Lou Barlow's "Goodnight Unknown"

Lou Barlow has released his new album, “Goodnight Unknown,” only a matter of weeks after “Farm,” Dinosaur Jr’s latest effort, on which he played bass. You have to wonder, given this proximity, how the two projects fit together, and I’m happy to report the answer is ‘not well at all.’ While I have already written about the incredibly complacency of those involved in phoning it in on “Farm,” it appears Lou has used the funds from that debacle to produce, in “Goodnight,” his most interesting work in some years.



There is a short film about the making of the album available here. I’ve tried not to let this documentary color my perspectives on the project. I think I’ve failed. Listening to Lou narrate images of his life working on “Goodnight” – setting-up and then re-configuring his home ‘studio;’ recording the sounds of child’s toys to make ambient sounds; working 9-5 on the album and then returning emoh to play with his 4yr-old daughter – I am left feeling jealous of the resources being a member of Dinosaur Jr has offered him to work, and intimidated by the snatches of music that have been born of it. When I turn back to the album itself, the final product is not quite so overwhelming an experience as his hard work on the film might suggest, but it’s not far off.

Why am I not as head-over-heels in love as I was about “The Freed Man” or “Bakesale?” Lou seems to move frustratingly on and off the target at some points on this album, as if he didn’t know himself what sometimes makes him truly one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard. Above all for me, those other albums set the standard for intimacy in music in two ways: they are musically more slight and simple than almost anything else ever recorded, and lyrically they are as open and candid as you might hope to confess on your deathbed.



Not to all tastes, this kind of songwriting (and not even to Lou’s at times it seems), but when it’s done well it’s a consummate enactment of connection between songwriter and listener. And there are moments of this king of bond on “Goodnight,” which is quite an achievement for someone writing their 20th or perhaps 30th album. “One Note Tone” is a song that could stand pretty well with ‘classics’ of his own genre like “Mystery Man,” “Two Years Two Days” or “Poledo.” “Too Much Freedom” is also poignant like tunes of old.

All in all, how much can we ask of Lou – That he matches or betters his best at every turn? Hardly likely, and hardly fair. He has written an album in which he digs once more into his own deep life, and we can enjoy hearing the sometimes stumbling results.

ART BRUT, tonight at Middle East Downstairs!

Going to a show in this day and age should not be a maudlin affair where we all commune over our sorry lives, our deep angst at the world and our lost loves – it should be FUN! This Friday night at Middle East Downstairs you can join a real musical party, when London’s Art Brut headline a night of breakneck punk with plenty of humor in the mix.



The last time Art Brut came to Middle East, singer Eddie Argos was nearly thrown out of the show, mistaken by security for a drunken fan who was dancing on the bar, chanting, with an ecstatic audience, that “MODERN ART… MAKES ME… WANT TO ROCK OUT!” It was a great night of entertainment, and now Art Brut return with a new album, “Art Brut vs. Satan,” and a hilarious new single to head it up, called, appropriately enough for them, “Alcoholics Unanimous.” How can you resist a title like that!



Art Brut are supported by some interesting up-and-comers from California. “Princeton” are a four-piece who mix shoegazing with airy-pop to create tunes which lighten our spirits. They are touring to support their brand new debut album, “Cocoon of Love,” and are well worth getting there early for. The opening act, Tab the Band, have been creating some buzz lately on the local scene (not to mention some nationally too, getting a Rolling Stone review into the bargain!). They should get things going for us very well indeed. See you down there.

Tom Thumb's "We never die"

Tom Thumb was already a favorite at RSL when I joined the crew a year ago. I had some catching up to do. On the night I first met Ryan, he led me over to Great Scott’s to see Andy Arch (the solo name behind the Tom Thumb project) play songs from his 2008 “The Taxidermist” album. It didn’t take much to be convinced. After that show, I listened to his new CD, “We never die,” with some trepidation – could he perform the acrobatics of building a whole second album to similar effect?

“We never die” comes stutteringly to life with a lone mandolin. It is a very human sound, unpolished to the point where it belies Arch’s mastery of his instrument(s). I’m pleased to say that this slight introduction to opening track “Olivia” sets the tone for a very intimate journey that is at least as moving and euphoric in turns as anything on “The Taxidermist.”

