Update: A little bit country.

Interview Andrew Bird from Editor I Amsterdam on Vimeo.

It's always a shame to get paid to work and realise you don't have any time to write for fun - but 'Say La V' as the Italians would say. This past week was a great week for music at Paradiso, not that I took in all of it but it's a sure sign that bands are wanting to tour this part of the world as the weather improves. This week we had Great Lake Swimmers, Shearwater and Easy Star Allstars all in one night, Andrew Bird, Phosphorescent and Laura Marling another.

Great Lake Swimmers were fantastic - the Canadians dressed in national costume of plaid shirts, beards and easy temperament. I don't know their latest album but have Ongaria and it was a delight to hear those songs - bred on Neil Young - played live not to mention "Concrete Heart" about 1950s-60s architecture in Toronto and its line - "like the tallest self-supporting tower - at least for a little while anyway" Oh the woes of a City's proud monument becoming eclipsed by something more impressive.

Shearwater I had heard about but nothing of. I had high hopes knowing the Okkervil River lineage. Nevertheless that dude is annoying, wailing about. We left halfway through - like Nick Hornby said 'never be afraid to walk out of a gig'. The music was interesting and the drummer, who looked like one of the film crew metal heads from Wayne's World - Terry I believe it was, was 80s awesome. But the rest didn't strike me none.

We lost our tickets to Beirut which was a complete shit considering it was sold out so we couldn't buy more. Mixed reviews from those that went from 'really great' to 'meh'. Later upstairs I got wind from Steven that Health were amazing. He couldn't stop going on about them. He also said Metric split the crowd.

Thursday night saw Andrew Bird and support. I had no idea who the supports were to be but was pleasantly surprised to discover it was Laura Marling and Phosphorescent.

Phosphorescent main man Matthew Houck looks something like the Spin Doctors guy but with a lonesome country glum. With recent album To Willy dedicated to Mr Nelson, there's tinges of folk, bluegrass and gospel not to mention some good ol' fashion honky tonk music. A delight. I'll be Glasgow later this month, sadly I miss them by 5 days, May 31 - Check them out at Captain's Rest.

Laura Marling, blessed with a maturity beyond her years, opened with debut single "ghosts" which is a little different from the rest of her songs, in a deeper melancholy drenched with English folk. Sterling stuff, 'cept for it being so delicate the Paradiso kind of overwhelmed her voice.

Andrew Bird is a scientist. Truly. He can predict the future via his multi-layered looping, putting down a guitar and picking up a violin, then a guitar sounds strums from nowhere. An invention behind him is some sort of pedal activated, double barrel grammaphone, whirly-gig. Dosh his drummer is equally brilliant.
He wanders in and out through improvised meanderings but I was thankful that he stuck to the script for "Plasticities". He had the sold out audience wrapped up and far more self-assured on stage than when I interviewed him.

Feature: Fever Ray from Huck

The new issue of Huck (with Ben Harper on the cover) is out now. If you don't know Huck, it's done by a lot of the guys that contributed to Adrenalin (R.I.P) like Vince Medeiros, Jamie Brisick, Phil Hebblethwaite, Michael Fordham, Jay Riggio and Zoe Oksanen – all top writers in their fields of surfing, skating, snowboarding and music. So it's a pleasure to get my words in this issue with a few more stories to come on Surfing in Holland and OT301: Amsterdam's former squat turned arts centre. Anyway, here is my story with Karin of Fever Ray.


Fever Ray Tour 2009 from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

"I started from where I ended with The Knife." States Karin Dreijer Andersson, vocalist and one half of the Swedish brother/sister electro outfit The Knife, whose record Silent Shout was named the best album of 2006 by indie-elitists Pitchforkmedia.

"We were very definite about us having a break. We had been sitting in each other's laps for seven years so we both needed the time off."
So while brother Olof was on a field-recording trek to the Amazon, documenting the sounds of the jungle for the soundtrack to an opera about Charles Darwin The Knife had been commissioned to produce, Karin found herself back in the studio.

