waywardpanties.com

Initially, I was skeptical about this King Khan guy. I mean, I don’t want to sound crass here, but an Indian guy trying to deliver funk sounded like the next bad Mike Myers movie.

Well, King Khan and The Shrines put on a show Friday night that was more than enough to exorcise any anti-Funkindian sentiments I had. I actually don’t even know if Khan is Indian or Pakistani or what. I do know he’s Canadian, and that he wouldn’t be upset if he read this racist-sounding review, because Khan’s above all that. The makeup of his band proves it: Ron Streeter, Curtis Mayfield’s live percussionist? There’s the Official Stamp of Funk Approval, and actually the selling point for me.

Khan came out like James Brown Himself, shiny silver cape flapping in the fans of the Larimer’s dance flo’. And then they just rocked the s*** out of the Larimer. All the heel-tapping hipsters barely knew what to do with themselves when Khan spat his bootylicious pushaman soundscape all over their faces. They figured it out eventually, with the help of Khan’s Fly Girl, who looked like she had come straight from a rollerderby match, but had more moves than a chessmatch. Khan is an act that defies description so, you just have to listen to them. Need recommendations? Sweet Tooth and Took My Lady Out To Dinner (with a chorus: She’s fat! She’s ugly! I really, really love her! x4) were my favorites of the evening. But it was all good.

My friend Billy and I got to the show just in time to order a couple beers and stake out a sweet spot right behind the sound man, and we got to listen to DJ Rare Groove chain about 10 classic hip-hop beats together in 10 minutes without a millisecond of undesigned sound.

It went a little like this: Puff Daddy’s Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems, Paul Revere by The Beastie Boys, Biz Markie’s Just A Friend, Ini Kamoze singing “Out in de streets… they call it murrr-derrr…”. We looked to the stage, and Rare Groove was smoking something. I don’t know what, exactly. But the next song was Bob Marley telling us to Stand Up For Your Right, and then we were Jamming. With Bob Marley. Then, Groove let us know this was his Denver set when he mixed Bob’s Jamming into a sped-up Passin’ Me By (by Boulder’s own Pharcyde). Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, Groove wrapped it up with Snoop Doggy Dogg… by Snoop Dogg. Everybody was dancing. Even those people who can’t dance were dancing. Smoke was everywhere. Love was everywhere. Abstract Rude came out. We danced. Atmosphere came out. We laughed. I almost cried (really). We danced. I tried to talk to Abstract Rude, and he was rude to me… but abstractly. I think he was mad Billy and I were dancing with his girls. Boo-yah.

My personal experience aside, though, Slug and Ant have really honed their sound on their new release, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Sh** Gold. The most beautiful thing about hip-hop is how just about anyone can start out, rapping over ’stolen’ beats and old soul loops, which makes hip-hop and indie go hand-in-hand. And just as the more successful indie rock bands eventually get the time and money to really put out an album that lives up to their artistic vision, Atmosphere has come into its own with Gives You Lemons, crafting hip-hop tracks that remind you of the first rap song you liked, the one that made you see through the stigma to the art itself. Songs that remind you it’s okay to bob your head, no matter what color you are. So, is Atmosphere going to let the rap game get to their heads? Not likely. Through the whole show, Slug was talking to the audience like old friends, giving Denver props for showing so much love, even back in like ‘98. But even if you’re not hardcore like that, if you think it’s been a while since you’ve heard some decent hip-hop with lyrics you can live with listening to, check out Atmosphere’s new album. They also have a clean version of Shoulda Known that’ll convince you if you’re not convinced already.

Coming into the show this past Saturday, I knew there was going to be a lot of dancing involved. A lot. And to start it all of was dj Michael Trundle (aka Boyhollow), a widely known fixture in the Denver music scene. Unfortunately, I had to miss his set due to band list issues, but from what I could hear outside the venue, he played a loud, bass-pumped set.

