Still buzzing from some recent cultural highs -- Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio at UCLA Royce Hall, the Glass/Wilson Einstein on the Beach at Los Angeles Opera -- we're looking forward to a smaller but no less welcome event in town this week. That's LA's own Radar Bros -- who we've written about several times -- with Overseas, the new collaboration between Matt Kadane (Bedhead, The New Year) with Daniel Bazan of Pedro the Lion. They'll be at the Satellite on Wednesday.
The Radar Bros, on Merge Records, are well known to Angeleno indie fans, tho still probably not celebrated enough. With roots in the '90s "slowcore" scene that's also included Spain and Acetone, they've become tougher and a bit harder. (The joke used to be that they were the only band in history that played slower when they performed live.)
Here's a video from a song on their latest album, Eight.
Overseas is making its first trip to the West Coast, with a self-titled recording.
The Kadanes (Matt and his bro Bubba, proud Texans) are on a very small lists of musicians: We (I think) everything they're recorded. The new band extends their old work -- Bedhead and The New Year had the mix of aching melody and mellow instrumental chaos that makes the best indie rock. They appeal to the side of us that wish The Feelies or Luna had made a dozen more albums apiece.
Here's a video for one of their new songs:
We'd love to tell you more about how much we love these groups, though since we're completing Creative Destruction, a book about the evisceration of the creative class, we must keep moving.
Hope to see you at Spaceland, er, the Satellite. Both bands are in San Diego on Thursday.
READERS of The Misread City know of this blog's fondness for the California-inspired English band The Clientele, who mix elements of British folk-rock with the West Coast pop of Love and The Mamas & The Papas. Since their wonderfully atmospheric and tuneful LP, Bonfires on the Heath, lead singer/guitarist Alasdair MacLean has been wondering about the next right step for his band, and he's now releasing the result of one of his side trips.
The new band is Amor de Dias -- led by Al and the Spanish artist Lupe Núñez-Fernández of the group Pipas, and their debut, Street of the Love of Days, comes out tomorrow. (Here is a video from it.) They've got a similarly pastoral feel, though cut in some cases with downtempo electronica and Spanish guitar. The tour -- with Damon and Naomi -- comes to the West Coast from May 31 (Seattle) to June 5 (San Diego), with a June 4 date at LA's Satellite. (What we used to call Spaceland.)
MacLean is one of the indie world's best songwriters and a very fine, Tom Verlaine-influenced guitarist; we look forward to whatever he comes up with.
Will Amor spell the end of the Clientele, or will it give Al another direction for his dreamlike musings? Here's an interview exclusive with The Misread City.
What made you want to step outside the framework of The Clientele, a band that's recently released one of its best records and has gradually accumulated a decent audience in the States, with this new combo Amor de Dias?
Audience sizes and good reviews don't mean anything if you've run out
of inspiration. With the Clientele I felt that I had no new ideas.
That was the sign to take a break really. Amor de Dias was going on at
the same time and it was less pressure, more about fun; we didn't have
a record contract initially, so if the recording had gone badly we
could have quietly buried it and walked away. I think you can hear us
having fun on the record.
The Clientele seems to be coming out of Nick Drake and Marquee Moon, with maybe some French symbolism thrown in... What are the compass points for Amor de Dias?
Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa definitely; that side of bossa nova.
Spanish guitars. Some spooky folk music like Trees. New, more
percussive and complicated rhythms. Vocal harmonies. Painters of the
English countryside like Paul Nash and Samuel Palmer. Surrealist poet
Robert Desnos. An odd mixture I guess!
The album's title, The Street of the Love of Days has a funny and accidental origin. Can you remind us where the title comes from?
Yeah, me walking down a Madrid street called Calle de Amor de Dios. I
think I'm being really clever cos I can translate it: oh my, this
street is called "Street of the Love of Days". How poetic and
beautiful! Only I got "Dios" and "Dias" mixed up. it's actually called
"Street of the Love of God". All my Spanish friends shook their heads
at me, but the name stuck anyway.
Some or your earliest training was in classical and Spanish guitar, I think?
Yes I got to grade 6 in classical guitar as a kid. It affected my
technique as a guitarist a lot. I still think Spanish guitars are the
most beautiful musical instruments.
