Arts & Culture
Patti Smith
The word “mulatto” jumps from Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the National Anthem for the blanker than blank generation. And until all the kids memorized the lyrics and drove Kurt Cobain over the edge it was that one word that hung like cool, moist ground fog on a hot summer night. But before Nirvana there was Big Joe Turner. In fact before just about everything there was Big Joe Turner. One might even argue plausibly that Big Joe was the real nirvana when it came to rock & roll. In his book Where Dead Voices Gather Nick Tosches writes: But enough of color. I tire of every race. I shall, however, here glance for a moment in this context of color and auditory evidence and speculation, to the bellowed words of Big Joe Turner’s “Tell Me, Pretty Baby” of 1948: They say brown-skinned women are evil. And yellow girls are worse. I got myself a mulatta, boy; I’m playin’ it safety first. Or is there no comma intended between the penultimate and ultimate words of the third line of this quatrain? – I got myself a mulatta boy Has the question of a solitary punctuation mark…, ever before or since presented an ambiguity of momentousness such as this? Get thee, then, a mulatto, regardless of gender, punctuation or pronunciation; and proceed, then, behind me, together as one. While the Cobain saga proves once again, sadly, that rock & roll eats its young, what is more vexing is just how many generations it took for mulatto to resurface in a lyric. Twelve, then, is Patti Smith’s twelfth album. (Longtime collaborators Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty are still riding shotgun.) It is an album of cover tunes. She has earned the right to coast, pay tribute, have fun – whatever the explanation of this album may be. She is the ultimate case of the fan who made the leap of faith to the stage. (She behaved admirably when she was recently inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame because her late husband Fred Sonic requested she do so.) Twelve gives us an even dozen snapshots paying tribute to The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the folky Neil Young, Jefferson Airplane and The Doors. Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder, too. The most interesting tune is an odd old- timey take on “Smells Like Teen Spirit” itself, with playwright Sam Shepherd on banjo. We may never know Smith’s reason for covering Gregg Allman’s “Midnight Rider,” but Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” always sounded to me like it was writ for Muzak from the gitgo. Friends, we are currently living in modern times. Some Old Testament types may even vehemently suggest the end is near. So what better time to sidestep the laws of The Man and track down bootleg recordings of Patti Smith’s real covers. Her first single was turning “Hey Joe” into a heavy liquid ballad, and along the way she’s covered The Velvet […]
May 1st, 2007 by Blaine Schultz
1 Henry IV
Sometimes theatre hurts. Milwaukee Shakespeare’s production of 1 Henry IV can attest to this, having suffered a few minor injuries early in its run. When Jeffrey Withers sustained a show-stopping injury to his lower back, it was only a short while until someone else had suffered a minor broadsword wound to the hand. After a few days, however, the show was back on its feet to start the second weekend with a flourish. Milwaukee Shakespeare continues its multi-season staging of The Henriad, closing its 2006-2007 season with 1 Henry IV. Jeff Allin stars as King Henry IV, the consummate politician who has taken over a tumultuous empire. Allin’s performance echoes that of any contemporary politician in poise and presence. As the play opens, the audience is made aware of an uprising against him in the south lead by Welshman Owen Glendower (an intense Lawrnce O’Dwyer). Meanwhile, supposed Henry loyalist Henry Percy (a charismatic Brian J. Gill) is refusing to send reinforcements from the north that Henry had requested. As the play opens, the King is summoning Percy back to the court to explain his actions. The play’s center rests with Henry’s son, Prince Hal (Jeffrey Withers), who has taken in with bandits and highwaymen. Some of the production’s most intense moments happen at a tavern between Hal and the thieves. Hal is caught somewhere between royalty and thievery as he associates himself with the likes of the rotund rogue Sir John Falstaff (Richard Ziman). Hal and Falstaff play an intricate game of subtle wits at the tavern that plays out particularly well in the intimate space of the studio theatre. Shakespearian subtleties that don’t normally get rendered in all that much detail burst with texture here. Milwaukee Shakespeare further ratchets up the intensity by having the audience flank the stage. Actors play between halves of the audience in a captivating 3-dimensional space that lends the play a very accessible earthiness. Action is particularly intense in the tiny space. The fight scenes are meticulously choreographed with painstaking attention to detail. Careful thought was put into the psychology and motivations behind aggression and it all comes through with a remarkable degree of clarity. Fights are played out in epic slow motion, which runs the risk of seeming silly in such close quarters were it not all so well executed. The interaction between Withers and Ziman is particularly captivating. Both perform with a style and poise that serve as a memorable high point of the production. The production leads directly into part two without much of a feeling of finality. Local theater audiences will have to wait until next season to see Henry IV wrap up at the Broadway Theatre center. It’s a bit of a strange experience sitting through something like three hours of Shakespeare and not having it reach a final conclusion, but there’s more than enough that reaches some form of resolution to satiate audiences until next season. VS Milwaukee Shakespeare’s production of 1 Henry IV runs through May 20th […]
