Minneapolis / St. Paul Music Blog

​Take one part Dear Landlord (Zack Gontard, also in Twin Cities punk band Off With Their Heads), one part Ergs! (Mike Yannich), and two parts Steinways (Grath Madden and Azeem Sajid), and blend. What you get is House Boat, another Minneapolis-affiliated supergroup with flavors from all of the above mentioned bands.

myspace.com/morethanlights

​When you first discover Minneapolis' own More Than Lights -- the eclectic septet and block party funk mob on the mic, strings, and electronics -- you might think they belong to an updated realm of "Sesame Street."

Toddlers aside, promo photos feature band members in various colored winter hats, which isn't a bad testament to their multi-flavored family vibe. Some of the tunes from their November 21 debut album, The Electric Prescription For All Your Funky Illz, are straight-up bursts of jubilation (sometimes simply thankful for the air in our lungs); others deal in the compassionate heat of some of life's chance moments. Either way, you'll want to warn the youth inside you: these pleasantries might induce lots of hand-holding, spontaneous ecstasy, and maybe a little jazz in those hips.

​The music on Orange Mighty Trio's sophomore release, Infrastructure, ranges from the quiet, contemplative mood of opener "Point A" to the propulsive, restless urgency of "Driving With Your Eyes Open" to the chugging, train-inspired jump blues of "Orange Line," but no matter the tempo or approach, their music is always shot through with a tinge of Old World nostalgia. Part of it is down to the instrumentation: a piano, a violin, and a bass playing together without rhythm instruments are inevitably going to sound a little wistful, a throwback to simpler times. But a lot of it comes down to their gentle, way with a fragile melody, as on standout track "Convergence."

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When Miles Davis recorded Kind of Blue in 1959, by way of contrast, he was looking for a way out of the straitjacket harmonies of bebop. He'd begun this work with modal compositions on Milestones and 1958 Miles (or '58 Miles as listeners in the CD age came to know it from the new cover art), but for Kind of Blue he came into the studio with nothing but sketches--scales or melody lines for the improvisers to use. The results were, of course, legendary.

And now here is Kind of Bloop, an album that re-imagines Davis' album as the soundtrack for a vintage Nintendo or Sega videogame. If that simple description doesn't already give you a clear picture, you should probably just head over to kindofbloop.com, where you can listen to samples and also buy the album.

​Volcano Choir
Unmap
Jagjaguwar

By Erik E. Martz

There is no "Skinny Love" on Unmap, the first album from Volcano Choir, the new side project of Justin Vernon of Bon Iver with Milwaukee experimental outfit Collections of Colonies of Bees. In fact, the closest thing to a traditional song on the entire album is looped and rhythmic advance single "Island, IS." There is, instead, a meditation--an extended session of noise and music making that seemingly has no compass and defies the listener to map its course. For those who simply expected another Bon Iver album, here be shoals.

Courtesy of Julian Plenti

​Julian Plenti
Julian Plenti is... Skyscraper
Review by Erik E. Martz

Julian Plenti is...Skyscraper is the first solo effort of Julian Plenti, nom de plume of Paul Banks, frontman of Interpol. Got all that? If not, then you may also be wondering why such an album should exist, given the established centrality of Banks' songwriting within his day band. Yes, this is all very well and good, Mr. Banks, but why not give it to the band?

I love going out to eat, especially at a restaurant that's a little pricier; one that has so many good choices that to choose is agonizing.  Your plate arrives and the excitement causes you to perhaps eat it too quickly, requiring you to take home the remnants, hoping to savor them again the next day. After refrigeration, the congealing of juices and a necessary reheating, your favorite plate of food becomes mediocre, requiring some extra salt and pepper, only a shadow of what it once was.

To equate Wilco's new album, literally entitled Wilco (The Album), to the same fate as a reheated plate of food might be a bit harsh. Yet today it appears that Wilco has become a band that's content with recollecting. One that has been there and now feel that it's ok to put out an album that's a little less inspired.

We here at Gimme Noise generally feel that if you can't say something nice about a local band, you probably shouldn't say anything at all. There are so many bands making so much music that it seems counterproductive to focus our energy on the negative--as it is, we can barely keep up with the volumes of great songs being written in our fair state. But sometimes, all of the press surrounding a band is so blindly positive that a critical ear must be lent to their work, even if the outcome is less than pretty.

"Here are some soothing words, not gonna rock your world..."

