Album review: 'OFF!' by OFF!

Los Angeles punk band Off! accomplishes an impressive feat on its self-titled debut album (after last year’s collection of EPs): Sixteen songs in under 16 minutes, each a compact, sonic rampage via scream, electric guitar, bass and drum, by four men who understand compressed aggression: Keith Morris (Circle Jerks, Black Flag), Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides, lead villain in the film “Suck”), Steven McDonald (Redd Kross), and drummer Mario Rubalcaba (Rocket from the Crypt, Hot Snakes).

In Los Angeles terms, that’s about the span it takes to drive from Vine to Alvarado streets down Sunset Boulevard, with Morris barking out bursts of verses about apocalyptic toxic boxes, false foundations, confusion piling up like trash, Darby Crash, chumps, drones, stone hearts, the Crenshaw strip, the King Kong Brigade (“sprinkling glass on their Happy Meals!”) and the Torrance jail. By the last lines of the album, during the song “I Want One (I Need One),” Morris has declared in all-caps that “I AM THEE HAPPENING” while acknowledging that “inside there’s nothing left, looking down from the 13th floor.”

Whew. But that’s Morris, whose quick lyrical exclamation points have always focused on frustration. What makes “Off!” burn is the band. To say that Coats, McDonald and Rubalcaba are tight is to simplify something incredibly rare: the ability to cram into 50 menacing seconds about five minutes worth of drama and structure without once dropping a beat. Few verses on “Off!” last more than four bars, ditto bridges and hooks. Coats’ chaotic guitar solos burst out and are reigned in within a few spazzy seconds. Choruses hit like skateboard wipeouts.

“My life was saved by Darby Crash,” says Morris in “Jet Black Girls” after he has screamed of shoving a six pack of tall boys down his pants and having “Co Co puffs with Mr. Scratch.” “Immortality calls,” he declares at the end. This is Los Angeles hard-core. Long may it rule.

Off!
"Off!"
Vice Records
Three-and-a-half stars (out of four)

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Keith Morris and Off! are pressed for time

-- Randall Roberts @liledit

Live: Lambchop at McCabe's Guitar Shop

On a night in which the moon was 14% bigger than usual, in a room the size of a church basement at McCabe's guitar shop in Santa Monica, Kurt Wagner, singer, songwriter, guitarist, visual artist and longtime leader of Nashville country band Lambchop, sang a song called “Nice Without Mercy.”

“We have crawled among the elements taking pictures with our phones,” he crooned, laying bare a curious reality of the modern world in a half-whispered baritone. The rest of his band offered delicate punctuation via piano, guitar, bass, drums and the occasional warm hum of a Nord Electro synthesizer, with a little bit of twang, a touch of pokey blues and a dollop of grace.

The song was taken from Lambchop's exquisite new album, “Mr. M,” and in it, Wagner addressed the natural world, capturing the kind of wonder that could make a believer of most skeptics. After the crawl with his phone, he sang of carrying buckets over mountains, “catching fish with just our hands,” of a sky that “opens up like candy and the wind don't know my name.”

Adam Yauch, founding member of the Beastie Boys, dies at 47

The Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch, best known the world over as the thoughtful, witty, in-your-face rapper MCA, has died, according to Rolling Stone and the hip-hop website Global Grind, which is run by Russell Simmons. Yauch, who had been battling cancer for the last three years, was part of a trio of New York rappers whose music starting in the 1980s transformed the budding genre and helped take hip-hop nationwide.

[Updated May 4, 11:40 a.m.: A Beastie Boys representative confirmed that Yauch "passed away in his native New York City this morning after a near-three-year battle with cancer."]

Yauch, who was 47, achieved fame with the Beastie Boys, but as their fame grew he directed his energy toward his lifelong passion: Buddhism and Tibetan independence. While he and his fellow Beastie Boys Mike Diamond (Mike D) and Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) continued to transform rap music through classics like "Paul's Boutique," "Check Your Head" and "Ill Communication," Yauch helped tether the group with his rhymes about peace, enlightenment and other topics far removed from the party-rap of the Beastie Boys' early music.

PHOTOS: Adam Yauch |1964 - 2012

Yauch also helped form the successful production company Oscilloscope Pictures, which released acclaimed films such as "Wendy and Lucy," "Burma VJ" and "We Need to Talk About Kevin." The Tibetan Freedom Concerts, which between 1996 and 2003 helped raise money for Tibetan independence, were the product of his work with the Milarepa Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group.

Last month the Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where members Ad-Rock and Mike D accepted the award; MCA was unable to make it.

Pop & Hiss will continue to provide information as it arrives.

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Beastie Boy Adam Yauch was also a force in film world

-- Randall Roberts

Photo: Adam Yauch in 2008. Credit: Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times

In Rotation: Carole King's 'The Legendary Demos'

In Rotation: Carole King's "The Legendary Demos." A series in Sunday Calendar about what Times writers and contributors are listening to right now...

This post has been corrected. See below for details. 

