Live Music | girlpants
Category: Live Music

Chris Knox benefit show, Jeff Mangum, Yo La Tengo etc

Last year, New Zealand musi­cian Chris Knox (of Tall Dwarfs fame) suf­fered a series of debil­i­tating strokes. You have doubt­less heard about the ben­efit album, which fea­tures an wide cat­a­logue of artists like Will Oldham, Jay Reatard, and Girl­pants favorites the Moun­tain Goats, all cov­ering songs from Knox’s impres­sive back cat­a­logue. When Pitch­fork announced there would be a ben­efit show on May 6th at Manhattan’s strangest-named venue (Le) Poisson Rouge, it included one par­tic­u­larly thrilling bit of news. The elu­sive Jeff Mangum will do an acoustic set along­side Yo La Tengo, The Clean, Por­tastatic, Kyp Malone, John Mulaney, Claudia Gonson, Dimmer, and Sharon Van Etten to help ben­efit his friend Knox.

Mangum’s pub­li­cist com­mented that the show did not signal the begin­ning of a come­back, but was rather a move to aid an old friend in a time of crisis. No matter what the reason is, though, Mangum’s pres­ence on the bill no doubt but fueled the furious phil­an­thropy that sold the show out in twenty min­utes flat on Kick­starter (I know this because I too was there, obses­sively refreshing the page, to bring Ghast­ly­pants the scoop) (and to buy myself a ticket) (yes I am going) (OMG). At last glance, the show brought in over forty grand, all of which will go to ben­efit Knox and help him in his recovery. To ensure this, the orga­nizers are taking a firm stance against scalpers, electing to revoke ticket priv­i­leges from those who attempt pub­licly to sell their slots.

Finn Family — “It’s Love”

The track above is off the com­pi­la­tion. Even though it has nothing to do with most of what I said above, I am posting it because it made me smile. You can (and should) buy the album here. And, although the show is sold out now, you can still track the dona­tions and con­tribute here at Kick­starter.

No Comments by Niina on April 2, 2010
filed in Live Music, Music, News, mp3
tagged , , , , , , , ,

Kate Miller-Heidke, Joe’s Pub 3-15-2010

On Monday, March 15th 2010, I found myself in the inti­mate front lobby of New York venue Joe’s Pub (4th Avenue between 7th and 8th Street, New York), standing around awk­wardly bumping into patrons on the top tier of the jazz club-y space with my media jug­ger­naut BFF Rohin. He did his best to remain cool and aloof as we waited; I did my best to bump into everyone and spill snacks from my bag onto the floor (gen­er­ally in public, I’m like a soccer mom only without the kids). But even­tu­ally we over­flowed into some seats. Joe’s Pub is meant for an audi­ence of a cer­tain size; any­thing beyond that, and things get uncom­fort­able, but for Brisbane-based singer-songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke’s US opener it was almost cer­tainly the per­fect venue. Tuesday marked the begin­ning of Miller-Heidke’s Amer­ican tour, and the day before, her album Curi­ouser was also released here.

Joe’s Pub is part dinner the­atre, part dark night­club, part music venue, and (unlike most New York venues), they like to keep things on the clock. There was no opening act, and Kate got onstage promptly at 7:30 with her gui­tarist (and, mixing busi­ness and plea­sure, her hus­band) Kier Nut­tall. Awash with the gor­geous lighting of the venue and clearly stoked about the recep­tive crowd, the pair opened with “Pol­i­tics in Space.” This song is agree­ably per­cus­sive and funny and a great opener. Listen here:

Kate Miller-Heidke — “Pol­i­tics in Space”

It is true that Miller-Heidke is quirky and deserves the com­par­isons to famous alien pop lady weirdos (cheap com­par­isons I’ll save for other blogs, really). But she also has her own pecu­liar­i­ties: her voice changes pitch and octave in unpre­dictable and inter­esting ways, and she’s really used to using it as an instru­ment (like on her single “Can’t Shake It”). She also gets down­right gritty some­times, banging fever­ishly on the piano keys and roaring like a demon, or unleashing oper­atic notes as her tam­bourine breaks on her hip. These moments are when I like Miller-Heidke best (but everyone who knows me knows that I have always been one for Vegas-lounge-queen-grade melo­drama). This is why it sur­prised me when­ever she show­cased one of her more tra­di­tion­ally written songs – pre­dictably pro­gressing piano bal­lads with emo­tional lyrics, lovely but some­what too Lilith Fair (songs like “Caught in the Crowd” and the platinum-going “Last Day On Earth”, both tidy and nice but not for me).

