blog.forgreatjustice.net

I really like sourdough bread: is a complex, challenging and ultimately dangerous sort of bread, and I’ve only found satisfactory sourdough from San Fransisco. If I get it elsewhere, it’s just a loaf of tragedy.

I just don’t dig rye. I feel like it tries too hard to be special with those damn seeds but, seriously, it’s just trying too hard, and I’m not feeling that caraway vibe.

Potato bread is basically a plain white bread with delusions of grandeur. Sure, it seems more nuanced and delicious at first. But after a loaf or so, it’s just like another bland white bread, and perhaps even more disillusioning as what was once delicious – the taste of potato – is itself dominated with the blandness. By now I sorta wish I’d never bothered with potato bread. All that bread chewing got me to same point of disillusionment with the whole bread thing.

But still, I gotta eat bread, right? So anyway, Whole Wheat Bread gives good, tasty traditional pop-punk offerings. It doesn’t break new ground, but nonetheless it’s pop-punk done right, and that’s more than enough.

That night, I think I experienced the fluttr effect. I don’t mean the band, Fluttr Effect, but rather: while watching their rocking performance of “Say Goodbye” near the end I saw, quite literally, every movement simply merge and flickr, fluttering into a blur of mighty idiosyncratic rock. I can’t tell you when precisely the guitar’s fists melted into the wicked marimba melted into the swinging orange hair of the vocalist, but I can tell you that this was a good, good thing.

Also: electric cello. Fluttr Effect is a quirky band, nearly to the point of feeling like art-rock or indie. And yet while listening through their songs, I’ve never once felt like they were forgetting about actual song craft. Their music pulls of some interesting things, combining some sound fusion I’d never expected before. The MIDI-powered marimba / electric cello isn’t something I’d expect to meld with power chords, but they make it work. The vocals are themselves an interesting mix. Songs like “Transmission” feel like a well-crafted balled, while otheres (”Tarantula” is a standout) use the vox as just another instrument, letting the other instruments push the song forward.

For the first half of their set, they played as an acoustic trio: vocals, cello and marimba, but minus the guitar and drums. And this was an amazing shift from the more guitar-backed songs I’d heard before. It was sort of distilled Fluttr: the three of them drove the rock to fill every nook of the Lizard Lounge with their loud, gorgeous melodies; but they also took total advantage of their acoustic setup in this more intimate venue, giving the cello or the vocals the breathing room when they needed it. For me, it felt like the first time that I could truly hear and understand the quietly moving lyrics of “Transmission”:

I’m sending a signal
Begin, please come in
Transmission for the one I have not found

(You can get a similar “acoustic trio” version of Transmission from their site: mp3)

Their performance had all the elements that a good live set should: intimately performed numbers, tuned for the crowd and the venue, but also with enough shock and awe kept in surprise so that you don’t get too comfortable. Catch them at the smaller Boston venues while you still can.

Harvey Danger had this crazy idea: put together a new studio album and give it away. They had good reasons. They deserve major kudos for that, and at least a free hoodie from Downhill Battle. (And they deserve at least a listen from you, because it is legal and free. Go get.) However, I will not just promote a band because they have the right ideals. I will promote them if their music is high-quality, and “Little by Little” is clearly a quality work.

The album walks the blurry line between indie-rock and twee-pop, with a really strong tend towards true song-crafting. On an album like this, you’re going to get cozy with the vocalist, locking eyes with him and hanging on at least every other word. The band is there too, but they’re chill, and he’s chill: neither snide vocals nor overzealous instrumentals are going to dominate. This sounds rudimentary, but the amount of blend I get between the band members is almost jarring.

I’m really reminded of Ben Folds / Five in the flavor of this music, and for me that’s a huge complement. Ben Folds strongly locked into capital-C songcraft, with sighing piano chords and retold stories in the most earnest language. That’s what I’m getting from Harvey Danger: clever and grabby lyrics, sincere vocals, and also no shortage of the piano-driven rock. (My key example of the Ben Folds Five / Harvey Danger synergy: “Happiness Writes White”.)

Then again, the first two songs on the album – “Wine, Women and Song” and the spunky “Cream and Bastards Rise” – come off a bit differently. “Wine” starts of mellow enough, but we quickly see the steady piano chords and clever lyrics, while innocent on their own, combine to reveal a truly bitter, sardonic view. This is sharp, in both the sense of “witty” and also “like a razor blade”. “Cream” ditches the genteel sheen of the piano and goes for the more comic anger of a guitar driven baseline. It’ just so very punk, but in a geek-rock sort of way.

Nonetheless, even these tracks never lose control, and I think that’s what was so surprising about the album when listening to this. The band has the patience for pace and a wisdom to know where it wants to go. It gets there in modest but small progressions: little by little.

Download it direct (and free and legal) from Harvey Danger’s site.

PayPal them money if you like it.