"I didn't know it was going to be an album," she says of solo project, Fever Ray. "I just wanted to work with some ideas I had been collecting. I did not have an overall sound in mind but I did have an overall idea of the tempo; slower, thicker."

Through the collected ideas and the minutiae, Fever Ray took shape, contemplative in its direction and certain of its evocation. Where The Knife bubbles with popping techno, Fever Ray stews like a primordial ooze, brooding through thick, droning, almost trip-hop tempos. And while The Knife stabs with sharp beats, Fever Ray weeps through unique timbres, building from trembling and fragile into strong, vengeful haunts. Karin's distinctive voice, like a siren, enchants the listener into an unknown world full of mossy darkness and decay.

"I have my own studio just south of Stockholm where I have mostly keyboard, computer and guitar and I've also got a new voice machine. I have been listening to a lot of Tomahawk and their Anonymous album inspired by Native Americans. It's very primal, making beats out of vocals."
Immediately you can hear that influence, via her new voice machine, on opening track and first single "If I Had A Heart" as well as "Concrete Walls", her voice alters and drop to looming chants over slow, prowling trance, creating an ominous tension.

She admits the album is intense, and that even she'd need a break from its heavy themes. However, "in [my] melodies you can find a lot more romantic aspects from the '80s like Alphaville which I listened to a lot a long time ago." She says with a guilty, kiddish grin. Certainly there's more than a touch of the new wave, synth-pop from "Forever Young" and "A Victory of Love" in songs like "Seven" and "Dry and Dusty".

Recorded after giving birth to her second child, inspiration inconveniently struck in those child-rearing, sleepless hours where the conscious and subconscious, the REM and restlessness, all dance.
"I think it's interesting to capture the moment while in that state of mind. It's not like you have an alternative - it's what's there. I don't sit and wait for inspiration. I definitely think you can write out of that perspective or state.
"Half of what the songs are about is the subconscious," she states in her bio. "Ideas of things happening. A lot of it is like daydreaming, dreaming when you’re awake, but tired; a lot of stories come from that world." As a result her lyrics are often cryptic, walking a thin line between mixed metaphors and just-decipherable details. It's no surprise she finds stimulus in the dream-like films of David Lynch.

Helping to bring a surreal cinematic feel to the Fever Ray project is Andreas Nilsson, who has collaborated with The Knife over the years on videos, live performances and DVDs. The video to "If I Had a Heart" is a voodoo trip down a bayou, spot lit with horror creeping in from the darkness.
"I've known Andreas for a very long time, even before The Knife," says Karin. "We have quite similar musical references but he also has his own interpretations of what we are doing, which I think is great."
The two have also collaborated on the visuals for Fever Ray's live shows, to be "five people on stage including myself playing different things," says Karin. "I think what makes sense to do live is percussion and some more noise elements. At first I was thinking about playing to a standing audience but now I'm thinking maybe it would be good to sit down and listen to it."

Whether live or recorded, immersing yourself into the muck and the mire of Fever Ray, seduced by Karin's vocals, pure or layered, mixed with the thick primordial tempo and foggy darkness you'll find there's a lot to unearth.

Fever Ray
Fever Ray myspace

Fact: Janet is better than Michael

Okay, maybe a stretch but indeed Janet is prolific from the 80s through to the nows where as MJ was only decent in the in the 80s. Thanks to Clare's Facebook status about being thrilled by "All For You" I spent this morning getting down to Janet slow jams like this


And this with J.Lo
And with Missy
And with Luther Vandross

Other great things I've been curing my hangover today.
this guy
Pharcyde's "Drop"
Diss tunes

Tune: Like a Boss

"Shit on Debra's desk"


also by The Lonely Island.

