Pages tagged “issue 31”

The Paste Summer Festival Preview 2007

August 3-5 Chicago, Illinois - Grant Park
Lollapalooza.com
Selected Acts: Pearl Jam, Daft Punk, Ben Harper, Muse, My Morning Jacket, The Roots, TV On The Radio, Spoon, Patti Smith, G. Love, Sparklehorse, Amy Winehouse, Elvis Perkins
Bring the Kids: Children aged 10 and under get in free with a ticket-holding adult, and the festival’s Tag-A-Kid program exchanges parents’ contact info for youngster-sized numbered wristbands in case the wee ones get lost amongst all the rocking-out.
Historical Fact: The fest is staged each year at Chicago’s Grant Park, which dates back to 1835 and was named after U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.

For the third consecutive summer, a secret society will form in Chicago for the duration of a three-day weekend. Strangers with color-coded wristbands will silently nod to each other on the Chicago Transit Authority, guitar solos will reverberate off the downtown skyline, and cars will clog Lake Shore Drive in an auditory gaper’s block—all signs that Lollapalooza has returned, the third edition under its new guise as sedentary behemoth rather than rambunctious traveling roadshow.

Since its days as the ultimate symbol of the ’90s-alternative-rock boom, Lollapalooza has widened its scope, becoming simultaneously a nostalgia trip (headlining performances from the Pixies and Red Hot Chili Peppers), a post-HORDE jamband depot (Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler), and a chance for up-and-comers to get their big-league call-up (Arcade fire, My Morning Jacket). To encompass all of these missions, the relaunched Lollapalooza more than doubled in size from Year 1 to Year 2, spreading out over the entirety of Grant Park and giving music fans their summer exercise while running between the festival’s nine stages. For all the exhaustion and heat, it’s an unparalleled urban destination for the camping-averse, a surprisingly functional all-you-can-hear buffet of rock sounds, some of which are finally — in part because of the exposure festivals like this offer — beginning to break through on TV and radio.

Spotlight: Cold War Kids
AS SEEN ON THE INTERNET
When Rolling Stone charted the rise and fall of hype surrounding the Cold War Kids, with the peak hitting sometime before they actually released their first EPs, the band became something of a poster-child for the ever-shrinking life-cycle of a media frenzy. “It’s kind of a charming thing when it wears off, because you get to sit back and feel like, ‘OK, we get to do what we do and play our songs, and we have people at our shows that love our music, and it’s great,’” says lead singer Nathan Willett.

But despite all reports of a quieting buzz, when the Cold War Kids took the stage at Paste’s SXSW party, there was a block-long line out the door. And while bloggers dropping the band’s name and fans passing around free mp3s started the hype machine, it’s Cold War Kids’ hyper-frenetic live show that’s kept it well-oiled. The Fullerton, Calif., quartet made its festival debut last year at Lollapalooza and will return this summer with a year of experience and a lot more fans. “And we’re staying in hotels,” adds Willett. “No sleeping in trailers this year!”
Kate Kiefer

WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Even though Wikipedia tells us that Lollapalooza got its moniker when festival founder Perry Farrell was amused after hearing the word uttered in a Three Stooges short, and the dictionary further informs us that the unusual word represents “an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event,” we can’t help but wonder if there were some ditched name ideas for the alternative music festival. Here are a few that might have crossed Farrell’s mind.
Addictionpalooza: Because the festival was originally intended as a goodbye tour for Farrell’s band, Jane’s Addiction. After realizing that sponsors were leery of throwing money at an event that seemingly promotes dependence on artificial substances, Farrell is forced to think up other options.
Controversapalooza: Because controversy is so alternative, man! That, and Ice-T’s metal band, Body Count, was slated to play the first Lollapalooza before even recording its debut album, which would include the later-banned track “Cop Killer.” Deemed too awkward and clunky a moniker, Farrell goes back to the drawing board.
Flannelpalooza: Because the success of grunge helped propel early incarnations of the festival. Ultimately, the plaid-centric title gets shot down as Henry Rollins (whose Rollins Band performed at the first edition) becomes furious at the prospect of changing his strict, no-shirt dress code. Considering Rollins is the size of a Mack truck, Farrell acquiesces.
Austin L. Ray

How one great songwriter got his groove

The youngest living member of the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, Braddock is one of the most successful writers in the history of country music. (“He Stopped Loving Her Today” and “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” are two of his classics.)

In Down in Orburndale, Braddock tells his story—from his origins to his 23rd year, when he left the orange groves of his backwater childhood home in florida for Nashville, eager to take his chances breaking into the country-music scene. He struggles with family, school, love, music, and a world on the cusp of dramatic change, back in the days before Disney took over florida and corporate life took over America.

The rigors and fallout of fundamentalist religion, the changing attitudes toward race during the Civil Rights era, experimentation with drugs, and the ins and outs of dating and casual sex are all told through a veteran songwriter’s eye—a story that, in turn, is comic, poignant and disturbing.

Sasquatch and Space Sheriff in search of true love

That Bigfoot might be unlucky in love is no oversized surprise, though the manner of love’s loss might be expected to include bellowing australopithecan roars. But no—instead we hear the peevish complaints of an emasculated ape man suffering subtle social slights and losing his true love to a lawyer.

Love sputters out or never quite gets inflated in A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both, a collection of short fiction by New Yorker editor Ben Greenman. Wildly inventive, sometimes surreal, but tenderly told, these stories give a glimpse of what Philip K. Dick might have written if he’d allowed himself a soft, sincere broken heart: forlorn love letters written by an artist on the Moon, chronicling the effects a series of colored pills have on him; a washed-up actor trying to make a comeback as Space Sheriff.

Even in Greenman’s more conventional stories, his characters never quite manage success, but neither are their failures spectacular. They must settle for what one conflicted lover calls the “simulation of passion.” Welcome to the lives of the perpetual not-quite.

Hometown: The Bronx, N.Y. (via South America and the Caribbean)
Members [L-R}: Maya (bass, songwriting; born Maya Martinez, Colombia); DJ Nova (keyboards, guitars, production, songwriting; born Ramo Nova, Dominican Republic)
Fun fact: The man who brought Nova and Maya together, songwriter Iván Benavides has written for Colombian pop superstar Carlos Vives.
Why they’re worth watching: Pacha Massive’s bilingual (Spanish/English) music has warmth, whimsy and wide-open sense of adventurousness—not to mention the sweet, hummable melodies.
For fans of: Morcheeba, Kinky, Massive Attack

The great culture critic, Henry Louis Gates Jr., once wrote, “No human culture is inaccessible to someone who makes the effort to understand, to learn, to inhabit another world.” The mission of boundary-jumping electronic duo Pacha Massive—a play on the term Pachamama, or Mother Earth—is to invite listeners into a world where human cultures collide like atoms, forming new textures with each successive bounce. “We’re about making people realize that we are all interconnected,” says Maya. “We think music is a good vehicle to do that.”

