Merge XXV

Last month, Merge Records celebrated its 25^th anniversary; I previewed this before the ladyfriend and I headed down for the festival they hold every five years, for some kickball, some Carrburritos, some old friends, and more music over four days than we can properly consume at this point in our lives.

Wednesday, July 23, Carolina Theatre, Durham

Mount Moriah: Star-power lead singer, lose the band. Okay, that's harsh—they're decent players, but they don't bring out anything in Heather McEntire’s songs. Maybe they were playing it tame in the confines of a soft-seat theatre. Or, more likely, they need a producer to come in and kick everyone's asses, because there's a great album somewhere inside this band. Also: unless you can jam like Crazy Horse, it does not behoove you to jam like Crazy Horse. 

Lambchop: a curious band. I don't just mean musically curious, although they’re that, too. I mean curious, as in, it's weird that people love this band so much. On paper, I understand the appeal: oddball old dude starts a living room jam with friends, makes a couple of good records with increasingly lush production, is big in Europe, and keeps on keeping on. Arguably, Lambchop peaked with the 2000 album Nixon, which is why that's the record they performed in its entirety on this occasion. But even revisiting that record now, what was weird and wonderful back then hasn't aged all that well—and not just because Kurt Wagner spent the last 14 years largely squandering Nixon’s capital. The band's 2009 Mergefest show was legendary—it was recently pressed on vinyl—and even converted folks like me. This show, however, was purely only for the faithful. Of which I am not one. Even the reliably witty banter between Wagner and pianist Tony Crow was absent, due to the recital atmosphere. A sleepy start to a great weekend.

Thursday, July 24, Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro

Eleanor Friedberger: I will always love at least 30% of what Friedberger does. Here, she performed solo, except when Telekinesis joined her for her last song, in which she ditched the guitar and transformed from oddball singer-songwriter into the rock star she is.

Telekinesis: Always liked this band—had no idea how much I loved this band. And I’m not just saying that because they threw me the biggest curveball of the whole week, by covering “Don’t Change” by INXS—that terminally uncool relic that happens to be one of my all-time favourites. By that point in the set, however, drummer/singer Michael Lerner had already delivered more than a half-dozen songs that sound like long-lost classics. I said it often in the weeks leading up to the festival, but Telekinesis is easily the most criminally underrated band on the Merge roster, a mainstream breakthrough in the making who should easily take the now-vacant space left by Spoon’s departure.

The Clientele: This band split up after their high-water mark, 2009’s Bonfires on the Heath, an album where the featherweight trio’s sound was bolstered considerably by Mel Draisey on violin and keyboards. Here, they were a trio again, and while I usually fall for their charms at Mergefest, this time left me a bit cold—and more than a bit sedate, seeing them sandwiched between Telekinesis and the Rock*a*Teens.

The Rock*a*Teens: There is nothing remotely sedate about the recently reunited Rock*a*Teens, who take every single song they have and pummel it to the ground until it cries out in ecstasy. I would say that Chris Lopez sings himself hoarse, but he sounded like that from the first note. This Georgia band is beloved south of the Mason-Dixon Line, more than a bit of a mystery everywhere else. This performance, however, undoubtedly turned everyone there into true believers. Maybe they had to go away for all those years to come back with such vigour and abandon; I can’t imagine any band maintaining this kind of intensity for over a decade.

Reigning Sound: "Really, we're a much better band than this,” said Greg Cartwright, after one of several false starts of the evening. “You should come see us again some time." Indeed, I will: the band’s latest, Shattered, is a swoony garage-rock gem, and he’s assembled a fine group of players to deliver it live. Clearly the touring for this, his first record in five years, is just getting under way. He’ll have a well-oiled rock’n’roll machine by the time they hit the Horseshoe in Toronto on October 25.

Superchunk: Oh yeah, these guys. They were awesome, as they always are, even if bassist Laura Ballance no longer performs live with them because 20 years of playing with Superchunk gave her tinnitus (amazing, really, that she’s the only one afflicted of the four). Because this band as predictably good as they've always been, the lady and I cut out early to preserve ourselves for the rest of the weekend.

Friday, July 25, Orange County Social Club, Carrboro

Hiss Golden Messenger: I received this band's upcoming Merge release before the festival; it sounds nothing like the sweaty Southern glorious mess I heard at this show, which was full of saxophone and Waylon Jennings covers and Dylanesque delivery and a guest guitar spot from William Tyler. Never mind this new album, I want to hear what they lay down a year from now.

Friday, July 25, Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro

  

Imperial Teen: Rolling Stone called them “power twee.” I can’t top that.

Mountain Goats: Never liked this band, even if everything about them seems tailored to my taste. Looking forward to John Darnielle’s new novel, however; I suspect that medium suits him much better (for me, anyway).

Wye Oak: Five years ago, this was the most promising new band on the Merge roster, a promise they more than fulfilled on their 2011 album Civilian. Back then, the duo were young nerdlings who hung out all weekend and could be seen front and centre in the audience, watching every act. This time? Mergefest is but one night in a busy tour schedule, a tour where guitar hero Jenn Wasner has shifted to mostly playing bass and keyboards, with new songs that come alive in ways only hinted at on 2014’s transitional release, Shriek. In a week full of old folks, it’s acts like Wye Oak that all but guarantee Merge will be around to celebrate another 10 years, at least. (We’re talking about the music business here. C’mon, I’d hate to be overly optimistic.)

Destroyer: see here.

Saturday, July 26, Cat’s Cradle parking lot, Carrboro

Ex Hex: It was 34 degrees Celsius before the humidity, in a sticky, sunny parking lot outside the Cat’s Cradle in downtown Carrboro on the closing Saturday. Who decided to put on a festival here? The first act of the day I caught, the new power trio fronted by Mary Timony (Helium, Wild Flag), was good—but could have been great. I suspected they were purposely holding back a bit, lest they melt into a puddle on stage. I wanted to dance, but knew that if my tapped my toe in the least, a river of sweat would start pouring down my forehead. These were not ideal rock’n’roll conditions. That said, Ex Hex delivered. I can’t wait to see them with air conditioning so they can turn up the heat on their own terms.

