Alt-J 3/29/13- Riverside Theatre

I'm not sure if there is a band that has gotten more attention and buzz in the indie scene right now than Alt-J.  Their debut record, "An Awesome Wave" came out last year to much critical acclaim and ended up on many music blogger's "Best of 2012 Lists" (including mine).  On Friday the band took the stage at the Riverside Theater after selling out Turner Hall, and the Pabst Theater previously.  I don't believe there has been another act to come to town and upgrade to not one, but two venues.  The place was as jam packed as I've ever seen the Riverside Theater.  So, what makes this band so buzz worthy?

Alt-J blends a lot of different sounds to create a unique blend of music.  The band's influences range from electronic beats, atmospheric loops, folk sensibilities, pounding beats, and harmonizing vocals.  Comprised of  Gwil Sainsbury (guitarist/bassist), Joe Newman (guitar/vocals), Gus Unger-Hamilton (keyboards) and Thom Green (drums), all of whom met at Leeds College in England in 2007, Alt-J is a relatively new band, but you couldn't tell that by their stage performance Friday night.

Their live show is best described as polished.  The quartet relied heavily on material from "An Awesome Wave," as was expected, and played to their audience well (although with little stage banter).  One could argue that the lighting engineer for the band served as the fifth member, as the visual accompaniments went along perfectly with the music, making for a wonderful visual and aural experience for the jam packed crowd. Their sound and overall performance can be best seen in their song, "Dissolve Me" which includes the best of the band's harmonizing vocals, paired with a fantastic light arrangement.


Other tunes from "An Awesome Wave" like "Tesselate," "Breezeblocks," and "Fitzpleasure" were delivered with great energy.  Alt-J proved to be a band that clearly deserves the buzz they are receiving these days.

Grade: B

Favorite Baseball Themed Songs

Opening Day is almost here, and dare I say that 2013 will be the year that I finally see my beloved Milwaukee Brewers go to the World Series?  One can certainly wish and hope (as I do each and every year that I can remember).  In honor of the 2013 Major League Baseball season kicking off in less than a week, I thought I'd do a post on some of my favorite baseball-related songs.  After all, baseball is the Great American Past Time, and music and baseball just seem to pair so well together (like hot dogs and Secret Stadium Sauce, hot pretzels and nacho cheese, plastic helmets and waffle fries... you get the picture).

For the purpose of this post, I omitted some obvious tunes like, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," "Come See Let's Brewing" (the 1980's Brewers theme song), and "The Beer Barrel Polka," as for me, these seem like obvious Miller Park staples.  Instead, I looked for songs recorded by artists I enjoy that either deal directly with baseball or baseball-related themes. 

Please feel free to share with me your favorites in the comments section of this blog:

Honorable Mention:  Eddie Vedder "All the Way" 2007.
A great homage to the Chicago Cubs, and a great song overall. However, as a die-hard Brewers fan, I just can't put a Cubs' tune in my top 5.  However, if there is ever one that is worthy of being mentioned it's this one.  

5.  Bruce Springsteen "Glory Days" 1985.

What kid who ever donned a glove or picked up a bat didn't dream of being a big league player?  Leave it to "The Boss" to capture the essence of summer-- reminiscing of days gone by, fun stories with friends, and good times.  While one of the characters in the song is a high school baseball player, I think the main draw for me is how baseball, like this tune, allows us to reconnect with fond memories in the past.




4.  Widespread Panic "Rebirtha"1996.
Widespread Panic, hailing from Athens, Georiga, are notorious for being die-hard Braves fans (although I have seen lead singer/guitarist wear a Brewers hat or jersey on occasion at shows in Milwaukee during Summerfest throughout the years).  Widespread Panic's soulful southern rock, especially Bell's howling vocals, invoke a baseball "feel."  The line in this tune that resonates for me is:

"I know a town where real life's a game
Baseball's all that's real
At night all the faces light up
As the players take the field"

Tell me if that doesn't remind you of Milwaukee during the recent 2008 or 2011 Brewers playoff runs?

3. Wilco & Billy Bragg, "Joe Dimaggio's Done It Again." 2000.
What would a baseball song list be without an homage to a great player from yesteryear?  This was a song originally penned by Woody Gutherie that appeared on Wilco & Bully Bragg's Mermaid Avenue Vol 2 record.  It's a great narrative about Joltin' Joe, and even better testament to how engrained baseball is in our popular culture.




