We saw the Cowboy Junkies, Saturday night at the Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh. We forgot to grab a camera, so I have no proof of this - you'll just have to take my word for it, this time.

Not surprisingly, they played a set of long slow songs about loss, longing, death and melancholy, wistful bittersweet and bleak defeat. But nobody can do a slow sad waltz like the Cowboy Junkies - and nobody else should even try to do 90 minutes worth. The songs don't mope, they ache. They don't scream, they sigh. The music is nearly hypnotic and Margot Timmins' voice is smooth and calm; the whole thing becomes dreamlike, meditative.

Or maybe that's just because I was insanely hungover from my wife's birthday party, the night before.

Either way, they sounded great. And Margot Timmins' voice sounds just as good today as it did on their debut, 24 years ago.

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Looks like the spring concert season is in full swing right now. We currently have tickets to see:

1. John Pizzarelli
2. Modest Mouse
3. Anthony Bourdain
4. Neko Case
5. Robyn Hitchcock
6. Fleetwood Mac

And I'm tempted to go see ...Trail Of Dead, Son Volt, Rev Horton Heat... and many others. Whew.

... on a lovely night, near the lake at the lovely Koka Booth Ampitheatre, in Cary, NC.

Wilco.

You weren't there, so you missed a great show.

They played all of your favorite Wilco songs.

They played my least favorite Wilco song: "Spiders (Kidsmoke)". I'm sure you skip it, too.

But, it was better live than on the record.

And they played a bunch you'd never heard (because you don't have all their albums). And they played one nobody had heard, because it was new.

They even played one from Mermaid Avenue, that collection of lost Woodie Guthrie songs they did with Billy Bragg, way back in 98.

What a shame you missed it.

Adrian Belew's Power Trio made another stop at the Cat's Cradle last night.

It was an excellent show, as is expected. And everything I said about his August show could be said about this one. Adrian was mesmerizing, Eric Slick remains a fantastic drummer, and Julie Slick makes most other bass players look timid and clumsy.

It was much the same show as the previous one, though they had one or two brand new songs, and they pulled out a couple I'd never heard him do before: "Future Vision" and "I Remember How to Forget".

Great show. But man... I'm too sleepy to write anything else, this AM...

We went to see a couple of bands last night, at an outdoor amphitheater in the office park where I work. I can see parts of it poking out above the tops of the trees from my window here. The stage itself is on the edge of a small lake, surrounded by tall pine trees. Idyllic.

The first band was from Leeds, UK (as the singer with the big black cast on his broken foot kept telling us), and called themselves "Your Vegas". They were OK. For some reason, I kept thinking "I really liked old U2 better".

The second band was, um, Duran Duran. Still at it, after 28 years. But, they were surprisingly good, and were neither bloated nor sluggish as I imagined they'd be (ahem). Four of the original five members were there - original guitar player Andy Taylor is out of the band, again - and that's one original member more than when I saw them back in '89. Maybe I can catch them all together on their 2027 tour! They played quite a few of their innumerable hits from the 80s of course; and they played a bunch of stuff from their new album (which didn't do much for me, in the same way most modern dancy pop music doesn't do much for me). To me, they sometimes seemed a slight bit bored, and the setting - a sylvan open-air theater by a lake - felt like an odd place to listen to really loud dance music, but it was still a good time.

No pictures.

After 10 years off, Polvo has reunited for a series of shows - one in Spain, one in London and a handful in the US, including one in their hometown of Chapel Hill, NC (well, Carrboro - but geographically, it's a matter of crossing the street). I waited too long to buy one from the Cat's Cradle myself, and it sold out; but I scored a ticket off CraigsList, and off I went...

First, the opening bands:

Noncanon are a local three-piece who combine the angular, and sometimes discordant, lines of 90's guitar bands like Slint, and Polvo, with the modern, melodic but sometimes detached, sound of a band like Radiohead. It works really well. I was quite impressed.

Next, Des Ark, a local duo: one woman singing and playing guitar, another playing drums. The former was a ball of crazed energy as she stomped and thrashed around the stage like Angus Young after two coffees too many (except, I think, if I understood her chatter correctly, she was actually quite drunk, and not tweaking on Starbucks').

The songs were fast and furious, chaotic bursts of energy. Since I was right up front, I wasn't getting the best mix, so it all sounded like an excellent drummer playing to sheets of discord, to me. Maybe it would've worked better if I knew the songs beforehand. In the middle of the set, the singer did a couple of acoustic songs on a little four-string guitar, which I liked (or could at least hear) - she has a great rock voice, lots of growl, though I could only hear it during the acoustic songs. The electric stuff just blew by me like a sandstorm.

And then, Polvo:

I saw their farewell show, way back in 97 or 98, but I didn't actually know them very well at the time. Since then, I've purchased everything they've ever released and have played it all to death. So, this reunion show was a treat. A reunion, but not a full reunion: they have a new drummer, Brian Quast. He did a fine job playing those long, complex, multi-part songs.

