Category: Article

Even as on-again/off-again fans (let’s not talk about All That You Can’t Leave Behind), we’ve got a soft spot for U2. They were first ever rock band we saw live; the boys were barely out of their teens and we were simply enthralled. Twenty-some years later, it sounds like they’re channeling those youthful selves in How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb: What we’ve heard is jangly and jubilant, soaring and slightly caustic—even a little sloppy. Another good sign is that producer Steve Lillywhite, so essential in creating the band’s early trademark sound, worked on this latest one, too. And a third: Bono calls this recording “a monster,” adding that “it’s driven by a guitar player who is sick of the sight of me shaking hands with dodgy politicians. The anger is unbelievable.” All right! Apparently U2 has left that bombastic miscalculation from 2000 far behind.

The odd-moment-out on Neko Case’s newest release is an outtake from an improvisational jam session she participated in at a cross-cultural arts conference. She threw it in, she says, to demonstrate the fluidity and facility of music-making, to invite listeners to join her in the fun. But any dreams of superstardom it might inspire are to be foiled by the rest of this album from our favorite “country chanteuse.” Tigers collects upbeat live recordings of new songs, hard-to-find Neko Case and New Pornographers concert favorites, and cover songs from her idols, like the Shangri-Las and Buffy Sainte-Marie. She turned up the volume (i.e., took a drummer on the road) and included nothing from her downer of a previous release, Blacklisted. These days, we’re happy to report, Case seems hell-bent on having herself a good time.

Ghosts of country music past reverberate beautifully in the bluegrass tenor of Handsome Family front man Brett Sparks. But somewhere deep beneath the eerie echo of Appalachia, shadowing the Carter Family influence, tucked behind the Autoharps, banjos, and lap steels—somewhere there seems to be an inside joke between this husband-and-wife team. All those death-obsessed compositions are spiked with some underlying silliness, an admirable trait that’s too easily lost amid the sparse acoustics off their studio releases. The irony in sad little yarns about suicidal welfare moms and haunted Wal-Mart stores is best felt alongside the Handsome Family’s old-timey stage presence. Brett Sparks intermittently wears Willie Nelson’s lethargy and Buck Owens’ shit-eating grin. 318 1st Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-338-8100; www.finelinemusic.com

The family band is a great rock ’n’ roll institution, from Oasis to the Black Crowes to Hanson. There’s something fascinating about the unstudied flow of sibling vocal harmonies and stage presence. Los Lonely Boys, three brothers from west Texas, began as their dad’s backing band. First off, let’s take a moment to imagine touring with your dad, watching him chase after-show tail, riding shotgun in a van knee-deep in fast-food wrappers and wearing five-day-old underwear. (Shudder.) Anyway, weaned on Tex Mex-style country and blues, Los Lonely Boys augment the basics with red-hot guitar playing and tight vocal harmonies. Perhaps their most ringing endorsement comes from the “Cannabis Messiah” of country music, Willie Nelson, who has called the Boys his favorite band and invited them to record at his studio. 612-332-1775; www.first-avenue.com

Jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux’s sophomore release, Careless Love, is earning high critical praise—and that’s no small feat for a musician who became best known on her first album, some eight years ago, as a twenty-two-year old who sounded uncannily like Billie Holiday. On her new album, you could say that Peyroux is going after something of a Holiday/honky-tonk fusion. Covers include Bob Dylan’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome,” Hank Williams’s “Weary Blues,” and Leonard Cohen’s delicious “Dance Me to the End of Love.” The swinging, swaying-with-your-sweetheart renditions that she serves up also have mournful folk currents running through them. But best of all, perhaps, is her version of the jazz standard “J’ai Deux Amours,” a whispery, sexy torch song to two loves: her native U.S. and her adopted hometown, Paris, France. 1010 Nicollet Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-332-1010; www.dakotacooks.com

The genius of Jonathan Richman is that he knows he does “Jonathan Richman” better than anyone else ever could. Normally describing a singer/songwriter as “wacky” seems to be a writer’s polite way of saying this guy is really a childish boob, not a real songwriter. Richman would be the exception. He is a goof, his songs have titles like “You’re Crazy for Taking the Bus” and “I Was Dancing in a Lesbian Bar.” Add to that that he was featured prominently in 1998’s There’s Something About Mary, playing guitar in a tree, no less. But it’s just that silly glee that makes Richman the treasure he is. The only other brilliant man to give Richman a run for his money as King Goof is Robyn Hitchcock. Would you expect anything less from the man who sang, “Sometimes I wish I was a pretty girl, so I could (oop) myself in the shower”? 612-332-1775; www.first-avenue.com

If you had to, you could call Bill Frisell a jazz guitarist, but he is really a master at seamlessly mixing a wide range of musical genres, having collaborated with everyone from Elvis Costello to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. One of Frisell’s best albums, 1997’s Nashville, was recorded with members of Allison Krauss’s Union Station band. It’s country music played with grace, sophistication, and a large dose of heart that makes his live shows something to see. With drummer Kenny Wollesen and bassist Viktor Krauss. 416 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-338-2674; www.thecedar.org

Just last month, Jamie Hook took over as executive director of Minnesota Film Arts, which is responsible for the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival and the repertory movies shown at the Oak Street Cinema. In Seattle, where Hook spent much of his adult life, he was known as an unconventional and talented wild man (once, at a party, he was spotted slapping his own ass with a giant Mickey Mouse glove). He and his wife, Debbie Girdwood, started a nonprofit film production company called Wiggly World, which had a lot to do with reviving Seattle’s independent film scene. And then he was invited to move to Minneapolis, an offer he couldn’t refuse.

