Sunday, Jul 6, 2008
The "Seinfeld" stamp, "Careless Love," Wire's arty punk revival and more.
May 15, 2000 | May 15, 2000
1) The Holy Childhood, "Up With What I'm Down With" (Gern Blandsten, P.O. Box 356, River Edge, NJ 07661)
There's a cracked vision in this sprawling music -- some drunk in his 20s conducting the Band with a few female friends to loosen the choruses, maybe -- that reaches a pitch of experience and desire so expansive the whole thing seems to have been recorded outdoors.
2) Richard Belzer as detective John Munch, "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" (May 5)
For once, no joke, no conspiracy mongering, just a case that sucks him in and breaks over his head, leaving his nihilism boiled down to the coldest professionalism, rewriting his ruined skin, wire glasses and dark beady eyes into the most complete deadpan imaginable, so that the suspect has two choices: fall into the black hole of this man's face, or confess, fast.
3) Wire at Great American Music Hall, San Francisco (May 2)
Formed in 1976, they were from the start the most severely arty of all British punk bands, and it was their severity that saved them: their pursuit, it always seemed -- as over the decades Colin Newman, Robert Gotobed, B.C. Gilbert and Graham Lewis went their own ways and reformed, dumping an all-but-unsolvable confusion of LPs and CDs off the charts -- of form before and after anything else. Despite Newman's cutting accent ("London suburban art-school sarcastic," according to critic Jon Savage), or the fact that in 1991, lacking Gotobed, the group recorded as Wir, their humor was all in their melodies, playing against the sense of espionage in their lyrics, against the harsh, absolutely self-contained bass drums guitars rhythms of their ridiculously brief songs. In a word, they were perfect.
For the sold-out first show of an eight-date American tour they were instantly up to speed: terrifically loud but precise, with Newman's staccato delivery for "Pink Flag" letting every word stand out clearly. They were pure punk in shape and attack -- punk as wish, as what it could be, as an ideal -- but without any baggage as to clothes, attitude, history. Never big stars, they carried nothing more than their old or young-looking selves and their sound onto the stage. Nothing was mythicized; nothing happening in the music referred to anything that wasn't present, except to the degree that the music referred to, or in its way reformed, the world at large. Expressions were dour. Movement was minimal. The four played as if they had invented punk -- or had stumbled upon it the day before, as if their project was so conceptual it was completed before it was begun. Doubt and nervousness underlay every tune. The cryptic invitations of the words suggested code. That made the momentary release of the melodies in the likes of "Dot Dash" or "French Film (Blurred)" unbearably pleasurable, because even as you felt the Pleasure, you felt it being taken away.
Remaining tour dates: May 15, Irving Plaza, New York; May 26-28, the Garage, London.
Five indistinct rehearsal cuts recorded last fall. Forget the "first edition: 1 of 1,000" printed, not stamped, on the sleeve (as I read it, that means there can be 1,000 first editions of limitless pressings each) and look for "On Returning (1977-1979)" (Retro/EMI, 1989), "Behind the Curtain: Early Versions 1977 & 1978" (EMI, 1995), "Chairs Missing" (Harvest/EMI, 1978, their best) and "Document & Eyewitness" (Rough Trade, 1981), in whatever configurations you might find, plus Ian Penman's fine "Flies in the Ointment" in the March issue of the Wire.
5) Richard Shindell, "Somewhere Near Patterson" (Signature)
I bought this glossy folk recording because of a fulsome New York Times review ("What does it mean to say a singer-songwriter is the best?") trumpeting "the vocal equivalent of Shaker furniture." Bet you didn't know "Shaker" was a synonym for "florid."
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