Author: alexvolonte

A SHOUT OUT TO BRITISH SUMMER TIME IN HYDE PARK | 2015-03-07

It may be that it’s just because I’m in London, but I gotta admit that I was quite struck the moment I learned about an amazing festival taking place in the English capital’s iconic Hyde Park at the end of June called British Summer Time (BST). Proudly sponsored by Barclays (come on, somebody’s gotta do it nowadays…), the open air is characterised by a series of one-day off line ups encompassing five different days so far, and according to their website many more acts have yet to be announced. While I myself couldn’t resist not getting my ticket for Thursday 18th June (the day when New Yorker indie veterans The Strokes are headlining supported by Kayne West’s current favourite Beck and Future Islands, amongst others), it’s the whole line up that really stands out in my opinion. Being able to put together headliner acts so diverse and at the same time appealing such as UK-darlings Blur, Kylie Minogue, The Who and Taylor Swift (by the way the only day that’s already sold out, so far) it’s not something that we as audience should take absolutely for granted.

Again, it may be that I’m not used to UK and especially London’s high standards yet, but besides the fact that in addition to such supersonic headliners there are other big shots acting just as “minor appearances” filling up the blank time slots such as Nile Rodgers, Kaiser Chiefs or John Newman, I was truly positively surprised when I got to know about this series of gigs. Of course, the fact that all these fantastic days of music are taking place in beautiful (and hopefully sunny, at least on 18th June) Hyde Park, doesn’t do anything other than amplifying my excitement for it. Also, I really, really like the concept of the festival as being an aggregate of single, scattered days of autonomous line-up which you can deliberately pick for yourself (and of course this applied also to tickets-purchasing, which is always convenient). For, unlike the majority of summer music festivals I know, which normally follow the classic scheme of 4-5 days in a row of musical programme, BST covers the range of over a week with single artists-packages you can select. I honestly think that this kind of formula is probably one that’s gonna be pretty fruitful in the future of music shows and festivals, considering today’s highly busy audiences, issues of location management over a longer period of time, and not least the not always convergent tour schedules of artists. The only disadvantage that I’m aware of in the case of BST is that if someone’s willing to attend more than one single day, there’s no combo-tickets that can be purchased at once for multiple days, as far as I know. However, since the line-ups seem to be rightfully articulated with specific target audiences in mind, it’s probably unlikely that someone would actually take part in more than 2-3 single separate days (at least that’s the case for me, bearing in mind the tickets’ prices).

With that said, I’m really looking forward to seeing The Strokes for the first time after many, many years of admiration and respect. Despite wide criticism not only from established music press, but also from the fans themselves on social media, I actually really enjoyed their last two efforts, 2011’s “Angles”, even though it remains their faintest LP, and in particular “Comedown Machine”, which contains great musical pearls such as “Tap Out”, “50/50” as well as closing gem “Call It Fate, Call It Karma”. After many failed tentatives to catch them live on tour or at some star-filled European summer festivals, probably also influenced by their unpredictable stability as a band over the past decade, BST is finally enabling me to experience The Strokes live. And for this, I really wanted to thank and shout out to them.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

Strokes_BST

ARCADE FIRE, PROFESSIONAL GUARDIAN | 2015-03-04

A couple of weeks ago I came across this news story on NME’s website. Not a huge connoisseur of Arcade Fire myself, for I only know a couple of songs pretty good, although I may’ve bought an album somewhen, but nonetheless I really had to read the whole article. In fact, my interest was already captured by the unusual headline used: “Arcade Fire’s Will Butler to write songs based on Guardian news stories”. The article is basically about this new thing the singer-songwriter Will Butler had agreed to do in collaboration with The Guardian from 23rd to 27th February where he’d write and release a song a day based on news stories produced by the liberal UK newspaper.

Well, I think this operation is at the same time very cool and really worrying. I’ve been interested in journalism and all its various forms and developments for a long time and, above all, I do consider it being a fundamental pillar of modern progressive societies, if functioning properly with discrete transparency and accountability. In addition to that, I’m at the moment interning at a journalism and society’s think tank called Polis based at my university (to be specific, I’m taking care of their Twitter profile), so I do feel a bit of a personal duty catalysing me to comment on this featuring.

