popwreckoning

Wednesday 10:00 a.m.
The alarm screams frantically for me to crawl out of the comfort of my studio hotel bed and drive downtown to collect the remainder of the PopWreckoning team working South by Southwest. I instead hit snooze nine times and let them fend for themselves.

Wednesday 12:47 p.m.
As I make my way down the halls of the Austin Convention Center with the immediate goal of collecting my staff, I become distracted by a small entourage near the pack of the level one expocentre. Of course, I do my best Nancy Drew impression, sneaking around tables and chairs to get to the bottom of the cluster. To my surprise, my detective work yielded not only my first, but also my second celebrity spotting of SXSW 2010. To my delight, both Erik Estrada and Verne Troyer, a.k.a. Mini-me, were gathered with their management, planning their campaign for the Starkey Hearing Foundation. I add their pair of earplugs to the fifty in my photography bag and move on.

Wednesday 12:35 p.m.
I sneak up the northern most staircase in the convention center, making my way to the third floor. This lobby, unlike the one on the first and second floors is empty. Its electrical plugs are unused and its lounge chairs are vacant. I grab and fill three just because I can.

Wednesday 4:17 p.m.
I make my way south to the PureVolume House forty-five minutes early in hopes of snagging free Taco Bell tacos. Instead, I receive a chance meeting with co-host of our ATN showcase and Big Picture Media president, Dayna Ghiraldi, who also was doing press for the PureVolume House. She walked me past the line waiting outside the venue where I was greeted by a fairly unimpressive forty minute set from Los Angeles, California-based Warpaint. I was kind of surprised to find myself apathetic to their music due to the fact that they possess several elements of music that I’m drawn to. I generally prefer female vocalists, Rough Trade Records and a good chunk of what Paste Magazine tells me to enjoy. However, I instead found Warpaint drab. The PureVolume House crowd, however, which consisted mostly of 14 and 16 year olds, seemed to disagree with me, eating up the group’s set like all the tacos they eliminated before I could get there. Following Warpaint, PureVolume hosted the wonderfully catchy Miniature Tigers. Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, the group brought with them the mood friendly east coast movement mixed with a witty, undeniable charm. The crowd seemed into it and this time I agreed.

Wednesday 5:30 p.m.
While exiting the PureVolume House, a concert goer young enough to be my daughter rushes through the venue door with the speed of an Olympic sprinter, arms flopping and her head spun backwards, focused on her friends outside. Her body, still in motion and facing forward slams into my camera at NASCAR speeds. Rather than stopping or apologizing, she mumbles “oh my god” and runs to the stage. I, however, spend the afternoon searching for a Wolf’s Camera.

Wednesday 6:40 p.m.
In tonight’s performance, the role of tacos will be played by buffalo wings. They however will not be free.

Wednesday 8:00 p.m.
I make my way to the Central Church across town to catch the epic cello player Zoe Keating. Her work with loop pedals allows her to build an orchestra by herself, using different pitches and levels to create depth, while clicking the bow against the cello body to design percussion. The natural construction of the church made the venues acoustics perfect for this sort of a performance, though the lighting left a little to be desired. While her performance was great, I bailed from my pew to catch the Brooklyn Vegan party across the street, where Dawes was halfway through their set.

Wednesday 9:15 p.m.
It’s not difficult to realize how out of shape you are at SXSW. I come to this conclusion on my 1.5 mile walk to the Belmont for a rooftop meet and greet surrounding our showcase. While I understood the need to be there, I could not be more bored. Realistically, I have no one to meet or great. I do my 45 minutes and head for someplace more entertaining.

11:00 p.m.
For the second time in two hours I walk a little over a mile to catch an event. However, this time my final destination lands me two rows back from Jenny Owen Youngs, the spunky female artist who also happens to be one of my favorite musicians. Seeing her in the 18th floor lobby of the Hilton continental hotel was interesting. While her performance was spot on her normal range of entertainment and sarcasm, her sound levels were rocky, thanks in part to a shady combo of an iffy sound man and playing in a hotel lobby. But, regardless of technical difficulties, her set still was the crowning moment of my Wednesday. I headed back to my hotel content to crank out reviews.

