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Rainer Maria have announced that they are breaking up. The word from their website:
Along with other big changes in the air this November, we are sorry to announce that we will be disbanding at the end of this year, following a few farewell performances.
Though the band are originally from Madison, WI, they moved to Brooklyn like, oh, just about everyone else. Their final shows will take place on the East Coast:
Friday, Dec 15th | First Unitarian Church | Philadelphia
Saturday, Dec 16th | Bowery Ballroom | New York
I for one will miss Rainer Maria, as they were one of the few emo acts out there who knew how to put together an outfit not involving a black hoodie.
Back in 2004, Say Hi To Your Mom were still a one-man act consisting solely of Eric Elbogen’s vocals, synth, and guitar. The opening lines of “Pop Music of the Future,” the first track on Say Hi’s sophomore release Numbers and Mumbles, gently allude to Elbogen’s loner status: “She sold her Warlock and bought a drum machine/Fired her whole band because they hated 909 beats.”
For much of the album, Elbogen’s songwriting moves back and forth between such self-reflexiveness and extreme geekery. Sometimes steady and loud, sometimes quiet and quavering, the vox sound a lot like, well, a nerd singing alone in his bedroom in between beating levels of a video game. At least, that’s the mental image I get; the lyrics’ continual return to images of bedroom solitude–”it’s never been clearer/just dance in the mirror” (from “A Hit in Sweden” ), “just like your teeball trophy says/you’ve come so far” (from “Super”), “so say goodbye/there’s the door/I can’t see you anymore” (from “She Beat My High Score”)–underscores it for me.
The album’s solitary synth thing is all right if you’re in the mood for it, but in this post-Postal Service day and age, many of us are a bit Ben Gibbard-ed out. In my opinion, the strongest songs on Numbers and Mumbles are the ones in which the depth of Elbogen’s musical arrangement contrasts with his lyrics’ claustrophobia, resulting in something a little bigger and a lot better than another ballad-of-the-lonely-nerdinator. My favorite track on the album is “Hooplas Involving Circus Tricks,” which starts with an organ intro, meets a tambourine a few measures in, and, as Elbogen begins singing, picks up a synth loop that sounds a little like a pogo stick (awesome, we’re out of the bedroom and in the driveway now!). The result is an excellent math-friendly ballad about sexual tension, underscored by the driving guitar that comes in for the chorus.
Witnessing him multitask his way through this song live is great fun, by the way. Though Elbogen has since picked up bandmates Jeff Sheinkopf (of Longwave and Sea Ray) on keys and Chris Egan on drums, the last time he rolled through my town to play at P.A.’s Lounge, he was on stage alone. Which is probably just as well–I think that may actually have been Jeff himself dancing like an idiot directly in front of me at the show. I’m not one hundred percent sure, though, because whoever it was temporarily blinded me with a four-inch expanse of their underwear. Note to people who must sag: do not wear tight-whities, and if you must, please do NOT bend over while you dance. Thank the Good Lord there was no blacklight at P.A.’s that night, else the retinal damage would’ve been permanent.
I have been waiting for years (okay, four) for the next great album written both for and about the club scene (the last one, in my opinion, being The Faint’s Danse Macabre). So when I first streamed Boys and Girls in America, I got pretty damn excited. Hell, even the album artwork made me happy: I took one look at that scraggly indie boy and midriff-baring chick surrounded by falling confetti, and thought, “sweet, this is gonna be the album that brings to light all the social and sexual bullshit that goes down (no pun intended) in the indie music scene. I am going to grin my face off and proceed to rock the hell out.”
And rock out I did. I’m a big fan of catchy, which explains why Boys and Girls in America immediately appealed to me musically. It’s got cascading guitar hooks that feel like they belong in an arena and tumbling organ and piano that feel like they belong in a jazz club or at a Baptist revival. This is NOT material for your average footshuffling indie crowd at some garish industrial venue–it’s the kind of album that makes one wanna dance. It makes me want to stage dive off my bed while playing air guitar to
“Chips Ahoy!“ (dude, a song about stoners betting on a horse named after a Nabisco cookie… brilliant) but that’s because I’m sometimes a little dumb like that.
So, uh, back to the album. Recycling fictional characters Holly, Charlemagne, and Co. from previous releases Almost Killed Me and Separation Sunday, Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn continues his pattern of Making Shit Up. On Boys and Girls in America, however, Finn’s stories (though they remain clever) are a little less dark, and the background accompaniments are more refined (to the extent of approaching power-pop). The album contains slower ballads that, though somewhat sweet, are still chock-full of allusions to the indie scene and gender relations therein. In the lines “hey citrus/hey liquor/I love it when we come together,” “Citrus” quietly alludes to a certain Chemical Brothers club anthem of yesteryear; in “The First Night,” Finn advises the ladies, “don’t even speak/to all those sequencer and beats boys/when they kiss they spit white noise.”