On the one hand, I honestly see the collaboration as something useful to try out new forms of songwriting and inspiration generation in realms never really tried out before, particularly in an established way. As Butler himself – whose by the way solo debut album “Policy” is due to be released on 16th March via Merge Records – declared in an associated interview: “It’s a cruel thing, but sometimes you read something and think, ‘Uh oh. I could make something really meaty out of that'”. Thus, if he’s admitting to feel inspired by real-world phenomena and issues, who are we to stop him from doing that? After all, it was even the folk-Lord Bob Dylan himself who involuntarily kicked off his tradition, as he once declared that certain of his songs were actually based on news headlines. Yet, on the other hand, I’d have to ask myself: are songs and especially lyrics not always somehow triggered by what specific artists come across in their everyday life experience, whether consciously or unconsciously? I feel there is no real need to officially frame this process directly by setting up such kinds of collaboration. If one gets inspired by a newspaper’s story, then he/she should just go on and write the piece without feeling obliged to give back something in return or to somehow acknowledge the source of creativity. What is really missing here, for me, is the true point of the overall operation.

However, these may be considerations concerning more the artistic-musical dimension of the relationship. I think one should also be aware that The Guardian itself could really gain something by such a featuring with someone who’s without doubt a really valuable musician. I’m not only talking about a healthy portion of promotion across target audiences (even though I concede that it’s debatable who’s really profiting between Butler and The Guardian on a mere publicity-level). I’m actually also referring to an interesting analysis that could be done of how their news stories can get perceived by someone who’s deployed to turn them into musical pieces. What is being consider relevant? What can be left out? Are such conceptions of values shared across the two parties or is there a big discrepancy in the output? This is exactly where the operation gets really fascinating, in my opinion: to see how something rather static presenting events and facts happening in the world in a journalistic way gets converted into an art effort. Still I think it’s not extremely surprising that The Guardian has come up with something like this. Thus, it’s certainly right to say that the UK newspaper has always been very successful in re-inventing itself both on- and offline as well as in finding new ways to undertake ‘alternative’ approaches to traditional news reporting across time, being it by redesigning specific features, undertaking risky editorial choices, or simply establishing new columns. It’s almost become its recognised trademark, and probably also what it makes it so popular.

For those interested, the result of the featuring between Will Butler and The Guardian’s website can be admired and heard here. I’m not gonna judge on the five songs themselves – after all, this isn’t an ARM blogpost – I really just wanted to let these thoughts out on the overall collaboration. Which, at the end of the day, I’m not really sure if I genuinely like or quietly fear. The answer is probably that since it was The Guardian that was implied, maybe the whole thing doesn’t seem so out of control after all. Great initiative, yet with an obscure goal.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): RYAN ADAMS IN CONCERT AT HAMMERSMITH APOLLO | 2015-03-01

I haven’t stated anywhere that the ARM column would have been limited only to actually recorded music or album releases in general. Therefore, I’m now totally exploiting the opportunity to share some lasting emotions and perennial thoughts I’m currently experiencing derived from the show I attended last Friday night, namely Ryan Adams’s Londoner stop at a sold out Hammersmith Apollo supported by the lovely and extremely talented Natalie Prass. Not only was the venue itself fabulous and breath-taking, but also the overall experience provoked by the magic force of the US alt-country rocker was truly one of a kind. I won’t forget it anytime soon for sure.

I gotta say, this was the first time seeing him live for me. It’s also fair to say that it’s only recently, let’s say the past two or three years, that I’ve really gotten into him and his repertoire. Also, I’ve been literally obsessed with his last self-titled album having it on repeat since last December. It just encapsulates everything modern rock music should be about: from the widest range of transmitted emotions to a large variety of incredible and good-sounding melodies, harmonisation, and songwriting. With that said, I was obviously extremely delighted to notice how Ryan played a good six songs off of such newest effort, including amongst them Grammy-nominated rocky intro “Gimme Something Good”, personal favourite and emotionally intense “Stay With Me”, as well as the delicate and fragile ballad “My Wrecking Ball”, which all appear to me as very good examples of how stunning this last album really is. But there was a lot more to it than a wonderful set-listed focus on his most recent self-titled output, which I undoubtedly took as a personal gift arranged relying on the fact that I was in the audience. Jokes aside, with over two hours of live performance and an overall amount of 23 songs played (see setlist below), Ryan had the chance to navigate through his immense and highly-prolific catalogue spanning over more than 15 years and ranging from intimate tunes such as “Dear Chicago”, “My Winding Wheel”, and “Oh My Sweet Carolina” (performed as a wonderful duet with opening act Natalie Prass), going through more well-known tracks like “New York, New York” and “When the Stars Go Blue”, all the way until the more recent “Kim” (probably one of the greatest songs of 2014) and the Springsteenian “I Just Might”.

