Month: January 2014

LOUD & TASTELESS: Dum Dum Girls

Dum Dum Girls

Dum Dum Girls

Every Thursday, AF profiles a style icon from the music world. This week, in honor of the release of Too True, we’re profiling Dum Dum Girls.  Front-woman Dee Dee Penny translates Dum Dum’s 60’s girl garage band sound into a rocker chic aesthetic, choosing dramatic silhouettes like bell-sleeved mini-dresses and all-over lace.  The band’s rotating line-up has always followed suit, often donning all-black or all-white garb for a cohesive stage presence.  Dum Dum Girls are so renowned for wearing zany patterned tights that artists have made them motifs for screen-printed show posters.  You’ll often see the girls sporting chic accessories as well, from wide-brimmed hats, bold necklaces, and platform boots to the quintessential leather jackets and dark shades.  And no Dum Dum Girls look would be complete without tasteful black liquid liner and vibrant lip color.

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][prw username=”audiofemme” boardname=”loud-tasteless-dum-dum-girls” maxfeeds=”10″ divname=”myList” printtext=”0″ target=”newwindow” useenclosures=”yes” thumbwidth=”100″ thumbheight=”100″ showfollow=”medium”]

 [/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

INTERVIEW: Skaters on their debut album and NYC

photo-credit--shane-mccauley-extralarge_1384974091027

Skaters have had a hell of a year. The New York City-based foursome—comprised of singer/songwriter Michael Ian Cummings, drummer Noah Rubin, guitarist Josh Hubbard, and bassist Dan Burke—got together in early 2012 and immediately started booking shows, even before they had officially practiced together as a band. Wasting absolutely no time, they soon had enough songs to release their first EP, “Schemers.”

“That was all done by ourselves,” says Cummings. “Then we decided, fuck it, we’re just going to put it out for free. Because nobody knows who we are and we aren’t going to charge our friends for something we made at home. We had no reason to do anything besides get peoples’ attentions.” And that they certainly did. The “Schemers” EP reached well over 10,000 downloads before the band took it down and signed with Warner Bros. Records for their first full-length album. Since then, the Manhattanites have amassed a huge fan following, who are now patiently awaiting the release of the band’s debut record, titled, of course, Manhattan. The album is due out Feb. 24th (and currently available for pre-order), but we thought we’d catch up with Michael in the meantime to talk about New York City and Skaters’ plans for the future.

AF: So you guys used to do a lot of covers when you first started playing shows; what’s you favorite cover to play?

MIC: There’s this song by the Pixies called “Allison” and I really love that song. I think that’s a special song for me, especially since it’s only a minute and a half long. It just sounds like it has every part that you need in a song. I think it’s a pretty perfectly written pop song.

AF: And the Pixies just came out with some new stuff, how did you feel about that?

MIC: I’m not so sure about that stuff…The Pixies without Kim Deal is not the Pixies to me. I mean obviously Frank Black is amazing and all but…it’s a weird vibe, you know. I like watching Joey Santiago though, he’s a funny dude. But yeah it’s not the Pixies, really, is it?

AF: I saw on your Twitter that you guys did a pizza crawl last week which seemed pretty successful.

MIC: Yeah we hit five spots up, we were trying to get six but there was too much traffic so we only got five in. But it was enough pizza, I had six slices of pizza or something. A lot of fucking pizza.

AF: Well, being that your upcoming album is sort of an homage to NYC, what’s your favorite spot in the city?

MIC: I like going to touristy spots in New York by myself. It’s a funny departure from where I usually hang out, in East Village, but I just enjoy going to the Empire State or museums, like checking out stuff at the MOMA or PS1. Those are the kinds of things that make you feel like you’re taking advantage of the city. It’s kind of like a romantic New York feeling. Sometimes you just decide to not work for the day and just go look at art, and it’s just a fun thing.

AF: Yeah doing museums alone is definitely a great experience.

MIC: Yeah because you can really figure out what you connect with, too, which is super different than when you’re with people and you’re trying to hold a conversation, but you don’t even care. Like, who cares? Sometimes you don’t want to hear what something means to someone else, you just want to like what you like. My friend Fab told me the best thing you could do to get into art is to go into a museum for ten minutes. Go in there for ten minutes and find one thing that you really love, and then leave. You don’t have to over-intellectualize it. Your opinion is as valid as anyone else’s.

AF: So do you feel like it’s sort of the same with music, for someone who’s trying to get into a new band or genre?

MIC: Totally, I think it’s the same thing with listening to records or reading a book. Like a great book, you’ll read cover to cover, or a great record you’ll listen to it all the way through, but if it’s not clicking, just fucking turn it off, find something else. That’s what it’s there for, so you can experience it however you want. I think that’s the cool thing about music these days, you can just experience so much of it whenever you want and often you get lost in, like, little Spotify playlist holes. Just clicking on related artists, you know what I mean? That shit’s fun for me, I like that.

AF: For your album, do you feel like you want people to sit down and listen to it the whole way through?

MIC: I think our record makes sense listening to it all the way through. It’s not very long. That’s kind of why we made it short, you know, it’s like 33 minutes long or something. For a debut record, I feel like that’s super important, if you can keep people on the hook and not clicking off. Hopefully they listen to it all the way through and that’s great. But if people just connect to one song, that’s just as good for me. It doesn’t bother me at all.

AF: One of my favorite songs off the record is “Fear of the Knife,” with its kind of reggae sound. What’s your favorite?

MIC: I’d agree that that vibe is one of my favorite vibes. I think “Bandbreaker” is my favorite song off the record. I think it just kind of makes you happy, in a really non-cheesy way. I like it, it’s got a good energy. Kind of like a gritty white boy ska without going into “Santeria” territory.

AF: Actually, speaking of “Fear of the Knife,” where did the inspiration for those lyrics come from?

MIC: Oh yeah, I had a weird stomach problem and I couldn’t eat anything. Everything I ate just hurt my stomach to the point where I was like curled over. So I went to see doctors and shit and I was kind of freaked out. And then they thought that they were going to have to operate and take something out and I’ve never had that happen. And I didn’t have health insurance and that freaked me out even more. So that song was just about my fear of the operating table.

AF: What ended up happening?? Are you okay now??

MIC: Yeah I’m okay now, it was a very weird thing.

AF: Okay so what’s the writing process for you guys, is it lyrics first or music first?

MIC: It’s kind of different every time. You don’t really want to do something the same way every time or else things always sound the same, or at least I feel that way. So sometimes you’ll have a lyric first that you know you want to write into a song because you think the lyric’s good enough. That’s what we did with “I Wanna Dance” with the lyrics “I wanna dance but I don’t know how.” I had that in my head, I was like, What a good sentiment, that you want to belong to something. It was a good metaphor for just wanting to be part of something that you couldn’t be a part of or didn’t know how to be a part of and just feeling left out. And then sometimes you write just a riff, like with “This Much I Care,” and that becomes the backbone of the whole song and everything falls into place after that. So you know, as long as you keep an open mind about having no rules, then you’re cool.

AF: So does it help having your bandmates to sort of bounce ideas off of?

MIC: Yeah, especially Noah. Noah knows me so well that he knows when I’m phoning it in…when there’s something subpar, he’ll call me out on that. And Josh and Dan are really good because they’re the most honest music listeners. When they hear something, they respond to it in a really immediate and passionate way. So you just get the best, most honest read.

AF: Where do you guys see yourselves going from here, musically?

MIC: I think the tracks that you were talking about like “Fear of the Knife” and “Bandbreaker,” I think those are indicative of what I want to do more of and what we want to kind of push the band towards. Keeping the same edge to the songs but not being afraid to make really sparse music and melody-driven songs. I think those are the ones that people respond to the most.

AF: So for this record, you guys went into Electric Lady Studios, but I know you recorded the “Schemers” EP at home…How was that transition?

MIC: Honestly, I was nervous before we [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][recorded the album] because I’d never spent that much money on a studio before and I’d never had a studio for a month on lockdown, like living out of a studio. I’d never done that before. I’ve always made stuff at home and sometimes you get the best results out of [doing it that way]. So I was kind of nervous about being there, about making a product that was going to sound sterile. And you kind of go into that place and you see all the records on the wall, bands that you’ve grown up listening to, and you feel this kind of self-imposed pressure to create something as good as that. You just have to put that aside and try to focus on what you’re doing and believe in it, and believe that you’re in the same situation that those bands were in when they walked in there. And ultimately we picked a really good producer. He’s very modern and has great taste, very similar influences as us. His name is John Hill. So we ended up coming out with something that we’re all really happy with, and now I’m not intimidated by big studios anymore.

AF: What is your favorite part of the album cycle—between writing, recording, touring, promoting…

MIC: I like the writing and recording, I think that’s the most fun because it’s the most creative. I think touring isn’t the most creative but it can be fun in a completely different way. Not in that fulfilling, healthy way, but just in a pure fun kind of way. Touring is obviously different than what you normally do. You meet a lot of people, see a lot of stuff, so that’s always fun, but you never come out of a tour feeling creatively fulfilled. There’s always a little bit of a void there.

AF: I saw that you guys mentioned that your goal was to sell out the Bowery Ballroom, which you’ve already done, so what’s the next goal for you?

MIC: Man, that was it. I never made another goal. Now I’m just along for the ride I guess. I’d like to sell it out again on February 24th, that would be very nice.

AF: What are you most excited about for this coming year?

