On the List :: LCD Soundsystem @ The Fillmore [6.3.10]

James Murphy is an unlikely rock god. We've been here before, along with seemingly everyone else, but it's shocking every time. A chubby dude, wearing a white tee shirt and 100-watt smile, gets the kids moving. Granted, most San Franciscans spend their waking hours boogieing to the music only they can hear, but some of us don't. And yet, we're all bouncing up and down to LCD Soundsystem. A friend who categorically doesn't dance, is dancing. This is the Power of James: the venue changes, the results don't. Groundhog Day The Musical?

Murphy and the gang are, understandably, tiring of the shtick. After weeks of touring, the set list has gotten repetitive. They are tight, but not as tight as they were a fortnight ago in New York. They work the crowd into a fevered pitch during most songs -- although "Get Innocuous," "All I Want," and "Pow Pow" never take off -- but their energy lags between each effort. They catch their breath. We follow suit, eager to start again. For us, it's our one chance to witness Murphy; for LCD, it's another gig in another city.

Set closer "New York, I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down" remains a gorgeous, poignant duet between the lead singer and Nancy Whang, but just like the band tonight it's missing... home. Murphy wrote his best song about the misery of being on the road, away from his friends. Halfway through the show, he yells "where are your friends tonight," scans the crowd, and sees a seething mass of happy faces he doesn't recognize. It must be a bit disconcerting.

You can take LCD out of New York, but you can't take New York out of LCD. Or something along those lines. (Yes, they recorded most of This Is Happening in a Los Angeles mansion, but it's more Gotham than Batman.) But dancing, that resonates across the country.

This show, like every other one, becomes a night of simplicity.

On The List :: Yeasayer @ The Fillmore [4.17.10]

Urban legend holds that Led Zeppelin used 12 guitars to record "Stairway to Heaven." Inevitably, live versions of the song feel a wee bit lacking. It's impossible to replicate the studio feel onstage. Jimmy Page, for all his immense talent, can only thrash one axe at a time.

Odd Bones, Yeasayer's sophomore effort, plays as a lovely, layered, lushly orchestrated album. It's the product of countless hours spent working mixing boards until they emitted smoke. It is, inevitably, irreproducible live.

Yeasayer is also tired. The quintet played a show at Coachella the previous day and look drained from the sun. Chris Keating says he and his mates are genuinely happy to play the Fillmore, and we believe him, but their energy remains lost in the desert.

The set, front-loaded with mellow songs, starts slowly. The crowd wonders why they sound better on the album. There are moments when the momentum builds, but then it disappears. We grow restless.

Then "2080." Off of 2007 effort All Hour Cymbals, it's a simpler song, translating seamlessly from album to stage. It also happens to feature a perfect band/audience bonding moment: "Yeah, yeah. We can all grab at the chance to be handsome farmers!/Yeah you can have 21 sons and be blood when they marry my daughters." And we're off.

Keating, refreshed, asks "Are we ready to get serious?" before launching into "O.N.E."

"Because I like it when you lose control," he sings while the Fillmore's springboard floor turns into a trampoline under the stress of 1,000 dancing feet. "Ambling Alp" closes the set and Yeasayer disappears stage left.

They return for the encore. Keating grabs a digital camera a girl in the front row set on the stage. He improvs, "Leave the camera on the stage and it gets taken," while taking pictures of his band and the audience. "What do you think this is, your bookshelf?" he asks with a laugh before returning the Canon. He's having fun. So are we.

Don't give up on me, and I won't give up on you, k?

Listen :: Yeasayer - "Ambling Alp"
Listen :: Yeasayer - "O.N.E."

On The List :: Free Energy and Foreign Born @ Rickshaw [2.24.10]

Noise Pop opened its stint at the Rickshaw with four bands Wednesday night. Oddly enough, co-headliner Free Energy slotted second, unleashed their brand of throw-back, Thin Lizzy-inspired rock. Tour standards "Dream City" and recently leaked, "Hope Child" kept the night lodged on some boombox, street corner in 1976. Of course, upcoming single, "Bang Pop," was righteously fun and unwaveringly catchy. If there is an American rock band to see this spring, it is this one. To boot, it wasn't hard to convince the crowd to embrace a thrown-back pathos; these people are mostly living in their own decades as it is.

