REVIEWS
LIVE ~ Room 5
Eva Ruiz-L.A. Taco
www.lataco.com
Globetrotting musical sensation Michael Van London has a knack for rock. The Michigan-bred boy is hardly a Midwestern novice. After playing through a series of years in New York, Paris, and Boston, as well as widespread touring within the European and American continents, Van London is rather a worldly and accomplished musician. At his art for an upcoming two year anniversary in L.A., he is currently blossoming amidst the musical community of the ‘Wood and such, doing so while keeping a fresh, updated style, constantly striving to be as professional and prolific a rocker as can be.
With an ongoing schedule at Los Angeles’s best known music venues, I caught him on a cozy evening at Room 5. With a nearly all female lineup, being sandwiched between chicks who rock is nothing new for Van London. With Juliana Hatfield a profound inspiration and The Donnas a favorite of his, it is no surprise Van London dreams of forming a full-fledged estrogen-charged, tittie-bouncing, fishnet-tromping chick band, except him, of course, who happens to be generously endowed with testosterone and other such related things. Say goodbye to cock rock, and bring on the cunt rock
With three recorded albums—“Roses”, “Je Suis”, and “Fortunes of Misfortunes”—Van London is currently working on a fourth and full-length album tentatively called “Ice Cream & Blood & Guts” while collaborating with Brandon Jordan of Kill Radio on production. The provisional title of said autumn album is totally in the nature of Van London. A serious beauty lies in his ability to craft pop with joint painstaking profundity—blood and guts.
Unquestionably bohemian, Van London not only makes sharp social critiques but also delves into deep wells of personal material among which “Sexxx Themes” is a favorite of mine. A song about artificial romances through sex and drugs is not just awfully compelling, but also really easy on the ear.
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"Prophets and Prophecies"
By Derrick Hurd
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When I was a child my mother came home from a night on the town in New York to tell me that she had been in a little nightclub in the Village and heard the voice of the century. “She’s kind of funny looking,” she told me, “but when she sings you cannot take your eyes off of her…and she takes a simple song and makes it into a journey.”
It would be several years before I got to experience Barbra Streisand for myself and by then she had more than proven my mother’s assessment sage. My mother also bought Polaroid stock when nobody knew what it was and invested in a dicey project called SEA WORLD which looked like a dog on paper. I did not inherit my mother’s savvy business sense, but I did inherit her love of music and prophetic connection to a musical muse.
I was sitting in the living room of a very good friend recently where another of his friends was visiting after performing for one night at the Rainbow Bar and Grill. After a while the stranger picked up a guitar and started singing.
An hour or so later I realized that my mother and I had shared the experience, separated by decades, of being in on a happening, the emergence of a truly seminal artist. Michael Van London is that artist.
Handsome and rangy, Michael is darkly enigmatic in appearance with an edgy humor and easy performing style. Similarly dichotomized his voice is as sweet as it is jagged; a combination of leather and Jasper. His lyrics are journals of life, each song a parable - stories recounted as if to a best friend, the one he could tell every secret to; the one he could trust; the one who could open his heart. Michael is the Gordian knot untied.
I left that evening thinking that the uniqueness of the personal concert I had just been given audience to would never be duplicated again in my life. But…then I listened to the album FORTUNES OF MISFORTUNES…and I was right back there in the living room eye to eye with Michael sharing his soul. Everyone I have played the album for says the same thing.
Each song is a living snapshot which, as the title suggests, segues to the next like chapters in a great novel, the kind of novel that covers the spectrum from despair to enlightenment; positively Dickensian in scope, despite the unmistakable rock and roll cache. Your body reacts to the beat instinctively and draws you into the journey you can never outlive or exhaust; or define.
The epic journey has begun again, as it has through time immemorial, every generation has its archetypes and prophets, I now call one of them, Michael Van London, a friend.
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"One Little Comeback"
Michael Van London makes his own luck on Fortunes of Misfortunes.
By Tom Kieliszewski
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In her musical tribute to the late Jeff Buckley, “Trying Not to Think About It,” Juliana Hatfield sings, “Southern California is bad for the soul and New York City takes its toll.” As a former New Yorker and a newcomer to Los Angeles (and a big Juliana Hatfield fan), singer-songwriter Michael Van London knows the relative truth of both of these claims. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that he’s still reserving judgment on Southern California. A military brat who spent the majority of his childhood in a small town in central Michigan, Van London arrived in Los Angeles six months ago to record a new record, with Hatfield’s words echoing in his mind. Van London came to L.A. spurred on by promises of major-label connections and a big break, promises that dissolved amid disagreements over style and substance. “I came here to do a record,” says Van London, frustration still coloring his words. “But I felt like my ideas weren’t cool enough for them.” “Look hot and sad” and be sexually ambiguous, he was told. Amid these struggles the project fell apart. For Van London, who has three independent EPs to his name on various indie labels, the delay was interminable and puzzling. “I was dying to record and all they were doing was talking. It was three months of talking and nothing getting done,” he recalls. This wasn’t his first experience of this sort. On a trip to the Hamptons in 2002 he met a lesbian producer for Sony who arranged a meeting for him with label execs. After his powwow with the bigwigs, he was told that he needed to be “more commercially viable.” That disappointment, however, hadn’t come at the end of a cross-country move. But Van London is used to life on the move. In 1998, after a brief year-long flirtation with music studies, he opted instead for a life performing his songs on the East Coast café and pub circuit. After a few years of this life, he pulled up stakes and moved to Europe for a year, where he made Paris his home base but traveled widely, playing gigs wherever he went. His final relocation before his trip out West involved an 18-month stay in Boston, where he recorded his EPs Je Suis and Roses, as well as contributed to The Burren Project, a major compilation of Beantown musicians. In the months since the collapse of the project that brought him to the Golden State, Van London has reset his priorities and hatched a new plan. While the original strategy was a high-profile team effort, Van London’s new approach is grassroots and self-driven. Taking inspiration from two of his musical idols, Aimee Mann and Hatfield—who both were burned by the big labels early in their careers—Van London adopted a DIY strategy. His response to his misfortune was scrappy and philosophic: “‘Tough shit! Move on.’ It gave me the opportunity to do things my own way.” Van London previews his new record on Jan. 7 at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, where he’ll kick off “Late Night at Highways,” a new series of Saturday-night musical performances. He’ll also be giving out copies of 6 Fortunes, an EP that includes five songs from Fortunes of Misfortunes and one exclusive track. Following his instincts and his own muse has served Van London well in the wake of disappointment. “I decided that if I were to go the independent route, I would go completely independent.” He concludes with a laugh, “I’m not sure if I’m completely insane for doing this, or right where I should be.”
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