Recap: Richard Thompson at First Avenue

If you’re not close enough at a Richard Thompson concert to see his fingers dancing across his guitar neck, you’re missing one of the most consistently sublime sights in the world of rock music. Thompson moves with such fluidity that it’s astonishing that he’s 61 years old and can still make such virtuosity seem effortless.

That blazing fretwork shone with full force Saturday at First Avenue, where Thompson wrapped up his U.S. tour backing his latest album, Dream Attic. Eschewing an opening act, Thompson instead commanded the stage for the entire evening, playing two sets backed by the quartet with whom he recorded the new album earlier this year. With a leopard-print scarf giving a dash of color to his usual ensemble of black beret, black shirt, and black jeans, he first zipped track-by-track through Dream Attic in its entirety, followed by what he wryly termed “some of our hits-with-a-small-H.”

Originally published Nov. 8, 2010 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.

Review: Cloud Cult, Light Chasers

Dealing with grief has been the primary driving force behind Craig Minowa’s songwriting since the 2002 death of his 2-year-old son. It’s been at the heart of each subsequent Cloud Cult album, providing a grounding element to his cosmically minded, vaguely New Age-y explorations of the big philosophical questions of life and our place in the universe. It’s significant then that Light Chasers is Minowa’s first since the 2009 birth of Nova, his second son with wife and bandmate Connie. On its eighth studio album, Cloud Cult’s musical approach remains a sweeping mix of Arcade Fire-esque indie rock, electronica, and symphonically tinged folk—but new fatherhood brings a subtle, important shift in focus. Light Chasers isn’t about living with death, but about becoming better equipped for the journey through life. Minowa, who also produced, dives in with typical gusto, building the album into a sprawling, intricately interconnected 56-minute concept that often soars into emotionally operatic, cathartic heights. At their best, as on “Blessings” and “Today We Give Ourselves To The Fire,” Minowa’s songs are like hymns for a religion that hasn’t been invented yet. In weaker moments, they come across more like a self-help book, and occasional overindulgent touches, like the processed robotic vocals on “The Exploding People,” exacerbate that. It’s fitting, perhaps, that one of the album’s sparest songs, “You Were Born,” is also one of its most powerful—a simply stated father’s declaration of love.

Originally published Sept. 21, 2010 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.

Buy the album. (Amazon.com link)

Review: Private Dancer, Alive In High Five

Private Dancer has one simple mission: to rock out. And that hasn’t changed now that the band is on album number two. The Minneapolis quintet knocked out a charmingly ragged, boisterous mix of garage-rock and psychedelia on its 2008 debut, Trouble Eyes, and its new follow-up, Alive In High Five, follows the template so closely it may as well have been titled Trouble Eyes Part II. Party anthems, monster riffs, and belt-’em-out choruses are still the order of the day, and there’s even a literal sequel in space-rocker “2,000 Year Wave,” following Trouble’s surf-inflected instrumental “1,000 Year Wave.”

But who needs change? Private Dancer’s appeal—particularly live, where it can be electrifying—is all about angst-free, uncomplicated enthusiasm for music, and it doesn’t need fixing. All five Dancers have extensive experience in other Twin Cities bands—three members of STNNNG, ex-Hockey Night drummer Alex Achen, and Vampire Hands’ Chris Rose—and the band benefits not only from their veteran chops, but the fact that as something of a side project, there’s no pressure to do anything but have fun.

That’s not to say the musical interplay here isn’t rich and complex; Alive is bursting with catchy nuggets of sound, and stands up well to repeat listens. Sometimes the rough edges could use a little more smoothing: Love song “Diane,” which shares a title with one of Grant Hart’s HüDüclassics, could also have benefited from a more sweetly sung, Hart-like vocal than the rough yelp Achen gives it. But that’s a minor quibble. Private Dancer’s best on the straight-up anthems like “Bajama Beach,” which sounds like some forgotten gem by The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, and the raucous “Weekend,” which boils down the band’s ethic of jubilant celebration over how great it is to play in bars on a Saturday night: “My friends, we work all weekend!” It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Originally published on avclub.com July 16, 2010. Read the complete article.