May 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Feist
Leslie Feist has all the makings of a classic indie girl – completely indecipherable, yet at the same time completely able to be pigeonholed. For one not familiar with Feist, the Canadian has some pretty ridiculous credits racked up: from the electro-shock value of Peaches to the pretty indie-pop of the Broken Social Scene (not to mention stints with By Divine Right and Kings of Convenience). She seems comfortable with and suited to each place she ventures. Her newest album, The Reminder, sees her travel right from writing in the tour bus and creating in the studio to finishing up a tour stint in Berlin and capping it off with a recording session with pals Mocky, [Chilly] Gonzales and Jaime Lidell in la Frette Studios outside of Paris. Feist’s previous releases, Let it Die and Open Season, made Canada and Europe take notice of her youthful but classic jazz vocals and guitar playing that lent a punchy yet wispy quality to her pop, half penned by her, half lent by others. This time around, Feist is writing more, collaborating with her recording pals Mocky and Gonzales as well as Ron Sexsmith. If Feist was arresting before doing other people’s songs, she is even more so singing her own. The lone cover song, “Sea Lion Woman,” was originally written by George Bass and made famous by Nina Simone. Feist revamps it by pairing light-stepping vocals with energetic and full handclaps. Feist also tries her hand at gospel, country-twinged pop in “Past in Present,” brooding piano dynamics in “My Moon My Man,” haunting ethereality in the chilling “The Water” and upbeat with “I Feel it All.” Versatility is the mark of a great songwriter, and Feist is writing with such fluidity on The Reminder that it will be interesting to see which direction Feist will travel next. VS
May 1st, 2007 by Erin Wolf
Lady Day
By Jill Gilmer It’s hard not to have a great evening at the Stackner Cabaret. The nightclub-style setting creates a relaxed and festive atmosphere and the well-heeled crowd doesn’t seem to mind sharing tables with strangers and chit-chatting over cocktails or coffee and dessert. Add to this backdrop the wonderful music of Billie Holiday performed by Grammy award-winning singer Regina Marie Williams and you have the recipe for a string of sell-out performances, which Lady Day has enjoyed since it opened on March 16. But theatre-goers hoping to learn more about the life and legacy of this jazz icon may leave the Cabaret disappointed. Like many theatrical productions that examine a celebrity figure, Lady Day focuses less on Ms. Holiday’s life and career and more on her personality. While this in itself is a worthy endeavor, director David Hunter Koch’s obsession with her surprising dark side nearly overshadows both her story and her talent. The story takes place at the Emerson Bar & Grill, a hole-in-the-wall jazz club in Philadelphia and the actual site of one of Holiday’s last performances before her death in 1959, at age 44. Emerson was, apparently, one of the few clubs in the U.S. where she was still welcomed. A series of temperamental incidents – most likely exacerbated by alcohol and heroin abuse – had tarnished her reputation and limited her performance venues. Regina Marie Williams delivers a riveting enactment of Ms. Holiday’s descent into a drunken trance over the course of her 1-hour and 15 minute performance. At least, we can only hope it was alcohol that fueled the seemingly-endless string of expletives that dotted her performance and the insults she hurled at her unsuspecting audience. This drunken rant was a stark contrast from the image of graciousness suggested by her strapless white satin gown, elbow-length gloves and trademark gardenia in her hair. Leaving the show, audience members who are unfamiliar with her contributions to jazz might even question whether the accolades history has bestowed on her are justified. These thoughts were sufficiently disturbing to send this writer surfing the in search of “the real Billie Holiday.” The artist I read about online seemed to bear little resemblance to the obnoxious faded starlet portrayed in Lady Day. The lack of balance in this portrayal of Ms. Holiday leaves an unwarranted black eye on this great artist. Despite her unbalanced portrait of Ms. Holiday, Regina Marie Williams does a superb job capturing the emotional intensity and famed uniqueness of Ms. Holiday’s voice, if not its exact tone quality. A highlight is a soul-stirring rendition of “Strange Fruit,” her classic song about Jim Crow-era lynchings. The song is a fitting conclusion to Ms. Holiday’s account of a racist incident she experienced while touring with Artie Shaw. That story reminds us of the difficult era (the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s) during which she succeeded in establishing herself as an African-American singer with a ground-breaking sound. The enormous obstacles she had to overcome are proof that this lady […]
