It’s rare to find an artist who is so expertly aware of and on top of their craft; one not only capable of recreating their recorded material live, but also skilled enough to make the sounds on stage transcend their recorded counterparts. This is M. Ward. At heart, he’s a studio man, more comfortable at home in Portland meticulously weaving intricate guitar lines together. That is when he’s not busy lending a production hand to the compositions of Zooey Deschanel as one half of She & Him. Side note: when I was leaving the venue, I overheard the following: “Yo man, have you ever heard of Zooey Dechannel?”. It was a priceless moment.

But Ward’s performance at The Vic last night was very much geared towards the longtime fans. Entering the venue, I was intrigued by what the audience makeup would be - it’s hard to deny the career boost brought to his solo career by the immediate success of She & Him - but nevertheless, even a deep cut like “Helicopter” from 2003s Transfiguration of Vincent had the whole room singing along.

With the lights dimming around 8:45, bassist Mike Coykendall and drummer Scott McPherson walked out to begin the slow, plodding rhythms of “Post-War”, a track from his 2006 album of the same name. Ward casually strutted out about a minute in, picked up his signature Gibson guitar, and stepped up to the microphone to fill the room with his unmistakable voice. “Clean Slate”, the opener from his April release, A Wasteland Companion (Merge), followed. One of the more captivating guitar lines he’s written, Ward seized the opportunity to perform an extended intro to the song paralleling the styles of Leo Kottke. It’s moments like these that truly display Ward’s virtuoso musicianship.

Both “Poison Cup” and “Chinese Translation”, favorites from Post-War, were warmly received by the audience. Others, such as “Eyes on the Prize” and “Magic Trick”, were welcomed selections of the setlist as well. A nice surprise came halfway through when Ward announced they were going to try one of his tunes, the track “Whole Lotta Losin’” , from the single album spawned from his 2009 side project, Monsters of Folk.

The main set ended with a beefed up, electrified version of “To Go Home”, a rocking Daniel Johnston cover, again from Post-War. And lucky for us, we got not one, but two encores. Ward closed out the night with “Duet for Guitars #3”, an instrumental gem from Vincent, but also a staple of his live show.

Ward himself has mentioned before his dislike for the road, that it keeps him away from home. This sense of a rushed, let’s-get-it-over-with vibe occasionally would filter throughout the room as he and the band generally allow for a healthy second between songs. But this is strangely welcomed in a way. Ward’s incredibly detailed music requires acute attention, and any excessive banter or theatrics would have proven distracting.

Ward’s A Wasteland Companion is out now via Merge Records.

-Sam McAllister | sam@tandemshoprecords.com

The three members of the instrumentally eclectic band, The Daredevil Christopher Wright, took the stage at Schubas Friday night to a moderately sized crowd. After a brief introduction, the band launched into a nearly three minute long a cappella arrangement, entitled “Day Song 080208” from their 2011 self-released EP, The Longsuffering Song. On the record, the song clocks in at only a little longer than a minute, but I’m glad they dragged it out on stage. I always enjoy when a band starts things off with something a little atypical compared to the rest of their set. It helps to rope people in, and the audience at Schubas stayed pretty darn silent throughout it. While the trio struggled slightly to keep their harmonies completely in-tune, the performance was certainly impressive.

In support of the band’s upcoming full-length (entitled The Nature of Things, out June 26th), they showcased three new songs from the record. The new material displayed the band’s increasingly adventurous style of songwriting. “The Animal of Choice” (a song that originally appeared on Longsuffering)  is a beautiful, almost Samba-esque jam. Others included extended segments of instrumental interludes.

The most unique aspect of the band is their eclectic instrumentation for such a small ensemble of people. Frontman Jon Sunde dons a nylon-stringed guitar, and he’s backed by a rhythm section that includes a drumset and a baritone guitar. Additionally, Sunde produced a slightly altered singing voice compared to both the band’s earlier work (more specifically In Deference To A Broken Back, their 2009 release on Eau Claire’s on Amble Down) and the last time I saw them live. He’s more tame with his vocals now, and it better suits the music.  

Lucky for the Daredevil Christopher Wright, the venue is certainly one of the better ones for them to play in the city. The impeccable sound of Schubas only bettered the listening experience for the audience by helping to expose all the intricate components of the band’s music. I think the band themselves recognized this too, as they gave multiple shout-outs to the venue during the performance.

I was disappointed with the short six song set. But oh well, I suspect these guys will be headlining Schubas sometime soon. Then we’ll get to hear a set that properly exposes the sheer talent and depth the Daredevil Christopher Wright pour into their music.

