The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 01:36 AM PDT

Devo drummer Alan Myers was more than a 'human metronome'.

Chances are when you're reading about percussionist Alan Myers, the word "metronomic" will be used. Myers, whose drumming for punk band Devo came to define the band's off-kilter sound, died on Monday after a battle with brain cancer.

Musician Ralph Carney, who was friends with Myers, announced the news on his Facebook page: "Alan Myers passed yesterday from cancer. He was Devo's best drummer and one of the first people to teach me about jazz. I cry..."

To call Myers a human metronome, though, is to suggest a drummer focused on keeping a steady, consistent beat.

Myers could do that and more, but his internal metronome contained secret compartments, switches that could drive odd time signatures, weird breakbeats, perfectly timed chaotic bursts.

Like one of his admitted inspirations, John "Drumbo" French of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, Myers understood rhythm so well that he worked as much silence and absence into his sound as he did crazy fills.

Myers was Devo's third drummer, joining in 1976 before the band released its Brian Eno-produced debut, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, and remained in the band until the mid-1980s. He played on all the Akron, Ohio-born, Los Angeles-based Devo's most mind-bending material, including the deconstructed version of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction that first propelled them onto the national stage, Whip It and Girl U Want.

Isolate Myers' playing on Satisfaction and wonder on his focus: the circular time signature and the way it upends the entire notion of the original.

On the tripped-out Swelling Itching Brain, Myers goes virtually invisible, driving a minimalist, one-drum-at-a-time rhythm, sparse but effective.

Which isn't to say that Myers couldn't keep a groove. On the contrary, his rhythms were incredibly steady and true.

Drummer Josh Freese, who has performed with Devo on their recent tours and recordings, tweeted about Myers' influence: "RIP Alan Myers. 1 of my all time favs. An underrated/brilliant drummer. Such an honor playing his parts w/Devo. Godspeed Human Metronome."

And Gerald Casale, Devo co-founder, also remarked on Myers' passing (and couldn't help implying that others in Devo were responsible for his departure): "RE: Alan Myers. I begged him not to quit Devo. He could not tolerate being replaced by the Fairlight and autocratic machine music. I agreed."

Casale followed that tweet with a few others: "In praise of Alan Myers, the most incredible drummer I had the privilege to play with for 10 years. Losing him was like losing an arm. RIP!!"

He concluded: "Alan, you were the best – a human metronome and then some. A once-in-a-lifetime find, thanks to Bob Mothersbaugh. U were born to drum Devo!" – Los Angeles Times/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Happy-sad: The hallmark of She & Him

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 01:37 AM PDT

On a Tuesday afternoon in the basement studios of Capitol Records, She & Him was recording a volley of live tracks for a few radio station sessions. Singer Zooey Deschanel finished an umpteenth take of the duo's single I Could've Been Your Girl, and she felt that something was sounding a little false.

"Do you have any ribbon mikes? We're just not used to sounding digital," she told the session engineer. "Maybe an RCA-77?"

That specific taste in microphones showed her technician's ear – and the craftsmanship that goes into the winsome summery music she makes with longtime collaborator M. Ward.

With the release of She & Him's fourth album, Volume 3, even once-skeptical audiences are coming around and admitting that they are real artisans of classic pop.

She & Him began as a side gig carved out of Deschanel's and Ward's respective acting and solo musical careers in 2008, but the act has since become as big a venture as the duo's day jobs.

As might be expected of an actor-fronted band, there was plenty of early groaning (it's hard to read much about the band without Deschanel's New Girl tagline "Simply Adorkable" popping up somewhere). But her voice was undeniable – a bright, resonant instrument with a hint of Patsy Cline – and Ward's pristine, tasteful arrangements conjured the AM of decades gone by.

The robust and immaculately written Volume 3 should put any last grumbly holdouts on notice. The album is the duo's most "produced" yet, full of the old Hollywood string arrangements and brass lines and stacked harmonies that make a simple tune take on new shades.

But it's also home to some of Deschanel's most acute and acidic songwriting.

The first lyrics on the album, from I've Got Your Number, Son, are as self-aware a depiction of dysfunction as a songwriter can ask for: "What's a man without all the attention? Well, he's just a man ... who am I without all your affection? Well, I'm a nobody too."

The jaunty, family-band singalong Together quietly implies that, well, love stinks and nobody really understands anybody: "We all go through it together, but we all go at it alone."

"We're always talking about that mix of happy-sad, where a dark melody gets an upbeat lyric or vice versa," Deschanel said. "I love that Beatles song And I Love Her for that reason. I find sadness and strife to be so much more interesting with an upbeat melody."

Of course, it's hard to hear a song like that or the album's single I Could've Been Your Girl without reading subtext from her recent real-life divorce from Death Cab For Cutie and Postal Service singer Ben Gibbard (a subject she doesn't talk about in interviews).

But that very public pain lends some even darker corners to songs that on the surface seem aglow with nostalgia and sweetness.

"People who say, 'There's no grit there,' have no use for someone like Sam Cooke or the Beach Boys," Ward said. "The productions are rich because her songs are rich."

To listen to the duo tout the emotional virtues of diminished chords and the deep cuts of Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry (whose Baby gets a cover treatment on the album) is to hear two lifelong students of the best American songwriting at work.

Yes, they know their arsenal of hipster-cute endearment is deep – watch Deschanel's vamping in her self-directed video for I Could Have Been Your Girl for proof.

Few are immune: At Tuesday's session, one radio interviewer took his last seconds with the duo to have Deschanel record a congratulatory message for his daughter's recent track-team accomplishments.

But She & Him knows that clean fun and serious skill aren't opposed in pop music. They're both necessary, and committed miserabilists can go jump in a lake.

"I remember having this friend in school who said she didn't like the Beach Boys," Deschanel said. "And in that moment I knew we couldn't be friends anymore." – Los Angeles Times/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Jumaat, 28 Jun 2013

The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

0 ulasan:

Catat Ulasan