Ponys / Black Lips / Sunday Sinners, Sala Rossa Montreal, March 26 2007

Riddle me this: how is it that the Sunday Sinners could make one of the best albums to come out of the city of Montreal last year (Sweet Jam EP, Sonic's Chicken Shrimp)-- a soulful, tuneful, and urgent seven songs swinging between sweet jangle and delicious noise-- yet they still haven't figured out how to play live? They've always been an awkward band on a stage-- frontwoman Jenna, for her vast talent and vocal range, is stiff and nervous, as is Annie, Jenna's melodic counterpoint on Farfisa, and the rest of the band simply fumbles around them. When I saw the Sinners play their first show in winter of 2004, I figured they were just starting out and would soon relax-- they clearly had talent and potential by the bucket and would realize it before long. But they've been playing for three years and their live set has hardly improved. Missy, their original guitarist, is gone, and they've replaced her with a guy who doesn't seem to be able to tell when he's not playing in key. All members of the band are riddled with hesitation, as though each waiting for cues from the others that never come. The scene is puzzling-- their songs are stirring and masterful, and on record they sound phenomenal. Why can't they do it live?

I arrived early to the Ponys/Black Lips show to make sure I caught the Sunday Sinners, but three songs in I wished I'd taken the long route over. Three songs after that I was wishing the set would end as soon as possible, for everyone's dignity. When the merciful end came, I could hear the same question all through the audience: What the hell? We'd all heard the record, we all came expecting something on par with Irma Thomas fronting the Velvet Underground. Instead we held our ears surreptitiously, trying to keep the band from seeing, ashamed for them that we knew what they could do but weren't doing. It was a shame.

What a relief when Atlanta's Black Lips tumbled onstage. As they set up my pal Greg said, "If this band doesn't immediately rock my ass off, I'm out of here." They didn't look like much-- a wee longhair in Crue t-shirt and toque on guitar, a skinny guy with short hair in a tie-die shirt on bass, an Eric Bogosian lookalike in a white t-shirt on second guitar, and a kid on drums who wearing a sideways camo hat featuring a dollar-sign in rhinestones. Someone had told me they played in suits and ties in deference to their Nuggets-era sound; instead they looked like a group of kids you'd see in a bus stop near a high school smoking a joint the size of a parsnip. Greg nudged me and pointed at the guy in white. "Does the guitarist on the left have gold fronts?" he asked in disbelief. After careful surveillance we determined that the most normal looking guy in the group did, in fact, have a top row of gold teeth. Huh.

Without preamble they hit the first beat and the room instantly jolted to attention. I'd heard their record and I knew what to expect-- old-school garage rock reminiscent of the Seeds or the Count Five or the early Stones, looser and lower-fi, with an edge of darkness and menace to the lyrics. Most garage rock is repetive and predictable, but Let It Bloom is a solid record that weathers repeated listening well. However, onstage the band was a different beast entirely-- each member played differently with a different energy, all singing at various times. The longhaired guitarist and shorthaired hippie bassist moved around, the drummer swung his head and neck wildly about as he played, and the gold-fronted second guitarist stayed mostly fused in place with his eyes inebriatedly half-lidded, mouth half-open, and a long trail of drool hanging from his chin down his chest. This he disturbed occasionally by spastically waggling his head like a wet dog, always with the same look of total stupefaction in the visible parts of his eyes. His look was such that he surprised me every time he actually played a guitar line, but he did that frequently and well.

What sets the Black Lips apart from a lot of other lo-fi garage bands is that they know how to write songs with hooks, which do things you don't expect and pique your curiosity and hold your interest. Through a brief set nonetheless packed full of short songs, it was clear how much songwriting talent was buried beneath the fuzzy distortion. Where other garage bands play uninspired 12-bar blues, aping the Sonics mimicking Chuck Berry, the Black Lips actually write songs that sound new while sounding old. They're catchy, and while they look like they must consume bull-doses of liquor and dope, they have a tonne of energy that they pass ably over to the audience. However long they had played, their set would still have been over too soon-- I was hooked and would happily have listened all night.

Finally the Ponys came on. Having seen them on the Laced With Romance tour in the summer of 2004 I knew what to expect-- not a lot of movement onstage, but solid songs played loud and well. They too are a weird looking band (as the band that wrote "10 Fingers, 11 Toes" should be)-- fronted by a hulking fellow with terrible posture who lurches over his guitar like a praying mantis, their bassist looks like a shy bird and their androgenous drummer clearly takes his fashion tips from Richard Hell circa-1975. They sound weird too, at least weirder than the Black Lips, but not so weird that you can't follow them. After all, they're a rock band first, an arty band second, and as a rock band they're sturdy and catchy. They played only a couple of old songs off the first album, avoided my favourite song from their second ("Get Black"), and encored with "I Wanna Fuck You" off of their first single. The Tom Verlaine worship of the first record has developed somewhat into a fuller sound with smoother lines and fewer angles, but they still held my attention for the duration of their set despite playing so loud that they left my ears ringing in spite of my earplugs.

