Atlas Sound, Icy Demons, The Shapers - Lincoln Hall, Chicago, January 15, 2010

If I had to make a list of the most disappointing concerts I have ever attended, this one would rank near the top. I did not take any pictures, as was the case for the only previous concert review on Flying Houses (Fiery Furnaces at Spaceland in L.A. in May of 2008...) because my digital camera is pretty much shot.

Seriously though--what has been more disappointing than this? OK, I went to go see The Allman Brothers and Ratdog once, and I am not a fan of either, and I was bored out of my mind, but it was at Red Rocks, which is a nice venue, and the energy of the crowd, annoying as some of their habits might have been, was infectious, and at the end of the night I did not feel like I had wasted my time and would have had more fun doing pretty much anything else.

Go back further--years and years of concert-going, since 2000, ten years, and it's really tough for me to think of anything.

Let's start with the positives: Lincoln Hall is about a year old, and a very nice venue. You can almost tell it is owned by the same people as Schuba's because their beer is not overpriced and the space is clean. It does bear more than a passing resemblance to the Metro, but it is not as hectic. The only negative, I would say, were the doormen, who, at the end of the night, requested tips from everyone, which made me feel guilty for not giving anything. How fucking annoying. Now, if they had said, donate tips for the relief effort in Haiti, then I would have given 10 or something. (That I am reading The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club, which details the bouncers demanding money at Christmastime to donate to charities, may have led me to believe that these times are just truly terrible.)

We watched some of the Bulls game, and they beat the Wizards in double overtime. It was a great game, and the beginning of what I hoped would be a fantastic evening. The Shapers played first, and they were sort of psychedelic, and unremarkable. I liked about two of their songs.

Icy Demons came next, and this was my first time seeing them. I did not realize they were from Chicago until their singer informed everyone. They had a much higher percentage of songs I liked. This was the highlight of the evening for me, but I don't think I'd go out of my way to see them.

Finally, around midnight, Bradford Cox took the stage--alone. He looked pensive, depressed. I was immediately upset that there was no drummer. No other musician onstage. My friend said, "Don't worry, it will be alright." No, it wouldn't be alright. 90 minutes later I would be traumatized, exhausted, nearly ill.

Someone shouted, "Who is your cardiologist?" at him. He said, "Okay, I guess it's going to be a short concert." If only it were, Bradford! Chicago is full of stupid assholes, even at indie rock shows. I recall Ian Mackaye being razzed by the crowd during an Evens set a couple years back, and he was like, "Dude, WTF?" and then someone was like, "Welcome to Chicago."

Bradford was like, "How is everyone?" And everyone was like, "Good." And someone shouted, "How are you doing?" And he said, "Oh, I'm not doing so well."

Before he played his first song, he said, "This is for Jay."

This was the elephant in the room. I was shocked to hear of Jay Reatard's death several days ago. I never got into him. I tried listening to him a few times. I bet he would have been fun to see open for the Pixies on their Doolittle tour in Chicago, just a month prior, if only because Bad Lieutenant couldn't play their slot, but that is just because of my obsession with New Order and Bernard Sumner (more on that to come, just wait a couple days). Bradford and Jay were friends--two of the most confrontational artists in the indie rock limelight--true originals, living up to the definition of "punk" par excellence. Reatard's death is not quite as monolithic as say, Kurt Cobain's, but along with Elliott Smith's, it is a tragic, unbelievable event that will continue to be felt for years and years.

So, imagine one of your closest musical compatriots trying to play a show just two days after such a thing. I did not recognize the first song, and maybe Bradford had written it in the day previous, as a true homage to Jay--if anyone is capable of that kind of output, it's Cox--and the song was wonderful. Sad, beautiful, moving, what one expects out of Atlas Sound.

NOW, what should have happened at this point, is that a backing band should have come out of the shadows, and accompanied him in a show that would have been energetic and fun, a celebration of life, something to inspire the crowd. Not a chance. That unbelievably happy-sounding song, "Walkabout" was played second--and it sounded about one hundred times more depressing than it does on record.

