The Return of Phish

I wasn't there, nor will I be there for any of this summer's no doubt sold out series of shows. I haven't listened to the band sincerely since 1999 or so (when I was in 11th Grade). Even then much of that listening was to a degree conditioned by my then-current predicament (I went to a New England Boarding School, where such things have a cache they lack utterly in the concrete jungle).

When I was about fourteen, (lets call it 1995-96), Phish became an important band for me, a touchstone to a whole world that up until that point had been off limits, due to a somewhat conservative upbringing and to a general isolation from the ideals of the sixties (because my parents were too young and grew up in the totally atheistical, hope-free seventies, a situation I am quite happy about, thank you very much).

So Phish was a weird backdoor into an obfuscated world for me, one that hearkened back to all those halcyon days of hedonism, sex, merriment, sex, hedonism, drugs, and merriment.

What I liked about Phish was that they were non-traditional, in as much as they weren't 'top 40' and sterile in the way so much music was to me back then, and they also made gestures towards "jazz,' which in my hyper-educated, hyper-pretentious preteen existence signified a rarefied dignity. Phish were better than Nirvana because they used four part harmony by this sick calculus. I won't say this view was universal among my friends, but I do recall a chum in those days saying that he thought "You Enjoy Myself" was probably the the greatest, most complex piece of music ever composed.

Ironically, at the first Phish concert I went to I turned down an offer of a hit on a joint, so uptight and caught up in austerity was I. But that Phish show was probably the best, as just before my second (and final show) in 1999, my parents caught me and a bunch of friends smoking in the backyard, which effectively ruined the night for me.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying I have a semi-nostalgic-yet-irrevocably-stained-with-regret relationship with Phish, so it was not without a perverse interest that I listened to the (legal, free) bootleg of their first shows in almost five years...

I can't tell if its the rust, or the music, but I'm very underwhelmed. I find it pretty tough going to get through these longer instrumental jams, and the "song" songs sound out of sync and emotionally dead... True believers no doubt would be charitable here, but I am no such a one... This sounds like a bad band playing bad material, and the 'creative' transgressive elements, ie the soloing, jamming etc, are just not good. The world has not been missing this; this is not going to help any of us.

This brings us back to an older discussion, namely, the influence of jam music on the contemporary 'indie rock' DiY Todd P Brooklyn scene. I have previously made the argument about Animal Collective's (non)-similarity to the Grateful Dead... Well here I am going against that grain a bit, as I would say the best jam-oriented event I attended last year was also, strangely, the best event I attended last year, period...

That show was Atlas Sound at Music Hall of Williamsburg (2.24.08). What was great about the show was the way the layered digital synth textures of the Atlas Sound record (Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel). Here is a link to mp3s from a show on the same tour (different day/time but same band, though the MP3 gives no hint of how good the music was and how overpowering where the cascading guitar effects).

This show to me was a hundred times more vibrant than either of the Phish shows I attended as a youth; Phish fans are more like cult worshipers, or Kobe Bryant fans--people divorced form the broader reality in order to experience the benefits of the enclosed space of the devotee. This Atlas Sound show was a pure, unexpected religious experience, not the fore-ordained forced mania of the Phish fiend...

I don't know where I am going with this, but I do know that what made the Atlas Sound show so awesome was the guitar playing of Adam Forkner, the layered, cosmic expansiveness of his delay infused arches. Anyone familiar with Yume Bitsu knows that Adam is a space-rock pioneer Adam is, but this Atlas Sound reaffirmed that idea in the context of the more MBV/Pop sensibility of Bradford Cox's music...

So I'm moving towards a thesis where the best music around combines elements of genres in new and exciting ways, ie some standard line on hybridity that has been de rigeur in academic circles for years... Yawn. But there may yet be more here, and I will plumb those depths. Hoping to get out to some shows soon.

Welcome

Because it seems increasingly as though Death-Media is becoming a Basketball/Politics blog, I have decided to venture off on my own with my music pronouncements and provocations.

The main focus of this blog will be the shows I see myself, in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and elsewhere. In addition to this I will try to develop somewhat interesting commentary from time to time on issues in music culture that seem significant.

So welcome, and expect a few posts a week to start things off.

Oh yeah, and artists we will be covering include:

Deerhunter, Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, Extra Life, Phosphorescent, Deer Tick, Adrian Orange, Mount Eerie, Sonic Youth, Larkin Grimm, Marissa Nadler, Joanna Newsom, etc.

