I was speaking to a gentleman about going to see Cake and he expressed some dismay that Cake was still together and that they were still big enough to sell out a major venue like the Palace in Waterbury. The truth is that 14 years since their last platinum selling album, Cake is still stronger than ever.
Their odd mixture of rockabilly, hip hop, country, and funk captured a certain novelty in the 90s and early aughts. But even as their record sales declined, their shows have still sold out consistently. Maybe it is part of a thriving 90s nostalgia that has made reissues of Nirvana’s Nevermind and Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream so popular. Or maybe it is because Cake is quirky enough to drag a quirky crowd out of the woodwork where ever they go.
Part of Cake’s quirk is their music, obviously, but their live show is equally quirky. For the past several years Cake has toured by themselves with no opening band. Billing it “An Evening with Cake,” the band plays two separate sets with an intermission in between. On this particular Wednesday night in Waterbury, the band began with “Sad Songs and Waltzes,” a cover of Willie Nelson. It was an odd and downtrodden beginning to the set but in a way that just speaks to the quirk of Cake.
The mood quickly turned around with a rousing version of “Opera Singer” followed by ten or so choice selections from Cake’s first four albums. Before going to intermission Cake performed the deadly sin of any band past their prime: they played songs from their new album. They closed out the first set of the night with “The Winter” followed by “Sick of You.” Although they did manage to get people on their feet for some crowd participation during “Sick of Me,” it still was a rocky ending.
The second set began with the giveaway of a tree. Not just a “who wants a tree?” but lead singer John McCrea asked the crowd for Algonquin name for Waterbury and its meaning. Whoever got the question correct got the tree. After calling on nary six people, finally he found a woman who knew the answer. She was given the tree and sworn to promise to send pictures of her and the tree for at least the next 30 years.
After this spectacle the band formally started the second set with another cover. This time of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” which has been a staple of Cake’s live shows for the past 5+ years. But after the hoopla of “War Pigs” followed by “Stick Shifts and Safety Belts,” the band picked up where the first set left off. Playing back to back tracks from Showroom of Compassion, many of the crowd began to sit down for the first time. Perhaps sensing they were losing the crowd, they played fan favorite “Sheep Go to Heaven” before closing out the set with “Comanche” and “Never There.”
What struck me as odd is that fact that Cake took one intermission already and yet left the stage and spent a decent amount of time off the stage before coming back on for their encore. The encore was fairly standard containing the band’s two biggest hits “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” and “The Distance.” The only real surprise was “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps” sandwiched between the two hits.
Leaving the show, there was not any complaints heard from concert goers. Traditionally walking away from a show you hear at least one person waxing poetic that they wish the band played such and such song or “why did they play THAT song?” But there was not a negative word heard in my earshot. Maybe that means that Cake’s quirky crowd is overly positive? Or more likely it means Cake can do little wrong in the eye of their key constituents, the reason Cake can still sell out shows over a decade after their peak relevance.
MP3: Cake “War Pigs (Live)”

When Los Angeles-based rapper, Schoolboy Q released his sophomore album, Habits & Contradictions earlier this year, it was hailed as “half gangster, half left-field” by AMG. A good portion of that left-field-ness comes from the beat selection which moves from fat beats to the dark-and-brooding. Lyrically, Schoolboy Q is not necessarily a trailblazer. He mostly raps about drugs and women. While there is a certain insouciance in his lyrics, nothing really prepared me for the show I was to witness at Toad’s Place.
On a Wednesday night in Connecticut, a half-full Toad’s Place waited for Schoolboy Q to hit the stage. Rapper Ab-Soul had just finished up a brief 20 minute set and the crowd waited at least 20 minutes before Schoolboy Q hit the stage.
Once he hit the stage, I was surprised by Schoolboy Q. Clad in a bucket hat and oversized white tee-shirt, he looked more like a beach bum than a rapper. His stage presence was more similar to a hypeman than a rapper. He was jumping around, not finishing his lines and holding the microphone out to the crowd to have them rap along. While this tactic works for bigger singles like “Hands on the Wheel,” for deeper album cuts the response from the crowd was minimal but that did not deter Schoolboy Q from trying.