2.   John Forgerty, "Centerfield" 1985.
"Put me in cold, I'm ready to play," howls former CCR front man on his classic track about baseball.  This track ranks #2 on my list as it really is a well-written and musically moving tribute to the game itself, and the passion an emotion that it can instill in its fans.  Not much more needs to be said about this tune, as it's become a time honored classic, and perhaps the rock tune that is most often  associated with the game itself.

1.  The Hold Steady "Constructive Summer" 2008.
This song is perhaps the "Glory Days" of its era.  The Hold Steady, are often compared to Springsteen's earlier work, as being a "ultimate bar band," with catchy rock riffs, shouting vocals, and raw emotion and energy that is palpable live or coming through your speakers.  This tune deals with the eternal hope that summer brings, old friends and the importance of taking it upon yourself to build your own lasting memories (baseball related or not).  While never mentioning the words "baseball," "player," "bat," "ball," "stadium," or anything of the like, Craig Finn and the boys from The Hold Steady capture the essence of hopefulness that springs forth each year at the start of the baseball season for fans in Milwaukee and everywhere. 

Here is a video I shot of "Constructive Summer" live in Madison, WI at the "Majestic Theater" during the summer of 2008.

Local Natives- Riverside Theater 3/22/13

A lot can be said (or not said) about a band's name.  In the case of Local Natives, the name makes great sense with the sound.  Local implying current and natives implying what's been there before. Hailing from the Los Angeles area, Local Natives put a modern twist on what one could describe as the "greatest hits" of the California rock sound.   Local Natives are a unique act, as their biggest asset is the harmonizing vocals from guitarist Taylor Rice, keyboardist Kelcey Ayer, and guitarist Ryan Hahm.  The vocals sounded good on the album, but blew me away live.  This, coupled with the driving drums of Matt Frazier, make Local Natives sound like Pet Sounds era Beach Boys if they were to cover the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense.  All the musicians in Local Natives share collaboratively in the songwriting practice and this is quite evident in the live performance, as there is not really a clear "front man" in the band. 

Speaking of Talking Heads, the 80's band's influence on Local Natives was quite apparent, as they delivered a rousing cover of "Warning Sign" which also appeared on the band's debut record, Gorilla Manor.

The set consisted of much of Gorilla Manor and the band's latest, Hummingbird.  This was Local Natives first trip ever to Milwaukee, and the band declared this the best show of the tour so far.  The band, for the most part, nailed their tunes with great percission.  My favorite was the tribal anthem"Wide Eyes" which kicks off Gorilla Manor.
 

The crowd, consisting of high school and college students to folks like me in their 30's and 40's were very receptive of the act, and nearly filled the Riverside Theater, a venue known for hosting larger and often times more established indie acts that come to town.  This show was actually moved from Turner Hall to the Riverside due to overwhelming crowd demand. 

Local Natives are a young band, and will need to gain experience and a deeper and more diverse collection of tunes before elevating to the next level of indie rock acts.  However, the future is very bright for these California rockers, and I feel this band's best is yet to come.

Grade: B

The 1975- Turner Hall Ballroom 3/19/13

About half-way through their set, The 1975's front man, Matthew Healy, announced that he hopes the band's forthcoming LP sounds like the soundtrack to a John Hughes film.  Listening to their set, I think you could have easily looped a montage of clips from Molly Ringwald films from the '80s in the background and the music would fit perfectly, particularly on more uptempo tracks like "Chocolate" and "The City."



Part Joy Division, part James, and part Jesus Jones, the 1975's retrofitted Brit Pop won over a crowd of roughly 400 people who braved a winter wind advisory to come check out this upcoming band.  The reviews from their shows at the recent SXSW festival in Austin portrayed the band accurately-- the band was energetic and musically very tight.  While the Manchester quartet consisted of a standard rock outfit with a singer, drummer, guitarist and bass player, the musicians also often alternated between their core instruments and samplers, to help layer electronic loops and effects into their songs.

One of the things I was most impressed by was the band's sincere humility.  Healy emerged for the first two songs wearing a Green Bay Packers sweatshirt, trying to engage a crowd that was already engaged for the music.  He was struck by both the size of the crowd and general appreciation of the fans, literally thanking the crowd at the end of every track.  A fun, thoroughly entertaining band, I expect good things to come from The 1975 in the future. 

Grade: B+

What's on Will's iPod March 2013 Edition

Looking for something new to listen to?  The following four artists have been getting a lot of spins recently on my iPod, and I thought I'd share them with you.

