Pages tagged “issue 20”

Hometown: Athens, Ga.
Members: [L-R] Jay Gulley (guitar/lead vocals), Phillip Brantley (bass/guitar/vocals), JoJo Glidewell (piano/vocals), John Swint (drums)
Fun Fact: The band’s debut album was mixed by John Keane, who’s worked with R.E.M., The Indigo Girls and Uncle Tupelo.
Why They’re Worth Watching: The Drive-By Truckers have taken the band under their wing and invited them to open one-off shows for them outside of Athens, and the band is selling out famous local venue The 40 Watt. The Skirts also are a Paste office fave to a ridiculous extent, with their debut spinning almost constantly.
For Fans of: Ben Folds, The Beatles, The Shins

The anecdote has already reached epic proportions among members of the Modern Skirts. Chances are it’s been embellished to make the tongue-tied culprit look even more bumbling and awkward (thereby easier to give hell to), but it plays something like this: Last fall after a concert in which the Skirts opened for local Athens rock legend Pylon, two guys named Michael Stipe and Chris Martin approach Jay Gulley, the Skirts’ lead singer. Stipe coolly remarks, “I’ve heard good things about your band.” To which Gulley replies, after a pause, “I’ve heard good things about your band, too.”

Phillip Brantley, the group’s primary bassist (they switch instruments a good bit onstage) and the relater of this particular tale, makes no attempt to conceal his amusement at the encounter or his giddiness over the presence of the audience members in question: “I can’t even believe they came out. It blows my mind.”

This is just one of a plethora of exciting things happening for an Athens, Ga., band that’s got the potential—nay, the goods—to explode in the same way the Drive-By Truckers have in the past couple years.

The Skirts are all country boys who grew up in small rural Georgia towns but have developed astonishing pop sensibilities—wildly inventive melodies and arrangements slapped atop jubilant, exuberantly catchy piano-and-guitar rockers. It’s a formula for bliss. The songwriting prowess evident on their self-released debut, Catalogue of Generous Men, portends good things to come. Maybe even a record deal. Brantley adds, “We’re really making a concerted effort to be patient.” Sure, patience is a virtue, but we’ve got a hunch they won’t have to exercise it long.

Hometown: San Francisco
Members: Jessica Peters and a revolving cast
Fun fact: Peters’ late parakeet, Clarence, was often inadvertently recorded in her home studio. “I put a little reverb on him, and he sounded pretty good,” she says.
Why she’s worth watching: Petracovich’s music is a perfect balance between rhythmic beats, atmospheric backdrops, striking images and angelic vocals. The sound, which has caught the ear of influential radio programmers, is simultaneously worldly and otherworldly.
For fans of: Aimee Mann, Iron & Wine, The Innocence Mission

Midway through my interview with Petracovich mastermind Jessica Peters, she confides that it’s her first interview with a woman. Spurred by this realization, we end up discussing motherhood, inspiration and the importance of authentic experience in the course of analyzing her new CD, We Are Wyoming. As a 29-year-old female and lifelong musician, Peters has determined that “it’s really important for women and mothers to be creating [because] it’s a perspective that needs to be heard.” But now that she and her husband want children, she’s worried she’ll be shunned from the industry. At the same time, songwriting is her way of coping with this fear.

When she’s not working through her worry, her songwriting process starts with journaling, which she admits is obsessive and sometimes poetic by accident: “It’s just a matter of being aware of my surroundings and always writing [them] down.”

She tells me how to journal the Petracovich way, describing the image of a man walking through a field in Wyoming or jotting down a couple’s conversation while eavesdropping on a San Francisco city bus. To Peters, these images and sounds are authentic, and her desire to create something like them is palpable.

For the 30 minutes I know her, Jessica Peters is a down-to-earth nurturer, generous and clever. When I ask where she wants to be in 10 years, she says she wants to be playing music as much as possible—with her family-to-be. “I have this vision of having an RV and going along with another couple who plays music. We would all take care of each other’s kids and tour … I think it’s going to happen.”

Don’t let her looks fool you. There’s more to British singer Alison Goldfrapp than the alluring, sexy vamp she personifies in stylish outfits and stilettos. As half the duo bearing her name—the other half being musician Will Gregory—she’s heavily involved in shaping the group’s music and image. “It’s quite interesting that people are more used to seeing a singer with an entourage creating that look [for her],” she wryly comments. “Yes, it is glamorous, but it’s also very personal because it’s coming from us.”

This attitude permeates Goldfrapp’s third album, Supernature, already a hit in Britain. Its atmospheric electronic sound recalls the work of late-’70s disco producer/composer Giorgio Moroder, while the romantic, yearning lyrics evoke Roxy Music’s Avalon. And with the Marc Bolan-inspired glitter raunch of “Ooh La La,” the charming, upbeat “Number 1,” and the sensuous balladry of “Time Out from the World,” Supernature will generate heat on the dancefloor and likely in more intimate settings.

“We always think about atmosphere and mood,” says Goldfrapp. “We wanted this time to make the songwriting simpler and more direct. We used a lot of synthesizers but also strings, as well. We always liked the combination of different textures to give it a different kind of mood.”

In contrast to its electronic-dominated sound, the duo’s dancers sometimes wear stag’s heads on stage, and on the new CD, the singer graces the sleeve wearing giant peacock feathers. “Animals are part of our psyche since time began,” Goldfrapp explains. “They can be fantastical, weird creatures but they can [also] be metaphors about ourselves, human sexuality, freedom and power.”

Although the duo’s focal point, Goldfrapp casually downplays her siren persona; she’d rather shift people’s focus to the music. “I think everyone feels kind of con?dent, sensual, and powerful,” she says, “and sometimes you feel like a sack of potatoes. I don’t want to draw attention to myself when I’m walking [down] the street. If I was walking around in nine-inch heels, wearing tons of makeup and strutting around, I wouldn’t be able to watch anyone else.”

