Chavez @ Spaceland, 12/31/06

New York art rockers Chavez aren’t exactly yr archetypal party band, but I was still trying to live it up a bit at their New Year’s Eve L.A. show. As a result, I didn’t approach the show with the kind of, erm, rigor that would produce a proper show review. Playing Johnny Snapshot or Sammy Setlistgrabber stresses me out to much to make it a party. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

In this very space I’ve previously praised Chavez’ mix of the rock, the pop and the weird. Somehow along the way they built up an air of mystery for me–how did they do this?–that’s dispelled a little when four dudes in jeans and button-down shirts, variously shaggy and bleary-eyed, strap on instruments and take the stage. I say a little because I coulda spent the night just watching guitarist Clay Tarver and trying to figure out how those moves made those sounds come out of the amp.

So Tarver and bassist Scott Marshall seemed to be having a blast, while “the” James Lo, stoic, battered out heavy beats with eerily little sign of effort and singer/guitarist Matt Sweeney applied a vaguely grumpy intensity to his frontman duties.

Out of this, a 90s four-piece reformed for a month or so of transAmerican rocking, arose a sort of majesty. The men of Chavez have expertly honed the soft-loud dynamic into a complicated push and pull of tension and release. Indie rock of the 90s had a well-earned reputation for being kinda sexless–hell, there’s no roll in Chavez’ rock–but the play of anticipation and catharsis that’s a Chavez signature, worlds beyond the same-old “hit the stombox on the chorus,” made me think of sex. The really good kind.

Soft parts give way as monster drums kick in and stop abruptly. A second guitar blares away a dissonant lead punctuated with unbluesy bent notes. Now the drums are in for real, and it’s resolved to massive freedom rock chords. The bass waits a couple bars and before storming in to add heft and, yes, maybe, a groove.

And so on, every song a little puzzle, a sweaty wrestling match, an alternate-reality anthem. I guess, succinctly, Chavez fucking rocked. Not a bad way to start the new year.

(Because we like providing evidence of some type, below a couple of hilarious Chavez videos from ten years back or so.)

“Unreal Is Here”

Better Days Will Haunt You at Newbury Comics. (and at iTunes.)

This week Paper Covers Rock is presenting a live Elliott Smith show in five installments. Mp3s in each entry will expire when the next installment is posted. All apologies from the writer/recordist, etc.

Elliott Smith (Live @ Largo, 4/11/98) banter “All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down)” banter “Lost Highway” banter “No Name #1″ banter “Alphabet City” banter “Thirteen”

Late into the evening of Low Saturday 1998, Elliott Smith had gotten past the tension that he’d complained about earlier in the night. I’ve seen the whole range of performances by Elliott, from transcendent to the shambolic, but I never saw him as talkative and at-ease as he was at that show.

So he’s joking with the audience, sharing his beer with a gurl sitting in front of the stage, and playing some country covers, with love and a wink. First up was his rendition of Hank Williams Jr.’s “All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down)”–an interesting choice set among the personal tour of the lowlife found in Smith’s own catalog.

I won’t pretend anything more than a passing acquaintance with Jr.’s material, but this half-joking review of the greying of country music’s outlaws, which first popped up on record in 1981, is tuneful fun. There’s also a certain mournful feel. It is, after all, an elegy to the loss of youthful exuberance, healthy or not. But Elliott was clearly connecting more with the humor–some of it unintended, such as the reference to George Jones’ drying out.

After a false start to change keys, Smith went from Jr. to Sr. with “Lost Highway,” actually namechecked in the previous tune. The song is actually a Leon Payne composition, but it’s most closely associated with Hank Williams Sr. Even though he lost the thread again for a moment after the first verse, Smith imbued “Lost Highway” with a spooky kind of intensity.

These aren’t waters I want to wade into too deeply, but the contrast here is Bocephus’ rocking-chair rock, the woes of someone who’s lived to grey, versus Hiram’s haunted cautionary tale, the sort of thing we label “prescient” coming from those whose excess dooms them too young.

