So I actually caught a glimpse of sunshine today and finally got a feeling that I had forgotten called "motivation." And this motivation has led me to briefly rave about one of my favorite Lansings bands, BerT.
Unassumingly named, confusingly punctuated, these dudes play super heavy music (but, thankfully, not "Super Heavy") that isn't remotely metal. Slow, droney, strangely melodic, powerful, nearly nauseating in its sonic wall. I just dig 'em. A couple of these guys were in a really fun band called Red Teeth awhile back, and they run a label called Madlantis Records. I've never really listened to their recordings, I think partially because I'm afraid I'll be disappointed at the lack of the visceral assault of the live show... but I should probably change that as there's a bunch at that website. They play often, and at the end of April they're playing at Mac's Bar with Black Flag founder Greg Ginn's probably mildly insane and likely mediocre new band Good For You (named by Mr. Ginn in a rare moment of clarity at what this project probably won't accomplish).
On the "national" scene, I've been trying, and failing to get into the new Strokes record, and I'm glad I wasn't at SXSW this year.
Even though they're rarely satisfying, I'm always interested in live releases by bands. When they're pulled off well they can sometimes save songs that were rendered uninteresting by poor production - sometimes the live version dramatically improves the original by just plain being a better/ more refined arrangement (compare the studio and live versions of Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me" and you'll know what I'm saying). Any band that's willing to release a true live document not mired in post-production overdubs (lookin' at you KISS) is always compelling to me. Check out Grand Funk Railroad's imaginatively titled Live Album for one of these. Yeah, I know, Grand Funk ain't the hippest band on the block, but seriously, check that record out. It's the sound of 3 dudes kickin' out the jams, live and raw, competent drumwork by Don Brewer and all.
Anyway, much like GFR this post's subject is a group of guys from mid-Michigan, specifically, you guessed it, Lansing. The People's Temple are two sets of brothers that started playing out in 2008. In these 5 short years they've gotten a decent amount of attention for playing psychedelic garage rock, oft-compared to bands of the 60s though they honestly sound more like an 80s or early 90s college radio band with the reverb cranked up to me. The entertainment writer at City Pulse (that'd be Lansing's free weekly) is really into them so it's hard to not know what People's Temple are up to when every time they do anything it's written about in the paper. Their records are pretty cool, but they've honestly bummed me out every time I've seen them live. Sometimes they've just been downright sloppy, or loud for the sake of loud with no real inspiration. They almost always have an off-putting stage demeanor where they seem to hate their audience and berate the staff at venues. They could be fine people off-stage, I've never spoken to any of them, but they just generally seem unapproachable and inconsistent. Some writers call this an "intense stage show"... I tend to think of it as something I don't want to pay to see.
Lansing's hottest indie band, or the "Surly Mod" gang from The Warriors?
Which is why I'm pumped about their new release, a live 7-inch featuring a song apiece from their two albums. This is the sound of a band rocking out as a tight live unit, and I have no reason to believe this is anything but a real document of a great show. Plus I don't have to look at them grimacing at the whole room and can just enjoy the sound. This "Never More / Miles Away" 7-inch came out at at the end of February on Jack White's Third Man Records (named after Mr. White's failed attempt to start a Burning Man-esque festival in the ruins of Detroit) and was recorded at the on-site venue for Third Man Records in Nashville. Maybe these guys try harder on the road... or Jack picked the two best songs of the set. Either way, this is a really solid listen and I'm also just plain proud that a band from my beloved overlooked hometown is working with such a great label. The People's Temple are currently on tour to SXSW so... maybe I'll check them out again when they're back in town. Order the 7-inch from Third Man - it's a good listen and this is a label that is more than worth supporting.
