Reviewed: Big Dipper, Banquet Hall

Big Dipper Crashes On The Platinum Planets' second track should have been its first. It's a lament, but also a prayer of sorts to activate the muse for this, the first new Big Dipper album in over 20 years (sort of) - hoping for "voices that guide a rising chorus that opens wide!" So goes Gary Waleik's "Robert Pollard," which worries that a classic era of songwriters like namechecked Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Jagger-Richards, and Newmans both Randy and Colin, is coming to end and all hope lies with Guided By Voices oracle Robert Pollard (who also created the album's cover art) may be the last man standing to carry the torch. The merits of that argument are called into question by its very existence as "Robert Pollard" is catchy as hell.

But maybe not as catchy as "Princess Warrior," drummer Jeff Oliphant's highly hummable tribute to cancer recovery. The refrain's plead "help me get back on my knees, I'm begging you, begging you please" is as big a hook as they make 'em. The album covers some wider ground too: Goffrier's "Joke Outfit" has biting guitar and smiting lyrics, and his "Hurricane Bill," "Pitbull Cruiser," and "Happy New Year" are grand, smooth pop. Waleik's "Sarah and Monica" recalls Dipper's longtime (and perhaps over-estimated) association with scientific and extra-terrestrial imagery (c.f. "Lunar Module," among others), but is as much a memory of summers past spent under "constellations in summer skies," though it does ask "is memory matter, in that it can be destroyed?"

Big Dipper Crashes On The Platinum Planet is everything we'd hoped it would be. Full of catchy hooks, idiosyncratic playful guitar jousting, and that essential silliness that make the band what it is. That latter bit may be the most important. Whether it's oddball characters called Lord Scrumptious, or the way Bill Goffrier hesitates while reaching for a high note in your face, or the way his guitar jabs in response to Gary Waleik's, Big Dipper continues to remind us that this whole music thing is supposed to be fun.

The self-recorded album out this week (very limited blue vinyl available here and signed CDs here) is their first since their 1990 major label debut (and finale) and their 1992 breakup. This reunion run started in 2008, when Merge, doing a great public service, reissued the band's Homestead catalog (an EP and two nearly perfect albums), along with a revelatory collection of an album's worth of material recorded but never released after the band's very short major label tenure. That collection, and the band's joyous reunion shows, hinted at what they were still capable of. Now we know for sure.




This is just the latest in a great classic Boston rock renaissance that I've talked a lot about in this space. These last few weeks alone have seen reunions of legends Human Sexual Response (who played literally every song they released in their short 80's run) and 90's indie pop favorites Fuzzy, who played a birthday show for one of their guitarist-singers, along with Tanya Donnelly playing a few Belly hits with Buffalo Tom as her backing band, along with the latter running through a few of their biggies as well.

This isn't just about reunions, though. I always closely associated Big Dipper with their contemporaries The Cavedogs as they trod the same boards around town and were in the same rough neighborhood of 'pop,' but the latter with their own bent and a bigger rock sound and more 12-string jangle. Like Big Dipper, the Cavedogs had their own flirt with the majors that led to their downfall. Their guitarist, Todd Spahr, spent the 90's leading greats Merang and then The Gravy before pulling up stakes and moving to Los Angeles. Save a couple of Cavedogs reunions (like this one a couple of summers ago), we haven't heard from him in awhile.

He finally resurfaces as a member of Banquet Hall, along with a couple of other Boston transplants. Rick Shaw, a criminally under-appreciated songwriter that some called the Godfather of the Northern Worcester County post-punk scene (by 'some' I mean I called him that) when he fronted his early band, Navy Blue Nuns (grab their great compilation here) before leading a couple of quality Boston bands like The Meltaways and Krebstar, handles the other guitar and Paula Kelly, who cut her teeth in cult legends Drop Nineteens and remained a prominent scene figure throughout the late 90's and early aughts, plays the bass and does some arranging as well.

After grinding it out in L.A. clubs for a few years now, the band has just released their debut album, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, which is the sum of its great parts. Right off the top of it feels so great to hear Spahr's playful jittery guitar chords on leadoff track "Stars After Stars" and Shaw's pop classicist approach to "Puppets," with warm lounge harmonies from the Watson Twins. Later, Spahr's "Urban Renewal" betrays an Elvis Costello influence wrapped in a cozy acoustic guitar, Shaw's "Bells On" is the kind of heart-on-your-sleeve pop song that Boston songwriters (like, say, Buffalo Tom) seem to do so well, and the band resurrects an old Merang single to great effect with lost classic "Drunk and Quartered."