Since they're not touring in support of a new record, I knew all the songs they did - except for one, which I think they said was new (maybe a new album in the works?? hope so).

Ash Bowie (guitarist), sang most of the songs, and Dave Brylawski (other guitarist) did a few; the drummer did some backups. The mix up-front wasn't really good (never is), so it was sometimes hard to hear the vocals clearly - sure could hear that bass though! But, even on records their vocals are often low in the mix, so I never could tell who was singing or what about, so that much is the same live. But it was fun to see who sang which song, at least - once I figured out what song they were playing, anyway; a lot of them were extended or re-worked so the beginnings were often different from the stuff I've spent the last ten years memorizing.

The two guitarists set up on opposite sides of the stage, and pretty much stayed there. The bass player roamed around a bit. And the drummer, well, obviously he stayed put. But there didn't seem to be a lot of interaction between them during the songs - they played their parts and signaled each other at the end of breaks, etc., but for the most part is it was shoegazing. I don't think there was ever a time when I could've taken a picture of all four of them at once - they never came together. I kindof remember that from the show way back in 97, too.

Dave Brylawski's amp quit in the middle of a song and he had to swap it out for a different one, while the rest of the band tried to work it out - eventually the rest of the faded away and it ended up as a drum solo. But they brought it back together almost seamlessly and finished the song, once the technical issues were over.

The crowd up-front got crazy towards the end, as all the drunk guys stared moshing and spilling beer over everyone else. It was just like 1993 again! Except that I wasn't moshing - I was was the one being annoyed about being rammed-into and having beer spilled down my legs. Boy, people must've hated me, back in the day.

Friday, M&C gave me some terrible news: Spoon was playing in Durham on Sunday (which I did not know), and the show was already sold-out. So, I spent Friday night, Saturday and Sunday AM scouring CraigsList and eBay for anyone who had tickets for sale. No luck. By Sunday afternoon, I had given up, and started cooking a lasagna. Then, 5:30 Sunday, M of M&C called and said they weren't feeling up for it, and offered me their tickets. Hooray. And immediately after I hung up, someone on CraigsList offered me 2 tickets.

So, first up: The White Rabbits:

They didn't look like I expected. Their studio stuff is densely-packed, slick, and crisp - reminds me of smart 80's Brit-pop. So, I imagined a couple of guys working sequencers; I didn't think they'd be a bunch of guys wearing blazers with no shirts underneath, two (sometimes three) drummers, a keyboardist, and a couple of guitar players. Six people (three of them drumming!) can make a hell of a racket. And they did. And the sound came across sounding pretty muddy: the sound overall was too loud, the drums especially. And that isn't strictly the band's fault, of course - they do sound good on-record. I knew most of the songs they did and as best I could tell, they were doing a good job - their trademark harmonies sounded great.

Next, the Walkmen:

Turns out, the White Rabbits weren't wearing any shirts under their blazers because they lost too many ping-pong matches to the Walkmen the night before.

They were really good. They've got a New York garage-rock + Interpol + Pixies sound -- good dynamics, interesting songs. Very nice. The sound was much kinder to them, since they didn't have as much going on as the White Rabbits. I hadn't heard them before, but I think I will give their stuff a listen. Here's a video.

The first/last time I saw Spoon, they were opening for Superchunk. I think it was the Girls Can Tell tour. There was no stage show to speak of, just the three (I think?) of them set up in front of Superchunk's gear on the small dark Cat's Cradle stage. This time, they were the headliners, and they had...

.. Lights!
They had a ton of lights. The stage was constantly filled with in smoke and candy-colored lights. Very shiny. Well, not constantly; they did turn the shiny stuff down for a couple of seconds on one song:

But mostly:

Shiny! Shiny! Shiny!

They played all, or nearly all, of their current record (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga), a bunch of things from their previous record (Gimme Fiction), and a handful of things from their first couple of records. They also did that Paul Simon cover (Peace Like A River) that they did on the live NPR show. They didn't have any horns for "The Underdog" so that lacked a little punch; and "Don't You Evah" and "Finer Feelings" felt a little bare without all their studio polish, but mostly it was a great show. Mostly. One thing became clear when the house lights came up at the end of their last song: they didn't play a single song from Girls Can Tell. And when I post the final installment of my Favorite Records List, this Friday, you'll see why that would leave me feeling a little let down.

Still, it was Spoon, for fuck's sake, and they're my favorite band of the last 5 years. So, I can't complain too much.

Thanks M&C! (now get back to work!)

Saw jazz-guitar legend, Bill Frisell, last night at a theater on the Duke campus.

The show was called the "Disfarmer Project", and was designed around a set of photographs taken by a reclusive and eccentric man who called himself "Mike Disfarmer" (as in "I am not a farmer"), who took hundreds of portraits of people in rural Arkansas in the late 30's and early 40's. He set up a studio on his back porch (Edit: and later in a storefront) and shot all his subjects in natural light. Though all of his shots are portraits, very few of the photos in the performance look formally posed; the people in many of them look as if they were caught off-guard, or have just been insulted, or told some horrible news. Many of them are scowling, grimacing, children look scared or surprised, though there were plenty of happy, clam, proud faces, too: couples of all ages, soldiers and sailors, groups of friends clowning around, huge families - but all of them are poor, rural working people. It's really quite an amazing collection - check out the gallery on that link above.

