The Dream Syndicate found whatever was in Sister Lovers and Tonight’s The Night still breathing in L.A. in 1984 and used it to make Medicine Show, still a nervous and wild local classic. Guitarist-singer Steve Wynn will perform the album in its entirety tonight with his band the Miracle 3. He speaks now from a quiet park in New York. This interview by Chris Ziegler.
Live reviews
DIRTY PROJECTORS @ THE TROUBADOUR
I wish I had better words for each member’s abilities, truth be told. But I ended up completely losing my shit that night as the band seemed to strike the main vein. I was overcome to the point where all I could do was bust into my best truffle shuffle and badly sing along with each harmony. It’s what I’d imagine Grateful Dead fans felt like in the ’80s (no irony). I was nothing but powerless.
ZIG ZAG WANDERER: THE OTHER MICHAEL JACKSON +PLUMP DJS + JERRY LEWIS + CHOKE
By three the next afternoon, I was slumped exhausted in the back row of the Silent Movie Theater, as the last night of L.A.’s first-ever Jerry Lewis retrospective flickered to giddy life. The three hours of clips shown before the main feature were like a curated tour through a vast and quirky comic universe roughly the scope of those of James Joyce or Flann O’Brien, and (in America at least), about as little understood. The last living heir to the great line of Buster Keaton and Stan Laurel, Lewis remains problematic to American critics and I think I know why.
BILL CALLAHAN @ THE TROUBADOUR
This was an over two-hour show, alternately exhilarating and draining, but altogether satisfying. The concert ended with an encore performance of “Eid Ma Clack Shaw,” a hilarious, self-deflating account of the creative process that details how Callahan found all the answers in life and summed them up in the most brilliant line ever concocted, only to find out later he wrote the complete gibberish of the song title. It’s about as good a summation of Callahan you’ll get. No matter how bleak and down he gets, he always has a cathartic card up his sleeve to show there’s something to smile about if you have the right perspective, or a good night’s sleep.
Album reviews
LONGMONT POTION CASTLE: 7
The Longmont reputation has finally preceded itself: a respondent working at a record store hears LPC’s delay pedal antics and instantly recognizes it, one-upping the call by throwing back an LPC reference. I guess it had to happen sometime? Another sign that Longmont Potion Castle is asserting his place in the American cultural landscape!
MIKA MIKO: WE BE XUXA
On the surface, We Be Xuxa almost seems like a retread of old school American punk, but actually it evokes without constant copying—it’s fresh-faced punk, yet my heart hears Born Innocent-era Redd Kross in their sisterly choruses, and early early Black Flag or even Ramones in their strumming (minus Greg Ginn’s noodling) and Wipers downturns on the chords, and a Darby Crash-like insistence on writing lyrics too self-referential and profound to sing straight into the microphone. And there’s even a Urinals cover!?! And there’s a Beach Blvd-esque melodicism to Jessie Clavin’s bass lines, one that perfectly matches their Descendants-like love of making up pragmatic gerunds such as “Totion.” A lot of reviewers have said these gals (et dude) sound like X-Ray Spex, but that is a lazy lie!
WAR TAPES: THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE
“Dreaming of You” is a serenade that could be anachronistically played in that new-wave version of Marie Antoinette. War Tapes tries riffs a la Franz Ferdinand and Moving Units in “The Night Unfolds,” while “She Lied” delivers lyrics surely inspired by heartbreak. “Mind is Ugly“ is like the off-focus, black-and-white music video—drumming and strumming that don’t casually fit anywhere else on the record. Besides their primary post hardcore style, War Tapes pull other influences from other eras—they have the sensibility of the Cure, pipes recalling Ian Curtis, and vibes from Morrissey.
