FLASHBACK FRIDAY: “Morning Has Broken”

Mary Ann Brown

My maternal grandmother, Mary Ann Brown (she is both my namesake and the genetic source of my snarkiness), died three years ago today. She passed away in her sleep at the age of 93 after out-living the entire 20th century and even the first decade of a new millennium (I remember the evening we prank-texted my youngest cousin). She raised three brilliant daughters and saw 8 grandchildren evolve into relatively high functioning adults (jk my cousins are all amazing people). She taught us every card game on the planet (Quiddler being her fave), cooked delicious green bean casserole perfected exclusively by those who lived through the Great Depression, and talked me back from the emotional cliff’s edge after Bush got reelected. It was a sunny November afternoon in DC. I was on the phone with her in tears, me, the idealistic college junior, freaking the fuck out about the world’s imminent demise as a result of what…? Bad policy? She gave this inimitable chuckle of hers and talked to me about all the national elections she’d witnessed in her life.  She told me about how with hindsight, you can see that the metaphorical pendulum indeed swings inexorably back and forth across the entire spectrum of human experience, yet when you insist on standing beneath the damn thing watching it from that myopic vantage only the youth seem to stake, one apprehends nothing more than the looming shadow it casts. This simple axiom is something I’ve managed to carry with me and apply to more than the disquieting circumstances surrounding electoral politics. Like, for example, situations in which I have felt powerless to life’s inertia. Or situations in which dead certainty (regarding anything–love, friendship, one’s sense of epistemic truth) becomes crippling doubt in a matter of moments, leaving you with the feeling of numbing loss. Or the experience of slowly crawling back from heartbreak…when the jaws of hell may just finally snap you in half…You feel stamped out, exhausted and dehumanized. Yet, sure enough, (and as if by some act of alchemy), the pendulum swings.

At Mary Ann’s funeral the entire room sang an old Christian hymn “Morning Has Broken”, one of her lifelong favorites, and a beautiful and befitting send-off. And since then whenever I hear it (usually the version below, popularized by Cat Stevens) it stops me dead in my tracks. There’s something indelible and compelling, albeit it elementary, about the chord progression–it starts off in the key of D major and then jumps to C within the first few bars before the opening verse begins (a common device used to  induce the feeling of physical transcendence). Halfway through it switches back to D, keeping us in its grips, only to fall to C again. Back and forth it goes for the track’s entirety. By the end it feels like you’re dismounting an emotional roller coaster. This is one of my favorite kinds of songs to listen to: simple and physically gripping in equal measure, all as a result of exceptional composition. The truths expressed lyrically are universal, and coalesce with those exact words of wisdom that she imparted to me nearly a decade ago: A new morning awaits, and you should praise it, for whatever it may bring whether it be adversity or peace, joy or  pain. It comes and it goes. And it’s going to teach you something about yourself, which is all we really have in the end.

Listen with your eyes closed (unless you want to see a montage of Cat Steven photos–even though holy shit he was hot in his youth).

ARTIST PROFILE: Emily Pelstring

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If the videos of Emily Pelstring were suits they’d be cut from outlandish cloth, but they would fit perfectly.  Between her recent work with Meghan Remy, a.k.a U.S. Girls, and Canadian song-man Slim Twig, Pelstring has perfected the ability to depict artists as exaggerated forms of themselves, perhaps in part due to her fascination with the “politics of representation”.  A self-professed postmodernist, Pelstring seems to be at ease with conveying various incarnations of identity, depending upon the quirks of the individual artist. There are instances when this portrayal appears so accurate, that it could even surprise the artists themselves, almost as if Pelstring extracted their very essence out of them.

While working with U.S. Girls on her music video for “Jack”, Remy certainly had her fair share of input. However it was Pelstring who hit the nail on the head when deciding to shoot with a VHS camera.  The fuzzed-out image quality is a soft contrast to the sparkling glit throughout the video, on dresses, skin, and all over the ground. It’s never perfectly clear where Remy is, as the frame of the camera doesn’t pull too far away from her, but the lighting suggests she’s is on a stage, performing to an empty room, signaling the last days of the glam-diva, perhaps.

In the video for “28 Days,” another nostalgia-inducing jam by U.S. Girls, Pelstring directly and boldly underscores the 1960s entertainment ethos .  The song itself is catchy pop throwback to girl groups like The Shangri-Las and The Ronettes, and its lyrical subject matter is no less female.  “28 Days” refers to that monthly burden all of us ladies share: yes, yea-ol’ menstrual cycle.  The video features a gaggle of beehive-crowned, rather sullen looking chicks dancing through a barren town as Remy shimmies and sings in front of them.

Though both U.S. Girls videos are humorous, they don’t hold a candle to Pelstring’s work for Slim Twig’s “All This Wanting.”  I’d say the headiest contributor to this video’s hilarity is contrast.  First there is the discrepancy between Slim Twig’s appearance and his voice.  Here’s this scrawny dude (Slim Twig is not just a clever name) with a white-guy fro and a moustache.  I expected him to sound a bit shrill.  Yet, he’s got this barrel-chested voice more akin to Nick Cave’s.  The music is not Cave-esque in any way, however.  The thumping piano and catchiness are more likened to up-tempo Harry Nilsson and Mungo Jerry.

The second and most prominent form of contrast in the video is the real star of the screen: the sock puppets.  They start off doing everyday sock puppet things, singing in unison, bobbing their heads, etc.  By song’s end, one has caught fire, another is hitting the bottle, while a pair are getting hot and heavy on the dining room table.  It’s an adorable and accessible display of dark humor that exemplifies Pelstring’s talent as well as her wit.  She certainly has a wealth of both those things.

Audiofemme recently got to have a little chat with the lady behind the camera, about music, media, and life in the creative lane. Here’s what she had to say:

AF: Your videos seem to be heavily influenced by the 60s and 70s, particularly those you created for both Slim Twig and U.S. Girls. Is there any particular reason for this?  Does that era of time hold any special significance for you? 

 EP: I do draw influence from different time periods, but the range is broader than the 60’s and 70’s. Part of the reason is that I am just curious about the history of moving image formats and I like researching what the limitations and possibilities were perceived to be at the time that specific developments happened. The Slim Twig and U.S. Girls video for Jack are each inspired by specific television programs from the mid-1980s. In the case of those two videos, I had acquired a studio television camera that was made in 1983—and it still worked!  So that was really exciting.  I had learned about analog video in workshop-type situations before, but these projects gave me a chance to develop a style with it.

There is certainly a 1960s reference in the choreography and fashion in 28 Days, motivated by the Supremes sample that is used in the song. Meg and I have a shared obsession with ‘60s girl groups.  One of the references she gave me was for the Exciters’ promotional film for “He’s Got the Power” (1963).  I also looked at Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots are Made for Walking” (1966) for choreography.  But I staged the video with contemporary environments and shot on hi-def video instead of film, because it’s a little more interesting to me when the references to media from different time periods are combined fluidly.

A more extreme example of that kind of conflation of historical media would be the video for Yamantaka // Sonic Titan’s Hoshi Neko.  For that, we wanted to combine early video game aesthetics with the visual textures of the silent film era.  We wanted to imagine what a 1920s video game might look like, and throw the chronology of aesthetic/technological developments completely out the window.

 AF: We’re all very aware of the low-fi direction music video media have taken in the last couple of years.  What do you attribute this to? Do you think it is a contrary reaction to high-tech innovations, CGI, etc?

 EP:To me, “low-fi” means distorted, visibly processed imagery.  Though I don’t really consider a lot of my own work low-fi, I can certainly think of compelling reasons for artists to be using low-fi aesthetics. When I do something that I would consider low-fi, (because it embraces technical malfunction, or includes disruptive glitches), it is certainly done in dialogue with mainstream aesthetic standards, like everything. There are these cultural narratives of technological progress, authorial mastery, and structural coherency that I do think can be questioned.  In my own work, it is part of a feminist agenda—a criticism of some of the values of the industry.

If you are just talking about the trend of shooting with vintage cameras in order to achieve a retro look, to me this is just a stylistic choice, like a fashion or design trend, and cultural nostalgia is everywhere in fashion, design, and music. Is not at all surprising that the visual trends in independent or underground music are things that would be easily accomplished with low budgets, because economic factors make it practical for independent music video makers to embrace lower production values. What is fun to see is that, now that we have developed the 2000s-early-video-revival in the world of commercially unsuccessful artists, mainstream artists are finding a way to spend millions of dollars approximating it!  The whole thing is like a conversation, or a snake eating its own tail or something, and it’s been going on forever.

 AF: When you’ve worked with artists in the past, do you find that they tend to seek you out, or do you have specific musicians in mind for your concepts?

 EP: I usually just work with friends, or people within my social circle that I want to collaborate with.  Sometimes it’s an excuse to get to know somebody better who I think is interesting.  I have done a few commissions for Pop Montreal where I had to select a musician to work with out of a few options, and they were people I didn’t know, but that’s rare.

 AF: How much of a collaborative effort are your music videos with the artists/bands?

 EP: Sometimes it is actually 50/50 collaboration, like with Ruby Kato Attwood of Yamantaka // Sonic Titan, but even when I’m not co-directing, there is always a lot of planning and conversation leading up to the making of the video.  This usually involves sending video references, storyboards, treatments, location images, etc, and this is when most of the ideas get worked out.  I like this process because I feel like my relationship with the musician gets stronger on a personal level.  The whole reason I do these collaborative projects is that I want to get closer to people through art-making, because I find it a fulfilling way to communicate ideas.

 AF: Given the nostalgic quality of your work, how do you maintain relevance?  How are these references relatable to the young viewer?

 EP: I think nostalgia itself is totally relevant to the young viewer. One would be hard-pressed to find an example of contemporary media that is not in some way nostalgic, or that does not owe something huge to the past.  Nostalgia has this connotation of longing and desire for a time we think that we can’t access. That feeling motivates me and I think brings a sort of pain/pleasure to some viewers.

 AF: What is the most difficult part of your process?

 EP: With each project I am attempting something new on a technical or organizational level.  The difficulties involve coordinating casts and crews, managing schedules and budgets, testing equipment and workflows, and trouble-shooting in advance of a production.  A lot of this work is physically demanding (hauling heavy gear, pulling long days).  But, I am usually very prepared for a shoot, and that enables me to foster a harmonious working environment where people are happy to be there, expressing themselves, being fed, and having fun. For 28 Days,we actually shot the whole thing, all 7 locations, in 3.5 hours.  That was no miracle: everything was meticulously coordinated.  I could never do any of this without Lesley Marshall, my absolute, go-to, all-time best Production Manager/Assistant Director/Right Hand.  You should see the two of us change a lens together!  We can do it in like 5 seconds flat.  Usually my crew is small- sometimes just me and Lesley, and that leads to situations where Lesley is like, holding Meg’s cigarette in one hand, a 500-Watt light in the other, and operating the smoke machine with a remote between her knees.

 AF: Where do you fall in the debate between digital and analog processes?

 I use digital, analog, and hybrid tools, simultaneously and interchangeably. Most recently, I made something where I used my vintage camera to make video feedback with a CRT monitor, which was then processed by an analog colorizer and a new digital video mixer before being edited in an animation program and then converted into animated gifs for a web-based artwork.  Since this kind of hybrid process is so typical in my work, I don’t usually bother engaging in a debate about it.

 AF: Who do you consider your biggest influence within the realm of film/cinematography?

EP: I always cite Maya Deren as the reason I ever wanted to start making films, and Kenneth Anger as my biggest filmic influence.  But, in terms of cinematography, I have been looking to my friend and collaborator Jessica Mensch, who is primarily a painter, and relatively new to video.  Her camera work is so subjective and exploratory that you can feel her decision-making process as she searches for compositions and moves through scenes (see The Fuzz).  This interests me because it is different from my approach, and I think I can learn from it.

I have been thinking about a few coming-of-age narratives a lot lately: Chantal Akerman’s J’ai Faim, J’ai Froid(1984)and Jane Campion’s A Girl’s Own Story­ (1984)which has a haunting musical ending I also recently watched an Australian psychological thriller by Peter Weir called Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975).  I liked that because half of the movie is a bunch of boarding school girls roaming around this awesome geological formation and becoming enraptured by the mysterious forces of nature.

 AF: Which of your projects is the most personal to you?

 EP: The projects that are the most significant to me are the ones where I feel like I am truly meeting another mind through the process.  In terms of the music videos, Jack and 28 Days feel like proficient expressions of issues and ideas that Meg and I both care deeply about. But the work I do with Jessica as Inflatable Deities is personally important because she is one of my best friends, and when working with her I feel more encouraged to explore uncharted territory.

 AF: Do you find yourself more at ease shooting within the confines of a set, or out in the open/ on location?