I bumped into a plaid shirted, red-haired, rat-tailed hipster gyrating while The Fresh and Oldies let loose on their sweaty dancing fans. Their song “500 snakes” (“we all hatched out of one egg!”) contained a thumping beat and a strong drum backing that resembled a White Stripes and Ramones sound with catchy lyrics. I just wanted to move. So did said rat-tailed gyrator.

As the headliner, Los Angeles’ Foreign Born took the stage amid a crowd in transition. Their hour-long set included a few twists and turns that I appreciated -- moving from the delightfully poppy garage band rock of “Winter Games” and the hypnotically harmonious “Don’t Take Back Your Time" to moments of an almost South African mbaqanga guitar rhythm in their new track “Early Warnings.” (And then there was bassist Ariel Rechtshaid’s mind-boggling decision to pull up his down jacket’s hood just as the lead singer was taking off his jacket. Hot indeed!)

Working in tandem with lead Matt W. Popieluchriffs, Lewis Pesacov diligently supplied Foreign Born with a diverse and enticing mixture of guitar riffs blending bluegrass and rock into a catchy, melodic sound. Popieluchriffs’s voice demonstrated impressive range, hitting the alt rock whine in both the high and low registers. Their sound is living room taken to the concert hall with a facility for changing tempo throughout the set that underscored their five years together as a band. “Vacationing People” combined sounds of Arcade Fire and Talking Heads with a more relaxed and harmonious ethic displayed through a slow guitar interlude which eventually -- when they were good and ready -- returned us to the rapid snare rolls of the introduction. And what was that song that began with that thumping base line? I’ll take two of those, thank you.

The girl I took said “the lead guitarist is hot.” Shocking, I know.

Listen :: Foreign Born - "Early Warnings"
Listen :: Free Energy - "Free Energy"

-- Dave Bryson, filling in for West Coast correspondent Noah Davis who was wildly derelict in his duties.

Interview :: Rebecca Bortman of My First Earthquake [2.3.10]

Rebecca Bortman, lead singer and cheerleader of My First Earthquake, looks exactly like she does in her band's videos. This, probably, shouldn't be surprising, but it is. She's chatting with a fan at the merch table before the San Francisco group's pre-Noise Off show, all dyed hair, bubbly, and happy. Minutes later in what passes for Du Nord's Café's green room, she answers our questions in exactly the same manner. We are not being filmed, but nothing would change if we were.

In one band photo you're wearing soccer cleats. Is that a fashion statement or a practical choice?

I have passion for bargains and I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where people don't know about fashion the way I like to know about fashion. All these big companies send their excess products to the suburbs of Pittsburgh. They can liquidate their stock without diluting the brand because no one knows about their brand there. So companies like Nike send their really cool gold soccer shoes to places like Gabriel's outside of Pittsburgh. I go visit my parents and spend hours digging for $5 Nike shoes and I'm like, "Fuck yeah, gold shoes." But cleats. I'm like Jackie Joyner-Kersee."

Does that get dangerous?

It gets a little clicky-clacky. They aren't metal. It spices up my step.

Does San Francisco have a sound?

San Francisco has a sound, and it sounds like people living the good life. I think that's why you see more bands come out of little small podunk towns because there's nothing else to do. I think San Franciscans have this general laid-back nature that things will just come to them. I'm guilty of it too, but you have to fight against the laidbackness.

Are you succeeding?

I hope so. Our second album is a fight. It wants to be mellow and low key. It wants to just hang out in Dolores Park on the weekends, but we have to be like, "Fuck no, you have to start the party, album." That's been our fight. I think we were successful in our first in bringing the energy, but we've gotta keep the volume high.

Describe the band in a haiku.

Ruckus jamming, yeah.
We make you sweat puddles.
And you like it, lots.

I was a poetry minor in school.

That's pretty good for on the spot.

You know, all of our lyrics are on the spot. That's how they are written. I will improvise some of the lyrics tonight.

For any specific songs?

Well, once they make it to an album they are kind of set in stone, but until they do they're all kind of flexible. Everything we haven't recorded yet is still up in the air. Some of them I have a rough idea. I know I'm going to sing about in this verse, but a lot of it is off the top, which was the name of my improv group in college.

