by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Tomorrow I’m off to Austin to cover a few days of SXSW for The Reader… and for Lazy-i.com. Here’s how the coverage will work: The daily “updates” will be posted at thereader.com (I’ll post a link to it here daily). However, my photos from the previous day’s adventures will appear right here the following morning (if I’m not being held in custody). The final wrap-up will, of course, appear in the printed edition of The Reader (and online there and here).

In addition to my coverage, The Reader also will have daily posts by Reader Music Editor Chris Aponick and Hear Nebraska owner/operator Andy Norman — all exclusive. That’s what you get when you provide the badges. Not included in the deal, however, is Twitter/Facebook. So for updates and comments from SXSW throughout the day — including photos — follow me at twitter.com/tim_mcmahan — Fun!

This year’s Omaha presence at SXSW is… respectable. Saddle Creek will have a showcase Friday night with Mynabirds, Big Harp and Icky Blossoms. Other Creek acts in Austin include PUJOL and Two Gallants. In addition, Depressed Buttons has a gig on Saturday, but that’s about it for official SXSW performances. Sounds like a couple other local peeps will be performing, but they’ll be playing unofficial shows not part of an actual SXSW showcase — not it matters as most people can’t tell the difference between an official and unofficial event.

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Sales numbers for Cursive’s I Am Gemini are in, and they’re a bit surprising. According to Mike Fratt, general manager at Homer’s, first week sales of I Am Gemini were 4,300 physical units, 1,250 digital for a total of 5,550. Fratt was surprised at the low percentage of digital sales. Wonder if it has anything to do with the album’s fantastic combined vinyl/CD packaging?

Fratt said 2nd week sales were off all charts (on neither top 200, nor Heatseekers chart), and off digital, which would mean fewer than 360 physical and fewer than 1,000 digital.

One more stat of note: I Am Gemini was the first Saddle Creek release that wasn’t made available on Spotify the week it was released, and last I looked it still wasn’t.

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Before I head out of town, I’m contemplating attending tonight’s big show at The Waiting Room — New Lungs will be unveiling some new material when they headline a show with Millions of Boys, Swamp Walk and Places We Slept. Quite a lineup, and the price is right: FREE. Show starts at 9 p.m.

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Finally, I keep running into people telling me they sure do miss my column not realizing that I still write a column, but that it’s exclusively published in The Reader and not here. With that in mind, I’m going to post links to my weekly column right here in Lazy-i, though I won’t be posting the actual text.

And I’m starting today with a link to last week’s column, which is particularly timely since it talks about the Equal Employment Ordinance being voted on today by the Omaha City Council. Read that column right here.

See you in Austin.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Released Feb. 21 on Saddle Creek Records, Cursive’s I Am Gemini is more than your typical concept album, it’s a full-blown 2-act play – or more specifically – a 2-act opera, whose plot would have been right at home performed either in ancient Greece or as an episode of The Twilight Zone.

The “official interpretation” via the record label: “I Am Gemini is the surreal and powerful musical tale of Cassius and Pollock, twin brothers separated at birth. One good and one evil, their unexpected reunion in a house that is not a home ignites a classic struggle for the soul, played out with a cast of supporting characters that includes a chorus of angels and devils, and twin sisters conjoined at the head.”

The album comes with a Playbill-style lyrics booklet that reads like a script complete with stage direction. But even if they follow the album’s lyrics word-for-word, fans will come up with their own interpretation of the album’s meaning. For example, this intrepid reporter was reminded of the schizophrenic 2010 Darren Aronofsky film “Black Swan.”

“Black Swan is a good example of how stories of duality are told,” said Cursive frontman and songwriter Tim Kasher over a PBR at the Old Dundee Bar & Grill a couple weeks before the band headed out on tour. “I hadn’t thought of ‘Fight Club’ as an example until an interviewer brought it up, but that’s essentially it. Those are stories about one person split into two.”

Cursive, I Am Gemini (2012, Saddle Creek)

At first, I Am Gemini feels like a departure from Kasher’s usual navel-gazing lyrical content. The band’s landmark album Domestica, for example, allegedly focused on Kasher’s painful divorce; 2003’s The Ugly Organ was an exploration in creative self-loathing, while Kasher gave us his views on organized religion on 2006’s Happy Hollow. By contrast, I Am Gemini, with its good-and-evil twins and sisters with conjoined heads, seems like complete fiction… or is it?

“It’s important to note that it is really personal and based on a self-referential story,” Kasher said, “In the past, the lyrics were so literal or so thinly veiled to the obvious. This time it was a lot of fun to expand into something more fictionalized.”

