Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Published by Chronogram online on August 30, 2013 and in print shortly thereafter

Godspeed You! Black Emperor has always been something of an enigma, the band’s music a complex triumph of sonic, mind-melting exploration, haunting samples, and inspired composition. After a seven-year hiatus, GYBE reunited two years ago for a series of shows, and on Thursday, September 20, they’ll perform at Basilica Hudson, a venue ideally suited for the group’s epic vibe.

GYBE has been hailed as champions of a genre called post-rock, but whatever post-rock means is anyone’s guess; it’s an application most often bestowed on groups for whom no other location in a record shop’s filing system would make sense. There are traditional rock ‘n’ roll instruments in GYBE, though the guitars and drums are often used in a darkly classical milieu. And with albums like the stunning Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven unfolding like a film soundtrack, or movements in an epic symphonic piece, where the hell else other than the chin-stroking, intellectually stimulating post rock section would a record shop keep it?

Rumors abound that GYBE has been recording new material, though at present their last album remains Yanqui U.X.O., the group’s politically charged 2002 full-length that featured a cover photograph of bombs tumbling out of a military plane, samples of then-President George W. Bush, and artwork linking major record labels to arms manufacturers. Heady stuff, but the music has always been grandiose and emotional, the stuff of fantasy and nightmares. Think the darkness and odd swathes of light in the music of the Velvet Underground, John Cage, and Swans. And, thanks to Karl Lemieux, a member of the group whose primary responsibility at live shows is bathing the stage in abstract experimental film projections, a GYBE performance is a totally immersive, singular affair.
They may not have a new album on the way, but it’s not unusual to hear new material at a GYBE show. Just don’t expect the crowd to sing along, whether they know the songs or not, because aside from the aforementioned samples, GYBE’s music is strictly instrumental.

Since regrouping, GYBE have rekindled a relationship with All Tomorrow’s Parties, the UK-based promoter behind I’ll Be Your Mirror, a worldwide series of small festivals with days curated by musicians. The group’s date in Hudson was planned as something of a warm-up to an appearance at the annual US version of I’ll Be Your Mirror, originally planned to be held in Asbury Park, NJ. But last month it was announced that the festival had been moved to New York City, and, with the exception of a few artists, would keep its lineup intact. After performing in Hudson and New York City, GYBE will continue their tour through the South and Midwest until mid-October, when they’ll presumably steal away into the night refusing to confirm whether a new album will ever materialize.

Basilica Hudson, a hollowed out 19th-century factory on Front Street, is a few dark turns off of Hudson’s main hub, Warren, on the waterfront next to the train station. The mammoth stone-faced industrial building, which has been the site of performances by such art-rock luminaries as Patti Smith and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, is dimly lit and unheated, giving it a sense of the medieval. The various anterooms and vaulted gothic ceilings with intricately laced beams provide the perfect acoustics for GYBE’s atmospheric ebbs and echoes.

'Blur 21': The Best of the Rarities

Originally published by PopMatters on August 22, 2012

Calling the new Blur box set (named Blur 21, honoring the 21 years since their first official release) a treasure trove is, if not a bit hyperbolic, certainly not inaccurate. If, like many of my fellow music nerds, you’ve all but abandoned the compact disc in favor of the tried and true vinyl option, there’s a version of the box set just right for you. While including all seven of the band’s studio albums in thick vinyl cut from oak trees (probably), the collection is lacking many of the bonuses which made the CD version too tempting to resist.

Each of Blur’s albums—from 1991’s Leisure to 2003’s Think Tank—is given the double-disc treatment in the CD set, with most of the associated b-sides and non-album singles chronologically placed, allowing the listener to effectively trace the development of one of England’s greatest bands, one which transcended its assigned genre (Britpop) to become something greater, even while celebrating its own inherent Englishness. The CD box set also includes a handsome hardbound book featuring recording information and what one hopes is merely an abridged version of a much longer and more comprehensive oral history. There are three DVD’s included as well, rounding out the promo clips for anyone who already has Blur: The Best Of, and featuring a live performance from the “Singles Night” tour in 1999, a brief run through of 13-era songs from earlier that year and Showtime, a 1994 performance at Alexandra Palace previously only available on VHS. For completists, there’s also a one-sided vinyl single recorded in 1989 when the band was still called Seymour.
 
But really, the most compelling reason to opt for the CD version of the box set (assuming you’re not simply downloading everything off of torrent sites) is the inclusion of four rarities discs covering the span of the group’s history, from the Seymour-era right up through their 2010 Record Store Day single “Fools Day” and “Under the Westway”, one of two songs recorded in anticipation of Blur’s headline performance in London’s Hyde Park last weekend, a show in celebration of the Olympics and British music of the non-Spice Girls variety.

The rarities discs, arranged like the rest of the box set in chronological order, are fascinating, with many demos and alternate versions of familiar songs, jam sessions, and unfinished thoughts (including the unfortunately-titled “Sir Elton John’s Cock”, a too-brief bit of piano-led melancholy which sadly never developed into anything more). It’s moments like those which make the set like Blur’s career since reuniting with guitarist Graham Coxon (absent from Think Tank, except on the gorgeous “Battery in Your Leg”) in 2009 so goddamned frustrating; Blur should record a new album and tour the entire world, and their inability to commit to anything beyond brief joyful blasts like their handful of Hyde Park warmup dates across England (and a pair of festival appearances in Denmark and Sweden) is difficult for anyone not in Blur (and maybe a couple of the guys actually in Blur, too) to fathom.

It’s partly why my girlfriend—fiancé, now, because I put a ring on her finger in Hyde Park a little over a week ago and she said yes—and I made the trip over in the middle of the Olympics. Yes, we had a wonderful time in my favorite city other than New York, and we spent time with friends and hit museums and record shops and regretted not having arranged for tickets to see any Olympic event. But what we also did was take a two-hour train trip to Margate for the first of the warmup shows at the Winter Gardens, an old music hall which hosted the Beatles nearly 40 years ago. Because I’m still almost completely incapable of conveying what the night meant to me, I’ll say in brief that it was one of the greatest gigs I’ve ever seen. The band was all smiles, and even when they messed up “Trimm Trabb” or “Sing”, or Damon Albarn couldn’t remember which line came where in “Coffee and TV” it was absolutely a celebration. Sure, Graham teetered on the verge of inconsolability when his amp wilted in the oppressive heat, but a hug and kiss from his old friend Damon set it all straight.

