jasonsindel's Posts


jasonsindel's Photo Writer, essayeur, freelance designer and erstwhile New York advertising producer, Jason Sindel is and intends to remain a jack of all trades who prefers the flexible over the rigid, the spontaneous over the planned, the frivolous over the serious. Contact him at jasonsindel at gmail.com.

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Concert review: Kishi Bashi and the Hibernauts rewrite rock formulas at Off Broadway, Saturday, January 14

flickr.com/photos/phillymostlyvegan/5806476270 / Brandee Nichols

As a rule, I’m a comparative thinker. As a writer, I construct parallels and employ juxtaposition all the time. As a critic, I see comparison as a means towards a more accurate definition.

The Kishi Bashi/Hibernauts show at Off Broadway this Saturday afforded me an opportunity to indulge in a study of contrasts.

First, let’s dispense with the obvious. The Hibernauts are four very white guys from the local area and Kaoru Ishibashi (AKA Kishi Bashi) is an American violinist of Japanese descent from Seattle. In the words of Kishi Bashi’s sexually charged anthem — which some on Saturday may have remembered from the Luminary’s of Montreal show from last June — that’s “just the tip.” There’s other glaring contrasts that set these musicians into singular categories and points towards their respective fates.

The Hibernauts’ brand of South Side gritty is a classic example of a post-punk paradigm. What do you do when you grow up in the Midwest and make music? If you are a band by the name of the Hibernauts, you adopt the classic two guitar, bass and drums formula and hope to break out of formulaic results. To their credit, they bring energy and verve to the enterprise, and what kept this band together, even when only sporadically doing live shows or recording new music over the years, is what makes them fun to watch — a palpable synchronicity and the ability to play off one another.

That’s fine if you play the odd Off Broadway gig or jam out for the happy hour crowd at Maggie O’s, but in this era of music-by-demand and cloud-driven social phenomena, a band has to work something else: its network. The Hibernauts have fans, and the turnout this Saturday was respectable and lively, but I’m starting to see why they are “retiring”: They just didn’t create the kind of buzz that makes you heard above the fray, and when they played, it sounded familiar and catchy, and sometimes, regrettably, well — too familiar.

With no single vocalist’s voice pulling the band out of the norm, they seem almost destined for comparisons to other more successful bands. Which is too bad, since while it was billed as a review and featured an old setlist that stretched back to the early oughts, the best stuff they played was the newest. Indeed, “Backburner” should have been moved to the front.

If the Hibernauts represent a classic, tried-and-true formula, Kishi Bashi is a mad scientist tinkering with new elements and new recipes. Classically trained on the violin at the Berkeley School of Music, his instruments double as input devices to a series of loop and effects peddles. It’s no wonder he studied film scores, cause there’s a majesty in his music, and enough depth to inspire the imagination and fill in any gaps that might be left by the lack of a full band.

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Posted by | January 16, 2012 | Concerts, Local | Comment 

Waiting for Man Man — At the Firebird, Monday, October 17

HONUS HONUS from man man at the Firebird 10-17-11

Meghan McGlynn

ACT I

We are in a dark room in a nondescript building in St. Louis. As the lights fade in, we see 5 men sitting on a stage. They are HONUS HONUS, POW POW, CHANG WANG, TURKEY MOTH, and JEFFERSON. They all sit in silence, but this is broken when HONUS HONUS begins to tap his foot repetitively on the ground in a way so it is clear he is anxious about something. A pair of gold sequined slippers rest atop an amplifier; POW walks over to them, peers inside, and seeing nothing, retreats to his drum kit.

HONUS HONUS

Still tapping to an unknown rhythm
Last night… something occurred to me. Something important.

POW stands, sits again.

POW POW

Important? I better sit down for this.

POW positions himself, facing HONUS, prepared and ready for something.

HONUS

It wasn’t a dream. It was a revelation, although it felt like a dream as soon as I woke up and I realized it was different than a dream, more like a glimpse into the…into…

TURKEY MOTH

A flask.

CHANG WANG

Inside a fall.

POW

That is important. We need to paint our faces. Doesn’t everyone need to paint their face?

JEFFERSON

In light of this news. Yes, I believe we need to. In fact, it may be a matter of life –

T. MOTH

and death…don’t forget death. It gets a bad rap. And nothing. “Nothing is everything.”

