Over, Down Under, and Sideways With Courtney Barnett

COURTNEY BARNETT AND THE COURTNEY BARNETTS

PAPPY AND HARRIETS

PIONEERTOWN, CA

08 AUGUST, 2014

...True story: Was lounging at Origami Vinyl in Echo Park, when the man on the counter started something new. A languid late night groove wormed its way into my head, and then that voice came in: "I was busy underwater/Seeing how long I could hold my breath..." It rambled on, seeming stream of conciousness, but acutely observed. The music was off kilter, full of delicate touches, but my heart was won when the drums rumbled in at the end, like a train passing in the desert.
By the middle of the third song, "Avant Gardener", a shaggy dog story seeded with guitar squeals, it was so right I was laughing out loud.
 I made the counter, pointing at the sound system: 
"I'll have THAT!".
"No, you won't..." Our man replied trimly, "It's not out yet..."

I finally got my paws on a copy of Courtney Barnett's Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas...and the rest is history.

Having made the mad dash to the desert a few times this year, the best part is when you depart I-10 and begin the climb up Highway 62 towards Joshua Tree. Veering off at Yucca Valley sent me once again out the road to Pioneertown. Pappy and Harriet's Pioneertown Palace has become a home away from home, and the roadhouse provides an intimate, sweaty, and often raucous place to catch a show.
The question was how the atmospheric songs of Courtney Barnett would hold up live. Taking a different tack, (no doubt learned in the pubs of Australia), she went for the Volume Dealer approach, turning the songs inside out, and blasting them full on, with the aid and comfort of her rhythm section, bassist Bones Sloane and drummer Dave Mudie. Turns out Courtney Barnett is a rock star...pretty much the same dichotomy one faced when seeing Lucinda Williams in the early 90's: going in with a folk mindset, and getting hammered with a Stonesy riff-fest. The best possible surprise, to be honest.
Courtney earned her keep before even hitting the stage, ghosting onstage to grab one of the opening band's guitars to fix a busted string. When their appointed time arrived, as if prodded on by the ominous Supermoon overhead, the band opened with a swaggering "David", then dropped into "Lance, Jr". Things came fully alive with "Are You Looking After Yourself", the template of the live transition, ending in a hail of feedback. Excepting the opener, the first half leaned heavily on her first EP: I've Got A Friend Called Emily Ferris, and her latest: How To Carve A Carrot Into A Rose yielded the bulk of the second half, including an impressive run through "Don't Apply Compression Gently" and a velvet glove/iron fist take on "Out Of The Woodwork" setting up "Avant Gardener", her best-received/most notorious song that gave way to the stomping set closer "History Eraser".
On the final steps of a US tour promoting A Sea Of Split Peas, out on her own Milk! Records in Australia, internationally on House Anxiety/Marathon Artists, and here in the States on Mom and Pop Records, Courtney Barnett and the Courtney Barnetts more than made their case. With a new album in the can, save for final tweaking, it'll be fun to see where she heads next. I can't say enough about her rhythm section; they give her the ideal springboard to work off of, and when pressed, they're modest to a fault. While the EP's allowed Barnett to work with a sprawling cast, there's definitely a chemistry with this trio, and I look forward to seeing it exploited.

Dream Your Sins Away: Afghan Whigs live

AFGHAN WHIGS

PAPPY AND HARRIET'S

PIONEERTOWN, CA

10 APRIL, 2014

 

The Afghan Whigs returned to live action, wedging in a warmup show at Pappy and Harriet's in Pioneertown, before they got down to business at Coachella. The occasion is Do To The Beast, their first album of new material since 1965 came out 16 years ago, also marking a reunion with Sub Pop, the label that served as their launchpad. Founding members Greg Dulli and John Curley remain, joined by Cully Symington, Rick Nelson, Dave Rosser, Jon Skibic, and Mark McGuire, and the signature sound of the band is intact. What started with All Tomorrow's Parties in 2012 grew into European Festival appearances and a hand full of stateside dates, including a two-night stand at the Fonda Theater in Hollywood.
The setup was outdoors in the desert night, and Dulli's guitar strap, fashioned from a vintage car seatbelt, was a portent of things to come. Kicking off with the first two songs from Do To The Beast, "Parked Outside" proved the perfect opener, setting the tone as surely as it does for the album, and "Matamoros", was shorn of its studio beats, but still slinky. The energy level far outweighed the wobbly sound, which surely sent the night creatures scambling for safe underbrush. Having dove straight in with new material, they paid back the audience, (most of whom traveled over from LA), with "Fountain and Fairfax", (from Gentlemen), and when Dulli hit the climactic title refrain, he could have easily cut his mic and it would have gone unnoticed, such was the audience's fervor. Keeping it in old school mode, Black Love's "Going To Town" and "Blame, Etc" kept things tense, and set the stage for "Conjure Me", (Congregation). Emblematic of the night was Dulli's reading of the "Going To Town" verse: "Don't worry baby, that's okay/I know the boss", providing an electrifying moment when he took the last line in a high register. Cully Symington, (Okkervil River/Shearwater drummer), got the shout out to kick start the martial beats of "Algiers", which, if you've seen the "High Plains Drifter" referencing video, sounded perfectly at home here. "The Lottery" continued a run of what would be seven of the ten songs from the new album. "Royal Cream" received an extended jam, and,  as it turns out, was one of the songs tracked right down the road, as Dulli observes in the liner notes: Shot On Location. The title track of Gentlemen provided another bat-shit crazy moment for the oldsters, then Dulli reached into his trick bag, and brought out LA soul man Van Hunt to do the honors on "It Kills". Crowd pleaser "66" set the stage for the last, and maybe best, of the new songs, "Lost In The Woods", with it's haunting refrain of "Fear has a mind of its own". Not content to let it go at that, Dulli trumped matters by ending the set proper with a segue into The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper chestnut "Getting Better", which seemed entirely appropriate to an Afghan Whigs catalog of examining one's frailties. The encore was all about desert, and Dulli saluted "Heaven On Their Minds", from Jesus Christ Superstar, as a song he's always wanted to play in the desert...so he did, then without pause the band ripped into "Something Hot", following it with "My Enemy", and when it seemed the intensity could not be raised any more, finished with the incandescent prayer meeting that is "Faded", leaving not too many dry eyes among the faithful. A stunning finish to the night from a band reinvigorated.

With special guest Van Hunt (left)

High Desert: Speedy Ortiz live

SPEEDY ORTIZ

PAPPY AND HARRIETS

PIONEERTOWN, CA

30 MARCH, 2014

 

Preamble: In the '90's...(echo...echo...echo...), when all were fawning on the latest sounds to come out of Seattle, it seemed like every third record I was buying came from the great state of Massachusetts. Not a surprise to me now to see, in the midst of a yearning for that decade, that Mass. is once again putting itself on the map, courtesy of, among others, Potty Mouth, California X, and our current subject: Speedy Ortiz. Hooking up with famed Fort Apache denizen Paul Q. Kolderie, the Pioneer Valley quartet has already amassed a tidy ouvre that pastes elliptical lyrics over a loud, brash, angular guitar attack.

***

Speedy Ortiz took a detour into the desert on the West Coast swing of a tour opening up for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, appearing at Pappy and Harriet's Roadhouse in Pioneertown, on the edge of the Joshua Tree National Park. With a fiery 13 song set that covering their growing catalog, the band more than made their point. While served up at a shattering volume, the off-kilter structures kept one engaged, waiting for the next left turn, and besides the innate hooks, the key was rhythm section Darl Ferm and Mike Falcone. In an era of bludgeon, they actually swing, providing a deep and elastic bed for dueling guitarists Sadie Dupuis and Matt Robidoux. As the lyricist and focal point, Dupuis carries herself comfortably, providing quite the role model for her students trapped back on the East Coast. Throughout the set, all the North East references, from the Vermont setting of "Everything's Bigger" to the UConn hoops shout out left one feeling a bit homesick.
Opening with dual salvos from their latest EP, Real Hair, "American Horror" felt especially intimate in the low ceilinged roadhouse, but was merely the setup for the gut-punch of "Everything's Bigger", a regional allegory given, (for them), an almost classic rock treatment. Last year's single "Hexxy" was followed by a pair from their Sports EP, "Basketball" and "Curling". "No Below" was as close to a ballad as we were going to get, and the highest testimony is that any song that can induce cold chills in a small space packed with bodies is well worth noting. Proceedings moved to overdrive, as the band ran through the guts of their  recent full-length, Major Arcana, running "Caspar, 1995" into a full-throttle "Tiger Tank", (or "Tiger Tinkle", depending on whom you would ask...), giving way to the sonic detonation known as "Mark VI", which, in the closing melee, found Robidoux jamming the mic stand between the wires of his instrument, then waving his new Frankenstein contraption around for bonus feedback. The scary part is this is a band only beginning to hit its stride, already brimming with confidence, and ready to take on the world on their terms.