Concert review: The Fray (with Dia Frampton) jump into the Pageant, Tuesday, May 8

facebook.com/thefray

On Tuesday night, the Fray sold out the Pageant with ease. The fans struck out from every borough of St. Louis to see the spectacle and feel pop-rock piano music splash over them. Did someone order a Rolling Rock? No? Damn, wrong band.

Dia Frampton, former contestant and runner-up on the first season of “The Voice,” took the stage promptly with her sister, Meg, on bass. The six-piece band offered a touching version of Kanye West’s “Heartless.” Dia’s oddly southern lilt (she’s from Utah) helmed the chorus with power and created new insight into the song as she danced about in her bare feet and white, diaphanous dress. The starlet didn’t fair as well during a cover of Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” where she faltered over the “make it last all night!” part during the chorus, her vocals awash in the muddy mix.

The Fray began its headlining set with “The Fighter,” from 2012′s “Scars & Stories.” Isaac Slade’s shaved, bald head glistened under the lights. The wail of Ben Wysocki’s trebly, electric guitar bled into the warmth of Jeremy McCoy’s bass. The audience could be heard under every word of the chorus that Slade carefully uttered.

Slade adjusted his unblemished, Elton-John-on-a-yacht jacket, hopped on his piano positioned stage center and belted out “Syndicate,” from the band’s 2009 self-titled record. On “You Found Me,” the singer ventured into the audience and up to the second level of the Pageant. Camera phones appeared in every hand as he passed by delivering lines in falsetto.

Soon, Slade returned to the stage wearing a dark jacket. “The Wind” featured Slade on a Korg synthesizer and the band supporting him with velvety vocals. During “Happiness,” the singer wrapped the song’s heart-breaking lyrics over a quiet bed of instrumentation: “Happiness feels a lot like sorrow.”

Before “Turn Me On,” Slade confessed that when the band toured with U2 they played the song much too fast, “like a Foo Fighters tune.” Slade chuckled and broke into the radio-friendly jangler, which, to me, played more like a Maroon 5 track than anything by the Foo Fighters.

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Posted by | May 9, 2012 | Concerts | Comment 

‘Give the audience a new experience’ An interview with Maria Lindén of I Break Horses

facebook.com/ibreakhorses / Sebastien Dehesdin

When you dig beneath the shimmering textures and ethereal vocals of Sweden’s I Break Horses you will discover that the duo of Maria Lindén and Fredrik Balck make soundscapes of depth and substance.

Listening to their 2011 debut “Hearts,” you can hear the influence of the Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Sigur Rós percolating underneath a blizzard of swirling melodies and opulent vocals.

This Stockholm duo is often mislabeled as a shoegazer band, and although the influences are omnipresent in their music (to a certain extent) they are so much more. I Break Horses literally transform the cold chill of Scandinavia into bursts of sugary, luminous sounds.

“Hearts” (out now on Bella Union Records) is an album filled with both broken and beating hearts that are as fragile and delicate as a single snowflake. Each track features layers of tumbling textured sounds encased within a shell of velvety softness from Maria Lindén’s immaculate voice.

She sings as if it is no real bother and has a feel for what literally and figuratively makes the human heart beat. Balck then takes over mixing in harmonies and deposits of perfectly-timed waves of tremolo treats and pulsating palpitations. There are guitars and synthesizers present but they never intrude or overstep their bounds. Instead they serve as the bulwark for skimming the clouds and making the listener feel as if they have taken flight.

It’s not hard to imagine these guys trudging through an expansive open wilderness to get to their recording studio as witnessed by the album’s crestfallen opener “Winter Beats.” It is pretty obvious that isolation, loss and solitude are pervasive elements of their sound.

In fact the closest they get to rocking out is the uptempo and dreamy “Wired.” “I Kill You Baby” begins with a Poe-like pitter-pat of a human heart before free-falling into an elegiac opus reminiscent of the early days of the Cocteau Twins (ironically, their label is run by Simon Raymonde of that very band). The grimy hands of trip hop have their fingers all over “Load Your Eyes,” a blissed-out track with drum machine plodding along behind it that are reminiscent of Portishead, Chapterhouse or the Cranes.

