popwreckoning

What is there to say about this show? Having the pleasure of seeing three of the best singer/songwriters music today share the stage was a surreal experience that I will treasure for the rest of my life. Going into this show, I really didn’t know what to expect, not having seen any of the acts in any capacity, but the show atmosphere setup and atmosphere had the feel of seeing Dylan- you knew you were seeing/experiencing truly special.

Something really to admire is how the show is structured, shifting from tracks from their self-titled, Monsters of Folk, into songs from each other’s extensive back catalogue of indie-rock classics. Each of the three, Conor Oberst, M. Ward and Jim James had mini sets of acoustic songs with a combination of another member (M. Ward and Jim James harmonies were full of such soul). Of the three M. Ward was the one I was the least familiar with, only knowing him from She & Him, but his solo set made me a believer and left the crowd in awe as his solo set, receiving a standing ovation and me making a personal note, “For the love of God, as soon as you get home, get some M. Ward albums.”

As the show hit the 2 hour mark, the M.O.F really hit their stride as Jim James steals the show (with his stellar white boy dance moves that would give Dave Matthews a run for his money), as he leads the band through My Morning Jacket‘s Smokin’ From Shootin’ and Monsters of Folk’s Losin’ Yo Head. Not to be outdone, Conor Oberst adds some punch to his verse of Smokin From Shootin’ as M. Ward holds down the keys and guitars rather masterfully.

This is a show that completely blew me away: plain and simple. After three hours, Jim James added, “Boy Chicago, you sure know how to treat a lady.” Chicago experienced something truly special that I will proudly recall for years to come.

Set List:
Say Please
The Right Place
Soul Singer in a Session Band (Bright Eyes)
Slow Down Jo
Ahead of the Curve
Lullaby + Exile (M. Ward)
We Are Nowhere and It’s Now (Bright Eyes)
The Big Picture (Bright Eyes)
Golden (My Morning Jacket)
Baby Boomer
Bermuda Highway (My Morning Jacket)
Look at You (My Morning Jacket)
Man Named Truth
Vincent O’Brien (M. Ward)
One life Away (M. Ward)
Wonder (The Way I Feel) (Jim James w/ M. Ward)
Lime Tree (Bright Eyes)
Dear God
Temazcal
To Save Me (M. Ward)
Goodway
Smoke Without Fire (Bright Eyes)
One Hundred Million Years (M. Ward)
Chinese Translation (M. Ward)
Bottom of Everything (Bright Eyes)
The Sandman, The Brakeman and Me
Map of The World
Smokin’ From Shootin’ (My Morning Jacket)
Hit The Switch (Bright Eyes)
Losin’ Yo Head
//
At Dawn (My Morning Jacket)
Whole Lotta Losin’
Another Travelin’ Song (Bright Eyes)
His Master’s Voice

Monsters of Folk: website

Rachael Yamagata will hit the road as a very special guest of Irish band Swell Season for a fall U.S. tour of intimate theaters that begins November 12th and finishes up on December 5th. Yamagata has spent the last few months writing the follow-up to her Warner Bros. Records debut album Elephants…Teeth Sinking Into Heart.

Elephants…Teeth Sinking Into Heart was released on October 7th, 2008. The follow-up to Yamagata’s 2004 full-length debut Happenstance, Elephants…Teeth Sinking Into Heart was praised by such media outlets as Entertainment Weekly (“Yamagata’s delivery is gorgeous”), People (“an ambitious double disc”), and Spin (“add some cheap scotch and you’ve got a John Cassavetes movie”).

Of the album’s 15 tracks, Nebraska-based Mike Mogis, the multi-instrumentalist and producer known for his work with Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley and The Faint, produced 12. Two tracks were produced by John Alagia (John Mayer, Dave Matthews Band), who also produced Happenstance. The album also features guest appearances by singer-songwriters Ray Lamontagne and Azure Ray’s Maria Taylor.

