arcati crisis
Not Stamps, Nor Coins
As sad as a commentary as this is on my recent listening habits, the excitement I feel about purchasing new music is as of late hardly ever a tangible one.
Really, it’s just the thrill of acquisition, and the subsequent thrill of careful examination and deconstruction. I could just as easily be a philatelist or a numismatist, so irrelevant can the actual fact that I am acquiring or examining a song be.
That said, at the moment I have two discs on my desk that I’m profoundly excited about.
The first is Grace Potter and the Nocturnals This Is Somewhere.
GP&N were one of the bands I had penciled into my Bonnaroo itinerary last summer. The festival was dotted with a precious few front-women, and most of the review I read were positive. So, on Saturday shortly after noon I planted myself in a dusty side-tent to hear the band for the first time.
They utterly blew me away. Grace Potter and the Nocturnals sounded like a feral, weedy, Joplinesque overgrowth of Sheryl Crow’s funky self-titled disc. Grace was an incendiary lead singer, wailing, screaming, thrashing her guitar, dancing behind her Wurlitzer, and leaping off of stage pieces to mark a number of huge crescendos. However, through all of that she was somehow still folksy – more an analog to Bonnie Raitt than to the PJ Harvey she was invoking.
Also of note, guitarist Scott Tournet was terrific, not only to listen to but to watch – a trait so many of the jam band guitarists I witnessed in passing didn’t seem to possess. (Listen below to his superb solo on the still-unreleased “Over Again” – I’m in there, screaming, somewhere. It’s currently available only on the overseas versions of the new disc.)
On the drive back I insisted we stop at the first civilized-looking mall to pick up the debut GP&N disc, but I was quickly disappointed – the disc was a calm, sterile affair, showing none of the vim of the live performance that had riveted me the day before. And, all of the best songs were absent from the disc!
This Is Somewhere has a few of those songs, and I’m hoping it fulfills the promise the Nocturnals made to me last June. Even a whisper of it would make my day.
If Grace Potter represents yet-unheard promise, then Rilo Kiley’s Under the Blacklight is a reverent hope for a return to form.
In 2002 I had no idea what Rilo Kiley sounded like – just that they were fronted by a woman and on Barsuk Record (which, back in the Death Cab’s better days, really meant something). I remember distinctly my first listen to their second disc, The Execution of All Things; I was meant to be drifting off to sleep in Elise’s bed, but I was instead riveted and wide awake.
At first RK seemed like a sort of indy-rock version of Garbage to me, one whose lead singer – lacking the queer confidence of a supervixen – instead wrote wryly about friends and potential apocalypses. But as I continued to listen I came to appreciate the significance of contributions from co-leader and guitarist Blake Sennett, who brought a tuneful, Elliott Smith-like melancholy to the proceedings, even when he was relegated to the background.
As my appreciation for the Rilo increased I also continued to play – and, now, co-write – with my best friend and musical partner Gina. One day, listening to two of Gina’s best paeans to the end of the world – “Real End” and “Fisher Price” – I realized that the strange pair of us had a chance at the same hooky, kitschy relevance that I had grown to love about RK.
It was like realizing for the first time what you want to do when you grow up – because I had. So, it was with great excitement that I purchased 2004’s More Adventurous – hoping to vicariously live out the next chapter of Gina and my musical development. Unfortunately, my excitement was quashed from track one – despite its title, the disc was a shapeless lump of peculiarly unhooky narratives, headlined by a spare duo of the superbly indie “Portions for Foxes” and the 60s Country spin through “Never Again.”
Having conceded that Rilo had lost their touch to the sappy post-folk, it came as no surprise to me when lead singer Jenny Lewis struck out on her own with an acoustic solo disc – Rabbit Fur Coat. More meandering nonsense, I assumed.
Well it wasn’t. Not quite, anyhow. As opposed to Adventurous, on which the band often seemed aimless if not excessive, Rabbit seemed like an eager bed made for absent riffs. And, it made some waves – indy and not.
Under the Blacklight is Rilo Kiley’s first major label disc, and its first after Jenny’s solo breakthrough. And, from the throbbing bass and reverberating guitar on the – yes, queer – lead single “Moneymaker,” I think the band may be back on some sort of track, even if Gina and I have since gone off the rails in our own direction.
