Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2007 > October > 10
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Show review: Adam Franklin at the Mohawk
With an arsenal of Boss guitar effects pedals, a beautifully battered sunburst Fender Jazzmaster, a Vox wah pedal and a vintage Fender combo amplifier bi-amped in stereo with a Gibson Custom Shop amp, singer/guitarist Adam Franklin played an intimate show to a handful of devoted fans Tuesday at the Mohawk. Soon hundreds of guitar players, musicians and guitar tone aficionados will kick themselves, wondering how they missed it.
Easily one of the most talented, yet under-appreciated singer/guitarists in rock, Oxford, England shoegaze pioneer and (former Swervedriver frontman) Adam Franklin blasted out a short set of 3-5 minute super-sonic dream pop songs. Primarily culled from his post-Swervedriver catalog and his recent “Bolts of Melody” release, Franklin’s unique sound resembled the musical equivalent of mashing-up multiple touchstones of the rock ‘n’ roll canon in a blender: the songcraft and hushed vocals of Elliott Smith, jazz chord progressions contextualized in pop songs (inspired by Nick Drake), the reckless yet blissful abandon of the MC5 and the Stooges and the deafening white and pink noise squall of a Cape Canaveral space shuttle lift off.
Franklin’s backing band proved up for the challenge of playing with a musician’s musician who many consider to be the Jimi Hendrix of the late 20th century British shoegazing scene. Guitarist Ley Taylor, bassist Josh Stoddard and drummer Jeff Townsin played with measured tightness, anchoring the rhythm with a less-is-more subtleness that left plenty of room for Franklin to mesmerize with his deconstructionist, “anti-lead” guitar prowess.
As the set progressed, a warm sensation flushed across my brown skin as my ears began to drown in the beautiful guitar tones. White noise whammy wha-wha sounds crashed into hard-panned waves of analog delay and tremolo. I felt like I was in on a secret that the majority of the world had yet to discover; imagine what it would be like to watch underground pop legends Big Star play in a tiny rock club to about 20 people (if you’re not familiar with Big Star, just imagine your favorite band that no one knows about).
The 2003 single “Magnetic Morning” transformed into one of the most transcendentally powerful songs in Frankin’s oeuvre. While the Swervedriver b-side “Director’s Cut of Your Life” sounded more fresh than ever with a smoothed-out revision on the inescapable backbeat.
Franklin introduced a new, original track called “Rain Drops Keep Falling On My Head,” featuring a triumphant “blue skies” chorus that tugged at your heartstrings as it contrasted with the song’s minor key and melancholic verse.
The show was ridiculously unattended, but props should go out to Transmission Entertainment for booking the enormous talent before the world has caught on to his innovative music.
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CD review: Four stars for the new Radiohead
Well, here we are. The new Radiohead album, “In Rainbows,” has arrived, ones and zeros hurtling through hi-speed cable modems, ultra-modern delivery for this most modern of classic rock bands. As the little kids sampled on “15 Step” put it, “Yay!”
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Radiohead announced Oct. 1 that this immensely anticipated collection, the follow-up to “Hail to the Thief” that the band had been working on for two years, would be available for download Oct. 10. Fans could register at their site and pay whatever they like for a 160kbps DRM-free MP3 version. A deluxe “In Rainbows” boxset is scheduled for release Dec. 3, with a regular CD version due in early 2008.
Music fans, bloggers and others who report on the music industry went nuts. This was declared the end of major label hegemony, even after the band said it would likely sign with a label for the CD release.
What? The music? Oh, yeah, the music. Well, it might be the most consistent album Radiohead’s ever released, but I’ve never been sure if consistency is something fans want from this band. They want the grand gesture, the large statement. (Of course, the grand gesture here is in the marketing.) The proggy melodicism of the 10-year-old “OK Computer” and the electronic frippery that defined “Kid A,” the more tuneful “Amnesiac,” and the mopier “Hail to the Thief” have become, as Salinger put it, “smoothly amalgamated.” The band is still in love with Krautrock’s rhythmic tropes — check out that fuzz bass on “Bodysnatchers,” a kissing cousin to the throbbing riff from “The National Anthem” and the electronic loops on “15 Step” — but seem more at ease than ever at turning them into songs-qua-songs. It helps that Radiohead has become amazingly good at making electronic music feel like guitar rock and vice versa.
“Nude” features synthy strings that go for corn rather than drama (note: this is not a bad thing; if there’s one band that could use a little less drama, it’s Radiohead). “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” strips everything back for a minimalist guitar-drums flicker that moves like electronica, while “All I Need” is a ballad with break beats that build to a wide-screen finale. “Videotape” is the stately closer, all hums and a stumbling beat and pianos for days. All the bits of the band’s personality have come together in ways that probably surprise even them. After two years of work, Radiohead sounds as if they could do this every day.
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Another Hot List
In honor of Rolling Stone’s “Hot Issue,” here is another hot list, some of it Austin-centric, some not:
Hot band: White Denim
Hot SNL guests: Spoon
Hot friends of the famous: Grupo Fantasma
Hot festival: Fun Fun Fun
Hot best-seller, local: Iron and Wine’s “The Shepherd’s Dog”
Hot best-seller, national: Bruce Springsteen’s “Magic”
Hot overratables: Iron and Wine’s “The Shepherd’s Dog, “Bruce Springsteen’s “Magic”
Hot “Chinese Democracy”: Rapid Ric’s Whut It Dew Family album
Hot they’re-still-a-band?: And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead
Hot wait-they’re-really-still-a-band?: Los Lonely Boys
Hot VJ: Emmy Robbin (ME-TV)
Hot JJ: Castillo (ME-TV)
Hot time-killer: Trying to order the Radiohead album
Hot judgment: The new Radiohead album is…much like other Radiohead albums
Hot sellout: Radiohead’s manager stating that the band will soon sign with a record label
Hot complaint: Velvet-rope, $300 champaign bottle, “our staff doesn’t know the meaning of no” bars.
Hot silver lining: Getting all the people who like velvet-rope, $300 Champagne bottle, “our staff doesn’t know the meaning of no” bars out of the rest of downtown
Hot so-last-year: Seeing “Friday Night Lights” cast members at Jo’s
Hot this-year: Seeing Morgan Fairchild here and there
Hot don’t-say-we-didn’t-warn-you-when-those-condos-went up: Discussions of a new noise ordinance lowering the acceptable dB level from 80 dBs to 65 dBs.
Hot we-no-longer-care-about-this-whole-live-music-capital-thing: Discussions of a new noise ordinance lowering the acceptable dB level from 80 dBs to 65 dBs.
Hot audience participation: Readers adding their own “Hot” nods in the comments section
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