Noah & The Whale

Evoking lit legends, classic troubadours

 Noah & The Whale

Charles Bukowski was a writer’s writer. The proudly alcoholic poet/novelist waxed on about the writer’s life and how to distinguish oneself—or, at least, how not to become a cliché.

When Noah & The Whale lyricist Charlie Fink redefined his writing approach for the band’s third album, Last Night on Earth, his muse was Bukowski. One of the poet’s more inspirational lines is quoted on the London-based indie band’s song “Life Is Life.”

“Your life is your life/ know life is your life/ know it while you have it,” Bukowski wrote in “The Laughing Heart.”

“That is basically what the album is about,” says keyboardist/violinist Tom Hobden. The album title is a nod to Bukowski’s collection of poems The Last Night of the Earth, and Fink also read poet Frank O’Hara’s work—emphasis on “Having a Coke With You”—to encourage lyrics to come.

The album’s pervasive theme is the limitless possibilities of the nighttime, he adds.

If that’s vaguely familiar to fans of the Tom Waits canon, the troubadour also served as inspiration for the band’s newfound writing style: delving into personalities and painting intricate scenes. In an interview published in Playboy in March 1988, Waits said, “I’ve learned how to be different musical characters without feeling like I’m eclipsing myself. On the contrary, you discover a whole family living inside you.”

“It was a conscious effort to write these songs in third person and make them relatable to everyone,” Hobden says. “These are everyday characters; they could really be anyone you know or part of you.”

Take one listless traveler on “Tonight’s the Kind of Night,” for example. He sets forth on a nighttime bus bound for anywhere, escaping his life, ready to start anew. That song’s chorus—“Tonight’s the kind of night where everything could change”—was in fact the catalyst for the whole album.

It had been in Fink’s head and, as he rode a train from Wales to London on New Year’s Day in 2010, he wrote the song, finishing by the time he reached London. The band had just finished touring in support of the sophomore release, The First Days of Spring, which was Fink’s autobiographical, heartbreak effort dealing with his breakup with bandmate/girlfriend Laura Marling. It was a necessary time for change, Hobden says.

From there, Fink began illuminating his “family” of nighttime losers, dreamers and prideful characters. Two memorable characters are the woman on “L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.” who seems transposed from a Bukowski novel, and the girl in “Wild Thing,” who is loosely based on the character Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks.

This album also diverges from previous work in its confidence and sonic experimentation—drum machines and synthesizers find themselves in the mix. But where some bands create a cacophony of sound, Noah and the Whale used the new sonic flares sparsely for an engaging, delicate effect.

“We really wanted to make things as concise as possible. The recording process was all about paring the demos down,” Hobden says. “I think if you listen to most of your favorite songs, you’ll realize they are really minimal.”

They created songs reminiscent of Tom Petty, Lou Reed or Bruce Springsteen—something atypical of their previous records. Hobden also cites Arthur Russell’s experimental use of synth and out-of-the-box compositions as inspiration while recording. The cellist, composer and musician, whose styles varied widely throughout the ’80s and ’90s, was little known until after his death. “He also scored movies. We like that approach—like each song is creating little scenes,” Hobden says.

A cinematic approach seems fitting. They are movie aficionados, and their name comes from combining names of a favorite movie, The Squid and the Whale, and its director, Noah Baumbach.

Thievery Corporation

DJ duo talks Culture of Fear

With a backdrop of politically hard-wired audiences, debt-crisis debates and terror alerts, Washington, D.C., can be a tumultuous place, to say the least. To smooth things out a bit—at least with a brief sonic vacation—there’s Thievery Corporation, the capital city’s mainstay DJ duo.

The group offers multilayered tunes that simultaneously bubble with undertones about the nation’s political deficiencies and glide on a trip-hop-induced lounge vibe. Thievery indiscriminantly takes cues from every corner of the globe, creating a musical melting pot in multicultural D.C.

These electronica sounds, like those on Thievery’s new album Culture of Fear or from artists on Thievery-owned label ESL and other genre-bending acts, fill Eighteenth Street Lounge. The establishment—co-owned by Eric Hilton, one half of Thievery—sees slick DJs mingling over martinis with Capitol Hill workers and lobbyists. Unless a concert is under way, the music serves mostly as a backdrop for lively political discussion.