I Break Horses are currently on the road, serving as the opener for M83 on their current tour. Live, the union of Lindén and Balck creates indescribable layers arctic headiness that has made American audiences take notice — no mean feat for a band in the opening slot on their first major tour.

Vocalist Maria Lindén took some time out from the tour for an interview with me via email.

Rob Levy: How is the tour with M83 going?

Maria Lindén: It’s going great. M83 are amazing and lovely people. The venues and crowds have been overwhelmingly beautiful.

How did the tour come about?

Simon Raymonde from our label Bella Union did some magic and made it happen!

There’s a lot of great music coming out of Scandinavia right now. Why do you think bands from that area are getting so much attention now?

I haven´t really thought about it that much. But I guess/hope it has to do with that Scandinavians know how to make great music!

Why did it take so long to make “Hearts”?

It was a combination of things. Most of the album was recorded in my bedroom, I tried to re-create my bedroom recordings in a proper studio during the recording process but I felt like these recordings lacked the energy and the vibrancy that was there initially so I ended up scrapping what was recorded there and started all over again at home where I felt more comfortable basically. Also, working full time at my day job during that time also made the whole process longer.

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Posted by | May 1, 2012 | Interviews, Music | Comment 

Concert review: Portugal. The Man (with the Lonely Forest and Union Tree Review) psych out the Pageant, Sunday, April 29

Portugal. The Man at the Pageant. St. Louis. April 29, 2012.

Abby Gillardi

Last night, St. Louis hosted Portugal. The Man on its first major headlining tour. But this was no normal tour. Its sponsor, Jägermeister, was everywhere, complete with a DJ spinning for the set-changes and the all-important Jäger girls strutting about the Pageant in tight leather, handing out freebies and other swag.

St. Louis’s own Union Tree Review opened the evening with a studied set that featured muted trumpet, violin and a post-rock, indie feel, like Cursive with a spritz of Cymbals Eat Guitars. Union Tree Review’s interest in sweeping dynamic shifts and bombastic drops worked well with lead-singer Tawaine Noah’s vocals, which, even though a bit strained, reminded me of younger, more angsty Ben Gibbard.

From Anacortes, Wash., the Lonely Forest churned out poppy, shoe-gaze rock. Their care and precision was impressive and lent their set a certain professional feel that Union Tree Review’s performance lacked. I noted a light tinge of Jimmy Eat World during “Turn Off This Song and Go Outside,” from 2011′s “Arrows.”

Portugal. The Man appeared on a stage full of atomic-like lighting elements that were also strung up and anchored from the center of the ceiling above the pit. The strings of lights with a bobble housing LEDs looked like swimming lane buoys ripper from a J Crew advert. As the first chords of “All Your Light (Times Like These),” from 2011′s “In the Mountain in the Cloud,” the buoy-looking lights glowed with psychedelic greens and blues. John Gourley’s vocals rang out, clear and high-pitched, as they elegantly drifted from a falsetto to a chanted chorus.

“The Woods,” from 2009′s “The Satanic Santanist,” featured lilting guitar and spaced-out keys. Sadly, the stage remained dark for the majority of the set — the only light illuminating the band came from the trippy, glowing installations, which caused a bit of a disconnect, as they obscured the audience’s sightlines preventing a clear look at the band.

“Work All Day” had the audience dancing and jiving throughout venue. The tempo ran fast compared to the album version, but the song did not suffer from the faster treatment, instead, it allowed the annunciation of the rapid-fire chorus lyrics to stand out.

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Posted by | April 30, 2012 | Concerts | 1 Comment 

Concert review: Willie Nelson mixes it up at the Pageant, Tuesday, April 17

Willie Nelson at the Pageant, April 17, 2012

Nate Burrell

Don’t let the oversize Texas flag hanging behind the stage or the unfortunate Toby Keith collaboration fool you. Willie Nelson is not simply a country artist.

One only had to look at the crowd that packed the Pageant last night (tax day, ironically) to hear him and his Family play to know the truth of this statement. From bankers to bikers, transexuals to tweens, Nelson’s appeal crosses, and erases, all lines of social demarcation, and his followers were out in force last night to see and hear him do his thing.

