Shearwater: March 15, 2016 Rough Trade (Bowie’s Lodger album)

March 23, 2016
By

shearwater-29
[photos by PSquared Photography]

Last month we captured a really outstanding performance by Shearwater at the Mercury Lounge. The show was in the early stages of the band’s tour in support of its superb new album Jet Plane and Oxbow and it featured most of the new album in a tour de force evening. But one of the non-album highlights of the night was the band’s cover of David Bowie’s “Look Back in Anger” from the Lodger album. We learned that night that Shearwater had rehearsed the entire album and upon their return to NYC, would play it live.

Last week at Rough Trade, Shearwater offered a gift to their fans — a free show at a great venue that consisted of that previously promised Lodger show. Jonathan Meiburg has discussed how this fairly obscure late-70s Bowie work helped him personally through some difficult times, but for this performance Meiburg discussed many of the aspects of the album in detail in segments in between the songs. Lodger is the last of the trio of Bowie albums produced in collaboration with Brian Eno, and as expected the Eno influence is all over this record particularly in a kind of world music feel. But the addition of legendary guitarist Adrian Belew also added more of a rock feel to this album as compared with the previous two records in the trilogy, Heroes and Low. The guitar based songs on the album gave Jonathan an opportunity to stretch out and use his pedals liberally. He remarked at the end of the show that he’d never used his phaser so often. While the band has rehearsed these songs and played a few of them at earlier shows, we learned that this was the first time that Shearwater has played the album start to finish. But you wouldn’t know — the songs were well played and the band was tight and the set was a fitting tribute to the late legend.

I recorded this set as I have all my previous trips to this venue — Schoeps cards mounted in the center of the Soundboard booth and mixed with an excellent feed, this time mixed superbly by the band’s touring FOH Jay. The sound quality is quite excellent. Enjoy!

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Stream the Complete Show (banter tracks removed):

Shearwater
2016-03-15
Rough Trade
Brooklyn NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [Engineer: Jay] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > Sound Devices 744t > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (post-production) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 47:28]
01 Fantastic Voyage
02 [banter – Lodger]
03 African Night Flight
04 Move On
05 Yassassin
06 [banter – Adrian Belew]
07 Red Sails
08 [banter – singles in the middle]
09 DJ
10 Look Back in Anger
11 [band introductions]
12 Boys Keep Swinging
13 [banter – SNL]
14 Repetition
15 [thanks]
16 Red Money

SUPPORT Shearwater: Website | Facebook | Twitter | BUY Jet Plane and Oxbow

Nap Eyes: March 9, 2016 Union Pool

March 22, 2016
By

FullSizeRender

Nap Eyes, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, occupy a bit of a time warp. Listen to Thought Rock Fish Scale, their fantastic new record on Paradise of Bachelors, without knowing what you’re hearing and you might believe you were hearing mid-70s Californians raised on Lou Reed, combining laid-back rhythms with a conversational, wry delivery. Frontman Nigel Chapman has the effect of sounding like someone you’ve heard a thousand times, but haven’t quite heard before. Beneath the winsome surface, Nap Eyes have a lot going on, including Chapman’s lyrics, which swing from the confessional to the bizarre. Not that it matters much in the live setting, where we caught the band’s sold-out show at Union Pool last week. The band showed off tunes from both Thought Rock and their recently-reissued debut, Whine of the Mystic, as well as one brand-new song that shows the same level of promise as the two recent offerings. Combined with the guys’ good-natured banter (even a parent was in attendance), the show gave you the sense that the positive press surrounding this band is well-earned, a sign of their low-key appeal and their ability to casually surprise.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK5 cardiod microphones from our usual spot in the balcony, combined with a soundboard feed from Union Pool engineer Robert. There are two flaws: the level of the vocals fluctuates a bit halfway through, and the house music isn’t totally faded out for about half of the first song. With those two caveats, the sound quality overall is excellent. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [MP3/FLAC]

Stream the complete show:

Nap Eyes
2016-03-09
Union Pool
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK5 (A-B, DFC, at SBD) + Soundboard (engineer: Robert)>>Zoom F8>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, adjust balance of SBD, adjust levels)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Mixer
02 Roll It
03 Dark Creedence
04 [new song 1]
05 Stargazer
06 Tribal Thoughts
07 Click Clack
08 No Fear of Hellfire

Support Nap Eyes: visit their bandcamp page, and buy their records from Paradise of Bachelors.

