Eugene weekly., May 21, 2015, Page 23, Image 23

WHEN
HELL FREEZES OVER
The Eagles are one of the most commercially successful bands in U.S. history,
JUNGLE
ROCK
The meteoric rise of Glass Animals was unexpected, especially for frontman Dave
Bayley. In fact, the success of the indie-electro rock band feels much like a dream.
Bayley produced many of the band’s early original recordings in his bedroom in
Oxford, England. He tells EW that he never expected anyone to hear his music, adding
that he was at first “too shy” to sing over his instrumentation.
A few years later and Glass Animals has notched a whopping 82 million streams
online. The band’s atmospheric song “Gooey” (which was the most blogged song by
music website HypeTrak) has earned 33 million streams alone.
The band’s current tour stops at major music festivals including Sasquatch,
Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and Outside Lands. And the band’s recently announced fall
tour goes international from New York’s Central Park to Poland.
“I don’t really get much sleep these days,” says Bayley over the phone while on tour
in Mexico City. “It’s fun and the adrenaline keeps you going. The shows are exciting. We
love doing what we do.”
There are only four members in the band — also Drew MacFarlane, Edmund Irwin-
Singer and Joe Seaward — so the group is somewhat limited in their live performance,
incapable of reproducing the signature sounds of the more layered studio tracks on
2014’s Zaba. And much like that album’s nostalgic namesake — a children’s book by
William Steig called The Zabajaba Jungle — Zaba creates an unexplored universe of
slippery, psychedelic grooves.
According to Bayley, however, the group still employs the “core elements” to
perform live, improvising remixes of their music onstage whether the crowd calls for a
more “dance-y fiesta” or a “chilled-out” vibe.
“The visual element of the project is very important,” Bayley explains. “When we
were making the album, we wanted it to be something that could take away from your
little piece of life and transport you away to the rainforest and the tropics.”
Glass Animals performs with Gilligan Moss 9 pm Friday, May 22, at WOW Hall; sold
out. — Bryan Kalbrosky
penning such classic rock staples as “Hotel California” and “Take It Easy.”
But these days, The Eagles are equally well known for drawing The Dude’s ire in
the Coen Brothers’ cult classic, The Big Lebowski.
The Eagles are equal parts rock band and running punch line, symbolizing for
many all that was bland and watered down about ’70s-era pop rock.
And just why are The Eagles so divisive?
Nerd-master author and pop culture yogi Chuck Klosterman pontificates on
this question in his 2014 book I Wear The Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real
and Imagined).
The Eagles “are the most unpopular super-popular entity ever created by
California, not counting Ronald Reagan,” Klosterman writes.
Let me take a moment here to clarify: I hate The Eagles. I’m certainly not the
first person to feel this way. While commercially successful, the group has never
been a critical darling.
“We’d been abused by the press,” Eagles drummer Don Henley said in the
band’s 1998 biography To The Limit. Quality and popularity are not synonymous in
the world of pop music.
I also feel it’s fair to hate The Eagles while conceding to the quality craftsmanship
that makes many of their tunes totally ubiquitous — popularizing the easy-going,
L.A.-style brand of country rock they’re known for (a sound many say the group
stole from more worthy innovators like Gram Parsons and a coterie of other Laurel
Canyon songwriters).
So why do I hate The Eagles?
Because they sound like the end of something, another example of a
commercially accessible and successful band exploiting a sound many other
artists toiled in obscurity to perfect. Maybe one day I’ll soften on The Eagles —
when hell freezes over.
The History of The Eagles Tour touches down 8 pm Thursday, May 28, at
Matthew Knight Arena; $49-$179. All ages. — William Kennedy
DIGGING
GRAVES
Austin singer-songwriter Alejandro Rose-Garcia, better known as Shakey Graves, wants
to scratch all of your respective itches. Drawing from myriad sounds that prove difficult to
solidly place a finger on, he dwells in a dusty sonic landscape somewhere between Two
Gallants and M. Ward.
However, Graves has never needed the aid of a Zooey Deschanel to lure out or take the
blame for his pop sensibility.
If the lo-fi production and suitcase kick-drum of Grave’s 2011 debut LP, Roll The Bones,
projected him to runaway indie-folk success, then his home-recorded 2012 follow up EP,
Donor Blues, only served to cement that status.
The DIY production of his music and word-of-mouth promotion allowed listeners to feel as
if they themselves had discovered Graves, and the musician has found himself playing to a
growing and increasingly rabid fan base — a fan base that might not take too kindly to a
slick studio album.
The following record, 2014’s And The War Came, is a flawless folk-country record with
layer upon layer of subtle influences, ranging from rock to Brit-pop to indie. The production
is unapologetically polished, and despite initial critical hemming and hawing, the advance
single “Dearly Departed” was met with more than 2 million streams on Spotify before the
record was released, debuting at number eight on Billboard’s Independent Albums Chart.
It looks like Shakey Graves might just be onto something big.
Folk-quartet The Barr Brothers join Shakey Graves 8 pm Tuesday, May 26, at McDonald
Theatre; $15. All ages. — Joshua Isaac Finch
PHOTO BY TODD COOPER
eugeneweekly.com • May 21, 2015
23