Another element that made Friday night unforgettable was the spectacular choreography that was set up as background to Ryan and his backing band The Shining (by the way, very convincing), showing a rather minimal design composed of many fragmented light bulbs attached across the whole surface that worked just perfectly. Moreover, yet another highlight of the evening occurred as the North Carolina-native successfully improvised a brand new song out of a random line shouted at him by a member of the audience (“I Ate Something Off The Street”), which not only received massive praise from the whole public and was in fact as pretty great as it was hilarious, but it also warmed up well Ryan and his guitar before jumping into the aforementioned “Kim”.

Yet, I must say the best moments for me were both the absolutely touching “This House Is Not For ‘Fucking’ Sale” (as introduced by Mr Adams himself), to which for a fair amount of reasons I can relate so much, and the last two songs of the evening, the forte-piano-driven “I See Monsters”, which took whole new forms and dimensions  performed live, and the classic folky tune as well as fans-favourite “Come Pick Me Up” (also accompanied by a lovely vocal dialogue with Prass). The closing track is probably his most famous recorded one, and for that matter it really didn’t disappoint live either, as much as the overall show in general. Moreover, acting as a sort of almost surreal glue keeping the gig together, there was a deep sensation of emotional involvement experiencing on the part of all of the audience members, without any kind of social compromising camouflage. That is, before last night I’d never had the sensation of being among a crowd of over 8000 people all keeping unbelievably quiet and standing literally still for Adams’s most delicate solo performances in order to enjoy them as intensively as possible. You really almost couldn’t hear any kind of noise coming from the audience, and still if you’d looked around, there’d have been an overwhelming wave of other companions coming from all directions simply looking at The Man and sipping from bottles of beer or cheap glasses of wine. In fact, it was something unique, rare, intimate, and shared among many fellow-attendees at the same time. It showcased a beautifully inspired Ryan, who didn’t step back when it was time to joke around with the mic and interacting with the audience, but who also took care of taming the stage with just his emotional voice and the help of six strings on an acoustic guitar. Everything worked out so perfectly well. Everything from the music, through the choreography, to the fans’ reaction. Unsurprisingly, after all, since it’s Ryan Adams.

This is the rad setlist he performed:

Gimme Something Good

Let It Ride

Stay With Me

Dear Chicago

This House Is Not For Sale

Everybody Knows

My Winding Wheel (acoustic solo)

Dirty Rain

Magnolia Mountain

New York, New York

I Ate Something Off The Street (improvisation)

Kim

Two

My Wrecking Ball

I Just Might

I Love You But I Don’t Know What To Say

Your Fool (Natalie Prass cover)

Oh My Sweet Carolina (w/ Natalie Prass)

La Cienega Just Smiled

Trouble

When the Stars Go Blue

I See Monsters

Come Pick Me Up (w/ Natalie Prass)

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

Source: Gigwise

Source: Gigwise

BETTER WATCH SAUL | 2015-02-24

Gotta say I’m pretty caught up with “Breaking Bad” (BB)’s newly aired spin-off TV series “Better Call Saul” (BCS), again created by those wicked masterminds who go by the credentials of Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. Although the show is officially only 3 episodes in, I feel like it’s already taking an unbelievably wonderful direction. Of course, as a long-time fan of what I’d have to consider the best TV product of all time (or at least that I’ve come in contact with), it wasn’t a difficult task for me at all to immediately feel closeness as well as tender empathy with the now-small-time-lawyer James McGill, who – surprise, surprise, who’d have said that?! – over the course of 7 fictional years will develop into the skunky ‘too cool for school’-attorney in law Saul Goodman folks have gotten to meet in BB.

Excuse me the spared dense description of both the BB and BCS’s story lines and extensive plots but I think there are enough well-written paragraphs out there on the Interweb providing this service for those who aren’t familiar with the two shows.  This take is just to shout out to another great piece of art minutely crafted off of the golden bones of what could have been a very dangerous source of corpsy-screenplay if treated and steered incorrectly. Yet, both the immediate appearance of radically-tensed action of the first three episodes of the first season as well as the introduction and adaptation to the show of very solid and extremely appreciable characters (the Kettleman couple, and Julie Ann Emery is too pretty [!], Nacho Varga, and James’s brother-and-also-lawyer Chuck McGill above all) is building up an extensive amount of high expectations with regard to the continuation of the overall series (which, by the way, has been already successfully commissioned for a second season and which you can watch on Netflix).