And how did this 26-year-old become so globally minded? “I think it has to do with fact that I was born outside of the U.S. and I have certain influences from my country,” says Maya, who played in bands that fused jazz with Colombian folk styles before teaming up with DJ Nova. “But I was raised in New York City, where you’re always moving in new circles and you live a creative lifestyle where you're open to all sorts of music, all sorts of cultures and all sorts of art.”

Her 31-year-old musical partner already knew about taking elements from one musical project to spice up the next. In the late ’90s, Nova worked with King Changó, which blended dub and drum ’n’ bass into its mix of ska and rock en Español. He met Maya during rehearsals for a solo project by Sidestepper vocalist/guitarist Iván Benavides.

“Living and working in New York, you’re more aware of all these different cultures,” says Nova. “You just develop this mentality where you adapt to everything around you and absorb it like a sponge. We just take it all in and spit it out again.”

Of all the gimmicks tried by major game makers, Microsoft deserves a prize for thinking up the Achievements system. If you’ve played a game on the Xbox 360, you’ll know what I’m talking about: Every single game hands out “gamer points,” which you earn by meeting goals like going through the tutorial, finishing the main story, or scoring a hundred sniper shots. Connect to the Internet, and all of your achievements show up online for your fellow gamers to scope out. It’s a simple way to score bragging points with the worldwide gaming community. It’s also fantastically addictive.

According to a story in GameDaily, players regularly buy games they don’t even want and stick with them until they’ve wrung out every last achievement. And while the first achievements in any game are easy bait, the hardest border on ridiculous: In the cinematic shoot-’em-up Gears of War, to earn the “Seriously … ” badge, you have to beat 10,000 other players in online matches. In four weeks, someone had done it.

Most people—and even some gamers—hear this and think, “That’s insane.” Why waste so much time going out of your way just to get points? Points that are worth nothing? Yet collection is one of the most addictive features you can add to a game—just like in real life. After all, whether it’s baseball cards, model trains, Hummels or old 45s, most of us feel the urge to acquire stuff. And Microsoft’s competitors agree: Sony has already announced a similar feature—a virtual 3-D trophy case—for the PlayStation 3.

But we don’t just earn points for our own satisfaction: Other players get to see them. And here’s where I see real value in the Achievements system. Most social websites use a reputation system based purely on scores or honor badges. MySpace counts the number of friends you’ve racked up, Amazon flags its hardest-working amateur reviewers, and message boards tally your posts. The same applies for online games, where players’ ranks and titles follow them everywhere. It’s true that on the Internet, nobody knows if you’re a creepy stalker. But they know if you’ve reached Knight-Lieutenant in World of Warcraft.

And when you look at it that way, Xbox Achievements are the most trivial example of the meritocracy built into social networking applications—where who you are depends entirely on what you’ve done online. And any fame you bring from the real world will only take you so far. Presidential contender John Edwards may have built a campaign site in Second Life, but until his avatar is hanging around in night clubs wearing 20-foot-wide bat wings and a tail, why should anyone take him seriously?

With so many online communities, it’s refreshing to remember that we have a choice about which ones we join And nobody cares whether you’re native or newcomer, young or old, a man or a man pretending to be a woman: you’re judged solely by the content of your made-up character. Or at least by your aim.

So if you’re playing Gears of War, and some guy clocks you in the head to cross that 10,000 kill mark? It doesn’t matter if he’s a grandparent, a teenager or a real-life serial killer. Just give him a pat on the back. He’s earned it.

Strummer calling

The Clash blazed across the punk-rock landscape with its hard-driving sound, progressive politics and unique fusion of rock, reggae and blues, so it’s fitting that renowned music biographer Chris Salewicz has crafted this definitive life-story of legendary Clash frontman Joe Strummer. Salewicz was Strummer’s friend and his level of access to The Clash can only be described as mind-blowing. Salewicz also seems to have interviewed everyone who’d ever known Strummer: Redemption Song thus blends exhaustive detail with a profound appreciation for Strummer’s achievements.

Strummer embodied huge contradictions, notes Salewicz. He’d give all his money to a panhandler one day in kindness, and then, during a post-concert interview, angrily smash a journalist’s tape recorder against the wall. The charismatic, popular Strummer was also the ‘hatchet man’ within The Clash (most famously booting Mick Jones). And while attacking ‘the corporate establishment,’ Strummer worked maniacally in pursuit of fame. “In his battle with himself,” writes Salewicz, “Joe couldn’t win.” For fans of punk rock, this biography is essential reading.

Solid outing from indie stalwarts

Fearlessly updating ’70s soft rock for The O.C. set, Aqueduct shed any pretense of indie cool with Or Give Me Death. Mixing reverb-y, Brian Wilson-inspired vocals with strutting Chicago horns and fuzzy prog-rock synthesizers, vocalist and songwriter David Terry writes songs brimming with ambition and bitter overstatement. And just when the heart-on-sleeve earnestness and pastel synths seem to be in danger of becoming a bit too precious, he'll slip in a wavering vocal or a glammy guitar line to add a little textural weight to the mix. It's hardly perfect, but it's bolder, more complex, and ultimately a more fulfilling release for this band.

The Paste Summer Festival Preview 2007

June 14-17 Manchester, Tenn.
bonnaroo.com
Selected Acts: The Police, Widespread Panic, The Flaming Lips, Franz Ferdinand, Wilco, The White Stripes, The Hold Steady

Of all the big festivals available for summer consumption, Bonnaroo has arguably the biggest buffet. In an attempt to mirror the cultural significance and popularity of The U.K.’s Glastonbury Festival, Bonnaroo’s founders (some of the biggest music aficionados this side of Pluto) set out to create the best fan experience imaginable. Beside programming a line-up that reads like the ingredients to the world’s most nourishing musical smoothie, art installations that gnaw at tethered minds, and a utopian infrastructure of amenities, the organizers recently capped the number of tickets sold to keep the event easy to navigate for those who made the pilgrimage every year. Addition by subtraction: Yes, the fans are finally running the asylum.