Though Finn’s statement is poetic and incisive, its attitude of admonishment is part of what constitutes my main beef with the album. I love that Finn and Co. point out certain idiocies committed in the name of indie rock (e.g., boy starts band, fangirl drools over boy, boy fucks fangirl but already has girlfriend), but I also think that, lyrically speaking, Boys and Girls in America is a bit of a boys’ club. The leadoff track, “Stuck Between Stations” starts with an allusion to Jack Kerouac and ends with a eulogy of John Berryman. Brilliant as The Dream Songs were, it annoys me somewhat that the album grounds itself in a reverence for male literary figures and then goes on to suggest, six tracks later, that females “don’t have to deal with the dealers/let your boyfriend deal with the dealers/it only becomes inconvenient/when you wanna get high alone.” And if said boyfriend gets annoying, Finn quips, “there’s always other boys and you can make them like you.”
I’m not saying there aren’t plenty of scenester chicks who employ that modus operandi, or that there aren’t scads of secretly machismo scenester jerks who, in turn, prey on such chicks. I just have a hard time believing that the more upright neo-beatnik scenester guys–you know, the ones who pride themselves on their liberal intellectualism but haven’t read a single female author in the last year–aren’t part of the problem too. Though the album does suggest that this type of male intellectualism ultimately doesn’t solve much (”she said ‘you’re pretty good with words but words won’t save your life’/and they didn’t so he died”) it still comes back (albeit empathetically) to the tired tale of woman-as-victim (”Holly’s not invincible/in fact she’s in a hospital”). In sum, this dance- and thought-provoking album keeps finding its way back onto my decks, but I’m still waiting for a record about the club scene that begins with a nod to Diane DiPrima and then goes on to tell the thinking woman’s side of the story.
In light of a recent indescretion (some of you my have seen the scandalous weed-in-purse photo), High Times would like to extend a formal invitation to the 2006 Stony Awards on Oct. 24 to Paris Hilton, and give her a VIP (Very Important Pothead) pass to the anticipated ceremonies for a night of laughs, music and fun stoner banter.
Paris won’t be walking the green carpet alone. She’ll be joined by a calvacade of stoner celebrities, including Stonys co-hosts Redman and Doug Benson, Adrianne Curry and Chris Knight, Charlie Murphy and Donnell Rawlins, Jeff “The Dude” Dowd, Penthouse Pets Krista Ayne and Aria Giovanni, James Toback and many more.
what joie is listening to today:
so if you like evil clowns, rabid monkeys and twisted carnivals (and who doesn’t?), then this is the album for you. if you’re not aware, firewater is a cool, dark-cabaret/drunk-gospel ish band from nyc and the ponzi scheme is my favourite release by them…the fact that it’s named after charles ponzi’s fraudulent investment operation of the 1920’s is only icing on the cake for me.
so what does it sound like, you ask? well, there is a definite tom-waitsy, nick-cavish flavour to it, but with a tad more of a marching-band, we-heart-accordions feeling. it manages to be wistful gutter-poetry and defiant middle-finger-in-the-air rock all at the same time and the lead singer, tod a., doesn’t hesitate to mock anything, including himself. and as you know, that’s the kind of thing we like ’round these parts.Â
i usually play the whole album through without skipping any tracks…always an added bonus when you can do that, eh? the first song i fell in love with and repeated over and over and over - well, you get the idea - was “so long, superman,” a marvelous escape-from-my-shitty-mundane-life song. it’s of course a theme that’s been tackled a time or two in musical history but is still enjoyable when it’s done with some creativity.
then “i still love you, judas” has some awesome lines in it, (”i fell like a hammer for the spike”). and “isle of dogs” is another of my favourites. i actually know a girl who got a lyric from that song tattoed on her right shoulder (”it can never be a symphony if nobody cries”).Â
i don’t like the record quite enough to get any of its words permanently inked on my body, but there are indeed some acidly unique and post-modern lyrics and they, along with the organ-grinder tinged sound, make for a listening experience unlike too many out there. i dub it pleasantly evil gypsy music because the first time i heard this back in 2002, i had to pick up the ray bradbury book something wicked this way comes, which i hadn’t read in years, just to get my carnie fix. and believe me, the ponzi scheme is the perfect soundtrack for that kind of thing.
NYC’s Motherfucker makes double the headlines in NY Times Magazine and NY Times this past month (Motherfucker is selected as the opening spread of the magazine’s issue celebrating the legendary NYC Downtown figures);After having launched NYC’s wildest parties during the spring and summer, a documentary is set to finish this fall and hits the festival circuit early next year.
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If you haven’t been to Motherfucker during the last 5 months, well then, you just haven’t been out! The all star cast of 4 producers, Michael T., Justine D., Johnny T. and Georgie Seville continue to out due themselves with their cultural undertaking. NY Times boasts “Together, they’re like a group of night life superheroes, united to fight the scourge of late-night boredom with music, dancing and sexy outfits.”
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And so our Superheroes continue to wow their audiences by booking our favorite legendary artists such as The Cramps and NY Dolls and even bless NYC with surprises as with their Independence day celebration featuring unannounced special guests The Futureheads. All of this along with their outrageous performances and lavish hosts such as Mistress Formika and Lady Bunny, it’s no wonder lines continue to stretch around the blocks of the 2000-3000 capacity venues. Read more »