Mikal Cronin: Sadly, I missed most of this set for social reasons, but Cronin and his headbanging hippie comrades made his already raucous recordings sound remarkably tame. Why did I skip this, and not Bob Mould? Grrrr.

Bob Mould: Never liked this man’s music, nor understood his iconic status. I was, obviously, in the tiniest minority here.

Teenage Fanclub: If I have to listen to a four-piece rock band in suffocating heat while standing on asphalt, it might as well be venerable masters of songcraft singing in perfect three-part harmony.

Caribou: This was more like it. As much as I love Merge Records’ roster, let’s be honest: there are way too many guitars involved. That made Dan Snaith and company the beautiful black sheep of the festival, delivering hypnotic, psychedelic electronics as the sun went down. This was the four-piece incarnation of Caribou—no horns, sadly—and the tour is just kicking off in advance of the new album, Our Love, out in October. Honestly, they were a bit rusty, and the sound mix was somewhat random. But Caribou had zero problems winning over the rockist crowd, many of whom seemed to have no idea who they were. (Best overheard comment from a new fan: “So, are, like, these guys from Italy or something?”)

Neutral Milk Hotel: Jeff Mangum spent most of the last 15 years as a total recluse, an enigma that only fuelled interest in the 1998 psych-folk classic In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Mangum was the anti-Kurt Cobain: like Cobain, he was overwhelmed by the demands of, if not stardom, then at least public life and fawning adoration from a cult audience; unlike Cobain, Mangum’s act of refusal did not have a tragic end. It’s okay to say no. Tell the rest of the world to go to hell. Pull a Salinger. You don’t have to end it all.

Cut to 2013: a reunited Neutral Milk Hotel are on the road, even playing some major markets twice, and the mystique is but a distant memory.

Or is it? Before their set here, festival MC Margaret Cho announced that the band requested that no photos or videos be taken during their performance. That usually goes over like a lead balloon (pity the poor security guards asked to enforce this, which they did), but surely a group of fans like the ones gathered here, people for whom music and the strange people who create it are integral to their lives, would respect such a request? Largely, yes, except for the usual smattering of libertarians drawn to indie culture, who found the whole thing pretentious—even if it’s entirely in character from a guy who didn’t want to be seen for the better part of a decade. Some people who should know better really got themselves in a twist about this.

I’m not a fan, even though I’ve come to appreciate Aeroplane over the years; Mangum’s voice is still a subjective hangup for me—too emo, for starters. For me, the pleasure of this set was not just witnessing history and seeing a bunch of fans’ dreams come true, but specifically people who were barely alive when Aeroplane come out—a quintet of teenage girls standing in front me, for example—who joined arms and swayed and sang along at full volume to this mysterious music. Mangum, though he looks like he’s been living in the Louisiana swamps for quite a while, doesn’t act like a reluctant performer at all; I was kind of shocked by how at ease he was with rote stage banter. The rest of the band—including drummer Jeremy Barnes, who’s spent years playing accordion as A Hawk and a Hacksaw (which I much prefer)—all looked delighted to be there, singing along off-mic and delivering intense, physical performances when the mood called for it. The most affecting moments were the intimate interludes when NMH became a brass band (“The Fool”), accompanied by Barnes on accordion and (who I think was) his Hacksaw bandmate Heather Trost on violin.

Because Aeroplane is so well-known and beloved, the only truly revealing moment of the show was “Little Birds,” a song about an abusive father that stands as the only post-Aeroplane NMH song ever released (long bootlegged, it finally appeared on a seven-inch single in 2011). In that moment, we were reminded that this art was—is—the product of a damaged man, or at least a man who’s faced a few demons in his life and sought solace in art.

No matter how curious we may be, it’s really none of our business what Jeff Mangum was up to all that time, what he plans to do next or why he’s touring with his band this year. Maybe he’s just in the right mental space to do so again. Maybe he or someone he loves has medical bills to pay (this is America, after all). Maybe he’s doing it just to shut everyone up and collect a paycheque.

The latter, of course, is unlikely. There was no better act with which to close a celebration Merge Records’ 25^th anniversary, with which to contemplate art, commerce, compromise and creative triumph, all under a Carolinian moon.

Destroyer: of expectations

Destroyer: before (photo by Helen Spitzer)

Dan Bejar, the Vancouver enigma who records and performs as Destroyer, is not the kind of guy you invite to birthday parties. If you do, you certainly don’t expect him to wind up as star of the show. Yet that’s what happened at Merge Records’ 25^thanniversary celebrations last week in Carrboro, N.C. The man who has spent his entire career making audiences uncomfortable somehow turned in the most memorable performance of a week that included shows by Neutral Milk Hotel, Bob Mould, Caribou and the label's raison d'etre, Superchunk. I’ve been a Destroyer fan for 15 years, and I never saw this coming.

He may not look the part, but Bejar is the bad-boy temptor in the archetypal teen romance: the entirely aloof guy with undeniable allure who couldn’t care less whether or not the female protagonist is pining for him. She thinks he’s fascinating and mysterious and talented. He says so many seemingly brilliant things she doesn’t understand. When she tells him all this, he shrugs and says, “Whatever.”

Bejar’s whole career is seemingly based on refusal. His earliest, commercially available recordings were deliberately obscurist: his voice inaudible, the audio quality so beyond terrible that it had to be intentional. His breakthrough albums, 2000’s Thief and 2001’s Streethawk: A Seduction, used the music industry as a metaphor for living in a compromised, corporate world. When a side project, the New Pornographers, became a commercial success, Bejar declined to tour with them; when he eventually did, he’d wander on stage for the handful of their songs he wrote, offer a perfunctory performance, and exit as soon as he was done.

Destroyer shows were not much different: he usually employed a guitar-heavy band that was louder than he was, an act of self-negation that defeated the purpose of him even being there. There was never any banter, never any indication that he considered a rock show anything more than a chore to be endured. Some of his recordings took a similar attitude. Others, of course, were brilliant, or else no one would even bother putting up with this shit. (Amazing, then, that I often end up defending Bejar to conservative rock fans who worship Bob Dylan—someone just as “lyrically obtuse and contemptuous of audience expectations.)

