Black Swan Songs

Last night I attended one of the best show’s I’ve seen in a long, long time. I have a copy of the Bon Iver record “For Emma, Forever Ago,” and I knew that the show would be good, but I didn’t expect it to be one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

There is something about vocalist Justin Vernon’s voice and songs that I identify with wholeheartedly. Knowing his story – how he wrote and recorded the album in isolation, hibernating away in upstate Wisconsin after breaking up with his girlfriend and his previous band – allows the songs to resonate in your soul that much more deeply.

Here is my review, which also ran in the online version of today’s Austin American-Statesman:

Bon Iver — a.k.a. indie-folk musician Justin Vernon and band — turned in one of the most memorable performances from the entire ACL Festival weekend Sunday evening at a sold-out show at the Paramount Theatre.

The band’s final performance before their tour-ending Wisconsin homecoming show couldn’t have been scripted better. The sold-out audience was hyped, fueled by adrenaline, alcohol (and who knows what else) after three days of music, sun and rain. The Paramount Theatre’s acoustics sounded as if they had been fine-tuned especially for Vernon’s booming falsetto. The show was also the final night of Bon Iver’s tour with opening band Megafaun (a freak-folk group of stunning power featuring members of Vernon’s previous band DeYarmond Edison).

Vernon was very gracious the entire evening, whether he was calling up an old friend to start the show by reciting a poem, or whether repeatedly thanking the audience for taking part in an evening that was seemingly a poignant apex in his life.

“I can’t express enough gratitude for y’all showing up to fill this beautiful theater,” Vernon said.

Bon Iver began the show with the first three songs from debut album “For Emma, Forever Ago” played in sequence, a comforting start for those familiar with what’s turned out to be one of the strongest debuts of the decade. The band’s emphasis on tone and harmony was obvious from the detail in the arrangements of their four-part vocal harmonies to the intricacies of their instrumentation. On “Skinny Love,” bassist Matthew McCaughan and guitarist Michael Noyce both played drums, adding a primal, inescapable beat accompaniment. On other songs McCaughan simultaneously played bass and a kickdrum with his foot while drummer Sean Carey played a small electronic keyboard.

As strong as the songs on “For Emma, Forever Ago” are, the band’s tireless touring for the past two years has developed them into an impassioned unit. Whereas some artists become detached from songs after performing them again and again, Vernon slipped into the songs like an old comfortable vintage sweater, filling them out with his passionate voice. The crooks and crannies of each song were not dusty and dark, but were places where Vernon’s bright voice illuminated, revealing the artistry of his song craft.

Just past the set’s mid-point, Vernon played an unexpected, rousing cover of the Outfield’s “Your Love,” inciting screams and laughter from the audience. Vernon pulled back the rhythm and created a bouncing groove, emphasizing a backbeat pocket that doesn’t exist in the original song.

An ethereal and sublime version of “re: Stacks” followed where Vernon played solo for the first time of the evening. The instrumentation stripped away to just his voice and guitar emphasized the power of the lyric and Vernon’s immense songwriting talent, recalling everything that was inspiring in Nick Drake’s music while being wholly original.

Bon Iver closed the night with a two-song encore. The first was the elegiac “For Emma,” then he brought Megafaun and various friends up on stage to cover Megafaun’s “Worried Mind” (In the video above, you can see a version of the two bands performing “Worried Mind” in San Francisco a few days earlier). The group of musicians huddled along the edge of the proscenium and used only the theater’s acoustics as amplification, Asylum Street Spankers style. After a few verses, they called on the audience to sing-along to the chorus, a cathartic “Come ease your mind, come on ease your worried mind.” The collaboration received a standing ovation (as did the first set and Megafaun’s brilliant opening set), proving that sometimes the most powerful performances at a music festival are not merely the loudest and largest.

Setlist
Flume
Lump Sum
Skinny Love
Brackett, WI
Blood Bank
Beach Baby
Josie
Creature Fear
re: Stacks
The Wolves (Act I and II)

Encore
For Emma
Worried Mind

Saturday evening – just two nights ago – I had the pleasure of attending a sold-out Grizzly Bear and Beach House show at Emo’s. I only caught the last Beach House song…and I’m glad because what I saw of their last song did not sound very good.

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.

My editor at the American-Statesman asked me if I’d cover Chris Cornell’s show at Stubb’s and considering the economy, I couldn’t say no. Despite getting made fun of for years, I’ve been a Soundgarden fan since 1988. His post-Soundgarden band was a more difficult sell for me. I love Rage Against the Machine, but I found much their post-Zach de la Rocha collaboration with Cornell in Audioslave  to be rock radio crapola. Music for the masses. Hoi polloi elevator music.

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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