Download “Documents” by The Lisps | Friday night was the premiere of The Lisps‘ musical, Futurity. By 10pm the bar at the Zipper Factory was filled with people waiting for the doors to the theater to open. Observing the impressive turnout, I overheard a friend of the band say, “I feel happy for them”, which I’m pretty sure was a prevalent thought in the room. It’s not very often that an indie band from Brooklyn puts a musical on.

Jeremy Barnes was there; he was in town for two shows his band, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, was playing the next two nights. The doors finally opened about half an hour late, and an eager stream of audience rushed past the stage, where Luke Winslow-King’s three-piece band was already performing. Given that timing and their vintage-inspired sound, especially with the sousaphone, I kind of felt like we had all just gotten off a stream locomotive and Luke’s band was busking on the platform.

After that opening set, out came the dark shapes of Cesar Alvarez–writer of the musical and singer of The Lisps–and Sammy Tunis, also singer of The Lisps; these two would be playing the two main characters. The spotlights went on, and it began: “Dear Julian…”. The musical was structured around letters exchanged between Julian Munro–a Civil War soldier who aspires to become a writer and dreams up an invention of the “Stream Brain”–and Ada Lovelace, the famous mathematician Julian calls upon in his imagination for guidance. The chorus, which switched between playing Julian’s regiment and the scientific community that funds the inventor’s project of mechanical intelligence, was the main source of animated performances (the picture above captures a gesture at the mention of a whore); Andrew Hoepfner of Creaky Boards was in it, as were several artist and musician types from Brooklyn, it seems; Sheila Donovan, who plays with a band called Amolvacy, had one of my favorite singing parts.

Remaining members of The Lisps played from the pit above the stage–the drumming was notably filled with agile movements. Most songs were flavored with good ole’ Civil War era Americana; some were supplemented with stomps of the marching boots and fitting blows on the trombone, courtesy Sam Kulik. The lyrics covered an expanse of meandering thoughts, including the simultaneous destruction (of railroads) and construction (of a thinking device that would perhaps bring peace or turn against its own maker); and, amongst other things, the language of math as an expression of nature. Cesar had one song with an impressive rapid outburst of words, which came close to becoming a Civil War era rap. One or two times he would pause and Sammy, who slightly tilted her head up and intently looked on to Cesar for almost the entirety of the show, would refer to her notes and mouth a reminder. All of this was pretty fun to me, and the venue’s a cool space, too. I wouldn’t mind if other bands felt the urge to put up a musical at their next album release party. Perhaps their friends Salt & Samovar should go next.

Luke Winslow-King

Luke is playing a whole bunch of New York shows. I’ll add an mp3 from him shortly.

Websites: Futurity, The Lisps, Luke Winslow-King

The Zipper Factory
New York, NY
Jan 9, 2009

Not that anyone’s even awake today, but here’re a few more presents. Dark Dark Dark’s set at Union Pool was much more fun than the relatively stiff one at Cake Shop. The last song they played was “Flood”, which isn’t on their album, but was performed for a forthcoming Daytrotter session, I hear. Nona got off the stage and joined the audience for a massive bout of swaying and singing. The video of this, and “The Benefit of the Doubt”, which features a few heart-gripping cello lines, are after the jump; as is ”True Believers All” by the Loom, whose front man John Fanning was celebrating his 28th birthday that night.

[Update: Pictures added]

Dark Dark Dark

From Cleveland:

Nona taught us this new dance move:

Jonathan insisted it was just stretching:

The Loom

Loom dancer breaks out:

Union Pool,
December 19, 2008

Websites: Dark Dark Dark, The Loom

Callers played this show, too.

Download “Colors” | It may have been the little-loved Tuesday, bastard child of the week, all yuckified with snow-turned-slush, and a flurry going on still, but Dark Dark Dark played to a Cake Shop basement that was as full as it was the night The Dodos played their secret show there. Most of those present were pirates and vagabonds and people of that nature who I imagine have infiltrated the city of New York for years, or perhaps they had only momentarily gotten off their travels for drinks and music. The band knew their names, and they knew the lyrics to all of the band’s songs. Some of them danced. They were all friends. It made me feel like I was crashing someone else’s party, but it was a good party. Move onward for video!

This being my first time seeing them at a proper “show setup”, however, there were two odd feelings. One, their music is so much a traveler’s, that it didn’t seem right we weren’t in motion; that Cake Shop wasn’t a boat, or a car of a train, and we weren’t going somewhere. I think the music rolled its eyes that it was being asked to sit still. Two, there was reverb on Nona Marie and Marshall LaCount’s roaming voices, but it seemed like the music (Mr. Music from hereon?) wanted to reject that industrial treatment, that the voices just wanted to be raw and amplified by its own might, not some equipment. But Mr. Music was a determined music, and so he would sound great anyway.

In the words of Marshall LaCount, the band’s playing Boston today and two Providence shows tomorrow and the day after, since these places are on the way to Union Pool, Brooklyn, which they play this Friday the 19th. “A geographical joke,” cellist Jonathan Kaiser added; bassist Todd Chandler then led the room to a sing-along. Watch last night’s performance of “Junk Bones”, embedded here for your pleasure.

Cake Shop,
New York, New York
Dec 16, 2008

All pictures after the jump, video coming later.

I was immediately drawn to this spectacled strummer; I believe he’s Ross Condon? Chris Hladowski (thanks j-m). Hladowski kicked butt.