And maybe we’re meant to enjoy these moments as they come and file them away and not long for more, but with all the joy on that stage that night, it’s natural to want them to do it all over again, but in New York this time (or wherever you happen to be from). If they never play again, I will be satisfied because I shared this moment with Blur and around 2,000 of their fans. It’s a version of a mantra I’ve repeated again and again as a fan of Blur: If they never release another song again, I’ll still be happy. If they never play another show together, I’ll still be happy. If Alex James continues devoting his energies to cheese-making and having interestingly-named children rather than picking up a bass guitar, I’ll be happy. I love Blur, probably as much as but in a different way to my other favorite bands, the Beatles and the Clash. I’m grateful Damon and Graham have both continued making music outside of Blur that I genuinely enjoy, but even if I thought they totally sucked I’d still be just as happy with what they’ve done in Blur. Fandom is confusing sometimes.

A cynic might consider Blur’s pulling out the stops when compiling their setlists for the recent shows as a craven attempt to illustrate how deep their back catalog is. “Young & Lovely”, a b-side to 1993 single “Chemical World” has always been a beautiful, Beatlesque gem, but they’d never played it live before. At Margate, Albarn self-consciously noted that it would have felt too corny to air it on stage before, but now that most of them have kids of their own it felt right. “Caramel”, a lengthy, atmospheric track from the William Orbit-produced 13 (released in 1999), is another song which was played live for the first time this year. But the cynics can go fuck themselves, because what Blur has proven is that their singles, while unbelievably catchy and wonderful, are not all that the band is about. The knees-up Englishness of “Sunday Sunday” and “Country House” are a key element to Blur’s sound, but so are sonic blasts of weirdness like “Trimm Trabb” and “Bugman” .

And so the rarities, four discs of material predictably varying in quality which, depending upon your perspective, may or may not be essential listening. “Red Necks”, a b-side to 1994’s “End of the Century”, is bad enough on its own, so the addition of two alternate takes seems a waste. And while Damon has all but dismissed Blur’s first album Leisure, the demos included show the band was on the right track with the finished product. “Wear Me Down”, for example, is a bit sludgy and slow in demo form, but its crunchy guitars and harmonies are partly whyLeisure is much more valid than Damon gives it credit for being. Remove the bad feelings Blur had about record company interference around that time (which included forcing the band to come up with “Bang”, a single they’ve tried desperately to forget in spite of it not being all that bad; and the removal of “Sing”, one of the band’s best early tracks, from the initial US release).

There are other missteps, though even if they don’t wind up in circulation on your iPod (purchasing any of the reissues and box sets comes with a download code), they’re still worth a listen. Modern Life Is Rubbish, released in 1993, has become something of a tentpole for Britpop fans, signaling a culture shift for Blur into a celebration of British music inspired by the over-Americanization of English society and the popularity of grunge. The album was produced by a number of people, including Stephen Street, who would go on to work with the band on their next three full lengths, but they had actually previously recorded some material with XTC’s Andy Partridge. Three of the songs from those sessions are included here, and while the early version of “Sunday Sunday” (called “Sunday Sleep” here) is an interesting listen, there’s nothing to suggest they hadn’t made the right decision in moving on.
But for all the tracks one might spin a few times for the sake of curiosity, there are some genuinely thrilling moments among the rarities.

Compiling lists is rarely a good idea, because no matter how strongly I might feel about a song or a band, it’s unlikely anyone will entirely agree with me. That can lead to some intriguing debate, but ultimately whether a Blur fan finds anything (or everything) on the rarities discs indispensable is up to that Blur fan. That said, I’ve made a list!

Those are by no means the only songs worth seeking out over the four discs of rarities, and even with the fairly hefty price tag, Blur 21 is worth picking up for fans. And maybe if more of us buy it, Damon, Graham, Alex and Dave will feel inspired to hit the studio and the road next year. Maybe . . .

1. “Death of a Party (Demo)”

“Death of a Party” turned up as a spooky organ-fuelled, full-band performance on Blur’s eponymous 1997 album, but the demo version of the song (recorded in 1992) was given to fans who subscribed to Blurb, the official fanzine, in 1996. The song was fairly complete in demo form, an acoustic run through with chilling harmonies, but it wasn’t until their post-Britpop comedown that the time was right to unleash the finished product.

2. “Far Out (Electric Version)”

Alex James’ spacy Syd Barrett-pastiche appeared in abbreviated form on 1994’s Parklife, but here the guitars and energy are turned up. It’s not necessarily a better version, but is every bit as intriguing.

3. “1”

Of the two tracks recorded in 2000 with Bill Laswell included on the box set, “1” is the most fully-formed, full of weird noises and chimes, and a laconic vocal from Albarn. It bears the sense of dread which pervades much of Blur’s later work, but in the best possible way.

4. “Dizzy”

One could argue which of the band’s earliest recordings best typifies what they were like when they were still called Seymour, but my money is on “Dizzy”, a song alternating between gently picked passages and spasms of kinetic energy. While Britain was in thrall to the Stone Roses and the Madchester scene, Seymour seemed completely oblivious (though later they’d adopt a few shuffle-beats in a half-hearted effort to latch on, their songs were never fully immersed in the ubiquitous sound of the day.)

5. “Seven Days”

Of the three songs here from the Andy Partridge sessions, “Seven Days” is the only one the band never re-recorded and re-released. It’s a testament to the strength of their material at the time that they could leave what could have at least been a quality album track or b-side with harmonies and a chorus which builds upon itself bit-by-bit from beginning to end.

Popblerd's bLISTerd Presents: The 100 Best Albums of the Eighties

Originally published by Popblerd in June 2012 in the series bLISTerd Presents: The 100 Best Albums of the Eighties

I was asked by my friend Big Money at Popblerd to contribute to a list of the best albums of the decade of my lean teen years, the '80s. If there's one thing us music nerds love it's making lists, discussing lists, obsessing over lists, and revising lists until we can scarcely remember what we were listing in the first place. After the votes were tallied, I was given the chance to write about five of the albums form the final cut. I'd included all five in my initial list, and below you'll find my blurbs as well as where the album fell when the votes were counted.

#58: The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses

Though its initial reach in the United States was largely contained to college dormitories, in the United Kingdom, the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut signaled a youth revolution. Masterfully weaving classic rock guitars with an acid house sensibility, The Stone Roses was about so much more than bellbottoms and bucket hats.

The Stone Roses is deceptively DIY; Ian Brown’s vocal range is indeed something of a musical liability in a live setting, though on album it works perfectly. But he’s also the coolest motherfucker on the planet. In John Squire, the Roses had their own guitar hero, and in Reni the greatest drummer since…well, since anyone, and with Mani’s soulful bass guitar, the band had a rhythm section for the ages.