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Posted by | October 18, 2011 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review: An Horse and Middle Class Fashion ride through the Old Rock House, Sunday, September 18

An Horse

facebook.com/anhorse / Shervin Lainez

A Sunday night at the Old Rock House can be a touch-and-go affair. I’ve been there when the band outnumbered the fans and the music bounced around like ping pong balls during bingo night at the rec center. I’ve also been packed in on the floor with no room to move.

Last night, the Australian duo An Horse drew a decent crowd, a fact that wasn’t lost on them since they thanked us several times. St. Louis was apparently the start of a 40 stop tour and Kate Cooper seemed a bit overwhelmed and slightly sad.

I think we forget how much work musicians actually do when they tour. Most of it isn’t glamorous and all of it isn’t home, but that aside, these two are going to have fun. They have a devoted fan base and extra doses of the typical Aussie “can do.” If they started out a little bumpy in St. Louis, I’m pretty sure they’re going to hit their stride in Chicago.

I’ll get back to An Horse in a second, but first a bit about the opening band Middle Class Fashion.

Last night was the first time I caught the St. Louis band’s show, but it’s a good one. If they seem familiar that’s because they are: Half the band play in the Paper Dolls and the other half play in Tight Pants Syndrome, with Jenn Malzone bridging the two. She sings and bangs on her keyboard with the enthusiasm of a happy, sugar-high kid (the best kind). I loved “My Attack,” in which she flat handed chords like playful biatch slaps for a staccato effect. But really the whole set was fantastic and fun. If you get a chance to see them play, in any of the bands many manifestations, don’t pass it up.

An Horse is a much different style, not so much fun filled, as angsty with a touch of leave me alone, wait don’t go. Reading the lyrics now, a day after the show, I’m struck by how depressing some of the songs are. “Airport Death” is pretty much about pessimism and tragedy. While “Company” is essentially the struggle to maintain a brave face against mounting fears.

The material belies their engaging stage presence, but it’s sincere — never self-indulgent or overly broody. “Company” in particular is a great example of their style. It’s plaintive and powerful, and when Kate sings, “I’m trying to be brave,” you want her to succeed.

If you choose to, you can read into those lyrics and get the sense they are at profound odds with the displacement that comes with touring and traveling. There’s a persistent longing to Kate’s refrains and comforting reassurance with Damien Cox’s harmonies. They obviously depend on one another way beyond just the music, as fellow journeymen, friends and refugees far from home.

Posted by | September 19, 2011 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review: Blitzen Trapper ambles through western ballads at the Firebird, Saturday, July 23

Blitzen Trapper

facebook.com/blitzentrapper

The songs of Blitzen Trapper arc from sweeping anthems to folk-inspired ballads all bathed in the same lyrical mix of cowboy mythos and Northwestern mountain country soul.

The recipe works. The first time I listened to the Portland-based band’s album Wild Mountain Nation, I was in New York and let myself day-dream of long summer’s past back in the Midwest: a windows-down drive on a dusty, gravel road; a summer’s float trip on intertubes down a languid river; a ice-packed cooler of cheap canned beer. There’s real gold to be mined here and at least most of the time, the quintet found it; but the brash energy of some of their tracks from Furr and Wild Mountain Nation was dialed back at the show at the Firebird this Saturday, in some cases drastically so.

Never having seen them live, I didn’t know what to expect, but that never stops me from having erroneous expectations. In this case, I expected more of a jam fest ala Allman Brothers, but the band refused. I should have known; they are not a jam band. Their material is a mix of story and fantasy, and even if at times Eric Earley’s lyrics can be problematic, finding the obvious rhyme in an obvious line, there’s enough whimsy to throw you off. The set-opener “Destroyer of the Void” and its mysterious “wayward sons” and “galaxies and stars,” and the “demons and dragons” reference in the successional song “Fire and Fast Bullets,” all point to a magical realism that belies the strictly western ballad.

If such lyrics bend the western genre a bit then we’re getting closer to the Blitzen Trapper source. There’s a touch of “Cowboy vs. Aliens” here, right down to the Steve Miller-style space keyboards thrown on top of dual guitar riffs in “Destroyer.” Then there’s “Furr,” a bildungsroman about a boy, his wolfpack and the girl he loves, played in this set at least a quarter tempo slower than it’s album version.

