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TONIGHT! 01/14/06
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THE DOUBLE (Matador Records)
CELEBRATION (4AD Records, x-Love Life/Jaks)
LOW MODA (members of Fascist Fascist/Ink/Candy Machine)
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The Warehouse Next Door
1017 7th Street NW
Washington D.C.
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9pm doors/$8/all ages
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www.myspace.com/celebrationcelebration www.4ad.com/celebration www.thedoublethedouble.com ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It's a celebration, all right. A visceral, full-throated, kinetic celebration of the power of music to take you out of yourself and into a strange new space peopled by angels, devils and white hot electricity.
Celebration is the band that Katrina Ford and Sean Antanaitis have been searching for, ever since they hooked up in high school. As drummer David Bergander says: "It completely blows my mind -- it's totally ecstatic, the energy that we end up creating together." For a taste, check out the way that album opener "War" comes fizzing and skidding
out of the traps, propelled by David's scattershot drumming and Katrina's no-holds-barred whoops: got more guns than anybody! But don't jump to conclusions. Celebration are also capable of more
measured, reflective bliss, as the swaying, shimmering swoon of "Lost Souls" demonstrates.
In short, this band is the most fully realised and three-dimensional stage of a decade-long journey through a string of striking, unsettling, and influential projects. Here's a little history: first came the unhinged punk expressionism of Jaks, which Katrina now describes as "kind of a spastic mess-induced rock band -- it was really fun and exciting and all about being violent". But despite their low-budget ferocity, the recordings that Jaks made have passed into underground
legend, and -- reissued in 2005 by Three One G -- they're now inspiring a new generation. Jaks also saw Katrina starting to explore the possibilities of her own vocal chords ("I wanted to sound like a man", she says) -- an exploration that has led to the spellbinding range and force of her performances with Celebration.
After Jaks came Lovelife, and two resonant, bold albums (one released by Jagjaguwar, the other by Troubleman). "It was all about identifying with deep sadness," says Katrina now, "and also about
trying to sing rather than screaming and howling everything". An evolution, then -- the next stage, rather than the last stage. Lovelife fragmented a couple of years ago, and in the space they left
behind, Celebration gradually took shape.
Like Lovelife, Celebration are a band that lean heavily on Sean's multi-instrumental abilities. He plays all the music except the drums -- a feat he manages live as well as in the studio -- and from his armoury of organs, electric keyboards and Moog bass pedals he summons a unique, dense, swirling sound. Muscular, but completely involving. He also makes use of the guitorgan, an electric guitar hand-modified so that it can produce sound through an analogue organ tone generator as well as through its conventional pick-ups. Onstage, this translates into an intensely concentrated, four-limbed performance -- one which leaves David and Katrina unencumbered, and free to follow their instincts.
"I like to get to the point which flamenco artists call duende", Katrina says, "which is when you completely lose your sense of self, and you're completely absorbed with the spirit -- the demon -- of music." It's one of the reasons why Celebration is the right name for this band -- it's not just about self-expression, it's about something wider than that. As David puts it: "It's the name of the band and it's the way the music is -- everybody is invited..."
Celebration's debut album was recorded at Headgear Studios in Brooklyn, New York, with David Sitek from TV On The Radio at the controls. Sitek is a long-time Celebration cheerleader -- he introduced the band to 4AD -- and being able to make this record was the fulfilment for him of months and years of dreaming and scheming. As well as producing the album, he contributed treated guitar parts and synth noises which -- along with Martin Perna and Stewart Bogle's flute and sax parts -- make for a record splashed with beguiling texture and sonic surprise. The other members of TV On The Radio were also around during the making of
the album -- Tunde, Kyp, Gerard and Jaleel all make guest appearances as vocalists on various tracks.
And this collaborative mood is a signal of sorts. For all its starkness, its twitchy, raw-boned energy, and its unflinching focus, Celebration is an inclusive, even euphoric record. Throughout -- in the tidal swell of "Diamonds", the hanging, haunting guitars of "New Skin" and the relentless rhythmic drive of "Stars" -- this is music that
speaks of a primal thirst for life. And in dark times, that's a cause for celebration indeed.
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There is a foreboding sense of everything coming apart at the seams in The Double's subversive take on pop music. Their Matador debut,
Loose in the Air, is an eerie, paranoid album steeped in a
hyper-awareness of the impermanence of things. Melody moves through thick layers of noisy, manic guitars and heavily distorted keyboards, and drums fight through a dense fog of melancholy. Tender vocals soar high and low through an atmosphere of chaos -- it's at once unsettling and utterly captivating.
The men of The Double are completely tuned into their own frequencies, seemingly unaffected by current trends. As a result, they have quickly
attracted a loyal following that craves the Double's brand of sonic experimentation and innovation. Last year's
Palm Fronds (Catsup
Plate) is a rock-pop album in the same way that David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" is a romantic comedy. Still, in addition to charming critics,
Palm Fronds earned the Double a coveted Peel Session, as well as opening slots for Interpol and Blonde Redhead in Europe.
For
Loose in the Air, the band escaped New York and holed up with Steve Revitte for 12 days at Tarquin Studios in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Having recorded everyone from The Liars and Tito Puente to the Beastie Boys and Black Dice, Revitte embraced The Double's idiosyncrasies and captured their broad instrumental scope. The result is 10 songs that burst with frantic energy and reach sublime transcendence.
"Up All Night" opens the record as a sort of manifest, the blueprint for what's to come. David says, "I found the melody singing along to instrumental dub tracks; I was reaching for Yoko
Ono's minor notes." "In The Fog" was originally written and recorded during their Peel Session last year. Jacob arranged the instrumentation on piano in the studio, and inspired by the history of their surroundings, they set out to write a "classic" and re-recorded it at Tarquin for
Loose In The Air. The epic "Dance"
was written to accompany a fashion show and debuted last spring at Lincoln Center. In it, David talks about the performance and exhaustion
of dancing -- "hulled out of breath, all loose at the ends, so bodied to ourselves in the head".
Of "Hot Air", Jacob says "I hope Ray Manzarek hears this and shits peyote out of his mouth. Vox Continental organ and piano, just like the Zombies, but maybe a more grotesque, undead Rod Argent." "Busty Beasty" is a stoner lullaby of sorts, Jacob rocking those ethereal E Naturals in the cascading G Major-to-Minor section like a
street fair magician, and Donald his sick, beautiful maiden. Elsewhere, the Double even lay down their version of a radio hit in "Idiocy"
and a love song -- the "dorm room make-out anthem", says Jacob -- in "Ripe Fruit".
The Double cite influences as diverse as Syd Barrett, Alice Coltrane, the Beatles, Horace Andy, the Zombies, Suicide, Brian Eno, Keith Hudson, and the Velvet Underground, and though the spirit of these bands is present in The Double's music, their sounds are not.
Loose in the Air is a unique work that is beyond comparison. It's a mature album as viscerally satisfying as it is intellectually stimulating. It sounds like a premonition -- a bone ache, before a big storm.
David Greenhill - bass and vocals
Jacob Morris - keyboards
Jeff McLeod - drums and electronics
Donald Beaman - guitar and vocals
"The varied swath of music categorized as noise tends to bank on its ties to the sublime: the ability to induce bewilderment, stupefaction,
and awe that traverses fear. But for the Brooklyn-based foursome The Double, noise-metallic clacks and supersonic crackles, crumpling
guitars and disappearing vocals is an accessory that sweetly disorders melody, a union that entreats and welcomes rather than confuses and
commandeers." (Village Voice)
