Frank Ocean, Paradise Boston 7/28/12

It’s been a dry summer but it was raining hard when we arrived at Nick’s house in Allston about 6:30. Our show started at nine and there were already people waiting outside the Paradise when we drove down Comm ave on our way out. In what would become the first of a number of lucky breaks, I happened to have both Alli’s and my own coat, along with an umbrella, in the trunk of my car.

Nick brought us to the Sunset Grill for dinner and some beers, which worked out fine because it was about half way between his place and the venue. After a couple IPAs and a tasty meal we parted ways with Nick  — who was kind enough to carry my raincoat home so I wouldn’t have to check it — and walked the additional 3/4 mile to the Paradise.

It wasn’t until we got close that we saw the line, at least 300-people-long and stretching about 200 yards to the end of the block from the building doors, and then AROUND the corner another 50 yards. I’m thinking it was the unexpected need for a coat check that gummed up the works. I decided very quickly I’d loop the umbrella through my belt and tie Alli’s coat around my waist.

By the time we got inside it was already after the 9 o’ clock scheduled start time (and we’d arrived nearly a half hour early) and the place was thick. I’d never been to a show at The Paradise before and imagined it to be much bigger than it was. We managed to find a spot on the floor about 20 feet back from the stage, packed in, but with a good vantage point.

Frank came on about 9:15, probably right around the time everyone from the line finally got inside, and didn’t stop for an hour and a half. I was struck immediately by the sparseness of the instrumentation; he had a four-piece band which more than competently played all the the parts, but there was nothing showy or over-produced about it. It was all about Frank and his voice, an instrument he plays about as well as anyone anywhere. He started off with a couple of slower quieter numbers (including a great Sade cover), setting an intimate tone before launching into “Thinking About You”. As soon as the introductory string line began playing the audience exploded. As noted in reviews of the show in NYC on Thursday, this was a performance where singing along felt obligatory, but NEVER was Frank drowned out, his voice is just too strong for that.

In fact there were moments throughout the night when he skillfully anticipated a phrase he knew the crowd was going to sing and actually harmonized with the audience. It’s something I had never seen done and probably will never see again because it required the perfect set of circumstances (a small club, a moment in that musician’s career when everybody at the show knows most of the lyrics, a crowd musical enough to collectively sing in key). It was incredible.

Throughout the set he was pretty reserved, with a few noted exceptions. Before playing “Bad Religion” he made a reference to the letter and the crowd began a cheer that lasted about 30 seconds until he started talking again, at which point he said “not to cut y’all off because that is just beautiful, beautiful, thank you…” Everything about the performance felt genuine, inspired and optimistic.

By the time he came around to the end of the set we were all emotionally exhausted but begging for more. “I’ma do one more for you guys, and it’s a long one…” “Pyramids” was ten minutes of bliss, the perfect climax of an exceptional evening of music.

Then he did something else I’ve never seen, and it was absolutely brilliant. When he finished “Pyramids”, with the crowd going nuts, he simply said into the microphone “thanks guys, I’ll be back in a minute” and went backstage. I can not overstate how awesome this was; we all knew we were getting an encore but we didn’t have to go hoarse screaming for it. Bands need to start adopting this as a policy: tell the crowd you’ll be right back. It takes all the pressure off the crowd of feeling like it’s letting the performer down if its applause is less than thunderous for 3 minutes. Then he came back out and played a whisper-quiet version of the song “I Miss You”, which he penned for Beyonce. It was an understated way to end such an amazing show.

This was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen, and a lot of that has to do with how organic it all felt. Here’s Frank Ocean, baring his soul to a room full of people hanging on every word, no overdubs, no auto tune. Here’s his voice cutting directly to the core of every audience member. Here’s a humble and ingenious songwriter who’s only 24-years-old.

It’s very exciting.

Passion Pit's Gossamer

by William Roy

“A distorted reality is now a necessity to be Free”

Elliott Smith wrote these words sometime between 2002 and 2003, shortly before his death. Smith was the classic case of the tortured artist; he was a raw, naked performer who was wheeled onto stages so audiences could simultaneously bask in the glory of his melody and shudder at the transparent pain he hauled on stage like an extra instrument. This is not revisionist history, either. Smith died a man most certainly in the throes of severe mental illness and drug addiction, another in a long line of tortured artists who eventually got swallowed up by the world around them.

Sometime in 2003, Craig Finn wrote these lyrics for a song that ended up being an outtake from the debut Hold Steady album:

“All your favorite songs wouldn’t seem so sad / If you weren’t so depressed / Elliott smith seems like a mess to me / And you cry way too easily.”