Anyone who might still have doubted Nelson’s transcendence of the “country” label after surveying the audience last night was undoubtedly convinced after he picked up his trusty guitar, Trigger, and played the first notes of the obligatory opening song “Whiskey River,” strumming with an off-kilter sense of time that took the straight-ahead rollicking tune into territory that was more be-bop than honky tonk.

Backed by a bare-bones band that included just a bassist, harmonica player, drummer and his sister Bobbie on piano, Nelson made the rounds of his huge catalog, from the outlaw country odes “Me and Paul” and “Mommas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys,” to sparkling gems of pop song-craft like “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” and “Crazy.” Nelson also took several songs from other artists, like Billy Joe Shaver, Kris Kristofferson and Hank Williams and made them his own. His delicate version of Ray Charles’ “Georgia On My Mind” was a particular highlight.

Willie Nelson is one of those artists who never plays a song the same way twice, and he took obvious pleasure in mixing up time signatures and phrasing, improvising his way though his songs while keeping just enough of the melody intact to remind the audience where he was coming from. Being the guy keeping time for Nelson has to be one of the toughest jobs in music, and the fact that Paul English only used a snare drum to take care of business was mind-boggling. Equally amazing was the sound that Nelson got out of Trigger, a beat-to-hell Martin N-20 classical guitar that by rights should have no business making those dulcet tones.

With his huge recorded output and proclivity for experimenting in musical genres from jazz to hip hop to reggae, though, it was a bit disappointing that the set list didn’t include some of Willie’s more esoteric offerings. The only time he really strayed from the hits was for a spare rendition of “I Never Cared For You,” from his vastly underrated late ’90s record “Teatro.”

At 78 years old (he turns 79 on April 30) with 50-plus years in the business and umpteen records under his belt, I doubt anyone would fault Willie for sticking close to the recorded versions of his songs, throwing some souvenir bandanas to the crowd and calling it a day. The fact that he continues to perform with such creativity and abandon elevates him above most of his peers, and definitely the majority of musicians out there. Just call him “artist.”

Opening act the Pernikoff Brothers played a short but tight set that featured a mighty drum sound and soaring vocal harmonies that made them sound much bigger than a trio. It can’t be easy to open for someone who’s achieved “living legend” status, but they handled the job with major aplomb.

Posted by | April 18, 2012 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review: Young the Giant (with Grouplove) marches forward while looking back, at the Pageant, Thursday, March 29

Young the Giant at the Pageant. Photo by Abby Gillardi.

Young the Giant at the Pageant. Photo by Abby Gillardi.

The Delmar Metro parking lots surrounding the Pageant were stuffed with cars. I guess this is what the MTV Music Awards will do for a band like Young the Giant‘s attendance.

But on this evening, an indignant funk hung in the air amidst grumbles and sighs. It quickly became apparent that everyone was frustrated with the Pageant’s red tape and nit-pickery in regards to the implementation of entrance/exit procedures (I got patted down twice), location-based drink rules and strict start/curfew times.

What can be said? Indeed, there are minors and large crowds to deal with — state rules and regulations abound (I get it), but there comes a point when too much exercised control and imposition make the Pageant feel like a police state. Who wants to live (much less witness a show) in such a place, even one with perfect sight lines and acoustics?

Bitching aside, openers, Grouplove, certainly brought the love. With their signature brand of psychedelic, love-laced indie tunes, Grouplove had the Pageant dancing and shimmying. The California group shot through “Colours” and “Tongue Tied” with surprising radio fidelity. They impressed the audience and sparked proper excitement about their upcoming headlining tour.

Young the Giant appeared on stage and exploded into the sun-sleepy “I Got,” from the band’s 2011 self-titled debut. Lead singer and egregious tambourine over-user, Sameer Gadhia, unleashed a soaring sustained note toward the end of the third chorus. “Guns Out” featured mashed-up, distorted guitar from guitarist Jacob Tilley. Drummer François Comtois’ snare clicks were crisp and clear.

“Shake My Hand” was a tune from when Young the Giant used to be referred to as the Jakes. The audience happily ate up the throwback, snare-drum-led, indie rambler. Bassist Payam Doostzadeh thumped along with ebullient power as second guitarist Eric Cannata chugged out distortion that harkened back to Modest Mouse’s work on “We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank.”