(A day later, Bortman emails us: Like any good poetry minor, I've done a revision to my haiku:

Enter our electro

Chasm of spasm. We spice

Songs: racy, tasty.)

Band name. True story? I was thinking it would be a great metaphor of sex.

Yeah, I think my mom thinks it's about sex. Or she actually thinks it about childbirth. She likes to refer to me as her first earthquake. Her first and only earthquake. Let that be an indication of my birth order. But I will tell you -- and you may not believe me -- the first time Chad and I got together to make some music was my first earthquake. I didn't come up with the name until several months later, and then I had to convince him that it wasn't a preschool toy.

Did you feel the earthquake?

Yeah, it was substantial. Probably the biggest one I've felt since I've been here.

On the List :: My First Earthquake @ Café Du Nord [02.03.10]

If one chooses to apply a literal interpretation to a couple couplets, some boys decided to throw Rebecca Bortman out of a band at some point in the relatively near past.

This was a mistake.

The lead singer of My First Earthquake dominates the stage at Café Du Nord. The type of girl who's ballsy enough to "join a band on a dare," she bounds around while screamsinging the lyrics to "Outta the Band" despite fighting off a weeklong cold. The 100 second-long ode to being ditched highlights the last set of the venue's pre-Noise Pop show.

The song comes immediately after Bortman, Chad Thornton, Dave Lean, and Andre Salcido power through "Cool in the Cool Way." During the middle of the Downstairs' single, the singer does her best Stepford Posh Spice impression. Her bandmates add enough backbeat to make a robot dance throughout.

The set progresses, and My First Earthquake integrates a couple new tunes. They are rough, but there's something undeniable about them.

Bortman found a better band, and we're all better for it.

Listen :: My First Earthquake - "Cool In The Cool Way"

On The List :: The Dodos @ SF MOMA [1.15.10]

It's clear from the line wrapped around not one, not two, but three sides of the block demarcated by 3rd, Minna, Montgomery and Howard Streets that 1,000 of our closest friends will be joining us on the list tonight. More accurately, a great many of SF MOMA's good acquaintances also received an invitation (+1!) to opening night of the 75th anniversary show with special guests including Jackson Pollock (deceased), Dorothea Lange (deceased), and The Dodos (alive; on stage).

We couldn’t care less about The Dodos. We don't really care about the art (although the show turns out to be excellent. If you'd like to go, you can borrow our membership card.) We are here ostensibly for the potential of meeting girls but honestly for the certainty of free drinks promised by the invite.

By the time we navigate the line, however, tickets entitling one to a free glass of Korbel are no longer available at the door. Dewar's, however, is only six bucks. We settle.

Two choices present themselves: Upstairs to the art, where no drinks are allowed, or right into a hot room where The Dodos, accompanied by The Magik*Magik Orchestra, play.

The triumvirate of Scotch, rocks, and music triumphs.

The band fits the role of local favorite well. (We later learn one of them lives within a couple blocks of us and held a Halloween party where he played drums while wearing a purple dress. This anecdote, while having no bearing on the content of this review, seems worth sharing.) The front few rows dance as much as they deem appropriate given the setting. The rest of the crowd oscillates between paying attention while trying hard to look like they are not and enjoying themselves while attempting to look like they aren't paying attention.

We pay attention. Almost immediately, The Dodos remind us of The White Rabbits. Tribal drumming and a singer who resorts to a strained voice will do that. (See "Men" for further proof.) The San Francisco version favors leading with a guitar and letting the drums take over, while the boys from Brooklyn launch into the skins from the get go, but the distinction is simply semantics. They are brothers from a different coast.

The Dodos play two sets, of which we catch probably seven songs. (At some point, we feel obliged to wander through the galleries upstairs.) At 10:30, they finish, SF MOMA begins to shut down, and we leave.

But the beat goes on, da da dum da dum da da.

Listen :: The Dodos - "Fables"

On The List :: Rural Alberta Advantage @ Bottom of the Hill [12.16.09]

The show at Bottom of the Hill plays like a celebration for The Rural Alberta Advantage. Every band has an "I think we made it" moment, and the Canadian trio seems positive its came here in July. Touring in support of Hometowns -- re-released by Saddle Creek -- RAA found itself far from home, a couple days into its first major U.S. tour, and enjoying the presence of genuine fans.

