popwreckoning

In today’s society a “concert” has become another option for a night out. You’ve seen that movie, you’ve tried that restaurant and now you’re looking for something else to do. People gather to be entertained and possibly let a boogie or two go. But very, very rarely are you treated to an actual experience. You know, something that grabs hold of that time and that place as though it was the only thing going on in the world. For the lucky 350 souls that made it inside the Bottleneck in Lawrence recently, they were treated to an incredible experience courtesy of Nashville duo The Civil Wars.

Joy Williams and John Paul White is a pair of singer-songwriters who have been blessed with an amazing talent. From the harmonies they make, to the notes they hit and the chords they play, it’s obvious their sound comes naturally and from deep inside. So the opportunity to see them perform live was one I was not going to pass up.

Their first full length LP is only about 2 months old, but has managed to gain them swarms of fans all along their tour. Our particular night was filled with nearly every song they’ve written and a few masterpiece covers.

The Civil Wars have a few sides to their music. One of the sides is reminiscent of a quiet town, nestled in the back roads of the Deep South. This is easily seen in selections off Barton Hollow, one of which – “20 Years” – made its appearance near the beginning of night. As John’s fingers danced across the notes on his guitar in an almost renaissance fashion, your attention is automatically grabbed in the first few seconds. The airy harmonies float with the steady chords throughout the rest of the song.

The interaction between the two was possibly more enjoyable than the music itself. The apparent admiration they have for each other was refreshing. And even when they spoke of their “most depressing” number “You Are My Sunshine,”it still came off as genuine.

Upon the first listen of “Barton Hollow,” I was blown away and excitement grew for the new LP. And so when smack dab in the middle of the set, John quietly slipped out: “and this one’s called ‘Barton Hollow’” – cheers proceeded to pipe up from every corner of the venue. Then within moments the powerful “whoo’s” were bellowing from the stage. You wanna talk about Deep South? Well then this song has got to be in the conversation. The incredibly strong beat coming from the top of John’s guitar, instigated a down-home kind of foot stomp from crowd. This was one of the many elements that only further proved why that venue with its worn wooden floor, was the perfect setting. While feet were stomping, the vocals were coming out so soulful and gut-wrenching, that they too would’ve felt at home in any Alabama Sunday church service. The participation from the crowd came in a few ways. As mentioned before, most stomped, but a large part of the crowd also stepped in for the chorus. And when the amazing song was finishing out, John obviously had recognized the audiences’ ability to not butcher their awesome notes and let us harmonize one single word “soul” all by ourselves. Perfection.

A few covers made the list and came out absolutely breath-taking. One in particular nearly froze the crowd in their place to where a pin drop could be heard. “Disarm” by the Smashing Pumpkins morphed into a mix of a lullaby and a love song when sung by The Civil Wars. The common reaction heard among fans was: “this is so beautiful!”

The end to their “official” set was naturally taken by the song most people heard first “Poison & Wine.” Having helped get the band their first spot on TV, it was no surprise that this came as a crowd favorite. The song was extraordinary. The vocals came off soft and elegant. And having Joy on the keys and John on the guitar, just seemed to be the way it was meant to be. The lyrics mostly repeated “I don’t love you, but I always will” for about 80% of the song. However with their angelic tone, you didn’t need much more to tug on the heart strings. Eventually the intensity built up to the point of a near cry, a cry from a broken heart that welled up a few tears among fans.

Smiles, tears, and a few foot stomps – that’s what resulted from our show. The duo is rumored to return to play a larger, outdoor venue in a few months. In the end though, this was the perfect show, the perfect way to experience The Civil Wars

In an age where digital music is supreme, album art is easy to lose in the shuffle. So perhaps when handed Belief in the Process, carefully pondering the mysteriously blue cast series of cylinder objects that look like a cross between buttons and compartments on the front cover, then flipping over to wonder why the album had divided itself into three parts for the track list and then even continuing to wonder over the selection of incomplete lyrics on the inside was a mistake. Yet, when considering the band is the Belated, then analyzing every little decision made on this record doesn’t seem so insane.

Kansas City’s the Belated is a rare breed in the city. While many of the new bands in the area are busy experimenting with electronic loops and whistles and other bizarre gimmicky sounds popularized by the hipster crowd out of Lawrence, the Belated is staying more traditional to the guitar-rich, lots of cymbal-crashing rock band sound. The band does have a nostalgic 90s sound (which isn’t that surprising when considering one of the members hosts a ’90s at noon’ radio show), but that isn’t to say the Belated is stuck in the past. No, what it does say is that the band is aware of the past and knows how to respect it. So perhaps, carefully examining something like album art isn’t so crazy for a band like this.