Setlist:

Day Song 080208
The Animal of Choice
Love With All Your Heart
A Man of the Arts
We Fold Inside of Us
I & Thou

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The Daredevil Christopher Wright’s new LP is called The Nature of Things and will be out  June 26th via File Under: Music.

-Sam McAllister | sam@tandemshoprecords.com

The Magnetic Fields played two nights back-to-back at the Vic and I was there for the first one. Australian one-woman DJing and looping machine Bachelorette opened the show. After a while the crowd caught on that her music was catchy and that they should be dancing, but by the time they got around to that point, her set was pretty much finished. Still it was good to see the crowd reacting to her music – a sign of what was to come from the embracing, family-like group of people at the Vic.

When Stephin Merritt and co. took the stage, the band’s pianist and sometimes singer Claudia Gonson told the audience that she and Shirley Simms had been hit with laryngitis over the past few weeks. The set started out a little rocky as the women and Merritt got their bearings, but confidence built as they went on. Merritt’s deep swelling vocals were in full form by the time he started singing 69 Love Songs favorite “Come Back From San Francisco”. A bone tingling rendition of “The Book of Love” and the new single “Andrew In Drag” were the highlights for his voice. Gonson and Simms had some great vocal parts too, proving that the group isn’t all about Merritt, though his were clearly the crowd favorites. Gonson and Simms made their instruments look easy, as did cellist Sam Doval. 

With the five band members sitting in a row across the stage and no percussion to back them up, their songs sometimes lacked a little forward momentum, though the Merritt-Gonson-Simms three art harmonies helped there. Still it would be interesting to hear the group add some drums for the live show at some point. Guitarist John Woo was my least favorite part of the band, playing a loose steel string guitar that sounded fuzzy and undefined. When not accompanied by piano I had a hard time accepting the guitar as a song’s leading voice. Apparently Merritt couldn’t hear it at all as he cut a song from the set list after trying to sing solo with just Woo’s guitar. It was a relatively unpleasant moment that put the crowd awkwardly between Merritt and the sound engineer. 

Otherwise, though, spirits on the whole were kept high with banter about dead animals, dying animals, and other dead animals. Apparently the band’s favorite theme, they didn’t talk about much else, aside from announcing which albums particular songs were from. The crowd didn’t mind the dead animal talk much though and the band’s stories were funny. Merritt’s deadpan delivery was especially effective, his storytelling skills shining through.

Emma Straub, the Magnetic Fields’ merch girl, has a tour diary going. Read it here. Includes some great stuff about their trip to SXSW and Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights.

-Megan Frestedt | megan@tandemshoprecords.com

M83 played two sold-out shows last night at Lincoln Hall; I was at the first one to check it out. The show was fun and energetic and there’s no doubting that M83’s songs do great in a club setting. Audience members danced, jumped, and yelled for more. The band chose songs well, making the night’s show more engaging than their recent album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, which, while filled with cool songs, gets long pretty early on.

But it always bums me out to see musicians hitting buttons when they could be playing instruments and M83’s frontman Anthony Gonzalez did a lot of that last night. He had a keyboard all to himself and he barely touched it. I got excited when I saw the three keyboards on stage at first, but let down when I realized they would mostly get used for holding reverb-y chords or as stage decor. Definitely could have been better utilized.

M83’s drummer was one of the highlights, mixing live drums in with the rest of the band’s electronic feel as only a pro could. The female keyboardist was a sight for sore eyes too, and she made being a woman playing keyboard look cool. Her voice was rock solid, though I swear there were times where she was just singing along to pre-recorded songs. Through all the fun, there was a constant reminder that the band members were orchestrating in front of your eyes, but not really creating.

In his review of the show, Dave Satterwhite from Time Out Chicago’s Audio File blog said M83’s show had“enough talent to take this band out of an ’80s moratorium and into the territory of modern pop”. So the conclusion is that they’re okay enough to sound like a part of modern music? Times are sad when we define good music or a good show by it’s okay-ness. What happened to shit blowing our minds? 

I guess what I’m trying to say is I owe M83 thanks for reminding me about all of that. I look forward to getting my mind blown again soon.

-Megan Frestedt | megan@tandemshoprecords.com

For this review, I originally had a piece nearly complete enough to post. I scrapped it and started writing a feature on some thoughts I had the next day, not just about Gold Leaves, but about artists in general who are just getting their start. I’ll post on that soon, but here are my immediate thoughts on the show.

Gold Leaves is a project primarily driven by Seattle-based musician Grant Olsen. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s also a member of the duo, Arthur & Yu.

Olsen’s new project is a folk band. He plays a rich sounding acoustic guitar and lets his rural and woodsy-sounding voice fill the room in echo and reverb. On Tuesday night, he came with a full band behind him, but it was his pedal steel player who added some of the best enhancements to the songs of the night.

