The Band to Band of Horses

In which we consider bands so band-like they began their name with the word "band"...

The Band
Coalescing while backing Canadian rock and roll godfather Ronnie Hawkins and the electrified Bob Dylan, an honorific was never necessary for the Band. The name was both humble and arrogant, a nod to the anonymity from which they sprung and a proprietary eponym (like "Kleenex" or "Xerox") for their brand of country rock that, while considerably different from the hits of the late 1960s, formed a template for four decades of edgy would-be folkies. (And, if you want to continue the analogy, probably the first band to popularize anachronistic clothing.)

The Band was comprised of four Canadians and one Yank, but all were masters of Americana, transplanting the mythos and emotional sweep of the rural heartland into the electric age. They were also somewhat unlikely counterculture icons, given their frontier milieu and their associations with "traitor" Dylan (who famously skipped Woodstock; the Band, however, played on). If there's a people's band, pre-E Street division, this is it.

Music From Big Pink introduced the quintet with a bit of songwriting assistance from Dylan. His three co-credits are unsurprisingly some of the best tracks on the record: the opening "Tears of Rage" is actually a slow, melancholy shuffle and a warning that we're going to be dealing with some very raw emotions. In "The Weight," guitarist Robbie Robertson picks up on these cues in a heartsick classic that announces his presence as the group's creative 500-pound gorilla. Robertson certainly didn't have a monopoly on talent in the Band, but "The Weight" is their quintessential song, something so pure and sweet and clear of conviction that you almost forget how achingly sad it is. A sob story about a transient who tries hard to be good, I also dig that it name-checks Nazareth, Pennsylvania, home of the Blue Eagles and C.F. Martin & Company--a.k.a. Martin Guitar, the manufacturer of the popular hollow-body guitars favored by many musicians of the era.



Big Pink has some nice symmetry in its closing number, "I Shall Be Released," another showcase of Dylan's lyrics that cauterizes the wound opened on "Tears of Rage" and offers some hope, however distant.



The rustic feeling is enhanced and the training wheels are removed on The Band, and the result is the group's creative masterwork. A deeper commitment to roots music is obvious through the record from "Across the Great Divide" to "Rag Mama Rag" to the pretty awesome Grateful Dead impression on "Jemima Surrender." Most are probably familiar with "Up On Cripple Creek," an early ode to the quirky dream girls that so captivated the secretly-grounded men of the beat, hippie, punk, New Wave, 'alternative,' and hipster generations. It's easy to get swept up with the narrator of "Creek" as he describes his staunchly loyal, doughnut-in-tea-dipping paramour who, perhaps coincidentally, is not his wife.



The Band balances the jug band work-outs with countrified arias with a tenuous foundation in historical fact - the slinky "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" and the epic "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." What these songs may lack in verisimilitude (or, um, claims on a higher morality in the case of "Dixie") they make up in verve and tears and gut feeling. There's an urgency I detect on this album, something about many of the tracks that perfectly captures an immediacy that's like sitting in on their original recording sessions. They have a life about them, and "Dixie" is the nerve center.

Two specific things impress me about "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down":

1. It turns me, a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee and detractor of revisionist Southern claims about Civil War history, into putty in old Confederate hands.

2. It was recorded, like the rest of The Band, in Los Angeles. This is kind of like if Jimi Hendrix recorded his version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in Brussels.



The years after The Band marked an inevitable decline in the face of corporate rock's ascendancy, and the Band had the good sense to bow out after their 1976 swan song, The Last Waltz. The fissures were already showing by 1970, though, with "Stage Fright" capturing a new era of uneasy feelings about the group's sudden fame and fortune.



Robertson had one last epic in him, "Acadian Driftwood," the centerpiece of the mostly-average Northern Lights-Southern Cross. Swapping famous American guilt (devastation of the American South, 1864-1865) for famous Canadian guilt (18th century deportation of Francophone Acadians from Nova Scotia to Louisiana), "Driftwood" takes even more poetic license than "Dixie," but is no less resonant in its lamentation of defeat. On a record that includes interminable synthesizer-driven jams and inexplicable Steely Dan pastiches ("Jupiter Hollow"), "Driftwood" is a jewel.



The extended edition of Northern Lights-Southern Cross also has the unrepentantly religious "Christmas Must Be Tonight," a glorious slice of holiday cheese. And now that we've mentioned treacly, misguided Xmas songs...