Once he broke into tracks from earlier albums he actually picked the two fans out of the crowd who seemed to know the words to every song and had them on stage to rap with them. This is where it got weird to me. Instead of playing the drug dealer with a sense of humor, Schoolboy Q went straight court-jester. Schoolboy Q (who is no bean pole) referred to one of the fans only as “fat boy” and made some witless jokes about his weight. The other fan had glasses so Schoolboy referred to him as “Steve Urkel.”
For an artist who benefitted so greatly from the dark pathos of his album, this type of persiflage in a live performance only stood to distract from the music. I do not have a problem with a little in-between song banter but straight mockery is a little much.

In 2004 when Say Anything released their first widely distributed album, …Is a Real Boy, it was a revolution to me. I was largely over emo but Say Anything mixed emo pathos with influences of math rock and punk to create something that was emotional but far from wussy. Since that time the band has released five albums but none have recreated …Is a Real Boy or its follow up, …Was a Real Boy‘s success in my mind. Over the last 8 years, lead singer Max Bemis has gone through personal changes like being institutionalized and getting married. Through this Bemis has emerged a more well-adjusted yet equally eccentric person as when he first started. The thing that is missing from Say Anything’s latest work from their early work is Bemis’ anger which he admits as much on stage.
When Max Bemis and company emerged from back stage on this Monday night in Hartford a fairly filled Webster Theatre greeted them with hefty applause. The crowd was a mixture of high school students whose parents allowed them out late on a Monday night and tatooed and pierced college kids. The crowd generally made your 27-year-old writer feel old but most shows in Hartford do.
The feeling of being the oldest man there quickly dissipated as the band jumped right in to “Spider Song” magically transporting me to 2004 when I first saw Say Anything at the Webster when they were playing a sparsely attended concert in the small Webster Underground rather than the Theatre. To my surprise, the crowd seemed to know every word of the song. Bemis strutted upon the stage like a mini-Mick Jagger taking time to hold the microphone out to the crowd to sing along. His motions on stage were a combination of moves from Madonna‘s “Vogue” and Avril Lavigne‘s “Sk8terboi” videos. Were the moves distracting? A little but moreso they just seemed emblematic of someone who looked incredibly uncomfortable and was trying to hide this fact behind a mask of cliche rockstar moves.
Although I was able to stick with the band through “Spider Song,” a track I was familiar with, as the set wore on the band lost me a little. As they played through tracks from their last three albums, Anarchy, My Dear, Say Anything, and In Defense of the Genre, I could feel my interest waning. For the crowd’s part, I will say they had much more interest than me. Even through slower songs like “So Good” and “Eloise,” the crowd stuck by and sung along.
I never strayed too far during the set as the band managed to sprinkle in classic from …Is a Real Boy and …Was a Real Boy like “Belt,” “Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too,” “Every Man Has a Molly,” and closing out the set with “Alive With the Glory of Love.” The band even came out for an encore of “Admit It” from …Is a Real Boy followed by 2012′s Admit It Again, an oddly angry way to end the night.
Throughout the show Bemis commented on how this was one of the best nights on tour with the raucous Hartford crowd but he could have been blowing hot air. Even I was impressed with the crowd, they knew the lyrics, they shouted them out, they danced (as best you can to odd time changes), and they got sweated: all hallmarks of a great show. For my discerning ears, the show was a little better than I had expected from a band I had lost touch with for the past half-decade or so but it largely reaffirmed why I had lost touch with them. Say Anything last few albums have just not packed the same punch of their earlier work for me. Who knows if it is I have changed or them but I fear I felt old at the show because I am now longer their main demographic.

I fall in love with a new band with the same frequency some women fall in love with a new pair of shoes in the shop window. Unfortunately, these romances start out with the intensity of a ball afire, but then quickly burn themselves out. Shovels and Rope has proven something of an exception. From the first awkward encounter looking up David Dondero videos on Youtube, through the courtship stages of their self titled LP, to our whirlwind first date at the World Café in Philadelphia, I have remained enraptured.