Above L-R: José Luis Mateos (bass guitar and vocalist), Gabriela Moreno (vocalist), Omar León (Accordion and vocalist), Francis Paulino (Congas), Alcires Hernández (trumpet), Pablo Alvarado (percussion), Manuel Ortiz (drummer) and Godofredo Rivera (absent—plays sax, flute, trombone, quena, trumpet, keyboard). Photo by Ji Shin

Los Jornaleros Del Norte, a Los Angeles band of day laborers, sings about life on the other side, where to stand on a U.S. street corner is to be invisible. I first met them in San Francisco on a Saturday night in the Mission District, at a day-laborer convention held in a long, narrow, incredibly stuffy room. Up front stood the band, composed that evening of six men—two electric guitarists, a drummer, a conga player, a keyboardist and an accordion player. They opened their set with an extra-crispy Tex-Mex hip-hop song:

“Llegaron Los Jornaleros! Llegaron Los Jornaleros!” (“The Day Laborers are here!”)
“Queremos trabajo! Queremos trabajo!” (“We want work!”)
“Nadie te va eschucar! Nadie te va escuchar!” (“Nobody’s going to listen to us!”)

The crowd of nearly 100 cheered and clapped. They were mostly young- to middle-aged Latino men dressed in jeans, baseball caps and white T-shirts or flannels. I see hundreds like them on corners in my city every weekday morning. But in this place they looked happy and relaxed.

With Pablo Alvarado, one of the band’s members and coordinators, I danced the cumbia—a folk dance originating in Colombia—protesting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s treatment of illegal immigrants. Afterward we walked out into the hall as he told me how the group began. Alvarado is a respected national day-laborer organizer. He’s average height with brown hair and is guardedly friendly without being prickly.

‘The Doctors Were Shocked’
In 1996, he told me, a day laborer named Omar Sierra visited a mobile health clinic in a Kmart parking lot in Los Angeles County.

Sierra and other laborers were getting blood drawn to test for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Despite rainy weather, the mood was festive, since the clinic had brought a mariachi band and food as enticements. Out of nowhere, the Immigration and Naturalization Service raided the fair, sending the workers running and leaving the nurses and doctors bewildered. Sierra pulled the needle out of his arm and ran home, where he wrote a song about the experience on a guitar he’d found in a trashcan. That song, “Corrido de Industry” (Ballad of Industry) was featured on the group’s first CD, Cruzando Fronteras (Crossing Borders). This accordion-led ranchera recounts the day:

The doctors were shocked / To see the people running / One friend of mine / Has never known fear / But they had him tight / By the hands and throat

Los Jornaleros grew from there and now has eight members including singer Gabriela Mateos, a female day laborer. They’ve played for thousands in the Los Angeles area and around the country at community events—political rallies, day-laborer conventions, church services, and union and university-student gatherings.

Cruzando Fronteras combines ambient sounds like sirens and helicopters with traditional Latin rhythms, tejano, rumba and cumbia. The music sounds clean, tight and melancholy. Some tracks stretch out like long, flat roads at night. The group’s recently released second CD, Únete Pueblo (People Unite) continues this tradition, however, it feels more authoritative, and the rhythms smoother and brassier. Some tracks are more contemporary: “Juana” is a fruity, soft-rock ballad, almost like Barry Manilow, with a power strip of trumpet, sax and accordion. The song recounts the daily struggle of a band member’s relative, a domestic worker and single mom. (“She cleans the floor impeccably / Enough to see her sweating reflection.”)

Music Changes Everything
Alvarado believes that Los Jornaleros performances shatter audiences’ media-reinforced day-laborer stereotypes (that they’re all aliens and criminals). “People,” he says, “[start seeing] them as human beings.

“And when we go to play for the day laborers,” he says, “you can’t believe how proud people feel. We go through a lot of shit every day, from really racist cops to really racist residents who insult workers. And then when you go to the workplace, you see all the discrimination and exploitation. Even if we won lawsuits to reinstate the rights of people, the reality is—one always feels like an outsider because that’s how people see you. But music changes everything; I don’t know how to explain it. It’s a feeling nobody can take away from us and from all immigrants in general. That’s what the day-laborers band represents.”

“Juan,” a track on the second CD, employs a rhythm called cumbia sonidera—a slower, more relaxed brand of cumbia. Cumbia on vacation, perhaps. Back in the hallway at the convention, Alvarado spoke about the story behind the song.

“Juan was from the poorest village in Oaxaca, and he decided to go north for work. His sadness and loneliness were his only luggage. As he got away from his family, he felt as if he was dying, but at the same time, this courage lifts him up, and that is the courage of having a better life. But when he was crossing the border, he died in the river.

“Three months went by, and his mother was really anguished from not hearing any news of him. She doesn’t know what to do. And then this man who was with Juan comes to her house to tell her the story of what happened. And she doesn’t believe him. And from that day on, she went out of her mind. She would walk the streets crying and praying for Juan.”

Alvarado stops talking and turns away. He turns back and wipes his eyes with his green T-shirt. “It’s a real story,” he says. “It’s a true story. It is the story of thousands of people who die. You know, when they play that song, everybody identifies with it.”

Sidebar: Coming to America? You have to get through Mexico first
Los Jornaleros del Norte’s second album features “Testimio,” a track with no music, only the testimony of two Honduran immigrants describing their passage from Central America to the U.S. On such journeys, people are often robbed by gangs, ripped off by hired “coyotes” (the smugglers who sneak immigrants across borders) and abused by police.

The men on the Jornaleros album recount how Mexican police threw rocks at immigrants trying to board a cargo train, killing at least one young man who fell beneath the moving train and was crushed. Town residents tried to help the immigrants by throwing rocks back at the police.

They also describe a similar death on another journey, that of a 15-year-old girl. One of the men weeps. At the end, he says (in Spanish) that it took two months to get here, but, “I am here because of my family. Why I came here is the idea of having a better future. … I am going to get a job. I am going to do it.”

As an artist who’s always sought creative control, it’s not surprising actor/comedian Rick Moranis has stayed out of the public eye for the past several years. “I just wasn’t being offered many interesting projects from Hollywood,” he says.