Carole King, “The Legendary Demos” (Rockingale/Hear Music)

The songs live within the minds of most Americans over 30, entangled among the neurons like morning glory: “You’ve Got a Friend,” “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” “Tapestry,” “Take Good Care of My Baby,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” and dozens others that Carole King wrote in the 1960s and ‘70s either alone or with her writing partner (and one-time husband) Gerry Goffin.

But no matter how often we’ve heard them, most have never been as exquisitely and simply experienced as on “The Legendary Demos,” which collects King’s original versions of these songs.

The set consists of thirteen works recorded from 1962, when she was working as a writer in New York’s songwriting epicenter the Brill Building, through 1971, after she’d divorced Goffin and moved to Laurel Canyon. The tracks on “The Legendary Demos” have been long coveted by collectors and King fans, and it’s easy to hear why. Though created as demo records and not intended for release, the documents contain some of King’s most casually elegant performances.

Flipping digitally through John Peel's record collection

In the end, isn't this what everyone who's ever collected anything wants: to have the world see what they did with their lives, what great taste they had, and how responsibly they cared for their possessions? If so, English DJ John Peel, whose BBC program was one of the most important and innovative popular music shows on British radio for nearly four decades, is living the dream from the great beyond.

After he died in 2004, Peel's voluminous record collection was left intact, and it is now being cataloged and displayed online as part of a far-reaching archival project called the Space, funded by the BBC and the British Arts Council. As part of the John Peel Archive, a chunk of Peel's roughly 25,000-piece vinyl obsession is being gradually revealed one alphabetical letter at a time in a section called Peel's Record Shelf. The unveiling could bring a better understanding of not only the music that he liked but also how an old-school curator did his job and cataloged his tunes before the drag-and-drop world of MP3s miniaturized music into data crumbs. 

For geeks interested in music, the chance to compare notes on -- and judge -- another person's collection, to flip through each piece one by one and absorb the information, inspires a certain giddiness, especially when that person's aesthetic, knowledge and curatorial skills are as fascinating as Peel's.

The first hundred records in the A section were uploaded this week, and they proved to be a combination of classics, one-hit wonders, private press curios and some bafflers that, like any true obsessive, he probably hadn't listened to in years. So what's in there so far? 

Honestly, to peruse the first batch -- The A's through Adam and the Ants -- is to wonder about what's to come, because this isn't nearly a big enough sampling to make any sort of snobby judgments, note any glaring omissions or wonder what the hell Peel was thinking. After all, one of the world's most famous DJs is going to have ABBA records, and as an avowed reggae fan, he'd have held onto his Abyssinians albums. As someone who was down with the New York post-rock/no wave movement of the '80s, Peel's affection for the Action Swingers' underappreciated albums is pretty cool -- but he was playing those records when they were coming out, so of course he'd hold onto them.

As the weeks and months progress and the collection continues to be revealed -- the first 100 records from each letter of the alphabet -- more evidence of his passions and oversights will no doubt show (though everyone who ever caught his show knew that he never held back on his opinions). 

The suspense will no doubt build: Which Black Flag albums did he keep? Did he have any Clash acetates? How many albums by his favorite band, the Fall, did he have?

For some of us, a new ritual is going to be checking in weekly to see what's up. And for a select few others of us, we now have a new stipulation to add to our will: The collection is to remain intact, and to be published as an online archive within a year of death. How else will others know of our secret passion for early Boogie Down Productions 12-inches, and mad obsession with both the Flying Lizards and the Lounge Lizards?

Oh, and it's worth noting that Peel didn't have any Roy Acuff records. What kind of collector doesn't have any Acuff records!? Oh wait. Yes he does. Never mind. Nice one.

ALSO

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Album review: Rufus Wainwright's 'Out of the Game'

Spotify for iPad arrives, aims to become the 'OS of music'

-- Randall Roberts @liledit

 Photo: Screen shot of Peel's Record Shelf. Credit: thespace.org.

Spotify for iPad arrives, aims to become 'the OS of music'

The race for digital music supremacy got a little more interesting this morning when Spotify, the online music streaming service that has quickly become both an industry standard and a key online innovator, released its long-awaited iPad application, replacing the dinky half-size iPhone app that preceded it. The new software, available free to premium subscribers, aims to further erode Apple's dominance in digital music -- through Apple's own devices.

Though available only to listeners who pay the monthly $9.99 fee, Spotify is currently offering a free 48-hour trial, which can be extended to 30 days after the initial run expires if (of course) you're willing to sacrifice some information/data about yourself. It's a good way to make your own decision about whether or not the service merits all the hubbub that has sprung up around it.

Granted, Spotify has a mere 3 million premium subscribers, and not all of them have iPads, so the percentage of listeners/readers who will be affected by this news is relatively small. But that doesn't mean that the new app hasn't advanced the conversation on the future of digital music yet another step.

Review: Jack White magnetic at the Mayan

 

This post has been updated. See below for details.

