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: 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 

Concert review: More Books, less Black Heart, please, at the Old Rock House, Tuesday, November 2

The Books

myspace.com/thebooksmusicpage

The Black Heart Procession takes itself seriously. Evidently, you should too, or you’ll find yourself questioning throughout the performance: “Hey, who died, man?”

I mean, I’ve heard of bands dedicating an album or a song to a lost compatriot, but the entire catalog? It’s as if Pall Jenkins and Tobias Nathaniel are in a state of continual mourning for the days when they played with Isaac Brock in Ugly Casanova… and the days when they had a sense of humor. The saw is an amazing instrument when bent and bowed, but it’s capable of two moods: melancholy and maudlin. So, Black Heart Procession, when you dump that atop somber pianos, graveyard images and a haughty crowd “shush,” you get a little too serious a little too fast.

Thankfully, the Books rejuvenated even the most pallid crowd with an audio-visual display that rivals the most elaborate street theatre you can find on YouTube. The trio doesn’t seem to differentiate its visuals and music; but rather than be distracted, you find yourself mesmerized — first by the disembodied head that counts down to a state of hypnosis, then by a fast-motion golf montage in “I Didn’t Know That,” the videos presumably culled from retirement home commercials then tripped out with Tim-and-Eric-Awesome-Show-Great-Job! style effects. Yeah, my black heart was lifting.

The usual duo became a trio last night at the Old Rock House, with Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong joined by Gene Back. Such names, Zammuto, de Jong & Back ring like a powerhouse law-firm specializing in ambulance and ice cream truck chasing while exposing corporate fraud. But these guys don’t specialize in lawxploitation; rather, they rock out with clever catches and quick-trick style, and they do it well. And the new guy proved to be the master of not just the violin, but also keys, guitar and bass, and I bet if Black Heart lent him their saw, he’d bend the hell out of that, too.

Part of the charm of the Books is their openness. The band members freely admit to rifling through their own pasts for material, with some songs inspired by things half-remembered. Others are the product of found objects cycled and recycled until they’re in a perfect state of lyricism. The original lyrics for “Free Translator” were plugged into a computer-generated language translator starting in English, then transformed into French, then Spanish, then German/Russian/Whatever and then back into English.

But these guys aren’t parrots of overwrought metaphor. The phrase, “know the wind moves in a patient way / like a two-decade day” is not random nonsense; it’s a song indeed. Challenge: Google that song, take the lyrics, put them back into the free translators and get the original song. Result: either a fathomless amount of cut-and-pasting, a math problem too difficult to solve, or lyrics that couldn’t possibly sound as good as “the meteorological man / with a whirl-wind girl / and the mote in the sun / and the squid in a bag / and a raccoon hat / and a talking plant…” whatever….

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Posted by | November 4, 2010 | Concerts | Comment 

If King Khan were to accept my facebook invite, I’d have a BBQ just on the off chance he’d show up

King Khan at 2720 Cherokee

King Khan at 2720 Cherokee. Photo by Nate Burrell.

With Arish Ahmad Khan in attendance, my little South City love fest would turn from a backyard brat-and-beer down into a full-fledged booty shake rap-style video with a much better soundtrack. I’d be high-fiving so much my palms would callous over into flat ping-pong paddles of shared enthusiasm. King Khan would steal the thunder and bring the rain. It would get awkward. There’d be a ring of folding chairs around him to start with as he held court. While I was running around making sure everyone had food and drinks, King Khan and entourage would commandeer the iPod, taking the party on a true genius mix, a deep dive into a soulful pool, a spastic thrash into his punk roots, a mash-up of musical fat and gristle, Parliament Funkadelic, James Brown, Suicide. Cameras would be present with the King transformed into a walking photo bomb, and I would feel the creeping glow of smug success as I prepared the cheese board, lined up the cracked-pepper and olive oil Triscuits just so, and listened to the sound of laughter and merry-making emanating from my off-the-hook garden party.

Then the $&*T would get out of hand. King Khan would politely ask for some whiskey and perhaps not even wait for an answer before dipping into the 12-year old Red Breast I’d been saving. Of course King, sure…why not. He’d listen to me intently as he poured us shot after shot — a dark-eyed mischievousness mixed-in with the bombastic charisma of a Bollywood movie star — a freakish combination of Buddy Love and Elvis Presley with the swagger of a soul singer and the soul of a hell-bent punk rocker. Soon the kitchen table we’d stood at would become an altar to rock legends, on which King Khan gave sermons on guitar gods and the true religion. His passion would be infectious, his tone an amen to music and his reverence for those rock gods he’d idolized would mask his looping obsession with food and sex and food and sex. Yes, he brings the funk, but what does he mean when he spills his heart out to you at the kitchen table at my BBQ and says, “I took my lady to dinner and came back a poor poor man. She took me right to the cleaners even stole my frying pan. All I wanted was a little romance a little hoochie coo on the side. Instead her booty grow three times its original size!” Is he breaking down those self-imposed barriers and bonding when he admits to his fetish for large women?