Here, have a listen:


-Michael Piantigini


Big Dipper: Facebook | Twitter 
Banquet Hall: Facebook | Bandcamp

Rock Over Boston Over Hoboken: Yo La Tengo Hanukkah Residency

[Peter Prescott sings the Volcano Suns' "Cover" at the night 5 of Yo La Tengo's 2010 Hannukah residency at Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ 12/5/2010. Photo by Michael Piantigini. More here.]

It's sort of like when Boston sold out nine nights at the Centrum in the 80's, except Yo La Tengo does it every year (when they're not on tour, at least).

Every 25th of Kislev (I looked that up), they bogart the schedule of Maxwell's - their legendary Hoboken hometown home base club - to celebrate Hanukkah with an 8 night stand. The only Hanukkah actually visible is the old-school electric menorah sitting on bassist James McNew's formidable amplifier, but these shows are their own sort of revival. Over the years, they've developed their own tradition: the openers are always a surprise - never announced in advance (at least until the first person with a Twitter account arrives at the club), there's a comedian, a mix CD by one of the band or someone close, and the money goes to charity. Sounds good to me.

Watching the coverage of the shows leading up to our night (5) was excruciating - M Ward? Parting Gifts? Jeff Tweedy? SYL JOHNSON? How could they possibly top those?

Mission of Burma has been laying low of late, and they've apparently been writing songs. After opening with "Nu Disco," they tore through a half-dozen or so great new ones before settling into fun cover times: Cream's "NSU," Brian Eno's "7 Deadly Finns," Buzzcocks' "I Don't Mind," an amazing Wipers' "Youth of America," closing it out with a raging run through the Dils' "Class War." The dark, low-ceilinged Maxwell's recalled the smaller clubs that Burma haven't really had to play in their second life. Man does it work for them: Peter Prescott's now-mandatory sound baffle barely contained him, and the now leonine Roger Miller was animated and nearly wild, slashing through impossible chords.

There's not really any info on when we might hear that new Burma album, but I am now officially anticipating it eagerly.

How very clever of Yo La Tengo to provide a comedic palate cleanser, because Burma was hard to follow. It was even tougher for comedian Wyatt Cenac, I'd imagine. How do you get a crowd energized by punk rock and anticipating the headliner to pay attention to your talking? Luckily, the crowd was friendly and jubilant and Cenac mostly connected for his brief set.

I'll try not to gush too much about our hosts, but it ain't easy. Yo La Tengo have proven to be so versatile and reliable over the years and though it would be natural to worry how a band can maintain momentum through an 8 night stand, one needn't.

Yo La Tengo makes a point of keeping things interesting for themselves, as well as their fans; sometimes they're on the road telling stories and playing acoustic, sometimes they're live-soundtracking old undersea nature films, and sometimes they're just making noise (and, in the new year, they're apparently doing all that, plus acting and more). Sunday night's opening set demonstrated that versatility: after easing into things with landmark album I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One's gentle instrumental "Green Arrow," they wound up the buzz with "Evanescent Psychic Pez Drop" from a 1996 split single with Stereolab, leading to guitarist Ira Kaplan working up his first guitar freak-out of the night in "Flying Lesson (Hot Chicken #1)." Turning on a dime, the band instantly hushed the-now frenzied crowd with And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out's confessional "The Crying of Lot G." The mood swing was breathtaking.

The rest of the set was just as varied, with the old and the new; the quiet ("Pablo and Andrea"), the poppy ("Sugarcube"), and the frenzied ("Mushroom Cloud of Hiss"). The band showed no signs of flagging energy, playing with as much intensity as I've ever seen them.

The night's Boston-based undercurrent continued at the top of the encore when the high bidder of an auction benefiting WFMU turned in a more than credible take on Jonathan Richman's "Astral Plane" with a Roger Miller-abetted Yo La Tengo's backing. How cool must that have been?

Swapping out one Burma for a pair, Bob Weston (who had been sitting in with Yo La Tengo all night doing the live sound collage-ing he does with Burma) strapped on a bass while Peter Prescott led his partial Volcano Suns lineup/Yo La Tengo mash-up through a version of the Suns' "Cover" that left me itching to see another full Suns reunion or maybe a reunion of the Prescott-fronted Kustomized.

The rest of Burma joined in for the last trio of covers capped off by Burma-associates Dredd Foole and the Din's "So Tough."

Yes, yet even more Boston. It was super nice of those Mets fans to be so welcoming of us Sox fans.

-Michael Piantigini

Don't miss Ira Kaplan's Hanukkah Diary.

Yo La Tengo: Internets | MySpace | Facebook | Twitter
Mission of Burma: Internets | MySpace
Wyatt Cenac: Internets | IMDB