Playing tunes from the band’s debut release, The Ornament (Hardly Art), the songs remained, for the most part, in the slow to mid-tempo range. One of the best songs of the night was a new one played (admittedly unnamed). We should be hearing it soon though, with a name, as Olsen mentioned they’d be doing it as a part of their Daytrotter session the next day.

Towards the end of their set, the audience slowly packed Lincoln Hall to near capacity. And thankfully so, as the band ended with the title track of its album, the best song they’ve recorded. “The Ornament” is a driving folk song, filled with layered vocals and shimmering keyboards. The middle section is mysterious, haunting, and slightly out of place, but makes a perfect turnaround to bring the song home.

While I’m certainly not the first to point this out, the music is a definite echo of Olsen’s contemporary hometown phenomenon, Fleet Foxes. Initially put off by the similarities, I have since changed my mind. I’m fascinated to see where Olsen takes his newfound inspiration. It’s clear he wears his influences well, and I’m excited to hear the music he makes under this moniker in the future.

The Ornament is out now via Hardly Art. Buy from Hardly Art, iTunes, or your local independent record store.

-Sam McAllister | sam@tandemshoprecords.com

Midway through her performance on Friday night, Esperanza Spalding softly mentioned to the audience, “Melt into this moment like a caramel”, as if the near capacity crowd wasn’t already completely physically and emotionally entranced by her mesmerizing voice and signature bass playing. When Spalding won the Grammy award for Best New Artist, she was relatively unknown to mainstream music. However, Spalding’s show that night proved the notion of her obscurity gone, and perhaps even bringing in more of a mainstream audience into jazz.

Taking the stage, she kept things simple and homey (literally). Traditional rugs adorned the stage; one kept to the side was even used in the setup of a small staged living room, complete with a side table and lamp.

The septet kicked things off with “Little Fly”, a song composed by Spalding for her most recent record, Chamber Music Society. Standing directly in the center, Spalding’s light and crisp voice filled the Symphony Center as she plucked the bass notes comprising the under-bed of the song. 

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Chaz Bundick stood stage left and only stepped outside of his keyboard rig once at Toro y Moi’s Lincoln Hall show on Saturday night. Surrounded by keyboards, the project’s mastermind danced his way through the band’s set while playing the carefully crafted keyboard arrangements and samples Toro is known for. Touring on their recently released, Freaking Out EP (Carpark), Toro y Moi’s show was, for the most part, a demonstration of musicianship.

Newer to the lineup, Bundick’s live bassist and drummer we’re incredibly tight and infinitely fun to watch. The band was able to seamlessly replicate the electronic production of the band’s first record, Causers of This, using the more traditional rock band set up. As for Bundick himself, his aforementioned keyboard playing screamed impressive, and his live vocals seemed improved upon and filled with confidence. The band played the majority of their most recent LP, Underneath The Pine, including “New Beat” and “Still Sound”, the record’s more standout tracks. They came back for a quick encore to play “Low Shoulders” from their first record, which gained immediate applause from the sold-out audience. 

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The Wooden Birds took the stage at The Hideout Friday night to about two-thirds of a full room. By the end of the night, the room was packed. The band, fronted by former American Analog Set leader, Andrew Kenny, has created some of the tidiest, most infections music heard in a while. At a few points, people in the front were dancing - you don’t see that at an indie rock show often.
 
On stage, the music is as tight and well-rehearsed as the record. The tunes are amped up for performance with a drumset instead of pounding on the strings of an acoustic guitar as heard on the album. Typically, a band who gets up on stage purely to recreate the record can come off as monotonous. But in the case of the Wooden Birds, it worked in their favor. Detailed guitar work sounded clearer than ever, and the vocal harmonies between Kenny and co-vocalist, Leslie Sisson were spot on. Adding to the mellow vibe, Kenny’s charismatic stage presence and witty banter came off as charming.

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Stony-faced, like a tired lounge singer, Bill Callahan rang in the 4^th of July at Lincoln Hall. His live delivery, with the help of a dynamically sensitive guitarist and drummer brought his songs, both schmaltzy and sincere, to life Sunday night.

Callahan opened the sold-out show with “Riding for the Feeling” and “Baby’s Breath” from his latest album Apocalypse (Drag City, 2011). With eerie background lighting and an aggressive guitar wash, “Baby’s Breath” came off more sinister than on the album. The setting highlighted the song’s literary pliability, and it became about tearing his wife to shreds and burying her in the ground (“She was not a weed, she was a flower”…”It was me, tearing out the baby’s breath”…”I’m on my knees, gardening”…”my baby’s gone”). The song sped and slowed down in waves, as unpredictable as its meaning.

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