BlackSwanSongs.com had the extreme honor of attending two Sixteen Deluxe reunion shows, as well as interviewing them for a short feature in the Austin American-Statesman. Easily the best band to emerge from Austin during the 1990s, Sixteen Deluxe had the potential to be a label’s prestige act. Warner Brothers signed them after a small bidding war. But I personally didn’t feel like Warner Brothers properly promoted the release, “Emits Showers of Sparks” during those dark days just prior to mass Internet adoption.

If you enjoy My Bloody Valentine, The Flaming Lips, Swervedriver and other noise pop/space rock bands, please seek out Sixteen Deluxe and their music. Then convince your friends that are music supervisors to use their music in films.

Yes!

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Note: showcases in bold hold the highest probability of my attendance.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

8:00 Strange Boys – Emo’s Jr.
9:00 Here We Go Magic – Club de Ville
10:30 Motorhead – Austin Music Hall
12:00 Nas & Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley
1:00 Sixteen Deluxe – Encore

Thursday, March 18, 2010

8:00 Ozomatli – Auditorium Shores (free show; no wristband or badge required)
9:00 Miles Kurosky – Emo’s Main Room
10:00 Rogue Wave – Emo’s Main Room
11:30 Band of Horses – Stubb’s
12:00 Centro-matic – Emo’s Annex
1:00 Evan Dando – The Ale House

Friday, March 19, 2010

8:55 Band of Horses – Central Presbyterian Church
9:30 Cruiserweight – Buffalo Billiards
10:00 Smokey Robinson – Austin Music Hall
11:00 Girl in a Coma – Buffalo Billiards
12:00 Broken Social Scene – The Parish
1:00 Dengue Fever – Encore Patio

Saturday, March 20, 2010

8:00 She & Him – Auditorium Shores (free show; no wristband or badge required)
9:30 Sarah Jarosz – Austin Music Hall
10:00 Margaret Cho – Esther’s Follies
11:20 Xzibit – Club de Ville
12:30 Big Star – Antone’s
1:00 Adam Franklin & The Bolts of Melody – The Tap Room at Six

One of the BlackSwanSongs’s contributors received a byline on http://brooklynvegan.com for an excerpt of the report below combined with the photos above.

Jay Z appeared very comfortable playing the role of the gracious “king of hip-hop.” Memphis Bleek dropped counterpoint rhymes, providing hardscrabble verbal interplay without the silliness of a sideman like Flavor Flav. I was a casual Jay Z fan going into the show (I bought a “Hard Knock Life” mix tape and have downloaded a couple of other records), but by the end of the show I had been become a hardcore Jay Z fan for life.

The show highlights were too numerous to list here, but they included the rock and bass bombast of “99 Problems,” the audience’s deafening call and response during “Jigga What, Jigga Who” and the booming, thuggish, palpitation-inducing low-end produced by his 10-piece band during “Dirt” and “Big Pimpin’.”

And when Jay Z wasn’t showing us Texans how his crew goes hard in Brooklyn, he spoke from the heart during his between song banter. “I know it sounds cliche, but don’t let any haters block your dream,” Hova said earnestly during one of the final breaks. Another one of the show’s more intimate moments came when he brought up vocalist Bridget Kelly for two songs. After her inspired assist on “Empire State of Mind,” Jigga Man smiled his biggest smile of the evening and said, “Damn…she put something extra on it for Texas…she put some extra bar-b-que sauce on it for Texas!”

Before Jay Z’s final curtain call, he took a break to turn on the house lights and point out individuals in all areas of the basketball arena, personalizing the show and reducing the scale as he talk to individuals, calling them out by their attire, homemades signs, dancing skills, etc.

The set list below is word-for-word identical to the setlist at the front of the stage (which I photographed). I’ve left their abbreviations and notes in tact.

