The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Pants Yell!, and The Depreciation Guild, Upstairs at The Middle East

[The preview for this review can be found here.]

Ech, I know this is late, but I’m still catching up on the uphill backlog. So, I did make it out to the The Pains of Being Pure at Heart concert Upstairs at The Middle East a couple of weeks ago. I caught two of the other bands, The Depreciation Guild and Pants Yell!. The one I had been looking forward to was The Depreciation Guild and, as often happens, they eschewed the dreamier, layered electronics of their recordings for a more typical guitar-centric live set. The newer songs they played seemed to bring out this kind of blander U2-ish poppy side which I really wasn’t into, and their background projection, comprised of flashing squares of color, quickly grew tedious. But I still want to go back and listen to their album, which they have as a free download on their website.

And, as seems to also be happening often, the band that I hadn’t particularly cared for before the show was the one of the two openers I saw that I liked better live. Pants Yell! are from Cambridge and their songs are fairly light-hearted explorations in angst, a la Morrissey. The songs and hooks were catchy, although they did have a tendency to repeat their hooks verbatim a bit too often. But this may have just been due to the lack of supporting instruments, e.g. trumpet, that appear on the recordings. A laid-back and enjoyable set, despite what I believe on American Idol they call “pitchy” vocals, not to mention a guitar that could’ve been a bit more carefully tuned. Although I suppose both did add to the group’s charm, not unlike that charming man Morrissey’s perpetually sharp vocals.

Similarly, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart also suffered from obviously uncentered vocals, although the boyish enthusiasm of the lead singer was also charming, and somewhat refreshing compared to the aloof moroseness one often encounters with too-cool-for-school indie bands. Their set was high energy, nice and new wave-y, and overall as enjoyable as their recordings. Speaking of which, they just put out their first album this month, and it looks like a good buzz has been developing. You can download a couple of mp3s from their official site and a couple other tracks on their MySpace page. And if you’re interested, here’s an interview from last December on Stereogum.com. Oh, and BrooklynVegan has some pics from a show in November if you need something to post over your bed.

Brave New Works at The Boston Conservatory’s New Music Festival

[The preview for this review can be found here.]

Good lord. It’s already the last week of February, and I’ve definitely gotten behind. I ended up not making it to even half of the things I’d planned on in February due to a lot of other stuff going on, but one of the concerts I did make it to was Brave New Works at The Boston Conservatory’s New Music Festival a couple of weeks ago. The program opened with Sunji Hong’s “Shades of Raindrops” which had nice textures and evocative sounds but lacked structure and as a consequence seemed a bit aimless. The same was true of “Wax Lyrical” by Chris Gendall which opened the second half of the concert, although his musical language sounded much more dated in comparison, with its Bartok pizzes and string glissandi.

Forrest Pierce’s “The Black Sword of Sappho”, scored for harp and soprano, was also piecemeal, although much more convincingly so as the texts were from the fragments of the ancient Greeks poet’s writings from “a handful of broken pottery” according to the program note. The performance directions even indicate (rather preciously) that the order of the short movements should be determined by writing their names on “a vessel” and smashing it on stage. The vocal writing, which Pierce says is for “hypersoprano”, features wide leaps, and BNW’s soprano Jennifer Goltz hit all the notes, although she didn’t always make them feel musical due to punching them too hard in general. However her monochromatic attacks may well have been due to her obvious hoarseness due to illness. She fared better in the melismatic passages, though, bringing a confident warmth and smoothness to her tone and beautifully bringing out every note (leading me to hope we get to hear her take on some of the coloratura standards before too long). Although diatonic, the work features fresh harp writing at every moment, and harpist Amy Ley brought excellent support to the partnership.

Mason Bates often uses electronics in his compositions, but his work “String Band”, for piano trio (including prepared piano), was a crowd-pleasing reworking of “twangy” old-timey Americana. The work doesn’t offer anything too deep or surprising and doesn’t quite transcend its source material, but it’s certainly a fun, well-paced romp, and it received a compelling performance by the group.

