I saw Swell Season at the Regency Grand Ballroom on Friday, November 9th, 2007. Swell Season is made of up Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard (lead singer from The Frames); their songs together eventually became the feature-length movie-musical Once. I saw Glen Hansard with The Frames at the Somerville Theatre in Fall 2005 (opening for Josh Ritter) and even saw Swell Season in Fall 2006 in a short set opening for Damien Rice. I enjoyed the previous shows … but not nearly as much as this most recent show. Glen is even more powerful with just his voice and an acoustic guitar while Marketa is a reticent force. ‘Heartfelt’ is the best word I can use to describe both their songs and their performance.
A couple thoughts about the show:
Glen played the same beat-up guitar he played in the movie Once. Great touch.
Marketa didn’t play The Hill, one of the best songs of the movie.
Marketa didn’t say almost anything during the show. Would’ve liked to hear her a little.
For me, Leave was the most powerful song of the night. Glen singing “Let go of my hand \ you said what you have to \ now Leave \ Leeaaveee …” Unforgettable.
“An early typical sign of LBD is occasional loss of attention and alertness”
“Persistent difficulties with short-term memory and recalling specific names of people or objects show up much later in LBD.”
“…may have more difficulty responding appropriately during a conversation, such as finding the right words to express themselves or staying on the topic.”
“…there may be signs of depression, such as increased irritability, poor concentration, lack of attention during interactions, sadness or a negative mood, poor appetite or sleep…”
All the while I was listening to Swell Season singing “I don’t know you” … “Words fall through me \ always fool me \ and I can’t react” … and
Falling slowly, eyes that know me And I can’t go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I’m painted black
Important lesson: much like Helvetica (the font), a good song (like a good font) can hold many different meanings for many different messages to many different people.
p.s. Here’s a poor quality cellphone picture I took at the show:
If I was 14 years old, this past Friday night at Arco Arena would have been a ”nite 2 remmbr.” For the youtube set, Plain White Tees (PWT), Gym Class Heroes (GCH), and Fall Out Boy (FOB) playing together is, like, OMG.
But I’m 25 and this was an arena concert featuring an emo-acoustic, pop-hip-hop, and pop-punk bands. In total, I only knew three of these band’s songs going into the show.
Not knowing the music beforehand was by far the biggest hinderence to enjoying the show. Arco Arena’s famed acoustics drowned out most of the lead vocals over the body-shaking bass/drums and defeaning guitars. Just about all the youngins around me were screaming the lyrics, so they probably had a completely different experience than I did.
Given the poor sound quality and my non-fan/wrong-demographic perspective, I’m actually surprised I enjoyed the concert as much as I did. Maybe I was just channeling seeing NoDoubt/Bush back in ‘97 (?), maybe I didn’t want to be un-hip and say it was too loud, maybe the energy of the crowd saved it … I dunno, but it wasn’t awful.
And here’s my standard in-no-particular-order takeaways:
A 17-year-old boy-girl couple mentioned to my friend and I that they’re glad to see some 25-year-olds at the show because they were worried “everyone was going to be 13.”
Arco Arena is actually pretty small compared to other basketball arenas I’ve been to. Of course watching a show from 200 yards away is still unacceptable so I went down to the floor after the Plain White Tees set.
I can’t recall anything specific about Plain White Tees’ set besides ‘Hey There Delilah’ (the one song of theirs I knew). It was a fine rendition: just like hearing it on the radio with a couple thousand people singing along.
Gym Class Heroes seem as fun in concert as they do in their Cupid’s Chokehold video (the one song I know) … but the Arco acoustics pretty much destroyed their set for me; nothing was distinguishable.
The most noteworthy aspect of Gym Class Heroes’ set was that they covered an Artic Monkey’s song (Leave Before the Lights Come On). I love covers, but I’m much more accustomed to bands covering old songs, not current ones. [further: youtube video of the GCH cover from another show. The user-recording is better than my first hand experience.]
Fall Out Boy has a pretty ridiculous visual show: huge video screen, eight 20-foot flamethrowers, and a 15-ft raised platform for the drummer. It’s all apparently in ironic hipster jest, so I guess it’s fine.
Fall Out Boy’s set was much louder than the other bands. I had to cover my ears a couple times to take a break from the pounding.
Even though I felt like Fall Out Boy’s set blended together just as much as PWT or GCH, I can actually remember four or five different songs from their set, which is much more than I can say for the other bands. I knew Thks fr th mrms going in, and also sort of knew The Take Over, The Breaks Over … and largely because of the videos playing in the background, I can distinctly remember The Carpal Tunnel of Love and I’m Like a Lawyer with the Way I’m Always Trying to Get You Off.
Speaking of videos, Fall Out Boy had a video for just about every song they played. It’s a super-effective way to make the songs more memorable … but it’s disconcerting that the songs don’t deviate from the standard video much.
That Lawyer song played against the backdrop of a video about Uganda. I’m always skeptical of bands trying to do good just for the PR … but hey, at least it’s somewhat educational. (further: check out the video on youtube.)
The hightlight of the night was unexpectedly a FOB cover of The Killer’s Mr. Brighside. Covering current songs still weirds me out, especially since FOB didn’t personalize it that much … but whatever, it was good.
And just to prove I was there, here’s a couple low-quality cell phone pics:
Ah, Pearl Jam. I’ve been watching their new Immagine in Cornice DVD, listening to the new Into the Wild soundtrack by Eddie Vedder, and recently stumbled across an unreleased track. My two initial thoughts:
First: “Wow.”
