Andrew Jackson Jihad, Future of the Left and Jeff Rosenstock @ the Venue; Range Life @ the Red Room (11/10/12)

My friend and I were hanging out one night a few weeks back when we got handed flyers for this show.  When my friend saw Andrew Jackson Jihad's name on the bill, she flipped out and asked if I wanted to see this with her.  Given my great respect for her musical taste, I couldn't very well say no.

She wasn't the only one excited about this gig, apparently.  There had to have been well over a hundred people when I made it down to the Venue (well over 200, according to the Venue staff).  Unfortunately, I didn't see my friend among the crowd (probably needed to work), but I did see members of Red Hands Black Feet, Le Fleur, the Green Zoo and the Useless.

New York musician Jeff Rosenstock opened the show.  It woulda been nice if he'd played with a band instead of some backing tracks, but the recorded bass, drum and guitar parts were still pretty darn rousing.  Besides, Rosenstock's strong tunes, raw soloing, charmingly pitch-challenged howl and high-energy stage act did just fine on their own.  I couldn't make out too many of the lyrics, but his gloriously awful cover of Tom Waits's "Anywhere I Lay My Head" (which he sang down among the crowd) persuaded me to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Next up was Future of the Left, a four-piece outfit from Cardiff, UK.  I had a feeling that this group was gonna be good when I saw that they'd modeled one of their t-shirt designs after Saul Bass's Vertigo poster.  Damn if they didn't prove me right: they mixed smart, funny, righteously indignant lyrics and on-pitch screaming with grinding riffs, monolithic basslines and pulverizing drums.  Not only did they go metal and disco, they sometimes did both at once.  And brother, it's hard to beat the Brits when it comes to telling off a drunken heckler ("Give you a reason?  Sir, you're talking entirely in cliches.").  They didn't need to do too much of that, though: other than that one guy, the crowd was happy to cheer, clap to the beat and climb onstage to do some screaming call-and-response with the band ("I TRUSTED YOU!") during the finale.

The show could've ended after Future of the Left and I'd have been satisfied, but Andrew Jackson Jihad took the stage next and turned in an equally impressive set.  This Phoenix band's nerdy vibe, multi-genre tunes and goofy, incisive, sarcastic, sardonic, surreal, grisly lyrics smashed together the Ramones and Randy Newman (and maybe tossed in some Meat Puppets for good measure).  They zipped through ragtime, blitzkrieg, Bakersfield, country swing and solo-acoustic.  Some of the more blood-soaked tunes made me uneasy (particularly one little ditty about finding a girlfriend's corpse), but their closing ode to existential terror ("I'm afraid of the things I wanna do but I won't...  I'm afraid that my dog doesn't love me anymore...  I'm afraid of my grandfather's cancer...") put that stuff in perspective.  Whatever the subject matter, the crowd cheered, sang along, headbanged, jostled each other, crowd-surfed and stage-dived.

My night would've been more than complete after the Venue show, but then I got to the Red Room in time to catch most of local band Range Life's final performance.  Not only did their jangling drones, elegant solos and lean, limber rhythm section all sound in top form, Kailie Leggett had returned to sing one last time with Ben Turner, whose vocals never sounded more confident.  A crowd of about thirty sent Range Life off into that good night with dancing and warm applause.  A fine farewell.

You can find info on these acts on Facebook and elsewhere online.

Email Interview: Range Life

photo used with permission of Range Life

As readers of this blog may know, I've been a fan of the local band Range Life for a while.  Their Crazy Horse-meets-Velvets sound made them stand out among groups in this area.  I did an email interview with them back in July, but I held off on publishing it due to their going on hiatus. It feels bittersweet to publish it now: the band's leader, Ben Turner, confirmed recently that they'll play their last show on 11/10 opening for Roomrunner at the Red Room.  Still, I thought that I should finally put this out there if only to commemorate this group's existence.  I wish the members of Range Life all the best in their future endeavors.

Here's the interview:

Let's start with the basics.  Who does what in your current lineup?

Ben Turner--Guitar, vocals
Eamonn Parke--Drums
Andrew Haffner--Bass, vocals
Nat Cummings--Guitar

Where does the name Range Life come from?  What does it mean?

"Range Life" is a song by the band Pavement.  We chose that as the name of our band because it describes a feeling or wishful desire we hope to achieve.

How did you get started making music?

With the exception of Eamonn, we all started playing music in our early teen years.

Who are some of your musical influences?  How did you find them?

Neil Young, Velvet Underground, Thee Oh Sees, Black Mountain.  Most of the music we've been influenced by has just been through sharing with friends.

Have you been in any bands before Range Life?  How did all of you start playing together?

With the exception of Eamonn we've all been in several other bands.  Andrew and I have played together before in the bands With Child and Great Western.  Nat has been in an immesurable amount of bands.

Describe your creative process.  Does one person come in with a preconceived idea or do you jam and see what you come up with?

At the beginning, we were just playing old songs of Ben's, but more recently, we have begun to all work together in the creative process.

What are your plans for the future (touring, recording, etc.)?

We hope to do things like tour and record and grow, but we'll just have to see where things go.

Is there anything you'd like to say to readers/listeners out there?

Thanks for listening.  Hope to see you!

Range Life and Desert Noises @ Flying M Coffee-Garage

I'd heard very good things about Maps & Atlases, who were playing this same night at the Neurolux, but I opted to check out this show instead.  For one thing, it had a $3 cover as opposed to Neurolux's $10 cover.  For another, it gave me a chance to check out Range Life again.  For yet another, I'd heard good things about Desert Noises as well from a couple of folks.  Finally, it gave me a chance to write about the Flying M out in Nampa again.