The final work of the evening was “Objects and Intervals”, a premier for the entire ensemble by Andy Vores. Like the rest of the evening the works’ two movements are also fragmented in many ways, although here the sections feel more purposeful. Vores’ works always have an element of surprise, and this work is idiosyncratically constructed in that after a humorous quodlibet of famous classical melodies from various eras the texture becomes very thin and focuses on the upper strings as they create a gauzy haze of quarter tones around a very tonal center. These are “interrupted” by wordless melismatic sections for the soprano which are surprisingly moving in the way they evoke almost primal cries of emotion. Although the program note indicates the sections are variations (or “compressions”) of the opening source material, the connections are often so buried and tenuous that the work doesn’t feel completely coherent. But as with all new works repeated listenings will certainly illuminate, and kudos to Brave New Works for bringing such a vibrant program to Boston in such polished performances.

Upcoming for February

Because of the Boston Conservatory’s annual New Music Festival, this first week of February has ended up being jam-packed. So much so that due to conflicts there are some things I want to see but won’t be able to. Here’s what I’ve got lined up, and the ones I’m sadly going to have to miss out on:

Friday, February 6: Passion Pit, Paper Route, Cale Parks Downstairs at The Middle East (18+, $12). I’d heard Passion Pit’s track “Sleepyhead” and then liked their other tracks on their MySpace page. The way I’ve been describing them is, “Like MGMT, but much less annoying and more interesting.” Won’t be able to make this one, though, due to the conflict below.

Friday, February 6: Brave New Works: The Boston Conservatory’s New Music Festival, as usual, has a load of worthwhile concerts. This one features a new work by Andy Vores entitled “Objects and Intervals”. It’s immediately preceded by a “prelude concert” by the Ludovico Ensemble of Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments for violin and soprano. Their soprano, Aliana de la Guardia, has yet to disappoint, and after the publicity of the Sellars/Upshaw performance at Lincoln Center this past fall I’m guessing I won’t be the only one interested in this thorny work.

Saturday, February 7 (2 p.m., All Saints Parish, Brookline): Benjamin Britten Noye’s Fludde: David Hoose, Music Director; Lynn Torgove, Stage Director; Members of Cantata Singers and PALS Children’s Chorus; Alysoun Kegel, Artistic Director; Young instrumentalists from Boston area arts organizations. Part of Cantata Singers‘ Britten season. Should be fun.

Saturday, February 7 (8 p.m., First Church in Cambridge): Sarasa Ensemble, Music of Handel, Purcell, and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with Dominique Labelle, soprano and Michael Chance, countertenor: Part of the Boston Early Music Festival.

Sunday, February 8: Momenta Quartet: Also part of the Boston Conservatory’s New Music Festival. Featuring Glass’s Quartet #5 and a premiere by faculty member Dalit Warshaw for theremin and string quartet with the composer playing theremin. This evening also includes a prelude concert by the Ludovico Ensemble, Morton Feldman’s Crippled Symmetry.

Sunday, February 15 (3 p.m.): Chameleon Arts Ensemble “a tale that’s told in ancient song”. Especially looking forward to violinist Joanna Kurkowicz’s performance of Ravel’s fiery crowd-pleaser Tzigane. You can get 1/2-price tickets from goldstar.com and if you register using this link I get a small commission. Whoo!

Sunday, February 15: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Pants Yell! and The Depreciation Guild Upstairs at The Middle East (18+, $9). Another show M wanted to go to, but I quickly got into The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s shoegaze-y brand of pop as well as The Depreciation Guild’s dreamy electronics. If you like M83, you’ll probably like The Depreciation Guild, and in fact at the moment I actually prefer the latter.

Phew! Looks like it’s going to be a marthon two weeks. Hopefully I’ll have enough stamina to get through it all. Stay tuned …