Whitehorse is Exhilarating in First Florida Performance

“Everything but the kitchen sink,” said Melissa McClelland midway through her and her husband Luke Doucet’s performance on Monday night at Clearwater’s Ruth Eckerd Hall, denoting the cluster of guitars, keyboards, drums, percussion, pots, pans, and sampling gadgets with which they’d just made a glorious racket on “No Glamour in the Hammer,” one of the many standout tracks on The Fate of the World Depends on This Kiss, their second and latest album as Whitehorse. 

In what was the duo’s first-ever live performance in the state of Florida, Whitehorse made the most out of being the opener for fellow Canadians, Barenaked Ladies, packing in 40 minutes of some of the most exhilarating, well-written rock ‘n’ roll this writer has encountered in far too long. Kicking off with “Devil’s Got a Gun,” McClelland and Doucet shifted instruments and even microphones (as they would continue to do throughout the set) at an almost perpetual clip, ultimately bringing the song to its climactic close with both artists banging the hell out of his and her own marching-tom drums in synchronized wallops. Just as thrilling, “Radiator Blues” followed, its throbbing, Bo Diddley beat seguing into a bit of Diddley’s own “Who Do You Love” for good measure. 

Both artists are remarkable talents in their own right, but McClelland proved especially superb throughout this all-too-brief performance, though not with as much shiver-inducing magnificence as on “Passenger 24,” one of the more ominous moments on her 2006 solo LP, Thumbelina’s One Night Stand. They concluded on a friskier note with “Jane,” giving the audience one last damn-good reason to look forward to their return. 

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Lou Reed, In Remembrance

There are a select few figures in rock ’n’ roll who possess the talent and vision to shape the way music is conceived, composed, performed, and appreciated for subsequent and perhaps even unwitting generations. 

Lou Reed was one of them. 

Reed died today at his home in Southampton, New York, of liver disease. He was 71. He is survived by his wife, songwriter and performance artist Laurie Anderson. 

News of Reed’s failing health first broke back in June wherein an interview with The Times of London ostensibly about her then-latest work, Landfall, Anderson revealed that Reed was recovering from a recent liver transplant. “It’s as serious as it gets,” she said then of the transplant. “He was dying. You don’t get it for fun.” Shortly thereafter Reed released a more optimistic assessment in a statement, in which he said, “I am a triumph of modern medicine, physics and chemistry. I am bigger and stronger than stronger than ever … I look forward to being on stage performing, and writing more songs to connect with your hearts and spirits and the universe well into the future.”

As the co-founder and principal songwriter in the Velvet Underground, whose avant-garde and at-times anarchistic approach to making music helped them go all but unnoticed in their brief tenure amid the prevailing winds of late-sixties psychedelia and flower power, Reed was responsible for expanding the pop-song vernacular to embrace the same contexts and latitudes of classic literature. 

With the Velvets (John Cale, Mo Tucker, Sterling Morrison) he wrote such songs as “Heroin,” “I’m Waiting For the Man,” and “Venus in Furs,” drawing on themes and subjects of sadomasochism, illicit and lethal substances, and the corrosive sub-cultural realities of his native New York City at the time, including the burgeoning pop-art scene cultivated by the band’s original benefactor, Andy Warhol. Under Warhol’s banner, so to speak, the Velvets were free to create their music without record-label or other authoritative intrusions or oversight. The only glaring instance of compromise occurred when Warhol suggested Nico, a statuesque German actress, model, and singer, be featured within the band’s music; her lissome vocals ultimately led three cuts (“All Tomorrow’s Parties,” “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” and perhaps appropriately “Femme Fatale”) on its debut LP, The Velvet Underground & Nico. Reed continued on with the Velvets until 1970—he notoriously fired Cale from the group in 1968 following White Light/White Heat, ultimately replacing him with multi-instrumentalist Doug Yule—but none of the band’s subsequent albums rivaled the influence of the first one.