Arch’s lyrics are intricate, leaping from compacted image to image, sometimes amusing, often touching, and never prosaic. Though there is poignancy, my overriding emotional response is simply to revel in Arch’s complex play between the celebratory and sad.

All this joyous music builds, like any really great album, to a delicate crescendo in “Acid Rain.” Playing this song, among several from the last album, at a show in Boston some months ago, this was immediately a stand out. Here on the CD it makes clear that Arch knows not just how to write a lyric, or just how to write a song, but the dying art of how to write an album. “Acid Rain” caps off a project that seals Tom Thumb’s place as the best solo artist to come out of Boston in some years.

You are lucky this week, because not only can you pick up this great new Tom Thumb album (http://tomthumbmusic.com/), but you can also see the start of his fall tour begin, this Friday at the whitehaus in Jamaica Plain. If you live outside Boston, make sure you catch him at one of the following shows across America:

10.10.09 - Biddeford, ME @ the hfs annex

10.11.09 - Keene, NH @ Toadstool Bookshop

10.13.09 - Jamestown, NY @ Labyrinth Press Co.

10.16.09 - Brooklyn, NY@ Sycamore

10.20.09 - Penland, NC @ Penland School of Crafts Coffeehouse

10.21.09 - Chapel Hill, NC @ Caffe Driade

10.23.09 - Atlanta, GA @ Star Bar

10.24.09 - Athens, GA @ 2nd Annual Southern Celebration of Life

10.28.09 - Indianapolis, IN

10.29.09 - Urbana, IL

10.30.09 - Chicago, IL

10.31.09 - Lincoln, NE @ Clawfoot House

11.2.09 - Denver, CO

11.5.09 - Boulder, CO

11.7.09 - Las Vegas, NV @ the Cloud Hidden House

11.10.09 - San Luis Obispo, CA @ the Clubhouse

11.28.09 - Port Townsend, WA @ the Boiler Room

12.5.09 - Madison, WI @ the project lounge

12.6.09 - Chicago, IL @ the Orphanage

12.10.09 - Rochester, NY @ Boulder Coffee Co

12.14.09 - Portsmouth, NH @ the Red Door

RIP Dinosaur Jr (Please).

Dinosaur Jr changed my life. Sometime over the summer of 1993, my first girlfriend gave me a vinyl copy of “You’re living all over me.” I am at a loss for words, or space in this post, to explain all the implications of this album on my mind, or on where my life went from that moment. This may sound rather melodramatic, but it really is hard to over-estimate the effect of the band on me over the years.

But all things must pass. Dinosaur’s new album “Farm” marks, after over twenty years, the death of the band. Only the bands you are truly close to can really let you down, and really raise your ire. That is true in this case. I have to confess that listening to “Farm” makes me feel angry. It is so complacent. It so completely misunderstands what made the band fantastic for many, many years, as if the deep connection I thought I had made with what J, Lou and Murph were doing was hollow.

Its guitar tone is certainly loud, but somehow it’s clean and regular in a way the early Jr seemed dead-set against. The solos are casual and tuneless, an exercise in posturing instead of a representation of angst or pain. The lyrics have a ‘by numbers’ feel to them which would make J Mascis of old roll in his metaphorical grave. Where they got everything right with “Dinosaur,” “Bug,” and “You’re living all over me,” and produced a lot of great material on the many albums that followed, “Farm” is the antithesis of that immensely powerful, immensely beautiful sound.

In a few weeks you will have to chance to make your own mind up, because Dinosaur Jr are coming to Boston on tour. Will I be there? After listening to “Farm” over the last few weeks, it’s going to be a truly difficult decision. I suppose it should really be about letting go – of my youthful exuberance, and of the notion that Jr could be endlessly inspiring. That would be a lot easier though, if they would let me go too, and stop flogging their crumpled image to me, as if I were still besotted.

