Earth
Slow, Steady and Heavy
originally published April 30, 2008
Earth
The planet Earth revolves around the sun at 107,000 kilometers each hour, but on Thursday, Dylan Carlson will play no more than 20 notes on his guitar in that time. Since 1990, his Seattle-based band Earth (named for Black Sabbath's original name, rather than our lovely terrestrial home), has been soothing the underground rock masses with its droning, ethereal sound usually structured around one or two gargantuan riffs, decontextualizing the common notions of songs and rock all the while.
There have been two phases of Earth, of which Carlson is the only original member. From 1990 to 1996, Carlson and friends recorded a heavy metal-influenced brand of lumbering riffs, if you can imagine bands like Motörhead or Black Sabbath played at 16 RPM. Recording for the Seattle indie label Sub Pop brought an underground celebrity for Carlson, if not massive record sales. He spent 1997 through 2002 living quietly in Los Angeles, sorting through personal and legal matters. He became fond of the American Old West and the rootsy country music it begat. Returning with a new lineup in 2003, he started recording a new take on the now popular drone-metal genre, injecting that twangy, clean Americana into the same massive, circuitous riffs. Now recording for the niche metal label Southern Lord, Carlson is happiest for the time being with his current lineup.
“It feels like more of a band at this point than previous incarnations,” he says by phone from his Seattle home.
Forty years old now and painfully soft-spoken, Carlson has a knack for recording with the best and brightest. An early lineup featured heavy metal bass journeyman Joe Preston (last seen in Athens playing with Harvey Milk), and some early recordings feature Carlson's close friend Kurt Cobain. On this year's The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull, legendary jazz guitarist Bill Frisell contributed to three tracks. “[Frisell] is one of those people that is so good, everything they do is hyper-musical. He plays so effortlessly; it's an honor to watch him.” The collaboration came about when sometime organist Steve Moore gave Frisell's friends a copy of the 2005 album Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method. Carlson deems recording and playing live the two rewards of being in a band, but, he says with a laugh, “I don't know how much longer albums will be a method of distribution.”
Moving from one of the largest independent labels in existence (Sub Pop) to a label that sells many records, but is still very much a niche label (Southern Lord), hasn't been too difficult for Carlson. He cites Southern Lord's good distribution and generosity for his happiness, and can't think of any complaints about the label run by Earth devotees, drone band Sunn O))). Still, there are a lot of things the band does itself, like print t-shirts for tours. “There's a level of self-efficiency a band has to have now,” Carlson says. Finally, he says it: Southern Lord is better to Earth than Sub Pop ever was.
The fact that Earth is not only playing in Athens but is also playing 12 consecutive nights in cities as small as Birmingham and Asheville has fans ecstatic, but also scratching their heads. This is the band known for flying across the country to play for two nights in New York City and not playing again until the next year. “We're on the road more now than we ever were back in the day,” he says. “Sometimes we'll go play in Europe for awhile just to offset costs of touring the U.S.” The band even has a West Coast tour scheduled for June that will reach small cities just in Washington, places unknown to many of us Georgians like Ellensburg and Tacoma.
Being deeply influenced musically and personally by the 1985 Cormac McCarthy Western novel, Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West, when I mention the upcoming Hollywood adaptation, Carlson says without pause, “It's going to suck. Ridley Scott is not the director to do it. Besides,” he continues, “there's no way anyone could do it without horribly offending a lot of people,” citing the extreme animal cruelty and depiction of Native Americans.
Carlson, a lover of the outdoors, is looking forward to playing the South. Though in the past the band generally played what ended up on the studio albums, he promises there will be some improvisation as the band has been working on incorporating that into sets. Having only played as far south as Lexington, KY, Carlson claims this tour will be a new experience for him. Given the band's storied history and the excitement brewing for its debut performance in Athens, one can really only say "same for us."
This show is likely to sell out, so head to www.ticketalternative.com to get advance tickets.
WHO: Fur Elise, Madeline, Earth WHEN: Thursday, May 1 WHERE: Caledonia Lounge HOW MUCH: $8 (21+), $9 (18+)
Pure ‘Lectricity
North Mississippi Allstars Still Got Plenty of Blues to Go Around
originally published April 30, 2008
North Mississippi Allstars
A strong yen for the trancelike Hill Country blues of Mississippi, a musical lineage including the producer of the Stones’ Sticky Fingers, and the instrumental presence of an electrified washboard; these are three qualities that defined the North Mississippi Allstars upon the band’s formation and initial run.
