2012 – Audiofemme

EVENT REVIEW: African Children’s Choir Gala

The 4th annual African Children’s Choir gala was held at City Winery this December 3rd. Hosted by ABC’s Nashville actress Connie Britton, and presided over by Big Kenny of Billboard Country chart topper Big & Rich, the night showcased the African Children’s Choir and raised funds to facilitate their travel costs.

The night began with guests enjoying cocktails and light hors d’oeuvres. Attendees mingled while the New York based rock act Emanuel Gibson and band played an opening set to warm up the crowd. Gibson kicked it off with classic rock style guitar riffs, soulful, rich vocals and a driving energy. The band included Poyraz Aldemir on drums, percussionist LS Bell on congas and Zito Bass on, naturally, the bass. Gibson brought edgy style to the stage and kept the night from starting off stiff and overly formal.

The lights dimmed and MC Connie Britton introduced New York’s longstanding crowd pleaser STOMP. The group consisted of five of the cast members, including Daniel Weiner, who also played as house band drummer, Keith Middleton, John Angeles, Marivaldo Dos Santos, and Patrick Lovejoy. The versatile crew performed sans the iconic trash can lids and push broom props they are known for making music with, and the result was a rhythmically rich, layered performance with only hands and feet as percussive instruments. I only wish they had been given time to perform more than one piece, as the crowd clearly loved the exclusive experience of seeing STOMP up close in an intimate setting.

Marty Thomas followed suit with his pop rock rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror”. His performance was engaging, and he even persuaded the crowd into joining in on the refrain. Thomas is a Grammy nominated recording artist, with Broadway credits Xanadu, The Secret Garden and Wicked under his belt. His crisp Broadway honed vocal style and technical ability was inspiring and refreshing to hear.

Stephanie J. Block was a special treat to see perform, as I had been blown away by her voice years ago when she played Elphaba in the First National Touring Company’s performance of Wicked. She has starred in Broadway hits such as Anything Goes, 9 To 5: The Musical, and The Pirate Queen, and can currently be seen in the title role of The Mystery of Edwin Drood at Roundabout Theater. Her strong vocal belt and ability to deeply emote continues to make her a distinguished performer.

Despite a star studded lineup, the true stars of the night were the children. The African Children’s Choir performed high energy Christmas themed selections and had the gala crowd on their feet. The kids truly looked to be enjoying the spotlight, and most likely enjoyed staying up past bedtime to get in on the gala action. The choir consists of children ages 7-11 from several African nations. They share their performances with audiences all over the world, and the City Winery attendees seemed thrilled to be a part of the choir’s success.

The live auction rounded off the night, and turned out to be nearly as entertaining as the performances. With prizes such as Chanel watches and a meet and greet with Miss New York 2012 on the line, and Big Kenny as a well intoned auctioneer, the bidding was a dramatic show. A surprising highlight involved an impromptu agreement from Connie Britton to sing a duet with Big Kenny if two bidders matched their price and shared an autographed violin. The gala crowd continued to raise the stakes on bids for a night with Big Kenny at his estate, and that was by far the big draw of the auction.

Big Kenny received the Malaika Award, which awards individuals for outstanding work on behalf of Africa’s children in need. He was recognized for his work in Sudan, and a music video highlighted his time spent in Africa working with the children. I had hoped Big Kenny would perform a final song with the Choir, but his closing speech inspired and ended the night on a note of hope.

According to www.nashvillecountryclub.com, the event raised over $50,000 for the African Children’s Choir.

Finding French Music In France

Having lived in France for the past four months, I’ve grown accustom to certain aspects of French culture: always say “bonjour” upon entering an establishment or you’ll be considered incredibly rude; don’t try to do any shopping on Sundays or Mondays – most everything is closed then; and there’s no need to rush out and do errands on your lunch break (all two hours of it) since the banks and post offices are shut during this time as well.

Although I studied in Paris two years ago, working in Chambéry – a small city surrounded by snow-capped mountains – has offered me a completely different cultural experience. Being here, I actually feel like I’m living in a different country.

So after weeks of not being able to see an American movie or find a normal-sized jar of peanut butter, imagine my surprise when I was able to spend three hours at a bar hearing nothing but American pop music. The homesick part of me relished those three hours. It was almost as if I had been transported back to college, “ironically” singing along to some Pop Princess with a group of friends.

A few weeks later I had kicked the mental malady and felt strong enough to commence a search for current French music. This proved to be a harder task than I had originally expected. Blaring through my French roommate’s door I heard the same three songs over and over: Nat King Cole’s “L.O.V.E”, Katy Perry’s “E.T” and something I assume was Christina Aguilera. It was an eclectic trio, but an eclectic American trio nevertheless.

Continuing the hunt, my English roommate Maddie bought a radio for our kitchen. As we scanned through the stations we couldn’t believe how many American songs we were tuning in and out of. Where was the French music?! (Even on the Billboard Charts, there is currently only one French artist in the top ten).

As a last resort I took to the Internet, searching and sieving through an immense amount of French artists. Here’s what I have to show for it: five of my favorite French songs released this past year.

1. Françoiz Breut – “La Chirurgie des Sentiments”: Françoiz Breut’s mesmerizing and angelic voice only add to her adorability factor.
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2. Lescop – “La Foret:” It’s a little repetitive, but fun electro-pop nonetheless. If you’re into Twin Shadow or Wild Nothing, you might like Lescop.
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3. Ooh La La! – “Un Poing C’est Tout:” Ridiculously catchy and Natacha Le Jeune seems pretty badass.
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4. Marie-Pierre Arthur – “Si tu Savais:” I might be breaking my own rule with this one, since she is actually French-Canadian, but I wanted to mention Marie-Pierre Arthur anyway. Listen to how she channels her inner-Feist.
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5. MOZIIMO – “Le Secret:” A beautiful and gradual build throughout the song makes it impossible to turn off.
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BOOK REVIEW: Neil Young’s Waging A Heavy Peace

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Last year, Neil Young performed a feat many famous musicians seem to be doing these days – he worked hard on a memoir that was published recently and gave it a few twists.

The overall premise of Waging Heavy Peace is that of Young peering into his brain matter over a period of a few months in 2011 and recording it (in writing, and only in writing – sort of). He talks about everything he’s currently doing and working on, complete with whatever thoughts pass through. It goes on for 497 pages. At times it was easy to forget that the book is that long. At other times it suddenly occurred to this reader to look ahead to check how much longer it was going to be before a next chapter, or to the end of the book, but it definitely had its moments.

Those looking for seriously deep insights and a more solid chronology from Young’s memoir are better off hunting down Shakey, Jimmy McDonough’s biography of the man. Peace finds Young holding to his chest the cards that proclaim how he feels about his closest family members and about many other matters that require intense introspection, but he’s quite willing to expound on many musicians and artists he’s played with, especially the ones who have passed away – original Crazy Horse guitarist and vocalist Danny Whitten; Larry Johnson, the filmmaker with Young’s Shakey Pictures who was best known for working on Young’s Human Highway; David Briggs, the producer with whom Young feels he made his best albums. There is a profound respect for what these people have meant to him and to the lives they led that is revealing in its own way. In a world he’s created that consists of music, family, close friends, and technology, Young can be an astute observer of surface.

Much has been made of the focus of Peace. It’s too easy to get caught up in that, and part of me wonders if that’s one of Young’s feints, a series of obstacles placed in the way of the readers that keep the man himself comfortable inside his own castles. They are edifices largely built of old cars and a need to present sound and music as he feels it should be heard. Young sings praises of the Lincvolt – his project transforming the innards of a ‘59 Lincoln Continental into a 21st century machine with a clean-burning engine – and a type of sound quality player and distribution system that would supposedly blow MP3s out of the water. He finances these enterprises, does some work on them, but mostly revels in a sort of nostalgia over these things. They are symbols of his American dreams, in a sense, of days when big cars helped bring him to his earliest gigs and larger vehicles like tour buses seemed to have lives of their own. Days when, even though the sound of his own albums may not have been perfect at the time, they sounded better than the CDs and iTunes digital files of the present. Repeated references to all of this stuff borders on annoying, making me wonder if Peace isn’t much more than a sales pitch.

If it is, it isn’t a very good one.

The Voodoo Music Experience is one of New Orleans’ attempts at being all things musically relevant to all people from all over the world – and to somehow, some way, make a profit while doing it. Its name makes it stereotypically New Orleans while differentiating it from the more well-known Jazz and Heritage Festival, somehow hinting at providing more “dangerous,” off-the-mainstream musical offerings than JazzFest would have.

The reality is that the Voodoo and Jazz Festivals are coming closer together with every passing year, both of them booking performers that wouldn’t be out of place in either festival context. One of those performers happened to be on the Le Ritual stage at Voodoo Fest earlier this year, rocking the audience with mostly new music that sounded a lot like his older music. Not that there’s a thing wrong with that, as Neil Young and Crazy Horse can still bring it. Put it in the context of Young’s recent memoir, though, and brace yourself for questioning why one would even attempt to categorize what he does at all.

Young’s interests and doings have gone well beyond wielding a pencil and paper to write songs, then wielding his trusty guitar, Old Black (among many other instruments over the years) to record them and perform them live. Watch him onstage with Crazy Horse, however, and you wonder why he would want to do anything else. Despite Young’s sobering hearkening back to past music on occasion with a bit of “Needle and the Damage Done” and the more recent, unblinking portrait of a couple’s travails over nearly twenty years of marriage in “Ramada Inn” from the newly released Psychedelic Pill, what he and the members of the Horse were best at was a sheer joy in playing rock. The massive expanse of the festival stage was shrunk not only by Young and the band members clustering together as they played, but also by the attitude they brought. An attitude that screamed This is fuckin’ FUN.

An occasional, recurring afterthought of sorts in Waging Heavy Peace is what playing with Crazy Horse means to Neil Young. It’s something that isn’t new to the memoir; Young has spoken of the Horse as an entity unto itself that kicks him into a higher gear both musically and spiritually many times before. He anticipates getting the group back together at the White House on his Broken Arrow Ranch and schemes to get each one of the musicians in on sessions that created Psychedelic Pill, another rock set destined to burnish their massive legacy (it’s of no little surprise to me that there’s a song called “Walk Like A Giant” on it). But watching them all performing live drives home one thing that Young’s memoir only hinted at…

…These days, the road is Neil Young’s drug. His music is still, largely, his greatest gift to us all in life. And the mirth he and Crazy Horse guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro took in 1990’s “F*!#kin’ Up” on that stage at Voodoo Fest was not to be missed – nor was the shredding that Old Black took, its strings a tangled mess on the rug after the encore of “Like A Hurricane.” These small, intense windows into Young’s innards are, truly, the best we as an audience will ever get.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

THOM YORKE, ‘ATOMS FOR PEACE’ & “HOLLYWOOD DOOOM”

Thom Yorke’s side project Atoms for Peace has an album coming out. F i n a l l y. We are excited about the debut from Yorke, Flea (of Red Hot Chili Peppers fame) and uber-producer Nigel Goodrich. But we are also just as excited about this live animation thing. The album art is wild and mysterious and apocalyptic, so why not animate it on the side of a building? Created by Radiohead visual artist Stanley Donwood and INSA, the aptly named “Hollywood Dooom” mural was done stop-animation style to give us a GIF on the side of a building. It is badass. See it HERE!

BEAUTIFUL NOISE DOCUMENTARY ON KICKSTARTER

Check out the campaign happening now on Kickstarter, by the folks working on the documentary Beautiful Noise. 8 years in the making, Beautiful Noise explores how bands such as the Cocteau Twins, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine created a fascinating sound that would influence generations to come. If this group succeeds in reaching their goal, Beautiful Noise will be released worldwide (and will definitely be a contender at the festivals.)

EMBATTLED MEGAUPLOAD FOUNDER BACK FOR ROUND 2

Kim Dotcom, whose property was recently raided by the New Zealand police and F.B.I in a spectacular ambush fit for a world class arms dealer, due to his controversial file hosting site, Megaupload, launched a new site in spite of his pending trial and the potential 20 years he faces. Dotcom, who is awaiting extradition, is seemingly unmoved by the charges. Mega, his new free file storage and sharing site, was flooded with traffic as soon as it launched yesterday, with more than half a million users lining up to register. “Legally it’s probably the most scrutinized Internet start-up in history,” Mr. Dotcom quoted to the New York Times. “Every pixel on the site has been checked for all kinds of illegal — potential legal challenges. We have a great team of very talented lawyers that are experts in intellectual property and Internet law, and they have worked together with us to create Mega.”

ARTIST PROFILE: TalkFine

They’re hard to describe, but maybe the best part about TalkFine is how incredibly unique their electro-pop blend of sound is. With dashes of humor and cues from a variety of genres including soul and R&B, TalkFine considers themselves a pop duo, and there is no better blanket term for their fun, sweet, and ferociously catchy brand of tunes.

