Goldfrapp

[sun_set_bravely]

Goldfrapp. Was. AWESOME. We saw them last night at Irving Plaza, which has the nicest event staff I've ever encountered. freak1c got there early, so he, moriana90 (whose belated birthday we were celebrating) and I had a fantastic standing space -- we were right at the front bar, chilling with the superfans and security. Luckily, the audience was more arms-up-dance than it was super-death-mosh (like the younguns at the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show... seriously, I was afraid for my life and my internal organs), so I really enjoyed closing my eyes and swaying to the music.

I swear, I spent most of the concert with my mouth hanging open, amazed by the theatrics and talent unfolding onstage. I loved the men's costumes -- they actually made choices in their clothes, instead of wearing any old t-shirt and jeans and messy hair, like so many rock boys do these days. The guy playing the violins and keytar (don't know his name, as they never introduced any of the band members) was wearing this funky black satin sack-pantsuit-thing with shiny gold boots. He looked like all of The Beatles mixed with Alan Rickman and Jesus. The bassist was just plain hot, in white pants and a black a-line shirt. He looked like the love child of Peter Berg and Tom Waits. Very hot.

The woman on keyboards was fantastic, at times playing her instrument with her head bobbing about one centimeter away from the keys. She never hit her head, amazingly. The drummer I can't discuss, since he was out of my line of sight.

Oh, right, there were also these two female dancers who donned various costumes, including wolf-faced bikini women, silver mimes, blue-fringed boot-wearers, and, most fantastically, white horses with life-sized mirrored head-pieces.

And of course, Ms. Alison Goldfrapp herself. She blew me away. I've listened to "Black Cherry" and "Supernature" a lot, and coming to the concert, I mostly expected to be amazed by the costumes and theatrical elements of the show. But when this tiny woman with blonde hair and stiletto heels walked onstage and opened her mouth, I was floored. I always kind of suspected that her voice was being tweaked on the albums. But no, it's all her. She opens her mouth and it's like the wind is blowing through her body. It was a real joy to hear her sing.


edited to add: I freakin' love "Number One". The first two lines are delicious, and the rest follow suit:

Walk out into velvet
Nothing more to say
You're my favourite moment
You're my Saturday

Cos you're my Number 1
I'm like a dog to get you
I want it up and on
I'm like a dog to get you

Sunset only seconds
Just ripe then it's gone
Got no new intentions
Just right then it's gone

Cos you're my Number 1
I'm like a dog to get you
I want it up and on
I'm like a dog to get you

I'll be there to meet you
Getting down to greet you
Howl under the moon

Comments

[girlinthemoon.livejournal.com]

ooh, your review gave me the chills. hurray for goldfrapp! sounds like a concert not to be missed.

Wonderful, Electric

[gmoneyjonesiii.livejournal.com]

Nyce! White horses with life-sized mirrored head-pieces! Sounds like they have a touring budget now. What was Ms. Goldfrapp wearing? Last time, she had this dark navy Nazi stewardess getup, along with Alice Cooper glitter tearstains around her eyes. Weird, yet ethereal, much like the music. Best part of your show: you don't have Earnest scowling in your ear about the damn fool kids around him who are touching him.

Classy. Wish I coulda been there. I guess I'll just have to make it up to you on Friday night! (Don't expect Antje to be, er, having fun with a theremin on stage. Or even to own one.)

Re: Wonderful, Electric

[sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com]

She was wearing much the same this time: a tight-fitting industrial-looking navy jumpsuit. She definitely had those cool glitter things under her eyes, and I thought to myself that I gotta get some of them.

Indeed, there was no scowling to be had at this show. The bouncers were working hard to keep folks from snapping photos, as they'd told us all to check our cameras at the door. There are always some rapscallions in the group.

Re: Wonderful, Electric

[oceanic.livejournal.com]

hey you-- I've been biding my time for a decent Tool/Massive Attack Coachella report from you, but no dice! What gives? :) I have to depend on people who know what they're musically on about to give me a good sense of what the performance were like. Also, have you heard 10,000 Days yet?

Wonderful Excuses

[gmoneyjonesiii.livejournal.com]

Sorry, kid--things have been fairly chaotic in my life of late, first with a persistent and draining "Cold Plus" (it may have been a sinus infection) that started at Coachella, continued for another week and a half, and is still producing some mildly frustrating symptoms right now (that I hope recede permanently, once this infernal rain and flooding recedes permanently). Then there was the living situation. Although I did end up finding another roommate at literally the last minute, it's been a major ordeal moving all that music and all that computer into a new room during the few hours I'm home during the week (consequently, I haven't had anything to write ON at night). Plus the roof is leaking. Plus one of my co-workers made a major mistake while I was on vacation that results in 140 calls a day and me staying until at least 9 every night...

