Posts about Mccarren Pool
Last evening’s Regina Spektor show at McCarren Pool was pretty much perfect, despite the rain and a tornado warning, and I say that mainly because she seemed to have made all the right choices. As a new album approaches, I hope these are a sign of having managed to regain control after being led by others in the industry:
She’s dropped the horrid guitar-bass-drum band since the last time I saw her–their presence also weakened her last album, Begin To Hope. This time she played a segment and part of the three-song encore (“Us” & “Samson”) with a two-piece (or three?) string section that provided just the right amount of accent to the piano’s gorgeous sound, without overwhelming it one bit. The cello’s sound, in particular, was warm and fantastic.
All photos, by Kashish, and more stories after the jump.
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Download “Welfare Bread” | This being my first return to the pool parties since last summer, allow me to say: yes, the lines have become ridiculous. When I got there at around 1:46, today’s had already wrapped around the pool, extending to somewhere behind the stage. And it took less than 30 seconds for a large number of people to pile up behind us. One of the (young) girls who joined after us said to her friend, “I don’t think the lines matter. Last week, you just had to be close to the entrance and we all dashed inside.” Damn newbies. Listening to King Khan soundcheck, one of them worried that they were actually maybe missing the show already.
While people hate on beards, headbands and fancy guy shoes, let me tell you, the evil doesn’t lie in that batch of hipsters who no longer check the “25 and under” box, but in that other less tolerable batch of newbies who have turned 18 since last summer, and probably have moved into the Williamsburg vicinity because that is the thing that lies in their bright future. As for the 25+, apart from that actual plumage and hideously “ethnic” shirt one guy was wearing, which incidentally saved him from a fist fight with King Khan (read on for that), the only overkill seemed to be sunglasses with bright-colored rims; everything else they wore was forgivable and harmless, let’s stop talking about that already.
All photos after the jump.
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Download “So Post All ‘Em” (from I Believe in You. Your Magic Is Real.)
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McCarren Pool was the busiest I’ve seen, and Feist performed with perfection. I am always saddened by the image of her that has been created by people, though well-intentioned, who only know her through music videos and promo photos, or for that matter, through only studio recordings. She is no goddess, they say, and I say that too, but she saves rock and roll, and she must be watched live to believe this. It was only when she told the story of a Janet Jackson concert attendance at the age of 11 or 12, it struck me that her music, with its clear roots in blues and essentials of rock, is an honest representation of how “rock and roll” has collected, after gushes and falls and transformations and simplifications and complications, into this generation.
Update: more photos added.Â
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A lot of love came Dan Deacon’s way at McCarren Pool. People offered him hugs, someone his sunglasses and another a bag of ice to keep cool (the first he warmly accepted, the last two politely declined). Most impressively, fans offered the kind of devotion that comes from being well-versed in all Deaconian traditions involving sing-alongs, chants and co-ordinated finger waves with stretched arms (whatever is the technical term for this particular move). I’m guessing it’s official: Dan Deacon is a movement!
While I was taking photos, Borchers was down in the pit:
As a 3rd tier opener for Octopus Project, Dan Deacon’s set was a fraction of what it usually is. But at about 5 feet from his signature, crowd-level table (equipped with his colorful gadgets), Deacon might as well have been a headlining act. The set was filled out by opener OCDJ, friend and fellow Baltimorite.
More after the jump.
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Download “Van Helsing Boombox” (from Six Demon Bag)
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My favorite is the kind of music I imagine to have been created by hooligans. This includes an imagery, heavily influenced by the movie Underground, of irreparable, drunken devotion to music through an otherwise quiet night. Here the musicians boast of decent talent, but it’s gushing passion that boldens them. Led by roaming spirits to drink their money (and homes) away, of course, their heads and hearts simply can’t be rooted. It encompasses what Zach Condon called a “ramshackle orchestra” he first witnessed in Paris (and later re-created in Brooklyn). Man Man are such gypsies at heart, and that’s why I love them. Their show at McCarren Pool was the best I’ve seen all this summer. From the way they were physically set up on stage to the way the songs are written, arranged and performed, the group is very organic, and each member a gift. Albums are a bonus, but Man Man must simply be seen live. Besides, they’re how a “rock and roll” band should be: at once, talented and clumsy, serious and unserious, intellectual and anti-intellectual; but rebellious at all times by simply being all they care to be.
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