Thing Of The Day: “This Is The Moment”

Current Listening:  The Odd Couple

Thing Of The Day: The State

Apparently The State DVD set was finally put together, but now MTV is delaying the release again.

Current Listening: Ween’s The Mollusk

Thing Of The Day: “Love Will Tear Us Apart”

Susanna and the Magical Orchestra’s version of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”

Current Listening: Subtle’s A New White

The Mars Volta: Part II

The ocean floor is hidden from your viewing lens
A depth perception languished in the night
All my life, I’ve been sowing the wounds
But the seeds sprout a lachrymal cloud
-Sarcophagi

By 2005’s Frances The Mute, The Mars Volta’s managerial structure was solidly in place: Omar – write, conduct, and produce all music, Cedric – all vocals and lyrics, everyone else – listen to Omar. Omar would teach and record each musician independently of each other to ensure an energetic and complete performance from each individual instrumental voice, even handing-off much of his guitar duties at times to John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who has contributed to some extent on each of The Mars Volta’s four albums.

Frances The Mute would be another concept album, based on a diary the band found in a repossessed car which chronicled it’s former owner’s search for his biological parents, with each song named after a person he had met along the way. While De-Loused was an extremely present album, constantly brimming with energy, purpose, and satisfactions, Frances carefully constructs musical ideas on a journey through expressive freedom and exploratory improvisation. Expanding on many of the qualities introduced by it predecessor, Frances The Mute undoubtedly contributed to the band’s being lazily labeled “overindulgent” by deriders to this day. With the addition of a saxophone/flute/clarinet player equally bolstering the band’s Latin and jazz aesthetics, epic, multi-part tracks with bilingual lyrics further polarized critics of The Mars Volta.

An acoustic performance of “Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore,” the album’s penultimate song.

An excerpt from “Cassandra Gemini,” the album’s final song, a 32-minute piece spread over the album’s last eight tracks.

Current Listening: Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It In People

The Mars Volta: Part I

In 2001, as the post-hardcore group was beginning to reach critical hype, At The Drive-In, citing serious artistic differences, fissured into Sparta and The Mars Volta. While Sparta took a more traditional rock route from ATDI, as The Mars Volta, guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala chose to blaze a more experimental trail.

When they drag the lake there’s nothing left at all
I’ve defected
Sutured contusion beyond the anthills of the dawning of this plague
Said I’ve lost my way
-Cicatriz ESP

2003’s De-Loused In The Comatorium is a concept album (based on the life and death of a close friend) in which the main character, while comatose from a morphine overdose experiences beauties and truths which are so devastatingly crushed by reality that he ultimately, upon awakening, takes his own life. Omar’s luminary guitar sets out across a sea of Latin percussion and complexly transient time signatures navigating each song through the chunky, mountainous waves that The Mars Volta creates. Lyrically, the album is characterized by Cedric’s puzzlingly verbose verses (“A half mass commute through umbilical blisters”) and anthemic choruses (“Exoskeletal junction at the railroad delayed”).

Cedric and Omar’s musical mission statement, De-Loused In The Comatorium is a psychedelic, hard-jazz sonic masterpiece. This precisely frantic declaration of independence successfully juxtaposes the band’s punk-rock accomplishments with their prog-rock ambitions. Listen: The official music video for “Televators,” De-Loused’s hauntingly lone ballad and two videos of “Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of);” the first, a brief clip from Toad’s Place in New Haven this past January and the second, some kid playing the whole song on piano.

Joanna Newsom, Somebody To Love

Joanna Newsom is a 26 year-old songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Northern California known mostly for her prodigious harp acumen and her unique singing voice. These three songs are all off her debut album The Milk-Eyed Mender. Also check-out 2006’s Ys and the 2007 EP Joanna Newsom & The Ys Street Band.

“The Book Of Right-On”

“Sadie”

“Bridges And Balloons”

Current Listening: The Mars Volta’s The Bedlam In Goliath

Bustle In Your Hedgerow - Southpaw, Brooklyn 2/9/08

Bustle In Your Hedgerow is a collaboration between Marco Benevento (keys) and Joe Russo (drums) of The Duo, Dave Dreiwitz (bass) of Ween, and Scott Metzger (guitar) in which the quartet explores the music of Led Zeppelin 99% instrumentally with Benevento taking care of most of the familiar melodies with his Fender Rhodes and Hammond B-3 organs. While the group as a unit has logged only a handful of shows (I’d guess 10-15) over the past 3 years, you’ll see from these 2-3 minute video clips that they’ve probably been practicing these songs for quite a while.  (Note: After watching 2 or 3 of these videos you have to refresh the page to watch more.)