May 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
Simply the best
By Evan Solochek + Photos by Kat Jacobs and Gene Martin He is one of the recording industry’s true living legends; some call him the godfather of modern music. His name is as synonymous with rock & roll as Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton. What’s that? You say you’ve never heard of him? Well, take a closer look at that cursive signature on the headstock of that Gibson guitar your favorite musician is playing. That’s his. His name is Les Paul. Born Lester William Polfuss in 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Les Paul took to music at an early age, performing semi-professionally by the age of 13 and with Rube Tronson’s Cowboys by 17. Shortly thereafter, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri and joined the Wolverston’s Radio Band on KMOX. By the 1930s, Paul was in Chicago playing jazz on local radio stations, and in 1936 he released his first two records. However, despite this early success, Paul was generally disappointed with the musical equipment with which he had to work; he found the acoustic bodies of the ‘30s-era electric guitars to be too dampening for noisy clubs. So, Paul began experimenting, and after some initial success in 1935 with “The Log,” which was nothing more than a length of fence post with a bridge, neck and pickup attached, Paul perfected his design in 1941 and built one of the first solid-body electric guitars, a revolutionary design that made rock & roll’s signature sound possible. By the early ‘50s, Gibson Guitar Corporation had finally taken an interest and used some of Paul’s design suggestions to build a prototype that would come to be known the world over as the “Les Paul” model, immortalized by the likes of Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, George Harrison, Bob Marley, Joe Perry, Slash and countless others. Today the Les Paul design remains virtually unchanged and one of the most popular guitar models around. While Paul also made many groundbreaking innovations in the area of multi-track recording, overdubbing and reverb, he is much more than an inventor. Widely considered the greatest jazz guitarist of his generation, over his 75 years in music and radio Paul has released over 10 albums, recorded and performed with the likes of Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005 and the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2006. Also in 2006, at the age of 90, Paul won two Grammy Awards for his album Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played. Now 91, this musical visionary will return home to Waukesha on May 10 to play a concert at the Milwaukee Marriott West hotel (tickets are $1,500 for up-front Premier Tables of four or $300 for general admission) that will also include appetizers, dinner, a silent auction and an autograph session. While the concert will only be 45 minutes long, it will mark the […]
May 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
Bright Eyes
Polarizing indie icon Conor Oberst lobs his first full-length studio album since 2005’s simultaneous releases I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Cassadaga, Florida, renowned “Psychic Center of the World” and the “South’s Oldest Spiritualist Community,” is the CD’s namesake. Songs about self-cleansing, balancing out and finding home emphasize the spiritual theme. “Four Winds” – on loan from this spring’s eponymous EP – and the Janet Weiss-drummed “Hot Knives” come as close as Americana can get to head-banging and fist-pumping. “Middleman” flaunts Iron & Wine-worthy breaths of grainy fiddling and “I Must Belong Somewhere” alone embodies enough colorful imagery to defend Oberst’s visionary status. Tribal beats and vocals feel fresh on the atmospheric “Coat Check Dream Song.” “Make A Plan To Love Me” begins as an airy lullaby swirled with female a capella, but becomes so over-produced that it winds up leaning toward theatrical score. Though delivering memorable storytelling and big hooks, the majority of songs also surrender to the same excessive polishing. Gone is the raw zest and neighing naiveté that made Fevers and Mirrors such a powerful release. Oberst even sings “…was a hopeless romantic/now I’m just turning tricks,” a possible reference to fatiguing artistic expression. Is our precious Conor jading over, growing up and abandoning his wild ways? Cassadaga is an attempt to convince, but he’ll most likely still be spitting into microphones, stumbling over amplifiers and wrangling up girls with nice shoes on the album’s supporting tour. Just as he should be. VS
May 1st, 2007 by Amber Herzog
A Shot in the Dark
