MUSIC P R E V I E W S
RICHARD SWIFT Richard Swift’s initial pop offerings were like those albums by Emitt Rhodes – solo songs that pulled orchestras out of bedroom closets and probably fooled a few people in asking how Paul McCartney fit into all this. And Swift even did it with just a four-track on his nightstand, rescuing staggeringly meticulous solo works (Walking Without Effort, The Novelist) from late-night insomnia attacks and buffing them ’til they fairly glowed. Newest EP Ground Trouble Jaw (Secretly Canadian) is a genre exercise non pareil – Swift trying out for Smokey Robinson with a rattled but ambitious falsetto and production as it actually came out of Hitsville, with vibes and spokenword spots and piano chords that bloom in the exact correct places. Like Ubiquity’s Nino Moschella – who four-tracks like Shuggie Otis or Sly Stone instead of Smokey – it’s a beautiful and beautifully done lo-fi valentine to a different part of the American pop chart. (CZ) Richard Swift, with Dappled Cities and We Barbarians, at Spaceland, 1717 Silver Lake Blvd., Silver Lake; clubspaceland.com. Fri., 8:30 p.m. $10-$12. 21+.
verocai: masterpiece
Arthur, We Love You Arthur Verocai comes back to his beginning
THOSE DARLINS
By Chris Ziegler Until 2002, Arthur Verocai was one of music’s lost cosmonauts – a pioneer whose single solo album left a trail of heat and light as it left the planet, never to be heard from again. But what an example he’d set – ten songs of voracious ambition and precise control, contemporary to work by studio auteurs like David Axelrod and Norman Whitfield but building in the music of Verocai’s Brazil as well. Jazz and soul and bossa and samba and rock and even proto-electronica were magnetized by young Verocai, who (working under state dictatorship) released an indiosyncratic work almost more sculpture than music and then – after flatlined public response – departed the studio for 30 years. He will be performing for the first time ever in America this weekend. Os Mutantes were Beatles babies born from a government-sanctioned version of Hullaballoo, but Verocai came from a much more traditional background. “I am a son of bossa nova,” he told writer Jeff Chang, speaking of harmony and guitar and swing, and after a short stint as a civil engineer whose moonlighted compositions were winning over studio engineers, he graduated into a chance to make his first complete album with complete creative freedom. “Everything was given to me,” he says now – 12 violins, four violas, cellos, trumpet, sax, trombone (later to be teased
into saurian orgasm on “Karina”) two percussionists, piano, guitar and even prototype analog synthesizers that officially didn’t even exist within Brazil at the time. But Verocai knew a guy who knew a guy, and he fired real-time synthesizer hiss and sizzle into the very first seconds of “Caboclo.” He was contemporary with L.A.’s Axelrod (though he’s never apparently cited him as any kind of influence) and he was just as comfortable hovering within that bottomless Axelrodian space. Axelrod songs like “The Human Abstract” or “The Smile” were arranged like fields of stars – moments of brightness above darkness and depth – and Verocai could compose a constellation, too. But that first self-titled album was released to a market that didn’t understand, he says. The bossa-style backbones on songs like “Sylvia” or “O Mapa” supported giant wild songs that whipped and weaved through all of Verocai’s influences, from guitarist Wes Montgomery to Brazilian landmarkers like Heitor Villa-Lobos and Milton Nascimiento and impressionists like Ravel and Debussy. (Not tropicalia, he notes – his music had nothing to do with tropicalia, he says.) Motown’s Whitfield had this kind of fearless vision, too, pressing entire established bands (the Temptations) into realizing painterly 13-minute compositions that felt more like inspired conversations
(or half-remembered experiences) than pop songs; so did Rotary Connection producer Charles Stepney, who with Whitfield helped pioneer the studio as an instrument for “psychedelic soul.” But Verocai’s album – startling still in how modern it sounds – never charted or even broke in Brazil, and a frustrated Verocai sidelined into writing for television and commercials. (“Jingles!” he says. “Too many times!”) He doesn’t sound particularly bitter – he was happy to be able to support his sons growing up – but for 30 years, he remained confined to sound-for-hire gigs. Then in 2002, he says, his patience ran out. He began composing for guitar again, and awardwinning Los Angeles-area label Ubiquity reissued his 1972 LP to resounding critical and professional acclaim – Madlib says he could listen that album every day for the rest of his life; MF Doom and 9th Wonder both pulled samples for their own work. In 2002, says Verocai now, “I want to come back to my beginning.”✶ Arthur Verocai and 30-piece orchestra, with Madlib and DJ Nuts plus special guests TBA, at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State Los Angeles, 5151 State University Dr., Los Angeles. Sun., 7 p.m. $32.50. All ages. Further information and complete schedule at vtechphones. com/timeless.
LACITYBEAT 18 march 12-18 2009
A different Tennessee Three this time – girls sharing a fake last name who dress like Jeannie C. Riley would if someone put her out now and who sing sassy rockabilly-country-pop songs lined up shoulder-to-shoulder on stage. Their recent In the Wilderness EP has two goofy songs (like the kind Lee Hazlewood had Nancy Sinatra mispronounce – cf. “Greenwich Village Folk Song Salesman”) and a winning lead track in “Wild One,” which recalls post-“Funnel” (but still feisty) Wanda Jackson fingerwaggers like “This Gun Don’t Care Who it Shoots.” Evidently they get awards out in Nashville, and of course they should – in 1968 you could get a million dollars and a TV show out of this sort of thing, and in fact Roni and Donna Stoneman had one or the other for a little while. And in fact Those Darlins would do well to cover Roni’s “The Guys That Turn Me On Turn Me Down.” So far they’ve got aw-shucks songs and gosh-dern-it songs so they might as well try both at once. (CZ) Those Darlins, with Dan Auerbach (of the Black Keys) and Hacienda, at the El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles; theelrey.com. Sat., 8 p.m. $22. All ages.