Even his sublime moments come with some squirming. On July 10, Bejar played a solo show at Toronto’s Massey Hall, a storied venue best known for Gordon Lightfoot’s annual week-long stint of gigs. Bejar was on a beauty-and-the-beast bill with Basia Bulat, a performer with a considerably sunnier disposition. As can be seen on film for the Live at Massey Hall series (UPDATE: now online), Bejar was singing better than ever, with none of his more exaggerated vocal inflections that veer into the comical. Songs that, on record, seem to be driven entirely by production and his players, revealed themselves to be far more melodic than suggested by the intertonal, speak-singing Bejar prefers.

Yet in between every song, he spent unusually long periods of time—even for him—crouching to sip his beverage and tune his guitar, offering precious little banter to break the tension (admittedly, much more than he would ever offer during a full-band set). Amidst Massey Hall’s impeccable acoustics, with a crowd unfamiliar with this strange character before them, the sound of shifting seats and clenched teeth was almost audible. (“I can’t walk away / you can’t walk away,” he sang on "Chinatown," practically taunting the seething newcomers.) Recall, if you will, that Neil Young and Crazy Horse put out Arc, an album consisting of between-song guitar feedback; were Bejar ever to do something similar, the album would consist entirely of awkward silences.

Cut to Carrboro, N.C., July 25, in front of a packed club of fans who have made pilgrimages from across the continent to celebrate an independent record label. These are people who consciously seek out cultural fringes. They’re naturally skeptical of performers who try too hard to please. These are Dan Bejar’s people.

After sets by the Mountain Goats (led by a songwriter whose lyrics are infinitely more interesting than his music) and Wye Oak (a Baltimore duo of considerable instrumental prowess, expertly juggling electronic sounds and ’90s guitar rock), Bejar takes the stage with his seven-piece band, including a saxophonist and a trumpeter who makes excellent use of an electronic effects box. It’s the band he assembled to play the smooth, almost Sade-ish left turn that was his unusually accessible 2011 album Kaputt.

Destroyer: after (photo by Helen Spitzer)

Tonight, however, the band has different ideas. They open with a new song, a driving, three-chord, glam-influenced rocker called "Dream Lover" that recalls Lou Reed’s more raucous moments—or at least the sound of pre-punk New York City in the dirty, decrepit ’70s. (Later on, the connection is made more explicit with another killer new song, called "Times Square.") The Kaputt material sounds much more muscular than it did when this band first started touring. Older songs ("European Oils," "Rubies") are turned inside out, and delivered with 10 times the intensity any live incarnation of Destroyer has ever managed. Bejar doesn’t play guitar all night. Instead, he stalks the stage, wielding a low-set microphone stand like a cane, rarely glancing at either the band or the audience, yet clearly in command of the maelstrom around him. During instrumental solos, he sometimes slouches in front of the drum set, appearing almost bored. But as the set gets progressively more intense, Bejar can’t help but enjoy himself. He acts like a cranky grandpa, somewhat infuriated but increasingly delighted by all these magical animated creatures making such a choreographed mess in his house. By the end of the set, he's practically dancing.

Back to the teen romance analogy: If you’re into the kind of sado-masochistic psychological game that involves falling for the bad boy, you’ll keep expecting him to conform to your expectations and secretly hoping he doesn’t, so that the game will continue. But maybe, just maybe, one night he’ll saunter right up to you and kiss you on the lips. It will be exhilarating, beyond thrilling, and you’ll spend every moment until your next meeting hoping it will happen again.

That’s what Dan Bejar did at Mergefest.

Of course, if were he ever to read this—a big “if,” of course, along with “if” he’d even care what anyone thought, least of all me—it might just inspire him to ditch the band and make yet another left turn into atonal sound poetry. Which would be entirely in character, Destroyer that he is.

My review of the rest of the fest is here.

Merge XX OO

Summer festivals—even great summer festivals—are a dime a dozen. Camping, road trips, outdoor settings, gorging on gluttonous and glorious musical buffets: these are merely par for the course.

But there’s something much more special about an event that only takes place every five years, in a small town, curated by a boutique indie label that feels like family.

And so it was that my ladyfriend and I headed to Chapel Hill, North Carolina last week to celebrate Merge Records’ 20th anniversary. We had myriad personal reasons to embark on the journey as well—which, truth be told, were probably the main push that brought us there. We’re both fans of the Merge roster, but there didn’t seem to be a lot on the line-up that we hadn’t seen many times before; the main musical attraction was the Magnetic Fields, who rarely tour and who have soundtracked our lives—together and apart—since the release of 69 Love Songs 10 years ago.

There was a part of me that wondered if this would be a swan song for my indie rock past. I have little nostalgia for much of anything from the ’90s, a decade that for the most part sounds like one long wasted creative opportunity. I rarely, if ever, get excited about guitar rock bands anymore. My tolerance for standing inside black-walled clubs for hours on end is at an all-time low. And although their curatorial history is largely impeccable, I found 2008 to be a consistently disappointing year for Merge releases.

So why did I end up having the best musical vacation of my life at Mergefest?

For starters: the people. The staff at Merge—past and present—are, to a person, warm, engaging, entertaining, and fanatical music geeks. They remember your name and face even if you’ve only seen them for a grand total of five minutes in the past five years. And then there are the fans, the ringleader of which is “Crazy” Tony Susco from Jersey City. He MC’ed the Saturday night proceedings, and organized the Friday afternoon kickball game that introduced strangers from all corners of the continent, who became fast friends over the course of the weekend at various dinners and day trips to swimming holes.