The quaint tourism-board brochure could read, “Once a year, nestled in the fertile fields of South Central Tennessee a stone’s throw from Music City and the Jack Daniels Distillery, Coffee County welcomes the migrating Bonnagroovians, a colorful species of musical zealots who worship an assortment of eclectic idols. 96-hour tours are available and all are welcome (Please bring comfortable shoes).”

Originally known more as a jamband festival, Bonnaroo’s greatest strength is its sonic diversity. While always offering turnstile-friendly headliners such as The Police, Tool and The flaming Lips, the festival’s real treats are found on the Abbot and Costello-sounding side stages of This Tent, That Tent, and The Other Tent, where you’ll be lucky to witness soul upstart Ryan Shaw, psychadelic Apollo Sunshine, string-band balladeers Uncle Earl or even the aptly named Wild Magnolia Mardi Gras Indians. And if your feet need a break, hit the stand-up-comedy tent, the beer garden or even plop down into a bean bag under the film Tent and watch Star Wars—all six of them. There is a reason Southerners are famous for their hospitality, and Bonnaroo is no exception.

Spotlight: Wilco
BLUE SKIES AND GREEN GRASS
The last time Wilco played Bonnaroo, frontman Jeff Tweedy had a complete fan moment with Bob Dylan. “Yeah, it was like, ‘You’re awesome!’ Like the Chris Farley character on SNL. ‘Remember when you were... Bob Dylan? That was awesome. Remember Don't Look Back? That was awesome.’ You know it’s kinda like meeting Jesus, Abraham and Walt Whitman all rolled into one.”

Perhaps the same reverie will befall some newer act when they meet Tweedy backstage, especially since Wilco’s new album, Sky Blue Sky, is chock full of live fodder ready to be unleashed. “It’s the first record for me in all kinds of ways in terms of where I am in my life; I’m much healthier than I have ever been, so this feels like a beginning for me.”

Lyrically the album rumbles like a train car shuffling between the glorious melancholia of suburbia and vibrant metro angst. In “Hate It Here,” domestic chores and longing reign supreme. “I just laugh when I hear that song,” says Tweedy. “I think it’s funny. My wife calls it one of my “liar songs.” ‘You don’t know how to work the washer/dryer, what are you talking about?’”

Like beautiful moments of emotionally unguarded sleep deprivation, Sky Blue Sky’s turns of phrases and simple melodies can wreak havoc on your tear ducts and funny bone simultaneously. “It’s an emotional record, but I feel oddly comforted by it,” says Tweedy. “Just the fact that it exists after the bargain I was willing to make to get healthy, I think I’m just happy that any record of mine exists. It’ll work live because we made the record sitting around in a circle, no headphones, just looking at each other, which is what we literally set out to do—sit down, play some songs and press, ‘record.’ I mean that’s always been good enough.

“Plus, this lineup of the band has, oddly enough, been together longer than any other Wilco lineup and certainly within that amount of time we’ve played way more festivals than we ever had before. Therefore, I think it’s gotten a little bit easier and, speaking for myself, a lot more comfortable. I feel like I can hop on stage and really enjoy it and actually be bemused by the whole spectacle of it. I don’t know if [festivals] would ever be my ideal environment for playing music, listening to music or watching music. But I certainly have grown to enjoy a nice day out in a field somewhere.” Bonnaroo (6/17)

Spotlight: Fountains of Wayne
MEETING PEOPLE IS EASY
New York quartet Fountains of Wayne has released another album saturated with ironic and artful tales of average Janes and Joes trying to navigate this mortal coil. The lyrical wit and grappling-hook melodies of Traffic and Weather co-mingle in the frontal lobe like Pop Rocks and Pepsi, which will translate well to the Bonnagroovian throngs amped up on sunshine and hoping for some air guitar and lighter-held-high, sing-along pop mastery. In fact, just the thought of seeing “’92 Subaru” live should have you dropping some extra butane in the Zippo.

Having played the U.K.’s Reading Festival and Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival, FOW’s stop at Bonnaroo will be among the band’s first of the American biggies, and they’re anxious to unveil the new material on their home soil. Co-founder Adam Schlesinger says, “Weirdly, we all find it less intimidating than sometimes playing to a small-club audience where you can see every face. When it’s a big sea of people, it almost looks like the crowd was added in with special effects. But we’re already working on how the new tracks will work live and thinking up set lists.”

The greatest thing about a live FOW show is perhaps the band’s penchant for timely cover tunes. You never know when you’re going to hear a Billy Joel cover or a few choice cuts off Thriller or Quadrophenia. A complete music geek, Schlesinger is excited just to join the crowds at Bonnaroo.

“One of the best parts of the whole festival thing is getting to see all these amazing and diverse bands and sharing a stage with them,” he says. “I mean, I’m the biggest Police fan in the world, and the fact that we’ll be playing festivals along with them is a thrill. In fact, in the case of Bonnaroo we’re changing our routing so we can get there a day ahead of time just to catch their set. You just get to meet musicians you wouldn’t ordinarily get the chance to meet. I remember getting a chance to meet Joe Strummer backstage at Fuji Rock, I mean what other time are you going to be lounging around in a catering lounge with Joe Strummer? It just doesn’t happen out of the festival context.” Bonnaroo (6/16), Fuji Rock (7/27)

[Above: Ty Manning and the author]

Ten hours. Two cars. Two planes. Three airports. A bus. Two taxis. One demented lunatic on the verge of a killing spree. This is what we endured en route to Atlantic City to cover Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil’s 46th birthday party, where—as with any ’80s rocker worth his salt—a new, personalized line of Tequila was to be launched. When I received the last-minute invite, I immediately phoned my good buddy Ty Manning—high-school art teacher, amateur standup comedian and spoken-word artist, semi-pro storyteller and beloved Athens, Ga., musician. He was out “bar-hopping,” and had just arrived at the 40 Watt Club in a full-body bunny suit. “We’re going to Vince Neil’s birthday party,” I told him. “Be at the Atlanta airport by 8 a.m. sharp.”

“Vince Neil? Hell Yeah!” he hollered back. And that was that. The next morning I spotted him wandering in, dazed, by the baggage claim, in full Ignatius J. Reilly garb, as if he'd just stepped off the cover of A Confederacy of Dunces.

