Serious Bizness

What could I possibly say about tUnE-yArDs that hasn't already been said on every music blog on the world wide interweb? Nothing. Nothing at all. I was ambivalent about Merrill Garbus's much-hyped music project up until last night, when I got a chance to check out her live act at the very cool Brighton Music Hall. Now I am a convert, an enthusiastic passenger on the crowded but thoroughly entertaining tUnE-yArDs bandwagon.

Garbus was joined onstage by Nate Brenner, who also plays bass on the new record, and two saxophonists. The typical track consisted of Garbus and Brenner whipping up some drum and vocal loops on the fly, which built steadily in complexity and sheer awesomeness until their metamorphosis into a recognizable song was complete. The saxophones were a treat whenever they chimed in, but the main attraction was Merrill's remarkably powerful and versatile voice. With an undeniably unusual sound for a female vocalist, she commands attention with her intensity while maintaining the flexibility to go on some pretty amazing vocal runs.

tUnE-yArDs - Bizness

For a mere 12 bucks, the sold-out crowd was treated to one remarkable song after another. One of the most all-around entertaining shows I've seen in a while, tUnE-yArDs impressed with musicianship, showmanship, and creativity. Sometimes an act takes off because everybody is supposed to like them, but nobody can figure out why (see: Animal Collective). But tUnE-yArDs, like the Dirty Projectors (who they toured with back in 2009), are blowing up for all the right reasons. Check out the new record and don't miss the chance to see this fantastic act on tour. 

Running from "The Law"

The former mill town of Lawrence, Mass., is a mere 45 minutes from downtown Boston, but worlds away from the city's gold-domed capitol and shimmering skyscrapers. The rough-and-tumble city has been in the headlines a lot recently for basically showing us what would have happened if Stringer Bell from "The Wire" had survived being ambushed and ultimately gone on to become the mayor of Baltimore.

Simply put, Mayor Willy Lantigua of Lawrence is hardcore. The first elected Hispanic mayor in Massachusetts history, he's been mainly a disappointment by any standard except the "badass" quotient. He's frequently spotted in the VIP section of grimy Lawrence clubs like Bali and The Loft - the latter recently cited by police for having "strippers in G-strings selling lap dances and dancing on an outdoor patio and in the windows — attracting crowds of gawkers on the street outside — on two successive nights."

But it hasn't been all harmless fun for Mayor Lantigua; he's under investigation for corruption for a number of incidents from the serious to the mundane. He was the victim of an assassination attempt back in April; he later criticized the police for their investigation and suggested that they were trying to frame Lantigua himself for a crime. Finally he appointed one of his boys - a sergeant -  as Deputy Chief of Police. Gangsters around the city are now known to drop Lantigua's name when cops mess with them. And as in "The Wire," race has been a major factor in all of this; the old-guard cops and firemen that Lantigua has clashed with are mainly white, while Lantigua's base is the more recently-arriving Dominican and Puerto Rican community in the city.

Termanology representing Mass.
with Celtics jacket and "The Town"
bank robbery creepy nun mask

The Honorable William Lantigua, Mayor

What does all of this have to do with music? Not much, except to establish the street cred of Lawrence, Massachusetts's answer to the post-industrial blight affecting urban areas in this country from Baltimore to Detroit. With a mayor that hardcore, any aspiring rappers have a tough act to follow.


Stepping up to the plate is Termanology, a Lawrence native of Puerto Rican extraction who has been steadily rising in the rap game for years. He got his first big break when the legendary DJ Premier produced a track for him in 2006 - the very tight "Watch How it Go Down." Since then, Term has frequently collaborated with fellow Lawrence native (and Exeter alum) Statik Selektah, including on the well-received "Stop, Look, and Listen" with Q-Tip and Styles P and "To The Top" with Cassidy and Saigon. It's been a slow and steady rise, but from where I'm sitting, Termanology looks like the top rapper out of the Bay State today. 

His new single "Uncut," released in April, finds the city's favorite son paying homage to Lawrence (watch for a shout-out to "the Law" with attendant hand sign at 0:30) while enjoying all the trappings of a successful rap career. I think that the club in the closing scene of the videos is none other than The Loft - Mayor Lantigua's favored spot - though I didn't spot him in the frame anywhere.