I'd gladly see either of the last two bands again. As for the Sunday Sinners, I can only wonder when they're going to live up to their very obvious potential?

Mika Miko - C.Y.S.L.A.B.F. LP (Kill Rock Stars, 2006)

For the past six or seven years there has been wave after wave of bands labelled "dance punk" by reviewers or publicists, but for the vast majority of those groups the title was inappropriate. Bands like The Rapture, !!!, Q And Not U, and Bloc Party play music you could dance to, usually with live drums and guitar, but none play punk rock or anything approaching it. Virtually none of the "dance-punk" bands do or have, until the appearance of LA's Mika Miko.

I could waste a lot of space quibbling about what defines a band as punk rock, but it's hard to argue that certain elements (both sonic and behavioural) remain hallmarks of the genre. Mika Miko covers them all-- soundwise, they play spastic, energetic rock and roll drawing strongly from the glorious late-70s LA punk sound (capably carrying the mantle of such giants as The Germs, early Black Flag, The Urinals, Red Cross, and the Middle Class), with enough of the influence of danceable European postpunkers the Slits and Liliput that their record sounds like an instant punker dance party. Yet even their nods to disco-inflected No Wave are a little off-- Mika Miko owes more to the good-time punk-funk of the Big Boys than the forced cool of James Chance and Liquid Liquid. Either of the two sets of dorky shouted vocals could be paying tribute to the late Randy "Biscuit" Turner, but whether they are or not makes no difference: there's nearly as much "Fun Fun Fun" on this record as in the Big Boys catalogue. The result is thrilling-- this record surges forward with the unironic vigour of old hardcore while swinging enough to put a shake to even the tightest ass.

What really makes Mika Miko a punk band, however, is that they believe in doing it themselves, volunteering at LA's DIY art-and-music venue The Smell and championing small community venues and house-shows when they're on tour. And they're young, which is maybe what's been lacking from the various troupes of bored-eyed art-school haircut bands heretofore called "dance-punk." It's unfair, but young people tend to do punk rock better if only because they're often a lot less worried about how silly they'll look if they reveal that they care enthusiastically about anything, be it for political causes or just having fun. The five women in Mika Miko are barely out of high school and, according to their website, mostly still live with their parents.

Whatever drives the band drives them hard. Their sound is bracing and and vivacious, rollicking between out-and-out hardcore and dancy rock numbers that sound like they could inspire the kind of party at which people try to hang from the ceiling and fail, leaving in their swath wrecked halls and property damage. Alright!

"Crows" by Sexy, Por Vida LP (2006)

Download track here, while it lasts.

The most appealing thing about sloppy music is that it imparts emotion directly, bypassing the impulse to do so sensibly (or in some cases listenably). Sloppy music is good precisely because it feels good when it sounds like it shouldn't work. The listener may not be able to make out the individual instruments, or the words, vocal melody, or even the rhythm, but is nonetheless thrilled by something other than the success of those individual elements. It feels good-- it quickens your step and makes your blood race, even as it constantly reminds you that it isn't making you any smarter.

Oakland's Sexy, however, do sound like smart guys (and smartasses, though often the two are inextricable), but they also sound like they've got personal problems and probably drinking problems as well. What you can hear of the lyrics are clever, plaintive, snotty, and occasionally suicidal. But you can't really hear the lyrics most of the time-- the entirety of Por Vida is several glorious slight steps above white noise. The band plays what might be diminutively described as East Bay pop punk-- certainly descendent of the punk-party-positivity of Operation Ivy, the melodic malaise of Jawbreaker, and the energetic earnestness of Crimpshrine ("Pink Elephants," another track on Por Vida, even includes a whistle solo that outdoes Crimpshrine's "Butterflies").

While the music is frenetic and loud and hurtles forward at a high tempo, what marks it is the fact that each individual part of it sounds as though it could have been made with cardboard boxes and broken glass. Were they not so well-played, the cymbals and drums could easily be the sound of smashed bottles and boots stomping on boxes. If you can imagine cardboard being torn musically, that's what the guitars sound like; the bass is like that too, except lower. The only non-recyclable part of the deluge is singer/guitarist Ashley's frenzied yelp occasionally rising above the din to cheerily explain things like, "The only way I can explain that you're gone is that I'm dead to the world."