This is what Young the Giant does so well. They inhabit a comfortable generic space where they can mimic the sounds of other acts. While this speaks to the band’s extreme talent and versatility, it also betrays a slight lack of focus, a certain vanilla aspect, that while well-produced and well-played, can at times feel devoid of fizzy freshness.

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Posted by | March 30, 2012 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review: A packed Pageant swoons for the Head and the Heart (with Drew Grow and the Pastors’ Wives), Sunday, March 25

The Head and the Heart at the Pageant in St. Louis, March 25, 2012

Kate McDaniel

The Head and the Heart brought an abundance of sing-along sunshine from Seattle to St. Louis on Sunday night at the Pageant. Joyful attendees stomped, clapped and swayed along to the sweet folk-rock and harmonies offered throughout the evening.

Opening act for this KDHX-welcomed night, Drew Grow and the Pastors’ Wives gave an emotional and psychedelic display of their own breed of folk-rock, progressing through a variety of musical influences. As frontman Drew Grow entered alone, his droopy, blue cabby hat shading his face, he took his position at center stage surrounded by four guitars. Grabbing an acoustic, he began strumming and singing a simple folk song and was soon joined by band members taking their respective positions and offering supporting harmonies to the modest introduction.

With all four members now on stage, the band launched into a passionate rock jam reminiscent of Langhorne Slim. Midway through their set, Drew Grow and company were joined on stage by the Head and The Heart’s co-frontmen, Jon Russell and Josiah Johnson, adding a tambourine and maraca to the mix. Aggressively wandering through rockabilly, folk and psychedelia, the raw vibes, powerful harmonies and ambient explorations gained quick approval as the crowd in the pit grew denser. The band concluded with a full-throttle jam before inviting members from their fellow touring acts to join them on stage for a final gospel tune laden with tambourines, shakers and vocal harmonies.

Roadies and band members alike set up equipment and stage décor preparing for the evening’s main event. As the room swelled with anticipation the crowd danced along to M83 playing through the speakers before the band entered to My Morning Jacket’s “Wordless Chorus.” The crowd cheered and continued to dance as the band took to their positions. Russell stood at center stage with an acoustic guitar on one side and an electric on the other. Johnson to his left held his acoustic, while Charity Rose Thielen stood behind a wildflower-wound microphone stand with her violin. Drums, bass and piano were all situated in the background; this was to be the most still the band would be for the rest of the evening.

Beginning in correlation with their sole album to date, drumsticks tapped the intro of “Cats and Dogs” as vocals and guitars joined. As the bass line kicked in, the lights strung between Chinese lantern globes overhead glowed warmly. Continuing in line with the album, the band moved directly into “Couer d’Alene,” as fans cheered and sang along. The dim Chinese lanterns took over stage brightening again as the piano introduced the third song of the album, “Ghosts.”

Following the soft piano outro, Russell announced the first of a handful of new songs for the evening. After the audience showed their appreciation, the band continued to direct the choir of the crowd through more of their album hits. The layers of harmonies soared beautifully throughout the building as the band drew energy from the audience and danced about the stage.

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Posted by | March 26, 2012 | Concerts | 1 Comment 

Concert review: Henry Rollins speaks his mind and heart at the Pageant, Saturday, March 24

henryrollins.com / Maura Lanahan

Punk-rock icon turned wordsmith Henry Rollins summed up his set of spoken word material perfectly himself last night. Stating that he was, “Like a 33 1/3 RPM record playing at 78 RPM,” Rollins advised, “I try to squeeze eight hours of material into four and a half.”

Dressed in his traditional black t-shirt and pants and armed with only a microphone, Rollins, without much lead in or introduction, took the stage at the Pageant promptly at 8 p.m. and proceeded to jump head first into the proverbial mosh pit with his rapid-fire speech and held the seated crowd’s attention rapt for the next two hours and forty-five minutes. While the thought of watching someone on stage speak for that long without a break or music may make some cringe, the fact was Rollins’ machine-gun-like delivery made the evening fly by is impressive – especially for this reviewer who stood in the back for the entire show.