Review: Slim Cessna, Cameo, Legendary Tiger Man

Jello Biafra described Slim Cessna's Auto Club as "the country band that plays the bar at the end of the world." On Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label, the Denver boys sound like The Dead Kennedy's bumpkin brothers blending rockabilly, gospel, bluegrass yodeling and straight out rock n roll into the best dang knees-up since the last Appalachian Father-Daughter Hay Roll Championships.
As suggested the band is fronted by Slim Cessna – a sort of fallen Baptist turned truck-enthusiast cowboy and his sidekick Munly Munly, the skeletal, slack jawed yokel and backed by a rockabilly band of bastards that mix double bass, banjo, lapsteel, organs and rolling drums.
Possessing the old Church hall that is Paradiso's kliene zaal it felt like Beelzebub's Revival Sermon. They rumble through tunes like "Jesus Let Me Down", "Red Pirate of the Prairie", "Children of the Lord" and "This is How We Do Things in the Country". Theirs are stories of murderers, divorcees, heathens and penniless souls that engaged the audience with sadness and black comedy - if there was ever a time for depression-era melodrama its heading into another depression and entertaining the beer-swilling masses.

Sadly not enough people were watching Slim Cessna. They were all too busy in the main hall waiting for Cameo to play "Word Up" who assumedly have seen better times themselves. The great thing about the Paradiso is once you pay for one show you can move around between the halls. Their posters boasted "Word Up" to jog people's memories and no prizes for guessing it wouldn't appear until the final bow. The singer was bedazzled in a shimmering shirt, the hype-man dressed like a Funkadelic-Parliament backbencher, a guitarist wore Kiss-styled boots and rocked a hub-cap guitar, the Keyboardist smart in a blazer while the drummer was a man mountain - similar to Ice-T's drummer, Body Count era. I couldn't bring myself to stay for "Word Up", especially as something seemed a brewing back in the small hall.


Slim Cessna had made way for The Legendary Tiger Man, a one-man rhythm and blues machine with a heavy bass drum and kick snare walking through every song as he played stripped back blues on a couple of elegant old guitars. Portuguese, sunglasses still wrapped across his eyes 'cos the light was shining hard in his face (admitedly he set the lighting himself), he crunched throw mourning blues. He played originals as well as a Cramps cover and "(Get your kicks on) Route 66". Visuals were clips of old 8 and 16 mm film, most produced especially for each song - the Route 66 one especially beautiful, driving the course of the famous American road. When needed, his backing band was an old record player, helping to build an atmosphere of authentic roots rock, sparse, cool and dirty.

A good night all round.

Podcast: SDRNRfm #2 - The Clash

SDRNRfm is back on your wireless. Last time I put together a mixtape it was a Bo Diddley beat kinda deal This time it's The Clash - songs by either The Clash themselves, acts that have sampled them or songs you can hear a direct influence. Don't expect balls-out guitar though, This is The Clash doing dub, gospel, and funk. It's annoyingly short as Garageband doesn't like songs over 34mins, Obviously Phish don't use this program. So I think this is just part 1 of a 2 part special courtesy of Zshare records. Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

SDRNRfm - The Clash
1. Intro to Lightning Strikes (not once but twice) - The Clash (Sandanista)
2. Straight to Hell – The Clash (Combat Rock)
3. Paperplanes - MIA (KALA)
4. History Song - The Good, The Bad, The Queen (Self-titled)
5. Dub Be Good To Me - Beats International
6. Guns of Brixton - The Clash (London Calling)
7. Dirty Harry – The Clash (Golden Bullets)
8. Welcome to the Third World - Dandy Warhols (Earth to Dandy Warhols)
9. You Were The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve - Johnnyboy (self-titled)
10. Hitsville UK – The Clash (Sandanista)
11. The Sound of Sinners - The Clash (Sandanista)

And don't forget, you can still download SDRNRfm #1

Video: Talking shop with Girl Talk Part 2

Did I say tomorrow... I meant next week - but better late than never for Part 2 of my Girl Talk interview.
See full report...
Live, Girl Talk invites mayhem. Those who have been to a Girl Talk show know the drill and first up are those with the most Dutch courage, in Amsterdam there's many. Before the first few riffs were out Gregg was joined by his band mates on stage, the thrashing, sweaty masses – booty shakin' girls, dudes clammering for podium placement in front of the crowd on the floor, someone even brought balloons.
And on the floor it was just as crazy, a packed house for usual the club night Noodlanding, the special guest kept people dancing til four in the morn.