The Boulevard Ensemble closes its 21st anniversary season with a murder-mystery comedy by Harry Kurnitz, adapted from an original French work by Marecl Archard. It’s a fun, well-balanced comedy adeptly directed by the Boulevard’s Mark Bucher. Bucher has assembled a surprisingly good cast for the final show of a memorable 21st season of theatre in Bay View. I believe it was Alistair Cooke who said that a shot in the dark doesn’t take much time. Well, the Boulevard has certainly taken its time in getting to this one, ending its latest season with a production that feels deftly aimed. The talented Joe Fransee holds together the center of the play as Magistrate Paul Sevigne, who is investigating the death of a Spaniard (Cesar Gamino). The action of the play takes place in Sevigne’s office as he interviews people who might’ve been involved in the murder and is aided in this work by Morestan – his chief clerk played by the ample Al Dobyns. Fransee’s charisma goes a long way here, but it’s the timing between Fransee and Dobyns that really pulls together the center of the play. All of the usual mucking about with exposition that goes on in a mystery is made all the more palatable by the interaction of Fransee and Dobyns. In places, they almost seem to be fencing with the dialogue, which isn’t done enough in local theatre. Fransee has a tight, crisp precision to the delivery of his lines that woks well with Dobyns overall affability. The chief suspect in the murder of the Spaniard is his lover: parlor maid Yvette Lantenay, played by Anne Miller. Lantenay was found at the scene of the crime holding the gun that killed the victim just moments after his death. The Spaniard’s last words even implicated her as the murderer. In spite of all the evidence against her, it is clear that Lantenay did not commit the crime and a good portion of the play rests on the audience’s acceptance of this. We must not think for a second that Lantenay is the murderer; otherwise all of Sevigne’s work to find the true murderer would seem remarkably tedious. Here, the casting of Anne Miller is crucial. To her credit, Miller has a sweet, innocent stage presence; it would be very difficult to imagine Miller as a killer. This is staggeringly important, as the same could not be said of every actress in town. Bucher’s choice in casting Miller does wonders for the production. Other notable performances here include Liz Mistelle as Sevigne’s beautiful wife and Jennifer LaPorte as a wealthy lady of high society. The decision to split the play’s three acts with two intermissions would seem a bit indulgent, but so much of the play relies on plot points revealed solely in the dialogue that two intermissions are welcome. Each intermission allows the audience some distance from the plot to turn it around and possibly figure out who the actual killer is. Bucher and company keep the […]
May 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Robbie Fulks
By Allison Berndt The best way to describe Robbie Fulks’ new album Revenge! is to call it an eclectic hillbilly mix produced live on the road for an audience that’s looking for some good ol’ country music alongside a good laugh. Well, it’s true. Fulks, known for his catchy country songs and humorous lyrics, has put together an impressive collection of his very best. Hints of jazz, bluegrass and even a little ‘50s rock are evident in this generally hillbilly-esque compilation. Revenge! is a two-CD set of live recordings, half of which are brand-new songs. “I Like Being Left Alone” is a perfect example of a song that makes you laugh while engaging you musically with a charming melody. The best tracks on the album include previous hits “I Want to Be Mama’d” and “Cigarette State,” as well as a cover of Cher’s “Believe.” Fulks goes off on a guitar tangent that’ll take the listener through some masterful riffs in “Mama’d,” and “Cigarette State” is bound to be a crowd pleaser no matter where or when you hear it – it’s a staple in his repertoire. To hear a western cover of “Believe” is laughable in general, but even more so with the adaptation Fulks provides. Slower and more serious, “The Buck Starts Here” is a great theme that showcases a classic twangy country sound. Revenge! has a smattering of everything on it: old songs and new, covers and originals and any tempo for which you could be in the mood. It’s a solid collection with one constant element: hillbilly. VS
May 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
Andrew Bird/Apostle of Hustle @ Alverno’s Pitman Theatre, April 21
Announcing that the audience at Alverno’s Pitman Theatre was about to experience the venue’s only ‘rock’ show of the season, opening act Apostle of Hustle began their set. It was filled with punchy banter from front man Andrew Whiteman, flippant statements on politics, co-eds and drug culture and lots of new material from their latest release National Anthem of Nowhere. The set swapped southwestern indie rock sounds with indie pop rock, pleasing fans, intriguing first-time listeners and warming the crowd well for the headliner. Chicagoan Andrew Bird (whose music is based on the excellent combination of big sounds and big words) returned to Milwaukee for his first ‘big-venue’ appearance at the Pitman Theatre (his previous Milwaukee shows have been at the former Gil’s Café and the Miramar Theatre). And while Whiteman may have dubbed the evening a “rock show,” true-blue Bird fans knew they were in for much more than that. Armed with his latest collection of songs from