From there, things just got worse. At least on "Walkabout" there were flashes of a brilliant re-interpretation. There was one more inspired moment--Cox played "Flourescent Grey," a Deerhunter song that Jay Reatard once covered. At this point, when he sung about decaying bodies and flesh turning gray, and about someone else being his god in high school, the concert was transformed into an Artaud-esque exercise in cruelty. Everyone who knows and loves Deerhunter or Atlas Sound (this was my 4th time seeing Cox perform) knows that he is not the most emotionally-balanced individual, and deals with loads and loads of psychological, emotional, and physical pain on a daily basis--but this was the only time that I truly felt an artist wanted his audience to feel the way he felt--that is, horribly uncomfortable, pained, and heartbroken.

There was no "Sheila" or "Quick Canal" (the latter may have been played, in a haze of three or four long songs that I could not differentiate). "Criminals" was played, after a brief moment of Cox putting on some kind of persona--Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan--with a harmonica, and a pronounced southern drawl, and pretending to be so happy and "crowd-friendly" that it functioned as hyperbole. It seemed funny for about a second, and then just turned sad.

He told a weird story about Climax, GA, and Cumming, GA, and the Cumming Eye Clinic. Perhaps this was the only comforting part about the entire show--juvenile humor. Eventually he played an extremely long version of "Attic Lights," and I swore he said, "this song is about my death," as he started it.

The show went on until about 1:20 AM and when it ended, Bradford did genuinely thank everyone for coming out, but I think it was a great relief for all of us that we could leave. I tried playing my friend Logos in the car afterwards, and Rainwater Cassette Exchange in order to show how it should have sounded, how he was much better than this, but by then I was just annoyed.

He may have his reasons for playing onstage alone, but when I saw Atlas Sound at the Echo in L.A. in March of 2008, I had a great time! He was wearing a Wipers t-shirt, talking about how he had just bought it that day, he played an awesome version of "Ativan," and he was just so happy the entire time. Now, everyone knows that you can't really be happy 100% of the time ("I should know, I'm a doctor..."), BUT if you are a successful artist, charging $15 a pop for 500 people, with Lincoln Hall taking in $7,500 in ticket sales along, not counting convenience charges--maybe you are earning close to $1,000 for playing for 90 minutes. OK, I can see why you don't want backing musicians, but I really don't think Bradford is a greedy guy. He has his reasons, but at least one huge fan of his doesn't understand them. This was the most depressing musical experience of my life.

I still intend to see Deerhunter on April Fool's Day in Chicago. Obviously I forgive Bradford because he must be going through a really difficult time right now, but I really hope that show will come closer to meeting my expectations.

Atlas Sound - Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel

Released in February of 2008, Atlas Sound's debut album Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel one-ups the success of lead singer Bradford Cox's other band Deerhunter, a band who racked up accolades and enjoyed increasing popularity in 2007 with Cryptograms, the Flourescent Grey EP, and numerous festival appearances. Cox had been talking up his side project for a while, and so I looked forward to this coming out. Somehow I knew it would be worth hearing when I read an interview with Cox and he started going off about how terrible the majority of bands are in the music scene. There are few greater consolations to the pain this life offers than seeing a person like Cox dimiss the mediocrity surrounding him. It is life-affirming to see someone so unapologetically pissed off about the due being given certain undeserving others.

"A Ghost Story" is easily the creepiest song on the album, very powerful aesthetically, gets you into the mood of the album. If anyone thinks this song is cute or making too big of a deal about itself, I urge you to listen to it in the dark, with no lights on at night, and see if you don't start feeling like freaking out because a ghost is going to emerge from your closet.

"Recent Bedroom" opens up the "proper" album, as the first track acts as more of a "found object" sound collage. Immediately, you notice that Cox is going to sing very differently on Atlas Sound than on Deerhunter. Gone is the rapid, throaty, yelping and here is the grandiose, impossibly slow, highest-pitched, most angelic, comforting style to match any other current performer including Thom Yorke. The lyrics are very simple, I could practically write all the lyrics for the album in a paragraph (except for "River Card"): I walked outside/I could not cry/I don't know why. It's apparently about seeing a dying relative and not knowing how it makes you feel that it's not making you cry. Maybe it's a more complex sentiment than that but I like the ambiguity of emotion.

"River Card" is apparently based on a short story about falling in love with one's own reflection in a river. Cox intones how badly in love he is with this person that is actually only a reflected image, but he realizes that if he tried to throw himself into said cherished object he would only be drowned. It's a powerful statement.

