CURVING PERCEPTION: Citadelle are great
with the lights out.
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Anybody out there old enough to remember Burt Sugarman’s Midnight Special? It was a wondrous live-music show in a time of gratuitous lip-synching much like our own, running 90 minutes on NBC every Friday night after Carson got over. It’s only vaguely on the fringes of my memory, as it ran from 1973 to 1981 and I ain’t that old, but they’ve made a kick-ass DVD package as a retrospective and the performances they’ve gathered are extraordinary. Have you seen a young Tina Turner shake it? Do you realize how hot Stevie Nicks was? Did you know Neil Sedaka used to be pretty cool?
The show stands as a brilliant reminder that music used to be about the performance and the song. People played each other’s songs, songwriters had hits with multiple bands, and the sweat dripped off Al Green like he’d been hosed down in the green room beforehand—and all he did was sing.
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Laser Bridge to Eagle City
| Released by Citadelle
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If you’ve seen Citadelle over the past year, you’re probably buying what I’m selling here. If there was any justice in the world, Burt Sugarman would come out of retirement (actually, he may be dead or something, as my research cannot verify he’s still alive) and launch a new program, just to put Citadelle up on the same stage that once saw Genesis play in 1974, along with Foghat, John Mayall, and Mott the Hoople. All of these bands understood that if a song is five minutes long, it’s because you’ve written three bridges and two different verse types, not because you’ve decided to go AB seven times. Also, there should be at least three instruments ripping solos, sometimes all at once. Plus, have a really warm guitar tone that’s as fat as your average American teenager.
Yeah, Citadelle, led by the multi-voiced Barry Burst, is psychedelic as hell, dripping with guitars, harmonies, organ, and thrumming bass on their new album, Laser Bridge to Eagle City. Unfortunately, they’ve yet again lost their drummer, so they’re not going to play a CD-release show, and Burst says the band will be moving to California in early October, so you’re not likely to see them again any time soon. The least you can do is buy the album at Bull Moose and give them a little moving money. It’s certainly worth a sawbuck.
Recorded by the band in their practice space using GarageBand (one of those easy-to-use Mac programs — probably Communist), the instruments can sometimes sound distant, and I’d have made some different choices with the mix, but there’s plenty to enjoy here, from fantastical lyrics to chugging garage blues to a crisp flute break in the opening of “A Winter’s Walk,” the disc’s first track. More of the Chris Wood (Traffic) variety than the Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull, you know that one), Burst’s piping follows wind chimes and tribal drums that finish in a jarring crash. It provides a melodic counterpoint to the low-end guitars and prepares the listener for vocals like, “Summer leaves on the ground/Darkness and winter walk hand in hand/And so the sun sets at every turn/ And so the candles fall, ever burnt.”
It’s unapologetic stuff, and the band are well versed in the ways of Love, Cream, and Pretty Things by their own admission. Which makes it all the more fun. This isn’t high art, but it isn’t meant to be, and it sure is great with the lights out and the headphones on (should you find yourself by yourself). “Electric Garden” is a sweet and melodic number with plenty of harmonizing vocal tracks and ringing indie-pop guitar heavy on the upper E and B strings. “Untilted” (no, not “Untitled”) instead puts you off with the vocals, using an effect that makes them oscillate unintelligibly, but you’ll forgive them once you hear Ben Gatchell’s creative organ break, following a series of modulations back and forth from a minor-y dirge to a poppy Monkees vibe with Sterling Black’s guitars.
There’s an undercurrent of prog-rock here, too, especially in “Antique Rhythm,” where Burst delves into spoken vocals, before a sung chorus about how “the old antique rhythm finds your mind/Finds your soul.” Though not prominent in the mix, the organ work before the last verse is perfect for the mood, hopping about in quarter notes to etch out a pop hook, plus you’ve got dueling guitar breaks, just about exact but not quite, one in each channel, finally building to a crescendo that finishes on top.
The title track is the album’s penultimate, a 1:41 piece of candy, as piano and flute play together like a music box in the next room, all the instruments fall apart into madness, like whoever was playing them just got struck by rapid onset Mad Cow Disease. It’s enough to make you wish “Sidetracked by Satan #2,” a waltz, didn’t sound so final: “Take us from this place ... the one thing I know is I’ll never return.”
On the Web
Citadelle: www.myspace.com/bandcitadelle
Email the author
Sam Pfeifle:
sam_pfeifle@yahoo.com