A solid crowd had built up by the time that the show began.  At the door to the concert space, the Flying M had thoughtfully provided a couple trays of earplugs.  I brought my own with me, and they certainly came in handy.

Starting off the evening was Range Life, who played without their female singer.  While I did kinda miss her chirpy vocals, I couldn't complain too much after the other four members had played their tightest and hardest-rocking set yet (that I've seen, anyway).  Leader Ben Turner's boyish sprechgesang sounded twice as confident and just as endearing, and he and his fellow guitarist traded spare, stunning solos throughout (the touches of wah-wah distortion added an extra edge).  Meanwhile, the bassist and drummer got to flex their muscles a bit while keeping the same monolithic beat, and the tunes sounded as indelible as ever.  I also got to hear the lyrics this time around--not too shabby ("I've been known to make my father curse./ I've been known to make my problems worse.").  Very well done.

After Range Life came Desert Noises, a four-man band from Provo, UT.  It's kinda unfortunate that I already described another Provo band, The Mighty Sequoyah, as Beatles up top and Stones down below.  I still consider that fairly accurate of TMS, but it would've been even more so of Desert Noises.  Poppy melodies; strong, soulful tenor harmonies; bubbling bass; rolling and tumbling drums; sharp, bluesy lead guitar.  They handled boogie, disco and funk with equal aplomb.  I can't really picture Mick Jagger writing lyrics about Stephen Hawking, though.  John Lennon, maybe.

You can find info about Range Life and Desert Noises on Facebook and elsewhere online.

The Hardluck Cowboys @ the Crux; Dark Swallows, The Gunfighters, Range Life and Annex Madly @ the VAC (5/4/12)

This was a busy night.  I don't usually shift between two venues or shows (the big exception so far being Treefort), but I wanted to show my support for Speedy Gray, who was playing a show at the Crux with local musician Johnny Shoes, and for Keesha Renna, whose Vagabond Promotions set up a solid bill at the VAC.  Man, who woulda thought that being a hipster/ poseur would be so much damn work?


My first stop for the evening was the Crux.  Both Speedy and Johnny Shoes apparently lost a gig, which prompted them to put together this one-off show under the name The Hardluck Cowboys.  I stayed for a little over an hour, and I wish that I could've been there longer.  Playing without his compatriots in Like A Rocket, Speedy Gray got to demonstrate just how fine a singer he really is.  On his quietly devastating cover of "Sunday Morning Coming Down," he channeled Willie Nelson right down to the conversational, just-behind-the-beat phrasing.  As for Johnny Shoes, he proved himself a songwriter and performer cut from the same cloth as Guy Clark and John Prine (both of whom he's opened for, according to his Facebook page).  For the 75 or so minutes that I watched them, they traded stories, jokes, songs and solos like they'd played together for years.  It was so great that it felt downright criminal being almost the only person there to see it.  I did note, however, that a lot of pedestrians passing by the Crux slowed their pace a bit to rubberneck.

I noticed quite a few cars in the parking lot when I arrived at the VAC.  That boded well, I thought, for the bands playing, for the VAC and for my friend Keesha.  That's the spirit, people!

I got inside just in time to catch the tail-end of Dark Swallows' set.  They sounded in particularly good form this night, and some smoke and lasers created just the right ominous atmosphere for their music.  The little bit of their set that I saw confirmed for me that, much as I like Le Fleur, I prefer this group just a little more: to my ears, they've got a stronger beat, stronger riffs and especially stronger melodies.

Next up after Dark Swallows was the Gunfighters, a local six-person rock band who decided to film their set for use in a music video.  After listening to Speedy Gray and Johnny Shoes, the traces of blues and rockabilly in this group's music felt a little cosmetic.  However, I couldn't complain much about these folks, considering that they came equipped with solid melodies, pleasant harmonies, outstanding guitar solos and a funky rhythm section (the drummer's a monster with that hi-hat).

(Note: There were a LOT more people at the VAC than this picture suggests.  They were all just hanging back by the bar and hiding from the lights and the camera.)

After the Gunfighters came Range Life.  This marked the third time that I've seen this local group, and it was easily the best yet.  The extra oomph that they put into in their minimalistic rhythms, artfully artless singing and jangling, droning guitar interplay made clear that their sound stems not from a lack of ability but from conscious artistic choices.  It also made clear to me that, while their music definitely owes a debt to groups like Pavement, Sonic Youth and the Velvet Underground, its true precursor is one of my all-time favorite groups (and a precursor of two of the bands that I just named, incidentally), Neil Young and Crazy Horse.  The unprojected vocals did make it hard to hear the lyrics, but the sure-fire tunes and razor-sharp soloing encouraged me to lean closer.  I'll look forward to seeing this group again and watching them develop further.

Closing out the night was local group Annex Madly, whose multi-textured, polyrhythmic rock and mysterioso light show owed something to bands like Nine Inch Nails.  My phone's crappy camera proved unequal to the task of capturing the darkened stage, the strobelights and the laser beams, so unfortunately, I don't have a picture of their set.  Maybe it's just as well--you might just need to see them live to get the full effect.

These guys had samples, noises, riffs, hooks and tunes galore.  The only thing that held them back was their singing, which I found at once too obtrusive and not obtrusive enough.  Music like this needs a belter/screamer like Trent Reznor to spearhead it or a gentle warbler like Bernard Sumner to stay out of its way.  Annex Madly's vocals seemed to insist on their own distinct identity, which I thought broke some of the spell that the music and lights tried to create.  All the same, the group's set was impressive and provided a good ending to the concert.

You can find info about Speedy Gray, Johnny Shoes, the groups who played the VAC and Vagabond Promotions on Facebook.