Aidin Vaziri: April 2010

18 April 2010

Pop Quiz: Josh Rouse

Aidin Vaziri | Since moving to Spain five years ago to live with his wife, Josh Rouse has let his music slowly drift away from its mournful Americana roots. But on the Nebraska native's latest studio album, "El Turista," the influence of his adopted country's sunny beaches, afternoon siestas and all-night wine bars takes full hold. Rouse sings in Spanish, revels in Brazilian sambas and even covers a classic by Cuban composer Bola de Nieve.

Josh Rouse
Q: Is that why you called the album "El Turista," because you feel like you don't belong anywhere?
A: Kind of. It had to do with that. Living in a different country and speaking a different language, you're always going to be the foreign exchange student. You're always missing something that's deeper in the culture. But the idea to do the Spanish-language thing, well, it's just part of my life. I speak it every day. I thought, "Why not try a couple of songs in Spanish?" You've got to challenge yourself and do something different.
Q: The best part is now you'll totally be up for a couple of Latin Grammys.
A: I would love that. I'm waiting for that call.
Read more.

Rykarda Parasol: True Blood

Rykarda Parasol's 'For Blood and Wine': Aidin Vaziri | Rykarda Parasol is slowly navigating the narrow aisles of Green Apple Books. We're here to talk about the weird and wonderful songs on the San Francisco rock musician's second album, "For Blood and Wine," and what she has planned for her Saturday show at Cafe Du Nord. But at the moment her eyes are scanning the rickety shelves, looking for a tome by Parisian poet Paul Verlaine. Parasol explains that she's recently taken up French. "Mostly because I want to read his work in its original form," she says. The striking Bay Area native with two-toned hair is not one for doing things in half measures. She writes, records and releases her own music. But it doesn't stop there. She also designs the album sleeves, books the shows and until recently handled most of her own promotion duties. "I'm not a band of four people, so it can be overwhelming at times," Parasol says. "But I'm crafty, so I've been able to do what I can." Read more.

On The Town: Alissa Anderson

Aidin Vaziri | Alissa Anderson does a little bit of everything. Since moving to San Francisco a decade ago, the Wakefield, Mass., native has played cello with the folk-rock band Vetiver, photographed album covers for indie rock icons like Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom, and launched her own DIY fashion line, Mittenmaker. Now she shares some of her local discoveries with us.

On The Town: Alissa Anderson
Adobe Books, 3166 16th St. "Filled to the gills with books collected by proprietor Andrew McKinley. You might catch a poet napping on the couch, a music performance or possibly be photographed. The art in the Backroom Gallery is always worth checking out, especially after its recent face-lift."
Halu, 312 Eighth Ave. "Tiny Japanese restaurant run by a local rock 'n' roll drummer and his family. Filled with Beatles memorabilia and a sign on the door that says 'NO SUSHI TODAY.' Extensive sake selection, delicious skewers, ramen, and specials like okonomiyake." Read more.

Review: Rufus Wainwright, 'All Days Are Nights'

Review: Rufus Wainwright, 'All Days Are Nights': Aidin Vaziri | For a moment, it felt as if we'd lost Rufus Wainwright. It's hard to pinpoint the precise moment it happened - was it the full-scale Judy Garland tribute at Carnegie Hall? Or the waltz he wrote about meeting the singer of the Killers that opened with the line, "You taste like potato chips in the morning"? But reality brings the 36-year-old singer-songwriter back from the brink on his sixth studio album, "All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu." Written, produced and performed entirely on piano by Wainwright, the disc arrives just three months after the death of his mother, Canadian folk icon Kate McGarrigle. Unlike the showstoppers that filled out "Release the Stars," the songs here are intensely personal, uniformly sober affairs. From raw, unblinking laments such as "Martha" and "The Dream," to a run through three Shakespeare sonnets and one track from his opera "Prima Donna," Wainwright's reedy voice has rarely sounded so vulnerable or poignant. But even as he navigates total emotional upheaval, Wainwright's wit remains undiminished. "My mother's in the hospital/ My sister's at the opera/ I'm in love, but let's not talk about it," he sings on the album's closer, "Zebulon," letting us know he's only waving, not drowning.