MIC: We’re going on a UK tour with Drowners and I think that’ll be really fun because we’re all really close with those guys. Matt [Hitt] used to play guitar in our band and we’re just good friends with them, so it’s going to be a really exciting tour for us. And then obviously we have to come back and do SXSW and do our own headlining tour and that should be pretty interesting, too. We’ve never really played outside of New York besides Lollapalooza and a couple of shows in Boston, so I don’t know if there’s people out there that want to hear it on the West Coast but I hope so. We’ll see.

AF: You guys are also playing Governor’s Ball, are you excited about that?

MIC: Yeah Governor’s Ball is gonna be awesome. I saw the lineup and it’s pretty insane. I want to see Outkast, The Strokes…Drowners are playing. There’s a lot of bands.

AF: How would you describe the New York City scene for up and coming bands?

MIC: We kind of kept our heads down from the get go, just trying to take little steps. It definitely takes a lot of hard work in New York but if you’re motivated and you make your own world around your band, then you can do stuff. I don’t think there’s any golden ticket or anything, some bands think there’s going to be a golden ticket. We came from the school of thought where you create that golden ticket. You have to do the fucking work and make things special and make yourself stand out in some way, and that’s when people will notice.

AF: Would that be your advice for new bands trying to make it big in New York?

MIC: Yeah, just work harder than anyone else. I think that’s the advice for anyone. If you just don’t stop working on something, give it all your attention, you’re going to go somewhere with it.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

LIVE REVIEW: Teen Girl Scientist Monthly @ Mercury Lounge

Teen Girl Scientist Monthly

Teen Girl Scientist Monthly

Perhaps some of our older readers will remember the NES/arcade game classic Paperboy, in which you, as a blob of bike-riding pixels, are tasked with throwing papers at houses painted a certain color (denoting their subscription status) while avoiding rabid dog-shaped pixels and mini-tornados and dudes exercising in the middle of the sidewalk.  If you manage to do this and successfully deliver newspapers to all the white houses, the red-painted non-subscribing houses change color and you have more subscribers in the next level.  There’s almost nothing simple about this game; it has frustrated generations.  That little ol’ lady waving her shoe came out of nowhere.

Teen Girl Scientist Monthly isn’t an actual print magazine, it’s a Bed-Stuy based six-piece that plays invigorating rock songs.  They are the Paperboy of Brooklyn bands – hardworking, perfect aim, and maybe a little vandalism.  They’ve built a tremendous fan base in the few short years they’ve been performing, in part because their songs are so vibrant and catchy its impossible not to tap a toe to them, and also because their live shows are more like spending time in an arcade than reading a stuffy research journal.  The band released their excellent debut album Modern Dances last year after a successful indiegogo campaign.  Many of their hilariously-described perks included songs written specifically for their supporters – enough that funding the first record made recording a 10-track follow-up a necessity.

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][bandcamp width=100% height=142 album=3949137841 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]

And so we have We Run With Gangs, TeenGirlSciMo’s exuberant victory lap/thank you note.  At the release party at Mercury Lounge last Monday, the band’s devout fans shimmied to the new songs as though a high score depended on it.  Vocalists Morgan Lynch and Matt Berger bopped around the stage, humbly dedicating the set to everyone who had ever supported the band whenever they were able to catch a breath.  Pete Scalzitti wielded the most serious key-tar I’ve ever seen on stage, while Daniel Muhlenberg pummeled his kit and Matt Gliva thumped out elastic basslines.  Melissa Lusk’s bright keyboards and vocal harmonies were also a nice treat, as was her turn as lead vocalist on We Run With Gangs standout “These Days” (no, it’s not a Nico cover).

Fans of Teen Girl Scientist Monthly subscribe (see what I did there?) to a simple formula (the puns come so easy!): F + U + N.  They have a great sense of humor, a winning catalogue, and energy to spare.  Their relatively frequent live shows are highly recommended, and in the meantime, We Run With Gangs is available for free via TGSM’s bandcamp – you don’t even have to paint your house a different color to jump on the bandwagon.

[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

VIDEO OF THE WEEK: The Naked and Famous, “i kill giants”

Naked And Famous AF

You’d think The Naked and Famous would be too nice to proclaim they kill giants. Frontwoman Alisa Xayalith tweets in the sweetest fashion, not to mention the whole band seems undoubtedly awesome.  In November, TNAF had to cancel a show in Birmingham due to fellow bandmate, Thom Powers, falling ill. Alisa, @AlisaTNAF publicly showed her remorse towards fans and remained personal with them. And although Alisa is a self-proclaimed introverted pixie, she and fellow mates Thom Powers, Aaron Short, Jesse Wood and David Beadle show us some graceful rebellion (or supernatural possession?) in the new video for “i kill giants.”

Staged in what looks like a community church enclosed with jail-cell doors, two young girls perform what could be described as ballet. By the end, their all-grey eyes reveal something more dreadful and slightly demonic. Mirroring or complimenting each others dance moves, their all-white ensemble suggest an innocence in the church as they glide barefoot in white stockings. Ironically the lyrics muse, “Black dress and black shoes, tied laces for you,” perhaps symbolizing the life’s morbid underpinnings.  Differing significantly from their debut video, “Young Blood,” TNAF is showing us a darker, deeper agenda with these fallen angels.

Check out the prima ballerinas in “i kill giants” here:

 

 

INTERVIEW: Marissa Nadler talks ‘July’

Marissa Nadler

Marissa Nadler is too shy to do karaoke.  Despite the loveliness of her timeless-sounding lilt, Nadler turned to Twitter for encouragement before “chickening out” on a rendition of Chris Isaac’s “Wicked Game”.

But that self-consciousness isn’t present on her sixth proper album and first release for Sacred Bones/Bella Union.  Entitled July, Nadler’s haunting vocals deliver brashly poetic lyrics, aggressively examining the personal change that comes about during the painful dissolution and subsequent rebuilding of relationships.

The startling work she’s produced in the past decade traces the events of her life through the lens of a storyteller, rich with recurring characters both real and imagined.  Her latest record examines self-destructive tendencies, complicated entanglements, vicious environments, and the hope that can exist within despair, each subject explored with a depth and tenderness that few singer-songwriters can match.  We talked with Nadler about how her career got started, the effect that self-releasing her last album had on her work and her psyche, and what her latest record means to longtime fans and new listeners alike.  July is out on February 4th, and you can stream the record over at NPR.

Marissa Nadler

AF: To start, I’d like to talk about your first records on Eclipse and working with Ed Hardy.

MN: Back about… it must have been 11 or 12 years ago, I recorded my first record when I was still in graduate school at RISD.  And I sent it to this guy Jeffrey Alexander who ran this label called Secret Eye in Providence.  He hooked me up with a couple contacts and I emailed Ed Hardy and Ed got back to me and he put the first record out.  He’s lovely to work with.  I actually had spent a summer living in Bullhead, AZ working for his label too.  So we’re pretty close.  I think he opened up a lot of doors for me in terms of the underground music scene.

AF: What made you decide to pursue music after so much training as a visual artist?  How did your time in art school inform what you do as a musician?

MN: Well I had been writing songs as a teenager.  And I had a little punk band in high school.  I had like a mini, a four-track recorder… probably there are some tapes somewhere in my parent’s house but… I just got more and more serious about my songwriting when I was at RISD. I don’t know if maybe it was a little bit of the disillusionment with the fine art world.  The more and more I got intimidated by being this hip fine artist, the more the honesty of music started to appeal to me and so my interests kinda switched and I think it was a way for me to deal with the stress of such a hardcore fine art academy.  So I started playing open mic nights and really digging around Providence.  I really consider Providence my first hometown.  It was where I played all my first shows.

I do think my fine arts training does have a lot to do with the way I write my songs, because the way I see the world is still as a very visual person.  I’m not an analytical thinker, I’m still a painter.  So when I write lyrics it’s a very painterly, expressive way of writing.

AF: You exercised a bit more of your left brain in self-releasing your self-titled record and The Sister EP.

MN: Yeah.  That shit really burnt me out.  I think a lot of people would be shocked to know that I’m an incredibly OCD person.  I’m very detail-oriented, but I was spending so much time in front of the computer reading my own reviews and dealing with the distributors and the post office stuff that I just got really depressed and I felt like I needed some advocates.  I stopped believing in my own music.  I just started to get really depressed, I think.  It was too much of that side of the brain and not enough of art-making.

AF: I can see how that would be a lot to deal with.  Do you still view those albums as successes from an art-making standpoint?  Or was it tarnished by the fact that you had all this other stuff to deal with on top of it?

MN: I definitely view the self-titled record as a success.  I’m really proud of that record, I’m proud of how far it reached, it being a self release.  The Sister I think of more as an EP that I, lacking a manager to tell me not to release it and lacking anybody to say you know, this isn’t ready, like… that’s what you run into when you’re self-releasing records.  Nobody told me, you know, “Hey Marissa, this doesn’t really feel like a record” and so that’s what I kind of benefit from now, having a label, having some people to bounce things off of.  But I’m very proud of the self-released record, I think it was a really good comeback for me after some hardships.  I definitely stand by that one. There’s a couple songs on The Sister I like but it wasn’t a “record” the way that July is a record.  Or the way that the self-titled is.

AF: A big part of your ability to self-release a record came from crowd-funding and via your tremendous fan base, which was built on the continuing narratives you tend you revisit across albums.  You’re one of the few artists who has created a ten-year, career spanning narrative and it feels really unique in an industry that’s more singles-focused.  Do you ever feel like you’re struggling against that sort of mentality that craves hits and rarely has the attention span to delve into a body of work?