Well, as Elliott said, “OK, that’s it for country songs.” Smith recounted a hilarious, or hilariously sad, story about the King in his own days of decline, then picked things back up with “No Name #1,” a favorite from solo debut Roman Candle, backed here by Jon Brion again on the vibes.

This more-or-less untitled weeper sports a verse built from another masterfully personalized reworking of that old set of doo-wop chords. But then everything here is communicated in a very personal set of signifiers: unnamed trouble and heaps of alienation sketched out with people who are barely there, a party that must be fled and a guest appearance by Kali the annihilator. I’m pretty sure, though, that I’ve been at this kind of party.

“Alphabet Town,” off the self-titled album, maps out a hard-boiled sort of romance, an assignation that might start in a dive bar on a deserted corner of a decaying city but comes from the arid places of the soul. I mean, wiser folks than me said something about, if you can’t be with the one you love, loving the one yr with, right? This, though, feels a little truer to life.

A few words, dialogue that’s all monotone come-ons, peppered with some elliptical stage directions, and a scene where the brokenheart falls into the comfort of a stranger. At the same time, there’s something almost cinematic happening when the mind’s eye swoops in like a camera, “her hand on yr arm/she put her hand on yr arm/she put her hand on yr arm.”

Another note on memory, to close this little project as I opened it: after finishing “Alphabet Town,” Elliott apologized that it was tough to get into the Largo show, intoning sheepishly, “There was a big industry… uh, people bought a bunch of tickets that I didn’t know about.”

At this remove, a snapshot of the machinations of a company town leading up to one Saturday night in April are less interesting than ever. It’s really only with this cue that I vaguely remember some sort of kerfluffle (wha?) among E.S. obsessives in L.A. about tickets (does Largo ever actually issue tickets?) being held aside for label employees, maybe even some last minute hustling by artist and venue management to right things.

It must’ve been a big deal back then, and I’m sure I waited hours on the Fairfax Ave. pavement to secure my spot at Smith’s feet, but in my head that night’s bathed in some sort of golden glow. I guess it’s always 72 degrees and sunny in the land of nostalgia.

But are we here to talk about music, or about my navel? (OK, a little bit of both.)

So as a perfect closer to the evening, Elliott sang a sweet take on “Thirteen.” Elsewhere and a long time ago, I called this Big Star tune the most perfect pop song not appearing on a Beatles record. An editor wisely challenged this bit of, well to a rational mind, obvious hyperbole. Makes me look like an old fart, an indie schmindie soft rockist with safe, calcified taste. Well, bring it all on, throw me over, hit the red button on yr browser. Because years older, wider, maybe wiser, I stand fucking by it still.

I want to talk about the simple beauty of the melody; the balance between the innocence of sentiment and tinges of sadness; how it’s all in the teenage pledge “rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay”; no, how it’s all in the “Do you like me? Check one: __yes __no” of the final verse…

But really it’s been a long week wrestling with memory, crashing into the limits of my vocabulary, dancing out-of-time about the most stunning architecture. I’m copping out. Just listen and enjoy, and thanks for reading.

Donate to the Elliott Smith Memorial Fund.
Elliott Smith music on iTunes.
Roman Candle at Newbury Comics.
S/T at Newbury Comics. (or mp3s at Insound.)

This week Paper Covers Rock is presenting a live Elliott Smith show in five installments. Mp3s in each entry will expire when the next installment is posted. All apologies from the writer/recordist, etc.

Elliott Smith (Live @ Largo, 4/11/98) banter “Clouds” smoke break “Killing A Southern Belle” banter “Jealous Guy” banter “Needle In The Hay” banter “Pictures Of Me”

More than halfway into his set, Elliott Smith opened up an audience referendum about cover choices, his pop forefathers Big Star vs. his peers and friends Quasi. He finally settledn the latter and assayed “Clouds,” the closer on R&B Transmogrification.