 EP: Both present their own special challenges. In-studio, I tend to take a lot of time figuring out the set and lighting. Outdoors, you are pressed for time if you want specific lighting, and you have to worry about factors like the weather, or the rights of other human beings to be in the public spaces that you want to shoot in. I do enjoy outdoor location shooting, but in Montreal, it is just too shitty outside for 11 months of the year.

 AF: Out of your contemporaries, who would you most like to work with on a collaborative project?

 EP: I would love to finish something with Brandon Blommaert. He is a friend and a very talented and skilled animator.  We have done some really cool experiments.

 AF: Have you ever felt comfortable in front of the camera, or solely behind it?

 EP: I have a lot of dance training and am always into doing anything crazy with my body, for stage or camera. I do performance art and perform in videos pretty frequently.

 AF: This one is born of the season: What is your favorite Christmas Special?

 EP: I’m going to leave you with a couple of my favorite music videos instead, consider it a Christmas present if you haven’t seen them already…

So epic, I can’t:

Another power balled from the same year.  Jessica turned me onto this one, it takes an amazing turn around the 2-minute mark:

Any video from the “Ooooooohhh… On the TLC Tip” era is fantastic, but this one especially makes good use of giant props, and they just look like they are having SUCH a good time.

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LOUD & TASTELESS: Charli XCX

Every Thursday, AF profiles a style icon from the music world. This week, we’re gushing over Charli XCX’s gothic wardrobe. There’s tons of black and velvet and we can’t get enough.

Charli XCX Audiofemme

Charli XCX has the ability to pull off cropped tees, netted shirts and even the 90s-redux plaid skirt. She’s a tough girl with a strong voice, which is why it’s so hard not to notice her style. She piles on black on black and then smears on black eyeliner to complete her look. She’s the smokey temptress who is bound to steal the heart of anyone who crosses her path. Take a goth lesson from this UK pop star as you browse our Pinterest board and listen to her hit, “You (Ha Ha Ha)” below.

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FLASHBACK FRIDAY: Karen Dalton

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Karen Dalton’s mystique, largely a product of her personal misfortunate, makes her an easy candidate for legend: it’s fun to imagine her, half Irish, half Cherokee, in a wooly, bohemian large-pocketed coat, Dalton had thick dark bangs and two missing bottom teeth knocked out when she got between two fighting boyfriends, and spent the sixties wandering Greenwich Village, palling around with Bob Dylan and enchanting tiny apartments full of literati with her banjo and her incomparable voice.

Most often liked to a folksy Billy Holday, Dalton’s voice is bluesy and husky, perfectly timed, but especially haunting for the sadness behind it. Dalton was criminally overlooked during her lifetime, and barely recorded, both because of her inconsistencies with the kind of pop music that got signed at the time and because of her own stubbornness and famous refusal to perform. The story of how her debut album, It’s So Hard To Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best, was made has become a legend unto itself:a friend tricked her into playing the songs, and secretly recorded the performance. Dalton released that album and one other, In My Own Time, and then disappeared off the scene. She struggled with drug use until her death from AIDS in 1993.

In My Own Time, released initially in 1971 and then again in 2006, epitomizes something of the intimacy and romance that had haunted her voice on It’s So Hard. The record was undoubtedly more comfortable, and Dalton’s experiments into the bluesier aspects of her voice (“When A Man Loves A Woman”), which even switches some of the lyrics of that song around to fit a female protagonist, feel natural alongside the beautifully archaic banjo-based tune “Katie Cruel.” Then there’s “Take Me,” a simple, heart-shattering song built around fermatas and soul, that hits a new peak of earnestness in Dalton’s career. However, the most memorable track on this album, for me, is the first one, “Something On Your Mind.”

The mythologizing of Karen Dalton, as much as it skews the life it imagines, lets you take the music for your own, and so it is with this song. “Something On Your Mind,” honest and comforting, utilizes a set of lyrics just vague enough to apply to anything—Yesterday, anyway you made it was just fine/So you turned your days into nighttime/Didn’t you know you can’t make it without ever even trying? And something’s on your mind, isn’t it—and cutting enough to feel like a conversation. More than thirty years after the song was recorded, “Something On Your Mind” is balm for the wounds of the lonely two thirty AM subway rider, the recently dumped or the recently unemployed, the weary traveler, or the woolen-jacketed wanderer through a snowy Greenwich village. Her voice, an acute blend of lonely weariness and deep strength, sounds like nothing to come out before or since.

Take a listen to “Something On Your Mind,” off In My Own Time, below:

PLAYLIST: Christmas Songs That Don’t Suck

Merry Christmas Baby (Please Don't Die)

Anyone who’s worked in retail can tell you what a headache Christmas carols can be.   You’re working eight hour shifts surrounded by irate customers who forgot the meaning of holiday cheer in a rush to get presents for their shitty boyfriends and picky sisters.  These people have no regard for the fact that you’re stuck in a mall neatly folding the pile of t-shirts they just demolished instead of out getting sloshed with your friends or exchanging gifts with your loved ones.  And all the while, that awful Mariah Carey song is just blaring.   Over and over and over again.

I’m of the opinion that not even David Bowie could save “Little Drummer Boy” from being the most annoying piece of music ever composed, and that “Baby It’s Cold Outside” is basically a rape-carol.  But that doesn’t mean the whole Christmas catalogue is a lost a cause.  There have been a handful of songs (usually lesser known and therefore less  overplayed) that can still manage to put me in the holiday spirit instead of making me want to gouge my eyes out with a nutcracker.  These are my personal favorites.

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Merry Christmas Baby (Please Don't Die)
Dee Dee of Dum Dum Girls & Brandon Welchez of Crocodiles teach Santa to rock on their single “Merry Christmas Baby (Please Don’t Die)”

The Kinks – Father Christmas: Somewhere along the line, I stopped asking my parents for gifts around the holidays and started requesting practical things instead: a trip to the dentist, a gift card to Target, rent money.  These things would keep me alive whereas candles from the Dollar Store would not.  So I am not sure if I side with Ray Davies or the antagonistic children who mug him while he was playing Santa, but choosing sides isn’t the point.  On the one hand, threatening violence is not cool, children can be terrifying, and machine guns are not appropriate gifts.  But what these kids really want is jobs for their dads or the cold hard cash that will allow them to survive their harrowing, impoverished existences, rather than dolls or blocks or whatever.  They’re just trying to check some volunteer Santa’s privilege (and ours) by reminding us that there are plenty of folks out there who can’t put food on the table at Christmastime (or any other time).  But this isn’t some depressing ballad; the message comes in a catchy rock ‘n’ roll wrapping, its riffs Xmassed up with some cheery chimes that make a nice foil for Davies’ ragged snarl.

Sufjan Stevens – Christmas Unicorn: The thing about Sufjan is that all of his songs are about 10,000% better if you just imagine he’s a singing unicorn.  And from the first line of this song, he presents himself as not just any unicorn, but a Christmas unicorn, with a mistletoe nose and a shield and a gold suit.  Sounds cool right?  But wait: Sufjan as the Christmas Unicorn is actually a symbol for American hypocrisy, out-of-control consumerism, Christians adopting Paganism, Baby Jesus, drug addiction and insanity.  But this outlandish gem from last year’s epic (what isn’t epic with Sufjan?) Christmas-themed limited edition six LP vinyl boxset Silver & Gold doesn’t stop there.  It goes on for twelve minutes and gets so weird it needs a play-by-play.  After the introductory takedown of hodgepodge Anglo-American Christian-Pagan ideals, there’s an expansive instrumental break that falls somewhere between swirly space rock and something you’d imagine playing over loudspeakers at a Ren-faire, flutes and all.  About halfway through, the meandering melody grows pegasus wings and starts flapping around all wildly a la those choruses from “Chicago”.  And eight minutes in, it becomes a Christmasified cover of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”.  This song is the best kind of holly-jolly trainwreck.

Joni Mitchell – River:  Easily one of the most gorgeous songs in Mitchell’s oeuvre (and of all time, pretty much), the power of “River” lies in Mitchell’s ability to evoke nostalgia via her contemplative lyrics and her timeless voice.  She’s alone on Christmas due to perceived failures on her part, ruminating on a recent breakup and feeling detached from the festive mood of the approaching holiday.  It’s an anthem for any adult’s first Christmas away from home, the first holiday where those carefree childhood days have faded and you can no longer escape all the grown-up responsibilities you have in the simple act of lacing up a pair of skates and taking to the ice.  Extra points on the shout out to all the evergreens slaughtered  for the sake of Christmas spirit.

The Waitresses – Christmas Wrapping:  The Waitresses had two songs.  One was the theme song for  “Square Pegs” which famously starred Sarah Jessica Parker (before she was famous).  And the other is this Blondie-esque narrative about a semi-Scroogey girl having a frustrating holiday/life.   See, all year long she’s been bumping into this cutie, and because of her first world problems (like sunburn – ugh!) she’s never actually able to connect with him.  The daily stresses keep piling up until she just, like, can’t even with Christmas.  I mean, her turkey was all in the oven and she forgot cranberries!  But in a fateful trip to the only all-night grocery, she finally finds love; her crush is in the check-out line, having also totally fucked up his grocery shopping.  Bright brass and zippy guitar lines are the perfect accent for this tale of bitterness diminished by serendipitous Christmas magic.

The Sonics – Don’t Believe In Christmas:  While it seems like any number of bands (especially those on the Burger Records roster) might write a song like this today, it was released in 1965, a decidedly un-scuzzy era for rock n’ roll.  It’s snarky and skeptical and goes beyond greedy to straight up entitled, moving about a mile a minute all the while.  When you don’t get cool presents or kisses from the ladies, there’s simply no reason to celebrate.  Ironically, the single finds its home on an Etiquette Records compilation entitled Merry Christmas, also featuring The Sonics’ singular contemporaries The Wailers and Galaxies.  Most of the songs are brilliant originals completely overlooked every December.  It makes sense that they don’t play The Wailers’ scathing anti-consumerist romp “Christmas Spirit???” in Saks Fifth Avenue but “She’s Coming Home” and “Maybe This Year” evoke melancholic hope with a slightly psych-tinged execution.  That sound carries over into the Galaxies’ unique covers of Christmas favorites.  Elsewhere on the record, Santa stiffs The Sonics once again; lead singer Gerry Roslie asks the titular Claus to bring new guitars, money and babes in his sack but gets “Nothin’! Nothin’! Nothin’!”, according to Roslie’s embattled cries.  Looks like not believing in Christmas didn’t stop the guy from trying.

John Lennon & Yoko Ono – Happy Xmas (War Is Over):  Shortly before the rest of The Beatles started recording Christmas fluff, John Lennon furthered his anti-Vietnam War protest efforts by releasing this 1971 single featuring Yoko Ono and Harlem Community Choir.  Lennon believed that coating the political content in sweet, sugary Christmassiness would make his message easier to accept (his Christmessage?).  It was not an instant classic, but endures today as a reminder that we should all just get along.  It also reminds us that the English say “Happy” instead of “Merry” which shouldn’t fuck with my head as much as it does.  The track was produced by Phil Spector (who certainly did not get along with Lana Clarkson, the actress whom he murdered).  If you’re going to listen to traditional carols, though, you can do no better than 1963’s A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records on Spector’s label.  There’s even a bearable version of “Frosty the Snowman” by the Ronettes.

The Everly Brothers – Christmas Eve Can Kill You:  It’s not just the twangy pedal steel that gives this song its melancholy mood.  Its emotionally devastating lyrics are narrated by a sad hitchhiker trying to catch a ride on a frigid Christmas Eve, ignored by drivers in a hurry to get home to their families.  The moral of the story is that you should really be kind to your fellow man, especially in the winter, and even more especially on holidays.  But let’s also be real – it’s actually dangerous to pick up hitchhikers; they can kill you too.

The Fall – (We Wish You) A Protein Christmas:  Okay, so this bizarre offering from The Fall is way more cryptic and terse than say, “Dashing Through The Snow” – what is a Protein Christmas anyway?  We may never know.  It’s a reference to (and a rewrite of) “Proteinprotection” but, just like a previous episode of Lost, we had no idea what was going on the first time around either and were basically left hanging without answers to the mystery.  It might have something to do with DNA, or aliens, or both.  But Mark E. Smith’s atonal poetics and Scizophrenic laughter punching through meditative, repetitive bass rhythms make for a great debate winner with your punk friends who think they’re too cool for Christmas.

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings – There Ain’t No Chimneys in the Projects:  No one’s gonna make a fool out of Sharon Jones.  Least of all her mother, with that trifling explanation of how presents wound up under her Christmas tree.  Replete with a jazzy sax solo that revisits “Jingle Bells”, this groovy soul number from the prolific funk revivalists takes a cynical look at all the continuity errors in the Santa myth while simultaneously pointing out economic inequalities that don’t simply end with a lack of fireplaces in housing developments.