I know we don't normally cover aging hair-metal icons in Paste, but I was weaned on the stuff—Mötley Crüe, Poison and Guns N’ Roses blasted me headlong into Led Zeppelin, which led to classic-rock radio, then The Doors, floyd, the Dead, American roots music, hip-hop, punk and, more recently, bands like Wilco and Morphine. Yep, before I earned my rock-crit stripes, I used to worship at the silver General Electric turntable of my metal-loving, Aquanet-addicted teenage sister Tracy, who blasted the Crüe’s Theatre of Pain, who had a pair of sunglasses from Ratt’s Stephen Pearcy on her bedroom wall, and who made me a fake guitar from scrapwood and kite string and dressed me in a headband and studded leather belt so my best friend, Bobby Farrell, and I could put on a lipsynched show for all the Collins Drive brats I’d conned into my living room at 25 cents a pop. (We were midway through our opener, “Round and Round,” when one wizened kid says, “Hey, they’re not even really playing!” And there we were, outed like Vanilli. We had no choice but to give the money back or risk a severe mob-beating at the hands of the neighborhood youth Gestapo.)

Ty and I arrive at the 42nd Street Port Authority bus station just in time to catch “The Gambler’s Express,” the shuttle that delivers a fresh crop of New York low-rollers every hour on the half hour to the dilapidated AC Hilton, where rough-looking senior citizens stare robotically, hard-luck pumping their social security checks into video slot machines while haggard security guards with bruised faces and similarly blank stares look on, fingers tapping their sidearms.

On the sweltering ride to Atlantic City, a very large and frightening man is having a violent argument with the world. As he repeatedly opens and clenches his fist and mutters long, unbroken streams of profanity and physical threats at no one and everyone in particular, I keep waiting for him to either detonate the plastique that must be strapped to his chest, or, at the least, turn and drive a switchblade into my belly. Miraculously, we arrive without bloodshed, and—after being hauled across town by a mute cabbie—pull up to our final destination: The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa. Quite possibly the most exquisite building I’ve ever set foot in, its white marble columns dwarf us as we walk through the revolving doors and into the Tissero room for VIP check in. Before long, we’re walking tall like kings to our posh suite. Tonight, me and Ty, we’re a two-man Rat Pack.

After we drop off our bags, we head downstairs for dinner at SeaBlue with the hotel’s publicist and an assortment of celebrity and fashion journalists from New York, most of whom are here to see if DJ AM—who's spinning at the afterparty—will bring his new girlfriend, Mandy Moore, so they can her ask her questions like, “How do you stay so fit?” or “If someone wanted to be fit like Mandy Moore, how would they go about doing that?” While these red-carpet wranglers ramble on, Ty and I excuse ourselves before dessert and head for the casino to play the Kenny Rogers slots while we wait for Vince and his backing act for the night, Love Seed Mama Juice.

Inside the Gypsy Bar, a band of geeks is playing “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic.” Is this really the birthday party of Vince Neil—god of hedonistic ’80s glam? But, alas, there’s Vince, still kickin’ his trademark bleach-blond ’do. He steps onstage and the band (wait, this is Love Seed Mama Juice? “No, can’t be,” says Ty. “These guys played my cousin's wedding.”) kicks into Led Zep’s “Rock and Roll.” “Smokin’ in the Boys Room,” “Highway to Hell” and “I Wanna Be Sedated” follow, with Vince strutting in a grey suit, unbuttoned at the chest, so the tattoos peek through. He plugs his new line of Tequila, Tres Rios, as fans shout for their favorite Crüe songs. On finale “Home Sweet Home,” we all sing every word, fists pumping over our heads.

The Atlantic City night twists haphazardly through hard-liquor prisms as we follow Vince, accompanied by two scantily clad women both at least a head taller than him, to the exclusive VIP afterparty in the exclusive VIP area of Club Mixx. DJ AM is playing the role of pop-culture jukebox, while Vince and co. are sequestered in an even more exclusive area. I make small-talk with some of the red-carpet wranglers, and we people-watch, staring at the quaint regular folks grinding below. Ty eventually stumbles back to the suite, and I think about how fitting it is that VIP areas in clubs are usually high over the dance floor, so all the people who believe they’re really special can look down on everyone else, and think, man, I’m in VIP, I’m so important… and this free appletini is delish!

Back in the room at 6 a.m., I pull a crumpled cocktail napkin from my pocket and stare bleary-eyed at the shaky green-pen scrawl: Hasidic Jews at the craps tables? WTF? My head hits the pillow, and I’m no longer in Atlantic City—I’m sitting in front of my sister’s turntable and “City Boy Blues” is pumping from the speakers as I trace my finger along the edge of Theatre of Pain’s glossy cover. One of the two squinting masks on the front grins at me creepily, mouth agape, and the other, it sheds a single tear.

Being in a 10-man democracy is hard work—just ask L.A.-based collective Ozomatli, in which every decision has to be unanimous. “We’ve been a band for 12 years, and we spend more time with each other than people do with their families,” tabla player/percussionist Jiro Yamaguchi points out.

“We’re a bunch of men living in close quarters and constantly working together, so over time there are always gonna be conflicts, no matter what. One way I put it is, like, if you went on the road with your fellow office workers and colleagues and were living with them 24/7, what would happen? In the course of any normal relationship, things are bound to happen, and life shows up, and that’s what we’re dealing with.”

Recognizing that conflict can destroy a band, and being pretty sensitive dudes despite their tough-guy appearance, the members of Ozomatli have done “a lot of personal and group work in terms of interpersonal relations,” says Yamaguchi, “and because of that, I think we’ve grown up a lot and matured over time—and we get along better than we ever have. So morale is good.” He pauses for a beat. “Talk to me in a year.”

Ozomatli applied this increased maturity to the creative process for its fourth studio album, Don’t Mess With The Dragon, which brought with it a pair of longstanding challenges. first, would the band finally find a way to capture the infectious energy of the live performances on which it had built its reputation? And, second, could the band come up with the radio hit that’s eluded it since the release of its self-titled 1998 debut? In other words, did these critically endorsed double Grammy winners have it in them to conjure a viable merger of art and commerce?

NO ‘WONDER BREAD’
“Trying to recreate that live energy of a show in the microscopic, sterile environment of a studio is like a dog chasing its tail,” says sax player Ulises “Uli” Bella. “It’s very hard to do, especially with a band as large as this one is. We’ve done the underground, we’ve toured ourselves to death, we’ve got all the accolades and awards, and now we wanna take it up to another level. And I think the best way we can do it is through the songs.”

The presence of high-quality material addresses both of the key issues—enhancing the album’s appeal while also providing potentially viable tracks for radio. “In a lot of ways,” Bella admits, “our music has been a little too challenging for radio. Language mixes, style differences—sometimes it’s hard to put that in a box. So this time around, we said, ‘let’s give them something that they’ll be able to service, but at the same time not kill who we are.’”