But without the songs – those songs, my God… – The Stone Roses would have been a flash in the pan. The soaring chorus of “Made of Stone” (“Sometimes I fantasize when the streets are cold and lonely, and the cars they burn below me”) still sends shivers down the spine, and the 8-minute-plus closer, “I Am the Resurrection”, with its dismissive lyrics (“I don’t care where you’ve been or what you plan to do”) and churning instrumental section is an exhaustively perfect finish to one of rock’s few perfect albums.

#21: Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
Having already established themselves as indie’s premiere downtown art-rockers, Sonic Youth’s fifth album,Daydream Nation, saw the group consistently hit what for some has been their greatest strength: Superior songwriting buried under an avalanche of sound.

It’s fitting that on their first double album Sonic Youth would include a song called “The Sprawl,” a Kim Gordon-sung epic with lyrics (“Are you for sale? Does ‘fuck you’ sound simple enough?”) to match the fury of the guitars. “Teen Age Riot” opens the proceedings with more than a minute of gentle guitars and hypnotic singing from Gordon before everything explodes.

Bassist Gordon and guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo share vocal duties throughout, with the latter pair’s standout tracks “Teen Age Riot” and “Eric’s Trip” respectively. Even Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, the Stooges) gets in on the vocal action on “Providence” (though his contribution is through a pair of answering machine messages). The album closes with “Trilogy,” a three-part journey which predictably ends in measured chaos and unbridled energy.

Daydream Nation convinced the music industry that Sonic Youth was ready to destroy the world, and despite a subsequent move to a major label, they never shed their commitment to experimentation and sonic songwriting perfected here.

#19: Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
If not exactly famous, the Talking Heads were certainly well-known by 1983. With four terrific albums under their belt, the New York punk scene’s most artistically enduring act was about to enter the upper reaches of the pop charts. The album’s lead single, “Burning Down the House” hit #9 on Billboard’s Hot 100, and thanks to a quirky video that matched the band’s quirky sensibility, Talking Heads were everywhere.

Thanks to the hypnotic rhythms, a greater reliance on synthesizers, collaborators like Parliament-Funkadelic co-founder Bernie Worrell, David Byrne’s spazzy art school vocals, Jerry Harrison’s understated guitars and the criminally underrated bass guitar of Tina Weymouth and drums of Chris Frantz, everything seemed to come together at just the right time on Speaking in Tongues.

Songs like “Burning Down the House,” “Making Flippy Floppy” and “Girlfriend is Better” still move butts on the dance floor, but for truly lasting brilliance one must turn to “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)”. Byrne’s description of the album’s second single made it sound like something of a reluctant love song, though “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” certainly feels unabashedly and genuinely romantic. It’s a love song even a cynic could love.

#6: Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Released in 1988, a year when the world was in thrall to the likes of Phil Collins’ “A Groovy Kind of Love” and Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth,” Public Enemy’s second album hit like an atom bomb-propelled freight train.

Socially-conscious hip-hop was nothing new by the late ‘80s thanks to pioneers of the form like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. But with the syncopated steps of the S1W and the bombastic beats of the Bomb Squad, the stage was set for the group’s celebrated vocalists to unfurl calls to action not heard since the early ‘70s heyday of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. Chuck D was Public Enemy’s intellectual center, a gruff storyteller balanced by his comedic foil, Flavor Flav. In 2012, with the reality shows and the failed business ventures in our collective consciousness, it might be difficult to believe there was a time when Flavor Flav was an absolute essential piece of the puzzle, but one listen to “Cold Lampin’ With Flavor” or any other track on which he emerges from the furor should help set the record straight.

Even its sleeve – with Chuck D and Flavor Flav behind bars – is provocative, and coupled with classic songs of anarchic angst like “Bring the Noise” and “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back isn’t just one of the finest hip-hop albums of the ‘80s, but is one of the best albums by anyone in any genre of any era. Public Enemy nearly matched it in quality with their next album, Fear of a Black Planet, but they never had so much shocking power as on It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

#5: Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
If the Clash’s London Calling had the power to singlehandedly destroy everything lame from the entire decade that preceded it in 1979, then perhaps the same can be said of Paul’s Boutique. Released in the summer of 1989, the Beastie Boys’ sophomore album may not have fully abandoned the sophomoric wordplay of Licensed to Ill (“I stay up all night, I go to sleep watching Dragnet/Never sleep alone because jimmy is a magnet”), but there was an undeniable maturity in its meticulously constructed grooves.

Paul’s Boutique is as compelling a case for the art of the sample as anything ever recorded, with easily recognizable sounds (Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman” on “Egg Man”) effortlessly mixed with decidedly less so (the beat from “Egg Man” was lifted from Lightnin’ Rod’s “Sport”). Many of the album’s backing tracks had already been built by the Dust Brothers before the Beastie Boys found them, but together the collaboration – along with co-producer Mario Caldato, Jr. – created a masterpiece.

Though one might feel compelled to attach a sense of the maudlin to the music of the Beastie Boys with the recent passing of Adam “MCA” Yauch, all these years later it is impossible to listen to Paul’s Boutique without being overcome with joy. They would go on to record more classic material, but the Beastie Boys were never better than on Paul’s Boutique, an album which perfectly captures the curious comfort of the musical schizophrenia of city life.

Mountain Jam: May 31 - June 3

Originally published by PopMatters on July 13, 2012, with photographs by Mike Katz

It’s been called “little Bonnaroo” and with some of the key acts heading off from upstate New York to rural Tennessee the following week, it’s not an entirely unfair claim. But while the pair share a hazy hippie vibe and even – I learned later – some of the same food vendors, Mountain Jam is an entity all its own.

This year’s incarnation of the annual Mountain Jam festival was the eighth. The first Mountain Jam was a one-day concert celebrating the 25th anniversary of WDST, a Woodstock-based independent radio station whose eclectic format is indicative of what the festival eventually became. Govt. Mule headlined the inaugural Mountain Jam and they’ve been the sole musical constant ever since. Warren Haynes, Govt. Mule’s guitarist and leader, co-produces the festival with WDST, and his considerable fanbase comprises much of the several thousand in attendance. So dedicated to Govt. Mule are these fans that they dutifully stood in a torrential downpour on Friday night; their slick ponchos glowing in the night with each flash of light from the stage.
If Govt. Mule is an annual constant for Mountain Jam, rain (or the threat of rain) was a constant for the four days of the 2012 festival. The threat was there through most of Friday, though it didn’t really come down until that night, just prior to Govt. Mule’s four hour set on the East Stage. James Murphy, former lynchpin of LCD Soundsystem and one of Mountain Jam’s most intriguing bookings, carried on with his late night DJ set on the West Stage that evening, though the rain kept many of the revelers cowering in their tents while hoping they wouldn’t slide down the mountain and into the tiny village surrounding the ski resort.

The Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado, is one of the country’s most renowned open-air concert settings. The gorgeous scenery and natural acoustics provide a unique experience for those wishing to commune with nature while they have their synapses shredded by music. Hunter Mountain during Mountain Jam should also be mentioned in that conversation. With the two primary stages (the larger East and smaller West) sitting side-by-side at the bottom of a verdant stretch of peaks, the natural setting carries the sound up the hillside and, presumably, into the heavens above. I learned this while on a long ride up the ski lift, one of the best ways to really get a sense of the surroundings as it carries riders over the crowd and beyond the RV and premier campsites, halfway up the mountain to the base camp of a zip line. I also learned it as I eventually got tired of being cold and wet during Murphy’s set and listened to the second hour shivering in a tent I feared would be obliterated by the volume and awesomeness of the beats.

The longer the weekend went on, the muddier the hill became, and even with the best efforts of the festival’s organizers by laying down shitloads of hay, people still slipped and fell in the mud. Of course the longer the weekend went on, the less people actually seemed to care whether they were covered in mud anyway. Yes, there were showers (three narrow stalls per gender for $5 a wash) but their lines never matched the length of the lines for coffee in the morning.

Mountain Jam is billed as a child-friendly festival, and I suppose if you’re cool with your kid inhaling lots of pot smoke, it’s not the worst place in the world. There was face-painting and a couple of kid-specific tents for kid-specific activities. Even some of the music was geared towards kids: Ratboy Jr., a local act in the wry tradition of They Might Be Giants who drop the Jr. when they play for grownups, was one of the musical highlights on the small stage in the Awareness Village, playing late-morning sets on Saturday and Sunday. I also saw four kids that were maybe in the 5th or 6th grade in the tall grass halfway up the mountain, perhaps bent on escape or on a hopeful Stand By Me-style search for adventure.

Did you go to college at any time between 1968 and…well, now, I guess? Picture the hippies. I’ll do it too: I was in college in the early ‘90s and I played drums in a funk band. A lot of the kids who came to see us play were contemporary hippies with long flowing robes and matted blonde dreadlocks. They wore hemp necklaces and corduroy pants with long quilted panels running down the sides. If that sounds familiar to you, guess what? They still look like that! Mountain Jam in many ways felt like college, though fortunately the comparison ended there and I wasn’t subsisting exclusively on ramen noodles so I could spend what little money I had on records, pot, and beer.

Though the name smacks of jam bands, Mountain Jam’s lineup is considerably more eclectic. Not that one shouldn’t expect lengthy guitar solos over meandering musical passages, because there is plenty. But this year also featured a stellar performance by the Roots, a band who, while not uncomfortable with the concept of jamming, are decidedly crisper and on point than the term “jam” might indicate. The Roots were one of the weekend’s highlights, a blast of electric energy just before the rains came down on Friday night. How they do what they do – house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, jetting off to destinations unknown for weekend gigs, ?uestlove’s weekly DJ set at Brooklyn Bowl, and steady stream of Twitter commentary nearly every minute of every day – is a mystery. Keeping up with their itinerary is exhausting enough, so imagine what it must be like to actually be in the Roots. But none of that matters once they hit the stage, because it’s pure bliss. The Roots even found the time to work in tributes to the recently departed, opening with a go-go-infused take on the Beastie Boys’ “Paul Revere”, simultaneously honoring Adam Yauch and Chuck Brown.

Mountain Jam also paid tribute as a whole to Levon Helm, a friend of the festival and a musical legend with deep roots in the area; Helm passed away earlier this year, and renditions of his solo material and songs made famous by the Band were heard (with encouragement by producers) from many of the artists during the weekend. Govt. Mule brought out the surviving members of the Levon Helm Band for the second half of their Saturday night set for an emotional, celebratory performance.

Mountain Jam was also the first official reunion show of the Ben Folds Five, who ran through their greatest hits in front of fans who’d traveled far and wide to see it happen. Folds was in predictably gregarious form, regaling the crowd with wry stories between even wryer songs from the group’s staggeringly catchy back catalogue. While the North Carolina-bred band is in the midst of recording a new album, they stuck strictly to the classics, only letting up long enough for Folds to throw his stool at his piano - a decidedly punk move for a guy who used to earn a paycheck as a judge on an NBC singing competition show. Of course, if you haven’t heard “Army” or “Song for the Dumped”, you might not know he had it in him.

One of the festival’s breakout acts, Gary Clark, Jr., had already lain waste to the kids at Coachella, and was one week away from doing the same at Bonnaroo when he unleashed his guitar fury at Mountain Jam. Clark, who grew up in Austin, Texas, has already made a name for himself in the blues community, but has lately expanded his reach thanks to incendiary live sets like the one on Friday afternoon at Mountain Jam. If he’s uncomfortable with the comparisons to Jimi Hendrix, Clark sure isn’t showing it, as evidenced by his blistering instrumental run through “Third Stone from the Sun”.

Another breakout performance came from Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires, a Daptone Records-affiliated soul outfit and one of the all-time feel-good stories in the history of music. Bradley, a singer in his mid-‘60s with a heartbreaking-but-triumphant life story, was discovered singing as a James Brown impersonator named Black Velvet by Daptone co-founder Gabriel Roth. Bradley, a.k.a. the Screaming Eagle of Soul, has since recorded a debut of all-original material, which he showcased at Mountain Jam along with crowd-wowing dance moves possibly honed during his Black Velvet days. Bradley’s sincerity and humility are as genuine as his absolute love of performing, and his voice – and his band – killer. Even if you ignore how totally fucking gratifying it is to be able to celebrate Bradley’s rise, the guy is just dynamite.

The festival’s final headline slot went to Steve Winwood, a dynamic performer since his teen years in the Spencer Davis Group. Though his performance came at the end of a lengthy stateside tour, Winwood was in fine voice and spirit, running through classic material spanning his long history, up to and including cuts from Nine Lives, his 2008 album. Winwood brought out Haynes for “Gimme Some Lovin’” – a singular highlight from an exceptional festival-closing set.

Despite often dismal weather and an abundance of exceedingly over-patchouli’d patrons, Mountain Jam was a pretty terrific festival. In its eighth year, it shows no signs of faltering. With a clear dedication to offering a wide range of musical options to its audience, one can only hope it carries on for many years to come. With great local acts like blues of the Connor Kennedy Band, hotly-tipped indie artists like the Carolina Chocolate Drops and the Simone Felice Band, genre-defying outfits like Break Science and EOTO, and jam legends like the Tedeschi Trucks Band, there really is something for everyone at Mountain Jam. Now, about all that rain…

Paul Weller: 18 May 2012 - New York

Originally published by PopMatters on June 1, 2012

In 1982, fresh off the buzz of his band’s first number one album in the U.K., Paul Weller broke up the Jam. That he moved on to further commercial success with the blue-eye soul of the Style Council is hardly the point, at least in this context: Paul Weller is unafraid of shaking things up and going against the grain.

