Dwarr at Walter's

Black Bananas were outrageous, Magic Markers noisy and brash, but the whole of last night I was anticipating the arrival of the very last act, the elusive Duane Warr. Writing under the name Dwarr, Duane has played solo since the 80s but never toured until his first gig in Austin, Saturday night. After Bananas finished, Duane could be seen pacing around, sporting a big smile, clad in a pair of intensely elevated black leather boots. He had no roadies to help him so I assisted him in hoisting his giant Marshall cab onto the stage. 

Duane's vocals borrowed from bluesy the baritone of Ozzy Osbourne but left out the shrill highs. His voice never cracked once which is pretty remarkable given the intense concentration he also paid to his white hot lead guitar playing while singing. He melted every face in the room with energy to spare.

Although this is a solo project and most of the songs were written on a four track with nothing more than a session drummer, Duane did have help from two other younger musicians. Between each song, the muscular metal-head revealed himself to be a warm, avuncular, Southern gentleman, never missing an opportunity to tell us all background on a song's history or a personal story. I've read certain critics referring to Duane's style and content as antisocial but nothing could be further from the truth. He is probably one of the nicest performers I've ever had the pleasure to observe.

At this point, Dwarr's set list consists mostly of older material Duane wrote in the 80s and some stuff a little more recently but this tour isn't to promote anything brand new. Drag City did however, recently re-release his dramatic debut "Starting Over". The show's highlight was clearly a soulful and foreboding rendition of fan favorite "Gates of Hell" in which Warr reminds us all to keep on the straight and narrow. Who knows when or if he will tour again, given his history. I don't see why he wouldn't though, he's in better shape than I ever will be and has the pipes of someone half his age.

Duane Warr plays first dates ever

Dwarr (Duane Warr) is an enigmatic figure to say the least. Rumors float around the web about his turbulent past as a reformed drug user but I haven't discovered too much to back that up. Similarly to our city's beloved Jandek, he's been active for decades without performing a live date (or at least that's what I've come to understand from his publicists). Tonight at Houston's Walter's on Washington, Dwarr will be performing the second gig of his first tour ever.

"Starting Over" is his first record (recently re-released by Drag City) and it is a cornucopia (no Sabbath pun intended) of gloom/doom metal with very phased-out Ozzy-like vocals. The title track in particular reminds me of possibly one of my favorite Sabbath tunes, the jazzy, genteel, but also very baron and haunting "Planet Caravan" off "Paranoid". While plenty of metal performers are able to match the technical abilities of Sabbath's classic lineup there are almost none, save Warr, who can contemplate loneliness, darkness and desolation in a similar fashion. That and the guy's got serious guitar chops.You can get this re-released gem through Drag City. Be there tonight if you can. It will rock for sure.

A Post-Punk DJ I Shall Be

My friend (and brilliant IDM artist) Pulse Rifle is setting up a weekly music showcase here in Houston and you are all invited. I will be DJing for the first time in my life but all I'll really be doing is playing a bunch of music I hope you've never heard and pray you're impressed by my selection.

I can promise that I will triumph over my music blogger tendencies and fight urges to play selections off of Pet Sounds or three hour Phillip Glass recordings.

The playlist I've compiled will be (surprised looks and spit-takes all around) composed mostly of post-punk songs each of which I hope has a strong enough dance component to distract people from dwelling on how self-indulgent my themed playlist really is. Here is the event page for any of you interested in coming out to our little soiree!

Plunging into more Jandek after his Big Star Bar blowout

After moving to a new place with my own mailbox I decided to finally solicit the mysterious Corwood Industries for my first fix of actual Jandek CDs. I've been back into Houston's man in black ever since his explosive April 1st electronic gig at Houston's Big Star Bar. He filled the room with stabs of sinister feedback, occasionally talking out mystical, lyrics about love and hate. I have high quality recordings of the first two songs. I promise I'll eventually post these for your listening pleasure.