Maximo Park’s “Quicken the Heart”

Rarely has there been so much controversy about an album in the RSL writer’s team that I am a member of, than about this one. Long-standing friendships have ended, bitter words have been thrown, violence has ensued, lawyers have been called… well, a few of us have sent some sarcastic emails to each other at least. I must give credit for his wit to one other writer on the team, who is otherwise a big fan of the band, for renaming them “Minimo Park” after hearing this album.



How can I defend MAXimo Park from ‘vicious’ attacks like this? Well, in all seriousness, “Quicken the Heart,” Maximo Park’s third album, is possibly the best new music I have heard in the last six months. New is perhaps a strange word to use, because “Quicken the Heart” harkens back to a lot of older music, particularly from the 80s. It’s an album that is heavy with vintage synths and clean guitar hooks. The pacing of the songs too, has something about it that makes you feel like you’re watching a band who aren’t aware that they could play harder with a drum machine, and so achieve every ounce of energy they produce by simply throwing themselves at their instruments. Having seen them live (and they will be back at Paradise on 20th Sept, so you can too!), I can imagine them doing just that as they play these tracks.



This band has a star performer though, who lifts them from just good melodies and interesting hooks, to something really remarkable. Singer Paul Smith writes songs of love and romance that seem vintage like the rest of the band. I would hold Smith’s lyrical abilities up against anyone writing today though. He then sings these fantastic, emotive lines with a voice that sounds so desperately strained that even those with a heart of stone begin to wilt under the pressure. There is so much sadness in this music, but so much celebration of life too: of affairs loved but now over (“Tanned”), of brief, beautiful moments held between lovers (“Questing, not Coasting”), and of the excitement of fledgling relationships (“I Haven’t Seen Her in Ages”).

This is probably not the best album this band has produced, but, like a new summer romance, I can see nothing but the beauty of my current love.

Jarvis Cocker's "Further Complications"

One good way to think about Jarvis Cocker’s new solo album, ‘Further Complications,’ is as rather like the music of another truly classic songwriter, who you might not think shares much in common with Cocker. I speak of the ruler of sinister himself… Nick Cave.

Both men have such intelligent and subtle lyrical constructions that you wonder if they write poems to which they set music, or the other way around. Both men are capable of dark humor and cynicism, but also seem to give us moments that are touchingly familiar. Both have longstanding involvement with seminal bands (Pulp and the Bad Seeds respectively) that have produced lots of great music over the last couple of decades. Both, perhaps most pointedly for the purposes of a review of this album, have solo/side projects in which they show the angrier, dirtier side of their sound.



Nick Cave released this first album with side project ‘Grinderman’ in 2008, and played some of the heaviest sounding music he’s ever done on it. To move, more or less consciously, from the 90s disco core of Pulp to something rather like Grinderman, Cocker called on an absolute master of the industrial and vicious. Producer Steve Albini has worked with PJ Harvey and Fugasi, Nirvana and The Breeders among (many) others, and each time has found the most live and furious sound those artists have ever produced. On this album, tracks like “Fuckingsong” were recorded live in Albini’s Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, and give the album an edgy and muddy feel which is really a great new direction for Cocker.

In the album’s title track Cocker sings: “I was not born in wartime/ I was not born in pain or poverty/ I need an addiction, I need a affliction/ to cultivate my personality.” It’s a witty lyric, but it’s also a bitter sentiment that could have sat well on the ‘Grinderman’ set-list. Who would have thought that the writer of pop classics like ‘Common People’ and ‘Lipgloss’ would put down music like this. It’s good for us that his did – ‘Further Complications’ is close to the best work Cocker has ever had a hand in.

Doves and Wild Light are coming!

The greatest shows are not the ones where you get to see the best bands you can pull to a particular venue on a particular night. They are the shows where everything seems to fit together and you’re really there to see one big performance with multiple bands playing the acts. Coming up on June 7th is a show that just might work out like that: Manchester UK’s Doves play the House of Blues that night, and they will be supported by New Hampshire’s Wild Light.

Wild Light are a band which I might want to call local because they’re great, and I’d like to feel that they are ‘mine,’ sitting here in Boston. Even if that’s a stretch, the band did win a Boston Music Award last year, before their debut album even came out. They have also toured with Tapes ‘N Tapes in the past, and have just got back from a stint with The Killers.