Review: Peter Wolf Crier, “Inter-Be”

Slow, painstaking craftsmanship can make great music, but when inspiration strikes like a freight train out of the night, it’s best to just jump on and let the thing get where it’s going at its own breakneck speed. That approach worked well for Peter Pisano of Minneapolis’ Peter Wolf Crier, who pounded out the core of his duo’s debut, Inter-Be, in a single night after months of stagnation in the wake of the breakup of his previous band, The Wars Of 1812. The songs’ rough framework was fleshed out considerably later, especially when drummer and recording engineer Brian Moen came on board to help shape Pisano’s nascent folk-rock into something more sweepingly gorgeous and layered. To their credit, though, the embellishments respected the raw, lo-fi energy that powered the music in the first place, enhancing it instead of smoothing away its personality. The approach is superficially apparent in song titles like “Untitled 101” and “Demo 01,” but it weaves through the whole album on a more fundamental level via Moen’s rollicking percussion and Pisano’s melancholy, high-pitched vocals. There’s a touch of Bon Iver’s sad, haunted-sounding balladry in the mix here—not surprising, since Moen and Pisano have both worked with Justin Vernon—but also a refreshing exuberance, particularly on the bouncy album-opener “Crutch & Cane” and the angelic crescendo of voices that closes the terrific “Hard As Nails.”

Originally published on avclub.com May 25, 2010. Read the complete article.

Review: Roky Erickson And Okkervil River, “True Love Cast Out All Evil”

Few people have walked a harder road than Roky Erickson and survived. Founder of the groundbreaking 1960s psychedelic band 13th Floor Elevators, Erickson fell into a spiral of drug and legal problems that culminated when he was committed to a hospital for the criminally insane. Even after his release, Erickson’s mental state was fragile, and his most productive post-Elevators period was full of songs about demons and monsters; he also generated a notarized affidavit certifying that he was a Martian. Nearly a quarter-century of hermitage followed. But in recent years, Erickson has rebounded, playing music, touring, and at last recording his first new album in 15 years, True Love Cast Out All Evil.

It’s a triumph merely that this album exists, but True Love’s musical richness goes beyond what could reasonably have been expected from even a resurgent Roky. A big part of that is due to producer Will Sheff, who backs Erickson along with his band, Okkervil River. Sheff’s role was necessarily more than just turning some knobs; he’s helping curate Erickson’s legacy. Given a huge backlog of unrecorded songs, many going back 40 years, Sheff wisely focused on Erickson’s most spiritual and personal material, like the beatific title track and the sad lament of “Goodbye Sweet Dreams.” Gently philosophical and wistful, True Love reveals Erickson as a songwriter of resonant emotional depth—something all too easily overshadowed by his bizarre biography, not to mention his penchant for writing about fanged devils and acid trips. Erickson’s dynamic, soulful voice, always his greatest musical asset, has lost little of its power. Equally at home on the wistfully romantic “Birds’d Crash” and the hard-rocking firestorm of the angry, raucous “John Lawman,” that voice is the passionate heart of True Love, and rightly so. Not unlike Bob Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind, this is an album by a grizzled veteran of rock’s rougher roads who proves in his late career that he still has great work in him. Perhaps even better, Erickson sounds remarkably confident and optimistic; for all the tumult of his life, he’s happy to be living it.

Originally published on avclub.com April 20, 2010. Read the complete article.

Thumbs-up: The A.V. Club’s Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival picks

I contributed four capsule reviews for this story on the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. Here’s a sample; read the whole thing at the link:

Reykjavik-Rotterdam
Iceland’s foreign-film Oscar submission rises above its potentially cliched noir setup—the reformed ex-thief pulled back for one last job—with twisty plotting, kinetic violence, and a rock-solid performance by Baltasar Kormár. Reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s recent crime thrillers, not least because of Kormár’s resemblance to Viggo Mortensen, Reykjavik interweaves dual plotlines as his crooked sailor plays a battle of wits against a stuffy captain to smuggle a load of bootleg liquor, while on land his boss plans to steal his wife. The movie’s commercial success in Europe has already spawned a forthcoming American remake with Mark Wahlberg.

Night Catches Us
The rise and fall of the militant Black Panther Party has no shortage of tragedy or far-reaching political themes, but Tanya Hamilton’s Night Catches Us works its magic on a smaller, human-sized scale. In 1976 Philadelphia, years after the revolutionary movement’s implosion, two former Panthers (Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington) rekindle a simmering romance when Mackie returns after a long exile. But his reappearance also brings back old ghosts and old grievances, and inadvertently inspires a new generation to repeat the mistakes of the past. The universally strong cast includes The Wire veterans Wendell Pierce and Jamie Hector.

The Miscreants Of Taliwood
Australian documentarian George Gittoes is either impressively brave or foolishly reckless, but you have to admire the chutzpah of any Western filmmaker who walks right into the heart of Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled Peshawar region. And Gittoes indeed risks the ire of the Muslim fundamentalists more than once as he explores the cultural conflict between the Taliban and Peshawar’s surprisingly vibrant, earthy low-budget film industry—the “miscreants” of the title. As the religious extremists begin firebombing video stores, Gittoes dives into the local movie scene, working his role in a campy Pashto-language action movie into his own documentary. The result is often outlandishly surreal, insightful, and never less than compelling.