With two EPs, a few YouTube videos of the boys covering artists like the Bee Gees and Rihanna, and several shows around the city, Clark Baxtresser and Pierce Siebers, Ann Arbor, Michigan natives, current roommates, childhood friends, and masterminds behind this unsigned act, are keeping themselves continuously busy with their band and a variety of special projects.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Baxtresser, the taller half, on the goings-on of his group as they prepare for two shows this month at Arlene’s Grocery. After two fantastic tours with fellow University of Michigan graduates and theatre troupe Team StarKid as the music director, Baxtresser has been working with Siebers on integrating TalkFine full-force into the New York music scene.

Take a listen here!

AUDIOFEMME: So what was the evolution of TalkFine?

CLARK BAXTRESSER: I started writing music with Pierce in high school, and we mostly would write funny songs. But we’d also perform or just play cover songs. A lot of them were Broadway ballads or classical arias. [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][Laughs]

AF: Is that your next album?

CB: Probably! [Laughs] So we established a musical partnership early on. We’ve known each other forever. So, I guess the partnership was there for a long time. The name TalkFine and the band idea, the idea that we would sort of be a unit, didn’t totally come about until middle of college. We spent our summer together after our sophomore years, and that’s when we thought of the name. We wrote this huge chunk of music, and that was, in terms of our work together, a huge turning point.

AF: Did you both go to college together?

CB: He actually went to Vanderbilt in Tennessee. He was a composition major.

AF: I get a very electro-pop, R&B vibe, especially from the songs on the new album. What would you say are your biggest artistic influences?

CB: We have a lot. The new album that we just released has a number of influences that are kind of soul, R&B…sort of like a throwback aesthetic. But we are huge fans of Rufus Wainwright. His great songwriting and love of melody, I think, is something that speaks to us because we both have very voice-centered backgrounds. Pierce was in the boy choir growing up, and I experienced a lot of that as well. So we love melody, and we love singing so that’s a big one. We also love Radiohead [laughs] it’s hard to call these influences but it’s things we love, so I’m sure it works somehow.

AF: In terms of songwriting, does it get done together or separately?

CB: We usually do almost everything together. Sometimes one of us will have a certain kind of idea and bring it to the other one and then we’ll work from there. But sometimes it really just takes one idea for us to build a whole song out of it, and when that happens it feels like, from that first idea, everything is built together — song construction, lyrics, production. It definitely feels like a true partnership in how we operate.

AF: Does the duo have any plans to tour in the future?

CB: We’d love to. Right now, we’re still getting our feet wet in the New York music scene. I know we’d love to in areas where we have friends – Chicago, LA. I’m sure if the opportunity arose we would love to set up shows there, but right now we’re just focusing on New York.

AF: When listening to the songs, there’s a fantastic sense of humor that comes across really well. So in regards to subject matter and thematic elements, what inspires you guys?

CB: It helps to have something to write for. We actually wrote a good number of songs for the latest StarKid show, A Very Potter Senior Year, and we’re working on the soundtrack for that right now. That was really an interesting experience for us because we were writing for such specific characters and scenes and feelings. We really worked well with those constraints. In terms of the songs on Lesser Known Hits, our most recent EP, we were writing a lot of those songs for our main producer [Jack Stratton]. So we were working with him very closely and a lot of the songs we were writing, we were anticipating sending to him. Some of the aesthetic and sense of humor is really attached to him and to what we thought he might find funny and want to work on. I think recently, we’ve been working with things we felt had some sort of destination. We were writing them for some sort of specific project.

AF: For A Very Potter Senior Year songs, is there more of a TalkFine influence or did you both work to stay true to what the Potter musicals had sounded like before? How did that work?

CB: We definitely were trying to keep it within the realm of StarKid musicals for sure. So we weren’t trying to make it any sort of TalkFine song. I’m sure certain parts are influenced. Our aesthetic can’t be completely removed. I think our hope is that we’ll just fit right in with the rest of the StarKid catalog, and that fans will embrace the songs.

AF: Having those two separate entities, did you and Pierce have to re-learn how to write together, or was it very natural for the two of you since you’ve been working together so long?

CB: We enjoy writing in different characters and different aesthetics. That’s part of why it’s sometimes difficult to kind of grasp our music because it’s just kind of fun to write in a completely different style sometimes.

AF: On YouTube, you’ve posted some really great covers. I love the Cranberries one you two had performed. Do you have a plan to continue with that?**

CB: Yeah, yeah definitely. We like doing covers. I’m not sure what the next will be yet, but I’m sure there will be another one somewhat soon. We’d also like to continue making original videos — music videos and other types of performance videos. We’re in the process of working out logistics for an upcoming music video shoot. We like making videos and having a visual component to what we do.

**Since our interview, TalkFine has released a wonderful cover of Wham!’s holiday classic “Last Christmas.”

AF: Finally, what’s upcoming for TalkFine?

CB: Possible music video and EP of our friend [Ahren Rehmel]‘s poetry. We’re working on the soundtrack for A Very Potter Senior Year. We’re still writing new music for TalkFine but we’re having to decide how that will be released and when it will be. Definitely sometime in the future we’ll release a new collection. Other than that, we’re just trying to focus on performing.

_____________

Check Clark and Pierce live this month at Arlene’s Grocery at 9pm on both 12/10 and 12/17. The duo will also be the special musical guest at “The Joe Moses Showses” at the The Player’s Theater 12/15 & 12/16.
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SHOW REVIEW: Matthew Dear + Light Asylum + Beacon

Watching a Matthew Dear performance is like standing before a work of art from the Italian Renaissance or Greek antiquity. You look at it, beguiled and even frustrated by the possibility that human hands could create something so beautiful. Matthew Dear himself, statuesque and always decked out in an impeccably tailored black suit even when he sleeps, I imagine, has been perfecting this aesthetic, now indistinguishable from the music itself, for over a decade. Going to his show indeed engenders that fleeting and indelible longing you feel when you’re in a museum looking at one of your favorite paintings: a longing to engage with something physically and emotionally unreachable even if by mere inches.

The tension of knowing he’s a real person who leads a real life with real things in it, and experiencing him as something so intangible and deliberately cultivated, is gripping. It keeps him shrouded in mystery, and keeps his magnetism as sharp and strong as ever; and it is precisely this tension that made his show last weekend at Webster Hall remarkable.

The stage looked beautiful. Bouquets of white roses embellished every mic stand. Massive banners in the style of abstract expressionism, of Dears most recent album artwork (created by Ghostly’s resident graphic designer, Michael Cina) hung in the background. Each band member juxtaposed one another dramatically, with two sets of percussion sidling the back, the trumpet player front and center, and the bass player in between him and Dear, who, off to the side, performed the electronics, lead guitar and vocals, conducting it all like a circus master. Everyone wore really pretty outfits. They started playing—new and old songs, all of which are so incredibly good— and the audience gravitated toward them like moths to a flame. It felt par for the course.

Then something extraordinary began to happen about halfway through. Maybe it was when he started to peel Rose petals off his bouquet, letting them fall to the floor with an improvised and unlikely touch. Or maybe it was when he started moving around the stage, dancing wildly, and even occasionally jumping off things. I think the decisive moment came, though, toward the end of the song “Do The Right Thing”. The flood lights were turned on so we could all see one another. Dear approached the audience and for the first time ever in my experience, sang the last verse and chorus directly to us, loudly and insistently, without any effects, tracking, or even much help from the band. “I was yours for escape”, he mused. He seemed to be addressing us . He seemed to be shedding his stoic affect in favor of human connection and all the ways in which it leaves one vulnerable as hell. For the last moments of the song he came right up to the edge like he was going to jump, defiantly, not singing just looking. People were generally freaking out. The girl to my right was bawling. As it all ended, he turned and retreated back, disappearing into a haze of smoke, and then the whole room went dark.

He’s clearly trying to make us care about him as a person. The question remains though, how this effort will coalesce with his music, long-associated with his personae, and the ways in which he distances himself from his audience when he’s live. On this, the verdict is still out. I think it says something mighty powerful, however, that his performance of “Do The Right Thing” that night was a singularly moving moment for I suspect, everyone in the room.

The supporting bands, Beacon, Light Asylum (and MNDR which I missed), put on amazing shows. Beacon’s performance was one of the best I’ve seen, since I think their big, cavernous sound is suited for big, cavernous places. The reverb actually had space to travel and linger, and the bass was so loud it had everyone’s hair standing up (the conventional wisdom about chicks loving loud bass is true, by the way). They performed most of their old material from No Body, as well as singles, “So Anxious” and “Last Friday Night”.

Now that they are signed, it seems they’ve come into their own. Thomas Mullarney is more confident in his vocal abilities, and therefore more inclined to sing louder. Even this simple act transforms the songs from good to really really good. For their whole set, they commanded the room–which is no simple feat when there are only two people and zero instruments. Those who were wandering aimlessly about were suddenly captivated. By the end of their set, there were three times as many people huddled toward the front of the stage.

I suspect in the not too distant future, they’ll be the headliners for shows like these.

When Light Asylum’s set started, I had no idea what to expect. I had only heard of them in passing. Flitting about on stage, plugging in wires was an incredibly muscular, tank top wearing man who I assumed was the band leader. Soon though, a young woman appeared and set my perceptions straight. Not only does she lead the project, she dominates. Their names are Shannon Funchess and Bruno Coviello and they make wildly energetic synthpop with electronic foundations. They’ve released one EP, In Tension, and one self-titled debut. The songs are chaotic and strange, yet entirely danceable. In fact you can’t help but dance when you hear them. This is due to the music itself, of course, but also Funchess’s personality on stage, which demands that you ride along with her on her weird journey. She stands behind an electronic drum kit, and sucks you into her world, sometimes singing or making other types of noises with her voice, sometimes dancing like she’s possessed, sometimes flapping like a bird, etc. And it is extraordinary. She has the lung capacity of a lioness, and a totally unique sounding voice, as well as an unending supply of energy. All this combined with Coviello’s catchy synth makes for the type of new-wave -writ modern I wish so many other mediocre bands would create, but can’t because they simply lack the spirit of innovation it takes to do it. Light Asylum, however, has enough to go around.

SHOW REVIEW: Twin Sister + Moon King + Leapling

twin-sister-2011 — Twin Sister • Photo by Shawn Brackbill

After a last minute cancellation by headliner School of Seven Bells, Long Island based band Twin Sister stepped up to the plate for an electrifying performance that truly stole the show. Singer Andrea Estella has a mesmerizing demeanor, and her hushed, waif-like vocals beckon listeners in. The full band has a seasoned stage presence and sound quality. The band mates are clearly in tune with one another on stage, and this resulted in some great moments of ebb and flow between instrumentation. The set focused primarily on their newest album In Heaven, which was released in 2011, although die hard fans did their part and called out for the oldies.

Twin Sister falls into the category of some sort of Dream Pop/Disco hybrid, and keyboardist Dev Gupta defines this style with a mastery of classic synth sounds. Estella joked that Gupta has a space station setup onstage, and his pile up of gear certainly looked the part. Gupta uses a modular synth, a Yamaha DX7 vintage synth, and a midi controller he hooks up to music software programs Logic and Ableton. I appreciated the precision of his playing and his sonic choices, although it left out the option for more spontaneity on stage. At one point, Estella wanted to add in a song the audience was calling out for, but it wasn’t set up on his computer to play, so they had to skip it. Yet this small inflexibility was a small price to pay for the quality he adds to the overall sound.

A highlight of the night was when guitarist/singer Eric Cardona kicked in on vocals for the song “Stop”. His crisp, easy flowing voice was a nice surprise to add into the mix part ways through the show, and I craved mores songs that could feature him as a singer. The acoustic encore included only Andrea’s voice with Eric on guitar and vocals, which resulted in refreshingly exposed harmonies, even if the duo was a little inexact. Twin Sister captures a bizarre, spacey calmness that is truly ethereal. The band turned out to be a natural headliner at the Hall.

Twin Sister – Stop
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Moon King was raw emotional content. I couldn’t help but fall in love with this band’s sense of wild abandon. Singer Daniel Benjamin is the heart of this group, and he seems to completely lose himself in his music. I found myself desperately wanting to come along with him on the trip. The group has a grungy rock look, and I kept feeling I’d transported into an impromptu Bushwick basement party, but they certainly filled out the Hall. It is interesting to see Moon King describe themselves primarily as a duo, when the drummer was such a strong tertiary aspect to the group. He was all passion, and his hard driving beats propel the songs quite nicely. But after a bit it was clear he was going to play full blast on every song. As a result, the songs felt too similar to one another. If Moon King could take a few steps back on a song or two, the results could be an explosive calm, and the audience would have come along for the ride. Guitarist/singer Maddy Wilde’s dramatic guitar style and airy vocal harmonies are indispensable, and she could do well to take center stage more often. The band had an energetic youthfulness that will be interesting to watch mature.