SETLIST: RUN THIS TOWN

D.O.A.
Takeover
U Don’t Know
99 Problems
Show Me What You Got
Give It To Me
Diamonds
Jigga
Izzo
Jigga What
P.S.A.
Heart of City (live)
Already Home (last verse Acapella)
Empire State of Mind
A Star Is Born
So Ambitious
Dirt

—–break—–

Thank You
(PLAYBACK SET)
Big Pimpin’
Hardknock Life
Encore
Forever Young

I like the Beach House mp3s I’ve heard, but whoa, was the bit I heard of their live show shaky.

Now Grizzly Bear on the other hand, were really amazing. I’m not surprised Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood called them his favorite band.

I wrote a review of their show which was published in the Austin American-Statesman here.

Ben Gibbard rocks his Telecaster at the Austin Music Hall during "The New Year."

If you are familiar with Death Cab for Cutie’s music, then you will understand how ironic and poetically, pathetically apropos it would have been for me to attend their Friday evening concert by myself.

But gentle reader, check the backwards-in-time rub: I’ve seen Death Cab play so many times over the years that I’ve lost count, and the majority of those times I’ve seen them play, I did go by myself. I seem to have a hard time finding a date to go see perhaps  the greatest indie pop date band of the late 20th/early 21st century.

It’s always weird watching a band, a band that you really love, go from playing to a handful of people in a dingy indie rock club to playing before 70,000 people at an outdoor festival. You reach a point where you admit to yourself that the band is not yours anymore…and just like the old adage goes, you set them free. Every band wants to be super-popular, so you have to be happy for your favorite band when they win the rock ‘n’ roll lottery.

I’m still trying to recall all the times I’ve seen them…not for you gentle reader, but for my own self…just so I’ll know:

• Lawrence, Kansas at the Bottleneck (Shiner opened)
• Austin at Emo’s (during a SXSW day party…I videotaped this one)
• Ben Gibbard solo at what is now called The Mohawk
• Two nights at Stubb’s during Transatlanticism tour
• A very hot (temperature-wise) show at ACL Fest
• A show at the Backyard (went with my ex-girl)
• Austin Music Hall show on May 1, 2009

My review of their Friday evening concert ran in today’s Austin American-Statesman. It’s very hard for me to write a comprehensive review within a 150 words capsule review. My review today was almost twice as long. I stoped counting at 400 words.

As you read – if you read it – know that I wanted to write twice as much more. I had twice as much more outlined in my head.

Here is a link to my original American-Statesman article; it appears in an altered version below.

(Note: The versions of my articles that appear in this blog are different than versions published in the newspaper as I prefer to avoid copyright issues, even though I would think that my re-publishing of my own articles on my blog would fall under “fair use.” I also sometimes add things that might have been edited out by my editor…or additional words and thoughts that I wish I had added…a la Walt Whitman’s life-long editing of “Leaves of Grass.”)

By V.M. Black | Monday, May 4, 2009, 12:01 PM

Being engaged fits Gibbard like a tailored suit as he appears more svelte than ever.

Seattle, Wash.’s venerable indie-ethos rock band Death Cab for Cutie messed around and busted out their best Austin show in years Friday night at Austin Music Hall.

Between South by Southwest, Austin City Limits Festival and regular album support tour stops, Death Cab has always put on perfunctory performances, but rarely have they been “one of the best shows I’ve ever seen in my life.” Seemed it always took them at least half their set to get warmed up. Once during a two-night-stand at Stubb’s on their “Transatlanticism” tour, they didn’t really begin to gel until their final song.

This time it appeared Death Cab had stepped up all elements of their tour production into a multi-bus, multi-semi-trailer truck affair. The PA’s sound engineering was on point (except in the far back) and the stage lighting was choreographed to accentuate the mood and tenor of the songs, creating displays that highlighted crescendos and emotions.

Another noticeable difference in the band’s performance was the depth of their catalog, allowing them to perform a crushingly emotional song-cycle. Frontman Ben Gibbard has always been a songwriter’s songwriter, and more than 10 years of crafting some of the most beloved melancholy indie-pop in the genre has built the band’s song collection into something deep and overwhelmingly powerful. All those years of touring (with basically the same lineup) has also allowed the band to become tighter than many of their peers. The members of Death Cab for Cutie have matured into consummate rock ‘n’ roll professionals.