Your tour -- much of which is with perfect match Damon and Naomi, who geezers like me remember from Galaxie 500 -- takes you to some unconventional spaces, and you've played spots like old Victorian bandstands with your other group. How does playing an atypical venue change the experience for you, and for the audience?
With the Clientele it was a Victorian bandstand on a January day, the
wind strafing our poor frozen fingers. But I love that kind of thing.
Variety is the spice of life and all that. And we have friends to
suffer with us this time!
What's next for both sides of the Al MacLean Experience -- the Clientele and Amor de Dias?
With Amor de Dias we've been working on some longer, more experimental
pieces. Kind of improvised John Fahey-esque guitar things. And Lupe
has a great love for obscure disco records which will probably come to
the fore in some way. Oddly enough I can see us becoming a little more
lo-fi. But that might just be a passing fancy.
The Clientele is a difficult one. I think the most positive strategy
will be to try and save up songs here and there as the years go on,
count them up one by one until we have a really great body of work to
come back with. Something which almost writes itself.
THE other night I was lucky enough to catch a short, hypnotic set by Spain, the Los Angeles "slowcore" band that's now back together and starting to appear in low-key shows around town. (The last time I saw them they played at tiny but wonderful Origami Vinyl in Echo Park.)
In any case, the show itself was both completely gripping and without any surprising jolts: Mellow songs with a brooding shimmer, the ghost of country music evident in some of the chord changes, incisive guitar lines, and about evenly split between darkly romantic songs from the band's '90s heyday and new songs including "I'm Still Free," recently released as a single. (We were especially impressed with "I Lied" the band's last song, "Untitled #1," from its first album, though it made us wonder how much better the song would be if it had a real name.)
The Misread City is a longtime fan of this group -- here is some of what I've said before about this band, headed by Josh Haden -- so we were delighted to see that despite the poor showing of this barely publicized gig, one of the great arbiters of Southland music was rocking to the show in dark overcoat: Actor Jack Black.
Black, of course, is married to one of Haden's musical sisters -- they are all descended from great jazz bassist Charlie Haden -- so maybe this was family obligation. But somehow I don't think so.
Your humble blogger has far too good manners to approach a Hollywood celebrity who has strayed into a public place, but his appearance made us recall his peerless role in High Fidelity, one of the great rock music films ever made.
In this scene, Black's character Barry gives a clueless customer a brisk musical lesson, and continues on the record-shop owner played by John Cusack. As you can tell from this clip, Black's taste is quite exacting: A major vote of confidence indeed for the band Spain.
One note: Silver Lake's The Satellite, where the show was held seems to be quite similar to Spaceland, the club it replaced. This is no complaint: The place falls into the if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it category. Long may it thrive, under whatever name.
THE graphic design genius of Cole Gerst struck me the first time I saw his indie-rock posters for Spaceland and the T-shirts he designs as Option-G: Birds, bears and other animals against a cool, retro-modernist background.
His work struck me as in the tradition of architect John Lautner and illustrator Charley Harper, with its mariage of nature and culture -- what architecture historian Alan Hess has called "organic modernism."
But his new work shows that marriage breaking down. The animals are still there, but in a much more perilous cityscape.
HERE is my piece on Gerst, and his new show at Ghettogloss Gallery, in today's LATimes.
AMONG Los Angeles' most intriguing -- and quietest -- bands are The Radar Brothers, an Eastside group dedicated to a blend of mellowness and tension. They were once associated with fellow "slowcore" or "psychedelic depression" bands Acetone and Spain.
The Bros.' new album, The Illustrated Garden, comes out on Merge next week. (I especially like the song "For the Birds.") They're currently in Austin, at South by Southwest; on Friday (March 26) they play Spaceland in LA. I'm a longtime fan, but was surprised at how strong their live show, at Largo, was last year, opening for Lambchop: They seemed powered by a new energy.
We spoke to head Bro, Jim Putnam.
So it’s an all-new Radar Bros.? What happened, and how has it changed the band and its sound?
we finished an album called "auditorium" in 2007(?) and the other members of the band decided to call it quits. i considered starting a whole new project, band whatever, but i thought the radar brothers should keep going as a new incarnation, atleast to support that record. things went very well with new members be hussey and stevie treichel, so we cranked out a new record, and here it is!
You’re often described as being a slow band. Is this fair, and it is part of your vision for the group?
no. it might be fair, but it's not part of any vision. we've been described as slow, same tempo etc., for years. i hear other bands doing the same thing, but not getting as much flak for it. i think if we were from butte montana, none of that would exist...