But can a concept album this tightly drawn, where each song is dependent on the other to tell a cohesive story, be successful in this singles-driven iTunes era? Can songs on I Am Gemini stand on their own, out of context, without the rest of the album, and is Kasher confident that listeners will take the time necessary to sit down and absorb the album in its entirety?

“I’m not confident of that at all,” he said. “A lot of this is my personal interest in tackling a full story in an album, and I’m still scared having done it, but I’m glad I pushed myself a little further. A really small percentage of people will really appreciate it, and I really appreciate those people. I’m glad they’re there to take it on. But I think (the songs) can still be presented separately.”

Kasher said he considered each song as a self-contained short story, but added, “It’s been troubling releasing (songs) out of context of the album for premieres. I feel like they’re part of a whole, which goes counter to what I’m saying about them being able to survive on their own.”

There are indeed tracks that can stand in isolation. The album’s first leaked track, “The Sun and Moon,” taken completely out of context can be read as a love song of sorts. “A Birthday Bash” has one of the better guitar riffs Cursive’s ever put on tape. Still others act more like bridges between ideas, such as “The Cat and Mouse.”

So far, critics have been split on whether or not the concept worked. Indie taste arbiter Pitchfork called it “the weakest Cursive album by a disheartening margin” and summed it up as “Kasher talking to himself,” while AV Club called it “forceful; a demanding rock-driven opus” and Paste said, “Musically, the band is at their most adventurous, albeit not their most accessible.”

All agree that I Am Gemini is the hardest Cursive album since Domestica. It is brutal, but even more than that, it’s proggy — proggy enough to make the members of King Crimson and Roger Waters blush. At the very least, it’s an about-face from the apparent convergence music-wise of Cursive and Kasher’s other band, the more singer-songwriter based The Good Life. Kasher agreed.

“The last couple records, we were trying to marry those different styles and make a more diverse record,” he said. “This time around at the very onset of this album I thought ‘I’m going to do a Cursive album.’ It was right for this time in my life and for the other guys in the band. We decided if we’re going to do it, let’s do it full on. Let’s write something that fits into the rock category, something to listen to on a Friday night.”

Those “other guys” are Cursive’s core members, bassist Matt Maginn and guitarist/vocalist Ted Stevens, along with drummer Cully Symington and keyboardist Patrick Newbery, who played horns on the last two albums, but switched when Kasher once again moved away from less traditional instrumentation as he did when the band stopped using cello after The Ugly Organ.

“When we moved away from cello, it was a taste decision,” Kasher said. “At an early point, I thought cello would be a really good thing to have. By the end of it all, it was so overdone and we needed to move onto something else. Along those lines, we’ve done horns for the last couple records, and it felt like we’d done enough of it. It’s nice to not have to be bound by these additional instruments.”

Something tells me fans won’t be missing them when the band hits the road.

And despite the theatrical nature of I Am Gemini, Kasher said he has no intention of recreating the opera on stage by performing it sequentially. “We respect the ticket holder,” he said. “We’re still playing under the name Cursive, and that implies our full catalog. We’re happy to play the proper hits and some fun, deeper cuts, what we garner as the taste of the avid Cursive listener.

“We’ll be playing ‘The Martyr’ on this tour every single night, just like we have for the past 12 years,” he added. “It’s a moment in the set where we’re feeding off the energy of the people that are excited to hear it.”

Cursive plays with Ume and Virgin Islands Saturday, March 3, at Slowdown, 729 No. 14th St. Showtime is 9 p.m. Admission is $13 advance, $15 day of show. For more information, call 402.345.7569 or visit theshowdown.com.

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Laura Burhenn of The Mynabirds is part of a panel that will be discussing “women in performance” this evening at House of Loom. Also on the panel are Susann Suprenant of ætherplough, Felicia Webster (aka WithLove) and actor Kirstin Kluver. The band Howard will be performing after the panel. The free event starts at 5 at House of Loom, 1012 Howard St.  For more info, go to houseofloom.com.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

It’s funny and sad where we’ve come in terms of generating interest in indie music. Just a decade ago, finding the best new music was something of a challenge; and if you lived in Omaha, it was practically hidden from sight. Today, everything’s at our fingertips. All you need is someone to point the way.