“Thank You”

“Ramble On”

“The Song Remains The Same”

“What Is and What Should Never Be”

“Four Sticks”

“The Wanton Song”

“Dazed and Confused”

“Over The Hills and Far Away”

“Moby Dick”

Unfortunately, in the middle of Russo’s mammoth drum solo, the camera ran out of space. Russo put down the sticks, and went Bonham-in-the-Garden on the drums. A tremendous end to another amazing Bustle show.

Currently Watching: The Whitest Kids You Know - Season 2. This sketch comedy show (www.whitestkids.com) is on IFC Sundays at 11p. Watch this please, we’ll thank each other.

Marco Benevento & Friends – Sullivan Hall, NYC 1/31/08

As exactly one-half of the Benevento/Russo Duo, a modern-jazz-meets-post-rock drum-and-organ outfit, keyboardist and circuit-bender Marco Benevento has been proving himself an innovator and major player in New York’s experimental downtown jazz scene since the turn of the millennium. Culminating on this night with a party celebrating Benevento’s new solo release Invisible Baby, Marco set-up shop at Sullivan Hall each Thursday night in January enlisting a different group of musicians each week drawing from among his closest friends and contemporaries (including Kaki King, Stanton Moore, and Joe Russo) to join him in reopening the recently renovated former Lion’s Den. With the first four Thursdays consisting almost entirely of unrehearsed group improvisation (some among the freest of form I have ever experienced), January 31st scheduled Marco with Andrew Barr of The Slip on drums and Reed Mathis of Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey on bass, a triumvirate that goes back further than last year’s Invisible Baby sessions, to Marco’s highly successful November 2006 residency which produced his first official solo release, Live At Tonic. (Marco and the guys from The Slip go back yet further to their days as friends and fellow students at Boston’s Berklee College of Music.) While the trio ran through a number of relatively succinct and singable instrumental tracks from the new record, it was the choice selection of covers incorporated into the set during which the group, as well as the individual musicians themselves, truly gleamed as creative entities. Both My Morning Jacket’s “Golden” and Pink Floyd’s “Fearless” stood out as clear highlights to most of the crowd (though I can’t speak specifically for Rolling Stone’s David Fricke or The Adventures of Pete and Pete’s Danny Tamberelli) until around 1am when Andrew’s brother and Slip-mate Brad Barr joined the group on guitar for the final “cover” of the night, and thus the month, The Duo’s signature “Mephisto.”

Marco Benevento & Friends - “Mephisto” Sullivan Hall, NYC 1/31/08

Current Listening: Yeasayer’s All Hour Cymbals

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

In the summer of 2007, Jenny Eliscu of Rolling Stone and Sirius’ Left of Center channel advised her listeners of a great band she had seen live the night before. She declared they would be a big deal in the year to come, as their debut album, she predicted, would garner hype on the level of Arcade Fire’s 2004 debut. While Vampire Weekend doesn’t quite compare musically to Funeral (nor should it have to), the satisfied listener will be happy to hear that this album isn’t really comparable to anything they’ve been hearing of late. A preppy garage rock album with a refreshingly youthful knack for world music a la Paul Simon, Vampire Weekend is what Wes Anderson would sound like if he were a band. And for whatever it’s worth, for Jenny’s sake, check out the oversized album covers displayed in the front window of the Virgin Megastore in Union Square.

Current Listening: Lee Rouson’s “Go Giants Go” www.gogiantsgo.net/purchase.html

Cat Power – Jukebox

From Chan Marshall, we’ve come to expect smoky, soulful vocals accompanied by straightforward, fairly mellow blues and rock tunes. Jukebox packs no surprises in this regard. That said, this album consists almost entirely of cover versions of songs I’ve never heard before. The opener “New York,” associated mainly with Frank Sinatra, deviates starkly from the familiar chord progressions and melodies, similarly to the way Rage Against The Machine approached the songs for their Renegades album where the band adhered only to the originals’ lyrics, around which they would craft a completely new song. While that reference does feel like it was crowbarred in a bit, since “New York” is the only song I can associate with another artist, it doesn’t help that I can’t take that comparison any further. I do love Chan’s voice very much, and it is what floats a few of these songs above the tide, but the truth is that I found most of these tracks to be unremarkable and boring. Listen to her previous album, 2006’s The Greatest. It was significantly better and last year earned her the distinction of being the first woman awarded the Shortlist Music Prize, paving the way for this year’s winner, Feist for The Reminder.

Current Listening: Beach House’s new album Devotion.