MN: I think I have a dual interest when I write songs.  It may seem like they’re continued narratives because I’m writing about my own life.  Our own lives are a continued narrative.  But, especially with this new record, a big thing for me was asking “Are these songs catchy?”  I’m definitely interested as a songwriter in songs that can stand alone regardless of an album and regardless of the body of work.  I think about whether each song on the record is good enough to stand on its own while maintaining my own integrity as a songwriter.  So yeah, I think there’s a lot of things that go into play with what makes the cut.

AF: Well, with this latest record it does feel as though most of the character arcs have been put to bed.  It seems like you’re less interested in mythologizing your experiences.  You’re using first person more, or addressing singular individuals directly.

MN: Yeah, definitely when I was younger I was more afraid to write in the first person.  I didn’t want to be thought of as a confessional singer-songwriter, like coffee shop bullshit.  I mean, I’ll be self-deprecating and say I was a little pretentious on my first record, like covering Pablo Neruda and Edgar Allen Poe.  And then I started listening to more and more old-time country music and my tastes changed and I wasn’t afraid to confront what I really wanted to write songs about without the mythological shroud, if you will.

AF: It seems a lot like this record specifically is more about a journey.  There are literal moments on tracks like “Drive” or on “I’ve Got Your Name” when you sing about changing dresses in a gas station.  But there’s also explorations on personal, emotional journeys, as with “Anyone Else”, where you’re coming to terms with who does and doesn’t belong in your life.  How have your journeys shaped this record?

MN: There’s so much personal stuff on this record.  “Anyone Else” is definitely about someone that ‘done me wrong’; “Desire” is about infatuation… I mean, there’s a lot of real-life details in this.

AF: The lyrics are very rich, which goes back to what you were saying about painterly songwriting.  I wanted to talk about that line in “Firecrackers” in which you reference an attacker whom you’re confronting.  It feels like an important cornerstone; the title of the record comes from this song.

MN: That’s about me being, especially during that period of my life before I stopped drinking, incredibly self-destructive.  So that song kind of speaks to the self-destructiveness ruining my relationship. My boyfriend and I broke up on July 4th two years ago.  And we got back together about a year ago, so the record has a lot to do with that.  Side A has a lot to do with the ups and downs of that relationship. And Side B has a lot to do with people in between him and… him.

AF: It’s so funny that you’re releasing a record called July when it is literally 8 degrees outside.  Do you feel like there’s such a thing as a winter song or a summer song?  Was it more that the relationship was an impetus for making the record?

MN: Yeah, I definitely don’t think this a summer record at all.  If there’s any season I have a lot in common with it’s winter.  But the reason I called it July was very specific in that I recorded the record in July and everything about the songs had to do with a year’s journey from one July to the next.

AF: I wanted to talk a little about the video for the record’s first single, “Dead City Emily.” Can you tell me more about it?

MN: Well I try only to work with people that I think are really talented artists.  I first met Derrick Belcham because he used to shoot videos for this French site Blogothèque.  I met him through  my friend Cat Martino.  I really like his aesthetic.  He’s worked with Julianna Barwick, and White Hinterland and a lot of artists.  The dancer, her name is coincidentally Emily but that has nothing to do with the song. In fact, it’s totally fictional, a make-believe conversation with a friend that was kind of a narrative device I used to write the song.

AF: If it’s not about a specific person, was there a particular city you had in mind while writing it?

MN: My own.

AF: That being Boston?

MN: Yeah well, not even that.  The feeling I was trying to evoke was the feeling of coming to terms with the place that you live and just feeling depressed and finding no joy in anything.  And then the contrast is in the chorus where it’s “oh, I saw the light today, opened up the door…”  I struggle with mood swings and ups and downs and it’s kind of about realizations you have about relationships to your city.

AF: I definitely have that sort of reaction to NYC.  I actually don’t think I ever want to live in a place where I don’t have a kind of volatile relationship with living there.  I’ve never actually been to Boston, but it seems like there’s a lot of good music coming out of that scene.  Although most of what’s getting attention is DIY-scene punk stuff – Speedy Ortiz, Potty Mouth.  Because you’re making music that’s so different – more timeless, less tied to a scene – do you ever feel like an outsider or distanced from your community?

MN: Definitely.  To be honest, I love Boston, but I have what I call a hometown curse.  I had more trouble getting a gig here on my opening record release tour than anywhere else in the world.  I’m not talking just the U.S.  I don’t know what it is.  I think maybe it’s because I’m not a networker or a shmoozer.  I would love to be embraced more, I’m hoping it changes with this new record.  It’s kind of a tough town if you’re not like heavy heavy or super folky.  I’ve always been somewhere in between.

AF: Well I think the irony of that is that while your music is often referred to as “dream-folk” or that there’s this permeating winsome quality to what you do, lyrically you get pretty dark and are a lot more aggressive and emotionally confrontational, almost more like a punk band in attitude.  Do you ever feel pigeonholed by those descriptors?

MN: Yeah, I mean, I guess people are always gonna have some genre tag they want to stick on you but my hope is just that people listen beyond the genre trappings.  My labels both asked me what genre I wanted to be tagged for on iTunes and I was like “I don’t fucking know…. I guess like, alternative rock, just don’t put folk, whatever you do”.  And they were like “okay, okay, we got it”.

AF: How did your connections with Sacred Bones and Bella Union come about?  Sacred Bones kind of has a reputation for associating with edgy projects.

MN: Well with Sacred Bones, when I finally was like “I can’t do this anymore, this self-releasing, I’m going to give up making music” it kind of dawned on me that maybe I should just try signing to another label.  So I went back through my emails and Caleb had written me years ago and I was like “Ohhhh, that’s that awesome label with Jim Jarmusch on it” and so I wrote him back and he said “Yeah, let’s do it!”  With Bella Union, I saw on Twitter that Simon Raymonde had played me on his radio show,l so my manager put me in touch with him.  It was really cool how it happened this late in my career to get signed to two really great record labels.  I feel like I’ve definitely earned it.

AF: It’s definitely been a long time coming. Do you feel like in working with the label they had any influence over the material or did you approach with the record already laid out?

MN: They definitely did not influence the material.  I finished the record and then gave it to them and they hadn’t heard any of the demos or anything like that.  It was really important to me to have 100% creative control.

AF: Was there anything about working with them that allowed you to do things you hadn’t done on prior records?

MN: No, I think I’ve always just done whatever I wanted to do.  That’s maybe gotten me into some trouble in the past.

AF: The new album is gorgeous.  I love how roomy it feels, the atmosphere built by the string arrangements.  Do you get to have a hand in the production at all?

MN: Well, no.  The producer’s name is Randall Dunn.  He’s worked with bands like Earth and Sunn O))) and he helped with that stuff.  I had written all the songs and all the harmony vocals that I sing on the record but instrumentation was a joint venture between Randall’s ideas and me saying “yes, that sounds like a good idea”.

AF: Was it hard for you to let someone else in on that process?

MN: No, because I’ve always worked with a producer on my records.  I think that word is confusing to people.  In the pop idiom the producer is very different than in the indie rock idiom.

AF: You’ve had a hand in a bunch of really great collaborations, working with Angel Olsen, and Emily Jane White to name a few.  What’s different about working on those sorts of projects?

MN: Well, they’re really different.  With Emily it was really just background vocals.  It wasn’t as much of a collaboration as I was a guest player.  With Angel it was different, it was more of a collaboration.  We got in touch after meeting years ago, and I wrote her to congratulate her on Acrobat and she was like “Oh, we should do songs together, let’s do covers” and so we sent cover songs back and forth over the internet to record those harmony vocals.  It was really fun; I like doing stuff like that, although it’s very different than doing my own work.  It’s probably less of an emotional investment.

AF: Do you have any collaborations coming up?

MN: Not a lot right now.  I’m hoping somebody gets in touch and says “Hey, why don’t you score my film?”

AF: You want to do film scores?

MN: Yeah, that would be really fun.

AF: What kind of film would you want to score?

MN: Just some kind of sad drama.  I think that would make the most sense.

LIVE REVIEW: Neutral Milk Hotel 1/22

Neutral Milk Hotel

Neutral Milk Hotel announced their tour dates in July. The tickets went on sale on August 2nd at 12:00 pm. I bought my tickets at 12:01. I printed out the tickets at 12:02. By 12:05, I worked out that I had approximately 173 days and 8 hours and 55 minutes to wait. I have never been the poster child for patience, but this wait was especially excruciating.

Neutral Milk Hotel were/are playing a string of New York City events (two nights at BAM and two nights at Webster Hall), but experiencing a live performance at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester has been on my to do list for quite some time now (and I wanted some home-cooked food from my parents). Therefore, I decided to leave the city and take a train ride to Westchester.

The Capitol Theatre, for those who are unaware, is one of the oldest and most historic theaters in New York. The Capitol Theatre opened on August 18, 1926.  It was a major hub for rock and folk musicians touring in the 1960s (Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd and The Grateful Dead to name a few). Unfortunately, The Capitol Theatre was shut down in the early ‘70s.  In 2011, the Capitol Theatre was renovated and re-opened. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, The Capitol Theatre is not only an important historic symbol, but a convenient place for Westchester kids to hear music without having to trek into New York City (being a Westchester kid myself, I am very sympathetic to this).

Seeing a band that has been pretty much dormant for 14 years in a venue that has been pretty much dormant for 40 years seemed appropriate. That being said, in reality Neutral Milk Hotel could have been performing anywhere and I would have paid money to see them.