In February 2006 the band brought its instruments and beat-filled hard drives to the Calabasas, Calif., home studio of KC Porter, a bilingual veteran whose specialty is taking music from Latin artists and making it more accessible to English-speaking audiences; his discography includes extensive work with Ricky Martin and Santana, including 1999 mega-seller Supernatural. Ozo had first worked with Porter as guests on Santana’s 2002 Shaman album; the next year he co-wrote and produced a track for the band’s third album, Street Signs. “He brought a lot to the table,” says Yamaguchi.

“The whole idea,” says Porter, “was, ‘How do we make every song something that everybody is happy with?’ That was truly challenging because they have so many influences, styles and ideas, so you want it to feel uniform, but you don’t want it to be compromised. You don’t want it to be what Santana always referred to as ‘Wonder Bread’; you want it to have the grain and the nuts.”

THE POLITICS OF DANCING
Working in a half-dozen studios over a period of months, Ozomatli and Porter baked up an album that reflects the band’s diverse ethnic makeup and “oppositional politics” (how it characterizes its brand of activism). But even more fundamentally, the members of Ozomatli believe in the politics of dancing. “To dance in a group,” says Bella, “is something very primitive—something that binds us all.”

On Don’t Mess With The Dragon, the band embeds its messages in deep grooves and intertwined musical styles. In the case of “Magnolia Soul,” explains Yamaguchi, “We wanted to make a song about what happened with Katrina and that whole tragic event, and the song dictated the style—it’s a modern, second-line-influenced piece.” Similarly, “La Temperatura,” inspired by the immigrant marches that took place last summer in downtown L.A., is powered by a Central American rhythm known as garifuna.

The evolution of the title track—which began life as a beat on rapper/percussionist Justin Porée’s laptop—illustrates how a song takes on added layers as it works its way through “the Ozo committee,” as Yamaguchi calls it. “People were playing the videogame Dig Dug, which is about a little guy who’s buried underground, and you’ve gotta watch out for the dragon.” The premise then deepened into a brotherly warning playing off of the opium-smoking colloquialism “chasing the dragon.” When the track was nearly finished, Porter—recognizing that the dragon is a mythological Chinese creature—came up with the idea of adding erhu, a traditional stringed instrument from that country, to the song’s bridge. He invited his erhu-player friend Lin Cheng to come down and provide the solo, and the song took on an unexpected new shape and flavor.

“Her playing transformed the track into something that was way more advanced than any of us would’ve thought of,” Bella offers. “It kicked our own asses, in a way, and it [exemplifies] the overall idea of inclusion. You listen to the section now, it’s a dub reggae feel with a Chinese instrument on top of it. It’s like, ‘What the f—’s goin’ on?’” Which could serve as a general description of this one-of-a-kind assemblage.

“Their palate is so global, there aren’t enough Pantone colors to please a band like Ozomatli,” Porter says with admiration. “They can be drawing from anywhere at any point. Those subtleties are what makes them so cool—there will always be colors for Ozo to explore.”

Lovingly redone throwback to a simpler age of RPGs

In bringing this 1990 adventure to the modern DS, Square Enix has kept its simple mechanics—kill this monster, win that sword, boost that stat—and changed only one thing: The graphics, updated to a three-dimensional doll-house look, now pull you fully into the simple but graceful world. You control a quartet of characters who look like kids—in fact, they’re all young, orphaned and infectiously spunky—and as they gain experience, you’ll assign them new jobs and outfit them in colorful costumes and floppy, oversized hats. If half the point of retro gaming is to make you feel like a kid, there’s no faster way than making you play with dolls.

The Final Fantasy series has grown more epic with every sequel, but this throwback returns you to a simpler world that opens up bit by bit: a cave leads into a valley, opens onto an ocean and then to new continents, and while there’s a story to pull you along, making your way through the world is your primary adventure. The underlying treadmill of fighting and leveling may strike newer gamers as old-fashioned, but it’s only half the point: Final Fantasy III is less about growing powerful than simply growing up.

MacArthur Award-winning Davis challenges our fiction

In her fourth story collection, Varieties of Disturbance, fiction innovator and award-winning French translator Lydia Davis continues her investigation of what a story is and what it’s for. In Disturbance, Davis’ hallmark shorts provide addictively powerful, rapid encounters with tragedy, humor and existential confusion in the span of a page or a line. These tales reside in fiction’s grand thematic territory: sex, family, love and betrayal. But they also touch on less hallowed topics, including pet flatulence and eyeballs.

Precious few of these stories signal “story” through the use of dialogue, scenes or plot, but they thrill with their depth and dynamism. “Grammar Questions”—which begins as an emotionally detached interior monologue about how we speak of the dead—culminates in a heartbreaking examination of how language shapes the narrator’s relationship with her deceased father. “People may say ‘his body,’ but that does not seem right,” muses the narrator. “It is not ‘his body’ because he does not own it, if he is no longer active or capable of owning anything.” “Dog and Me” moves in a fluid, tender circuit between the thoughts of a dog owner and the imagined consciousness of her canine.

Though unconventional, the shorter pieces in Disturbance are formally conservative compared to the longer stories. With a few exceptions, these longer pieces challenge reader expectations and attention spans in lengthy narratives presented as case studies, pseudo-scientific journals and instructional manuals.

“We All Miss You: A Study of Get-Well Letters from a Class of Fourth Graders” is a close reading of invented children’s letters to an ailing classmate, complete with exhaustively detailed quantitative and qualitative observations about the children’s preoccupations and grammatical tendencies. It’s a curious mix of wistful, profound and downright cute, and “We All Miss You” points out the surprising possibility of emotional resonance in a source as unlikely as scientific narrative. “Helen and Vi: A Study in Health and Vitality” details the lives of two healthy, elderly, working-class women (and a shadowy third whose wealth and narcissism negatively affect her health) in the form of an extremely thorough interview-based report.

These oddly shaped longer stories can be intriguing and funny, but also tedious—perhaps intentionally so. Like the novels of Samuel Beckett, one of Davis’ early influences, the stories in Disturbance strain the boundaries of what constitutes entertainment in literature. And, as with Beckett’s absurdist monotony, even Davis’ dull moments seem audacious. Taken along with the immediate gratification provided by her short shorts in the same volume, her longer stories succeed more quietly, with their restless evocations of what Davis insists are the infinite possibilities of fiction.

