Ever feel like you’ve said it three times when you haven’t said it at all?
What a weird weekend. My band went on vacation and left me alone for 72 hours to finish up vocals on some demo songs. Nine-and-one-quarter songs, of which I made two sound partially tolerable. I finished about half of the rest, but blew out my upper register during hour 30 of the 32 hours I spent trying my best. A light bulb went out in the room minutes before my voice turned to mush. It was terrifying.
As my Last.fm can testify, I couldn’t really listen to any music when I was away from the rehearsal room. In my apartment—where I took most of my meals—I sat in silence, alone and gravelly, drinking a cup of Throat Coat per hour. All I could think about were melodies that didn’t quite work and lyrics that I did or didn’t find oppressive, insincere, too-ridiculous or any of the other things that drive me crazy about lyrics. Literally, I would go to the practice space around 2 pm, then come home around 2 am. Before going to sleep all I could do was drink tea and watch Twin Peaks Youtube’s until I knew I’d have some sort of nightmare. On Sunday night I dreamt I was in a house that only had stairs on the left side of this ochre room, and when I walked up the stairs it became pitch black until I emerged in the same room I was in before, with the same crooked frames on peeling walls, unsavory faceless people on torn velvet couches, and that same flight of stairs going up to the left. Somewhat logically, I looked out a window. Outside looked like that dreamy desert from Beetle Juice, with a few more of these houses that went up five or six stories to the left. Like I said, weird weekend.
Friday was great, though. All day long I felt excited about being alone with these songs that have been months in the making. I threw my iPod on shuffle at work and enjoyed the randomness of the 12,500 songs crammed in there. Admittedly, I hoped for inspiration. The third song to come up was this Bruce Springsteen song, “Downbound Train.” I’d never really listened to it before and until The Boss comes in I swore it was a twangy Cure song. It’s a great song about lonliness. I listened to it three times in a row. I thought about the song all weekend. It hovered above my own songs, a distant statute of tamed greatness blurred across a weird desert of my own flat notes, awkward words, and imagined monsters with Michael Keaton’s face.
Click to download “Downbound Train” by Bruce Springsteen from the album Born In The U.S.A.
One of the few things that could have made this poster better is if the headliner was, in fact, The Postal Service.
Two Saturday’s ago we played a good show in Reno, NV. The spot we play is a tiny bar called Satellite. I’m going to call it our “spot” because we’ve played there at least four times, not counting that one time at a different venue through the same promoter—or the show we’re doing there in ten days. Shows at Satellite are fun. The crowd is always young and excitable, and they’re not going anywhere else anyway, so you know someone close to your age and drunk will be ready to get down.
Another cool thing about Satellite is that the employees and owners are friendly and attractive. That Saturday, the only thing better than the drink specials was the bartender’s iPod mix. In quick blurs of audacity, she would cut off a recognizably great song (like the blurpy first seconds of “SexyBack”) and, in a flash, be playing something totally better.
The primary example being this peach gumball from electronic artist John Tejada: a remix of Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights.” Tejada slows it down; if James Scott Tamborello’s original mix was a frantic, impassioned dash towards distant love, Tejada makes it a confident jog, like indie rock Fabio Lanzoni approaching Jenny Lewis on a white sand beach in the South Pacific. Oh my god, I just reread that last sentence. So “crit.”
When this came on at Satellite, it wasn’t instantly recognizable. But when Benjamin Gibbard’s vocals drop, sounding even clearer at the slower speed, I melted. I found the remix on iTunes. Turns out it sounds great when it’s not Saturday night in Reno, too. The things you learn in The Biggest Little City In The World.
The video for the original, un-remixed “Such Great Heights” by The Postal Service.
The video of “We Will Become Silhouettes” by The Postal Service. Directed by the guy that did Napoleon Dynamite and featuring Jenny Lewis.
The Postal Service’s WEBSITE. The Postal Service on MYSPACE. The Postal Service on PUREVOLUME. The Postal Service on LAST.FM, where, according to wikipedia, the song “Such Great Heights” has been in the Top 10 most played songs list since the website's inception. The Postal Service on WIKIPEDIA. The Postal Service on ELBO.WS. The Postal Service on HYPEMACHINE. The Postal Service on AMAZON. Learn about the upcoming release from Tamborello’s other project, Dntel. Support The Postal Service’s LABEL.
An unflattering picture NAVE took of this prototype Gibson guitar.
I have little perception of how many of my 21-25 year-old friends enjoy The Fall Of Troy. I’m almost certain none of the damaged-artsy noise kids do. Same goes for the post-damaged-artsy kids who moved showering up on the prerogative list about the same time as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah overtook Xiu Xiu as the show-to-wear-a-party-dress-at. I think most of my math-rock friends probably enjoyed TFOT back when the band played basements for free, though I’m unsure they’d admit it now. I’m sure that my “post-hardcore” friends like TFOT, and I’m certain that all my 15-20 year-old friends love (or are about to love) TFOT.