The Best Buy Theater in New York City is a deceptively large space in a terrible part of town for live music. Leaving a show is like getting knocked off a surfboard by a massive wave, the sea of tourists moving in all directions in the heart of Times Square, and if you want to avoid being pulled by the undertow into Madame Tussaud’s or Toys R’ Us, you’d better steel yourself for a struggle. Outside, it seems as unlikely a place on earth as any you might find for an artist to perform his latest album in full, especially when that album is Sonik Kicks.

Paul Weller has been around a long time, and if you’re a fan from the Jam through the Style Council on up through his many years as a solo artist, you know in your heart that his generally accepted title – the Modfather – is more an honorary degree than a testament to his having stayed in one place for all this time. Weller may be known for writing classic songs, but they’re hardly all cut from the same cloth. Even so, Sonik Kicks, if not a difficult album, is possibly one of the most sonically adventurous of Weller’s entire career. And while it reached the toppermost of the poppermost in the U.K., it’s not exactly tearing up the charts over here. So opening a 2 ½ hour concert by running through the album from start to finish, while not a revolutionary concept, is still a daring proposition.

Up front, on the rail, the fans were out in full force. Weller performed just two shows in the U.S. on this visit, both at the Best Buy Theater on consecutive nights one weekend in mid-May. As such, Weller-heads (or whatever they call themselves) have traveled for the show. They might have done that anyway, but then again maybe not. Would the fan from Boston who claims to have seen the Jam and Style Council way back when, who aggressively bellows “Oi!!!” and “Are you ready?!?!?” in a phony Cockney accent have made the trip down if Weller was playing a little closer to home? Maybe. But with the tour really more of a two-night stand, there is the air among the fandom of something special, something worth riding the rails in a t-shirt from some past Weller tour or other.

If Weller was going to play all of Sonik Kicks in this manner, he at least had two things going for him. There was a fairly partisan crowd on Friday, May 18, at least in the first pit closest to the stage. It also helped that Sonik Kicks is so fucking good.

If he has any interest in shaking off the Modfather mantle, Weller shows no signs on the surface. He’s still sporting a mod hairstyle and is still dressing to the nines, his suit a sharp number that might have been crafted for a nearby production of Guys & Dolls. Weller’s band – some of whom have been with him for years, including Ocean Colour Scene guitarist Steve Cradock – is also sharply dressed, but it’s clear from the moment he hits the stage that the Modfather is the coolest motherfucker in the room.

The Sonik Kicks set was killer, and while I went in familiar with the material, I still got the feeling that those who hadn’t yet found their way to the album were captivated, especially by the high-energy numbers like “Kling I Klang” and “Dragonfly”.

The band returned for an acoustic run through some of Weller’s back catalogue, taking the front of the stage on a row of stools like a sharper, less hirsute, Crosby, Stills & Nash along with a string section. It opened with a rapturously received “English Rose”, the first sign that the Jam were not off limits in Weller’s repertoire, and closed six songs later with a stunning “You Do Something to Me”.

Weller plugged back in for a final run through more of his timeless tunes, with “22 Dreams”, “Stanley Road” and “Wake Up the Nation” highlights in the first run through. One fan who’d yelled “Town Called Malice!” at least 100 times over the course of the night was rewarded in the encore, which also included the Jam’s “In the City” and “Art School”.

On the street, actually in the city, fighting through a million people craning their necks to figure out where the ball drops each New Year’s Eve, the air was still crackling. Weller is more than just an institution, but an active genius still capable of creating vital music. On one night in May in New York City, Weller’s sense of adventure was more than matched by a terrific performance with his band.

Kraftwerk at the Museum of Modern Art on 10 April 2012

Originally published by PopMatters on April 20, 2012


In recent years, as Hollywood has been bitten once again by the gimmick of 3-D, legendary critic Roger Ebert has routinely taken to Facebook and other corners of the internet to lambast the film industry for its craven efforts to wring more money out of cinema-goers. I tend to side with Ebert on the topic though. As the parent of a 4th grader, I’ve certainly given in and donned silly glasses for 90 minutes in the pursuit of entertainment. I wonder what Ebert might think of Kraftwerk using a vast 3-D screen as part of their eight-night audio-visual series at the Museum of Modern Art.

The conceit with Kraftwerk is that while they’re undeniably futuristic, there’s a certain level of classic kitsch in the mix. It must have blown people’s minds when they first heard “The Robots” or “The Man-Machine”, for example, though much of the imagery of that time period was based on a Modernist movement which was already 40 years old. It’s within this dichotomy of retro-futurism that Kraftwerk initially found its relevance, and it’s there where they remain relevant today.

As a fad, 3-D film made its biggest initial splash in the early 1950’s, giving audiences “Astounding! Astonishing! Amazing!” experiences with schlocky flicks like The Mad Magician and It Came from Outer Space, in an age of cinema gimmickry where theatergoers found their seats vibrating and 30 different syncopated smells sprayed in their faces. The experience, we’re told, is different today than it was even in recent years past, and I suppose there’s some truth to that because we no longer have to wear glasses with one red lens and one blue (though as another throwback, those old timey glasses are on the cover of a fancy Kraftwerk book sold in the MoMA gift shop).

Perhaps it’s because I’m jaded, but 3-D in the modern age isn’t packing much more of a punch than it ever has. Which brings us back to Kraftwerk.

The MoMA retrospective is billed as a complete run-through of Kraftwerk’s entire back catalogue, providing one ignores their first few albums and begins with 1974’s digital travelogue, Autobahn. Over eight consecutive nights, Kraftwerk is performing an album in its entirety, though each show also contains highlights from other releases. The residency’s opening night (Tuesday, April 10) kicked with “The Robots,” a single from 1978’s The Man-Machine, before Autobahn was tackled in full. It was a shrewd opening salvo, introducing the longstanding half-gimmick of the members of Kraftwerk being robots themselves (a point actually first made in the lobby where robot versions of the four current members of the group slowly moved…well…robotically in glass cases. It was as though Disneyland’s Hall of Presidents had been overrun by the aliens in This Island Earth.

To the credit of Kraftwerk and MoMA, the Marron Atrium could have probably held twice as many people as they let in, but in the spirit of the immersive experience they allowed attendees to have a bit of breathing room. And honestly, if you’re speeding down the vast expanse of the Autobahn wearing cardboard 3-D glasses, the last thing you want upsetting the fantasy is being packed like sardines on the L train during the morning commute. The 3-D was great about half the time, and the other half it wasn’t particularly necessary. Whether 3-D added anything to the experience of seeing the sleek lines of the “Trans-Europe Express” come reasonably to life on the large screen behind the group is hardly the point. The evening included 3-D because 3-D is very Kraftwerk.