The opening words of "Please and Thank You", the first single off the new album by Mouthful of Bees, proclaim that what you're hearing now may not be what you expected. The Minneapolis four-some turned sextet's self-titled second release (released online April 21, in stores May 19) is not just a total departure from their highly touted debut The End, it may in fact be the last recording the band creates.

Look-- Teaches of Peaches was undoubtedly a high-point of its genre. Between Merrill Nisker's skeletal production, the audacity of her sexual proclamations, and her daredevil live shows, which tested every conceivable limit of good taste, prank rap had actually found a kernel of meaning-- something uniting and motivating to be found in loud pronouncements of sexual absurdity, spat wryly enough to keep too many from being offended overmuch.

How could we resist? Neil Sedaka in his sexual prime.

On the cover of his double-disc Christmas album, Neil Sedaka stands in the pinched, clenched posture of a man who's recently been neutered, and his tense underbite and bugging eyes seem to suggest a face lift gone bad, as if his hide has been stretched over a cranium just a hair too broad.

Across the internet, the battle is well underway. This lamentable conflict is dividing houses across the nation, setting brother against brother, son against father, freelancer against editor. The Gimme Noise Offices are no exception, and while we fling pencils into the ceiling, invent new paper airplane models, and talk our way out of deadlines, our cavernous keep rings with idle debate. In our effort to keep you abreast of the only the most enlightening discourse, Gimme Noise presents 808s & Heartbreak: the Gimme Noise Deathmatch. 

We get sent a lot of CDs here at City Pages, way more than we could possibly review for the paper. A lot of these end up just sitting around on shelves, on top of the fridge, or tucked under a dusty stack of vacation request forms. Given such a wealth of material, we figured it'd be a worthy endeavor to pick an arbitrary album or two each week for review, in a recurring feature called Clutter Control.

I'll choose anything that strikes my fancy, be it a three-song bar-rock EP from four years ago, or something new and whorishly corporate, like this week's selection: All Wrapped Up!, a Christmas compilation from Hollywood Records.

The new record by Mason Jennings really snuck up on me. Which is unusual, since at one time I considered myself to be a die-hard Mason fan. But this time around, I barely heard anything about his new record, save for the incessant spinning of new single "Fighter Girl" on 89.3 The Current, and was shocked when I learned yesterday that it was already available in stores. (The record is also available to stream online for free from Spinner.com.)

With every new Mason Jennings recording my fanaticism decreases, and this album did nothing to regain my confidence in a songwriter whom I once thought to be life-changing.

El Guante's Haunted Studio Apartment
Review by Jordan Selbo

El Guante's Haunted Studio Apartment, the new disc being promoted at Friday's Blue Nile show and only available at shows until this summer, is a megaton bomb on local indie rap, bound to be the heaviest breath of fresh air hip hop heads will suck in all year. And it succeeds despite itself. Any other rapper who used such potentially pretentious setups as modeling their art conception on Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite, dividing their album into three "sessions" (one of which is spoken word...usually a clear warning to stay away), and including about 80 minutes of lyrical and conceptual denseness would inevitably drown in surface-level coffee shop boho-isms.

The Brokedowns: New Brains for Everyone
Thick Records

Angry, hurtling and relentlessly focused, this Chicago-area quartet attacks the usual targets—conservatives, hypocrites, meatheads and zealots—with abandon and aggression. The Brokedowns grumpily grind crayons and cigarette butts into the simple, loud and fast blueprint of bar-room punk, creating a glorious mess that's both fresh and familiar.

Text by Eryc Eyl

Jason Isbell: Sirens of the Ditch
New West

Despite having three songwriters, the Drive-By Truckers have made some remarkably cohesive music. But while songs by Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley are compelling, Jason Isbell's tunes cut to the core. The tunesmith left his indelible stamp on tracks such as "Goddamn Lonely Love" and "Outfit," in which he channels the spirit of "Simple Man" for the iPod generation. Earlier this year, Isbell split with the Truckers to focus on the outstanding material he's been working on for the past four years. The resulting solo debut, Sirens of the Ditch, is filled with his irresistible Southern charm and guitar-rock sensibilities, from the swampy, come-hither groove of "Try" to the easygoing, soul-kissed shuffle of "Hurricanes and Hand Grenades." The main draw, however, is the inscrutable sincerity in his voice on songs like "Dress Blues"—a wartime elegy to a schoolmate that avoids jingoistic grandstanding and partisan fist-shaking and simply focuses on the underlying humanity—and "Grown," in which he thoughtfully recalls a momentous coming-of-age crush. As expected, Isbell delivers the goods on Ditch.