Secondly: the locale. From Toronto, Chapel Hill is definitely worth a leisurely drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains with a camping stop along the way. The town reminds me a lot of Guelph or any other quaint university small town with nearly every amenity you would want from a major city (and Raleigh-Durham is a 20-min drive away). The food was uniformly excellent. And most importantly for an event like this, the Cat’s Cradle club holds a lot of people comfortably, with good sight lines from anywhere, a back patio to escape to, and consistently excellent sound. If you’re going to be stuck in a club all week, this is the one to be in. (Hats off to the remarkably efficient stage crew, as well.)

To the music: Each night was a surprise. The organizers purposely kept the schedule a secret, in part to ensure excitement for each slot. This was occasionally frustrating—is our dinner going to run late and we’ll miss Favourite Band X in the opening 7 p.m. slot? It also dangled the idea of additional, unannounced surprises—which was ultimately a big tease, especially for the trainspotters who were somehow convinced that Neutral Milk Hotel or Arcade Fire or Dinosaur Jr. would show up. I think I was the only one crossing his fingers for the first-ever show by the reclusive East River Pipe. (Not entirely improbable: Fred Curnog was there all weekend with his wife and daughter, smiling and hugging everyone and enjoying the shows. One of my weekend regrets was finding this out too late to meet him myself.)

Friday night opened with what had been promised would be a can’t-miss affair—which it was for locals who remember the band Pure, who hadn’t played together in something like 18 years. Even Merge didn’t know what had happened to them in the interim, until the drummer showed up at a Portastatic show in Asheville last year. Pure were the first of many reunions—most of which meant far more to the locals than to the tourists like me.

Pure were followed by Lou Barlow, who was a new Merge signing when he opened the 15th anniversary shows five years ago; at that show, he was opening for a band no one had heard of called the Arcade Fire. His 2004 album Emoh holds up remarkably well; he has a new one due in the fall. Yet through his set and the subsequent show by Oakley Hall, I was regretting the fact that I was missing Eric Bachmann of Crooked Fingers—one of my favourite songwriters ever, and whose Forfeit/Fortune album of 2008 has been in constant rotation in our house since its release. He was playing an early solo show in Durham entirely unrelated to the festival; I could easily have seen that and caught the last three acts at Cat’s Cradle, as one local did. Why he wasn’t at Mergefest is anyone’s guess, just as it’s a mystery as to why he voluntarily chose to self-release Forfeit/Fortune, his finest album.

The Clientele is a band I didn’t have the time of day for until I saw them at Mergefest five years ago, playing on the Sunday night of the festival in the beautiful Carolina Theatre opening for Lambchop. There, their wispy British dreampop was a cool breeze after a week of sweaty rock’n’roll. Here, they helped open the week with music that ultimately sounds best when you’re on vacation and your mind has time to wander; I’ve seen them in Toronto and I’ve heard their records, but nothing compares to seeing them in Carolina. They too have a new album due in the fall.

Hanging out on the back deck between sets meant that you often walked back in the club with no idea if anyone had started playing or not—and no idea who it might be. So when I strolled in to see the Magnetic Fields on stage in mid-song, I may have exclaimed “holy fucking shit” a bit too loudly for the hushed, reverent tone of the room. Vocalist Shirley Simms was on board to sing the songs from the 2008 album Distortion (played entirely without distortion—this was an all-acoustic set, with Stephin Merritt on some kind of mandocello, Sam Davol on acoustic guitar, John Woo on cello and Claudia Gonson on a real piano) as well as her share of the 69 Love Songs. It was as magical and marvelous as I could have imagined, and for the first time since seeing Leonard Cohen last year, I was weeping openly at a show—and I was definitely not the only one. The only song not from the aforementioned albums was “Give Me Back My Dreams” by the 6ths (originally sung by Sally Timms); sadly, Lou Barlow didn’t perform “In the City in the Rain,” the song he recorded with the 6ths. During “Come Back From San Francisco,” Claudia leapt up from her piano mid-song, clearly alarmed by some critter that then crawled behind John. What the audience couldn’t see was a six-inch flying cockroach (the Southern euphemism is “palmetto,” apparently) making its way around the stage, cracking up the entire band, who nonetheless managed to finish the song by only slightly butchering the coda. Of course, it’s hard to imagine a more forgiving crowd.

The Rosebuds had the challenge of following up the most sublime moment of the weekend—and as a result, I can’t remember a single thing about their set, other than that I heard my two favourite songs from Night of the Fireflies. Conor Oberst and his Mystic Valley Band then put on a marathon set at the end of an already-marathon evening. Despite the awesome intensity of his band—the kind of players who sound like they practice together for eight hours a day before the gig—I remain mostly indifferent to Oberst’s charms, and not for any of the usual playa-hater reasons. He does, however, earn my respect for insisting on wearing a ridiculously large black sombrero that he would reinstate after every guitar change.

Thursday began by meeting Claudia Gonson in the parking lot of the Cat’s Cradle, and telling her how much the set meant to me, and that the Magnetic Fields were the one band I was looking forward to the most all weekend. “Oh, well, sorry for wrecking the rest of your weekend!” she replied. The rest of the Magnetic Fields had split, but Gonson was very present all weekend, happily chatting with anyone and everyone, posing for pictures, jumping up and down for her favourite bands, organizing swimming excursions, and getting all Merge artists and staff to sign her copy of Our Noise, the new oral history of Merge, like it was a high school yearbook. I spent the rest of the weekend wishing that she had gone to my high school.

One of my companions for the weekend had to miss Thursday night due to a prior engagement; she didn’t miss that much. The Broken West opened the night with a solid set that made me want to revisit their records; they also covered a song from the Teenage Fanclub album that Merge put out. Sadly, few other bands made similar gestures; apparently Spoon has covered Destroyer’s “It’s Gonna Take an Airplane” in the past, but they wouldn’t this weekend.

Richard Buckner sounded exactly the same as he did when I last saw him five years ago, with each dirgey number bleeding into the next with minimal melodic differentiation. I’ve never been a fan; this didn’t change my mind. I had no prior opinion of Guv’ner, another one of the weekend’s reunions, but it was painfully apparent to everyone that they had barely practiced—perhaps not even picked up an instrument—since their last gig ten years ago, when ’90s amateurism was going out of style. Versus also seem stuck in the ’90s, and not in a bad way—just not in a way that sounds remotely interesting anymore; they were a time capsule, and sounded suitably frozen.