14 years is a long time– more than half of my existence. We may have seen several wars begin and end and a few presidents come in and out of office, yet (despite Jeff’s beard), it doesn’t seem like too much has changed with Neutral Milk Hotel. Jeff Mangum still rocks the dorky Christmas sweaters, Julian Koster still looks like a child (that man does not age), Jeff’s voice is still nasally and thin yet surprisingly rich, and the band’s dynamic members still seem to have as much, if not more, chemistry as they did in back in the ‘90s.

I have seen Jeff Mangum perform solo before, yet experiencing the whole band together, was a completely different experience.  Julian Koster coaxed haunting melodies out of his singing saw, Scott Spillane anchored the horn section, and Jeremy Barnes propelled the music forward with explosive drumming, all while Jeff’s nasally voice shouted above the ruckus. This was a sonic experience that I did not expect nor had I prepared for.

Magnum opened the set by himself. Briefly after walking onstage, someone commented on his sweater, to which he responded, “What did you say about my sweater?” The first song that he graced us with was “Two-Headed Body.” Standing with his feet firmly on stage, Jeff Mangum played the song straightforward, almost exactly as it sounds on In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. The rest of the band joined on stage by the end of the song, and, like in the album, they transitioned into “Fool.”

For a band with the stature that Neutral Milk Hotel possesses, they were nice, gracious and humble. Jeff Mangum always seems surprised to find out how beloved he is. When he held the mic to the audience, and was confronted by a sea of audience members shouting every word and every inflection of his song, he seemed genuinely taken aback. One thing that Jeff Mangum wasn’t doing from 1999 to 2010: stroking his ego. That being said, Neutral Milk Hotel knew exactly what we wanted, and they gave it to us. Without messing around, they played pretty much every song that the crowd came to hear. Their setlist included: “Two-Headed Boy,” “Fool,” “Holland, 1945,” “A Baby for Pree / Glow Into You,” “Gardenhead / Leave Me Alone,” “Everything Is,” “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1,” “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pts. 2 & 3,” “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” “Naomi,” “Ferris Wheel on Fire,” “Oh Comely,” “Song Against Sex,” “Ruby Bulbs,” “Snow Song, Part one,” (ENCORE) “Ghost,”  “[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][untitled],” “Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2” and “Engine.” Yes, they really did play all of those songs, all presented in a straightforward manner, almost exactly how they sounded on the recordings, yet here and there they would add small flourishes. For instance, Jeff would include a run or go a third up or down at the end of a phrase, or Julian would open the song with a different pattern. These variations were like priceless gifts that the band dished out and the audience grabbed at desperately.

The band was great, the venue was great, the night was great. Seeing the gang play live after all of these years thoroughly solidifies my belief that they were one of the greatest bands to ever grace the music world. There’s nothing much else to say, except, Julian Koster: will you please be my friend? I think we would get along well.

 “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” (2013)

 

“Ghost”/”[untitled]” (1998)

[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

TRACK REVIEW: Jamaican Queens “Wellfleet Outro”

 “You bring me down. I don’t want to live here with you anymore.”

Detroit outfit Jamaican Queens is a weird act. The music is chilling, the lyrics are depressing, but still, you walk away from band’s debut, Wormfood (out on vinyl February 11th), feeling comforted. That’s mostly to do with their melodies–simply, cloying lullabies that somehow humanize the oddball echoes that resound through Jamaican Queens’ electric-inclined instrumentals–and vocal lines. Lead vocals by Abby Fiscus elevate the sound to a whole new level of soothing–and, simultaneously, devastating–with “Wellfleet Outro,” a gorgeously simple vocal duet with Jamaican Queens frontman Ryan Spencer.

Acoustic guitar and flickering piano coexist with a grave hip-hoppish beat, scratched distortion layers over gentle strumming, and Spencer’s gravelly melody lines serves both to contrast against and harmonize with Fiscus’ vulnerable, repeated chorus: “You bring me down, I don’t want to live here with you anymore.”

As it documents the catastrophic omnishambles of a doomed relationship, “Wellfleet Outro” seems to also be drawing attention to a greater sense of hopeless, unsurmountable isolation. Like two islands floating ever farther apart, Fiscus and Spencer draw away from the harmony of the first half of the song into a dual narrative of parallel vocal lines, occasionally falling over each other but never connected.

Listen to “Wellfleet Outro,” the gorgeous new single off Wormfood, below:

ALBUM REVIEW: Morgan Delt “Morgan Delt”

“I think we’ve become stuck in time and everything is going to happen all at once from now on,” Morgan Delt has commented, regarding the resurgence of sixties and seventies influences in the impressive amount of psychedelic- music coming out today. It’s an interesting phenomenon, one that gets more prevalent all the time–new music sounding like it’s from an old decade–and it’s not just one era new music is channeling, it’s all of them: eighties and nineties throwbacks occur almost as often as sixties and seventies throwbacks do. What makes Delt’s self-titled debut, out yesterday on Trouble In Mind Records, interesting isn’t his carefree-Californian psych-rocker theme, it’s the way he goes about making that theme happen in the music.

At the very beginning of last year, Delt released a 6-track cassette called Psychic Death Hole. Being on the short side, it didn’t do anywhere near justice to Delt’s potential for scope, but it did do a pretty good job of convincing everyone who listened to it that he could do sixties psych-pop. The familial resemblance was blandly straightforward, though, like Delt had copy and pasted straight out of the Unknown Mortal Orchestra songbook. This isn’t to imply that the music had no imagination of its own, just that it wore its influence on its sleeve very conventionally. No one could have extrapolated anything about psychedelic music from hearing Psychic Death Hole that they couldn’t get anywhere else.

Morgan Delt was finally released yesterday, after a couple of track teasers that left the AudioFemmes of wintry New York salivating for a sunnier climate (here and here). It’s an intricate album, very colorful and intelligently orchestrated. There’s plenty on here to recall the sixties, too, although many of the bells, whistles and ambient noise that turn up between those smoky hooks come off surprisingly futuristic. Time collapses, and musical memories aren’t presented in terms of narrative or chronology. Instead, Delt rips up all his idols into confetti, tosses them in the air, and makes it rain. The resulting mosaic is what he knits together out of the snippets.

Delt’s method of picking and choosing–with a greater fidelity to his own project than to any of the influences he cites–suggests self-portraiture: he’s tying the album together based near-solely on his own vision, despite the genre turf he treads. There’s certainly enough space on this album–unlike the preceding cassette–to get a long look at its creator. “Morgan Delt’s debut LP expands on [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][Psychic Death Hole‘s] tracks and brings forth a fully realized glimpse into the California native’s twisted brain,” reads the album notes. If that’s true, I don’t think Delt’s brain is all that twisted–it’s a whimsical album with a lot of color, but is overall pretty lighthearted. And the textures on this album–the crisp instrumentals on “Mr. Carbon Copy,” the melty smear of vocals on “Sad Sad Trip”–are delightful to listen to.

It’s interesting, though, to think that self-portraiture emerges out of a lack of alignment with chronological history–that, having liberated his songwriting of narrative continuity, Delt could create a collage that, taken altogether, approximates the inside of his brain. I’m not totally sold on this theory. The album may not be memoir,  but at the very least, Morgan Delt is a fully-realized glimpse of something.

What do you think? You can buy Morgan Delt’s self-titled album here, and listen to “Obstacle Eyes” below
[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

TRACK REVIEW: Todd Terje, “INSPECTOR NORSE”

todd terje

It’s not that Todd Terje’s “Inspector Norse” is something from the untouched realm of electronic music; it’s just that it’s impossible to resist.  Fresh off of the Norwegian artist’s latest release: It’s Album Time, Norse is a true dance hit.  The song is essentially a glorified loop, rolling along and picking up more effects with each rotation.  It’s a track that would do well in Paris circa 1998, with its chirping beats and minimalist breakdown towards the song’s end, which picks back up for one last disco spasm.

Terje certainly has a sense of humor, made apparent by the song’s music video that features a mustached dork (Terje himself) dancing through the mundane duties of everyday life.  Near the beginning, the video’s prancing hero narrates: “there are certain types of electronic music that give me the urge to dance, and I feel I have to dance when I hear it.”  So dance he does.  Through the grocery store, the arcade, the bowling alley, the neighborhood, you name it.  I can’t think of a more universal feeling than fighting the urge to cut a rug at the sound of certain tunes.  In fact, I may be doing so right this moment

 

ALBUM REVIEW: Farewell Young Lovers

Crushed StarsTodd Gautreau, the man behind Crushed Stars, left behind electronic music for more melodic, folky sounds demonstrating his exceptional talent as a singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer along the way. Crushed Stars released its fifth album, Farewell Young Lovers on January 21, 2014. Its nine tracks feature poetic, descriptive lyrics, intricate melodies and unorthodox instrumentation.

In Farewell Young Lovers, Crushed Stars draws from a number of musical genres to create its own unique sound. Gautreau extracted elements of folk, rock, jam rock, and even jazz, when creating this strangely complex album. Upon first take, the its overarching qualities consist of Gautreau’s haunting, deep and mumbling (often to the point where it’s inaudible) voice, spacey instrumentation, catchy melodies and guitar hooks. Take a harder listen and it’s clear that Gautreau’s unique combination of instruments with rich and textured instrumentation are common motifs throughout.  Understated and unassuming, Farewell Young Lovers is definitely a slow burner, with Gautreau challenging you to fully grasp all of the intricacies of his music.

