Marathonproxys 2007: Dudes from School, Vol. 1

2. Robert Pollard – Silverfish Trivia
Admittedly, Pollard’s been spotty for a while, but this ranks with his best, partly because it’s an EP, a form he excels at. More important, I think, is that he’s rediscovered his gift for organizing a record—part of the appeal of the lo-fi GbV was the fact that those records sounded like the world’s greatest DJ putting tracks against each other perfectly: here, note how the instrumentals frame the almost-meandering “Cats Love a Parade” just right so that it comes off as a full, complex movement rather than a bloated song.

3. Ornette Coleman – Sound Grammar
So it’s from last year, who cares. It inspired me to reappraise funk Coleman, which I had unfairly written off because I didn’t much like Virgin Beauty or Body Meta. Turns out I’m an idiot—this one and Dancing in Your Head are fabulous (Of Human Feelings and In All Languages are just a step behind, I think). True to the harmolodic ethos, Ornette’s take on fusion is more egalitarian than most: melody plays a very strong role (I went back to Bitches Brew to compare, and I don’t think there’s a real melody on it) and his funk rhythms are strangely rickety, far from, say, Herbie Hancock, whose thick grooves sometimes threaten harmony altogether. The liner notes are, uh, informative. (Footnote: not only was this the first recording to win the Pulitzer Prize for music—apparently the other winners were all written compositions—it wasn’t even one of the nominees; the voters went outside the [jewel?—sorry] box and selected something on their own. Good for them.)

4. Einstürzende Neubauten – Alles Wieder Offen
Neubauten have been doing this irritating series of download-only fanclub releases that I keep finding out about after their distribution windows close, so it’s good to see them back with a proper release, and a great one at that. They’ve finally made a record that combines all of their various sounds together in the right proportions: the racket of the early albums, the techno throb of the late ‘80s, the Barry White sounds of Tabula Rasa and Ende Neu, and the droning ambiance of their soundtracks. “Let’s Do It A Dada” (mp3) is crap, but at least it’s goofy crap.

5. Maxïmo Park – Our Earthly Pleasures
I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to indie rock trends, but I do know that a few years ago there was a big thing where a lot of bands (especially in the U.K.) were making records that sounded like old U.S. and British postpunk, particularly its dancier variations. People liked it for a while, then they started making fun of it, and now, I guess, it’s over. Fortunately, Maxïmo Park haven’t given up the dream, and on their second album they’ve done that seemingly exhausted trend proud. In addition to heartbreaking melodies and witty-if-maybe-a-little-pretentious lyrics, what I really like about this band is the way they work disparate song sections together in unconventional ways. Some of the tracks here are straightforward ballads and raveups, but about half of them seem put together out of bits and pieces from multiple songs. Unlike other bands that tend in this direction, Maxïmo Park craft compositions that hold together. So, for instance, in “A Fortnight’s Time,” instead of getting from a minor key verse to a major key chorus with a conventional increase in bombast, they quicken the pace mid-song and shift from electric organ to piano accompaniment, all without making the song sound disjointed. The opening track, “Girls Who Play Guitars,” has five different sections, one clearly a verse, one clearly a chorus—but none of the other three is identifiable as a bridge, or as anything other than a sort of compositional interjection. And yet, the song coheres perfectly, which is a pretty neat trick. This album is a clear advance beyond their debut, but there’s lots of room for them to develop further–more than any other band I’ve heard in recent years, Maxïmo Park have not only a sense of where they are, but also where they’re going.

6. Skip James – 1930 Recordings
I was telling someone how great Skip James was a few months ago when I realized I hadn’t listened to these definitive recordings in years. Skip the ‘60s revival stuff for now and go back to these early sides, some of the weirdest blues ever made, and definitely the creepiest. James used, apparently, a D-minor tuning (“the saddest of all keys”), which makes for a harrowing experience even on the up-tempo numbers. Case in point: “I’m So Glad,” which is probably the most deceptive song title ever (except when Cream played it; then it was just boring). It’s never clear what James is purportedly glad about, but he sounds demented more than glad, repeating the lines “I’m so glad/I am glad/I am glad/I’m glad” over and over. It seems to have something to do with a woman, but it’s less likely that his long lost love has returned than that she has been killed in some gruesome way, by a train or a shotgun. The song takes an even darker turn when “glad” is replaced by “tired,” a sure sign that something awful has happened, and that you don’t want to ask James what it is.

7. Yoko Ono at Pitchfork Festival
Everybody left the park once Yoko started playing (many during the overlong video about love and flashlights), and I get it: Yoko Ono sounds weird. But the animosity directed at her by twentysomething hipsters was really troubling: racist remarks, petty mockery of her vocal style, suggestions that she had John Lennon under some kind of mystical Japanese spell. One young man from New Zealand said that “if John Lennon were here right now, he’d be rolling over in his grave,” which not only ignores the fact that Lennon performed on some of Yoko’s albums, but which also seems to suggest that the solution to Yoko-noise is to move John Lennon’s grave to Chicago.

Yoko’s show was, in fact, extraordinary, drawing on her most familiar and poppy material (“Don’t Worry Kyoko,” “Walking on Thin Ice”) while maintaining a firm foundation in noisier terrain. She was chipper, interacting with the audience quite a bit (most of those who stayed responded rapturously—she does have fans, after all), telling jokes, and generally enjoying herself. The highlight was a 10-minute version of “Mulberry” performed with Thurston Moore, which Yoko said afterward would be the last time she’d ever do the piece (really?), and which she introduced with a line that will never be spoken from the stage at Pitchfork again: “When I was a little girl during World War II . . .”

8. The Mekons at the Lafayette Brewing Company
The Mekons are a venerable, “original era” British punk band that no one actually listens to. They are, of course, alternately Marxist, anarchist, pagan, and/or atheist. They are also my favorite active band, and, as it turns out, an extraordinary live unit, even in this sort of acoustic setting. They know their crowd, it seems, focusing mostly on “the hits” with only a couple of songs from their latest record (the satisfying, if lesser, Natural). With Tom Greenhalgh back in England awaiting the birth of his fourth child, the audience here was treated to guest Will Oldham, whose hysteria-laden vocals worked to great effect on songs normally sung by Greenhalgh, and whose fidgety dance moves fit right in with an over-the-hill bunch of British devotees of Appalachia. Closing with a single encore, an achingly beautiful, Sally Timms-led version of John Scott Sherrill’s “Wild and Blue,” the Mekons live were everything I hoped they’d be and more, even without amplifiers and a drum kit.

9. The Weakerthans – Reunion Tour
I really love the Weakerthans. No, this isn’t as good as Reconstruction Site, but man, it’s close. That John K. Samson, I tell ya. Man.

10. Pylon – Gyrate Plus (reissue)
Dance it out, motherfuckers!