There they stood, nearly perfectly still, for just shy of two hours, resplendent in black bodysuits that were equal parts Tron (the original, ‘natch) and Spider-Man’s symbiotic Venom costume. Ralf Hütter is the sole remaining founding member of Kraftwerk, with his longtime co-conspirator Florian Schneider having left the fold in 2008. If it’s possible for a group largely modeled after barely animate robots that hasn’t released new music in nearly a decade to have an essential member, Hütter certainly fills the bill. Most of the lead vocals—often monotone, but with a vulnerable humanity—on the group’s classic tracks came from Hütter, and it remains so on stage in New York; he wears the only headset microphone, and any other voice heard comes via loops or outer space or wherever.

The future-past theme only holds water until the music comes into the conversation; nearly 40 years ago, Kraftwerk must have seemed as though they’d beamed in from another dimension, a window into a clean, emotionless yet oddly sexy future. And they still sound like that today, because for all the shit they influenced, and all the iPad apps that can create music on the fly, we still haven’t caught up to what Kraftwerk were doing as far back as Autobahn in 1974. I thought perhaps it was a trick of the eight-channel video and sound installation developed solely for this series of performances, but listening to the music now on my tiny laptop speakers it still brings me back to the future.

Tickets for the retrospective quickly sold out, adding to the exclusivity of the event, though the entire affair was as civilized as one might expect given the venue. Besides a guy in a wizard hat and sandals playing a harmonica, no one prowled the line outside hoping for a spare ticket. Inside, personal space was respected, and no one rushed the stage or craned their necks in vain to see over the group’s lecterns to find out how they made all those wonderful sounds. The crowd looked like something out of a Kraftwerk song, sharply dressed, all with the same goofy white cardboard 3-D glasses. A few danced, but most were struck with awe at a legendary group bringing their aesthetic to life in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. 

Whether you made any of the performances or not, it’s worth heading across the East River to Queens for a presentation of Kraftwerk’s historical audio and visual material at the MoMA PS1 Performance Dome through May 14. For more information, visit www.moma.org.

Van Halen: 1 March 2012 - Live at Madison Square Garden, New York

Originally published by PopMatters on March 9, 2012 with photographs by Sachyn Mital

If you want to be annoyed by David Lee Roth, there’s plenty to work with. The mincing, preening, gurning original and most recent frontman for Van Halen is one of rock’s most mercurial figures, a court jester in a fallen kingdom. But for all the hits of the Sammy Hagar era – a period Van Halen circa 2012 would rather pretend never happened, thank you – there is no one more perfectly suited to serve as a foil to Eddie Van Halen’s legendary guitar pyrotechnics than Diamond Dave.

At a sold out Madison Square Garden on Thursday, March 1 – the band’s second such show on their tour in support of A Different Kind of Truth – Van Halen blasted through many of the touchpoints of their golden era, weaving in seamlessly four songs from the new album, their first with Roth back in the fold.

The tension between Roth and the Van Halen brothers, Eddie and drummer Alex, has become a long, cautionary folktale, an awkward and terrible period stretching over two decades that’s only worth bringing up again for the umpteenth time because of its total absence on the stage at Madison Square Garden. Eddie always smiled on stage anyway, but he’s positively beaming these days. It can’t hurt that the band’s new album – its first since 1998’s grim Van Halen III, with vocals by Extreme’s Gary Cherone – has been heralded as a genuine return to form. And, sure, it’s hard to imagine anyone not grinning like a loon playing a second sold out show at “the world’s most famous arena” in the early stages of what promises to be a very profitable tour. But there’s also genuine warmth on the stage, so much so that it even manages to break through old stone face Alex.

Another awkward truth which can’t be overlooked is that for all the esprit de corps in the Van Halen camp these days, they’re still trolling through the past without the mystical mullet of Michael Anthony, the band’s original bass guitarist whose vocal harmonies were an integral part of their signature sound for all those years. As with almost anything involving the history of Van Halen, the relationship was fraught with acrimony, and Anthony is nowhere to be seen or heard. Filling in on bass and backing vocals for the past few years is Eddie’s son Wolfgang, an official member of the band. Wolfgang clearly has the chops to perform with Van Halen, and he appeared comfortable in front of nearly 20,000 fans in New York City. Weeks shy of his 21st birthday, Wolfgang has been an official member of Van Halen since his mid-teens, a time when most fledgling rock musicians are fumbling in the garage through a haze of low grade weed and acne medication. To Wolfgang’s credit, he’s not only in his element on stage, but does nothing to deserve any criticism from Anthony purists longing for a “true” reunion.

Being a support act at Madison Square Garden is no picnic, as the vast arena looks empty until it’s close to full. Kool & the Gang, performing without singer James “J.T.” Taylor, might seem a curious choice as a tour opener, but aside from a few ardent rock fans who sit, arms crossed, in protest, they do their job by getting the crowd in a celebratory mood.

Then came Van Halen, with a performance that mostly sounded like it might have back in 1978 or 1984. But let’s get the bad news out of the way first. After a night where proficiency matched energy, they closed with “Jump”, which topped the charts in 1984. It’s hard to imagine a more ideal choice for a finale, and after mostly killing all night it was a total mess, with none of the musicians able to secure a toehold with the song’s signature keyboards, played here as a backing track. It was a disappointing end to a terrific show, and all the confetti and grand prix flag waving couldn’t obscure it.

There were also three solo moments for the band’s old timers. It was inevitable, of course, but also unnecessary. Midway through the set, the rest of Van Halen left the stage so Alex could prove he’s still got it. There is no greater primal thrill in rock & roll than his tribal drums in “Hot For Teacher”, and as he demonstrated later, he’s still more than capable of pulling its complexities off on stage.

Eddie’s solo, incorporating elements of “Eruption” and “Cathedral”, was also undeniably skilled, and probably even more appreciated by the crowd. But at the risk of committing heresy, it would have been perfectly fine being passed over, especially with his incendiary work on songs like “Runnin’ With the Devil” and “Everybody Wants Some” still hanging in the air.

Diamond Dave’s solo bit was predictably more puzzling, an acoustic run through of “Ice Cream Man” with pauses to narrate home movies about his dogs playing on the massive HD movie screen at the back of the stage.