Originally published on avclub.com April 15, 2010 as part of a group-written roundup; I wrote the reviews of Night Catches Us, The Miscreants Of Taliwood, Will Not Stop There, and Reykjavik-Rotterdam. Read the complete article.

Review: Private Dancer, Trouble Eyes

A glance at the cover art for Private Dancer’s 2009 debut EP, Trouble Eyes, declares up front one element of the band’s sound: Covered with trippy, melting eyes, it echoes the psychedelic artwork on 13th Floor Elevators albums. And indeed there’s some heavy ’60s surf-garage churning around in here, but Private Dancer gleefully merges that with thrashier, wilder noise that grabs elements of The Stooges, Pavement, and early Pixies—not surprising considering the band features members of STNNNG and Hockey Night, but it’s impressive the way they weave and dodge between beauty and powerful dissonance. In October, the group followed Eyes with a new single, pairing a pounding original garage tune, “Ride To Work,” with a passionate and pitch-perfect cover of the Count Five’s psychedelic classic “Psychotic Reaction.”

Originally published in A.V. Club Twin Cities.

The best local music of 2009

My picks for the Minnesota music scene’s best albums of the year. Here’s #1:

1. P.O.S., Never Better
(Rhymesayers Entertainment)
Stef Alexander opens his third album with a down-to-earth apology for the three-year gap between Never Better and 2006′s Audition—”sorry I took so long,” he says, before launching into “Let It Rattle.” It’s the only thing the Doomtree rapper needs to be humble about when it comes to his music. Drawing energy as much from his punk-rock background as his hip-hop side, P.O.S. is as verbally propulsive and nimble here as Savion Glover, the dancer he namechecks on Never Better‘s third song. The Twin Cities is not exactly hurting for talent when it comes to underground hip-hop, but here’s a solid sign that P.O.S. will be counted in the highest echelons of that group for a long time to come.

Originally published on avclub.com Dec. 10, 2009. Read the complete article.

The Skinny: Sen Yai Sen Lek

Northeast Minneapolis’ Central Avenue has a ways to go before it approaches the diversity and quality of ethnic eateries on Nicollet Avenue, but there have been some significant inroads over the past couple of years, including the expanding empire of Middle Eastern cuisine that is Holy Land Deli, and the engagingly elegant, community-minded Thai spot Sen Yai Sen Lek, opened just over a year ago by owners Joe and Holly Hatch-Surisook.

Originally published on avclub.com Sept. 17, 2009. Read the complete article.

Review: The Chambermaids, Down In The Berries

The Chambermaids, Down In The Berries
(Modern Radio)

Twin Cities post-punk quartet The Chambermaids sounds like it might have stepped out of a time machine, freshly arrived from 1983. Its new seven-song Down In The Berries fits comfortably back-to-back with spiky, art-punk classics like Wire’s Chairs Missing or Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, and though it’s undeniable that the band’s hardly breaking new ground by bringing that sound into 2009, it’s accomplished with real verve, driving rhythm, and a good ear for pop hooks and harmonies.

If ’80s post-punk is alive and well in The Chambermaids’ hands, though, the compact disc is dead in the gutter: Down In The Berries is only available on vinyl and as a download. It’s a trend that’s becoming increasingly common—Vampire Hands did the same thing for their new Hannah In The Mansion. Perhaps not coincidentally, VH’s Colin Johnson is also the former drummer for The Chambermaids, leaving them amicably shortly after recording Berries to focus on his other group. The Chambermaids have since picked up a new drummer in ex-Shotgun Monday skinsman Mickey Kahleck, and a second guitarist in STNNNG/Private Dancer ax-wielder Nate Nelson. Fronting the band are brother-and-sister co-vocalists Neil and Martha Weir, and their deft musical interplay is apparent not only in their harmonizing, but the way Neil’s My Bloody Valentine-esque guitar lines spark off Martha’s bass work. Johnson’s drumming, meanwhile, is almost brutally direct compared with Vampire Hands’ two-percussionist complexity. But the more simple approach serves the songs here well, giving the shoegaze-style title track a shot of adrenaline that works like a series of exclamation points. The weak link here is Neil’s flat and monotone singing, which serves the music adequately but without lending the dominant stamp of personality that Ian Curtis or Colin Newman gave their bands. Martha, on the other hand, adds liveliness everywhere the way Kim Deal spices up the Pixies, whether she’s just lending an “oooh-aah-oooh” in the background or taking the lead on “The East Place.”

Grade: B+

Upcoming shows: Aug. 29, Turf Club, Sept. 15, Triple Rock Social Club

The Chambermaids, “Lily”:


The Chambermaids perform “Down In The Berries” on 89.3 The Current:

Originally published Aug. 28, 2009 in The A.V. Club Twin Cities.