Text by Dave Herrera

Spoon: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Merge

Five years later, Spoon's 2002 release, Kill the Moonlight, still feels new. In fact, it still has the acute ability to make listeners pace from room to room, clapping their hands, attempting bad imitations of Britt Daniel's raspy croon, wishing there was a sweet party about to happen. It's almost as if the album was recorded in a vacuum, out of time and place. The opening song on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, the act's sixth record, crowns with some off-putting digital distortion that lets you know exactly when and where it's coming from. It's no big deal, really, as the album is littered with great songs that connect on a totally gut level, but it lacks the head-to-tail gusto that made Moonlight truly epic. Back-to-back tracks "The Ghost of You Lingers" and "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb" are especially fetching reminders of the former's high points, but there are plenty of other moments where, well, if the remote is handy...

Text by Josh Tyson

Interpol: Our Love to Admire
Capitol
Interpol's major-label debut isn't as monochromatic as its two predecessors. "Pioneer to the Falls," which channels the stormy textures of the Cure's Pornography, is possibly the richest song the act has ever recorded, with death-march piano and a giant quivering mass of strings adding counter-melodies that swell in the mid-section. In typical fashion, vocalist Paul Banks presides over the track like a stern preacher peering at his congregation. Elsewhere, though, the stentorian singer breaks a sweat on the forceful, R.E.M.-esque "Mammoth" and gets into creepy-boyfriend mode on the cinematic highlight "No I in Threesome." In fact, Admire itself often resembles a movie score. About three minutes into "Wrecking Ball," the song nearly stops dead, then continues as a quasi-instrumental. Mournful guitar, synths, horns and faint vocals slowly build and wind around each other like an Explosions in the Sky song. The understated "Lighthouse" is just as lush, recalling Nick Cave's somber sea songs and evoking the quiet peace of sleeping on a boat in the middle of a lake. Overall, Admire covers the entire black-through-white palette instead of just a few shades of gray.

Text by Annie Zaleski

Various Artists / Super Cool California Soul 2: Raw and Rare Soul from
the West Coast 1966-1982 / Ubiquity

Text by Dave Segal

In the '60s and '70s, nearly every major American city-and many minor ones-had thriving funk and soul scenes. And if they didn't have hotbeds, then these towns at least produced a handful of acts that could convincingly approximate the special sonic sauce of James Brown or the Meters. So it's unsurprising to discover that the state of California has warehouses full of obscure 45s that have been and are still being excavated for insatiable collectors and aficionados. In the past decade, Costa Mesa's Ubiquity Records has been among the foremost curators of soul and funk musicians who somehow slipped under radio's and print media's radars. Case in point is the Super Cool California Soul series. While this second volume boasts nobody with the marquee luster of such Golden State stars as Sly and the Family Stone or War, this 16-track disc radiates enough soular power to warm the coolest hipster's constricted heart.

Jose Gonzalez Stay in the Shade EP Hidden Agenda

Jose Gonzalez is 25-year-old Swedish singer of Argentine extraction who covers Kylie Minogue tunes and sounds like a '60s British folkie. His acoustic guitar picking, precise but not fussy, and his 2:00 a.m. singing, gentle but not precious, brooding but not dour, combine for bohemian easy-listening music worth hearing even if you already have Nick Drake and/or Bert Jansch records. This EP leads with an extended version of "Stay in the Shade," from Gonzalez's 2005 full-length, Veneer, and follows with a handful of generally tuneful B-sides. His version of Minogue's "Hand on Your Heart" recalls Aztec Camera's take on Van Halen's "Jump": an acoustic rendering of a pop hit that bypasses novelty entirely just by aiming for the vulnerable heart of a good song.

Madonna's back. Camille Paglia's back. There's nothing we can do about that, but Paglia's overwrought Salon review of Madonna's underwrought record is a fine summation of why it's probably best to ignore both of them:

At a recent party in New York celebrating Salon's 10th anniversary, the formidable Cintra Wilson said mordantly to me (I scribbled all this down on a cocktail napkin at the bar), "Madonna is the Robo-Celebrity, calcified with discipline--religiously saintly, physically superhuman, in all ways faultless. She represents the unspoken desires of America--to be good at everything!"