Or later, when he’s dancing with your ex (how did she hear about this party? Oh yeah, Facebook), and they disappear out of sight for a few minutes, and she’s laughing when she returns and later you find out that King Khan had told her with all earnestnesss, that “I wanna be a girl, I wanna be a girl, Sometimes.”

Well, love, of course he’s saying that. It’s an old rock trope that ambiguous sexuality sells records. Bowie, Young Mick, Prince, Michael, Poison, errr…. But tell me you don’t believe he’s saying that out of some new age metro-feminism. He imagines what it’s like to be a woman because he clearly likes women and dances like he does and sings like he does and probably doesn’t mind when a few man crushes are laid at his feet like some sun burnt spiritual offering. Read past the persona and you’ll see, he’s sex-obsessed and he’s irreverent and mocking, and everything is a joke to him, especially the fact that people take this whole fame thing seriously…and he just wants to party because he’s lonely, really lonely…and it’s really lonely to be the King. Man, I hope he confirms my friend request.

Posted by | October 4, 2010 | Concerts | 1 Comment 

Stag Nite at El Leñador — oh what a site.

Entering the El Leñador on Wednesday for Stag Nite (sic) is a little like taking a hot tub time machine. The carpet alone, full of nostalgia and the reek of cigarette smoke, screams Leisure Suit Larry to the disco cobwebs of your mind, where George McCrae and his mustache sit sipping rusty nails and saying things like, “you dig, man?”  This hipster paradise — ironic, almost legendary — also offers a perfect venue for laid-back jam bands or earnest singer/songwriters. In front of a room-stretching mural of pastoral landscape, echoing the past incarnation of El Leñador as a German beer house, sit the entertainment for the evening. With the stained-glass interior windows removed from the bar area, you can watch the band from fifty feet away, choke on a cloud of smoke and never loose sight of your bartender as he reaches into a cooler and pops Stag after Stag after Stag or generously over-pours a Jameson.

And last Wednesday at least, the band was totally worth the $5 cover, the $1 beers, the nostalgia and cigarette smoke, the Cherokee street hipster love-in, the accidental run-in with old friends and the lingering hang-over. John Krane, Tim McAvin, Jesse Irwin, Fred Fiction, Elly Herget, and Alvie Caby comprise the St. Louis Region’s answer to Monsters of Folk; and their song swapping country and folk stylings proved for me the ultimate touch of irony as I drank Irish Whiskey in the Germanic décor, wondered aloud whether anyone was brave enough to eat the Latin fare they served there, and washed it all down with a Milwaukee beer. These musicians played as much for each others’ benefit as for ours.  It might as well have been a basement jam of singer/songwriters, if that is, the basement was an old catering hall and you were charged 5 dollars to listen in, and you were friends with some of the most talented folks from the South City set. Oh it was a thing to see, an old run down restaurant on Cherokee given a second life as an ironically fueled rock venue with no self-consciousness, no pretense — a thing of beauty — if you are into that type of thing.

Posted by | September 9, 2010 | Music | 3 Comments 

Gogol Bordello casts its spell in St. Louis

Eugene Hütz at KDHX

Friday night at the Pageant featured a rare and beautiful site: a mosh pit of sweaty rockers. Like Proust’s madeleine, the scent of mosh transported me back to an earlier primordial time, when I was young and too stupid not to realize that dances which involve elbows and collisions aren’t healthy, even if they are fun. Gogol Bordello brought it all back to me.

Kudos to Joe Edwards and the Pageant crew too, keeping a firm lid on an evening of controlled, calculated chaos and allowing Gogol’s fans the chance to go a little crazy. The whole place was feeling it, and Gogol Bordello’s blend of punk politics and gypsy globalism hit its mark. As Eugene Hütz called for the crowd to “break the spell,” he was casting his own spell, entrancing, manic and soulful, reaching a near perfect pitch with “My Companjera.” And when he plaintively wails, “Where have you gone, my Companjera?”, you want to find her, shake her and tell her to go back to him, that he loves you and only you, and will make it all up to you, if only you go back to him. This time…this time will be different.