Politicians, rappers, and strippers - oh my! While none of this is great for the city of Lawrence, a Mayor who likes to hit the clubs is hardly the worst scandal facing the Commonwealth these days. And at least Lawrence is getting some pretty tight music out of their slow and painful decline, following in the path of Detroit rather than its less rhythmically-inclined neighbor Flint. For better or worse, Lawrence is back in the spotlight, as Termanology and Willy Lantigua alike are both very much on their grind. 

...And the living is easy

Free for the summer from the mind control programming of the Harvard Kennedy School's liberal shills, I resolve once again to pledge my Life, Fortune, and sacred Honor to the pursuit of catchiness, at least until I get bogged down with something else. The weather has finally begun to turn here in the northeast, and it's my pleasure to bring you a new track with those sweet summer sounds we've been longing for all through the finger- and soul-numbing winter.

Dirty Gold - California Sunrise


The biggest problem with this track is that the guitar intro for the first ten seconds or so sounds exactly like "Zebra" by Beach House, and that song annoys me. But once that visceral association passed, I really got into this beachy jam by two brothers and their friend straight out of San Diego. Just one listen to the seagulls squawking in the beginning of the track, and you don't need The Google to tell you that this is a band in the Cali tradition through and through. Their debut EP was just released by Autumn Tone, the record label arm of music blog Aquarium Drunkard, and their description of "shimmering beachside pop" pretty much hits the nail on the head for this trio.

This picture of the band, featuring driftwood, a hand drum, and a sweet portable keyboard, gives a better visualization of their music than even the most intrepid iTunes programmer could. There's nothing too complicated going on here - but as my fellow Concordian Henry David Thoreau always said, "Simplify!" That was a man who knew a thing or two about transforming the individual's commune with nature into art, and the spirit of Thoreau's message shines through on "California Sunrise."

It's only May 10th (happy birthday to my brother Alex in Baghdad!), but I think that I've already found my beach anthem for the summer of 2011. I'm very much looking forward to getting down to the Cape, laying down a towel, and giving "California Sunrise" a field test. Happy summer, everyone.

Alma Mater

At long last, the soundtrack to so many Princeton nights has finally been recorded for dissemination to the masses and careful study by future generations. Paul Cowgill, the pride of Munster, Indiana and a helluva college roommate, has just made his first EP "Secret Snow" available for digital purchase or to stream for free. The Cambridge, MA-based polymath has put together four brisk songs sprinkled with the deft wordplay and lyrical ingenuity one would expect from a Harvard PhD in systems biology (see: "The Right to Arm Bears"). But it's hardly all work and no play for Cowgill. His crisp guitar-and-vocals tracks evoke the carefree joys of a good jam session with your buddies on the quad - except unlike that annoying kid on your floor freshman year playing Dispatch, Cowgill is actually good at singing and guitar.

According to his Bandcamp website, the writing for these four tracks took place over four years between 2006-2010. As the four tracks only total 13 minutes and 8 seconds, that means that Cowgill devoted nearly two days of songwriting, practice, and tweaking for every second of audio recorded on the EP. Now that's attention to detail, people. 

The fruits of this labor of love, composed at a Brahms-like pace, are finally being served up for the listening public in take-out form on the website and in a sit-down venue at O'Brien's pub in Allston on May 10th. The crowd at Cowgill's last live performance - an open mic night at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge - was so taken with him that management had to make an "Elvis has left the building"-style announcement to get us to pipe down and let the other artists meekly attempt to follow his act. 

So check out the EP online and come to the show if you're in town. Cowgill's new release is just the kind of hot off-the-presses, quality singing and songwriting that's sure to please you, your mother, and that cute girl in econ 101 alike. 

*Full disclosure: no financial considerations were made to the Pursuit of Catchiness in exchange for this plug, unless you count the time that Mr. and Mrs. Cowgill let a bunch of us stay over and bought us all burritos even though Paul wasn't in town.

The Last Great Blues Guitarist

I've always considered Stevie Ray Vaughan to be one of the greatest blues guitarists of all time. So when I turned my (no cable) TV to PBS the other day just to try my luck, I was immensely pleased to see the legend himself decked out in a turquoise kimono with a white “British invasion”-style scarf hanging loosely from his neck. I had stumbled across one of the great blues recordings of all time: Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan in session, for one night only.

