Review: Christopher O'Riley's True Love Waits and Hold Me To This

I'm almost embarrassed to be writing this review. Nothing says trend follower more than loving gimmicky albums, and this is about as gimmicky as they come.

Christopher O'Riley is a classical pianist who hass a deep appreciation of Radiohead. So much so that he, like Finnish all-cello Metallica cover band Apocalyptica, decided to merge his classical skills with his modern appreciation.

O'Riley and Apocalyptica. So alike...yet so, so different.

The first fruit of this genre-melding was 2003's True Love Waits: Christopher O'Riley Plays Radiohead. On it, O'Riley picks a little bit from every album up until that point (excluding 2003's Hail To The Thief). What impressed me right off the bat was his song selection. It would have been easy to do Radiohead's greatest hits, but there are a few popular songs evident by their absence (the most obvious being Pablo Honey's "Creep"). O'Riley chose songs based on their evocative merit, including lesser-known tracks like "You", "I Can't", Black Star" and so on.

That isn't to say that this is a catalogue of b-sides: even casual fans know "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Karma Police". And while it's true that some tracks work better than others, you never get the sense that O'Riley felt he should include something that people will know. His credibilty as an arragner and as a music appreciator grows track by track. He evokes all the fury, hopelessness and navel-gazing that Radiohead is famous for while ably absorbing each melody and harmony into the medium of classical piano. Personal favourites from this album include "Airbag" and "Exit Music (For A Film)".

O'Riley followed up in just under two years time with 2005's Hold Me To This: Christopher O'Riley Plays Radiohead. The album focuses much more on Radiohead's modern era, taking nothing from Pablo Honey and only "(Nice Dream)" and "Street Spirit (Fade Out)"from The Bends. It's evident that O'Riley has hit his stride by this point; he seems more willing to take chances with the material, adding in crescendos and decrescendos and even sprinkling in his own counter-melodies. Fortunately, any tendencies O'Riley has towards aggressive arrangement are tempered by a nigh-reverence for his source material, resulting in an almost perfect blend of styles. The only fly in the ointment is "2+2=5", specifically the bridge. A one-note dischordant bridge is fine in experimental rock, but on the piano it's going to sound like your finger slipped no matter how many times you do it on purpose. With that aside, however, everything else is gold. I especially love "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" and "The Tourist".

I don't think anyone can go wrong on these albums. It's great music for background at dinner parties, to study to, or to listen to intently. Fans of Radiohead are especially encouraged to pick this up, as it adds a whole new dimension to the songs while maintining their original flavour.

Here's a clip of Mr. O'Riley in action:

I should also mention that there is a jazz pianist named Brad Mehldau who does some Radiohead covers. Here's him doing the same song:

Mehldau also covers "Paranoid Android" and "Knives Out". His covers outside of Radiohead include Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun", Oasis' "Wonderwall" and the Beatles' "Blackbird".

Peace!

Review: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

What can I say? I get a couple of blogs under my belt and suddenly I’m rife with ideas to post.

I’m a sucker for movies about bands and music, so much so that I’m probably going to do a post on it sometime soon. So when I heard about the premise for Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, I was immediately interested. Two people running all over new York City looking for a band, while sharing their favourite music with each other along the way? One of them is Michael Cera? And he’s playing bass? Sweet!

You could tell that whoever wrote the movie has watched a lot of Linklater stuff, specifically Dazed and Confused. Very similar setup, with the characters and their respective roles (the bitchy ex, the drunken flirt, the moody loner, the heartbroken good guy, etc.) coming into focus within five minutes. The plot? Two groups of friends chasing a legendary band to a secret gig in New York City. The first group is Michael Cera’s band in New Jersey, who are two-thirds gay (Cera being the lone hetero). The other group is three upper-class high school senior girls, one of who is Cera’s ex named Tris who cheated on him consistently during their 6 month relationship (not that he knows). Cera’s Nick is the focus of his group, and Kat Dennings’ smarty-pantsed-alt-loner-misfit-etc. Norah is the focus of hers.