Stepping in as a last minute fill in, Leapling played the opening set. This group has a laid back, indie pop feel, and they oscillate seamlessly between a simplistic, easy going style, and moments of more driven jamming. Singer Daniel Arnes has a voice that sounds eerily similar to Benjamin Gibbard at times, and I found myself flashing back to my high school days of Death Cab for Cutie more than once. Leapling’s performance was polished, and their loose, roomy style was a great kick off to the night.

When School of Seven Bells returns to Brooklyn, I will be sure to check them out, but in the mean time, I’ll be jamming out to my new find, Twin Sister.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Life After Girls: The Rebirth of Christopher Owens

In January, Fat Possum will release Lysandre, the debut record of Christopher Owens. Owens will then play two back-to-back shows at Bowery Ballroom. In all likelihood, these shows will sell out. The reason that the music world is waiting so eagerly for this particular singer/songwriter’s first solo record is because Christopher Owens is best known as half of highly celebrated indie rock band Girls.

Formed in San Francisco 2009 with bassist and producer Chet “JR” White, Girls became a huge and nearly instantaneous success. Part of the fascination no doubt stemmed from Owens’ intriguing personal history, having been raised in the Children of God cult until he was sixteen. But it was the songs that the duo created that kept audiences enthralled, their pop simplicity resonating with fans and critics alike. The effortless, often sunny chords and uncomplicated lyrics, simultaneously fun and dark, characterized the three releases the band would produce over the next few years – Album in 2009, Broken Dreams Club in 2010, and 2011’s Father, Son, Holy Ghost – before Owens announced via Twitter last summer that he would be leaving the band. Now, six months later, Owens will make good on his promise to continue to write, record and play music, but this time, he’s on his own.

With Owens poised to take this leap, what can fans expect? Oddly enough, Lysandre is a strange little epilogue to the Girls saga; it’s a loosely themed tour diary of the band’s first international outing, during which Owens met and fell in love with the French girl the album is named for. It features all the sentimentality one might see coming with such a synopsis – he describes the tender details of their first encounters and the painful realizations he came to as it ended. And in between he questions his validity as a songwriter, marvels at the cities of the world, and swoons about a million times over, all in the key of A.

I caught what I considered a slightly more than mildly awkward solo performance a few weeks ago at Le Poisson Rouge, only his second solo appearance. That’s using the term ‘solo’ a bit loosely since he was accompanied by a sort of sad looking plant, a keyboardist, a drummer, two back up singers (one of which is his new love interest) and a wizard-esque, white-bearded woodwind player who was literally playing a different instrument almost every time I looked at him. More often than not, he trilled the recurring “Lysandre’s Theme” on his rather jazzy flute. Owens and company proceeded to play his record from beginning to end, signifying further Owens’ clear intention to present the work as a whole rather than as a set of separately satisfying and sonically distinguished gems in the manner of his work with Girls. While this is admirable in its ambition, it made the material a bit harder to digest, especially coming from someone who has shown a bit of a genius as far as composing perfectly pitched pop nuggets is concerned.

The performance was awkward because everyone wanted Owens to succeed. There’s no denying Owens as an artist and when he left Girls he left the world hungry for great records that could have been. But it’s also frustrating to know that he has chosen to make indulgent and somewhat gawky folk music when he’s capable of exploring the same themes in a far more palatable way. It’s more than a little uncomfortable to watch someone coming to terms with a painful past, confronting strange desires and issues of inadequacy. It wasn’t that the music he made under the Girls moniker was less raw or honest, but the sonic intricacies of his former project provided a more clever mask for its coarser sentiments. Without that veil, Owens’ musings tend to go from earnest to embarrassing.

A perfect example of that came about halfway through the set, when Owens performed “Love Is In The Ear Of The Listener”. The lyrics are a series of questions posed from songwriter to himself regarding the necessity and worth of his work, but it sounds like something an aspiring fifteen-year-old poet might write. He wonders if everyone’s tired of hearing love songs, if he’s just a bad songwriter in general. It came across like a questionnaire Owens might send to blogs with promo copies of Lysandre, and even had the audience chuckling at certain lines. It’s entirely possible that Owens is going for a tongue-in-cheek exploration of his insecurities. It could be that he’s not actually worried about his abilities at all; someone with Owens’ degree of critical acclaim must feel that he can’t totally fail. The conclusion he comes to in the song is that it doesn’t matter anyway since he’s doomed to write what he feels regardless of what people want or expect. In this way, it acts as a sort of disclaimer for the entirety of the new material, a challenge even.

Owens closed out the set with an encore of iconic covers from Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, The Everly Brothers, and Donovan. By this point I was almost embittered enough to yell out “Cover a Girls song!” knowing that it would be completely inappropriate and even unfair to do so. But the whole thing felt like Owens had left Girls to become a glorified wedding singer – and the tables LPR had set up around the stage did nothing to diffuse that impression. Owens picked celebrated songs that definitely seemed autobiographical, communicating his fears of striking out on his own (“Wild World”), holding specific relevance to his break from JR White and Girls (“Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”), and fleeing from the only family he knew when he was still a teenager (“The Boxer”) but also belie his fascination with classic love songs (“Let It Be Me”) and folksy caricature (“Lalena”). If these celebrated songwriting heights act as reference point for Owens’ aspirations, his goals certainly cannot be loftier. One can almost parse the moments when Lysandre makes good on these objectives but the record I’ll be more excited to hear will chronicle this current solo voyage, rather than act as a sentimental look back at the artist’s time with a band I’ll miss for a while still to come.

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SHOW REVIEW: Reptar w/ Stepdad & Rubblebucket

I first saw Reptar when they opened for Foster the People on their fall tour last year. It takes a lot for me to notice a band that is opening for an artist or group whose album I have memorized from the first to last notes, but Reptar possesses exactly that kind of high energy, enthralling dynamic that makes you wonder who you even came to see in the first place.

A year later, I’ve gained a more intimate relationship with their tunes and finally got the chance to see the Athens, Georgia quartet again. This time around, they were accompanied by Stepdad and Rubblebucket at the The Bowery Ballroom on a freezing cold November evening. In between my first to the second experience, the band has grown – both in the musical quality and the number of musicians on stage. What was once a show featuring a few boys with their instruments on stage has turned into a fuller experience complete with blaring horns and some vocal distortion.

It’s reminiscent of the way they grew after their first EP, Oblangle Fizz Y’all!, which feels minimalist in comparison to the lush layers of sophomore release Body Faucet. The new music tastes like ’80’s kitsch on a funky plate and, like their older songs, is yummier when experienced live. The band radiates a neon-bright vibrance when on stage and with additional members joining them on tours, everything feels even more like a clusterfuck of childish excitement which their name already throws back to.

Sweeping through songs off of both releases, Reptar bounced and screamed and danced and invited the entire audience to the strange frat party they seemed to be throwing at that very moment. Several times throughout, lead singer and guitarist Graham Ulicny’s twangy screams of lyrics would become a complete mess of syllables and sounds that helped build their charm. They’re messy, dirty, and ridiculously fun, and that’s what makes Reptar.

By the end of the night, Stepdad and Rubblebucket had joined Reptar on stage for an enchantingly chaotic few moments of communal good vibes. And maybe that’s always Reptar’s goal by the end of the show – to share their good vibes with a room full of people where it doesn’t matter what song is playing as long as you’re dancing. The audience has felt it both times I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing. In a smaller space, a show with this band feels like a group hug that ends in entangled bodies screaming and jumping up and down. It’s psychotically fresh and exactly what a live show should be.

While their music is better heard raw, unfiltered, and live, their initial EP and full-length album are as sweetly funky as they perform on stage. Check out these boys all over the web (and huge props to the genius who designed their throwback website) and make every effort to dive right into the middle of a Reptar dance pit when they come to town.

Content by Brittany Spanos for www.audiofemme.com

AF EXCLUSIVE TRACK: Which Magic “Electra Light”

It wasn’t very long ago that I stumbled upon Which Magic’s bandcamp page, but it feels like I’ve listened to and loved Sara Autrey’s Baltimore-based project forever. It could be the timeless, soulful quality of her voice, or her innovative, fearless, anything-goes approach to creating music, or that inherent playfulness paired with the dreamy quality of her songs. Or it could be that I feel a deeper connection and kinship to these anthems and their maker based simply on the fact that each track somehow manages to encompass my favorite sorts of feelings – the bleary haze of relaxed afternoons, the swoon of having a new crush to obsess over, the magic of being alive.

AudioFemme was ecstatic to host Which Magic’s first-ever NYC performance at our CMJ showcase. Sara is an amazing performer, bursting with energy, busting out jokes, and battling with her temperamental guitar. Thus far, she’s recorded and released a self-titled cassette and a split EP with Wing Dam, a band in which she collaborates with her boyfriend Austin Tally. These offerings show a subtle progression from folksier sounds to beat-driven jams, but both are carried off with an earnest and artful DIY approach that makes the material seem that much more personal and authentic.

Continuing along that trajectory, Autrey’s begun to infuse her tunes with more hip-hop influenced delivery and more eclectic rhythms, obsessions she’s had since since a friend taught her how to create her own beats. “Hip-hop is so influential to my musical style. It’s badass and sexy, everything I aspire to be,” Autrey says, laughing. This fascination was clearly the impetus for Which Magic’s newest track “Electra Light”, which we are pleased to present here as an AudioFemme exclusive.

Autrey says the inspiration for the song came in part from her dual nature as a Gemini, being at odds with feelings of inadequacy on one hand and having complete confidence on the other. “Feeling like shit about anything is great inspiration to write songs” Autrey explains. But in listening to “Electra Light” it’s nearly impossible to detect any traces of self-doubt; it sounds instead as though Autrey is imagining herself as a kind of superhero who uses moonlight and breezes to bathe the world and herself in truth. It isn’t until the last verse, in which Autrey croons “Cryin’ to the moon because I dont shine like I used to / and though I speak right I know the things I do
are not always true” that we’re reminded that the singer of these verses is not invincible or beyond reproach. Ultimately, the song is “about the duality of self – the things you like about yourself, the things you hate… all at the same damn time, at the same damn time” Autrey says.

When pressed about her songwriting process, Autrey describes her rituals as a bit chemically enhanced thanks to espresso and (ahem) herbal substances. “I also make a point of saying what I need to say in a song one of two different ways,” she adds, “Either a.) as vaguely and artfully as possible, or b.) as blatant an honest as possible. No in-between. Again… Geminis…”

Autrey’s not slowing down her musical output one bit. She’s hard at work on a new project called called “Glitteris” (pronounced like CLITORIS but with more sparkle). “This is going to be my rap project. I, along with Lizz King, have been tapping into my inner gangsta… We feed off of each others’ need to be a boss bitch (in all the positive sense of the term) and put it into words.” Autrey is also collecting beats made by individuals throughout Baltimore, including beats from Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak and Flock of Dimes. It will be exciting to see how the two preoccupations come together. “Stay tuned,” warns Autrey. It’s advice we’ll gladly take.

For now, check out “Electra Light” below. And continue reading for some of Autrey’s musical recommendations.

WHICH MAGIC LOVES…..

WING DAM– my other band that I’m in, as a bassist/vocalist…total grungy rock from Baltimore. I wake up every day ever with one of the songs from “Damage” stuck in my head, in the best possible way, not the annoying way.

JONAH RAPINO “Berbere Superstar”- total ethiopian ghetto beats with electric violin overdubbing and amazing sampling happenning here…DEFINITELY give “thug sign” a listen or 10.

THE AMPS – Kim Deal from The Breeders side project!! So fuckin’ good! So punk! So so so chill punk rock bad-ass… godDAMN the album PACER is amazing. The best. 1995.

MOSS OF AURA – Baltimore-based instrumental synth-hip-h’pop mega dramatic awesomeness from the keyboard genius of the band Future Islands, Gerrit Welmers. All of his songs are incredible and moody and mood-inspiring, but the song “Never” really really makes me dance like I’m possessed.

ELO – Electric Light Orchestra will never get old. The album “Out of the Blue” is truly an inspiring masterpiece full of uplifting ass shakin songs.

LIZZ KING – also Baltimore-based lady songstress of badassness and sexuality. She was my original musical mentor and she helped me get my first shows ever/introduced me to the Baltimore scene. Lizz is also the first woman I’ve ever seen perform as a total fucking boss. BO$$ as hell, check the video for “BOOTY QUEEN”.