The album starts with the band’s first single, “Intelligent Redesign,” a song ripe with big rolling drum crescendos ending with even bigger cymbal crashes.  A low bass riff trickles throughout the song. The pre-mentioned 90s vibe is most evident in the Soundgarden-like vocals. It’s a big song with a title that promises exactly what it delivers. The music video for the song says a lot about the band, too. A 90 percent serious video lightened with brief interludes of dancing from Kansas City’s favorite concertgoer.

From “Intelligent Redesign,” the band continues mixing broody vocals with even moodier instrumental patterns. The lyrics are dark, yet an aire of sarcasm and irony serve to lighten the mood rather than darken even deeper into a lyrical black hole. Just like the video, the band is mostly serious, but still fun. Singer Michael Richardson showcases phenomenal, dynamics as he goes from whispering “I Don’t Remember” to yowling down the scales like on “Someone – Somehow.”

The only problem with his vocals is that this is the element that is almost too unwavering. While the band, instrumentally progresses between bluesy riffs from the keyboard on songs like “Sacred” to the latina marching band sounds from the percussion on “Someone – Somehow” to the straight up rock on many of the others, the vocals seem stuck creating a slight tension. Yet, the diversity of the instrumental sound is something that is quite welcome on this album. The band shows that they are capable of engineering a new sound with just their skills and not modern music’s common desire to make “new” with computers. Sure, there are effects like reverb and echoed layering. There’s even the occasional synthesized string, but this is still very organic and fresh. They’re ranging from early Smashing Pumpkins to Silversun Pickups in the instrumentals and it works well for the Belated.

Though there are strong single possibilities with “Intelligent Redesign” and “Escalation,” the band crafted an album: not a collection of singles. Check the whole thing out, and yeah, the album art is significant. The album does seem to have three distinct sections. The first two thirds of the album is bigger than the last third, which serves as more of a catharsis by the time “Daily Rose” comes about. The selected lyrics are some of the more significant stand out lines in the songs. Yet as for the image and the arrangement of those lyrics? Those are best left to the imagination of the album’s owner.

As said before, the Belated is a rare breed not just for Kansas City, but for music in general. This is an album worth checking out.

The Belated is celebrating the album’s release this Friday, January 8 at Crosstown Station. They’re joined by fellow locals Nutchhatch 47 and Pet Comfort. Doors are at 8 and tickets are just $10. It is one of the first chances to see new drummer Stephanie Williams in action as well as hear the new tunes.

Track Listing:
01. Intelligent Redesign
02. I Don’t Remember
03. Sacred
04. Someone – Somehow
05. How Did You Know
06. Easy
07. Escalation
08. We Don’t Belong
09. Lazy Fascination
10. Wound
11. Daily Rose

Canadian twins Tegan and Sara have been making innovative power-pop music for ten plus years, and they’ve been doing so on their own terms: navigating the challenges of the music business and following their fearless hearts with grace and conviction. The following interview marks a personal milestone for me in my fledgling career as a music journalist. Tegan and Sara are what got me writing about music in the first place, a secret dream of mine since high school. Their gutsy, heart-heavy music, hilarious stories, and devotion to what they believe in is what inspired me to pick up my pen, or rather, dust off my keyboard and camera and start making art again.

When I found out that PopWreckoning contributor Dese’Rae Stage and I were set to interview Sara Quin, the notoriously shy, enigmatic, hard-to-get half of the duo…uh, in person, you can imagine that my ticker just about plummeted to the bottom of my gut. I was going to meet my muse. We sat down with Sara, in a very slick studio at the Warner Music offices in New York City just a few days after Sainthood, the twins’ sixth studio album was released, and the day before the twins played two sold out shows at New York’s legendary Town Hall theater. We talked about everything from how the girls spent a very busy album release day to the potential difference between an alligator and a crocodile. Needless to say, it was the best nine minutes ever.

Reni Papananias, PopWreckoning: First of all, congratulations on the album.
Sara Quin: Thank you. It’s like having a baby when you put a record out, everyone’s like, “Congratulations!” And I’m like, “Thank You.”
RP: It is a baby…it’s your art baby.
SQ: Yeah…(giggles)

RP: So, tell me about album release day?
SQ: You know, it was great. We had a really early morning. We did a five-hour thing at AOL, where we did like all these skits. We’ve been on Spinner.com all week so we had to do some more skits where we were like acting, and we set up and played four songs, so they can play them on the website, and then we did a little bit more press, and then we did a four and a half hour signing at a bookstore where we saw about five hundred kids, which was great, and then we had a big dinner with the label and the band and then I fell into bed at like two a.m. and I was…beat. It was a long day, but it was great. It feels really exciting. We’ve always had really great release days. It’s really celebratory. There’s a cake involved. I actually had been waiting for this moment for like four months and I was really happy that it had come. It was great. We were charting all day, which was exciting. We feel like there’s a lot of momentum and excitement around the record. I’m just happy. There’s a lot of gratitude.

