Archives : all posts by Sean

I stayed up far too late last night writing the Okkervil River review. I'd been ready to write it for more than a week - my feelings composed, some metaphors and things floating around... but it just wouldn't go. I tried last Monday and last Thursday, and simply got blocked. And last night it was a struggle too. Not because the music is boring to think (or write) about, but because I felt I simply couldn't articulate my thoughts on the record. It all came out as a muddle - and I imagine it still does. Oh well.

It didn't help that I got sidetracked while exploring Okkervil River's cover artist, William Schaff. He does beautiful, haunting work - themes of death and religion and literature. Okkervil River's last two album-covers, but also the last Songs:Ohia record, and the insert for Godspeed's Lift Your Skinny Fists.

The Mercury Music Prize nominees are out. Although many other people bash the "Booker" of British Music, I think that it's recognized some fine artists pver the past ten years (both as nominees and as winners): The Bees, Gomez, Doves, Talvin Singh, Badly Drawn Boy, The Streets, the Delgados, Pulp, Portishead, Kathryn Williams,

This year, the nominees are:
RADIOHEAD - 'Hail to the Thief'
DIZZEE RASCAL - 'Boy In Da Corner'
THE THRILLS - 'So Much for the City'
SOWETO KINCH - 'Conversations with the Unseen'
FLOETRY - 'Floetic'
THE DARKNESS - 'Permission to Land'
COLDPLAY - 'A Rush of Blood to the Head'
MARTINA TOPLEY-BIRD - 'Quixotic'
ELIZA CARTHY - 'Anglicana'
ATHLETE - 'Vehicles and Animals'
TERRI WALKER - 'Untitled'
LEMON JELLY - 'Lost Horizons'

I've only heard the Coldplay, Radiohead and Dizzee Rascal; Coldplay and Radiohead are apparently the favourites. While Coldplay was a worthy nominee for Parachutes, if they win for Rush of Blood, I'm going to have to put on some angry-music, if you know what I mean. Dizzee Rascal doesn't seem to be for me - the music's too mechanical and sharp, he descends too often into the crude - but I can hear the innovation in his sound. What I know of Eliza Carthy does not impress (pleasant-but-that's-all folk fusion), and Lemon Jelly hardly seems award-worthy. Ultimately, the only nominee I'm curious about is Athlete: has anyone heard the record?

A new track from the upcoming Weakerthans record, on Epitaph. Sounds fine to me - but I'm not so sure about the softer, double-tracked chorus. Oh well - radio rock, here we come!

Day ten at the 2003 Ottawa Bluesfest.

I realized I messed up the "day x at Bluesfest" stuff, starting last Wednesday. Oops.

The Trachtenburg Family Slide-show Players: Cancelled. The cancellation is unexplained and maddening. It was to be the highlight of the day, and things looked pretty bleak without them.

Chris Brown and Kate Fenner: Suitably laid-back light pop. I had a very pleasant nap in the La-Z-Boy Lounge.

Dinner: At Carmellos on Cooper. Very good - linguini in olive-oil and garlic, with tomato concasse, sundried tomatoes, artichoke and grilled chicken.

Blue Rodeo: Like a middle-aged and blues-inflected Jim Bryson and the Occasionals, with a two-week dose of boring pills.

The Dirtbombs: rhythm-and-blues vocals atop heaving garage guitars. I wanted to like them but didn't have enough in me to withstand the rock'n'roll assault. Stayed for a few songs, then shakily made my way to the bus. (I made sure, of course, to give my pass to one of the sad souls clinging to the fence while the Dirtbombs made their noise.)

The big surprise of the day was Peter Green. I'm not exactly up on my blues lore, but I knew of Green's eminent history. ("Green is God" was spraypainted on walls in England, until Clapton came along and usurped the blues-guitar throne.) I, however, hate the blues, remember - and the last thing I expected to enjoy was the work of this famed electric guitar-player. It was strange, then, to find myself enraptured by the man's performance. His instrument sang things I didn't expect, soaring in precise, acheing ways. It was far from the loose-and-lazy guitar solos I'm used to hearing from blues-rockers. The band - "Peter Green's Splinter Group" - was a worthy accompaniment, spreading a patterned background of sounds, and demonstrating genuine originality in the swell and fade of the tunes. Green's voice is a flat, accented murmur - but it's fascinating, and a dignified alternative to the overly melismatic bluesmen I heard earlier in the week. Things only collapsed on the closing number, a "classic blues tune," and when the typical 12-bar form was resurrected, so was my boredom.

