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Thanks to dj popscum for forwarding pics from last Tuesday's Lady Sovereign show at The Empty Bottle. Check out the complete set here in the RFC Live Photo Archive.
I wasn't able to make the show myself, but word on the street was that the S-O-V was a bit off her game and didn't get the crowd moving nearly as much she did at her North American debut at Sonotheque this summer. Anybody else check out the show? Post your thoughts below.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Self-released)
This album isn’t really that good. But I think that’s something we’ve all known since our first listen back in the summer. Oh, how Clap Your Hands Say Yeah [CYHSY] is such torture for we who strive to be cutting-edge by shunning the self-same hip underground affections that make us cutting-edge. Do we hate CYHSY because they’re popular (well, popular in our little corner of the world) and they’re unoriginal and they’re somewhat annoying and they lack the use of sampling and electronic ambient loops and chamber strings, or do we love them because they’re unoriginal and they’re “annoying” (you say annoying, I say honest) and their lack of sampling and electronic ambient loops and chamber strings guarantees that our elitist friends won’t like them, and so in our love we’ll make popular so popular again that it becomes unpopular and therefore those who love the popular will be more exclusive than the elitists. And that will be us. Unless everyone has this idea. Does Pitchfork like this album? Fuck. They gave it 9.0. I think I’ve just criticized myself out of existence.
I digress. The real issue here is that, if for no other reason, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah should be on everyone’s top ten (or seven) indie list by default. This album’s sold 40,000 copies without a label. Before a few months ago CYHSY had no distributor and were sealing and stamping all of these puppies themselves. Their popularity spread rapidly through word-of-mouth and internet relays, which most people fantasize is how all independent artists rise but this is definitely not the case. For a band to reach this level of success without label-supported promotion, without a big-name producer and without a song on a television commercial is a rare feat indeed. These days indie has become a Zen plateau rather than a definitive production quality; In 2005 CYHSY emerged as a good kick in the pants to all of those who don product placement in the name of independent-can-never-be-what-it-was.
But do I only like this album by default? Not really. There’s a fun mesh of sounds here that fit together strangely yet not disjunctively. And yes, bandleader Alec Ounsworth can deny all he wants that he is consciously influenced by particular artists, the fact remains that even if only subconsciously, CYHSY is a product of New Order and Talking Heads and The Who and even Bob Dylan. Maybe because he doesn’t realize he’s picked up all of these various influences, Ounsworth makes no effort to disguise them and the result is not a smooth, spicy blend, but a rough, accidentally exotic gallimaufry stew like the one grandpa used to make when grandma was out playing bingo. They’re just so weird. And not in a bizarre, revolutionary, experimental, post-blah blah blah way. They’re weird in a retarded way. I feel bad for laughing but sometimes I just have to.
The album opens with the carny organ of “Clap Your Hands!” and Ounsworth talk-singing nonsense like some sideshow emcee atop his soapbox. On most tunes he sounds like a whiny but eloquent drunk, except on “Gimme Some Salt” when he makes an attempt at lazy sass that may or may not be earnest. This uncertainty is part of what makes this album amusing; either CYHSY is so oblivious to its absurdity, or so conscious of it, that we want to be in on the joke and play along.
This isn’t to say that the album is laughable; indeed there are qualities to it that are so understated that they shine. While Ounsworth’s voice is neurotic, its unpolished quality has the capability, like on the bleak jangle “In This Home on Ice,” to ring out in an childlike weep. The tune carries traces of social criticism: “Should I trust all the rust that’s on TV/I guess with some distaste I disagree/With quite a fashionable dispassion for/ the dispossessed under-stressed/gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme.” This gravity is not rare on the disc. Underneath the fuzz bass and happy keys and jam band harmonica, “Heavy Metal” is a song of loss and confusion that’s not poetic but nonetheless genuine. “This Tidal Wave of Young Blood” is an anti-war song more successful than any somber, straightforward homily released this year. The tune is sarcastic, but not in an overbearing way; Ounsworth sings, “We are men who stay alive/Who send your children away now/We are calling from a tower/Expressing what must be/Everyone’s opinion.” The message is disguised in the cheerful acoustic guitar romp, the electric guitar line, sparse and distant like an eighties ballad, and Ounsworth’s robotic voice. And just so we won’t think CYHSY has gone sober and didactic in the end, the song and album ends with one of its dumbest stunts: Ounsworth repeating the words “child stars” continuously for forty-seven seconds and then ending on the cliché, “with their sex, and drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.”