Five months later, the followers have multiplied. While staring into a packed house, Nils Edenloff acknowledges this much before he and the band launch into their first song, "The Ballad of The RAA." It is, appropriately, a song about leaving home.

After blowing through tight versions of "Rush Apart," "Don't Haunt This Place," and a new song, memories of the July show return. Edenloff asks the audience how many people were present. Maybe a tenth of the room's population slowly raises their dominant hand. To an outside observer, this seems like an honest response, one that's very much in line with the ethos of the band.

Calling The Rural Alberta Advantage "honest" or "genuine" or other adjectives commonly associated with Canada is stereotypical and unoriginal.

It's also true.

There is no pretense on stage. Even to an audience of one, Edenloff would risk throwing out his voice (which he does near the end of the set during a new tune), Paul Banwatt would kill his drum set -- fast forward to 1:06 of "Drain the Blood" -- and Amy Cole would brilliantly fill the gaps with her voice, her xylophone, her enthusiasm, and her tambourine. On this indie rock occasion, appearances don't matter (Peronis as two out of three beverages of choice?); the music does.

These songs were written in the vacuum of Alberta, Canada with no guarantee they'd ever leave home. Then they did. "None of us thought, when we were coming up with this song that we'd have 300 people singing along in San Francisco," Edenloff says after watching a sold-out venue do exactly that.

We all, invariably, leave the prairies.

Listen :: The Rural Alberta Advantage - "Don't Haunt This Place"
Listen :: The Rural Alberta Advantage - "Frank, AB"

On the List :: Julian Casablancas @ Regency Ballroom [11.17.09]

(A brief introduction: Hi, I'm Noah. You probably don't remember me from such productions as "32feet gets impressively drunk on SPIN's dime" and "Good god, that's the Futurehead's music," but I was there. Now I'm writing here. We're taking this thing bicoastal. From San Francisco, with love.)

The Messiah -- happy, sober, and dressed entirely in black -- is bathed in white light at the front of The Regency Ballroom stage. Julian Casablancas traded his four horsemen for an impressively well intentioned if not always perfectly executed solo album and six new bandmates. Two guitarists, two keyboardists, and two percussionists are arranged in a semi-circle behind the once and future(?) lead singer of the Strokes, symmetrical through the Y-axis. They will barely move throughout the entire set, stuck inside their individual Casblancas-created Calling Bubbles.

The Chosen One, however, wanders freely around the stage. One earns this privilege after one's first band saves rock and roll. To his credit, "Phrazes For The Young" simultaneously builds upon and moves away from the music of the group that wrote the No. 1 album of our dying decade, a fact that's clear in concert. The choice to open the set with "River of Brakelights" -- whose backbone is the lyrics "getting the hang of it/timing is everything" -- hints perhaps at the novelty the singer experiences when he's alone as the centerpiece, but this thought fades minutes later when the chorus of "Left & Right In the Dark" explodes, driven by, dare I say, peppy keyboards. Casblancas can sing about stumbling in the dark, but he knows exactly where he's going. We, of course, will follow.

Julian, it seems, is enjoying himself on stage, becoming less posture and more human with each song. He increasingly interacts with both the crowd and his bandmates. Pretense washes away in a sea of well-orchestrated lights. During the set's one cover -- The Strokes' "I'll Try Anything Once," chosen, I have to assume, because a fan in the front row held up a homemade cardboard sign with the song title written on it -- he forgets the line "everybody was well dressed." (Accidental symbolism of mental departure from previous band known as time went on more for their clothes than their music=high.) Later, Casablancas announces that the group on stage at The Regency will play a b-side: "We'll probably ruin it, but shit, we're gonna have fun no matter what." By the end of the song, he's proven prophetic on both counts. The song is a wonderful disaster, ending with a wall of noise created by seven musicians playing their instruments, hard.

Being the Music Messiah is lucrative -- how else can you explain half a dozen band members in addition to a three-piece horn section that supports two songs? -- but I suspect it's not that much fun. The Strokes imploded under the pressure, splintering and going their separate ways. The band's lead singer doesn't want to save us again and, quite frankly, we don't need him to. But damn, it's nice when he walks among us.