THE GOLDEN HERON

D.SMITH @thegoldenheron

[thegoldenheron]

LIVE: D’Angelo, O2 Apollo, Manchester, 18th February

As the jarring whirls echoed and the spoken word introduction of album track, “1000 Deaths” reverberated around the O2 Manchester arena, an all black-clad D’Angelo stepped into centre frame and the surging political sentiment that roused was subtly morphed into later Black Messiah cut “The Prayer”. Backed by The Vanguard featuring old friend and bass icon Pino Palladino and The Times’ Jesse Johnson, D’Angelo began to romp through a heavy catalogue of hits both old and new. From “Brown Sugar” to “Sugah Daddy” a tight display of natural musical ability flooded the O2 Arena with a series of tight, well rehearsed soul-r’n’b jams which were scorched by hints of funk, Latin and Hip-Hop influence.

From the very moment that he took to the stage any notion of the reclusive songwriter was soon discarded as he gyrated from stage left to right, embracing his merry band who with broad smiles on each of their faces clearly enjoyed the arrival of The Vanguard. Truth be told, this felt almost like a homecoming – after well documented troubles in the interim leading up to the release of Black Messiah, D’Angelo seemed finally happy and contented and most at home leading his tight Vanguard troop through subtle slow jams numbers through to almost riotous “Soul Train” like proportions that will have caused many an aching muscle from dancing come the morning after.

The vibe of the room shifted with each and every number, with political dalliances like, “The Charade” spinning a tight yet contemplative groove into the evening’s atmosphere; yet the overall mentality of the show at its core was love. From the remnants of the first Black Messiah single “Really Love” came the familiar Boom Clap, Boom-Boom Clap of 2000’s Voodoo mid-album cut “One Mo’Gin” which saw D’Angelo sprinkle his inebriated wrists over a drunk and pulsing electric piano riff, whilst longtime collaborator Palladino glided his long and intricate Welsh fingers from fret to fret over a falling, paralytic drum beat that combined with rapturous effect to shake the entire building.

Although many have stated that D’Angelo shelters his vocals within the confines of the background of the mix on record, it became very clear tonight that the man still has twice as many tools than most vocalists could only ever hope for. Shifting from James Brown like shrieks to his renowned, ‘sexy falsetto croon’ seamlessly, D’Angelo has mastered not only his voice and piano playing skills but that of his use of the guitar; adding another wave to the cacophony that is the Vanguard and cementing his status not only as a musician but that as a showman and performer. After a groove-fueled chaotic performance a definite highlight of the evening was the classy finale of the second encore, “Untitled”. Sat alone at the tail end of the night under a sole light of pallid yellow distortions, D’angelo sat smiling, head thrown back with his subtle fingers running up and down a major scale on a sparkled and textured electric Yamaha piano as the entire occupancy of the O2 Apollo repeatedly sung back to him a steady refrain of ‘How does it feel?’

Hands clapping intermittently, the crowd basked in the joy and union that the Vanguard had brought with them over the past two hours and fifteen minutes. When the final words were sang and the final chords rang out, the context of the song seemingly took on a whole new meaning, a sentiment of thought welcoming D’Angelo back to stage. It’s taken around 14 years or so to arrive at this point but it sure does feel pretty damn good to have him back.

Words by Dale Smith (@TheGoldenHeron).

http://www.northernnoise.co.uk/featured/live-dangelo-manchester/6725

[thegoldenheron]

New Noise: False Advertising

From the rupturing chords and slacker demented attitudes of Early 90's Northern America to the grime filled, noise laden laments of Northern England, Manchester's own False Advertising have managed to court a fine line between the old and new. Holing up in a private studio since April 2014, the band adopted the original DIY ethos of, try and try again as they worked on their self-titled debut album due to be released September 4th. As the seasons changed and the months rolled on by, the three piece began to skitter around the dank underbelly of Manchester’s alternative rock scene, leaving a throng of ringing ears in their path as they managed to perfect their nostalgic blend of fuzzy, lethargic riffs and sharp, snappy drum fills. 