Second: like most of Pearl Jam’s more recent efforts, the quality varies a bit. I found myself wanting to skip some of the tracks on the DVD and soundtrack … and was captivated by others. But don’t forget what I said first: those “wow” parts are mesmerizingly gorgeous. Here’s a brief run-down of the three new PJ items…
Immagine in Cornice: This is DVD documenting Pearl Jam’s 2006 tour of Italy. Much like their previous tour-DVD, Touring Band, the concert footage is nicely shot from on and just-off stage (plus a few neat angles), providing a viewpoint of the concert far better than any I’ve ever had actually attending a concert. Anyway, the quick take:
“Some fast and some quiet.” That’s Eddie’s response to an unbeknowing ‘director of local music school’ in Pistoia who asks Eddie what Pearl Jam’s “repertoire” is. My big criticism: the fast songs simply don’t play very well on a DVD. I found myself zoning out whenever PJ started jumping around and solo-ing. Seeing the band up close and playing hard is neat … but it just doesn’t feel that rocking.
The softer songs are the ones that actually ‘rock.’ And by rock, I mean ‘resonate’. Hearing the Italian crowd sing along to Better Man was thrilling. Come Back, a new song off Pearl Jam’s last 2006 self-titled album, was breathtaking. And Eddie’s solo rendition of Tom Wait’s Picture in a Frame near the end was beautiful. Thrilling, breathtaking, and beautiful … I’ve run out of adjectives … but I’ve also run out of slower songs to praise.
The absolutely best part of the DVD are the homemovie style clips/interviews. There’s an interview with Mike about his tattoos, a nice chat about how setlists and encores are decided, and some fun footage of Jeff skateboarding. Oh, and for the Eddie stalkers there’s some cute footage of Eddie chatting with his daughter .. and, well I could go on. These parts are priceless … or more specifically, the cost of the DVD.
further explanation: go check out Come Back on youtube. And you can buy it here.
Into the Wild: Eddie Vedder wrote an entirely original album for the soundtrack to the movie Into the Wild. The movie is about the true story of a 21-year-old American who graduates from college and then leaves ’society’ to take on nature, eventually dying in the Alaskan wild.
Jon Krakauer, the original writer of the Into the Wild book said that he identified with the protagonist from his own similar youthful experience: ”I thought if I picked a challenge that was hard enough and succeeded, everything thereafter would be alright. It makes no sense, but I was convinced of this. And it was not that I would get rich, it was just in some spiritual sense that you would feel so good after doing something this hard.” (go to 7:35 in this video to see the quote in context.)
If you know Eddie Vedder’s music, you can imagine how much he would relate to that sentiment. In Eddie’s own words: ”As soon as I was let in … to the story and the book and the film … which all happend in a matter of days, I was just inside it. I don’t even know … what I saw, because I was in it, looking out, I think.” Eddie says he did the album in 2 or 3 weeks and doesn’t “really remember much of what took place” while he was making the album. During that time he was just “waking up, and having done the work from someplace that I’m not really sure where it was, and just … [I was] getting out of the way.” (Go to 1:25 in this video to see Eddie.)
So given Eddie’s passionate, trancelike creation, how is the actual album? Initially unlistenable, later brilliant.
Into the Wild is not just a bunch of Pearl Jam songs written by Eddie Vedder. There are less backing arrangements than traditional Pearl Jam. The songs are all written in the first-person (Eddie is supposed to be the “internal voice” according to director Sean Penn) and while the lyrics maintain some elusiveness, they are more direct than standard Pearl Jam fare. Also, almost all of the songs are shorter than regular Pearl Jam songs, at just two and a half minutes or less.
So for fans that usually find they most-like the Pearl Jam songs written by Eddie with minimal instrumentation (like, cough, myself. See Come Back.), what could be wrong with this album? Well, some songs simply seem to be intentionally discordant: sort of off-tempo, off-melody, off-key. For example, the second track, No Ceiling, just plods along, the music unmatched to the lyrics, and the lyrics just tossed out without almost any feeling. Completely forgettable.
Unfortunately, many of the songs have the bad quality of No Ceiling … but thankfully only briefly. Setting Forth starts melodically, hits a verse that Eddie’s thrashes through, then segues into the passionate chorus of ‘keep setting forth in the universe.’ Still, the song varies between terrible and beautiful several times in just 1:37. That’s tough.
By far the best songs of the album are two of the quieter songs, Rise and Guaranteed. Rise,which is just Eddie and his ukulele, infectiously rises (pun intended) to become what I can only paradoxically describe a ’sweeping little song.’ Guaranteed, meanwhile is a fun lyrical gem, starting with ”On bended knee is no way to be” and continuing with many more nicely rhyming turns of phrase.
[interesting sidenote: Hard Sun, one of the more promoted songs on the album, is actually a cover. The original, by Gordon Peterson is pretty much the same … including the backup singers. And speaking of backup singers: if Eddie is supposed to be the internal voice of the protagonist, who are the backup singers supposed to be in the film? I’ll let the discrepancy go since the chorus builds so nicely in Hard Sun.]
I’m Still Here: I recently stumbled on this still unreleased and untitled track. Fans call it I’m Still Here. It was supposedly leaked when Lost Dogs came out in 2003, although the song wasn’t actually on the album. There is very little background to the song … but some rumors put it as being an unreleased track from Pearl Jam’s 1992 debut album Ten.
The song floored me, and it’s done something to everyone I know who has listened to it. I can’t implore you enough to listen to it, so I’ve embedded a fan-made video right here. Put down what you’re doing and spend a couple minutes alone with this song.
Immagine 