1.  Phosphorescent:  
Their latest record "Muchacho" is the potential break out effort from singer-songwriter Matthew Houk and company.  Great vocals and layered instrumentals that catch the listeners' attention make this a fantastic record, and an early forerunner for one of my favorite records of the year.  Sonically somewhere between Counting Crows and Bon Iver, Phosphorescent's latest puts a unique and creative spin on the singer-songwriter style.  An evocative listen from start to finish with excellent musical diversity and instrumentation.  Below is a recording of Phosphorescent's "Song for Zula" from SXSW



 2.  Fort Frances:
Speaking of Counting Crows, this trio from Chicago is on the up and up.  First, their cover of DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's "Summertime" came out last summer and created some Internet buzz.  Later, this past fall, they were featured on comedian Daniel Tosh's Comedy Central show,  Tosh.0 with the comedian highlighting the cover and even sporting a Fort Frances shirt.  However, don't let a catchy cover fool you.  This band is hot off of playing the "Outlaw Road Show" at SXSW, and have an upcoming sophomore release due out next month.


 
3. Toro y Moi:
A post by 88.9 RadioMilwaukee DJ Tarik Moody, regarding their exceptional performance at SXSW made me YouTube this band, and ultimately pick up their latest album.  This is a real hard act to describe in words.  A mash up of electronic music, acid jazz, rock,  r&b, and mellow trance, Toro y Moi is an enjoyable and infectious listen from start to finish.  It's vesitile enough to provide a terrific workout soundtrack and dinner music soundtrack all at the same time.  This live track from one of their recent Austin shows definately puts this act on my list of "need to see" artists.



4.  Thao and the Get Down Stay Down:
Perhaps no single has gotten more iPod spins thus far in 2013 than Thao and the Get Down Stay Down's "We The Common (For Valerie Bolden)."  I embedded a video below where Thao goes into the origins of this great tune.  In my opinion it is next to impossible not to like this tune.  Best thing is that the rest of Thao's latest, "We The Common" is solid, musically diverse with unique instrumentation. and charming with Thao's unique vocal delivery.

Tame Impala @ Turner Hall Ballroom 3/3/13

Music is truly a universal art form that can and should be appreciated by people of all ages and walks of life.  Never was that more true than looking around at the capacity crowd at the Turner Hall Ballroom on a chilly Sunday evening to see Perth, Australia's dream pop indie darlings, Tame Impala, perform a headlining show.  From the first note of their opening jam, "Desire Be Desire Go," you could see a sea of head bobbing happiness from people of all ages.  In attendance were everyone from former students, now seniors in high school, to college students wearing college hats and sweatshirts, to a couple who looked just shy of my parents' age who were to my right and held hands and swayed during the whole set, to mid-thirties folks like myself (rocking Brewers gear, by the way :) ), to mustachioed hipsters, to long-haired folks who looked like Kevin Parker, the lead singer and songwriter from the band, to ladies on girls' nights out, to everything else in between... literally.

So, what makes Tame Impala's music so appealing to such a diverse crowd?  My thinking is that it's the right blend of a lot of styles that come together to form a unique and truly enjoyable sonic landscape. Imagine what would happen if you were able to attend a collaborative jam session with  Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon era), the Flaming Lips (Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots era), the Stone Roses, and My Morning Jacket.  The result of that musical conglomeration would be about as close of a description as I can come up with in defining Tame Impala's overall sound.

The band's near 90 minute set drew mostly from songs from their two full-length albums, 2010's Innerspeaker, and last year's Lonerism, (which was one of my favorite albums of the year).  "Endors Toi," the first track off of Lonerism, was featured early in the set and elicited a classic spacey jam.  Moreover, a show highlight, "Elephant," the single off of Lonerism frequently played on 88.9 Radio Milwaukee, featured a tripped out blues guitar riff coupled with dynamic percussion, and even a homage to circus-sounding instrumentals during a pause in the tune.

Another truly engaging factor of this concert were the fantastic visuals which often corresponded, literally note-for-note, to what either the guitarist, bassist, drummer or keyboardist was playing.  The visuals were so good, that one could argue that the lighting engineer was just an integral part of the band as the musicians themselves (just like you'd see at a My Morning Jacket or Phish show).

Tame Impala certainly melded all of their influences throughout the concert.  The jam from "Mind Mischief" demonstrates their ability to incorporate aspects of shoe gaze, pop-rock, and no-psychadelica all at the same time.


My highlight overall of this concert was oddly a tune that I had only heard on YouTube called, "Half Full Glass of Wine" featured on the band's first EP released in 2008.  This tune begins a lot like My Morning Jacket's "One Big Holiday" and features a strong jam from each of the musicians, resulting at the end with a deafening crescendo featuring all five musicians (and the visual effects) at their finest.