Following Trundle, a newer ensemble in the local music scene, Astro Moveo hit the stage as the first band of the night. Made up of several well-known musicians around town, the group’s energy along with their provocative, electro rock made it nearly impossible to not dance throughout their whole performance. I sure found this to be true and so did a bunch of others (including those who bared a striking resemblance to the cast of “Growing up Gotti”). I have to say these gents are quickly becoming one of my favorite Denver bands.

The U.K.’s, Does It Offend You, Yeah? continued on with the evening’s entertainment. I couldn’t help falling in love with the band solely because of Morgan Quaintance’s (the lead singer) whole throw-back to the 80s outfit and spunky charisma. There was quite a bit of interaction with the audience with Quaintance asking multiple times about where the after party was since the group had the following day off from tour. And the music wasn’t too shabby either. The Bluebird was filled with super dancey, electro-punk songs and the crowd was constantly bouncing around and yelling shouts of approval. My favorite song was the loud and rambunctious, “Let’s Make Out.” After DIOYY’s show, quite a bit of the theater cleared out, making it obvious that they were the main attraction of night’s bill.

I have to admit I haven’t been to many hip hop shows. So I don’t really have much to compare Yo Majesty’s set to. But I enjoyed what I heard. I don’t know if I can really say “saw,” since at one point one of the ladies took it upon herself to take her top off and walk around on stage with absolutely NOTHING on for quite a while. I will give her props, however, for having no reservation at all being in half of her birthday suite around a whole lot of strangers, because there’s no way I could ever do that. With their dj in the center of the stage, the Yo Majesty ladies meandered back and forth rapping song after song while involving the audience at the same time. With loud and fast beats, the sound was a mixture of electronic fused hip hop and funk. And from what I observed, those left at the Bluebird enjoyed the group’s offering. Even though there was a significant number of less people in the theater during their set, the energy always stayed high. Yo Majesty never stopped delivering. And that in my opinion, that helps make a show (and group) successful.

It has come to my attention that I have gained a bit of a reputation as “the mean one” here at Wayward Panties, and I have to admit that I don’t mind the moniker. I believe in yin and yang, and I have no problem being the resident mean girl opposite my girl Tiffany. I tend to have high expectations and am not easily impressed. I go into a lot of shows setting the bar pretty high. So when I showed up at the Gothic for the Augustana show last night to see a multitude of teenage tanning-booth victims and a KBCO tent at the gate, I bought myself a Peroni and steeled myself for the worst.

But here’s the thing. Opening act David Ford blew me away. I didn’t know what to make of the softspoken, beared and fedora-wearing man onstage with a tiny piano. When he started live-looping, I even rolled my eyes a bit (Oh great, I thought, live looping is officially played out). But when he really found his groove, this British artist had this great, symphonic sound that is striking if only because he’s the only guy up there. But the thing that really got me is his sweet, raspy sound and pretty, heartwrenching songwriting. For those of us who love Tom Waits, we have been waiting for a long time for someone to resurrect the slightly-emo, charmingly optimistic, staggeringly talented spirit of his younger years. And David Ford presents a solid argument in his own favor for this role.

Ford’s live-looping technique breaks from the styles of Andrew Bird and the like by building to incredible crescendo, starting with a maraca or two, adding a guitar and drum riff, and then exploding in sound at the very end. But he doesn’t use this technique as a gimmick- he’s as comfortable and effective just sitting alone at his piano as he is adding tracks to his looping creations. And his between-song banter, unimposing and drily, well, British, just adds to the effect. I’d happily see David Ford again, just to see how he continues to explore both basic songwriting and his large-scale live-looping experiments.

David Ford’s people paid for my ticket, so I’m focusing mainly on his set (short as it was) but I believe Wild Sweet Orange deserves a mention as well. I tend to think of songs cinematically, and Wild Sweet Orange would create one hell of a soundtrack for a film where two people leave each other, move far away, and finally realize they can’t live without each other and rush to each other’s arms. They oscillate between the sweetly romantic and a kind of train-inspired, Southern traveling-song style that I’ve always loved, whether done by Willie Nelson or Bright Eyes.