There are certain artists that you almost expect to die, and some of them produce the brightest, most danceable music you have ever heard.

Finn’s line always makes me think of Passion Pit and specifically the brains behind that operation, Michael Angelakos. While artists like Elliott Smith will always sound depressing, artists like Passion Pit create what ultimately sounds like the happiest music in the world. It’s only when you listen to the subject matter lying beneath the shimmering synths and up-tempo beats that the truth seeps in with an unexpected eruption of the modernly gothic. There are certain artists that you almost expect to die, and some of them produce the brightest, most danceable music you have ever heard. I mean no disrespect with that statement.

Remember the bounce of Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab”, the sunshiny horn blasts, and the addictive chorus? The day Amy Winehouse died I went to see Lucinda Williams and she powered through a haunting version of “Little Rock Star” that she dedicated to Winehouse, a song in which she sings “Will you ever know happiness little rock star? / Or is your death wish stronger than you are?” Artists like Winehouse achieve an incredible sublimation of the strife of problems in living, substance abuse, and organic anxiety. However, when they are living there is an ever-present prophecy that we may lose their talent permanently.  I’m afraid that Michael Angelakos is the latest artist to instill that fear in my mind.

The musical manifestation of rapid-cycling bipolar disorder; it’s as if he penned all of the lyrics while in depressive episodes and recorded the music while in manic states.

Angelakos told Pitchfork that he does not want to be depicted as “that bipolar artist”, even as he continues to intermittently cancel shows due to his mental health, even as he tells friends that he doesn’t see himself living much longer, and even as he prepares to tour in support of an album that is lyrically one of the biggest downers of 2012. Gossamer is a stunning achievement; it’s the best album of the year so far, a time capsule of both the economic distress of the early 2010s and the personal hell Angelakos has trudged through for the past few years. Every line is delivered upon a backdrop of optimistic music destined for clubs worldwide. The juxtaposition of densely miserable lyrics with shiningly symphonic production actually suggests the most obvious musical manifestation of rapid-cycling bipolar disorder yet; it’s as if he penned all of the lyrics while in depressive episodes and recorded the music while in manic states. Gossamer is dotted with references to pill abuse, intense alcoholism, an autobiographical suicide attempt, among other passages of self-deprecation. To compound all of that, though, Angelakos bears a topically populist cross of commiseration, singing about copper-scrapping, dried up pension funds, overdrawn accounts, corporate personhood, and cheating wives.

The most personal moments on Gossamer are the most poignant and also the greatest cause for concern. Angelakos has confirmed that the passage in “Cry Like a Ghost” is indeed true, outlining a moment when in a drunkenly delusional rage he nearly abused his fiancé:

“See what I’ve done now, I don’t understand / She says I screamed and that I raised my hand but / I never meant to, wasn’t even there / I never meant to, I would never dare.”

Alcohol blackouts, when they take the turn they seem to for Angelakos, are one of the most terrifying phenomena of the human experience. Poet John Berryman, in the last years of his life, relied on his blackout persona to negotiate every social situation he encountered. At times his blackout persona was gregarious and beloved by the crowds at the parties, many other times it was offensive and crude. After years of trips in and out of detoxes and rehab programs, Berryman leapt from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minnesota in 1972, and drowned to death in the Mississippi River. In recent years Berryman has become a tragic hero in the realm of indie rock, a warning of the fate of men who are “pretty good with words” because “words won’t save your life”, as Craig Finn pointed out in “Stuck Between Stations”. Finn should know, he’s had his own wrestles with substances and has many times “departed from” his body, but he’s survived to tell the story. Two paths diverged: one leads to the wisdom and comfort of being an elder statesman of rock and roll, the other leads to a premature grave.

In the closing track of Gossamer, Angelakos describes an episode in which he attempted suicide by taking an overdose of medication, cutting himself open, and laying in a bathtub. Eventually he envisioned the archangel Gabriel pulling him out of the tub and somehow walked himself to the hospital where his life was saved. We can all be thankful that he survived this attempt, because Angelakos has given us a perfect album in Gossamer to follow-up the amazing Manners and solid Chunk of Change EP. For now, I just hope the glimpses of optimism throughout Gossamer will resonate with him as he prepares a lengthy world tour after a brief stint in the hospital in early August. He’s too talented of a songwriter to take a permanent departure from his body.

This is William’s second piece for hMsM, his first was a ten year retrospective on Bright Eyes’ “LIFTED, or the story is in the soil keep your ear to the ground”

Catchy, Good or Both? "HEY!"

For this edition of “Catchy, Good or Both?” we’ll be looking at a not-so-recent phenomenon that has come back into vogue within popular music in the last few years: yelling “HEY!”