Even allowing for the fact that she must strenuously maintain her hipness for a busy husband 10 years her junior, Madonna is starting to morph into the mature Joan Crawford of "Torch Song," still ferociously dancing but with her fascist willpower signaled by brute, staring eyes and fixed jawline. In cannibalizing her disco diva days, Madonna runs the risk of turning into a pasty powdered crumpet like the aging Bette Davis in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" Will she become a whooping Charo shaking her geriatric hoochie-coochie hips on TV talk shows? Or should we expect a sudden, grisly collapse from glowing beauty to dust, like Ursula Andress as the 2000-year-old femme fatale in "She"?

This post was revised on November 29 (see above); the following represents the corrected version: Some news about Jordis (alternate site here), the Rock Star INXS breakout from St. Paul: She has a new blog (here's her old one), and she has left Liars Club (formerly Fighting Tongs), who have changed their name to the Payback, and play a show on New Year's Eve in Minneapolis. (Catch up on the entire Jordis saga via MNSpeak.) The breakup news arrives via a correction from Gingerjake's Ian Severson to this post, which previously (and erroneously) reported that Jordis would be performing with Liars Club on New Year's Eve. She will not. Instead, she's pursuing a solo career, with a Sony debut due in early 2006. (Jordis doesn't post many details about performing on November 20 at the opening celebration for the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky, but turns up in photos with Bill Clinton, Jim Carrey, and Ali himself.) As for New Year's, it's only one show, not two, as previously published, in the Quest Ascot Room, with Gingerjake (more here), Crashing By Design, and the Lid: Doors at 5:00 p.m., and it's over before 10:00 p.m., so you can still make that New Year's Party. $8 under 21; $20 for 21+, which includes "2 top-shelf drink tickets at $14 value." Call 612.338.3383 for advance tickets or keep checking www.thequestclub.com (currently down).

For a $25 entry fee, you can compete tonight in Freestyle Fridays at Digital City Music in North Minneapolis, where a grand prize of $1500 awaits the winner (if I have the rules straight). The rap battle is cheap to watch, in any case ($3), and I'll be there with a camera covering it for City Pages. 905 West Broadway, Minneapolis, MN 55411-2615, 612.588.2000. Registration is at 5:00 p.m., showtime 7:00 p.m. Click photo for more weekend hip hop as part of Saturday's local celebration of Kenyan independence (including a new Kenyan hip-hop documentary and a night of music at the Blue Nile). Also read more on Saturday's finale of the Soap Factory's essential Afrofuturism event, which kind of ties it all together.

Watch the video for "Do They Know It's Hallowe'en?" and consider plunking down dough for the charity single, now in stores. Performed by "the North American Halloween Prevention Initiative," the parody track benefits UNICEF (as in "trick or treat for...") and features Beck, Sum 41, Les Savy Fav, the Arcade Fire, Sonic Youth, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Joey Waronker, Sloan, Peaches, Feist, Devendra Banhart (who performs Tuesday at the Fine Line, and is reviewed by Andy Beta in this week's City Pages), Wolf Parade, Postal Service, Buck 65, Elvira, Malcolm McLaren, Gino Washington (for more on him, see "Gino vs. Geno" at Complicatedfun.com), Roky Erickson, Rilo Kiley, Sparks, Tagaq, and producer Steven McDonald of Redd Kross, though I have to admit, the only voice talent I recognized on first listen was David Cross. (By the way, did you read his parody of Pitchfork reviews?) Here are the lyrics. Listen while you carve your own virtual jackolantern.

Originally, the term "house music" was used simply to apply to the disco and discofied R&B spun by Frankie Knuckles at the Chicago nightclub the Warehouse. Starting in 1983, though, house developed into a distinct genre--or better put a distinct genre containing divergent subgenres. Some of house's architects (sorry) advanced a high-tech, economical variation on '70s-style disco and Philly soul. Others used the same technologies (the Roland 303 bass synthesizer, for instance, and the then-new digital synths) to create experimental, four-on-the-floor dance music with no use for traditional song structure and an open mind toward strange noises. Anyway, you can't fence house in (sorry): Deep house like that made by Ten City is some of the most soulful music of its era; acid and jack tracks like those found on the new double-CD collection, Can You Jack? Chicago Acid and Experimental House 1985-1995 (Soul Jazz Records), are often deliberately soulless. The compilation is partly a tribute to the late Ron Hardy, a DJ who spun at the legendarily intemperate Music Box and competed with Knuckles for house-DJ supremacy. Hardy was the more accessible and adventurous of the two spinners, favoring hard, abrasive music and often turning demos from aspiring house producers into underground hits. He was also the guy to first spin "acid house," tracks for which 303 tones were distorted and abused to sound like demonic bird chirps, Miro squiggles, and other odd things. Can You Jack? includes a few (relatively) famous singles, such as Phuture's archetypal "Acid Tracks" and Marshall "Sleezy D" Jefferson [pictured] epic "I've Lost Control," which is at once absurd and harrowing. Most of the other selections are obscure but not unworthy. Larry "Mr. Fingers" Heard's "Beyond the Clouds" just might take you there, and Tyree's "Acid Crash" is fabulously over the top and polyrhythmic. This is trashy, intense (also occasionally warm and sorta pretty) DIY music, recommended even to folks who'd just as soon hear it on a quiet night at home. --Dylan Hicks

