Switch @ Mr.Jones

It’s been about two months now since we waved a final goodbye to Backlash. Once THE electro night of choice for Dublin students, its (questionably named) replacement Mr. Jones was the cause of much speculation. The Bodytonic crew promised us a similar feel to the original electro night but with a twist i.e. featuring more guest artists, bands and a broader spectrum of sounds. However, with Ivan Smagghe having been a no show when he was billed to perform in January and the sounds in the “Kitchen” becoming increasingly samey and commercial, some people were beginning to tire of the Pod as the dancing venue of choice.

Switch’s guest performance at Mr.Jones last night is surely to change all that. By midnight the venue was already pretty packed as Chewy warmed up the crowd with a selection of bass heavy tech-house and electro. Space on the dancefloor was scarce as eager clubbers psyched themselves up for the self-proclaimed “fidget-house” stylings of Dave “Switch” Taylor and come one o’clock when the man himself appeared behind the decks, the venue was jumping.

The first time I saw Switch was in November of 2006 when he was playing with Klaxons, also in the Pod. At that stage I was unfamiliar with his stuff but remember him playing a banging set, so good in fact that my… em… friend… fell off the stage (and nearly onto the DJ) from dancing so much! Last night was pretty much the same deal, good danceable bassline house and a charismatic, varied and most importantly fun set. The dance-floor didn’t empty in the slightest all night, testament to the DJ no doubt. A highlight of the set for me personally was stage dancing to “This is Sick”, one of Taylor’s own tunes remixed by Donna Summer. Check it out and keep your eyes peeled for more guest sets at Mr. Jones. Last night’s was a stomper.

These kids will listen to anything

This is kind of old, but so god damn awful it bares repeating. If you’ve ever wondered why the record industry hasn’t tapped into dissonant outsider punk and folk, excreting thin attractive Daniel and Calvin Johnston clones to mime angst free pop noize, you haven’t been looking hard enough. The prosecution presents item 1. ‘Black Out Band’ ’s 2007 flop ‘Video Games’, combines everything you tolerate and come to enjoy in say Jandek - the inability to sing, compose, record and or indeed perform, with the crass commercialism of a mid 90’s Sega of America Marketing Video.

For once, the liner notes really say it all.

“This comic ballad mocks the stereotype of today’s youngsters as spoiled rotten video game addicts. It’s all clearly tongue-in-cheek and these hard working boys appear anything but spoiled. Most surprisingly, Hunter Watson’s performance is Mick Jagger cool despite a refreshing absence of explicit lyrics. But what really makes the song stay on replay in the listener’s mind is the catchy pop-style melody, with it’s wry references to a diverse group of artists, from Dylan and the Monkees to the Black-Eyed Peas.”

Indeed.

Weekend Homework

Like the word ‘epitome’*, ‘Rock Lobster’ by the B-52s had, for the longest time, a curious double life inside my brain. I knew that there was a band called the B-52S, and that they sung a song called ‘Rock Lobster’. I also knew that I liked this song, though I didn’t know what it was called. Eventually, I put two and two together, and made a tentative decision, that, perhaps, four was a possible correct answer.

Anyways and all, the B-52s’s’s’s’s’s’s first album in 16 years in being released in the coming weeks. Entitled ‘Funplex’, it bears a lead single of the same name. Let’s have a look at it, shall we?

Here are the good things about it:

1. The intro has some muttering and some guitars. I am fond of both muttering and guitars.

2. The chorus is seven assorted types of excellent.

3. At about 2.06, the negative points that I’m about to make doesn’t matter, because the record just WORKS, if only for about 10 seconds.

Here are the not good things about it:

1. Schneider’s voice grates. Immensely. I know sprechgesang’s his schtick, but he’s been doing the same thing in the same way for nigh on 30 years. Maybe he could vary intonation? Dynamics?

2. I am disappointed at the lack of a video for the song. Hopefully this will be remedied. Or, some clever Youtube person will super-impose the song over this track

Homework for this week: Outkast’s ‘Hey Ya’- the ‘Love Shack’ of our generation? Discuss, using secondary references.

*Epitome- I used to think that there was the word ‘e-pit-oh-me’ and the word ‘epi-tohm’, in the same way that I thought of both ‘Rock Lobster’ and the song that turned out to be ‘Rock Lobster’.

Le Loop live at KEXP podcast

Photo by Doron Gild.

Last week Dan and myself got the chance to catch Le Loup live in Crawdaddy and I have to say it was absolutely deadly. There’s a certain rawness and energy that doesn’t come through on the album (The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly). Live Le Loup really let loose and rockout. It’s a little more guitar based live too and unfortunately for us Tripod sound engineers failed to give the banjo enough volume that its essential melodies required.

Anyway I guess the jist of what I’m saying is that Le Loup are a whole other experience live. If you missed their crawdaddy show last week, fret not for the excellent Seattle based alternative music radio station KEXP recorded a live set of theirs and it’s available as a podcast here. There’s a brilliant song which didn’t make it onto the album called ‘The Sea took me’ that kicks in at about the 25 minute mark.

Super Extra Bonus Party Win the Choice Music Prize

I’m very surprised by this, you just never know with the Choice Music Prize. To be honest I think the prize should have gone to Adrian Crowley or Cathy Davey.

Leap Year

This year is a leap year. That means there are 29 days in February. Imagine that, one whole extra day to just take off and do as you will! So I decided a day of musical indulgence would be best. But it seems that the gods have once again ruined all my plans for fun, for Menomena, Fuck Buttons, SebastiAn, I Was A Cub Scout and You’re Only Massive all play Dublin the same night!