A little background for those of you who have no idea who I'm talking about, Jandek is a Houston born outsider musician known for his dissonant guitar playing and more recently, his foree into post-modern free-jazz collaborations. He started making albums in the early 80s and has churned out over 50 albums since then, all distributed through the clandestine, Jandek-only, Houston record label Corwood Industries.

In order to get your hands on official, new, Jandek merch of any kind you have to send away via snail mail to p.o. box 15375, Houston Texas, 77220. The actual discography with prices of each item is posted on the hyper-minimalist label website. Recently, I sent away for four albums and about a week later they came in this inconspicuous brown paper package:

The albums that I got were as follows:

Khartoum (2005)

This one is extremely inaccessible for beginners. I've acquired the bizarre taste of Jandek so it wasn't that weird to me but this album is remarkably hard to approach in the sense that it is pure Jandek vocals plus rattling, jangling acoustic stabs. It doesn't even sound like there was any post-production. The lyrics are emotional and frightening, especially on songs like "I shot myself" but this one is hard to listen to all in one sitting. On many albums, Jandek breaks up his patterns by going back and forth between electric and acoustic, lyrics and no lyrics, accompaniment and no accompaniment. That brings me to the next album I ordered.

Chair Beside a Window (1982)

This early album does do a good job of providing an eclectic picture of Jandek and the different things he can do with his arcane style of music. On songs like "You think you know how to score" Jandek pairs his guitar with harmonica. "European Jewel" is a jagged but surprisingly tonal and satisfying electric number that sounds like it could have been an alternate take from the immortal "Sister Ray" sessions. The sound engineer left the booth during the recording of this 17 minute song, telling Lou Reed, "I don't have to listen to this". I wonder what he would have said to Jandek. Anyway, there also appears the unusual "Nancy Sings" which consists of a beautifully voiced uncredited female vocalist singing over Janky's quiet acoustic noodling. Fantastic release.

Manhattan Tuesday (2005)

This is a double live album recorded around the time of Jandek's re-emergence in the early 2000s. Jandek plays a Korg synth and gives cosmic sermons backed up by drums and electric guitar. This one is very atmospheric and a little less dissonant. It wouldn't be a bad beginning point for the very vanilla listener. Don't get me wrong, it's out-there in the sense that everything Jandek does is out-there, but it's still fairly accessible. No real song titles other than Part 1, 2, 3, etc. Very stream of consciousness.

Where do you go from here (2011)

Many of the critics who reviewed this one have dubbed it his "jazz record". There's lots of grand piano on this album played in a jazzy down tempo. Like "Manhattan. . ." there are no real track names but on the ninth track Jandek does some surprisingly normal and competent singing about the topic matter of the album's name. Spastic but musical drumming fills the backgrounds of these songs. Track two has a nice electric guitar jam. A very accessible and enjoyable album.

More reviews to come as I order more albums from Corwood. I strongly urge you all to do the same.

Delta Spirit 4/12 at Fitz: Study Guide

Delta Spirit started out their musical life as a quaint, folksy, Americana-laden, indie act. Most of the music off their first album (2006’s “Ode to Sunshine“) reminds me of Athens Georgia folk project Phosphorescent: heavy on lap-steel and country authenticity. However, over their next two albums they underwent a radical transformation.

On their sophomore LP “History from Below” they clung to their folk roots but embraced a slightly harder, more modern sound. This metamorphosis began to show on songs like “Bushwick Blues” where buzzing electric guitars and splashy reverb replaced soft folk crooning and acoustic jangling. Still, the mix was closer to 50/50 folk and modern rock.

As other critics have pointed out, their self-titled March release seems to be self-titled for a reason: acknowledging a kind of rebirth. “Tear it up” shows just how different the band sounds in 2012 with its quirky experimental percussion and growled Wolf Parade-like vocals. The music just sounds bigger, in general. More dramatic, more bold. The quaintness has largely evaporated and left in its place a spacey modern rock that somehow still retains warmth and familiarity.

