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11/10/09 Pike Room Pontiac, MI
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11/11/09 Horseshoe* Toronto, ON 11/12/09 Motore* Montreal, QC 11/13/09 Space* Portland, ME 11/15/09 Middle East* Cambridge, MA 11/16/09 Bell House Brooklyn, NY 11/17/09 First Unitarian* Phila, PA 11/18/09 9:30 Club* Washington, DC 11/19/09 UVA Chapel Charlottesville, VA 11/20/09 Grey Eagle* Asheville, NC 11/21/09 Earl* Atlanta, GA 11/23/09 Bottletree* Birmingham, AL 11/24/09 One Eyed Jacks NOrleans, LA 11/26/09 Walter’s* Houston, TX 11/27/09 Mohawk* Austin, TX 11/30/09 Modified Phoenix, AZ 12/01/09 Casbah San Diego, CA 12/02/09 Troubadour* Los Angeles, CA 12/04/09 Great American Music* SF, CA 12/11/09 "The Crocodile"* Seattle, WA 12/12/09 Mississippi Studios, OR with PGM |
+ abridged album review
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J Tillman ♥ Music Box |
Year in the Kingdom remembers a simpler era that Tillman was not alive to experience. Softer tracks cite 60s folk influences like Joni Mitchell, had Mitchell penned her songs in a humble log cabin, without basic comforts save for canned beans and a faithful canine companion. The sparse “Age of Man” is a few twangs/few stringed instruments short of Americana territory, while “Though I Have Wronged You” reminds us that Tillman isn’t seriously concerned by FF comparisons. At times matter-of-factly somber (“There is No Good in Me”), the album lulls its listeners into a false feeling of peace (albeit reflective, disquieting peace) that does not prepare the ears for the sheer force of Tillman’s live rocking.
Kingdom-the-album clashed awesomely with Friday night’s show at the Music Box Theatre in Minneapolis. I now have a physical point of reference for the expression “it blew my mind,” as I’m pretty sure I lost a piece of my skull when Tillman blew my mind. Similar to the structure of the studio tracks—gentle start, build-up, full instrumental progression—the show began as one would expect had they listened to Kingdom: Tillman + band = traditional 3-dimensional engagement. Then, maybe a third of the way into the set, all hell broke loose. Cue roar of full instrumental capacity, skin-tingling whine of amped slide guitar, psychedelic transformation, and crazy apeshit thrashing. On top of everything unholy, we, the audience, bore witness to grown men playing plastic recorders and finger cymbals. Surely I wasn’t the only one to lose some head mass by the end of the night.
Cerebral hemorrhage notwithstanding, strong tracks like “Though I Have Wronged You” sounded ridiculously swollen with intensity and deliberate flair. Not showy, per se; rather, phrenic but perverted by foggy invention. It was like walking into the Louvre for the first time—extraordinary but strangely unfocused, as if the senses were forced into overdrive. Had I lapped a taste of Tillman’s sweat*, the experience would’ve been complete. Unfortunately, there was no exchange of bodily fluids; there wasn’t even an encore (a mumbled “thanks” and the musicians made their hasty exit). It didn’t matter. How do you follow an act like yourself?
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J. Tillman is currently on tour in support of Year in the Kingdom. Upcoming shows include stops in Chicago and New York. For more information or to listen to select tracks, visit his Myspace at http://www.myspace.com/jtillman.
* I’m not a creeper, promise.
11/09/2009 03:26:24 ♥ lara (
/lara206.vox.com)
♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ myspace.com/jtillman
I was walking home - desperately - from work one day, shuddering with my disinterest, when I looked up and saw a simple composition floating in the impatient sky. All of the elements were ruled by astronomy, so as each second passed, they were shifted by a celestial slight-of-hand.
I saw a crescent moon, hanging in the sky like a slice from a ghostly fruit. A rag of cloud, the color of sweetness - apricots, irises - was pulled across the pale lunar fraction. The sky was a gentle product of the negotiation between daylight and sunset: a lavender agreement.
The sky assembles visions like this every evening. It is common drink. But I would dare anyone to take a sip from this vignette ordinaire and not return home happy and reeling.
Night 1:
Flamingo Dancer returns from the bathroom and Mr FD asks:
"Did you see any dragons?"
"Yes," said I. "They were bar-b-queing the yaks"
"I hope there are some leftovers for breakfast" he says and goes back to sleep.
Night 2:
Mr FD returns from the bathroom and I ask:
"Did you see any dragons?"
"Dragons!" Mr FD exclaims. "I am sick of slaying dragons. Day in, day out, nothing but dragon slaying. At least they could keep it down to one a day." He returns to bed and goes back to sleep.
Dragons and yaks in our backyard...the neighbours are not going to be happy at all.
- 20:44 Sinatra on the box and old Italian couples dancing on Saturday night...perfect! #
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If you read the comments on yesterday's post, you'll know that today leaves the bonobos in the dust for VOLES!