RP: How was it different from when The Con came out? How have things changed for you this time around?
SQ: You know, it wasn’t remarkably different. When The Con came out we were in Los Angeles, which is where we were this time. We played at Amoeba and literally a thousand people showed up. Literally it was their biggest in-store ever, and it was bananas. It was so exciting and we played and we signed for hours and we basically took over the store for the entire day and it was super fun. There’s nobody else you’d want to spend a release day with than who you’re releasing the album to. So that’s why we always try to do a fan-related thing.

RP: You and Tegan definitely do a lot to stay in connected with your fans. We were curious, in relation to social networking, Twitter in specific, if you feel pressure to engage in that way as artists?
SQ: I mean, I’m not on Twitter, so Tegan, and I am totally talking for her, but my understanding is that she definitely started Twitter when we were sort of done touring and it was more of a personal Twitter and now it’s become totally a band Twitter where she pimps what we’re doing during the day and that sort of thing. We never feel forced into it. The truth is that when we released our first album and we first started touring it was like 1999…2000. The Internet was really just getting going. We were not in any way a buzz band, we had signed a record deal, it was a very small deal, and we were touring and we kept using the word “organic.” “We’re organic. We’re going to organically build a fan base,” and all of these things, but we really had no press or support from television or radio and the internet was truly social networking and the internet was the way that we started to build an audience one by one. And so, we still have a lot of connection to it, just because it’s a way for us to make that connection, and to be as authentic and genuine as we want to be or don’t want to be. When you’re doing television or radio or interviews, you’re really through the filter and the mind of the person interviewing you and there’s something about knowing that our fans want to tap directly in and I’m completely okay with that. After ten years you sort of figure out how to keep what’s for you, for you, and what’s for them, for them. You’re very in control of what message you’re putting out there.
RP: Right.

Dese’Rae Stage, PopWreckoning: I guess that sort of answers that other question we had about where your borders are in relation to your fans.
RP: Right, some artists kind of take it to the extreme when it comes to connecting online…like hosting online Friday night Twitter parties and stuff like that.
SQ: You know, I think each person is looking for something different in the connection they have with the public. For Tegan and I, we’ve always been performers and we’ve always loved to be onstage and entertaining people, but there’s also a part of us that’s really private and I know certainly for me, I don’t have any desire to knock down every wall between me and the person that’s in front of me. And the reality is, it’s not even possible at this point. There’s just too many people. How on Earth could you do it? I mean, I think it depends too on what your personal life is like. I have a huge family, I’m still best friends with the kids I went to junior high school with and I have so many people from my early life that I’m still so connected to. It sounds strange but I’m over capacitated already in my life. Like, I can’t even imagine taking on those kinds of connections, those kinds of intimate connections with strangers, you know? What we do on stage is real and authentic, but it’s done in this way where we truly are performers projecting out onto people. It’s reciprocated in this strange energy way but it’s like…how could I possibly connect to 2,000 people every night? I just can’t. Even at that in-store that we did on release day, I mean, the information people will tell you in thirty seconds is profound…to have someone walk up to you and tell you about a death in the family or something that happened to them when they were a little kid…you…I couldn’t do that every day. I can do it like once a year. (Laughs) I’m like, oh my God…it’s too much.

RP: Well, your music means a lot to people. I mean, people are really connected to it. What do you think it is about you and Tegan that people feel so intimately connected to?
SQ: You know, I’m not always sure. I think society, what we project on television, and on film and on billboards and those things, I think in a strange way is how we want to see ourselves, is how we think we see ourselves or even how we don’t think we see ourselves and I think Tegan and I are, you know, an alternative version of what’s projected out constantly. I think, we, for a lot of women, for a lot of queer people, there’s something nice about, or there’s something calming about, or something refreshing about seeing something that isn’t always in the media or whatever, but then on the other hand, I can only speak from my own experience, from when I was a kid, what resonated with me, was intense for me, like Bruce Springsteen and the Smashing Pumpkins or whatever, what made me feel more connected to them over other bands, sometimes it’s hard to say. Sometimes it’s just because…it’s just because it’s the right time and the right words and the right melody. I think Tegan and I have that combination of maybe the music part and the personal side.