I know pigeonholing doesn’t make or keep friends, so let me be clear: I don’t care who likes TFOT and I’m stoked for whatever they’re liking instead. But a lot of people love TFOT and I think these people—though younger—have amazing, significant reasons for their appreciation. I think the qualities of the appreciation—it’s pretty fervent and viral—make TFOT a new yardstick in an industry changing so fast it’s psychedelic. TFOT farmed a cult of fans from the ground up. The band toured incessantly since all the members were under 18 (they are now 21-ish). The trio easily outshined the zillion-watt lights burning out the decade’s first international music scene. Instead of doing this by innovatingmascarausage, pissing off an Osbourne, or rehashingMötley Crüe, TFOT succeed by updating the progressive swirl of Rush so that kids into My Chem could compute. In fact (and here's a big compliment), I'm sure TFOT is a gateway band for a lot of kids, leading them to music outside of the mentioned "scene." That scene—like a totem with only one repeating face—had become profitable, popular, and largely disposable long before TFOT entered the pit. It remains that way today. Really, it's stronger than ever, as we’ll see next Tuesday when Fall Out Boy bury The Used with an album of songs that Robert Edward McCracken should have purchased the rights to years ago.
Don’t read into this too much: I’m not saying this scene of scream/sing after-emo produced TFOT. Nor does TFOT sound remotely like FOB (hopefully you're still with me). I am saying that I’m impressed that this scene allows for a band like TFOT, and I’m especially impressed with TFOT’s ownership over its career within the homogeny that helped foster its success. The case-in-point is the seemingly hand-selected lineup for the band’s current headlining national tour. All the bands are exceptional in their own way: Portugal. The Man, one of Fearless Records’ recent stabs at remembering a better past, are as progressive—if softer—than TFOT; Damiera, labelmates with TFOT, take Cap ‘n Jazz-style math rock and give it a dose of contemporaneousness; and Tera Melos, the love of my life, provide the purest, unhinged artistic integrity that I’m arguing this tour is full of. It’s a big deal that a band like TFOT, that will end up selling out a majority of the shows on this, its first national tour, is willing to assure this sort of musical quality succeeds in its wake. And succeed these bands will: I’d feel like Judas by mentioning just how much income all the bands are generating, but be assured, the numbers across the board are very high.
That should mean that the audience will grow and (hopefully) sustain for every band on the tour. I went to the kick off for the tour, a show in San Francisco that might have sold out twice over. The line was enormous. Half the attendees (myself included) missed most of Melos waiting outside. I’ve seen a bundle of sold out shows at the 250-ish capacity Bottom Of The Hill. I’ve noticed types of sold out shows: Minus The Bear sold out the night of, so it seemed fairly packed, but not too crazy. The Mars Volta (on their first tour ever) and Thrice (way back in the day) were much fuller. Or maybe the crowds had more panicked energy, as if they knew it wouldn’t be like this again.
This kid, upon finding out that the show was gonzo-sold out, decided to try and jump the razor-wire fence. We have no idea what happened to him, but rumor has it he’s trapped in the maw.
TFOT’s crowd had that energy, as if next time ‘round it would cost $45 to see TFOT open with Circa Survive for Coheed And Cambria at the 3,500-capacity Warfield on the “Equal Vision Records Just Made Another $50 Million This Year Tour.” But at BOTH, people went apeshit for every band. Melos’ music, peerless as it is, earned polite applause and confusion, which usually means that everyone’s brains were (understandably) about a minute behind what was happening on stage. Damiera and Portugal. The Man had more and more people singing along. And TFOT had 200 fists raised for an hour straight. TFOT ringleader Thomas Erak could step into the crowd like a Jesus-in-girls-jeans and walk all over his fans, who looked even happier than when their guitar hero wasn’t touching them. Erak shreds phenomenal riffs, and this is what gets me wettest about this whole salad of screamo, prog, math-rock, and pop: it’s founded on incredible, thoughtful musicianship.
As songwriters edging their way into the centrifuge of pop culture, TFOT bring more to the table than most bands of comparable size: key changes, timing switches, riff after riff, solos, jams, all captured by wicked musical choreography. The band represents many things, the most important of which—from where I’m standing and singing along—is the proliferation of technical audacity in the mainstream marketplace. I think that cultural tastes seem to change when cults outgrow themselves. Rarely does music this complex cause a cult audience to outgrow itself, and rarely still does that growth even begin to take over the scene itself.
TFOT will release an anticipated album in just a few months. They know there’s an army of interest. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m wordy when I’m excited, and I’m excited that music this creative can make such an impact. It gives the future a lot of purpose.
Click to download “Marching With 6” by Portugal. The Man from the album Waiter: "You Vultures!".
Click to download “Lessons” by Damiera, from the album M(US)ic.
Click to download “The Werewolf And Ben” by Tera Melos, from the vinyl-only release Drugs To The Dear Youth.
This is a new song, probably my favorite I’ve heard. Live at Bottom Of The Hill. No one is holding it together.
“I Just Got This Symphony Goin’” live in Italy.
Tera Melos playing at The Door in Dallas. There were over 800 people at this show.
The Fall Of Troy’s WEBSITE. The Fall Of Troy on MYSPACE. The Fall Of Troy on PUREVOLUME. The Fall Of Troy on LAST.FM. The Fall Of Troy on WIKIPEDIA. The Fall Of Troy on HYPEMACHINE. The Fall Of Troy on AMAZON. Support The Fall Of Troy’s (and Damiera’s) LABEL.
The Greater Mekong... is also home to striped rabbits, bright pink millipedes laced with cyanide and a rat that was believed to have become extinct 11 million years ago.
