Old Soles

Salt Lake City Upcoming Concerts: Michael Franti & Spearhead, Fiona Apple, Evanescence

By Brian Staker, 10-19-06

	Pick of the Week: Bonnie Prince Billy

Michael Franti & Spearhead

Political and social consciousness has always been an important part of the outlook of Michael Franti. Even as an angry young rapper with the Beatnigs and Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Even though he has mellowed out as we all do when growing older, he has kept up the efforts to ‘keep it real,’ even at times criticizing the materialism and misogyny of mainstream rap at times with his various efforts.

With Spearhead as the final fermentation of his group work before he branched out into solo efforts in the late 90’s, he refined his message with songs like “Hole in the Bucket,” depicting the plight of the homeless, and “Positive,” confronting the growing AIDS epidemic. With musical textures including funk samplings, tight guitar riffs and physically affecting rhythms, the group found mainstream success as well as acceptance in the hip-hop hierarchy. Franti’s Songs From the Front Porch did a stylistic turn into acoustic effort that brought his thought-provoking lyrics to the fore. Spearhead’s latest Yell Fire! was recorded in Jamaica, and along with the book and film I Know I’m Not Alone, create a moving testimony to Franti’s visits to Israel, Palestine and Iraq, taking his consciousness to a global level.

October 19, Club Sound

Also appearing:

October 20-21: Denver, CO (Fillmore Auditorium)

Bonnie Prince Billy **Staker’s Pick Of the Week!**

If as Sir Elton John himself once opined, ‘sad songs say so much,’ the oeuvre of the artist known as Bonnie Prince Billy speaks volumes. The non-de-tune, one of many of itinerant actor and indie songwriter in the alt-country vein born into the world as Will Oldham, isn’t an example of a musical chameleon ala Prince but a man exploring various facets of the same persona, mining rich lyrical ores from the deep vein of the American folk and country musical lexicon.

From the Louisville, KY native’s 1993 debut as ‘the Palace Brothers’ release, There Is No-One What Will Take Care Of You, he has always taken care to pay attention to painstaking detail, whether song construction or lyrics or even instrumentation, including making the best use of talented collaborators such as ex-Chavez and Zwan bassist Matt Sweeney or filmmaker Harmony Korine. His craftsmanship tends to get lost in the rush of his prolific releases, at the rate of about one a year, which makes them seem easily tossed off. But as his latest, The Letting Go (Drag City) makes painfully clear, that’s anything but the case. Recorded in Iceland, the production makes the chill of his haunting melodies seem positively Nordic.

October 19, The Depot

Strike Anywhere

Strike Anywhere is a great name for a punk band, taken apparently from the ubiquitous slogan on matchbook covers. It’s especially apt for a punk rock unit of a political stripe, which this Richmond, VA group has since 1999 inception. Perhaps it just seems they have been around longer because they continue in the fine punk rock tradition of voicing political discontent of groups like Avail, 7 Seconds, and even back to the Clash in many respects. Initially recording for emo imprint Jade Tree although they aren’t emo, the combo switched to more straight ahead recording house Fat Wreck Chords for this year’s Dead FM.

October 23, Club Sound

Also appearing:

October 22: Boise, ID (The Venue)
October 24: Denver, CO (Marquis Theater)

Dashboard Confessional

What do you do when you have become the poster boy for an entire style of music, but your core audience is 13 years old? If you’re Christopher Carrabba, frontman of Dashboard Confessional, you enjoy every minute of it. Even if your bread and butter is the tortured musings of a lyrical persona who spends far too much time writing in a diary. But somehow, you have to hand it to him, from initially uninteresting musings, like the vapid hit “Vindicated” from the movie Spider Man II, Carrabba has chipped away at the blank pages of his mind to produce an effort, this year’s Dusk and Summer, that is more subtle and intimate than any of his previous work. Though those adjectives are all relative terms.

October 23, McKay Events Center (Orem)

Also appearing:

October 24: Denver, CO (Magness Arena)

Stones Throw 10th Anniversary Tour

By the late 90’s, hip-hop music had truly reached a malaise from which it still struggles to extricate itself to some degree: post gangsta rap, the ravages of violent clannish battles had taken its toll, and that lifestyle was no longer glamorized to the extent it had been, but the genre was left instead with a worship of the ‘bling’ instead of keeping its ‘eyes on the prize’ of social justice and positive messages to the community. There have been glimmerings of movements to take hip-hop out of its dilemma, and chief among them are several labels founded in sonic innovation.

Among these is Peanut Butter Wolf. The nomenclature of hip-hop artists is a fascinating study in itself, as much as it represents the efforts to reshape your entire identity by taking on a new tag. Instead of the boastful egoism of some artists, BP Wolf adopts an eccentric, happy-go-lucky monicker that might be a character on some kids’ TV show. It’s also interesting that the experimentation of artists like BPW is rooted in an old-school sound, as if to pay respect to the music of the past, then making it a base to add their own new wrinkles, including elements of turntablism and electronica, as opposed to the voice of the MC dominating a minimal soundscape.