By the end of Jack White’s concert at the Mayan on Monday, the Detroit-born, Nashville-based singer and guitarist had the sold-out crowd doing something that jaded baby boomers and skeptical folkie grandpas might never have imagined: Their kids and grandkids were giddily singing along to Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter’s version of “Goodnight, Irene,” a song at least a century old about basic human desire -- and certainly not trending on Twitter.

Touring in support of his new killer record, “Blunderbuss,” the lanky, pale singer and guitarist, wearing black and surrounded by his all-female band the Peacocks (who were all dressed in white), tossed out riffs suggestive of everyone from Chuck Berry, Hubert Sumlin and Keith Richards to Jimmy Page, Johnny Thunders and Joe Strummer, rolled out yarns worthy of Bob Dylan, and conjured the spirit of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys by giving each of his six-member band a solo. 

It was as if he’d gathered inside his head many different strains, accents and ideas of pre-digital American music -- country, folk, blues, soul, rock 'n' roll and every combination thereof -- and was pouring them out through his fretboard-busy fingers and wailing voice.

Album review: Rufus Wainwright's 'Out of the Game'

This post has been corrected. Please see note at bottom for details.

One of the best opening lyrics so far this year comes near the middle of Rufus Wainwright’s seventh studio album, “Out of the Game.” Following a stutter-step, loping piano-drum introduction suggesting a Patsy Cline ballad, the singer with a perfect tenor starts with a suggestion: “Let’s meet in a respectable dive/On a somewhat safe street/And have a beer.” Over the next five minutes,  Wainwright offers intimate recollections to an unnamed lover, and one of the best lyrical turns of his career, on an album that follows through on the promise of his 1998 debut and his impressive, if at times uneven, work between then and now.

One of the catchiest and most immediately accessible albums Wainwright, 38, has made, “Out of the Game” was produced by Mark Ronson and features as its backing band the Dap-Kings, best known for its work supporting both Sharon Jones and Amy Winehouse. Other guests include Nels Cline of Wilco, Andrew Wyatt of Miike Snow and guitarist Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, all of whom steer the Dap-Kings and company away from a retro vibe and toward something much more vivid.

Live: Colin Stetson, Sarah Neufeld, Gregory Rogove at Dilettante

Over two hours Saturday night on the eastern edge of downtown Los Angeles, a trio of solo musicians offered three wildly distinctive sets, played four instruments using six precision-made hands to create an infinite range of wordless sounds, structures and ideas.

The three — Sarah Neufeld, Gregory Rogove and Colin Stetson — are better known for their work with prominent artists including Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, Devendra Banhart, Feist and Tom Waits, but what they offered during their weekend performances was something much more expansive and experimental.

The three landed at Dilettante, a production house and performance space with an acoustically exquisite sound room, as part of a six-date West Coast tour. Neufeld, the charismatic violinist for Grammy-winning Montreal band Arcade Fire, offered five new, as-yet-unnamed solo pieces; Rogove, a multi-instrumentalist and sound engineer whose credits include working with Banhart, Megapuss, Liars and Medeski, Martin & Wood, sat before a grand piano to perform work from “Piana,” a John Medeski album devoted to Rogove’s compositions.

Rolling Stones' 'Exile' as feature film? Casting Mick and Keith

Last weekend it was reported that a film production company helmed by Richard Branson, the brains behind the Virgin empire, had acquired the rights to "Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones," author Robert Greenfield's 2008 book on the Rolling Stones circa 1971, when they were exiled in France and making their now-classic double album, "Exile on Main St."

Keith Richards' yarns about that time in France are some of the highlights of his 2011 autobiography, "Life," in which he wrote of being strung out on heroin, running with Gram Parsons, dating Anita Pallenberg and, basically, creating the living definition of the rock star life while working out "Exile."

The story has all the ingredients you'd want out of a rock biopic: sex, drugs, running from the law, a French mansion called Villa Nellcôte, and a band, the Rolling Stones, at the peak of its powers (and ragtag beauty). 

INTERACTIVE: Who should play Mick Jagger and Keith Richards?

Wrote Richards of that time: "We had a record to cut and knew that if we failed, then the English [tax authorities] would have won. And this house, the Bedouin encampment, contained anywhere from twenty to thirty people at a time, which never bothered me, because I have the gift of not being bothered or because I was focusing, with assistance, on the music."

But there's one major concern with such a film: Casting Mick and Keith, two rock figureheads whose portrayals will be key to whether the project is as cool as the band was at that time, or a laugh-out-loud cheesefest. Pick the wrong Mick, and you've got problems; cast a parody Keef, and the whole thing fails.

With this in mind, we have a few early casting suggestions, including a number of wild-card ideas -- Rooney Mara as Richards and Angelina Jolie as Jagger? -- that could, if "A Season in Hell" is ever produced, make it a winner. 

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Rolling Stones shine a light on 'Exile on Main St.'

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-- Randall Roberts

Photo: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at Villa Nellcôte in the early 1970s. Credit: Dominique Tarlé / Universal Music Group