music
JACK WHITE
Explosive Blunderbuss
Music from the Middle Ages and the Middle East
Pop music abhors a vacuum. After K. copped for the Big Sleep in
1994, the scene went supernova and collapsed, opening up a black hole
that snuffed the uber-hip underground. Goodbye yellow brick road, shit
happens. Consequently, Billboard bought the farm. American idols
gobbled down American pie and farted out teen spirit. Radio, scared
clueless, filled the dead air with the stink of shit — sexless pap,
dandruffy disco, syndicated sit-and-spin for twisters and shouters
stranded on the dark side of the moon. Baby Spears hopped the rehab
fence. Then emo crashed the party and the music died.
It might have gone on a lot longer than it did, that tone-deaf tempo-
ral sump — years, maybe decades, of pneumatic smarm and saccharine
schtick — but then, just in time for the fin-de-siècle, the White Stripes hit
the scene, a punk-rock duo of Jack White on guitar and vocals, and his
sister-lover, Meg White, on drums. Remember the first time you heard
them? Starting with their eponymous drop in 1999, the Stripes strung
together these melodic pearls of perfect pop, one after the ‘nother.
Those songs beckoned the jaded and disenfranchised — Nirvana-heads,
pubescent pups, Cristgau critics — welcomed us back into the fold, with
a fierce, raw, nervy assault of infectious guitar-driven pop rock. White
reached down deep into the vaults of three-bar Delta blues and spun
that mud anew, refashioned it with grit and wit for the new millennium.
Songs about boys and girls making icky thump, waltzes for seven nation
armies and little birds. We got behind it.
The Stripes officially disbanded early last year, a bittersweet
farewell though hardly a reason for despair; White, frenetically
ambitious, cultivates several gardens: Along with Brendan Benson, he
fronts an excellent outfit, The Raconteurs; with Kills singer Alison
Mosshart, he formed The Dead Weather; produced and played on
Loretta Lynn’s 2004 album, Van Lear Rose. Then, last month, White
released his first solo record on his Third Man Records label.
Written and produced by White and featuring a slew of guest
musicians, Blunderbuss is a jagged, scattershot journey across the
subliminal soundscape of White’s inimitable style and indelible
substance — a sort of magical mystery tour, with pins poked higgledy-
piggledy into the scavenged map of White’s brilliantly idiosyncratic
artistry. Employing a stripped down, almost anachronistic sound — you
can hear the hiss of analog tape, the breathy whir of the Rhodes piano
— Blunderbuss trades the explosive accessibility of the Stripes for a
more subdued, sophisticated approach.
The sepia tones and melancholy refrains of songs like “Love
Interruption” and “Blunderbuss” evoke an atmosphere that is at once
intimate and out-of-time, like staring at old portraits in another family’s
photo album. Other songs, like the fantastic “Weep Themselves To
Sleep,” veer toward the anthemic before White’s fragile vocals — all
urgency and need — ground them in some private hurt.
Blunderbuss might be White’s most personal and challenging album
to date, and as such, it’s sure to confuse those fans expecting De Stijl II.
They’ll get over it. This one’s a slow burn, but it gives off the warm
glow of endurance.
Jack White plays Monday, May 28, at Hult Center; SOLD OUT (but
worth dropping money on, if you know what we mean). — Rick Levin
The UO isn’t the only place to hear exotic sounds this summer. Saturday, June 2, Cozmic hosts a concert of
Middle Eastern music and dance starring a UO doctoral graduate, the dancer-choreographer Elena Villa (who
creates a fusion of Spanish and Arabic dance forms including flamenco and belly dance), Eugene’s own excellent
world music band Americanistan accompanying a quartet of belly dancers, plus the Boise-based ensemble District
19 Flamenco, featuring dancer Julianna Marie Thomas and guitarist Derren Davidavich, who specialize in the
fiery Spanish musical form whose roots stretch back through the Roma (gypsy) diaspora from India.
What is it about June 2? That’s also the night the great Hawaiian singer and slack key guitarist Ledward Kaapana
performs at The Shedd. For four decades, the Grammy-winning Big Island native has captivated listeners with his
plaintive falsetto voice and mastery of the dreamy finger-style guitar music that evolved from the 19th century and
earlier encounters between European sailors and Hawaiian natives. His important bands Hui Ohana and I Kona and his
many solo projects (including collaborations with Alison Krauss, Chet Atkins and other pop musicians) have solidified
Kaapana’s deserved reputation as one of the islands’ most intoxicating voices. — Brett Campbell
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Seve n Deadly Synths,
or an Exploration of
Aural Psychology
Have you ever stopped nodding
along to a drum beat only to realize that
you have no memory of consciously
deciding to start? It takes perfection in
multiple facets — tempo, timbre, melody,
etc. — in order to actively hypnotize your
audience, especially if they are unwitting
test subjects. I’m fairly certain you can
get paid for agreeing to take part in a
similar psychological study somewhere,
but that shouldn’t stop you from paying
a cover to see the indie outfit Birds and
Batteries.
The Bay Area group’s sound is
characterized by virtual blankets of
synth and pop production falling out of
nowhere to smother the growing fire
that so desperately wants to erupt out
of lead songwriter Mike Sempert. B&B
goes far beyond other, similar indie-
electro outfits of the time — Starfucker
et al. — in that the emphasis on fusion is
BIRDS AND BATTERIES
strong, and it creates a potent mixture
of years past and days present; like
David Byrne fucking Passion Pit in the face until a new sonic hole, composed of cascading psychedelia and languid
buildups, is ripped open.
In truth, this is the music that’s going to confuse your body and your mind. You’ll be in that daze — nodding
aimlessly at the stars flying through your inner circuitry — when a fluid-yet-oddly-abrupt change in pace’ll hit like a
kick in the teeth and you’ll be dancing, and you’ll be sweating, and you’ll be content closing out the rest of your life
on a couch with soothing beats and flustered synthesizers reminding you that there’s value to lethargy, and there’s
no point in sloth if we can’t be conscious of what put us there.
In this case, it’s Birds and Batteries.
Birds and Batteries play 10 pm Thursday, May 24, at Luckey’s; $5. — Andy Valentine
EUGENE WEEKLY
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