If it hasn’t become clear enough with these lines yet that I can’t do nothing but suggest you to embrace in the adventure of drawing in the magic of BCS, then I’m doing it right now anyway: well, it’s totally worth it. Drama, black-comedy, fictional-realism, just comedy without drama, just drama without comedy (and judging by the first episodes the tendency may well be this one…), call it whatever it may best suit you. Fact is, you should totally give this show a try, especially now that it’s still in its initial phase of taking-off in order to not miss out too much and don’t get anxious about potential spoilers as it was the case with BB. By the way, once again, I’m already sure this one is going to take home a consistent amount of awards emulating what its older brother has been doing in the past five years or so. 100% sure.

Furthermore, the very kind and generous production team of BCS has been also putting on a lovely podcast which follows the series with conspicuous commentary and analysis episode-by-episode. Captained by BCS editor Kelley Dixon on the moderating mic, so far it has hosted no others than show creators themselves Gilligan and Gould, alongside main star Bob Odenkirk in episodes 1 and 2). It’s actually pretty great (and it may be the only truly official podcast accompanying the series too, if I’m not mistaking), it delivers plenty of anecdotes and behind-the-scenes revelations of the shootings and, beyond everything, it helps contextualising not only each episode but also the big picture of the series in a beautiful and funny manner. I’ll only concede the fact that they may tend to be rather long (over 1 hour and 15 min each), although, first of all, for me they’re not too long at all, and second, they never get boring, honest to the Lord.

All in all, I’d really suggest you harvest my council of embarking in the BCS cinematic adventure, at best with the addition of the complementing podcast, but I’ll leave you that also just the TV series can do a lot of good to you. You definitely better watch Saul.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

BetterCallSaul

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): TAKING BACK SUNDAY – HAPPINESS IS: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS | 2015-02-21

I used to write reviews of new records and music I bumped into on Facebook a while back (like 6-7 years ago), and since now I’m trying this new thing out I thought it would be a good idea to keep that tradition going and to kick off with something similar. You can think of this as some kind of 2.0 music review revival. I’d call this section, column, feature or whatever “Alex Reviews Music” – and I’ll probably shorten it to ARM – because it’s literally what I’ll be doing in it, no magic, persuasion, or tricks involved.

Obviously, as I don’t like to do things the standard way, I’m starting with a review of a very non-conventional record. In fact, Taking Back Sunday’s “Happiness Is: The Complete Recordings” it’s a so-called “deluxe version” of their sixth studio album released at the beginning of 2014, called “Happiness Is”. This new version contains the entire fruits of their recording process, i.e. including the outtakes that didn’t make the final cut of the album itself plus three additional acoustic renditions of album tracks, and comes in various formats ranging from simple digital to a limited edition 7″ box set with signed cover card as well as individual art for each song. Also, before we go any further, I assume it’s right to say that, because of a deep personal involvement with this band’s repertoire, I won’t be able to objectively assess the intrinsic musical value of this art piece without tending to a overwhelmingly positive judgement. Nonetheless, I’ll do my best to stay true to my apparently distant position I’m supposed to incorporate while writing for ARM.

While it’s worth acknowledging that the record itself has yet to be released (it’ll on 24th February), I thought I’d take the opportunity to write about both the standard 11-track sequence entailed in “Happiness Is” and the extra song that’s already been disclosed, namely “How I Met Your Mother” (by the way also the B-side of the main single “Flicker, Fade”: this is why folks were already able to listen to it last year).

Precisely the main hit single and de facto album opener “Flicker, Fade” makes the effort of quickly delivering a statement of where the album positions itself within the band’s catalogue. Playing with swinging moods of heavy punches in ya face (best heard immediately in the intro) and sweet harmonic but still melancholic verse/bridge takes, it best kicks off Taking Back Sunday’s latest album without any kinds of compromises. The following track, “Stood A Chance”, also a single and host of an extremely funny video, takes care of poppy-upbeat feelings in the listener juxtaposing them with rather darky connotations in the lyrics. Also, this song has probably the best bridge/breakdown the band has ever made, which in a way is very reminiscent of the one in “What’s It Feel Like to Be a Ghost?” off of Louder Now (2006), which was leading this special chart until “Stood A Chance” came along (one can’t really miss the similar ambience). The next pair of tracks, “All The Way” and “Beat Up Car”, simply summarises the finest moments of this album and demonstrate an incredible maturity on the part of the five-pieces outfit from Long Island. They’re both able to reach much depth both lyrically and melodically and show increased songwriting and performative ability by all of the five members, with special mentions for lead singer A. Lazzara and drummer M. O’Connell.

