Present Joys

I saw the Mountain Goats in Cincinnati last friday (14 jun 2013). It was as delightful and numinous as you’d expect. Some thoughts:

• I disliked the venue, which was the ballroom beneath the Taft Theatre. It was literally like a big, low-ceilinged basement room with harsh lighting. The sound was excellent, though, so I can’t complain.
• The opening band, the Baptist Generals, were excellent. A great mix of weird/artsy/distorty/polyrhythmy stuff and good, solid tunes.
• On to tMG: this whole tour, the band is just JD and PPH. The setup was very simple: two persian rugs, two guitars and one electronic keyboard for JD, and a bass for PPH. Super good. The stripped-down instrumentation was so much fun throughout the entire night.
• Specifically wonderful: the bass, the bass, the bass. Peter played that white fretless bass the whole time. (Which must be a new thing? The first time I noticed the fretless was last fall, and he only used it on a few of the Transcendental Youth songs.) I don’t know whether it was the more intimate venue or the lack of drums or Brandon Eggleston workin’ extra magic or what, but the sound of the instruments was crisp and articulate and wonderful.
• That isn’t to say that Wurster was not missed, because I missed him a lot! But it was so fun to have the bass as sole rhythm section. Several songs (“Alpha Rats Nest”, “Dance Music”) had fresh-feeling, reworked bass grooves that seemed to be a direct result of the simpler instrumentation.
• It was a cool set. Some old stuff, some new stuff. My two favorite parts: JD and PPH performing “Tallahassee” with JD on electric keyboard. Also: “Commandante”! There’s a song I wasn’t expecting to hear live. JD improvised some of the lyrics, at one point rhyming “the sayings of Chairman Mao” with “full Communism now”. Fantastic.
• Oh, yeah! “Alpha Chum Gatherer” is a real song, and it is very good.
• the bass! the bass! the bass! (Please imagine me shouting that à la John Flansburgh.)

Last night (3 may 2013), my sister and I drove to Nelsonville to see Bill Callahan play at Stuart’s Opera House. (A popular location for Drag City artists, apparently!) Instead of sitting in Stuart’s auditorium-style seats, we sat on collapsible chairs on the stage itself, and since we got there a little early, we had front-row seats.

I’d seen Bill Callahan play once before, in july 2011 at the Wexner Center in Columbus. The Nelsonville show had an identical guitar + guitar/occasional harmonica + bass configuration, and a very similar setlist: lots of Apocalypse songs and only one or two songs from the Smog era. The sound was beautiful—just the right volume to appreciate the artistic subtlety of the music. Especially Bill’s lead guitarist, who was super great. It was a fantastic time! Bill Callahan may not have changed much in the past two years, but my ability to appreciate him has only increased!

I had the chance to see They Might Be Giants play at the Newport Music Hall this past saturday (2 mar 2013)! I took my sister along with me. The opening band, Vandaveer, was a bad fit for the audience. The frontman for the band was annoying (he was “trying way too hard”, as my brother would say) and the music was really unappealing. On top of that, all the usual Newport unpleasantness abounded—lame acoustics, dirty, sticky surfaces, generally terrible logistics.

But TMBG was freaking wonderful! They played a lot of songs from their new album Nanobots (“You’re On Fire”, “Call You Mom”, “Circular Karate Chop”, “Insect Hospital”, and “Nanobots”) and they all sounded very tight! We did “Battle for the Planet of the Apes” and a new thing where the Johns would take turns shining a high-powered flashlight in the face of a random audience member and would then make up a nickname for him. And of course there were lots of great tunes. I particularly enjoyed hearing “Whistling in the Dark” with full band + accordion performed literally in the dark.

The band is so vibrant and technically proficient and imaginative and fun. It’s a really heart-warming, satisfying experience to see them perform. My only complaint is an enduring, long-term one: more accordion, please.

Oh, how time flies! My all-time favorite Mountain Goats concert bootleg is fifteen years old! Have you heard it? Highlights include:

• Pre-Coroner’s Gambit versions of We Were Patriots and Family Happiness.
• A really good performance of Tulsa Imperative, a deep cut which JD wrote and PPH’s old band DiskothiQ recorded.
• My favorite version of Orange Ball of Hate (and I’ve got fourteen versions to compare it with).
• A fantastic cover version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Tell Me On a Sunday.
• Generally great audio quality (it’s a soundboard recording).
• Fun young-JD banter.

Listen to it! you’ll love it!