With a mix of earnestness and kitsch the album lacks any feeling of being contrived. Mostly it’s dark little dance tunes, like “The Skin Off My Yellow Country Teeth,” which sounds like sedated eighties pop, and “Is This Love?” whose fluttering keyboards and chaotic chorus is British invasion meets prog punk meets classic indie rock. These fellows draw from so many different areas that they can’t be labeled as copiers of one act, or one scene. And they’re off key just enough that, even though their sound is derivative from all these other places, it’s deliciously jarring and attention-grabbing.
So I doubt that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is going to revolutionize the modern music scene; however, there’s definitely potential for them to grow as a band and stretch the limits of artistic lunacy. Apparently Ounsworth wrote most of the tracks before the band was even together, so it will be interesting to hear what the next effort sounds like with the input of the other members and with even more layers of influence. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is I think really just a peak at Clap Your Hands Say Yeah; it’s an audacious bud that in a year or so we’ll either forget accidentally or remember pompously. Either way, in 2005, it’s made its mark.
Tomorrow night(12/8), the Museum of Contemporary Photography will be presenting a listening party for the upcoming Beck remix album, Guerolito. Stop by to hear a sneak preview of sliced and diced Guero tracks from the likes of Air, Boards of Canada, Diplo, El-P and "the king" Ad Rock. While there have been reports of the record being delayed until January in the UK, it appears that domestic fans should still be able to pick it up Guerolito as originally planned next Tuesday, the 13th.
The listening party lasts from 6-8pm, the Museum of Contemporary Photography is located at 600 S Michigan Ave. For more info, call 312-663-5554.
(via flavorpill)
Illinois / Sufjan Stevens (Asthmatic Kitty, July 5)
Remember that party we were at? Yeah, well, let’s go back and change the smoking jackets into pea coats, the pleather sofas into your older brother’s hand-me-down futon and the martinis into PBR. Then we’ll invite some wimpy boys who’ve reclaimed their traditional, righter-than-left beliefs as traits to bolster their sincerity, and then we’ll turn into the girls that fall in love with them despite our devout faith in faithlessness, in socialist anarchism and casual sex. And during our perennially nerdy music discussion we’ll stumble across the concept album, and we’ll say how we love that we’ve returned to a time when people aren’t afraid of cohesive themes and characters and reprises and fifty-four word-long song titles, and how we wish more artists weren’t afraid to be as eccentric as we are. And someone should shout, “SUFJAN Stevens!!” and we’ll all raise our PBR in salute.
On Illinois Sufjan Stevens has found a perfect balance between gorgeous earnestness and impish pokes at Illinois, at music, at the concept album and the people who love and hate them. As a rule concept albums are contrived and pretentious, and I’m sure a lot of people hear a six second song entitled “One last ‘Whoo-hoo!’ for the Pullman”--literally one whoo-hoo--and they groan, but I tend to be a soul that finds such tomfoolery pleasantly amusing. Or, at least on Illinois I find them amusing. I also find it amusing that some people are pissed off because this album isn’t truly about Illinois. Mostly it’s namedropping and random folklore references that could be substituted for anything that happened in any other state. So really it isn’t a successful concept album. I don’t really care what kind of album this is. I grew up on three minute pop tunes and commercial breaks that shortened my attention span, and so it’s impossible for me to consider anything more than the sum of its parts. Sure there’s a half-minute non-song entitled “In This Temple as in the Hearts of Man for Whom He Saved the Earth” and sure “The Seer’s Tower” might possibly be the worst song I’ve heard all year, but I can concede these to an artist’s necessary egocentricity and move on to the chipper “The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders.” That’s what god created the skip button for isn’t it?