CHEAT SHEET

Songs I hope they play but they probably won’t: “Trashcan”, “Strange Vine”

Sounds like: Lindsay Buckingham, Phosphorescent

You may also like: Cass McCombs, The War on Drugs, Dr. Dog

Songs they will definitely play: “California”, “Idaho”, “Parade”, “Timebomb”

Best album: “Delta Spirit”

GET TICKETS HERE

Miike Snow - Happy to You

Happy to You is certainly a more upbeat release than their debut. The self-titled first release took the traditionally cheery sounds of electro-pop and injected it with some very sombre themes. Even the less than happy sounding "God Help this Divorce" has more pep and optimism than most songs off the debut.

"Pretender" stands out as a potential dance-floor hit with trance organ stabs and very complimentary oohs and ahhs. This variety of mood will only add more replay value to each album respectively.

"Archipelago" counters this by turning down the electronics slightly and allowing Ezra Koenig/Peter, Bjorn, and John vocals to ring out making them the centerpiece.

Highly enjoyable.

Houston, please don't paint your teeth

As Ramon so kindly reminded you all in this week's preview, Big Star Bar will be visited by a representative from Corwood Industries this Sunday afternoon. I am speaking of none other than the least accessible musician in all of Houston music history, the arcane, abstruse, artist himself: Jandek.

I felt compelled to write this little piece because I've run into an unbelievable amount of people my own age who have no idea who Jandek is. This includes people who are into way weirder music than I am, like power noise and pedal noise stuff. Stuff you couldn't pay me to pretend to care about.

There was a time when this would have been a bigger deal, more specifically before his 2004 Glasgow gig, which Ramon also touched on. Before this small, unheralded, show there is essentially no record of the man playing live despite the fact that his career started in 78 and he had, by 2004, released over thirty albums. It wasn't until 2009 that Jandek played his hometown of Houston for the first time at Rudyards. Just a few months ago he played the Menil as well.

However, some of the best live music Jandek has played for Houston so far was not on any stage or at any festival. Last year, he was kind enough to play a fully original two song acoustic set broadcast live over KTRU shortly before the station's FM signal went dead. The songs had a chilling, eldritch, delivery but also one of great emotional depth and pathos. Jandek was a perfect last live performance to honor the innovation and eclecticism that KTRU has shown Houston over the past few decades.

Besides his highly unconventional contributions to music, Jandek himself is an interesting subject for investigation. Most of what we know about him is founded upon rumors and hearsay (and Wikipedia). According to an entry in Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music, "He'd written seven novels, but after they'd been rejected by New York publishers, he'd burned all the manuscripts."

Odd, impossible to confirm anecdotes like these are typically all we can learn about Jandek because of his curious unwillingness to talk about his personal life at any meaningful length. Even during the rare occasions Jandek has made himself accessible to the press he remains impossibly distant and vague; not hostile by any means but distant for sure. This clip from the documentary "Jandek on Corwood" shows Jandek's characteristic evasiveness. It's almost comical. When asked about where he met a particular group of session musicians he responds with what feels like the longest pause in all of human history. The camera pans, the interviewer fidgets, some b-roll is shown, and then Jandek finally replies that it wouldn't be right to say. Under the Youtube video, commenters swear that the man on the other end of the line couldn't possibly be Jandek. They say he put someone up to it. One even says he met Jandek and that he sounds nothing like this. Every time someone tries to answer more questions about the man, the plot always seems to thicken.

If you're looking to actually purchase his music, it gets even more mysterious. One cannot simply drive over to Cactus and load up on Jandek. No. That would be too easy. The only way to have access to his full catalog is by mail. There isn't even an order form, just an address and a list of very reasonably priced albums and DVDs.

Whether this anonymity is merely an artistic choice or a real distaste for public life I can't say, but either way I've decided to not detract from it by omitting what consensus says is his real name. It's out there, you can find it but I'll leave that to you. If it's important to him, I won't bother him with more exposure of that kind.

Regardless of what you think of Jandek's work, he's an important part of Houston's rich musical heritage and Sunday's event should prove interesting to anyone with a taste for outsider music. The performance will be an early one at 4 p.m. so don't plan on showing up late. Eclectic Houston, multi-instrumentalist Benjamin Wesley will be involved somehow but the details are hazy. Expect great things.