Armchair Apocrypha, his two touring pals Martin Dosh (drums, keys) and Jeremy Ylvisaker (guitar, bass) from Minneapolis and two of the coolest amps ever created by Chicago luthier Ian Schneller – a single horn shaped like a gramophone and a double-spinning-horn amp called a “Janus Horn”– Bird and company created a stunning mini-orchestra. Bird hushed the audience with his whimsical croon, sparkling, world-famous whistle and glockenspiel combination, and his amazing ability to layer guitar and violin via a sampler. Bird even shook off his shoes, giving himself easier toe-push access to the buttons on his sampler, arranging a base of guitar, then plucked up his violin, setting his Janus amp a-spinning to bow his way through renditions of “Fiery Crash” and “Imitosis.” He later took it solo with “Masterfade” (the audience helping him along with his brain-farted lyrics) and “Dr. Stringz,” dedicated to his nieces and from his television appearance on kids TV network Noggin. Bird pulled the show together by weaving in stories about his travels in France and how they were the partial inspiration for his new material. “Plasticities,” he said, is a song born from a breakfast of oatmeal and accompanied by four looped songs in a topsy-turvy French hotel, while an attempted car-parking in Bordeaux before a show gave us “Heretics.” Storytime ended and Bird finished up the set with material from The Mysterious Production of Eggs (“Skin Is, My” and “Tables and Chairs” ) and “Scythian Empires” from Armchair. The audience, picture-perfect up until now, politely hushed during songs and wildly cheering in-between, couldn’t resist any longer as a few made their way down the aisle, dancing and twirling to Bird’s literary indie symphony. VS To view more images from the show, click HERE.
Apr 24th, 2007 by Erin Wolf
A Walk In The Woods
A park bench seems innocent enough until you get it on stage. What might casually be seen as an unsuspecting piece of furniture in its aural habitat takes on a whole new personality when it is placed in front of an audience. In Edward Albee’s Zoo Story, a bench is a silent witness to murder; it may as well be an accomplice. In Mark St. Germain’s Ears On A Beatle a park bench bears witness to meetings between FBI agents whose values slowly shift. And in Lee Blessing’s Walk In The Woods, a park bench takes center stage in the impressive space of the Broadway Theatre Center’s Cabot Theatre. The bench in question is Swiss. It sits on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland in the mid-1980s. Scenic Designer R.H.Graham sculpts the ample space of the Cabot’s stage into a grand sylvan setting. The ground is very earthy and organic. The trees are stark vertical lines far in the background and there is a winding path leading off the stage on the left. It is here that two men meet, away from the conference, to hammer out a few agreements involving weapons that could wipe out most of the life on the face of the planet. Peter Reeves plays John Honeyman, an American. Robert Spencer plays the Soviet Andrey Botvinnik. Relying entirely on two actors playing two characters for an entire story can strain any feature-length play. Thankfully, Reeves and Spencer develop a rapport within Graham’s script that is interesting enough to swiftly carry four scenes with relatively few tiresome stretches. At the beginning of the first scene, we are seeing two people who have just met and begun working with each other. They’ve been hired by opposing employers and both want to work out an agreement. Honeyman is a young, lean and bureaucratic man who seems to want to meet success in negotiations for the sake of his own achievement as a professional negotiator. Botvinnik is an older gentleman who has been working away at brokering an arms agreement between the U.S. and the USSR for a number of years. He wants to get to know Honeyman as a human being. Much of the appeal of the play unfolds in the first scene as Botvinnik tries desperately to reach Henyman’s human side so that they can talk like normal human beings. Any appeal that the rest of the play holds resonates from that first scene. Spencer’s charisma here is much the same as it was in the Milwaukee Rep’s production of Tuesdays With Morrie some time ago. Spencer has a gift for portraying wise older man with diligent ethics and complex personalities. Reeves plays the straight man with such ferocity here that his suspicion of Botvinnik is palpable. With Spencer’s precise execution of Honeyman’s smart professionalism, it’s easy to side with his suspicions. Maybe Botvinnik’s efforts to reach a more friendly level of rapport with him are actually an attempt to control him. As the conversations play out, it is […]
Apr 23rd, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Ears on a Beatle