Nick Cave and three Bad Seeds destroy, then redeem rock ’n’ roll with mid-life crisis

Even for a man like Nick Cave who thrives on mythmaking, The Bad Seeds must be a particularly weighty crown to bear. From the moment they swore not to “tell them about a girl” in Wings of Desire through the immensity of their myth-twisting double album Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus, The Bad Seeds’ legend has only grown. And with each step, Cave’s band has removed itself further from the Cuban-heeled boot kicks of The Birthday Party and the roughshod blues deconstructions of albums such as Your Funeral, My Trial, moving toward the kind of complete characters and unique, often bizarre, tales we once looked to Van Morrison (“Madame George”) or Leonard Cohen (“Suzanne”) to produce.

On a trip to the studio to flesh out songs for recent Bad Seeds albums—with the scaled-down team of Bad Seeds violinist Warren Ellis, drummer Jim Sclavunos and bassist Martyn P. Casey—it seems Cave lamented this shift. The result, two years later, is Grinderman, a garage-style four-piece featuring Cave on guitar, that revisits the wretched rock and embalmed blues of earlier Cave projects with similar youthful vigor and venom. It’s lo-fidelity, low-class and high-brilliance.

One of Cave’s many obsessions is proving that the rebel kick and gouge of American music still survives, in an iron lung-full of Blind Lemon Jefferson records. His hero is the forgotten singer, the anti-hero whose strength and smarts have been sapped by an unforgiving system, but who would rather die kicking against the pricks than submit. Thus, you get a song like “Get It On,” a lament for the loathed: “For those who gave their lives / So we could get it on.” It’s a call to arms from the Grinderman rock gospel. “I’ve gotta get up to get down and get started again … kick those baboons and other motherfuckers out and get it on!” Hail the redemptive power of a bilious screech.

That’s not to imply that Grinderman makes what could be summed up perversely as “rock ’n’ roll.” As its name implies, the band borrows liberally from the blues tradition, though perhaps not that of “Grinder Man” singers Memphis Slim and John Lee Hooker. Grinderman’s conceptual blues is more akin to the relentless drone and lolloping grit of Junior Kimbrough’s hypnotic grindings and Skip James’ purgatorial rambling. “Electric Alice”—a fitting tribute to the departed Alice Coltrane—bubbles up like an evil dub, and while “Go Tell the Woman” might follow its looping guitar plucks for hours in the hands of R.L. Burnside, for Cave it’s three minutes of existential crisis. Grinderman’s power stems from the slamming together of two musical forces. first, there’s the tried-and-true experimental collaboration of Ellis, Casey and Sclavunos. In The Bad Seeds, these three have learned the diversity that the band’s repertoire requires—transitions from quiet, minimalist melancholy to orchestral-noise grandeur. Then there’s Cave’s rudimentary guitar, which devolves his partners from time-honed perfectionists to mavens of invigorating, high-energy grit.

Conspicuous in his absence is Mick Harvey, Cave’s partner since all the way back to The Birthday Party. And maybe that’s part of the magic. Without his refined colleague’s input, Cave has little filter for the questionable sanity of No Wave vet Sclavunos and musical madman Ellis. Though it’s just that mix of tempered madness that makes The Bad Seeds the giants they are. So while Grinderman’s rough-and-tumble democracy makes for an exciting, illicit affair, it’s only that: a gorgeous bit of rough trade to scratch that seven-year itch.

Miranda July
No One Belongs Here More Than You
[Scribner]

Short stories from noted filmmaker

July’s first collection of stories treads the quirky path paved by her 2005 feature-film debut, Me and You and Everyone We Know. Whether it’s a young woman giving swimming lessons using bowls of water, or a rock star’s illicit relationship with her father, July effectively tempers her characters’ stumbles through life with a sense of the surreal.

With a desperate need to connect, most of the denizens of her world find themselves in relationships inappropriate (often with younger people), unexpected (two cases of elderly people experiencing same-sex relations) or imaginary (a woman who believes she and Prince William are soul mates).

The only problem—as with most collections containing stories that riff on the same themes—is that characters and situations begin to blur into one another. Yet this oddly grants a wholeness to the book, for as each person discovers that the world is a cruel place, so do we.

"World Music” is an amorphous term that gets thrown around far too often. But Bebel Gilberto’s third solo album, Momento, is World Music in the truest sense. Not only was it recorded on three continents (in New York, London and Rio de Janeiro), it manages to seamlessly integrate sounds from each one—from Brazilian bossa nova and samba to European dance and electronica to American jazz and folk.

Gilberto’s father, João, is considered one of the founding fathers of bossa nova. But she says her music didn’t truly take shape until she left her home country. “I don’t know if I could achieve the style I wanted if I wasn’t living in the U.S.,” says Gilberto, who now considers New York her home. “When I moved away, I found my own style; my own way of playing Brazilian music.”

Gilberto’s ability to create songs that are perfect for dancing, chilling out or sipping a latte means her music tends to pop up everywhere. Even if you didn’t know it was her, odds are you’ve heard Gilberto at a restaurant, spa or lounge. “I heard one of my songs in a mall recently and thought ‘This sounds so much like me. Wow, it is me,’” she laughs. “It was such an unexpected thing. I used to go to that mall as a girl and now my song is playing there.”

Gilberto says her music becoming so pervasive surprised her, mainly because she sings in both English and Portuguese. “Sometimes I can’t believe people can love my music and not understand what I’m saying,” she says with a chuckle. “But then I think back to when I was young and couldn’t speak English. I’d try to sing along to Donna Summer and I couldn’t get a word right.”

No matter what language listeners speak, Gilberto wants to give them something everyone can understand. “I just hope my music is inspiring and makes people feel sexy.”

The Paste Summer Festival Preview 2007

May 26-27 George, Wash.
SasquatchFestival.com
Selected Acts: Björk, Arcade fire, The Hold Steady, Neko Case, Beastie Boys
Landscape Architecture: The festival is held at the Gorge Amphitheatre, a nine-time winner of Pollstar's Best Outdoor Music Venue award.
Fun Fact: Comedienne/actress Sarah Silverman will host both days of the festival.

One of the challenges for any festival is to transform a field or a park into a world of wonder; but no forest of lights, art instillations or wandering masqueraders will ever inspire the awe of the Columbia River Gorge that serves as the backdrop for Sasquatch. Most of the revelers (limited by the venue to about 22,000—a mere quarter of some of its brethren) pitch a tent, and make the fest a two-day home.

