concert review

Violin virtuoso Sarah Chang brought the Oregon Bach Festival audience to its feet last night with a rousing performance of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. I heard murmurs and comments of awe coming from the audience around me throughout the piece. And, breaking with protocol just a little bit, the audience gave a round of applause halfway through the work, between Summer and Autumn, as well as a full standing ovation at the end.

But enough about the music, we all want to know what Sarah was wearing! It can best be described as a mermaid gown. For a visual example, see the woman pictured second from the right below (between Biancé and Britney Katherine Heigl, I think her name's Rihanna something or other):

In fact, that's the exact color and sheen that Sarah wore last night (and just as curvy). I think these styles of dress are known as "fishtails," and it fit perfectly with the Spring and Summer movements of the Four Seasons (but maybe not so much Autumn and Winter). It all really came together when I saw this bewildering text come on the supertitles:

"the lark coos, the goldfish sings."

I can picture a lark cooing, but a singing goldfish? Ah, but then you look down and see Ms. Chang "singing" with her violin in a fishtail dress and it all makes sense.

You can check out Sarah Chang's rendition of The Four Season's by clicking on the image below:

Photo by David Gourley

So, yeah, I'm a little late with this one. If I don't blog about something the same night, it can be a while. But today I walked (about) a mile in four-inch (I think) heels to pick up my copy of Frightened Rabbit's The Midnight Organ Fight from House of Records, and that seems to call for a blog post. Right? Though I have so many good things to say about this night that I'm not sure where to begin. Perhaps bullet points are in order:

• Holocene: Gorgeous. Lately, every time I go to a new venue in Portland, I love it better than the last new venue — though the Wonder Ballroom may still own my heart. I fell for Hawthorne Theater's layout, where the drinking oldies and the kids are on the same floor with the bar in the middle, and now for Holocene's several-room setup. Cement floors, new white walls, the bar in a different room than the stage, a fantastic old-fashioned in hand: brilliance (though for the record, no one should ever make a Sazerac with Ten High. I'm just sayin').

• Ulterior motive: I had one. An old friend I hadn't seen in five years is the bassist for the Rabbit's tourmates, Oxford Collapse, and somehow I'd never seen this band of his play before. It's always funny to see people you know on stage. As my companion aptly put it, "In a band of crazies, he's the craziest." Yes. And "Please Visit Your National Parks" is still the best Collapse song, so go find an MP3. I believe there's one here. While you're there, grab the Rabbit's "Heads Roll Off" and "The Modern Leper," mmmkay?

• Listening to people in the know: A good idea. Years ago, I learned a valuable lesson: When Chris Newmyer is really into a band, pay attention. Even if he tells you, say, that Les Savy Fav's name means "the tight pant wearers." It was my loss that I didn't see Les Savy Fav sooner, and when he started hitting his mailing list with all kinds of Frightened Rabbit stuff, my ears, um — while speaking (in a way) of bunnies, this is so lame — perked up.

Another FR fan is Pitchfork Senior News Editor Amy Phillips, whom I suspect is the coolest person at Pitchfork. About FR, she wrote, "I can't explain why this band's jangly, anthemic indie pop hits me harder than everybody else's jangly, anthemic indie pop, or why such terrible-on-paper lyrics as 'you're the shit and I'm knee-deep in it' and 'it takes more than fucking someone you don't know to keep warm,' sung by a guy who sounds like the twee Scottish version of Adam Duritz, come across as so profound. I just don't know. But it works. I can't stop listening to this album." Exactly.

• Oh, right. About the show. Four unassuming Scottish men, at least two of them in plaid shirts (and one with Jack White's hair), take the stage. Portland, or this tiny slice of it (though the show is well-attended), greets them happily. They proceed to be awesome. It really is sort of hard to explain, but it is anthemic indie pop with lyrics that waver all over the damn place; I'm a big fan of the phrase, "I'll make tiny changes to earth," but not so much of that fucking line quoted above (though it is followed by "I'm drunk / and I'm drunk, and you're probably on pills / and if we've both got the same diseases / it's irrelevant, girl!" which is better, in a bleak sort of way). My companion and I yell back and forth: "They're kind of like Snow Patrol, if Snow Patrol was actually indie rock." "Yeah, Snow Patrol of the streets." Um.