The point is, things have been rough. You don't want excuses, you want answers. They'll have to be short answers, for now. Suffice to say Coachella was worth it, even though every one of the "bigger" acts were late and kept us waiting an uncomfortably long time (Madonna was TWENTY-FIVE minutes late, and hell hath no fury like a crowd of angry gay men). No one was completely disappointing, though. I'll address your immediate concerns (I'm doing this all from memory, so 'scuse the lack of detailed notes):

Massive Attack were engrossing, with a surprisingly deep, organic sound--virtually all live instrumentation, although 3D certainly relied on what synths were there, as well as adding an interesting filter to his voice for many songs that gave his voice a menacing, insectoid hiss. He played a good ringmaster in his Master And Commander naval jacket (no epaulets, sorry), conducting a dynamically precise four-piece band across mostly Mezzanine material (only a noddable "Karmacoma" represented Protection, sadly), plus a smattering of Blue Lines and "Live With Me" off the best-of. Probably the best light show of anyone short of Daft Punk at the festival, with deep, misty reds and bright blues prominent, as well as a gridlike backdrop of tiny, wide-spaced LCD squares that could be configured for atmosphere or as a giant scrolling billboard (there were some anti-Iraq statistics that heavily sped by during "Angel", I think, that neither me or the camera could pick up at all; I'm sure they were informative, but I'll have to rely on the Tall Peoples' Convention in front of me for a report).

An affable, urban-camouflaged Horace Andy and a squat and reclusive Elizabeth Fraser were on hand for vocals (so, she can make it for this, but not for the proposed Cocteau Twins reunion back in '05? Oookay). Musical highlights: "Teardrop", a rickety and looser "Inertia Creeps" (live drums make a big difference), a marvelously warm and welcome "Man Next Door" filled with bassy reggae spirit despite that irritated lyric (personal highlight #1), Deborah Miller on a spacious "Unfinished Sympathy" and a gritty, GREAT rock-through of "Safe From Harm" (personal highlight #2). Closed with a punishing "Group Four", rivalling Tool for rock presence. Hats off to whoever the guitarist was--a thinner, white-haired gentleman with a decent use of chugga when necessary and an occasional David Gilmour-like feel for space and control of that instrument...about the highest compliment I can pay an axe-slinger. Cesar was in ecstasy, I was somewhere to the left of that.

Re: Wonderful Excuses

[oceanic.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I envy you that version of Safe From Harm-- one of my favorite songs of theirs. And hell yes for the menacing, insectoid hiss. 3D has one of the hottest voices in existence, even if it is filtered.

Wonderful Esoteric

[gmoneyjonesiii.livejournal.com]

About that Tool: nearly as good a show on a musical basis, but the Tall Peoples' Convention, in this case, seriously reduced my enjoyment of the show. On the side-stage monitors, you normally get some solid camera work of whoever's holding down the fort up there. Tool, of course, will always be different, using that for psychedelic video swirls and Adam Jones puppetry of the psyche. In the case of the singles, they just play the video--and not outtakes from the video or anything. I'm a proud owner of Salival and the DVD singles; I can watch those at home any time I'd like. What I want to see is the BAND, dammit! Photography was no good--those background screens were moving so fast that anyone trying to get a snap of someone standing in front of those screens is going to come away with a big neon blur. At least with a digital camera. And I'd left my own dinky analog camera back at the car (hey, you want to have as little baggage as possible when you're walking around for twelve hours straight at a music festival--my notebook was enough of a burden already).

I did see the stage a little, when the smelly hippie in front of me bent down to light his pipe, (which was, literally, every ten seconds). The group was very widely spaced out, everybody with their own "King Crimson Kompartments", as I like to call them (the farther apart the band members, the proggier the sound, is that the way it works?) House Left to Right: Justin, Maynard, Danny, Adam. Danny on a gargantuan drum riser with a full but not huge kit. I barely saw Justin or Adam (over there in a Robert Fripp Chamber Of Darkness surrounded by amps and pedals). Maynard had a cowboy hat and was shockingly chatty. "Hello, hippies," he quipped after a typically accurate and heavy "Stinkfist" opener. "I smell patchouli."