“Haters” and “Flowerbomb,” the album’s featured tracks, manage to balance mellow, ambient underpinnings and guitar-driven uptempo beats, while Gautreau’s signature haunting, deep and echoing vocals are showcased in full force making them both the most instantly accessible songs on the album.

With the whammy filled guitar part, the  jam-band esque guitar solo, and Gautreau’s breathy and mumbling (often to the point of incoherency) vocals, “Our Interest in Claire” is one of the spacier tracks on the album, ending on a psychedelic note, with extended and mellow instrumentals.  “Our Interest in Claire,” even more than the other tracks on the album, is able to exist without moving towards any final destination. “Fly” is one of the few tracks that’s truly anchored in melancholia from the onset. The piano enters about 30 seconds in, producing a chilling melody that interacts with Gautreau and the female vocalist’s accompaniment. The result is gorgeous. The textured, multifaceted and unconventional instrumentation on “Fly” makes it by and far the standout track on Farewell Young Lovers.

Gautreau’s electronic roots are most easily detectible on tracks like, the understated and mesmerizing “Poppies.”  With a-typical instruments, Gautreau employs repetition while constantly adding new variations and intricacies to the music. “Supernova” is a mellow folk pop song, and the most “jammy” track on the album, complete with a meandering instrumentals that conclude the song–a perfect track to wake you up on a Sunday morning, perhaps.

On Farewell Young Lovers, Crushed Stars isn’t trying to be anything, but rather lives in the moment. We can all take a page out of Todd Gautreau’s book, and just put some music on and chill out.

 

 

ALBUM REVIEW: New Electric Ride “Balloon Age”

The dream of acid-era Beatles pop is alive in UK quartet New Electric Ride, whose debut full-length Balloon Age will be out February 25th via Beyond Beyond is Beyond Records. Balloon Age checks all the boxes: the hooks are tight, the love songs are cute, and the ear-happy vocal harmonies share spotlight with spooky, tripped-out psychedelia.

It may be pastiche, but it’s well-executed pastiche. Balloon Age‘s appealingly jumpy transitions and instrumental menagerie takes us on a whiplash-ride through the sixties, all its incense and dripping surreality. Familiar life in the exterior world gives way, when you least expect it, to the twisty tunnels inside your head. The catchiest songs on this album exhibit such skillfully laid care that it barely matters that they’re derivative; the bluesy and round-like “I Feel So Excited” stands out not for originality but for, at just under a minute long, hitting a bulls-eye with a formula so well-worn that it’s hard to compellingly pull off. Particularly on the second half of the album, New Electric Ride demonstrates not only a deep saturation in the genre but also the fresh enthusiasm they have for this kind of music, even if, to all appearances, it’s been done to death. The quartet’s loyalty lies unquestionably with songs, and the album can be best understood as a lovingly assembled collection of details and imagery.

It’s in these details that you’ll see New Electric Ride’s contemporariness. “Isn’t it mean how no one can dream about writing a submarine song anymore?” warbles the wistful chorus to “A Submarine Song.” This might be the first time I’ve been happy to discover that a band’s being meta —if they weren’t, they wouldn’t just be taking inspiration from The Beatles, they’d be flat-out ripping them off. “A Submarine Song” teems with whimsical images—including the central one—straight out of the original Submarine song, with an “I Am The Walrus” intro and a bit of “Strawberry Fields” thrown in for spice. The pervasiveness of sixties pop, the song argues, makes it difficult to return to its ideals in new music. Echoing with repetitions of the line “have you heard this tale before,” New Electric Ride pays homage to a sub-genre whose very greatness closes off its vivid imagery and singular direction to new bands.

2013 was a good year for psychedelia. It seemed like everywhere new bands with weird scale patterns and inscrutable lyrics were springing up to push their experiment in unexpected directions, as though it weren’t so much a genre as a way of looking at all kinds of music. Long, layered rock patterns jammed and droned and forewent choruses. Elsewhere, other groups, like The Entrance Band, used heady and occasionally unfriendly tendencies to explore more psychological turf, using the music as metaphor for a excavation of the depths within their heads. Either way, when it was successful, the music’s form felt like a traveling companion, on albums that could be taken as long, exploratory journeys. At the end of a good psych album, I always feel a little drained.

And that, I think, gets at what I don’t like about Balloon Age. The way that New Electric Ride employs psychedelic pop doesn’t have as much to do with their musical experience as it does the experience of the music they’re imitating. It’s not used as a vehicle on this album, it’s a recreation of how sixties groups used it as a vehicle. Or, to put it another way: it’s not a spaceship—it’s a picture of a spaceship, drawn by a really skilled portrait artist.

Balloon Age comes out February 25th on Beyond Beyond is Beyond Records. Until then, you can get your New Electric Ride fix with “Bring What You Expect To Get,” via SoundCloud!

TRACK OF THE WEEK: Prinze George’s Victor

prinze george

Prinze George is an exciting new electronic pop trio from right here in New York. Their latest single, “Victor,” is anchored by lush sounding beats and singer Naomi Almquist’s beguiling vocals. The song is a soulful slow burner for the most part, but it steadily unfurls and picks up the pace near its end. It’s only the band’s second released track and it shows a lot of promise from these up and comers. Here’s to hoping we get some more material from Prinze George soon!

Stream “Victor” below or through today’s mix of the day on Spotify!

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][fusion_soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/130008399″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

ALBUM REVIEW: Held In Splendor

MEX149-Cover-hi-res

“Everything will regenerate as love.” 

“Quilt” is an apt name for this Boston trio, who weave together assorted instruments, genres, and moods on their stirring sophomore album, Held in Splendor. The psych-folk band were already known for their layered vocal harmonies and vintage sound, displayed in full on their 2011 eponymous debut, but Held in Splendor sees the three experimenting with more dynamic arrangements and a pastiche of instruments not previously heard in Quilt’s signature sound. Perhaps it was the addition of drummer John Andrews, who joined founding members/college buds Anna Fox Rochinski and Shane Butler for the making of this album, or perhaps it was the long hours logged in a legit recording studio in Brooklyn, NY, or perhaps it was Woods member Jarvis Taveniere taking the role of producer— something surely gave the band way to blossom beyond its boundaries in these 13 tracks, due out 1/28 on Mexican Summer.

Don’t get me wrong—for those familiar with Quilt, Splendor loses none of the band’s retro sensibilities but it certainly expands on them. “Arctic Shark,” for example, works wonders as the album’s opener, inviting listeners to a warm and happy place with floating sitars and trance-like “Oooh”s layered atop Rochinski’s honeyed voice, singing “Everything will regenerate as love.” It plays like an HD version of one of their earlier songs, as does the later track “Mary Mountain,” recalling textbook psychedelic folk in keeping with The Mamas and the Papas. Songs like “The Eye of the Pearl” and “Talking Trains” brush away the lo-fi fuzz of their previous work so that the vocals are crystal clear, glistening atop a lush blend of piano, banjo, and electronic sound effects in the former and subdued guitar in the latter.

But the album’s stand-outs are the songs that evidence Quilt’s ability to mix things up. “Tie Up The Tides,” for example, is a pop gem at its core, immediately appealing and subtly addicting thanks to that prominent, catchy bass. “A Mirror” is a sprightly song with audible depth that evolves around its upbeat percussion, evoking ‘70s rock and roll with punchy electric guitar licks. And “Secondary Swan” shows off the band’s delicate lyrical prowess (and apparent love of alliteration), with a soft and orchestral, Andrew Bird-esque sound that hides an unexpected, raving rock-out midway through the song, bringing to mind the skittering energy of bands like the Talking Heads or The Feelies. The tracks careen through quite a few twists and turns but many of them bleed into one another, providing a sense of continuity.

With reference points that dot the decades, Held In Splendor is unfettered psychedelic rock, approaching the genre with a wholly contemporary frame of mind. This is what a sophomore album is meant to do: expand on an established sound and provide proof of a budding band’s staying power. And with this release, Quilt make it clear that they aren’t going anywhere.

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][fusion_soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/117794892″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

TRACK REVIEW: David T. Little “…and there was morning – the Second Day”

Haunt-Cover1

David T. Little’s seemingly inborn theatricality complements his music’s strong themes. A classical composer with a rock drumming background who, in the company of an array of edgy and sometimes rock-leaning classical groups–the Kronos Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, and his own project Newspeak, to name a few–flirts with the rock/classical boundary, Little’s got a knack for unlikely but accurate pairings. In “…and there was morning – the Second Day,” the first track released off his forthcoming album Haunt of Last Nightfall, that tension lies between the courteous delicacy of minuet-ish xylophone trills and heavy strains of hard rock.

In early 2013, Little’s evening-long, multi-perspective cantata “Soldier Songs” demonstrated this blend of theme and experimentation on a grand scale. After interviewing soldiers, Little divided the experience into three phases of life–the young soldier playing war games, the fighting soldier, and the old soldier reflecting on his experience–to draw tormented circles around the ultimately incommunicable experience of war. Details like hip hop music filtering out of young soldiers earbuds add sharp, astute, and decidedly Little-ish twists on the music.