Listen to the live session with Eugene Hütz at KDHX from August 6, 2010.

Posted by | August 9, 2010 | Concerts, Video/Film | Comment 

Cornmeal cooks at 2720 Cherokee

Cherokee Street is often spoken about as a sort of hipster central in St. Louis, a street on the cusp of some kind of post-modern meta-ironic conspicuous self-consciousness, sort of like Bedford in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the mid ‘90s. But this ain’t New York and this ain’t Brooklyn, and that ain’t a bad thing. As the audience of five hundred or so (on a Monday!) milled about before the start of the show, and bearded South City dads rocked their babies while a mixed crowd of young, old, and in-betweens took turns around the bar for a drink or on the sidewalk burning up a smoke, and for the first time since I’ve been back to St. Louis, I saw Cherokee street as something past the cusp and perhaps even justifying the Bedford allusions, while at the same time thankfully real, mixed, approachable and genuinely St. Louis, for whatever that’s worth.

I visited 2720 Cherokee on invite from the owners, the “Loyal” Family, Josh Grigaitis and his sister Abbie to celebrate their Grand Opening last Monday. When Abbie had described the venue to me as an Art/Concert Space, I had expected a tiny space– a dilapidated re-purposed storefront with a few chairs, a bookshelf and a couch maybe and a makeshift stage, but instead the nondescript storefront gave into a warehouse sized area that seemed open and intimate at the same time, sparsely decorated but not without style. The space is always part of the show, and as I watched Cornmeal take the stage and a few hands clear the area of chairs to make room for a dance floor, I knew I was in for a good time in a good place.

Cornmeal plays blue grass in jam-style, but their jams aren’t spacey Phish white-outs or rambling Deadhead off-trail excursions. These mid-song ventures are well-planned and well-executed, and they never feel self-congratulatory or extraneous. They jam with a respect for each other and for the audience, and most importantly when they jammed out, the crowd never stopped moving their feet and never had a single moment in which a twirl was interrupted with a “am i the only one dancing?” look. Kris Nowak on vocals sang confidently with a backyard-in-the-summer voice that when combined with the distant harmonies of a singing while fiddle-bowing Allie Kral felt just like a pair of blue grass crooners should– without rush, without worry, with just the right amount of flourish. The band really shined in moments in which the tempo slowed and sank into a contemplative and mournful fiddle, such as in the track “When The World Gets You Down” or when the band all rose up in round harmony on the conclusion of “River Gap”; and that’s when you know they are the real deal, and you may stop for a moment from your dancing, but not to look to see if you are the only one still dancing, but to soak-up the sight of a band that works so hard to have so much fun and knows exactly what they are doing.

Posted by | June 30, 2010 | Concerts | 1 Comment 

Brave Combo shakes up the Gramophone

A Beatle Bob spotting in St. Louis means one of two things: he is either coming from a show or on his way to one. Last Thursday, Beatle Bob shuffled down Taylor Ave on his way to the Grove’s the Gramophone, complete in his legendary plaid jacket despite the one-hundred-degree heat. That night, Bob was going to see Brave Combo, a Grammy-awarded band from Denton, Texas that is just as eclectic as the iconic St. Louis music fan himself. These five guys are aptly named — a mash-up of styles and content, often starting an old standard like Peggy Lee’s Fever in lazy wedding singer style and then exploding into a rock-fueled madness. They defy simple categorization and beg for hyphenated hybrids– Mariachi-Funk? Polka-Rock? Gypsy-Pop-Blues? It didn’t seem to matter to the mix of die-hards and newcomers on the dance floor, and those newcomers, perhaps skeptical of polka at first, found themselves rockin’ out to a honky tonk version of Hokey Pokey that brought the roof down and made the whole joint “shake it all about.”

I can see why the Talking Head’s David Byrne had these guys as his wedding band, since they combine inter-generational appeal with musical chutzpah. At one point, I swear founder and lead guitarist Carl Finch busted out the words to Aqua Teen Hunger Force rap-style over guitar-riffs and polka swing, but it was there and gone, a brief burst of musical inventiveness and tongue-in-cheek pop culture reverence. Highlights: a two-flutes-at-one-time performance by band member Jeffrey Barnes, and the song Bumble Bee, a Brave Combo original off their 2004 LP Let’s Kiss. Polka made cool? Brave Combo takes it off the shelf and off the hook.

Posted by | June 29, 2010 | Concerts | Comment 

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