Once upon a time there was a band called Nirvana, and Nirvana did this funny thing where they took pop song structures but had loud and noisy choruses with quiet verses, "abstract" lyrics, and rather "heavy" instrumentation. They were not the first band to do this, and holy flying hell they were far from the last, but they did it with the greatest commercial success and are often credited for the less-appealing-in-retrospect "alternative rock" boom of the 1990s. Drummer Dave Grohl went on to even greater success with the more conventional, sometimes enjoyable but often bland Foo Fighters, as well as a potentially eclipsing 2nd career of being "nice rock guy that collaborates with lots of people but is still hella cool." He recently directed a movie called Sound City that is both a celebration of a now-defunct studio in Los Angeles where many influential records were recorded (including Nirvana's Nevermind) as well as a manifesto of sorts that the best and purest music is made by human beings with live instruments and imperfections as opposed to the modern trends of digital correction, sampled instrumentation, auto-tune, etc etc.
Some of those last two sentences might not mean a lot to some people reading this, but it is a certain fact that a lot of modern music is made with computers fixing mistakes and "fixing" recorded sounds to make "cool" new sounds (for example, sometimes auto-tune is used as an instrument of sorts to manipulate a voice into a different sound - for better or worse - and a lot of the time it's used to make a less-than-great singer sound too perfect in a studio environment. This person then has to live with the reputation of being a terrible live performer). Some people (including Dave Grohl) say that this trend makes modern music sterile and hard to listen to, and I don't disagree with them on most of this point. Other people say it's musical progress, and most people don't notice or care, they're just like "hell yeah, pass the Smirnoff". I blame many factors on this development, but it largely boils down to continued influence of "cutting-edge" records of 10 years ago (I'm thinking Flaming Lips Soft Bulletin and Radiohead's Kid A here) and the fact that record labels don't make much money these days and it's just easier to have producers digitally fix things for artists to get them out of the studio as fast as possible.
So... there won't be any blow and strippers in the studio tonight?
Every musical trend begats pale imitators, and while I enjoy the late 90s/early 00s work of Flaming Lips and, to a lesser degree, Radiohead, the last 10 years has been wrought with introverted people with mediocre levels of talent but patience with digital manipulation making blippy, whispy, "arty" music on their laptops and Pitchfork Media racing to blow themselves over which one them has achieved the highest level of dreariness. And lately this has gotten even more offensive with the success of this fucking asshole. But... I don't want to come across as a YouTube commenter on an Alice in Chains video and go on a diatribe about how nobody makes "real" music anymore and anything that's popular now is shitty, with an odd pre-occupation with Justin Bieber. There's still plenty of quality music out there, and, yes, I gravitate naturally towards more punk-influenced things and artists with more old-school approaches, but I think more and more people are figuring out how to use these tools in a way that doesn't result in immediate suckage. I also know that lots of my problems with modern "indie" music is in the fact that I despise clearly digital production in a "rock" context - for example, I recently saw a band cover MGMT's "Kids" with just guitar, drums, and horns and found it to be a rather kick-ass tune and almost regretted running down all those guys in scarves outside Espresso Royale with my car two summers ago.
Almost.
So, I've somehow been on a kick with the recently-released album Wondrous Bughouse by Youth Lagoon (named after the fact that not a single young person has a remote clue who Creeper Lagoon is). Youth Lagoon is everything I hate on paper - a solo project that is masked as a band made by an awkward dude in his parent's basement in Idaho or something - and the first record by the project (Year of Hibernation) went through my ears with barely a notice. But, call it the midwest winter, but Wondrous Bughouse takes these modern college-radio pretentions and puts it together in a way that nods to psychedlic artists of the past without wallowing in "my-Iphone-is-broken" weariness. "Raspberry Crane" is my jam of the moment, and the fact that it sounds like Steve Drozd could be on the drums is probably no coincidence for my enjoyment.
Does this excite me to go see Youth Lagoon live at some festival this summer? Probably not - I still feel that the domain of live music belongs to those who celebrate the imperfect "all-in" human instruments championed by Mr. Grohl in that there movie up to the top of the page, but, who knows, maybe (the rather awesomely named Youth Lagoon mastermind) Trevor Powers has the human urge to crank out a power chord on the ol' stage and I'll become some sort of Buddy Holly-glasses-wearing modern Dead Head. Now, in the meantime, I'll muse on that and check on my French press. Can't let it get cold and sterile.