The lounge isn’t generally a place where conservative congressmen, like, say, Utah’s Rep. Jason Chaffetz or Sen. Orrin Hatch—can you imagine?—would kick back. The dreamers on barstools are hip and mostly liberal, which is currently fairly representational of the city, says Rob Garza, the other half of Thievery. Garza moved to San Francisco more than a year ago, but returns frequently and keeps his finger on the city’s pulse.

“Since Obama got elected, overall, D.C. has been a really great, booming place to be—the energy is young and people are excited,” he says, adding that the various communities—be they artistic or political—are all abuzz, talking about the debt crisis and the War on Terror, among other things.

“What gains have we gotten from [the War on Terror] and what’s really happening? Most people can’t tell you why we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, exactly. I think those are the things we’re touching on on some of these songs,” Garza says, referring to Culture of Fear, the duo’s 2011 release.

The jet-setting DJs also delve into the surveillance society that Garza says we live in. “It’s the kind of things like going through the airport and being screened and patted down that are getting people conditioned to being watched. I think that’s something that transcends political parties, war budgets and what’s going on right now in D.C.,” he says.

The album’s title song, “Culture of Fear,” especially digs into the government’s not-so-subtle presence in citizens’ daily lives, post 9/11. The track was originally planned merely as a single, but Hilton and Garza liked the theme so much they spun a record out of it. The straight-up hip-hop track, a rarity for Thievery, featuring Mr. Lif, is weak-kneed due to a lack of conviction—the lyrics, without hard-hitting emphasis and specifics, merely scratch the issue’s surface.

To borrow the Homeland Security Advisory System’s color-coded warning for a CD review, Culture of Fear, as an album, comes in at somewhere slightly above yellow. While it isn’t incredible like previous efforts—think The Richest Man in Babylon—Thievery sticks to their basic formula of worldly trip-hop, which makes for quality albums and doesn’t handicap their live performances. The stand-out tracks are the instrumentals “Light Flares” and “Tower Seven,” which, picturesque as they are, hint at the band’s previous music triumphs and, possibly, what’s to come from them later this year.

A slow, cinematic-sounding album with Bossa Nova flair, Saudade—which basically means “contented melancholy” in Portuguese—was being hashed out before Culture of Fear. Garza says now that they’re back on it, they’re “coming close” to a release.

After 16 years and seven albums, this effort brings their sound almost full circle. Garza recalls that he and Hilton first bonded over the Latino-infused soundtrack music of the late ’60s and early ’70s, whose sound and scene inspired them. “You [had] these musicians who were just really experimenting, not just musically, but maybe also taking drugs and stuff, and exploring all these different styles. That, for us, is a really exciting time period because you have all of this cross-pollination of ideas,” Garza says.

It’s an interesting change from political undertones, which might just be what the band, and the capital city needs—if only for a brief moment. 

Early Portion: Freedom Fest

Art, music, food & activism

 Seth Walker, Freedom Fest co-creator

The flier advertising the first Freedom Fest, back in January, said it started at the Utah Arts Alliance digs at 6 p.m. I arrived at 7 to find about 100 people in the parking lot watching fire spinners, dancing to a DJ, eating and shopping for local art. There was already a line out the door and about another 100 peeps inside watching Utah band Robin Mary. Approximately 1,500 patrons were counted by midnight when it finished, drawn by a low-key advertising campaign of fliers, word of mouth and Facebook posts.
The Freedom Fest was created by Salt Lake City musician Lauren Begent and Houston spoken-word artist Seth Walker (pictured above) as a new way to combine art and activism. They met when Walker toured through Utah in 2009, and their like-minded approach led them to tour the country together shortly thereafter.
“We’ve worked on various volunteer/community projects and have been blessed to be able to share our unique music and poetry with as many people as possible,” Begent says of her and Walker’s relationship. “We started brainstorming what we could do to positively affect a city in a lasting way. Salt Lake City was the first test. By creating a free show with local art, music, food, education, activists, understanding, and opportunities to volunteer and donate your time locally in your city and daily life, you truly gain freedom and begin to create change,” she says.
Walker says the first Freedom Fest was almost instantly successful.
“Starting the next day, people were spending their money at different places, spending their free time in new ways that were giving back to their community and looking at their own city in a new way,” Walker says.
The first Freedom Fest was so successful that they had to bring it outside for a second run at the newly renovated Gallivan Center. I’ll be emceeing one of the stages presenting Utah musicians like one of my faves, Fox Van Cleef from Ogden, the funk/metal sounds of Babble Rabbit, Urban Bleu, Lake Mary and many others. Admission will be free, so there really is no excuse for you not to go.
Among the other featured attractions are a poetry slam featuring Adam Love, Doni Faber, Skylar Church, Michael Dimitri and Jesse Parent, marionette performances by Gary Swanson, and kids’ activities.

Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit

Songwriter crafts his best LP yet

  To hear Jason Isbell tell it, his excellent new album Here We Rest is more a result of coincidence and good fortune than his own diligent work as a songwriter.

The year off from touring in 2010 that allowed him to hang out in his hometown of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, absorbing stories that turned into songs? A mere scheduling issue. “It just worked out that way in the cycle,” Isbell says. “We didn’t have a record to tour. I don’t want it to sound like it was something I wanted to do.”

The maturing sound that now includes some traditional country accoutrements like fiddle and standup bass, even a little accordion? “It wasn’t a thing that was planned,” Isbell avows. “I wrote the songs, and we went in the studio and tried to record them in the most appropriate way possible. That became the recordings we got. I definitely didn’t want to run away from making something a country song if I felt like I’d written a country song. I wanted the songs to sound like they wanted to sound.”

Yes, like many a songwriter, Isbell feels he’s a mere conduit of the music, channeling some mysterious force into concise songs full of rich characters and evocative imagery. If only it were that easy.

Anyone who’s watched the 32-year-old Isbell evolve from the barely legal wunderkind who joined the Drive-By Truckers in 2001—providing some of that band’s best moments before leaving in 2007—into the rock-solid writer and leader of a new band, the 400 Unit, knows he’s too talented to simply attribute his music to good luck.

That time off the road allowed Isbell to hunker down in his hometown for the first time in his adult life; most of the past decade has been spent touring. And during that year, he was able to sit at his favorite bar and hear the trials and tribulations of friends and strangers. Getting into the rhythm of life in the small northern Alabama town certainly fueled the songs on the new album.

Here We Rest is the strongest of his post-Truckers catalog, from the stirring opener “Alabama Pines” to “Tour of Duty,” the story of a soldier trying to return to a normal life at home. There are love songs (or heartbreak songs, depending on your perspective) like “Codeine” and “We’ve Met” that rank among Isbell’s best. Altogether, it’s one of the best albums of the year to date, in the Americana genre or otherwise.

The trick, of course, is getting a straightforward roots-rock record heard in an age of pre-programmed radio formats. Like Lucinda Williams, Tom Petty or his old band the Truckers, Isbell isn’t quite “rock” enough for modern rock radio, nor country enough for Nashville. So he and the 400 Unit hit the road and take the tunes to the people.

“It’s hard to make a living,” Isbell says. “I’m losing money on the road as we speak. There are really no major outlets for the kind of music we make. But that’s something I signed up for; I knew that was going to be the case.”

The modern music environment does help Isbell in one way. Social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook allow him to reach people across the country on the cheap. And those fans, in turn, get to know one of their favorite artists a little better, whether Isbell is tossing out witty one-liners or bemoaning a loss by his beloved Atlanta Braves.

“It’s another way to connect with people,” Isbell says. “It can be a little odd and creepy sometimes. You don’t want to let people know too awful much about you, because some people are nuts. But for the most part, the people who listen to the kind of music I make are really decent people for the most part. Well-adjusted.”

Eisley

Texas family band's maturing sound

I think about how fast kids grow up every time I hear something new from Eisley, a group of four Texas siblings and their cousin, whom I first encountered nearly a decade ago at a South by Southwest Music Festival showcase.

I returned to Utah raving about the family band of adolescents who had enraptured me with their epic guitar-pop and the soaring harmonies delivered by the three DuPree sisters—singer/guitarist Sherri, singer/keyboardist Stacy and guitarist Chauntelle. It wasn’t just that they were good for how young the members were (at the time, Chauntelle was the only one who’d hit 20); they were simply a great show, assured on stage despite their youth, and reminded me of other girl-centric guitar bands like Throwing Muses.

I knew they were going to be huge. And soon enough, they were signed to Warner Bros. Records and touring with Coldplay. In the years since, they haven’t risen to rule Alternative Nation like I thought they would, but I’m not giving up yet. And neither has Eisley, who just released their third full-length, The Valley, which reveals just how much time has passed since I first fell for the band.