Gibbard appeared more svelte than in past shows, performing with a relaxed air of assuredness. Highlights included the Los Angeles send-up “Why’d You Want to Live Here” and the dusted-off gem “Photobooth.” The coup de grace encore was delivered with two of their best songs, “A Movie Script Ending” and “Transatlanticism,” Gibbard’s mellifluous voice pulling at heartstrings like a blustery winter break-up.

Ben Gibbard gets a "Boss" sound out of Fender Telecasters, a unique choice of guitars (a few people will get the pun in here).

Setlist:
The Employment Pages
Your Heart Is An Empty Room
The New Year
Why’d You Want to Live Here
President of What?
Crooked Teeth
Photobooth
Company Calls
Grapevine Fires
I Will Possess Your Heart
I Will Follow You Into The Dark
Title and Registration
Cath
Long Division
The Sound of Settling
Soul Meets Body
Scientist Studies

Encore:
A Diamond and A Tether
A Movie Script Ending
Transatlanticism

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The album will make you want to scream, "Why did I pay for this!"

I was hoping Cornell’s adventurous third solo record would turn out well since he collaborated with hip-hop producer Timberland. Turns out Cornell has lost the plot; that album reminded me of that album where Garth Brooks played pop music as a guy named Chris Gaines. Don’t remember that happening? Exactly. You shouldn’t remember as these type of unsuccessful experiments in sound aren’t worthy of being remembered by the pop culture cannon.

My review of Cornell’s show is pasted below. You’ll see a comment from one of his die-hard fans where she took offense to my description of Cornell’s rhythm section. All I can say is, sister, just cause Cornell hand-picked his musicians, it doesn’t make what they’re playing good.

The original version of the review ran in the Austin American-Statesman here.

By V.M. Black | Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 12:24 PM

During Monday evening’s sold-out show at Stubb’s, Chris Cornell rocked, despite the fact that “Scream” – the new album he’s touring behind – is a divisively experimental hot mess.

“Scream” was produced and co-written with hip-hop mega-producer Timbaland (Justin Timberlake, Madonna) and finds Cornell singing over Timbaland’s beats and electro bells and whistles. Fortunately for Cornell’s longtime fans, when he played his new hip-hop-meets-pop songs, he turned up the rock quotient and dialed down the hip-hop beats and backing loops, making the experimental portion of his new songs almost unrecognizable. If you were one of the longtime Soundgarden/Audioslave fans that found “Scream” to be heresy to Cornell’s oeuvre, then the live show should have put your mind at ease quickly.

Show highlights included Cornell’s silvery falsetto on the melancholy, Led Zepplin-bitten “Seasons,” the inescapable groove of Audioslave’s “Cochise” and when the audience sang the entire second chorus of the Audioslave radio hit “Like A Stone.”

And although the live versions of the “Scream” tracks were umpteen times better than the Timbaland recorded versions, the overall performance was still maddening in many ways.

Unlike Audioslave (or Soundgarden for that matter), Cornell’s backing band is not a super-group; they were not up to the task of complementing Cornell’s own good taste in dynamics. His bassist and drummer over-played throughout all the songs. As band leader, Cornell should have put the clampdown on all that noodling during the initial tour rehearsals.

During a pretty faithful version of the Soundgarden hit “Burden In My Hand,” bassist Corey McCormick was playing like a music school grad that can’t help but justify his existence by showing off his chops. Likewise drummer Jason Sutter overused his double-beater kick drum pedal during “Cochise” to the point of distraction.

Despite this, the audience was definitely satiated, at least until Austin’s sound curfew left Cornell with no time for an encore shortly after 10:30 p.m.

“Everybody is still here after 15 minutes (waiting for an encore),” longtime Cornell fan Jamie Wang said. “I’m kinda speechless that he didn’t come back out. Usually (an artist) will come back out and at least acknowledge the audience … it was a good show nonetheless.”

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