Concert Review: My Pet Dragon at the Cameo Gallery, Brooklyn NY 2/8/10

My Pet Dragon opened their February residency at the Cameo Gallery with a fiery yet trance-inducing show including a considerable amount of new material. From their first few notes, they went for sweeping, epic grandeur, part 90s British anthem band, part shoegaze and whichever way they turned, completely psychedelic. Frontman/guitarist Todd Michaelsen’s voice functions as an instrument in the band rather than a distinct lead vocal over instrumentation. He’s got a range that would make Thom Yorke jealous, and uses the entirety of that range with an unselfconscious intensity. Harmony vocalist/dancer Reena Shah would judiciously pick her spots to echo or play off Michaelsen’s soaring wail when she wasn’t moving around her corner of the stage with a grace that was as trance-inducing as the music. Lead guitarist Anthony Rizzo layered precise, reverberating raindrops of melody when he wasn’t making a sonic Jackson Pollock behind the atmospheric washes and roars of Michaelsen’s guitar. Several of the songs would riff off a hypnotic two-chord vamp until the chorus would sail in, bright and catchy, sweeping the clouds away.

They opened with an insistent, creepy, Radiohead-inflected new one, Michaelsen running the lyric “with a minute to go,” over and over, mantra-like. There’s a remarkable social awareness to their lyrics, which really came to the forefront on New Nation, a hopeful post-apocalyptic duet between Michaelsen and Shah. Another new one, Yellow Brick Road was a study in unease, Rizzo bringing just a hint of a bluesy tinge to the pensiveness underlying the song’s sturdy, anthemic theme. A couple of other recent tunes swung and swayed, buoyed by bassist Mario Padron, taking advantage of the opportunity to emerge from his usual insistent pulse with some potently incisive runs up the scale as the verses would turn around. Another more recent one added subtle shades and shadows to a four-chord hook that wouldn’t be out of place in the Brian Jonestown Massacre catalog. Their last song – one of three brand-new ones they debuted tonight – became a mesmerizing, swirling echo chamber with the two guitars roaring full blast, the two singers rising wordlessly out of the morass, part exaltation and part scream.

The opening band were like a good ipod mix of b-sides – they have excellent taste. The end of their set included a Nashville gothic ballad, a ska-rock number like early No Doubt but with an edge, a song that sounded like Wire and another like Blur (or like bands who’ve ripped off those two groups, whose sound these guys were now recycling). My Pet Dragon are back here on the 15th and then the 27th at 10.

The 100 Best Tracks of 2010, 100 Best Songs of 2010, 100 Best Cuts of 2010, Whatever You Want to Call This

It’s only February, folks – this page won’t be final til the last week of 2010 and by then it will be vastly different. In the meantime, consider this a work in progress - it’s just another way we spread the word about all the good music out there that the corporate media and their imitators in the blogosphere won’t touch because it’s too edgy, too much fun, or too intelligent. Right now there are just a few artists with a whole lot of songs here right now – that will change, and change many more times over the course of the year. Whenever possible, we link to each individual song, but because some of them are so new they haven’t been recorded or youtubed yet, that’s not possible. We endeavor to get titles right, but in the case of the unreleased stuff the artists may not have settled on definitive ones yet…so stay tuned, bookmark the page, come along for the ride and have some fun with us this year.

Because we’re a New York blog, this is a very New York-centric list – but we’re always looking for good stuff from anywhere in the world. If you know something good and underappreciated, we’d love to know about it. Hit the comment button at the bottom of the page and let us know what we’re missing and if it’s good enough to stick when we finalize this at the end of the year, we’ll give you credit! If you’re interested, here’s our Best Songs of 2009 list, our 50 Best Albums of 2009 list and our 200 Best Albums of the Decade list for the entire decade of the zeros.

Bands – since we update this constantly, there are always going to be new songs arriving and older songs falling off the list. If one of the songs that fell off was yours, we apologize and hope you’ll at least appreciate that we did give you some press here, at least for a little while. Please don’t be offended if we deleted one of your creations - we hear literally tens of thousands of new songs every year and if your song or songs end up being good enough to make our t0p 100 list, that means they must be pretty damn awesome – and if they don’t, that doesn’t mean they’re bad. If you wish, you are welcome to tell the world that we frontpaged your song on our 100 Best Songs of 2010 list even if it doesn’t make the final cut.

The last couple of years this list concentrated mostly on rock – this time around, we’re going to try to do a better job including other styles from jazz to classical to world music. Now here’s what we have so far this young year: as usual, we don’t make any attempt to rank these songs in any kind of order since that ultimately would be an exercise in futility.

