CD review - Julia Nunes, I Think You Know EP (2010)

Julia Nunes is the new kind of popular phenom. She built a following for her quirky ukulele based songs on YouTube, playing a mix original songs and interesting covers. This attention eventually scored her a chance to tour and open for Ben Folds. She hasn't let it go to her head, though. She's still a full time student in college and she still responds directly to her fans regardless of how strange the questions get.

I Think You Know is a new EP (due out Feb 2), with 5 songs. Like most EPs, it covers a range of material, without a strong musical theme. It's short enough, that I'll run down the tracklist.

First up is August. This is an older folky song. This is the sound and feel of a new, fresh love. The simple guitar arrangement is pretty and little details are added in. The harmonies are sweet.

Comatose radically shifts the mood. The choppy beat is anxious, which fits the disjoint nature of the lyrics. It's not clear whether this is about the fear of love or something darker. A little bit of studio talk tacked onto the end punctures the seriousness.

The bass and drums provide a perfect bed for the indie folk sound of Grown a Pair. It's a reflective piece. The lyrics start out wanting to be cared for, then slide into paranoia. This "push me-pull you" theme flows smoothly. This is one of the best songs here.

I Think You Know returns to the simpler folky sound. With a theme of moving beyond a relationship, the intensity builds, but the lyrics don't quite live up to the emotional weight of the vocals. There's a lot left unsaid here. The bridge is particularly sweet, when the arrangements falls back to vocals and ukulele.

Through the Floorboards should have been a Barenaked Ladies song. It has the rhythm, the instrumentation, the lyrics, and the vocal delivery. It's a tight arrangement, with some nice musical sections. The chorus loosens up the driving beat, leading into a great sonic opening with retro shifting harmonies. Then, it drops suddenly into the next verse:

I don't mind burning bridges
To the bitches I used to live with
But I'm all about forgiveness
So I'll take this tape and run

Unwinding yards
To mend these shattered hearts
Doing circles round the shifting ground
That's tearing us apart

I don't get what changed
But you're not the same
I doubt I'll ever get the chance to explain, given the circumstance

I kind of feel you through the floorboards...

Every time I listen to I Think You Know, this is the song that sticks in my ear.

Even with the darker moments, this a cool mint tea collection of songs.

Concert review - Dualistics, Brazos, White Denim

27 January 2010 (Larimer Lounge, Denver CO)
The lighting wasn't so great for photos, but it was a full night of music that was well worth the drive home in the snow. White Denim was the headliner, with fellow Austin band Brazos, and local openers, Dualistics.

Dualistics

Dualistics describe themselves as progressive pop, which is as good a name for it as anything. Their sound ranged from the progressive drive of Trail of Dead to the vintage alt rock sneer of the Replacements, with an oil slick of Wilco flashing through at times.

Guitar player Tyler Despres hunched over during the more tortured bits of thrash, but always rose back to the mike. He and fellow guitarist Charley Hine played some cool paired guitar parts that blended a jangly discordance of sound. Their stage energy is intense and they put on a fun show. The rhythm section was tight, as the band flowed through their set.

The band has a great sense of dynamics, with low bits jumping into loud, grungy guitar riffs. Nowhere was this clearer than the high point of the show: the U2 influenced Pure Sorcery, with little sampled bits of guitar (hardly enough to be full looping). Following this with the more thoughtful Taking the Time accomplished the same dynamic shift at a set level. This was also a strong song, with some beautiful cymbal work supporting layers of guitar fragments.

Dualistics were a great opener for White Denim, but nine songs or so wasn't nearly enough. I'll need to catch them again when they're headlining their own show. In the meantime, I'm listening to their eponymous six song EP.

Brazos

Like their friends White Denim, Brazos comes out of Austin. Sonically, they're worlds apart. Guitarist and frontman Martin Crane has a muted, mid-rangey guitar tone. His vocals are often dreamy or diffident. The show started with a solo guitar playing a simple chord, shifting a couple of notes. Crane's voice, a blend of Kurt Cobain singing with a sort of Rickie Lee Jones distance, riffed through the lyrics. The room was receptive to the shift in energy, but it was jarring.