The songs populating The Valley dissect Sherri’s short-lived marriage to Chad Gilbert (she’s now married to Say Anything’s Max Bemis), a broken engagement for Chauntelle and a rough end to one of Stacy’s relationships, as well as the band’s split from Warner Bros., which delayed the release of The Valley for more than a year. While older Eisley songs dealt in fantasy and sci-fi, The Valley shows maturation into more personal songwriting, something Sherri DuPree-Bemis says is a natural progression for the band.

“The more transparent and real you are with yourself, the more people will connect with what you’re doing,” DuPree-Bemis says. “I think overthinking anything that takes massive amounts of vulnerability to share with the world will only be harmed by over-thinking. It’s got to be from your guts.”

Still in place, despite the more serious subject matter, are the insistent hooks that are a calling card for the band’s two main songwriters, Sherri and Stacy. And the thrilling intertwining sibling harmonies are all over songs like the slow-building “I Wish,” the string-saturated title track and the guitar-driven “Sad.”

DuPree-Bemis notes that Eisley had more than 30 new tunes to choose from when they worked on The Valley. She concurs with the suggestion that the band’s music has grown more sophisticated: “We’ve been a band for over 10 years now, so in my head I would like to believe that a song I write now would be better and more complicated and challenging to play than one I wrote when I was 14.”

Listening to The Valley, it’s hard to imagine what the label execs at Warner Bros. had a problem with, but the label’s foot-dragging in putting out the band’s music seemed to be one sticking point that helped lead to the band’s departure and eventually signing with Equal Vision Records in 2010.

“It was hard to go through,” DuPree-Bemis says of the split from Warner Bros. “Very frustrating, and as a group of creative people, you never want to think of the business side of things. But when it directly affects your future, you have no choice.

“It affected each of us in different ways, but I know that at the point when it was going down, we knew who we were as a band and believed in that so much that we didn’t care what [Warner Bros.] thought or did. We just wanted to get our record out, so we said, ‘If you don’t want to do it, adios.’”
Seems like 10 years later, Eisley is still precociously savvy, even if now it’s about the music biz instead of simply making music. 

Charles Bradley @ State Room

Hard living, soulful sounds

He sounds weathered, worn out. It’s tough to reconcile this voice with the one that moans and shouts with such conviction on No Time for Dreaming. But this is the man, sho’nuff.
Rousted from a nap, Charles Bradley is a little groggy—“I was just dozin’ off”—but certainly not foggy. When asked for details on a bio scrap that mentions hitchhiking with a killer, he launches right into the tale. It’s remarkable how much he recalls from his 63 years. Then again, some stories tattoo themselves on your mind.
Bradley’s music has that effect.
Like Bettye LaVette, the 63-year-old soul singer came up in obscurity. He sang when he could, knocked ’em out when he did, but always wound up in a dim corner. Unlike LaVette, who found Euro-circuit fame, Bradley mostly worked as a chef in New York, Alaska, California and finally back in New York, where he quit the kitchens but really started to cook.
At 51, he got up and gigged as Black Velvet, a James Brown act. Then his brother was gunned down, and Bradley considered giving up.
That’s when Daptone Records stepped in and plucked Bradley from the blue-black depths. As labelmates Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings and The Budos Band formed a new wave of funk and soul, Daptone co-founder Gabriel Roth paired Bradley with The Sugarman 3 and then the Menahan Street Band for several singles. The buzz rose in pitch until Bradley and the MSB released Dreaming this year. Now Bradley is a certified soul legend—the “Screaming Eagle of Soul.”
It’s the voice, but also Bradley’s life and perspective, that gets to you. He sings about his brother on “The World (Is Going Up In Flames),” but instead of addressing it directly, Bradley writes generally about conflict, appealing for brotherhood. Even “No Time for Dreaming” isn’t explicitly about himself; Bradley’s aim is to be good to people. Like the man who gave him a ride.
“The guy kept lookin’ at me. I’m tired; I’m tryin’ to go to sleep,” Bradley recalls. After a spell, the stranger said, “I know you’re wonderin’ who I am, right?” Bradley, who calls himself “a very honest man,” said, “Not really. But what’s up?”
The stranger told him what was up.
“Oh God … I got scared,” says Bradley, wide-awake now. The man had caught his wife cheating with his boss, and, during the confrontation, she told him he was worthless. He awoke the next day, snapped, shot up his workplace, and then his family. He said he just wanted to tell his side of the story and urged Bradley to sleep, saying he’d wake him up before their paths diverged.
“I was still a little nervous,” says Bradley, “but I slept.” The man kept his word, telling Bradley, “Keep goin.’ You’re a good person. I hope you can understand [my situation].”
“I could relate to him,” Bradley says. Bradley hadn’t killed anyone, but years ago, while working at a restaurant, a dispute with white coworkers led to one attacking him. Bradley fought back, and, when the police came, he was made the culprit. He spent 15 days in jail and, upon returning to the restaurant, was treated like a dangerous criminal. That murderer had been done wrong and reacted badly; Bradley was in a similar situation and felt the same frustration, but clearly he handled it better.
As he tells this story, real sirens sound in the background.
“That’s why I say we need to bring back the golden rule,” says Bradley, referencing a song from Dreaming. People just need to show each other kindness and sympathy; that’s what he was doing with the murderer —when others would’ve jumped from the moving car. It brings to mind a line from “Golden Rule”: “Now you know what I’m talkin’ about/ Now you feel my heart—and know I’m for real.”