Unfortunately, from an indie music standpoint, that someone continues to be Pitchfork. As it’s been for a few years now, a review in Pitchfork can help make or break an indie band. For a new band, it can mean the difference between having your music heard and people coming to your shows… or being unheard and unseen. For more established bands like Cursive, Pitchfork won’t break them to a new audience as much as: 1) support a listener’s already-formed notion about their music, or 2) cast doubt on the listener’s own taste.

For Pitchfork‘s review of I Am Gemini, posted yesterday, the effect is the latter. The 4.7-rated review opens with this salvo: “Credit where due: I Am Gemini is Cursive’s weakest record by a disheartening margin…” The opening sentence of the next paragraph gives you a footing as to the reviewer’s past experience with Cursive: “…even while Cursive’s Domestica and The Ugly Organ remain some of the most purposefully narcissistic albums to ever bear the emo tag, their lyrical acts of emotional martyrdom understandably inspired an intense cult.” Yikes…

But it’s not all negative… or is it? “Conceptual tomfoolery aside, the music aligns with Kasher’s increasing tendency to sand off the edges of his prickly attitude and serrated vocals, and I Am Gemini is by far Cursive’s most playful record and almost fun at points.”

The review concludes with: “At one point on ‘Wowowow,’ Kasher sings in puns taken from Cursive titles, and this kind of meta exercise makes a sad kind of sense within the context of I Am Gemini’s impenetrability. After all, main characters like Cassius, Pollock, Young Cassius, Young Pollock, and the Narrator are all voiced by the same guy the same exact way, a more concrete way of essentially pointing out that the whole of I Am Gemini is Kasher talking to himself.”

After reading that, Cursive should be happy to have received a rating as high as a 4.7. Keep in mind that the rating will be the only thing non-fans will ever see. Only Cursive fans will read the entire review, because no one reads Pitchfork reviews anymore, they just look at the number. I take that back. People will read a Pitchfork review if the rating is as low as 2.0 or high as 8.0. Anything in the middle is ignored.

Upon hearing the review, I can imagine Tim Kasher shrugging and saying, “Hey, whattaya gonna do?” There’s nothing you can do about a bad review other than bite down and move on. Kasher knew he was taking a risk with this one; people are either going to get it or they won’t. And in fact the record has received its share of accolades. Drowned in Sound gave the album an 8 out of 10, calling it a “monumental return for Tim Kasher…” adding “This beautifully dark fairytale of a concept album is as heavy as the Cursive of old, ingenious, and just as lyrically surreal as you could hope for.”

Paste Magazine gave the album 7.8 out of 10 with the comment: “Musically, the band is at their most adventurous, albeit not their most accessible,” and recommending repeated listenings — good advice, but will anyone take it in this ADD/Spotify age?

AV Club gave it a “B,” calling it a “forceful, a demanding rock-driven opus…”

On the other hand, the Boston Phoenix gave it 2.5 stars out of 4. The reviewer, who can’t seem to get over the loss of Gretta Cohn, called the record “the most musically conventional record they’ve ever made; it also bears the burden of putting across Kasher’s most preposterous story ever.”

But in the end, it’s the Pitchfork review that carries the most weight if only for the fact that a high Pitchfork rating could have been enough to get a non-fan to check out the record on Spotify or whatever subscription streaming service they use. Not that it matters, because despite the fact that the record dropped today, I Am Gemini is not available in its entirety on Spotify, and may not be for a while…

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I almost forgot to mention: Tonight at the Shop at Saddle Creek it’s the second meeting of the Record Club @ Shop. Tonight’s record to be played in its entirety: Neutral Milk Hotel’s classic In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. It all starts at 7 and will be followed by a short discussion afterward. For more info, go here.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

I’ve been espousing this premise about the future of music and entertainment in general for the past year. It’s this: As music becomes more accessible and virtually free via Spotify/Rdio/Rhapsody (and eventually iTunes) bands won’t be vying to get you to buy their music as much as simply take the time to listen to it. With all the distractions from all the media bombarding us like radiation every second of every day, just finding time to listen to new music, and really consider it, is a precious thing, because no one wants to waste their time listening to your music if it’s shitty.

I think this future I’m describing is already here.

Last night’s inaugural meeting of the Record Club at The Saddle Creek Shop was a salvo aimed directly at this idea. The club’s concept: Sit and listen to an entire record album uninterrupted, and then afterward, talk about it. It seems simple enough, until you ask yourself when was the last time you sat and listened to a complete album uninterrupted, beginning-to-end without surfing on the net or updating your Facebook page or driving around town or shopping at Whole Foods. Just sit for 43 minutes and listen. To the whole thing. No skipping around. Top-to-bottom. Who has the time to do something like that anymore?

