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Honeysuckle
on Rusty Barbed Wire Lucinda Williams is hard to pin down, restless, complicated. And you get the feeling she likes it that way. Yesterday she might have been an obsessive, cast-off lover sifting through the ashes of old flames, a theme that flows through her songs over and over again.
Today she might be the gothic Southern Belle, a wordsmith with the skill to rip poetry from the aching pits of sorrow too deep for tears. And tomorrow she could be the independent-minded artist who's gotten a bad rap for acting like a pouty, demanding brat who clashes with producers and musicians and who people say is hard to work with. "Challenging" is the most frequently used euphemism. For years she did her own thing, writing songs that blended country, blues and rock while the mainstream embraced the scuzzy grit of grunge. But that's the way she likes it. She lives on her own schedule, rarely rising before noon, forgetting appointments for interviews, and is known for turning cold, steely-eyed and almost hostile when she has to appear in front of a camera. Her 1998 Grammy-winning album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, took almost five years to record because of her agonizing, perfectionist, control-freak tendencies and painful self-doubt when in the studio. But when she recorded her most recent studio album, World Without Tears, she waltzed into the studio around seven in the evening after the band had been there working up a song, sang three takes and left. "We'd do one song a day, usually ended up using the second take, and that was it," said producer Mark Howard, who's also worked with Bob Dylan and U2. By the time the alt/rock/country sound made it mainstream, she was already well into her career, old, over the hill, some might say. For decades she'd already been weaving together the influences of Hank Williams, Flannery O'Connor, Loretta Lynn, Eudora Welty, the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix. And just when the artsy, creative fringe was trending back to a more retro feel that soon evolved into a style that embraced old school country western music, rockabilly and alt-country, Williams released a couple of really great albums. Her timing was perfect. With Sweet Old World, released in 1992, her poetic talent and gravelly, haunting lyrical style really took hold. Over the years, her music has evolved from the disciplined, intensity of Cars Wheels on a Gravel Road to the looser, more relaxed sound we hear today. With every subtle change, the music just gets better and Williams remains one of the most innovative musicians of the millennium. She's got a voice like mud-covered honeysuckle twining around the spikes of a rusty, barbed wire fence — delicate, painful and dangerous. Something innocent and sweet trickles through all her songs that more often than not hover forlornly over desperate, romantic obsessions. It's the searing realness of her lyrics that's made her the darling of critics and an icon with everyone from urban hipsters to small town folk. It's something about the way her songs make you feel the stifling air of the room she's singing about or smell the bacon frying and the coffee. Her most recent album, the double-disc Live at the Fillmore, does an adequate job of capturing Williams' concert persona on a good day, a day when she's performing for an audience that loves her. But like most live albums, it doesn't even touch the raw real thing. Which is why you should sell your first born if that's what it takes to get a ticket to this show.
When
the Hippo Talks, Minowa Listens Show me a band who wants to make a positive difference in the world and more than likely I'll hide under a rock, cover my ears and scream "No more hippie jam bands! No more hippie jam bands!"
But not so with Cloud Cult. The band records in a geothermally-powered studio, prints its CDs on recycled materials, donates 100 percent of its after-expenses profit to environmental charities and makes environmental information available at its shows. Brad Minowa, Cloud Cult's mastermind, organic farmer and founder of the Earthology record label, wouldn't make music any other way. But Cloud Cult doesn't make the kind of "all one love let's jam together" schlock. Cloud Cult's brand-spankin' new CD, Advice from the Hungry Hippopotamus, has a little bit of everything. It would be entirely appropriate to call it epic, even, despite the dippy name. But what else would be expected from the band that Minnesota Music Awards nominated "2004 Artist of the Year" along with Prince and Paul Westerberg? About the hippo — Minowa has said in interviews that when he moved to Duluth he began having dreams about hippos. So, like a totem animal, he allowed the hippo to live in the album art and imagery. In a recent interview in the Twin Cities' Pulse Minowa spoke about his 2-year-old son Kaidin, who died unexpectedly in 2002. "On the last album (2004's Aurora Borealis) there was a big struggle in trying to understand where he went and why he left and the darkness involved with that and trying to just accept it," Minowa said. Now it's about "feeling him here and also taking that gift of his life and trying to make it as huge as possible." Advice is the fifth Cloud Cult album in five years, topping out at 25 tracks in 64 minutes. Kaidin's death still reverberates through Minowa's music. You don't have to be a parent to understand the depth of pain Minowa experienced when he sings, "I bought a new shirt and I got new socks/But my skin's still made of memories," on "Start New." Minowa pilfers Neil Young's "Into the Black," buzzes and screeches like Chemical Brothers and soars like Thom Yorke. He channels Isaac Brock alongside Doug Martsch and doesn't mind sounding silly when singing about the hippo. The CD's got some utterly beautiful fuzzy guitar, some lovely orchestral cello, viola and flute and many un-categorizable moments. You'll serve yourself well to check out this show, which features an onstage painter every night.