Elliott gave an airy reading to the Sam “Puffy” Coomes composition. I’m not meaning to pun there, but it is a quirky, heartbreaking little song about love and loss that trades in metaphors of the atomic, the elemental and the divine. “Clouds” signs off with that distinctly Quasi fatalism that in the end we always go ping-ponging away from each other. At any rate, it was nice to hear Smith’s sweet and reverent take on his friends’ tune.

I believe I sat out the club-wide smoke break that followed. I know I didn’t smoke back then, at least. Refreshed, or freshly polluted, Smith launched into “Killing A Southern Belle,” a track from the self-titled record. I risk repetition (”no way!” you say) since I know these past few days I’ve already talked about songs of accusation and “busy fingerpicking” and quiet seething elsewhere. But those are the watchwords for “Southern Belle.”

Although I don’t think there’s any sort of demand that the subject of this song shape up–it feels a lot more like 100% pure hate. OK, possibly more cutting than that thing about breaking yr own heart ’cause you can’t finish what you start a few posts back is the bridge to “Southern Belle”: “how come yr not ashamed/of what you are?”

Smith again bemoaned the tension in the room, although my memory insists that it was all in his head. Funny that an audience could be too quiet for him. In a trip to L.A. only a couple years before, he struggled to be heard over a way chatty industry crowd at the Roxy.

Next up was a cover of John Lennon’s solo tune “Jealous Guy,” with assists from Jon Brion on piano and the assembled fans on that infamous whistling solo. Not to pick that Beatle-guy baggage back up, but of the Lennon solo stuff I’ve heard, I always prefer his love notes to Yoko over the Big Statements that most people associate with his legacy. Maybe I’m being too punk rock (bitter?) for my own good, but I get more of a buzz off the love thing than off hearing a dude who’s (deservedly enough) richer than G-d singing “imagine no possession” while playing a piano that’s worth more than anything I’ll ever own.

Now that y’all hate me, I’ll just note that it was cool hearing Elliott stretch out into a song penned by probably his biggest influence, a song both more straightforward and vulnerable than anything he put to record. He sounded relaxed, and it felt pure (and dareIsay innocent?).

“Needle In The Hay” is the opener and tone-setter for that 1996 self-titled platter. Churning strums underpin a tale of junkies on a desperate search for a fix. The depiction here is completely unromantic. It shows no glory in these shambling, mixed-up kids who roam the Portland streets trying to hook up with their connection.

There’s inside slang–”the cure”–and a few on-the-nose turns of phrase–the needle, “getting good marks”–that work nonetheless. These words, the slightly obscured personal asides, the handful of concrete details, they all give “Needle In The Hay” its deeply sad, lived-in but worn-out feel. Something about this song always makes me feel a little dirty, something unsettling about a scene so ugly being rendered with such beauty.

The poppy bounce of Either/Or’s “Pictures Of Me” would have been a respite from the last song’s darkness. But then again, it comes with its own weighty hints of trouble. “Everybody’s dying to get the disease” after all. It’s another scold of a song, which feels like a sequel to “Alameda,” played earlier in the set.

I’ve never fully gotten what the pictures in the chorus refer to. Other fans out on the Internets infer a message about hating something about someone else that actually reflects something that’s wrong with you.

I’ll buy that for a dollar, I guess, but then again, as a whole, Smith’s songs pretty stubbornly refuse line-by-line interpretation. Somewhere along the way, he dreamt a fog essential to his music, mystery that draws listeners in, but leaves them to find their own meaning. It’s worked on many of us.

Donate to the Elliott Smith Memorial Fund.
Elliott Smith music on iTunes.
S/T at Newbury Comics. (or mp3s at Insound.)
Either/Or at Newbury Comics. (or mp3s at Insound.)

This week Paper Covers Rock is presenting a live Elliott Smith show in five installments. Mp3s in each entry will expire when the next installment is posted. All apologies from the writer/recordist, etc.