With a coy blend of The Pixies, Weezer and New York upstarts Lemuria, the trio have converged this trifecta of influences in combustible fashion, raising eyebrows and nodding heads in venues and bars the whole UK wide. Touted as a form of fresh air, a world away from the current mine field of bleeps and electronic kicks that have pioneered the new renaissance of the Manchester musical underbelly, False Advertising have charged forward to try to ignite the fading flames of their historical surroundings. With an evocative penchant for garish jumpers and clad in ever present wayfarers, the three piece have confessed to scrapping hordes of songs and were prone to restarting recording sessions in strife to fulfil their own artistic expressions. What remains from these sessions are eleven solidly composed noise pop songs, strikingly well produced and surprisingly finely mixed by a band very much in its infancy. 

With a trio of shows at the latter end of the year, hitting the likes of the historic Hop and Grape and the legendary Deaf Institute and new album, 'False Advertising' is on September 4th, the scuzzy three piece are definitely not ones to miss.

Words by Dale Smith (@thegoldenheron). 

[thegoldenheron]

LIVE: Two Gallants, Gorilla, Manchester - 20/02/15

With no airs and fewer graces, San Francisco’s Two Gallants casually crept onto Manchester’s Gorilla stage in matching dye-stained t-shirts and jarring non-plussed faces. Backed by an impressive projected red velvet like sheath recalling The Roadhouse scene in Twin Peaks, the moody duo slowly tinkered with their respective instruments, completing various tuneups and minor adjustments before drummer Tyson Vogel kicked into the rapturous rolling Tom pattern that introduced set opener, “Some Trouble”.

Through minor sound issues, guitarist Adam Stephens’ droning chordal strums did not manage to fully construe the kind of dynamics heard on record, yet the tense and often sporadic energy created between the two-piece from the offset managed to replace any momentary noise deficiencies. Not afraid to push his voice to the very cracks at the spectrum of his range, any lapses of key can be easily put down to heightened passion as evidenced by follow-up, “My Love Won’t Wait” which sees Stephens red-faced and frantic stretching his vocals to almost breaking point as he strives to reach over Vogel’s spastic drumming and his own booming guitar tones.

As the night wore on, the drunken shouts of obvious fan favourite, “Drive My Car” left a noticeable grimace on Stephens’ face and the lairy cries began to wear on the spectators who were content to follow the band’s personally chosen journey. It’s scenes like these that show the glaring troubles with a lack of live music etiquette that many fans are encumbered with in the Manchester music scene – seemingly unaware of how to act and behave when watching a band or artist perform live, drunken laments are hurled toward the performer making them ill at ease with their new surroundings leaving their performance faltering to a certain degree. Although this could be said to be considered as a sign of affection, to a traveling musician who has a carefully rehearsed and prepared set it more often than not eludes an obnoxious hostility. Yet after years of playing together and after literally fighting the law at a gig a few years back, Two Gallants have a natural premise of disregarding the sardonic throng of cathartic listeners and have galvanised their live sound, leaving them to appear largely un-phased by the rowdy requests, with the subtle exception of the furred brow of guitarist Stephens. 