As for Augustana, the headliners, I was not terribly impressed. As they took the stage, I finally realized why the aforementioned tanorexic teens had bugged their parents to take them to this show. These overstyled, overproduced rockers came off (to me, at least) as a musical Hot Topic, a way to commercially benefit from standard-issue teen angst. Their radio-friendly sound isn’t bad per se, just not my style. And so to avoid putting a sour taste in my mouth after seeing the first two excellent acts, I quietly slipped away into the night.

But what’s important here is that somewhere between David Ford’s inspired piano and Wild Sweet Orange’s cool, Southern rock, I realized I was really loving the music. I was tapping a stiletto-clad foot and humming to the melody. I was jotting down lyrics that I liked and contemplating buying the CD at the door. And for this mean girl, that’s a big deal.

Running late as usual, I arrived just in time to see the end of Mark Mallman’s set. I will only say that he was highly entertaining, the keys were covered in leopard print and there was a lone dude dancing near the bar like the moves couldn’t stay inside him another second. Fantastic. I wish I had been more punctual.

It was a surprisingly short wait to get all of the members of Dark Meat onto the itsy-bitsy Hi Dive stage. I counted 12, but that was when the action had started, so I could have missed some. The instrumentation was stellar. A brass section, a piccolo, a violin, 2 drummers, singers, keys, guitars. Oh, my! The band nerd in me was in heaven.

When the first song started, it was laced with 70’s era harmony. Then the horns kicked in. POW! Again, the internal band nerd shivered. The varience of instruments, vocal stylings and genre not only held my attention late on a Thursday night, but kept me up thinking about how I could possibly describe the evening without the use of a thousand exclamation points.

By the end of the night, I was speechless… well as speechless as I get. And that just means me quoting the lead singer’s introductions to the songs. “This is a true story about when me and my cousin got into some shit.” A true story indeed.

The show opened up with a pounding kick drum and the first few notes of “This World Is Not My Home”, and as the music swelled, I found myself lining up a shot at the hi-dive’s lone pool table, singing at the top of my lungs “Lord, take me awaay! This worrld is not my home! I won’t need a thinng! Love will be my home! Love, love, love… love, love, love!” The four or five friends I had invited out to the show all looked at me as if I was a crazy man. In their defense, lead singer Chris Adolf hadn’t started singing yet, and my friends didn’t yet know I was singing the lyrics to the song being played. And really, who just starts singing “Lord, take me awaay! This world is not my home!” while playing a game of pool at a dive bar? A crazy man.

But that’s just the sort of song Bad Weather California plays, songs that seem to take root in you and well up out of you and songs that you can’t help singing along to, even if you’ve only heard them once or twice. And they play them well, and they play them differently almost every show.

And then the strangest thing happens… the hi-dive, which had up until last night been, for me, one of those bars that made me feel out of the loop or not on the scene or just plain not cool enough, suddenly felt like my bar, the place I hung out at. I suddenly realized that all of that loop/scene/cool stuff was just in my head. Maybe it was because I was with my friends and we were just hanging out playing pool while Bad Weather California, the best band in Denver, was playing the soundtrack to our evening, but I like to believe that it was the love. The love coming out clear over the speakers and into everyone’s brains was what made that big scary hi-dive feel like home to me. But you can believe what you want, right?

I’ll be honest- I’m used to shows starting late, and seeing as how I was still nursing my Sputnik-Brunch-Induced hangover around 3 p.m. or so the day of the Islands show, I didn’t show up to the Bluebird until 9:30, after both opening bands had played. So I’m afraid I still have no opinion of We Are, We Are or Ancient Mith. Apologies.

But Islands sufficiently rocked a good-sized school night crowd Monday, to a world-music-infused brand of indie rock from my current favorite rock region: French Canada. The band’s first song reminded me a lot of local heroes d.Biddle, with a heavy Western twinge and a melancholy drone. But things changed pretty distinctly with the rest of the set, with songs a little like what you might get if you put Paul Simon’s “Graceland” in a blender with a non-annoying version of They Might Be Giants and the tiniest touch of metal guitar. This doesn’t sound like it would work. But it does. Enough to make me declare this one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time.