Let me tell you a little bit about my new love. Continue reading →

Kentucky-based band, Sleeper Agent released a woefully underrated debut album, Celabrasion, last year. Their sloppily crafted blend of Mates of State male/female vocals with Strokes meet The Thermals garage/punk fuzz sounded great on record but I wondered how it would sound live. There is always a chance that it would get more sloppy and end up a mess, especially when more than one vocalist is involved.
Before I get into the performance itself, I should set the scene. In the basement of oldest public art museum in the United States, there is an auditorium with fourteen rows of movie theatre-style seating. In said auditorium on this warm Tuesday night in March was scheduled Sleeper Agent to open for Ben Kweller. Getting to the show at a respectable time, I was shocked to see a miss-matched crowd of business men who seemed to have just gotten out of work but managed to ditch their ties and blazers and standard Brooklyn-by-way-of-Connecticut hipsters. Everyone seemed to be sipping red wine out of plastic cups. Over the PA blasted the new Springsteen record and in between songs was complete silence. To enhance this point, after one song one of the hipsters shushed the crowd loudly which drew a few chuckles but mostly everyone just obeyed. Needless to say, when Sleeper Agent finally stepped on stage it was not an environment that they had probably ever encountered before: a semi-full room of seated and absolutely silent people. Not exactly a scene conducive to rocking, but Sleeper Agent really did their damnedest to try and squeeze some life out of the crowd.
Having only one album to draw from, the band played an eleven song set meaning they only left one album cut unplayed. In that set they played a rip roaring versions of the album’s opening track and first single, “Get It Daddy” but oddly followed it up with the album’s slowest tune “That’s My Baby.” While “That’s My Baby” is a pretty, well-crafted pop song, it sucked a lot of the energy out of the generally energy-less room. Any bobbing heads that “Get It Daddy” caused immediately went still. They followed “That’s My Baby” with a story about how the band will be musical guests on Jimmy Fallon later in the week. Guests on the show will include Fergie, for which the band showed their discontent, and wacky reptiles, which they seemed slightly more excited for. The entire story was to introduce their current single “Get Burned.” The track did not quite get people’s heads bobbing quite as much as “Get It Daddy.” After the track the band did the standard rock star move of tepidly starting the next song while saying “we have a few more songs for you.” That ushered in the album’s closing track “Far and Wide,” another snoozer before closing out the set with the uptempo rocker “Be My Monster.”
The up-and-down close to the set did not do the band any favors in the crowd’s eyes. I did not get the impression that the crowd hated the band but no one seemed overly enthusiastic. When the set was over, there was a smattering of applause but no standing ovations just people standing to go get their wine cups refilled at the concession stands.

Despite the wintry defeat at the battle of Union Transfer by them Heartless Bastards last week, hope lives on. And I must apologize in advance if I immortalize The Walkmen, but they left very little to be desired from live music.
I know what you’re thinking: “Big deal, Surviving the Golden Age is gonna hype The Walkmen, again.” You would be right, we are going to hype the Walkmen, and yes, again, because The Walkmen just might be the best working band in America. Say what you will, ye hipsters of little patience and great taste. Their albums do tend to run long, and yes their ratio of rocking to thinking is heavy on the thought side. There might be some mote of pretension in the group’s insistence on using period instruments to fill out the dynamics of a track. Though thine arms might cross, and thoughts turn towards calculation of orchestrated manipulation of emotion, all while gazing shoe-ward, verily, I say unto you, raise your eyes, see and hear and think for yourself on this one.
While most bands with a dozen albums or more are content to allow lesser tribes to attack first, The Walkmen forewent any contrivances and cut to the quick. Like some grizzled biker behind the bar in a Texan honky-tonk, they delivered straight, without benefit of chaser or ceremony, three straight hours of music. It’s important to keep in mind though, this is a tenth anniversary celebration, and like that rich uncle you never see they’re giving us the gift.