Tour Dates:
Nov 12 – House of Blues / New Orleans, LA
Nov 13 – Warehouse Live / Houston, TX
Nov 14 – The Palladium Ballroom / Dallas, TX
Nov 15 - Paramount Theatre / Austin, TX
Nov 17 - Mesa Arts Center – Ikeda / Mesa, AZ
Nov 27 – Egyptian Theater / Boise, ID
Nov 28 - Jeanne Wagner Theatre / Salt Lake City, UT
Nov 29 – Ogden Theatre / Denver, CO
Nov 30 – Uptown Theatre / Kansas City, MO
Dec 2 – Michigan Theater / Ann Arbor, MI
Dec 3 – Chicago Auditorium Theatre / Chicago, IL
Dec 4 – The Pageant / St. Louis, MO
Dec 5 – State Theatre / Minneapolis, MN

Rachael Yamagata: myspace | website | Elephants…Teeth Sinking Into Heart review | interview with | @ liberty hall

On the album Another Side Of Bob Dylan, in the song “My Back Pages,” Dylan sings, “But I was so much older then/I’m younger than that now.” True, that was a kiss off to the “protest songs” thing he’d been pigeonholed with and wanted to escape, but on his next album, he not only abandoned that particular stance, but stylistically began embracing rock and moving away from the acoustic folk that had dominated his music up to that point. In the song, he words his “declaration of intent” paradoxically to increase the power of the statement, but really it makes perfect sense: he had been playing the (older) music of the past up until that point and now he was going to play the (younger) music of the then-present and future. Of course, Dylan never entirely abandoned folk, but rather, he advanced it by electrifying it, filling it with amphetamine-fueled beatnik-inspired poetry and abandoning the limiting three chord structure of traditional folk to pen otherworldly epics like “Ballad of Thin Man” and “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands.”

The past can’t be ignored, but it’s no place to make a home, or worse, a career. Elvis Perkins and The Dimes aren’t so much folk revivalists as they are folk preservationists, with the latter act going so far as to base the songs on their first album on stories they found in depression era newspapers preserved beneath the floorboards of the guitarist’s house.

The two acts draw inspiration from Americana of more or less the same time period, but they differ greatly in their aesthetics. Perkins’ approach is kind of goofy and not adverse to more electric instrumentation and idiosyncratic brass arrangements. The title track for instance, despite its morbid subject matter involving dedication “till doomsday,” is a jovial, bouncy folky tune with a traditional melody Perkins sings in his quivering, exaggerated tenor.

Perkins’ strength lies in his large, charismatic personality. It’s enough to carry the music, but his music isn’t original enough to carry itself. All the songs on The Doomsday EP are based on traditional folk structures and the lyrics have their roots in either the religious or archaic. Admittedly, in “Gypsy Davy” the topic of underage girls is still relevant, but it’s sung in away that suggests some kind of creepy 19th century perspective. And the straightforward “Stop Drop Rock And Roll” feels like nothing more than an energetic exercise, like something played to warm up the band. Perkins is simply repackaging music that’s been around for decades. He’s not updating it or drawing on it for inspiration like Bob Dylan or Bright Eyes or M. Ward; he’s just remaking it with a funny voice and an electric guitar.

The Dimes fare somewhat better, largely because their songs aren’t so strictly traditional in their structure. The arrangements are very in keeping with the sounds of the period, and the band use all kinds of sounds of the period to tremendous effect: sweeping harmonies are everywhere, supported by various rustic-sounding stringed instruments and all kinds of little bells and whistles. Over the course of The King…, The Dimes try out a selection of musical outfits. In “The Liberator” the band sound dark, brooding singing about the abolitionist newspaper the song is named after; the moving “Save Me Clara” is sung from the perspective of a dying man, begging in vain for “Clara” (apparently Clara Barton, a nurse during the civil war) to save him from his fate; the wispy, ornate “Ballad Of Winslow Homer” is about an American painter of the time who for a period painted scenes of wartime; “Webster Thayter” is a twangy tune about a judge who condemned two men to death, despite the fact that there was very little evidence to suggest they actually committed the crime they were accused of.

The Dimes’ devotion to the past is so deep-rooted and expansive that with a Wikipedia page open, it’s hard not to be pretty impressed by what they’ve accomplished. But despite the strength of the music (which is considerable), in steeping the album so strongly in the past they’ve distanced it from themselves. The emotions don’t quite ring true, but seem secondhand, like echoes from some elsewhere, which they are. And true, an artist can put himself in character and deliver great work, but The Dimes just don’t quite manage to pull it off entirely on The King… Maybe it’s because they focused too much on the history and not enough on the emotions involved, or maybe because they sound too young, or too clean.

The artistic and commercial success of Fleet Foxes and M. Ward and any number of great contemporary folk and Americana artists prove that the genre is still as valid and full of potential as any other, but looking at great bands and artists like the aforementioned, it’s not greatly apparent that there’s a thin line between paying tribute to the music of the past and indulgently recreating it. But there is. The past had its music, its stories, and its culture and those aren’t going anywhere. It’s up to the artists of today to give the present its own music, stories and culture.

Elvis Perkins: website | myspace | @ bonnaroo | @ sxsw
The Dimes: website | myspace