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Yo La Tengo
Friday · Southgate House
It hardly seems possible that, 20 years after their initial pairing, the guitar/drum, husband/wife team of Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley are still maintaining both their marriage and their fascinating musical partnership in a little acoustic-expanse-to-feedback-drenched cottage industry known as Yo La Tengo. Although Yo La Tengo was defined by a steadily rotating membership in their early years, the band’s constantly shifting sonic center point was less a component of their physical profile and more a result of Kaplan and Hubley’s restless creative muse. The Hoboken, N.J., couple translated their interest in noisy, artfully urban Rock and eccentric Pop into a catalog that ran a similar gamut and inspired legions of slavish fans. By 1987’s New Wave Hot Dog, the band’s Velvet Underground devotion was plainly evident (they ultimately played VU in the 1996 biopic, I Shot Andy Warhol), from Kaplan’s Lou Reed-inflected vocals and chaotically controlled guitar to Hubley’s understated Mo Tucker homage on the drum kit. But as they proved on subsequent releases, Yo La Tengo was equally capable of wrenching squalling sheets of feedback and distortion out of their amps in a shredding display of pure Rock fury as they were of tossing off a brilliantly conceived and executed work of shimmering Folk Pop beauty. While the band’s lineup solidified in 1992 with the addition of former Christmas bassist James McNew, the consistency has done nothing to quench Kaplan and Hubley’s need to explore the farthest and often harshest reaches of their musical expression. The band’s current tour is a little different, given the election-season climate and the members’ passionate political views. Hitting “swing states” exclusively (Kaplan recently said on Air America Radio that playing Newport is “our way of playing Cincinnati”), guest musicians and comedians (including the hysterical Fred Armisen) will join in on what is being promoted as a sharing of ideas and political views in “an entertaining fashion.” The group Music For America (musicforamerica.org) will also be on hand to provide voting information. (Brian Baker)
Deicide with Goatwhore, Cattle Decapitation and Jungle Rot
Friday · Bogart’s
What is it about the utopian warmth and sunshine of Florida that inspires the most brutally dark music on the planet?
Over the years, some of Death Metal’s most depraved and demented purveyors have emanated from the Sunshine State like an oozing Everglades sludge, spewing black lyrics, growled and shrieked vocals and viscerally downtuned guitars. Among the oldest and most influential of Florida’s Black Metal bands, Deicide boasts a relatively long and respected (if somewhat controversial) history within the genre. The band’s first tour in 1992 was a lightning rod for serious criticism when they announced support for the idea of animal sacrifice (which they reinforced by flinging animal organs into their audiences). The negative reaction followed the band to Sweden, where their concert in Stockholm was canceled when a bomb was discovered onstage. In the intervening years, Deicide (bassist/vocalist Glen Benton guitarists Eric Hoffman and Brian Hoffman and drummer Steve Asheim) has released a steady stream of vitriolic albums that helped set the standard for Speed Metal in the ’90s and into the 21st century. One of the band’s most distinctive features is its ability to play Metal riffs and rhythms that are nearly impenetrable, while punctuating the density with elements of Prog, Jazz and good old fashioned Hard Rock, an acidic soundtrack to match the often virulently anti-Christian slant of the lyrics. Deicide recently ended a three-year hiatus from the studio with the release of Scars of the Crucifix, their debut on Earache Records and an album that builds on the band’s Death Metal foundation while departing from it in subtle yet substantial ways. One thing is guaranteed: There is no ambivalence where Deicide is concerned. (BB)
David Wilcox
Saturday · Jack Quinn’s
Born in Cleveland, educated in Yellow Springs and musically shaped in the clubs of Asheville, N.C., David Wilcox has been plying his sensitive singer/songwriter tales for well over a decade and a half with very little change. His affinity for James Taylor has served him well over the course of his career, because Wilcox has been smart enough to recognize that Taylor’s greatest period of critical success was in the “Sweet Baby James” era, and he has hewn his intimate story songs of personal evolution pretty closely to that blueprint with a slightly jazzy angle applied to his Folk foundation. In addition, Wilcox possesses a playfully goofy streak that earns him comparisons to John Prine and Loudon Wainwright III, who are also able to write with a sense of humor while avoiding the stench of novelty. But just because Wilcox has chosen to concentrate on a fairly narrow style doesn’t mean he hasn’t grown in his work and career. It’s just that he has wisely banked on his strengths over the years, and focused his attention on writing better songs within his self-defined context. You can pretty well bet that you’ll get exactly what you expect when you take home one of his albums or venture out to see his show. Although David Wilcox only occasionally deviates from his longstanding formula, his success lies in the fact that he never allows his songs or his playing to sound formulaic. His guitar style is grounded in a number of odd tunings and features the use of a specially designed capo that gives his playing a distinctive and singular resonance. For many artists, the worst thing one can say about their current album is that it sounds like the last one. With David Wilcox, that is a compliment of the highest order. (BB)
The Black Keys with The Cuts
Saturday · Southgate House
The Blues as a musical form is so familiar and prone to cliché that artists in the genre have to be very careful not to sound like an average boogie-woogie bar band. From the beginning, Akron’s Black Keys have set themselves apart from the madding Blues crowd. Guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney have performed as a duo since their high school days, but never with the intention of playing gigs. The pair was perfectly happy being a basement recording project, but eventually took friends’ advice and began exploring live opportunities in nearby Cleveland. Within a month of their first shows, the Keys’ 2002 debut album of elemental skronk Blues, The Big Come Up, was released and rapturously reviewed in Rolling Stone and Mojo; Carney and Auerbach were mowing lawns to supplement their incomes at the time. Almost immediately, major labels contacted the duo, and they actually recorded demos in California in a state-of-the-art studio with a producer as a result of one offer. But the results were dismal failures by the Keys’ raw yet exacting standards. Signing with Fat Possum, the Keys’ returned to Carney’s basement studio and recorded their sophomore album, thickfreakness, over the course of a day. The ecstatic reaction to the album put the Keys on the road for the better part of the subsequent year and gave them the perfect platform to create their third and most viscerally satisfying work to date, Rubber Factory, recorded in a deserted General Tire factory in Akron. Though the new album is less linear and more expansive than its predecessors, Auerbach and Carney know full well that the magic of their collaboration is found in a very simple equation with very complex components: Auerbach + Carney = the electrified Delta swamp Blues of the Black Keys. (BB)
This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2004.