Live Review: Thom Yorke with Atoms for Peace at the Fox Theater

Music review: Thom Yorke with Atoms for Peace: Aidin Vaziri | It started with a twitch in his shoulders. Then his hips started swaying violently from side to side. Suddenly his hands were clawing at the air. It was hard to tell what was happening to Thom Yorke when on Wednesday, his new side project, Atoms for Peace, was playing the first of two nights at Oakland's Fox Theater. Seizure? Wasp attack? Hiccups? No, it turns out, he was just dancing. Everybody knows Yorke as the lead singer of cerebral British rockers Radiohead, whose concerts are typically dark and sober affairs. But this? Well, this was different. Read more.

11 April 2010

Pop Quiz: Charlotte Gainsbourg

Aidin Vaziri | After suffering a cerebral hemorrhage that nearly killed her, Charlotte Gainsbourg did what anyone would do - she checked into a Los Angeles studio with Beck and made an album inspired by the sounds she heard during her brain scans. Now the revered French actress (and daughter of Gallic pop icon Serge Gainsbourg and British singer-actress Jane Birkin) is taking that recording, "IRM," on her first tour ever.

Charlotte Gainsbourg
Q: How did having a hole drilled in your head change you?
A: Well, it gave me insulation. I was also very attracted to those MRI sounds. It was the first thing I thought of when I was in that machine - I remember thinking what I could do with those sounds.
Q: Was there some profound revelation you got from being near death?
A: I hoped there would be at the very start, but when we come out of something so shocking it only lasts for a week and then you go back to normal.
Q: So you still get annoyed if someone's bumper is hanging over your driveway?
A: Yes. I also stopped smoking, so I have been very nervous and irritated. Read more.

Corinne Bailey Rae: Into The Deep

Corinne Bailey Rae faces her grief on 'The Sea': Aidin Vaziri | Two years ago, just as Corinne Bailey Rae was bouncing back from the whirlwind success that followed her self-titled 2006 debut (the album sold 2 million copies and earned three Grammy nominations), her husband, saxophonist Jason Rae, died of an accidental drug and alcohol overdose. She had already started to write her second album, hoping to dig a little deeper than the airy pop she put on offer with her breakthrough hit "Put Your Records On," but now a sense of melancholy was inevitable. The trick was hanging onto the sunny disposition that won her so many fans around the world without losing her soul. "I feel all those things all the time, so singing about them, it's nothing," Rae says.The hard thing is to actually feel them." Read more.

Review: MGMT, 'Congratulations'

Review: MGMT, 'Congratulations': Aidin Vaziri | When we checked in with Andrew VanWyngarden of the Brooklyn electro-pop duo MGMT before last year's Treasure Island Music Festival he admitted that the wildfire success of the group's first album, "Oracular Spectacular," had scored them a lot of leeway with the record company when it came to making its follow-up. "So when we bring them some seven-minute instrumental song that has a synthesizer solo that sounds like a baby crying for four-minutes they think it's cool," he said of the work in progress. In the same breath, he admitted that MGMT had no idea how to follow up the infectious set that yielded effervescent dance hits like "Kids" and "Time to Pretend," adding, "There's going to be a lot of weird s- on it." Sure enough, the best tracks here - folkie oddities such as "Siberian Breaks" and "I Found A Whistle" - mainline the loopy psychedelic vibes of Syd Barrett, Suicide and producer Sonic Boom's former band, Spacemen 3, while the treacly instrumental "Lady Dada's Nightmare" will most likely drive away as many fickle fans as the last one pulled in. "Congratulations" doesn't so much represent a band taking bold artistic liberties so much as feeling thoroughly confused. The album's cheery title, it turns out, is not so much a celebration of MGMT's rapid rise but the curse that comes with it. "The ground may be moving fast," VanWyngarden sings on the closing track. "But I tied my boots to a broken mast."