But in the end, these are minor gripes, and what the night was really about was those fantastic songs and the performance. Van Halen was always about blending style and substance, and even as they’re older now than they were then, they’ve still got it. Eddie still shreds, Alex still destroys and Dave…Dave is still Dave. His voice is terrific and he’s in unbelievable shape, not only wearing his ass-hugging fancy pants with his version of dignity and grace, but also capably, acrobatically performing every strut, spin, split and kick we all remember from the “Jump” video.

The crowd ate it up with a spoon. Women with overly frosted hair and the dudes evenly split between old rockers, guys who want to be low-level mob enforcers and guys who consider Jason Statham a fashion and lifestyle template. Everybody wants some, indeed. And even 40 years after they first got together in Pasadena, California, Van Halen can still give it to them.

The tour winds across the U.S. and Canada through the end of June.

Kaiser Chiefs: Start the Revolution Without Me

Originally published by PopMatters on March 7, 2012

The path that led to the new Kaiser Chiefs album, Start the Revolution Without Me might not have been fraught with the same corporate tension as Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or the threats of legal action and long periods of lethargy as the Stone Roses’ Second Coming, but it’s still every bit as winding.

Kaiser Chiefs have lived inside a Britpop bubble since their debut album, Employment, arrived on the scene in 2005. It wasn’t the first go-round for the Kaiser Chiefs, of course. They began life as Parva, a short-lived incarnation given a quick burial after their record label folded. The band regrouped with a host of impossibly catchy terrace anthems and found themselves the heroes of those who either missed or lamented the loss of the mid-‘90s English aesthetic.

The band has stuck with the formula ever since, tweaking it here and there but ultimately relying on the strengths and weaknesses of their wry pop-craft. In the UK, the plan has seen relatively diminishing commercial returns come the Kaiser Chiefs’ way: 2007’s Yours Truly, Angry Mob was the high water mark on the charts, with both the album and its lead single (“Ruby”) hitting the toppermost of the poppermost. But it sold fewer than a third the amount of Employment. Off With Their Heads, the band’s 2008 album was produced by Mark Ronson, but did little to stop the precipitous slide.

And so the Kaiser Chiefs responded with a hiatus of sorts; as with many young bands who settle into a record-tour-record-tour rhythm, they found themselves in need of a breather. It lasted more than two years, but was over before anyone realized it might be. Which brings us to mid-2011 and the beginning of the Start the Revolution Without Mesaga.

With little advance fanfare, the Kaiser Chiefs returned with a grand scheme, uploading 20 new songs to their website in early June of that year and allowing fans to create their own albums comprising 10. Other fans would be allowed to peruse those creations, and if purchased, the initial compiler would receive a royalty of one British Pound Note. Members of the band contributed their own compilations, with their royalty going to charity. A few weeks later, an official 13-track release was issued as The Future Is Medieval.

The Kaiser Chiefs had attempted to make inroads in the U.S. before their break, hoping a tour supporting Green Day would bring them legions of new fans. But then they disappeared and the momentum failed.

The Future Is Medieval wasn’t released on this side of the Atlantic, and so with a North American tour looming – including high profile appearances at SXSW and Coachella – the Kaiser Chiefs reassembled some of the 20 songs from 2011 again, added one new one and called the albumStart the Revolution Without Me.

If your album is going to share its name with a film, you could do worse than the 1970 historical parody starring Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland. Loosely based on events surrounding the French Revolution, Start the Revolution Without Me predated the ‘80s rash of switched-at-birth flicks by over a decade and in addition to giving a boost to the powdered wig industry also gave Orson Welles a chance to flex his narration muscles. Whether we’re meant to draw a connection between the film and the album is unclear; it’s tricky enough to consider the songs here without comparing them to prior releases, so contemplating where Charles and Claude Coupé fit into the picture is unlikely to yield rewards.

Listening to Start the Revolution Without Me and forgetting The Future Is Medieval is easy enough because it has the feel of an album proper. The Kaiser Chiefs have sometimes been dismissed as lightweight pop wusses, to which I’d reply, “So what?” Though the radio often tries to convince us otherwise, pop songs don’t necessarily have to feature vocal histrionics or lazy guest appearances from Busta Rhymes. And that’s where the value in a band like the Kaiser Chiefs really lies. Their songs, for the most part, are difficult to not sing along to, no matter how unpopular that might make you during the morning commute.

Start the Revolution Without Me draws its title from a lyric to “Cousin in the Bronx”, a song which opens like the Charlatans’ Clash-lite ode to the city before it, “N.Y.C. (There’s No Need to Stop)”, with the sounds of the streets and police sirens. The song arrives midway through Start the Revolution Without Me, often the refuge to space fillers on other albums. Here, it’s one of the album’s strongest tracks, with the sort of chorus one can imagine a stadium full of faithful fans singing along with, and with a slinky guitar possibly turned up to entice the U.S. market.

On previous efforts, the music of Kaiser Chiefs has seen the message delivered with the smirking vocals of Ricky Wilson and the quirky keyboards of Nick “Peanut” Baines. Start the Revolution Without Me doesn’t get rid of those features, though the guitars of Andrew “Whitey” White and the drums of Nick Hodgson are generally higher in the mix than before. It’s not an unpleasing result, as on “Problem Solved” or “Little Shocks”, which served as the first official taste of theFuture Is Medieval material last year.

Hodgson also emerges here as a lead vocalist, singing the anthemic “Man on Mars” and the heartachy “If You Will Have Me” with enough weedy Lennonesque pathos that the notion of a solo album by a drummer wouldn’t be the worst idea ever. The newest track, “On the Run,” was worth waiting around for, a Frankenstein’s monster created from all the strengths of the Kaiser Chiefs.

If they can’t make a dent in the U.S. market in 2012, the Kaiser Chiefs can’t blame the quality ofStart the Revolution Without Me, a collection that manages to overcome the cobbled-together history of the material to become one of the band’s most complete-sounding collections sinceEmployment. It’s very British with enough American influence in the grooves that it’s worthy of comparisons to other bands who wore that mantle in the past like the Kinks and Blur.

8 out of 10

Paul McCartney: Kisses on the Bottom

Originally published by PopMatters on February 7, 2012


Let’s get the good news out of the way first: Paul McCartney’s new album of old standards isn’t quite as disappointing as Rod Stewart’s “Songbook” series.


Kisses on the Bottom, a… well… cheeky title taken from the lyric of the collection’s opening number, “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter”, originally popularized by Fats Waller and possibly a song which made the young McCartney giggle like a loon when he was a wee lad in Liverpool.


To his credit and sometimes also to his detriment, McCartney has been unafraid in the past of publicly flogging his personal playlists. Never mind that the Beatles often covered rock ‘n’ roll, soul and show tunes alike, but Macca’s solo canon includes two albums of raucous versions of tunes that supposedly made him put grease in his hair and pick up a guitar as a teenager. Here, McCartney is in crooner mode, backed by Diana Krall and her capable band and sticking almost exclusively to the microphone, pictured in the album’s artwork as one of those old-timey models that hangs upside-down and is encircled by a fancy bit of metal wire and was probably caked with Dean Martin’s booze breath.


