Somewhere between “palm trees” and “Randy Newman,” add “film comedians making surprise appearances at concerts” to the list of Los Angeles’ advantages over New York. At a Swell Season performance earlier this week, the charismatically dopey Freaks and Geeks graduate Jason Segel presented an original comic ballad, accompanying himself on piano. The song, a celebrity come-on complete with Segel’s phone number, appears to be an untitled effort. “Remember when I showed my penis in Forgetting Sarah Marshall?” the actor emotes, plaintively. “Well, there were no special effects—so if you like what you saw, well, that’s exactly what I’m working with.” Ladies?

“Here’s another one you may remember, New York,” Bob Dylan declared midway through his set full of hits so true to their iconic versions that, if not for the addition of two keyboardists, one could have sworn they were the original recordings. “I want to hear all the fellas in the audience singing along.”

But of course, this did not happen. As with all Dylan concerts, his Wednesday performance at United Palace—the second of three nights at the gaudy Washington Heights theater—steered clear of most classic-rock cliché. The artist does not encourage his audience to clap, bask in his accomplishments and dexterity, or recall a period of their own youth. That is, he does not pander to his patrons or submit to the base desires of mass-market rock & roll. Some find this position frustrating: Whenever he plays, a stream of baby boomers, having lumped Dylan on a shelf with the world’s Paul McCartneys and Billy Joels, trickle away. Younger fans—and in particular music nerds—tend to remain glued to their chairs. Long one of the most famous people in the world, the singer here becomes something more interesting: a cult artist.

The focus of a latter-day Dylan concert is not his legend, vocals or even songbook, but rather his band. Read more »

On Friday, Halloween Eve, Yeasayer headlined the October installment of It Came from Brooklyn, the new music-comedy-reading series at the Guggenheim. As far as I could tell, nobody wore a costume, but it’s so hard to tell these days. For Yeasayer’s set, audience members donned cardboard ChromaDepth 3-D glasses. Of course, live rock bands—unlike, say, movie screens—tend to present themselves in 3-D without the benefit of cardboard glasses. But ChromaDepth seemed to have the reverse effect, turning the stage into a flat, blurry mishmash of colors. For safety reasons, guards confiscated the glasses of those concertgoers making their way up the museum’s ramp; staring down a Kandinsky through 3-D glasses seems dangerous indeed.

I had not seen Yeasayer play since 2007—not long ago, but a lifetime in indie-band-on-the-rise years. For much of its set on Friday, the group ignored its sole album, All Hour Cymbals, in favor of newer material. The songs sounded clangorous and grand in the vast museum. As the musicians neared the end of their set, they began performing songs from the LP; everybody cheered, as if they were witnessing a more storied band. The maneuver seemed nicely forward-thinking but also presumptuous—John Fogerty withholding Creedence Clearwater Revival hits makes sense; Yeasayer ignoring songs from its one album seems a little silly. (The band recently posted its new single, “Ambling Alp,” on its website.)

The neatest part of this series, of course, is not any particular band, but the setting: Frank Lloyd Wright’s famed rotunda. The stage sits at the museum’s base; concertgoers are allowed to wind their way through the first four floors, either looking at the performers from different vantage points or admiring the main room’s exhibition. At $45 per ticket, these shows do not come cheap—the Guggenheim would be wise to shave about $25 off that price tag—but they give the vibe of benefit events designed for far posher crowds. One caveat: For anybody with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, halting a museum exhibition midway through is a demonic teaser. (Naturally, I returned to the museum the following day.)

On Friday evening, Doveman—the talented pianist and singer Thomas Bartlett—performed at the Chelsea apartment of two of his friends. The concert, closed to the public but open to music industry riffraff, technically fell outside of CMJ’s clutches. But it essentially functioned as a rarefied showcase to celebrate the singer’s new album, The Conformist. Bartlett played a brief set accompanied by a string quartet, which he claimed to have met earlier that day. It was the first time I have ever seen a musician begin to introduce his group, then confess that he did not remember the musicians’ names. The gesture was rude yet refreshing, in a Larry David kind of way—leave stage courtesy to pedestrian rock clubs.