Again my expectation of the band was for energy and pace, and the show failed to satisfy on those two points. According to the band’s website, drummer Brian Koch took a chunk of flesh from his finger in a cymbal accident during the opening number. After a brief chat with Marty Marquis while packing up, I learned that they had recently lost their keyboardist, Drew Laugh­ery, either by mutual or individual decision. I suppose any number of things can cause a performance to fall flat in a few areas, but regardless there were enough high points to smooth it all out.

The band is touring now ahead of a new album release in September, which is somewhat interesting as a sneak peak to new directions. If the handful of new songs they played this Saturday was any indication, the new stuff is heavily weighted on the side of the kind of campfire-rock that worked so well in earlier albums, perhaps re-grounding their material from its occasional and fitful flight into the ethereal on Destroyer with lots a harmonica and a full embrace of the mountain ethos as its subject matter.

The new songs I listened to last night were the best of the set, as was the encore, a cover of Led Zepplin’s “Good Times, Bad Times.” While it wasn’t the best show I’ve seen at the Firebird this year, I left thinking that the new album’s going to be excellent.

Meanwhile, Blitzen Trapper remains a staple of the summer’s playlist for those country drives and midwest river days, and I’ll have to remind myself once again that while the band may not have lived up to my unrealistic expectations in their live show, they are still great enough to inspire me to have such expectations in the first place.

Posted by | July 25, 2011 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review: Fishbone, boned up and red hot at the City Museum, Monday, March 14

Fishbone at City Museum

Dustin Winter

I purposely didn’t refresh myself on the music of Fishbone before I went to the concert this Monday to the City Museum to catch the set. I decided to go armed only with my own memories of what the band and their music was like in the late ‘80s, and seeing that I hadn’t heard the 2007 release, or their latest live album — these memories were from a long, long time ago — when In Your Face became stuck in my car’s cassette player and every morning commute to school was a forced Fishbone marathon.

In a twist of irony, while lazing around this Saturday and playing the YouTube 80′s DJ Game (in which you try not to be predictable while pulling up old music videos), my girlfriend pulled up “Modern Industry” without even knowing I was taking her to the show. The break-through song and video that first thrust them into the national consciousness shows a manic mad-hatteresque Angelo Moore as a kind of cyber-punk B-boy, ranting on commercialism, the crush of mass communication, radio “personalities.” This group ur-persona as agents of revolution defined them as they blazed through late ’80′s, trend-swapping with unique takes on synth, bass licks that picked up adherents and admirers from Flea to Bela Fleck, and vocals, guitar and horns that took funk, reggae, ska, punk, spoken word and soul and mashed them all into a Fishbone stew of tireless, raucous energy and timeless ingenuity.

The classics such as “Party at Ground Zero” and “I Wish I had a Date” — and they absolutely deserve that label—are as impactful now as they were then, but grittier, more layered, and really, just plain more. No wonder a whole sub-generation of Y’s showed up at school one day with Fishbone shirts and Fuck Racism buttons — Fishbone had taken the idea of alternative and blew it the fuck-up and now they’ve seasoned it with layers and grunge and harder rock feel. It’s timeless, but it has aged well.

The Monday concert, a redux of February’s Thursday night concert earlier this year, was only half as attended (casual estimate this time around was 150 or so, all crowded around the stage and lingering in the surrounding cage and wood-like City Museum maze), but the energy in this crowd was all-over, frenetic, spontaneous, pleasure-seeking and in sync. Angelo’s stump to stump dance moves, his stage dive, followed by the younger Fisher’s stage dive, followed by some Mardi Gras inspired crowd nudity, capped off by some serious soulful spoken word, sprinkled with harmonies, the appropriate use of a theremin and a “what will they do next” mix, put the crowd on an edge in which they danced and generally acted like horny teenagers again.

Angelo stopped his show briefly to salute the St. Louis fans and to comment that playing at the City Museum was like visiting “Willy Wonka’s without the chocolate.” Some venues are just made for some bands, like the Dead and the Filmore or the Whiskey a Go-Go and the Doors. For Fishbone, at least for St. Louis, it’s the City Museum, and the band were like deranged, musical umpa lumpas, and I was like Charlie and my wristband, well that was like a golden ticket.

