Andrew Bird at Northwestern University 5/14

Before I got into town, my friend Maggie told me that she had landed a batch of tickets to see Andrew Bird put on a VH1-style- storytellers concert at Northwestern and would I be interested in going? Uhm, of course.

I haven’t listened to much of Andrew Bird’s music, so I tracked him down on MySpace and checked out his latest album, Armchair Apocrypha. I thought it was an interesting album. If you asked me about it before the show, I’d recommend it, but I don’t know that I’d go out and spend $12 on it.

After the show, I was read to jump on iTunes and download it.

I used to play at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall while I was in high school. I was constantly amazed at the acoustics and how easy it was to hear other people playing. It only holds 1100 people, so the idea of hearing such intricate music in that venue was half of the draw.

Neither Andrew Bird or the Hall disappointed. I was sitting 11 rows back on the left hand side of the stage. I’m pretty sure that Bird heard the muffled burp that I let out half way through Why. I’m not joking.

His stage set up consisted of a glockenspiel, electric guitar, violin with two looping rigs and two giant victrola looking horns. Each of the victrola horns was hooked up to a separate violin rig and altered the sound not so subtly. One of the horns kept the melody. The other had two horns pointing opposite directions and spun in front of a microphone. The effect was to completely destroy the sound that Andrew Bird had previously looped.

It made the music sound very Phillip Glass-like.

After an hour, Bird took questions. I found out he grew up in my home town. He likes coffee and tries to tour in an environmentally friendly way. After 15 minutes of questions, he played a three song encore and closed with Weather Systems.

In that space, with that sound, it was amazing.

Review: Kristoffer Ragnstam 04/02/07

I made my way over to the Middle East in Central Square last night to check out Kristoffer Ragnstam. The show was Upstairs at the Middle East. If you haven’t been there, the room is small and intimate. It was made more intimate because in addition to Dave, Iris and me, there were about a dozen other people in the crowd. Plus the members of the three other bands that were playing.

The space always makes me feel like I’m seeing a friend play a show in his garage in high school. The stage isn’t big and the max occupancy of the room is 194. Thinking back, those garage shows might have held more people.

Kristoffer Ragnstam was hanging out by the bar before his set. Tall and skinny with glasses that looked more like Coke bottles than eye wear, he was dressed in a green and purple cowboy shirt. I couldn’t make out what was stitched onto it because his matching handkerchief/ascot was too big too see around.

As his band, The Electric Four, set up on stage Ragnstam turned to the crowd and said, “Watch out, Swedes are in the building. Swedes are in the building.” He looked to the drummer — who’s hand was pointing straight up with drumstick — then turned back to the crowd and simply said, “Thank you for dancing.” They launched into slick 40-minute set mixing pop with pop-y funk stylings that tried to channel Beck.

Unfortunately I kept thinking Devo instead of Beck. It’s worth noting that I’ve never seen a band more into their own music than this one. The drummer sang to himself, the lead guitar player danced and the bass player — who may be the bastard love child of John Daily and Curt Schilling — rocked himself hard all night.

The same can’t be said of the other 12 of us in the audience. Ragnstam definitely touched on a few musical themes that made me nod my head, but all in all his show wasn’t as incredible as I was made to believe it would be. It could have been that the room was mostly empty or that it was a Monday, but I left the Middle East wanting something more.

But, if I happening to surfing concert listings and see that Kristoffer Ragnstam and the Electric 4 are playing a show for $10, I’d go check them out again.

Review: Menomena at Great Scott 3/27

I made the trip out to Allston on Tuesday night for the second show of the week: Menomena at Great Scott. I met up with Iris and Dave for a burrito and a few beers before heading over to the show. Doors were at 9pm and the line up was Menomena, Field Music and Land of Talk.

Talk about a night of indie music and indie people. Sorry, pretentious indie people.

Great Scott hasn’t changed much since the last time I was there. Walking in, you’re in a square room with a checkered floor. A big wooden bar runs the length of the far wall and tables, rails and barstools are littered around the room. The beer selection was decent. Jutting out of the main room was a long rectangular hallway about 20 feet wide and maybe 40 feet long, which opened up at the head and had the stage. The whole place is shaped like a dumbbell.