Later (bit of a paraphrase): "We have a new album coming out in a couple days. I know you fuckers have downloaded it already. Just do me a favor and buy one anyway, okay? Cause I need to buy this ring, this gold nugget ring, shaped like a piece of popcorn. I need about four of these rings. That way, when I walk up to you in the street, and hit you in the face for downloading our fucking album, it'll look like you got hit with a bucket of popcorn."

Re: Wonderful Esoteric

[oceanic.livejournal.com]

HaHA! Brilliant anecdote.

Wonderful Eclectic

[gmoneyjonesiii.livejournal.com]

About those songs: Three from 10,000 Days. "The Pot" was right after "Stinkfist", and absolutely kicked ass. Like it does on the album, too, but maybe a little extra energy for this (its live debut, I think!) A rugged rumble of a metal groove, Adam peeling off silver shards of distortion, Justin and Danny holding a Zep-perfect classic rock pattern of power, Maynard spitting "You pissed all over my black kettle...you musta been...HIGH!!!" I was in love at first listen, shifting and dancing in place. And that don't happen as often as you'd think. "Is this the new single?" I yelled to Cesar, giddy with delight. (I hadn't heard "Vicarious" yet). He shrugged, probably too taken aback to say much. An unquestionable highlight, for me at least.

Others: Good, if not particularly out of the ordinary, read-throughs of "Forty-Six & Two", "Schism" (good theremin blasts from Adam on the bridge), "Jambi" (actually, quite involving and rockin', particularly the end), and "The Patient" (with "Eon Blue Apocalypse" up front--probably the best of the Lateralus songs). Eh to "Lateralus" (I've always been flip-floppy on the song, much like the album) and, yup, "Vicarious" (downright boring here! Maybe I'd just had too many epic-length tunes back-to-back, but it seemed to lack virtually all melody or consistency, and as a Designated Hit Single, I was especially unimpressed and even concerned about the fate of the album with it as a flaghip. "You forgot the catchy!" I scrawled in my notes.)

Big ups: "Sober" (Maynard switched around the first chorus, saying "I just want to drink forever", and Justin was spot-on for this, the bassiest of Tool singles), the aforementioned "The Pot", and a splendid set-closing "Ænema" (as crappy as the weather was in L.A., though, I felt guilty shouting "LEARN TO SWIM!" along with everyone else. I don't want L.A. to fall into the sea. I like it there. Even when it's mean to me.) Tool started late like everyone else, but, being the last act of the festival, they played until they were done. Things wrapped up at 12:20 A.M. Happy May! And happy Coachella.

Wonderful Ecstatic

[gmoneyjonesiii.livejournal.com]

I was just about two clicks away from a response when you posted your impressions of 10,000 Days, um, less than 10,000 days ago. I've spent most of my time listening to the album unconscious, as it was my "alarm album" for a full week. I can't say that's the way to approach it, but I don't think it demands as intense concentration as, probably, Lateralus does. And that can be a good thing; after the deliberate spaciness of that album, Tool needs to prove they can make direct music again. I'm not saying they need a collection of three-minute songs, but it can be easy to let expansive compositions engulf your identity, once you've become a disciplined enough band to make expansive compositions possible. King Crimson tends to stay on the right side of that line, and it's usually because they remember to include a "voice" of some sort in every song, be it a human voice, Fripp or Belew's distinctive guitar voices, Pat or Bill's chatty percussive voices, etc. There is a focal point of some sort, a foreground to lead you through the background. Without that, it's all just landscaping.

Tool, of course, idolize Crimson, and where 10,000 Days succeeds, it succeeds because it's learned, from them, to put some sort of voice in there. It seems that Adam has learned it best--if this album "belongs" to anyone, it's him (I'd put Lateralus as a "Danny album" for themes and emphasis on spaciousness, and Ænima as a "Maynard album" for its emotional and lyrical bent, but this is all theorizing). He's taking a tremendous step forward here in creating involving tones and moods, and giving his solos some "body" to them. If he's not always successful, that's because the band isn't yet always successful at putting together something that sounds more compositional than improvisational. Specifically, things really fall apart after (and maybe during) "Rosetta Stoned". Its musical concept of gradually emerging coherency in the vocals is pretty interesting...the problem is that it's verrrrrry gradual. After that, things are more along the lines of unusually loud Robert Fripp Soundscapes than anything resembling, well, songs.

