American Music Club: Love songs for cynics

If you're in and around Dublin City on Saturday night then you may want to take yourself to Whelans, which will be playing host to American Music Club. The San Francisco based outfit, fronted by the influencial singer-songwriter Mark Eitzel, have just released a new album called 'The Golden Age', which is the follow-up to their stunning comeback album in 2004, 'Love Songs For Patriots'.

Prior to 'Love Songs...' the band had not recorded together for almost ten years. Within this period Eitzel went on to have an acclaimed, if occasionally uneven, solo career. Known for a more hard-edged approach to folk and Americana, American Music Club took us on an alternative road-trip through some not always pleasant sub-cultures and characters.

When making plans to go to this show, a friend of mine persuaded a mutual friend of ours to go. Our mutual friend said, "aye, be a bit of craic", to which my friend replied, "it won't be a bit of craic! It'll be two hours in the dark and you'll love it!" Indeed, with American Music Club it may not be dark yet, but it's getting there. Amid the melancholy though, lies a sharp wit and some finely crafted songwriting. Also, Mark Eitzel is one of the most distinctive voices of the last 20 years.

Rumours prior to the release of 'The Golden Age' were that it was a lot more 'up' than previous American Music Club records. The dark sense of humour still prevails on the album, that's for sure, and it is a fine record. I still prefer 'Love Songs' and 'Everclear', but with all American Music Club records it takes a long time to absorb them fully, which is part of the fun. Yes, I said fun! I'm really looking forward to Saturday - it WILL be good craic!

American Music Club - Whelans, Dublin, Feb 2.

REM get ready for Reconstruction

REM are due to return on March 31 with their 14th studio album, 'Accelerate'. The album was recorded partly in Vancouver, partly Dublin, where the Athens trio held a residency at the Olympia in May last year for a series of live rehearsals. Much of the material that was road-tested in Dublin has made it on to the album. A new producer was also brought on board for the sessions, Jacknife Lee.

At an apparent duration of just 36 minutes, 'Accelerate' looks like being a return to the pre-'Automatic For The People' REM, where their albums had this wonderful habit of breezing along swiftly. 2004's 'Around The Sun' seemed to limp to a conclusion. It looks like REM are ready to make a bit of noise again. I look forward to their return and their live shows later this year - they remain one of the finest live rock bands on the planet!

Here is a taster of what to possibly expect on 'Accelerate'. Recorded during their rehearsals in Dublin in May 2007, this is 'Horse To Water'. Sounds very 'Life's Rich Pageant' era REM to me. No bad thing!!

MGMT - a name for 2008

One of most exciting new sounds of 2008 (yes, I know we're only a month in) has been electro duo MGMT (pronounced The Management). The duo's eccentricity on record is echoed on their website biog, which informs us:

"MGMT is: Andrew Vanwyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, two psychic pilgrims whose paths first intersected in the green pastures of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, circa 2002." Andrew and Ben realized that -- despite their opposing views on methodology (one is spontaneously practical, the other is practically spontaneous) -- they shared a common love of mystic paganism (ironic indeed on a campus named for the founder of Methodism), psychotropic sounds, and the belief that a joke (or a joke song) could be sad, profound, and funny at the same time." Interesting guys!

With influences from the mainstream pop world, the underground hallucinogenic electronica of Suicide and the sonic soundscapes of The Flaming Lips, MGMT have created a debut album, 'Oracular Spectacular', that is a headphones experience, a dancefloor experience and a live experience all rolled into one. With Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann at the helm, it is a perfect union.

For some absurd reason, 'Oracular Spectacular' will not be released in Ireland until the summer. But it really is worth getting your hands on before that, if you can. Here is a taster from the album to persuade you....opening track 'Time To Pretend'.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1G43OGNO

The Enemy of the NME is my Friend

The nominations for the NME awards have just been announced and, as with every other year, I am totally indifferent. The once glorious publication, formerly the home of writers with the calibre, wit and wisdom of Nick Kent, Julie Burchill and Stuart Maconie, now gives refuge to thin-tied white boys so far out of their element they struggle to even have a vague knowledge of David Bowie.

The sins of the modern day NME and it's writers are many but I'm sticking with one just now that has really rattled my pissy bone. In the catagory of Villain of the Year they have nominated Amy Winehouse. I know in the wide scheme of things that this is quite a trivial category that is not to be taken seriously, although it could be tough to take being listed with Tony Blair and George W. Bush on the chin! It would certainly kill the fizz out of being nominated for Best Solo Artist, which Winehouse quite rightly was, following a year that saw her 'Back to Black' album barely leave the top ten. Regardless of how seriously we are to take the Villain of the Year category, it does speak volumes, whether the powers that be at the NME like it or not, of the contrast in how a troubled female artist is perceived in comparison to a troubled male.