It sounds like garbage, but it's not-- in spite of the terrific noise, every member of Sexy is very good at what they do. The music is horridly recorded, sure, and the instruments are no doubt cheap, but the band plays tightly and fervently. Guitarist Ashley is a more accomplished player than most punk rock guitarists, playing careful high-speed parts with strained grace. He's well aware of how the guitar sounds and seems to treat it less as an instrument and more as an item that makes a loud noise, but even that he does distinctly-- I'm particularly fond of the little guitar barks he emits following the brief drumroll-rests in the chorus to signify that the music will continue. There's natural and palpable talent under there if you pick the scab of the recording far enough away to hear it. As such, it's unfair to call this "sloppy"-- the only thing truly sloppy about this song (or the rest of the album) is the recording. Yet the poor recording is part of what's great about this track. Having all instruments and vocals striking so directly and consistently into the red gives the song the adrenalized dizziness of pure energy. It feels more than it sounds, and the feeling it communicates is exhiliration.

Lyrically it's a broken-heart song, but from the sample at the beginning of a smarmy voice bleating The Smiths, it's clearly one that deliberately eschews the self-absorbed preciousness of popular songs of love and loss in favour of the profanity and hysteria of real heartache. Ironically, the song's subject matter is exponentially self-indulgent than anything Morrissey could weep up. The snatches of lyrics that fight through the bedlam of the music are cartoonishly despondent (lines like "I'm stuck in this world where nobody loves me, nobody wants me, and nobody holds me" have kin in other tracks on the album -- "All I want is someone to love me. Til death. Til death" in "Xmas Song" or the point in "Valentine's Day" at which Ashley suggests, "I'll put my head in the oven"), but instead of wallowing in it the band is sweating the misery out. Beneath the noise, the song's melody is clean and pure and even joyful, kicked forward by the frantic tempo.

Revelling in unintelligibility, the song races along gathering mass and speed like a filthy snowball bounding down a ski hill full of mud and sticks and discarded mitt-warmers and hot-chocolate cups, headed for the cheerful unsuspecting lovers enjoying their apres-ski at the lodge. Sexy is angry about love and bent on destruction, whether for themselves, their instruments, the venues they're playing, or their listeners ears. It sounds like fun.

Live take of a new track from the forthcoming Ted Leo album: "Who Do You Love?"

"I've Found a New Baby" by Lester Young Trio (with Nat King Cole on piano and Buddy Rich on drums), 1946

Download track here (while it lasts).

Without a doubt my favourite piece of instrumental jazz, on par with Billie Holiday's later, rougher version of "Love Me or Leave Me" on Verve. Probably one of my favourite pieces of music, period. I have listened to this one track over and over since first discovering it twelve years ago and it has yet to tire me even slightly. There are so many angles from which I approach listening to it that it's hard to begin with one, but the sensible approach is the obvious one: a tenor saxophone sounds like a human voice, and Lester Young's saxophone sounds like the voice of someone whom you care about very deeply. It's by turns intimate, teasing, rousing, and reassuring, and as such much of this song is like a conversation with someone.

But it's not so much a conversation as it is like listening to someone's thoughts. Maybe your own, maybe someone else's, maybe an archetypal anyone's. Somehow, in barely over four minutes of instrumental music, this track manages to impress upon the listener the sense of the most important emotions and routines of human thought. Transcribing the process of trying to make up its mind, the track progresses through all different levels of reason and emotional reactions thereto. Wonder, care, uncertainty, self-doubt, hope, reticence, confidence, and joy are amply present at various times, as well as less emotional moments of pensiveness, suspicion, reason, and verification. All communicated, of course, through wordless music.

What's astonishing about this track is the monstrous ability of all three of the musicians playing it. Each of the three is unequivocally a master of his instrument, and here all three play freely and wildly together in a manner that--in spite of the brilliant spacing and room all over the track--allows each one of them to be doing something astonishing at all times. Pres, Cole, and Rich spend this track being infinitely interesting, which is why it works so well to communicate so much without really saying anything. If it's an exercise in virtuosity, it's one that displays pure joy in playing (and, in some sense, of living) rather than a practiced digital ability.

The fact that it's so poorly recorded, scratchy and trebly, plays well in its favour too-- the extent that the joy and genius is electrifying in spite of what is clearly not a 100% representation of what the music actually was succeeds in suggesting some mythological quality to the musicians, that in person this would have been somehow beyond human. But the recording is enough-- you can instantly absorb the exuberance of Rich's swift, layered drumming, and the magnificent endowment of Cole's ability to express with a piano what otherwise no one would be able to express at all. All of which is tied naturally together by Lester Young's by turns swaggering, nervous, plaintive, thoughtful, and vivacious stream-of-thought saxophone. But it's not even the sound of a voice anymore-- that saxophone sounds like the taste of butterscotch, or cool water passing over and over through a parched throat. It breathes, it swallows, it thinks, and it talks. This music sounds like being alive.