The progression of any show one sees live (or most albums for that matter) generally uses the same principals Mr. Spector set out decades ago. Arrest attention with the wall of sound until the emotion builds to the point of hysteria, then pull back, issue the break down, utilizing a slow, thoughtful song to rejuvenate the audience before thrusting them right back into frenzy. Building to crescendo, relenting and building again creates the sonic equivalent of waves breaking against shore. It’s well understood and a well used practice, another trick hidden up the deep sleeves of any group who’s been in the music industry long enough to begin anticipating retirement.
But not The Walkman, they would rather turn the equation on its head. They began slowly, monotonously after Mr. Leithauser walked onto stage as if at an open mic night, then segued without comment or foreshadowing into the fury that is “The Rat.” But it wasn’t to be a night of rage, because it was followed again by an atmosphere number, “What’s in it for Me?” before building tempo again.
The audience was split. We didn’t know what to think; slow, fast, slow fast, with no precedent or precursor, ripping at the very fabric of our expectations. They introduce the horn section, brought out especially to compliment the music on their least popular but perhaps best record, You & Me.
To watch them on stage, the organist lost to a universe of melody, the guitarist with his classically bad mustache sincere and intent on a rhythm heavy enough to crush the room, while Mr. Leithauser screws his eyes up into the balcony singing to bring down the rafters. A look of torment flitting across harrowed eyes, until you spy Mr. Barrick behind all on the skins, with the biggest shit eating grin on his face. He’s easily the most talented–if not the most energetic of the caste–and while he plays, one gains the perspective that despite a background position, he takes the greatest joy from the pure act of making music.
I could go on and on about the flagged emotions during the intermission, about the crowd being much cooler than one should reasonably expect, about an invitation to Reykjavik from a traveler who was much more interested in The Walkmen than America, about a fist fight with a member of the opposite sex, about losing my voice from singing along and pogoing to faster numbers, about the fever sweat of commingling with the crushed hundreds at the foot of the stage, or I might just wrap it up thusly:
There is very little in this life that brings joy. There is very little to make you think while believing. There is little about music that one cannot reasonably roll their eyes at. There is very little to share with those unnamed faceless masses we interact with daily. But The Walkmen, my brother in arms, they subvert these things. The king is dead.
MP3: The Walkmen “The Rat”

Concerning the Heartless Bastards, I hadn’t been so excited to see a band play live since the Pixies reunion back in ought four, and at a brand new venue no less! But therein lies the problem with expectation, it sets very high standards. While I wasn’t expecting the Union Transfer to burn down, a street riot, or the over-throw of Russia I did expect a little bit of magic, something to send me reeling and singing the Bastard’s praises. Unfortunately, it just didn’t happen last night.
After the passable opening acts, David Therriault and Hacienda, Ms. Wennerstrom led her group onto the stage without much show or introduction, launching directly into favorites off of Mountain and Stairs and Elevators. Initial crowd reaction was subdued if not fully approving, but as the Bastards segued into tracks off of their latest release Arrow, there was a noticeable shift in audience response.
Arrow is by far the Bastard’s best work. The growth of their strength in recording combined with the experience of several years touring under-belt shines upon listening to the hard format. However, due to its recent release date it became apparent much of the crowd was not yet familiar with the record, and so response and even attention began to wane.
I’m not entirely sure if this lack of reaction influenced the Bastard’s on stage any, but it was fairly obvious from Ms. Wennerstrom’s lack of stage presence and general refusal to interact with the audience at all that the Bastards weren’t motivated to play any more heartfelt or energetically as the set bore on. While towards the close, some hour and a half later, they did revert back to a better known track or two, the experience was irrevocably dampened.
I’m not saying the performance was not enjoyable; it was to a point. Ms. Wennerstrom’s vocals were as luxuriant as ever, the songs were nearly as rocking live as they are recorded, and the band could not have possibly benefited any more by the venue. The Union Transfer is the newest concert hall in Philadelphia, complete with dark wood bars, advantageous viewing balconies, and acoustics I can only describe as pretty bad-ass. So the stage was literally set for a massively successful performance. It just wasn’t delivered.