The premise is fantastic, but the execution is awful. What could have been a well-paced love letter to the New York indie scene becomes a frat-pack party movie. Norah’s best friend drinks herself stupid and spends the remainder of the film stumbling around New York at night by herself, throwing up in ice cream coolers and following pantsless strangers into buildings (of course I’m not kidding). She makes a ton of ridiculously dangerous decisions, and it’s kind of hard to laugh at the possibilities of a drunk, flirtatious teenage girl talking to strangers in the bus station. This unease is accented after Nick is accosted by homeless people (Andy Samberg in a somewhat amusing but pointless cameo).

The meat of the film is supposed to be Nick and Norah’s romance. Norah is half in love with Nick because of all the amazing mix CDs he made for Tris after their breakup. After a chance meeting at a bar, Nick’s bandmates decide he and Norah should be together and arrange it so the two of them spend the night together looking for Where’s Fluffy, a fictitious New York band famous for their guerilla-style show promotion. Of course, spending time together makes them fall in love. Or makes them realize they’ve always been in love. Or something. I’m not quite sure. I do know that sometimes they like each other, then sometimes they hate each other, and sometimes one of them punches the other in the throat, and I was never quite sure why.

None of the performances stood out for me. Michael Cera is either a one-note actor or he’s being typecast, early-Jim-Carrey-style. Baffingly, the director chose to use the most base parts of Cera’s trademark persona (the nervousness, the don’t-hurt-me smiles) and denied us the best parts: namely, those improved stream-of-consciousness rambles that always seem to become his most quotable lines.

Denning’s character is what it is. The script doesn’t allow for the characters to follow their emotions logically (not even teenage drunk/hormonal logic) so it’s hard to know wheterh the suck started at the acting, the directing or the writing.

This might be one of those Romeo and Juliet things where you buy the soundtrack even though the movie is terrible. I picked out Vampire Weekend and We Are Scientists during the show. Further research indicates that Shout Out Louds, the Dead 60s, and Takka Takka will also be on the soundtrack (Tapes n’ Tapes will not be on the disc, although I swear I heard them at one point).

So yeah, I give Nick and Norah a 2 out of 5.

Review -- Will Currie and the Country French's A Great Stage

OK, so first off – this is not going to be a fair review no matter how hard I try.

I’ve been listening to Will Currie and the Country French (WCFC hereafter) for about a year and half. For those unfamiliar with WCCF, they’re a piano based outfit in the vein of a swingier Ben Folds. I first met them in November of 2006, when I was participating in a competition called Last Band Standing with the Tyler Schwende Band. We made it through the quarter- and semi-finals and ran up against WCCF in the finals. There were two other bands there but I don’t think there was ever any doubt that it would come down to the two of us. In the end we wound up winning (a decision that was hotly contested, as I’m sure it would have been either way), but more importantly I had found an amazing new band to be excited about. WCCF was so danceable, so fun, so talented, so easy to listen to. I picked up their four-song EP the next show we played with them in (I think) September 2007 for $1, and caught them live as often as I could, whether I was on the bill or not. Then they got signed to Murderecords and released A Great Stage.

Intially I was very excited to hear their full length. I had assumed that there would be an immediate re-recording of a couple of the songs on the EP with a bunch of new material. Not so: all four songs from the EP are here (“Surprising Me”, “Centerfold”, “Thunder Bay Coastguard Radio”, “Honest People”) and while they definitely have been remastered there isn’t much different aside from the odd cymbal shot. There are technically five new songs, but when you eliminate the brief bookends “A Great Stage” and “A Grand Reprise” there are three: “Maybe”, Mannin Veen” and “Friendly Fire”. So my enthusiasm dimmed a bit.

For me personally, WCCF is at their best when they’re driving fast and dancing. So this includes “Surprising Me”, “Honest People”, “Thunder Bay Coastguard Radio” and “Friendly Fire”. You might notice that only one of the newer songs is included on that list. “Mannan Veen” is a mid-tempo swaying love song, and “Maybe” is a straight up piano ballad. They are both incredibly well done and are totally re-listenable; the only reason I mention this is to highlight why I was personally somewhat disappointed in the disc. If you have a bigger fetish than I for piano pop, then you aren’t going to have this problem.