The question, now, is which blues do I like, and why?

Days seven and eight at the 2003 Ottawa Bluesfest.

Two long days, so there's only been time for one update..

Friday was foreboding. As I finished up at work, the sky was exploding with rain - sharp, small drops that pitted the sidewalk. By the time I arrived downtown, though, the flood had ceased, but there was still the smell of storm in the air, and the clouds were as stonegrey as ever.

Perfect conditions, in other words, for miss Nina Nastasia. Going into Bluesfest, she was perhaps my most-anticipated act, and despite some technical hiccups, my expectations were mostly met. The rain seemed to have either upset the wiring at the Birdman Stage, or invoked the soundman's incompetence, because for the first three quarters of the show, things were clicking and cutting-out in the speakers. It's to the testament of Nastasia's gifted-as-hell band that in the midst of this, they managed to carry her songs to some extraordinary heights - as the cello, violin and bass sawed, accordion murmuring in my ear, the images from Run to Ruin and The Blackened Air seemed to flicker into being in front of my eyes. Ash-filled streets, cackling seas, deaths and longing and creaking forests. Dirty Three's Jim White on drums, playing with careless, birdlike grace. And Nina? She was demure and sincere, she sang like someone who knows how to sing without thinking about it. Her songs are so strange: they appear in the air like steam, or smoke, dissipating suddenly in a fresh wind. The concert, and her albums, are like a wideopen sky, ringed with pines, clouds drifting through it. As Nastasia struggled through the sound problems (which I hear occurred in Montreal, too), they evoked moments of true awe. It was as I described the album:accordion, mandolin and saw paint glowing flowers, wooden porches, and then they waver, shudder, and are blasted apart by vigorous strokes of cello and violin. Something stringed screams behind the march of drums as Nastasia sings...

After dinner, we were honoured with the presence of Orchestra Baobab. Holy moly. Holy. Moly.

They were, to put it simply, tremendous. More than the typical world music act (commonly described with words like "energy," "jam," "fun," "spirited"), Orchestra Baobab was bold, soulful, skillful and mesmerising. They were a joy. There was such passion in the singing and playing - not spirit, passion: happy and sad, carrying a mighty force, a melodic - and intellectual - momentum. The musicians delivered songs that never grew tiring, their solo improvs (on guitar, sax, drums) genuinely good jazz - good, that is, for listening to, and not just for dancing to. But believe me, I was dancing. I turned off the wry part of my brain and turned on the clown - I let their cries and stories (of which I understood not a single word) take me home. The 90 minutes sped by, the crowd was euphoric, and all of us were transported - not the least of whom those who must have been Senegalese immigrants, celebrating with a fervour that made my heart swell.

Saturday, it was raining. A good Scottish drizzle. Listened to The Glads play some energetic yell-and-riff garage rock, then Mei Han & Randy Raine-Reusch played some traditional Chinese music on traditional asian instruments. The latter was pleasant, and fairly interesting, but lacked any real dynamics - it was best heard, as we did, while reclining on wooden La-Z-Boy chairs in the La-Z-Boy Tent (there was no view of the stage, but this wasn't a problem).

After four or five songs, we quit Le Nombre in order to grab a coffee and warm up, but they were mighty impressive. Garage stuff from Montreal, with riprooared vocals in French. The obvious touchstone is the Hives, but I don't want to sell the band short with an offhand reference. Their chops were topnotch, but more than that, they had the kind of electric sparkle that suggests the potential to Go Places. And the singer -- yowza!

Jim Bryson, solo, in a church. At first I thought the vocals were too loud, but in the end the immersive, all-around-you sound was pretty wonderful. Bryson's first album won a lot of acclaim - I enjoy it, but don't think it's a masterpiece - and his performance today justified his reputation among critics. He displayed honesty, sincerity and wit - add this to his earnest (not not too earnest) songwriting, the folkrock flames of his guitar, and, well, he's made himself a new fan. He was followed by Giant Sand's Howe Gelb (also solo), who lazed his way through an hourlong set, playing songs that didn't quite make sense, as songs, but charming me with his deep, brusque croon. (When he sang "rock-hard liquor," I felt a shiver.) There was something off-kilter about the performance, though: I don't think I quite understood what he was trying to do.