Further highpoints in the album are the punky and probably guitarist E. Reyes’s influenced “They Don’t Have Any Friends”, especially where the singing melody of the pre-chorus is simply irresistible, the very much direct and personal “Better Homes and Garden” – already a candidate to become a fan all-time favourite – and album closer “Nothing At All”, which showcases Taking Back Sunday at its most calm and introspective ever. Instead, not really convincing are the opening “Preface” (why not rather include “How I Met Your Mother” in the record replacing it with such a noisy and superficial introduction?, cf. below), the ballad-like “It Takes More”, a solid track but honestly nothing more than it and probably more at home in their fifth self-titled album (2011), as well as the rather dry “Like You Do” and “We Were Younger Then”, although these last two show increasing potential with augmented amounts of listening.

As promised, a last mention is well-owed to “How I Met Your Mother”, main tune “Flicker, Fade”‘s B-side and first of the bonus tracks entailed in the deluxe version. The song is unlike anything else the band’s released so far, in the sense that it really never leaves high-tension moods across the whole duration playing with a continuous climax and can be considered one of their heaviest efforts alongside with “El Paso” (off their self-titled). With once again drummer M. O’Connell at his top, retrospectively this track, if included in the standard album, could’ve covered the only minor omission of it: namely a real outrage of hard walls of distorted sound which goes hand in hand with fine melody as well as great harmonisations (the tunes in the album that get closest to reach this are probably “Beat Up Car” and “They Don’t Have Any Friends”). Needless to say, if the other two extra tracks included in the complete recordings version (“This Is Happening” and “Can You Feel That [Here I Am])” are on the same level of this one quality-wise, there is so much to be excited about them being released to the public. At that point, if these promises are to be maintained, the band’s sixth effort can literally be considered artistically complete.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

TAKING BACK SUNDAY

“HAPPINESS IS: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS”

2015, HOPELESS RECORDS, INC.

www.takingbacksunday.com

TBS_Complete Recordings

WELL, COME! | 2015-02-20

There is nothing like getting excited about something you’ve always dismissed as pointless and as a waste of your time. I’m not gonna lie right now, I’ve always found the idea of having a blog problematic to say the least. Mainly because of a distant perception that sooner or later, or maybe let’s just go with sooner, one simply runs out of excitement in relation to this form of (creative) expression. It seems to me that it doesn’t leave much room for variation or experimentation. In fact, the blogs I tend to follow regularly are absolutely countable on the fingers of one human hand. Needless to say, everytime someone mentioned blogging as a fruitful way to find one’s self and to explore tastes, passions, and emotions steering our lives and shaping the outside reality I wasn’t really tempted to reply affirmatively.

However, I feel the time has come for me to land away from the elitist-heaven of non-bloggers and to embrace this new commitment with high enthusiasm. The reasons for this are numerous, but all in all they could be summarised in a refreshing need to express myself in ways I hadn’t tried out before. So far, I’ve normally been using music in its various manifestations in order to do so, and while I’m sure no form is going to replace other forms, this whole thing I’m embarking on right now will lead me to exciting new channels of shaped self-expression.

I’m not really sure about content, frequency, and specific writing-style with regard to the essence of this page – by the way very kindly hosted by WordPress – although judging by first, rather primitive instincts of sourced interest I can already announce that music-related musings won’t be lacking. Yet, given the fact I also do a bunch of other stuff in my everyday life and I don’t just listen to rad music on the iPod, it won’t be a surprise to me to retrospectively stumble upon entries about journalism, society, and all forms of artistic endeavours, either in direct/conscious or indirect/unconscious form. Also, I don’t rule out the fact that, at least initially, I’ll rely much on the things I post, comment and abundantly retweet on another social networking website called Twitter, which also very kindly takes care of my yet-to-be-verified profile named after my name.

Speaking of names, I’ve provisionally called this page Everything Must Swing. If you don’t really get the meaning at a first glance or if it doesn’t sound familiar at all, that’s normal. It represents an old obsession of mine, namely the establishment of the perfect rock and roll outfit that could allow me and my fellow bandmates to rock the goddamn hell out of every performance. As you can probably already tell, the name wasn’t an issue anymore. Matter of fact, the name is the combination of the titles of two very important tunes for me, “Everything Must Go” and “Swing”, composed, recorded, and officially performed by this band from Long Island, NY. I’d like to think that Everything Must Swing not only denotes a personal legacy to my character, but that, linguistically speaking, it also means that there is a continuous flow of energetic connection that encompasses the entire structuring of our realities, and it is constantly swinging and changing sources of action amongst us. Hopefully, fragments from its incredible force will find their way into this ephemeral page.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV