Grizzly Bear @ Le National, June 4, 2009
Jun. 9th, 2009 04:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaNo photos - didn't remember to bring a camera - so I have to make a note of it, or I'll forget when I went. XD;
Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks
Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks (Fred Falke Remix)
Grizzly Bear - Knife (Girl Talk Remix)
Fred Falke is on some kind of 2005-esque remix roll all of a sudden? I re-discovered the "Knife" remix just now, it is +Clipse and +Ying Yang Twins or rather Girl Talk correctly identified Ed Droste as an appropriate voice for "dude diva hooks" (remember the conversation about Kusano Masamune).
My thoughts on Grizzly Bear:
1) They are really normal. There are tons of bands out there that do stuff like this. A. (sound engineer on my FanSupported team, jazz enthusiast) takes me out to $7-at-the-door nights where the bands are reminiscent of Grizzly Bear. Their opening act, a band I'd never heard of, sounded like them only not as pop. One automatically assumes such bands don't make money, ever. Grizzly Bear just happened to win the Random Pareto Popularity Snowball Effect Jackpot. This is cool as they are really nice people.
2) How the snowball got rolling: they can sing four-part harmony, are increasingly good at writing proper pop songs, and hang out with other Pitchfork-famous bands.
3) I'm not sure what to call this "genre", though. "Indie" is meaningless if it can comprise Veckatimest and, say, Franz Ferdinand. It's not "psychedelic". All I can say is I know it when I hear it (The Good, The Bad, and The Queen - actually "Two Weeks" is way like a Damon Albarn composition with that rinkydink piano intro - some of David Byrne's stuff). Left to my own devices I would call it "adult contemporary pop" but that's taken. ..."Post-rock"?
4) My reaction to Grizzly Bear straddles the tail-swallowing divide between profound absorption and profound boredom. Standing there in the audience, three rows from the front, I realized I was flipping from one to the other quickly. XD; This is not as apparent when listening to the record because I usually listen to the record to induce sleep. Don't knock it, I love sleeping to albums.
5) In the manner of Au Revoir Simone, they were EFFING LOUD live.
Other notes on evening: band reiterated the bit about Le National being one of their favorite venues, as well it ought to be as it's a jewel. It has a springy wooden floor, for instance, tilted so everyone can see the stage no matter where they're standing. Incidental music playlist was GREAT, A+ would hire members of this band to DJ a party again. Audience was young, cute and fluffyheaded Scott Pilgrim &co. types, enthusiastic but too indie to be pushy. The vinyl sold out because everyone at the merch stand (manned by Chris Taylor) asked for vinyl, including me. I know I make fun of other music fans' illogic but shit, I have totally bought into this one. XD; It's not even for the sonic qualities. Emotionally these days music itself = free and CD = a doohickey you can buy at Wal-Mart for 0.25$/unit with the inherent value of disposable chopsticks, so you have to go to vinyl to feel like you've achieved the kind of ownership you have over a book made out of paper and cardboard stock. Plus there is nostalgia value for people my age, like collecting Hasbro toys. I don't know what vinyl feels like for the fluffyheads, though - probably like when I pick up my dad's twin-lens reflex Yashica from the 60's, something out of a steampunk fantasy film set, barely reconcilable with everyday existence.
Toward the end Ed Droste was like, "Are you guys going to hang around outside and start a street party as is the Montreal way? We might join you if you do! :D" which of course resulted in the entire audience hanging around outside the venue afterward, LOL. That part of Saint-Catherine is a pedestrian street in summer. If I were with friends I would have stayed but I didn't want to sit there and wait by myself, so I have no idea if the band actually did show up.
Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks
Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks (Fred Falke Remix)
Grizzly Bear - Knife (Girl Talk Remix)
Fred Falke is on some kind of 2005-esque remix roll all of a sudden? I re-discovered the "Knife" remix just now, it is +Clipse and +Ying Yang Twins or rather Girl Talk correctly identified Ed Droste as an appropriate voice for "dude diva hooks" (remember the conversation about Kusano Masamune).
My thoughts on Grizzly Bear:
1) They are really normal. There are tons of bands out there that do stuff like this. A. (sound engineer on my FanSupported team, jazz enthusiast) takes me out to $7-at-the-door nights where the bands are reminiscent of Grizzly Bear. Their opening act, a band I'd never heard of, sounded like them only not as pop. One automatically assumes such bands don't make money, ever. Grizzly Bear just happened to win the Random Pareto Popularity Snowball Effect Jackpot. This is cool as they are really nice people.
2) How the snowball got rolling: they can sing four-part harmony, are increasingly good at writing proper pop songs, and hang out with other Pitchfork-famous bands.
3) I'm not sure what to call this "genre", though. "Indie" is meaningless if it can comprise Veckatimest and, say, Franz Ferdinand. It's not "psychedelic". All I can say is I know it when I hear it (The Good, The Bad, and The Queen - actually "Two Weeks" is way like a Damon Albarn composition with that rinkydink piano intro - some of David Byrne's stuff). Left to my own devices I would call it "adult contemporary pop" but that's taken. ..."Post-rock"?
4) My reaction to Grizzly Bear straddles the tail-swallowing divide between profound absorption and profound boredom. Standing there in the audience, three rows from the front, I realized I was flipping from one to the other quickly. XD; This is not as apparent when listening to the record because I usually listen to the record to induce sleep. Don't knock it, I love sleeping to albums.
5) In the manner of Au Revoir Simone, they were EFFING LOUD live.
Other notes on evening: band reiterated the bit about Le National being one of their favorite venues, as well it ought to be as it's a jewel. It has a springy wooden floor, for instance, tilted so everyone can see the stage no matter where they're standing. Incidental music playlist was GREAT, A+ would hire members of this band to DJ a party again. Audience was young, cute and fluffyheaded Scott Pilgrim &co. types, enthusiastic but too indie to be pushy. The vinyl sold out because everyone at the merch stand (manned by Chris Taylor) asked for vinyl, including me. I know I make fun of other music fans' illogic but shit, I have totally bought into this one. XD; It's not even for the sonic qualities. Emotionally these days music itself = free and CD = a doohickey you can buy at Wal-Mart for 0.25$/unit with the inherent value of disposable chopsticks, so you have to go to vinyl to feel like you've achieved the kind of ownership you have over a book made out of paper and cardboard stock. Plus there is nostalgia value for people my age, like collecting Hasbro toys. I don't know what vinyl feels like for the fluffyheads, though - probably like when I pick up my dad's twin-lens reflex Yashica from the 60's, something out of a steampunk fantasy film set, barely reconcilable with everyday existence.
Toward the end Ed Droste was like, "Are you guys going to hang around outside and start a street party as is the Montreal way? We might join you if you do! :D" which of course resulted in the entire audience hanging around outside the venue afterward, LOL. That part of Saint-Catherine is a pedestrian street in summer. If I were with friends I would have stayed but I didn't want to sit there and wait by myself, so I have no idea if the band actually did show up.
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-09 02:11 pm (UTC)I'm kind of thinking about buying the album, is it any good besides as a sleep aid?
no subject
Date: 2009-06-09 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-09 08:37 pm (UTC)But I wasn't bored because we had seats on the balcony RIGHT ON TOP OF the stage, close enough that we could have poured beer on the performers' heads if we'd wanted to, and I could watch the drummer. The singing/guitars were eh okay but the drumming was AWESOME.
White Rabbits had six people, and all three guitarists were the Rivers Cuomo awkward smart person type. And the keyboardist/lead singer and two drummers weren't that much more extroverted. So the fun part was watching them swap instruments and mess with amp levels to reproduce a studio recording sound on a SERIOUSLY TINY stage, not watching the body language of the frontmen. Although maybe from the front, the show would have looked different.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-11 04:50 am (UTC)Yeah, the fun of "boring" bands live is watching them fiddle around to make the sounds they do. XD The Notwist are great for that.