But there's something about these guys. Really. The drummer's constant motion is hypnotic; the singer has his eyes closed a lot; the wall of distortion has just the right density, and it builds in all the right place. It takes half a dozen songs for us to realize there's no bass. Nothing is missing. Someone requests "The Twist" and it's beautiful and it all feels like a scene in a movie when someone's making a really bad decision but you know they're going to enjoy it — at least for a little while. It's a soundtrack to falling in love with the wrong person, sometimes, and other times it's a blanket of yearning settling heavily on your shoulders. And sometimes it's the charm of the moderately tough looking drummer singing the funny little "woo-oot-woot" in "Good Arms vs. Bad Arms." Every so often, I get goosebumps, for no reason whatsoever. And some Portlanders actually sort of move around a little. Fancy that.

They should be your new favorite band. They really should. Here's the disarmingly charming video for "Heads Fall Off" to help convince you (I'd say this is their most Snow Patrolly song):

All images by Todd Cooper. Click on any image to go to a full gallery from Bloc Party Day Two.

Nick Diamond of Islands, winning the day's fashion award

4:15 pm Downtown is a ghost town.
Those are my thoughts as a friend and I pull up on our bikes and walk through the “gates” at Broadway & Willamette. Now I know why they called it a bloc party instead of a block party: the gate system really does block non-wristband-wearing folk from entering the downtown core of Broadway & Olive, making the whole scene look like a badly made post-Apocalypse flick shot in the former Soviet Union. About 50 people stand in front of the stage while another 40 or so dwell in Davis’, Jameson’s, Horsehead, the beer garden (lame idea, folks … setting up a beer garden when you’re surrounded by bars offering happy hour specials). The only things missing are a few scattered tumbleweeds and a roving anarcho-punk goon squad.

4:19 pm The first band of the early evening is Montreal’s Islands. They are competing against a number of factors. The poor acoustics of a breezy intersection. The statuesque crowd of fans. The too-loud speakers (lead singer Nick Diamond requested tissue from the nose-blowing audience so he could rig up some earplugs). But somehow they still manage to put on a rousing set of mostly songs off their new album, Arm’s Way, plus their best-known songs from Return to the Sea, including “Bones,” “Whalebone” (where a random dude from the crowd jumped up and did the rap) as well as a highly kinetic version of “Swans” that ended with Diamond laying down on the pavement in front of the stage, slowly playing his guitar while fans crowded in and snapped pictures over him because he was, like, doing something weird and in-the-moment. And that shiv deserves to be photographed like vultures circle a dying dog.

5:15 pm It's worth noting that Diamond's jokes were falling flat. At one point he said he got an anonymous text message inviting him to a post-show house party, which he presumed was sent from Eugene's mayor, who Diamond called a "he." The crowd half-heartedly corrected him.

Islands' drummer was really into it. Props!

6 pm A down-south-hippie Hunter S. Thompson impersonator befriends me on the patio at Jameson’s and says he wants to start a one-man-band with a Capuchin monkey on drums. I ask him, “Wouldn’t that be a two-mammal-band? Or a one-man-and-a-monkey-band?” He feigns amusement and we turn to watch Devil Makes Three jump up onstage and remark “Welcome! It’s nice to see your faces in the daytime!” I’ve seen DMT play a bar in Medford, and that’s where their energies are best spent.

The Devil Makes Three awake at a godawful hour of day.

6:30 pm I bike the mile back to my house to pick up a warm jacket and pants because the breeze is getting nippy. That, and I need another round of Zyrtec, eye drops and my first-ever dose of Alavert. The grass pollen is through the roof and I hear people are going to the hospital for ashthmatic attacks (even if they don't have asthma). Thanks, patriotic field burners and grass growers!

Alec Ournsworth of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

8 pm I get a text from Todd that they’re letting everyone into the Bloc Party for free to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, so I immediately relay that message to 10 of my friends, three of which will actually show up. Then I bike back downtown.

8:30 pm The gate person says that Davis’ bought up all the remaining tickets so everyone can come down and enjoy the show. How thoughtful of them! Seeing as how it would be terribly embarrassing if CYHSY showed up (who aren’t on tour at the moment and came to Eugene all the way from the East Coast all special for us) to a crowd no larger than you could squeeze into a phone booth.