Still not all of the night was affected by the negative crowd reactions, as the duo flew through tracks old and new complete with a few off kilter covers to boot. With new tracks, “Incidental” and “We Are Undone” flowing into old favourites like “Steady Rollin'” and “Two Days Short Tomorrow,” 2GS trudged through their extensive back catalogue managing to meld the music of their youthful fury with that of their current more realised and cultivated output. New track “My Man Go” poses a pensive reminder of their reverberated country lead roots, with the saturated fingerpicked sliding chord pattern and spacious steady kick-snare combination allowing a brief interlude of calm before the wailing scream of Stephens, “Well I…” pounces into, “Las Cruces Jail” at full throttle and the dazed audience are awoken from their momentary trance. A surprising inclusion of the set included a cover of the old Moses Pratt recording, “Long Summer Day” with its highly anti-racial political elements cutting a stark knife into the nights proceedings. Its comic-tinged refrain sparked an energetic sing-along which with its brooding and despair ridden verses proved a slightly odd pairing between band and audience. Set closer, “Broken Eyes” proved the only piece to the solitary encore and saw Vogel, tambourine in hand join Stephens around a lone microphone. With an acoustic at his fingertips and a harmonica to his lips, the two-piece showcased the apex to their tender side, echelons away from the rapture and noise the past hour or so had inhabited. The delicately sweet song sought to draw the audience together and as the steady pulse and rushes crashed from the muted tambourine slaps and Stephens picked the final refrain on his road-worn guitar, the crowd applauded heartily before wandering buzzed and rowdy into the cold Manchester February air, freewheelin’ away into another loaded bar. 

Words by Dale Smith (@thegoldenheron).

http://www.northernnoise.co.uk/featured/live-two-gallants-gorilla-manchester-review/6739

[thegoldenheron]

Essential Playlist: Hamilton Leithauser

Cutting his teeth with the fuzzy garage rock of The Recoys before weaving his rich croon into the intricate sonic quilt that was The Walkmen, New York’s own Hamilton Leithauser has polished his impassioned howl, donned a refined suit and is heading to the Night and Day Café in promotion of his first solo effort, Black Hours. Released in early June and produced by Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij, Leithauser assembled a band with a little help from members of The Shins, Fleet Foxes, The Dirty Projectors and his old partners in The Walkmen; putting together ten brooding tracks of marimba enthused, piano laced visceral indie folk-rock. Leithauser’s coarse, wistful rasp is ever present as the first piano chords ring out on album opener, “5am” and he begins to contort and wrap his calloused words of chaotic exuberance over the course of the oncoming three quarters of an hour. In celebration of his return to the North, we take a look back through his often overlooked back catalogue; from boozy blues led bar-room sing-along jaunts to slow burning, fore-boarding acoustic numbers to find those standout moments throughout the course of his illustrious career.

“11 o’clock Friday Night” – Hamilton Leithauser – Black Hours

Bound with the rich tones of a lightly beat marimba and tied together with the breezy vocals of The Dirty Projectors’ Amber Coffman, album highlight, “11 o’clock Friday Night” takes all the familiar notions of Leithauser’s previous body of work and progresses each sentiment further into something delicately majestic. Leithauser’s lost, observational lyrics paint a stark portrait of a young man aching to fit in to the often bleak city life; a seemingly common thread tied together by The Walkmen guitarist Paul Maroon’s directed video of a lone Leithauser cycling around a darkened city spliced with intermittent shots of a traveling street walking carnival.

“In The Shallows” – Hamilton Leithauser – Alexandra B-Side/Black Hours (Deluxe Edition)

Beginning with the thunderous reverberation of a snare drum roll before settling into a tight cadence of a traded marimba and guitar interlaced riff, spare cut “In The Shallows” is a strange choice to be left off Leithauser’s debut. With the heady loathing refrains and added progressive percussion, the track introduces and maintains a steady groove before the crunchy guitar riffs appear at the chorus and along with the accentuated drum fills, aid to propel the track up a notch before relaxing back into a bridge of the introductory instrumental melody.

“We Can’t Be Beat” – The Walkmen – Heaven

The final Walkmen album, Heaven has in hindsight become a fitting eulogy for the New York band. Littered with wistful harmonies, foreboding acoustic guitar riffs, daring confessional lyrics and atmospheric yet natural uplifting bridges, The Walkmen found a fragile sweet spot to close out their 14 year career. Album opener, “We Can’t Be Beat” employs all of the previously stated merits and exemplifies them with the steady roll of a kick drum pedal and a harmony laden final refrain. Leithauser’s lyrical palette is once again broad and unnerving, interlacing his nonsensical yet regal prose poems into something so sweet and delicate; his lower vocal register burns and rises as the acappella intersection transforms into the steady pulse and stomp of a dive bar sing along, laying the way further into Heaven.

