Category Archives: night music

New Night Music: The Menzingers, “I Don’t Want To Be An Asshole Anymore”

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I read a good review of this band’s “punky” new record last week and waded in. These guys are from Scranton PA, and the band’s name is the phonetic spelling of the German word for troubadour, which is kind of what gives here. You would hope that the sons of coal miners and refinery workers would be clawing (or digging) like mad to escape the brutal lives their parents lived as they struggled to get their little honeys into college and away from a life of Walmart and picking scabs off the inside of their various orifices. Kind of like Steve, who hails from around those parts, but no.

This kind of punk is really singer songwriter pop bleating catchy tunes above some well struck drums and jangly-hard guitars. I listened to a bunch of Menzinger’s songs and this one is the best I heard, but if you like it you might find something you like more in their catalog. If that’s the case, I’d suggest you try harder. There’s no reason to settle for competent fake punk.

By the way, I tried to be grumpy about the video but I couldn’t. Perfect.

Hmm, Menzingers, kind of like telling jokes about men. Kind of like that video. Brilliant.

Night Music: Efterklang, “The Ghost”

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Efterklang is a Danish rock band. I went with a friend a couple of years ago to see them play at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. We had some really expensive and tasty cocktails on the roof before the show (it’s fantastic up there, hovering over Central Park), and then made our way down to a medium sized auditorium with excellent acoustics and sightlines for a fantastic show.

I’d never heard of Efterklang, I was tagging along, but I knew they were playing with the Wordless Music Orchestra, which is a small classical ensemble that seems to create interesting hybrids with non-classical music. The first time I saw Wordless Music they performed a symphonic piece written by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, as well as a fantastic piece by Ligetti. It was a fine show, more memorable for the Ligetti, but you have to give Greenwood a lot of credit for stretching. And for the record, I’m not much of a Radiohead fan, but maybe I’m missing something.

Efterklang (which means Reverberation, which is nice) turns out to be these delightful Danish rock guys, who for whatever reasons decided to extend their range into a world involving strings and woodwinds. And a drummer using brushes. And backup singers. This is not my definition of rock music, but it was a wonderful show, which took this rock band all around the world as they performed with different symphonies of players who usually play the classics in each city.

I’m assuming they were paid enough to not regret giving up their day jobs.

Apart from all the prelude, this song is just great, even if the drummer uses brushes.

Night Music: Vampire Weekend, “Oxford Comma”

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The thing about the Oxford comma is that some assholes will be doctrinaire, and make a big deal about it. They’ll scold you! This is stupid, but at the same time, the Oxford comma is a great weapon for clarity. Use it right, your reader will know.

This video offers no clarity. But this could be the best song about grammar I know.

Night Music: The Records, “Starry Eyes”

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I have the UK version of this just about perfect pop song, so perfect it reached No. 56 on the Billboard charts, down in the basement. It has the little hole, not the big one US 45s have, and a picture sleeve. A reminder that the first punk explosion was followed by a wave of jangly power pop. Or maybe they were happening at the same time. Starry Eyes landed in 1978. It was the Records’ only hit as a band. They did contribute a hit to the Searchers’ 1979 comeback.

Night Music: Lee Michaels, “Do You Know What I Mean”

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My great aunt died and my mother said we, as a family, could decide how to spend the small inheritance.

My recollection is that Lee Michaels convinced me that the money should be spent on a Hammond B3. In terms of musical enrichment, that’s a no brainer. But my mom decided we’d do better with a pool table, and my geometry skills improved, for sure. Maybe my brother’s did as well.

Night Music: Petra Haden, “Tattoo”

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Lawr’s impassioned defense of the Who Sell Out, an album that has fantastic highlights, but also shows the unsightly spread of Pete Townsend’s ambition to warp the pop machine to large scale narrative. In any case, there are many great moments in Sell Out, and one of the most delightful and out of left field is the album’s inspiration of the singer Petra Haden to cover its entirety in multitracked vocals, she singing all the parts.

Perhaps if Keith Moon was more of a tick-tock machine this would come across as deracinated, but I imagine a young woman creating these complex arrangements, using her voice to mimic the whole of the sounds, in the dark night of her idea, realizing just how crazy the whole thing was. And then she pushes the record button and sings again. There are more tracks to be laid down.