Posted by | March 18, 2011 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review: Pretty Little Empire conquers the Firebird (and St. Louis), Saturday, November 27

Pretty Little Empire by Jamie Devillez

Jamie Devillez

The St. Louis music scene can at times seem anemic, stubbornly hanging onto the past. I used to hate the sheer preponderance of classic rock stations, the mass illusion that all great music was recorded and waxed in the ’70s, and that everything else was pop, rap or worse.

Luckily, Al Gore invented the internets, file sharing broke the stranglehold on music licensing and our generation put Pink Floyd into the nostalgia bucket and began searching for something new. As a result of social networking and community radio like 88.1 KDHX, St. Louis has pried itself away from the amber of classic rock and heartless punk and now has an alternative music scene, and it is good.

One such pillar of this changing scene — a relative newcomer — is Pretty Little Empire. The band’s first album Sweet Sweet Hands seeped into the scene in 2008 through word of mouth spread from friends of the band and patrons of Sasha’s on Demun, where half the band earns a living while chasing the dream. It played heartfelt and real, at times predictable but still engaging, earnest and it established a distinct voice, with direction from a musical core that promised to improve and evolve. That first album mainly bore the imprint of Justin Johnson, a 30-something with a baby face, soulful eyes and a solid vocal range. Between his voice, the rare trumpet accompaniment, fledgling harmonies, the first album worked, but not like this one. On Reasons and Rooms, the band’s second album, Pretty Little Empire sounds deep, varied and on the cusp of something much bigger.

The 4 members of PLE are best when they engage in full harmony. It’s clear that over the past 2 years they’ve played together enough to realize their distinct voices, and the new songs exploit this strength. Though once defaulting to a grungier sound, now with the addition of a cello and banjo and so many voices, there’s nuance where there was once mainly guitars and drums. The banjo didn’t make it into the studio on Reason and Rooms, but it should have. It tempers the chords sneaking in right under the bass, finding a niche, never getting lost. A touch of country emerges in just the right amount.

Another marked departure from earlier arrangements: The Saturday night CD release party at the Firebird was punctuated by a steady rotation of band members, guest players and lead-singing switches, a true musical chairs. These new voices are welcome. Evan O’Neal brings a real folk element and “Islands” was a sweet mid-show release. Another newer element was the catch provided by the keyboards in “Morning’s Been Hard.” The hook started me thinking of the Police but ended up a much newer sound. Will Godfred’s song adds a new dimension as well — a playful side the first album never had. “Cinnamon Toast” is in some ways less complex then the other songs, but the lyrics are tied tightly together and the chorus of “oh hey I don’t know” works because it comes out of nowhere and is full of feeling. Add the cymbals and the song goes places you can’t predict.

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Posted by | November 29, 2010 | Concerts | 1 Comment 

Concert review: Wolf Parade works hard at the Pageant, Saturday, November 20

Wolf Parade

facebook.com/pages/Wolf-Parade/125411320818132

Not all rock shows are soul-rocking experiences. Though all the necessary components were there at the Wolf Parade show this Saturday at the Pageant—the punctuated lights, the sheer volume of the music, the gathered masses and group drunkenness—but the performance while solid seemed forced and it wasn’t fixed by a light show. It was a valiant effort by the entire band, but unfortunately, at least for me, it was just, well, mediocre.

To start with, they were a bit pissed. I saw it early, one boozer recognizing the inebriated swagger of another. Brother, I hear you, pass me the whiskey. I kept waiting for a visible gaff, a stumble, a botched key stroke or a missed lyric to liven things up, but there wasn’t one. Maybe Spencer Krug always does no-look hackey-sack tricks with his foot stool while he plays head down, banging the keys on his center-stage set-up, and maybe all the other members of the Wolf Parade are always kind of crowd wary, and not just happily smashed and a little disconnected.

They looked disconnected from their audience and they were. Maybe it was the cold medicine and the flight from Kansas City, the eighteen city tour in almost as many days. Maybe these guys should take a break after this and do a little soul searching. I don’t know, buy a church to record in or take a long trip into the desert accompanied by a film crew and lots of psychedelics.

Last week I’d seen the Dresden Dolls and watched Amanda Palmer captivate an audience with her eyes, lusty vocals, the full attack of her playing, her manic sex-fueled rocking on her keyboard. I’ve seen a keyboardist hold a crowd, so I know Spencer could have looked up at least once and given me something more than the top of his head. Amanda Palmer had been there for us. But this week, I was there for Wolf Parade. If I left, they would cease to exist. That’s not true of some bands—some have a purpose and a following and a raison d’etre. But Wolf Parade worries me a bit. They get the basics, they work hard, they make decent music. But I wonder about the soul of the whole enterprise, whether they are truly committed to doing something innovative, or whether they’ll just be happy with a little record deal and an 18-city tour.