The advantage that Zoe Keating has over your band, be it present, fictional or future, is just that: Zoe Keating.

Independent in a way few others are talented enough to even attempt, this one-woman musician brings a completely new definition to the words self reliant. Packing of a cello and a handful of loop pedals, Keating manages to create a rhythm section, bridges, verses and choruses, bass and lead riffs, and a whole life of music.

I first experienced Keating a few years back as the opening act for Imogen Heap at The Bottleneck in Lawrence, Kansas. The memory of her set then prompted me to make sure to catch her in Austin. When I found out she was playing one time, at the Central Presbyterian Church, I shunned Dawes and several other listed bands to make my way to her stage. That intimate setting is simply nonexchangeable.

Keating herself is pretty nonrefundable as well. Classically trained from the age of eight, she is no hack. She’s found herself on the charts of both the classical and electronica sections of itunes, while managing to sell in upward of 30,000 albums. In addition to Heap, she’s worked with the likes of Amanda Palmer and traveled with the group Rasputina, whom she was a member of from 2002-2006. Just because you haven’t heard of her, doesn’t mean she’s not a road tested genius. She’s not that simple.

Her music is also actually quite complex. Each loop adds a layer, which build a chorus. As time passes, the movements build into full orchestrations that filled the steeples of the church in a way that those passing by might assume 50 people were playing.

But no, it was one girl. One extremely talented girl named Zoe whom you should check out.

Inu, a three-piece project from San Francisco-based producer Mikael “Count” Eldridge, guitarist Tim Hingston and cellist Zoe Keating, has created an entertaining, catchy and easy to listen to handful of electro-pop tracks on their first EP dubbed Monster. Count is best known as a top-tier music producer and has worked with such artists as DJ Shadow, New Order, Radiohead, Lyrics Born, Galactic and Halou. Hingston, originally from the east coast, has been dabbling in experimental music and finding new sounds his whole life. After bringing his guitar and bass skills to the west coast to play with the aforementioned Halou, he met Count and began collaborating on a variety of new projects. This is how Inu initially came to life. And it only got better when the, “one-woman orchestra,” Zoe Keating, jumped on board.

The experimental rock music is an interesting mix of electro-pop with a healthy dose of guitar, drums, bass, cello and pretty smooth vocals to top it all off. The EP boasts five songs that establish primarily catchy beats from the get-go and show off the band’s “retrofuturistic techno-wizardry” throughout. The EP’s first song “The Bailing,” is a friendly mix of trippy and relaxing, and although it isn’t fast-paced and in your face, it sets the tone for the remainder of the album. The following song “Stephen Colbert,” is nowhere near as humorous as the Comedy Central late night icon, but does come out of the gate with a peppy, consistent drum beat and some lyrics that may resonate with some citizens of Colbert Nation. Lead singer, Count, sings, “They think they can compete, but he’ll out talk them all. Truth in lying. Exposing liars,” voicing his opinion on the news industry and praising Colbert for his effect on the media.

Rounding out the EP is “Disarmed,” “A Crowded Place” and “Captured,” which are more reserved tunes in comparison to the totally upbeat “Stephen Colbert,” but that does not mean they are a letdown. What that does mean is that they have simpler lyrics and a mish-moshy slowed down vibe. All three of these tracks are filled with drums, bass and that oh-so familiar electro sound that the two opening songs had in common, but at this juncture, Inu starts to sound all the same to me.

The stand-out song in this small sampling is definitely “Stephen Colbert,” and it is surrounded by an “interesting sound” that sounds eerily similar throughout. If you are looking for something different, and a lot of it at once, check out the Monster EP. It’s not bad; it’s interesting, entertaining, but at the end of the day, most of it is a consistent, easy to listen to collection of songs.