I do not want to blame the so-so show on the Heartless Bastards, but I can not shove the responsibility onto the crowd either. I think their performance could serve as a relevant reminder to any touring group. I understand the intention to showcase new material while putting to bed songs that have been played hundreds and hundreds of times, but musicians should be equally wary to entertain with tried and true favorites, or else wait an appropriate period for new material to become known, lest they lose the fickle attention of the flannel clad rock audience.

Just in case you were entertaining any doubts, here’s a little more proof there’s no justice in this life: Less Than Jake filled the Trocadero to near capacity. I don’t know what it is about these guys, but they throw a wide net and have managed to pull in a large audience for the last twenty years. What makes it even more mind boggling is their poor work ethic and generally mediocre sound. That last little fact I give you, the one about them being a band for over twenty years is a direct reference from the band, because they said it about a dozen times last night during the set. It was a really odd performance, and I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it because the band would play a song, maybe two but never more than three in a row before they would take a good five or ten minutes to verbally dither. I found myself screaming from the audience, time and again, “Shut the fuck up and play some music!” But it seemed I was the only one disturbed by this.
To Less Than Jake’s credit, they played a two hour set, but at the same time you would think a band with twenty years experience would have plenty of material to choose from and not resort to the working musician’s trick of blathering to fill up the time.
I personally thought the entire show was filler, even the pit seemed more like a ritual than a thrashing expression of frustration. So, I took advantage of this time to talk to the audience about what it was they saw in Less Than Jake. I was open and honest about not really caring for the music, and got a lot of laughs when relating I only covered it in the first place because I thought they were Jimmy Eat World.
Philly native Ben Bergin even agreed with me that LTJ wasn’t a good band, attributing their success to a pure inability to sink into the obscurium they so rightly deserve. Bergin said he had heard them at house parties when he was in high school (a time when most everybody gets into regrettable types of music) and just sort of stayed with them for the past ten years. He went on to say they became a part of his life. He had seen them about a dozen times, got a tattoo of one of their logos on his leg, and goes to their shows whenever they’re in town.
I was a little humbled by this. So what the pop/ska format’s been dead for years? So what their lyrics are bland and song structures predictable? So what they kind of loiter on stage chit chatting between three minute, three chord pseudo-anthems? So what? The music industry’s a cold and miserable cut-throat institution built on generations of crushed dreams and wasted ambition. A little part of me can not but be happy for a band, even a crappy band like Less Thank Jake that gives crappy shows, has a loyal, happy following. Good on ya Less Than Jake, best of luck to you.

What is it about Jeff Mangum that has made so many seemingly normal, middle class white people go absolute ape-shit? To the vast majority of people, Mr. Mangum, his magnum opus, or this review won’t make two licks of difference, but to a ribbon thin slice of the population, the 38 minutes and 34 seconds of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea has created hysteria. In due order, I will supply a short history for the uninitiated.
In early 1998, homely, august Athens native, Jeff Mangum designs a concept album focused on Ann Frank. The mythology begins here: some say he locked himself in a closet with only a plastic gallon jug of water and a copy of the Ann Frank diary, emerging a week later with a masterpiece. Others say he disappeared into the woods of Colorado with a lethal supply of amphetamines and hallucinatory substances (and a copy of the diary) appearing out of the frontier and into the studio several weeks later to record the album in a handful of takes. The exact process is unknown, and neither will Mr. Mangum clarify. What is known, is that In the Aeroplane Over the Sea has become one of the most intensely loved records to ever be produced, anywhere, ever.
Although the album did not initially sell well, within a couple years of its release, the few who originally did celebrate the album thankfully disseminated the crushing weight of Neutral Milk Hotel to their friends, who in turn to their friends, etc, etc, until it seemed the time was ripe for Mr. Mangum and his revolving door of band-mates to punch through into the mainstream. So what was the response from Mr. Mangum? He quietly withdrew from public eye and quit playing music!
The myths propagate themselves for years. Everyone said he was crazy, he’d been committed, everyone said he couldn’t handle the pressure of fame, everyone said he was dead. Thing is, no one knew anything. There was nothing to be said on the internet, and so word of mouth, the way you found out about the album anyway, was your direct source of information. The rationale alone was frustrating, how does a person compose an album of such magnitude without responding to the acclaim it generated? These tactics inspired something of indignation in fans, because, you see, there are no casual fans. There are those who’ve never heard of Neutral Milk Hotel and then there are those who have spent an appreciable amount of time obsessed.