Crane's new indie folk sound is backed by an incredibly tight rhythm section. When they joined in to finish the first song, everyone woke up. These guys provide a syncopated structure to support the looser guitar and vocals. Like Dualistics, they have a good sense of dynamics. Drummer Andy Beaudoin has some wonderful phrasing, often using a maraca in his right hand rather than a drumstick. Bass player Paul Price throbs a steady drive of bottom end.

The music didn't click for me in this context, though the energy on the last couple of songs were much better.

White Denim

The bar drops across your lap and, with a sudden turn, you see the drop ahead of you...much like a ride on a roller coaster from some warped nearby dimension, we were committed. Turn after turn, climbs and falls. White Denim kicked off their set with a subtle looped guitar that built an intricate layering that was subsumed in a moment by the band rocking out as one. This turned into some 40 odd minutes song after song strung together in one ass-kicking loop-the-loop ride through their acid and soul drenched world.

When a break in the music finally came, the audience needed it as much as the band. There was no time to savor it, though, as they started playing again immediately. The songs flowed together, with the band playing like a flock of birds: shifting tempo and style while staying in formation. Most of these changes have to be worked out in advance, as they would veer off together on a dime, but it all felt perfectly natural. This flow gave the set a bit of jam band feel, but the music was firmly hard rock/psychedelia. Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith riffs rubbed elbows with Steppenwolf drive and Hendrix wail.

White Denim ran through many of the songs from their latest album, Fits, including the trippy All Consolation and their single, I Start to Run. The live versions were looser, but much faster and louder. One surprise was that Synchn, a decent song on the album became a masterpiece of moody pain.

The balance between these three players was exquisite. James Petralli built tight layers of looped guitar and then shredded over them with gleeful abandon. Steve Terebecki was incredible as he managed to channel John Paul Jones crossed with John Entwistle. Josh Block covered the basic beat necessities, but he filled out the spaces with tasteful, decorative touches. There was always a lot going on, but the three managed to showcase everyone's talents.

At the end of the night, we walked out: tired, drained, exhilarated. If only there had been a good coffee stout on tap, that would have been perfect. Catch White Denim on their next pass through your town.

More photos at my Flickr.

CD Review - The Mars Volta, Octahedron (2009)

No one will ever accuse the Mars Volta of being lighthearted. They've built a catalog of dark, pessimistic, cynical albums. But they've been on my radar for a while because of their strong mix of hard rock and progressive rock. They're also well known for making concept albums.

Octahedron cracks that mold a tiny bit by not having a cohesive theme. Musically, most of the songs follow a bit of a formula, starting out moody and mellow with elements of Pink Floyd-like psychedelia. But then they pick up into a harder rock or progressive rock approach. It's an uneven road, though, mostly because the lyrics don't connect as well as the music. There are high points like Since We've Been Wrong, which has some nice layered guitar parts and trappings of early King Crimson. Halo of Nembutals starts out mellow, with a Richard Wright keyboard sound that sounds straight off Dark Side of the Moon. It shifts into a busier progressive rock sound. In this case, the lyrics turn ugly and disturbing, for all the sense they make:

The night I begged you to come to me
The limp in your talk and the scent of your bleed
It's still not enough roulette to let you go

You covered your wounds in a bandage of sloth
The deeper the slur that rang from her laugh
And something tells me to keep it together

How could you turn your back on me?
I've summoned the stampede of infidel feet
For all I ever wanted is all you ever flaunted

Deviate by all means in name
Cause we all crawl in quicksand the same

Okay, so the nembutals kicked in. That would explain the depression and the loose coherency.

Cotopaxi continues the obscure lyric assault. The music perches somewhere between Led Zeppelin and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's frenetic but the lyrics miss the mark. Sometimes, it can be enough to have lyrics the flow phonetically (like a chunk of R.E.M.'s catalog). This didn't click, though.