Montreal-based Land of Talk opened the evening up with a 40 minute (!?) set. They sounded like a poor man’s version of Rilo Kiley. I couldn’t hear the lyrics over the guitar fuzz. The drums and bass (Bucky and Chris) were unimpressive. The smoking hot indie chick lead singer Elizabeth Powell was the most redeeming part of their show. All in all, they sounded like a relatively new band trying to massage out a live sound while still trying to be relevant. They finished their set up and retired to the swag stand for the rest of the night.

Field Music (David Brewis, Peter Brewis and Andy Moore) is a UK-based trio that I checked out for a few minutes before heading over to the show. Their tracks sounded pretty interesting and I figured that seeing two good bands out of a three band lineup would make the evening worthwhile. Unfortunately, they were pretty benign. One guy I met at the show called them derivative and a rip off of Yes. (He was a little bit older.) Rather than trying to forge their own sound, they picked bits and pieces of other bands they must have listened to and tried to cobble it together into a mosaic. Unfortunately, I didn’t think it worked.

The drumming was less than inspired. It was just there to keep the beat and didn’t add to the sound. I suppose there is nothing wrong with that, but I challenge you to name me a truly great band that didn’t have a good-to-great drummer. It’s hard. And even bands that skate by on poor drumming make up for it another way. Take the White Stripes. Say what you will about them, but Jack White’s blistering guitar work overshadows Meg’s drumming and makes the sound work.

Not so much with Field Music. Dave and Iris disagreed with me and the random guy from the bar. But after the sound of the first act, anything was going to be a step up.

Menomena finally came out an hour after Field Music left the stage. The Portland, OR three piece (I guess that was the theme for the night) consists of Brent Knopf on guitar, keyboards, glockenspiel; Justin Harris on bass, guitar, baritone sax and alto sax; and Danny Seim on percussion. It was apparent from the first song that these were the professionals and everything up until that point had been wrapping — here was the real present.

What struck me most was the difference between the sound on the album and the sound live. I gave the record Friend or Foe two listens before the show. It felt slow and melodramatic. I remember thinking ‘Here we go again.’ But live, these three guys put on a show. All three of the guys sing, but Harris’s voice was the standout. The addition of the two saxes and glockenspiel to the sound gave it less of an Indie feel and more an experimental rock sound. Me likey.

Menomena played for about an hour an a half, finishing up around one. Although the encore was delayed because, as the band left the stage after their set, the drummer skipped out for some food. Harris and Knopf came back on stage and explained to the crowd: ‘This is probably the lamest encore you’ve ever seen, but our drummer went to get something to eat.’ They hung around until he got back, played their encore and strolled off to wherever experimental rock bands go after shows — probably a bar around the corner.

Review: Galactic at Paradise 3/26

Monday night was the first time I’ve seen a show at the Paradise Rock Club. What a venue. Saying the Paradise is small is like saying beer is good or the Cubs probably won’t win the World Series this year. The main room is at the end of a long skinny hallway plastered in posters for upcoming shows. (Seu Jorge, anyone?) After going through a small doorway, you’re hit by the stage. The room is rectangular and is laid out like the long, skinny Tetris piece when you want it to take up four across spaces. From the entrance to the front of the stage doesn’t feel like more than twenty feet.

On each end of the room there are two stairways that lead to a balcony level with mini-mezzanines on the way. As usual, I made my way upstairs to stake out a good vantage point to see the show. Luckily, I found a spot on the right side of the stage next to the soundboard — my favorite spot at any show. It makes for the best sound.

After grabbing a cold can of PBR (thanks for making this beer cool to drink again, hipsters), I started listening to the Delta Blues man Papa Mali play his opening set. A slide guitar player with long graying dreds and silver soul patch, Papa spent more time talking to the crowd than playing his guitar. It was a good set, but mostly unremarkable. After he cleared off the stage, the crowd uniformly had a smoke, got a beer, then started crowding the stage to get a good spot for Galactic.

After twenty minutes, Galactic steamed onto the stage like a river boat that had run out of liquor on its way to Mardi Gras.

