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.

The Radio Department :: "Heaven's On Fire"

The Radio Department make their return with the bouncy, lighter-than-air single, "Heaven's On Fire." Starting with a spoken, nasal voice, dryly noting: "People see rock and roll as youth culture and when youth culture becomes monopolized by big business, what are the youth to do? Do you have any idea? I think we should destroy the bogus capitalist process that is destroying youth culture." Promptly, a sunny keyboard riff stutters into ear-shot and warm guitars follow, making this the softest call for revolution in world history. By rough historical analogy, this would be like Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky picking up rhythmic gymnastics and taking the new Soviet Union to a gold medal in the 1920 Summer Olympics. The Radio Department duck and weave and twirl through an arrangement that rolls like Acid House Kings playing a Clientele cut. There is no forgetting the original call to revolution, nor is there anything placid about the central lyric, "One look at you and my heaven's on fire;" the edge of the threat is in the softness of the delivery.

Listen :: The Radio Department - "Heaven's On Fire" [sendspace]

Thrushes :: "Crystals"

"Who will I find to talk to?," singer Anna Connor poses the perfunctory sledgehammer. Treating a failing relationship like the lack of a partner at an awkward dinner gathering, Connor and Thrushes aren't worried that things are fundamentally falling apart; they're worried they won't have anyone to talk to at this thing. The second-half of the lyric, "who will I find to talk to/and grow old with/I wish it was you," draws a higher-stakes comparison but behind the fuzzy guitars and the insistent drums, Conner is after something quiet and earnest. The question reiterates, "who will I find to talk to," like the best thing in the world is to be sitting next to someone who gets your jokes, says interesting things and whispers sarcastic commentary about the stuffiness of the occasion under her breath when no one else is listening. With the melodic hints of The Bangles "Manic Monday" (listen hard), and the fuzzy, shoegaze rock that Pains Of Being Pure At Heart made work two years ago, Thrushes' "Crystals" sits next to you, cracking jokes only you can hear. That's exactly how things don't fall apart.

Listen :: Thrushes - "Crystals"

New Pornographers :: "Your Hands (Together)"

The New Pornographers boast such a broad catalogue that a new record is like hearing from an old friend, still established in the same job, same city, same relationship with no major material changes. It's both nostalgic and familiar, like their return is really a "never-left." While this might not be the most exciting lede for a bit on their new record, Together, it's important to note that underneath all this familiarity is a standard of unsexy excellence that has been the hallmark of the band's career. With Carl Newman's vocals driving and Neko Case's explosive voice-box riding shotgun, "Your Hands," buzzes and hums with the 60s throwback power-pop that the band has both updated but largely just maintained since 1997. Or, put another way, those 13 years feel like they both did and didn't happen.

Listen :: The New Pornographers - "Your Hands (Together)"

Together is out May 4th in the US.

Why Write? :: "Burning Holes"

Independent rock didn't necessarily sound like The Shins until 2003. Back in the late 1980s and 1990s, it sounded like Michael Stipe's R.E.M. and later, the efforts of early career Belle & Sebastian, Pavement and Built to Spill. This is certainly a reductionist analysis of the great ontological question posed best by David Byrne, "How did I get here?" Independent rock, this morning, is something different, and it's easy to forget, or perhaps challenging to remember, where it came from. But "indie rock," had its infancy in record store in Athens, Georgia in 1980s when Michael Stipe had a chance encounter with Peter Buck, and the soul contributors to R.E.M. found one another. If there exists a genesis moment for the movement, it was these creationist "six days" between this meeting in '80 and '82, when Stipe turned down a lucrative offer from RCA records to release his first EP independently. This was before music was supposed to necessarily change your life; it was just supposed to be yours.

Why Write? is the brain-child of Jacob Faurholt and returns us to those days where music sounded exactly like it was made. On "Burning Holes," Faurholt is channeling 1983 and the lo-fi, college radio sound of R.E.M. In fact, you could almost slip "Burning Holes" onto Murmur, like a secret castaway, and maybe no one would notice. The signature lyric is destructive and oblique, "my hearts been broken into pieces of you," followed with the title lyrics, "burning holes in the heart you made with your hands." It evokes something magic and something real, something like 1983.

Listen :: Why Write? - "Burning Holes"

[Elevator] The Shimmer :: "No Surprise At All"

One the most hotly tipped bands out of the UK this winter is The Shimmer. The brother-sister duo storming out of a small town on Britain's eastern coast circulated a series of demos before being snapped up by Hit Club, home of Egyptian Hip Hop and Wolf Gang. "No Surprise At All" isn't a complicated affair, a wide-open, straight-ahead rock cut with driving guitars and 4/4 drums. By the final twist, where the band repeats the lyrics, "on and on," you can almost see heads nodding and lead-singer, David Hanks, improvising a yell, "comeonletsgo!" before screaming and falling away from the mike. In all the forward movement there are hints of darkness here; the lyrics address the perils of achieving some dream life where the reality is less rosy. Regardless, "No Surprise At All" is the best rock song we've heard this year.

Listen :: The Shimmer - "No Surprise At All" [zshare]

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.