This newly minted hit by the Lumineers was the genesis for this article because it has stretched this guttural tendency to a domineering new place. This song is based around yelling, well, “HEY” and “HO” over and over. But this ain’t no fun time Naughty-by-Nature singalong, it’s a folk song. This infectious monosyllable is not new, let’s take a look back at some recent examples before we come to a decision on whether “HEY!” is catchy, good or both.

This song by overzealous band-namers Of Monsters and Men, a new Icelandic outfit, uses the shouted “HEY!” in a way that is either novel and catchy, or terrible and derivative, depending on whether this is your first time listening to music.

Having spent a few years languishing in a limbo of compromised artistic ideals and not thinking to shout “HEY!” during a song, Edward Sharpe finally scored his breakthrough with this undeniably catchy slice of jangle pop.

2 years before Edward Sharpe made “HEY!” a part of current musical vernacular, Arcade Fire released this track, a standout on the under-appreciated Neon Bible and was also featured on their first EP.

So, is “HEY!” catchy?

–Any time a particular phrase or passage is sung by a large group of voices there’s a suggestion of inclusion, encouraging you to sing along.

-The “HEY!”s in all of these songs punctuate a rhythmic and melodic phrase simultaneously. Way to put your money where your “HEY!”s are, bands.

-“HEY!” is an utterance very easy to pronounce for the majority of human beings.

-The “HEY!”s in these songs all convey an inarticulate emotion. It’s probably the reason they are all sung by multiple voices; they can mean something different for each listener.

But is it good?

-The last of the above points has a backlash. “HEY!” what?

-In each of these songs “HEY!” is, arguably, central to the hook; central to drawing in the listener. Hedging the success of a song on something so simple is risky, and what was newly re-novel can come quickly become re-played-out.

These songs are all quite catchy, but for different reasons. It’s difficult to know if “HEY!” will stick around for a while or just dissapear for another 40 years.

“HEY!”

Verdict: Very Catchy, Goodness results inconclusive (*with all due props to these guys and these guys)

Stream the Antlers' new EP "Undersea"

When The Antlers announced last month they’d be releasing an oceanic EP that was “EP in length, but well beyond that in scope” my interest was piqued immediately.

Well here’s the first listen to Undersea, due out next week…

Click here to stream the album through the band’s facebook. (UPDATE: The full EP is no longer available for streaming as it’s now been officially released in stores and on iTunes, but this link still brings you to 2 of the 4 songs.)

Stream Purity Ring's "Shrines"

It’s been a very good week for album leaks. On Saturday I discovered that both Passion Pit’s Gossamer and this album, Purity Ring‘s debut Shrines had leaked onto Grooveshark.

Having heard about 50% of this album already over the last year, it’s essentially what I expected, but not in a bad way, check it out!

Bright Eyes – "Lifted…" Ten Years Later

by William Roy

Bright Eyes – LIFTED or the Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

Ten Years Later.

Ten years ago, in the steamy summer of 2002, we were collectively still reeling as a nation from that autumn day when all hell broke loose. I was a 15 year old kid and was pretty panicked about the state of the world. Everything felt like it was on the verge of crumbling down; life had felt strangely fleeting for the past year or so. We kids who were shoved out of our innocence and blissful naivety by the dust clouds in NYC suddenly felt like we were trapped in a tunnel of deep despair. Things felt meaningless. We needed a voice, someone to broadcast our crippling anxieties to the people orchestrating the madness that had encompassed the world. We needed someone to stand up and say “you kids aren’t crazy for losing sleep at night – this world is fucked”. More than that we needed someone to tell us why we should keep on waking up in the morning and navigating the chaos of the world.

Enter 22 year old Conor Oberst, indie wunderkind whom Rolling Stone magazine dubbed “the next Dylan” during the early summer of 2002. By this point countless troubadours had received the “new Dylan” tag including John Prine, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and Loudon Wainwright III, and surely each had validated that label by articulating the tragic state of their era through song. In fact, it was only two weeks before Oberst dropped LIFTED or the Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground that Springsteen helped his generation cope via the release of the gorgeous album The Rising. I listened to The Rising and took some solace in the songs, but there was something missing. I needed someone to be that voice, the same way that Dylan’s generation needed someone to put into words what they were suffering through. I can imagine the bittersweet relief when they heard Dylan sing “Your brain is a-bleedin’ /And your legs can’t seem to stand”.