Much like Bonnaroo, Sasquatch! launched in 2002 squarely on the hemp-clothed backs of the jam community and their surf-folk cousins, with first-year performances from String Cheese Incident, Ben Harper, Jack Johnson and Galactic. But by the next year, headliners like Coldplay, Modest Mouse, The flaming Lips and Death Cab for Cutie quickly morphed Sasquatch! into the indie-rock celebration it is today.
-Josh Jackson

Spotlight: Jesse Sykes
LIKE, LOVE, LUST AND MIC WRESTLING
That Jesse Sykes and guitarist/bandmate Phil Wandscher have musical chemistry is obvious from listening to any of their three, masterfully moody records. But what isn’t obvious until we begin chatting is that the partnership extends beyond music—Wandscher rolls his eyes as Sykes talks, Sykes elbows Wandscher when she thinks he’s saying the wrong things. With one mic between them, an intermittent game of Keep Away ensues. Either these two are a couple or they need to stop living in denial.

“He was reluctant to get involved musically when we first started going out,” Sykes says, laughing. “[He said] ‘I don’t want to be in a band with my girlfriend.’ But I think it’s always inevitable when two musicians live together—you’re in the living room messing with something and he goes, ‘Oh that’s really cool.’ The first record [2002’s Reckless Burning] happened just because we were spending time together.”

Perhaps inevitably, this sort of relational dynamic is what the band’s more adventurous latest—Like, Love, Lust and the Open Halls of the Soul—is all about, stemming from an encounter with a colorful, fiftysomething ‘biker-type’ couple in Reno, Nev. “I noticed he had three script tattoos on his wrist—three Ls. And I said, ‘What does that mean?’ And he said, ‘Like, love, lust, baby—it’s all you really need.’ And he pointed to his wife. Before he even said that I could tell there was this amazing amount of love between these two people.”

The second part of the record’s title, “The Open Halls Of Soul,” is also the conclusion, a country-gospel song about “celebrating your own demise” as Sykes puts it. “I just wanted to combine them all because it just told this amazing story—the complexity of love and the vastness of it all.”

Vast complexity? I’m sure this happily sparring, musically creative couple knows nothing about that. Sasquatch (5/27)
-Reid Davis

Spotlight: Viva Voce
HOME SWEET STUDIO
Portland psychedelic rockers Kevin and Anita Robinson, aka Viva Voce, make all their records at home. It’s fitting that their laid-back, organic jams would come straight out of the environment in which they were written. “There are cables running from the bedroom to the spare room to the bathroom to the living room to the kitchen, and amps in the basement and outside,” says Kevin. “Pretty much our whole house is sacrificed.” But hopefully not for long—he says they’re in the process of building a studio in the backyard “so we can have that separation of business in the yard and home life in the house.”

While there’s certainly tension that comes along with being in a band with your significant other, the Robinsons wouldn’t have it any other way. “I’ve been in bands with other dudes,” says Kevin. “And it wasn’t this cool or this fun.” Sasquatch (5/26)
-Kate Kiefer

You’ll come for the concept, but you’ll stay for the big melodies and sly beats

On their seductive third album, The Rosebuds split the difference between indie pop and dance music, laying hard into the seam where coy sweetness dovetails with simmering sensuality. House-music drums and rubbery bass quiver tensely through the blocky arrangements while Ivan Howard’s ghoulishly posh croon calls to Kelly Crisp’s demure yet tough responses. Fluid guitars, thinly sliced metallic synth flutters, and bright keyboards carry the songs through haunting peaks and sloughs and foggy harmonies. There’s an understated drama to Night of the Furies, one that has more to do with its razor-sharp songwriting than its belabored conceptual framework—the mythological narrative neither enhances nor detracts from the album’s allure. But its bipolar nature wins you over—in terms of tone, Furies covers a broad range, from the dark pulsations of “My Punishment for Fighting” to the sunny bombast of “Cemetery Lawns” and the ’80s pop futurism of “I Better Run.”

Hearing it from an acclaimed singer/songwriter who’s currently working on an opera, you’d hardly expect the fawning anthem “Tulsa” (“Your suit was the whitest thing since you know who / I feel that that savior I have mentioned may be you / And who would have thought that I’d owe it all to Tulsa?”) to be about, of all people, Brandon Flowers of The Killers. “I spent one night with him at a bar, swooning over him along with everybody else,” jokes Rufus Wainwright.

In fact, Wainwright—son of singer/songwriter Loudon—wrote most of the songs on his new record, Release The Stars, for friends and contemporaries, including some other children of musicians. The string-adorned “Nobody’s Off The Hook” is about Teddy Thompson, son of Richard, and the triumphant title track is about his relationship with longtime friend Lorca Cohen, daughter of Leonard. According to Wainwright, the shift in subject matter is part accident and partly a natural consequence of arriving at a more emotionally relaxed place. “I just realized I couldn’t be so precious about my intentions,” he says.

Release The Stars is Wainwright’s first self-produced record. While the original plan was to make a more stripped-down, darker follow-up to the extravagant Want One and Want Two, the new album turned into something just as huge. “When I went in [to the studio this time],” he says, “I was this athletic animal that had to really lay everything out on the line.” The result is another installment of Wainwright’s signature fusion of pop and operatics, but the music comes off as less self-conscious under his total artistic control.

“I think it’s everything that Rufus has ever wanted to do, and everything he should do,” says his sister Martha, who sings on the record. “It’s the truest expression of his songwriting, for better or for worse.”

Since his last pair of records, Wainwright has picked up an extracurricular activity that helped shape the sound of Release The Stars. He reenacted Judy Garland’s legendary 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall during two sold-out nights in New York last year, along with three more shows in London and Paris this past February. In September, he’ll perform the show at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Garland is one of Wainwright’s musical idols, and he wears the influence proudly, taking advantage of the emotional power of theatrical vocals without being saccharine or contrived.

Also in the Dreams Come True department, Wainwright has been commissioned by New York’s Metropolitan to write an opera. “I’m completely obsessed, and have been all my life, with opera and the effect it can have on a person and on society,” he says. “I feel that this is my World Series of artistic pursuit.” The libretto of Wainwright’s Primadonna follows a day in the life of an opera singer, and while he doesn’t expect the piece to come to fruition for several years, he’s working on it constantly, the exposure making his pop arrangements and storytelling even more vivid and intricate.

“He can do Judy Garland, he can do opera, he can do a singer/songwriter pop record,” says Martha. “All that education and life experience has really culminated in a pinnacle for him.”