I can’t yet recommend either disc, but I recommend getting this excited about a record. Not because you have to have it to complete your collection, or because you love an artist so much you can’t stand the wait, but because you have a fervent hope that you are about to be introduced to life-altering music.
An hour past showtime. I will never, ever, ever play into microphones outdoors ever again in my career as a bitchy little folk singer. The student tech crew could inexplicably not get either of our guitars to come in via our pickups, so we had to mic them both with microphones. Now, i dunno if you’ve ever seen me play before, but i shimmy around like a belly dancer with a cricket put down the back of my shirt, so giving me a stationary microphone to play my guitar at is the worst idea you could ever have. Furthermore, they couldn’t even get our vocal mics to come out of the monitors in front of us, so i couldn’t hear Gina singing anything directly, just from off to the side. After sitting there strumming a G chord for ten minutes while the sound guys did everything but get us any sort of monitor mix we could hear, we finally decided to start and see what happened.
“Punk” was a thankfully quick crash and burn, though at that point we were assuming the monitor problem would get fixed. In our naivety we managed to get some good harmony going. However, the set took a downturn during “Deadweight” when two obnoxious guys were standing directly in front of us having a conversation and we still couldn’t hear ourselves playing. I, of course, started directing all of the lyrics right at the conversationalists – which wound up getting their attention rather quickly (they especially looked up when i screamed “i can’t get rid of you even if i want to, cause your deadweight the way you serve no purpose”). “With or Without You” was quick and rather painless for me because Gina was singing, but i couldn’t hear her guitar so i didn’t know what the hell was going on. “Lost” sucked because i couldn’t hear my guitar over the reverb of our voices (which finally found their way into the monitor), so i basically just played it quick and angry (which generally works well). I stalked off to retune after that and Gina bravely attempted “Landslide” solo while the wind dueted into her microphone, after which i came jogging back onto the stage for a very brave attempt at “Under My Skin” (in which the solo was rendered totally moot because Gina had no pickup for her acoustic guitar so we couldn’t hear what she was playing). After that we were supposed to play another 20 minutes of songs, but i was basically just muttering “fuck” under my breath inbetween every lyric and Gina was totally frustrated, so we hammered out “Can’t Do” and walked right off the front of the staging area without even saying thank you. Yep… i’m a rock star in training; i’ve got the attitude and everything.
The next band’s instruments all plugged in fine and the band sounded wonderful, even though they had too much reverb. There was a chick guitarist in the last band, but i was too pissed to hang around much longer. Somehow i managed to sell fifteen demos in the midst of all of this, but that leaves me with mucho extra copies, so get your orders in now. Ugh.
Five hours. I just ran into Gina, so … she’s here. I also dropped off my rapidly fuzzing liner notes to be copied on stock paper – had i planned this out properly i would have had the liner done digitally for today, however when it comes down to digital liner notes or underwear to wear for your show the right choice is (usually) doing laundry. Also, Gina and I were just totally improbably asked to record songs for a play opening in D.C. in July that will be playing at the Philly Fringe Festival, which means we might get to perform live there. This is ultra-tentative, but if i pursue it i think it’ll work out. See how easy it is to network when you’re not just some random kid recording dumb little concerts for your website ;-)
Meanwhile, somehow i leaked the liner notes before the demo release (i know how: i am a dumbass), so people are starting to catch wind of the thanx they received. I’m probably going to change the inside liner notes for each “pressing” of the disc so i can keep straight which ones got made when, so hopefully there’ll be some continuing surprises. But, now i have to sit at my desk and stew for another hour while my copies are being done. What fun.
The concert countdown is now officially underway! Seven and a half hours and counting until Gina and I take the stage awash in fame and record high temperatures. Am i nervous? Possibly; i’ve basically invited everyone i know to come see us play this tiny acoustic set of songs and we’re playing in the midst of some Drexel bands who i’m a minor-league fan of. And we’ve never done harmony on “Punk,” “Under My Skin,” “Never Say Goodbye,” or “A Perfect Day” live before. But, no reason to be alarmed – after all, part of the charm of acoustic musicians is their ability to entangle and then unknot themselves from oddball onstage situations without ever breaking a sweat. Or, at least, they don’t break a sweat from the stress. The heat might get to them, though.
Errr… right. 5:30 today between Market and Chestnut & 33rd and 32nd. 42 demos available for a to-be-decided price. And me pretending i’m a rock star.