While it’s nothing new in the current music milieu to have any number of exotic instruments in a rock band, the challenge is to use them not only to advantage but as more than a gimmick. Islands managed to involve guitars, viola, violin, bass clarinet, bass, keyboards and an adorably enthusiastic drummer in a cohesive and symphonic mix.

The only critique I really have with this show was that the sound wasn’t the best I’ve heard at the ‘Bird. Vocals got lost in the mix and sometimes strings and sax got drowned out by guitar. Other than that, Islands reminded me of the reason I would drag my hungover ass to any venue on a work night. Because every once in a blue moon, you get something like this.

Who am I to turn down a free The Knew show? Even if I’ve had an eleven-hour day at the scootershop, a lousy knight’s sleep, and not nearly enough caffeine to carry me into the wee hours of the night?

Well, it was not an easy battle to fight, staying up after a hellish work day and the looong bike ride home. But the lineup at Old Curtis Street last night promised a hell of a finale: the spoken-word work of my friend Charly “The City Mouse” Fasano and the gritty rock fabulosity of The Knew. So despite the fact that my body wanted only to curl into the fetal position and dream of a world without difficult scootershop customers, I jumped back on my trusty tenspeed and headed down the the tavern for some rock with Lady Tiffany.

I’ll be frank. The first band, King for a Day, was not terribly impressive. Their sound was an earnest blending of The Gin Blossoms and The Mountain Goats, unoffensive mid-nineties rock the likes of which you’d hear in a movie staring Ethan Hawke and oh, I dunno, Parker Posey or something. Not really my style, and kind of a weird choice to preface the band ahead.

Next up, The Jim Jims were a little better, a little edgier, but someone nearby remarked that the only reason we were really enjoying them was that they made for a nice reprieve from the previous band. Definitely drawing from The White Stripes and The Killers, The Jim Jims weren’t doing anything new, but at least they weren’t doing anything wrong. I probably wouldn’t make a special trip to see these guys as a headliner but they were, at least, a more appropriate choice to open for The Knew.

The main event of the evening was Charly Fasano’s book release, so the second band’s set was followed by some poetry reading by Fasano’s colleague, Scooter James. At this point I was so deliriously tired I am pretty sure I’d fallen asleep on the guy next to me (nice to meet you by the way, sorry about the drool on your shoulder), but I managed to sit through his set and got to see Charly perform with a cellist (neat beatnik touch, Charly). And finally, when my eyeballs were about to physically reject my contact lenses, The Knew came on.

This is the first time I’d seen this band, and they didn’t disappoint. Old Curtis St. probably has the world’s worst sound outside of a P.A. system at your local bingo hall, but they made the best of it with their bombastic, garagey style. They really made me want to stay, despite my body’s protestations to leave and get into bed. I managed three of their dancey songs, growing even more tired watching Megan bounce around the dance floor as though she had every ounce of energy I didn’t. But I would definitely make it to another The Knew show. They lit up the dingey room with their kinetic rock.

I’d say I’ve dragged this out long enough. Here are the rest of my scattered thoughts about my week in Austin.

The Blow is completely awesome. It’s hard to get a room full of anti-dancing hipsters to wave their hand in the air. See here. But, Khaela Maricich made it look easy. Here is a video on Uncensored Interview that briefly talks about why I love this artist so much.

Land of Talk’s singer/guitarist Elizabeth Powell has this strangely attractive masculinity in her stage manner. And their drummer has the best facial expressions ever. Oh yeah, and their music rocks.

My favorite new discovery in Austin hands down was Fishboy. This Denton, TX group has a rock opera and when I saw them they played it start to finish. For the finale the keyboardist somersaulted through the crowd and played his last notes with his feet while laying on the ground under his keyboards. Like this:

They f’ing rocked it even though there were maybe a dozen people in the audience.

Via Audio is a terrific indie pop group from Brooklyn with the cutest lead singer that has the most awesome voice ever. What? They sang a song about Godzilla that hasn’t been recorded yet, but that I’m definitely looking forward to. Incidentally, I watched their show shoulder to shoulder with Britt Daniels. Yes, the Britt Daniels of Spoon.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? are completely manic. At the start of their show they told the crowd, “All we want to see is hands in the air and fucking dancing!” The crowd was happy to oblige. The bassist played his instrument on the rafters above him. That is when he wasn’t swinging from them himself. Manic.