THE RAKE: Don’t you just hate Citizen Kane?

No, I don’t just hate it, but I do think that The Magnificent Ambersons is the superior film, botched ending and all. How can you not love that staircase in the Amberson mansion? Plus, the shot that concludes with George Minafer asserting that he wants to be a yachtsman when he grows up is one of the sacraments of the cinema. And I could watch Joseph Cotten disembowel my mother and it would make me smile.

Has Minneapolis been nice to you?

Minneapolis has been very nice. My landlord even reduced my rent, just to be “nice”—which of course made me paranoid. But now it’s fall and I am a bit concerned that, having arrived only recently, I won’t have time to build up those unvoiced, longstanding, passive-aggressive Lutheran animosities that stay burning in the belly through the deep Minnesotan winter. Otherwise, the city is as lovely as a well-made sandwich. I saw Mark Mallman perform his fifty-six-and-a-half-hour-long song the third day I was here, which truly inspired me.

How is this city different from Seattle?

Seattle is very dreamy, which is both an asset and a liability. Living in Seattle is like dating a Pisces: When things are good, they are very, very good, and when they are bad, they are rotten. Minneapolis seems a bit more Cancerian. People hoard their goodness, and dole it out like candy when you most need it. The city is more realistic, pragmatic, and diverse, which is a refreshing change. I would add that it is not a more staid city, however. I have heard more public swearing in Minneapolis than anywhere else I have ever lived, which is a good thing. Certainly, the Twin Cities would really benefit from having more alcoholic public intellectuals. Seattle took a lot of its character from the alternately brilliant and pompous rantings of various public drunks.

What’s your goal at Minnesota Film Arts?

I would love Minnesota Film Arts to grow into the hub of a local filmmaking community that exists independent of the wider industry, at least in terms of artistic accountability and ambition. In so many smaller cities with hefty artistic egos—Seattle, the Twin Cities, Boston, Portland—there is an unfortunate provincial tendency to want to pander to the cultural taste-makers of New York or Los Angeles, without recognizing that the most influential cultural movements inevitably emerge from the artistic basement, so to speak. Music provides the clearest example of this pattern, both in Minneapolis and Seattle.
 
You just made a film, The Naked Proof. Tell us about it.

The Naked Proof is a screwball comedy about a philosopher whose life is undone by a mysterious pregnant woman who may or may not actually exist.  It has been called “a corker,” and Twin Citians will be happy to know that the venerable August Wilson makes his screen debut in the film as a German professor. Whenever we can’t afford to rent another film, you can expect it to show up on the Oak Street calendar.

Your films usually involve your friends as writers or actors. Do you plan to shoot something here in Minneapolis?

I am working hard at making friends so as not to stall my filmmaking career. That’s why you can find me at various sleazy bars most nights of the week. According to my plan, as soon as the universal lubricant has brought about the boost in friendship and popularity that it so recklessly promises, I will embark on a new film. Then, having exhausted and/or destroyed those hard-won friends through the filmmaking process, I will have to flee the Twin Cities to begin the whole silly cycle again in Fargo.

The Minnesota Opera vows to pump up the authentic Japanese flavor of Madame Butterfly this time around. Productions of Puccini’s masterpiece about a geisha who gets crossed by an American sailor rely too often on caricatures of Japanese culture—especially the geishas in their campy kimonos and sets festooned with rice paper. Up to now, the Minnesota Opera has followed suit with their many seasons of Butterfly, which pops up every five years or so. This time they’re under the direction of Colin Graham, a veteran kabuki and opera director, who will undoubtedly infuse the production with subtle influences from real Japanese theater. Without the distraction of those pesky and frequently comic geisha-girl clichés, the Opera can focus on distilling Puccini’s gorgeous music to its heart-wrenching core. Sung in Italian with English super-titles. 345 Washington St., St. Paul; 651-224-4222; www.mnopera.org

Close your eyes and listen to the Jungle Theater’s reprise of Dylan Thomas’s dreamlike Under Milk Wood, which it’s staging for a fifth time to stretch through this year’s holiday season. While there’s little to see in this radio play, there’s plenty to hear—a beautiful, lyrical ramble of poetry, all spoken during a day in the life of the average, unhappy folks living in a Welsh fishing village. Artistic director Bain Boehlke reappears onstage alongside Claudia Wilkens, an adroit local performer who thrives in text-heavy productions (largely on the Jungle stage). Together, they weave a cozy, lyrical collage of language out of Thomas’s script, offering listeners a meditation on what it is to be content together in hopeless misery. 2951 Lyndale Ave. S.; 612-822-7063; www.jungletheater.com