8:32 pm I go to the front. It is ear-bleedingly too loud. I step back 20 paces. CYHSY are jamming out and, oddly, it does sound pretty good. They make a good jam band, if a bit repetitive. Two songs in and lead singer Alec Ounsworth asks the crowd, “Is it too loud?” And everyone tells them, “Hells yes!” Ounsworth agrees, but they only lower the sound a little bit and some people still have their fingers (or tissue) in their ears. Running the gamut of songs off their two LPs, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and 2007’s Some Loud Thunder, CYHSY rattled off “The Skin of My Yellow Country,” “Is This Love,” “Satan Said Dance” (excellent call-and-response on this one) and even an incongruous “Clap Your Hands!” (shouldn’t that song only be played at the start of a band’s set?). And, it’s worth noting the rhythm guitar player seemed to get extra-excited whenever they played songs from their self-titled album (but not so much from SLT). It’s also worth noting that this was the first show Ounsworth played with his glasses on, and it gave him the look of wandering off the open mic poetry stage and into this rock band.

8:15 pm Since the gates are now essentially open, the downtown crazies come out for CYHSY. I’m a little worried one man is looking to either rape or lay the smack down on some dancing sorority girl but he quickly moves around the crowd before causing too much trouble. A lot of people look tipsy or just out-and-out raging drunk (as it should be) or, like me, puffy with allergies and drugged up on Zyrtec and steroidal inhalers.

Hey, look! There's DIVA!

9:40 pm CYHSY finish a song, say “Thanks, that was our last song,” and walk off the stage. But … you had 20 minutes left! Oh well... thanks for making the trek out to Eugene!

It should be noted that I think the back of my head is in this pic.

A Few Pointers (should the organizers wish to throw a block party again next year):

• Throw the party the week before school gets out and before everyone bails out of Eugene for the summer (and don’t count on grads to show up when they have a million things to be doing on their grad night).

• Get the UO to sponsor the damn thing and make it FREE. If OSU and Willamette University can do it (albeit theirs took place on campus), why can’t the UO?

• The Devil Makes Three (and groups of their folk-punk ilk) does not belong sandwiched between two indie rock supergroups. Either make an indie-folk-bluegrass block out of it, or not at all.

Props:

• For trying to start something new in downtown Eugene.

• For booking solid musical acts.

• For Davis’ seeing a situation and doing the right thing.

• For HST Impersonator: I hope you get those saw lessons from the Bad Mitten Orchestre and they don’t smash a bottle over your brow.

NOTE: I didn’t make it to Friday night’s action. Someone clue me in!

Criminal.
It’s just criminal that the WOW Hall wasn’t packed to capacity last night for two up-and-coming (and soon to be super-famous) bands, Parenthetical Girls and Los Campesinos!

With Infamy Comes Responsibility.
But those who did their indie-patriot duty and showed up last night were the die-hards, anyway, and knew how to act like one of Eugene’s infamous crowds. That is: Plenty of hand-clapping, hoots, hollers, moshing, dancing, moving. We were few, but we were mighty. And the bands responded accordingly.

In Which A New Favorite Band Is Made.
I walked in on the last three songs of Parenthetical Girls, a Baroque-pop quartet from Everett, Wash., and was quite impressed. At one point lead singer Zac Pennington leapt into the crowd (well, the shoegazing under-21’s at least) with drumsticks and did the percussion part on the WOW Hall’s wood floor. The closing set had the band gathered around the drumkit, each hitting a different part. It was Baroque as indie pop can get. And it was grand.

The Author Meets Lead Singer In The John.
I first met Los Campesinos! lead (male) singer Gareth in the bathroom. He was chatting up people while taking a shit. I joined the conversation, then the other people left, and Gareth walks out and we chew the fat. I’m a bit nervous at the low turnout, but then remembered the same situation at the Handsome Furs show. I told him that Eugene was famous for its moshpit. (Then I secretly hoped the moshpit crowd would show up.)

The Author Is Name-Checked, Nearly Shits Pants.
Later, three songs into LC’s explosive set, I have to run to the bathroom again. On my way out, I hear my name. Apparently Gareth is saying, “I met this guy named Chuck who said the moshers in Eugene are the rowdiest. But you guys look like pussies.” I run to the bathroom to escape humiliation. Then I tell some dude in the bathroom that the band is calling for a true moshpit. I ask if he wants to help me out. We return to the crowd, see that a small pit has been started, and dive right in.