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ARTIST PROFILE: Los Encantados

Sitting down with the boys of Los Encantados, you don’t get the sense that they’ve caught onto their own inevitable indie fame. Comprised of six members, Los Encantados is a straightforward, surfer-rock band based out of Brooklyn, and, like many others, practices in a tiny room of a converted Bushwick warehouse that smells like booze and cigarettes. Unlike many others though, they are all good at playing instruments. Additionally, they are cerebral and mild-mannered (though not entirely mild-mannered. One member, whose name I’ve omitted, joined the band once upon a daytime bender when he, “literally stumbled into the practice space…” )

The story of Los Encantados began when front man James Armstrong wrote a bunch of songs about a girl, who, from what I surmise, broke his heart in the summer of 2010. Those songs were then turned into an album, and in 2011, he and his friends got together to perform that album for a live audience. Sartorially, the show involved white masks, and a lot of frantic last minute ribbon cutting. After it was all over they decided that they “liked it way too much to stop”. So they kept playing. And it’s a good thing they did.

The album, Same Damned Soul, was released in three parts, to accompany mood shifts driven by seasonal change. Chapter 1 is the sonic embodiment of summer love and all of its nostalgia-inspiring highs and lows. The first track, “Ghosts”, hits you over the head with its catchiness; however any song that opens with four full bars of kick drum is bound to hook you no matter how you feel about throwback rock. Armstrong’s voice then comes in, drawling and retro, reminiscent of Julian Casablancas ‘though so much better, because he doesn’t take himself all that seriously (nor does he loathe his fellow band members. In fact it seems they all really love playing together). After “Ghosts”, you indeed want to hear more. All three tracks, as well as each from the following chapters, 2 & 3, straddle the line between warm, melodic love songs and loud, insistent, percussion-driven rock jams that take you on the psychic journey of someone who’s been exhilarated and subsequently torn to shreds by love. “Your ghost has chosen me”, Armstrong mourns–a motif as relatable as it is confounding. Without relying too heavily on the theme of love lost, the redemption is in the music: indie gems that keep you pressing ‘play’ again and again.

I was lucky enough to sit down with the chaps of Los Encantados one night, to muse about the band’s happenings around town, what they think about the music industry, and where they see their sound heading over the next year (“we’re NOT planning to make a dub-step or trap album…yet…”), as they prepare to release forthcoming work. You can listen to one of their new tracks, “ZZZZ”, right here.

Los Encantados are all exceptionally nice–though I’m sure it didn’t hurt that I brought them beer–and fun to listen to, just like their tunes. Below is my interview with them in full. Click and hear it all, straight from the horse’s mouth.

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CMJ 2012: Best Of, 1-3

CMJ is one of our very favorite music festivals of the year, because it showcases the best, brightest and unknown talents out there, hidden like diamonds in the rough. Over the course of five crazy days, NYC mines those diamonds for all the world to see. Though we witnessed an abundance of music-related shenanigans that we would love to tell you about, we wanted to first pay homage to the artists out there who we think, and hope, the world will soon experience much more of. Here’s a sample of 9 acts I liked best. Some are those diamonds, brand spanking new to the scene, and others are old favorites who continue to blow my mind every time I get to see them.

XO,

1. Chad Valley @ Le Baron

Chad Valley, the moniker of UK native Hugo Manuel (of indie rock band Jonquil), is a phenomenon that creeps up on you like a flash flood. Though I had heard a few of his tracks prior to the Ghostly/Cascine showcase, when I finally saw him at Le Baron my prior impressions were torn to shreds. He is possessed of an exceptional kind of talent that can only be apprehended through his live performance (one of the myriad great things about live performance). There are three aspects of his work that standout. First, he doesn’t really seem to give a fuck about how he’s perceived. He is accessible and unassuming, and doesn’t cultivate a hyper-stylized personae in order to distance himself from the audience—a commonly employed mechanism by “DJs” and other solo performers who lack traditional means of self-definition, like musical virtuosity for instance. This absence of self-consciousness, while it could perhaps be interpreted as impudence, is a breath of fresh air in this biz. Especially at festivals, you often feel like you might just choke on all the hubris floating around in the air. Second, his music is innovative but simple, in that the way that he creates an experience for the audience. You don’t grasp this from the recordings unless you are familiar with the fact that he doesn’t perform with a band. He stands behind a table of samplers and builds his songs from there, singing simultaneously into two microphones so that he can loop and layer his vocal tracks. Third, Manuel’s lung capacity alone transforms what could be formulaic electropop into true art, unrivaled by almost any similarly minded pop musician I can think of, save Antony Hegarty.

All this made for an impressive set of performances, which subsequently topped my list for the week. His songs are lush, melodic and complex, and each one gives audience members the sense that he’s intimating something directly to them about life, love and longing.

2. Doldrums @ PS1

Doldrums‘ Pitchfork gig at MOMA PS1 was a CMJ winner. Project of Airick Woodhead , Doldrums’ set brought visual art and inventive electronic music together seamlessly; and the performance was executed with an elegance that this particular genre often precludes, since it’s meant to challenge the musical aesthetic of the viewer in a way that can leave one feeling abandoned in the…um…doldrums. Doldrums’ set was entirely captivating though, accompanied by video installation that wrapped around the inside wall of PS1’s huge, white crystalline dome, in which he and his band performed. Though previously a solo project based out of Montreal, he played his CMJ shows as a three-piece. His music samples and layers together different, often opposing sounding percussion and a-melodic strings over (in this instance) live drumming, throwing in animal sounds, child sounds, the sounds of a modem starting, etc. Woodhead’s ethereal vocals tie it all together, and the result is tracks that are haphazard, yet never absent of a central thesis, which perhaps in his case is: controlled chaos is fertile ground for good music if you have the brains to compose it all well. And that Doldrums does. All of it makes for experimental electronica at its very best. We will surely continue to see more from this young talent, if he chooses to give us more.

3. DIIV @ Villain

Aside from nearly getting moshed to death at Villain, a pop-up warehouse venue on the Williamsburg waterfront where they performed, DIIV was an exceedingly good live band to watch.

Why there was a circle pit at a shoegaze concert at all is mystifying, and made watching DIIV feel like a weird dream that’s also kind of a nightmare. I know that shoegaze trailblazers like Jesus And Mary Chain have a whole damn album of super raucous jams that make people want to flail themselves at one another. DIIV, however—at least what I thought I knew of them—do not. All of the songs off their full-length debut Oshin, do not whatsoever betray a “fuck the world” ethos. Instead, listening to them makes me want to go for a run on a sunny autumn afternoon. But I don’t go for runs. I go to concerts. And this one got rowdy, it seemed, as soon as the opening chords were strummed. After adjusting my expectations and locking my knees, I began to actually “get it” though, because the songs themselves elicit an emotional reaction in people. It’s almost as if they were written to be experienced viscerally. The melodies are full of reverb, underpinned and carried through by jangling guitar riffs, making the vocals appear incidental. After listening for a few moments you do feel swept into their sound, until you’re completely out to sea, alone but happy, which I suspect could be exactly what Oshin is trying to achieve.

Chad Valley performs “Up And Down” @ Le Baron, 10/17

Coverage by Annie White, for AudioFemme

CMJ 2012: Sea Wolf, Jim White, Hey Marseilles @ LPR

CMJ has come and gone but the week proved to be a memorable one filled with discovering new artists and rediscovering old favorites.

If you’re like me and are just under the 21+ age limit of many of that week’s shows, finding something, anything, to attend proved to be a truly ridiculous adventure. Fortunately, some fantastic acts took pity upon the children, including Sea Wolf, a band that falls into the “old favorites” category and have been on the back-burner of my iPod playlists.

On the chilly Friday evening at the tail end of the music marathon, Sea Wolf, joined by Hey Marseilles and Southern folkie Jim White, graced the intimate stage at (le) poisson rouge. The red-tinged, smoky atmosphere of the venue had been filled to the brim with too-cool patrons who held their half-empty glasses and fashionably dressed bodies like they were at an art show, mulling over the artist’s intentions and so on.

Hey Marseilles, a seven-piece Seattle outfit, entered a stage filled with a mess of string instruments that were put well to use during their frantic yet earnest set. Their energy and heavy focus on a strong string section gave them the vibe of a softcore Mumford and Sons that hasn’t been enraged by the roughness of life while the musicality and lyrical content felt reminiscent of The Decemberists (this is a comparison that is driven home by the insanely similar vocal tone Hey Marseilles’ lead singer has to Colin Meloy). Towards the end of their setlist that included mostly new songs from a forthcoming album release, it was difficult not to smile during “Rio,” an old song of theirs that comes complete with a festive audience clap-along.

The positive energy of Hey Marseilles made way for Jim Whites typical Southern folk take on Jesus and highways and tumbleweeds over crunchy guitar riffs. With his twangy accent and quippy asides in-between songs (“Imagine if your dad was up here smiling stoned. That’s kind of what you got with me”) made him a fun and personable presence on stage. A highlight, in between all that talk of Jesus and tumbleweeds, came in the form of a song written for Kimya Dawson titled “Keep It Meaningful.”

While the audience lagged a bit for the first half of White’s set, the energy spiked during his ‘rock the vote’ speech that included his sage advice for everyone to ‘find a drunk and get him sober enough to vote.’ It was a perfect lead into the long, related tale he tells in his song “Newspaper,” which ended a set that felt like it had just begun.

Finally, Sea Wolf came on after a break that dragged on in between sets. Enthusiasm lifted once again as they jumped right into a rousing set filled with edge, bite, and all the folky goodness that had been presented throughout the night. While they may have not had the same joy or fervor as openers Hey Marseilles, who really stole the show with their genuine excitement to be up there, Sea Wolf felt exhilarating and charming and earnest, as they’ve elicited in the past. With a mix of old and new songs, the band continuously delivered flawless musicality until lead singer Alex Brown Church forgot the lyrics of a few older tunes, including “I Made a Resolution.” The band and the audience laughed along with Church and the show continued with its regularly scheduled indie joy.

After their final song, a thrilling version of “You’re a Wolf,” Sea Wolf returned for a warm encore with the song “Saint Catherine St.” It felt like a good-bye but not to the band — it was a good-bye to the weird week that was CMJ Music Marathon right before Saturday’s own warm encore and final hurrah.

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CMJ 2012: SESAC Showcase @ Cakeshop

Photo curtesey of http://www.sesac.com/Events/Event_News_Details.aspx?id=1791 — Psychobuilding performs.
Photo courtesy of www.sesac.com/Events.

This year for CMJ I dropped by my old standby Cakeshop to check out the SESAC showcase. SESAC, an organization that represents musicians who seek compensation for having their music performed in public, showcased a cross section of their indie rock talent; and the groups were indeed a good match for the typical Cakeshop crowd. Here is a review of four bands from the evening.

First in the lineup was the Wisconsin based duo Blessed Feathers, comprised of Jacquelyn Beaupre and Donivan Berube. The pair constructs songs together, and consider themselves partners in music and in life. Blessed Feathers’s sound was beautifully wrought with a strong emphasis on folk guitar style and soulful melodies. Beaupre’s vocals add a harmonic layer that flesh the songs out and are indispensable to the music’s emotional depth. If you’re a folk rock fan like I am, you may find yourself enamored with Blessed Feathers’s sonically expansive Red Hot Chili Peppers cover of “Porcelain”.

CMJ2012_3 — Blessed Feather performs.
Photo courtesy of www.sesac.com/Events.

Communist Daughter is also borne out of WI, and is fronted by singer John Solomon. Grey’s Anatomy fans know this group for their song “Soundtrack to the End”, which made it onto season 7’s credit roll. That said, they have many more notable songs to back themselves up, the latest hit being “Ghosts“. This group is relatively new to the scene, with one EP (Lions & Lambs) and one full length album (Soundtrack to the End). They have a great live sound, with driving drum beats, catchy guitar lines, and expressive vocals. This polish and care lends Communist Daughter a lot of potential.

CMJ2012_1 — Half Undressed performs.
Photo courtesy of www.sesac.com/Events

Half Undressed is a two man drum and guitar duo. The group is self described as “indie/dream pop”, and with drummer Sam’s airy, laid back vocals, the genre seems an accurate description. The relaxed vibe and surfer rock style guitar hooks set an easy going atmosphere. I found I was immediately drawn in to Half Undressed’s sound, but after a few songs, I felt I’d heard everything they had to offer. With such a specific vocal style choice, the songs needed more variation in instrumentation, or the drummer could have made more complex or varied choices. Overall the tracks began to sound too similar to one another and too simple to support such an unwavering vocal style, and I began to think the group would be best on a soundtrack compilation rather than in a concert setting. Chill out to their song “Demons” here.