"Quarantined" is apparently about how Cox spent weeks/months in a hospital having various surgeries performed on him and how alone he felt being away from everyone he knew. This is the first really weird song on the album, and you will know what I mean when you hear Cox sing, "Quarantined" for the first time: "Quar-an-tined/and kept/so far away/from my friends" but as weird as the pronunciation is, by its end the song has stretched into the kind of lilting sound aesthetic that Cox has carried throughout the entire album. He talked about how obsessed he was with the My Bloody Valentine album Loveless and how he would listen to it over and over, trying to understand how that band had pulled such ethereal sounds from their instruments and effects gadgets. Now, that album very famously was very expensive to make (most expensive indie rock album of all time, maybe?) topping out over a million dollars. It appears that Cox has made most of these recordings under rather bare circumstances, making his accomplishment all the more impressive.

The sound that enters in "Quarantined," a sort of melodic humming in the highest registers of pitch with an atmospheric glow, reappears in "On Guard," which is a song you can listen to and not even realize you are listening to it, like a bunch of songs on Cryptograms that are instrumental. Actually, it is easier to listen to "Winter Vacation" and think you are still listening to "On Guard," so similar as they sound to each other and so seamlessly do they blend together into one. However, "Cold as Ice" asserts itself in the mix next. This song is apparently (and this whole album, in a way is) about unrequited love, how you can be so close to one person and so in love with everything they do and how they can act as if everything's totally normal and you're just their friend and not someone who wants to be their lover...However such songs never reveal their meaning so clearly. The lyrics are left minimal and vague, which only serves to elevate them in the mind of the listener.

"Scraping Past" is the second weirdly-pronounced song after "Quarantined" and its ending does not enter into the soaring heights of that other black sheep of a song. Instead, it offers the most catharsis of any song on the album, Cox weirdly pronouncing "Scraping past" over and over, paying particular attention to the sound of every letter as it pertains to each word. "Small Horror" introduces the re-surfacing of the sound echo that carries the album, and is a rather minimalistic song, but serves as an appropriate taking off point for the final stunning 1/3 of the album.

"Ready, Set, Glow," an instrumental, minimalist, serves its purpose well. "Bite Marks" opens up with a sound that comes straight out of Loveless, I swear, and may be the closest thing to a misstep on the album It is not a bad song, but the meaning is difficult to decipher, and its bassline makes it sound as if it almost wants to be a pop song, but then it sounds so sad. I don't skip it anyways because I'm very concerned about upsetting the flow of the album. "After Class" is another instrumental that is probably slightly more interesting than "Ready, Set, Glow" but serves an even greater purpose.

"Ativan" is the last "song" on the album (the title track, another instrumental, closes it out) and, as I told a friend at the show we saw after they played it, the best song on the album. It is perhaps worth noting that the first time I listened to this album, I laid down to go to bed around "Small Horror" and I could not help but think about how amazing the album was as I tried to sleep, how remarkably good the songs were, how I could already tell it was a classic, timeless statement of a record, and how the ending was one of the best endings I had heard of an album in a long, long time. Now, after listening to "Ativan" dozens of times, it is not as special to me as it once was. But the first time I heard it I could not believe it was so good.

Apparently it is a song about anti-depressant drugs that Cox had been taking recently which have an addictive quality (I believe). The song is about sleeping until you throw up, or feel drunk, sleeping while the intended target of the song goes out to have "lunch with a girl who has hair as soft as baby's breath...lunch with a girl that takes time to listen to every word you utter," quite probably the most achingly sung lines on the album, and potentially the most heartbreaking. Regardless, LTBLTWCSBCF ends with the title-track instrumental, content with whimpering out the remainder of its energy on some far away sounding distorted guitar sounds.

I may have been exagerrating when I said that Random Spirit Lover might have been better than OK Computer, and people thought I was crazy when I said that, so I will not say that Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel is better than Loveless, but I will say that it tries damn hard to be. Unless some truly amazing work is released this year, Atlas Sound's debut deserves to be near the top of the year end best of 2008 lists. Unfortunately, I would imagine that most will not remember it by then. Indeed, it seems most don't even remember it now, even though it only came out a couple of months ago.

I went nuts when it came out and listened to it many times in a row and I went to see their show at the Echo in L.A. and they played most of the songs from the album and the only one that was different was "Ativan," which had been turned into a loud shoegaze song. If I hadn't been so afraid of coming off the wrong way, I could have interviewed Bradford Cox that night (I saw him outside, but he was already talking voluminously to someone so I didn't interrupt) and pulled together much more personal insight into this album review. But I believe I have done a good enough job.