Doves really are mine, because, as I’ve said before, Doves come from my long-lost hometown in Northern England. This gig, to support their new, fourth, album “Kingdom of Rust,” is Doves first in Boston for several years, and you’d be a fool to miss it, because they are one of the better live acts in England right now.



Best of all, these two bands compliment each other really well, both playing cleverly holistic melodies on bass and guitar, which make them sound musically warm and inviting. Go and see them both, not for either one, but for a whole night of moving music.

Back to Back Ryan's Smashing Life Shows coming up!

This coming week is a big one for the Boston music scene. New England's most popular music blog, Ryan's Smashing Life, is sponsoring TWO shows in a row at Berklee's Cafe 939 on Boylston Street, which are open to all.



Check out RSL for reviews of the bands and sample tracks for both Friday May 29th and Saturday May 30th.



Don't come along to show your support for the scene - these show won't need your charity (they may even sell out!). Come along instead because you want to see a couple of nights of really great music for just $10 a piece. Highlight of both shows for me will likely be acoustic virtuoso Tom Thumb (who I've written about before) on Friday 29th, but there will be lots of other great stuff to see as well.

I hope to see you down there.

Manchester Orchestra at Middle East Downstairs

The bands on the bill Thursday night at Middle East have to fight hard to be heard. They struggle not with technical problems, but with a city transfixed by the Celtic’s triple overtime playoff fight. Bands come and go as the majority of the audience give them only glancing attention, between shouts and cries at three point shots in final seconds, and desperate fouls.

Andy Hull of headliner act Manchester Orchestra knows how to handle this problem: don’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. As crowds huddle around the one old TV in the place, a bearded and hooded Hull pushes past to see the final moments of the game. Only once it’s all over does he turn and move past the boundary to the backstage to prepare to play.



When he appears on stage, he is also smart enough to open with the line “Fuck the Bulls.” It doesn’t seem that he needed to win the crowd over with this comment though - They are all with him from the first. Several times his singing is just about drowned out by the audience’s voice as it follows him. The band seem comfortable with this. Perhaps, fresh from their Letterman performance the day before, they are ready for the big-time audiences that are coming to them. We only hope they will keep their feet on the ground enough to write more songs like the vicious “Pride,” and not be swallowed whole by the PR and labels and producers who are surely poised to jump on them.



But things look good for the band in that department – they aren’t taking themselves too seriously, playing a cover of The Proclaimer’s cult classic “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” at one point, between their own rock epics. Manchester Orchestra are a band with a load of potential and a great live show. Check them out, on tour with Audrye Sessions.

Doves - Kingdom of Rust

The other day I came across the review of Doves’ new album, “Kingdom of Rust,” in an unlikely place: Rolling Stone. You might think it quite surprising that I was looking inside a Rolling Stone in the first place, but even more surprising was the fact that Rolling Stone were bothered to write even a short piece about Doves, a band from the UK that hardly cause a ripple over here. Soon I understood though – it was an opportunity to open with the following byline: “UK trio create epic tunes about (what else?) boring UK.”

What can I say about this kind of thoughtful journalism, but try and write a little about the Doves album that reaches past the merely trite…



I have to work hard not to be swept away by “Kingdom of Rust.” Doves make me melancholy. Their music is moving, but I must confess there is something more particular about my sadness in this case. Doves are from my long-lost hometown of Manchester (UK!), so I’m not claiming journalistic objectivity this time around, but then again, I don’t think I’m completely off the mark when I say that “Kingdom of Rust” is a really warm, engaging album. Doves’ bass driven song construction, mixed with Jimi Goodwin's vocals, create tracks that are much less elaborate then their hometown counterparts Elbow, but remain capable of being similarly ‘epic’ – here, at least, the Rolling Stone piece has some value.

Tracks like “10.03” are an achievement the band should be really proud of, building to a frenzy you might not expect from their commonly seen malaise. “Compulsion” too, shows that Doves have some swagger in them too, along with all the poetry.



Doves are definitely a band worth checking out, if you can stomach all the ‘boring UK’ associations.