Drakkar Sauna
w/ The Ginger Envelope
Thursday, March 29 @ Flicker Theatre & Bar
originally published March 28, 2007
Drakkar Sauna
Drakkar Sauna’s music certainly delivers upon its name’s fragrant promise: these boys emanate harmonies that waver and shift and curve and stab but stay closer than the direst stink lines. It’s humane music, which explains all the musk; imagine two perpetually-touring buddies with nothing to do on the road all day but steam-up their sedan-bubble with singing so radiant and beaming it sends shudders through the plains-grasses spreading around their travels, and you get an idea of how natural it feels when they open their mouths to sing. They can fill a room gloriously with song, til the windowpanes are stressed with it and the gaps above the doorjambs are leaking it.
Jeff Stoltz and Wallace Cochran live now in Lawrence, KS, which makes a fair amount of sense: the warmth and ease so redolent in their music evokes those sun-fired Kansan wheat fields; underneath it all, however, is a dense dark loam - they both passed plenty of time toiling in Rust Belt gray-zones like Detroit and Pittsburgh, and that city-shocked realism has put a layer of consternation beneath the harmonically optimistic atmosphere. This ain’t parlor-music.
Think of the young Everlys skipping the sock-hop to read a bunch of Freud and catch a Pablo Neruda reading, and you’ve got a start. Now throw in the coffin-wheeze of Nico’s harmonium - via Jeff’s one-handed Harmophone! - and the indispensable tribal boom-whap of a guitarist playing percussion with just his feet and you’re getting a fuller picture. Add next those molecular-airborne things, like the ecstasy of instantaneous musical invention and the joy of witnessing up-close a musical brotherhood - inherently packed with the truth and the beauty and all that - play itself out, and now you start to understand how truly great it is to see Drakkar Sauna play live. Show starts at 8:30 p.m.
Ying Yang Twins
w/ DJ Mays
Friday, March 30 @ University of Georgia
originally published March 28, 2007
Ying Yang Twins
Two years ago, my husband played in a regular softball game at Bishop Park, and the thing I remember most about the experience (much more than the games) was the fact that at least one car a night drove by blasting Ying Yang Twins’ “Wait (The Whisper Song).” You couldn’t hear anything besides the basic beat - they were, after all whispering - but it was ideally suited to Doppler distortion, and, eventually, one came to enjoy the dirtiness of the well-melded lyrics and squeezed melodic toms. Call it the moment in the movies when the girl dressed in white stops being grossed out by the food fight/ mud wrestling and joins in.
Unlike many other rappers, who make at least an attempt at classiness (champagne, fancy suits), the Atlanta duo of Eric "Kaine" Jackson and D'Angelo "D-Roc" Holmes is impressively lowbrow. There’s no attempt at real seduction. They cut straight to the chase with regard to what you’re going to see or what you should do with your ass or what kind of women they like (although, unfortunately, their latest album seems a bit more grown up, making use of Wyclef’s talents and a heavy electric guitar sample on the single “Dangerous”). This kind of gleeful vulgarity could explain why it’s so strange that they’re playing the Georgia Hall on the bottom floor of the Tate Student Center, more often host to prestigious lecturers and blood drives, or - and this is the explanation we’re going with - it could explain why it’s not.
The trashy incongruity of Kaine and D-Roc sharing the same space in which Nadine Strossen and William F. Buckley have debated serious political issues to rap about - let’s face it - pussy is exactly the appeal of the group: a delight in stains. There is an acceptance of the darker and grosser aspects of human nature, not an ascension but a going down in the world, to a carpeted room in a student center that sells no alcohol, doesn’t hold that many people and is about as opposite from sexy as you can get. Odd!
Sean Lennon
w/ Kamila Thompson & Women And Children
Wednesday, April 4 @ Melting Point
originally published March 28, 2007
Sean Lennon
It’s not easy being the son of the greatest rock star to ever grace the planet - or so we hear. Sean Lennon has been ducking his father’s shadow for pretty much his entire life, but he’s only recently stepped into his own songwriting skin. Lennon’s latest release, Friendly Fire, shows a more comfortable songwriter - unfocused on the precedent left by his father. While opinions on the record were mixed, Lennon has dealt with the massive press buzz exceptionally well, giving mostly reasonable responses to constant scrutiny and comparison. Most of the questions focus on his family, but, as would be expected, Sean Lennon usually wishes, and tries, to discuss his own music.
Friendly Fire, Lennon’s second full-length studio effort, reflects pretty good pop songwriting executed pretty well. There’s nothing all that bad about the record - but it leaves a fair-weather taste. The album reveals itself as more impressive when considering that Lennon self-produced it, and created the album artwork himself.
Friendly Firecomes eight years after Lennon’s debut release Into the Sun. There are many subtle differences between the two records. Yuka Honda, Lennon’s then-girlfriend and Cibo Matto member, produced Into the Sun- which Lennon claimed to be mostly about her. Friendly Fireshows Lennon setting out on his own, and while the record may not have completely held up to critics’expectations, it’s a step forward and reflects his true songwriting potential. Tracks like “Dead Meat” and “Headlights” reveal a young songwriter still looking for a proper voice, but well learned in song structures and phrasing. Again, it’s not easy being the son of the greatest rock star ever - but that could be the thread that pushes Lennon to the top. He’s got the talent. He’s got the know-how. Now, he just needs to make the record that lets him come fully into his own.
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