The session took place in a Hamilton, Ontario studio in 1983 for CHCH-TV and remains the only recording of these blues icons playing together. It's an interesting hybrid of a live and a studio recording. There was no in-studio audience, but the whole session was done in a single take. Stevie and Albert hadn't rehearsed together - they didn't cross paths too often - and Stevie actually admits that he'd never even heard one of the songs they end up playing ("Ask Me No Questions"). The studio setting lends itself to a lot of banter between the musicians, and the intimacy of the session is really special.

The artists are having fun, but there’s no doubt that Stevie is absolutely zeroed-in. He's not nervous or overly serious, but he clearly recognizes the significance of the event and wants to put on a good show. King undoubtedly feels the same way, but his supreme confidence in his status as elder statesman, and his unbelievable chops (which show absolutely no signs of age) are clearly visible in his comfort onstage. A consummate showman, King is a bit more relaxed but no less impressive. The literal and figurative giant is clad in a three piece suit, and we see him variously standing up, yelling, and seemingly loving every minute of it. His name is spelled out boldly across the neck of his axe, lest anyone in the audience forget even momentarily who is the focus of attention. He also refers to his guitar at one point as a guit-fiddle, which is now the only term I will ever use for the rest of my life to refer to that particular intstrument.

Just as valuable as this lexicographical invention and the superb music the two make together is the unmistakable passing-of-the-torch quality in the session. Stevie was 31 years younger than Albert and clearly the most talented blues guitarist (guit-fiddler) of his generation. Fittingly, they duet on songs that Albert had played with the best axemen of his day: "Ask Me No Questions" was originally a duet with B.B. King, and Albert also raps on the recording about playing "Blues at Sunrise" with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin at the Filmore West. Finally, on a track titled "Pep Talk," there's as close to an actual torch-passing ceremony as you'll ever hear between two professional musicians, as Albert exhorts Stevie to respect his craft and keep the music alive.

Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan - Pep Talk

Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan - Overall Junction

The video contains a bunch of tracks that aren’t on the accompanying audio CD, and some of the highlights are found here. My favorite is an old Stevie track, “Texas Flood.” On this slow blues jam, even with the two guitar masters stringing together dazzling improvisations, I can't help but be hypnotized by the bass in the background: as steady, fundamental, and utterly essential as a heartbeat

Tragically, both artists would be dead within ten years - with King actually outliving Stevie, who died in a helicopter accident in 1990. Stevie's death left his generation of "young" blues guitarists (and even he would be 56 if he were alive today) with no heir apparent or even an heir faintly visible. And if one is to rise up, he'd better make himself known quickly. Perhaps no genre of modern music has relied so heavily on the transmission of its secrets from one generation to another than the blues, owing to its origins in African musical traditions and the circumstances of its development in the segregated and poverty-stricken Deep South. Every generation of blues guitarists has prepared the next for greatness, but unless Clapton has some protégé that he’s just biding his time before unleashing on society, it seems like that chain may be broken.

Jazz will go on, you figure. The innovation that has continuously reshaped the sound of jazz leaves the door open for development in any number of directions for years to come, and an iconic artist could step up and grab the mantle. But blues is tougher. At the end of the day, the 12-bar form (or some very similar offshoot) is the rule. The chord progressions are more or less set in stone. A blues player makes his whole living off the 6 notes of the blues scale (albeit with abundant note-bending in every direction). With so many greats having come and gone, how much more could there be to add to the picture? The previous generation, furthermore, lived such an authentic blues experience, really growing up in the Mississippi Delta and that distinct and uniquely American culture.

Of course, besides his abundant skills, Stevie also more-or-less singlehandedly moved blues music into the post-racial era. Can white people really play the blues? Ever since Stevie, the answer has been a resounding yes. He just put an end to that argument. Even a great player like Clapton hadn’t totally settled the matter, as his greatest accomplishments were more in blues-rock and straight rock groups like Cream and Derek & the Dominoes than in the blues. But was the first indisputably masterful white blues guitarist also potentially the last great guitarist of any color? Unfortunately, I tend to think so. I have no evidence for this claim, just a sinking pessimistic sense that the best days of that genre are well behind us.