After Bartlett finished singing the songs he set out to sing, a string of local musicians took turns on the living room’s makeshift stage. Sean Lennon and his girlfriend, Charlotte Kemp Muhl—whose band, the Ghost of a Sabre Toothed Tiger, performs with Doveman at Mercury Lounge November 1—were at once precious and funny. Muhl, a model, has a surprising voice, breathy and small but bursting with character. Justin Bond, as he is prone to do, stole the night—in this case with a Kurt Weill song.

The crowd was well scrubbed, all pricey flannel shirts and enormous glasses. A black lab made the rounds, proud to be hosting such glamorous guests. As I suspect the dog would agree, it was the type of soiree that contemporary New York needs more of—unless, of course, these things happen every night, and people choose not to invite me.

Surf City

Just before Warpaint’s set at (Le) Poisson Rouge, four people dressed as pandas emerged from the club’s side door and wormed their way through the crowd. It was unclear whether the pandas were associated with the band; perhaps I had missed an explanation earlier in the night. Regardless, Warpaint chose not to acknowledge the panda-suited portion of its audience—an odd decision, for sure. The L.A. band played ’90s-style rock, all brooding guitars and ominous vocals. It left me cold.

Across town, at the Living Room, the Morning Benders’ Christopher Chu played solo, dwarfed by an acoustic guitar and enormous glasses. For his finale, he brought a pack of underage friends onstage to sing backup; they had Xs across their hands, a cult of children. In the audience, a famous label man with eminently skilled ears applauded enthusiastically. Next door at Pianos, Shilpa Ray led her Happy Hookers, wailing under diabolic red lights. On the television, the Yankees lost.

Throughout the night, everybody I bumped into seemed to be en route to a show at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center, so I headed over to Suffolk Street. A friend was standing outside and I asked her if she was going into the show. “After this band finishes,” she said. “I’m friends with them, but they’re GGBB.” Read more »

In 1996, while completing a semester abroad in London, I became unhealthily obsessed with the Birmingham band Broadcast. The group, then a quintet, had a sole seven-inch to its name, “Accidentals.” Though newly jelled, the band already was its own beast. The musicians turned not to the Kinks or the Velvet Underground but rather to the film scores of Krzysztof Komeda and records of the electronic-music pioneer Joseph Byrd and his short-lived ’60s group, the United States of America. Their concerts were low-budget yet thoroughly stylized, the five musicians appearing as shadows against black-and-white films. Before returning to the States, I went to one of the band members’ homes to interview Broadcast for Puncture magazine. I’m sure my parents appreciated their son using the money he was given to witness the glories of Europe to travel to Birmingham and ask questions to a gang of red-eyed British musicians. (In fairness, while in Birmingham, I also toured the Cadbury factory.)

In the ensuing years, the band—which I interviewed again, for Time Out, in 2003—has evolved in a manner that is radical but not surprising. The 2009 version of Broadcast that turned up at (Le) Poisson Rouge was not the quintet I remember from London, but a lonely duo: the core couple of Trish Keenan and James Cargill. Read more »

Like many rock musicians, Tim Rutili fell into a singing career while sniffing out other artistic pursuits—in his case, filmmaking. Music has proved a creatively lucrative sideline for the Chicagoan, pilot of the storied ’90s band Red Red Meat and its quieter ’00s spin-off, Califone. Rutili’s worlds collide in All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, which doubles as the new Califone album and a feature film written and directed by the singer. The movie involves a fortune-teller, ghosts of old vaudevillians and a band portrayed by Califone itself. The soundtrack, on Dead Oceans, includes the band’s typical fare: murky, multilayered songs that can seem comforting or disturbing, depending on one’s perspective or mood. On October 23, Califone plays a special concert at 92YTribeca, where the band will perform a live soundtrack to Rutili’s film. Here is one of the album’s ballads, no doubt informed by Califone’s Chicago origins, “Polish Girls.”