Dinner, and then we tried to squeeze to the front of the Mainstage for Jim Belushi and Dan Ackroyd doing their Blues-Brothers-but-not-Blues-Brothers bit. Lots and lots of surly old people, standing arms-crossed in front of their enormous deck-chairs, forbidding us kids from moving through/past them. "Tough shit," said one man, a smirk on his face. It made it worse that he looked like he made more than $100,000 a year.

But we made it within sight of the stage, at least until it began to pour again and umbrellas went up like bizarre biological responses to moisture. Ackroyd and Belushi had fun, it was entertaining to watch, but I couldn't get over the fact that we were listening to B-grade blues, whose appeal consisted of the celebrity pedigree of the performers. It was also very, very wet.

Antibalas followed, and although they sounded like a great deal of fun, I didn't have it in me to dance, and their afrobeat jams were much more repetitive than Orchestra Baobab - perfect for dancing, in other words, and not excessively rewarding for attentive listening. I stripped away from the crowd after a chorus of horns and a truncated percussion solo, moving to the Americana stage to see Jim Bryson and the Occasionals, that is, Bryson with a whole band.

And I was rewarded many times over for my choice. The band's performance outstripped their album many times over - the guitar solos came out as live things, agile and glorious; the singing was wistful, poignant; the twang was the sound of remembrance, of regret, and not just of the country. Much more indie rock than the album - braver, more intense - and it was exactly what I needed. I felt like I had cracked apart my chest, and that bright, silver-and-gold noise was filling me right up.

Howe Gelb showed up to watch. I think I heard him ask someone for cocaine. Then he joined Bryson for the last song. The crowd was roaring for a second encore but the curfew fell with a wet thump. I was happy, though. And maybe glowing.

Day six at the 2003 ottawa Bluesfest.

We sat happily and awaited White Cockatoo.

"White Cockatoo is a unique performing company that hails from Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. The artists are a group of senior Aboriginal men from the Mialili, Rembarrnga, Guningu, and Burrara language groups, who share the same social and family affiliations. Their corroboree (music, song and dance) is a part of one of the earth's oldest unbroken artistic traditions. Their homeland is the traditional birthplace of the Australian Aboriginal musical instrument the Didjeridu."

Eventually he introduced one of the members of the troupe, who walked out wearing a red loincloth, his body covered in swathes of white paint. The man then played the didjeridu - his circular breathing was incredible (ie, he never stopped for air), but there was a perplexing lack of dynamics in his performance. For those of us who have heard so-called "professional" didj players, it's interesting to see that the original Aborigine tradition calls for very little of the fancy "barks" that people associate with expertise.

When the didjeridu player finished, our Colonialist Guide then introduced the rest of White Cockatoo - two singers ("songmen"), and two dancers. What followed were six or eight songs, each with sameish didjeridu playing, sameish wail-singing, sameish stick-hitting (each of the performers hit two pieces of wood together, with alternating rhythms), and sameish dancing. While some of the rest of the audience was bored by the (apparent) monotony, I found it mesmerising. Hearing the little differences in style and feeling, trying to understand the different way-of-thinking that abstracted these strange dances out of conventional stories. It was the dancing that was most wonderful - sudden, high-stepping movements; careless twisting of legs. If I didn't know better, I would have thought it was contemporary dance - surprising, moving, different.

Of course, my postcolonialist alarms were going off like crazy. I've read too many essays on cultural imperialism, subalterns, mimic-men and orientalism to be able to view this through a naive North American lens. There was something alternatingly infuriating and hilarious (such gall!) about the fact that a white man in a tuxedo was explaining each song, cracking light jokes about how different we are from the "noble" Aborigines (They believe in "devils," ha ha! And you can tell someone's not a devil because they eat or go to the toilet! Ha ha ha!). It's not that I think that the performers were innocant, oppressed, Pocahontas-like victims - how could I think that, having delved into Spivak, Said and Bhabha - but worse still, I couldn't imagine them in a sustained way as anything other that cynical, Coca-Cola-swilling, fully indoctrinated Australians. I pictured the members of White Cockatoo going backstage, scrubbing off the make-up, throwing on a pair of Levis and watching Survivor: The Amazon. Flashes of this image kept interrupting my viewing of the show. "Is that guy faking it?" I kept wondering. "Or are they playing us 'lovers of Culture' for fools?"

