In celebration of my 26th birthday, Aryn took me to see The Apple Tree at Studio 54 last night. Knowing nothing of the original 60’s show, I wasn’t familiar with the story or the music, but I was there pretty much just to see and hear the lovely Kristin Chenoweth. And she was there. And she did sing. Although the songs themselves were decidedly less showy, and perhaps less memorable than something like Wicked, she performed them so flawlessly, and had so much fun with them, that it’s hard to say anything bad about the show. Throughout the night, Chenoweth showcases her versatility by playing three characters, jumping from a chesty vibrato to a piercing nasal voice and everywhere in between.

In addition to her crazy mutant vocal range, she has perfect comedic timing, whether going for something subtle or completely over the top. In the end, the show itself might be a little fluffy and insubstantial, but her performance is so captivating and she is so charasmatic, that everyone from the hip locals (us) to the out-of-towners in sweatpants (directly in front of us) gave her a standing ovation at the end.

My birthday also featured lunch at Swich and dinner at Burgers & Cupcakes. And I think I had oatmeal for breakfast. Overall a good day. The Apple Tree ends its limited engagement next month, so if you’re unable to see it, I recommend that you make it to the next show Kristin Chenoweth is in, whatever it may be. Just don’t wear sweatpants, that’s not cool.

So Keith told me about this contest they’re having for Cyanide and Happiness, where you basically have to take an existing comic and replace the text with your own.  I don’t have the most “accessible” sense of humor, so I doubt I could actually win, but it’s fun to compete for a week of free advertising, with my banner up on their site.  12.5 million views?  That could mean as many as 25 people who would actually laugh at my comic!  Sweet.  Anyway, here’s my submission.  I tweaked it for a little bit because I felt like it hadn’t quite achieved what I wanted it to at first.  In the end, giving it the father-son dynamic was what did it for me.  It may not do it for you.  And that’s fine.  I encourage you to submit your own.

From the beginning seconds of M(US)IC, the debut album from Buffalo’s Damiera, it’s clear that this is a band who likes playing at full throttle. Dual guitars ceaselessly interweave meandering angular melodies and beautifully discordant chord stabs, while a distorted bass throbs and crawls between sporadic drum hits, everything somehow melding together into this math-y marriage of noise. It’s a fusion of four integral parts, interlocking so precisely that they’re almost indistinguishable from each other, each contributing equally to the final result. The band careens along at a breakneck pace throughout this collection of ten songs, each track ending as abruptly as it starts, until the album is over and you realize you haven‘t exhaled in 31 minutes.

For someone like me, Damiera embodies a perfect balance of all my many musical tastes. The kid who listened to all that punk in high school revels in their constant energy, relentlessly pushing each song to the finish with the requisite number of shout-along choruses and bouncy yelps. The college prog nerd giddily closes his eyes while he tries to count along with the aid of a calculator as time signatures seamlessly shift and melt in and out of each other. And the self-assured certified music snob, so confident in the infallibility of his own preferences, charts out the whole thing to make sure all the right compositional elements are there. This is music with an immediate vitality, achieving a huge impact on first listen, but still rewarding repeat listens with a generous amount of hidden subtleties.

The band’s sound is like theoretical better versions of all the bands you might cite as influences. If Fall Of Troy learned to play to a metronome, or if Minus The Bear practiced their instruments for six hours a day, or if Further Seems Forever ditched emo and surrendered to their prog tendencies, it might come close to what Damiera are about. Undeniably confident, M(US)IC is a remarkably mature debut album, sounding more like the product of decades of careful perfection than a rookie band finding its sea legs on a rickety raft. While it’s true that the band cranks it to 11 for the vast majority of the album, they’re also clever enough to make the rare tranquil interludes really count, not to mention wise enough to cut the last song off before you have time to feel like you’ve been bombarded by such an onslaught.

If there is a weak element on this album, it’s definitely the vocals, which can’t help but be overshadowed by the robotic precision of the rest of the instruments. Dave Raymond sounds great when he’s half-singing, half-shouting at the top of his range, but as soon as he pulls back, the conviction leaves and he sounds vulnerable and limp against such flawlessly performed music. Luckily these instances are rare and they’re more than made up for by the transcendent moments like the chorus of “Immure,” in which Raymond perfectly belts out every single word over a jerky fist-pumping 5/4 groove.

Assuming the world is ready for Damiera, there should be no limit to what they can accomplish with this album. Though their dynamic range is perhaps a little limited, the diverse elements that make up their trademark sound should appeal to fans of indie, punk, prog, math rock, and everywhere in between. When the chunky “Obsessions” eventually stutters to its final cadence, you’ll probably want to either take the time to reflect on the experience, or you’ll start it over from the beginning. I usually find myself among the latter. I’ve been waiting for a band with this level of technical proficiency to manage a sound that is actually accessible from start to finish, and having finally found them, M(US)IC won’t be leaving my CD player for awhile.

Talking to my mom on the phone tonight, I realized just how bad I am at keeping people up to date on what’s going on in my world, so I thought I’d give you all a quick update. I’m still hard at work in the studio (my apartment) recording and mixing the “new” Astronaut Down album, which I hope to have done by March. All that’s left to record is a handful of vocal tracks, so we’re making good progress. I just have to work my studio wizardry and somehow make sonic sense of this densely-layered concept album madness.

We’re also trying to put some shows together for this summer around the northeast with Edensong. It’s a lot of work, but hopefully the payoff will be exposing our music to a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise hear it, and maybe even sell a CD or two while we’re at it. And, you know, maybe we’ll get discovered by some random A&R guy in Boston or Toronto and be catapulted into superstardom. Maybe.

Of course, the trade off for being this busy is that my mind is constantly preoccupied and I can’t seem to manage more than a single coherent thought a day. Today I used it up on a discussion about different laser sounds (specifically the red laser sound vs. the blue laser sound) with my friend Sandy. Tomorrow I think I will proclaim my hat itchy. It’s hard to say. With just one thought, you have to make it count, you know?

Oh, and it’s almost my Birthday! If you want to buy me stuff, I started a Wist, and of course there’s always Amazon. Or if you’d rather buy yourself a present, I recommend Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (which I *finally* finished) or the debut Damiera CD. It’s crazy, in the best possible way. I just might bore you with a long and meandering review of that at some point.

OK, that’s all for now.  Come see Astronaut Down at The Mean Fiddler on Saturday, OK?