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| Friday, February 19, 2010 at Wonder Ballroom |
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(click for full-page printable poster)
GENRES
Indie Rock
Pop
Punk
Rock
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KUFO Presents
Alkaline Trio
Cursive
The Dear & Departed
Friday, February 19, 2010
Wonder Ballroom 503-284-8686
128 NE Russell St, Portland, OR (MapQuest)
8pm (doors open at 7pm). All Ages.
$18.00 advance tix from Ticketmaster.
$20.00 at the door.
"Save me from myself/Save me from this hell." "Help Me"
Love. Alcoholism. Depression. Fire. Drugs. Blasphemy. Death.
Those are the usual song topics covered by Alkaline Trio through their previous five albums, starting with 1998's now-classic Goddamnit on pioneering indie Asian Man Records through 2005's Crimson, the band's last album for Vagrant Records.
Since being formed in 1996 in McHenry County, Illinois, a suburb northwest of Chicago, Alkaline Trio has built a loyal following. The band has sold more than a million records, not by garnering a lot of radio airplay, but by forging an intense relationship with their fan base through relentless touring and, of course, a connection to their music.
With Agony and Irony, the band's debut for Epic Records, produced by Josh Abraham [Linkin Park, Slayer, Atreyu, 30 Seconds to Mars] at his L.A.-based Pulse Recording, singer/guitarist, Matt Skiba, singer/bassist, Dan Andriano and drummer Derek Grant insist they have found a light at the end of the tunnel.
Forsaking the wide-screen production of Crimson for a streamlined return to punk basics with an eye towards the anthems of '80s new wave stalwarts like Billy Idol, The Cars, Pat Benatar, Gary Numan and, yes, Def Leppard ("The stuff Mutt Lange did with them is amazing," says Matt), the songs on Agony and Irony trace a journey towards salvation. The concept was sparked by the likes of Dante's Inferno (the spoken-word intro on the album) and Joy Division's Ian Curtis (a longtime fan of Curtis, Skiba penned the first single, "Help Me," after being blown away by the recent Anton Corbijn biopic, Control).
"There's a heavy theme of duality, light and dark, life and death, on the album," says Matt, adding, "we tried to make it all about the individual songs, and we really took the time to craft each one in the studio."
"We felt it was time to reassess everything we'd done," adds Derek. "We went in without any preconceived notions and didn't record in a linear fashion. We kind of jumped all over the place which, for three guys with attention deficit disorder, was perfect."
"Help Me" is a cry for salvation spurred by Skiba channeling the tragically doomed Curtis, who hanged himself on the eve of Joy Division's first U.S. tour, leaving behind a grieving wife, a baby daughter and stunned band mates.
"Anton Corbijn's film was so brilliant at capturing the moods and emotions of the time," says Matt, "especially the reactions of the people who loved him. People call suicide the easy way out, a cowardly thing to do. I think that's a terrible thing to say because you don't know what someone like Ian or Kurt Cobain has been through to reach that point. Thankfully, they're still here in the music they left behind, which continues to inspire us."
"I Found Away" and "Into the Night" both came out of Matt's recent discovery of Transcendental Meditation, which helped him develop a new-found ability to not fear death, but accept it as a part of life. "Meditation helped me get over a great deal of anxiety I didn't even realize I had," he says.
Dan's "In Vein," with its gurgling riffs and martial beat, and "Love Love, Kiss Kiss," a cynical, gnarled punk-rock anti-love song, offer a pair of the ink-black meditations for which Alkaline Trio have become known since Skiba started the band back in 1996 in a Chicago suburb.
With its Who-like guitar break, "Calling All Skeletons" is about opening yourself up totally to your loved ones, featuring a lyrical nod to legendary L.A. punk band The Minutemen's classic album Double Nickels on a Dime, echoing past shout-outs to Skiba faves Big Black and Naked Raygun.
"Over and Out" starts out with an ominous Joy Division/New Order dance-floor pulse and a tip of the cap to classic punk bands the Clash, Sex Pistols and the Ramones, with a storyline that incorporates the military history of Matt's family, whose parents both served in Vietnam, his mom as a triage nurse in the DMZ. A U.S. News and World Report story he read about a wife waiting in vain for her husband to return from Iraq, where he died in battle, inspires the refrain: "Over and out/She sang/As the telephone rang/There's no pain/In answering no more."
Andriano's "Ruin It," with a spaghetti western flavor provided by drummer Grant, harks back to the more elaborate production of Crimson, announcing: "So this is what I'm looking like these days/I'm all grown up/And full of hate."
"We're truly thrilled with this album," says Derek. "And we have so many songs left over, that we're anxious to get back in the studio and record more. It's an exciting time for us. In many ways, a fresh start, on a new label."