In “…and there was morning,” the parallel lines–one light, one heavy–lose separation as the song progresses, the bell-like melody drawn into and eventually transformed by the dark, rock and roll line. For all the new dawn-ness of its title, there’s little salvation in this song. Biblically, the second day marks a separation between the waters, and the creation of the heavenly expanse that sits between them. The song plays with boundaries and borders, considers and inverts the meaning behind their distinctions, but doesn’t seem to end with separation–if anything, the opposite is true. The song begins clear and clean, the xylophone separated into neat phrases, but by halfway through the track this line has been overtaken by chaos, churning electronics and sinister bass line lows. Little’s imagination is active, creating shadows out of clean separations, and a kaleidoscopic image out of a familiar picture.

David T. Little’s new album, Haunt of Last Nightfall, is out February 25th on New Amsterdam Records. Listen to the first single off that album, “…and there was morning – the Second Day” below:

FLASHBACK FRIDAY: “Goodnight Irene”

leadbelly

I woke up this morning to my first Brooklyn snow storm. After promptly deciding that I wasn’t going to leave the my apartment for at least 24 hours, I poured myself a cup of coffee, curled up next to my cat, and put on some folk music.

While some children needed their blankets or teddy bears to fall asleep, I relied on my parent’s rendition of Lead Belly’s American folk classic, “Goodnight Irene.” Some of my earliest childhood memories involve my parents tucking me into bed and attempting (unsuccessfully) to sing “Goodnight Irene” in a two-part harmony.

“Goodnight Irene” was originally sung and recorded by Lead Belly in 1934, but like most American folk songs, its exact origins are unknown. Lead Belly claimed that he was taught the song by his uncles. While he may have borrowed aspects of the melody and structure, Lead Belly modified the song and molded it into what it is today.

Huddie William Leadbetter, or Lead Belly (1888-1949) was an American folk, gospel and blues musician. “Lead Belly” is best known for his unique baritone voice and his prowess as an instrumentalist (specifically on the 12-string guitar). Lead Belly was born into extreme poverty in the countryside of Louisiana. Much of his early life was plagued with criminality and incarceration (twice for homicide and once for attempted homicide). Most of Lead Belly’s songs are subsequently dark, usually touching on racism, alcoholism, depression, prison life and poverty.

During Lead Belly’s final stay in prison he was discovered by folklorists Alan and John Lomax, who petitioned the governor for his pardon. The petition was eventually granted, and between 1934 and 1943 Lead Belly recorded a number of songs for the Library of Congress, one of which was “Goodnight Irene.”

Of course as a child I was oblivious to the song’s dark undertones. “Goodnight Irene,” which was almost definitely not intended as a child’s lullaby, depicts a story of a man who was kicked out by his wife and child for drinking, gambling and infidelity. In the song, Lead Belly mourns and reflects on his actions. A number of the verses contain direct references to suicide (sometimes I have a great notion, to jump in the river and drown //  And if Irene turns her back on me I’d take morphine and die), adding another dimension of solemnity to the already grave lyrics.

“Goodnight Irene” might initially come off as a simple song, although upon deeper listening it can be made clear just how emotionally complex it is. The lyrics are accompanied by basic acoustic strumming. Adornment is minimal yet effective. The rolling ¾ tempo and soothing vocals make the lyrical content of the song all the more jarring. It’s almost as if Lead Belly rocks you to sleep with the music yet wakes you up and slaps you on the face with the lyrics. The result is astounding and heartbreaking.

As with a number of key American folk songs, Goodnight Irene has been covered and modified by a number of musicians, including Johnny Cash, Eric Clapton and The Weavers.  Although Its success has made “Goodnight Irene” an essential example of early folk music and has carved its place as a fundamental component of the American folk music canon, to me, it was most importantly the only song that could put me to sleep as a child.

 

ARTIST PROFILE: Erin Barra

erin barra Audiofemme

Anyone can speak, but to truly have a voice is to affect another’s being by using just your words. This is an art form that Erin Barra has perfected. Barra has mastered this particularly skillful technique by facilitating self-expression through the use of her words, and inspiring young women to do and be more; through her actions. Erin writes music that encourages young girls to be as hands-on as humanly possible. She believes in the idea that women should be an active part of every step of the creative process as musicians. Which makes perfect sense, seeing as she wears so many different hats as a singer, song writer, producer, instrumentalist, teacher, and mentor. Her music is purposeful and captivating. And with the anticipation of her new record Undefined, Erin definitely has our undivided attention. With heartfelt ballads like “Always Almost,” a song that speaks openly and honestly about the disappointment one feels when a relationship just doesn’t make it; and “Still Alive” where Erin sings to us about second chances and coming together to build a stronger unified front, as well as “Visions I see,” a track that inspires the pursuit of dreams. Once it drops, Erin’s new record Undefined is destined to make an even bigger splash than Illusions did. Always a visionary, Barra is finding new and inventive ways to get her music to as many listeners as possible. Her latest video performance is a cover of Daft Punk’s “Up all night”wherein she puts a soulful, electronic spin on the track, beckoning listeners in with its eclectic set of influences, jazz among them . I had the pleasure of conducting an interview with Erin, where we discussed her past, her present and her future. Here’s a how it all went down. After reading this I am certain that all you Audiofemme readers will whole heartedly agree with me on two things: 1). Erin Barra is an amazingly wonderful artist who is uniquely talented, and 2). I desperately need to brush up on my Phil Collins Knowledge. :)

AF: How would you describe yourself as an artist, and how would you describe your music?

EB: Well, I guess I would not necessarily describe myself solely as an artist, I’m like a combination of writer, producer, creative, technical person, so I guess some of the things that define my music are kind of like a rounded depth, you know I’m like harmonically complex, lyrically I kind of take it to more of literary place, and the arrangements are typically pretty complex and involved as well, not only in the elements but in the way that I recorded them as well. And I guess in terms of the sound, I don’t like to limit myself to any specific type of genre and that has been kind of a blessing and a curse; but one blog called my music “electronic progressive soul”, and I think that that’s probably the closest that anyone’s gotten including myself (laughs).

AF: I find that very interesting because the first thought that came to my mind when I listened to your music was: “It’s very soulful.” That’s the first thought that I had, so I think they’re dead on.

EB: Yeah it’s always had this undercurrent of R&B, or some sort of urban element, but it’s definitely not R&B.

AF: What inspired the title for your album Illusions, and what’s your favorite song on the album?

EB: So that record released two years ago, and I spent three years making it, so a lot of the content and the titles and ideas are just directly related to my first five years in New York, which was like a very tumultuous time for me as a young artist; kind of realizing that I wasn’t as important as I had figured I was before I got to New York (laughs). And I kind of went through a process of becoming less naïve, and you know, realized that pretty much everything I thought about life was not the way that it was, so you know, the title to the album; it just came really naturally because it was just very obvious that I was being disillusioned to some degree and things weren’t really anything that I thought they were.

AF: Would you like to tell me anything about your new project before I even get a listen?

EB: (Laughs) Sure. It’s called Undefined, and it’s a lot more mature sounding; it’s simpler. Harmonically, lyrically, melodically, it’s more straight ahead; which is kind of where my life is at right now. And also I went even further into the electronica side of things so it still has this really like organic, analog, alive sound to it, but I did a bunch of midi programming and digital work on top of the organic sound scape, so it’s kind of like a mix. You know, and I released a mixtape as well, after Illusions where it’s just electronic remixes of other songs I had done, so it’s like a combination of those two albums really, it’s like the organic side of things and then a really heavy emphasis on the technical electronic side as well.

AF: I was looking on the website and I read a little about BeatsbyGirlz, but could you tell me a little more about it? Like what the purpose is, and what you would like to see come out of it.

EB: Sure. The purpose is to encourage and empower young women to explore and use technology, not only as a way to express themselves, but as a potential career path. There’s a huge lack of role support and role models that exist for other women to look up to say: “oh you know, this is a possibility for me. I could be a producer, or I could be an engineer.” You know if there were ten other Santigold’s that we could reference. I imagine that that’s where we’re headed. We want to encourage women to get their hands on the technology, learn how to troubleshoot, and get more females on that side of the industry because we are so hugely unrepresented that I really do feel like being one of the few females in this field, it’s my responsibility to pay it forward and encourage other women to take the path as well.

AF: It’s so interesting that you say that, because the next question that I was going to ask was who are some of your favorite musicians and idols? Or just women that you look up to and maybe draw inspiration from.

EB: Somebody that I really identify with a lot is Annie Lennox. As a writer she’s very hands on with like the production and arrangement of her albums. It’s organic, it’s electronic, and it’s deep. And she’s like unapologetically very female, and doesn’t really care how she’s perceived, and I enjoy that. I’m a big fan of Santigold and Tokimonsta. That’s more of like the current artist. Let’s see…who else? Janelle Monae. Her album and just like the fearlessness and creative license that she takes, I find to be very refreshing.

AF: In what ways do you feel that you’ve grown as a songwriter? And has your process when writing songs changed over the years?

EB: Like I said before, I think that my maturity as a human being is reflected in the song writing. It’s much simpler, you know I think I’ve taken a “less is more” approach; whereas before I had sort of a “more is more” (laughs) way of doing things. And my life use to be very complicated and turbulent and I think that that’s the place I was writing from. Before I just had so much to say, and trying to fit all of that into a song can be really difficult. But now as I age, I’ve become a much simpler human being just in general. And I’m far less confused and complicated so it’s been the same with my writing. You know, less chords, less lyrics, less complex rhythms; just kind of focusing on what it is that I want to express, and getting to the root of it. Getting in and getting out (laughs). And I think it’s the best way to write honestly. And I do a lot of melody first stuff now, whereas before I was definitely a lyric first type of a writer.

AF: What is a typical day like for you? And what is a typical day OFF like for you?