For that reason, along with losing his wife to cancer, Moranis focused on making music, writing an album of country songs called The Agoraphobic Cowboy. He says the songs grew out of his home life in post-9/11 New York City—hence the title—but only came to fruition when producer/bassist Tony Scherr (Jesse Harris, Sex Mob, Bill Frisell) offered to record them, getting other top-notch musicians onboard.

“My kids were listening to a lot of bluegrass and jambands, so I really started enjoying it, too,” Moranis says. “The thing I love most about country is its honesty and ability to tell stories. This wasn’t intended to be a parody record; these songs just became an outlet for my writing.” While there are many hilarious moments, such as his retooling of Hank Snow’s “I’ve Been Everywhere” as “I Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” there are also bittersweet moments, like “Press Pound,” that echo Warren Zevon.

“It was only after we’d gotten into recording that I started to appreciate the cowboy myth and its spirit of adventure,” Moranis says. If there’s any overriding theme to the album, it’s about how much adventure and new frontier I was able to discover at home.”

[The Agoraphobic Cowboy is available exclusively through rickmoranis.com.]

Believe some of the hype

That frantic scratching you hear is the sound of music scribes on both sides of the Atlantic working up their best superlatives to herald the U.S. distribution of London white-soul virtuoso Lewis Taylor’s Stoned, released in the U.K. in 2003. Taylor’s surfeit of talent is undeniable, but let’s be clear—this is not the second coming of Al Green, Stevie Wonder or Prince, even though Taylor does possess a sensuous alto, plays all the instruments himself, and pulls off fleet, Hendrixian fretwork that calls to mind His Purpleness, however briefly.

For all Taylor’s technical facility, he’s more journeyman than auteur, more R&B classicist than avant-soul genius. His attention to detail and intuitive feel for rhythmic phrasing elevate Stoned’s otherwise lightweight songcraft and meandering lyricism, which wander around in your basic lovelorn, love-lost and lovestruck R&B mood. “How you made a mess like this,” he sings on the title track, “I just don’t know / Did I crumble? / I told you so.” And as with other one-man bands like Pete Yorn, an overarching sameness sets in after about three tracks. A creative partnership, with, say, a Jon Brion or Marius de Vries might add the interest to Taylor’s next outing that’s missing here.

Even so, the record’s earnestness and solid, intelligent performances sound better with each listen. So don’t feel bad if Stoned doesn’t meet the impossible expectations created by over-enthused critics, but neither should you be surprised if you’re still spinning this disc long after you’ve forgotten whether Jamiroquai was a band or an exotic ice-cream flavor.

Talented country singer’s sophomore effort spoiled by contrived, cornpone lyrics

When I popped All Jacked Up in the player I was immediately impressed by the music. Track after track, Wilson belts like Bonnie Raitt while her band lays it down. Unfortunately—with half the album mired in embarrassing heartland clichés—the ‘Redneck Woman’ and her dozen songwriting partners seem like they’re mostly phoning it in. The few solid tracks are overshadowed by swill about girls who “ain’t afraid to eat fried chicken,” a jingoistic power ballad with a Merle Haggard cameo, and the real kicker—an ode to guys who dip snuff (“Don’t want a bunch of bling bling … only thing I need is a man with a Skoal ring”). It’s as if Wilson is saying to her audience, “I think you’re a bunch of moronic, country-ass stooges who’ll eat up any cliché-ridden bowl-a-cheez-grits I slop you with.” Music Row has always had its share of hokey gimmick tunes, but where are the great songwriters in Nashville today? Or, rather, why don’t the most high-profile artists in town have the sense to work with them?

Prozac Nation Goes Honky Tonk: Introspective indie-pop star crafts classic blues-bar album (but why?)

If you’re one of the “Americana Roots” types who reads this magazine, you’ll love the new Cat Power. Two albums ago on The Covers Record, singer/songwriter/sole proprietor Chan Marshall stripped back any residual punk leanings and covered an eclectic batch of standards with minimalist bravado. While still raw enough to appease her garage-rock fans, it revealed her uncanny ability to interpret “regular” soul, blues and folk songs with idiosyncratic sympathy, without falling into the gaping maw of neo-whitebread roots-revival pap.

The Greatest finds Marshall in similarly non-alternative territory, except this time she’s composed her own original standards. She’s got an “authentic” band of Memphis-soul session musicians, and she’s not afraid to embrace ragtime-piano stylings and the occasional horn section. If such stuff moves you, you’re in for a real treat.

On the other hand, if you’re one of the “College Alternative” types who reads this magazine, you may be left wondering, “Who stole my radio?” Joni Mitchell went jazz, Bob Dylan went electric, Mercury Rev went folk, and I suppose it all worked out for the best. But the sloppy production and goofy musicianship many considered a Cat Power liability (e.g. the wildly arrhythmic drumming on “Cross Bones Style”), I found a charming hallmark. All such DIY quirkiness (for better or worse) is absent from The Greatest’s production.

But whichever side of the musical fence you’re on, the album still works because Chan Marshall is unmistakably genuine in whatever genre she chooses to inhabit. Her heart shows through most in her voice, which is uncharacteristically tonic and easy. On “Could We,” it even qualifies as smoky, inducing visions of Ricky Lee Jones and menthols. Her heart is also present in the album’s songwriting. What she lacks in cool pop riffs she makes up for in mature song structures. It’s not easy to write new standards in any genre, and Marshall has written an album full of them. If producer Rick Rubin were still scavenging the highlands of alternative music to supply Johnny Cash with tunes to reinterpret, he’d need look no further than The Greatest.

Unfortunately, Marshall’s own authenticity is too frequently obscured by the album’s “authentic” arrangements. “Lived in Bars,” “Islands,” and “After It All” are songs I might play for my Dr. John-loving uncle to prove one of my ilk can make good, too. Every Cat Power album (with the exception of Moon Pix) contains several tracks that don’t hold up to the rest; more often than not, these subpar songs are just too dark and monotonous. Ironically, the subpar songs on The Greatest are too bright and legitimate. Maybe Chan got sick of being labeled “depressing” and set out to prove she wasn’t. More likely, she’s taking an honest foray into a genre of American music she reveres.