So when New Zealand’s 3Ds took the stage and announced that this was their first gig in 18 years, my expectations sank. (It didn’t help that I only knew one of their songs, “Beautiful Things.”) The band themselves seemed befuddled that anyone still cared at all, never mind a packed club on the other side of their world. And yet this was one reunion that clicked; even at its sloppiest, they still had the kind of chemistry that’s impossible to acquire or enforce.

That set the stage for Superchunk, the reason for the season. Merge’s flagship band has been largely silent for the past six years, with only occasional area appearances distracting them from their families, their jobs as Merge executives, or, in the case of drummer Jon Wurster, an extremely busy session career. I’ve seen this band several times over the past 15 years, and have never been disappointed—except possibly when they were touring my favourite album of their’s, 2001’s Here’s to Shutting Up, which found them introducing more acoustic guitars and keyboards while the dwindling audience that came to see them in Toronto mostly wanted them to sound like it was 1993 again. So maybe it’s best that they’ve been laying low, because shows like this prove that these four musicians are in absolutely no danger of losing their edge—just in case that’s something people actually care about. They were on fire from the first notes, each one of them incredibly animated and invigorated, and the set list spanned their entire discography (including early manifestos “Slack Motherfucker” and “Cool”), slowing down only for “Like a Fool,” which was no less intense than the rest of the set. For many people there, this was a weekend highlight; for me it was as good as Superchunk always is; maybe I just take it for granted that they’re such a phenomenal live band.

Friday opened with the Essex Green, who I missed because we were dining with new friends we met at the afternoon’s kickball game. They were followed by Yet Another Reunion, this one being the (aptly-named?) Spent; much like Versus, this sounded fine, but it was a part of the ’90s I’m happy to leave behind.

Unlike most people there, I had few expectations of Lambchop, the much-revered Nashville orchestra that has probably put out more records on Merge than anyone else on the roster. I enjoy two of their albums (Thriller, Nixon); the rest do nothing for me, in some cases even less than that. I saw them put on a somnambulant set here five years ago, the highlight of which was the between-set banter between singer Kurt Wagner and pianist Tony Crow. Here, however, they executed a carefully paced set that began with the delicacy they’ve built their career on and slowly ramped up into the R&B and soul excursions heard on Nixon, which inspired some bona fide disco dancing on the floor. From there, however, the intensity continued to be ratcheted up to full-on techno territory, with all 12 members devoted to a pulsing groove that wound up Wagner to the point where he finally abandoned his seated position and started to get seriously unhinged, climaxing in a verse of Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” that took everyone in the room right over the top. Lambchop are a band that doesn’t tour; their hardcore fans are spread few and far between. Seeing them have a packed club in their clenches like they did here is hard to imagine anywhere else; this was an extremely rare treat, and it was the unanimous highlight of the entire weekend.

The only way to follow that was for something completely different. Ladies and gentlemen, Polvo. Revered as gods at home both in North Carolina and far afield, Polvo are a big deal to a lot of people. (Dan Bejar: “I got in a taxi at the airport and told the cabbie, ‘I’ll give you $100 if I get to see the last 10 minutes of the Polvo show.’ ”) Those people enjoyed this show. I couldn’t care less, and unlike with Lambchop, there was to be no conversion.

So still coming down from Lambchop, expectations were again lowered for Pipe, a local Punk Rock BandTM on the reunion train. Except that Pipe is everything you want a Punk Rock BandTM to be: ferocious, fowl, snarling, soaring and soaked in beer cans that the audience has pelted them with. These were not creepy old men trying to relive their youth; they could happily kick the ass of ten dozen bands half their age. Score one for the local team.

Spoon were the closers on Friday, and studiously avoided their “hits” in favour of newer material and songs from their first Merge release, Girls Can Tell. Spoon’s popularity may be growing—their last album debuted in the Top 10 in the U.S. and Canada—but this set found them getting pointier and more peculiar, with increased use of Echoplex, dub drops and sharp guitar parts. Spoon were the only act of the whole weekend who draw any serious influences from soul music (Lambchop’s twisted take notwithstanding), and while that went a long way to loosen up the dance floor (especially after Polvo and Pipe), there was still a detachment present that garnered a noticeably subdued reaction for a band that is Merge’s second-most-popular active group. People lost their shit for Lambchop and Pipe; people seemed to merely appreciate Spoon. Perhaps there was no more shit left to lose.

Saturday afternoon was an outdoor show under a tent in the parking lot of the Orange County Social Club, the go-to bar for all pre- and post-show activities. Various commitments caused me to miss nearly all of this, except for the Radar Brothers and an encore set by the 3Ds, both of which went down fine with sno-cone mojitos and mint juleps on this blazing hot day. That meant missing The Music Tapes (one of the only non-guitar bands present, sadly), Portastatic (whose “Noisy Night” always conjures Carolinian memories), Matt Suggs (whose last album, as part of the band White Whale, is one of the most underrated Merge releases—go find it right now!), and Tenement Halls.

Other than the Magnetic Fields, the one act I was most looking forward to seeing was Telekinesis, Merge’s newest signing—if only because I had seen most everyone else before, and Telekinesis’s self-titled debut is the best power pop album I’ve heard since the New Pornographers’ Twin Cinema. The album is the work of drummer/songwriter/singer Michael Benjamin Lerner; he does have a touring band, but a series of family emergencies and calamities caused them to cancel on him for the weekend. So he called up Nada Surf guitarist Matthew Caws and the Rosebuds’ Ivan Howard on bass; they practiced once, three hours before their gig opening up the Saturday night show. You’d never know anything was amiss; they’re all pros, and Lerner’s songs would stand up to any treatment. Lerner probably isn’t much older than the label itself, but you can bet that he’ll be a big part of the next 20 years.

Erectus Monotone: sweet Jesus, are the ’90s reunions over yet? And does Ladybug Transistor count? Because I haven’t even thought about them since they played this festival five years ago.