Dark
Tales and Shiny Melodies
Becoming a Mountain Goats fan is very often a matter of hearing the right song at the right time. John Darnielle's jangly story-songs don't sell themselves the way poppier, lusher music might, and his early recordings were as lo-fi as it gets, just Darnielle and a boom box with a record button. The song that won me was "Going to Georgia," from the just-rereleased Zopilote Machine. It's the closest thing Darnielle (who is, for all intents and purposes, the Mountain Goat) has to a hit; live, the building verse becomes a sing-along as Darnielle says, "The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway/ Is that it's you/ And that you are standing in the doorway/ And you smile as you ease the gun from my hands/ I am frozen with joy right where I stand." Darnielle's voice sounds something like Conan O'Brien looks: a little awkward and lean, but bright and unconventionally handsome. He's a madly prolific songwriter, but only since signing to 4AD (home of such notables as The Pixies, Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance, and hardly a hotbed of lo-fi recordings) has he started to get more attention in the more mainstream press. A recent New Yorker story on Darnielle and The Hold Steady's Craig Finn lovingly referred to Darnielle as "America's best non-hip hop lyricist." (The writer also noted that he's seen seven Mountain Goats shows, and his companions have always become converts.) It's a hyperbolic claim, but an interesting one to make now: When Darnielle's lyrics have been, for the most part, dramatic fictions about dissolving marriages and semi-sympathetic underdogs, The Sunset Tree, his new release, is mostly autobiographical. His last album, the beautiful, engrossing We Shall All Be Healed, began this trend, but Sunset takes it a step further. Sunset is a chronicle of a dark time in Darnielle's life, a history of abuse at the hands of his stepfather and the solace he found in music. What makes this potentially maudlin topic work is the distance Darnielle, who's now in his thirties, has from those teenage times. He's blunt and straightforward, but never self-pitying or self-conscious, never morose, never wallowing. He is, in fact, telling the same sort of stories as always — it's just that now they're his stories. And now they're wrapped in strings, buoyed up by bass and drums and marked with piano. Darnielle's wrapped his darkest times in some of his shiniest melodies, as when he sings tautly, "I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me," on the gently rollicking "This Year" — a song which could easily be the one to win the Mountain Goats a whole host of new fans.
Music
Shorts Pop Resurrection
Jangly riffs, sentimental lyrics and soaring melodies all describe the music of the High Dials. With a nod to all the appropriate (and great) players — The Zombies, The Byrds and The Pretty Things — the High Dials honor their musical influences with a sophisticated early '90s rock edge that brings newness and originality to classic, albeit forgotten, pop sounds. So they're big in Canada. Possibly Japan? Who knows. Stateside, the High Dials haven't really thrown the switch that would illuminate the US pop-world. However, on the wake of the release of their solid, forthcoming album, War of the Wakening Phantoms, (which, by the way features amazing psychedelic/folk artwork a la those old '60s concert posters for the Fillmore), the group stands poised to really turn some heads. The Montreal-based five-piece was also the darling of this year's South By Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, and were voted by the New York Post and SPIN magazine as one of the top ten "must see" bands at the event. War of the Wakening Phantoms capitalizes on the group's ability to write memorable, cascading melodies. Every note captivates with vibrant emotion and melancholy, while at the same time refraining from being too corny or wussy. You can sit and listen in introspection or leap from your seat and do the Flashdance run-in-place dance. Pre-released tracks from the album such as "The Holy Ground" and "Soul In Lust" virtually explode with crisp yet morose guitar hooks. Whereas songs like "Standhill Sands" reflect the group's fondness for a more subdued Brit-pop sound (in an almost shoegazing style) and more specifically, the music of Supergrass. Craig Leve, the on-air host of KWVA campus radio's "Snap Crackle Pop" radio show, was among the first people to introduce the group to the West Coast public. Apparently the band loves playing in Eugene as next week's stop at the Downtown Lounge marks the High Dials' third appearance here, having previously played at the Black Forest and the Samurai Duck. War of the Wakening Phantoms drops stateside on July 12. The High Dials perform with Nude at 10 pm at the Downtown Lounge on Monday, 6/20. Free. — Steve Sawada