RP: Right. Okay, this is sort of a silly question…I really love “Alligator.”
SQ: Cool.
RP: It’s a really hot track. We were wondering if alligator tears are the same as crocodile tears?
SQ: Yeah, that’s what I actually meant, but I thought the phrase was alligator tears and then very early on, when I sent it to someone, they were like “I think what you mean is crocodile tears” and I was like, crocodile tears doesn’t have the same…
RP: Well, I think it adds to the mystery of the song.
SQ: Yeah. I mean, I think, just phonetically, it didn’t make as much sense to me as alligator. Alligator just fit better and I wanted it to be sort of an R&B type track and alligator the word just was better.
RP: I like it and I think it’s different. I think people are really responding to it.
SQ: Yeah, the response has been terrific. Originally, when we sent all the demos out it wasn’t on the original list, but both Tegan and I were like, “There’s just something about this song.” It kind of hovered in the “B” list area for a while and then when we started recording the album, I was like, “You know, I think we should try this.”

RP: You guys wrote together for the first time when putting Sainthood together. What did you learn from each other during that experience?
SQ: You know, Tegan and I both, and we’ve acknowledged this a lot, but I think we almost have a reverse style or process when we go into the recording kind of…headspace. Tegan is really lyrical, she loves to put together words and ideas and then she’ll sort of build music after that and I’m like, completely the opposite. I will get almost 100 percent done with the instrumental before I even begin to think about melodies and once I’ve sort of figured out melodies, then I’ll do lyrics. So it’s the absolute last thing that I do. So, when we were in the writing process that was kind of awkward. Tegan’s natural instincts…suddenly she was being held back and when we would try to do it her way, I would feel really off balance, and it ended up kind of working to our advantage. I think the music is really interesting and super cool but I wouldn’t want to always write like that. I think there’s something truly satisfying about just working the way you want to work. I wouldn’t want to convert her. I think what she does is great and she should keep doing it.

Insert here a wide, adorable smile and a dulcet giggle, and the best ten minutes ever comes to a close.

DS: Love it.

Tegan and Sara: website | myspace | interview with: Tegan pt. 1, pt. 2 | @ terminal 5 | @ town hall | Sainthood review

Interview by Reni Papananias.
Photo by Dese’Rae L. Stage.

The first day of the second annual Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival held in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park was filled with all of the ingredients you would expect at such a mammoth, eco-conscious festival. Expressions of art in many forms, lots foodie-centric vendors and throngs of music-adoring fans packed the event for three days of music, activism and celebration in a picture-perfect setting.

West Indian Girl
One of the early highlights was the set by West Indian Girl with guest vocalist Miranda Lee Richards. WIG delivered a psychedelic set of dreamy pop to an appreciative SF crowd.

Built To Spill
Often mentioned and praised by other bands throughout the day was the swirling, guitar-driven performance by Built to Spill.

Loop!Station
A San Francisco favorite, Loop!Station played three days in “The Barbary,” a magnificent “venue” brought in from Belgium. The effect of Robin Coomer’s soaring vocals, set atop layered samples and powerful cello from Sam Bass is absolutely mesmerizing.

The Dodos
Displaying their unconventional techniques for the hometown crowd, San Francsico’s The Dodos gained some much-deserved exposure with their opening-day performance.

Silversun Pickups
Often compared to Smashing Pumpkins, Silversun Pickups have built out their own sonic wall of sound. Delivering the most powerful set of the festival, Silversun Pickups brought their familiar “Lazy Eye” and “Swoon” in all of their fuzz-out, screamed-out glory.

The National
The performance by Brooklyn-based The National was filled with well-crafted gems of surprisingly interesting indie pop. A band familiar to San Franciscans from their song “Fake Empire” which was used in the Obama campaign, The National had the crowd won over before they hit the stage.

Incubus
Struggling with some vocal issues, Incubus lead singer Brandon Boyd did his best to power through the hit-laden set. The fans were more than happy to fill in the gaps while Boyd nursed his pipes with a Cotes du Rhone.

Tom Jones
In an odd Vegas-meets-the-Bay moment, Tom Jones brought his endearing sing-along show to Golden Gate Park. I wasn’t sure if “It’s Not Unusual” or “She’s a Lady” would resonate with the hipster, boomer and ubiquitous ironic t-shirt-clad festival crowd. Sure enough, Sir Tom had everyone, young and old, dancing and singing right along.

Thievery Corporation
Even exceeding my expectations as a long-time devotee of Thievery Corporation, Rob Garza and Eric Hilton led fans through an amazing spectacle during their performance on Friday night. The opening minutes of the show featured no less than three lead vocalists, a cross-legged Rob Myers on sitar and were followed by one of the most stunning performances of the entire festival. Pearl who?

Check back for days 2 & 3!