Believe it or not, back in the old days before the iPod, people used to do it all the time. At record stores like The Antiquarium, they sat around, smoked cigarettes, listened to records and talked about them. That’s what Creek chief Robb Nansel remembers. That’s what he’s trying to recreate at his new record shop (but without the smoking). That’s the concept behind this club. In some ways, it’s a noble if not extravagent idea.

So there we were last night at 7 at the shop, all six of us, listening to Cursive’s I Am Gemini one side at a time. And afterward, we talked about the record. Did we like it? Did we hate it? Where does it rank among the band’s discography? What the fuck does it mean? Will “kids” have the patience to listen to a concept album and “get it”? Can any of the tracks survive in isolation, out of context? Whether Nansel wants to admit it or not, it was kind of like a focus group consisting of music fans, though I’m not sure if anyone felt comfortable enough to say if they thought it sucked in front of Nansel and the record store guy (there were only three “civilians” there). But the fact is, anyone who would trek out on a snowy Tuesday night to listen to this record is probably pre-disposed to like it.

Creek is marketing this as “the best Cursive album since The Ugly Organ.” Am I the only person who liked Mama, I’m Swollen and Happy Hollow? Like I said yesterday, Gemini is a return to Such Blinding Stars-style Cursive, but that wasn’t the consensus last night, as none of the three had heard that album before (or Domestica, for that matter).

Eventually, the topic shifted to the record’s format. I love the idea of Saddle Creek releasing everything on vinyl with a CD tucked in the sleeve. Why would anyone want just the CD when you can get the vinyl and the CD for just a few dollars more? Well, that also wasn’t the concensus last night, as none of the three had a turntable, have no plans on buying one and wouldn’t know what to do with the record. They’d rather spend $10 and just get the CD. So what do I know?

Then the topic shifted to Spotify. Everyone likes it, everyone uses it, but they use it differently. I listen to full albums on Spotify. A few only listen to playlists and never listen to full releases. Then the discussion shifted to how anyone makes any bloody money from Spotify.

And so on for more than an hour. The point is, I went into this thinking it might be a long night filled with awkward and forced “conversation,” when it was actually interesting and fun. When was the last time you just sat around and talked about music?

They’re doing it again in two weeks with Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Will more than three people show up? Who knows. But let me leave you with this thought:

I’ve heard for years local music fans and bands suggest how great it would be to figure out a way to get together and talk about music outside of a bar setting. No one’s ever figured out a way to pull it off. Here’s an opportunity to not only listen and discuss new or classic music, but to talk about what’s going on with music during a time when the very nature of how we listen to music changes every day.

And it wouldn’t kill you to listen to stop for an hour and listen to a complete album. It’s certainly worth the investment… in time.

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Tonight is the kick off of the annual Lincoln Exposed festival in, uh, Lincoln. The festival runs through Saturday at three venues: The Bourbon Theatre, Duffy’s and The Zoo Bar, and features performances by some of Lincoln’s best bands.

Tonight’s line-up:

Bourbon Theatre
8:30 p.m. Strawberry Burns
9:30 p.m. Professor Plum
10:30 p.m. Sputnik Kaputnik
11:30 p.m. Powerful Science
12:30 a.m. Aren’t We All Dead

Duffy’s Tavern
8 p.m. Dean the Bible
9 p.m. Pharmacy Spirits
10 p.m. Eli Mardock
11 p.m. Orion Walsh
12 a.m. Foam_Form

Zoo Bar
6 p.m. Dr. John Walker
7 p.m. Tijuana Gigolos
8:15 p.m. Sons of 76
9:15 p.m. Hangin’ Cowboys
10:15 p.m. Lucas Kellison
11:15 p.m. Ghost Runners
12:15 a.m. Omni Arms

Cost is $6 per night to get into all three clubs, or $20 for the full week! The full schedule is on their Facebook page, here. Hey, I’d go if I lived there…

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Cursive, I Am Gemini (2012, Saddle Creek Records)

Since it’ll be discussed tonight at the event at the Shop at Saddle Creek, I figured I might as well share my initial thoughts/questions about Cursive’s new release, I Am Gemini, which comes out in two weeks, but will be available for purchase at tonight’s event.

Here they are: Can a concept album this tightly drawn, where each song is dependent on the other to tell a cohesive story, be successful in this singles-driven iTunes era we live in? Can the songs on I Am Gemini stand on their own, out of context, without the rest of the album? And how will a random, isolated track sound sandwiched between Lana Del Rey and Andrew Jackson Jihad during shuffle mode?