Future Man's Funky Rhythm
Roy "Future Man" Wooten knows rhythm. The percussionist for the three-time Grammy winning band Bela Fleck and the Flecktones has been drumming since he was a little kid. "I was probably 7 or 8 … I just started beating up boxes," he says. "The funk rhythms of today are the brothers of the blues rhythms of the past." While the Flecktone's take a year-long break, Wooten is touring with his "street maestro" Jeremiah Able on keyboard. Wooten says he's been "utilizing all kinds of music" in his solo work. His sound is certainly innovative, melding jazz with electronic music and more. "I love music because … it reveals yourself," he says. If you want to see this percussion master for yourself, Future Man plays at 9 pm at the WOW Hall on June 22. Tickets are $13 in advance, $16 at the doors. — By Ursula Evans-Heritage
The Cock Rockin' Makers The traditional 10-year wedding anniversary gift is aluminum or tin. How special. But the modern upgrade is diamonds. Somewhere in between is what The Makers, who've actually been around since 1991, deserve for their 10th album in as many years, Everybody Rise! As their producer, Jack Endino, put it, the album is a "monster" that "rocks pretty hard." That's an understatement. They put the hardest track right at the beginning, just to get you in the mood. With distortion drenched guitars (two of them) that take the lead over the vocals on this particular track, "Matter of Degrees," they pound out this incredibly melodic, growly, power rock tune in exactly three minutes, leaving you amped and wanting more. You won't be disappointed because they segue right into "Good As Gold" with its awesome, catchy chorus that's more dark Green Day than Stones meets Stooges, as they've been described. With a new drummer, Aaron Saye, and Tim "Killingsworth" Maker returning to the fold after a some time away, this may be their best album yet, poppier than some of their earlier works but more polished than more recent releases like Rock Star God and Strangest Parade. Lead Singer Michael Maker can mimic Mick Jagger with uncanny perfection, which probably explains the comparisons to the Stones. But on the happy Beach Boys-sounding, boppy "Run With Me Tonight" he sounds more like Paul Westerberg might if you dropped him on a shiny, happy SoCal beach. And let's not forget "Ordinary Human Love" that sounds like The Backstreet Boys infiltrated this hard cock-rockin' band. It's somewhat baffling how a band that started in the early '90s can STILL look like a five-person '80s power trio, complete with uniform black outfits and shaggy Joan Jet hair for boys. But they do. In a way, their bad fashion sense and refusal to embrace the current, indie rock "darker than thou" trend is refreshing. And they get extra points for dedicating the entire album to Buddy Holly. Plus, this show's going to be really, really, fun. The Makers play at 7 pm on June 22 at John Henry's, $7. — Melissa Bearns
AX BILLY GRILL & SPORTS BAR BADA BING'S BEANERY All Ages BLACK FOREST CLUB TSUNAMI CORNUCOPIA All Ages COUNTRYSIDE COUNTRYSIDE PiZZA
COZMIC PIZZA@THE STRANDH DA HOUZE DIABLO'S DOWNTOWN LOUNGE EMBERS SUPPER CLUB EUGENE WINE CELLARS GOOD TIMES JAXX LOUNGE@PREMIUM POUR JO FEDERIGO'S JOE'S BAR & GRILLE JOGGER'S BAR & GRILL JOHN HENRY'S LAVELLE'S WINE BAR & BISTRO LUCKEY'S CLUB CIGAR
LUNA MAC'S AT THE VET'S MCSHANE'S BAR & GRILL MONROE STREET CAFE All Ages MULLIGAN'S PUB O'DONNELL'S IRISH PUB OVERTIME GRILL PEABODY'S PERUGINO QUACKER'S RED LION INN ROSE'S DINER
SAM BOND'S GARAGE SAM'S PLACE
SAMURAI DUCK SHER'S TAVERN STACY'S COVERED BRIDGE THE STAGE@HOSANNA CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP All
Ages SWEETWATER'S TAP 'N' KEG TAYLOR'S BAR AND GRILL TINY TAVERN WETLANDS WOW HALL All Ages YUKON JACK'S CORVALLIS BEANERY IOVINO'S RISTORANTE PLATINUM NIGHT CLUB TOMMY'S PEACOCK
karaoke TH: The Cooler, Countryside Pizza (River Rd.), Da Houze,
Duck Inn, Lone Star
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