Just reviewed Mercury Rev’s marvelous new album The Light In You for Whisperin’ & Hollerin’. You can read it here.
The album is out on Bella Union Records on October 2nd.
I am really looking forward to seeing the band on their one and only date in Italy at the Bronson Club in Ravenna in November.
Here is the video to the single. Are You Ready? is the question. Yes is the answer.
White Hills got a cameo spot in Jim Jarmusch’s Vampire flick ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ and being a cult band in a cult movie is as close to superstardom as they are likely to get.
Undeterred by a lack of mass following, they continue to put out great albums, the latest Walks For Motorists (which I reviewed for Whisperin’ & Hollerin), is well represented in the show tonight. From it, they kick off with the punchy No Will which morphs into the motorik drone of Lead The Way. Continue reading
She came, she sang, she conquered. An hour-long set packed with intensity. Nika Roza Danilova is a vision in black with silver jewelry. Beauty and youth. Still only 25. The world at her feet if the world will listen. Bursts of wild dervish dances. Goth soulfulness. Striking poses but wholly natural. Arty but heartfelt. Pounding drums a constant. Moments of calm interspersed with Wagneresque splendor. Most of Taiga is played plus five older songs. Abstract paranoia rendered as upbeat pop. “Set me free” from Nail sang a capella. The audience in the palm of her hand. Power is a voice.
ONEIDA – art but not arty
The support slot for this midweek show belongs to People Of The North (POTN), a case of ‘meet the new band, same as the old band’ since the five members are the same as headliners Oneida (pronounced OH – NEED- ER).
POTN play a meandering 45 minute piece which I assume was improvized. There are noodling lulls here and there but things get interesting when surges of keyboard, drum and guitar interchanges build momentum; like Krautrock played with New York attitude. Continue reading
Say cheese!
There’s a quiet menace about Mark Kozelek. His songs reveal he’s a sensitive guy but his highly personal, story songs never stray into sentimentalism.
The lyrics are full of the humdrum details from his life at home or on the road yet are delivered with such intensity that they seem positively revelatory.
He sings of being unable to shake his melancholy nature, a condition that I imagine is exacerbated by touring on his own and having time to brood in lonely hotel rooms.
On stage during this two-hour solo performance he’s not ice cold but not warm either. There’s no charm offensive. He seems pissed off that the audience don’t talk to him but doesn’t do much to meet us half way. He doesn’t even know what city he’s playing in so you get the impression that part of him doesn’t give a damn who’s listening and why.
He wonders why there is so much graffiti in Rome but nobody dares venture an opinion as to why Italians are so into street art. In the US, Kozelek says, kids have better things to do; they’re too busy mugging and stabbing people. This is a topic he also touches on in song form in Richard Ramirez Died Of Natural Causes.
Having a few rows of seating and playing under dimmed lighting efficiently communicates the fact that you take pictures or videos at your own peril. And amazingly, no-one does. I can’t remember the last show I went to when there was so little chatter and so few pulling out smart phones. “You are a nice, respectful audience”, Kozelek acknowledges near the end and he was not wrong. Continue reading
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