The strongest tunes on The Greatest shine irrespective of production. “Willie” grooves and romps even as it lilts and exonerates. “Where is My Love?” sounds like something from a Disney production of Robert Bresson’s Mouchette, Marshall’s naive piano heartbreakingly augmented by a perspicacious string section that synesthetically serves the dramatic function of a Greek chorus. “Hate” finds Chan back crooning and strumming unaccompanied electric guitar, dark and spooky as ever, like early Nick Drake on angst. The CD’s final track, “Love & Communication,” bears an eerily disarming “Kashmir” vibe: minor-key stadium rock erupting from the juke joint. If every performance were this blessed, I might’ve bought into the project whole hog—muted trumpets, single-note blues riffing and all.

Were this my first exposure to Cat Power, even amidst the honky-tonk haze, Chan’s voice would still merit a double take. It’s truly a national treasure. Joni Mitchell owed it to her voice to leave the plaintive folk melodies of “Clouds” to acrobatically explore more challenging jazz heights. Likewise, I reckon Marshall owes it to her voice to wallow a bit in the beer-soaked back rooms of bar-band Americana. I imagine those Memphis session players scratching their berets, wondering, “Who discovered this gem? Sonic Youth? Never heard of ’em.”

In the end, I like Cat Power’s punk-pop stuff better, because I’m like that. But since most people aren’t, this album will likely be Chan’s ticket to greater acclaim or perhaps even an episode of Austin City Limits. Personally, I’m hoping she revisits the garage, but one man’s basement floor is another man’s barroom ceiling. So belly up and order a Schlitz. There’s a little gal sitting in with the house band tonight who’s a genuine rough in the diamond.

Let’s Talk About Sucks: Foxx escapes Ray Charles’ shadow only to wallow in oversexed R&B numbers

Jamie Foxx has a lot going for him: decent voice, good looks, huge diamond earrings, star power, Oscar-winning acting skills and charisma. What he lacks is an album with enough substance to let any of it shine through. After kicking off his musical career by emulating Ray Charles, it’s understandable that Foxx would want to prove himself as himself. But instead of tapping into the wealth of unique life experiences at his disposal, he’s crafted a generically freaky R&B simulacrum. Like an ill-prepared tackle box, the record is loaded with flossy lines but direly lacks hooks, and it becomes clear: it’s better to be the imitation Ray Charles than the poor man’s R. Kelly. How did the chainsaw-soul Foxx exhibited on Kanye West’s hit, “Gold Digger,” metastasize into these leering single entendres?

Unpredictable stifles Foxx’s personality in a digest of clichés verging on parody, and inexplicably harking back to Ginuwine and Blackstreet, complete with tooth-gritted rococo cadences, freaky interludes and smarmily unsexy sex jams. Even though Foxx supplied the white-hot hook for “Gold Digger,” he apparently couldn’t persuade Kanye to return the favor by donating some beats. Instead, Unpredictable bogs down in twitchy reconciliations of Southern bounce, moist G-funk and smooth jazz that don’t even begin to prop up Foxx’s forgettable melodies, phoned-in rapper cameos dropped awkwardly into songs (industry standard, but still), lubricated come-ons, disjointed narratives, multi-tracked and variously filtered Foxx-on-Foxx harmonizing and fluttery emoting.

The title track and lead single—featuring a guaranteed hitmaking cameo by Ludacris—starts off promisingly with bombastic horns and strings, but soon fades into a tepid lite-funk that manages to diffuse even Luda’s dynamic flow. “With You” evokes hip-hop collective Dipset’s whistle hooks, with a blasé yet organically interwoven Snoop cameo and a cumbersomely placed but authoritative appearance from The Game. Kanye guests on “Extravaganza,” and while Foxx’s vocal line is flaccid, meandering where it wants to vamp, West is terrific. Notoriously agile-tongued rapper Twista shows up on “DJ Play a Love Song,” hoping to recreate the magic that earned Foxx a Grammy nomination for “Best Rap/Sung Collaboration” on Twista’s “Slow Jamz.” But while this tale of creeping on a girl who’s at the club with her man is OK, I liked it better when it was called “Run It,” with R&B singer Chris Brown playing the part of Jamie Foxx and Dipset’s Juelz Santana standing in for Twista.

Foxx devotes almost every song on Unpredictable to his sex obsession, and, lyrically, the album ranges from unintentionally hilarious (“Every time I try to walk away / You put that ass on me and make me stay”) to head-clutchingly bizarre (“Baby, one plus one ain’t two when you’re with me / C and B ain’t after A when you’re with me”). One of the only songs that isn’t a series of increasingly lurid propositions, the Mary J. Blige duet, “Love Changes,” goes too far in the opposite direction: it’s a bittersweet, soft-focused ode to malleable love and outdated gender roles, with preposterous beatnik affectations and call-and-response groaners about getting back to loving, hugging, caring and sharing. But hold up—You put that ass on me? I guess the album’s title isn’t completely misleading, because I never saw that one coming.

Free To Dream: The sunniest, least ambitious Elbow album yet—and it suits them

Elbow has released a string of ambitious albums, but no masterpiece. Its 2001 debut Asleep in the Back evoked its title image by making you feel disoriented yet serene; the follow-up, A Cast of Thousands, coughed up bigger singles, louder guitars and a Gospel choir. Neither album put the band at the top of the British music scene—Radiohead strikes a better balance of mood and songcraft, and Coldplay’s Chris Martin gets The Girl—but Elbow’s unique atmosphere and creeping emotions always set it apart.

This time, the band has elected to not let great be the enemy of good. They’ve toned down their aspirations and settled for a solid, comfortable record, full of choruses that roll like hills, and love songs that coo and sigh. There’s no tension here, maybe because it’s a homesick album that’s already made it home; the band wrote the songs on the road, but recorded them in a cozy spot near its native Manchester, and you don’t listen to the result so much as put up your feet and lounge in it.