You went to Cal Arts in the ‘80s – wondering if there are any other art forms, whether painting, architecture, the short story, etc, that have a meaning for you as a musician?
yes!!! i paint and draw all the time. our new record's artwork was a concept i had where i wanted it to look like a mentally challenged high school student made it.
i love oil paint! can't use it, though. my house is full of dogs and cats and a turtle, wouldn't want to expose them to the toxicities...
To what extent does Southern California or LA shape what you play, how you hear and see the world?
very much. i grew up here, and there's a lot of certain subtleties about this place. it's unpredictable. suddenly there will be a new pho restaurant where the sushi restaurant was, next to the thai place that used to be a taco bell.
drive 100 miles in any direction, and you will be in a stunning place. perhaps the beach, or the desert, or the mountains or farmland.
or just hang out in your own backyard, and you will be visited by many different types of birds...
i always thought this place was normal, until my parents took me on a trip out to the east coast. i thought the east coast was strange. eventually i realized that l.a. was strange...
You’re very serious about the production of your records and have a locally famous production studio. What do you try for when you’re producing your own band, or others like, say, Let’s Go Sailing?
i just try to make it sound good, and interesting. expensive studios can sound bland. my studio sounds interesting, i think.
For people who haven’t seen you play in a few years, should they expect the upcoming Spaceland show to be different than Radar Bros. shows of yore?
it's an all new band(except for me), so it will sound different. i really like the way we sound now. it's pretty full and complex, i think.
How often you arrive at a club and kick yourself for having missed the opening band? Not bloody often I'll bet. But when I got to Spaceland on Saturday to find I'd arrived too late to see a rare (and barely announced) show by LA indie kings Spain, my heart sunk into the kind of melancholy the group conjures so well in song.
Spain, which is led by Josh Haden (son of legendary jazz bassist Charlie Haden, bro of Haden triplets) made two of the most ethereal, melodic, and -- here's a word I try not to overuse -- haunting LPs ever in the 1990s. Their second record, She Haunts My Dreams, may be my favorite breakup record (a genre in which I specialize.) Johnny Cash covered Haden "Spiritual" on Unchained, one of his American records.
But after one more LP and a best-of record, the band broke up, sort of, and has been dormant for a while. While I missed their spot opening for the Clientele, I was able to briefly meet Josh and the band's keyboardist, and to buy a two-song single -- "I'm Still Free" and "Hang Your Head Down Low" -- which is damned fine. The first song is especially affecting, and the second a bit too slow for me but packs one of their best-ever understated guitar solos.
I guess what I like most about the band, besides the genius of the songwriting, and the strong playing, the combination of tension and intimacy that led to their being described as a "slowcore" band back in the day, is its use of the Haden family's Missouri hill-country roots. That is, this is indie music with a twang that doesn't sound much like alt-country. (Ghost of a twang?) It's abstracted and oddly folky at the same time. (In this way, it resembles the early Ornette Coleman records Charlie played on, though it sounds nothing like them.)
Here is Josh Haden's blog, which includes Spain news as well as his thoughts on music, politics, and so on.
And here is the new Spain website. Keep your eyes on these if you don't want to make the same mistake I did. And watch The Misread City for more news on this heavenly band.
Followers of the UK indie scene have been aware or the chimey, reverb-drenched Clientele for several years now. The band's current tour, which brings them to LA’s Spaceland on Friday and Saturday night, could likely be their last.
Here is my LA Times piece on the band, which goes up Friday. I spoke to lead singer/guitarist Al MacLean about his early schooling in classical guitar, his fondness for LA bands like the Byrds and Love -- and his sense that The Clientele may have reached the limits of his vision for them.
The Clientele are more proof that the West Coast sound of the 1960s is often best mined by English and Scottish groups.
He sees several possibilities for the group, but adds: “What I don’t think we can do is a record like the five we’ve already done."
Weirdly, the collapse of the band could happen after one of their best records -- the hypnotic Bonfires on the Heath -- and their most serious tour. Either way, I'll be at Spaceland Friday. I caught them at the Knitting Factory the last time around, and MacLean's encore with the guitarist for Great Lakes was like seeing a jam session between Johnny Marr and Chuck Berry. Don't miss them.