Jason Munn: Posters That Rock

Jason Munn makes concert posters that rock: Aidin Vaziri | You've probably seen Jason Munn at one of the Bay Area's many music festivals. Although chances are your eyes went right past the fold-up table Munn was manning and straight to the gallery of concert posters hanging above his head - minimalist, smart, efficiently designed works of art that look unlike just about every other rock poster that has ever come out of here. Unlike the eyeball-searing psychedelic-era prints lining the walls of the Fillmore and Amoeba, the silk-screened posters Munn designs from his independent Oakland studio called the Small Stakes rely on just a few elements - usually feathers, fingerprints, butterflies, keys, maybe a couple of records - and even fewer colors. "I went to school for design, but I didn't want to make brochures for insurance companies," says Munn, a graduate of the Madison Area Technical College. "I wanted to do design for things I cared about." Read more.

Pop Quiz: The Doors

Aidin Vaziri | Nearly 40 years after singer Jim Morrison died, the surviving members of the Los Angeles rock group - keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore - are gearing up to once again celebrate his legacy with the release of a new documentary, "When You're Strange." Narrated by Johnny Depp and directed by Tom DiCillo, the film features digitally enhanced footage from the band in its rowdy prime as well as some never-before-seen live performances. We spoke with Manzarek, who has been on tour with Krieger and various singers as Riders on the Storm, about how it all came together.

Ray Manzarek of the Doors
Q: How did you lure Johnny Depp away from hanging out with Keith Richards long enough to narrate this movie?
A: We presented it to him, and it turns out he's a big Doors fan. I must say he did a great job. I've heard it said when preparing for a role at the earliest stages he always listens to "The End."
Q: Who wouldn't? Do you ever get tired of watching the same footage over and over?
A: I'm just having a great time seeing all the young men onscreen. The best part is to see Jim alive again.
Q: There have already been so many movies and books on the Doors. How many different ways can you tell the same story?
A: Well, there are things that are still out there. There are things known and there are things unknown. And in between there are the Doors.
Q: Wow, you should put that on a poster. Read more.

Jónsi: Sigur Rós Singer Flies Solo

Sigur Rós singer prepares for U.S. solo tour: Aidin Vaziri | Jón "Jónsi" Birgisson is feeling a little flustered. It's early March, and the Sigur Rós front man is running around his hometown of Reykjavik tending to some daily chores before he catches a flight to London, where he will oversee the final production details for his world tour in support of his first solo album, "Go." The only problem is that before he left the house, he watched some preview footage of the stage design by Fifty Nine Productions, the audiovisual company known for its elaborate set designs for New York's Metropolitan Opera and the English National Opera. Now the anxiety is setting in. "I was just getting my shoes repaired and going to the store - doing everything so low-key and normal," Jónsi says. "And then I see this trailer for this romantic fairy tale." Read more.

Review: Jakob Dylan, 'Women and Country'

Review: Jakob Dylan, 'Women and Country': Aidin Vaziri | The last time Jakob Dylan worked with producer T Bone Burnett was on the breakthrough second album by his band the Wallflowers, "Bringing Down the Horse." To call the 1996 collaboration a success would be an understatement - it yielded quadruple-platinum sales, two Grammy Awards and three Top 40 singles. On "Women and Country," Dylan's second solo outing, they are making music that's a little more low-key but no less endearing. With mournful pedal steel guitars and Neko Case's haunting backing vocals winding around his ragged voice throughout the set, songs like "Everybody's Hurting" and "Nothing But the Whole Wide World" find Dylan sounding oddly inspired, even as he's waist-deep in contemplation. "I've got nothing but the whole wide world to gain," he sings. More calm and confident than he was on 2008's Rick Rubin-produced "Seeing Things," the singer-songwriter may have finally made an album worthy of the family name - and with Burnett's name on the back, it wouldn't be a bad idea to start clearing off some space on the mantel now.