Here we have a lady whose personal problems with drugs and her posh double-barrelled jailbird husband, whose name has never been with me to escape from me, have kept her in the media glare daily for over a year now. Like many, I'm fed up reading about the lady and her problems. I adore her 'Back to Black' album, but it seems to be of little interest to the snakes of the press who, bereft of a soul to enjoy such musical stylings, focus on the murkier side of Winehouse's life. Her problems are continually being used as a stick to beat her with and the NME are now part of the Winehouse lynch-mob with this Villain of the Year nod.

I do not know Winehouse personally. She may well be an individual deserving of such an award but her reasons for being nominated are the very reasons that see her male counterparts lauded and mythologised. Winehouse gets caught smoking crack and she's a villian. Pete Doherty gets caught shooting up and he's a troubled genius and a poet. Keith Richards tells us for the 234th million time that he should be dead and we call him a legend. Gil Scott Heron gets caught with heroin and they throw his ass in jail and deny him his HIV medication - but that's another story about how selective both the system and the music press are in relation to gender, race, sympathy, mythology and condemnation.

Keith Richards has been living well off his drug excess truths, myths and legends for well over thirty years now. What is so acceptable about t-shirts of a 'wasted' Keith Richards or Sid Vicious that is so unacceptable about images of Amy Winehouse with needle marks on her feet? There are no differences between any of these images, yet we seem to not only accept it in males (if they're white) but celebrate it, and that's wrong. So perhaps the NME should be praised for taking Winehouse to task like this. It may get a message to the lady that she needs help. But did the NME, even in its pomp, ever offer the same message to Keith Richards, Sid Vicious or Kurt Cobain? No they didn't. They don't see the need to villainise white male addicts because it's 'rock n' roll, man' and 'it's better to burn out than to fade away'. Yet, like stuffy old male Cricket Club House members, they wag their self-righteous fingers at any woman who dares to step into the boys club of 'sex, drugs and rock n' roll'.

So I now feel the need to reassure all the female artists and music lovers out there. I come from a club that welcomes women. If a walk on the wild side floats your boat you're more than welcome to jump on with us. We believe you have every equal right to indulge in excess if you so please. We'll make sweet rock n' roll with you. We may even take some (non hard) drugs with you, and yes - we'll even have sex with you........if you'll have us of course!

Chuck Berry, Letterkenny, March 24

Imagine my shock when surfing the web yesterday and having a nosey at Chuck Berry's official website. After a number of text messages, I had to see it for myself. There it was - in the middle of his 2008 tour dates, March 24, Grill Venue, Letterkenny! His only Irish date on the list.

Berry is without doubt one of the original pioneers of Rock n' Roll. John Lennon once said that if you had to give Rock n' Roll another term, that term would be Chuck Berry. With his seminal self-penned classics like 'Maybellene', 'Sweet Little Sixteen', 'Johnny B. Goode' and, of course, 'Roll Over Beethoven' Berry laid down a template for Rock n' Roll that is still, to varying degrees of success, celebrated today - teenage promiscuity, a love for the road, escape, fast cars, partying and rebellion. Now in his 82nd year, mere words cannot do justice to his (and his peers') influence on the grand scheme of things.

Tickets are sure to be hot property as soon as they become available. It will be Rock n' Roll history literally before your eyes, and at a venue where many moons ago the showbands of the country would've knocked out more than a few of Berry's classics.

Here's Berry live in London in 1972 with 'Promised Land'.

'Small Hours' at any Hour!

Donal Dineen's late show on Today FM has consistantly been one the best things on the airwaves for the past ten years. Now under the name 'Small Hours', his shows continually introduce a whole new sphere of alternative music, especially in the electronica genre.

For the first time since his broadcasts began in 1997, they are now being archived on the Today FM website for your listening pleasure at any time of the day, not just after midnight in bed with the earphones on.

First check the link here:

http://www.todayfm.com/Article.asp?id=448129

then, turn on, tune in and cop out.

'I'm Not There' - a Todd Haynes film on Bob Dylan

This is a movie with six different characters, none of whom go under the name Bob Dylan, who each represent a different aspect of the man, his many myths and his work. I thought this was a pretty brave step for director Todd Haynes. How do you make a conventional biopic about one of the most unconventional figures in popular culture? The answer is simple - you can't. 'I'm Not There' had to be off-beat right from the start.

This movie stands up where Haynes's glam-rock opus from 1997, 'Velvet Goldmine', collapsed. This is mainly due to the fact that he was able to use Dylan's music, something denied to him by Bowie for 'Goldmine', and the film suffered because of it. Ewan McGregor's awful American accent and sub-Iggy Pop parody Kurt Wild didn't help either. There's none of that here. The performances are solid, especially Cate Blanchett as the 'Blonde on Blonde' period Dylan - a definite Oscar nod for sure.


