Monthly Archives: July 2014

Shearwater, Vienna Szene Wien, 23 April 2014

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This year I’ve found myself listening to Shearwater more than just about any other artist, so it was a great pleasure to take my preferred front centre spot at the Szene for what was, remarkably, their third concert in Vienna in as many years (see here for my review of their 2012 visit). Some groups, and Shearwater are one of them, tour so frequently that you can’t help but admire their dedication. The received wisdom goes that groups have to tour in these days of rampant downloading in order to make money from music. But as Shearwater’s singer and songwriter Jonathan Meiburg recently wrote, “Touring is like the rest of American life – only the famous bands make money. The rest of us are doing it for some other reason.” (As an aside, Meiburg once asked people on the group’s Facebook page if they could guess how many copies of their recently released album Fellow Travelers had been sold; the answer was a mere 1500.)

No, it seems to me that touring is what you need to do to form a bedrock of support and goodwill in the world, and it’s certainly what initially made me a fan of Shearwater. As mentioned above, though, I’ve also been playing their records an awful lot this year, particularly 2008’s Rook, 2010’s The Golden Archipelago and 2012’s Animal Joy. The first two of these seem to go together in my mind, consisting as they do of spare, brooding art rock that draws you in with its haunting imagery and restrained instrumental colours. (“An Insular Life” from The Golden Archipelago is my favourite song from this period, a stunning cinematic masterpiece in three minutes.)

Animal Joy was something of a departure for the group, more urgent and direct than its predecessors but no less compelling for all that. And in “You As You Were” and the near-title track “Animal Life” the album contained two of the most potent and dramatic rock songs I’ve heard in many a year. This music is so good that it makes me want to grab everyone I know and make them listen to it, so convinced am I of its dazzling, diamond-hard brilliance. (Since the new one, Fellow Travelers, contains only one Meiburg original among a rash of cover versions, it’s a fairly inessential addition to their catalogue.)

It seems to me, in fact, that there is no-one else in rock doing anything remotely like what Shearwater are doing except for my one great musical obsession, Peter Hammill. This isn’t a comparison I make lightly, but it’s one that makes sense to me given Meiburg’s sharp intelligence, rich voice and gifted way with words, not to mention the grand ambition of his songwriting. In other words I find this music completely spellbinding, from Meiburg’s soaring vocals via his remarkable texts to the way the songs ebb and flow from peak to challenging peak. Shaped by gorgeous melodic touches, the songs speak eloquently of memory, violence and the precarious relationship between human and natural worlds.

Live, Shearwater are a fearsomely powerful outfit, with Meiburg’s up-front guitar and keyboards bolstered by energetic percussion and, well, more guitar and keyboards. Between songs he is witty, relaxed, yet always riveting. His spoken introduction to the song “Home Life”, in which he tells of looking out of his bedroom window as a boy and seeing the lights of radio towers in the distance, is both evocative and strangely moving.

After an enthralling main set, Meiburg returns to the stage alone for a stark solo reading of the anguished “Hail Mary”, slashing furiously at his guitar as his voice echoes around the hushed room. Finally the group send us home with an exuberant cover of Roxy Music’s “Virginia Plain”, a fun way to end the evening for sure but one that feels almost too lightweight in comparison to the epic scale of what has gone before.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Vienna Stadthalle, 23 July 2014

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The last time Neil Young came to Vienna was six years ago, touring on the back of the Chrome Dreams II album. That show, in the slightly odd surroundings of the Austria Center (which has rarely been used for rock concerts since; maybe they were put off by the fact that the audience nearly broke the floor with their jumping up and down) was a relatively user-friendly affair, with an acoustic set followed by an electric set and a fairly generous helping of Young’s greatest hits. Wednesday night’s concert, on the other hand, was definitely one for the diehards, with extended jams aplenty and an acoustic set that lasted for only two songs – one of which, “Blowin’ in the Wind”, added up to not much more than glorified busking. And yet this was the one that played out in front of a capacity audience in the soulless barn that is the Stadthalle, with its muddy acoustics, concession stands and endless parade of people wandering around the place. All of which goes to show, as if it needed reiterating, that nothing is predictable in the world of Neil Young.

The other big difference between the 2008 and 2014 concerts, of course, was that this time Young had brought his legendary backing band Crazy Horse with him. And while there’s clearly no “right” or “best” way to see Young, given the plethora of styles and configurations at which he excels, there’s no denying the crackle of excitement that greeted his entrance onstage accompanied by rhythm guitarist Frank Sampedro, drummer Ralph Molina and substitute bassist Rick Rosas, along with two excellent female backing singers.

With barely a nod to the audience, the evening kicked off with a barnstorming take on “Love and Only Love” from 1990’s seminal Ragged Glory album. Young and Sampedro fell straight into a lengthy dialogue, their guitar licks meshing together in loose but controlled interplay. It was a full four minutes before Young stepped up to the mic, his unique and still haunting voice testifying to the song’s powerful message: “Love and only love will endure/Hate is everything you think it is/Love and only love will break it down/Break it down, break it down.”

On the other hand, if there’s one thing Neil Young has been at pains to communicate in his almost 50-year career, it’s that love is not all you need. The strongest emotion emanating from the stage was not love but anger – and righteous anger at that, borne of an abiding and passionate humanitarian conscience. The singer’s black hat stayed stubbornly on his head for almost the entire evening, but from my vantage point fairly close to the stage (or, if you must, from the video screens on either side), it was clear that his mouth was set in a more or less permanent snarl. It was as though these long (14 cuts in two hours), serpentine songs, their distorted shapes hewn from volume and electricity, were the only possible response to an ongoing crisis of global proportions.

That response was inscribed not only in the more hard-rocking numbers like “Love to Burn” and the inevitable main-set closer “Rockin’ in the Free World”, but also in the more elegiac moments such as “Living with War” and “Cortez the Killer”. “Cortez” in particular was exquisite, with Young drawing out long, achingly tender cadences to frame the song’s narrative of love and sacrifice. When not at the mic Young was most often to be found squaring up to Sampedro, the two men seemingly oblivious to all but the music binding them together, a touching image of two sexagenarians holding fast in the storm.

Given the depth of Young’s back catalogue, there will always be gripes about the setlist, with regrets over omitted songs an inevitable aspect of any post-gig discussion. In my case, the absence of “Like a Hurricane”, “Hey Hey My My”, “Powderfinger” and “Cinnamon Girl” was particularly keenly felt. It was also unfortunate, though perfectly understandable, that Young chose to round off the evening with the bouncy but rather cheesy new song “Who’s Gonna Stand Up And Save The Earth?” But such disappointments count for little when weighed against the urgency and vitality that Neil Young, at 68, still brings to everything he does.