I could say that Illinois is pretty and leave it at that, but then I wouldn’t be telling you anything you hadn’t already realized. The opener, “Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois” consists of the minor, gentle swelling of piano and flute under Stevens singing in his reticent voice about aliens as if invoking the muses for his imminent odyssey. And who would’ve thought that John Wayne Gacy could be the inspiration for one of the most beautiful songs released this year? On “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” bass, piano, and guitar are at once cooperative and at odds with one another; above this augmented, hollow harmonies create an urgent, ethereal tension. Stevens ends with, “And in my best behavior/I am really just like him/Look beneath the floorboards/For the secrets I have hid,” an unexpected allegory that makes up for anything saccharine he tries to push on us later.
And there is sugar galore on this album; Sufjan Stevens is a sad pop poster boy, with his boyish good looks, reticent voice and propensity for melancholy melodies. “Casimir Pulaski Day” is a simple song whose innocence matches the quality of Stevens’s voice. In austere two-part harmony he tells the story of a boy trying to make sense of his girlfriend’s imminent death. The song could easily turn into a sorry and didactic Christian attempt to explain god’s mysterious ways; instead Stevens has no answers, no words of comfort, just the complications, the resignation to the fact that “He takes and He takes and He takes.”
One way in which Stevens is able to rise above the maudlin traps that ensnare his sensitive contemporaries is in his nontraditionally structured songs. “Casimir Pulaski Day” contains no chorus but remains altogether charming. On Part I of “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” there are sound shifts and a clever use of rhythm that gives the illusion of time signature changes when actually the romp is persistently 5/4. Part II moves into common time and invokes dramatic strings. “The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders” does use a shifting time signature and also a Part I/Part II split, the first half being cheery with hand clapping and trumpet, the second somberly hopeful with a polyphonic chorus and weeping strings.
The second way Stevens is unusual is by his thorough musicianship. Outside of trumpet and strings he plays all of the instruments on this album, the long, diverse list of which includes guitar, piano, flute, banjo and glockenspiel. Any song, like “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us!,” that relies on an oboe for its oomph is fine by me. All of these instruments on Illinois come together to create an array of sounds, from the softer rock tunes, to the vaguely ragtime “Decatur,” to the mix of string quartet, banjo, and electric guitar on “Jacksonville” that falls somewhere between lazy bluegrass and poppy jazz. On the romantic “Chicago” Stevens creates a lush sound with the bass on the low end, moving up through full harmony of voices and strings, topped by fluttering guitar and majestic trumpet. Among this resonance Stevens’s diffident voice stands out sweetly like a modest boy in a grade school chorus.
So this album could easily be annoying because it is so cute, but the cuteness is often grounded in a sadness that is acquiescent and universal instead of indulgently miserable. I admit some of the lyrics are little better than something you could find in the journal of middle school Catholic school girl (“Celebrate the few. Celebrate the new. It can only start with you.”), but this is not an album of lyrics; rather, it is one of tales and life and legend and humor. Jesus Christ, it is a concept album! I get it! Critics be damned. But Illinois isn’t necessarily the theme. More the state and all of its glory and inanity is used as a means to relay Stevens’s personal concept: the climb out of that dejection every sad pop star feels, the egress of which reveals a love for god, a wonder at the world, and the ability to laugh at oneself.
After a hiatus that felt like ages, underground hip-hop heroes Vordul Megilah and Vast Aire recently announced they would be returning as Cannibal Ox and embarking on a short reunion tour. Now it looks like anxious Chicago fans are going to have to wait just a bit longer for the much heralded return of the Ox, as the Abbey Pub website reports that tomorrow night's show has been cancelled. A make-up date is supposed to be announced TBA. We'll keep you posted...
In the meantime, check out highlights from their recently released live album, Return of the Ox, on their MySpace page at www.myspace.com/cannibalox.