McCartney has often been tagged as a purveyor of schmaltz, a reputation that he’s at least partly responsible for earning with numbers like “My Love” and “Ebony and Ivory”, the latter a duet with Stevie Wonder so corny it makes Macca’s “Pipes of Peace” seem like a work of great insight and importance by comparison. Wonder is here as well on “Only Our Hearts”, one of just two McCartney originals on the album; the Motown legend doesn’t sing, but instead plays a harmonica solo so uncharacteristically abrasive, I almost used it to file my nails.


Elsewhere, the music is so inoffensive and gently wrought that it’s difficult to generate any enthusiasm in either direction. It proved challenging to accentuate the positive in the cover of “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive”, because it sounds as though it was hastily performed to test the mics and was accidentally included in the final mix. “My Friend the Milkman” has McCartney doing a probably-unintentional Carol Channing impersonation and is possibly even weirder than that looks in print.


It’s hard to completely knock Kisses on the Bottom because McCartney is in love and as history will tell us, McCartney in love makes for a flowery broth. Indeed, some of the songs themselves are quite good. “My Valentine”, a McCartney original featuring tasteful guitar from Eric Clapton, is one of the album’s genuinely captivating tunes. “We Three (My Echo, My Shadow and Me)” is also quite good, a lush orchestral number arranged by Johnny Mandel with a breathy McCartney vocal that’s just about as perfect as it’s likely to get here.


McCartney is clearly enthusiastic for the project, wearing the velvet lapels and smoky ambience with a natural comfort. And maybe he saw what Stewart’s done over the past decade-plus and thought he might as well take a crack at it and move a few units in the process. If there’s even a whisper of commercial ambition here, it’s at least a toned-down version. The guest stars are few—Wonder and Clapton, but most importantly Krall—and their contributions seem less a sales gimmick than they could. Yes, the intentions seem mostly pure, and if buoyed by love of the music and of how it expresses McCartney’s own fondness for romance, and if that all sounds way too saccharine sweet for your tastes, it probably is.


As musical interpretations of romance go, Kisses on the Bottom may only get you about halfway there, flowers in hand wondering whether a second date is on the cards, unsure if that’s even what you want at all.


6 out of 10

The Lemonheads Bring 'It's a Shame About Ray' to Brooklyn

Originally published by PopMatters on January 17, 2012

It’s 1992 all over again. The Lemonheads played a sold out show at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory on Wednesday night, the conceit being a run through It’s a Shame About Ray – the breakout album which put Lemon-leader Evan Dando’s lustrous locks squarely in the hearts and minds of neophyte hipsters from sea to shining sea. The gig was the first of a lengthy tour which sees the band give its regards to the Deep South and Midwest, flirt with the West Coast and ultimately return to the NYC-metropolitan area for a pair of mid-March shows at Hoboken’s legendary venue, Maxwell’s.

I say “band” despite the common knowledge that the Lemonheads have effectively served as a Dando solo venture since even before It’s a Shame About Ray introduced Generation X to timeless pop songwriting, albeit viewed through a grimy slacker lens. Anyway, finding offense in Dando touring as the Lemonheads is an absurd notion, since even in the busiest of times he never had the same musicians around him for more than a couple of years at best. The Lemonheads, for better or worse, are all about Evan Dando.

The guys on stage with Dando at the Knitting Factory, and in all likelihood the entirety of the tour to follow, sound great. The drums are sometimes overly flashy for performances which otherwise stick close to the original arrangements, but that’s a minor quibble at best. What’s perhaps most apparent on the stage with the current incarnation of the Lemonheads is this: Everyone is clearly having a very good time. And as long as you’re taking a trip through the past, you might as well enjoy it.

Evan Dando’s past is nothing if not notorious, an often grim bacchanalia of drugs, excess and hanging out with the likes of Oasis and Courtney Love. That he survived at all would be worthy of note on its own, but the sobering truth is that he’s not only survived, but he still looks fantastic. This superhero has been through wringer after wringer and still looks as though he stepped off a surfboard and onto the stage. He’s in trim fighting shape, still has a full head of messy, sexy hair and is still the handsomest guy in any room he’ll ever enter. For those of us who awake looking like a pile of broken dreams after a night where, “Okay, but just one more beer” is the exception rather than the norm, this will either come as welcome news or as sure a sign as any that life just isn’t fair.

But we want the Evan Dando we remember from back when we first fell for the scamp, and if he’s had to arrange some sort of Picture of Dorian Gray deal with the devil to preserve that, well that’s cool with us. Whatever he’s done, its working. I didn’t have to squint my eyes and pretend or con myself or whatever, because the perfectly disheveled guy on stage looks like he stepped out of a time machine from one of those extremely ‘90s videos the band made, right down to the same guitar, the same t-shirt, the same knowing smirk. He’s also come armed with the same songs, which in case it’s been a while since you’ve heard them, are bona fide classics.

The first sign of trouble for the original Lemonheads, or so the legend goes, was partly ego-based, but perhaps more tellingly was down to the fact that Dando’s growth as a songwriter was pushing him into the spotlight. It’s why the Lemonheads can tour It’s a Shame About Ray and from stem to stern, there’s no waste, no moment where the concept falls flat. Okay, so the album clocks in at just shy of thirty minutes, but the songs are so perfectly written, so beautifully wrought that nothing is inessential.

But before the full-band run through the album, Dando hits the stage for a brisk run through a few songs on acoustic guitar, beginning with “Being Around” from Come on Feel the Lemonheads, as charming a song with the word “booger” in it as you’re ever likely to hear. Dando performed solo again after the sequential run through It’s a Shame About Ray, as well, playing songs of his own as well as the odd cover, such as “Streets of Baltimore”, a tune most closely associated with the late Gram Parsons.

Whether the night’s most effective sing-a-long strikes the same chord on the road remains to be seen. “Frank Mills”, the song from the musical Hair which closes It’s a Shame About Ray, is rife with local references: “He lives in Brooklyn somewhere” got a predictably huge cheer, as did Dando wryly observing mid-song that the Waverly was now called the IFC Center.

The crowd was largely comprised of fans who remember what the Lemonheads sounded like when “college rock” morphed into “alternative rock”, but that’s hardly a prerequisite for attending a Lemonheads show. The songs are truly timeless, and if Dando is going to keep delivering them with geniality, good humor and gusto, it’s worth putting away your CD’s for the night and enjoying them live.