Acoustic ballads like “The Stops” and “An Imagined Affair” are languorously melodic, as relaxing as a deep breath and comforting as pulling your blanket over your head. On the loud end, “Forget Myself” is a chiming victory lap, though “Mexican Standoff”—which practically steals the bass line from Radiohead’s “The National Anthem”—crests ferociously, at least until it clunks to a sudden stop. (But cut them some slack: the members of Elbow aren’t accustomed to fast tempos.)

Leaders of the Free World would seem by-the-book Brit rock, if it weren’t for Guy Garvey. Gruff but generous, with a voice like Peter Gabriel’s minus the ego, Garvey masters the role of sensitive frontman by staying grounded; he sings as if he’d been grumbling, and then something wonderful startled him. This tone helps you forgive some obvious lyrics, like the lazy “love-you”s and “miss-you”s, or lines like, “You were the sun in my Sunday morning,” which—let’s face it—is just a bad pun. The title track declares, “The leaders of the free world are just little boys throwing stones,” which doesn’t begin to get its hands around my grown-up fears and anxieties.

On the other hand, it fits Garvey’s worldview. He’s the Everyman who shuffles daily to a job, who treats politics as petty rather than devastating, who’d rather volunteer to work at the polls than project himself on a giant TV and sing about government clones or the end of the world. But every so often, he has a dream about a sudden, gasping, all-engulfing love. And when that dream shows up, he diligently helps you see it.

MF Doom, Danger Mouse and cartoon characters converge for a rap classic

“I might be buggin’, but it seem to me, that cartoons be realer than reality TV,” raps guest MC Talib Kweli on The Mouse and the Mask’s “Old School.” The line may reflect the feelings of MF Doom and Danger Mouse when they decided to embark upon this collaboration centered around The Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim lineup. More likely, though, the prolific MC and producer are just fans who thought the idea of making an album that includes characters like Meatwad and Master Shake would be a whole lot of quirky fun. Fortunately for those who aren’t fans of shows like Sealab 2021, Doom brings it ill and witty enough for all to enjoy, and his typically gruff, lazy drawl fits Danger’s slightly left-field beats tightly as an iron mask. The self-described “black wookie” is joined by Cee-Lo, Kweli and Wu-Tang’s Ghostface on several standout tracks. The rest of the record safely relies on Doom’s ample lyrical strength—as he spits clever wordplay and gets wonderfully weird—and on Danger Mouse’s crafty sampling of everything from string sections to obscure psychedelic rockers. The results are wonderfully askew.

Birthplace: Joliet, Ill.
Favorite bands: Arcade Fire, Smog, Cat Power
Favorite novels: In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (“a cliché but it’s true”)
Favorite film: “I watch Five Easy Pieces and The Last Detail every year.” Also Blade Runner and Days of Heaven

Adam Rapp’s journey to the land of the multi-hyphenated has been circuitous. The young-adult novelist seldom read books until he began writing. The future award-winning playwright hated theater as a kid because his brother Anthony’s burgeoning career as a child actor continually uprooted his family. And when the opportunity came to write and direct his first film, the hobbyist musician/basketball player nearly balked.

“I was like, ‘Do I want to set myself up for incredible disappointment and anger?’” he recalls. “I had such a disdain for shooting and film, so I tried to avoid it as much as possible. But I have a great love for film, so I had a very complicated relationship.”

Ultimately, his desire for control (“to be the one to screw it up”) led Rapp to tackle his feature-film directorial debut while also directing a play and writing his first novel for adults. Based on an idea for theater his agent suggested he turn into a screenplay, Winter Passing follows detached, disillusioned actress Reese Holden (Zooey Deschanel) as she reunites with her dad (Ed Harris)—a famous, exceptionally reclusive author—and deals with his new makeshift family comprised of grad-student Shelly (Amelia Warner) and handyman/Christian-rocker Corbit (Will Ferrell).

The result is a slow-paced but engaging character study that effectively highlights a recurring theme in Rapp’s work: characters searching for connection, for refuge from chaos, for home. Harris is forceful in the Salinger-inspired role, but the real surprises are Deschanel and Ferrell. The young actress’ understated performance, driven largely by her expressive eyes, is revelatory in its potent languor and concealed torment. Meanwhile, the former SNL star, in his first serious dramatic role, plays Corbit with the exact combination of eccentricity and buried pathos needed.

Such subtlety is a surprise coming from a director trained in the theater, where the stage demands embellishment. “It’s funny, because a lot of people say my theater writing is crazy and intense and physical,” Rapp says, “but I always tell my actors when I work with them to do less.” The director was even more adamant in filming, where close-ups and big screens accentuate the nuances. “That’s what I love about film. I kept saying, ‘Just think the thought and let it do you. Trust that the script is doing it for you in some ways. These characters don’t know how to be theatrical. That’s part of the story we’re telling. Don’t take any moments.’”

Rapp says that the real challenge in transitioning to filmmaking was two-fold. As a writer, he had to learn to pen shorter scenes. “With theater, I’m trying to get characters in a room and not let them leave for as long as possible,” he explains. “With film, I learned very quickly you want to establish a mood and let them get in the room, then get them out as quickly as possible. It’s almost converse energy in a weird way.”

As a director, the challenge was lack of rehearsal time. “I literally had three-and-a-half hours with them in a loft in New York,” he says. The adjustment required faster decision-making and taking advantage of any opportunities to talk with his cast, whether they were in hair-and-makeup or walking to the set. “You feel like you’re pirating your own ship in a way. But it was fun; it was exciting. It’s like running a decathlon and trying to build a car all at the same time.”

Despite a number of obstacles in getting the film to theaters, Rapp will keep filmmaking on his plate. “With the [politics of distribution], I was like, ‘F— this; I’m never doing this again.’ But having gotten to the end of it and feeling the value of it, I’m actually shooting another film, an adaptation of my play, Blackbird. Two years later, and here I am, gearing up again. I’m excited about it.”

