retrospective: the best collaboration album of 2009 (and it’s not ‘Dark Was the Night’)…wait, nevermind

Sweetheart-Our Favourite Artists Sing Their Favourite Long Songs (2009)


This collection has a lot going against it but it suprisingly started so promisingly. Going against it: love songs and it’s sold in starbucks. It has a Coldplay song in it. Covered by Jem. And Katy Perry reminding us that she’s indie by recording with a starbucks corporate music studio.

But in spite of these adversities, the cd starts mostly enjoyable (after the katy perry hiccup) as a hold-the-syrup love song compilation, notably DeVotchka, Dept of Eagles, Ben Birdwell (Band of Horses). I like love songs alright, I think many songs are some sort of repressed love song. When Jessica Lea Mayfield coos “tell me love is real hmmm hmmmm hmmmm” it feels so sweetly melancholy. Then the wheels come off.

There’s a run of hitting the fast forward urgently through extra sap or 40year-old-female soft pop processed jazz with generic drum kit, then the closing credits song in Monsters Inc., then it finishes curiously with Zooey Deschanel belting/wailing ‘I put a spell on you’ with a M. Ward practice session on how to cut out the sound with his frets. If I was using this album for romantic purposes, it would start off real well, then end with me killing the mood by kicking a hole in the stereo.

False alarm folks- Starbucks, Coldplay, and Katy Perry are still not associated with good music.

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NEW MODEST MOUSE (Satellite Skin, single)

Satellite Skin


download the single

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and moving on.../Dark Was the Night

It's five a.m., and I'm rummaging around my ex-girlfriend's apartment trying to find the parts to her espresso machine without making too much noise. This is unexpected. Forty-eight hours ago I was trying to get through immigration in Beijing; a month and a life before that I force-fed the English language to bored Japanese middleschoolers, returning home at night to an aging mp3 collection.* Now, I've got the shakes thanks to a New York night out that only began to wind down with the sunrise.

I am jet-lagged, I am confused, and good lord I need coffee. I Eventually manage to piece together the espresso maker, locate the ON button, and bring the thing clattering to life. I jump up and down, whisper-squeeking expletives and slapping at the off button, nearly knocking it off the counter. So much for a quiet cup of coffee to start my morning. I've no choice but to venture outside for my fix. There has to be somewhere in the West Village where a uniformed teenager will hand me a styrofoam cup of sludge to sip until I reach the subway and the last leg home. It'd be impolite to sneak out, so for now, I just sit at the window watching people defy their weekend by trudging to work on a soggy Monday morning.

This is not, however, why I am here. I am not in New York to drink coffee or observe the pedestrians of lower Manhattan. I am not here to visit old friends. or get drunk. or wander Central Park or eat bagels or jaywalk.

I came here to see Dark was the Night.


Allow me a moment to defend the use of melodrama.

This is pretty big for me. I'm breaking a three year, tempted-in-the-wilderness vow of silence here, and goddamit I am going through a lot to do it in style. I stumbled off a 20-hour plane ride on Friday, said hey to my folks, and promptly jumped on a chinatown bus to New York on Sunday.

As the lucky-star bus passed through the brick mass of South Boston, I couldn't help but stare out the window, every five seconds thinking "Holy shit: ...America."

Unoccupied sofas are tracked down as I text friends filtered by years of infrequent emails and brief Christmas visits. It seems my people gathered around the cultural salt lick that is Brooklyn. They'll have to wait, though (music first, friends and food later). After subways and lines at the door and clumsy handshakes with old friends, I collapse into my third-mezzanie seat at Radio City Music Hall.

Between the impressive list of artists and my sudden return from exile, I'm expecting big things from tonight. The show starts off simple enough with the Dirty Projectors playing jangly, angular (jangular?) stuff off their new album, which is, y'know, cool.

I know this. I'm comfortable in this moment. And then David Byrne walks onstage mid-set.

MY COMFORT ZONE:
1. Band onstage playing music.
2. People watching said band and having a good time.
3. Absolutely no David Byrne walking onstage sort-of unexpectedly

The place goes completely apeshit. Ok, maybe it's just me, but around me people are clapping, screaming, stomping in their skinny jeans, and the dude's not even halfway to the mic. He's old, man, in a kind of mad-scientist kind of way (which is appropriate somehow) but the focus of the Projectors' set has very quickly re-focused on him and him alone.