“Victory” – The Walkmen – Lisbon

With its stabbing, picked bass line and reverberated swirling guitar riff introduction, “Victory” emits a resounding military feel as Leithauser makes his heady, laboured sentiments dedicated to his ‘lord’ above.’ Growing and building in temperament, The Walkmen allow Leithauser’s vocal premise to dictate the direction and flow of the song with his unusual melody patterns and passionate vocal arrangements. The swells of his vocals which burst into the chorus of, “Victory right beside me/There’s blood all over my hands” seem reminiscent of a violent battle cry, whilst the dense and bludgeoning cymbal hits meld with whooping bass and forcibly smacked guitar chords to create a melodic yet blusterous storm which repeats and slows throughout the course of the tune.

“Red Moon” – The Walkmen – You & Me

On brooding piano-led lament, “Red Moon,” Leithauser’s yearning words of longing are casually strewn upon a warm bed of flugelhorn and a thumb-stroked acoustic guitar. Showing a darker, more subversive shade of his notebook, Leithauser muses, ‘And you shine like the steel on my knife/The darkness is wrapped all around me tonight,’ a stark sentiment which reflects his uncanny ability to confound an element of love and longing with a dark sense of the macabre.

“Many Rivers to Cross” – The Walkmen – Pussy Cats

2006 saw The Walkmen release a song-by-song cover of John Lennon produced Harry Nilsson ‘lost weekend’ album Pussy Cats. Starting off as an in-joke and evolving lovingly into a full fledged album, Pussy Cats showed off The Walkmen’s ability to merge and morph the original source material to something oft-dark but also subtly humorous. Opening track, “Many Rivers to Cross” originally written by “The Harder they Come” star Jimmy Cliff, adds a shade of violent tension into the once sweetly sung verse melodies. The added ending refrain of “Sitting in Limbo” is a fitting sentiment to the original writer, whilst the bold and tenderly vulgar backing vocals add an emotional depth to the concept of which Leithauser frequently laments.

“The Rat” – The Walkmen – Bows + Arrows

Starting with a harsh cadence of downward grazed guitar chords strangely reminiscent of an ethereal church organ, leading through to a heavy-pounded drum kit introduction complete with bar-spanning frenzied rack-tom fills, the song that charmed many people to be conscious of The Walkmen sounds just as fresh today as it did way back in mid 2008. The bass slide to the C# minor as the full instrumentation meets and explodes into one minor cacophony shows a focused and more polished side of the band, a far progression from the jangly, loosely picked riffs and spare rhythm section of their debut album.

Words by Dale Smith (@TheGoldenHeron).

http://www.northernnoise.co.uk/featured/essential-playlist-hamilton-leithauser-manchester/6499

[thegoldenheron]

INTERVIEW: Hamilton Leithauser

November 20th, 2014

I believe that throughout your career as a musician, your voice has developed into something very natural and very organic; yet something that has always remained stable, albeit with progression is your use of words and language which at times take on an almost quintessential English tone. What bands and artists have influenced you as both a writer and a musician from this side of the pond?

“Hi how’s it going. Thanks for the kind words. I’m an American through and through but that doesn’t mean I can’t love those mid-20th Century Englishmen…Kingsley Amis, Robert Graves, WH Auden, Graham Greene. Those are maybe my favorite writers, in order. I don’t really know the English tone, but I do appreciate the humor more and more. Bands? There’s a million. Start with the Rolling Stones and just roll on down the line.”

Much like your native country the UK is very much divided into North and South, both which possess both similar but vastly different commodities and ways of life. In your touring experience, which side do you gravitate toward the most and find a connection with; the dirty North or the cosmopolitan South?