I'm kicking myself for not tuning in earlier to local saxophonist Doug Little's CD-release show, coming up this weekend at the Artists' Quarter. Little's new album, The Phoenix, sounds real good on first listen, and features more than able backing from pianist Giacomo Aula, bassist Jeff Bailey, and drummer Kevin Washington. The quartet will be playing Friday and Saturday at the AQ. Look for a review of one of the sets in the Aug. 31 "In Da Club."

A recently discovered concert recording finds Bird and Diz at their peaks

The story of how bebop was, and was not, documented on recordings is one of serendipity and missed opportunities, felicity and rotten luck. There were sides made with the right people but at the wrong time, others made with the right people at the wrong time, squeaky saxophones out to sabotage inspired solos, great bass players that one has to use some imagination to hear, plus labor disputes, technological limitations, heroin. The recording ban of '43 and '44 kept Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie from committing their initial bop essays to wax, and when things got going again the commercial records of the time still couldn't accommodate the seven-minute renditions Bird and Diz would present in concert. Then again, those last two factors were curses and blessings. We get an incomplete historical record of bop's evolution--and a marvelously realized form once it debuts in '45. We have few records of how the music was actually played and heard in clubs--and a lot of perfect, economical solos that might have given quarter to some second-rate ideas if allowed to go on for an extra minute. Well, it's a great story.
Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945, a newly uncovered recording just released by the tiny Uptown label, offers a new wrinkle.

THIS IS A GREAT DANCE RECORD AND I'M SORRY BUT YOU CAN'T WRITE ABOUT A GREAT DANCE RECORD WITHOUT BOLD CAPS! AND EXCLAMATION MARKS! SAY IT LOUD: IT'S FUNNY AND SEXY AND ITS ROOTS ARE IN THE CONTORTIONS AND THE WALLETS AND THE NEW PSYCHONAUTS BUT THEY ARE OLD. THIS IS THE SOUND OF THE NEW NO WAVE! THIS IS MELODIOUS OWL! THIS IS WHAT WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR! SOMETHING TO FILL UP THE DANCE FLOORS OF OUR MINDS, HEARTS, HIPS. DIG THE JUNKYARD HORNS, THE SIMPY SYNTHESIZERS, THE FAKEY DRUMS. DIG IT WHEN CAPTAIN CAMPY HOOTS, "I'M WEARING STRIPES TONIGHT/SHE'S WEARING ME OUT TONIGHT," AND "HOT," AND "TOUCH ME" AND "LET ME FEEL YOUR FIRE." HE SOUNDS LIKE HE'S HAVING SUCH A GOOD TIME! WE COULD USE MORE GOOD TIMES! OH YES! WIGGLE WIGGLE THRUST THRUST SWAY SWAY FUCKY FUCKY. --JIM WALSH

Acid House Kings
Sing Along with Acid House Kings
Twentyseven Records

The Cardigans are Deep Purple next to this cheekily named Swedish outfit. The world, of course, isn't as soft as these folk-pop tunes, and neither are marshmallows wrapped in cashmere. Is music of so delicate and anachronistic dangerously hermetic, or is it a necessary counterweight to the more common escapism of dehumanization and violence? Do you like puppies? Over 12 songs--recalling Belle & Sebastian, Pet Clark, and Spanky & Our Gang--the co-ed foursome's well-wrought melodies can get oppressively anodyne, but several tunes, "That's Because You Drive Me" especially, are so sweet, so sincerely, romantically in search of beauty that shunning them might be a sign of grave emotional decay, the sort found in a great many successful people. Undoubtedly the group's members have wonderfully cozy apartments, and would open them up to you, were you being chased by a mugger or masher. --Dylan Hicks