The Flaming Lips – Christmas at the Zoo:  In this hazy, lazy jam from Clouds Taste Metallic, Wayne Coyne sings about freeing animals from the zoo Brad-Pitt-in-12-Monkeys style.  Zoos are sad fucking places, it’s true, but something about listening to this song is akin to flipping through and filling in a coloring book with your most psychedelic crayons.  Rubbery guitars waver like the bars bent back on peacock cages, trumpets sound like liberated elephants.  Coyne’s Christmas obsession didn’t fizzle after the release of the song in 1995; they released a secret Christmas album in 2007, re-recording one of the tracks (“Atlas Eets Christmas”) four years later with Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band.  And then there’s Christmas on Mars, a film Coyne wrote, directed, and starred in with other members of the Lips.  It debuted at Sasquatch Festival in 2008.

Joey Ramone – Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight):  This is the only worthwhile selection on Joey’s 2002 Christmas Spirit… In My House EP.  It’s got to be one of the few Ramones-related songs that separates “want” and “to” instead of using the stylized “wanna”; I was under the impression that the Ramones had no idea such a thing could be done.  Yet here it is, right at the intersection of Christmas cheer and heartfelt pleas to your significant other to end the bickering for once.  The reason this song is listenable when the others on the EP are not is mainly because it hearkens back to Ramones glory days, only trading a bit of the usual grit for some shades of Doo-Wop and festive jangle.

Crocodiles/Dum Dum Girls – Merry Christmas Baby (Please Don’t Die): Dum Dum Girls’ collaborated with Crocodiles in a 2009 all-night recording session that resulted in this Yuletide look at love and mortality.  Christmas, no joke, is a time when a lot of people struggle with depression, and this song is particularly sweet in that it addresses a lover who seems to have fallen prey to those demons.  Real-life couple Dee Dee and Brandon Welchez take turns spreading the cheer in this garage pop jam, which should be enough to rouse even the saddest bopper.
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Kishi Bashi – It’s Christmas, But It’s Not White Here In Our Town:  In this short and swoony number, the multi-instrumentalist with a heart of gold longs for an idyllic, frost-covered wonderland, the reflections as dreamy and romantic as a tape on rewind.  Kishi Bashi’s vocals are extra angelic, layered airily over sweet strings.  It could have been a great opener for one of those claymation Christmas specials, maybe one in which the protagonist has to fight to save the town from a snow-less winter.  But in a real-life heroic move, the musician donated all proceeds from sales of the snowflake-shaped flexi-disc to Ear Candy, a charitable organization that provides kids with used instruments.

The Pogues – Fairytale of New York:  There really aren’t enough Christmas songs with the word “faggot” in them.  JUST KIDDING, THERE’S ONE TOO MANY.  Kirsty MacColl’s cavalier use of the epithet almost disqualified it from the list, but this song is a fixture on so many lists already because all anyone associates with it is ending up in the drunk tank on Christmas and those triumphant “And bells were ringing!” chorus declarations from Shane MacGowan.  I considered including Wham!’s “Last Christmas” or The Vandals’ “My First Christmas (As A Woman)”, decided that the latter did more harm than good and that the former represents the kind of annoying things I hate about Christmas songs in the first place.  Incidentally, there is no such thing as the NYPD choir.  According to the song’s Wikipedia entry, the NYPD does have a Pipes and Drums unit but they didn’t know “Galway Bay” when they appeared in the video for “Fairytale”, playing the Mickey Mouse Club theme instead.

So there you have it.  These songs go above an beyond the cloying carols dripping with good tidings.  Whether political or personal, they represent a more thoughtful, far less narrow view of what Christmas is about, embracing the controversial and updating the conventional.

In other news, Iggy Pop wants you to have a happy holiday, or go swimming, or cuddle with his cockateel, or something.

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TRACK OF THE WEEK 12/23 : “Ambien”

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“Don’t wake me up,” howls Blank Paper‘s lead vocalist, Marie Kim, on their new track “Ambien.” It’s not a track that will put you to sleep in the least; instead, it’s more likely to hypnotize you with its sharp beats and bombastic percussion. You, too, won’t want to be woken up from this electronic dream of a song.

The Brooklyn-based synth-pop foursome was formed last year by Taylor Bense (synth, keys, guitar), Chris Holdridge (drums, sampler pads), and Cory Sterling (bass, synth bass), along with Kim. Their new track, with its blustering and glittering ’80s sound, recalls contemporary favorites like the Gorillaz and The Knife—a compelling dance beat paired with fervent vocals that give off both a sweet and edgy feel. You can’t help getting lost in this track, which makes it ideal for the dance floor. 

The song even comes with a 30 second teaser that’s equally as slick, replete with vivid visuals of leather jackets, darkly contrasted facial close ups, and a retro-looking car.

Ambien Teaser from LGTR Productions on Vimeo.

Check out the track below, and keep your eyes peeled for Blank Paper’s new EP coming out in early 2014!
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YEAR END LIST: Top 10 Album Covers

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Let’s all just agree to agree that hip hop as a genre won the album cover contest this year, okay? Much of the new heavy metal out this year bore covers that ran the gambit between overstatedly woodsy to just plain inexplicable, and pop albums favored stark, angular glamor shots and occasionally left us confused as to why these artists are so mad at us. Release for release, hip hop had some stellar, memorable artwork, much of it instantly iconic portrait art, like Drake’s diptych of his child self mirrored with a matching image of himself as an adult. However, one exclusion from our favorite cover art of 2013 is a hip hop album worth mentioning: Kanye West’s Yeezus.

I know, I know: Yeezus saves. Equally loved and detested, West’s new album will, I predict, come to be one of the lasting albums from 2013, and he’s had his share of notable, exquisite, and ridiculous moments. But Yeezus’ album cover art isn’t any of the above. First of all, the red tape slapped onto the homemade CD is at best a humble-brag for the contents’ breadth and slick production–the record itself is far more magnum opus than it is demo tape, and both West and Yeezus know it. Secondly, it’s neither iconic nor indicative of the year West has had–the image is tepid, and in 2013, the rapper was anything but. Number 10 in our Year End Album Cover countdown employs the same understated formality of Yeezus’ image, but goes for an effect more subtly surreal.

10. Kid Cudi – Indicud

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The contrast of the stately frame makes the fire in this image come alive, as if it’s three-dimensional. Dangerous, uncontainable things come inside unassuming packages, and this image is so memorable because it’s unpredictable, framing a scene that doesn’t naturally observe boundaries.

Listen to “Unfuckwittable” off of Indicud here via Grooveshark:

 

9. Warm Soda – Someone For You

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Flat, room-temperature yellow backs this ambivalently nostalgic cover, bringing listless summer days to mind. In fact, the image captures the album’s blistering-but-catchy, vaguely seventies-era sound perfectly.

Listen to “Someone for you” off of Warm Soda here via Grooveshark:

 

8. The Civil Wars – The Civil Wars

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High-definition billowing smoke, a black and grey scale, and the austere white script across the dark grey cloud make this album cover memorably melancholy and archaic. This image looms, foreboding, channeling the loneliness and stark beauty of this band’s self-titled album.

Listen to “From This Valley” off of The Civil Wars here via Soundcloud:

 

7. The National – Trouble Will Find Me

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This odd, and vaguely threatening, photograph evokes a chilly quirkiness that The National’s Trouble Will Find Me delivers.  The sterility of the floor–bathroom tiles, maybe–lends a particular spookiness to this shot.

Listen to “I Should Live In Salt”, off of Trouble Will Find Me here via Grooveshark:

 

6. Bill Callahan – Dream River

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The broad brushstrokes of the album’s title look almost like vandalism, as if they’d been painted over an otherwise stylistically intact impressionistic scene. Vast and epic, the foggy image draws my attention to that peeking square of sky above the mountains, and the music on this record is equally complex and easily obscured.

Listen to “The Sing” off of Dream River here via Grooveshark:

 

5. Tyler, the Creator – Wolf

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The yearbook aesthetic is brought off with hilarious attention to detail, but what really makes this cover so bizarre are the faces Tyler, the Creator makes here. Simultaneously nostalgic for and mocking innocence, this rapper nails high school’s un-selfaware awkwardness (no surprise, since the rapper was only twenty-one when this picture was taken).

Listen to “Awkward” off of Wolf here via Grooveshark:

 

4. A$AP Rocky – Long. Live. A$AP

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Sweet baby Jesus, this album cover is terrifying. Strongly evocative of a screenshot from The Ring, A$AP Rocky huddles with his head down, cloaked in an American flag, as the (presumably) VHS film recording him stutters between frames.

Listen to “Purple Swag” off of Long.Live.A$AP here via Grooveshark:

 

3. Daft Punk – Random Access Memories

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Adapting the cursive script made iconic by Michael Jackson’s Thriller to a shiny, austere image of their own, Daft Punk set the standards high for their 2013 release. The album delivered on a grand, complicated scale, setting the band’s course for dance music that was at once nostalgic and intensely intellectualized.

Listen to “The Game Of Love” off of Random Access Memories here via Grooveshark:

 

2. Death Grips – Government Plates

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There’s nothing frill about this stark, badass album, and nothing frilly about the stark, badass album art, either. As nihilistic as the music within, this image zooms in on the message.

Listen to “Birds” off of Government Plates here via Soundcloud:

 

1. Deafheaven – Sunbather

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Like shoegaze metal itself, this cover–an utterly pink black metal album–seems like an illogical combination of things (see the album’s gorgeous Abstract Expressionist-inspired Vinyl design up top as our featured image), but makes glorious sense taken altogether. The image represents a view of the sun from behind your eyelids, a harsh and not wholly possible ascent towards the sublime that perfectly mirrors the journey the group takes over the course of the album.

Listen to “Dream House” off of Sunbather here via Bandcamp:

 

LIVE REVIEW: !!! (ChkChkChk)

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I think it took me a whole week to fully regain consciousness and physical awareness of myself after seeing !!! (chkchkchk) last Friday night at Webster Hall. This was the first time seeing the 8-piece ensemble, and at the show I felt both violated and honored at the same time. It should’ve come as no surprise to me that Nik Offer, frontman and lead singer, was performing for the whole hour and a half in boxers. Indeed, their prank pulling reputation (they’ve been around since the 90s after all) truly does precede them.
!!! consists the same amount of people as your high school’s marching band, it seems. We got Nic Offer as the lead scoundrel, Justin van der Volgen playing the bass, Tyler Pope and Mario Andreoni on guitar, Dan Gorman on trumpet/percussion, Allan Wilson with the saxophone/percussion, Mikel Gius on drums, and finally, Jason Racine on percussion. I can’t stress enough how well !!! pulls off being a “fun” band and at the same time makes instrumentally complex music. I don’t think I’ve danced to a song in which the trumpet and sax take main stage since the famous scene in The Mask when Jim Carrey’s green-faced double whisks away a young Cameron Diaz at the Coco Bongo Club.

The show at Webster Hall was not one of those nights where it was party in the front, bobbed heads in the back; the whole floor was one colossal dance party, rocking out to old songs as well as new tracks off of Thr!!!er. I’m pretty sure most of us in the crowd slung back a couple drinks right when we arrived, not to necessarily get obliterated, but to give ourselves the chance to dance wildly and spill-free. !!! always delivers a positively savage performance, making it hard for anyone to stand motionless. The band basically brings the dance party to you, personally (Nic Offer even jumped off-stage and jived around in the audience at one point).

From what I learned at Webster Hall, a !!! show can never be too long; I found myself having withdrawel the minute they exited the stage, despite their amazing encore for which they play their Christmas time newbie, “And Anyway It’s Christmas,” which is currently available in limited edition on 7″ vinyl.

Though all things must come to an end, Nic promised us that he was going to see us in 2014, so I can’t be too dejected.  I hope you can wait. In the meantime, boogie-down to the holiday jam, here, via Soundcloud:

FLASHBACK FRIDAY: Elvis Joins The Army

410059As 1957 wound to a close, Elvis Presley was twenty-two and a mega-star. He’d taken several steps during that year towards becoming the icon he’s remembered as today: earlier in 1957, he began dying his hair black and made his third appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show There he was filmed from the waist up, per censors, although by that time the sex appeal ship had sailed for Presley: already he’d been dubbed “Elvis the Pelvis.” He bought Graceland, his iconic Memphis mansion, and moved in with his parents in time for Christmas.

On December 20, Presley received the draft summons that sent him to Germany the following year. Though Presley apparently feared that the notice would sabotage his career, his image as soldier only bolstered his appeal, particularly because he’d been given the choice to enlist as Special Services and perform for troops. He chose to be a foot soldier instead. His time spent in the army was fateful in several ways. Presley grew dependent on barbiturates while serving–a habit which triggered later drug use and contributed to his early demise. But more positive, less personal changes ensued, too—the army made Presley a more flexible icon. Already established as smooth-talking, sharply-dressed rock ‘n’ roll royalty, Presley’s army career added ruggedness to his public image. News crews filmed Presley being sworn in and, three years later, discharged. Subsequently, stories about this time in his life figured him an American hero—not just a pop star.