Robert Mecurio, Jeff Raines, Rich Vogel, Ben Ellman and Stanton Moore filled the room with sound and energy from the first tenor saxophone wail until the last chord of the Hammond organ faded away. The first set was a tight improv set featuring Ellman on the sax and Vogel on the Hammond. Like a classic blues band, the rhythm section vamped while Ellman took his 64 or 128 or 192 bars before giving way to Vogel. The crowd undulated like a handful of beads flying from a balcony. But in this case the reward wasn’t titties — it was a blues/funk fusion that hips just couldn’t resist.

Moore, the drummer, took one solo in the first set and used it mostly to expand the beat he had been keeping behind the song while adding a few flourishes here and there. Mostly, though, it was just to let the crowd know that his solo would be coming and to whip the already dancing mass into a frenzy.

The first set ended with the tenor sax doing its best impersonation of Robert Plant as Galactic ripped off a cover of Kashmir before the crowd moved out to Comm Ave for another smoke, grabbed another beer and then found new spots for the second set. I moved from the right side of the balcony to the left for a better view of the stage and the crowd.

The second set started and the focus shifted a little bit. Ellman switched back and forth between the tenor sax, Bari sax and harmonica to change the sound a little bit, but the groove was still fast paced and the sound reached a new level of intensity. Unlike some other shows I’ve seen recently, Galactic never once slowed the tempo. There were no ballads or mellow pieces. From start to finish the goal seemed to be to get people to dance. And the whole time they were putting on a clinic of how an improvisational blues band works by passing solos back and forth, hitting bridges together and changing times.

Two songs before the second set ended, Moore got his chance, but not before Bonerama came on stage and played with the band. The incarnation that was at the Paradise was simple: a trombone quartet that took me back to the days of high school jazz band. The four horn players traded solos with Ellman before Moore stole the show.

The stage lights changed color and everyone cleared the middle of the stage as Stanton Moore arrived at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston, Mass. His solo lasted about five minutes and he played every snare, tom, cymbal and bass drum he had wrapped around him. At one point, with a grin on his face, he stood up behind the set, leaned over the toms and started playing the front of the bass drum.

The solo was impressive enough that it caught at least one of the professional musicians off guard. I noticed one of the trombone players was watching Moore a little slack jawed. When Ellman cued the rest of the band to move to the center of the stage again and start playing, this one lone ‘boner was the last to get his horn up and get back into position to play.

The band played one encore before calling it a night. Two hours and thirty minutes after the show started, it came to an end. I would’ve liked to hear another song or two, but after all, it was a Monday night.

Upcoming shows: Galactic and Menomena

After the weekend excursion to Philly, I’ll return to Boston in style with two shows next week. Galactic at the Paradise on Monday night and Menomena at Great Scott on Tuesday.

This will be the second attempt at checking out Galactic. They were supposed to play in Boston a month and a half a go but cancelled the show. The concert on Monday is their attempt to make good. Everything I’ve heard and seen from this band suggests that they will do just that. For those who don’t know, Galactic is a five piece funk band. I’ve heard bits and pieces of an album or two and saw them play one song on the Bonnaroo 2004 DVD, but this will be the first time I’m really checking the band out.

I don’t know anything about Menomena. It’s a cheap show recommended by Iris whose music taste I usually agree with. She passed along a Menomena CD last week that I still haven’t listened to yet. I’ll do that one the drive south Friday night.

Seeing a show at Great Scott makes me feel old. I haven’t been in that place since I visited Rachel in Boston while I was living in New Jersey. Another friend said of the venue’s former life: It used to be a Boston College frat house. I would agree. But by all accounts it is turning into a great place to see a show. We will see.

I’m pretty excited for these shows. I always get a little keyed up as a concert gets closer but there is something special about discovering a band by seeing them live. Granted, the opportunity for me to yawn, smoke and drink my way through the show because I don’t recognize any songs exists, but those shows where that doesn’t happen are always amazing — they take on a special meaning.

Buying a cheap ticket to a small venue without having heard the band before or even knowing their name only to be blown away… just thinking about it makes my pants a little tighter. Those are the shows where I wait in the swag line to buy a CD, throw it on in the car, and listen to it twice when I get home. Then I’ll rip it onto my computer and load it on the iPOD and listen to it non stop for the next week.

It’s glorious.