Slim Cessna had a crowd full of Denverites and inspired more dancing than any of the other acts I saw all week, including the DJ sets. Slim and Munly were their usual throe-inducing selves. Badass.

Monotonix is an insane rock band from Tel Aviv whose lead singer kicked Ricardo in the face at least twice while crowd surfing. The band brought their instruments one by one into the crowd until at the very end the whole band and all their instruments were crowd surfing for the grand, and I do mean grand, finale. Here is a picture of the kick drum being passed around.

Emo’s annex had the nicest port-o-potties I’ve ever seen. Girls were pink and boys were blue. I only know that the pink ones smelled light a light perfume and hand tons of TP and hand sanitizer. Well done, Emo’s. Well done. And yes, there is a bar named Emo’s, a fact that amuses my friend Kelly to no end.

Two Gallants had the most difficulty I’ve ever seen a band have on stage. They had lots of sound problems, the kick drum pedal broke during the first song, the harmonica fell out of its holder during another. You think of an onstage problem and they had it. Yet they still managed to deliver a fantastic set. Best group to overcome in the face of adversary at SXSW I believe.

I completely love Tokyo Police Club, which is why it was fitting they were the last band I saw at SXSW. The only disappointment was their guitarist wasn’t there so they had the sound guy filling in. It was still good, but it wasn’t as good.

Finally, my biggest SXSW disappointment was that I got onto the Playboy party guest list, which featured DJ sets by Moby and Justice as the headliner, only I didn’t know about the secret media door because that email went to my spam folder. BALDERDASH! So after waiting for an hour in the regular line I gave up and left. Thereby missing my chance to see the party I was looking forward to most at SXSW. Ah, well, there’s always next year….

Here are some other people’s Words and Pictures though.

PSes

Here is pretty much the best rock picture I took all week long (which really says something about my photography skills or the amount of liquor I had in my system.) It’s Matt Smith of Thee Emergency:

And here is me, in case you ever wondered what I look like:

You can see more of those here.

Good day.

Post-rock is a stupid name for an amazing genre of music. I would like to propose that we change the name to “cinema rock,” which more appropriately characterizes the way in which this particular kind of music can function as a sweeping soundtrack to life, bringing depth and dimension to even mundane moments. Because nothing as heart-rending as what I saw last night is done justice by the term “post rock.” Explosions is the music I put on when I need a good cry, when I’m sleepy but need a little sound to put me to bed, and yes, it’s a part of my “makeout” playlist on iTunes. It has literally been the background score for some of the most pivotal moments in my life. And I have always imagined what the band must look like when creating their furiously beautiful sound. So in a way, last night was like I was being introduced to someone for the first time who has somehow intimately been there for me for several years.

I will not spend much time here speaking about the opening band. Here is what you need to know: Lichens is pretty terrible, and I was very, very ready for the one-man-act to leave the stage. Imagine Yoko Ono whining into a microphone while a vacuum cleaner blares in the background. There ya go. The boyfriend and I discussed how it might only work if it were the soundtrack for someone being hacked to bits in a Tarantino movie, set somewhere in the Sonoran Desert. Just grating, pretentious and bad.

Moving on.

Explosions absolutely lived up to their name. They’re not big guys (or at least, they looked small from the balcony) but their big sound and big energy filled the space. The most impressive part of all their music is their impeccable precision. This is not sloppy rock, this is trained, practiced, complex rock. A bad drummer will not ruin a band, but a good drummer (and Chris Hrasky is insanely good) will absolutely take the band to a different level. With his bass thumping a heartbeat through even the band’s roughest songs, and a military-style tattoo creating just enough tension, Hrasky’s drumming alone would make any band good. But with the symphonic guitars of Munaf Rayani, Mark Smith and Michael James, Explosions becomes a force of nature. From friendly opening banter to crashing finale, the show simply rocked.

Not post-rocked. Just rocked.