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The Rice Thresher
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Mariel Tam Thresher editorial staff
Here are a few bands that stood out for their pop-rock sensibilities and their utter lack of mullets:
Bauer Bauer started out as just Berend Dubbe, former drummer for Bettie Serveert, with an eight-track machine. But from such humble lo-fi beginnings comes a group capable of everything from spare Burt Bacharach-style piano and vocal melodies to lush, soaring romps through synth-rific, sample-strewn pop with a beat. Dubbe and Sonja van Hamel make up Amsterdam's Bauer, performing keyboards and singing. Their male-female vocals play off each other enchantingly - even when they're not really singing anything, as in "Fernando Ray," which Dubbe claims is about the airing of the film The French Connection, but is just filled with doo-doo-wah-do's. Live, they're joined by a drummer and a guitarist who fiddles with the programmed loops and samples. The programming is used judiciously and isn't overdone, including trumpet lines and, bizarrely enough, electronic dolphin noises. The latter comes into play during "I'm Starting a War With Dolphins," which shows Bauer's occasional lyrical sense of humor. Dubbe even references Bacharach in one line, "They like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony." But then, the lyrics aren't from your average '70s-style pop single. "I had a very bad zoo experience one day," Dubbe explained at Bauer's show at the Red Eyed Fly March 16. "A dolphin almost bit my finger off." If that's what it takes to inspire fun pop ditties with almost-orchestral arrangements a la Pizzicato 5, maybe more young songwriters should get their fingers nearly chewed off. Bauer has two albums out in Europe but none out in the States yet. Hopefully that'll be fixed soon. Until then, keep your ears to the Web, where www.bauer-plaza.com provides a couple of MP3s.
Clem Snide The quartet appeared on stage in dapper country and western suits and an instrument lineup consisting of a guitar, a drum kit, a cello and an honest-to-goodness upright bass. But Clem Snide's sound is hardly straightforward country. They're based in New York City, for starters. And singer/guitarist Eef Barzelay kicked off the band's set at Buffalo Billiards March 16 with an eerie spoken-word invocation, repeating "Tonight I feel like Elvis longing for his long-lost twin." Barzelay's slightly drawling voice resides somewhere in the neighborhood of Will Oldham and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, and as the group's songwriter, he pens some mighty poetic lyrics that are simple but amazingly evocative. "Don't be afraid of your anger," he sang over a gentle Western swing melody early in the set. "I'll eat it with mustard and wine." Another even lovelier lyric from Barzelay goes, "I heard you wearing worried shoes and they're too tight." Clem Snide's sound is twangy pop, but in concert they play like they think they're a rock band, tearing at the music with an energy that their mellow studio tracks hardly hint at. During "I Love the Unknown," off last year's Your Favorite Music (Sire), Jason Glasser's cello goes all discordant like electric guitar feedback and Jeff Marshall does some rock-star leaps in the air - sending his huge upright bass airborne.
eX-Girl Overheard after eX-Girl's performance: "They're such the indie-rock nerd wet dream band." The Tokyo all-girl pop-punk trio certainly has a lot going its way: the looks, the youth, the crazy antics and the matching shiny vinyl flower dresses. Musically, the band embraces everything from new wave to bubblegum to screaming-girl punk. The three members of the guitar/bass/drums group all sing - either in melodic harmony or in shrieking discord. It's not entirely original, but their stage presence is weird and funny, as long as you can stomach large doses of cute. eX-Girl ups the ante of the wacky lyrics of their predecessors like Cibo Matto and Shonen Knife by incorporating even stranger on-stage shenanigans. They claim to be musical ambassadors from the planet Kero Kero. Every so often, guitarist Chihiro will whip out a cuddly stuffed animal, proffer it to the crowd for admiration and then use it as a guitar pick. The band also has the kitsch factor working for them. At eX-Girl's show Friday at the Red Eyed Fly, the group brought onstage a "special, special, special" guest - Robin Scott of M, whose "Pop Musik" was a new wave hit in the '80s. The girls, who have covered the song in the studio, provided light backing vocals and music as Scott took to the mike for the song. And awkwardly, like an elder statesman passing down a torch that he probably never had in the first place, Scott proclaimed eX-Girl to be "the future of pop music." He then trained his camcorder on eX-Girl for the rest of their set. How very Japanese.
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