Jason Poranski and Paul Collins from Beirut:

This woman danced wildly from the start, full Roma style, and there was a dancing group at the back that was no less than the groom’s friends at a Romanian wedding.

I got my first taste of the space at a Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society performance on a rainy Wednesday last week. Watch the video, and continue with my findings:

I was delighted to have stumbled upon Darcy’s “steam punk big band”. All that talent (an 18-piece ensemble) packed on to the smallish stage can make one giddy, especially if one has an undying affinity for them horns. There were trombone solos to be had, and trumpet solos galore. Yet, as an eager supporter of the mission to cross-fertilize between two seemingly different worlds of music, I knew right away what was missing for me; why watching the Darcy crew felt like a privilege without it considerably increasing the bars of my happiness. 

While scholarly music chooses to be an entity in itself, popular music finds its home in the context listeners provide it in each of their lives—there is that which appeals to the mind, and there is another that appeals to the heart. Non-mainstream popular music (or “indie”) is the genre the cross-fertilization is mainly aimed at, and my somewhat populist view is that live performance is the space where lasting relationships form between bands and audience; that the band cannot fully find itself without giving to the live audience and taking in return; and that this can be done only when the band lets all guards down (which is why street musicians will always be the spirit of independent music).

With Darcy’s crew, the songs weren’t short of possibilities. But I wanted more steam in the steam, more punk in the punk, and more big in the big, which was a matter of how the songs were performed. If those 18 pairs of eyes weren’t on sheet music, and if their knees were unbent into upright positions suitable for just a little bit of dancing, and if they were celebratory enough to stumble freely without falling, the experience would’ve been totally different, the cross-fertilization would’ve truly occurred; which is not to say that dancing is a requisite to a good performance, but live performances are richer, not unlike life, when they are not sealed in perfection; and that is not to say that lyrics must be forgotten or a beat must be missed, but that the process must come before perfection, and that the perfection must come from the heart first and head second. In short, I would’ve liked to see committed vulnerability. After all, stepping out of the comfort zone is one the aims of these smaller venus showcasing highly trained musicians. And sure, everyone was dressed casually in t-shirt and jeans, but there was a little bit of an intellectual guard up.

On the other hand, I have not seen other performances from the band before, so it could’ve been a combination of the slightly intimidating (highly branded) venue and the early slot; it would be nice see them play in an even more laid back setting, for example a drunken wedding. I’m pretty sure, however, that each band will transform the venue slightly, and I’m super excited to see what A Hawk and A Hacksaw will do tonight. The recordings from Darcy’s performance at (Le) Poisson Rouge will be available soon.

There’s an intoxicating brand of punk that originates from the depth of folk, and that has so far been of brilliance specific to Slavic boisterousness. New York’s immigrant phenomenon Gogol Bordello isn’t quite the prime model of this, but to the band’s biggest advantage is the history that runs through the blood of its core. With chaotic globalization in full swing, one culture’s aged tradition is now a crazed discovery in some other, and everyone can be sure that New York will get at least a sip of it all. My Eastern European friends are outraged that their punks should now be models for “hipsters”, but we might as well ready for the world that will quickly run out of secrets. To our horror, something fantastically new will have to develop rapidly to pacify our ever-increasing curiosity, but to our relief, with every generation there is a change of context, and the old finds a place amongst the new. In Gogol Bordello’s unintelligible punk, the gypsy has found something new, and vice versa.

Continued, and more photos, after the jump.

Gogol Bordello has been playing New York every now and then, selling out in advance without a fail. Despite the readiness, I was unreasonably surprised at this all-age show at Terminal 5 to see American kids as young as 14-18 desperately in love with the chaotic Ukrainian Eugene Hutz and his vibrant band. There wasn’t a single English word he uttered that I understood (other than the lyrics I was familiar with), but to everything he said there was an approving cheer – and why not, music and the intention to have fun should be expected to surpass the thickest of borders, and it was to this intention the band and its audience were committed (besides, a band like Gogol Bordello can form only in a city like New York). In any case, to see the packed venue jump to the violence of a fiddle, an accordion, clashing cymbals and a thudding bass drum can never fail to be a remarkable sight. Given the enthusiasm, it’s unfortunate that many venues are inaccessible to the younger audience, but perhaps their energy is almost overbearing for small places like Mercury Lounge. The front was mostly packed with these younger fans, and I had the advantage of noticing quite a few of them pulled out to safety by the security several times following crowd surfing. One boy in an orange shirt popped out to the front about seven times between short intervals, and another, bearing bruises and all, well over a dozen times. Between claps and jumps, those in the front spent half their time ducking.

Adding a great deal of interest to the performance were the two female members that sing, dance and drum. For one of them, Elizabeth Sun, it was mainly a matter of performance, and the forms her body and faces took were very intentional, looking often like a Hindu goddess effusing rage. The other, Thai-American drummer Pamela Racine, pictured below holding a bass drum (and seated a few rows ahead of me with Elijah Wood during Regina Spektor at Town Hall), was quite a natural. She raised her legs as if she might have also tilled the land, and her understanding of the “Gogol Bordello Objective” seemed much more complete. I am sure the difference in the degrees of this understanding showed not only in her decision to wear a head scarf while the other sported a hat in one of the costume sets, but also in the wild movements that were masculine rather than wicked or exotic. Eugene Hutz, on the other hand, decided to wear a flowing wig for a brief period, trading his sneakers for a bright red pair of heels – an impressive pick for his yellow athletic socks!