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY? HIM?
Wainwright says he’s at a personal pinnacle, too. He’s got a long-term boyfriend (“He’s just a godsend who looks like a god, as well”), he calls his new record “an unintended masterpiece,” he’s getting along with his friends and family, and he’s realizing a lifelong dream with his opera. “There have just been a lot of fulfilled things in his life recently,” says Martha. This lack of personal drama has only strengthened his art.

“For any person who’s worried about getting older and taking care of themselves, I hope that I’m some sort of beacon showing that, in fact, you only really start to hit your stride after you’re done with your 20s,” he says.

He’s even healed a volatile relationship with his folksinger father, which was made public by both Wainwright (“So put up your fists and I’ll put up mine / No running away from the scene of the crime,” from “Dinner At Eight”) and his dad (“I don’t know what all of this fighting is for / But we’re having us a teenage / middle-age war,” from “A Father And A Son”). Wainwright says the two have been bonding when he goes out on his father’s boat in Los Angeles. “My dad and I are very, very traditional at the moment,” he says. “I’ve learned not to expect too much change from him. He does exactly what he wants to do, but I respect that, because in life you’ve gotta do what you want to do to be happy.”

This happy-go-lucky talk might sound strange coming from someone who’s been portrayed for years as an emotional train wreck. Critics often find it hard to resist Wainwright’s sensational side, harping on his former meth addiction, his sexual history (sometimes simply the fact that he’s gay) and his turbulent relationship with his father. But he takes it in stride and answers the questions he’s asked, no matter how invasive or outdated. “I’m somewhat fascinated by the way Madonna or Morrissey or U2, whoever—they seem to really be in control of their personal front and how they’re perceived, and there’s a certain cathedral-like architecture to their persona,” he says. “I think that’s interesting. I just don’t have the energy or the time. So, as far as my life and my feelings are concerned, bring on the vultures. It’s fine.”

But, at this point, there’s really not much for Wainwright to worry about: He’s all grown up; he’s in complete control of his life, artistically and otherwise; he doesn’t have any new stories about drug-induced debauchery or family fights; and it’s not like he can come out of the closet again. His sister says it best: “I think Rufus is a true testament to the fact that you don’t have to be completely miserable to make good art.”

North Carolina roots trio takes a transcendent stand against postmodern emptiness

In the late ’60s, The Band’s earnest roots rock helped topple nonsensical hippie credos like, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” Similarly, The Avett Brothers—still unjaded after half a decade in the music business—do their best to combat modern-day hipster detachment and pseudo-coolness with Emotionalism’s simple, poetic story-songs and bittersweet, introspective laments. The album—down to the title itself—is a celebration of unselfconscious passion. It’s also a huge step forward musically: The relative sonic polish works magically in contrast to the Avetts’ jagged edge; they go beyond their core of acoustic guitar, banjo and upright bass (a change foreshadowed by Four Thieves Gone’s “Colorshow”), adding piano, B3, drums, electric guitar and mandolin; the vocals feel more carefully arranged, relying less on energetic screams and shouts and giving the melodies room to breathe; and the influences peeking through are more varied than ever, the music sporadically reminiscent of everything from Help!-era Beatles to Chopin nocturnes. The Avetts, long deemed “promising” by critics, are now unflinchingly—unguardedly—delivering on that promise.

Given the current invasion of quirky, colorful indie-pop bands from Sweden, you could be forgiven for assuming the only flavors of music from Scandinavia are those produced by sprawling collectives covered in confectioner’s sugar. Not Dungen, the project of prodigious multi-instrumentalist and arranger Gustav Ejstes, a man who has little interest in making music that can be digested in one sitting.

“Maybe we’re alone,” he muses humbly of his band, his eccentricities extending to the near-exclusive aural diet of American hip-hop and Swedish folk music he listens to each day. “I’m a Swedish citizen, and in that sense, I’m a part of that movement,” he continues, sounding unsure of whether he can realistically lump his band in with the far more pop-minded strains of Love is All and I’m From Barcelona. “But, I’m a little bit of a loner,” he says with a laugh. “I’m into my stuff, and I’m not good at following."

That much is obvious from listening to Tio Bitar, his more melodic, focused follow-up to 2004’s breakthrough, Ta Det Lugnt. An uncompromising psych-rock epic, the album made Dungen an unexpected international “It” band. This time around, Ejstes decided the best route was to take small steps forward, retaining most of Ta Det Lugnt’s heady sprawl. As before, Ejstes handles nearly every instrument in the mix, and his mélange of fuzzed-out Hendrix riffs, sun-bleached psych-pop and prog-rock exploration is even more refined and eclectic. Drawing yet another distinction between he and his countrymen, not a note of it is sung in English.

“That’s just the sound of Dungen and has always been. Dungen music is only in Swedish,” he continues emphatically. “I haven’t decided to never sing in English, but the concept is that it’s my lyrics and I want it to be honest. The easiest way for me to express myself isn’t in English, as you can hear,” he says, self-effacingly. “I just create, and I have so many different influences from different times. Today, we have so much. We could get all these records through the Internet, and it’s so easy to listen to different kinds of music. If you just do your own thing, maybe it becomes timeless.”

Hometown: London, England
Members [L-R]: Jamie Morrison (drums), Shingai Shoniwa (bass, vocals), Dan Smith (guitar)
Fun fact: Bassist/vocalist Shingai Shoniwa—whose first name means ‘perseverance’ in the East African Shona language—was first inspired to rock by an equally exotic source: Thomas Mapfumo’s guitar transcriptions of the mbira, a traditional thumb piano dubbed “telephone to the spirits,” Shoniwa explains, “because it puts you into a trance so you can reach a state beyond physical mortality.”
Why they’re worth watching: They bridge the gap between late ‘60s acid rock and modern alternative.
For fans of: Wolfmother, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Jimi Hendrix

Sure, Shingai Shoniwa currently feels right at home in urbane Britain. After all, it’s where she studied theater, co-scored a Harlem-themed musical with fellow classmate Dan Smith and formed her brainy blues-rawk trio, Noisettes, with Smith on guitar and Jamie Morrison on drums. But in Malawi—where she spent a good deal of her childhood, roughing it in the danger-fraught bush—she was quite the tigress. A la The Jungle Book, she giggles, “I had to fetch water, balanced on your head, first thing in the morning, at least enough to get you through to the midday meal. The other kids laughed, because I was this kid from London who couldn’t hold a jug up for longer than a couple of minutes. But I learned quickly, and today I can balance pretty much anything on my head, even a suitcase.”

Shoniwa had