And I don't know the answer.

Later, we made our way to the front of the mainstage for Kool and the Gang. We only stayed for three songs, however. It was simply the cheesiest thing I've ever heard. While I had been hoping for some organic funk awesomeness, Kool and the Gang's performance was instead saturated with skyhigh eighties synths, the funk on par with the theme-song to Perfect Strangers (but without Balki's hilarious antics). What's more, 80% of the band was under 35 - this wasn't Kool and the Gang, it was Kool and the Gang of Kids Who Auditioned for the Record Label. The players were all competent, the fresh-faced singer charming, but the music was simply loathsome. A huge disappointment.

Hawksley Workman wasn't much better. "Oh, get over yourself," said Julian as Workman cooed and preened on-stage. I've never liked the guy's stuff, and my opinion goes unchanged. He's like a junkie Rufus Wainwright, and I like neither junkies nor Rufus.

I went home, and listened to Ron Sexsmith's "Cobblestone Runway", Elbow's Cast of Thousands and Doves' Last Broadcast using my new (blissful and comfy) headphone pads.

Day five at the 2003 Ottawa Bluesfest.

I'll say this about Great Big Sea: if I was harvesting souls, stalking the living and feeding upon the happy spirits of unsuspecting concert-goers, tonight would have been a bonanza.

Day five at the 2003 Ottawa Bluesfest.

Julian convinced me to go see jazz/blues pianist Michael Kaeshammer, and am I ever glad I did. He played an hour and a half of adventurous, knife-quick songs, ranging from toetapping boogie-woogie to lighter-touched, more lyrical stuff. He and his bandmates (on upright bass and drums) injected everything with flashes of contemporary wit and experimentalism, with unexpected flickers of high-notes, sudden splashes of cymbal. I don't find myself putting much jazz on at home, these days (except for Kind of Blue), but tonight's show reconfirmed my prior realization that live jazz kicks ass three ways to friday. Whereas in lots of other genres (rock, folk, hip hop), I seem to vastly prefer the album-listening experience, with jazz, a live setting is many times more exciting. Not only does the improv feel improvised, you're there to feel the temperature of the air, see the glances between musicians, behold the little things that make the music what it is, and drive it down its spontaneous little paths. You follow the artists' train-of-thought (at least to a higher degree), which lets them surprise you all the more with the harmonic flourishes, the false-endings, the sudden (glorious) resurrections of the melody. Though there were a few places where things were too straight-ahead blues for me (especially when Kaeshammer was singing along), and he sometimes held the same note patterns for too long, it was overall quite terrific.

Then we sauntered over to the mainstage, where 23,000 people were trying to make out Sheryl Crow on the giant screen (seeing her on the stage was a lost cause). The sound wasn't so good (it was quiet, first of all, way in the back), and the 6 or 8 songs we stayed for didn't make any impression. (I went nuts, though, trying to figure out who she was covering on "The First Cut is the Deepest." My exchange with Julian went like this:

[Sheryl is singing "The First Cut is the Deepest."]
Sean: Do you recognize this song?
Julian: No.
S: It's a cover, but I can't remember what.
J: Oh.
S: It's driving me crazy!
J: [shrugs]
[I spend five minutes making groaning sounds, rolling my eyes, singing the song to myself, making comments like "I think the original was sung by a black guy." ... "Maybe not." ... "It's either from a long time ago or really recent. Maybe." Julian is simply doing a lot of shrugging.]
S: Argh, what was it!?
J: How did it go, again?
S: Uh... "The first cut is the deepest, uh, baby I know... the first cut is the deepest. Um. Na na na."
J: Oh. That's Cat Stevens.
S: Yes! [slaps forehead] But you didn't recognize it when she was actually performing?
J: [shrugs]

All I know is that there will certainly be a lot (ie, several hundred) of disappointed people, tomorrow, who paid $35 to get into the grounds, only to witness a performance that they experienced in lesser quality than they would have at home on TV. And the beer was more money.