Sunday, June 1, 2008

Show Reviews, New Releases and Confessions
 

Today's post is going to be split right down the middle into two topics, the first of which, as I'm sure you know, I've given an unusual amount of love to here in my SOTO column.  Centro-matic/South San Gabriel put on a show last night here in Austin in celebration of their new album, Dual Hawks, which comes out Tuesday.  Needless to say, I was in attendance.

Centro-matic/South San Gabriel Show Review

I have to quickly mention the opening act, Sarah Jaffe, who is fast becoming one of my favorite female performers.  Like Centro-matic, she hails from Denton, Texas, but unlike Centro-matic, her music leans more on country roots, with a heavy emphasis on folk (ie good lyrics).  To be honest, almost anyone could strum her fairly simple tunes, but it's her lyrics, which range from unsentimentally emotional (you know, the good kind) to straight-up witty, and her voice, full of soul but never twang or whining, that really do it for me.  Backing her up were a cello, some sparse drums, and another area-favorite, Robert Gomez, on second guitar.  I don't think she has an official release out yet, but you can dig on some of her tunes on her Myspace until she does.

Centro-matic and South San Gabriel, as you know, are technically two distinct bands, even if they are made up of the same core members, which makes a double-bill interesting, and probably a little bit of a scam for people who aren't aware of that fact.  To their credit, they kept the two bands separate, appearing first as South San Gabriel, clad in suit jackets, sitting down, and generally looking very "professional."  There were a lot of songs I wanted to hear, and the band got around to playing most of them, starting with Emma Jane (off the new album), as well as Smelling Medicinal (from Welcome, Convalescence) and my personal favorite, I Feel Too Young To Die (from The Carlton Chronicles).  With the core band (ie Centro-matic) on guitar/vocals, lead guitar/bass, keyboards/fiddle, and drums, and then the addition of another guitarist and a steel player, things got to be pretty noisy at times, but I was impressed at how well it kept together, recreating the depth of the albums with accuracy.  After joking about grabbing a drink with him while we watch the next band, Will Johnson and the boys headed out, only to return as Centro-matic.

With all of their slow, calm songs out of the way, the (new) band cleared the stage to make some room to rock out.  Which is exactly what they did.  Starting with The Mighty Midshipman and speeding through a whirlwind of their entire back catalog (as far back as Fidgeting Wildly off 1999's Redo The Stacks), it was like a Centro-matic's Greatest Hits album, which is good because for as many songs as I love, there are just as many that are really, really boring.  So with a dream-team setlist, and a few songs off the new album from both bands, I must say I was thoroughly satisfied by the time Johnson thanked the audience for listening.  All the elements of a good show had been laid out that night: a new favorite opener, good music representing the best of old and new, and Johnson's friendly/goofball banter with the (almost) home-field crowd (after announcing a song off Fort Recovery and telling the amount of time past, to the day, since the album came out, a man yells, "You made that up!" Johnson laughs and shakes his head disapprovingly at him while the song kicks in).  I couldn't ask for a better show.

Okay, okay, I promise, no more Centro-matic posts for a while. Here again are a couple songs off the new record, Dual Hawks, which is out June 3rd (that's Tuesday).

:Centro-matic - I The Kite: 
:South San Gabriel - Trust To Lose:

Shearwater - Rook

Uh-oh, John already talked about Shearwater just a couple of days ago, and he even posted the only promo track from the upcoming album.  What, you read the other post on this blog?  Actually you should, but while John talked a lot about the (phenomenal) show Shearwater put on the other night, I want to give the album some love, and encourage you again to go pick it up as soon as you can (this Tuesday, June 3rd – you only have to make one trip!.

Palo Santo, their previous release, made a lot of people think twice about calling the band an "Okkervil River side project" (Shearwater's singer/songwriter, Jonathan Meiburg used to be in Okkervil River, and Okkervil River's Will Sheff was a founding member of Shearwater), and also spent a lot of time in our collective CD players (I hope).  It takes a lot to follow up an album that good, but Shearwater have done it with Rook.

The first track, On The Death Of The Waters, shows just how much contrast is on the album. Starting with Meiburg's falsetto vocals accompanied by a soft piano and plucked strings, the song lulls you into trusting it just enough to turn the volume up a little, but then blowing your speakers when, as the lyrics go, "the wave breaks" and down come blaring horns, howling guitars and piano glissandos.

In the first song alone, Shearwater introduce a style of music that is both, as I said, calm and soothing, but also articulate, powerful, and sometimes very unsettling.  Rooks follows as the second track, and as I'm sure you've heard somewhere on the internet by now, is kind of creepy.  Meiburg sings of birds falling from the sky, dying where they drop, and being piled into fields and burned.  An avid ornithologist, many of Meiburg's subjects are influenced by bird imagery (the album's name comes form a type of bird predominantly found in Europe), but it's much more complex than mere subject-matter.  Rooks is really more about a terrible, unnamed event occurring, forcing the narrator to sleep until the world of man is paralyzed than it is about birds. It's not the death of the Rooks that necessarily causes the unknown tragedy, in fact Meiburg is intentionally ambiguous about many of the events on the album, but the birds are like signifiers of a world in turmoil, and our only real look into a darker force that appears to be driving the album.

I could write for ages on the lyrics of the album, but I wouldn't want to ruin the adventure for you.  Of course, lyrics don't mean much if they aren't supported by good music, and Shearwater have got good music covered.  The more serene sections, such as on I Was A Cloud, are some of the most interesting on the album, and are far more complex than the repetitive acoustic guitar line that maintains a focal point would lead you to believe.  Harps, pianos and bells fill the background space with complexion and infinite depth, leaving you straining to hear it all, like staring down into a lake searching for signs of life below the calm surface.

The album isn't afraid to turn it up a bit either, though not as much as on the first track. Century Eyes clamors with distorted guitars hammering out chords as Meiburg is forced to almost scream the lyrics to be heard.  Of course, drummer Thor's dance-y beat that carries the song is equally welcomed. I've always maintained, you can't go wrong with a dance beat.  Franz Ferdinand proved that.  Twice.

Rook is immediately likeable, but deep enough for more than a couple listens (according to my iTunes, I am on 8). There's enough variety to hold the listener's attention, but the band has further refined the distinct sound that made their last album so successful.

:Shearwater - Rooks:

Confessions

As I alluded to throughout the post, yours truly is feeling a little guilty for writing about the same bands again and again.  That being said, these are two of the releases I was most excited about this year, and be thankful you aren't around me all the time, or you'd be getting a whole lot more where this came from all the time.

- John Michael Cassetta -

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