When he was drafted, Presley’s single at the time, “Jailhouse Rock,”  moved the singer away from his golden boy image into grittier territory. “Jailhouse Rock,” featured in one of his most successful movies, achieved fanatical acclaim in the second half of 1957. Aside from the generally seedy aesthetic the song cultivates to go along with its subject matter, it’s a miracle that “Jailhouse Rock” ever snuck by the censors at all—famously homoerotic lyric “Number 47 said to number 3/You’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see/I sure would be delighted with your company/Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me” made Presley’s unwholesome side exciting and sexy, and not in a “Love Me Tender” kind of way. The army similarly expanded the reach of Presley’s reign, confirming the heroism his deep bass and dance moves had always posited.

Check out the original video for “Jailhouse Rock” below:

FLASHBACK FRIDAY: A Letter to Tegan and Sara

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Dear Tegan and Sara,

It’s 2002 and you guys just released your third album, If It Was You. The record is a little bit “indie rock” and a little bit folk and a little bit understated pop—a combination that works like a magical key to unlocking all of your best attributes. It sounds honest and genuine. These days, people are still calling you “Lilith Fair spin-offs” and throwing around names like Ani DiFranco and Alanis Morissette in trying to categorize you, but that’s a tough thing to do when all you two truly sound like are yourselves.

A little over ten years from now, critics will praise you for your “new pop direction” and your chart-topping, synthy single “Closer.” But right now, in 2002, If It Was You couldn’t even graze the charts, and it’s not trying to. Instead, it’s just softly playing from my headphones, and I’m listening intently to your fingers slide on your guitar strings and your gritty voices leisurely singing “Love pull your sore ribs in / I will pull your tangles out.”

This is the kind of intimacy that your music allows for—no, is made for—in 2002. And in ten years when you release your third DVD, “Get Along,” a live rendition of “Living Room” (the eighth track off of If It Was You) will set the stage, introducing the entire movie. And I’ll think about whether that means that you both feel that song still encompasses you two as songwriters and musicians, more so than your most recent work.

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Your most recent work today, in 2013, is Heartthrob, the complete antithesis to If It Was You. This album is laden with electronic beats and hazy synthesizers and your voices are polished and neat. You explain your evolving sound as a product of a “calculated risk:” you both sat down and discussed what you wanted as musicians (your names on the Billboard charts, your songs on the Top 40 radio stations, your live shows in arenas). You made a conscious effort to “bite off a bigger piece of the mainstream,” as Tegan put it in an interview, and you succeeded. And I’m happy that you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve.

See, I’m not writing to you to tell you that you SOLD OUT. I’m your fan in the truest sense of the word: I’ll respect and support you two even when you stray pretty far away from what I’d normally dip into. The truth is I hate Heartthrob—it feels, to me, like your work on The Con, and So Jealous, and If It Was You was able to musically highlight all the nooks and crannies of your songwriting, whereas Heartthrob simply drowns your quirks in synths. But I can’t really knock an album that was pretty universally loved by critics and blogs and most of the general population (congrats, by the way, on making so many of this year’s “Best Of 2013” lists). In the end, I just can’t help wondering if you miss the way you once sounded as much as I do.

Sincerely,

Raquel

Femme Unfiltered: Perfect Pussy

Twice a month, audiofemme profiles artists both emerging and established, who, in this industry, must rebel against misogynist cultural mores. Through their music  they express the attendant hurdles and adversities (vis-a-vis the entertainment industry and beyond) propagated by those mores. For our first installment, Rebecca Kunin profiles Perfect Pussy, who burst onto the scene earlier this year and jolted the music world with its message: women can scream just as loudly as men, and have just as much, if not more to say.

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PERFECT PUSSY: I HAVE LOST ALL DESIRE FOR FEELING

Perfect Pussy is a noisy lo-fi punk band from Syracuse, New York. Meredith Graves heads the band as the lyricist and singer. She is backed by guitarist Ray McAndrew, drummer Garrett Koloski, bassist Greg Ambler and synthesist Shaun Sutkus. Perfect Pussy combines Graves’ screaming lyrics with catchy guitar riffs and driving drums. The instrumentation, which is heavy on reverb, fuzzy guitar and feedback constantly battles Graves’ inaudible shouts. This results in an incredible, yet anxiety inducing and electrifying audio experience.

On April 25 Perfect Pussy released their debut demo, I Have Lost All Desire For Feeling. This EP includes 4 tracks, appropriately titled “I”, “II”, “III” and “IV”. I have Lost all Desire for Feeling features intimate and emotionally evocative lyrics from Graves’ personal life.

I’ve been lying to get attention.

Thankfully none of it ever happened,

nothing ever really happens.

I have a habit of telling extravagant lies;

Ask anyone, they’ll tell you.

So why didn’t I come forward, why didn’t I?

Ha ha ha, I deserve to be hurt like that.

Ha ha ha, it’s so funny isn’t it.

Oh, why didn’t I come forward?

It’s not your fault that I didn’t feel safe.

It is no surprise that Perfect Pussy is paving the way in the bk DIY scene, and mapping new frontiers within the nexus of feminism and punk rock.

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 Perfect Pussy Live: Shea Stadium 12/6/13

I went to see Perfect Pussy at Shea Stadium in Brooklyn last Friday. They were playing with a string of up and coming punk bands (Blessed State, Flagland, Yvette and California X).  Their performance was penultimate.

The first thing that my roommate said to me after entering the venue was, “Geez, there are so many men here!” This statement was very true. The male-to-female ratio was about ten-to-one.

Perfect Pussy took the stage nonchalantly, chatting with the audience and one another as they set up their instruments. After a sound check where Graves had the sound engineer turn the mic way up, (my poor ears!) they paused, and over the impossibly loud reverb and guitar feedback, Graves addressed the audience. “Hey everyone, we’re Perfect Pussy.” There was another brief pause, and the music began.

Then Meredith Graves opened her mouth, and the gender comment my roommate made no longer mattered. Screaming at the top of her lungs until she was red in the face and the veins were popping out of her neck, Graves wiped away all of my previous gender awareness in one fell swoop.

A moshpit instantly formed (the only one of the night) while Graves writhed, pirouetted and hurled her body around haphazardly. Graves commanded power when she flexed her biceps and formed fists on the stage. She even got in one mosher’s face while singing “I.” , pulling  the stranger forward so that their faces were almost touching while shouting “She’ll forget her actions. Someday I’ll forget her actions. Ashes to ashes to ashes, we will all die someday.”

In seemed like as soon as the set started, it had already finished. I had heard that they put on short shows but I didn’t expect it to be quite so short (They played 3 songs that lasted less than 15 minutes).  I like to think that Graves and the gang put so much into their performance that they exhausted themselves after only a few songs. Also, the fact that they have only released 4 tracks makes a 45 minute set perhaps more of a challenge. Regardless, they played an incredible show, well worth the hearing loss that I likely incurred (my ears are still ringing!)

 Femme Unfiltered: PERFECT PUSSY

In her music and performance, Meredith Graves presents an aggressive, unattainable and intimidating attitude.  Her lyrics are often aggressive or sexually explicit. “There’s no room in this world for people who hate men, fuck you // My best friend is back in town. There’s a bad taste in my mouth. Her eyes fell low and heavy with shame and cum.”

Graves’ also displays a more vulnerable and insecure side of herself.  “How long will I have you? //  Who am I to speak of permanence? //  I’ll be fifty in the book of names but goddamn it, I’ll be the last on the list // Someday I’ll stop begging you of who and how.” 

She represents a person who is both aggressive and intimidating yet also shy, vulnerable and flawed. Graves doesn’t seem to care about whether or not she is supposed to be the shy, vulnerable Taylor Swift type or whether she is supposed to play the domineering Beyonce/Lily Allen role. Those models are impossible extremes and, just like men, women are complicated beings. We are sexy, ugly, skinny, fat, mean, nice, shy, outgoing, slutty and prude, all in one person. Graves is brave and honest enough to expose the complexity and confusion of femininity. She displays her battles with aggression and insecurity in her lyrics.  “First I was softer, then I was stronger, now I am frightened, would you look at me now?” //  I’m a tough boy, wild and innocent and dangerous as hell.”

In an interview with Pitchfork she mentioned that the band’s name, Perfect Pussy is a response to her own insecurity about her body image. “Perfect Pussy” is Grave’s declaration that she no longer cares if she is ugly.

“Nobody can look at me and say shit about my appearance or my body, which is all too common for women in music. It’s like, ‘Are you going to call me a cunt? Are you going to tell me I’m ugly? Well, here’s my band name, ‘do your worst, motherfucker.’”

The contradiction posed in aggressive name of the band and her own feelings of insecurity indicate indicates that this complexity extends from her music to her life and back.

Graves’ combination of both femininity and masculinity in her writing and performing is seemingly genuine and effortless. Too often female musicians are pigeon-holed as certain “types”, yet Graves is able to successfully blend various colors of femininity into her music, thus promulgating power through honesty.

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Perfect Pussy has just finished playing a number of NYC events this past month and is now headed on a country-wide tour. Listen to I Have Lost All Desire for Feeling here via bandcamp:

 

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LOUD & TASTELESS: M.I.A.

Every Thursday, AF profiles a style icon from the music world. This week’s icon is M.I.A., whose bright, crazy patterns have mesmerized us since the beginning of her career.

The controversial pop icon M.I.A. never disappoints us with her crazy stunts and her awesome outfits in equal measure. She’s become known for both in the music world, and you’ll rarely see her in a tame outfit or mood. She typically sports large jackets with swagger or an array of mismatched patterns, likely in a neon spread. Sporty hip hop gear crossed over into high fashion when she collaborated with Versus Versace for a collection of full-body patterned outfits in colors like gold, green and black. It’s not likely that she’ll stay out of the news any time soon, whether for her actions or clothing choices. Listen to  M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls,”  while you check out our picks from Nasty Gal and Urban Outfitters, all inspired by the goddess herself, of course.

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YEAR END LIST: AF’s Guide to Riot Grrrl’s Influence in 2013

Body/Head at St. Vitus

It is a goddamn golden age for girl-fronted punk.  It’s not that there haven’t been important works by women in the ensuing years, but 2013 saw a Riot Grrrl Renaissance unlike anything since its early ’90s inception.  Back then, Kathleen Hanna had to make safe spaces at Bikini Kill shows for female attendees by calling out aggressive dudes.  The ladies at the forefront of the movement had to blacklist the mainstream media that painted them alternately as fashion plates, dykes, or whores (sometimes all three, and always with negative connotations; it shouldn’t be implied that to be any of these things is bad or wrong in the first place).  By all accounts, they “couldn’t play” anyway, so the medium and its messages were barely worth discussing as anything more than a passing trend.  Meanwhile, riot grrrls preached their radical politics one Xerox at a time.

If the wisdom of these women seemed to skip the generation that adored Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time” without criticism, it has finally come full circle in a way that feels vital and urgent now.  Not only are we as a culture stepping up to finally examine sexism and exploitation and appropriation within the industry, there are more acts than ever completely unafraid to do their own thing – be it overtly political (see: Priests) or revolutionary in its emotional candidness (looking at you, Waxahatchee).  Maybe it has to do with direct influences of stalwart ensembles like Sleater-Kinney and Bratmobile, and maybe it’s a thing that’s happened gradually as those first voices carved out room for other female performers (for instance, in establishing Rock Camps for young female musicians throughout the country, a project that initially came about through discussions and direct action in riot grrrl communities).  There’s no way to make an inclusive list of all the phenomenal bands (punk or otherwise) now blazing their own trails through their various scenes but taking a tally of at least a few of these acts felt like a necessity for me as someone whose entire life was informed by music like this, and girls like them.  And because fifteen years after I discovered it for myself, 2013 feels like one giant, celebratory dance party/victory lap.

CARRYING THE TORCH

If 2013 is the year female-fronted punk broke, it has to be said that not all 90’s era veterans burned out or faded politely away.  In fact, two of the grunge scene’s most influential women put out intensely personal releases this year.

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Kathleen Hanna Kim Gordon
Hanna and Gordon in 1994’s “Bull in the Heather” video

Body/Head, Kim Gordon’s noise project with Bill Nace, created a moving exploration of feminine and masculine tropes in the form of a noise record.  I wouldn’t want to reduce Coming Apart to a document of her split from long-time partner Thurston Moore, but the whole thing feels every bit as raw and awkward as a life change that catastrophic must have been.  It’s Gordon’s most powerful, wild moments in Sonic Youth distilled down and then blown up.  Her vocals can sound desperate and strained at times, but this is ironically the most forceful aspect of the recordings – the anger and the vulnerability existing together in all its anti-harmony.