Psychobuildings has a fantastic synth pop dance sound, and singer Peter LaBier’s voice has so much character and wildly distinguished style, he seems destined to be a pop icon. Not to mention he has that fearless indie rocker aesthetic. Listen to “Wonderchamber” and see if you can restrain yourself from dancing! Psychobuildings has a great sense of musical composition and a full sound that builds with diverse instrumentation and classic synth sounds. Yet, seeing the duo perform, I felt I was cheated of that live performance feel. The group plays along with pre-recorded tracks they’ve written in the software program Ableton Live, adding only the drums and vocals in performance. Hearing basic bass lines play out of a laptop made me question the reasoning behind leaving a real bass player offstage. I certainly understand Psychobuildings is part of the DIY music movement, and they are able to bring a studio quality sound into the basement of Cakeshop. But without more onstage investment in creating music in real time, I began to feel the show turn into a karaoke night. More ownership of the songs and their creation was needed in order to engage the audience. Psychobuildings is a great studio band, with some killer tracks to be found online. I hope to see the group expand their live sound with an electronic artist who can give these stellar dance songs an edgy, real feel.

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ARTIST PROFILE: Harlan

Thoughts from a neo-soul prodigy on the rise from LA

Harlan _American__photo by Landon McMahon — Photo by Landon McMahon

Harlan, an LA-based newbie of A-side Worldwide management (Mayer Hawthorne, Jamall Bufford), blends together soul, funk, and electropop to name a few, and makes songs that showcase his wide-ranging influences and musical virtuosity in equal measure. In his work, he manages to create a sound that is hauntingly familiar and distinctly fresh at the same time—a difficult feat he accomplishes with seeming ease.

His recently released EP, 1984, indeed gives us a glimpse into the ambitions of a multi-talented, intelligent “genre hopper”, who wants to make us dance pretty much no matter what kind of mood we may be in. Though each of the four tracks has its own throwback quality—from new wave to Michael Jackson to 90s era jazz-funk—his background in classical music is unmistakable (he is a cellist), as is his eye for compositional detail, evident in complex yet accessible guitar lines and melodies that are catchy without losing their integrity. Take a listen here, and see for yourselves.

AudioFemme was lucky enough to have a little chat with Harlan, about his work, the superpower he wishes he possessed, his inspirations, and his background, as well as his forthcoming follow up single, “American” (appropriately timed for what we hear is an impending national election), which can be downloaded right here, just for you: Harlan_American

Here’s what Harlan had to say to us.

AF: Hi Harlan. We love 1984. Can you talk a little bit about your creative process in
writing it? What genre would you say your music best fits into—or is the name of
your EP supposed to indicate that? I’ve been listening to The Human League a lot these days, and can’t help but hear the influence of early new wave in your work—in a
good way.

I wrote the album in a short period of time with the exception of “Cathedral.”
That was an old song. I would describe it as electronic-pop-soul. I am definitely
a fan of new wave.

AF: To that end, what are your main musical influences? And what is your
background specifically; did you grow up playing instruments or just singing?

I am a child of the 80’s. That production style can be heard in most
of my work. I grew up studying classical cello. I didn’t start making
contemporary music until college.

AF: What aspects of the EP production were you involved in?

I produced the EP. I play all the instruments with the exception of
drums on two tracks. My good friend Alex Elena co-produced Pack
Light and AD. He also played drums on them.

AF:The quality is so great, and it sounds like you put a ton of time into it. How long
has 1984 been in the works?

I work really fast in the studio. I have the sounds and ideas already
in my head so that makes it a lot easier. There’s usually not a lot of
experimenting once I set out to record a song.

AF: You have one other EP, Native Son. How does 1984 relate to your earlier
stuff? Do you feel like your sounds are evolving?

I think 1984 is more focused. Native Son works in a lot of different
genres. So yes, I would say the work is evolving.

AF: In what direction do you see your music going in the next few years?

More R&B.

AF: What does your live setup look like? Do you play with a band, or electronics,
or both? We unfortunately missed your NYC show but hope to catch you in the
future.

In LA I play with a 6-piece band. Drums, Bass, Keyboard, two Guitars,
and a backup singer. When I go on tour I strip it down some.

AF: What compelled your follow up single, “American”? Its seems motivated
by our current political climate. Can you talk about that at all?

I wrote the song to point out both the good and bad things I feel
embody my generation. There’s a lot of focus on the individual and
his/her own personal reward. You Tube fame and reality television
for instance are unsettling to me.

AF: What else are you listening to these days? Anything coming out that you find
particularly innovative or inspiring? How do you feel about the LA music scene?

I just bought the new Kendrick Lamar. I like it. I think hip-hop has
finally come back around. Kanye West’s production is a big reason.
I also have been listening to my friend Madi Diaz new record. She is
really great. There’s a lot of talent in LA right now.

AF: Lastly, if you could have any super power, which one would it be, and please
explain why?

Flight. No more having to deal with airport security :)[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Five Things I Learned From CMJ 2012

Five years ago I tackled my first CMJ by drinking jitter-inducing amounts of free Sparks at an insane Crystal Castles blow-out, haunting le Poisson Rouge until 2am to see Kria Brekkan and Beach House, and getting lost on my way back to Queens after a School of Seven Bells show I’d managed to weasel my way into for free. Every CMJ I’ve attended since has had shades of that first whirlwind foray, although I’m happy to report that I’ve gotten a bit better at navigating the mess.Some might say CMJ is becoming irrelevant, thanks to the shorter and shorter attention spans of listeners in a digital age. But I can’t think of a time where it won’t feel exciting to me to analyze schedules in a quandary over how to parse out the day, or standing before a stage on which a nascent act buoyed by buzz will make or break their career. And there’s nothing more sublime than being blown away by a band barely on your radar on the first place, glimpsed while you were waiting to see the next big thing in the following time slot. Or knowing you were part of the crowd for the pivotal performances destined to be talked about weeks, months, even years in the future. Despite this year’s slightly lackluster lineups, there were still memories to be made; here are the things that will stand out to me about CMJ 2012 five years from now.

1.) 2013 will be the year hip hop comes out of the closet.
As a fan of a good beat with a fondness for wordplay I adore hip-hop, but it can be really hard to reconcile that love with the homophobic and misogynistic attitudes so pervasive to the culture. It’s not that I need every rap song to be a PSA about gender equality, but is the use of the word “faggot” ever really necessary? Because I don’t care what it rhymes with – that word is ugly, especially when it’s in the middle of a verse about beating up queer people.The ironic thing is that no one does swagger better than a man dressed in drag. And when a queen stops lip-synching “It’s Raining Men” and starts emceeing, you get something like Mykki Blanco, whose dark rhymes and party-ready beats turned a Saturday night performance at the Knitting Factory into an all-out dance party. It was not the first of Blanco’s bombastic CMJ appearances, in which fabulous outfits were as standard as adept rhythm and fierce, noir-tinged rhymes – there had been a handful, including one I caught on Thursday at new party space Autumn Bowl. While the de rigeur drag show sashaying is in full effect, Blanco takes it someplace darker, appearing at Knitting Factory in black lipstick and spidery dreads, crouching low on stage and hissing into the mic as though presiding over a Satanic Black Mass. Still, danceable hits like “Wavvy” brought the audience to its seething, shimmying full potential. In those moments, it’s easy to understand what makes these artists so vital. It lies in that ability to work a room into a wicked froth and yet still full command attention.[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1959″]Kalif Diouf, otherwise known as Le1f, also brought killer style and mad game to the stage at the Pitchfork Topman CMJ Party, but the sound in raw new venue Villain didn’t travel as far back as you had to stand to be able to enjoy the show without a bunch of aggro Vice types getting all up in your business. Luckily, Le1f played a slew of other shows; I caught him the next evening at a late night party deep in Bushwick, closing out a bill that featured a JD Sampson DJ set. Le1f’s flow was smooth, direct, and delivered with a healthy dose of booty bounce. Over relatively minimal beats with creative textures, Le1f rhymes a mile a minute, hypnotizing audiences with heavy hip gyrations.

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I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not about to sing the praises of these two artists simply because they are gay and in the rap game – the talent with each is so consistent and concise that it’s a shame to have to mention sexuality at all. But, especially with hip-hop, we aren’t at a point where we can pretend that what these two (and a handful of others who didn’t happen to play CMJ showcases) are doing isn’t absolutely revolutionary, even if they are essentially just being themselves. It’s the fearless approach to the spotlight – a rightful place for either to be regardless of gender identity or sexual preference – that could change the way hip-hop regards queer artists and hopefully the LGBT population in general. If nothing else, it’s intensely satisfying to know that when I’m at a Le1f show, one of my fabulous gay homies can pick me up and spin me through the air like the queer Patrick Swayze I always dreamed would do that, and not have to worry about winding up as the victim of a hate crime afterward. Safe spaces, y’all.

2.) I’d really like to be adopted by the Woodheads of Toronto, or at least invited to a Thanksgiving dinner, but I’m not sure Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving.
Did you ever visit a friend’s house in grade school and feel like you were on another planet? Maybe because your friend had laid-back parents, or their decor was more World Market than, say, Cracker Barrel, or maybe even just because they had HBO. I don’t know what was going on in the Woodhead household but I imagine it to be a more musical, more Canadian version of The Royal Tennenbaums. I base this assumption on the fact that brothers Daniel and Airick Woodhead are two wildly talented and wonderfully weird musicians whose projects kept popping up in all sorts of CMJ venues.The brothers’ first band, Spiral Beach, was known for energetic live shows that resulted in much hype a few years ago. Though in some ways the band’s studio recordings fail to capture that energy and are musically all over the map, they established deep ties during this time within Toronto’s music scene. Maddy Wilde, the group’s female vocalist, went on to form Moon King with Daniel, a folksier, more direct offshoot of the ideas that the Spiral Beach had begun to explore. Daniel is also a frequent co-conspirator in Airick’s electro-psychedelic pop outfit Doldrums, and Airick’s been involved with AudioFemme favorites Phédre.I saw two Doldrums performances, and as the week progressed so did their confidence. The thing is, these kids are weird. They’ve got this neo-hippie stage vibe, barely stopping short of performing meditations and crystal ceremonies on stage. When they play, it’s really a head-down, focused on making odd sounds come out of keyboards and electronic gear kind of affair, though by the time they played the Knit on Saturday Airick was ripping off clothing and writhing around on stage. But Doldrums isn’t a straight-up electronics driven band – the guitars and drums are live, and so are the vocal loops which give Doldrums songs such trance-like power. For as focused and autistic as they can seem, the boys aren’t hiding behind laptops, and the results have positively psychedelic moments.

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By comparison, Moon King is a bit poppier, and the set at Cameo was even more mellow and toned down than I expected it to be given the EP’s frequently hyper moments. But they didn’t spare any sentiment or dreaminess. Maddy’s and Daniel’s vocals, scaled back from shriek to serenade, soar over ecstatic melodies and blend almost seamlessly together, no small feat considering the trademark almost-sneer of a Woodhead singing. Moon King isn’t really classifiable in terms of genre, but it recalls a lot of things ranging from folksy sing-along to call and response protest punk. But it’s not really any of that; it’s simply capable of evoking those moods.

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If Daniel and Airick never performed together, you might assume they were the same person, and even when they both grace the same stage it’s necessary to remind oneself that there’s not some mirror trick at play. I imagine their early lives to be a bit like a classic Parent Trap movie, the two of them playing clever tricks on outsiders. Or else I imagine them huddled in a blanket fort, making up secret languages only they knew how to speak. Growing up as Woodheads obviously stoked some creative fires within these boys. It’s no wonder that their various projects have become a nearly collaborative effort, and it’s interesting to note the particulars of each and speculate on what that must say about them as individuals.3.) Merchandise needs a drummer, very badly.

Merchandise released Children of Desire, an absolute gem of an EP, earlier this year. Carson Cox’s plaintive vocals and thoughtful lyrics complimented the band’s brand of new wave punk cum noise pop well. The EP shows remarkable growth for a band who built a solid following in Tampa’s punk and hardcore scene, but it became astonishingly clear at the shows I saw them play that it is mainly a studio project, without much of a live show to back it up. Cox’s vocals deliver, the guitar work was deft, and the bass as immediate as on the record, but in place of a live drummer was a drum machine, hollowly keeping time but not providing anything in the way of the heart that these songs really deserve.

With the conflagration of acts who rely on drum machines as their only form of live percussion, you would think that it might not result in so much of a let down. But Merchandise needs a drummer to really pull off the material on Children of Desire; playing without one simply doesn’t do them justice. And I saw several bands this week that I would consider contemporaries of Merchandise, all of whom delivered with blistering performances.

Savages, for instance, absolutely blew me away and were possibly one of the best bands I saw all week. Hailing from London, the all-female four piece astounded an entire room with a set that nearly bordered on sonic violence. All these ladies know how to handle their instruments; they’ve built a reputation around playing out rather than focusing on recording their material. Lead singer Jehnny Beth seethes on stage, her eyeballs wide, her gestures imploring and dramatic. The kind of energy they create is contagious, driving fans into fits, but it couldn’t be pulled off without a drummer.