True fans said that the ten-minute “Kissing the Beehive” encore was incredible; I don’t know, because I left, and for me, Wolf Parade ceased to exist at least for a night. Maybe they’ll get over their colds and bring it in city 19; I will never know.

Posted by | November 21, 2010 | Concerts | 3 Comments 

Concert review: The sparse beauty of Iron and Wine at the Pageant, Saturday, November 13

Iron and Wine at the Pageant

Photo by Meghan McGlynn

A funny thing happens when you tell someone that you are going to see a live performance of Iron and Wine; immediately, with an air of disinterest, a slight withering sympathy, it’s suddenly, “Sorry, snoozefest.”

But when I first discovered The Creek Drank the Cradle, I played it so much, my upstairs neighbor feared the worst: “Why do you always play such depressing music?” It wasn’t boring to me, though, as my co-worker complained, and though I don’t play it when I wake up or before I go out, I love the album. I loved my time with it.

If music always matched our moods, and an iTunes genius setting allowed you to put together a playlist centered on “introspection,” Iron and Wine would appear, along with Sufjan Stevens and Ray LaMontagne and an overcast afternoon of lamentation. Sometimes we need those moments; Iron and Wine can provide that soundtrack.

Most reviewers fixate on Sam Beam alone, though — the singer-songwriter cum storyteller who is Iron and Wine. Fans refer to “the band” as a “them,” and technically that’s true, since all of Sam Beam’s albums feature a full ensemble. But Beam is the sole architect behind the music. He writes alone then records much of the music at home. It’s not hard to imagine this scene with his wife and their five daughters in a town called Dripping Springs in Texas. It also makes sense that the most gripping moments of his performance at the Pageant this past weekend were when he took the stage alone, standing with only his acoustic guitar, with the earnestness of a folk singer no doubt borne from years as a college film teacher, as if he loved his material, and was just happy that someone out there cared enough to attend his class and not fall asleep.

This is how he hooks you: one man versus noise and confusion. That’s what makes an Iron and Wine concert such a fine night. The performance was stripped of pretense. It was subdued without being severe, and while there’s a distinct reverence for his own material, Sam Beam has a self-effacing style, a humility about him that invites you in while he plays. His songs are lorn evenings by the fire, whiskey in tin cups, rocking chairs.

My friend told me she had fallen in love with Sam from the third song, and then broke up with him somewhere between “Sodom” and “Bird Stealing Bread.” It was as if his earnestness had worn too thin and his tone turned as dry as a fallen leaf. Or perhaps, just like his doppelganger Zach Galifianakis, his character was in danger of being over-played, made into parody with too little presence of mind to have more fun or do something different. Sam Beam does one thing so well. The hushed lullaby.The swayed-back cradle song. The porchlight hymnal. The evening fireside medley. But it’s all one song with the same moods and the same style.

After ten songs, I wished there was more there. I felt hungry for something, like we’d gotten through the first course and were awaiting the entrée. The concert was missing something — it had all the sparse beauty only Sam Beam can create, but none of the personality that makes each of the Iron and Wine songs a story, an experience. I wanted more of Iron and Wine, but less of him, less of his band; or maybe I wanted more time alone. Like my friend who fell out of love in the course of an evening, I found myself echoing the words of my upstairs neighbor, “Sam, my friend, why do you always make such depressing music?”

To be fair, it’s not all somber. There are plenty of songs with inspiration at their core and there’s optimism to be found as well. But what comes from the man himself as he sang wasn’t this, and certainly wasn’t excitement — it was the wearied-by-walking feel of a journeyman, the tale told in lieu of a real dialogue.

I had wanted to see Iron and Wine and I got Sam Beam. Perhaps it’s better that way. Perhaps because I had so often read so much into those songs my own tales of lost love, my own wearied journeys, my own rocking lullabies, maybe it was time to give them back to their original maker. Here are your sad songs back, Sam Beam. I loved them when they were mine.

Posted by | November 15, 2010 | Concerts | Comment 

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