A few years ago, the actor and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg released 5:55, a lovely slip of an album featuring songwriting and performance contributions by Jarvis Cocker, Neil Hannon and Air. Though she did not play New York concerts following its release, Gainsbourg essentially took up residency at the Angelika, with roles in The Science of Sleep, I’m Not There (she purred “Just Like a Woman” on the soundtrack) and, of course, the new Lars von Trier rom-com. Next year, the French artist returns to music with the album IRM, which will be released in January through Because Music/Elektra. She has found the ideal producer in Beck—who, as with Cocker, seems to relish playing Lee Hazlewood to the world’s Nancy Sinatras. (Or is that Serge Gainsbourg to its Jane Birkins?) Beck and Gainsbourg share similar backgrounds: Both are half-Jews from an arty lineage, and both radiate detached cool, hers Parisian and his Californian. Today, Gainsbourg made the LP’s title track available on her website. Where her previous album seemed designed for a Sunday nap, “IRM” grooves, with big, busy drums and the aloof vocals of a nightclub. Click here for TONY’s 5:55 review, here for TONY’s Beck interview and here for the new song.

In Born Standing Up, the memoir recounting his years as a white-suited stand-up comedian, Steve Martin writes about live performance as a painstaking craft. He built his act with precision and deliberateness; even at his professed wild and craziest, his massive stand-up audience was viewed almost as a patient, he a surgeon.

Martin retired from the stage years ago to become a movie star, screenwriter, playwright, novelist, New Yorker contributor, art collector, all-star Late Show guest—a Renaissance man in the mold of Leonardo da Vinci, or “Weird Al” Yankovic. Recently, Martin has devoted much of his public time to playing the banjo. His album The Crow is one of this year’s most surprising debuts, full of smart, original banjo songs that are wistful but rarely hokey. Last night, Martin headlined Carnegie Hall, sharing the bill with titanic Virginia singer Ralph Stanley. Read more »

The young London trio Micachu and the Shapes was in town over the weekend, concluding an American tour with a pair of shows at Littlefield, on Friday, and (Le) Poisson Rouge—where, on Saturday, the band performed accompanied by strings in a concert for the Wordless Music Series. The musicians met with TONY before their Littlefield show, performing the song “Guts” as the sun set over DeGraw Street. Click here to see the artists—Mica Levi, Marc Pell and Raisa Khan—discuss their impending Wordless Music show. Micachu’s agreeably unruly debut album, Jewellery, was released earlier this year on Rough Trade.

Among this year’s most uniquely rendered debut albums is Jewellery (Rough Trade), by the young London trio Micachu and the Shapes. The LP sounds at once junky and artful—a smart, wholly idiosyncratic work with both high and low instincts. Mica Levi, the trio’s namesake and leader, plays a small, weathered guitar—and, at times, a vacuum cleaner—and, not shockingly, hails from a classical background. Tonight, Levi’s worlds collide at a Wordless Music Series show at (Le) Poisson Rouge costarring Micachu and the Shapes and the contemporary-classical group ACME, which will play music by composers including Levi. The three Shapes also will be joined by strings in their own set. Before their show at Littlefield last night, Levi and her bandmates—Raisa Khan and Marc Pell—spoke to TONY about the Wordless Music show.

The world remains hypnotized by the latest batch of Beatles reissues, which have given fans and critics alike the opportunity to reassess the Liverpool band: As it turns out, the Beatles were good! Yet the newly reissued disc that I cannot stop playing is by another venerated rock quartet, the Feelies—specifically, the Jersey band’s 1980 debut LP, Crazy Rhythms, which has been given a new life by Hoboken’s Bar/None Records. I heard this album from time to time over the years, but for some reason never fully connected with it until now. The Feelies are worth the fuss—they are wired, nerdy and particular; wholly individualistic without reaching for eccentricity. While the band predated contemporary indie rock by years, its mannerisms course through sundry albums of the past ten years, perhaps most lucratively those by the Strokes and Interpol. Here is the one track on Crazy Rhythms not penned by the Feelies’ Glenn Mercer and Bill Million. (Its original version appears on another popular 2009 reissue.)