And does anyone even care about lyrics anymore?

Tim Kasher must think they do. The album comes with a “playbook” — basically a script of a play whose dialogue and direction are the lyrics of the album, so you can follow along as you sit down and listen to the album, presumably in its entirety, just like we used to back in the days before iPods.

By now you’ve already heard the album’s “plot:” identical twins — one good, one evil — separated at birth reunite at a house that they’ve inherited.  Along the way there’s angels and devils, Siamese twin sisters joined at the head, alternate-mirror realities and other assorted oddities. In the end (Spoiler Alert) the house blows up along with the main character(s). Many nods to Greek tragedies abound (thank god Tim wasn’t reading Beowulf). Some of you youngsters may want to keep your Google prompt on screen when you come across references to Sisyphus, Dionysus, Cassius, dead albatrosses and other literary tidbits.

I think there’s a Black Swan sort of dual-personality-destroying-your-evil-other thing going on. Only Kasher knows for sure, and I’m sure he’s going to get sick of having to explain it interview after interview after interview as the band tours the globe this year and next. Look, I minored in English (okay, it was at UNO) and I’m still not sure what all of it means. And in the end, does it matter? Will your typical teenager or 20-something give a shit or will they merely be entranced by the album’s meaty riffage? What you’ve heard is true about this being the hardest Cursive album since Domestica. It is brutal, but even more than that, it’s proggy — proggy enough to make the members of King Crimson and Roger Waters blush. At the very least, it’s an about-face from the apparent convergence of Cursive and The Good Life music-wise. There aren’t a lot of sing-along pop songs in this collection.

But there are indeed songs that can stand in isolation from the rest of the record (though lyrically, they don’t make a lot of sense). “The Sun and Moon,” taken completely out of context, can be read as a love song of sorts. “A Birthday Bash”  has one of the better guitar riffs Cursive’s ever put down on tape. That said, there are a few songs that seem to act as bridges between ideas, such as “The Cat and Mouse,” which aren’t so successful by themselves.

I’m going out on a limb here guessing that the band intends to play this album in sequence on tour, just like it was recorded. Maybe they’ll also pass out playbills at every gig. Maybe there will be costumes and a live angel/devil choir.

Anyway, I’m still figuring it out. A full review will come later (probably). In summation, it’s a modern-day indie rock opera more so than a rock musical. It’s also a message to the record-buying public that albums — rather than singles — still make sense and can still provide a holistic, theatrical experience if you’re willing to invest the time and keep your twitchy fingers off the shuffle button for just 43 minutes.

Hear it and decide for yourself tonight at 7 at the Saddle Creek Shop.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

I’ve read the description of Cursive’s new concept album, I Am Gemini, a half dozen times and it’s still disturbing. The story: Twin brothers separated at birth, one good and one evil, have an unexpected reunion that “ignites a classic struggle for the soul, played out with a cast of supporting characters that includes a chorus of angels and devils, and twin sisters CONJOINED AT THE HEAD” (The all-caps are mine, although I would suggest the fine folks at Cobra Camanda Publicity use all-caps in future press releases, if only for effect).

Maybe someone can explain why the first thing to pop into my head was the classic Star Trek episode, “Let That Be Your Battlefield,” which featured Frank Gorshin, more famous for his role as The Riddler (maybe because I’m a nerd?). So combine that with the best parts of Angels in America, Ordinary People, Stuck on You and Erasurehead, and you’ve got a first-rate concept album.

Seriously though, this sounds like Cursive’s most ambitious concept album since, well, their last concept album. Just the idea of making a concept album seems ambitious in an age when young listeners are more likely to download a single track rather than an entire album. But you have to remember that frontman and primary songwriter Tim Kasher also is a playwright, and judging by the press release, approached this one with a story in mind, having “wrote album lyrics in a linear fashion, in order, from song 1 to song 13.”

We’ll all have to wait until Feb. 21 when Saddle Creek Records releases the album to hear how it all worked out, unless of course Cursive does a “secret show” somewhere around town as a warm-up for the support tour, which kicks off in Denver Feb. 12. You have to wonder if the band will perform the entire record as a rock opera, a la The Who’s Tommy or Styx’s Paradise Theater. Imagine Ted Stevens and Matt Maginn in full drag playing the entire set forehead-to-forehead. OK, now that’s entertainment.

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Tonight at The Waiting Room it’s our old friends The Appleseed Cast, with Hospital Ships and local chamber rockers Skypiper. $12, 9 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.