Now, 12 years into things, the trio led by brothers Cody and Luther Dickinson is still tight with the blues, still claims Jim Dickinson as family, and on occasion, still breaks out the crazyfied amped-up washboard. However, the group has established itself as a near-cottage industry in the last couple of years through a series of side projects and guest spots.
The project that most reflects the Allstars’ juke joint and back porch pickin’ roots is the Hill Country Revue. Featuring Allstars drummer Cody Dickinson and bassist Chris Chew, alongside guitarists/singers Garry Burnside and Kirk Smithhart and harp player Dan Coburn, the group proudly carries the banner of gritty, hard-stomping blues personified by influential Hill Country bluesmen Junior Kimbrough and Garry’s father, R.L. Burnside.
“They’ve just been ripping it up all over the place,” says Allstars vocalist/guitarist Luther Dickinson of the Hill Country Revue. “Cody and Chris have been doing a lot of the Hill Country Revue shows and it’s really picked up steam. Also, it’s another tie that connects our family with the Burnside family. Duwayne Burnside played with us in the North Mississippi Allstars for sometime, too. Garry is one of R.L.’s youngest sons and just does an incredible job with the Revue and on his own.”
Luther himself has also been moonlighting as of late. The Allstars’ vocalist/guitarist recently accepted the Black Crowes’ offer to join up in place of guitarist Paul Stacey. With a background steeped in blues-informed rock and some stellar slide guitar skills that aren’t always pushed to the forefront of the Allstars’ sound, Dickinson would appear to be the perfect foil to the Crowes’ lead guitar slinger Rich Robinson. Luther has already appeared on the Crowes’ latest release, the surprisingly solid Warpaint, and will accompany the band on a series of live dates throughout the year.
“The kind of stuff they play is just my kind of music,” says Luther of the Crowes’ catalog. “It’s that bluesy, nasty Southern rock kind of stuff. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to play on that record and to go out on the road with those guys.”
Yet another side project that Luther confirms helped himself, brother Cody and bassist Chew to progress as both studio musicians and accompanists was sitting in behind veteran singer/songwriter John Hiatt on Hiatt’s standout album Master of Disaster. That record was something of a departure for both Hiatt and the Allstars. It showed Hiatt creating a rare mesh of his charging Memphis-infused blues-rock sound and the from-the-gut story-song approach that had defined releases like 2003’s Beneath This Gruff Exterior. And, as with any memorable Dylan, Van Morrison or, yes, John Hiatt record, the man was fortunate enough to have a sharper-than-average crew of musicians, as well as a master boardman in Jim Dickinson, backing him up.
“John and our dad used to play together in Ry Cooder’s band years back and have been friends ever since,” says Luther. “The way we made that record, all the voices were recorded live in the room. John is a real professional and a gentleman; he taught us all his music by hand. It was a great experience to learn from someone like that. He actually has a new record coming out that I got to play on. We recorded it at his house and he produced and engineered it. Man, he’s something else. I don’t know when it’s coming out, but it should be released soon.”
Of course, the North Mississippi Allstars proper remain the Dickinson Brothers’ and Chew’s primary focus. Though the bandmembers may spread themselves over a multitude of other projects, the Allstars most always sound fresher, rejuvenated, and dare say, raunchier when coming back together after participating in other such projects. Case in point is the NMAs' latest release, Hernando.
Again produced by big daddy Dickinson and named for the brothers’ hometown, the record casts aside some of the pop sheen and polish that dotted 2003’s Polaris. Instead, it’s a sweaty, shifty-eyed dose of guitar-driven Southern rock accentuated by Jim Dickinson’s live, one-take production. The Memphis-informed “Blow Out” suggests the Allstars also know their rockabilly, while the chugging “Eaglebird” sounds like it was conjured up from the sessions for Z.Z. Top’s blues-fuse classic Tres Hombres.
“One thing that Dad, as a producer, encourages is doing lots of demos before you get in there to record an album,” says Luther. “So we demoed up about 22 songs in advance, which saved a lot of time once we got in there to put it together. We just wanted to make a no-nonsense, electric Southern rock kinda record. You know, something like Z.Z. Top or The Allman Brothers would’ve cut back in the day.”
WHO: North Mississippi Allstars
WHEN: Friday, May 2
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
HOW MUCH: $15
Take Two
The Debut Record Morning State Had to Record Twice
originally published April 30, 2008
"I think Morning State could be for anyone who enjoys music."
Morning State
Lead guitarist Dave Williams' broad opinion of his band Morning State's potential appeal might suggest that the impetus for creating the band stemmed from the the desire to make music for people who enjoy a wide range of genres. In actuality, the goal was to make the same kind of music the band enjoyed listening to.