I've got the weight of half of the world
You better keep on looking for me
I won't come home if you can't come home
Don't stop dragging the lake, don't stop dragging the lake

And up the hill go the last of my crumbs
We'll be lucky if we eat tonight
And up that hill go the last of my crumbs
That's when I'll magnify a hole

Luciforms also channels Pink Floyd at the start, shifting from a stretched out Us and Them into setting a Careful With That Axe, Eugene beat. The band kicks in to shatter that beat into an angular King Crimson chorus.

Sip on a greyhound (vodka and grapefruit juice) and enjoy the music, even if the lyrics obfuscate. You can still get the mood.

Concert review - The Jonestown Potion, Good Gravy

22 January 2010 (Aggie Theater, Ft. Collins CO)"Hey! You got modern jazz in my jam grass." It's rare to catch two such dissimilar bands on the same billing and even rarer that it works. Still, I always come back to my motto: Dedication to the groove. The groove was strong last night.

The Jonestown Potion

Simply put, the Jonestown Potion blew my mind. Their songs seemed to orbit Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention and early King Crimson (Court of the Crimson King), but it was an eccentric orbit. For the most part, they avoided the standard 2-5-1 jazz progressions, opting for more chromatic changes. Eli Cagen's sax is central to the groove, but left plenty of room for the other players.

The partnership between guitarist Devin Morse and keyboard player Nathanial Marshall is an equally important element. On some songs, they set up a call and response, with twinned guitar and keyboard providing a springboard for the sax. When the guitar exuded a little distortion and wah, the jams evoked Zappa songs like Trouble Everyday and even some of the Joe's Garage material. When the keys got more reflective and the melodies were more outside, that was their King Crimson extreme.


In between, though, they nailed some sweet jams, from a Take 5 influenced groove to Ghost Burrito's progressive rock drive. There were lots of odd time signatures and surprises that kept the crowd engaged and dancing.

Drummer Vance Leggett nailed this down with tight syncopation. Dusty Ray's bass work occasionally evoked Phish's Mike Gordon. Even when they played some more standard modal jazz, the breaks slipped into other styles, like art rock, dance, or funk.

It was a pleasant surprise to see how well they pleased the Good Gravy crowd. Even though their music was quite different, their energy and sense of play meshed well. I picked up a copy of their CD, too. If it's anywhere near as good as their live show, I'll be reviewing it soon.

Good Gravy

Good Gravy's show last November impressed me with how much they had improved. In a mere two and a half months, they've beefed up their performance even more. Their sound has tightened up, even when they had guest musicians sitting in. Also, their stage presence was stronger, in part because they were interacting more with the audience during their jams. Ross (mandolin) and Jeremy (guitar) had great chemistry sharing front man duties.

Even though Good Gravy is still rooted in bluegrass, they stretched out in last night's show. The more rock and psychedelic jams served as a slight common ground with their openers. Much like their earlier shows, they slid into improvisational sections, but always slipped back to the root of the song cleanly and easily. The jam during Laughing at the River had some Phish-like elements and the crowd ate it up.

To The Mine layered in some Latin rhythm and drifted off into a great space jam, with some trippy guitar (E-bowed and echoed) and a cool percussion solo. The complexity built up along with the intensity. The audience danced with abandon. This was what live music is all about.

Another part of Good Gravy's development was the excellent light show. They had a guy in from Denver with a whole set of special lights who added a sheen of professionalism to the show. More importantly, though, was his skill at playing the lights to accentuate the music. This gave the jam sections more of a dance groove feel. I hope this is a permanent part of their stage show.

When the band took a break between sets, they had a DJ, Auditory Elements, throw down some beats. He kept the energy up for the second set, which exploded into full jam. They had some keys sitting in, which really opened up the sound, even allowing for some Ike and Tina Turner style build ups. The song transitions were smooth and the set flew by. Their encore, a cover of Free Ride, was a perfect topper for the night.



Last night called for an IPA or two. Some citrusy Cascade hops and a firm malt backbone -- fitting together like an evening of jazz grass.

More photos available at my Flickr.