Andriano insists, despite this being their first album for Epic Records, the band made the album they wanted to make. "Everyone has been so supportive," he says. "It's really been a positive experience. All they said during the entire recording process was, 'Keep up the good work!'"
Now relocated from their Chicago home, with Skiba in Los Angeles, Grant in Indianapolis and Andriano in St. Augustine, FL, Alkaline Trio are poised and ready for what they see as two years of non-stop touring.
Each of the band's last two Vagrant releases, Good Mourning (#20) and Crimson (#25), have cracked the upper reaches of the U.S. album charts.
And things are already off to a great start, with the first single, "Help Me," generating 70k plays in just a single day on MySpace. The album cover is by renowned British designer John Yates, who created memorable sleeves for the Dead Kennedys, among others, during his 10 years at Jello Biafra's legendary punk label Alternative Tentacles.
Agony & Irony answers that question as only Alkaline Trio can, with 11 rip-roaring punk-rock anthems that take us on a spiritual trip to hell and back.
"We've taken a major step in our growth," nods Skiba. "A bigger one than we've ever taken up until now."
Ever since Cursive burst onto the music scene with their 1997 debut album, the band has consistently and continually churned out heady albums heralded by critics and fans alike. Wrestling with life's miseries and mysteries, Mama, I'm Swollen is an album brimming with the universal, questioning the human condition, social morality, and the 'Peter Pan Syndrome' of grown men.
After the underground success of their third album, Cursive's Domestica, in 2000, the band followed up with what would prove to be their breakthrough album, The Ugly Organ, in 2003. A self-aware conceptual record about artistic constraints (or lack thereof), relationships, sex, and the intersection of all three, it landed them on the Arts section cover of The New York Times and accolades from Rolling Stone, Alternative Press, Blender, Magnet, Esquire, and Spin -- as well as a place on many year-end best lists. Cursive spent the next year and a half touring the album relentlessly, headlining the Plea For Peace tour and playing Coachella before being handpicked by The Cure for their Curiosa tour in late 2004.
Exhausted and admittedly daunted by the task of following up a hit record, Cursive went on an indefinite hiatus before remerging with the adventurous Happy Hollow in 2006. Lauded as a triumphant comeback and evolution of the band by publications such as Alternative Press, Spin, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and Blender, the album examined small-town angst, American dreams, and religion. Midway through touring in early 2007, original drummer Clint Schnase amicably departed the band. After a short break following a national tour with Mastodon and Against Me! and feeling somewhat conflicted about proceeding forward without him, Tim Kasher (vocals, guitar), Matt Maginn (bass, vocals), and Ted Stevens (guitar, vocals) decided to begin writing -- only without the ambitions of necessarily turning it into the next Cursive record. Shortly thereafter, Cornbread Compton (formerly of Engine Down) officially signed on as drummer by this time and what musically unfolded from this newly realized foursome was indeed...Cursive.
Conceived together in intermittent rehearsals as the band is now spread out across the west and Midwest (Kasher and Compton live in Los Angeles, CA; Maginn in Columbia, MO; and Stevens in Omaha, NE), they road-tested and refined the new material for Mama, I'm Swollen largely via a few shows this past spring and summer. The band's new process resulted in a more enthusiastic and focused set of ten songs to record when they entered Mike Mogis' ARC Studios in Omaha, NE in the fall, producing the album themselves alongside AJ Mogis.
Kasher is a storyteller, a weaver of songs that can read more like short stories or fables than the standard verse-chorus-verse. Mama, I'm Swollen finds him at his literate, lyrical best, where references to both Poe ("Going To Hell") and Pinocchio ("Donkeys") are intertwined seamlessly within his own tales of characters grappling with the moral quandary of being human, adult, and playing a role in 'civilized' society. Musically, Cursive is as smart and sophisticated as ever, the songs' rousing, cerebral content complemented by moments alternately hushed and exhilarating (the cathartic "From The Hips," the noisily melodic romp "I Couldn't Love You"), eerily moody and jaunty (the almost prayer-like "Let Me Up," "Mama, I'm Swollen") -- moments that often occur within the very same song. From the charging bass lines of album opener "In The Now" to the quiet first chords of confessional closer "What Have I Done?", Mama, I'm Swollen is a natural progression that remains distinctively Cursive: a fluid amalgamation of the band's sound past, present, and future -- a band that both your punk kid sister and English lit grad student best friend can call their own.
Whew. Mama, I'm Swollen is also one very simple thing: an amazing Cursive record, proving yet again why -- after all these years -- the quartet remains one of the most exciting and inventive rock bands today.
Cursive plans to spend the majority of spring and summer 2009 on the road.
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