So, the songs were either written or adapted to be played while two giant screens (one on either side of the stage) showed these photos. The music was generally country-tinged, with a violinist; a dobro, lap-steel, mandolin, player; a stand-up bassist; and Frisell's guitar. I recognized two pieces from other contexts: one was the Elvis classic "That's All Right (mama)", and the other, I think, was "Pretty Polly", which can be found on the "Bill Frisell, Ron Carter, Paul Motian" record. Unfortunately, for me, while the musicians were certainly adept and the music was well-done, the whole thing was very formal - the four of them sat behind music stands, had absolutely no interaction with the audience, or barely even with each other. On one hand, that did give me a chance to focus on the photographs, which, again, were fantastic - and nicely presented; on the other hand, when I did watch the musicians, there wasn't anything to see. All were seated behind wide music stands (eye-level with my seat), rarely looking away from the sheet music, calmly playing their score. Frisell himself sat turned 90 deg to the audience, on the opposite side of the stage from my seat, so I could see what he was doing, sometimes, but few others in the audience could. While it's hard to say because I wasn't familiar with most of the songs, there didn't seem to be much improvisation - or if there was, there was little reaction between the players when someone did something interesting. It just all felt more like a chamber music recital than a band. Maybe that was the point and I my expectations were wrong. Either way, I ended up a bit underwhelmed by the band.

No pictures of the band. There wasn't anything to look at.

By the way, I think the little violin lick, where you play a set of very high but very dissonant notes, quickly, in kind of a hellish siren-like fashion needs to be outlawed. It's a cliche.

While I'm at it, here's a quick clip of Adrian Belew messing with his gear during the break in Thela Hun Gingeet. The crowd got kinda bouncy once the song kicked in again, so I couldn't get any more of it. But it's kinda fun to watch him screw around with his tons of electronics.

This is from his show back in August.

The sound is pretty much total ass because my little camera couldn't handle the volume.

And here's what the Sea And Cake look like, live (a tiny bit from "The Argument"). Same disclaimer about the sound.

And here's a little bit of Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3. That's Robyn in the middle, REM's Peter Buck on the other guitar and the Minus 5's Scott McCaughey on bass. There's a drummer back there somewhere, too.

...bad sound, yadayadayada.

So, you, know... that's what all these bands look like, live.

And wow... YouTube really crushes the quality on these. I guess I would too if I had to deal with all that bandwidth, but wow, what a difference from the originals! (trust me)

Saw the one and only Junior Brown last night:

He was, as always, excellent. Played with just a drummer and an electric bass, this time. No monitors on-stage, drums were just a snare and a ride cymbal - very stripped-down. Didn't hurt the experience any. He still did his thing. Alternately chuggin' along to his playfully-corny old-school country/western songs and screaming away on tunes that are half Jimi Hendrix electric blues and half Dick Dale 60's surf, all the while switching back and forth between the standard neck of his guitar and the lap-steel neck - he's a walking encyclopedia of guitar styles. He's a pretty fine country singer too. Probably made a fun guitar teacher as well.

The last time I saw Jr., he had the legendary Buddy Miles playing drums with him. But unfortunately, Miles passed away this past Tuesday. Junior seemed pretty bummed-out when he dedicated a song to him.

Here's a bit of video from the show:

That's part of a song called "Hung It Up". The mix is not the best because the PA speakers were in back of me - you're hearing the sound from the stage, mostly his guitar amp.

Saw The Shins on Friday night. And, just as they were back in March, they were excellent. The main difference between this show and the last was the venue; instead of a low, wide, converted warehouse, this was in a modern concert hall with nice seats, great acoustics and little old ladies with flashlights to show you to your seat. As before, they were very tight and energetic, fun to watch - and I actually got to see them, this time. They played basically the same set of songs as they did last time we saw them, maybe in a different order. So there were few surprises. Well, few surprises, but not zero. They did play one song I'd never heard before, which I assume was a new one, though it was hard to tell because they didn't introduce it, or any other song: they had very little between-song chatter - just a "thanks" here and there. Basically, they just bang out song after song. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, since they have so many great songs to get through. But, the highlight of the show, for me anyway, was their first encore: a surprising, slightly-compressed, but highly-satisfying version of Pink Floyd's "Breathe". I've been on a Pink Floyd kick recently, so this was a nice bit of synchronicity. Good show. Catch them if you can.

Vetiver opened. We only caught their last few songs, but from what I heard, I'd say they're squarely in the mellow, stoner-indie-folk rock groove of bands like My Morning Jacket and Iron and Wine. Nice.

No pictures. Forgot the camera.