At 51, the former lead singer of seminal punk band Black Flag is funny, self-effacing and practically an open book. His constantly changing material only gets better with time and age as Rollins becomes more knowledgeable about the world. He advised that he spends much of the year on the road speaking to audiences: “Being at home is not interesting to me. I don’t like being off tour or going to the grocery store.” He stays busy with these spoken-word performances, film or television projects, a recent affiliation with the National Geographic channel and doing work for various non-profit organizations. He referred to himself not as a workaholic, but as a “work slut.”

Rollins started the evening with a discussion of his background of learning American history from disinterested athletic coaches at a naval prep high school in Washington, D.C. in the late ’70s. This set the tone for the evening as he related that this stunted his knowledge of the subject in his younger days, but as he grew older he took it upon himself to study and gained a large admiration for the subject — especially Abraham Lincoln.

To illustrate his point he referenced Lincoln’s “Speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois” given on January 27, 1838, just before the young politician turned 29 years old and over two full decades before he led the country during the Civil War. Recalling Lincoln’s words through part memorization and part paraphrase, he advised that Lincoln’s words “Speaks to America now.” Rollins continued by reiterating Lincoln’s sentiments, “America’s biggest danger does not come from abroad, but from America itself.”

The heavy preface allowed Rollins to give the audience his thoughts on the current state of American politics and the Republican race for a 2012 presidential nominee and continued as an undercurrent of his stories traveling around the world later in the set. With the state of current events, Rollins was able to rely on his thoughts about the candidates in a humorous tone while making the point that these are the type of leaders who are going to ruin America from within.

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Posted by | March 25, 2012 | Concerts, Culture | Comment 

Concert review and set list: Andrew Bird whistles while he rocks (and swings) at the Pageant, Thursday, March 22

Andrew Bird at the Pageant, St. Louis, March 22, 2012

Louis Kwok

Halfway through his return to the Pageant, Andrew Bird and his trio grooved through a sensuous take on Kermit the Frog’s “Bein’ Green.” At the end Bird claimed he’d had a rough day.

“That’s not on the set list,” he explained. “Sometimes that song makes me feel better. It’s for my benefit.”

He later explained that he was feeling under the weather. Not that it showed in vocals that ranged from falsetto to howls, all wrapped in his signature liquid warmth. Or in the head-shaking fervor he put into switching between violin, guitar and xylophone while manning a complex pedal set-up.

Early in the show he said how happy he is with his new album, “Break it Yourself,” and how much fun it is to play live. It showed, with the bulk of the set list coming from the new album, beginning with his solo version of “Hole in the Ocean Floor,” filled with violin loops repeating under his soaring vocals. A one-man orchestra, he melded into “Danse Caribe” with his backing band, recreating a steel drum feel via electric guitar, brushed drums and strummed violin. “Desperation Breeds…” brought delicate vocal harmonies juxtaposed with shrill, shrieking pedal effects and deft violin-picking.

Bird’s live shows have never sound like his recordings, thanks to the complexity of the loops and pedals. It’s curious, though, that he doesn’t include a female backing vocalist for harmonies on tour as he does on his recordings. While bassist Alan Hampton’s vocal accompaniment more than adequately sufficed, the songs could have benefited from breadth of vocal range from the recordings.

Bird didn’t move from the new album until “The Naming of Things” from 2005′s “Mysterious Production of Eggs.” But it was inspired by the new album. Bird explained that he was intimidated by the song at first, but it was a good match with the next song, “Lazy Projector,” from the new album, since both albums are about memory. The former being about physical memory, dissolving into a cacophony of hard percussion and raging electric guitar with Bird howling intensely enough to keep up with the instrumental assault.

While “Lazy Projector” may share “The Naming of Things”‘s theme of memory — selective, in this case — the song softly rolled to a delicate crescendo.

“Bein’ Green” must have given Bird a boost, because he looked positively joyous blasting through a seat-vibrating take of “Eyeoneye.” The band took the already vibrant song and turned it into a guitar rock anthem with bird on a six-string that nearly dwarfed him, violently shaking his head as he played with rolled-back eyes and a blissful grin on his face. It gave way to the otherworldly chirps and cheeps of “Near Death Experience Experience.” Slide and funk guitar with sharp metal edges created a darkness punctuated by high-pitched violin plucks and classic sawing, building a grim and horrific soundscape with the audience clapping the rhythm until the song’s abrupt end.

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Posted by | March 23, 2012 | Concerts | Comment 

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