Blanchett's casting in not as pretentious as it sounds. Having a woman play Dylan is perhaps an attempted parallel of the shock Dylan caused by his transformation in 1965 from folk to 'that mercury sound' of an electric guitar. The songs are used at the right moments to signify a certain mood or situation. It would be interesting to hear what Dylan made of all of this. He would probably dismiss it as inaccurate. His myth is still intact. We know no more, and I don't think Haynes actually believed it was going to be any other way.


Would I recommend this film? If your interest in Dylan is quite minimal, probably not. You will hate it. If you're a little bit more of a Dylan anorak, then yeah, go for it! The title doesn't lie - Dylan is not there. Or is he? We'll never really know. Have we ever really known? He's a clever one, that Zimmerman.

Cat Power - Jukebox

An album of covers should make any listener fear the worst. Most covers are pointless exercises in rehashing someone else's music almost identically, yet without any of the original intent, sentiment and personal investment. One thinks of Jacques Brel's 'Dying Man' and how its various bastardisations down through the years as 'Seasons in the Sun' have all failed to do justice to the Belgian's sombre lament. Even the sight of a some kid barely able to shave thinking he has enough in the bank to take on 'My Way' is very hard to stomach. There are certain songs that you have to earn the right to sing - 'Hurt' by Nine Inch Nails, which, it would be fair to say, Johnny Cash earned well, although it's one of the few songs he didn't murder in his American Recordings series.

There are certain people who get the point of a cover and the need to bring something else to it. Hendrix's reinvention of Dylan's 'All Along The Watchtower' and Jeff Buckley's reading of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' are perhaps two of the most famous cases of a cover breathing new life into a song.

Cat Power, aka Chan Marshall, has been down the road of a covers album before. Her 1999 'Covers Record' saw her deconstruct standards by The Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground and Nina Simone. It was a beautifully haunting and tasteful collection of reinterpretations. Marshall has always striven to find something new, not only in cover material but her own. Her recent live shows have seen her step into that sphere of re-make, re-model, which has been a key factor of playing live for people like Dylan and Lou Reed for over 30 years now.

Given Marshall's approach to covers, the arrival of 'Jukebox' should not be met with cynicism, but intrigue. 'New York' is no karaoke trip down the Sinatra wannabe path but practically related to the original in lyric and lyric alone. Unlike the 'Covers Record', Marshall has recruited backing band the Dirty Delta Blues for this collection and in turn it sounds just as the band did on tour throughout most of 2007.

2006's 'The Greatest' album saw Cat Power step closer to the mainstream than ever before. Some feared that this would be at the expense of her earlier material, written at a different time emotionally for Marshall, so much so that she may not have wanted to step back into that skin. On 'Jukebox' it's pleasing to see that she is not blanking her past, but giving it the same reinvention that she does with Hank Williams' 'Ramblin' (Wo)man', James Brown's 'Lost Someone' and Joni Mitchell's 'Blue'. Her new rendition of 'Metal Heart', which first featured on her 1998 record 'Moon Pix', is at first more piano-led and merges into a chaotic climax, losing none of the drama of the original recording.

Having seen Cat Power live last summer and hearing some of the material that would end up on 'Jukebox', I recall being very excited by the live version of The Highwaymen's 'Silver Stallion'. The full band arangement is replaced with a more subtle acoustic reading on the album. As good as it is, it fails to live up to how it worked with the band live. The same cannot be said for 'Aretha, Sing One For Me'. With it's southern soul swagger, it's a definite highlight of the record.

Chan Marshall's voice is one of the most distinctive sounds of the last ten years or so. It is the perfect late night companion on 'Lord, Help The Poor and Needy' and 'Don't Explain'. What the hell - It laces with gold anything it sits on top of - just ask Faithless or Handsome Boy Modelling School. But it's difficult to gauge just how essential a covers album should be. Original new song 'Song To Bobby' is a welcome addition and sits well on the collection. It would've perhaps sat even better on 'The Greatest'. A lazy, sun-drenched auto-biographical narrative of a run-in with Bob Dylan, it's a fine hint that Chan Marshall has a lot more to offer. I look forward to the journey.

Tracklist: 1. New York (Frank Sinatra)2. Ramblin’ (Wo)man (Hank Williams)3. Metal Heart (Cat Power *)4. Silver Stallion (The Highwaymen)5. Aretha, Sing One For Me (George Jackson)6. Lost Someone (James Brown)7. Lord, Help The Poor And Needy (Jessie Mae Hemphill)8. I Believe In You (Bob Dylan)9. Song To Bobby (Cat Power **)10. Don’t Explain (Billie Holiday)11. Woman Left Lonely (Janis Joplin)12. Blue (Joni Mitchell)

* Original can be found on Cat Power's 'Moon Pix' record. A recommended album!

** A brand new Cat Power song never released before.