This Friday Menomena bring their brand of post-rock goodness to The Sugar Club, while Fuck Buttons create some ‘euphoric noise’ at Whelan’s. Meanwhile indie pop-rockers I Was A Cub Scout will be playing the Voodoo Lounge and the Shell 2 Sea Benefit at the Lower Deck boasts Herv’s breakcore, You’re Only Massive’s techno rapping and more post-rock from Hounds. Later on SebastiAn will be laying it down at Spy, but only if you’ve already bagged some tickets cause it’s already sold out.

Do you see the predicament? So what will I be doing this Friday? Probably sitting at home cursing the calendar and the heavens for this astrological anomaly and the conflicting scheduling it has inspired, while trying not to imagine the musical delights I could be enjoying if i wasn’t so indecisive.

Music as Nightmare

I recently piked the Xiu Xiu album, Women as Lovers. Its an unsettling little piece of work. Quite what the artist is reaching for is unsure. He seems to be trying to worry you, like a drunk who delights in shitting himself on the bus, the music seems designed to drive you away. The lyrics also repulse, like the afore mentioned drunk squishing around a bit, smacking his lips, making big lip smacky sounds. You’re going to think ‘fuck it, I could do with the walk, perhaps I’ll get off here, in Newbridge‘. The music, as it is, is submerged in layers of noise: the constant hum of discordance and unhappiness, and Stewart’s breathless dominant delivery of those fuk’d lyrics, the unveiling horror of whats going on inside of him. It might be interesting if there was a redeeming feature, other than the Queen/Bowie cover. Even the cover photograph is soft-focus nightmare of a Japanese rope fetishists dream.

Ugly Megan are lots of fun…

I think Dan might be doing an interview with these guys soon so as an introduction, here’s a video for ‘Kathi and Orlandos Revolution’.

Congrats to Glen & Marketa

Hotpress darling Glen Hansard and child bride Marketa Irglova were the recipients last night of the Oscar for ‘Best Original Song’, for ‘Falling Slowly’, a track written for their ‘Swell Season‘ album and featured in John Carney’s slight but touching film ‘Once‘. Congrats guys!

‘Falling Slowly’, from Once..

Acceptance Speech..

‘Falling Slowly’, performed at the academy awards..

Siding with Kant

“There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.”

- Duke Ellington

Fantastic rock webzine Crawdaddy! have an interview up with rock critic Carl Wilson, author of the latest book in the legendary 33 1/3 series of album critiques. Rather than reviewing a new or ageing classic, Wilson decided to do something original, to attempt an irony free appreciation of the 1997 Celine Dion album ‘Let’s Talk About Love‘. Writing the book as an analysis of elitism and class related rock music prejudice, Wilson seems to have become rather the Dion apologist.

“When you start getting to know her biography and her persona, it’s clear that she’s kind of helplessly sincere. Yes, she works the pop game—to her, that’s her job. And she has people around her whose marching orders she takes, primarily her husband. But she cares about her job, has a strong work ethic; that makes her work personal to her. She probably doesn’t conceive of herself as an artist-with-a-capital-A at all. She’s more like a very conscientious, enthusiastic craftsperson, like a terrific plumber. (An analogy that comes to mind because people are always talking about her “pipes.”) That may not meet with our expectations, but it’s a long tradition in show business, and none of us disrespect, say, Judy Garland for being primarily concerned with being a great performer rather than a creative original. It’s just that in many ways that social role has become disreputable.”

I haven’t yet read the book, but judging by the interview Wilson seems to have missed the point. Dion is disliked in part because of her nasal voice, uncreative interpretation and blandly unoriginal pop sensibility, but also because of her palpable lack of sincerity - describing her output as skilful is all well and good, but it does not forgive the offensively banal turf that she produces. Wilson argues that class and taste are inextricably interlinked (which is a little like saying ‘it’s not their fault, they’re only trailer trash’), in a manner reminiscent of left wing cultural relativists shying away from criticising African female genital mutilation.

“So there’s a tone of contempt that we adopt about what we consider inferior music that I think is contextual: “This music doesn’t make sense within my life.” And maybe that does mean it’s second-rate, or maybe it means that it’d be first-rate within another kind of life. The background sense that what we’re debating is ways of living might make us slow down a bit in our snap judgements. It’s probably not a way any of us can think all of the time, but like any sort of moral thinking, it can be a check upon our worst instincts.”

Perhaps in Wilson’s hipster milieu, musical tastes are worn almost exclusively as socio-political badges, but he might be surprised to learn that others genuinely appreciate music because of it’s innate quality. Post modern claptrap about how all taste is culturally relative is a tabula rasa rejection of the last half century of biology. Our tastes may differ, based on developmental factors (e.g.: growing up learning a language in which prosody expresses meaning rather than merely emphasis - why Chinese opera can sound so strange), innate differences (the frequency response range of our ears), and experiences (our parents looping a Carpenters Best of, or exposure to the quarter tones of Middle Eastern music), but fundamentally those of us who enjoy music for it’s aesthetic qualities, in addition to it’s anaesthetic or phatic utility, share an appreciation of quality and creativity, and more importantly agreement about their lack, even when we differ on the specifics of a given artist (most of the time!) or genre. Pretending that all work is equally valid has killed fine art, and it’s possible to underestimate the potential of the same sort of thinking to fuck up music (read the M.I.A review in last years Electric Picnic Foggy Notions for an example of this kind of muddy thinking). Whatever your perspective, it seems an argument worth having. I look forward to reading Wilson’s book.

New York Times article - Tasters Choice
Crawdaddy Interview - Carl Wilson: Tastes Are Composed of a Thousand Misunderstandings

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