1. Clare & the Reasons – Murder, They Want Murder

2.  Bad Reputation – Small Doll

3. Chicha Libre – Chaplin Theme

4.  Ninth House - The Fever

5.  Bobtown – We Will Bury You

6. The Snow – The Silent Parade

7.  Flugente – People Come from All Around

8.  Tall Tall Trees – Sallie Mae

9. Abaji – Menz Baba

10. Pal Shazar – People Talk

11. Chicha Libre – Rich Guy Theme

12. Devi - Tompkins Square

13. Bobtown – Short Life of Trouble

14. Bobtown – Black Dog

15. Ninth House – Funeral for Your Mind

16. Fishtank Ensemble – Espagnolette

17. Fishtank Ensemble – Shalaiman

18. Fishtank Ensemble – Chika Chika

19. Disclaimers – Tell Me What You Want

20. Disclaimers – Love in the Back Seat

21. Disclaimers – We’re the Disclaimers

22. Disclaimers – Stranger’s Land

23. Sound of the Blue Heart – It’s All Over Now Baby Blue

24. Sound of the Blue Heart – Never

25. Sound of the Blue Heart – The Arms of Yesterda

26. Sound of the Blue Heart – Once Stood Love

27. Sound of the Blue Heart – Violet’s Wish

28. Sound of the Blue Heart – Wind of Change

29. Sound of the Blue Heart – Run for Cover

30. Sound of the Blue Heart – The Spell

31. Paul Wallfisch/Peter Mavrogeorgis – Gimme Danger

32. Paul Wallfisch/Peter Mavrogeorgis – She Cried

33. Paul Wallfisch – Nature Girl

34. Paul Wallfisch – Hard to Cross

36. Elisa Flynn – Close Your Eyes

37. Elisa Flynn – Silver Rider

38. Greta Gertler – Honey Bee

39. Greta Gertler – Teacher

40. Greta Gertler – Darkening Skies

41. Greta Gertler – Swimming

42. Greta Gertler – Grasshoppers

43. Greg Garing – Happy Once Again

44. The One and Nines – Walked Alone

45. The One and Nines – Wait

46. The One and Nines – Something on Your Mind

47. The One and Nines – Just Your Fool

48. The One and Nines – Anything You Got

49. The One and Nines – Tears Fall

50. Flugente – Any Time Now

51. Flugente – Apeman

52. Flugente – Long Long Way from Home

53. Flugente – I Have Turned Down Gifts & Prizes

54. City Champs - Love Is a Losing Game

55.City Champs – The Safecracker

56. City Champs – Coming Home Baby

57. Cuban Cowboys - Senor Balaban

58. Cuban Cowboys – Dance with the Devil

59. Moona Luna - Jump

60. Pistolera – Todos se Cai

61. Bad Reputation – Princess and the Troubadour

62. Bad Reputation – Philistines

63. Bad Reputation – 95% of the Time

64. Bad Reputation – Don Juan

65. The Snow – Long and Strange

66. The Snow – Moral Debtor

67. The Snow – Handle Your Weapon

68. The Snow – Fool’s Gold

69. The Snow – I Fell In

70. The Snow – Reptile

71. The Snow – New Orbit

72. The Spy from Cairo – Nayphony

73. The Spy from Cairo – Leila

74. The Spy from Cairo – Jannaty

75. The Spy from Cairo – Kembe

76. The Spy from Cairo – Ala Shan

77. The Spy from Cairo – Saidi the Man

78. Gilzene & the Blue Light Mento Band – Gungu Walk

79. Gilzene & the Blue Light Mento Band – Ole Im Joe

80. Gilzene & the Blue Light Mento Band – Water Yu Garden

81.Tall Tall Trees – Walk of Shame

82. Tall Tall Trees – Chocolate Jesus

83. Dollshot – The Trees

84. Robin Aigner – Pearl Polly Adler

85. Robin Aigner- Annie & Irving

86. Liz Tormes - Read My Mind

87. Robin Aigner – See You Around

88. Robin Aigner – Found

89. Robin Aigner – Mediocre Busker

90. Robin Aigner – Get Me Home

91. Redhooker - Standing Still

92. Redhooker – Presence and Reflection

93. Redhooker – Friction

94. Redhooker – Black Light Poster Child

95. Redhooker – Trip and Fall

96. Brooklyn Rider – Achilles Heel

97. Brooklyn Rider – Cycles

98. Redhooker – Bedside

99. Robin Aigner – Great Molasses Flood

100. My Pet Dragon – Something Between Us

Song of the Day 2/9/10

The best 666 songs of alltime countdown continues every day, all the way to #1. Tuesday’s song is #170:

The Jam – Mr. Clean

“And if I get the chance I’ll fuck up your life, Mr. Clean,” Paul Weller snarls. One of the great anti-yuppie diatribes ever; sweet Bruce Foxton bass groove too. From All Mod Cons, 1978; Foxton and drummer Rick Buckler continue to play this one live in their From the Jam project.