In any event, I will also be retro-posting all of my music-related posts from D-M here, of course with Nostradamus's approval.

Cross-Posting will continue for a time until we have developed our audience sufficiently.

Okay, everybody see the picture? Yes. She is a movie star. She is gorgeous, and is very well endowed in certain ways.

Judge her accordingly for launching a music career. Yes. Judge her.

Finished? Good.

Scarlett Johansson, stripped bare of her movie star identity, is an awesome singer and a great artist. I loved her Tom Waits covers record, and this cover of the (wildly overrated) Jeff Buckley strikes me as a more intimate picture of her as interpreter. A certain set of tastemakers are driving up the hateometer... And for obvious reasons, but bad reasons.

Scarlett Johansson is totally legit as a singer and as an artist, and if she had any other name, people would dig her work, because it's solid.

End of discussion.

I go back to sucking blood next week.

Animal Collective III: The Microphones Connection

Okay, this is getting a little old for those of you who don't care about such matters, but I have to go there.

I just started listening to "Campfire Songs" again after a few years, and it helped me understand the strangeness in a new way.

What those songs reminded me of most were the lo-fi architectural masterpieces of Phil Elverum of The Microphones and his numerous other production gigs for those in the K-Records crew (Calvin, Mirah, Adrian Orange, etc.)...

Back in around 2000-2001, Phil was pioneering a new height of mainstreamness, even garnering album of the year status from contemporary tastemaker Pitchfork. Lo-fi was on a high, and all was primed for Phil to make a big jump with his group into some form of 'pop' incarnation.

But that was not what Phil was vibing on. Instead, Phil decided to end his (relatively famous) 'The Microphones' project and start a new one, "Mount Eerie", named after a mountain on his native Fidalgo Island. That is what one would call a PR agent's worst nightmare.



But Phil has continued to make really great lo-fi music as Mount Eerie, and has continued to make awesome analog recordings of other artists. He has fans, he tours, I'm sure he does relatively okay.

But Animal Collective, now that is another story. Somehow, those cats have taken what was essentially an avant-garde/lo-fi experimental art project and made it into the most vital pop act in the world.

Where Phil turned his back on such accolades, Avey Tare, Panda, and Geologist have capitalized, and in a major way, which I find interesting, given the relative similarity in each "group's" initial style...

"Indie Rock" vs. Jam Bands: The Animal Collective Dilemma

This is a follow up on my last post, where, having just seen them live, I pointed out what I considered a crucial flaw in the recent Grateful Dead/Animal Collective analogy that the members of the group themselves have alluded to several times in interviews recently.

First of all, this brings to mind an hilarious incident from several years ago. I was at a large outdoor Todd P event, which was held down on the tip of Roosevelt Island (which remains my favorite place in the universe. The whole of Roosevelt Island, really, but especially the tip). Many bands were performing acoustically, including a number of people who are now quite famous (Ezra, the singer from Vampire Weekend, for instance, was there, with really long hair, playing saxophone with Aa. Matt & Kim played that addictive hit of theirs before it had really blown up).

But this is beside the point.

I overheard a person who has become something of an Avant/Indie icon in years since talking with Todd P. This person was like: "Dude, why is that guy wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt? We (meaning the Todd P movement, or whatever) are so not about that. That is so not about this." At this point, it was my distinct misforture to chime in "Well, actually, he's probably wearing it because one of their keyboard players committed suicide the other day; I wouldn't take it too ideologically, in light of recent events."

Todd P and this person met this suggestion with indifference because, while it was correct, it in no way altered the true sentiment that had been expressed: this movement, this barbecue, this "type of DiY Brooklyn thing" was philosophically opposed to all things Jam Band, all things hedonistic; this thing wasn't like the failed utopianisms of the 1960s, this thing was different, an extension of punk that was utterly horrified by the banal "trustafarian" jam band/Phish culture of the late 90s. This was way more serious, way less commercial, way closer to the world of Art than the world of the stoned rich kids. This was about doing it yourself and not selling out.

But of course it wasn't then, and isn't now, simply because it can't be; that very rejection of utopianism in the name of an allegedly more refined, purer dedication to art is itself a utopian gesture. Of course the Brooklyn scene had (has?) in it elements that would never fly in a jam band context, namely dissonance and disruptive, analytical song structures, etc, but that is quite academic. Differences aside, a potentially monstrous child, a "terrible beauty," is born...