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Body/Head at St. Vitus
Kim Gordon and Bill Nace perform as Body/Head in June at St. Vitus

Likewise, Hanna’s record is not a chronicle of her late-stage Lyme Disease, the chronic illness that forced her to quit touring with socially-conscious electro outfit Le Tigre (for that, check out Sini Anderson’s brilliant Hanna doc The Punk Singer) but a testament to the triumph that creating it had over her sickness.  Reviving her moniker from ’97’s bedroom-recording project Julie Ruin by adding a “The” to the front and four incredible musicians and co-conspirators at her back, the band released Run Fast in September.  It manages to meld every one of Hanna’s prior sonic sensibilities, burnishing the the dance-punk of Feminist Sweepstakes with the sass and cacophony of The Singles and adopting the confessional tone of that first solo record.

This is riot grrrl all grown up; though neither project should necessarily bear that particular label, it feels like a continuation of the story that in turn validates its importance.  And the influence of Gordon and Hanna and others of their ilk can certainly be heard in a whole host of bands with break-out records that landed this year.  Again, it’s not that anyone in these bands are running around calling themselves riot grrrls, just that they’d be right at home on a playlist with bands who did (and bands of that era, from Red Aunts to Discount to that dog., that demanded my affection as equally).

NEXT WAVE

Katie and Allison Crutchfield have been making music since they were teenagers, most notably in P.S. Elliot before splitting up to pursue creative projects as separate entities.  Katie released American Weekend in 2012 and Cerulean Salt in March, Allison released a self-titled record with her band Swearin’ last year and followed it up with Surfing Strange a few months ago.  The girls are mirror twins, meaning they’re identical but that their features are reversed in some instances, and that’s a good approximation of how their musical projects merge and divide.  Cerulean Salt is stripped down sonically and hyper-focused on thematic subject matter, dealing directly with her family history and its personal stories.  Swearin’ takes a music-making approach more classic to pop punk, its subject matter just as earnest but with a broader focus.  The two have reunited for one-off projects (like an incredible cover of Grimes’ Oblivion for Rookie Mag) and live together in Philly with their boyfriends (both of whom play in Swearin’).  In interviews and in their song lyrics they espouse feminist ideas unabashedly and have talked openly about finding inspiration in the riot grrrl movement.

Speaking of Alison’s boyfriend, Kyle Gilbride produced girl-punk supergroup Upset’s debut album, She’s Gone, out this year on Don Giovanni.  Uniting Vivian Girls contemporaries Ali Koehler and Jenn Prince with Patty Schemel of Hole, She’s Gone is a quirky collection of catchy, rapid-fire jams that at first listen might come off as slightly superficial.  But at the crux of the record is the idea of examining female experience, in particular the formative teenage years, in which break-ups and female rivalry loom large.  Taking what might be written off as juvenile and giving it its due importance in song is what makes the album both accessible and relevant.  If it seems precocious to compare one’s dreams to a dinosaur, at least it validates them by re-calibrating the scale.

Don Giovanni put out another astounding release in The Worriers’ Cruel Optimist.  Fronted by Lauren Denitzio of Measure, the project seeks to combine her interests in literature, art, and queer activism in a way her past musical projects have not.  Over hooky guitars and crashing drums, Denitzio talks about privilege in feminism and the need to re-evaluate personal politics with growing older on “Never Were”, references Jeanette Winterson as a way to talk about androgyny and gender identity on “Passion”, and ruminates on the toll that conservative politics took on a personal relationship in “Killjoy”.  The album closes with “Why We Try”, a triumphant reminder of the reasons these discussions still need to happen in music and elsewhere.  “If we expect something better / things won’t just move forward / Remember why we try“.

In talking about New Brunswick’s esteemed DIY circuit, we’d be remiss to not include Marissa Paternoster, active for several years now in the punk scene there, releasing work under solo moniker Noun as well as with her band Screaming Females.  It’s the latter’s most recent release, Chalk Tape, that sees the band going in some very interesting melodic directions with their particularly searing brand of guitar rock, recording most of the songs without revisions based around concepts scrawled on a chalkboard.  Paternoster’s commanding vocals, gliding easily between out-and-out aggressive and tender, looped sophistication, paired with her exceptional guitar work, make Chalk Tape a tour de force.  Here’s hoping a few misguided Miley fans accidentally stumbled on the wrong “Wrecking Ball”.

Nestled in another well-respected DIY scene, Northampton-based Speedy Ortiz represent a collective of 90’s-era rock enthusiasts with a poet at the helm.  Sadie Dupuis feels more comfortable behind a guitar than on open-mike night, but the lyrics she penned for Major Arcana and delivers with brass are practically worthy of a Pulitzer.  Razor sharp wit, slyly self-deprecating quips, and vitriol marked by vulnerability characterize the general tone of the record, its particular lyrical references so nuanced and clever it begs about a million listens.

Potty Mouth sprang out of the same scene when Ally Einbinder, frustrated with the difficulties of booking shows and playing in bands with men who rarely asked her input when it came to songwriting, decided to form and all-female punk band.  Einbinder and her cohorts are frequent participants in Ladyfest, which has sought to showcase feminist artists across different mediums for thirteen years running.  Bursting with energy and attitude, Potty Mouth’s debut Hell Bent calls bullshit on punk scene bravado, questions obsessive tendencies, encourages punk girls in small towns “it-gets-better” style, and delivers acute, sharp-tongued kiss-offs to any doubters.

Though the pun alludes to classically trained harpist and witchy-voiced weird-folk patron saint Joanna Newsom, Alanna McArdle and her compatriots in Joanna Gruesome stray pretty far from that reference point.  Instead, the UK band cherry-picks from shoegaze, twee, and thunderous punk with Adderal-fueled ferocity.  McArdle is a study in contradictions, one moment singing in a sweet-voiced whisper and the next shouting psychotically, often about crushing skulls or some other, equally violent way of expressing her twisted affections. The group met in anger management, and every second on Weird Sister sees them working out some deeply seated issues, the end result proving what a gift anger can be.

NEXT YEAR

This particular calendar year, it seems, is only the beginning.  With a record crate’s worth of amazing releases from 2013, there’s a bevvy of bands with bandcamp profiles, demos, EPs, cassettes and singles that hold a lot of promise for future releases.  Across the board, when asked how their bands formed or when they started playing, the response is “I wanted to do it so I got a guitar and I just started playing.”  The DIY ethos and “fuck it” attitude are what make these projects so vital and exciting.

Priests

The DC group are explosive live, in particular thanks to Katie Greer’s spastic growl and Daniele Withonel’s revelatory drumming.  The band’s been known to spout off about anti-consumerism between songs, out of breath from the high-energy set, but there’s plenty of radical content in their self-released tapes, too.  Those searching for manifestos need look no further than “USA (Incantations)”, a spoken-word bruiser that skewers the non-inclusive founding of America and ends with “this country was not made for you and it was built on lies and murder”; it kind of makes me want to vote for Priests for president.  Elsewhere on Tape 2, Withonel steps from behind her drum kit to flip the script on the male gaze, with perfect Kathleen Hanna pitch. Whether they’re singing about Lana del Ray or Lillian Hellman, these self-described Marxists provide an electrifying listen.

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Perfect Pussy

Perfect Pussy plays notoriously brief shows – if you blink during their set, you’ll miss ’em – but all have played the Syracuse scene for years now.  The quartet got a lot of attention this over I Have Lost All Desire For Feeling, a four song EP with walls of guitar fuzz and synths and some forceful vocals from Meredith Graves buried low in the mix.  Trained in opera but trying out punk, she’s said that because she’s insecure about her singing they’ll likely stay that way when the band records a full length.  But it’s not because she’s trying to hide her words – you can read them by clicking through each song on Perfect Pussy’s bandcamp.  They are well worth extracting from the sludge, coming across like a Jenny Holzer send-up of rape culture, mixed in with some personal meditations on growing past a female betrayal and catharsis through relationships thrown in for good measure.
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Palehound

Ellen Kempner writes off-kilter lyrics that perfectly distill the wonder and worry that comes with being a teenager, but with a wise, almost nostalgic tone that does not belie the fact that she is, actually, a freshman in college, living these experiences for the first time.  Her musician father taught her how to play guitar, and in high school she was in a band called Cheerleader before releasing some solo recordings that morphed into Palehound.  Their excellent Bent Nail EP came together this year, featuring the quintessential “Pet Carrot”, which seesaws from sing-songy folk to scuzzy 90’s grunge more reminiscent of Liz Phair than of Lorde.
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Cayetana

The Philly trio are a perfect picture of female solidarity, repping other girl bands from Philly in interviews and inking their bodies with matching arrow tattoos, as well as getting involved with Philly’s Ladyfest.  They sing about friendships and loss and the city around them with a raspy roar, holding back just enough on their three-song demo to hint at the spaces they’ll grow into.
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All Dogs

Coming out of Columbus, Ohio’s great lo-fi scene (which bands like Times New Viking and Psychedelic Horseshit helped build, and contemporaries Sex Tide and Connections will only continue), All Dogs take that same energy and clean up the grime just a bit to let Maryn Bartley’s hopelessly catchy vocal melodies shine.  There’s a youthful exuberance and earnestness that propels the material on their split cassette with Slouch and their self-titled 7″ released on Salinas Records.  The Crutchfield sisters have been big early supporters; Katie booked them as openers on an upcoming Waxahatchee tour after saying they “made her cry”.
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Tweens

About an hour south in Cincinatti, Bridget Battle takes an endearing 60’s girl group intonation and spits it snottily into a microphone while her bandmates in TWEENS play messy, immediate punk rock.  Their CMJ performances earned them rave reviews and helped them release a bit of the energy they’d pent up during the recording of their first full-length in DUMBO, set to see release sometime this spring.  Until then, they’ll be touring with fellow Ohioans the Deal sisters for The Breeders’ extended reunion shows.
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Heavy Bangs

“I don’t care what you think as long as I can’t hear it / I’ll be a fly some other place.  / I don’t care what you do / As long as you stay away from me / I can’t stand the way you do the things you do.”  So begins “All the Girls” from Heavy Bangs’ bandcamp demos.  It’s a departure from the quirky indie pop Cynthia Schemmer played as guitarist for Radiator Hospital, but it takes cues from the same attention to clever melody.  The best indication of what might come from her solo project are the artful and contemplative postcards she posts to her tumblr (http://cynthiaschemmer.tumblr.com/) before sending them to to friends, apologetically explaining why Philly drew her back after time in New York, or recounting conversations she had with a therapist over the loss of illusions.  Like the two tracks she’s shared, these can feel sad but are intently self-aware, the attention to detail speaking volumes between the lines.
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Are those alive in a golden age ever able to really realize it?  Or can it only be understood by looking back?  With the passage of time we grow older and wiser and we’re better able to put things into context, but there are some moments that are simply meant to be lived.  If you’re not screaming at the top of your lungs to these records or dancing in the front row at one of these shows, you’re doing it wrong.

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TRACK REVIEW: “Give It Up”

htrk1I wouldn’t consider myself an especially devout David Lynch fan, but I love Twin Peaks rabidly and uncritically, and I watch the show in its entirety at least once every winter. Never when the weather’s warm. My theory is this: something to do with frigidness, and the overarching quiet that comes along with a thick blanket of snow, demands a Lynchian blend of detached dreaminess and surreality. So maybe the recent snowstorms and having Laura Palmer on the brain is to blame for the way I feel about this track–it’s otherworldly, it’s vaguely sinister, and it’s an utterly appropriate backdrop for the weather these days. 

Duo HTRK claim an affinity with Lynch’s aesthetics; you can hear a kinship in the hypnotic chilliness of the melody, the scratched-out echoing synthesizers that ripple outwards as if a pebble’s been dropped into the beat of the song. Church-organ reverberations in minor mode plod menacingly up and down in the periphery, like mystery men in black trench coats and low-brimmed hats. The repetitive, androgynous vocals add to the sense of uncanny that characterizes this track.

HTRK stir some real polish into this mix, too–with glitzy production and a beat that suggests driving fast on open roads late at night, in a deserted city or through an empty stretch of highway. The sultry and foreign landscape that the song creates provides a space in which to detach from the outside world, whether in the dubious isolation of a dream space or nestled into the warmth and stillness inside a fast-moving car. The group’s new LP, Psychic 9-5 Club, will be out in 2014 and promises an expansive and rich musical landscape. For now, listen to “Give It Up” below:

YEAR END LIST: Best Soundtracks of 2013

Soundtrack

We all know that music has the ability to make or break a cinematic moment.  Would Jaws be as scary if it weren’t for the theme song? Or would we cry as hard when Leo Dicaprio sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean if Celine Dion didn’t belt “My Heart Will Go On” every five minutes? Probably not. Creating the perfect soundtrack is no easy task. This list details my favorite soundtracks of 2013.