Band Aid - "Do They Know It's Christmas"
Band Aid 20 - "Do They Know It's Christmas 2004"
Many things have been said about "Do They Know It's Christmas" - it's pandering and trite, it's problematic, it's self-satisfied, it probably perpetuates the annoying/horrid cultural stereotype of the "starving African," and considering the checkered track history of European Christians intervening in African affairs, do they even care that it's Christmas?

Ultimately, I give Band Aid mastermind (and onscreen Roger Waters surrogate) Bob Geldof the benefit of the doubt. The Boomtown Rats frontman raged for several years against the myopia of the Me Decade and eventually won over many of his peers. It led to the creation of the modern benefit concert template (Live Aid) and was taken as a charitable challenge by musicians across the pond ("We Are the World"). Even naming the project "Band Aid" was an act of self-awareness that demonstrated Geldof's understanding of his very small role in addressing a very complex problem. It's the type of project that will always attract opportunists but as long as they're reciprocating some of that benefit, I don't see any major harm.

The song itself is extremely dated now, with a giggle-inducing spoken word portion stuck in the middle that forever captures some of the flavors-of-the-month (Dad, what's Bananarama?) alongside strange vamping (from Paul McCartney, of all people) and an intensely serious Christmas message from David Bowie that nearly stops the song in its tracks, mostly because he sounds like the only guy on the record besides Geldof who genuinely cares about famine relief. Also, Bono kind of being a dick...feed the world!



Musically, there is no real excuse for "Do They Know It's Christmas 2004" except, perhaps, for Chris Martin to take over the alpha dog vocals from Paul Young and for Dizzee Rascal and the Darkness' Justin Hawkins to do a call-and-response sing-rap. It doesn't even have the spoken word part. The word 'inessential' comes to mind.



Band of Horses
A band at their best when gloomy and anthemic, like the Shins crossed with Explosions in the Sky and scrambled with grits - "The Funeral" (from the debut Everything All the Time) and "Is There A Ghost" (from Cease to Begin) stand out in this regard.






Everything All the Time dances with a peculiar sort of alt-country darkness and as such might be Band of Horses' most interesting record to date, full of "Monsters" come to feed on us and the ministrations of "Wicked Gil" ('helping evil people to say things they show'). But Cease to Begin runs in the opposite direction, flirting with romantic dream pop in the likes of "Detlef Schrempf" (sadly not an ode to the former Mavericks/Pacers/Supersonics/Trailblazers sharpshooter) and "No One's Gonna Love You."



It's worth mentioning that Cease to Begin was recorded after a massive lineup overhaul that left only two original members, Ben Bridwell and Mat Brooke, which may account for the diverse tone of the sophomore record. Also contributing - the money made after "The Funeral" became a hot commodity among music directors for commercials and television shows. Normally I find this annoying, but in this case it couldn't have happened to a better song. And lest we forget their country roots, Band of Horses offers the mid-album stomper "The General Specific."



2010's Infinite Arms continues the slow expansion of the band's music palette but there's something about it that's just too willowy about it for my taste. It's a record tailor-made to grab the attention of the NPR crowd that likes their music alternative but not too abrasive. To oblige, the band tosses in some strings on "Factory" and busts out the Eagles harmonies on "Older" and "Blue Beard." It's still a quality record anchored by Bridwell's wistful vocal, which only helps the group maintain its creative stamp throughout myriad personnel changes and stylistic dalliances.

The Automatic to Avi Buffalo

Time and circumstances will prevent me from watching Super Bowl XLV this weekend. It's not the first time I've skipped "The Big Game" (as it's known in scores of electronics stores and supermarkets for legal reasons) - a couple years ago I passed on Steelers-Cardinals in favor of a trip to Disneyland. But this year I get the added benefit of missing the Black Eyed Peas performing the halftime show.

The last time I actively enjoyed a halftime show, I think, was U2's performance in 2002. I actually taped that one since I watched the game at a relative's house and while everyone would quiet down for the commercials, there was precious little interest in watching Bono show off the American flag sewn into his jacket (why a company of Boy Scouts and American Legionnaires didn't detain him after the game remains a mystery). To be honest, I recall watching the counter-programming more often than the halftime show. I'm a sucker for Celebrity Deathmatch and the Puppy Bowl. And the Bud Bowl, for that matter.