Let's examine why this is potentially problematic.

Brooklyn is high on organization, not at all into spontaneous jamming unless it is REALLY out jamming (which is actually composed), or is done in a knowing and/or correctly positioned way.

Brooklyn is about songs, not about improvisation. Brooklyn is about Mahler, not Miles Davis. Jamming is out, and concise, exact, infinitely repeatable songs are in.

But this is breaking down. The biggest bands these days, groups like Deerhunter (who I linked to above), for instance, have embraced an element of 'seemingly improvised' guitar fuzz soloing into their songs. This, a few years ago, would have been frowned upon, but as the Indie---->Mainstream transformation continues, such gestures towards "classic rock" are more accepted by audiences and 'tastemakers' alike.

This brings us back to Animal Collective. Their shows do share things with those of the Grateful Dead. They also share certain audience members with the (about to return to save us all) Phish scene. For instance, the other night there was a kid dancing frantically in front of me the whole night. He was a small, weaselly looking guy with two earrings who clearly had been to his share of Phish shows. All he lacked was that glazed over look of stoned/mushroomed insanity and a pair of glow-sticks.

And this was "not what this was about" a few years ago. I saw Animal Collective in a small space back in 2005, and it wasn't like this, it was much more the "stand perfectly still, don't move, that's not what WE do" crowd one is accustomed to encountering at Brooklyn shows.

No more. The move to the mainstream, the jamminess/raviness of the music, draws in the crowds, and the Brooklyn Fascists can't do anything to stop it. And, ironically, they need those people, now more than ever.

These artists, in the fat economic times of 2006, must have believed that if things ever really got tight, they could always bail out, get a corporate job based on their degree from Vassar or whatever, and everything would be okay.

But that ship has sailed. No one is hiring. If you are an avant musician/home depot employee, that is your lot for the foreseeable future, and you are glad for it.

But there are still plenty of people paying to see music. Especially hypnotic music with a physical element. Music you can wig out to, if you catch my drift, music you can use to "get away from it all."

And thus here we are. Animal Collective are more Brooklyn than Brooklyn, yet they flirt with the jam band scene. The circle is closed.

I remember a few years ago (07 I think), my parents asked me to take my younger brother to a Dave Matthews concert at Fenway Park in Boston. I grudgingly accepted, knowing it would be awful, but hoping to find it at least socialogically worthwhile. I could not have been more wrong. The audience was, without a doubt, the preppiest, whitest, absolutely most bourgeois middle-class America of any crowd I have ever seen. It was mind boggling (if not exactly surprising).

And yet, there they were, 25,000 or more of them, filling this stadium, filling the pockets of the band and all associated with it.

I hate to say it, but are we headed in that direction? Has the avant garde truly died at last?

Of course not. But this merging of scenes bears watching.

Armchair sociological speculation aside, Merriweather Post Pavilion is absolutely incredible. Such great bass samples.

The Problem With the Animal Collective/Grateful Dead Analogy

Lately, this has been all over the news: growing up, Animal Collective were like big into the Dead, and now we are supposed to understand the progressive/non-perforated song structures of their (AC's) contemporary live shows as being somehow another generation's answer to the spontaneously epic jamming of The Dead.

All well and good on the surface. Having seen them tonight at the Grand Ballroom, I can testify that the songs did indeed blend together.

However, at no point was there a Scarlet/Fire moment even remotely analogous to the transition from the 5/8/77 Cornell show. No, there was no spontaneous discourse between Dave Portner and Noah Lennox that created a new sense of gravity, a new sense of dynamical interplay within the existing idea of the band. No. For that, you would have to look to The Dead, circa 77-78.

But what you do have with AC, in place of the at times fruitless jamming and "musicianship" of the GD, is amazing melodies, incredible song structures that lie waiting to explode onto the scene.

With the Grateful Dead, one waits for the explosive moments of interplay, the accidental, "wild" combinations that occur within the freedom of the jam. With Animal Collective, it is just the opposite; the usually very repetitive sample-based structures that predominate between "songs" serve as a plateau, a base upon which one builds up an expectation of the melodic release to come.

This is particularly true of the Panda dominated songs, but also, I'm noticing more and more, of the Avey Tare pieces.

So what we have, roughly, is this:

Grateful Dead=Best Moments in the Jamming.

Animal Collective=Best Moments in the Songs.