 

10. Girl Rising

Girl Rising is a documentary film directed by Richard E. Robbins. The film profiles nine girls from different parts of the world who face adversity and injustice in their struggle to receive an education.  Each profile is written by a famous writer from their respective countries of origin. The soundtrack is composed by Rachel Portman and Lorne Balfe. With unique songs drawing from the World Music, this soundtrack accompanies each of the girls on their journeys. It subsequently takes the listener on a trip around the world, from Cambodia, Haiti, Nepal, Egypt, Ethiopia, India to Peru.

9. Something in the Air

Something in the Air is a French drama directed by Olivier Assayas. The film takes place in France during the events leading up to the May 1968 strikes and boycotts. The soundtrack is a mixture of politically charged rock and folk songs from the period. From Phil Ochs’ “Ballad of William Worth” to Captain Beefheart’s “Abba Zaba,”  this soundtrack succeeds in choosing appropriate yet unobvious songs to compliment the political turmoil in the film.

8. Spectacular Now 

Rob Simonsen scored The Spectacular Now, a romantic drama directed by James Ponsoldt and written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (500 Days of Summer). Rob Simonsen is a veteran when it comes to scoring films (his prolific body of work includes Moneyball, Little Miss Sunshine and The Life of Pi).  All twenty of Simonsen’s instrumental tracks vary in style and composition. While some tracks feature horns (“My Name is Sutter Keely”) others are minimal (“Walk in the Trees”).  Among the best tracks are “Walk in the Trees,” “Im’ing Cassidy,” and “Sutter and Amy.” Phosphorescent, Kurt Vile and Ariel Pink & Dam-Funk  are also featured on this soundtrack.

7. The Lords of Salem 

While I’m rarely a fan of horror movie soundtracks, Rob Zombie’s  are always so over the top that they add an almost comedic element to the film. His most recent horror flick, The Lords of Salem, includes an eclectic range of genres, featuring a combination of punk, metal, funk and classic rock. Highlights include “Give it to me Baby” (Rick James), “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “Venus in Furs” (The Velvet Underground).

 

6. 42

Written and directed by Brian Helgeland, 42 is a bio pic about Jackie Robinson. Regardless of the fact that Jay-Z’s “Brooklyn Go Hard”, was featured in the trailer, the actual soundtrack is time period appropriate.  Featuring rock and roll (Hank Williams and Wynonie Harris) gospel (Sister Wynona Carr) and jazz (Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington), 42’s soundtrack is a collage of early 20th century African American musicians.

5. What Maisie Knew  

What Maisie Knew is a drama about a young girl dealing with her parent’s divorce and the ensuing custody battle.  Devotchka’s frontman, Nick Urata, scored nine instrumental tracks off of this original soundtrack, which also includes Lucy Schwartz’s “Feeling of Being (What Maisie Knew),” and two collaborative tracks with Julianne Moore (who knew she could sing!?) and The Kills.

4. Ginger and Rosa

Ginger and Rosa is a dramatic film about two teenage girls living in London in 1962.  The movie documents the strain on their friendship within the political and cultural turmoil of the time. While I expected the soundtrack to consist of 60s rock and roll, the Ginger and Rosa soundtrack features a mixture of traditional jazz music. The soundtrack is littered with jazz favorites, including tracks by Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Django Reinhardt and Les Paul.

3. A Place at the Table 

Directed by Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush, A Place at the Table explores hunger in America through examining stories of Americans experiencing food insecurity.  The mostly instrumental soundtrack is a collaboration between prolific rocker, T Bone Burnett, and folk/rock duo, The Civil Wars.  It includes four The Civil Wars songs, seven T Bone Burnett songs, and three duets to create an amalgamate of blues, country, folk and bluegrass.

 

2. Inside Llewyn Davis

If you’ve ever seen a Coen Brothers movie, you will know that their soundtracks are always impeccable. Therefore, when I discovered that Inside Llewyn Davis was about a 1960s Greenwich Village folk singer, I had extremely high expectations. Some of the music on this album was to be expected. Greenwich Village folk staples Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk, for instance, are featured. More interestingly, many of the actors in the movie are also featured on the soundtrack.  In fact, one of the strongest songs on the soundtrack is “Five Hundred Miles,” sung by Justin Timberlake (who makes his folk music debut in this film) and Carey Mulligan. Current Americana bands such as The Down Hill Strugglers and Marcus Mumford of Mumford and Sons are also featured.

1. Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby might seem like an obvious choice, but I don’t care. Produced by Jay-Z and The Bullitts, The Great Gatsby soundtrack did an excellent job at exposing the parallels between the ostentatious displays of the wealth of the upper class in the 1920s and that of today. All of the songs on this album have similar themes of youth, wealth, and unhealthy romantic entanglements. The soundtrack was probably actually the best part of the movie. Highlights include “Together” by The xx, Beyonce & Andre 3000’s version of “Back to Black,” and “Love is Blindness” by Jack White.

AF LIVE: Spike Hill 12/18

Live Music

Ooooh, we’re having a showcase! Please join us on 12/18 at Spike Hill in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and peep some local bands who we believe should be heard and seen. Doors are at 730 and the show is free. Below please find artist profiles of the talent we booked. We hope to see you there!

 

8PM: Wildcat Apollo

Wildcat Apollo

Formed in 2012 by Alex Margolin and brothers Taylor and Aaron Eichenseer, with lead singer Cat Tassini completing the indie rock/synthpop band a few months later, Wildcat Apollo released their debut full-length in October of this year. The 12-track eponymous record combines elements of garage rock and dancey shoegaze, full of catchy bass lines and innovative guitar hooks.

AF: We read that you guys are planning to make a permanent move to Austin, TX to join your bandmate Aaron. How do you anticipate that move influencing your sound, or inspiring each of you musically?

 Cat: Well, we’ll all be together, so we’ll be writing together and growing together musically and just feeling more like a unit.  I think Austin’s more relaxed vibe will definitely sink into our skin and come out in our music.  It’s Aaron, Taylor and Alex’s hometown, and even though it’s not mine, I love it there, and I think we’ll all feel really comfortable and confident.  And of course all the festivals and venues there will inspire us to be on top of our game.

AF: You all seem to share a lot of instrumental duties within the band (Cat and Alex both doing percussion and synth, Taylor and Aaron both on guitars). Do you also share songwriting duties? How do you generally go about collaborating as individual artists to create your music?

 Taylor: Everybody in our group contributes to the songwriting; there’s certainly no set process as to how we develop a new song.  It’s a mixed bag.  Sometimes there is an independent writing process going on, where one member will come to the group with a decently formed concept and everybody else is left to fill in the blanks.  Like when I was working at an after-school program and the fourth graders would take pink highlighters and glitter and brown and purple crayons to sketches I would do in my notebook.  Collaboration breeds magic.  You can’t be afraid to let your vision grow into something bigger.  But we also do a lot of jamming and recording of jamming with a loop pedal or on a computer.  This is great because it lets the music be the guide and you can turn your brain off and just let it flow and figure out what happened after the fact.  It’s how we express ourselves, by shutting up and playing.  Also, that everyone is artistically motivated in our group is a real blessing, because we hold each other accountable to be our absolute best.

AF: Where’s some of your current inspiration coming from?

 Cat:  I’ve been listening to Lorde, Miley Cyrus, and Sky Ferreira all week.  Taylor:  Brutally honest self-reflection.

AF: Cat, you’ve said you had no previous experience being in a band before you joined Wildcat Apollo last year. What are some of the things you’ve learned along the way, so far?

 Cat: The biggest lesson I’m learning is giving up control.  My artistic life before the band was dominated by directing.  I was doing performance and video projects where I would handle almost everything and I’d just work with a friend or two on it.  I came up with the idea, figured out all the details and made sure it all happened.  So I didn’t have to depend on anyone else.  But I missed the camaraderie of being a part of a cast and a crew.  And eventually I felt limited and wanted to work with more people, people who were better than me.  And in my the rest of my life, I was traveling and trying different jobs, floating around in the post-collegiate nebulous phase, just being totally free and independent, but also feeling confused and angsty.  And then I got drawn into the band, which sort of came out of nowhere, but gave me a great sense of belonging and gave my life a direction.  But I had to learn how to be a part of a team again and do it in a brand new context.  And that context was a group of guys who had been playing music together their whole lives, so that was intimidating.  Also I tend to have really strong artistic visions, so I had to learn to trust my bandmates and not just reject an idea because it’s different from the idea in my head.  It’s something that I’ll have to keep learning over and over again: how to disregard my perfectionist control freak instincts and just trust the process and the people around me.   Also, I recently co-directed one of our music videos and worked with Bull Moose Pictures on it, and it was a wonderful experience.  So I’m learning and I’m happy the band is giving me an opportunity to experience that.

AF: Since it’s the end of the year and all, what are each of your New Year’s resolutions?

Aaron:  To really push boundaries sonically and to embrace new technology in the song writing process.

Alex:  To find a job.

Cat:  Mine is always to be better with time and money.

Taylor:  To release another, better record by year’s end.

Wildcat Apollo wishes to thank you, Annie, and everyone at AudioFemme for the tremendous opportunity to take part in your monthly showcase, especially considering the abundance of great music in Brooklyn and on the internet at large.

*Aw, yr welcome, Wildcat Apollo. Can’t wait to hear you play tonight!

Listen to “Gotham”, here, via Bandcamp:

 

 

9PM: New Politicians

New Politicians

New Politicians have been building some great hype with their two EPs, Alpha Decay and Drag A City, both released earlier this year. Their self-described post-punk sound has a gritty and straight-forward aesthetic, paired with melancholic lyrics. The four piece band are set to accomplish a lot more in the coming year.

AF: How did you guys come together as a band? Are you all still based out of New Jersey?

Gian:  All four of us are currently based out of New Jersey. Around the time the band was formed though, I was living in Philadelphia attending college and Renal was working in Manhattan. We would share files via email and then come home to Centerville on the weekends to jam. As brothers, Renal and I have always connected over music and have been writing together since we were young. Winston and I went to school together and had been playing in a few projects before the idea for New Politicians was formed. When I tracked the demos for some of our first songs, I brought it to them and we decided to form a band around it.

Q: Your two EPs were released about 6 months apart. How do you think you developed as a band in that time and in what ways are the two releases unique from each other?

Gian: Well, since the release of Alpha Decay we’ve had a lot of opportunities to play live in New York and New Jersey which has given us plenty of experience playing together as a group. We recently recruited a new drummer, Chris, who allowed us to implement a pretty rigorous practice schedule that’s been refining our skills collectively and individually as well. From the song writing aspect I think there is a continuity between the songs on both EP’s. The only major difference is that Drag a City was self-produced at home in our apartment where we didn’t feel the restrictions of time and money during the process. That allowed us to take control of our sound for the first time and we ended up with a record that we’re really proud of.

 Q: Your most recent EP includes a song titled “Are We The Dining Dead?,” presumably a reference to the Eternal Sunshine line. What other non-musical sources do you draw inspiration from?

Renal: Why yes, it is a reference to Eternal Sunshine. At the time of writing the lyrics to that particular song I had finally gotten around to watching the movie from beginning to end. Lyrically, I tend to draw most of my inspiration from life experiences as well as books and movies. Finding connections between my life and what I am reading or watching helps me generate multiple perspectives. While we were writing for the Drag a City EP, I had just finished reading Tender Is the Night and “Winter Dreams”, both Fitzgerald stories that served as a catalyst for my ideas.

 Q: What’s the story with your band name?

Gian: Renal came up with the name New Politicians and when he brought it to the group we immediately liked the irony of calling a rock band “politicians.” It’s more tongue-in-cheek than it is a deep statement or anything. However, a lot of truth is said in jest.

 Q: What are your plans and goals for the upcoming year? A full-length release, perhaps?

Gian: We’re planning to play as many shows as we can in support of Drag a City as well as continue to promote the record with the goal of receiving some label attention.  So far there’s been a lot of positive feedback on our social media sites and we hope to continue to gain new fans throughout 2014. A full-length isn’t completely out of the question but we feel we don’t currently have access to the resources necessary to make a quality debut record. Regardless we will continue to write, record, and build our song catalog so who knows what the future holds for New Politicians.

Listen to “The Length Of Our Love” here, via Bandcamp

 

10 PM: Wild Leaves

Wild Leaves

This folksy five-piece and their “sun-drenched harmonies” sound like a far cry from Brooklyn’s cityscape, but the fresh local band is making waves with their debut EP, Wind & Rain. The 7-track release is a confident showcase of their wispy, nostalgic melodies, which are sure to bring some comfort and warmth to our showcase!

AF: How and when did you guys come together as a band?

 WL: Wild Leaves officially formed as band in January of 2011. But its roots run much deeper.  We had the pleasure of being friends in college, moving to Brooklyn together, and experiencing a similar struggle to find our respective places in the world. The band formed in the midst of that struggle as we began to articulate the challenges we experienced, through songs. Starting with intimate two-piece performances in our Crown Heights apartment, and growing into regular gigs, across the city, as a five-piece.