(Above: Doug Bruce)

This is not my beautiful house…

Director: Rupert Murray
Studio info: Wellspring Media, 88 mins.

Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind suggested what happens when romantic memories are selectively erased: human nature rebels, reboots and repeats itself, like a daisy pushing through the concrete.

But what happens to Doug Bruce isn’t a comedy. And real life proves, as much as ever, far stranger than fiction—even Eternal Sunshine screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s fiction. Bruce is the suddenly isolated and anonymous title character of Unknown White Male, a bracing documentary that explores the double life of a downtown Manhattan fast-tracker derailed by a profound case of retrograde amnesia.

Bruce—a stockbroker turned photographer—wakes up one dawn on the F train as it pulls into Coney Island. He has no idea who he is. Mysteriously, all biographical memory has been wiped from his brain. Eventually rescued from a Brooklyn hospital by a new female acquaintance, he faces the astonishing prospect of rediscovering his identity. That old Talking Heads lyric—“This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife”—applies fully. He owns a spacious loft and has the comfort of attractive, sympathetic girlfriends. Since he’s also a camera buff, he immediately begins videotaping the ceaseless flow of revelations that constitute his new existence.

This is a boon for director Rupert Murray, who’s drawn into the story by his friendship with the “old” Doug—a handsome Englishman whose taste for adventure and biting tongue marked him the leader of his pack. Murray yearns to reconnect, and Bruce, who steadily embraces his new skin, agrees to the project. What’s shocking for Murray and everyone else in the sprawling circle of friends and family is that their bright, beloved buddy shares little of their interest in his former life or re-assimilating it.

Doug 2.0 is a sensitive, introspective artist type, a polar shift from the brash, dashing playboy who lights up photographs and archival footage that Murray edits into “this was your life” montages. Miraculously, he relearns two years of photography classes in a matter of weeks, and his work—intimate portraits of friends jarred by the new scenario—acquires raw, emotional depth. The melancholy in their eyes also suffuses much of the film, which shuffles images like mementos mori of someone not dead but no longer present. As Bruce builds new relationships with those—including a lovely Australian woman—who only know his post-amnesia persona, he encounters another twist: Doctors give him a 95-percent chance of regaining his memory. Ecstatic when introduced to the pleasures of the ocean or eating sushi for the “first” time, Bruce must now contemplate the ambiguous nature of who he once was, and who he may yet be. The metaphysical questions posed are certainly eternal, and anything but spotless.

Smith develops an imaginative first novel about Europe and the birth of photography

Dominic Smith’s first novel is like the initial photography efforts it portrays: an intriguing if imperfect image of Louis Daguerre, the Parisian theatrical-set painter turned photographer.

This imagined life story of the real Daguerre plays out against an exciting diorama. Set in the mid 1800s, Europe’s sclerotic monarchies are clinging to power against a rising class of entrepreneurs and scientists. Daguerre is a bit of both, and he stands in the middle of this class struggle, embodying a great irony of innovation and change—his photographic process revolutionizes art and science, but it also slowly poisons him. Like Daguerre, few of us escape progress unscathed.

Smith wonderfully depicts the messy, lethal process of marshalling sunlight to fix images with mercury vapor. But his storytelling is sloppy at times—the plot predictable, and the book plagued with inconsistencies. I see little clear evidence of an editor here. It’s too bad—Smith deserves better. A lens with clearer focus would’ve sharpened the image of this first novel.

Coulda-shoulda-woulda-been writes about what mighta-been

Nothing good seems to come from a major-label bidding war. Jen Trynin was subject to one in 1994 after she changed her image from singer/songwriter to rock chick and gave her career one last shot.

Her book, Everything I’m Cracked Up To Be, tracks the time she breaks out as the “next big thing,” following seven wilderness years playing to disinterested coffeehouse audiences. Record labels, managers and lawyers come calling in droves, promise huge sums of money, and then quickly fade when the hype refuses to translate into sales.

Trynin writes in a cool, unaffected style and, to her credit, she doesn’t shy from revealing herself as a needy, insecure woman craving all the attention while at the same time recognizing its hollow ring.

This story adds to the trend of young, privileged women who cannibalize their work-related misfortunes and turn them into book deals (see The Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada). For anyone with insider knowledge of the music industry, there’s fun to be had trying to decipher the hidden identities of some major players. Still, at more than 300 pages, Everything I’m Cracked Up To Be is a long, slight read.

Surf’s up in this novel set in paradise—a surf of suffering

Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s novel is set in Hawaii, but not the one tourists see. In this Japanese American writer’s fictional world, Hawaii is a place of poverty and ethnic mistrust, alcoholism and family dysfunction.

Yamanaka’s unflinching depictions of Paradise’s darker side have earned her praise—and condemnation. In 1998, the Association for Asian American Studies rescinded an award given for her novel, Blu’s Hanging, after the Filipino community angrily complained that her portrayal of a Filipino character as a sexual predator perpetuated a racial stereotype.

But this incident didn’t change the way Yamanaka approaches her art. Behold the Many, set in the early 1900s, is the story of Anah, Aki and Leah, three young daughters of a Portuguese father and Japanese mother. The sisters are sent to a Catholic orphanage to be treated for tuberculosis and never see their parents again. Anah survives, only to be haunted—and physically tortured—by the bitter ghosts of her dead sisters. Jealous of Anah’s earthly life and terrified of losing her, Aki and Leah resort to any means of preventing their sister from leaving the orphanage.

Behold the Many is not an easy read. Much dialogue is in pidgin English sprinkled with Japanese and Portuguese words. Still, it’s well worth the effort. Yamanaka delivers a powerful, three-dimensional portrait of an unfamiliar culture, and she creates a memorable heroine Dickens would’ve envied.

Ryan Adams (pictured above) ended 2005 by releasing a dramatic reminder of his gift—the musically sublime, deeply disturbing and stunningly expressive 29. What the most recent album has in common with his first two—the sublime Heartbreaker and the ambitious, if polarizing, Gold—is producer/player Ethan Johns, who’s been able to focus the mercurial artist like no one else.