I experienced the same relief on August 13, 2002 when I first listened to LIFTED, alone in my bedroom with headphones on, start to finish. I feel no shame in admitting that I was shaking with emotion throughout most of that first listen. I feel an equal paucity of shame in telling you that I still feel those chills at times when I revisit LIFTED, especially when I consider the cultural, temporal, and personal context in which I first experienced the album. The sheer enormity of the album is awe-inspiring, and not just because of the 73 minute length. Conor Oberst never again would get production this perfectly executed. His songwriting would never again sound this topical, urgent, and tremendous. In a 2012 review of the re-release of Fevers and Mirrors Pitchfork’s Ian Cohen suggested that perhaps that album is “critic-proof”. I would argue that the forced imagery of Fevers and Mirrors leaves it completely susceptible to criticism; the honesty of LIFTED makes it a hard album to argue with.

Everything that followed the epic country-folk-doom of LIFTED would be considered a quasi-disappointment for various reasons: I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning was too lean, edited too far down to the bone; Digital Ash in a Digital Urn had too much filler, too many forced moments; Cassadega had its fine moments, but ultimately suffered from over-production; Cohen points out that Oberst’s Mystic Valley Band albums were plagued by “misguided democracy”; The People’s Key lacked the apocalyptic earnestness of Bright Eyes’ greatest moments.

Those greatest moments are packed into the 73 minutes of LIFTED; the album leaves little time for breathing. Like the greatest mix-tapes, the album opens with a soft, thoughtful number (including the obligatory self-indulgent spoken-word passage) and then erupts into the turmoil of “Method Acting”, during which Oberst proclaims “I have sat too long in my silence / I have grown too old in my pain / To shed this skin, be born again / it starts with an ending”. Many of us felt older than we were during the first half of 2002, as we had all been forced to grow up a little quicker. It’s fitting that the 22 year old Oberst laments growing “too old”, an echoic of a 24 year old Springsteen asserting that “maybe we ain’t that young anymore”. The greatest songwriters seem to be the ones who stumble into wisdom far beyond their years and are able to spurt out language that is instantly recognizable as profound, and yet equally recognizable as genuine.

For those who write Bright Eyes off as a depressing act fit for sad-saps interested only in warbling and crying, a closer listen is in order. The pragmatic optimism that shines through LIFTED was literally a life saver for me during my formative years. Take the final stanza of “Method Acting” for example:

“We have a problem with no solution but to love and to be loved.
So, I’ve made peace with the falling leaves.
I see their same fate in my own body.
But I won’t be frightened when I am awoken from this dream and returned to that which gave birth to me.”

Oberst existentially weaves the themes of political unrest, personal distress, biblical apocalypse, and the paranoia of the early 2000s throughout the 13 tracks on LIFTED, but always prescribes hopeful advice for surviving the maelstrom. Specifically, Oberst suggests that we can find meaning in this world by giving ourselves over to others (family, friends, even strangers). When a doctor is in “quite poor health” it is the time spent with a friendly stranger that heals him; when Oberst questions the value of producing artifacts that will be lost forever when the world ends, he turns to his close friend and fellow artist Tim Kasher for comfort; it is the love of his friends that consoles Oberst when he perseverates on the fragility of man. LIFTED wonderfully captures the paradox of life: we love being alive because of all of the beauty we find in others and in nature, yet we forever fear death because it signals the end of everything we love. After nearly 70 minutes of exhaustingly philosophical songwriting, Conor drops his guard one last time and makes a proclamation that has reverberated throughout the last decade: “To love and to be loved, let’s just hope that is enough”.

LIFTED reified my fear about growing up in the modern world, but more importantly it provided me with a compass for navigating the tumultuous swells of adolescence in America. Before Winona, before the number one singles, before Conor sobered up, Bright Eyes crafted an album that perfectly encapsulated the terror and beauty of being a middle class white kid in a first world country in 2002. In the closing moments of the album we get a picture of Oberst, near death, “weak from whiskey and pills, in a Chicago hospital”. Seeing his father watching over him in the hospital room with unrelenting love, something clicks for Conor and he suddenly understands what life is about. He realizes that it is the relationships we forge and the impact we have on the world that truly gives life meaning. Its Eriksonian Generativity packed into 73 brilliant moments of music. The indie rock landscape was never the same, nor was I.

William Roy is a psych intern at the Margaret Murphy Center for Children in Auburn, Maine. He also introduced me to Hospice…

Stream the new Passion Pit album "Gossamer"

Exciting news! It appears the new Passion Pit album Gossamer has leaked ahead of its scheduled release later in the month. Check it out, it already sounds excellent.