“Little by Little” (Harvey Danger)

The first thing I notice in this song is the violin. She starts out in brisk bottom-of-the-bow staccato, scarcely sounding like the refined instrument you’d think it was, but like the rhythm guitar’s short and crass cousin. Then she breaks away from the accordion, doing her own thing. She’s still laying low, she’s still not looking you straight in the eye, but you just know that the she is starting to act like a real violin now. She flying up and down no more than three notes, like a twisted “Flight of the Bumblebee” with her heads rolled into the back of her head.

I should come clean: I played the violin when I was younger. (SUZUKI METHOD, FOOL!) I wasn’t ever one of the best young violinists, mainly because I hated to practice. Thus, I got left behind while my betters filled up the first violin slots. Perhaps a different side of the violin was shown to them: the violin as the champion of classical music, carrying the melody proudly into battle, with swords and painted armor and crap like that. I was always in the second violin section, and my playing was always there to support the first violinists. But that sweet, sweet jealousy was the very elixir to wake my young eyes. I knew what was missing from my colleagues’ understanding of the violin: Satan.

No, really. The violin is the devil himself, and if you’ve heard any of the really good stuff (HINT: Zigeunerweisen by Sarasate) you understand this. When someone is truly great at the piano or harp or banjo, you might presume some angels was guiding the fingers. You make no such mistake with the violin: when she sings out, whether in her low bellow or her high scream, and when she spins around faster than God would allow: you then understand that the violin, for all her good intentions, is a purely diabolic entity.

This is Gogol Bordello, and they just don’t care. So you’ve got this violin. She started fast and mean, and now she’s getting faster and meaner. If I were you I’d duck right about now.

The second thing I notice in this song is a piercing scream, crossed with the violin finally wailing upwards, breathing fire and cutting the bow to bits as she climbs up the octave, throwing tremolo across the note like it was cheap vodka. The violin is now dirty and fast, mean-spirited and violent, and entirely soaked in flammable spirits. Just like the violin was meant to be. You? You’re loving every minute.

The punchline is that you’re just thirty seconds in a 3 1/2 minutes song. This is Gogol Bordello, and they just don’t care. Cue the vocals.

“Gypsy Punks Underdog World Strike” (Gogol Bordello)

I just got the three Coheed and Cambria albums on sweet, sweet CD, allowing me a chance to actually understand what the hell they’re going on about.

Moreover, I have finally got speakers for Christmas. Not those little computers speakers with a puny “subwoofer”, where subwoofer is defined as “cardboard box with power outlet”. No: these speakers are mighty, they are impatient, and they certainly aim to misbehave. In my defense these aren’t yuppie audiophile speakers you’d get at the Sharper Image. There simply have the potential to be loud, and this is all that matters.

I rediscovered the importance of Loud when I first listened to the Receiving End of Sirens album. The album was good – dangerously good – but it’s goodness was ultimately limited by my $20 Radio Shack speakers. The fact is, when I’m listening to a power chord I want it to kick me in the face; by virtue of my sound system, I was merely getting a shin massage, and that’s a very awkward relationship to have with an emo band.

I tried cranking it, I tried fiddling with wires, I tried drawing “11″ on my speakers in red crayon but I failed, entirely.

But now I have new speakers, and I have some Epic albums that need to Rock, and Loudly, with More Capital Letters. I’ve got some old albums to return to, and some neighbors to wake up.

I remember working at the venerable Record Hospital at WHRB back in college. I was distinctly instructed that a 1/3 of our musical selection had to be from our heavy rotation list of recently incoming new releases. Our new releases were significantly more indie-than-thou – we were playing the “Yeah Yeah Yeahs” decades before they were cool! – and yet I wondered why, in the midst of all this musical anarchy, would they still choose to be tied down to the tyranny of “heavy rotation”?

A few years later, I rediscovered the joys of listening to real over-the-waves radio. This was partially due to the recovery of my long-lost radio alarm clock, but also due to the discovery of the Coffeehouse, one of the best programs on WERS. The program is centered around indie-folk with a glance of alt-country (rather than the Record Hospital’s characteristic post-indie-punk-anarcho-noise), but is still hardcore by virtue of of having such a beautiful musical selection.

And yet, it’s not the music selection that makes the Coffeehouse sing with magic, because between MP3 collections and internet radio there’s no shortage of music to be heard. If anything, radio has lost the dominating advantage it once had.

Radio perseveres, and it comes back to the heavy rotation list. When you hear some songs more frequently than others, it gives you a sense of continuity. I know that WOXY played Sufjan Stevens; over the months, he was played less, and Shelby seemed to pick up the pace until they, too, gave way to… Sinead O’Connor. And this too will pass.

There’s a time for the sterile perfection of finely cropped MP3 collections and headphones, but there’s also a time for hearing a familiar song you didn’t expect, and a time when a well-worn playlist is a like a friendly face.

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