A Great Stage is quite good, in fact. Had I come into it fresh I would have enjoyed the majority of the songs, and I think most people will. I like the use of “A Great Stage/A Grand Reprise” to open and close the disc. WCCF do all the big things that makes songs great (melodies, sharp musicianship, quality lyricism, etc.), but also have a great ear for smaller touches (vibraphones, shakers, whistling, etc.).

I’ve been telling anyone that would listen about WCCF for a year and a half, and will continue to do so. I really can’t wait to see what’s next for them. If you don’t have it already please go buy A Great Stage.

Review -- We Are Scientists' Brain Thrust Mastery

So first of all, welcome to my new blog. The idea is that I'll be posting all the music related stuff that doesn't fit on the Haus Hlog: reviews, thought on the industry, my own experiences, etc. My best intentions will be to update twice a week, definitely on Fridays and once some other time during the week. Right now, I am the only reader. Let's see how long that lasts!


Ask anyone I hung out with last summer -- all I ever wanted to listen to was We Are Scientists' With Love and Squalor. I barely missed them on two tour stops (once I didn't find out until after the show, the other I couldn't find anyone to go with me to Toronto), and I'm feeling like I might not get that opportunity back. Obviously WAS will come back to TO at some point, but I doubt I'll go see them after Brain Thrust Mastery.

Yes, I understand the easiest thing in the world is to pan a sophomore album. There's less time to write it, more pressure to have it do well, and it's hard to keep from playing it safe; conversely, you can't go too far from what worked (and yes, I know WAS had a disc or two before Squalor, but that was their first LP).

At some point before Mastery was recorded, drummer Michael Tapper left the Scientists to pursue "other things". There are a lot of bands that could get by with any drummer at the helm (most of my bands can say this), but We Are Scientists is not one of them. Tapper's frantic, focused, outside-the-box drumming was an essential equal third in the attack and edge of Squalor, and it's extremely noticeable by its absence. Don't get me wrong, session drummer Garrett Ray is more than competent, but he's not a part of the songwriting process and is limited at how far he can go. His beats and fills are very predictable and have nothing resembling the percussive craftsmanship that Tapper applied to each song.

Granted, there's not a lot of room to be creative when everything slows down to mid-tempo toe-tapping rock. For the most part, Squalor was too fast to tap your foot to; you had to dance. Everything here is just plodding by comparison. No jittery guitar, no teeth-gritting vocals, no invincibly pounding bass lines. Melodically, everything sounds very poppy and hooky, which is not a crime, but is somewhat disappointing.

The production is tough to swallow. There were very few studio add-ons on Squalor, barring the odd keyboard or tambourine. Mastery is awash in synths, strings, saxophones, cymbal washes, and layered guitar parts. No surprise, considering Ariel Rechtshaid (who me and Wally remember as the lead singer/keyboard wizard of 90's ska underground sensations the Hippos) pushed the sliders on this disc. I loved the Hippos back then, even when they were rocking ridiculously 80's synth pop on their last album, Heads Are Gonna Roll . I'm not at all sure who thought marrying those sounds to WAS was a good idea.

If I was still writing reviews for free CDs and to see my name in newsprint professionally, I would have to talk about the individual songs at some point. Thankfully (for me, not so much for you) I am my blog's editor, so I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. And I don't want to try and find the defining characteristics of what amounts to eleven similar anthills in a row. If I had to pick a song to recommend, I'd pick "Chick Lit" as it comes closest to the intensity and grand sense of personal failure that characterized WAS when I wanted to make sure everyone I knew had heard them.

Downer way to start the blog (mlog?), I know. Sorry. I still want to review Tokyo Police Club's sophomore disc, because I love it a lot. If I can find a store in town that's carrying it I'll also cover Will Currie and the Country French's A Great Stage. I've also got a lot of shows coming up and some backlogged stories about shows I've already had this year.

If you want to catch me live, I'm playing at the Freeway Cafe in Hamilton this Wednesday (June 4) with the Runaway. Thanks for stopping in!