Ratatat

2-headed dance crew, 1 vision

 Ratatat

There are three elements to Ratatat.

The band members are two: Mike Stroud, guitarist, and Evan Mast, synth- and bass-man. Then there are the songs, which for Mast have a life of their own: “They take their own direction, do what they want to do. If you try to impose your own sound, you end up with something really unsatisfying.”

So far, the songs have not steered them wrong. The duo has been touring for around eight years, maturing along with their music. Their newest release, 2010’s LP4, features sounds little heard on other Ratatat records: strings, Middle Eastern and African beats and lyric-less vocals. “We kind of got into the sound of voices and the manipulated voice,” Mast says on the phone from New York. “There’s no instrument that does what a voice does.”

Does this mean that Ratatat have broken their long-standing no-lyrics policy? Not likely. Since their first self-titled album in 2004, the only words heard on Ratatat records were found in samples or remixes. Mast says that lyrics can be limiting, and eschewing them “allows people to experience the song on whatever level they want. … It’s more interesting.” Plus, he points out, Mozart and Bach wrote predominantly instrumental music. Mast spent the past year studying Bach, but shies way from naming the composer as an influence. “It sounds a bit pretentious,” he laughs. “I think Jay-Z’s records are just as influential.”

The music has been growing and changing in other ways, too. Mast says he and Stroud “got more into being detailed with guitars and keyboards.” They also added strings. “It’s an easy thing to make those songs melodramatic and cheesy,” Mast admits. But with a little growing up, “we got to the point where we were going to write string parts that were worthwhile.”

Meanwhile, the heavy beats that marked early Ratatat tracks have subsided in favor of intricate African and Middle Eastern rhythms. But fear not, Ratatat fans: Whether you worship hip-hop or electro-pop, you will still find something that will make you shake it.

If you’re not a dancer, Mast promises a “spectacle” that “anyone could enjoy on some level.” Their live show, according to Mast, is an “intense and elaborate thing” built over the eight years he and Stroud have been touring together. While Mast and Stroud rarely share the stage with other musicians, a holographic string section will join them on this tour.

Sick beats, holograms, flashing lights and an extra-crazy audience are all elements of a great show. But then there are birds.

Fellini, Stroud’s albino parakeet and star of two recent music videos, might make an appearance. According to Mast, Fellini was, at first, “just around.” But one bird led to another, and now they’re traveling with not only Fellini, but other avian friends also, including an African Grey parrot. Or so Mast says—it’s hard to tell if he’s joking. But given Ratatat’s reputation, those with ornithophobia should probably stay away.

While the show and the music have grown more complex, so has Mast and Stroud’s relationship, though they remain remarkably in sync with each other. “When we’re working on songs, we know what the other is thinking,” Mast says. Each song is discovered as it is written, meaning the emotional feel of a track might range from serene to giddy to desperately sad and back again, all during the course of the composing process.

Instruments, emotions and tour mates might change. But for Ratatat, there are a few constants: unique beats, an irreverent and glorious mix of genres, and, finally, devotion to a back-to-basics musicality, highlighting sounds and instruments without linguistic trappings.
“So much can be done with instrumental music,” Mast observes. “And I feel it’s neglected.”