Which brings us to M. Ward, who apparently insisted that he not close Saturday night, perhaps because he was playing again on Sunday with She & Him. I’ve been a casual fan of his since I first saw him in San Francisco seven years ago; he’s an amazing guitarist and singer, a great producer and a decent songwriter. My only complaint is that I find his songs and albums interchangeable; I rarely reach for them. I’ve seen him solo and with various bands over the years, but his current line-up is by far the best configuration for his live show. They bring out the old-timey rock’n’roll in him, right down to the covers of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” and the occasion-appropriate Beatles’ “Birthday.” Ward seems to be having more fun on stage than ever; this set was much more joyous than any of his recordings would ever suggest.

Joy is not something one would normally associate with a Destroyer set, but Dan Bejar seemed to actually be enjoying himself. Maybe it’s Mergefest itself; my favourite Destroyer show was his performance here five years ago, with a back-up band of Merge staffers dubbed “The Treacherous Fops” who picked the set list. This time he played solo—not an easy feat after M. Ward’s barn-burning set—and played songs from nearly every Destroyer release, reaching back to “Streets of Fire” from the debut (later covered by the New Pornographers). The newer songs held up well in the absence of his backing band, on whose arrangements much of his recent records have relied heavily. Bejar pondered requests and happily engaged in some mutual heckling with the enraptured crowd—much like with the Lambchop show, it’s hard to imagine an audience that was as totally geeked out as this one. As a huge fan who was ready to give up on Bejar a couple of years ago, this set won me back. Maybe all it took was the occasional smile from the stage.

That left Imperial Teen… and the notion that there was still going to be some surprise act. Most delusional overheard comment: “I heard that Imperial Teen were never supposed to play and their name was only a placeholder for the super secret surprise.” Yeeeee-ah. Right. So facing that kind of implausible expectation, sure, Imperial Teen might have been a bit of a letdown. And sure, they’re not the greatest band in the world. But they’re a fun party band, and they managed to rouse most of the audience who wasn’t still crying over the fact that they’d spent the past week dreaming the impossible dream of a Neutral Milk Hotel reunion. Get over it, people! And dance!

Sunday night we finally got to leave the Cat’s Cradle for the considerably more upscale Memorial Hall on the leafy University of North Carolina campus. Opening the show was another new Merge signing, Baltimore duo Wye Oak, whose new album, The Knot, is so unbelievably superior to their passable debut that I barely believe it’s the same band. Jenn Wasner is a haunting vocalist and occasionally raging guitarist; drummer/keyboardist Andy Stack does all sorts of on-stage juggling to complement her many-changing moods. Sadly, backing vocals are not one of his live duties, and nor are any of the violins and pedal steel heard intermittently on The Knot. But those are minor quibbles, and I’d love to hear this band in a club; the cavernous acoustics of Memorial Hall are not cut out for rock bands, even ones as sparse as this one.

They are, however, ideal for American Music Club. I had no idea what to expect from this set; I knew songwriter Mark Eitzel’s towering reputation among many critics, and I knew that I’d heard him occasionally over the years and nothing every really stuck. So I was a bit shocked, to say the least, to see a dumpy guy in a trucker hat accompanied only by a pianist and singing like Tony Bennett—with all the vocal reach and mic control that reference implies. Eitzel is a storyteller first and foremost, both between songs and in his lyrics, and while I still doubt I’ll buy one of his albums, I would go see him again in an instant. He’s an amazing and unique showman who is alternately heartbreaking and hilarious; I can’t even begin to contemplate a comparison point.

She & Him are anything but unique; singer Zooey Deschanel writes songs that fit perfectly into early ’70s Laurel Canyon pop ala Carole King and Linda Ronstadt. Nothing wrong with that—after all, Telekinesis and M. Ward are just as derivative—but after a weekend of unique and iconoclastic performers like Lambchop, Destroyer and the Magnetic Fields, it certainly seemed the wrong note to close on. And this was definitely a more mainstream crowd than that at the Cat’s Cradle; even before she sang her first note, the first dude of many piped up, “We love you, Zooey!”

I like the She & Him album well enough; I couldn’t care less that Deschanel is an actress first and a singer/songwriter second. Live, however, she is simply unbearable: cutesy, cloying, bouncy, and seemingly without any knowledge of how to sing into a microphone properly—which is key when you have a chirpy voice like she does. (After witnessing Mark Eitzel, this was a particularly egregious crime.) To make it worse, her stage banter was cringey—perhaps because it wasn’t scripted. I felt bad for the band, including M. Ward, not only because they were mere window dressing for the Zooey show, but because the acoustics smothered the set in rumbling bass.

And then came the covers. Deschanel and Ward do a fine acoustic version of Smokey Robinson’s “You Really Got a Hold On Me,” mostly because she sounds far better when she’s singing harmony than lead. But tackling Sam Cooke was considerably trickier; attempting Joni Mitchell was a trainwreck (“You Turn Me On I’m a Radio”). As her piece de resistance, she actually had the chutzpah to blurt her way through Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You”—I cannot begin to enumerate the reasons why this was such a horrible, horrible idea.

There were many jaded indie rockers in the audience who don’t like sickly sweet pop music of this vintage variety in the first place—but I do, which made this show hurt even more. Where’s Camera Obscura when you need them? Needless to say, there was some extremely spirited lobby conversation afterwards.

Not that any of that could stain the memories of the past week. Mergefest is one of the only rock festivals with the down-home intimacy of a folk festival (next weekend’s Wolfe Island Music Festival, outside of Kingston, is another), due in large part to the Merge ethos itself: open ears, open minds, sustainable scale, earthbound expectations.
They inspire a loyalty that few other labels maintain, both to and from their artists; and naturally, that trust extends to the mutual relationship with the label’s fans, who gather once every five years for what more than one person called an “indie rock fantasy summer camp.”