But, I'll tell ya. Right up through that odd soap opera acting on "Lost Keys (Blame Hoffmann)", I would just about count this as my favorite Tool album next to Ænima. "Vicarious" gains tremendously from a more tempered studio environment, putting it back-to-back with "Jambi" does wonders for giving the album a biting, guitar-heavy feel that really makes it stand out from the rest of Tool's catalog, and "Wings/10,000 Days" scores almost exclusively on a gorgeous lyric sheet (it might have made a better poem than a song, truthfully), dripping with solemnity and reverence (and making me wonder again, after Maynard's commentary on the "Judith" video, exactly what his take on Jesus really is).

And, of course, "The Pot". Wow. Let's put it this way: I think it's the song "Prison Sex" always wanted to be. There was something missing in the groove of "Prison Sex", a trickiness in the time signatures and a backing off from the promise of Adam's perfect opening riff...that is here. I can dance to it, I can scream to it, I can read a few people into it (I'd pick George Bush, but a more appropriate title for that would be "The Coke", I guess. Besides, APC's "The Noose" skewered him perfectly already)...I fucking love all of it, choppy vox to final chord. Up until that last half, I was starting to think I had a new favorite Tool record, here. (And who can go wrong with that fun stereoscopic art. It's an album! It's a ViewMaster™! Stop, you're both right!)

Wonderful Eccentric

[gmoneyjonesiii.livejournal.com]

(10,000 Days review continued...

Yeah, not quite there. But I get the feeling this will be even easier to enjoy in the long term than Lateralus was. I could be wrong; the whole thing is simpler, somehow, even in its excess. And you need a few nooks and crannies to explore on a proggy album like this if it's going to make it into the long-term listening bin. For a while, though, they had the exact right vibe going. As With Teeth is to The Fragile, so is 10,000 Days to Lateralus. Not the most accurate comparison, but both are, at least, attempting to back away from the dense, deliberate, brooding shadow of the previous album. Where Trent Reznor succeeds, Tool only half succeeds, if that. Of course, I know how much you love With Teeth (hack), so you may want to toss this whole opinion in the circular file.

And if so, hey. There's always Songs From Black Mountain to look forward to in about a month, isn't there?

Finally (FINALLY), I just want to thank you for saying I was one of those "people who know what they're musically on about". Although you'll probably change your mind after reading all this. But, seriously, that's a compliment that I'm dying to live up to, all the time. I'm stunned and flattered that you think I do.

Re: Wonderful Eccentric

[oceanic.livejournal.com]

As With Teeth is to The Fragile, so is 10,000 Days to Lateralus.

And that, I think, sums up our differences of opinion on those two albums rather neatly. What you call "dense, deliberate, brooding shadow" I re-label as "actual worthwhile content." The fact that they're simpler, to me, makes them feel like the artist just isn't able to summon sufficient amounts of genius to give the album enough substance. It doesn't have to sound like previous albums, but it has to stack up to them in terms of the merit of what they contain. Which is of course thoroughly subjective, so that's not something I can argue.

Wish I could have seen The Patient, 46 and 2, Aenema, and especially Sober. And don't tell Cesar, but I wasn't a huge fan of LA.

Man, thou shalt not blaspheme against Prison Sex! One of my top three favorite Tool songs ever. I can't even begin to compare the two in my head, maybe I need to go back and listen to The Pot again. Prison Sex is beautiful and churning and heartwrenching and The Pot just reminds me of HWAP, redux. Oh well. Each to his own. :)

And really, ever since V burned me so badly, I can't take heart in new Live albums. Maybe this one will redeem the enterprise.

Also, forgive me the brevity of these comments, I have so much work to do it's just unhealthy. :)

[chaptal.livejournal.com]

"He looked like all of The Beatles mixed with Alan Rickman and Jesus."

In other words, I should be checking this bad out?

[sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com]

Hell yeah!!

goldfrapp.co.uk

[chaptal.livejournal.com]

i've reserved the new one from the library.

[oceanic.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if I want to first go download their music or just sleep with everyone in the band, after that description. ;)

[sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com]

Sleep with them first, then maybe they'd give you a free CD in the morning. :)

[paularubia.livejournal.com]

They were on David Letterman tonight. I stuck around to watch them because I'd read your post.

Hmm.

They sound kind of like an 80s band covering T-Rex. She even had an early Debbie Harry thing going there with the tight jumpsuit and stilettos.

pass my cane

[(Anonymous)]

Come'on ya'll, yr making anonymous gurl feel O.L.D. cuz I don't know what the frick any of you are talking about.