In his solo career, with such works as the David Bowie-produced LP, Transformer, to such albums as Berlin, New York, and Magic & Loss, Reed continued to challenge convention while often enough infuriating, or at least perplexing, his audience. He faced considerable backlash, for instance, for his 1975 feedback-laden LP, Metal Machine Music, which while considered revolutionary by many now, inspired vitriol from both listeners and critics—except Lester Bangs, who hailed it in Creem as “the greatest record ever made in the history of the human eardrum.”

In the music he made overall, Reed’s influence is severe. Indeed it’s not a stretch to suggest that without him, genres from punk to glam to grunge to alternative rock would have far different lineages, if they would have even existed at all. 

Reed was inducted with the Velvet Underground into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Patti Smith in 1996, astonishingly in the band’s fifth year of eligibility. Upon the news of Reed’s death, former VU bandmate, erstwhile collaborator, and at-times adversary John Cale posted a statement to Facebook, saying, “The world has lost a fine songwriter and poet…I’ve lost my ‘school-yard buddy’.” 

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Review: Van Morrison - Moondance [Deluxe Edition]

Ask Van Morrison about Moondance and he’ll probably gripe about not making much of any money off the album. Ask anyone else even remotely familiar with the man’s music, though, and it’ll likely be cited as among his best, most beloved works. Released in 1970 it was Morrison’s third solo LP since leaving Them, containing such ultimately classic songs as “Crazy Love,” “And It Stoned Me,” “Caravan,” and the jazzy title track. A new, deluxe edition of Moondance sheds an in-depth and exhaustive light on its creation, yielding dozens of alternate takes as well as previously unreleased tracks and some newly produced remixes. For casual listeners the alternate takes, particularly, which comprise the bulk of what’s included, are too comparable to make this collection wholly worthwhile. Excluding blatant mistakes or abbreviated performances (which are also included), even casual fans would find it difficult to distinguish between many of these session takes from the sides that ultimately made the studio album proper, tougher still to cast a judgment on their most superior versions. 

This is for die-hard Morrison fans only. With that in mind this deluxe edition offers a great deal to appreciate, including the alternate takes, which even at their most similar yield insight as to Morrison’s perseverance and willpower in summoning exactly what he wanted out of himself and his band in order to deliver the album he sought to make. The previously unreleased material is (not surprisingly) the biggest goldmine here, however, led by the uptempo “I Shall Sing,” a cover of which was later a hit by Art Garfunkel. Other such highlights include a boogie-woogie outtake of the old blues chestnut penned by Jimmy Cox, “Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out,” and a revved-up and scorching 11-minute performance of “I’ve Been Working”—a less-than-four-minute version was ultimately released later the same year on His Band and The Street Choir—with Jack Schroer’s wailing sax complementing Morrison’s intense, barking vocal. An additional ten-minute version of the latter lacks the same fire. All in all, though, this set should rock the gypsy souls of the most faithful of Morrison followers.

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An Interview with Charli XCX

Six months after the release of her critically hailed debut, True Romance, Charli XCX is set to begin her first North American headlining tour this weekend in Las Vegas, and expectations are high—especially hers. “I have a new band, an all-girl band, which I’m super excited about,” says the 21-year-old British synth-pop star. “I’m just happy I get to finally do this record justice and play it live with a proper tour. It’s a very different experience live than it is on the record.”

In addition to having recently completed a UK tour with Paramore, Charli XCX has also opened for the likes of Coldplay and Marina & The Diamonds, and while she says she doesn’t deal too much with stage fright she nevertheless concedes to suffering one particular anxiety of playing live. “I’m always worried no one’s gonna be there,” she admits. “That’s what one of my biggest fears is, that I’ll look out and no one will be there. I always have that insecurity.”

She needn’t worry. In fact, she’s already garnered a faithful-though-still-burgeoning audience and a handful of smash singles like “You’re the One” and “So Far Away,” making True Romance one of the year’s biggest hits. Composing the album was a labor of love, she maintains, while adding that her original ambition was for its songs to reflect not so much a particular genre or style but rather a different palette altogether. “I wanted all the songs to sound purple, like the color purple,” she says. “That was kind of where I was at. I wanted them to sound mysterious and floaty and quite lo-fi and luscious.”