The experimental fashion label threeASFOUR, a kind of art collective that sews, presented its Spring 2010 collection last night at MAC and Milk, on 15th Street. Usually, when fashion designers claim to use a music figure as a “muse,” it seems to mean their collection bears vague resemblance to a British depressive from the early ’80s, or Debbie Harry. The trio of New York designers behind this show turned to an infinitely more engaging idol: Yoko Ono.

The label was not merely paying lip service to the artist’s work. Ono sat front and center under an enormous hat, sandwiched between Sean Lennon and Carrie Fisher. Many of the coolest pieces incorporated prints made by the artist decades ago; other garments came in Manhattan black, Ono’s color of choice—she is not a floral-print kind of gal—as well as a nod to the old avant-garde world in which she made her name. Read more »

The idiosyncratic Manhattan folksinger Larkin Grimm arrives at an East Village community garden, a leather case slung over her shoulder. Affixed to the case, which contains a dulcimer, is the mildly terrifying carcass of a fox. Grimm spots a Hare Krishna sitting high in the garden’s shed and walks up its stairs, a glint in her eyes, trailed by her sometimes bandmates John Houx and Marit Bergman. The Hare Krishna, who is reading a book about Paul Revere, looks up at the singer as if she is the most outlandish person he has ever encountered. “Hello!” Grimm says. “Do you mind if I play some music?”

The Hare Krishna nods, bemused.

“Do you want to play percussion?” Grimm inquires.

“But I don’t play,” the Krishna replies.

“I thought all Hare Krishnas played drums,” says Grimm, the demonic shaman suddenly channeling Larry David. The man shakes his head.

Grimm sits next to her new friend, plucks her dulcimer from her fox-bag and sings “Mina Minou,” off her superb 2008 album, Parplar (Young God). From behind the flipcam, Houx and Bergman harmonize and add minimal percussion; to Grimm’s left, the Hare Krishna quietly reads about Paul Revere. (It is worth noting that when Grimm last met with TONY, she had an unusual encounter with a homeless man; some people have all the luck.)

After the jump, Grimm discusses Musicka Mystica Maxima, the music and magic festival she is curating with the Ordo Templi Orientis at Santos Party House Monday, September 21 and Tuesday, September 22.

Read more »

The Pastels reside in Glasgow. They have been active, more or less, since the early ’80s but did not get around to releasing a full-length album until 1987; they have released relatively few since. The group seems most sensible in the context of seven-inch or a zine. It is hard to find an unpleasant moment in their repertoire, but it’s also difficult to pinpoint one definitive period or recording. The Pastels are, in other words, a cult band’s cult band, champions of the U.K. underground. Their forthcoming record, Two Sunsets, is a breezy collaboration with the Japanese band Tenniscoats. While the album does not come out until later this month (on Domino), the groups have been streaming the song that’s below: a hushed cover of “About You,” by the Pastels’ noisier contemporaries the Jesus and Mary Chain.

Richard Hell walks outside his East Village apartment, his lips curved into the mischievous smile that he has worn, regardless of prevailing fashion orthodoxy, for decades. A founding father of CBGB punk, the onetime Voidoid has been retired from music since the mid-’80s, his energy devoted to an arguably more punkish vocation: writer. Yet now and again, Hell is lured back to music. Now, he cups in his hand his unlikely new CD: Destiny Street Repaired, a retooled version of the Voidoids’ 1982 album Destiny Street, released this week on Insound. Hell walks to Tompkins Square Park, looks around, and heads to a playground; there, he reads from the new album’s liner notes. A toddler gazes on in awe.

On Sunday, September 13, Hell reads at the New Museum as part of the Howl! Festival. “Be sure to mention that tickets are only $6,” he says. “And that goes toward the price of museum admission, too.”