This Is Why They Call Them "Supporting Acts."
Parenthetical Girls are probably the best opening act to have on tour. The band members will stand near the front of the stage and rock out, dance, antagonize LC! members, crowd-surf (tho it was more like Superman, where we just carried a guy around in circles, since there was a lack of hands in the audience).

Eugene Inspires Stripping.
Handsome Furs, Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks … and now Los Campesinos! frontman Gareth has decreed from the WOW Hall stage that the Eugene middle-of-the-week showgoing crowd has been one of their “best yet.” Then they launched into “You! Me! Dancing!” and all hell broke loose. Gareth was asked to take off his shirt, and so he did. Apparently he never does this (even tho it was cold and raining outside, it was real hot inside the WOW). And the drummer, who had his shirt off already, put his back on (special rule: no more than one band member with his/her shirt off at a time … unless you’re Red Hot Chili Peppers).

Distorted End To A Twisted Set.
The band came back out for an encore which amounted to one long, fuzzy take on “Sweet Cheeks, Sweet Dreams” (I think … again, it was fuzzy). And LC saw how much distortion they could muster (quite a lot, actually). My only critique of the show was that the female vocals needed to be a bit higher. Aleksandra (lead female vox) looked a tad under the weather, and most of her vocals were lost.

The Band Members Who Smoke Are Easiest To Track Down.
After the show, a friend and I caught three LC members outside the WOW taking a smoke break. I think it was Harriet, Ellen and Tom Campesinos! I wanted to take them on a late-night walk up Skinner Butte, but it was cold, raining and apparently the band partied it up in Portland the night before.

Does The WOW Hall Bounce?
Question: If enough people are in the WOW Hall, does the floor “bounce”? The band members remarked to me, “It’d be awesome to have a full crowd; we heard the floor bounces” (or something along those lines). I thought maybe they were confusing the WOW for the Crystal Ballroom, where you really can “dance on air.”

Corrections and Appendages.
Oh, and apologies to Gareth for not raising my hand when he asked the crowd if anyone was going to post a blog on their show.

Photos by Todd Cooper

My ears, they ring. There weren't enough bodies in the Indigo District tonight to absorb enough of the treble coming out of the speakers, which looked small but sounded big enough to hold several Johnny Whitneys and all their falsetto notes.

But I get ahead of myself. Fact is, I can't speak to either of the opening bands, as I'm still not sure who was who. The second band had a nice dose of late-’90s I'm-in-a-basement-in-New-Jersey shouting crossed with early At the Drive-In, which was a good soundtrack to sitting at the nearly empty bar and shooting the shit. But we were there to see Whitney do his diva-hand (as seen above; the guy puts Cursive's Tim Kasher to shame with the diva hand) and the littler Votolato — that'd be guitarist Cody, as opposed to singer-songwriter fella Rocky, whom I also adore — and the rest of Jaguar Love do their thing. Us and about 30 other people. The band doesn't have an album out yet, so I kind of get the low turnout, but seriously, did Blood Brothers mean nothing to you people? (Confession: I had this spaced out moment at the door and kept referring to Jaguar Love as Blood Brothers. Well, two out of five ain't bad. Sorry, Pretty Girls Make Graves Guy. It's the vocals I think of first.)

It's hard to have a lot to say about the show when you've heard just four songs by a band, but the thing is, there's something about this kind of music that I find hard to describe in the best of situations. It's not like the danceable angles of a band like Q and Not U, where there's so much space between the instruments, and it's not like the density of a good poppy punk band, either. It's — this is the best I could do — an aural assault you can dance to. It hurts, a little bit, and it kept putting me in mind of Daphne Carr's paper at this year's EMP Pop Conference. She spoke about noise rock, and at the end, the lights went out and the noise started. And, just for a little minute, I got it. It's not physical the way a vibrating bass is physical; it's more washing, more drenching, than that. It doesn't just shake your eardrums, but blisters them. You can't do it very often.

The Eugenean audience exercises the right not to rock:

Jaguar Love hits that funny place where I want to cover my ears and I want to shake my ass. (Big internet imaginary hugs to the tall skinny guy in the plaid shirt who was totally shaking his. I admire you, sir.) The last three songs were the best; they were the catchiest, the whoa-oh-ohs slipping out from under the barrage of distortion and (too-sharp) snare drum to sink in just long enough to register as something to which you actually might sing along. And so I did. Just a little.

Listen to 'em here: Jaguar Love on MySpace.