Voles are a small rodent and are often confused with mice, moles, and rats, and are only found in the northern hemisphere. There are 155 species of voles (although these guys say 124), including pine, water, mountain, etc. They will eat a wide variety of food, from bark to dead animals and insects. They are quite fond of roots and bulbs, often killing the plant before the gardener realizes the animals are even there.
And hey, voles even have their own website! I think they should send one of their own out to design classes, though, to spruce the page up a bit. They're small, they could sneak into class in someone's backpack.
Apparently voles deserve more attention. Purdue University states that they are the fastest evolving mammal and are a bit of a genetic enigma.
Today's final vole lesson is taught in pictures:
Stephan LOVES Christmas. He sees the displays go up in stores and gets excited. We were walking through Kohl's a couple weeks ago and he saw their Christmas area and exclaims, "mommie, it's Christmastime here!"
Friday night I was out with a friend and we stopped in Target (the one near me is attached to the mall), I found a small tree that was $9. Didn't quite want to get it right then, but I knew that Stephan would probably love to have "Christmastime" in his room. I talked to Andy about it and we both agreed the tree was worth it. So after nap I said I wanted to go to the store and get a surprise for Stephan. He of course wanted to know what it was. When I told him I wanted to get him a tree for his room he didn't seem super enthused about the idea.
However, as he realized what I was saying he got a little more excited about things. When I showed him the little tree he got very happy and decided he wanted colored lights. We usually have white ones on the big tree, and I figured the colored ones wouldn't be as bright to leave on at night when he's going to sleep. We found the tree, the lights, a mini tree skirt and a few ornaments.
When we got home, the first thing we had to do was set up the tree, and put on some Christmas music. Stephan's a riot.
Everything always seems so much livelier through the eyes of a toddler.
When Michelle & I went to the Outer Banks of NC in September, we stopped by a really nice store called Sandy Bay Gallery. After making our jewelry purchases and chatting with the owner, we walked back outside and stopped to admire the hippo pottery. But oh look! Hippo Mouth has a resident!
Is that the blurpiest little frog ever? The shop owner saw us looking and came out and said he lives in there, and that sometimes there is another one that hangs out close by. But before I could get more photos inside the hippo, she coaxed him out onto the wall:
and that is about half of my vacation photos right there....
At the far end of the enormous Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern is a correspondingly huge metal box: thirty metres long, thirteen metres high and sitting on two-metre stilts. One end of the box is open with a metal ramp leading up to the pitch-black interior. The artwork entitled How It Is by Miroslaw Balka is said to allude to the Holocaust, whereby the huge metal container is akin to the trucks that took the Jews away to the camps of Treblinka or Auschwitz.
Walking up the steel ramp towards the vast dark opening of the box is certainly unsettling. Even the sound and vibrations of footsteps on the metal ramp feels cold. Once you are inside the structure it gets progressively darker as your move further in. People beside you become less discernable and those at more than an arms length away cannot be seen at all. Were it not for the cheerful and exited chatter of most of the visitors the experience would have been decidedly eerie.
I went in with my sister while her boyfriend remained outside taking pictures. Once we had gone in some way and I could no longer make out or hear any people in front of us I stopped so that my sister’s boyfriend could catch up with us. While we waited for him we simply appreciated the odd sensation of being in a dark box. Before long my sister’s boyfriend appeared beside us. I was surprised that he managed to find us so quickly but also glad because I was eager to step into the absolute darkness that lay ahead. As I took a step forward though I came smack up against the back end of the structure. The wall was lined in soft black velvet, which felt nice to touch and was as unexpected as the wall itself. Turning around I was surprised to see how much more brightly lit the box now seemed and how close the entrance actually was. I had expected it to be further away.
For me the experience of walking into the box was comparable to ones journey through life: as you move forward you don’t actually know what is coming next or whom you will bump into. You might link arms with someone and walk beside others but most of the people you see or hear you’ll never know. When you reach the end it comes as a surprise, it’s disappointing, although you knew it was coming all along. Like the unexpected touch of velvet on the box however death is probably comforting. Our lives will also most likely seem like a much quicker journey than we imagined when we look back on them. Even at this point my life seems to have passed by ever so quickly. Lastly, I imagine that our lives in retrospect will seem far simpler than we experienced them to be, just as the box was much brighter looking back towards the entrance where we started out.
Since the box is supported on stilts you can walk underneath it and hear the footsteps of those inside. If the box is symbolic of life then the space under the box could be likened to the netherworld of ghosts perhaps, or the life one leads after we have left this box that we are now in. I don’t believe in life after death mind you, but if there were such a thing I would imagine that it would eclipse life as the Turbine Hall eclipses the box. Perhaps the after-afterlife would be the world outside of the Tate Modern and so on, until such a point that we live a space that is infinite.