Tonight, the New York–Copenhagen band Hess Is More plays a last-minute show at Nublu, the groovy East Village nightclub whose record label released the pop group’s album, Hits. Before the album came out in June, I interviewed the band’s leader and namesake, Mikkel Hess. We played tennis on the East River Park courts; I remember this fondly, as it was one of the few times this summer a tennis game has not been rained out. It was the second time I have played tennis with a musician for a TONY interview; the first was all the way back in 2000, with Stephen Malkmus, who was just transitioning from Pavement to his solo career. No offense to Mr. Malkmus, but in my experience, Hess is the superior player.

Hess Is More’s June record-release show, at 92YTribeca, was strange and engaging—part disco, part experimental pop, part performance-art happening. Read more »

Predictably, response to news that Bob Dylan is recording a Christmas album has been that of surprise, coupled with dreadful puns. (“Snowin’ in the Wind,” Reuters? Really?) The real shock, however, is not that Dylan is recording a collection of Christmas standards, but that he has not already done so. The musician has long sought to produce every type of American music he can get his hands on—a case could be made that his flirtation with Christianity occurred primarily to justify Dylan as a gospel star. Naturally, the artist’s born-again phase is now being referenced in relation to the album. Yet it is as an American Jew that Dylan sings of Santa. The history of Christmas music is riddled with Semitic artists, who wrote all the great December songs—“White Christmas,” “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”—and helped to secularize the holiday. When people like Bill O’Reilly vent about religion being sucked out of Christmas, their concealed targets include the world’s Phil Spectors and Neil Diamonds. Of course, singing “Here Comes Santa Claus” also helps Dylan advance what increasingly has become his mission: Chipping off bits of the halo that has formed around his own head, so that he is positioned as a humble rock & roll contemporary, not a sacred icon forever cast in black and white.

Judd Apatow has long used music effectively in his films and TV shows. Think of the opening scenes of Knocked Up, contrasting the idyllic realm inhabited by Katherine Heigl’s character (Loudon Wainwright III) with the stoner’s paradise presided over by Seth Rogen’s (Ol’ Dirty Bastard). Funny People, his new movie, is no exception. It leans on classic rock—including some unlikely selections by various Beatles—and features what may be Adam Sandler’s most unsettling musical performance, “George Simmons Soon Will Be Gone.” (“He’s mad when others do well,” the character sings of himself. “He hates himself / Fuck George Simmons / He has a medium-size penis.”) The song that stops the movie cold, however, comes from the late Warren Zevon. “Keep Me in Your Heart,” played for the ailing George Simmons by Rogen’s character, is the final song on Zevon’s final album, The Wind, famously recorded as the musician faded away from cancer. (The Grim Reaper deserved a production credit.) The Wind came out in 2003, weeks before Zevon succumbed to the disease. Increasingly, “Keep Me in Your Heart” seems to be one of those songs destined for a life of its own.

Keep Me In Your Heart - Warren Zevon

Last night, the 38-year-old R&B oddity known as Erykah Badu performed on the 225-year-old New York oddity known as Governors Island. Both the artist (herself an island) and the island (itself art) brought to the show singular quirks and diva auras. The performer wore a top hat, the venue sand.

The city still seems to be figuring out what to do with Governors Island, the former Army and Coast Guard post that falls within spitting distance of lower Manhattan but maintains a surreal, bucolic calm. It is only recently that the island began hosting larger concerts, on a large tract facing New York’s greed district. Arriving to the show late—after Janelle Monáe finished her set but before Badu started hers—presented a dreamlike quality, the Water Taxi dotted with just a few stray laggards. Traveling to a concert there, particularly after sundown, gives the sense of being privy to a cool secret.

Badu has been a star for more than a decade, but she maintains a certain mystery and whimsy. Her performance last night was sleepy and at times annoying: A soul diva has no business fiddling around with electronic percussion or other such onstage tinkering, which dwarfs her presence. And while the singer’s stage mysticism can seem freaky when she finds a groove, it also can wilt into posturing if she seems the least bit unprepared or cautious. Yet in a sense, Badu was working the room. Her loose set, with its slack jams and snippets of covers (N.W.A!), made a mellow backdrop for a tranquil beach party on this strange, isolated island—staring down the lights of Manhattan in a funky daze.