Metz also brought that kind of intensity to several performances throughout the week, playing loud and fast and heavy, creating the kind of punk rock paroxysm that edges them out over other purveyors of such. But these aren’t just songs that are thrown together – they’re smartly crafted and seriously executed, never sloppy. And it’s not just about assaulting eardrums and working audiences into frenzied thrashing, because you could just as easily dance to many of the songs, as long as you weren’t in an audience full of folks hellbent on moshing (sometimes, that happens, as evidenced by the ultra-shaky video I risked life and limb to shoot at Pitchfork’s CMJ party, hosted by new party space Villain).

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Gap Dream scale things back just a touch, but also illustrate how fun it can be just to see a full band play and play well together. They’re from Cleveland (my hometown) and kind of have a sleazy seventies throw-back thing going on. But they had everyone dancing at their Big Snow performance. Lots of vocal reverb, elastic guitars, and pummeling drums could have filled a much bigger room than the tiny space into which we were all pleasantly crammed.

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These bands definitely have different things going on, but Merchandise could stand to learn a lesson from any of them. If you want to get audiences engaged, start dance (or thrash) parties, move people beyond standing with crossed arms, you need percussive power to back up even the best material. Here’s hoping their next shows will feature someone behind an actual kit.

4.) Brooklyn’s new party spaces keep the live music scene vital.
Aaaaah, Brooklyn. Years ago, CMJ was a thing that happened mainly on the Lower East Side, but each year more and more performers cross the bridge to play this lovely borough. Though I’ve been disappointed by closures of some of my favorite DIY venues, from Monster Island to Silent Barn, the scene is constantly evolving and new locales keep opening up to replace the others.I was really impressed with Autumn Bowl, formerly a skate park (though maybe it still is?). The circular stage was smack dab in the middle of the cavernous space, and risers lined the walls, making it easy for plenty of show-goers to catch the action. It sounded great and as collaborator with Nuit Blanche New York hosted some incredible light installations. Security is around, but pretty chill. I’m hoping they’ll be hosting a lot of parties in the near future, and if they Four Tet DJ set they’ve got scheduled in a few weeks is any indication, there will be a lot to look forward to from this venue.I was slightly less impressed with Villian, though it was mainly the sound that got to me. There are two large space separated by a wall, which makes capacity for shows smaller than what it should be but also helps keep crowding down to a minimum. Villain is operated by a marketing firm, so the events they host there definitely have the earmarks of being a bit commercial. The Pitchfork showcase I attended there was sponsored by Topman and Svedka, for instance. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – I can’t complain about free drinks. But the bottom line is that it turns shows into sales pitches for other things, and that’s one of the elements that makes huge festivals like SXSW something of a drag. I’d hate to see the same thing happen to CMJ, which for whatever reason has escaped this fate til now.

I also got a chance to check out Big Snow Buffalo Lounge, a Bushwick rehearsal and performance space that opened just a few months shy of a year ago. The performance area is cozy to say the least, and you’re right on top of the bands as they play since there’s not an actual stage, which makes it hard to see if you’re in the back and slightly awkward if you’re up front. But that’s not to say the venue doesn’t have its charms, and the sound is unimpeachable and really, really loud.

I was super excited to check out Delinquency, especially since they’d booked a bunch of awesome shows and dance parties and were said to inhabit five or more separate rooms of an old warehouse. Unfortunately, the venue was lacking the permits it needed, proving that operating a space in NYC isn’t the least complicated thing in the world, and rescheduled all its events at other venues.

The thing is, the venues I’ve here mentioned don’t even begin to scrape the surface of all that Brooklyn has to offer in terms of raw DIY spaces, and in the course of researching for our showcase (see below!) I found out that there are so many that I’ve yet to hear of. Once resource I’m absolutely grateful for in sorting all of that out is Brooklyn Spaces, a compendium as complete as any I’ve seen of art collectives, galleries, performance spaces, studios, nonprofits, party places, and underground theaters. Attending these venues is paramount to keep Brooklyn’s thriving underground and DIY scene going, so we encourage you to check them out and support them when you can.

5.) Putting together a showcase is hard.
Okay, so maybe this should have been more obvious to me to begin with, but we AudioFemmes barely had an inkling of what we were getting ourselves into when we started booking our blog’s showcase. There are spaces to contact, sponsors to reach out to, and then there are the bands. We’d have loved to host handfuls of them – picking bands out was certainly not the problem. But tracking them down, or tracking down their management, or the label, or whoever, was just the first difficult step in actually confirming anyone to play. Even if it hadn’t come together, we had quite the learning experience, but we’re happy to report that we put together a lovely little shindig featuring Datalog, Which Magic, Foxes In Fiction, and Autodrone. The fact that it was on a Tuesday afternoon mattered little, we pulled it off for those that showed up, and recorded each brilliant performance (look for a stream of the audio from the show soon!).

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MIXES: With A Little Help From My Bands

Whatever it is about the change of seasons in New York City from summer to fall that makes me feel especially nostalgic is something I hope I never lose. Maybe its the crunching leaves underneath my foot as I rush from my apartment to the subway and onward to class every day. Or maybe I’ve already consumed more pumpkin-flavored food and drink than one person should in such a short period of time.

Because of this overwhelming sense of nostalgia, when I’m presented with the idea of sharing the songs that have gotten me through tough moments in my life, I had the problem of having one too many songs to choose from. Music has always been a fluid element in my life; it weaves through the moments and people and feelings I encounter. The most meaningful musical moments weren’t always the ones that let me wallow or the ones that incited me towards action; they were the ones that allowed me to just exist in a singular moment and reflect. The songs that feel like a warm blanket on a cold day are always been the most comforting.
This collection I curated is ten songs that have done, and still do, just that.

“With a Little Help From My Friends” – Joe Cocker

I could’ve very easily gone with an Elvis Presley tune in place of this one. I wanted a song that reminded me of my grandpa, and Elvis had been a constant presence in our relationship. However, even more constant in hazy childhood memories from the dusty basement he spent all of his time in and the rickety blue pick-up truck that took me to and from elementary school is the sound of my grandpa mimicking Joe Cocker’s voice. It would echo through our house on Saturday afternoons while accompanied by the blaring noise of his stereo. When my grandpa passed, I listened to this song on repeat because it felt like I could still hear his voice. The soulful rasp of Cocker’s belt is warm and inviting as he wistfully answers the questions posed by the gospel choir backing him. His uncertainty comforts and eases to the point where I feel like I should respond, too.

“Silent All These Years” – Tori Amos

My mom played this song for me when I was still in the single-digit age bracket. I remember she played the track on our relic of a computer for me while my grandma cooked dinner in the kitchen. My mom was only 21 when I was born, so her taste consisted of 80s pop hits and angry 90s alt-girl singer-songwriters. I didn’t understand a single line of the song then, but I would put the track on repeat every time we were in her car before flipping to RadioDisney after the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth play. I’d spend my time dissecting the lyrics and wondering if she was saying “mermaid” or “moment.” But the title and chorus resonated with me outside of the mysteriousness of the context. Shy and always too scared to speak up, I knew what it was like to be silent for too long. And I was glad Tori Amos understood.

“True Colors” – Cyndi Lauper

Senior year of high school was filled with change and small steps towards maturation and growth. As we all prepared to move away from home and dive into adulthood, the most meaningful gift graduation gave me was the strengthening of important friendships in my life. Throughout the stress and anxiety of leaving my Midwestern hometown to live a big city life on the East coast, I learned to survive with and from my best friend Jonathan. I dedicated this song to him after he came out to me that year, and since then, we’ve adopted it as our theme song. Lauper’s vulnerable vocals are such a beautiful reflection of what it means to truly love another person for all that they are. Everyone should listen to this song when they’re feeling a bit lonely or missing a close friend; nothing serves as a better reminder of what it feels like to be loved by another.

“Hallelujah” – Jeff Buckley

Buckley’s cover of the Leonard Cohen hymnal sounds deceptively melancholy. The first time I heard it, the song drifted through the speakers in my mom’s car about a month into my freshmen year of high school. It was the first song to elicit tears from me. After repeated listens over the past six years, I’ve begun to better understand the underlying glory rather than the sadness. For some reason, I feel like I turn to this song during some of the most painful portions of my life — death, fights, stress, etc. Buckley’s range and the ease of his emotive capabilities have been able to express my sadness and recovery from all different kinds of pain better than I ever could.

“The Resolution” – Jack’s Mannequin

Andrew McMahon will always top my list of inspiring musicians. His battle with leukemia, subsequent recovery, and lyrical reflection of this battle have been moving to me since I first started listening to his band Jack’s Mannequin. Another song that defined Senior year of high school, “The Resolution” became my personal anthem to make it through the seemingly endless obstacles that separated me from having a sane year. What makes this song lack the cliche of other “inspirational” jams is its honest search for answers and clarity. It’s not about what happens when you’ve reached the end of the tunnel; it’s about figuring out the most effective way to navigate the tunnel first.

“Wicked Little Town” – Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Hedwig and the Angry Inch happens to be one of my favorite films, so the soundtrack holds a special place in my heart. The summer between senior year of high school and freshmen year of college, I watched the film at least once a week with my best friend and listened to the soundtrack almost every night. The chorus’ repeated message of “and if you’ve got no other choice/you know you can follow my voice/through the dark turns and noise/of this wicked little town” resonated at a time when I felt desperate to escape the confines of my small, directionless suburb. It was my own wicked little town, and the omnious lyrics of the song felt like a glimpse into my future if I stayed there.

“Landslide” – Fleetwood Mac

The perfection of this hit record lies in its universal appeal. My mom would sing along to the lyrics in her car whenever it played on the radio. I remember her always directing the lyrics of the chorus to me (“Well I’ve been afraid of changing/‘Cause I’ve built my life around you/But time makes you bolder/Children get older/I’m getting older too”). It felt like a lullaby when I was younger, but as I’ve grown up, the song has transformed into a musical embodiment of my growth into adulthood as I continuously speculate “can the child within my heart rise above?” My mom still sings that chorus to me.

“Chicago” – Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan Stevens’ outstanding track from the incredible album Illinois literally hits close to home. After moving to New York from the Chicago suburbs, I’ve adopted this track as my official homesickness jam. When Chicago and the people I love who are still there feel especially distant, I listen and remind myself just how much “all things grow, all things grow.” The idea of being in love with New York “in my mind, in my mind” feels especially pertinent in those moments when I just want to curl up on an old friend’s couch and be reminded of those high school inside jokes and all the mistakes we thought we had made.

“Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” – Elton John

Not many singer-songwriters can pluck at my heartstrings the way Elton John can. I had never heard this song until the spring semester of my freshmen year in college, and if there’s ever a situation when a song fell into my lap at the right time, it was this one. “My own seeds shall be sown in New York City” felt like a beckoning to me to never give up on what I came to the city to do. If the subtle inspiration wasn’t enough, Elton reminded me of the wonderful friendships I had formed in this city with his line “I thank the Lord for the people I have found. While “Chicago” draws me back to the past, “Mona Lisas and Matt Hatters” makes homesickness feel like a silly idea in the first place.

“Don’t Rain On My Parade” – Barbra Streisand

With all the stress, anxiety, and whirlwind of emotions life can throw at you, sometimes it’s worthwhile to remind yourself that you actually are the baddest bitch on your block and quite possibly the universe. My ever-growing adoration towards all things Streisand makes me incredibly biased towards any of the tunes she sings. However, this particular track from the classic film Funny Girl keeps me from forgetting during my more anxious moments that it’s never worthwhile to let the world get me down when life is just waiting for me to take a bite out of it.

Content by Brittany Spanos for AudioFemme

audiofemme//mix 1 from ohheybrittany on 8tracks Radio.

AUDIOFEMME PRESENTS: CMJ 2012

AUDIOFEMME PRESENTS: CMJ 2012 AT SPIKE HILL // 10/16

Please join us on Tuesday, October 16th at Spike Hill, for AudioFemme’s inaugural CMJ showcase. In order to give you a preview, we’ve written a little introduction to each artist in the lineup. We love them, and hope you will too! Doors are at 12:30 PM.

See you there!