Now with her latest single, “SuperLove,” which is the lead-off track from her forthcoming (as-yet-untitled) sophomore album, Charli XCX radiates a whole new shade on the spectrum. 

Is “SuperLove” indicative of where you’re going with the second album?

It’s definitely the most pop song I’ve ever written for myself and definitely the most pop song I’ve written so far for the second record. The second record is all really inspired by the color red and also by, like, French yé-yé pop and Bridget Bardot and then movies like Ladies and Gentleman, The Fabulous Stains as well as New Wave bands like the Waitresses and Bow Wow Wow. I just feel like all the songs are red for this record, and feel like it’s kind of like a shout/fight/fuck record. It’s about sex and it’s about anger and it’s about passion and about femininity.

Do you write all the time? Like, are you always quote, unquote always on?

No, I’m definitely not always on. There’ll be months where I can’t think of anything in my brain and I feel like I’m caught in half gear. I can’t do anything. I can’t sing anything. I just lay in bed. And then there’ll be times when I’m in the middle of something and have to go write because suddenly I’ve got it again. Right now I feel like I’m in a really creative space.... It’s weird. I don’t have a process so I can’t figure it out. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it totally doesn’t. 

Does it worry you when it doesn’t happen?

Yeah, that’s kind of scary, I suppose, because you never know if it’s going to come back. Also, I’m not one of those people who knows when a song is good. Like, I’ll be in studios with producers and I’ll finish up a song and they’ll be like, “It’s a hit!” And I’m like, “Is it?” [Laughs] I don’t know. I just know when I like something, but that’s also kind of scary because sometimes I like really weird, bad songs.

You seem like someone who fiercely follows her instinct. How do you maintain that integrity, though, as you get more successful and as your audience grows when you’re on a major label and there are forces around you who also have a vested interest in your success?

Well, I think I’ll always just do what I want. I think the term “major label” is bullshit anyway. A label’s a label. Every label wants to make money off their artist anyway. I released my first record in the UK on a major label, Atlantic, and it’s not a massively-selling record but it’s the record that I wanted to make. I was very selfish with it and I’ll always be selfish with the music that I make because the number-one person I care about when it comes to making music is myself. It has to be therapeutic for me and it has to be something that I’ll always love and not just something I’ll enjoy for fleeting moments and then hate myself for for the rest of my life. 

Also, I feel like pop music’s changing. You don’t have to make boring pop music anymore. You can make amazing, emotional, real pop music and still be, like, a big deal or whatever. But I feel like I wouldn’t do what I do if I wasn’t in control and if I didn’t have final say on everything.... I don’t want to just make music to make money. I could’ve done that ages ago if I’d wanted to do that. I just don’t really want that. I don’t want to make music that I hate.  

—All photos by Dan Curwin

For more information on Charlie XCX, please visit her official website. 

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Album Review: Anna Rose - Behold a Pale Horse

Raised on classic rock with scores of stage and screen running in her blood, singer/songwriter Anna Rose embarked upon her musical career in earnest with her 2010 debut LP, Nomad, harvesting her formative influences with sleek, progressive-rock textures and earthier, more acoustic distinctions. A foundational album as much as a first one, Nomad was expansive enough so as to give her the latitude to expound upon it in any number of fashions on subsequent efforts. She suggested how brazenly she could embrace that latitude the following year on a stunning cover of Arcade Fire’s “My Body is a Cage,” translating an already tense and fretful confession into something more tempestuous and carnal in comparison.

On her recently released sophomore LP, Behold a Pale Horse (White Pony Records), Anna Rose continues to build on the promise of her debut while challenging her talent along the way. Her songwriting, particularly with regard to the melodic sophistication of pop-oriented songs like “Drive” and “Beautiful World” or the climactic title track, has developed more versatile and evocative dimensions. The same could be said of her singing, too, as such a diversity of songs necessitates that she approach her performances in equally varied ways. What most comes across, though, is her confidence, which she projects with bombshell bravado on “Electric Child” and “Because You’re Mine,” the former a blues-drenched, cabaret sort-of romp, while the latter is a riff-driven slowburner with thick, grimy guitars punctuating Anna Rose’s hot-blooded, come-hither vocal. Both songs are sexy as all hell, and the balance of release and restraint with which she sings them is phenomenal. All told, for an artist still in the early stages of her musical journey, she clearly knows where she’s headed and, more important, what it takes to get there. 