But I don’t want to quibble. The set was clever, well played, inter­esting, and great fun to listen to. Miller-Heidke’s stage banter (some­thing that I usu­ally cringe about *cough* TORIAMOS *cough*) is absolutely endearing and won’t pander to anyone, including the audi­ence or the venue – at one point she stopped and pro­claimed that she had never before played any­where that smelled of “such pun­gent fish,” refer­ring to the food a patron in front was enjoying. And we got to hear her excel­lent Britney Spears cover, com­plete with the afore­men­tioned opera flour­ishes. Really, if you like music with per­son­ality (and clearly you do or you wouldn’t be here at Griz­zly­pants), and you are lucky enough to be in one of the towns Miller-Heidke and Nut­tall will be hit­ting on their tour, you should go hear out their rather incom­pa­rable pop brand.

Finally, for some top­ical humor (as opposed to the “trop­ical humor” of the malaria-related prac­tical joke Mike tried to play on the office after one of his Africa jaunts), hear out this little ditty:

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6 Comments by Niina on March 19, 2010
filed in Live Music, Music, Reviews, Video, mp3
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list & listlessness: an american journey

Handsome portrait of Richard McGrawThere’s been some­thing wicked and deadly in the New York air that’s making me listen to Amer­i­cana. I’ve near worn out my copy of Emmylou Harris’s Thir­teen on the record player, and I’ve been out­fit­ting myself in gen­uine honest-to-god colors like red and blue and white. I’m not sure what’s going on there, but I think it’s worthy of noting (fellow Girl­pantsers have found it pretty fear­some, con­sid­ering my usual xenophilia). Anyway, there is some­thing to be said for when an Amer­i­cana jangle can be emo­tional yet non-maudlin, singsongy yet unpre­dictable — and “Hurting Heart” by Richard McGraw (off his album Burying the Dead) man­ages all of these. It fea­tures many classic ele­ments, which I will now delin­eate to you in a helpful list format. Here, have a listen and read along.

Richard McGraw — “Hurting Heart”

  1. The begin­ning verse — sung with an endear­ingly breaking voice — acknowl­edges the wrong­ness of the narrator’s love sit­u­a­tion (you’re with someone else now), and makes a self-conscious ref­er­ence to the song itself (“so I wrote you this song”).
  2. 45 sec­onds in, McGraw intro­duces the man-versus-himself theme (common in country, blue­grass, and all other types of classic songwriting) of wishing to over­come per­sonal bias in order to become a better man. In this case, better-mandom involves bearing the love interest’s ring at her wed­ding; enter the dev­as­tating emo­tional crux of this song.
  3. He fol­lows this rev­e­la­tion with the word­less relief of an infi­nitely sing-along-able “La la la” refrain. Note this refrain; it will proudly reap­pear in Point 6.
  4. McGraw then intro­duces a tinge of wry humor that both acknowl­edges the des­perate predica­ment and dis­misses the new partner as infe­rior and even gim­micky (“I could teach you how not to let go / But why you wanna learn that girl I don’t know / Your bohemian friend has got you tied up now / And I don’t think that you’ll ever come down”).
  5. Then, enter the chorus twice, to set up for the final crescendo: 
  6. The second layer of sin­ga­long chorus: “I know it’s all wrong, I know it’s all wrong” lay­ered WITH “La la la” — a genius sticky song­writing move ensuring you’ll be singing this song for days. 
  7. A clean outro rem­i­nis­cent of the begin­ning of the song, but also invoking the tidy way that the nar­rator decides to dis­en­gage with the situation.

Bingo, Richard McGraw. You’ve hit the nail of heartache square on the head without ham­mering that shit to death. You under­stand sub­tlety; this much I know from your MySpace, which pro­claims you’ve never used the words “Cal­i­fornia” or “LA” in a song. Bril­liant movez all around.

Now, if any of you Great­pants readers reside in New York the way that I do, you should know: McGraw will be per­forming on Friday March 5th at the Amer­ican Folk Art Museum, as part of the Free Fri­days, along with readers from the Under­water New York project.
 

2 Comments by Niina on March 3, 2010
filed in Listmakery, Live Music, Music
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On the off chance we’ve got any S. Florida readers…

Come see girlpants-associated post rock godz Pink Panzer play Miami. Meet the band! Meet the staff! Booze it up! If you need a couple Pink Panzer traxx to whet yr appetite, check this old post, in which I get real excited about them. [Pink Panzer / Quiet River High / Echo Me, Astro­naut]
2 Comments by Ben on March 4, 2006
filed in Douchebaggery, Live Music, Music