Tortoise: March 17, 2016 Littlefield

March 20, 2016
By

Tortoise
[Photo from Le Poisson Rouge by PSquared Photography]

There are a lot of twentieth anniversaries going around these days: 2016 marks twenty years since Tortoise’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die cemented their place in the annals of indie-slash-post-rock. And the last time the band played New York, it was for Thrill Jockey’s twentieth anniversary show at Webster Hall in 2012.

Tortoise’s return to New York after a four-year absence was a significantly more intimate one, playing the tiny Littlefield in front of a packed, sold-out crowd. And the band didn’t do much looking back, as the set focuses most heavily on their new album, The Catastrophist—their first since 2009’s rock-y Beacons of Ancestorship. While nothing played dates further back than 1998’s TNT, that doesn’t mean Tortoise didn’t play the hits. Ask anyone what their favorite Tortoise album is and you’ll receive a variety of answers, the most likely being Millions… and TNT; however you’re also likely to hear votes for Standards and I’ll go ahead and stump for the underrated (and perhaps maligned) It’s All Around You. Listen to this recording of “Salt the Skies” and then give It’s All Around You another listen if you don’t believe me. Other modern classics played include “Seneca” with it’s signature dual-drummer intro, the slinky “Monica,” and the rocking “Prepare Your Coffin.”

At this point it’s worth mentioning that the Littlefield crowd got to see what could turn out to be the most special moment of Tortoise’s current tour, when the band was joined onstage by Georgia Hubley (of Yo La Tengo fame, of course) to sing “Yonder Blue.” Hubley guests on that track on The Catastrophist and it’s pure geographical luck that the Brooklyn crowd got to experience the collaboration live.

I recorded this set with the AKGs clamped to the soundboard cage, at about 10 feet high. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Thanks to Littlefield FOH Todd and the rest of their production team for their help in making this recording happen.

Tortoise are still on tour through at least July and you can see their full listing of dates here.

Download the complete show at the Live Music Archive.

Stream the complete show:

Tortoise
2016-03-17
Littlefield
Brooklyn, NY

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by Eric PH

AKG C480B/CK63 (ROC, FOB, PAS) > Roland R-26 > WAV (24/48) > Adobe Audition CC (compression, normalize, fades) > Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, exciter) > Audacity 2.0.5 (downsample, dither, tracking, tagging) > FLAC (16/44.1, level 8)

Tracks [01:33:45]
01. [Intro]
02. The Catastrophist
03. Prepare Your Coffin
04. Tesseract
05. Monica
06. In Sarah, Mencken, Christ, and Beethoven There Were Women and Men
07. Hot Coffee
08. Gesceap
09. Blackjack
10. At Odds With Logic
11. Gigantes
12. Eros
13. Salt the Skies
14. [encore break]
15. Yonder Blue (with Georgia Hubley)
16. Seneca
17. [encore break]
18. Shake Hands With Danger
19. High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In

Support Tortoise: Website | Facebook | Buy The Catastrophist and more via Thrill Jockey

Speed the Plough: February 25, 2016 HiFi Bar

March 17, 2016
By

speedtheplough
[photo by Neil deMause]

Correspondent Neil D writes:

Explaining Speed the Plough’s connection with and distinction from the Feelies is a bit daunting, but here we go: The band first began as the Trypes, a Hoboken band that grew to incorporate Feelies’ guitarist/vocalists Glenn Mercer and Bill Million when their main band went on hiatus during the early ’80s. When the Feelies reformed in 1985, Mercer and Million took bassist Brenda Sauter and drummer Stan Demeski with them; when the Feelies went back on hiatus in the ’90s (after Million moved to Florida to become a locksmith at Disney World), Sauter and Demeski rejoined what was now known as Speed the Plough, only to depart again in 2008 when the Feelies re-re-formed. This left Speed the Plough with no actual Feelies veterans, but a who’s-who of the Feelies family tree, with Demeski’s brother-in-law John Baumgartner (keyboards, vocals), sister-in-law Toni Baumgartner (vocals, flute, clarinet, glockenspiel), son John Demeski (drums), and nephew Michael Baumgartner (guitar, vocals) all on board, along with Cindi Merklee on bass/vocals and Ed Seifert on guitar/vocals. And there’s a family feel to the shows as well, with everyone trading off on lead vocals and writing credits. (“Ed’s Song,” appropriately, is actually written and sung by John Baumgartner.)