A thousand thank yous to all the Merge staff, as well as everyone else who made this trip so amazing: Martin Hall, the Orange County Social Club, Carl “I don’t want to use the phrase ‘genre exercise’ before nine in the morning” Wilson, Wendy Spitzer, Jay Cartwright, Tony Susco, Autumn Cannella, Django Haskins, Jessica from Asheville, Margaret from Orlando, Craig and Rosa from San Francisco, Saleen from NYC, Todd from D.C., Kirk from Lumberton, Mary Catherine from Seattle, Ky from Boston, Carl from Top Drawer Records in Seattle, Bob the Tragically Hip fan from Seattle, Matt from the Dead Mechanicals in Baltimore, and everyone else I encountered there. And to the lovely Helen Spitzer, who five years ago first talked me into doing this—and so many more wonderful things ever since.

Arcade Fire 04: Howard Bilerman

The final installment from the Arcade Fire vaults, interviews conducted for this story in Exclaim in September 04.

Howard Bilerman is a longtime leading light of the Montreal scene, primarily as co-proprietor of the Hotel 2 Tango studio in Mile End (the studio's initials comprise the first part of the neighbourhood's postal code). In addition to most of the Constellation roster, he's recorded people like Angela Desveaux (also drumming on her album), the Dears, Pony Up, and Thalia Zedek. Bilerman co-produced Funeral with the band, and served as their drummer for the year it took to record it.
At the time these interviews were conducted, his future in the band was in doubt. I'd been informed beforehand that he was likely not going to continue with the band, but no final decisions had been made on anyone's part. One of the main reasons he ultimately left is that he didn't want to abandon Hotel 2 Tango, which continues to thrive, and that was the official reason given.
One can also speculate that personality differences might arrive because Howard was ten years older than the group's strong-willed bandleader. But though Howard has outspoken political beliefs on the state of the music industry, and would likely be uncomfortable with some of the minor concessions Arcade Fire has made to the industry machine, the band has remained on Merge and turned down plenty of lucrative offers to retain their independence and integrity. To my knowledge, Howard has never commented on the record regarding anything Arcade Fire-related other than for this piece (whoops, and this piece, not by me, which is a gear geek article).
Despite the precarious future ahead, I deliberately treated Howard as a full-time member of the band in the piece, as I felt he was just as important to the album's realisation as the rest of the band, and without his skill as both an engineer and a drummer, Funeral would have turned out much differently.
Jeremy Gara (Kepler, Snailhouse, Jim Bryson, Julie Doiron), a longtime friend of Tim Kingsbury and Richard Parry, was one of several drummers who played the Funeral release show in Montreal; he's played every Arcade Fire show since, also serving as the band's road manager during the first several months after Funeral's release.

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Howard Bilerman

August 11, 2004

locale: Arts Café, Fairmount and Jeanne Mance, Montreal

Had you heard the Arcade Fire before they showed up at your door, lonely, in need of a studio and a drummer?

(laughs). When I was recording Molasses, Scott Chernoff, who works with Tim, passed me their EP and said, ‘Do you want to hear the next greatest band in the world?’ (laughs). I was like, come on. I listened to the EP, and it didn’t really grab me so much. I thought it was a band who did have more of an identity than others, but that hadn’t really found their sound yet. A few weeks later I got an email saying that they wanted to come to the studio to record two songs. I told them I’d like to see them play beforehand.

Do you normally do that?

No, but I had a suspicion that it would be more difficult to record than other stuff and I wanted to know what I would be faced with. I went to Win and Regine’s kitchen and the band played ‘Wake Up,’ and I was just knocked on my ass. It was such a huge leap from everything I had heard on the EP.

Who was there?
Everyone who’s in the band now, with Arlen of Wolf Parade on drums. And he played on the studio version too. We did a few days of recording, and then Win emailed me saying that they were looking for a drummer, and if I could recommend anyone. I had just recently picked up playing drums again after so many years of just recording bands.

Had you even been playing at home?

No, nothing. I played drums on one song on the last Silver Mt. Zion record. That’s what made me realise that I love playing drums and expressing myself that way. I told Win that the only person I could think of was me—that was available, anyway. I know tons of great drummers, but they’re all in 19 bands. I didn’t hear anything for a week, and we were recording the whole time. They didn’t say anything the whole time, and it was like asking someone to the prom and having them tell you, ‘Hmmm, I’ll get back to you.’ Even though the prom might be next weekend.

At the end of the recording session, they asked me if I was serious about my offer, and I said absolutely. We practiced the next day for an hour, and then I started playing live with them that September.

What was your last band before that?

[long pause] The last band I played in was the last incarnation of a band called Frog Machine, in 1996. By then it was called The Famous Meats. That lasted for a few months before it disbanded.

What other Montreal bands did you play with?
Oh no, you’re not getting that one from me! (laughs, before revealing all, off the record) Once the studio started getting going around 1997, I just had no desire to hear music outside of the time I was spending recording.

Do you record many pop bands at Hotel 2 Tango? Because it’s known mostly for the stuff on the Constellation roster.

I recorded more pop bands before I moved into the Hotel. My studio was called Mom and Pop Sounds in Old Montreal. I did the Paper Route, early Tricky Woo, Les Secretaires Volants. I think I’ve recorded about 200 bands, and about half of them would be poppy.

One thing that strikes me about this record is how big it sounds, yet how raw it is, in all the best ways. There are a lot of layers that could easily become overproduced, overly bombastic and bloated.

I had to put my foot down a bit. I can’t stand records that are more about production than songs. Reverb and delay and compression were used very sparsely. The recording of Funeral was a car crash of so many different influences. Richie loves Brian Eno-type production, and I don’t ever want to ever put production before the music. Win, for his vocal treatment, at the beginning was very uncomfortable not having his voice supported by effects. I tried to suggest more interesting ways than your standard reverb and delay. Plus, I also think that effects tend to date a record. That whole bombastic orchestral type of production from the past five or six years really bores me, and I think it’s been done to death. (off the record opinions on specific examples)

I especially love Regine’s vocals on “In the Backseat,” when she’s hitting the stratosphere. Other people might have the tendency to dress that up or turn it into a Celine Dion moment, but here it’s very raw and honest.