The girls at AF

AUTODRONE

Autodrone combines many of the best elements of our favorite genres, including dreampop, shoegaze and experimental indie rock. Formed in 2002, their career has spanned an entire decade of music—a decade during which technological innovations in live and recorded performance have changed the face of the industry, changed how we listen to music and upped the ante for bands looking to make an inimitable mark on the scene. Autodrone has managed to withstand the crucible of the aughts, emerging with gusto. This in our opinion is due to a few important aspects of who and what they are as musicians. First, Katherine Kennedy’s voice is timeless, both reminiscent of early 90s post-punk—in particular Kim Deal and her ability to vocally walk the line between angelic and grating (a thing that can leave one feeling emotionally vulnerable)—and also unique in its own right, melding seamlessly with the band’s more experimental elements. Second, they are possessed of the capacity to straddle what some may think of as conflicting genres. While tracks like “Through The Backwoods”, off Strike A Match employ catchy drums and accessible melodies, the subsequent track “Moth Of July”, is a seven-minute long, droning, synth-laden psychedelic journey into what feels like the band’s deepest, darkest musical intimations. Lastly, however, is their compelling group dynamic, which is also their thread of continuity. Their cohesion with one another is palpable even through the opacity in which studio recordings tend to enshroud a song. This goes to show that longevity in and of itself can make for better music. It also nearly ensures that they will be a great live act.

12 Pictures, by Autodrone

FOXES IN FICTION

Foxes in Fiction’s Warren Hildebrand first stole our hearts at the Moodgadget Showcase back in September. Originally from Toronto, Hildebrand is a multi instrumental, multi talented, genre bending one-man show. At first glance, he is shockingly young. His blond hair gleams from behind a table full of impressive looking electronic gadgets. He performs in his socks. When he starts his set, however, he transforms into a self-possessed magician and master of his craft. Yes, what he produces is electronically driven, but he plays guitar and sings too, blending and looping his live music into a dreamy atmosphere that spins and builds from the setup before him, which by the third song appears like a perfectly designed stage plot, even though the props only occupy a small surface area. He is so mesmerizing, that at times it feels like he’s raising something from the dead as he builds and shapes each track. He reminds some people of Bradford Cox. We think he’s much better. There are ineffable qualities about him as an artist, and about his music, that leave a space for one’s imagination to inhabit as his set develops, and goes from droning, ambient electronica to innovative, thought provoking, multi-dimensional live performance. Plus, he really is a youngin’. At the tender age of 23, he has decades of musical trends to herald. And we fully expect him to do just that.

WHICH MAGIC

Sara Autrey, jangling guitars, tinkling bells, a “shitty” keyboard, and an eight track are all it takes to make Which Magic; the recipe may be simple but the resulting jams are spellbinding. Autrey’s earnest and astral incantations swirl through a haze of chill beats and warbling guitar loops. Lyrically, Autrey mines her dreams and earthly desires alike for material with an authentic heart; listening to these tracks is not unlike drifting in and out of sleep in those first early morning hours of waking. For a project that began only recently, Which Magic has already achieved a compelling evolution via Autrey’s own musical curiosities. Her self-titled debut cassette is a rare lo-fi gem full of dissonant bells and softly strummed ukele, layered vocals and heady, sylvan frequencies fuzzy with tape hiss. High Already (her split EP with fellow Baltimore-based band Wing Dam ( in which she also plays) sees a migration from woodsy thickets to a beachy boardwalk thanks to the addition of thumping drum machines, sunny claps, and airier synths. And Autrey has plenty of tricks left up her sleeve, including an album of hip-hop influenced tunes and an exclusive AudioFemme track. We’re so excited to host her New York City debut!

DATALOG

Datalog is the brainchild of Conor Heffernan, whose tight productions and complex, jazz-influenced beats oscillate from cool and collected to grandiose and flashy, sometimes within the same track. Unlike many bedroom producers, Heffernan is a classically trained pianist who has put in hours as an internationally touring musician. As Datalog, he’s remixed tracks from Bjork to Brooklyn indie darlings Phone Tag, DJed runway shows and composed movie scores, but it’s his personal work that stands out most. With its ethereal touches, dramatic flair, seamless sample collage, and chopped rhythms borrowing from a variety of globe-spanning genres, his music is a cosmic beam of light endlessly refracting through a smoky, pitch-black club. Fans of Four Tet or Flying Lotus will appreciate his knack for building complicated, intelligent soundscapes from the expertly-curated digital depths while reveling in an dark romanticism completely his own.

SHOW REVIEW: The Jesus And Mary Chain

Not shockingly the Jesus And Mary Chain concert a few weeks back felt like a strange clash of generations; a milieu whose parameters constantly shift and become obscured by its inhabitants’ conflicting schemata, or really, their respective ideologies around music.

Attending the show were those who remember Jesus And Mary Chain as a group of kids from the early 80s who would sneak into venues and fool sound engineers into thinking they were the opening act for the night, play a set, and then quietly leave. Or those who’ve been fans for decades, and who saw them in 1985 at North London Polytechnic right before they became huge. There were those who discovered them in the 90s during an angsty teen phase, perhaps, after Stoned And Dethroned came out and everybody had a crush on Hope Sandoval. And then of course, we were there in hoards: ah yes, the Millennials, who more than likely started listening to them during sophomore year of high school in 2000, well after the band’s hay day was up. By then, their music had taken on a new meaning, and was no longer shaped by the sociocultural context into which it was born, but rather occupied an ineffable gray area, one in particular, that exists between the realms of nostalgia and reinvention.

In the year 2000, we listened to JAMC albums not because they were novel for whatever reason, and not because they represented something bygone that we never got to know or apprehend. We were too young for the former and too old for the latter. We listened because the songs are timeless. Boring, a bit, but ever so resonant.

Removed from the culture that inspired their creation though, they both lose and gain certain dimensions, thus allowing for new ways of experiencing them. Which is what it’s all about, right? This is what separates music that is bound to its age from that which lives, and continues to influence and herald trends to come. My early experience with the albums was one of deep, and in hindsight stupid confusion, about why all the guitars sounded so loud. Then I came across tracks that transcended my distaste for noise rock, like “The Hardest Walk”, for instance, which follows a simple and pretty accessible chord progression, but contains endless seeming layers of heavy distortion. It wasn’t grunge music because there was no yelling, really. It wasn’t new wave because there wasn’t tons of synth. It wasn’t anything that sounded like what “the future” would bring, i.e. all the electronic music I was listening to. There was no band to go see, to make it all more palpable. Yeah, I was confused, but I found the space for it, and subsequently developed a more generous understanding and appreciation for their sound.

I didn’t start loving their songs until 2003, when Lost In Translation came out. I needn’t say much, I’m sure. But the first time I saw the final scene, as she’s walking away and the opening chords of “Just Like Honey” start, with that marching drum beat, as Bill Murray’s character catches up to her, and whispers into her ear, and Jim Reid’s ethereal voice starts singing the first line, about taking on the world…I cried through the entire closing credits. It was that moment when the songs acquired context for me.

In any case, I still hadn’t actually SEEN this band until two weeks ago. They don’t release new albums. They don’t tour. I had always thought they were done. So I was excited, but had no idea what to expect. Their music had always been detached from even the idea of live performance.

We got to Iriving Plaza, which unfortunately is my absolute LEAST favorite venue in NYC, and walked up stairs to the stage. The opening act, Psychic Paramount was playing their set, shrouded in a haze of red fog, so heavy you couldn’t see any band members. Though I do like their recent album, I didn’t like how they sounded live because there was too much noise and no cohesion, and the mix in that room is always so muddy, it made it impossible to really hear anything.

Finally after what felt like eons, JAMC came on, Obscured by billows of multicolored smoke, apparitional, like ghosts of times past. It was exactly how I had always pictured them. They opened with “Between Planets”, which sounded pretty good for the most part, save some excruciating (for those of us with sensitive ears) feedback issues coming from the lead guitar, that ended up persisting for the whole show, that made me want to jump up onto stage and reposition the entire mic and speaker setup (please refer back to “Irving Plaza is my least favorite venue in NYC”). It ultimately didn’t distract too much from the songs, however, which sounded nearly identical to the studio recordings. This can be a good thing, because people generally like consistency, and it demonstrates the band’s technical competence as musicians, but it can also be a bad thing. It can make the music sound formulaic and monotonous even to those who are playing it. This, if anything, is my one criticism of their performance. There were times when they seemed on autopilot, or maybe even a little bored with themselves. Also, Reid forgot the lyrics to “Happy When It Rains”.

They’re lack of energy aside, it was a cool night. The woman who accompanied them on “Sometimes Always” and “Just Like Honey” had a great voice, and brought a vibe to the stage and to the songs that made both duets highlights of the show. They mostly played tracks from Darklands and Automatic, saving the louder, more raucous and distorted jams of Psychocandy and Honey’s Dead for the encore, during which I almost got trampled to death, when the theretofore mellow crowd started a circle pit in which I found myself. Up until that point I had pretty much forgotten how truly fanatical people are about this band. It was both heartwarming and a little scary.

Throughout the entire night, all I could keep thinking was that even as I watched them play, I’ve listened to their songs so many times without having a notion about what they’re like as a live band, that I couldn’t get specific references out of my head, that the tunes have always elicited–certain people, places, smells, drinks, etc.

And this alone made the whole thing so worth it.

SHOW REVIEW: Twin Shadow

It was not without drama that I came into a ticket to Twin Shadow’s second of two sold-out NYC performances. I’d planned to skip both sets since tickets were $22 and one of them was at Webster Hall, which I kind of hate. But a friend of mine who’d gotten tickets in advance had just turned thirty, thrown a temper tantrum, and bailed, so I found myself at Music Hall of Williamsburg. I’d seen Twin Shadow play a CMJ show at Le Bain in October 2011, with the twinkling ribbon of the West Side Highway unspooling across giant glass windows behind the band. I’d ruined a suede skirt by spilling wax on it in attempt to light a joint in the bathroom; I’d also embarrassed myself during the dance party afterward when I toppled sideways in uneven heels at the very moment I’d finally caught the eye of the tall, bearded dreamboat I’d been spying all evening. As it turns out, he had a girlfriend anyway.

But I’ve come a long way in the last year, and so has George Lewis Jr., the man behind Twin Shadow. He has released two albums to tons of critical acclaim (including Pitchfork’s coveted Best New Music for this year’s Confess on 4AD), survived a motorcycle accident to have an epiphany that majorly influenced the songwriting and recording of his sophomore album, and headlined a two month tour across the United States and Canada. The MHoW show was the second-to-last stop on that tour, and the fact that Lewis is a bit fatigued from it all was likely a factor in his somewhat bitter between-song banter.

Twin Shadow’s songs have been compared to just about every pop band from the eighties, and it isn’t hard to hear why. 2010’s stellar Forget, produced by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, was all airy synths, anthemic choruses, bouncy bass, and shimmering guitar riffs. These parallels also grew out of Lewis’ personal style, in which leather jacket and pompadour were de rigueur. With lyrics hopelessly meant for chanting (namely that moment in smash single “Slow” when Lewis croons “I don’t wanna believe / or be / in love”) it was pretty inevitable that Twin Shadow would blow up, and when Confess was released it was apparent that he’d stayed on that same trajectory and managed to amp up the nostalgia factor even further.

Honestly, Confess is almost too over-the-top for me. In certain moments, like personal favorite “Beg For The Night”, it takes the form of giggle-inducing orchestra hits which are somehow still endearing. But on album opener “Golden Light”, the backup vocals sound so much like the closing theme from Lost Boys that I can’t even see past it to enjoy the rest of the song, which is unfortunate since without that, it would actually be really lovely. Slowly but surely, however, Confess has grown on me; it’s something in the transition of Lewis’ low, sultry moans into easy falsettos, the urgency and desperation on songs like lead single “Five Seconds”, the heartbroken but detached callousness of pretty much every lyric Lewis has ever penned.

That cockiness is something that Lewis may as well have trademarked at this point. While his swagger is not unwarranted, it certainly permeates every aspect of his persona, from song to image to stage banter. I had always assumed that it was a bit put on, but last night’s show may have convinced me otherwise once and for all. When I saw him less than a year ago, he didn’t say much and mostly kept his eyes trained on the floor while he hunched over his guitar. Friday’s performance was an entirely different thing – he wore his mohawk slicked back, jumped around on stage with his guitar swinging, and belted out his most raw lines with fierce bellicosity.

Twin Shadow, image courtesy of BrooklynVegan

It started in a low-key manner, with a slow, stripped-down solo performance of “The One”. A guitarist, keyboard player and drummer joined him on stage and they moved through a setlist featuring the four best tracks from Forget and all but three cuts from Confess. While “Slow” was incredibly disappointing (he sang choruses out of turn, feedback screeched), “Castles In The Snow” had to be the show’s highlight; the live version was huskier and grinding in all the right ways, with basslines blaring and buzzing. But even in the more rote performances, something intense was happening, at least to me, most notably during his performance of “Run My Heart”. So much of Confess is seemingly infused with a summery mood; it was birthed in Los Angeles, where Lewis fled to escape brutal Brooklyn winters when he was writing and recording the album. But its darker power comes from what happens when the sunshine fades, from that realization that summer is ending and that with that death, romanticism is doomed. When Lewis sang “This isn’t love / I’m just a boy / you’re just a girl” it acted as a grim reminder to that harsh reality.