John Lennon mastered the deceptively simple genius of finding his own voice and speaking with it. He spoke it deftly and frequently enough to have made quite a few people uncomfortable over the years and some of these people were in rather prominent positions in the U.S. government. As a result, Lennon was trailed by the FBI for a number of years. Agents were assigned. Reports were written. A stage comedy about this could be done a lot of different ways. With Ears On A Beatle, playwright Mark St. Germain delivers a competent script that mixes some clever bits of comedy with an overall natural sense of drama about two FBI agents assigned to trail John Lennon. Under the direction of frequent Rep actor Jonathan Smoots, Next Act Theater closes its season with an enjoyable production of the hit comedy. St. Germain chose for the play to follow the two FBI agents over an extended period of years. Next Act Producing Artistic Director David Cescarini plays Howard Ballentine, the older, more cynical agent who’s been on the job for a very long time. Ryan Schaubach plays younger, more idealistic FBI agent Daniel McClure, who goes undercover as a young hippie. This sets up a youth/experience theme that sees cynicism slowly change hands between generations as the ‘70s slowly fade-out into the ‘80s with the death of Lennon. The story is painted in fairly broad strokes, but that doesn’t make it any less compelling than a more intricate plot might have been. For the most part, we focus on the two agents and their lives and their interactions with each other. Other characters appear in the production as rendered in dialogue. J. Edgar Hoover is a silent character in the play, making his presence known subtly throughout the story. It was Hoover’s FBI that opened the file on Lennon in the first place. Dialogue ranges from very obvious jokes about the nature of work at the FBI to very, very subtle moments passing between two agents in idle conversation. Lennon himself is evident in so much of the dialogue, but nowhere is he more present than St. Germain’s depiction of the era of which he was a part. Cescarini brings his usual charisma to the role of Agent Ballentine. It’s a sympathetic portrayal of a public servant who just happens to be following around one of the most popular musicians of the 20th century. Cescarini has an impressive presence in any role and his performance here is no exception. His sympathetic portrayal of a practical conservative who comes to an understanding about the man he’s being paid to follow has a great deal of depth to it. Schaubach plays McClure as the nice guy who comes from a proud military family but gets shifted off to the FBI instead. He seems to believe in the idealism of his country, but understands that there’s a moral code that it doesn’t always live up to. His idealism outweighs his patriotism, leaving his personality […]
Apr 2nd, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Unintended consequences
By Jon M. Gilbertson Sweden apparently values a well-rounded education for its children. That’s probably why Emil Svanängen – the man who releases modestly constructed, eminently beautiful albums under the curiously affectionate name of Loney, Dear – was playing clarinet when he was 8, then playing piano and fronting a jazz trio in his teens. Even after a few years of less directed musical pursuits, he got a bit of help from Jönköping, the town where he grew up. “I got a computer from my hometown,” Svanängen says. “They started to rent them out for the citizens, and that is how I got the opportunity to have one. I started recording with it and real cheap equipment and making record after record, and suddenly, I had a fourth record ready.” That record, Loney, Noir, initially came out in 2005, and in much the same manner that Loney, Dear records had always come out. Svanängen had played and recorded the entire album himself, largely in his apartment or in his parents’ basement. Then he transferred the stuff to CD-R’s, put together some cover art and sold the things. And he was fine with doing that. “I was quite happy, and I wanted the music to spread, but I wasn’t chasing anyone to release it,” he says. “It was living on its own as it was. The only pressure came from myself. I could sell albums the day I was finished and it wasn’t a problem. It was a good situation to check out how people could react to the music.” In one of those rare occurrences of pleasant serendipity, however, the good music of Loney, Dear went further than Svanängen had intended. It started getting attention in the Swedish press, and the British imprint Something In Construction released the third Loney, Dear album, Sologne, in 2006. And that March, Svanängen visited Austin, Texas to perform – with a full band, no less – at the South By Southwest music festival. “Our manager wanted us to go there, and that made a change for us,” he says. “He’s more interested in progress than I am. That is where things started happening.” Shortly thereafter, Svanängen got an e-mail from Tony Kiewel, the head of A&R at Sub Pop, the deservedly famous indie label that introduced Nirvana and Postal Service to the world. The label wanted to work with him, and he, in turn, was ambivalent toward the label. “I got a record deal in the mailbox and I didn’t sign it for five weeks because I was kind of afraid of it,” he says. “I think I was afraid of too much touring and tough jobs. They wondered what had happened to the deal.” He did sign, and so it was that Loney, Noir finally got its stateside release this February. It’s the sort of record that should do better on an indie than on a major: its songs deal in small-scale majesties, in slow build-ups to moments of exquisiteness and the magnificent […]
Apr 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