Elliott Smith (Live @ Largo, 4/11/98) requests “Rose Parade” requests/tuning break “No Name #3″ “The Biggest Lie” banter “Coming Up Roses” requests “Alameda”

A little local Portland color is painted into this portion of our Elliott Smith set from Low Saturday 1998. It is, after all, the City of Roses and Microbrews, home to its own annual, well, “Rose Parade.”

Smith uses this opportunity to set up a contrast that’ll ring true for most of us, sort of drawing the team lines in life. On the parade route we have the favored sons on display, false and fancy even if all is not right. The parade is passing by dwellers of the lowlife, rowdy, rundown and pushed to the margins.

OK, so snobs v. slobs is a storyline of enduring power–or at least it endured through most of our favorite 80s movies–and it’s not because there are exactly two kinds of people in the world. It’s that anyone can relate to feeling alienated, and as much as people tend to identify with strength, there’s always space in the human heart for the misfits and underdogs of the world.

Smith finishes off this scene with a heavy dose of self-loathing: “when they clean the streets/I’ll be the ony shit that’s left behind,” and the whole thing is indeed kinda dusty and down-in-the-mouth, but sing-song catchy enough to leaven the mood.

After demurring on a request for “Freddy’s Dead,” Elliott launched into an older song, “No Name #3″ from his solo debut, 1994’s Roman Candle. In its gentle and trebly stop-start strums and ghostly whispers, the song borders on the atmospheric. And indeed its lyrics manage an almost Impressionist retelling of some kind of emergency, a deep domestic trauma.

The details as they’re presented, the things we look at when we have to look away from something horrible, carry an undercurrent of defiance–something matter-of-fact and untouched by grief in “everyone is gone/home to oblivion”–even as the I of the song incants, “come on night.” The wail of police sirens really wasn’t the worst backing vox for this one.

Not a Hüsker Dü cover but rather the closer from Smith’s self-titled 1996 record, “The Biggest Lie” is a sturdy, almost traditional breakup tune. Against Elliott’s own twist on at least the second-oldest pop chord progression (I vi IV V, FWIW), the tune is set among some of the typical details of our modern urban life–public transport, the hum of commerce–but expands them, quite naturally, into metaphors for yr good old timeless themes–separation from love, feeling used up at love’s end.

Or, put another way, Elvis C. said, “you won’t take my love for tender,” but before “The Biggest Lie” I didn’t think I’d be moved by references to a credit card.

Elliott invited Largo’s Friday night resident, Most Musical Man on Earth Jon Brion, to accompany him on vibraphone starting with “Coming Up Roses,” and, hey, there’s roses and the moon again, hallmarks of Smith’s Portland days in song.

As with many tracks off of the self-titled record, “Roses” uses addiction as a large-scale metaphor or subject matter, although it’s a bit oblique this time around. Nothing’s fully spelled-out, there’s just a compulsion on the biological level, ominous signs from above and “a kind of trouble/nobody knows.”

The song’s got a bit of an upbeat feel by the time the chorus swings around, and it got such a reading here with the glassy, echoing tones of Brion’s vibes chiming along. But the roses this tune always brings to mind look more like a plume of blood swirling into the chamber of a syringe.

“Alameda,” off Either/Or, falls within an entire of subcategory of Smith’s songs that address a subject and give ‘em a good fuckin’ talking-to. It’s hard to say whether these were aimed at friends who’d let him down, at characters invented to illustrate a type and a problem, or at himself, but these are harsh words devoid of self-righteousness.

In “Alameda” we’re talking about a manipulator who keeps the world at arm’s length, always looking for an angle, and the emotional wasteland that results. It still feels distinctly like a slice of the lowlife, and you don’t get much more cutting than to say, “nobody broke yr heart/you broke yr own ’cause you can’t finish what you start.” Of course, the character study is so fully drawn that the putdown “I never pay attention” is canceled before its song, like the million songs out there that go to great lengths to tell someone “I don’t care.”

And out of this–the rejection of falsity, the demand to open up to people, to meet the outside world on its own terms–a litany of accusations coalesces into something like a philosophy.