Between songs, Lewis rewarded Brooklyn with some backhanded compliments, then promised to move back and abandon his 3,000 square foot loft in Silver Lake (and its jacuzzi) if the crowd screamed loud enough for him. So not only is he actually cocky, he also doesn’t seem to realize how a bragging about his success might sound to a bunch of folks who paid slightly inflated ticket prices just to dance at his feet. He made this trespass up slightly by unleashing a bunch of gold and black balloons on the audience, but the kicker was closing out the show with a cover of “Under Pressure” dedicated to openers Niki & the Dove (who I’d missed). The cover was rather epic and he proved his chops in performing it shockingly well, ensuring that it will be all anyone really remembers about this show.

All in all, Twin Shadow’s live shows are a tad sloppy compared side-by-side to the obsessively glossy production on his records, but Lewis, let’s remember, is relatively new at this. He has toured extensively in the last few years, and if nothing else has come out of it, he’s certainly perfected his rock’n’roll idol swag. Even if this moment doesn’t last much longer than it has, his penchant for making ultra-nostalgic records will ensure his place in the collective consciousness of everyone who came close enough to touch it. And he’ll be sneering back at us, telling us all how hollow it really is with tears in his eyes.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

SHOW REVIEW: Sinkane, Friends, Phone Tag

There are certain nights when I wish my favorite venues in Brooklyn, all of which happen to inhabit the same square block of Williamsburg, would just band together and offer three-for-one show deals, or at least build a network of secret tunnels connecting each venue to the next – like those elaborate ferret dens you see in pet shops, all neon yellow and orange plastic. Thursday was a perfect example of just such a night, as my buddy Ahmed Gallab and his band Sinkane were opening for Sun Araw at Death By Audio and Brooklyn-based band Friends were over at 285 Kent. Additionally, Annie was amped for a Chris Cohen set at Glasslands, so we did what any good AudioFemmes would do and attended all three between the two of us.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about Sinkane’s set; this blog has not seen the last of him by any means. Frontman Ahmed Gallab is a longtime friend of mine from Ohio, where I’d see him play regularly with two of my favorite Columbus acts, Sweetheart and Pompeii This Morning. Sinkane is the most psychedelic sonic adventure he’s ever been on, and I’ve been stoked to watch it evolve from its humble beginnings as a solo project, through a move to Brooklyn and tours with the likes of Caribou and Yeasayer, and into what it is now – a four piece as much informed by seventies funk and Afrobeat as it is by indie rock. His jams get more and more solid every time I get a chance to see him play, helped along by a recent residency at Zebulon and soon to take the world by storm as he was just signed to DFA. On Thursday he debuted some great new material – stay tuned for an upcoming AF feature.

As I mentioned, Sinkane was opening up for fellow purveyors of psychedelic sound Sun Araw, though I was only able to stay for a few of their songs. I’ve liked a good many records that they’ve put out, but have never really gotten to see them live. Their first few numbers were droning and dissonant; hair hung in the faces of the flanneled band members who had turned most of the stage lights out just before playing. I’m hoping the set got better as they went on. They were sluggishly nonchalant, as though there weren’t a room filled with folks eyeing their moves, and the songs just didn’t come across as textural or integrated as they do on the albums, and the cloud of weed hovering in the front room of DBA didn’t even help. I’ll be giving them another chance, though, and soon.

I could have probably stuck around a bit longer, but I didn’t want to miss Friends and figured they’d play at 285 Kent around 11:30. When I arrived at the venue, Phone Tag was finishing up an adorably bouncy set that had the crowd (and it was a decently sized crowd for an opening band on a Thursday night) going wild. I hadn’t yet heard their self-titled 2012 LP but was definitely intrigued by the ardent fanbase, not to mention the glistening keys and synths, reverb-drenched guitar and cooing vocals reminiscent of a less grating Passion Pit. The band is led by Gryphon Graham and comprised of some pretty attractive kids. They could just as easily be a group of hip super-heroes as a band, but lucky for everyone at 285 they chose to play instruments instead of fight crime. Their songs are made for rooftop dance parties and flirting in bars, ultra catchy and very fun but never totally frivolous.

All of this made them appropriate openers for Brooklyn band-of-the-moment Friends, who will soon embark on a month-long tour opening for Two Door Cinema Club. Like Phone Tag, Friends play deceivingly simple indie pop party jams, but there’s a certain depth and skill at work that goes beyond the band’s youthful exuberance.

Friends take ultra catchy jams and infuse them with beats and instrumentation so eclectic it’s hard to pin down any definitive influences. Their live shows feature heavy, funky basslines courtesy of a new bassist known as “V” (who in a weird way looks like an avatar from Rock Band), lively synths thanks to Nikki Shapiro, and he percussive efforts of Oliver Duncan (on a drumset) and Etienne Pierre Duguay (formerly of Real Estate) on bongos, tambourine, and anything else that will make a sound when you bash, tap, or click it.

But Friends simply would not be what it is without the incredible vocals and personality of Samatha Urbani, whose aesthetic has informed the band since its inception, when she directed videos for the band’s first and very buzzed about singles, “I’m His Girl” and “Friend Crush”. Wearing high-waisted navy blue pants with double rows of gold buttons, a white shirt tied at the waist with gold beadwork cascading down her back and across her shoulders, Urbani was every bit the glamourous frontwoman.

Her flamboyant-meets-chic style is one thing, but her vocal chops are completely another. She drifts back and forth easily between a higher, sweeter coo and lower, more sultry tones delivered with a dose of sass. That much was apparent on the band’s debut LP, Manifest! released this year. But live she’s that much more captivating, peppering her performance with coquettish yelps and squeals reminiscent of Kate Pierson from the B-52’s. A friend of mine told me that she used to see Urbani perform regularly at karaoke and said that she completely slayed every song, which I not only believe but would have probably paid money to see that alone.

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SHOW REVIEW: Gang Gang Dance w/ Prince Rama

Okay, so I know I’ve been spending too much time at 285 Kent. I know you’re all sick of hearing about it. I’m thinking of getting a tattoo of a sharpie line drawn across my wrist so they won’t have to ID me anymore, maybe even the “RANDO” stamp they use on my forearm so I don’t have to pay to get in. For all you foursquare nerds out there, check out the mayor – it’s actually me. But none of this is my fault. I could quit if I wanted. It’s just that there is too much goodness going on inside those walls on a nightly basis, really.

On Sunday night, that goodness took the form of Gang Gang Dance and Prince Rama. It was the last night of GGD’s “Tour of Williamsburg” in which they played Public Assembly on Friday (with Sun Araw), Cameo Gallery on Saturday (with New Moods), and 285 on Sunday (with Prince Rama). All of these shows were put together by Brooklyn-based booking agency Bandshell, whose mission is to bring bigger bands to smaller, more intimate venues. From what I can tell their venture is a new-ish one and they don’t seem to have any events coming up, but it’s a mission we can get behind and we’d like to see it succeed.

I’d been dying to see Prince Rama but had missed the seven billion opportunities I’d been given in the past. Now I will say this: NO MORE. No more will I show up late to shows where they are opening, no more will I skip their free or cheap shows for some other free or cheap show, no more will this band play in Brooklyn without seeing me at the foot of their stage, worshipping every move. These ladies (and one gentleman) do it so, so right.

First, they were wearing ultra-eccentric outfits (think animal print, think sequins) and had gold glitter all over their faces and all of them (the boy too!) had pretty hair. The driving force of the project is sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson, joined by guitarist Michael Collins. The three met in a Hare Krishna commune in Florida and honed their psychedelic leanings in art school. Oddity can sometimes seem affected or put on, part of a performance rather than a way of life, but for Prince Rama it’s genuine and engaging.

Taraka sang the majority of the vocals and was also in charge of the synths, but abandoned them relatively often for a little audience participation. The audience this night included members of the Larson family; during the second-to-last number Taraka jumped off stage and danced with what I’d assume was maybe her mother, who seemed to know all the words. Nimai stood in a circle of drums, dancing while she played, her smile so wide and constant that she kind of reminded me of the girl muppet in Dr. Teeth’s Electric Mayhem. She was adorable and so fun to watch, but it was hard to train the eyes on any one thing. There were cool projections mirroring their movements filtered to look like some kind of crazy acid trip, and the stage was festooned with loudly printed textiles and gauze.

Musically, Prince Rama’s sound is designed to put you in a party trance of sorts; there’s plenty of chanting and call-and-response but it’s backed up by an acute understanding of what makes a song worth dancing to. I’ve been to plenty of psych shows that devolve into sort of boring drone, and this is the exact opposite. To prove that, the sisters leapt off stage during the last number and performed an incredible dance routine on the floor to close out the show; this included flips, hand motions, dramatic facial expression, and probably went on for over six minutes. Since they’d arrived late and hadn’t been able to start the show on time, yet the venue wouldn’t allow them to hold up Gang Gang Dance’s scheduled performance, the dance number ended up being a significant portion of time in their set overall. But it was absolutely enchanting. I cannot wait to see them again.

Gang Gang Dance play a similar brew of exotic psych, but there are way more people in the band and have a much heavier ratio of males to females – there are four dudes to the one lady, Lizzi Bougatsos. At this particular show there was also a strange shaman-type dude in the band; he mostly hid behind the amps but he’d peer around them with some weird antique binocular-type gadget, or hit an adjacent cymbal with a piece of rope tied to his wrist. At one point he did move to the front of the stage to hold a drum head so Lizzi could bang on it, but that was as present as he ever seemed.

I’m getting a bit ahead of myself though. Before the show even started, Bougatsos appeared onstage in a baseball cap and a homemade hijab, asking the house DJ to stop playing MIA. Despite Gang Gang Dance’s obvious affinity for world beats, exotic instrumentation, and Middle-Eastern influenced sonic tinges, Bougatsos proudly identified herself as a Long Island girl, glorious accent and all. When she sings, though, it sounds like she’s coming from some other planet. She also plays a floor tom and a smaller set of drums. The synth guy sometimes played drums too, and then there was actual drummer. Together, they caused quite a lovely racket, the band spooling out their off-center dance tunes into sprawling psychic meditations. They tackled favorites like “Mindkilla” “Adult Goth” “Egyptian” and “Vacuums”, interspersed with new songs like “Lazy Eye”, which prompted Bougatsos to keep a lyric sheet on hand, though she ended up not needing it. In addition to building kaleidoscopic jams out of their regular material, the band also debuted some expansive instrumental tracks. The only song notably missing from the set was “House Jam”, but in such a long and tight set its omission was not exactly tragic.

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It’s been over a year since Eye Contact was released, and it’s exciting to see the band develop new material, though if the time that passed between their most recent release and 2008’s Saint Dymphna is any indication it will be a while longer before we see a new full length. If this trio of performances is any indication, Gang Gang Dance are far from exhausting the font from which their reputations as experimental wunderkinds flow.

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Year: 2012

EVENT REVIEW: African Children’s Choir Gala

Finding French Music In France

BOOK REVIEW: Neil Young’s Waging A Heavy Peace

THOM YORKE, ‘ATOMS FOR PEACE’ & “HOLLYWOOD DOOOM”

BEAUTIFUL NOISE DOCUMENTARY ON KICKSTARTER

EMBATTLED MEGAUPLOAD FOUNDER BACK FOR ROUND 2

ARTIST PROFILE: TalkFine

SHOW REVIEW: Matthew Dear + Light Asylum + Beacon

SHOW REVIEW: Twin Sister + Moon King + Leapling

Life After Girls: The Rebirth of Christopher Owens

SHOW REVIEW: Reptar w/ Stepdad & Rubblebucket

AF EXCLUSIVE TRACK: Which Magic “Electra Light”

ARTIST PROFILE: Los Encantados

CMJ 2012: Best Of, 1-3

1. Chad Valley @ Le Baron

2. Doldrums @ PS1

3. DIIV @ Villain

CMJ 2012: Sea Wolf, Jim White, Hey Marseilles @ LPR

CMJ 2012: SESAC Showcase @ Cakeshop

ARTIST PROFILE: Harlan

Thoughts from a neo-soul prodigy on the rise from LA

Five Things I Learned From CMJ 2012

MIXES: With A Little Help From My Bands

AUDIOFEMME PRESENTS: CMJ 2012

AUDIOFEMME PRESENTS: CMJ 2012 AT SPIKE HILL // 10/16

SHOW REVIEW: The Jesus And Mary Chain

SHOW REVIEW: Twin Shadow

SHOW REVIEW: Sinkane, Friends, Phone Tag

SHOW REVIEW: Gang Gang Dance w/ Prince Rama

Ticket Giveaways

Each week Audiofemme gives away a set of tickets to our featured shows in NYC! Scroll down to enter for the following shindigs.

See you there! xoxo