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Album Review: Paul McCartney - New

It makes sense that Paul McCartney has courted a decidedly youthful demographic in promoting his first album of original material in six years, New (Hear Music): by appearing on Hollywood Boulevard for a taping of Jimmy Kimmel Live, on a big rig in Times Square, or at Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens, the 71-year-old icon has appealed to audiences most likely attuned to the album’s precocious, experimental spirit.

In a way New recalls McCartney’s 2008 LP with The Fireman, Electric Arguments, particularly in how its most rambunctious pop rockers (“Queenie Eye,” “Everybody Out There”) fuse acoustic-rich foundations with techno-drenched loops and other similarly kooky effects. Some songs are more progressive than others (“Road,” “Appreciate”), but even the most seemingly straightforward, organic ones (“Early Days,” “Looking At Her”) are complemented with at-least-discreet effects. The album boasts four different producers (Paul Epworth, Mark Ronson, Giles Martin, Ethan Johns), yielding a bit of a hodgepodge disposition overall. The diversity works, though, not least because of the ageless enthusiasm and imagination McCartney exudes throughout.

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Kate Nash Readies North American Dates with New EP

On the occasion of her return later this month to North America for a new round of dates in support of her critically-acclaimed LP, GIRL TALK, British singer/songwriter Kate Nash now releases a six-track EP of the album’s latest single, “Fri-end?”  

Five diverse versions of the Go-Go’s/Bangles-reminiscent song are capped off by the provocative, previously unreleased track, “Pink Limo Ride,” which advocates a bold anti-bullying stance.

“Fri-end?” (EP) is available now at iTunes.

Kate Nash’s North American tour dates:

10/29 - Turner Hall – Milwaukee, WI
10/30 – First Avenue – Minneapolis, MN
11/01 – Metro – Chicago, IL
11/02 – Deluxe – Indianapolis, IN
11/03 – Beachland Ballroom – Cleveland, OH
11/05 - Phoenix Theatre - Toronto, ON
11/07 - Union Transfer - Philadelphia, PA
11/08 - House of Blues - Boston, MA
11/09 - Terminal 5 - New York, NY
11/11 - 9:30 Club - Washington, DC
11/12 - Cat’s Cradle - Carrboro, NC
11/13 - Terminal West - Atlanta, GA
11/15 - Fitzgerald’s Upstairs - Houston, TX
11/16 - Mohawk - Austin, TX
11/17 - Trees - Dallas, TX
11/19 - Crescent Ballroom - Phoenix, AZ
11/20 - Porter’s Pub - San Diego, CA
11/22 - Fillmore - San Francisco, CA
11/23 - Fonda Theater - Los Angeles, CA

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Album Review: Katie Melua - Ketevan

Katie Melua possesses one of the most sublime, enchanting voices of her generation, like that a Disney princess come to life straight off of the silver screen. It’s a gift she’s both embraced and challenged in her now decade-long career, most recently exploring orchestral pop as she did on her last album, Secret Symphony, and techno-inspired terrain as she did on the one before that, The House. 

With her sixth and latest studio LP, Ketevan (Dramatico Records) — its title is the Georgian-born Melua's given first name — she recalls the demure grandeur of her debut, Call Off the Search, collaborating as she did then with longtime manager, singer/songwriter Mike Batt (formerly of the Wombles), on a ballad-rich song cycle tailor-made to her talent. Between moments of unguarded emotion (“Never Felt Less Like Dancing,” “I Never Fall”) and ones spiked with a little mettle and sass (“Love Is a Silent Thief,” “Idiot School”), Melua finesses each lyric, each syllable and breath, with utterly stunning command. In fact, everything that is exceptional about Melua’s artistry is reflected on this album. 

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