And he formed his own label, Stones Throw, to provide a venue for other similar artists to express their own similar tendencies. Mad Lib and J-Rocc join him for this show that also defies another stereotype: that Salt Lake doesn’t have an audience for hip-hop music.

October 24, Urban Lounge

Also appearing:

October 25: Denver, CO (Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom)

Bouncing Souls

The Bouncing Souls have been, well, bouncing since 1987; long enough they’ve no doubt worn out countless pairs of Chucks, or punker boots, whichever your footwear of choice to pogo or mosh or whatever the punk dance has evolved into. Because when your lifespan as a band reaches the two decade mark, you start adding heady words like ‘evolution’ into the music critic’s verbiage. Do punks evolve? True ones try damn hard not to. Some people thought the Police was somehow ‘punk’ back in the day, now listen to the effete ‘sensitivo’ Sting has evolved into. The New Jersey of Bouncing Souls is in many respects a kind of evolutionary backwater anyway, so that minimizes the danger. The three chords are still the same as always for them. Do I hear a fourth chord there? No? Good. Whew. The only change is taking it to a larger stage, summering at the Warped Tour, hanging out with all the ‘right’ bands, shattering all the right eardrums.

October 24, Club Sound

Also appearing:

October 26: Boise, ID (The Venue)

Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple was one of a number breathy female singer-songwriters to emerge in the mid-nineties as the genre was rediscovered but also the general rush to sign everyone and everything by major labels lifted a lot of ships that couldn’t keep afloat in shallower waters. Fiona Apple is a real talent, however, but her career has followed its own ‘Tidal’ shifts (the title of her debut). The album was one of the biggest hits of the decade, but the 1999 follow-up, the title of which is so long I’m not even going to laboriously type it in here, didn’t quite match that success.

And since then, she has seemingly gone through a musical identity crisis: although she has her fansites and message boards, she has kinda gotten lost amidst the other singers to emerge from the era. We all remember the bitter Alanis Morrisette of “Ironic,” and who can forget the piano-humping eccentricism of Tori Amos? And the gap-toothed Jewel, with her goofy poetry books and attempt at disco. Last year’s Extraordinary Machine found Apple and label Sony forced to reintroduce her to audiences to a degree. But then that’s partly because Sony held off release in fear that tracks weren’t commercial enough, then after they leaked, were forced to put it out. It’s ‘worth the wait,’ as they say; the work of a matured voice who hasn’t resorted to gimmicks like some others in the class of ’95.

October 25, Huntsman Center

Also appearing:

October 24: Boulder, CO (Boulder Theater)

Jagermeister Music Tour

Corporate sponsorship is the name of the game anymore, and adult beverages’ sponsoring a music tour is far less objectionable than, say, chewing tobacco having a large presence in sporting events spectated by minors and other people that might be unduly influenced by the demon advertising, which we all know is one step removed from brainwashing or hypnotism by the likes of the Man They Call Reveen, or David Blaine or somebody. At least music concerts are regulated to only let in adults to venues in which the imbibery of liquids is conducted on the premises. And I like the idea that one of the very bands in the Jagermeister Music Tour, Slightly Stoopid, has a name that conveys a condition you might achieve at some point during the evening. That group and Pepper purvey the kind of heavy-metal/punk/rap hybrid that is the standard issue ‘hard’ music of the day, as befitting one of the hardest of hard alcohols, which doesn’t fool around with the niceties of ‘cocktails’ or ‘mixers’ but is just downed in a hazy, blurring shot, in order to try to ignore that taste like the worst cough medication ever (or the best), in a Teutonic-looking bottle that looks like the stuff was designed to give soldiers courage before conducting some kind of almighty blitzkrieg. It is an assault on your liver, if nothing else.

October 25, Harry O’s (Park City)

Also appearing:

October 26: Aspen, CO (Belly Up)
October 27: Denver, CO (Fillmore Auditorium)

Evanescence

Arkansas Goths. Now I’ve heard everything. But Evanescence has at least a moderately interesting sound, with churning guitars backing the swirling synths and shimmering vocals of Amy Lee. Their song “Bring Me to Life,” was easily the best thing about Ben Affleck’s attempt to portray superhero Daredevil. But that’s not saying much, is it? I just keep remembering that video of one of their songs, with Lee eventually falling out a tall window of some goth-looking castle. Evanescence are nothing if not stylish. The band has tried to expand their emotional range on this year’s The Open Door, (Wind Up) but it’s debatable whether you shouldn’t just stick with what you do best when you do it as well as they do, somewhat of a schtick though it is.

October 25, In the Venue

Also appearing:

October 24: Denver, CO (Paramount Theatre)

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