Morning State came together in 2004, when lead vocalist/guitarist Russ Ledford and Williams took a bunch of songs Ledford had written and decided to form a band around them. The boys recruited Aaron Stephenson (a. armada) on bass and Zach Sharenko on drums. Directionless but motivated, the guys spent most of their time writing songs and traveling between Athens and Atlanta for practice.
"We thought the songs were pretty good and wanted to see where we could go from there," says Williams. "Our interests at the time were to continue to write more songs and play some live shows. From there, things just seemed to blossom as far as seriousness and ability goes."
In late 2006, Morning State recorded a five-song EP titled The Retreat. The EP was lauded by local and national music rags alike. The band began touring religiously in support of the release, playing alongside such bands as Apples in Stereo, Yeasayer, Meat Puppets, MGMT, Black Kids, Colour Revolt, Two Gallants, and Peter and Bjorn of Peter, Bjorn and John. As industry bigwigs began catching Morning State fever, the band was ready to record a full-length album. In the fall of 2007, the band signed to Livewire Records and began the arduous task of making an album. Sadly, after months of recording, the label folded and left Morning State in a bit of a pickle. "We were four songs into mixing and the record label went under. So, we lost those recordings and had to re-record," says Williams.
With an unfinished album and no chance of the label finishing the record, the band migrated back to Athens to re-record its debut with longtime friend Asa Leffer (Dark Meat, The Whigs). The CD was recorded over a 10-day period at DARC Studios in Athens during February 2008.
"We entered the studio very focused on the project and really excited about working with Asa. He is someone we are very comfortable with and trust his ideas. Recording with him, we were able to do things that otherwise we would have never had the opportunity to do. He was able to bring in some outside players, such as Page Campbell (Hope for Agoldensummer), The Vomit Lasers from Dark Meat, Ben DuPriest (The Pendletons), and Gnarls Barkley to play on the record. Asa also came out to South By Southwest this year with us and ran sound/brought the hype. He is an amazing guy and a great friend."
The album You Know People I Know People is like taking a trip down memory lane. Streaming from the stereo is nothing but good old early-'90s indie/alt rock and bit of late-'80s pop, reminiscent of bands like Spoon, Live, Tender Idols and maybe a little Verve Pipe in there. The record doesn't suffer from awkward progressions or bland arrangements, and it begs the question as to what it might've sounded like recorded elsewhere. You Know People I Know People vacillates between post-grunge arena rock and melodic indie pop, but still forms a cohesive little record.
"Having done it once already, we were able to take a step back and plan the album a little better the second time around. When we went in, we knew what songs we wanted, as well as the sequencing for the album. We did throw two new songs in there that we didn't record the first time around, as well as not record some songs that we did the first time around."
Morning State will celebrate the release of You Know People I Know People on May 6 at the Caledonia Lounge. After that, the boys will be performing at a couple of summer festivals and have a bunch of shows lined up for an East Coast tour, including the Forecastle Festival in Kentucky and Corndog-o-rama in Atlanta. When asked what's next for the band, Williams just had this to say:
"I am personally looking forward to a Chicago show we have with White Rabbits soon. After that, world domination I guess!"
WHO: Jukebox the Ghost, The XYZ Affair, Morning State
WHEN: Tuesday, May 6
WHERE: Caledonia Lounge
HOW MUCH: $6 (21+), $7 (18+)
The Bad Plus
Bringing Jazz and Rock to a Melting Point
originally published April 30, 2008
The Bad Plus
Meet The Bad Plus. It's a typical pop group. Sort of. Aside from the instrumental array of post-bebop jazz and late-Romanticism, chromatic and whole tone scales, bi-tonality and atonalism; you’ll find the band to be quite amiable, and perhaps even accessible - maybe. It’s only after the group combines all of these elements into the occasional classic rock cover that makes the whole ordeal an easier sell - a tactic which, thus far, has offered the group the opportunity to cohabitate within the confines of popular music, introducing a new generation of listeners to its inverted musical agenda in what was once a more comfortably defined living space.
Despised by the orthodox jazz community and otherwise labeled as “postmodern” by the popular press, The Bad Plus has rather unsystematically abandoned the notion of wielding any particular sense of musical/historical tradition, making it increasingly difficult to categorize, or critique for that matter. From the outset, this was probably never the bandmembers' intention, but became so, in spite of themselves and by virtue of their eclectic musical tastes. To the average listener, it is oftentimes difficult to decipher whether The Bad Plus is a rock-inspired jazz trio or a jazz-inspired rock group; yet, in the marginalized context of postmodern musical ambiguity, such labels simply aren’t warranted nor are they in any way helpful. Here lies the difficulty in writing about a group like The Bad Plus, as its sonic palette typically defies the limitations of verbal conventions. Fortunately, for our aural clarification, the road-rehearsed trio will take the stage of Athens’ Melting Point this Thursday, May 1, guaranteeing to brandish flawless technical proficiency and even more sonic force.