Richie recorded that vocal. I recorded all the beds, set up the mics and went away for a week and gave them the keys to the studio. They tracked a lot of the overdubs. Win had a heavy hand in setting up the initial mixes, and he was very good at it. It was a great way to work He would hear something in his head and set it up, and I’d say, ‘I think it’d be better if we moved this guitar off to the side, or add some EQ.’ He would have a breath of fresh air and I would get my hands in there, sometimes changing it drastically, sometimes not at all. Then we’d just ping-pong back and forth and at the end of the night we’d have a mix.

More so than a lot of other people I know, both Win and Regine have very high standards for themselves and the band and how they present themselves. They don’t want to settle for less at any point. Even after I’ve seen them play the most incredible show, they’re always self-deprecating about it. It could always be better. Did you see that drive in the studio?

I saw it instantly in Win that music is in his blood. And it’s always refreshing to meet a band—and I’m talking about all of them—who care more about making music than being successful at making music, who are working on music and living up to the responsibility that I think should be involved in putting out a record. I also definitely saw some impatience. Sometimes Win gets very obsessed over wanting things to happen right away, and I don’t think it’s a negative thing as much as it is he’s young and eager. The way he and Regine work together, they really do come from two opposite places and meet in the middle.

She was telling me that she never wanted to be the girl in a rock band playing keyboard and tambourine. How have you seen her drumming evolve?

I think Regine is an amazing drummer. What makes her an even more extraordinary drummer is that she plays open-handed. She plays like a left-handed drummer would, but she’s right handed. [demonstrates] She has so much fun, and it’s really beautiful to see someone discover their instrument and enjoy it so much.

I know that you have Merge connections going back a while. Did that play a role in how the record landed there? I was listening to the new Portastatic and noticed that you’re credited in the liner notes with ‘gear assistance.’

It’s true. I met Mac and Laura when Superchunk opened up for Mudhoney at Foufounes in 1991. Then they came back a few months later. I got to know them just because I’ve seen about 20 Superchunk shows and hung out with them. More recently, Mac was setting up his home studio and had a lot of questions that I helped him with, emailing back and forth. Did it have any effect? Yeah, I’m sure that opened a door for the Arcade Fire to be listened to ahead of the 100 CDs that get sent to Merge every week. But it certainly didn’t make them like it.

What was it like for you playing Mergefest?
It was weird! Because I’d spent 13 years in clubs waiting for Superchunk to play, hanging out with Mac and Laura. Then we went to Chapel Hill and hung out and it was my drum set on stage. It was surreal.

I’ve always enjoyed watching people’s first reactions to the band.

This is the most beautiful thing about this time for the band, and it’s a time that will come to an end when the record comes out. When we toured with the Unicorns or do one-off shows, 95 per cent of the audience has never heard an Arcade Fire song, let alone seen us. So there’s no expectation. By the end of the set, it’s beautiful to know that you’ve won over some people. Even now when we play Toronto now it’s all expectation and anticipation and there’s a bar that’s been set that we have to live up to. It’s already changing. It’s still going to be exciting, though.

There always seem to be so much invested in any given show, and the passion that comes off the stage always feel genuine and real.

The Arcade Fire has never made the decision to put on a ‘show,’ or to perform with a given amount of energy. That’s just what happens when those six people get on stage. I can’t see it any other way. It’s not put on. Which is not to say that it’s not tiring and taxing and you don’t feel like you’ve run a marathon at the end of the set. I just can’t see it being any other way. Nor would I want it to be.

Anything else I should know?

I have very little tolerance or patience for any aspect of this industry that isn’t directly involved with making music. I found it very difficult as soon as the Arcade Fire became quote-unquote the band to watch when parts of the industry came out of the woodwork to quote-unquote help us. It makes me very suspicious and uncomfortable and it almost makes me not like being in a band. Ultimately, it’s meaningless.

The help, or being in a band?
Definitely the notion that they want to ‘help’ us is meaningless. They want to make a dime off our buck. Which is their job, I guess.

That’s the record company’s job, too.

But at least Merge has shown over 15 years that they’re more on the artist side than the industry side. Knowing them and seeing how they work, they’re far more interested in their bands being healthy than selling tons of records—and that’s rare. I’m talking more about critical acclaim and acclaim from managers and agents and other record companies. To me, it seems meaningless and is a knee jerk reaction to someone, somewhere saying, ‘You must like this band.’ It’s more important that we like the record we made, and that our families and friends like the record we made, and that it touches people. It’s been difficult to navigate, I’ll leave it at that.

How does this cover story fit into that?

I’m well aware of the hypocrisy involved in, on the one hand, not wanting to partake in that industry, and on the other hand potentially having my face on the cover of Canada’s largest music magazine. For me, it’s more about the integrity of the people involved. It’s more about that … I think what’s really beautiful about the Arcade Fire is that we’ve never asked for press or attention, which is quite different from the way most bands operate. I know that it’s based on word-of-mouth, rather than a publicist or a press release.

Howard emailed me the next day to follow-up on some of our thoughts, for the record.

"music is very very important to me...i can honestly say it changed my life...became my life at quite an early age. i keep this in mind when making records & certainly when performing live with the AF. as musicians & performers, we must always remember that music gets people thru stuff...that maybe the whole day at school is alienating & oppressive, but that listening to your favorite record on the way home somehow makes you feel yourself...normal...happy...free. life for me wasn't the same after i heard the clash & the violent femmes...it was the first time i felt people were speaking directly to me thru their music....it's something i can only hope i can participate in from this side things."

"the only system i believe in is one that is 100% independent. major labels have such a bad track record with artists, due mainly to the fact that every corporation boils down to a dollars & cents operation. even if you & your bevvy of lawyers walk away from the major label table with some amount of a "head-above water" deal, you are still making money for an industry that does not really care for the health & well being of its artists. this is not some leftist conspiracy...it's a story that has been documented by decades of musicians. so, if this record makes money for merge, i know other artists will directly benefit from that...and that's a decision that i can sleep well with."

-end-