CD Review: Shatter the Hotel – A Dub Inspired Tribute to Joe Strummer

If you’re a musician, you’ve got to be very careful if you want to cover an iconic band like the Clash. The obvious question is, why bother, since virtually all of the songs are impossible to improve on. Pretty much the only way to approach material like this is to either redo it with a completely different feel…or do it in a rub-a-dub style, mon. The new Shatter the Hotel compilation is yet further proof that just about everything sounds good if you play it as reggae. Yet it’s only logical that this album would happen eventually: the Clash were competent reggae musicians themselves, inspired equally by the music and the roots esthetic. This album is charity effort whose proceeds benefit Strummerville, set up by the Strummer estate to benefit young musicians. It’s an intoxicatingly psychedelic, smartly original dubwise collection of reinterpretations of a whole bunch of classics – Clash fans will love most of this, as will fans of oldschool conscious reggae as well.

The single most imaginative cut here is Infantry Rockers’ transformation of Rebel Waltz, a head-spinning, surf-inflected mix that takes the song straight 4/4 – in its own way, it’s as good as the original. Dubmatix‘ version of London Calling, which kicks it off, features both longtime Clash collaborator/dj Don Letts along with Dan Donovan. It’s more of a reggae-rock effort that sticks pretty close to the source except for a little toasting after the second verse (best not to try to upstage Joe Strummer when it comes to lyrics). Dub Antenna take White Riot and completely flip it, turning it into a slow groove (where you can actually understand the lyrics, which are great!). By contrast, Creation Rockers keep it short and sweet with Four Horsemen, clocking in at just under three minutes, although they take Complete Control in a completely opposite direction with equally successful  results. Nate Wize mixes equal parts electro and vintage dub on Rock the Casbah and vastly improves it – when’s the last time you heard a Clash cover that’s actually better than the original? John Brown’s Body prove themselves to be the perfect band to cover Bankrobber, adding their trademark, slippery keyboards-and-horns sound.

The deepest, bassiest dub here is Wrongtom Meets Rockers’ hydroponic instrumental of Lost in the Supermarket. DubCats do Rudie Can’t Fail in a modern, techie Jamdown pop style, while Citizen Sound’s take on One More Time starts out without adding anything til the dub effects start to kick in. O’Luge and Kornerstone’s straight-ahead roots treatment of Spanish Bombs reminds what a great song it is under any circumstance, and Danny Michel’s cover of Straight to Hell is a real eye-opener, accenting the tune’s underlying Celtic edge. The only real miss here is the cover of Know Your Rights which adds nothing to the original, which was nothing special anyway – the Clash were running on fumes by that point.

Song of the Day 2/8/10

The best 666 songs of alltime countdown continues every day, all the way to #1. Monday’s song is #171:

Young Marble Giants – Salad Days

Just so you know, we deleted Romans by the Church to make room for this one. It’s the catchiest cut on the influential postpunk band’s 1980 debut Colossal Youth, a spiky lo-fi gem with eerie deadpan vocals from frontwoman Alison Statton. The link above is a considerably ironic, dodgy live clip from a 2008 reunion show in Barcelona.

Concert Review: Miori Sugiyama Plays Chopin at Bargemusic, Brooklyn NY 2/6/10

A fresh, vigorous, potently counterintuitive interpretation of iconic Chopin works for solo piano. Miori Sugiyama’s formidable technique is matched by an equally fine-tuned emotional intelligence- she gets this music – and a hair-trigger detector for devices that might cross the line into cliche. Those she wanted nothing to do with. No disrespect to Chopin, but Romantic piano music can be just as stylized as any other genre and there are places where it’s hardly difficult to figure out what he wrote to pay the bills, and what came straight from the heart. Sugiyama wasted no time in going for authenticity of emotion. From a contemporary perspective, it wouldn’t be completely accurate to describe how she tackled the program as radical – no electronics or rock band were involved – but sixty years ago it would have been. When a familiar trope loomed, she’d get a running start and go sailing over it, sidestep it with a jump or a quick turn or simply trample it in a stampede to get to the good stuff. It was as effective a performance as it was personal and individual.

The Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 23 benefited vastly from a strikingly rubato approach: Sugiyama didn’t let the courtly waltziness of much of it fake her out a bit, uncovering every raw, resonant tonality she could find. A pair of nocturnes (F Sharp Minor, Op. 15, No. 2 and C Sharp, Op. 27, No. 2) gave her less of an opportunity to mine for that kind of treasure: in her hands, they glimmered comfortably but not complacently. By contrast, the Scherzo No. 1 in B Minor, Op. 20 was a breathtaking showcase for a lightning sostenuto attack, rushing rapids punctuated by pregnant pauses, if ever so brief before the torrents returned. Ironically, the one piece that might have benefited from a straight-up reading instead of an attempt to find its inner menschkeit was the Scherzo No. 2 in B Flat Minor, Op. 31, a staple of classical radio for decades whose martial theme stops just short of bombast (with that one, the temptation is to ham it up Victor Borge style). Sugiyama wound up the program with an inspired, fluid precision that defied another kind of serious rocking as river waves got the barge swaying, definitely not in time with the music. The Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise in E Flat, Op. 22, more of a real nocturne than anything else on the bill, was given the chance to build gracefully. Sugiyama then blasted through a minuet passage, got it out of the way and brought the intensity to redline with molten-metal glissandos leading inexorably to a fiery conclusion.

Miori Sugiyama is also playing the big upcoming Chopin marathon at the World Financial Center, March 1-5: watch this space.

Song of the Day 2/7/10

The best 666 songs of alltime countdown continues every day, all the way to #1. Sunday’s song is #172:

The Clash – Gates of the West

English punk apprehensively sets out for America, knowing that it’s a long way, literally and figuratively, “from Camden Town Station to 44th and 8th…stealing cross the shadows, will I see you again?” Joe Strummer wants to know. The searing layers of Strummer and Jones’ guitars are exquisite. Originally issued as a bonus single packaged with the first American release of the Clash’s first album, it’s on a bunch of digital compilations as well.

Concert Review: The Chiara String Quartet Play Beethoven in NYC 2/5/10

The Chiara String Quartet are winding up their Beethoven cycle this year. Maybe it’s all the practice, or that they play a lot of concerts in more sonically challenging places like bars and rock clubs, but either way their mastery of the material is such that they can command the subtlest dynamics, some of which when even gently applied make an enormous difference in the music. Not only was their show Friday night a clinic in how to locate the gems tucked away in the corners of a piece and then shine them up so everybody knows they’re there, it was just as much an emotionally charged overview of Beethoven’s career. In the spacious confines of Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church (tucked into the back of the Lincoln Center complex, home to the Jupiter Symphony players), the Chiara Quartet took the audience along for a vivid ride from Beethoven’s first string quartet through one of his last.

The String Quartet in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3, actually the first that Beethoven ever wrote, dates from the end of the 1700s and really needed all those dynamics. It must be a lot more fun to play than it actually is to listen to: all those endless volleys of call-and-response get tedious after a couple of minutes. How to draw in a 21st century audience far more sophisticated (and probably far larger) than the small circle of courtesans who heard it first? Accentuate its occasional astringencies, its atonalities and proto-modernisms, because there are a bunch of them (Brahms’ more stodgy chamber works are the same way). Perhaps Beethoven craftily wove them in to see how closely everybody was paying attention.

He wrote the String Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3 in 1808: what a difference ten years made. From the first few tricky syncopations of the opening movement, it was clear that the paradigm had been shifted, and as a result the quartet could ease back and let the piece speak more for itself. The second movement was a feast of little pleasures – a neat pianissimo climb to Vivaldiesque insistence; a clever, artfully orchestrated series of riffs making the rounds, violinist Rebecca Fischer passing off to her counterpart Julie Yoon, to violist Jonah Sirota and cellist Gregory Beaver, who would soon afterward deliver several snappy, intense pizzicato passages including a potently plucked bass solo to end it.

The piece de resistance was the A Minor, Op. 132, one of the late quartets from just two years before Beethoven’s death. It has reputation for transcendence and was precisely that. Yoon held wary and unwavering early on while the other voices conversed around her; Sirota led them into wintry terrain, viola and cello adding a gravitas mostly absent from the rest of the program. The highlight was the third movement, written after the composer had recovered from what he’d thought was the illness that would finally kill him, and in this ensemble’s hands it took on the raptly hymnal, plaintive tone of a giant, haunting accordion chord and successive permutations – minimalism, 1825 style.

The Chiara String Quartet are here tomorrow, 2/7 playing the same program at 4 PM at Union Church of Bay Ridge, 8101 Ridge Blvd. and 80th St. in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; they’re back on 4/26 at Symphony Space for the Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival.