Opening for Tame Impala was The Growl, fellow band mates form Perth, AU.  The Growl featured two drummers (one of whom literally used a tin garbage can for part of his rig), a guitarist, a keyboardist, an upright bass player, and a singer who channeled what Jim Morrison would have looked like as a western Australian.  This act was very solid as well, and did best when they stuck to tunes with more traditional blues structure, which lent themselves to the added electronic loops and effects the band put on their set.

Grade: A+



photo by Stephen Bloch

Zen and The Lost Art of the Mix Tape

Unlike a mix CD, a playlist, or even a compilation that you can upload onto a piece of  music sharing software or a blog, there was nothing quite like the texture, effort and artistic creation of the mix tape. Not to mention that unique plastic aroma of "new tape smell," fresh out of the wrapping.  This blog post is my homage to this now antiquated art form for music fans (read geeks): the mix tape.

After recently viewing The Perks of Being a Wallflower (which I highly recommend for readers that are interested in a more modern-day Breakfast Club sort of flick), I began rethinking the role the mix tape played in my formative tween and teen years.  For one thing, the tape gave you a unique format.  Most blank tapes (I personally preferred the Maxell XLIIs) were 90 minutes in length, divided into two 45 minute sides.  Using the blank tape, you could record from the radio, record from CDs, and record from other tapes or other mixes.  The artful mixologist would need to essentially piece together music the length equivalent of a double-LP to merely fill up the space of the tape.  This required more than dragging and dropping tunes on your computer from one folder to another to create a playlist, that ultimately could be re-altered by the listener.  Making a great mix tape, in its most humble form,  required timing out your songs, considering placement of tracks, juxtaposing shorter and longer tunes and making the piece flow in an order that makes sense to the listener and is ultimately enjoyable.  Many mix tapes were constructed to send a message of friendship, introduce a pal to new tunes, or ultimately, in middle and high school land, tell that special someone that you "liked" them without having to mutter those horribly awkward tween and teen words yourself.  So, with all of this in mind, what were the elements that made for a great mix tape?

The Old and Recognizable Tune:
The quality mix has to contain some recognizable songs.  There are always a handful of feel good tunes, often positioned at the start of the tape or kicking off the B side that are lively and will automatically make the listener sing along.  Classic up-tempo rock staples from well-known bands, like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Van  Morrison, or Simon and Garfunkel would often do the trick in this department.  Who can go wrong opening your tape with the Beatles, after all?


The Campy, Inside Joke or Overall Humorous Tune:
What's a mix tape without that humorous or campy tune that would be used to invoke a sense of  nostalgia or levity?   Anything from They Might Be Giants, to a cover of the Muppets' infamous "Mahna Mahna," to Ruppert Holmes' one-hit-wonder "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)", no perfect mix tape would be without one of these gems.

 

The Singer-Songwriter Tune:I don't think I can recall one mix tape (or CD or playlist that I've made for that matter) that has not had some element of singer-songwriter artists on it.  After all, who doesn't love acoustic guitars and thoughtful lyrics?


The R.E.M Tune:
The era of the mix tape coincided almost perfectly with the height of REM.  One of my favorite bands of the 80's and early 90's, REM delivered a diverse sound, catchy melodies, and exceptional lyrics.


The Props to the Local Guys Tune:
Everyone's gotta love that local band that you think, at one time or another, is going to be the next big thing.  Growing up in Milwaukee in the early 90's, the local bands were Citizen King (my personal favorite), Willy Porter and The Gufs.  Just about any given weekend you could see one of these acts at a local festival, an all-ages show, or a benefit show at a local high school.  They all made for perfect mix fodder.


THE ballad: If you were ever making a mix for a potential future significant other, you would need to include "THE ballad."  Placement of this tune in the mix was paramount above all others.  You wanted your listener to know that this may be the song that makes you think of them.  Likewise, you want to be subtle enough not to just lead off the tape with it.  "THE" ballad on mixes I made often included slow dance songs from 7th and 8th grade dances.  The Black Crowes' "She Talks to Angels," Pearl Jam's "Black," and "Yellow Ledbetter," and, embarrassingly so, Poison's "Something to Believe In," all filled the role of THE ballad at some point or another on a mix.



Edie Brickell & New Bohemians: "What I Am"


Finally, last but not least, appearing on perhaps more mixes that I created than just about any other tune, how can you not have an homage to the lost art of the mix tape without including this classic from the late 80's early 90's era?

Hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane.  Let me know what were your mix tape favorites.