Unlike other contemporary jazz artists in its league, The Bad Plus has consistently managed to captivate audiences without requisite all-star collaborations, studio overdubbing or needless digital gimmickry. For the recording of its 2007 release, Prog, the group opted for a truly acoustic representation of its sound, camping out with British-native engineer/mixer Tony Platt (known for his work with AC/DC, The Who and Led Zeppelin, to name a few) in the band's home state of Minnesota, only to find themselves delving right into habitual mayhem. The resulting album reveals the group to be just as prolific as in previous albums, without showing evidence of exhausting its creativity.
In typical atypical fashion, the three-man demolition squad relishes in its own demented pleasures, torturing and maiming thematic elements, as they are rag-dolled from one instrument to the next in some possessed form of imitative counterpoint. On the relentless original, “Physical Cities,” bassist Reid Anderson’s uncompromising 5/4 bass-figure is regularly displaced by pianist Ethan Iverson’s metrical barrage of spiraling 16th notes, and might be the only jazz number to date that hammers out syncopated power chords loudly enough to tear through your subwoofer. It’s the same musical effect that caused audience members to riot after hearing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, and precisely the kind of gut reaction these guys are after. To add more fuel to the fire, drummer David King divulged in an interview with Flagpole that the group’s forthcoming album would feature rearrangements of works by both Stravinsky and György Ligeti (most recognizable for scoring several Stanley Kubrick films) - as though covering Black Sabbath just wasn’t enough. King added that a preview of these works in progress could be heard at the Melting Point performance.
In what has become something of a trademark for the group, any Bad Plus album wouldn’t be complete without a collection of pop deconstructions (the group would hesitate to use the term “cover”). The bridge for Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” showcases Iverson’s cascading arabesques in Debussy-like idiom, while Bowie’s “Life on Mars” flaunts his ability to employ one hand to sound the melody, while the other creates a conflagration of chromatic confusion. Yet, it’s Iverson’s “Mint” that truly elucidates his whimsical style of composition, in which he fuses Rachmaninov and Ornette Coleman in bursts of atonal vigor, only to be further disfigured by unpredictable stretches of asymmetrical phrasing. Like a brainy infant throwing a temper tantrum, Iverson gets manically chromatic in moments of frenetic heat, and diametrically fragile when Anderson’s more introverted style forces him to take a musical time-out. “Giant” is recognizably Anderson’s own in its detached melancholy, employing slowly shifting suspended minor chords over an ostinato bass line that borrows as much from Radiohead as it builds upon previous compositions such as “Silence is the Question” (These Are the Vistas) and the Mahler-inspired “Prehensile Dream” (Suspicious Activities?). Looming, omnipresent drummer David King seems more confident in his own musical space, often directing the energy of his bandmates through direct opposition, setting the stage for the inherent conflict within each tune, as in the fiery bossa of “Thriftstore Jewelry.” In his Zen-like approach, King often approaches the kit the way Miles Davis might have approached playing the trumpet - “When they play fast, you play slow,” Miles once advised bassist Buster Williams after a gig, “when they play slow, you play fast.” King asserts that as a group, The Bad Plus is an “organic being” with plenty of breathing room for each member to convey his strengths within each composition. “We’re a total democracy,” King adds.
Never taking success too seriously, the trio has developed what appears to be its own “music-award for the underdog” across its four-album career span, beginning with “1972 Bronze Medalist” from the debut, These Are the Vistas (2003), losing a little steam on Give’s (2004) “1979 Semi-Finalist,” followed by a mysterious gap on Columbia-released Suspicious Activities? (2005) before returning triumphantly with Prog’s “1980 World Champion,” which samples a victory speech from an Olympic contender in the height of his glory, reflecting a trio in the pinnacle of its power as the album races towards the finish. Yet, there is an underlying subtext to this story, as King admits that the hero in his fictional trilogy feels a tinge of remorse in lieu of his hard-earned achievement. This is perhaps no coincidence, as it’s the band’s ever-renewable sense of humility, combined with a tenacious work ethic, that has allowed the members to challenge each other musically, as well as to remain objective about their own careers. “We’ve never been the type of guys to win any awards,” King confesses. Maybe it’s time to introduce a Grammy in the “postmodern jazz” category - but the boys surely aren’t resting their future upon it.
WHO: The Bad Plus
WHEN: Thursday, May 1
WHERE: The Melting Point
HOW MUCH: $20
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