Frank Ocean – Channel Orange

10/10

The albums I remember best from growing up were elusive. But they were the kind of elusive that waves to you and then runs into the woods. Albums like OK Computer and Discovery would reveal themselves immediately and then beckon you to come closer. They were a collection of songs none of which was the best, but everyone had their own favorite. A masterpiece shouldn’t be easy to understand but should demand understanding.

On Channel Orange  it’s easy to make out pretty much every word Frank Ocean sings. That, in and of itself, is pretty refreshing, but it’s also crucial to the success of the record. On the album’s  emotional climax, the confessional “Bad Religion”, Ocean bares his soul to a stranger, “Taxi driver, be my shrink for the hour/leave the meter running…”. Album closer “Forrest Gump” is a paean to the fictional football star and all around idiot everyman (“I saw your game Forrest/ I was screaming run 44/ But you kept running past the end zone/ where’d you go Forrest?”)

Writing a love song about Forrest Gump is one thing, but when that song is intuitively and undeniably catchy it’s put over the top. That’s the story of this whole album. The lyrics aren’t propping up the music or vise versa, everything pops with inspiration and every moment of the music entices.

It’s not a concept album by definition, but there are vignettes embedded within the larger narrative. Probably the best example is the “Sweet Life”/”Super Rich Kids”/“Pilot Jones”/“Crack Rock” swing. Starting in the “domesticated paradise” of Ladera Heights (“why see the world, when you got the beach?”) it traces an afflictive fall from grace that climaxes in “Crack Rock”, a track containing some of the most difficult lyrics on the album (“you don’t know how little you matter/until you’re all alone, in the middle of Arkansas/With a little rock left in that glass dick…your family stopped inviting you to things/won’t let you hold the infant”). Everywhere you look there’s a story, a cautionary tale. But this is not a depressing album so much as one that speaks to universal tribulations.

The albums I remember best from growing up held a mirror up to the world and everyone in it. They didn’t always make you feel better about yourself, but they always told you the truth. Channel Orange is that kind of album: a voice that everyone can hear, speaking directly to you.

Stream Frank Ocean's Channel Orange

Suprise! Early this morning Frank Ocean took to his tumblr to post a stream of his new album Channel Orange, which was due in a week. I haven’t had time to digest it yet, but at this point I can already tell you it’s one of the best albums of the year, and one of the best debuts I’ve ever heard.

Click here check it out!

Frank Ocean Comes Out

Yesterday Frank Ocean, via his tumblr, released a piece of prose. The segment of writing was originally intended to be the “Thank You” section of the liner notes of his forthcoming album Channel Orange.

In the piece Ocean makes reference to a homosexual relationship he had over a series of summers. “4 summers ago, I met somebody. I was 19. He was too. We spent that summer, and the summer after, together. Everyday almost. And on the days we were together, time would glide.” He goes on to explain that the relationship was something that felt beyond his control, like he almost didn’t identify the feeling he was experiencing as romantic love because he was afraid of what that meant.

It’s an undeniably earnest and thoughtful piece of writing; you can tell Ocean struggled with how best to share this. It’s also a bit jarring in light of the homophobic and misogynistic lyrics of Odd Future, which counts Ocean as its resident crooner. But even beyond foiling Tyler the Creator, a walking hyperbole of infuriating nonchalance who used the word “faggot” over and over and over on last year’s Goblin, Ocean’s statement is big — nay, HUGE —  for hip hop at large.

Huge primarily because of the tremendous outpouring of support from the hip hop community. In a genre full of artists so concerned with posturing and the cultivation of image, the honesty and soul-baring of Ocean’s writing is beautifully refreshing. Def Jam founder Russel Simmons had this to say: “The Courage of Frank Ocean Just Changed the Game! Today is a big day for hip-hop. It is a day that will define who we really are. How compassionate will we be? How loving can we be? How inclusive are we? I am profoundly moved by the courage and honesty of Frank Ocean. Your decision to go public about your sexual orientation gives hope and light to so many young people still living in fear. These types of secrets should not matter anymore, but we know they do.” Tyler the Creator, in typically douchey fashion, offered this lukewarm “support tweet”:

My personal feelings about Tyler aside, hopefully he’ll think twice before he fires off wholesale degradation like it’s going out of style (because it already has).

It’s hard to overstate just how cool this is; cool that we live in a time where this act is looked at as courageous and refreshing, cool how quickly forthcoming the unparalleled support (well maybe not unparalleled, Westboro Baptists must be licking their hate-mongering chops) for the action, and REALLY cool now that Frank will, presumably, be singing love songs about both men and women!

Check out “Pyramids”, the first track released from his forthcoming album Channel Orange (out July 17th). For now let’s call “her” Cleopatra…