AF: What are you focusing on right now? Any plans in place for 2014?

 WL: We just recorded a new batch of songs a couple weeks ago so we are mixing them now. This is a fun part of the process because a lot of the pressure is off (temporarily) The songs are what they are at this point and we get to just focus on putting the whole presentation together.  We’re looking to do a release in early 2014 followed by massive amounts of touring.  We’ve got people to see all across this beautiful country.

AF: Seven tracks is a good amount for an EP. Why did you decide to go with an EP release and not a full-length album debut?

 WL: Ultimately it came down to releasing something that encapsulated a moment. We had a bunch of songs that didn’t make the cut because they felt ancillary to the place we were in.  Recording those seven songs was a turning point in our collective time together in this city. A lot of work had gone into our transition and the songs were a away of acknowledging the past, while still embracing the future.

AF: What are your long-term goals for the band? Where do you anticipate going from here?

WL: Our long-term goal as a band is to write songs powerful enough to change the world. One of the major driving forces in our creative process is the open conversation we maintain with the people we come across on the road.  Whether its through lyrics, a performance, or a conversation after the show, we view each experience as an opportunity to exchange ideas and hopefully make the world a better place.

AF: What are your New Year’s Eve plans this year? Any parties, shows, etc?

 WL: Our new years plans are to lay low and spend some quality time with our loved ones.  It’s been a wonderfully busy year. We played something like sixty shows, made new friends in many new places, but didn’t spend a lot of time at home.  Winter is the perfect time for reflection and recuperation.

Listen to “Everyone”, here, via Bandcamp:

 

After the live show, stick around for dancing, courtesy of the ever-wild, B-Tips, who’ll be spinning all your faves til late.

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NEWS: Wayne Coyne goes on record store tour

Flaming lips

Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne will hit the road this Thursday, December 19th, for what is being billed as his Record Store Tour. Coyne will be meeting and greeting fans and signing copies of the Lips’ first-ever EP, The Flaming Lips 1st EP, and The Flaming Lips 2nd Cassette Demo.

Wayne will be selling an extremely Limited Edition version of the EP which will be housed with a hand-crafted, custom-made solid chocolate skull. Anatomically correct and life-sized, of course. Each skull will contain a special Golden Coin that is redeemable as admission to any headline show by the band in the world. See below for all of Coyne’s upcoming tour stops.

This product contains quite a substantial amount of high-quality, gourmet chocolate accompanied by tthe very earliest music created by The Flaming Lips in their original incarnation and pressed onto color vinyl.  A feast for the senses, indeed.

The Flaming Lips 1st EP  will be available as a limited edition 12-inch on green vinyl and signed by Coyne. The last time this recording was available on vinyl was in 1986. It was originally recorded in two sessions at Benson Sound in 1984 and released on the group’s homemade label Lovely Sorts of Death Records. This edition has been remastered by Lips bassist Michael Ivins and given a reimagined cover by freak artist Charlie Immer.

Also for sale, will be The Flaming Lips 2nd Cassette Demo (recorded in 1983), which will be available as a limited-edition 7″ on blue vinyl, also signed by Coyne. Originally recorded in 1983, it captures the group in a transition from its primitive shambolic drug-damaged punk-pop to the primitive shambolic drug-damaged hallucinogenic cosmic brother death rock heard on the 1st EP. The music has been remastered by Lips drummer Kliph Scurlock and the cover photo is by Wayne’s brother, Dennis Coyne. Both items go on sale from participating record store retailers on December 24th and only 2,000 copies of each piece will be made available.

Wayne Coyne’s Record Store Tour:

12/19 @ 4pm       Nashville, TN        Grimey’s

12/20 @ Noon     Louisville, KY       Guestroom Records

12/20 @ 8 pm      Chicago, IL           Permanent Records

12/21 @ 5 pm      St. Louis, MO       Vintage Vinyl

12/22 @ 5 pm      Lawrence, KS       Love Garden Sounds

The Flaming Lips upcoming shows:

12/29    @ 7 pm                  Broomfield, CO                  1stBank Center

12/30     @ 9 pm                 Aspen, CO                        Belly Up

12/31    @ 9:30 pm             Aspen, CO                         Belly Up

01/10     @ 3:30 pm            Squaw Valley, CA               The Last Chair Festival

01/26                                  Riviera Maya, Mexico         My Morning Jacket One Big Holiday

01/27                                  Riviera Maya, Mexico         My Morning Jacket One Big Holiday

01/28                                  Riviera Maya, Mexico         My Morning Jacket One Big Holiday

01/29                                  Riviera Maya, Mexico         My Morning Jacket One Big Holiday

01/30                                  Riviera Maya, Mexico         My Morning Jacket One Big Holiday

03/08                                  Tampa, FL                          Gasparilla Music Festival

03/21                                  New Orleans, LA                BUKU Music + Art Project

03/22                                  New Orleans, LA                BUKU Music + Art Project

YEAR END LIST: Top 10 unexplainable Kanye moments

Kanye

It’s been a weird year for Kanye West; although really, with Kanye, what year isn’t weird? He’s become renowned for his crazy shenanigans, which most of us are now familiar with. From his “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” slip in 2005 to his infamous “I’ma let you finish” bluster at the 2009 MTV VMAs, Mr. West has built up quite a reputation for himself. His musical talent has remained impressive throughout his 6-album career (Yeezus easily made several of this year’s “best of” lists, from SPIN to AV Club) but Kanye’s persona has been the subject of parody and scandal for a long time now.

This year, though, held several moments of Kanye-crazy that stood out among the plethora of examples from his memorable past. Before we head into 2014—a year which is sure to see many more unsurprising surprises from Kanye—I’d like to take a walk through the most bizarre Kanye West moments of the year.

10. SNL teaser

Back in the spring, Kanye performed on SNL when Ben Affleck hosted. The performance itself was fine, but the promo teaser was incredibly awkward. Kanye, Affleck and Fred Armisen are standing around, trying to make jokes. Kanye merely stands there, delivering his lines with no real expression on his face. I don’t know what he was going for there. Unfortunately, NBC is pretty good at taking promos of SNL off the air shortly after they’re over, so there is no footage available for us to relive this awkward moment.

9. Naming his child North

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Celebrities essentially run the crazy-baby-name game. It’s almost as if famous children are expected to be scared for life by the crazy “creative” ideas their parents come up with. Apple? Suri? Blue Ivy? It’s just a thing they do. Kanye joined the game by naming his child with now-fiance Kim Kardashian North. This might not be so bad if his last name weren’t West. I don’t know what the influence for this was, but there can’t be any explanation worthy of this horrible decision. I liked Kimye better.

8. Dressing Kim Kardashian

I remember watching an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians a while ago when Kim and Kanye first made their relationship public.  There was a scene where Kim was struggling with emptying her entire closet. Kanye had made her a deal that if she got rid of her wardrobe, he would buy her a complete new one. Ever since then, there has been a clear Kanye influence on her style. She has become more, um, adventurous, and not always in the best way. At the Met Gala, she wore a floor-length, floral Ricardo Tisci gown. With attached floral gloves. And a high collar. It was incredibly unflattering to the pregnant, curvy Kardashian. Girl can afford to hire a stylist that isn’t her wanna-be designer boyfriend, and she should.

7. Comparing his tour stunts to being a police officer or soldier

“Kanye did another interview and said some things that got people angry” could be the lead of most stories about Kanye this year. Recently, he did an interview with Saturday Night Online where he compared the stunts he performs on his tour to the adversities that police officers and soldiers are faced with on duty. This was incredibly insulting. And Brimfield Ohio police chief David Oliver took to his Facebook page (which is a popular outlet for the chief to talk to the residents — I attended college in the town next to Brimfield and can vouch that the page is well-known in the community) to reprimand Kanye for his insensitive assertions. But it wasn’t the first time Kanye offended someone, and it probably won’t be the last.

6. Bringing Jesus on tour

When Kanye does a concert, he is meticulous in its planning and execution. So, in keeping with the Yeezus themes, he had an actor dress up as Jesus during the opening night of his Yeezus tour. He called him “white Jesus” and apparently squealed with glee, then performed “Jesus Walks.”

5. Being a genius all the time

This isn’t anything new, but this year, Kanye seemed to take time repeatedly to remind us that he considers himself a genius. This may be true, but why does he need to keep saying it about himself? He may feel empowered by it, but the rest of us just feel that it is celebrity self-worship at it’s most banal. A little humility goes a long way: something he has yet to figure out.

4. BBC Interview

I don’t have enough room here to describe all the crazy that went on during this interview. The highlight? Probably the “Fendi leather jogging pant.” If you haven’t seen the video, check it out.

 

3. “Visionary streams of consciousness”

Sometimes, when Kanye feels the need to say something, he just really goes for it. Lately, this has taken the form of ranting during interviews, or even live shows. During a tour stop at Madison Square Garden, Kanye took a break from performing to go on a confusing, nonsensical rant, which apparently he has referred to as one of his “visionary streams of consciousness.” Few topics were spared as he talked about being a genius, The Hunger Games, classism, how he feels boxed into his role as a musician, and how much he apparently wants to design clothes. He also dismisses people who want things just to be cool, yet in previous interviews says that making cool things is essentially what life is about. Maybe he blacks out during these streams of consciousness?

2. Jimmy Kimmel Face

After the BBC interview with Zane Lowe aired, Jimmy Kimmel’s team got ahold of the footage and decided to recreate several interesting moments of the interview, using children to play Lowe and Kanye. It was a childish (pun intended) move, as the bit delivered several of Kanye’s answers without context, and selected specifically to make Kanye appear foolish. However, once Kanye found out about Kimmel’s stunt, things got weird real quick. He took to Twitter to rant — in all caps, typical Kanye style — about Kimmel. One rant went so far as to talk about Kimmel’s face, accompanied by a Photoshopped photo of Spongebob Squarepants, hands framing his face, with the words “Jimmy Kimmel Face Motherfucker” surrounding the photo. It was straight up cray.

1. “Bound 2”

It was so awkward, Seth Rogen and James Franco had to do a mock video (Bound 3) to emphasize how awkward it was. As if that wasn’t obvious in the original. Essentially, the video is Kanye either riding on a motorcycle with Kim Kardashian  bouncing naked in front of him, facing him, or him standing in front of the camera rapping. There were also intermittent scenes of horses running and some type of canyon/desert. The Franco/Rogen version has Franco in the role of Kanye and Rogen in the role of Kim. It’s a scene-by-scene recreation of the video, which is all it takes to point out the ridiculousness of it all.

 

**Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Kanye fan, and Yeezus was one of my favorite albums this year. I just think Kanye is ridiculous, and I constantly can’t decide if I love it or hate it.**

 

YEAR END LIST: Top 7 To Anticipate

 Colourful 2014 in fiery sparklers

I’ll be honest: 2013 wasn’t the best year for me. I had my moments (like joining AudioFemme, for one), but overall this past year had a few more downs than ups in my experience. So I’m ready for 2014 and determined to make it a good one no matter what—although, by the looks of it, I’m not going to have to try too hard. Between the exciting festival rumors and anticipated album releases, 2014 is already shaping up to be a pretty amazing year (at least musically speaking). Here are some of the reasons I’m counting down the days until that New Year:

Outkast’s reunion at Coachella

outkast-reunion-big-boi-andre-3000

Rumors of Big Boi and Andre 3000 ending their hiatus began in November and got everyone (including myself, obviously) up in a tizzy. It’s been a decade since the hip hop juggernauts performed on a stage together (and twenty years since the release of their debut full-length, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik) and their reunion at the April 2014 festival (confirmed most recently by Outkast collaborator Sleepy Brown) will be a welcome jolt for the hip-hop genre overall.

Album releases from longtime favorites and newcomers

February ’14 is going to be a particularly big month for music. Highly anticipated new releases from Beck, St. Vincent, and Neneh Cherry (her first solo effort in 16 years—check out our review of her album’s title track here) are all coming out in February, and that’s just the beginning of a long list of albums to look forward to. Keep an eye out for new work from NPR and Spotify’s “artists to watch” Banks and Sam Smith (among others) as well.

Gary Richards Planning All-Female Event

Music executive and founder/CEO of HARD events Gary Richards revealed in a recent interview with Wildspice Magazine that he’s got some thoughts about putting on a festival with an exclusively female lineup (think modern-day Lilith Fair, or so we hope). Richards described his idea, saying “I have a concept for a show that’s all girl performers… It’s not a 70,000 person event. But I do see more females coming up and… I’m definitely gonna do it 2014.” Here’s to hoping this amazing opportunity for female artists/musicians/DJs actually pans out.