Johns, son of legendary producer/engineer Glyn Johns, spent his childhood watching his dad make records in the traditional manner, and he manifests his purist methodology on every record he makes, but never more artfully than when he collaborates with Adams, from playing the drums on basic tracks and overdubbing numerous additional parts to making tape edits with a razor (see sidebar).

The producer acknowledges he doesn’t know what motivated Adams to make the sometimes puzzling choices he has between Gold and 29, although the two friends have continued to stay in touch over the years, mostly by e-mail. “Ryan has really specific ideas about the way he wants to approach material,” Johns says, “and that may be why we haven’t worked on some records in the past—because I wasn’t the guy who was gonna give him a satisfactory answer at a key point during the session. I couldn’t have made Rock N Roll if I’d had a gun pointed at me; it was just not my kind of record. I’ve had that side of Ryan presented to me numerous times during the making of other records, and it’s something that I don’t relate to.”

Johns says he was on call to renew their collaboration whenever Adams “had the material, or was willing to write the material, that was gonna get me excited about doing another record. And he showed up one day with a guitar player, J.P. [Bowersock], and we started recording, and two weeks later there it was. It was a great session.”

Cut during the first half of August 2004 (prior to the Cardinals LPs) at Three Crows, Johns’ North Hollywood, Calif., studio, 29 found the collaborators in familiar roles. “The way it works with Ryan, he’ll play you something on the guitar, and we’ll talk about it a little bit,” Johns explains. “Then he stands up in front of the microphones and I sit down behind the drum kit, put the headphones on, press ‘record’ and we just play it. So it’s a very immediate connection, musically; you just have to get to that point of immediate inspiration. That’s probably why I enjoy working with Ryan so much, because we communicate musically with each other really well, and we really listen to each other.”

Johns reckons Adams had two songs—“Night Birds” and “Elizabeth, you were born to play that part”—nailed down when he walked into Three Crows. The rest of the material came into focus during the sessions, but that doesn’t mean he was making stuff up on the spot. “The amount of verse this guy has at his fingertips is astounding, particularly when, at any given moment, 90 percent of it hasn’t been written down,” Johns marvels. “There were anything from kernels of ideas to almost-done stuff that he would pull out and finish off here right before we recorded it. The same with the three records we’d done previously, including the Whiskeytown record [2001’s Pneumonia, which marked the first time they worked together]. Some of my favorite things are the ones that he writes in the middle of a session, very, very quickly. The opening track on Pneumonia is one of those songs, and ‘Damn, Sam’ on Heartbreaker, which I happen to love. There’s some really good stuff on Gold. He’s putting his experiences straight into the material.”

It’s the material—and the discussions it triggers—that has always dictated the sound. “You have to be able to talk about what kind of album you want to make,” Johns says. For this album, Johns felt the songs called for a certain kind of muted mood lighting, so he overdubbed what he calls “effects,” using analog synths and a Memory Man delay unit.

Several songs on 29 were nailed the first time they were played, following a familiar pattern in the partnership; indeed, nine of Gold’s 16 tracks were first takes. “So you’re really listening to the first time a complete run-through of the song has ever been performed,” Johns points out, “which is why I think the performances on that record are so tangible.”

The conversation keeps returning to Gold, and despite the fact that Johns has made 30-some-odd records since, he remains connected to it, protective even. “When Gold came out, it was a four- or five-star record, and then, eight months later, it became very uncool to like it, for whatever reason,” he recalls. “I’ve heard people talk about it like it’s a Pro Tools record, and it’s absurd that you could listen to that record and not get that it was cut live. We cut and mixed 26 songs in six weeks. When you’re working at that kind of pace, you just do it. Time’s up—there it is.

“So that record is just kind of written off. But it’s a perfect portrait of a guy who has arrived at the place he always dreamt about arriving at. But the beauty of it is, he looks around and sees that it’s all movie sets—there’s nothing substantial anywhere. But the thing he dreamed about when he was 12 years old is finally literally sitting in his lap. ‘Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd.,’ ‘Nobody Girl,’ ‘Sylvia Plath,’ ‘La Cienega Just Smiled’—it’s all there.”

Johns views 29 as another career highlight for Adams, but he has no problem with any of the choices Adams has made. “What makes Ryan interesting,” the producer says, “is that he’s not afraid to fail. Most artists today forget that you’ve got to be willing to fail to do good stuff.”

Sidebar: THE RAZOR’S EDGE

The term “capturing the moment” may sound like a cliché, but that’s literally what Johns has done on albums like his three with Adams, the pair from Kings of Leon and Ray LaMontagne’s revelatory Trouble (the subject of the very first Production Notes in issue #7).

There are no computers in Johns’ studio, an open, high-ceilinged space in a funky section of North Hollywood. A custom recording console—retro-hip in flat black and chrome trim—sits imposingly in the middle of the recording area, as if it were another instrument, which in Johns’ mind it is. In this producer’s world, things happen up close and personal, in real time, and they’re documented on two-inch, 16-track tape.

“I’ve tried using Pro Tools,” Johns acknowledges, “but I can’t get a balance with digital noise, and it doesn’t sound good to my ears. For me there’s no reason to use it, because it doesn’t do anything as a tool that tape doesn’t.”

Although his best-case outcome is a complete performance, Johns says he does a lot of editing. “People talk about Pro Tools as being the best editor,” he says, “but because I don’t like to alter musicians’ performances, I don’t have a use for that side of the tool. But if we hit something with Ryan, for instance, and it’s the first run-through, and somebody doesn’t make the bridge, or Ryan wants to change the lyric, or we just happen to get a particularly great outro on one take, then I’ll cut that into the multitrack with a razorblade and cut the takes together. Tape helps me get the sound I want to get. It’s like having another member of the band, almost, or another engineer. And digital doesn’t allow me to do that, so I don’t use it.”