If you would like to download Inu’s first track “The Bailing,” head to http://www.inumusic.com/ before Dec. 15 and give it a listen on your own. As of now, Inu has finished their debut album and it is set for an early 2010 release.

Track Listing:
01. The Bailing
02. Stephen Colbert
03. Disarmed
04. A Crowded Place
05. Captured

Inu: website | myspace

Written by: Brandon Scott Wolf

Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before: a singer/songwriter branches out from his or her band to release a collection of “solo material.” The inevitable blog buzz builds. Chatter rises about potential turmoil within the group. Some people even celebrate the idea that an artist can finally explore and express new ideas that he or she may not have been able within the confines of a group dynamic.

You hear word about “high profile” producers and collaborators. A killer advance single may even leak that convinces you that you’re really in for something extraordinary. Then the album drops, you pop it in for a listen and it sinks in: This doesn’t sound all that different from the band. It’s nothing new. Individual output from artists as diverse as Thom Yorke, Jenny Lewis, and Siouxsie Sioux over recent years, while far from terrible, has done little to justify its existence outside of the respective bands. To that growing list, we can now add Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer and her Ben Folds-produced, “Twin Peak”- nodding debut, Who Killed Amanda Palmer?.

Perhaps I’m just being too cynical. After all, many of the songs included here are quite good, and most of the highlights actually began as live favorites during the Dolls’ myriad tours, most notably in the lush opener “Astronaut (A Short History of Nearly Nothing),” which now features swelling strings courtesy of Rasputina’s Zoe Keating. Other stand-outs include “Ampersand,” a sobering ballad in the vein of Yes, Virginia’s “Delilah” that once again seems to explore a dysfunctional relationship this time from an internal perspective, and the perky “Oasis,” a single-in-the-making sporting girl-group harmonies, Cars-styled synths and archetypically Palmer-esque lyrics about date rape and abortion.

Indeed, a good deal of these songs would be right at home on any Dresden Dolls album (Maybe, Virginia perhaps?), but that’s the point. Why go through the facade of a solo outing when your best songs originated within the band? Why not record versions of these that include the fierce and propulsive percussion of fellow Doll Brian Viglione? Furthermore, if you insist on asserting your independence, why not choose collaborators that actually challenge your aesthetic and listeners’ expectations in order to make something unique instead of ones that, while undeniably talented, merely encourage and accentuate attributes that were already prevalent in your work?

Ben Folds is in full-on “Brick”-hurling mode here with his production, and while on paper a team-up between him and Palmer sounds like a match made in Heaven, his quirky touches frequently get lost amidst Palmer’s trademark in-your-face melodrama. The one exception where their styles truly come together into something worthy of them is on the sauntering “Leeds United,” a delectable slice of Cabaret swagger complete with swanky big-band trumpets. The other team-ups don’t work nearly as well as they sound like they would. Annie Clark of St. Vincent fame is wasted on the soporific Carousel cover “What’s the Use of Wonderin’?” while East Bay Ray’s guitars add little to the already slight “Guitar Hero.”

Perhaps the only way for an artist to truly shine on his or her own is to cast aside the band altogether. Frank Black wrote some of his most intriguing (if not ultimately satisfying) work post-Pixies, and Björk continues to spin beautifully challenging gold from her Sugarcubes’ straw. But should it really have to come to that before a solo album can take on genuine artistic relevance? Do band artists really have something unique to say beyond their collectives any more or are they simply going it alone to prove that they can? These are questions that deserve answers, and any of those answers would probably be more satisfying in the end than the answer to Who Killed Amanda Palmer? Nobody may have killed her yet, but she’s certainly veering dangerously close to shooting herself in the foot.

Look for Who Killed Amanda Palmer? in stores September 16, 2008.

Amanda Palmer: website | myspace | NYC show review

Written by: Rob Huff