If that’s the case, it’s a sad thing. But it’s not as bad as it may seem; the greats that came before have left an abundance of material that one could fill a lifetime enjoying and analyzing (it reminds me of this article by sabetmetrics god Bill James in Slate arguing that we don’t produce more great literary geniuses because we don’t really need them anymore). Nowhere is that legacy of musical brilliance, with merit to last through the ages, more evident than in this classic 1983 recording. If Stevie Ray Vaughan was the last great blues guitarist, at least the genre went out on top.  

Bob Marley and The Stranglers

My only complaint about "Hey Sparrow" from Peaking Lights is that it's too damn short. There's nothing more disappointing than hearing a song, deciding you like it a couple of minutes in, and then seeing that there's only another minute or so left before it's over. It's the musical equivalent of pouring yourself a heaping bowl of delicious cereal only to lift the milk carton and discover - gasp - it's too light! With its entrancingly subtle dub rhythms, delicate keys, and "groove-wave" guitar, "Hey Sparrow" puts the jam on your breakfast toast and will leave you wanting seconds.

Peaking Lights - Hey Sparrow

After considerable thought, I can best describe this track as Bob Marley's "Natural Mystic" crossed with "Golden Brown" by The Stranglers. In my musical world, that is a serious compliment. Peaking Lights have been called "post-reggae," and other tracks on their new record 936 do indeed show a heavy dubstep influence. Combining an uncanny number of instrumental tracks for a two-person outfit, they spin a multilayered musical web that sneaks up on the listener and, before you know it, ensnares you utterly. 

I got tipped off to this excellent record by a pretty glowing review on Altered Zones; they have a couple of other tracks from 936 up on their site as well. Leave it to a married couple from Wisconsin, recording out of Los Angeles, to put together the first great record of spring 2011 (morning temperature in Cambridge today: 26 degrees). With superior instrumentation and some beautiful vocals, Peaking Lights are warming things up for all of us with a sound that defies easy classification, but definitely deserves to be in the rotation this spring training. 

Le Chanson Fait La Force

Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to Haiti this week from exile in the Central African Republic and South Africa accompanied by a number of political and entertainment figures from around the world. While I have no interest in getting into questions of Haitian politics, I do think it's pretty hilarious that traveling in the company of Danny Glover, an actor known best for playing crotchety veteran Murtough in the Lethal Weapon series 25 years ago, is considered a mark of distinction in the developing world.

Another Aristide supporter is of greater interest to me at the moment though: legendary Haitian singer/songwriter Manno Charlemagne. He's been called "the Bob Marley of Haiti" and any of a number of other superlatives. It's pretty hard to compete with this snippet from Manno's MySpace biography, so just give this a read and you'll get a sense of the esteem in which the artist is held by his fans:

"A soulful yet brazen balladeer, Manno for decades used his acoustic guitar and tender baritone voice as weapons against the brutal Duvalier regime and civilized indifference of Haiti's insulated upper class. A skinny, poor rebel from the slums, he was the little black fly in a cold glass of milk.

Born in 1948, he slipped out of his mother's womb with a clenched fist thrust up in the air; his birthsong was defiance. He picked up his first guitar as a teenager and has been playing, singing and writing songs ever since. In the classic troubadour tradition, he is a teller of truth who disguises his profoundly political messages by placing them inside hauntingly beautiful melodies. Similar to the storytelling traditions of the African griots who passed their history down through the generations from mouth to ear, Manno's protest songs with their caustic lyrics and gentle rhythms documented centuries of abuse suffered by the peasant class in Haiti, and captured the rawness of life in this black republic."

I caught a riveting program on CCTV documenting Aristide's return to Port-au-Prince, and the rabid passion with which his supporters greeted him bordered on the frightening. Part of the broadcast was set to Manno, a longtime Aristide backer and himself the Mayor of the capital city during Aristide's second term. I was moved to share some of his beautiful playing, and it is strictly for the aesthetic value of the music, and with no political implications one way or another, that I offer it up for your listening pleasure. My French Creole isn't really up to par these days anyway, so I can't make out much of what he's saying - though it has clearly not pleased any number of rulers in Haiti's troubled history.

In a country where two of the leading candidates for President were singers (Wyclef and Michel Martelly), listening to Manno and others is a reminder of the power of music to move people and hearkens back to a political tradition in music that has been sadly on the decline in our own country. Au fin en Haïti, peut-être que ça n'est pas l'union qui fait la force - c'est le chanson.

Manno Charlemagne - La Fimen (The Smoke)