Hometown: Sheffield, England
Members [L-R]: Jamie Cook, guitar; Matt Helders, drums; Alex Turner, guitar/vocals; Andy Nicholson, bass
Fun fact: Frontman Alex Turner, who wrote “Fake Tales of San Francisco,” recalls every minute of his grandma-chaperoned trip to the Bay Area when he was eight.
Why they’re worth watching: The Monkeys turned the U.K. pop world on its ear in ’05 by rocketing a series of singles to the top of the charts, bolstered by a diehard retinue of singalong, tour-following fans dubbed the Arctic Army.
For fans of: Franz Ferdinand, Buzzcocks, Undertones

The group’s currently untitled Domino debut has yet to be released, but the Arctic Monkeys—by word of mouth alone—are already the biggest, must-hear buzz band Britain has seen since the glory days of Oasis. How did this happen? Even 19-year-old lead singer Alex Turner—on a 12-hour San Francisco layover before heading to Monkey-rabid Japan—isn’t so sure. The combo formed two years ago in industrial-grim Sheffield with an unusually bright outlook. As soon as they’d finish a demo, Turner says, “we’d hand ’em out at our shows. And the audience took those demos we made and spread ’em around, for whatever reason—copied ’em or put ’em on their websites.”

A behavior reminiscent of—gulp!—tie-dyed, tape-haggling Deadheads? Turner heartily guffaws. “I know! That’s pretty much what it was! And through trading, people got a certain affection for the songs and really started to care … so by the time we actually released something, people were so into it already that they went right out and bought it and we topped the British charts that week.”

The upcoming album, Turner says, will probably feature early hits like “I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor” and “When The Sun Goes Down” (a true-crime tale of sordid after-dark activity in Sheffield), plus new numbers “Riot Van,” “Still Take You Home” and “The View From The Afternoon.” Do the Monkeys have what it takes to be stars? Turner—a shy, soft-spoken lad—turns into a veritable whirling dervish onstage, typhooning through a pogo-manic set like some CBGB’s vet from the ’70s. And half the S.F. crowd, believe it or not, is singing along with every bombastic syllable.

(Above [L-R]: Eugene Mirman, Hollis Gillespie, Colin Meloy)

Comedian Eugene Mirman:
“My first concert was Guns N’ Roses opening for Aerosmith. It was awesome. I was in eighth grade. My brother took me. Could you imagine being 1,000 feet from Axl Rose and later Joey Kramer?! The best part? I got water in my knee and spent the next day in the hospital in surgery. (They cut my knee and drained it! Plus there was a med student who for 20 minutes kept missing the vein in my arm with the IV. She poked a lot of holes in me.) Still, thanks, Ilya (my brother), Axl, Slash, Mr. Tyler, Joe Perry and the rest of the gang for rocking so hard. I hereby offer $100,000 (an amount I don’t have) if Guns N’ Roses re-forms (with or without Steven Adler) and plays on SPIKE TV for 20 minutes.”

Author Hollis Gillespie:
“My first concert was at the Hollywood Bowl where I saw Kiss, Montrose and Bob Seger. I tried to rock out, but I was 12 and worried someone would slip acid in my slurpee. Gene Simmons spit up blood but you could tell he had it in his mouth the whole time, waiting for the right moment. Seger caught a Frisbee mid-”Katmandu” and expertly hurled it back into the audience. Later I saw the lead singer of Montrose in the parking lot of Old Town Mall in Hawthorne, and he was wearing the same pants.”

Colin Meloy of The Decemberists:
“My dad took me to the Great Falls state fair in Montana to see Willie Nelson, and I remember specifically that there was a beauty pageant right before Willie came on.”

Soaring above Jamaica’s central Dry Harbour Mountains, the sun shining so brightly that our small plane casts a clear shadow on the carpet of green below, it’s possible from the window to spy the occasional shack almost, but not quite, camouflaged by dense forest. Evidence, I think, of the island’s other important cash crop.

But it’s not herb that’s led to this aerial shortcut from the hustle of Kingston to the idyll of Negril, it’s cane. More specifically, it’s the fermented and distilled nectar of sugarcane more commonly known as rum.

Appleton Estate distillery lies a short, if rather challenging, drive from the all-inclusives of Negril, nestled amid acre after acre of Appleton-owned-and-managed cane fields in the fertile Nassau Valley. In this regard, it’s the rum equivalent of an estate winery, since Appleton and a handful of other rum producers are among the few distillers to bother with such tight control of their raw-material farming.

The reason for this strategy, says Joy Spence, master distiller, is that the quality and variety of cane used affects the rum’s flavor. By growing its own, she continues, Appleton is able to exercise maximum control over the character of its rums.

William Ramos, brand master for Bacardi, disagrees. Weeks later, during a session of his traveling “Bacardi University,” Ramos tells me the cane’s brix, or sugar content, is everything. Variety and source mean nothing.

But perhaps this is going too far too fast. It’s best to begin with a quick view of what rum really is, and how one differs from another.

RUM 101
Like pretty much every other spirit, rum is at its heart a simple liquid. To make it, distillers just mash sugar cane, extract and ferment the liquid sugars, and distill the resulting low-alcohol “beer” until you have a much higher-alcohol spirit.

In its soul, however, rum is a much different creature. First, there’s the cane, which—depending on whether you subscribe to the Spence or Ramos school of thought—is either important or not. (For the record, I’m inclined to side with Spence, since flavors remaining in the rum post-distillation should reflect the nature of the cane itself.) After that, the cane must be pressed and the choice made to distill either pure cane juice or cane syrup, or the molasses byproduct of the cane juice’s conversion into sugar—the latter being the norm in most larger distilleries.

Next, there’s the matter of water and yeast, since each has an impact on the distilled spirit’s non-alcohol part—the flavorful “impurities” known as congeners. And speaking of distillation, another important decision is whether to use a modern, commercial column still for a purer, leaner rum and/or a pot still (the type used by single-malt-whisky producers), which generally leave more congeners in the spirit.

Finally,