If you wanted to find out anything, there was only one way do it. You had to make a pilgrimage down to Georgia and seek for yourself. So the years passed until, for no discernible reason at all, Mr. Mangum appears at an impromptu Occupy concert. But that’s not all, after a decade of pure unbroken silence, he declares he’s going to start touring again.
You can only imagine the response. Tickets sell out in record time, like 12 minutes record time, and this humble reporter had to charm, harass, and ultimately coerce venue reps in three different cities to finally score tickets at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for an add on show in response to over-whelming demand. (And an inside scoop to those of you who are despairing over not being able to get tickets in your city, I imagine these add on shows will be par for the course, so keep your ears to the ground.)
BAM is a venue not to be taken lightly. It’s essentially an opera house, and demands the respect of elevated art. In the Louvre I once made the mistake of physically touching a three thousand year old fresco and received the harshest open faced, spittle flying scream from a curator. I experienced something similar at BAM trying to exit the will-call line in the wrong direction. From there I got lost in the museum quality architecture of the ante room. Speaking with other concert goers I met a wonderful couple who had flown from Australia expressly for the show, and a trio of Bohemian artists from Fond-de-Lac Wisconsin who had hitch-hiked in winter just to get there.
As you may now grasp the gravity of the event, I feel no shame in telling you I don’t go to whorehouses for the piano playing, or a Mangum show for the opening act. Somebody played, I’m not sure who, but it isn’t important and I will waste no time covering it.
When I finally did enter the theatre, it felt like something out of a dream. It contained arched balconies, terra cotta minutia, and a dripping opulence as if Gaudi had designed the interior to an onion domed Russian Orthodox Church. The pin point acoustics allowed you to over-hear the very whispers of the balcony seats, and as the lights dimmed a portly poet appeared onstage to beg for a place to spend the night before reading a poem to introduce Mr. Mangum.
He enters stage left to a standing ovation. The excitement becomes so thick it could be cut from the air as he sits down on a simple wooden chair flanked by several guitars. He strikes a single strum and the audience can no longer contain themselves, they applaud to shake the foundation as Mr. Mangum enters quixotically, “Two Headed Boy, part II,” the last song of the album, a track which tellingly ends with the scratch of a similar chair being pushed back, and the musician walking out of the room, leaving us to the sound of a door closing.
There was a split in the audience, there was those who didn’t want to ruin the experience and so sat silently, almost hypnotically through the song, and then there were those like me who sang every goddamn word right back at Mr. Mangum as if it were a duet.
In the silence between songs I overheard someone ask, “He’s not going to leave is he?” But that question was answered without word or introduction when he careened head-long into “Holland 1945,” perhaps the most violent and striking, if not the most intense of his works. Nonsense lyrics are nonsense lyrics, but Jeff Mangum has the unique ability to melt the world around his, something akin to a burning cube of sugar dropped into a tippler of Absinthe when he sings,
“The only girl I’ve ever loved
Was born with roses in her eyes
But then they buried her alive
One evening 1945
With just her sister at her side
And only weeks before the guns
All came and rained on everyone
Now she’s a little boy in Spain
Playing pianos filled with flames
On empty rings around the sun
All sing to say my dream has come”
And he was as ugly as I ever imagined him to be, dressed in Joe Everyman clothes, Andy Cap cap, a face hidden behind stringy dark hair, nervous compulsive foot taping, his sleeves rolled up to better attack the droning, predictable down strum over which he built himself an empire. The audience, we couldn’t help but love it, love to have seen it, to sink into a moment that affirmed all those years we wasted on an almost religious conviction to listening to Aeroplane Over the Sea. And when he arrived at “Oh Comely,” accompanied by a saw player and a bronze cast of horn character, French and trumpet, he encouraged us to sing along, openly calling for a chorus over which to carry this psychedelic tragedy,
“Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies,
While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park.
Thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums,
The music and medicine you needed for comforting.
So make all your fat fleshy fingers to moving,
And pluck all your silly strings, bend all your notes for me.
Soft silly music is meaningful magical,
The movements were beautiful, all in your ovaries.
All of them milking with green fleshy flowers,
While powerful pistons were sugary sweet machines.
Smelling of semen all under the garden
Was all you were needing when you still believed in me.”
A young man several rows down from me began weeping openly during the crescendo, and when the song tapered off into Magnum’s familiar self-conscious off pitch cackle, the audience couldn’t bear but jump from their seats in magnanimous applause.
When they had calmed Mangum worked his way through most of Aeroplane, touching on the better known tracks from “On Avery Island.” In typical fashion Mr. Mangum finished his set with “Two Headed Boy part I.” The twisting of parallels here is something that needs to be addressed, because he opened the show with the second portion, in fact the last song on the album, and then closed the show with the first portion of the song. Like all good mysteries, there are no answers here, just a whole lot of questions, and I think at the end of the day it was just another attempt by Jeff Mangum to shade in a little more the feverish hallucination that is his music.
The applause dies, and he pushes the chair out and walks off the stage, but it contained none of the finality of the album. Everyone knew there was a song left unsung, the title track, “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.” And so as the applause built, a stadium like clamor for an encore, he reappeared smiling sheepishly and delivered. Further comment about crowd reaction is unnecessary.
Writing to you at the distance of a day and several hundred miles from the show, I can’t help but feel a twinge of shame at how silly it all seems, the lengths we all went, Jeff Mangum and his refusal to play along to the demi-god musician status, the couple who literally crossed oceans for forty minutes of music, the young man weeping in public to some song that was likely written when he was in grade school about a young woman none of us will ever know who herself has been dead for seventy years… It’s too much, somewhere hidden deep within me I know it doesn’t mean anything and it makes me feel a little ashamed of myself, for buying in, for allowing myself to be seduced, but in the same moment I can’t help but chuckle to myself and think, “Fuck you, I sang a duet with Jeff Mangum!”
MP3: Neutral Milk Hotel “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”

Pete Doherty once quipped, “If you’ve lost your faith and love of music, the end won’t be long.” Truer lyrics were never written, and I confess that I come close from time to time of losing it, of flat out forsaking rock n roll. All these white dudes with guitars singing sad songs becomes too much after awhile, and like many people I get tired of analyzing the music I listen to. Wasn’t it supposed to be fun? Wasn’t rock n roll supposed to be edgy and dangerous, weren’t we supposed to dance and sing along, fall in love and fist fight to four/four time?
Musicians lose sight of this, and then, when you least expect it, a band comes onto the rock scene like a breath of fresh air blowing away the dust that’s collected and dragging you kicking and screaming into the pure sonic joy that is Rock and Roll.
Enter Howler. Much like Napoleon, this bright eyed Midwestern five piece is trying to conquer the world. They are touring everywhere. That’s right, everywhere. Their schedule is exhausting to even look at, for instance, in the next month they’re playing three continents. But I guess them’s the dues, and bless them for it because I had the good fortune to catch them at Piano’s in Manhattan.
Piano’s is about the size of the Anne Frank room, and last night it was populated with cross armed disinterested hipster types in expensive shoes. This was not lost on Howler. Between mocking the audience and insulting the other bands, they delivered the crashing, tight fisted singles from America Give Up, their debut album on Rough Trade.
Now, when playing to this sort of crowd, a lot of band’s performance tends to suffer. There exists an exchange between musicians and the audience, when the crowd’s excited the band feeds of the energy, but when the crowd’s subdued the performers can fall into this open mic night type of riff.
Not Howler. They turned the equation on its head, pulling in the audience and playing to spite the very lack of energy. With clever lyrics like “You like white girls/I like cigarettes,” sung over heavy, soft, heavy fuzz rock rhythm, it was hard not to like the band for poking fun at you. By the end of their short set, heads began nodding, and feet tapping, shaking them kids loose from their painful self awareness, seducing them into enjoying the shit out of rock n roll as they rightfully should.