“I’ve really come to like Manchester. I feel some affinity to the place I don’t really know why, because up until recently, it hadn’t been very friendly to me at all. Maybe it’s the music history or something that originally got me interested, but I was recently shown around the city by some locals and saw some great architecture and interesting places. It wasn’t all that dirty…I guess the canal was just a traffic jam of trash…and there were some dudes fishing in it…which I kinda liked.”

As mentioned earlier your use of the written word and the way you mould melodies out of that to which you write is very passionate and often slightly pained. On your debut, Black Hours your focus on the small but prominent reminds me of the way Steinbeck used language and the smallest dalliances to accentuate something so profound yet unfalteringly sad. Are authors and novels a big source of inspiration? What examples of literature do you find yourself coming back to over the years which may have shaped the way you, yourself write?

“I read a lot because I enjoy it, and I think it does help me write music…but only insofar as keeping your mind active would theoretically keep your creative thought process going. I can’t draw an exact connection, but in general it seems to help for me. I used to exercise a lot and I thought that would probably help with keeping the mind active, but I actually find that a gin and tonic has basically the same net effect on the creative process, and you don’t even have to leave the couch for that. So I’m exploring that method.”

Your band-mates from The Walkmen have been prominently featured throughout the beginnings of your solo career, from them guesting on your album to adjoining live shows; was keeping those relationships both musically and personally important to you as you moved out on your own as a sort of celebration of how you all have developed? And what do you make of both the Peter Bauer album, Liberation! and the Walter Martin album, We’re all Young Together?

“Yeah they’re all my oldest friends (and family) so of course we’re gonna stay in touch and always be linked to each other one way or another.”

On Black Hours collaborations are a frequent notion which litter the album throughout – Given the choice, who would you either living or dead choose to collaborate with? And who would you enjoy working with again from your long and fabled career?

“Every person I worked with on Black Hours was a pleasure to be around, and I’d love to work with all of them again. That was a unique group and I challenge anyone to beat that lineup. I’d like to write music for a Coen Brothers movie.”

The Black Hours album cover seems very ‘classic’ in its presentation. How involved are you in the creation of the visual side of your music? And why did you deem this image the most appropriate to convey your art?

“I just wanted a picture of myself to go with my own name because I was a little tired of being labelled under a band name after all these years, and I thought “what you see is what you get”. I picked that shot because I was smiling so I didn’t want to come across as morose or something when the record was called “Black Hours”…like a funeral or something. I know I do look like a politician, but it was the lesser of many evils. It’s hard to work with pictures of yourself if you’re majorly un-photogenic. I suffer from that.”

The whole notion of Black Hours seems a very relaxed and light-hearted affair, albeit often with grimaces of sombre undertones. On songs like, ‘I Retired’ it sounds at times like a group of friends in a room playing songs and heaving a good time. Was the writing and recording of the album as organic as it sounds?

I Retired was just me and Rostam getting to know each other. It’s got a lot of first take performances and spontaneity in it and I’m really proud of that one…and I know he is too. It was a real curve ball for both of us and I think it adds a serious out-of-left-field element to the record. A lot of the rest of the record came from months of preparation…I think you can probably hear that more on like “5 AM” or “The Silent Orchestra” or “St. Mary’s County”. Very different feel and approach.”

To succeed in any art form you must deliver yourself to it fully. How do you balance your creations with your own personal responsibilities and life? And how important is living an ordinary everyday life as an influence to your art?

That’s hard to answer because I just try and go about my business the best I can….it’s difficult to just suddenly judge your whole existence. Between music, my kids, the semi-often novel, and online chess, I don’t have much free time any more…so I do find myself working on music every day. At odd times…not necessarily during the hours I try and block off for it…but that’s kind of how I’ve always worked on music. It’s just something I always do.”

Interview by Dale Smith (thegoldenheron).

http://www.northernnoise.co.uk/featured/interview-hamilton-leithauser/6591