Speed the Plough’s music itself is a somewhat more distant cousin to the Feelies’, with the similarities including clean melodies layered over crisp percussion, though much more varied in tone and instrumentation — there aren’t all that many glockenspiel solos in Feelies songs, for starters. This appearance, at Manhattan’s quickly-becoming-beloved HiFi Bar (in the former Brownies space, run by former Brownie Mike Stuto), was a record release show for Speed the Plough’s new LP “Now,” which the band played through in its entirety, followed by an encore of the title track from their 2010 album “Swerve.” The show was recorded with a mix of mics set up on the booths opposite the stage and the HiFi soundboard, and is an excellent capture of the intimate sound in that space, with not too much chatter filtering in from the bar area adjacent.

Download the complete show: [MP3/FLAC]

Stream the complete show:

Speed the Plough
2016-02-25
HiFi Bar
New York, NY
Soundboard > Sony PCM-M10 > WAV (24/48) + CA-14 cardioid mics > Church Audio ugly battery box > iRiver H320 (Rockboxed) > AIFF (16.44.1) > Sound Studio (light EQ and mixing) > FLAC (16/44.1) > Tag > FLAC
Recorded and mastered by neil d

01 Matt Davis intro
02 S.O.S.
03 Midnight in the World
04 Garden
05 Be With You
06 Because
07 More and More
08 second set intro
09 Hey, Blue
10 Buttermilk Falls
11 Miss Amelia (for Carson McCullers)
12 On A New Day
13 Telegraph
14 Ed’s Song
15 Swerve

Pick up “Now” and other Speed the Plough goodies (their 2014 retrospective “The Plough and the Stars” makes an excellent starting point for acquainting yourself with their three-decade back catalogue) at: http://www.speedtheplough.com/

craw: March 12, 2016 Saint Vitus

March 17, 2016
By

craw-5
[photos by PSquared Photography]

Ohio is an interesting place. In some ways its an Eastern industrial state and in other ways its an agricultural Midwestern state. Its a state with large cities and large swaths of farmlands. Its largest metropolitan area of Cleveland is itself a unique place which is geographically both a lake city and a river city. Despite that Cleveland also happens to be the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it’s music has always indicated a similar off-kilter personality. Its most well known punk band was also one of the first art-rock outfits — Pere Ubu. Its early 70’s classic rock band was also a unique mix of jazz and blues — The Numbers Band. Its 80s alternative band was also a “gunk punk” act — Death of Samantha. And its 90s hardcore band was also its 90s metal band — the inimitable craw.

Even craw‘s reunion didn’t follow the standard script. We’ve seen a ton of these 80s and 90s band reunions. Generally speaking, the usual scenario is that the continued existence of a cabal of fans manages to finally convince a band of some repute to bury the hatchet and reuite. Most times the band enters the reunion with the advantages of maturity and sobriety and does their legacy proud. But the craw reunion was in large part the result of one uber fan who grew up to be a respected journalist and musician himself. Hank Shteamer is a senior editor at Rolling Stone and he plays in the bands Aa (Big A little a) and STATS, but as a teenager he was one of a few very rabid craw fans who saw the band repeatedly. His fanship never went away, and as outlined in this excellent Observer piece, when Hank teamed up with local record label Northern Spy the pairing produced 1993-1997, a remastered box set of craw’s long out of print first three records along with a 200-page book with an essential history of the band. The final piece of the puzzle was realized when craw agreed to play two reunion shows, one of course in Cleveland and the other at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn.

I arrived early on Saturday to record the show at Saint Vitus and was immediately met with the good news that the venue was sold out. As the crowd filtered in during the opening sets, it was an interesting amalgam of various types of people of various ages and styles, and as we found out when the band took the stage, from various geographical areas — people traveled from far and wide to see this show. But the crowd did all have one thing in common, they were there to hear the music, as all attention was focused forward to the stage and there’s almost no talking on this recording. craw took the stage and immediately recognized the large contingent of traveling fans before launching directly into a lengthy “Caught My Tell” from their still-in-print 2002 album Bodies for Strontium 90, and then stuck with that album for the next few songs. The remainder of the show consisted of material that appears on the current box set as the songs were roughly grouped by album in reverse-chronological order. By the time craw reached their self-titled debut album and one of its highlights “405”, the show was virtually complete. While craw didn’t leave the stage, the final two “encore” numbers were performed by the entire 7-piece band the represented every player who had appeared on all of their albums.

