ABC Pick

Pinback, American Analog Set, The Eaves

originally published April 7, 2004

Saturday, April 10, 40 Watt Club

I've put in my time trying to like Pinback. One of my favorite people in the world swears by them, and I likewise swear by her taste in music. So I started with the most recent full-length,

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Blue Screen Life. I could never get past the feeling that Pinback's music was veiled emo, saved from a dead and irrelevant genre by virtue of its quirks. The band was doing everything right, but there was an ingredient missing. I could never put my finger on it, so I just wrote them off as forgettable, and the aforementioned favorite person sulked for a while.
Now comes Offcell, a five-track EP released by Absolutely Kosher Records as a teaser for the full album set for a fall release. My immediate reaction? The California band - Armistead Burwell Smith (3 Mile Pilot) and Robert Crow (Thingy, Heavy Vegetable) - has improved enormously while retaining its Pinbackness. There's a depth to these five songs that lift them above past material. "Victorius D" carries that yearning emo feel, but the complex arrangements and bouncy vibrancy save the song. Crow's vocals have also gained in confidence. The title track leads the band into a experimental pop area, where the magic nostalgia of the Shins collides with the delay and echo of the Spacemen 3.
But I was totally unprepared for the EP closer "Grey Machine." At 11 minutes, it's a staggering and repetitive song, but it makes me grin without relying on the word epic. Summer-happy lyrics like, "Lay in the yard curled in a ball/ Nails in your mouth, keys still in the car door" skip along with the sunny melody. So Pinback's on track, it seems. That favorite person will be elated. [Michael Wehunt]

ABC Pick

Tatsuya Nakatani

originally published April 7, 2004

Monday, April 12, X-Ray Café

Sound construction, the creation of music, can be just as delicate a thing as a house of cards. Now, I've never been able to build a house of cards larger than one consisting of the queen of hearts

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precariously leaning against the two of spades. But there are those who have mastered the ability to put together loosely-structured edifices out of multiple decks - I know, I've seen it on the TV. And just as building a house of cards requires careful consideration of the space between the cards, so does the music of improvisational drummer-percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani focus on the spaces between the notes just as much as the notes themselves.
Nakatani was born in Kobe, Japan, in 1970 but grew up in Osaka. He's lived in New York for almost 10 years now, and has become an integral component in the town's improv-experimental music scene, collaborating with Peter Brötzmann, Sabir Mateen, Asif Tsahar and, on the recent 13 Definitions of Truth, Peter Kowald. Well versed in numerous styles, Nakatani's free jazz, rock and improv textures all combine to form a fine example of what, in last week's Flagpole, Rob McMaken described as "This Music." From crashing cymbals to banging sticks, from singing bowls and saws and gongs to precise silences, Nakatani's work constantly escapes definition. It's some heady, challenging stuff, but if last week's ACME festival piqued your interest in the limitless possibilities for jazz and sound experimentation, get thee to the X-Ray to hear music built, watch it crumble and witness its rebirth. Nakatani will play a solo set and then will perform with five of Athens' "outsider guitarists" (Paul Thomas, Jeff Chasteen, Craig Lieske, Tony Evans, Marshall Marrotte) in separate sets, each lasting about 10 minutes. [Chris Hassiotis]

ABC Pick

Roger Creager, Honeybrowne

originally published April 7, 2004

Tuesday, April 13, 40 Watt Club

Although he'd been messing around with a piano since he was two years old and singing since he was six, it wasn't until seven years ago - at the age of 26 - that Texas-based country artist Roger Creager began performing his own songs for a real live audience. "I went to college and played it safe for a while,

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and leaving a steady job and steady paychecks was a hard thing to do, but I knew that I had to do it," says Creager of his decision to leave behind the less romantic world of accounting for one where it's company policy to don a ten-gallon hat.
Creager builds his songwriting around a tune; he is, after all, a piano player at heart. But he still upholds the tradition at the core of country - that of telling a good story. As evidenced on his first two albums (1998's Having Fun All Wrong and 2000's I Got the Guns), Creager has the ability to build an intricate setting around to-the-point characters, much like Robert Earl Keen or Steve Earle, and he's got an everyman appeal like that of John Mellencamp. Backed by his Roger Creager Band - Matt Baker (lead guitar),Troy Brown (piano), Matt Medearis (drums), Jason Swindol (fiddle, mandolin) and Stormy Cooper (bass) - this past September, Creager put out his third album. Like its predecessors, Long Way to Mexico was released by Dualtone Records. The album marks a step forward for Creager's sound, expanding beyond the traditional country of his previous records. Latin rhythms, gumbo sounds and smooth jazz piano notes find their way into the songs, and it works to solid effect. By incorporating a number of disparate flourishes, Creager's on his way to stepping out from the pack. [Chris Hassiotis]