Donate to the Elliott Smith Memorial Fund.
Elliott Smith music on iTunes.
Roman Candle on Newbury Comics.
S/T at Newbury Comics. (or mp3s at Insound.)
Either/Or at Newbury Comics. (or mp3s at Insound.)

This week Paper Covers Rock is presenting a live Elliott Smith show in five installments. Mp3s in each entry will expire when the next installment is posted. All apologies from the writer/recordist, etc.

Elliott Smith (Live @ Largo, 4/11/98) tuning break “Clementine” banter “St. Ide’s Heaven” banter “Oh Well, OK” “Say Yes” “Some Song”

In yesterday’s post I touted Elliott Smith’s occasional, but spot-on, use of references to other songs within his own compositions. In soft, lilting “Clementine,” off his 1995 self-titled (or untitled, depends who you ask) album, it’s an old-timey song that haunts the tune.

“Oh My Darling Clementine” dates back to 1884, and though it’s been made innocuous with age and repetition, it’s pretty damn dark–about a man mourning a dead lover. But Smith wasn’t really relying on that thematic heft. Rather the other tune is important here as an earworm, replaying in a barfly’s head over and over, like the doubts, worries and regrets he can’t shake.

It’s songs like “Clementine,” with its last call ambiance, and the thrumming, quietly seething “St. Ide’s Heaven” that made Smith’s reputation as a punk-bred pop gutter poet par excellence. It’s songs like this that, quite naturally, gave him an air of tragedy.

Bleak stuff here–confessions of the glassy-eyed guy mellowing out his meth tweak with malt liquor, roaming the streets like a menacing ghost. If any of us have been in this situation, it’s not likely that we were as self-aware as the voice narrating “St. Ide’s.” That makes it bleaker still, the sense of routine, of embracing self-ruin. And it’s being played against something, or someone, as a refusal–against the judgements of the song’s “you,” against a world where “everyone is a fucking pro” armed with useless advice. And Portland’s broken-light-bulb moon looks down on it all without comment.

Next up was one of the slowest, most delicate of Smith’s compositions, XO’s “Oh Well, OK.” The song is a bit of a puzzle to me. The lyrics are very internal, or almost a coded message. The refrain sighs and gives up, but it’s never clear what the effort in question is. Even though the lyrics address someone, the song feels more like it’s about intricate ruminations going on inside someone’s mind. A bit funny that Elliott introduced it, “This one’s slower, so it should be easier… if it wasn’t for this,” pointing to his head.

Assenting to some insistent requests, Elliott played what might well be my favorite of his songs, “Say Yes.” What I like about it is its mixture of the upbeat–that descending guitar line, that cascading melody, the overt optimism–and that same golden sadness that always brings me back to Smith’s work–it is, after all, a breakup song.

Holding aside all the baggage–I can, but really there’s tons of it–the song often evokes for me the story of John Lennon falling for Yoko Ono upon seeing an installation of hers where the single word, “yes,” is painted on a platform above a ladder, enchanted by the philosophical positivity. It’s a nice story. There are few more pleasant words to hear, and every plea has “say yes” at its heart.

Back in Largo 1998, the audience requests kept flowing, so Elliott decoded, and obliged, a call for “Same Song”–it sounded like the dude wanted to hear “Say Yes” again–to play casually-named b-side “Some Song.” Over droning acoustic power chords, Smith indulged a bit of downtrodden fatalism. After abuse, put-downs, ostracism, the you of the song sees only more down the road, a damaged future to hold up against an unhappy past. I’m not sure whether it’s accurate to call it “hope,” but the chorus offers at least the possibility of solace in the another: “Help me kill my time/’cause I’ll never be fine.” Unfortunately, the focus is on the last half of that couplet…

Donate to the Elliott Smith Memorial Fund.
Elliott Smith music on iTunes.
S/T at Newbury Comics. (or mp3s at Insound.)
Either/Or at Newbury Comics. (or mp3s at Insound.)
XO at Newbury Comics.