New venues 

brooklyn-postcard2

With brand new places opening up around Brooklyn, 2014 is sure be replete with amazing indie shows all around the borough. We’re especially excited about Baby’s All Right in Williamsburg, Radio in Bushwick, and Friends and Lovers in Crown Heights—all three of these amazing new spaces have already put on some great shows with some of BK’s favorite local bands. We’ll take this as a sign of more venues and concerts to come in the next twelve months.

The festivals

2014 is looking like it’ll host an unforgettable festival season, with the released lineup for SXSW alone offering enough to get your blood pumping. The Austin, TX festival’s confirmed acts include Kevin Drew, Tinariwen, the So So Glos, Sage Francis, Black Lips, Diarrhea Planet, Blouse, Avi Buffalo, Phantogram, and hundreds more (with even more to be added as the festival draws near). Rumors circulating the blogosphere are also hinting at a pretty exciting Glastonbury (Pixies and Arcade Fire) and indicating that acts like HAIM, Neutral Milk Hotel, Justin Timberlake, and Prince are all going to be hitting up some of our favorite fests in 2014.

Hamilton Leithauser’s solo album in spring

Among all the confirmed album releases for next year, this is perhaps the most intriguing. The Walkmen’s distinguished lead vocalist Hamilton Leithauser has announced that he’s embarking on a solo venture with the help of friends Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend), Richard Swift (the Shins), fellow Walkmen member Paul Maroon, and Morgen Henderson (Fleet Foxes). With such a solid backing band, we can only assume this album is going to be a standout for 2014.

Tours

With new releases come national tours, and 2014 will see a whole slew of unmissable shows from bands like the Broken Bells and War on Drugs. War on Drugs is making a particularly exciting return, not only with the March ’14 release of their third album Lost in the Dream (a follow-up to their critically acclaimed 2011 sophomore release) but also with their Springtime North American tour. Several other bands are sure to release tour dates as the year goes on, so keep a careful watch!

Track of the Week 12/16: “Flawless”

beyonce-chanel-chain-bootsLast week, Beyonce did what only Beyonce could do. She released a new album, unannounced, accompanied by music videos for each song. In an interview explaining her creative process, she stated that when she listens to music, she naturally sees its intended vision. For her, music and vision are one, and that is proven time and again throughout this groundbreaking endeavor.

Beyonce was a pioneer in the now common practice of releasing singles prior to an album, in attempts, for her, to gain  more creative control over her work. Now she is taking the reigns once again, releasing her album unannounced to the world , in a highly unprecedented move.

The track of the week is “***Flawless.” I could have picked a more sentimental, meaningful song, like “Blue” that captures Beyonce’s motherly role and what has become most important to her in life, but the song is just so infectious and yet also has a great message. While a good chunk of the album is especially sensual in nature, Queen Bey changes direction to bust out “***Flawless,” (clips of which were featured on last spring’s “Bow Down/I Been On”), which likely would have been the hit single had she followed the typical album release trajectory.

Beyonce is at her best when she is being a badass feminist. Past hits like “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” “Irreplaceable,” “Diva” and “Run the World (Girls)” center on women taking their lives into their own hands and not depending on a man. The diva is back again for “***Flawless,” where she once again asserts herself in the world and reminds us all how powerful women are. It’s an incredibly empowering track.

However, Bey doesn’t spread this message alone. She takes a sampling of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche during a talk at TEDxEuston titled “We should all be feminists.” She speaks about girls being held back by society from a young age, and having the world reinforce the idea that motherhood is all they should amount to. Adiche questions these assertions in saying:

“Because I am female

I am expected to aspire to marriage

I am expected to make my life choices

Always keeping in mind that

Marriage is the most important

Now marriage can be a source of

Joy and love and mutual support

But why do we teach to aspire to marriage

And we don’t teach boys the same?

We raise girls to see each other as competitors

Not for jobs or for accomplishments

Which I think can be a good thing

But for the attention of men”

Beyonce backs up this sentiment with her words “I took some time to live my life/ But don’t think I’m just his little wife/ Don’t get it twisted/Get it twisted/ This my shit/ Bow down, bitches.” Beyonce is saying that she made the choice to get married and start a family, but that she will not be overlooked because she stepped back for a while. She is still the talented artists she was before she made those choices, and she’s going to show us all what she can do now that she has made a family of her own. Yes, she’s telling bitches to bow down, but it’s promoting the healthy competition that women need to be encouraged to display more often in work.

Queen Bey is back — with an edge. And we all better listen up, because we might learn a thing or two.

Watch the official video for “Flawless” Here:

TRACK REVIEW: “Comfortable Life”

Comfortable life for you, always a comfortable life for you. I used to think it was true, we all get as fucked over as I do. But now I know It don’t happen to you, ‘cause you get everything you want. But I like my way, struggle every day, that’s how I learned how to hunt.

Childhood friends Kerry Kalberg and Dan Francia began playing music together in High School. After meeting Nick Dooley at NYU, they formed Flagland. Kalberg (vocals and guitar), Francia (bass and vocals) and Dooley (drums) moved across the river to Brooklyn and have since released three albums, Danger Music/ Party Music, Tireda Fightin, and a split record with BIG UPS in 2013. Flagland will be releasing their next full-length album titled Love Hard, on February 25, 2014.

Self described as a band that plays “panic rock for the panicked,” Flagland’s repertoire floats through numerous genres, namely punk, grunge and 90s alternative. Part of their charm is their character. I had a chance to see them on 12/6 at Shea Stadium, where Kerry Kalberg stripped down to nothing other than his boxer briefs to play their entire set. Apparently that wasn’t a one-off, but rather something that he usually does during his shows.

“Comfortable Life” is the first single off of Love Hard. In three minutes, Kalberg, Francia and Dooley manage to drag the listener through a wide range of contrasting emotions. The track is initially colored with a simple, sugar-sweet melody and Kalberg’s soothing, yet understated vocals. By the second verse, the guitar picks up, and Francia and Dooley enter the mix on the drums, bass and xylophone. There is a diminuendo at the end of the second chorus, where Kalberg descends on each note until there is complete silence. Then the music explodes. Kalberg’s voice completely transforms, and what once was a bittersweet lament is now an impassioned emotional release. Kalberg, Francia and Dooley turn the volume all the way up on this verse and completely let go. With guitar feedback, vocal shouts and guitar power chords that starkly contrast the understated and restrained first half of the song, the second half of “Comfortable Life” is jarring and disconcerting, but in a good way.

The song’s garage band feel (pretty much the whole album was recorded in Dooley’s apartment) combined with its dynamism and emotional range makes “Comfortable Life” both genuine and raw.  If this is any indication of what is to come, expect rich dynamics, varied musical styles, and intense emotion to fill all twenty tracks of Love Hard. Listen to “Comfortable Life” Here:

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LIVE REVIEW: Fred Falke/Starsmith

FF

How do I say this…sometimes you think you can dance in public, because recently you’ve become more comfortable dancing in your kitchen alone. Yet still, you think: “I’ve got this!  I’ve been practicing.

No.

A thousand nos.

It’s similar to when I used to push the grocery cart for my mom as a kid and I thought it would prepare me for driving.

I only recently got into French House for which I simultaneously blame and thank spending a year in Europe.  I started easy with Daft Punk, as protocol, and then ended up at an Alan Braxe show in London without really knowing what I was getting into.  After a little research I discovered Fred Falke who had provided the sugary retreat from Braxe’s hard-hitting bass lines when the two worked together in the early 2000s.

I spent months working on my college thesis with headphones in my computer, hand sewing at a small desk and dancing in my chair to songs like “Intro” and “Face To Face.”  All I wanted to do was go to a DJ set and dance my face off.  Well, some things are better in your chair than in reality.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with Fred Falke or Starsmith’s set at Le Poisson Rouge on Thursday.  Falke was in good form and the crowd was dance-happy.  As DJ sets go, there was no definitive start or end to any “song” and I didn’t recognize what he was playing per se, but it certainly had the Falke touch.  He is the master of infectious dance beats afterall.  Starsmith was spinning classic French House tracks with some wise sampling (a stretched out take on The Smiths’ “This Charming Man” for instance).  The only thing wrong with the evening was my unabashed awkwardness.

I fortunately had a plus one, and was able to drag my friend along with me.  Between my rigid posture and his spike-encrusted vest and piercings, we were the sorest thumbs in the room.  We joked that the only thing we looked like we were doing there was selling drugs, and waited for someone to hit us up (no one did).

The show went on until the early morning and my only salvation before the mission home was a 2 am slice.  I wish I could have shed my inhibitions for the evening and danced with everybody else, but the truth is:

I can only dance when no one’s looking, and usually, in a chair.

FLASHBACK FRIDAY: Patti Smith Live

patti smith

I was surfing the internet for vintage Patti Smith videos the other day when I came across this gem. I was so excited that I decided to dedicate my newest installment of Flashback Friday solely to this video, which is a 1979 performance of Patti Smith’s “My Generation” at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag…

The clip begins with Smith reciting the “Pledge of Allegiance” (She even put her hand over her heart)  over a Hendrix-esque “Star Spangled Banner” guitar solo. You can see an American Flag plastered in the background. With her back to the stage, she finishes the pledge. The room then fills with discordant noise coming from the guitars, drums and amplifiers. Once the chaos dissipates, the drummer signals the beginning of the song by striking his sticks together to define the beat. Then it begins.

It is no secret that punk rock poet Patti Smith is a dynamic musician who is full of energy and character, but watching her perform live and listening to her recordings are like night and day.  With no shoes on her feet, hair awry and a presence that generally suggests dishevelment, Smith completely lets loose on stage. According to Smith, this experience is just as important as the music. Smith prefers expression to accuracy, and often strays from the key, rhythm or melody in order to fully express herself within the music. The performance is spontaneous and seemingly genuine.

The song breaks down right before the end. She turns her back to the stage while the music escalates in speed and volume. The drums are pushed over onto their sides, the guitarist puts down his guitar, and Smith is left playing alone. She seems entranced as she strums randomly on the guitar and overworks the whammy. The music gradually becomes more esoteric as she crouches and kneels with the instrument, even shaking it at times to produce a piercing tone. After a couple of minutes, the band members return to the stage. Smith walks over to interact with the bassist, who begins to hit the guitar with his microphone.

She then returns to center stage, faces the audience, and recites one final impromptu verse:  

“Here I am

Empty warrior

Here I am

Back on the straight and narrow

here I am

with my broken arrow”

While Patti Smith still performs fairly often in the NYC area, it is still exciting to see old footage of her from back in the day.  Enjoy.

LIVE REVIEW: Not Blood Paint/Bad Credit No Credit

Not Blood Paint live

not blood paint

 

A friend of mine has been nagging me to see Not Blood Paint almost every week for the past two months.  She lured me in with stories of their famously dramatic shows and musical dexterity.  Apparently its members have a background in theater and performance, which was nothing less than obvious the night of their show at Shea Stadium last week.  The foursome mounted the stage in greenish-gold face paint, leggings, and spray-painted tunics. Their look fell somewhere between Spinal Tap and cheap costumes for people dressing as “Satan Worshippers.”  I was skeptical of this display immediately.

Oh, here we go, some theater kids.  Just like the ones in high school who greeted every morning with a star jump and vocal exercises.  Great…  I watched with a raised eyebrow for the first few songs, confused about my feelings over what was transpiring on stage, and then I realized something: they’re fucking incredible musicians.

Truly, every single one of them is a master of their instrument.  I would be fawning over the guitar licks until I noticed the precision of the drum parts, and eventually I’d stumble all over the bass riffs.  On top of that, they can do perfect barbershop quartet style harmonies, and stretch their vocal range to that of Steve Perry.

I had heard a handful of their tracks prior but could never pinpoint their style.  Every song I listened to sounded different from the last, yet all sounded familiar at the same time.  I say this because Not Blood Paint is not a genre-defining band.  Their musical roots clearly lie in early metal, glam rock, prog rock and jazz.  Yet what they lack in innovation they make up for in pure craft, passion, and sense of humor.  Some of their live performance stunts can get a little gimmicky, but they’re the kind of guys who just like having fun and don’t give a shit what pesky writers like me say, so more power to ‘em.  They certainly know what they’re doing and I’d love to see them again.

The headlining band, Bad Credit No Credit fell under a similar category as Not Blood Paint. While the music itself was different from their predecessors’–they played their own brand of ‘90s revival ska, punk, and jazz–their set was no less theatrical, and gimmicky.  And again, despite the Christmas costumes and backup dancers, Bad Credit No Credit are a pack of damn fine musicians.  I could listen to the horn section alone and be happy.  Throw in Carrie-Ann Murphy’s Sax ‘blowin and phenomenal vocals (she must be operatically trained) and you have a pretty impressive bunch.

It was a fun show regardless of any nitpicking I’ve committed.  The crowd was dancing hard, and everyone was happy.

Just as a last nod to the overwhelming talent of Not Blood Paint, here’s a round of applause for their diversity as musicians.  Check out the difference between this:

And this:

Pretty damn impressive if you ask me.

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