Shapes and Sizes, Cake Shop 9/27/07

This must be the first show I've paid for in at least eight months, what with a summer of freebies and hitching rides with three publications. I wrote such a glowing preview for them in the Onion for this week (last thing I did before my term ended), I hope they're proud. Plus Cake Shop is $7 for four bands. And I only stuck around for two.

Though, I thought the benefit of actually paying for a show would be that I wouldn't have to write about it. Well, here I am, writing about it.







Though my love for Caila knows no bounds, what's best about S&S live is how they all seem to move together. Makes sense: three out of the four of them write the songs (poor, lonely drummer), three out of four sing (though Mr. Bass Player usually just provides harmonies). When the three of them scream together it's a thing of beauty.





The other amazing thing is Caila's dancing. Maybe the more intimate setting brought out more of the little kicks and shimmys than when I saw her last year at Irving (they and The Blow opened for Architecture in Helsinki at CMJ, perhaps the most fun night of music I've ever experienced.) or maybe she's grown as a performer. Or maybe she was drunk. But it was dang cute.



Also played: The Forms. Quite rockin'.



Flickr stream

Twilight Sad, Radiohead, and Farming Nostalgia

The indie/rock playlists have led me back to The Twilight Sad, a Scottish through-and-through band that realizes you don't have to be quiet to be depressed. The enveloping loudness reminds me oddly of the Rosebuds, whose Birds Make Good Neighbors also has that sort of nostalgia that you can feel palpably on the Sad's debut Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters. But the Rosebuds occasioned into electronics, Twilight Sad is all instruments and intensity, occasionally screaming, lead singer James Graham sounding eerily like an out-of-control Craig Ferguson

"Watching that chair painted yellow", a b-side off the first single, has now become one of those songs, along with the Rosebuds' "Boxcar", that I can leave on repeat for a day and a night.


Watching That Chair Painted Yellow (yousendit)
That summer, at home, I had become the invisible boy (eachnotesecure)
Talking with fireworks / here it never snowed (musicforants)







Also: Looking for tracks lead me to Stereogum's compilation OKX: A tribute to OK Computer, a compilation of covers for the 10th anniversary of the greatest album of the '90s. Not only do the Twilight Sad do a utterly claustrophobic version of "climbing up the walls", check out John Vanderslice on "Karma Police", a very spooky "Exit Music" by Vampire Weekend, and the Cold War Kids on "Electioneering". Among others. Hell, they're all brilliant.

The Lamentations of the Women

The quality of the female voice at its most subversive -- what do I mean by subversive? Well, I guess a particular form of irony. A non-funny kind. I think currently the best male voices are doing irony, a funny irony, in a faux-honest way -- Art Brut, Stage Names Will Sheff with his phony autobiographies, the ghost of The Unicorns haunting the latest Strokes-clones (Vampire Weekend, Tokyo Police Club, etc). But with females, my personal favorite trend is the simple, ironically "weak" subversion of a voice like St. Vincent ("What me worry? I never do, I'm always amused, and amusing you..."), or my two current favorite voices:


Caila Thompson-Hannant of Shapes and Sizes



Not only can she squeak like a seagull, when she sweeps from a talky-low to an uncomfortable, almost nasally sustained high it sets my teeth on edge like a deliciously dissonant string harmony. Live, there's a quizzical disparity between her voice and her physical presense -- a slightly frumpy, boyishly charming girl with short hair and an endearing, lopsided grin. Is she really belting out this stuff? And yet there's something ever so sexy about her chuckling "Ho ho ho, my little cauliflower, I got plans for you..." on the just-released b-side Annihilator.

Shapes and Sizes - Anhilitator

Perennial favorite "Alone/Alive", along with the seaguls, has two great choruses: the band repeating "tonight I learn that I'm alone" or "tonight I feel that I'm alive" while Caila lamenting or celebrating in cute little couplets then sweeping up into lilting, wordless vowels, mimicing the guitar's plaintive bends. But it's the lyrics that keep me coming back, no matter the mood.

Tonight I learn that I'm alone.
The cat don't love me, he told me so...
Tonight I learn that I'm alone.
A homeless man won't even come to my home...

Shapes and Sizes - Alone/Alive


Emma Louise "Scout" Niblett



The new Scout Niblett album (This Fool Can Die Now) is due the beginning of October and boasts, among other surprises, four duets with many-named Will Oldham. The first released is "Kiss", which, though the guitar is dangerously similar to her also brilliant "Just What I Needed" cover, is gorgeously sad, and their seemingly incompatible voices play with each other like a dog and a cat in the rain. The track feels much more produced than her usually slap-dash albums, even with a bit of strings at the end (A Scout album, with instruments not actually played live by Scout herself? Preposterous!)

Scout Niblett - The kiss

My favorite track off Kidnapped By Neptune is "Lullaby For Scout In Ten Years", a song dedicated to her future self. I love her transitions, how she goes from soft to screaming -- which is what I'd probably be doing if I got to have a conversation with myself.

Are you still a chauffeur,
driving your body around?
Are you still a hunter for your sound?
Cause Honey, if you're still around...

Scout Niblett - Lullaby For Scout In Ten Years