Song of the Day 2/6/10

The best 666 songs of alltime countdown continues every day, all the way to #1. Saturday’s song is #173:

Bowdoin Rocks – Waiting for the Breakdown

While students at Bowdoin College, bassist/singer Wendi Mitchell and keyboardist Alan Walker (later of the Brilliant Mistakes) recorded a lo-fi demo of this haunting, artsy pop gem. Years later, Walker’s ex-bandmate George Reisch of Luxotone Records would add some badly needed guitar and suddenly an underground classic was born. The link in the title above is the stream at radio luxotone.

Concert Review: Gyan Riley and Chicha Libre at the New York Guitar Festival 2/4/10

Last night’s theme was film scores. The New York Guitar Festival is more avant garde than rock (WNYC’s John Schaefer emceed) – this particular Merkin Hall bill started out intensely and virtuosically with a rare artist who’s every bit as good as his famous father (Gyan Riley is the son of avant titan Terry Riley), then got more mainstream with an emotionally rich, frequently very amusing pair of Chaplin soundtracks just completed by Chicha Libre.

Composers have been doing new scores for old silent films for decades (some of the most intriguing recent ones include Phillip Johnston’s improvisations for Page of Madness, and the Trakwerx soundtracks for Tarzan and a delicious DVD of Melies shorts). Riley chose to add sound to a series of brief paint-on-celluloid creations by Harry Smith (yup, the anthology guy), which came across as primitive if technically innovative stoner psychedelia. Ostensibly Smith’s soundtrack of choice had been Dizzie Gillespie; later, his wife suggested the Beatles. Playing solo, Riley opened with his best piece of the night, an unabashedly anguished, reverb-drenched tableau built on vivid Steve Ulrich-esque chromatics. From there, Riley impressed with a diverse mix of ambient Frippertronic-style sonics along with some searing bluesy rock crescendos evoking both Jeff Beck aggression and towering David Gilmour angst. Most of the time, Riley would be looping his licks with split-second precision so they’d echo somewhere in the background while he’d be adding yet another texture or harmony, often bending notes Jim Campilongo style with his fretboard rather than with his fingers or a whammy bar.

With their psychedelic Peruvian cumbias, Chicha Libre might seem the least likely fit for a Chaplin film. But like its closest relative, surf music, chicha (the intoxicating early 70s Peruvian blend of latin, surf and 60s American psychedelia) can be silly one moment, poignant and even haunting the next. Olivier Conan, the band’s frontman and cuatro player remarked pointedly before the show how much Chaplin’s populism echoed in their music, a point that resonated powerfully throughout the two fascinating suites they’d written for Payday (1922) and The Idle Class (1921). The Payday score was the more diverse of the two, a series of reverberating, infectiously catchy miniatures in the same vein as Manfred Hubler’s Vampyros Lesbos soundtrack as well as the woozily careening Electric Prunes classic Mass in F Minor. While Chicha Libre’s lead instrument is Josh Camp’s eerie, vintage Hohner Electrovox organ, as befits a guitar festival, Telecaster player Vincent Douglas got several extended solo passages to show off his command of just about every twangy noir guitar style ever invented, from spaghetti western to New York soundtrack noir to southwestern gothic. When the time came, Camp was there with his typical swirling attack, often using a wah pedal for even more of a psychedelic effect. The band followed the film to a split-second with the occasional crash from the percussionists, right through the triumphant conclusion where Chaplin manages to sidestep his suspicious wife with her ever-present rolling pin and escape with at least a little of what he’d earned on a hilariously slapstick construction site.

The Idle Class, a similarly redemptive film, was given two alternating themes, the first being the most traditionally cinematic of the night, the second eerily bouncing from minor to major and back again with echoes of the Simpsons theme (which the show’s producers just hired Chicha Libre to record last month for the cartoon’s 25th anniversary episode). Chaplin plays the roles of both the rich guy (happy movie theme) and the tramp (spooky minor) in the film, and since there’s less bouncing from set to set in this one the band got the chance to vamp out and judiciously add or subtract an idea or texture or two for a few minutes at a clip and the result was mesmerizing. It was also very funny when it had to be. Bits and pieces of vaguely familiar tunes flashed across the screen: a schlocky pop song from the 80s; a classical theme (Ravel?); finally, an earlier Chicha Libre original (a reworking of a Vivaldi theme, actually), Primavera en la Selva. They built it up triumphantly at the end to wind up in a blaze of shimmering, clanging psychedelic glory where Chaplin’s tramp finally gets to give the rich guy’s sinisterly hulking father a swift kick in the pants. The crowd of what seemed older, jaded new-music types roared their approval: the buzz was still in the air as they exited. Chicha may be dance music (and stoner music), but Chicha Libre definitely have a future in film scores if they want it.