The show is, as hoped, fucking epic. It's like 4AD raised its artists free-range and we're finally allowed inside the pen: Bon iver backs the National's set - the National, in turn, backs Bon Iver's set (bro hugs!)– David Byrne chases everyone offstage with his bongo-drumming army while Feist pops out from behind a monitor to sing along – Dave Sitek (a.k.a. the dude from TV on the Radio) goes all Count Basie on us when he comes onstage in a full suit and full entourage, an exhuberant saxohonist in tow – My Brightest Diamond teases the audience by only doing the song off the compilation before poof! disappearing (prompting them to be (dis?)honored by being the only band who people demand the curator name a total of three times... evidently some people did not listen to the whole compilation) – Feist acoustic-guitar/spotlight/3000-people-but-could-be-your-living-room-intimacy's her way even deeper into my heart

That constant shuffling of artists on and off stage makes the show feel like a constant creative process, a living thing coming into being as we watched. Not in that ninth-grade-health-class-video kind of way, but something more pivotal, like actual fucking Creation itself. Yeah, the compilation track listing names an artist or two playing a song together, but live, backing roles were tossed around like southern pigskin. This thing that we were witnessing truly felt the way live music should: alive, totally new, and never before experienced.

Which is why those artists that shunned the collaborative spirit of the evening suffered in comparison. Now that I think about it, that basically narrows the artists I was disappointed in down to one: Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. While a great showman and excellent singer, her onstage persona (cocky with cause like a young James Brown) seemed contrary to the spirit of the evening. Don't get me wrong, I had a great time watching her: the band play solid, classic soul. But she tried to take over like Aretha Franklin on VH1 (stay with me on that one). Look at what happened during the encore: an obviously planned gag where Sharon Jones interrupts all the other artists as they sang “this land is your land” to school them in the ways of soul. While she sang, she seemed to be almost lecturing them, stalking around onstage with a “you kids don't know nuthin!” attitude while the other artists sort of clumped together on stage left, awkwardly attempting to join in on a guitar (if they had one). She stuck out as an ego out of place among the cooperative.

Meanwhile, sets by the National and Bon Iver encasulated what the evening was all about. Honestly, I should disclaim that I looked forward to seeing these bands anyway (I'm going to miss the National when they come by Boston in a two weeks) but did not anticipate the degree to which the two would complement each other throughout the night. Instead of stifling the music with unnecessary supporting roles or complexity, the two bands added soul and depth to each other. Independently their recorded work pushes that anyway, but Bon Iver's vocals gave the National sweetness, while the National rooted down Bon Iver's set in a way that you can't hear on the recorded work.

Those two sets are being played over and over in my head as I walk from West to East Village. I shovel corned beef and eggs down my gullet at some sticky linoleum diner, remembering the moment Justin Vernon checked the tuning on his acoustic guitar and the audience steeled itself as one - somewhere in there we all heard the opening chord of “Flume.” Passing through Union Square, the first time I've done this in a t-shirt in years, my inner jukebox replays the National breaking into “Slow Show” at the start of an amazing set (followed by “England”). I remember wishing I could share that moment with a overseas friend who I will most likely never see again, one among the many who should have been there but have long gone on with their lives.

No matter. Maybe I'll see all those people again again, but it's no time to be nostalgic. It's too nice outside. It's spring, sure, it's raining a litte, but not enough to ruin my last way to the subway. \

I promised someone back in Brooklyn I'd say hi before heading back home. Just gotta figure out how to get there from here.


*It's not like I didn't try to like J-pop, J-hip/hop, etc. Just the opposite. I waded through uncountable albums of J-music, most if it sadly derivative and uninspired, as if the mere slapping a "J-" in front of the genre name creates something inherently new. It's hard to forge ahead when everything was so J-neric (HA!)

did like this song though:

furuido - "sanaechan"

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it never ends with these guys

man, it just doesnt end with these guys. coldplay. thats right. another artist emerges claiming that theyve been ripped off. and this isnt some attention grubbing startup band looking to get press- its yusuf. aka cat stevens.

As Coldplay do battle with Joe Satriani in court after the guitar hero claimed the Britpop superstars stole his 2004 song "If I Could Fly" for their smash "Viva La Vida", Cat Stevens (who currently goes by the name Yusuf Islam) is looking to get in on the action. According to UK rag The Sun (via NME), Stevens is now claiming Chris Martin and company actually stole "Viva La Vida" from his 1973 song "Foreigner Suite".

And... turn up them speakers, and then click on this:

http://www.najle.com/idaft/

"iDaft lets you treat “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” like a sampler guitar hero and trigger all the words with your keyboard. It’s dorky, but just a little too much fun not to post."

source: pfork, yanp


I'm going to go on temporary hiatus until june19 to take care of some things.

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