Duck & Cover :: Indie rock music writing from Arcade Fire to the Zygotic Minci

The following is an account of the Arcade Fire after party hosted at Outlaws, a club on Burnside in Portland, OR, and provided courtesy of guest commentator Adele. The photo at right is from the long drive from the Gorge to PDX, as our girl Adele catches up on some much needed sleep. As Dakin and I left the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon, still reeling from Win Butler’s descent from the stage and brief pause atop a chair directly in front of us, I kept asking “Why didn’t I touch him?” “I don’t know,” said Dakin. “Everyone else did.” I know I’m not the only girl ever to have fallen head-over-heels in love with the married lead singer of a band for a few minutes during a live show, and after their stupefying performance in Portland, who wouldn’t be in love with every member of the Arcade Fire afterwards? This isn’t a new story either: those who know me may recall a three e-mail romance with Erlend Oyes following a Kings of Convenience show at the Triple Door in Seattle...

THE ARCADE FIRE 27.05.2007 Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall The show opens with the fall of the house lights; the audience cheers and then becomes slightly restless as monitors flicker around the stage; grainy footage of a television evangelist, a hefty southern woman in sequins, paces breathlessly and decries “people pleasers” as “butt kissers” repeating over and over again that “we have no more time, no more time” and tells women to “take off those high heels”. She rushes back and forth whipping her crowd into a hallelujah frenzy, and then fades into static. The band arrives, and it is immediately apparent that we are in church, and they are the evangelists. They immediately, with no banter, and no introductions, slam into “No Cars Go”; the audience, surging forward as Win invites “There’s plenty of room here at the front, come on down!” Security wrestles with the crowd, and manages to push them back, but not before a few people manage to make it to the space between the front row and ...

May is New Zealand Music Month! For the rest of May, Jamie will review NZ bands, attend (and subsequently write about) NZ shows, and generally give attention to some of the greatest bands you've never heard of. I realised while writing this review that the New Zealand albums I've chosen to patronise are a little on the sanguine side, so far. Perhaps it's the Autumn chills creeping between my sleeves, but this review is going to follow the set pattern. Haints of Dean Hall play mellow, but troubled, acoustic melodies. Very fitting for anyone wishing to light a few candles, cut the power, and hide under a blanket as a gale howls through the gaps. The title 'Haints'--a term borrowed from Southern American vernacular meaning 'haunt'--befits this trans-tasman, alt-country duo, as Kathryn McCool (vocals, guitar) and Stephen Reay (guitar) dub themselves. However, I have no idea where Dean Hall is. If it's as haunted as a few of their tracks, however, I don't...

Dakin departs Hawaii today to travel to sunny Seattle, where he will catch up with old friends before travelling deep into Eastern Washington for the Sasquatch music festival. Sasquatch, for those not in the know, is an annual event held at the Gorge Ampitheatre, in Quincy, WA and showcases the best and the brightest of indie talent. Beginning last year, Sasquatch became a two day event and became a little bigger than makes Dakin comfortable, though last year's lineup was exceptional. This year Sasquatch continues the two day theme, and features (for the day that Dakin and co. will attend, and among others) Bjork, the Arcade Fire, the Hold Steady, Neko Case, instrumental Beastie Boys, Grizzly Bear, and (and this is the one that just thrills to the core) Citizen Cope. Hopefully there will be something exciting going on in the beer garden for that set. Also accompanying is Duck & Cover photog in residence, the fabulous Laura Musselman, so look forward to some amazing photos from ...

May is New Zealand Music Month! For the rest of May, Jamie will review NZ bands, attend (and subsequently write about) NZ shows, and generally give attention to some of the greatest bands you've never heard of. I first heard Grayson Gilmour when I stopped in to Wellington's Real Groovy to buy the Mint Chicks' new album a few months ago. One of the staff, a slight, heavily pierced goth girl advised I give it a listen after I expressed an interest in local musicians. I think my exact words were, "Wellington has some whip ass bands." To which she replied, "Oh, you MUST hear this guy, then." But I have to admit, during that particular visit I was on my lunch break, I had not eaten anything, and I had to walk (very quickly) back to work. So, I was in a hurry, and only listened to a few seconds of the first three tracks. I shyly set the headphones back to rest on their cradle, and put Gilmour back on the "Staff Recommends" shelf. I think I threw some...

Today Dakin made a decision, a small decision, that he hopes will impact the world in a positive way. Today Dakin purchased a travel mug from his coffee shop of choice. For some time, Dakin has been refusing plastic bags at the grocery store, requesting paper, or, when he manages to be mindful and responsible, bringing his own reusable non plastic bags. However, Dakin realized that, however many bags that he declined, almost daily, he purchased a cup of coffee; a cup of coffee that was served to him in a plastic cup (iced -- Hawaii!!) that he then disposed of. Dakin was faced with, while not a quandary, certainly something to think about. Discontinue the convenience of the to-go coffee habit, and thus excise the dreaded plastic waste, OR come up with an alternative method of delivery. Dakin, of course, chose the latter. He had long not quite admired, but certainly considered the shelf of reusable vessels displayed at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and, frankly, every time he threw aw...

May is New Zealand Music Month! For the rest of May, Jamie will review NZ bands, attend (and subsequently write about) NZ shows, and generally give attention to some of the greatest bands you've never heard of. I was surprised by this album. Surprised, for one, that there was an album at all. Pryor, up until a few weeks ago, had existed mostly behind the scenes, such as his involvement in the delightful Fly My Pretties venture. While he sporadically bobbed to the surface--as with his inclusion in the late A Low Hum CD + Magazine collective and on the soundtrack to Eagle vs. Shark--his was a name reserved for the lips of kids most indie (indie kids in an indie city in an indie country in an indie hemisphere--honestly, New Zealand is so indie it sometimes makes me a little queasy). But here it is, Age Pryor's album, Shanks' Pony. And there I WASN'T--at his CD release party at Wellington's Mighty Mighty. For weeks I kicked myself and cringed whenever I talked to someon...

This may be the coolest instrument since the theremin, the hands free instrument that manipulated waves of energy to create a ghostly, almost human sound. (Please see, for reference, 1950's sci fi films [ The Day The Earth Stood Still ], and the collected work of Portishead.) The Reactable (react+table) is " a multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface." What does this mean? It means that there is a table, and there are geometric shapes that you can arrange on the table to create and manipulate sounds. The Reactable is, in short, a deconstructed synthesizer that looks like it could have been manufactured by Playskool. The whole thing is controlled via a camera that measures each object's realationship to the other, and so on and so forth. It's all terribly fascinating, and, frankly, beyond my brain's capacity for comprehension, but the website provides a brief tutorial that explains it all. (Further, any explanation pr...

I was living in Ireland when Kings of Leon released Youth & Young Manhood in 2003, and was so sick of pub tunes and diddle-dee-aye-oh music that I heard one track off the CD and rushed to the record store to pick it up. So refreshing was it to hear energetic, Southern American rock produced in a relatively lo-fi environment that I briefly considered myself a Kings of Leon fan. The shouts and foot-stomping beat of "Red Morning Light" sounded like the after-midnight music sessions in the backwoods of the Bluegrass Festival in Kansas. In short, Kings of Leon made me feel a little less homesick. But four years later they release Because of the Times , and now I have to destroy every connection between them and myself. According to an excerpt from a review off cduniverse.com, Kings of Leon are "recreating the majesty of 1970s southern rock for the emo generation." I agree in essence, but would reword it slightly to say they are "rehashing hackneyed riffs in a ...