For a band that hadn’t performed live in the better part of a decade, and who has always relied on mathematical precision in their riffs, this show was phenomenally tight and focused. At the center of it all was lead vocalist Joe McTighe, whose sing/scream/talk approach to the strangely literary lyrics are part of the unique draw of this singular band. Although this show is purportedly the final craw show of this all-too-brief reunion, honestly I can’t imagine that the band won’t keep playing gigs. When something is this good and the fans are calling for more, there’s no reason not to give them more. At least that’s what we hope is the case.

I recorded this set with the Schoeps cards mounted in front of the soundboard and mixed with an excellent feed provided by Vitus’s FOH wiz Nick. The sound quality is superb. Enjoy!

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Stream the Complete Show:

craw-29

craw
2016-03-12
Saint Vitus
Brooklyn NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [engineer Nick] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > Sound Devices 744t > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wavs > Soundforge (post-production) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3/tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:16:48]
01 [introduction]
02 Caught My Tell
03 Chop Shop
04 Space Is the Place
05 Unsolicited Unsavory
06 Killer Microbes Devour Cleveland
07 New Plastics Diet Alters Man’s DNA
08 Parasitic Dad Evades Biocops
09 Divinity of Laughter
10 The Adventures of Cancerman
11 Botulism Cholera and Tarik
12 Sound of Every Promise
13 Strongest Human Bond
14 Cobray to the North
15 My Sister’s Living Room
16 To the Child Reader
17 405
18 Elliot
19 [outro]

SUPPORT craw: Website | Buy 1993-1997 | Facebook | Bandcamp

craw-32

Alan Licht: March 4, 2016 Saint Vitus

March 16, 2016
By

Alan Licht
[photos by PSquared Photography]

Since 2011, Alan Licht has been playing guitar in Lee Ranaldo’s backing band, The Dust. For someone normally associated with the downtown No Wave and Minimalist set, The Dust has been an outlet for Licht to play song-oriented guitar rock. His recent album, Currents, splits the difference between experimental and rock music, blending minimalist and melodic solo guitar work into one of the most compelling solo-guitar records of the last few years.

Last week at Saint Vitus, opening for Rangda (that recording here), Licht devoted most of his set to tracks off Currents, adding a special cover that he has only recently begun playing solo. Openers “Riding on the S’s” and “First Love, Haleema” recall Licht’s guitar work with The Dust, and accomplish what even the most seasoned guitar players have difficulty doing: creating a narrative without words. Those tracks are followed by “Raw Deal” and the album-closer, “(Thems the) Breaks,” which despite their titles manage not to sound like downers.

For his closing piece, Licht looks back to his performance at the 2004 No Fun Fest (where he and band were billed as Alan Licht’s 1970), for a fifteen-minute explorative composition based on The Stooges’ “1970.” What begins as an earnest cover with that most-recognizable riff, wanders into a thematic meditation on that tune before returning back to the original. While I normally expect some audience chatter to seep in to a solo guitar set, in this recording you can almost feel the crowd’s collective breath held for the length of Licht’s set. The performance of this Stooges—and Licht—classic tops off an already excellent set.

I recorded this set from our usual location at Saint Vitus, the room mics combined with a board feed from FOH Nick. I mixed those two sources, favoring the room sound. The quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [MP3/FLAC]

Stream the complete show:

Alan Licht

Alan Licht
2016-03-04
Saint Vitus
Brooklyn, NY

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by Eric PH

Soundboard (engineer: Nick) + AKG C480B/CK61 (PAS) > Roland R-26 > 2xWAV (24/48) > Adobe Audition CC (align, mixdown, compression, normalize, fades) > Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, exciter) > Audacity 2.0.5 (downsample, dither, tracking, tagging) > FLAC (16/44.1, level 8)

Tracks [35:57]
01. Riding on the S’s
02. First Love, Haleema
03. [banter]
04. Raw Deal
05. (Thems the) Breaks
06. 1970 [The Stooges]

Support Alan Licht: Buy Currents via VDSQ

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