Category: indie rock

My favorite song on the excellent Real Emotional Trash — a beautiful dirgy ballad that recalls some of Pavement’s more crushingly melancholy moments. I’ve been puzzling out what it’s about. I did a blog search and only came up with one person who really tried to interpret it, suggesting some persuasive-seeming ideas about the whole album being (possibly autobiographically) about “familial anomie” and a marriage in trouble (“taking out the wife,” “daddy’s on the run”).

The song seems to be about an affair with a woman who believes in signs & portents, astrology and tarot (or maybe it’s the marriage, not an affair). “You’ve got omens that are tailor-made for every situation that you’re conjuring… So pull your little crystal from the boulevard.” This made me think of that great Go-Betweens song “The House Jack Kerouac Built:” “With your kittens on the patchwork quilt,/ Oh no, what am I doing here, in the house jack kerouac built./ There’s white magic, and bad rock’n’roll,/ Your friend there says, he’s the gatekeeper to my soul./ The velvet curtains/ The chinese bell/ With friends like these; you’re damned as well./ Keep me away from her.” I always took that to be a kind of anti-scuzzy-rock-and-roll song and a statement of purpose on the part of the Go-Betweens, a pop band in the heart of Stooges-loving Australia. Also a song about distrust of bohemia in a certain guise (linked with self-destructive behavior and stupid aesthetics).

That doesn’t seem to be what’s going on in Malkmus’s song, though; maybe the mockery of the crystals and omens is just incidental. The song and maybe the album definitely seem to be about intimacy and its failures. On the one hand, “gale force intimacy/ every time I get some I feel oh so near,” but on the other, the title phrase: “out of reaches.” Given that Malkmus repeats the latter phrase many times, you end up feeling that this sense of intimacy with the witchy woman blew in and then out again like a passing storm, leaving him (/the singer) frozen and sad, out of reach. “Point me in the direction of your real emotional trash.” And of course there’s the other devastating (albeit bouncy) chorus, “I am a cold…. son.” Some kind of male father/son/husband guilt coursing through the album.

On the other hand, a lot of it is just funny, catchy, and silly too (“Gardenia”).

Oh and be sure to check out the hilarious Malkmus interview on Fox TV.

I went to see Okkervil River at our downtown theater a week ago (I don’t usually see this many shows, Okkervil River and Feist are the only two I’ve seen in maybe 2 months?). I got there sort of early and met Ed in front — turned out the opening band Howlin’ Rain (I get the impression they are a faithfully retro 70s band concept?) were delayed so they’d roped in a local band to play while waiting… whose name is escaping me at the moment. We are both grouchy aging indie-rockers with limited patience so we went next door to have a beer and watch one of the NCAA final four games, what was it, Memphis vs…? Got back after Howlin’ Rain (sorry boys). Okkervil River were fun. I’d liked but never listened all that much to ‘Black Sheep Boy’ which I’d pegged as a bit earnest, so I was impressed by Will Sheff’s showmanship/ theatricality. He bounced around, flipped his floppy mane, flirted with the audience, emoted a lot.

He’s a smart guy, really good lyrics and ideas about celebrity, art, and related topics. “Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe” is the best maybe?

“It’s just a life story, so there’s no climax.
No more new territory, so pull away the imax.
In the slot that you sliced through the scene there was no shyness.
In the plot that you passed through your teeth there was no pity.
No fade in: film begins on a kid in the big city.
And no cut to a costly parade (that’s for him only!).
No dissolve to a sliver of grey (that’s his new lady!)
where she glows just like grain on the flickering pane of some great movie.
…
From the speakers your fake masterpiece is serenely dribbling.
When the air around your chair fills with heat, that’s the flames licking
beneath the clock on the clean mantelpiece. It’s got a calm clicking,
like a pro at his editing suite takes two weeks stitching up some bad movie.”

Makes me think of Destroyer’s “The Bad Arts” — both songs partly about the feeling, endemic to indie rock, of being belated and minor, insufficient, aspiring to great art but just producing fake masterpieces in some phony canon.

I saw Feist on campus the other night. First we all went to an MFA art opening. Two painters, one of whose work riffed on Sargent paintings of dancers, the other murky portraits of GI Joe toys. There was also a brief fashion show with a DJ. C&I were amused by the weird dresses including one made out of automobile seat cushioning, I think. Then I walked the 20 yards to the auditorium where Feist was playing. First opening was Hayden who I vaguely remember from the mid-1990s or so when I believe, in those days of giddy alt-rock hysteria, he was signed for a whole lot of money by a major label. I was sent a couple of his albums around then which I recall enjoying. [OK, checked Wikipedia, he was signed in 1995, dropped in 1998, has had a recent comeback.]

It’s tough to be the opening act in a big place like that filled with a lot of sorority girls, etc chatting, especially when half of your show is with acoustic guitar. He did pretty well though. I liked the weird song about how his apartment in Toronto got broken into while he was recording music (and so did not hear the window breaking).

Feist put on an excellent show filled with various visual tricks and artifices — she began as a silhouette behind a screen, and then for much of the show there was someone creating arty, pretty effects on a transparency projected on a big screen. A little bird; leaves moving around; beads and jewelry… Sometimes fairly corny (my daughters would’ve loved it), but it was nice to have something to look at. I thought Feist did a good job of creating warmth/intimacy in this fairly impersonal setting and she has a lot of great songs… I liked the Bee Gees cover a lot (more than I do on the album). She has going for her something you don’t always hear in more or less ‘indie’ rock, a really good voice that can do a lot.

At one point someone yelled out “you’re beautiful!” (I think) and she said “you’re sitting really far back, which is why you think that” — charmingly but oddly self-deprecating, I thought.

My two friends showed up after Hayden, which meant I was sitting alone amid all the undergrads for a while and one of them addressed me as “Sir” which makes me wince a bit in that context. I was remembering the time I went to see Sonic Youth at the Orpheum theater in Boston — this must’ve been a decade ago when I was in my late 20s –my friend and I never found one another so I was sitting next to some teenager. We made awkward smalltalk at one point and he opined that it was “nice to see that older people are into the band too” or something. This is Sonic Youth!!!! They must’ve had an average age of 49 at that point!!!? I guess my baldness had really kicked in…