Prince was alright too, especially his sick burn on the Foo Fighters. Everything else is meh.

The Automatic - Not Accepted Anywhere
a.k.a. "The Automatic Automatic." Though I have a weakness for anything Welsh, this is pretty generic dance punk. They sound a lot like Kaiser Chiefs if those guys routinely forgot to write a third verse and just repeated the chorus a few more times. "Raoul" ain't bad though.



"Monster" was the big U.K. hit because...it had an a Capella breakdown? I'm still not sure why. I guess if you really hearing like the word "monster" over and over (and are not aware of Kanye West) this is your jam.



Also, I feel like it's my duty to report that most of The Automatic's songs have a whiny Linkin Park-sounding guy contributing background yelps. PASS.

The Avalanches - Since I Left You
I always felt like I was torturing my KSCR co-host, "Mellow Mike" whenever I asked him to participate in my many misbegotten attempts at gaining publicity for our show. One night I decided that we needed to post short bios of ourselves to our show's Facebook page. After 20 minutes we had about four sentences for Mike. I promised him we could stop if he could give me a few of his musical influences. He stared at me for a few seconds and said, "The Avalanches."

It makes sense now, because by name-checking the Australian electronic group he was essentially saying "everything." 1999's Since I Left You is a wall-to-wall samplefest, predating Girl Talk by 5 years. It's a fascinating stew of bits from obscure funk and soul songs, repetitious dialogue from old movies, and the smooth electronic sheen of a silkier Daft Punk. Tracks such as "Frontier Psychiatrist" are like weird, arty loops of black and white cartoons, deadpan and detached yet still fun and whimsical.



The Avalanches have a truly astounding grasp of rhythm, and this record would be essential if I were some kind of superior turntable mixologist. But I'm not. For me, it's something that's probably most effective to play when I'm waiting for the next act.

Average White Band
Yeah, everybody knows "Pick Up the Pieces" since it's the bigger hit, but "Cut the Cake" is way similar and better IMO - zippier and some of the more unusual lyrics conflating food and sex.



Between this and Van McCoy and Walter Murphy and Giorgio Moroder and Meco...well, we really loved our disco-funk instrumentals, didn't we? Or rather, our parents did.

And yes, they really were white...most of them. Like a lot of out-of-nowhere hitmakers in the 1970s, Average White Band was formed by a bunch of no-name session players with names like Chuck Berry and Eric Clapton on their résumés. This is a phenomenon that I find intriguing and I will definitely revisit it and it deserves a tag.

The Avett Brothers - I and Love and You
I completely forgot about alt-country back when I was demeaning country music! How rude of me. Country and its close relations now comprise 0.9% of my library, up from 0.2% (margin of error 1 - 3%).

I kid. The Avett Brothers have been at this for more than a decade, and they're pretty good at it. Being from North Carolina, the home of Southern iconoclasts (that is, in terms of how Northern culture defines "Southerner"; not in terms of being fire-eating, secession-loving Yankee-baiters), has something to do with how they keep their sound so evergreen.

"I and Love and You" is a great closer that also works well as the album's first track. It's about a dusty vagabond who just wants to get back home to the sleepy burg of Brooklyn, New York. You might say that this fiddles with the country paradigm. When Johnny Cash famously sang, "I've been everywhere, man," I'm fairly certain he added, "except with those emaciated youths in Williamsburg."



Variety is a strength of I and Love and You, from the sweet, romantic "January Wedding" to the authentic hoedown stomp of "Laundry Room." My favorite is "Kick Drum Heart" - raw euphoria like this in rare in country, at least without a "Yee-haw" or a reference to shoving your footwear into your enemy's rectum.

Charming amateur music video for "Kick Drum Heart":



Avi Buffalo - Avi Buffalo
From the very first KSCR Fest to SXSW - not bad for a couple Long Beach high-schoolers. They're a little shoegazey for my tastes, though they coax quite a wall of sound out of each other on Avi Buffalo.

If you're 19 and have a record deal, you apparently write a lot about teenage sexuality. Write what you know, etc. "What's It In For," "Five Little Sluts," and "Summer Cum" are good examples of this form, full of madness, vulnerability, barely concealed excitement and nervousness. They make me feel old.