EB: Hmm…what IS a day off? (Laughs) Um right now 2014 is insanely busy. I guess I wake up. I do all my email response stuff in the morning. I go to yoga, like I’m very committed to like Nyasa practice. It helps because in order to be creatively grounded your mind needs to be at peace; in order to be on command creatively. Then I go to the studio. This week I had five co-writes, five days in a row. So I was either with an artist in the studio, helping them write songs, or was doing it via Google hangouts for some people that aren’t in New York that I’m working with. And that takes about three hours. And then I spend another three developing different arrangements, doing a lot of file sharing (laughs) and mixing. Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays I’m at the Girls club teaching the girls. And then I also work for Ableton so I travel for them occasionally and I’d be in the Northeast part of America doing retail training, workshops, demos, all sorts of stuff on the technical side. Between what’s going on with the Girls club (Beats by Girlz), Ableton, and me freelancing, I currently have not a single free moment. But I actually prefer that. It’s so much better than being stagnant and kind of not having a lot going on. I’d rather be like towards the overwhelmed side of the spectrum, rather than having huge amounts of free time. My income is directly related to how much work I have, so the more the better in my mind. I can sleep when I’m dead.

AF: Well that’s a great outlook to have (laughs), and what about a typical day off? I know you haven’t had one in a while, but what are some of the things that you like to do when you do have some time off?

EB: Um I like to cook. I’m definitely kind of hands on with the food that I put past my lips. I’m a big vegetable person. I really believe in getting enough fiber (laughs). I just like to shop seasonally. It’s like, New York has such amazing Farmer’s markets so I’ll just buy whatever is in season and then go home and get creative with whatever I have on hand. And I do a lot of Yoga. So I really don’t even do a lot anymore. It’s like, I make music, I practice Yoga, I cook food, and I hang out with my boyfriend (laughs).

AF: Are there any upcoming shows that you would like our AudioFemme listeners to know about?

EB: We are kind of taking a backseat on performing right now. A lot of what I do onstage is really technical, it’s like multiple laptops, multiple synthesizers, and midi controllers. And it’s really difficult to translate that onstage unless you have a controlled situation. And most venues and lineups don’t provide that sort of control. So we’re actually switching gears and putting more emphasis onto video content performance wise, so that we can reach a greater audience, and be in people’s homes. So there’s a video that we just made of a live remix performance of a Daft Punk song.

AF: And lastly, I wanted to play a little game with you. It’s something that I came up with, called: How well do you know you? Where I will recite a line from one of your songs and see if you can guess which song it’s from.

EB: Oh God (laughs) okay.

AF: The first line is: It ain’t black and white, cause I see in several shades of grey.

EB: Um……….that’s from “I’m out.”

AF: Yes! One point for Erin!!

EB: Cool (Laughs)

AF: Next line is: Send me a someone with which my seed to sow.

EB: That’s from “Good Man.”

AF: Yes! Next line is: So why does it always seem to be, me looking at you, you looking at me?

EB: Oh that’s actually a genesis song. It’s a cover, I didn’t write that. Phil Collins did (Laughs).

AF: Oops! Sorry about that! It was a great cover though (Laughs). The last one is: Disguise them in the NY Times, and I’ll snub them out on the sidewalk.

EB: That’s “Skyline”

AF: Wow good job (laughs) you got all of them. Thank you so much for doing this interview with AudioFemme you were great, and I really enjoyed your music.

EB: Aw thank you. And I hope you enjoy the new music as well!

Check out her cover of “Get Lucky” here, and keep your eyes out for her forthcoming  EP, Undefined, due 2/11.

While you’re at it, check out Erin’s indiegogo campaign, Beats by Girlz, and show this righteous lady some love.

 

WEEKLY NEWS: MAKJ announces N. American Headlining tour, Debut solo album from T. Hardy Morris, MT Warnings’ new video, + Sick Individuals tour

  • MAKJ will be hitting every major stop in the US & Canada on his first full North American Headline Tour, including plays at Coachella, Northern Lights Festival, XS & Surrender, Ruby Skye, Webster Hall, and Winter Music Conference. Pre-sale tickets go on sale today, followed by general on-sale on Monday January 27th at 10am local time. All pre-sale ticket holders will automatically be entered to win a chance to meet MAKJ before each show (five winners will be chosen at random). Follow this link to snag them before they sell out!

post

  • T. HARDY MORRIS ANNOUNCES 2014 TOUR DATES WITH  DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS, THE AUTUMN DEFENSE, AND ROBERT ELLIS FREE SIX-SONG DIGITAL EP LIVE AT THE GEORGIA THEATRE WITH PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED SONG “DRINKING OF YOU”

DEBUT SOLO ALBUM AUDITION TAPES OUT NOW

post4

T. Hardy Morris is excited to announce 2014 tour dates in support of his debut solo album Audition Tapes, out now on Dangerbird Records. The breakout effort from the Dead Confederate frontman and member of Diamond Rugs, Audition Tapes has been lauded by Stereogum for its “calming beauty,” won acclaim from Paste for its “wildly passionate” songwriting, and described by American Songwriter as “a raw, unfiltered view of an artist evolving and growing in front of our very eyes, setting the scene for repeat listens and years of enjoyment.”  The upcoming tour dates, listed below, will pair Morris on bills with Drive-By Truckers, Wilco side project The Autumn Defense, and Robert Ellis. Upcoming tour dates below.  Listen to and download Live at The Georgia Theatre post5 Watch the Transistor Six directed music video for the album verion of “Audition Tapes” Watch all the “Audition Tapes From Places In Peril” videos here. Upcoming Tour Dates: JANUARY 31 – Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel w/ Drive-By Truckers FEBRUARY 08 – Rehoboth Beach, DE – Dogfish Head Brewery w/ The Autumn Defense 11 – New York, NY – Highline Ballroom w/ The Autumn Defense 12 – Allston, MA – Great Scott w/ The Autumn Defense 14 – Athens, GA – 40 Watt Club w/ Drive-By Truckers 25 – Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle Back Room w/ Robert Ellis 26 – East Atlanta, GA – The Earl w/ Robert Ellis 27 – Athens, GA – Normaltown Hall w/ Robert Ellis 28 – Asheville, NC – Grey Eagle w/ Robert Ellis MARCH 01 – Louisville, KY – Zanzabar 03 – Nashville, TN – The Basement w/ Robert Ellis 06 – Birmingham, AL – Bottletree Cafe w/ Robert Ellis 07 – Savannah, GA – Savannah Stopover Music Festival

  • Sick Individuals is getting ready to embark on their US tour including Slake on February 7th

sick individuals.. For ticket info visit: http://www.wantickets.com/Events/147694/Sick-Individuals/ LIKE Sick Individuals on Facebook, and tag yourself in this post to win tckts:   View Sick Individuals: “Shock”

  • MT WARNING releases new single 2/17, new video out now for Midnight Dawn

With his debut album set for release on March 28th, MT Warning reveals the video for his brand new single Midnight Dawn.  Typical of the sprawling desert Rock, that pervades the album, the single is released on 17th February Check it here: DEBUT ALBUM – MIDNIGHT SET – RELEASED 28th MARCH

Mikey Bee was playing a solo show in Australia, when American film-maker Taylor Steele happened to be in the audience and was intrigued by the performance. The film-maker approached the musician with a different way of writing songs.  “How would a song sound from a man sinking into the ocean?” The musician answered with a song washed with anticipation, determined lyrics, and denial.  A discovery of new music was explored.

Together they pushed the idea of a song telling a unique story while being part of a visual story, played out over an album which came to represent life’s cycle – a journey from one side of the day to the other, as much as from one side of life to the end.

The outcome is dynamic, an album that is visually thick, sonically sprawling and lyrically subtle in the most poetic sense. A recording of the interactions between us, what lies just beyond and utilizing music as the movie.

TRACK REVIEW: Tropic Of Pisces “More [And More]”

pisces

New York-based Mathew Scheiner, aka Tropic Of Pisces is dropping his debut EP Symmetry on February 25th.  Formerly the guitarist for Oberhofer, Scheiner has gone solo to explore a more synthetic sound, one that is far less rock directed than that of his previous band.  More [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][And More]”, the EP’s third track, is exemplary of this desired distance from the confines of a pop-rock grou,.

The song is a dance track without a doubt, but a subdued one.  It opens with a crackle and hum that are barely audible; building tension for the punctuating synths that burst it open. This setup reminds me of some of Fred Falke’s most recent work: the song becomes textured with a solid, tinny drumbeat holding down the frolicking synthesizer, which is more dull than aggressive.  A funk-laced bass line is my favorite trait of the song, as it recalls those riffs of the French House canon.  The bridge features what sounds like a digitized guitar, wailing like a coked-up mall soundtrack.

At first his vocals stand on a solo track, but it eventually replicate into a choral harmony reminiscent of Fleet Foxes, giving the whole thing a folk coating over its electro-dance core. Despite the well arranged beats, Scheiner’s voice is nothing rapturous.  He’s on key, and there’s a sweetness to his style, though I can’t say it stands apart from the thousand others creating this genre of music.

Catch Tropic of Pisces at Piano’s on Feruary 15th, and listen to More [And More] below.


[retweet][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

TRACK REVIEW: Sylvan Esso “Coffee”

Sylvan Esso

Sylvan Esso

What’s better at warming brittle bones in the brutal cold than a piping hot cup of coffee?  The only thing I can even think of is the newest track from Brooklyn-based electro-pop outfit Sylvan Esso, and wouldn’t you know, it’s named after everyone’s favorite caffeinated beverage.  The song is less about daily roast and more about sensuous evocations of comfort and home.  Amelia Meath’s lush vocals deliver salient lines like “I know my words will dry upon the skin / Just like a name I remember hearing” before asking “Do you love me?”  Twinkling electronic flourishes and crystalline chimes adorn a thick blanket of bouncy bass, courtesy of Nick Sanborn.  Each element is carefully articulated as the track breathes and stretches around Meath’s eloquent longing.

Sanborn is best known for his work in Megafaun, Meath for her folksy Mountain Man project.  The duo released a 12″ for their equally infectious debut singles “Hey Mami” and “Play it Right” via Trekky in July.  “Coffee” will be released as a 12″ by Partisan Records on March 25th, with a b-side entitled “Dress”.

With playful shout-outs to Tommy James & the Shondells, textural percussion, and vivid imagery, this track is going to stick around like a crush on your favorite barista.

VIDEO REVIEW + OP-ED: “The Apple” and “Everyday Robots”

Damon-Albarn

The video for ”Everyday Robots,” off Blur frontman Damon Albarn‘s forthcoming solo debut, is as minimalist and hypnotizing as the song itself. The imagery’s progression shows the slow creation of a digitalized portrait of Albarn—first a skull forms, with a gold front tooth, mouth and eyes take shape out of what looks like red putty, abstract tubes turn to neck muscles that stretch over the skull’s face. Once completed, the Alburn turns grey and two more identical copies appear, bouncing back and forth along the parameters of a white backdrop, like images floating across a computer screensaver. The video’s design is richly detailed and extremely fun to watch, thanks to creative designer Aitor Throop, but comes off a little clinical—and overstated—given the music it’s matched to.

“We are everyday robots on our phones,” Albarn sings, over a looping stanza of clock-like electronic rhythms and violin trills. The lyrics cast long shadows over a society of alone people, working always towards greater isolation and more total immersion in virtual reality. It’s an unspecial gimmick. Who hasn’t griped about technology dependence? The song, like a piece of Danish furniture, is gorgeous but manicured to hell. Albarn’s voice has always had an impassive transparency to it that helped him sing sentimental lines without overloading on theatricality, but with material so streamlined and dispassionate, the vocals are frigid.

I’m trying to imagine this song pinned against a more obvious kind of music video, something more recognizable as a story line—cold, gray cities, maybe, cars on a highway, Albarn standing still as a blurred crowd rushes by. It probably wouldn’t be as good as the video is in its current form. The details, like the ridges along the skull’s bone and the sporadic, and how machine-ishly the head swivels, offering each of its angles to best advantage, are stunning. The perspective from inside a computer, though—when lopped on top of the subject matter of the song and the pulsing electronic beats—are too much. Especially so when, at the end, the rhythm moves from basso continuo-status up to the foreground of the music, recalling a heart monitor machine, with all of its connotations of melodrama. It’s just so damn serious.

Pop songs that wrap a moral into themselves always walk a tricky line. Of course the music has a history of social involvement. Protest music, jazz, reggae, and soul all arguably emerged in response to a need for music to enact social reorganization. Popular music harnesses large groups of people into an action because of its singalongability, so it’s interesting that both “Everyday Robots” and our next video, “The Apple (For Alan Turing)” repeat melodies and lyrical phrases. Vagueness works well in pop, too: lyrics are short, bendable, mishearable; key shifts can be interpreted according to mood, and what the music means is often linked to a memory or association unique to the person listening to the music. Conversely, when something is so fixedly about what it’s about as “Everyday Robots” is about technological development in society, the scope of the song feels rigid and loses much of its power to surprise us, to be free-flowingly beautiful rather than just, as “Everyday Robots” is, pretty.

If “Everyday Robots” has too much distance from its subject to be compelling, the opposite may be true of Fiction’s “The Apple (For Alan Turing),” which would, I think, gain a lot of precious ambiguity by simply removing the parenthetical. “The Apple” is a retelling of UK mathematician and very early (1950s!) programmer and code-writer, who chose chemical castration over jail time when he was convicted of gross indecency for his homosexuality. In a nod to the Snow White fairy tale, which he loved, Turing killed himself a few years later with a couple of bites of an apple that he’d shot full of cyanide. “Everyday Robots” trends futuristic; this song takes us back, and the video is a black-and-white, home video-like representation of the day of a man’s life. The man—Turing, evidently, because we see him writing equations on a blackboard—goes running through a field, pours wine, has a conversation with a chain-smoking, nervous-looking younger man, and turns to hold eye contact with the camera when the lyric “The code was really nothing much and I just took a bite” comes along. The video is preceded by a full reproduction of a note written by Turing after he learned that he was going to be taken to court.

This video takes us into the details of Turing’s life with as much fidelity as the song itself does, and pound for pound, that’s a lot. It’s fairly common for indie bands to make songs or whole albums that dwell on one historical person, or in a general past era—Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over The Sea was reportedly believed to be inspired by the life of Anne Frank, and Jus Post Bellum recently released Oh July, which followed the lives of a working class married couple living during the Civil War—but Fiction’s track, especially taken alongside the video, leaves little to the imagination. Had they not named Alan Turing in the title, though, the lyrics would be more provocative than biographical. Some lines, like “They’ve been making my mind up, they’ve been turning my body into something it’s not” come across lushly, with the vocal line making its ascent to the highest point in the piece and then cascading downwards on the word “not.” Out of context, they’re intriguing. I would much prefer to have to do some of my own digging to link the song to Alan Turing, rather than see it stated. After all, Neutral Milk Hotel never confirmed that their album really was about Anne Frank. In pop music, the payoff of cultivating mystery is pretty remarkable: ambiguities in songs fade into questions that cult fans can compare evidence over for decades.

The last cut on Fiction’s 2013 debut album, “The Apple”’s subject matter holds relevance today, too. Turing received a posthumous Royal Pardon  only this Christmas. But though a reminder of Turing’s story is certainly appropriate in a year of equal rights setbacks and breakthroughs in almost the same measure, the song reads mostly like a love story to Turing’s specific case. The individual admiration on this track is very compelling—though the video is a little lackluster—and I’d forgive the vocal lines here almost anything. Softened with a shimmering, lightly electronic backdrop, Mike Barrett and James Howard’s vocal harmonies emerge with a beautiful delicacy, and a real sense that love is propelling the song.

LOUD & TASTELESS: Sigur Rós

Every Thursday, AF profiles a style icon from the music world. This week, check out the beautiful boys of Sigur Ros, whose inimitably dark and mysterious ethos have ladies (and gentlemen) across the globe swooning.

Sigur Ros Loud&Tasteless

I’ve honestly never read 50 Shades of Grey, despite the swarm of girls flocking to a Barnes and Nobles to retrieve a copy. Of course I heard (and endlessly saw on Facebook), all about women dreaming of that perfect man while discovering their sexuality. Luckily, I didn’t need that book for either. And if I was still in middle school and needed to read something to spark my inner fantasies, it would certainly be about a boy in a band, dressed in all spectrums of dark. When it came to attitude, he would certainly be a “bad boy.” But what would he wear? I’m thinking of a bandmate who can literally pull off all fifty shades of grey. He would be professionally and classically decked out with hints of rebellion. His music would reflect in his fashion: dark, mysterious, clean, held together with military buttons. I don’t think any of us can pronounce their names quite as melodically as their music sounds, but I think the members of Sigur Ros dresses like that man.

Formed in the largest city in Iceland, current members Jón Pór Birgisson, Kjartan Sveinsson, Georg Hólm, and Orri Páll Dýrason, nailed it after two decades; their style is eloquently elusive. They can sport blue jeans, but rock black slacks with more sophistication, which are usually paired with a wrinkle-free sweater, dark button-up, or a Sherlock Holmes-esque blazer. However, Sigur Ros dresses down too- unwinding with solid v-necks, bright plaid patterns, and stripes. Their clothes are unfailingly form-fitting; they invariably look sharp in every photo shoot. The experimental band carries that shadowy style with them on stage, too. There’s an appreciable amount of live videos that underscore their aphoristic stage presence. Their shows can seem opaque and very dark, but think of it as a nebulous glow, seeing and hearing space, delicately.

Get sartorially inspired by the group’s dapper look, via our Pinterest page. And while you’re at it, listen to ekki múkk via Soundcloud, here:

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][prw username=”audiofemme” boardname=”loud-tasteless-sigur-rós” maxfeeds=”10″ divname=”myList” printtext=”0″ target=”newwindow” useenclosures=”yes” thumbwidth=”100″ thumbheight=”100″ showfollow=”medium”][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

TRACK REVIEW: Blondfire “Young Heart”

 

blondfireKin duo Bruce and Erica Driscoll formed into Blondfire only recently, yet the band has already trailblazed the path for the indie scene, recently hitting the number 1 spot on iTunes Alternative. But get this- they did it without a record label. Nothing more galvanizing than that. In the interim between their attention grabbing debut and their forthcoming sophomore release, they’ve been busy playing every single major festival, and touring  with greats like Surfer Blood and AWOL Nation.

A year since “Where The Kids Are” premiered, they are returning with another magnificent dreamy-pop rock single, “Young Heart.” The Driscoll’s have found the perfect formula for the track, emphasizing on the balance of a bouncy synth and guitar-driven melodies . Erica’s vocals are cavernous and entrancing; she sounds like the vernal equinox–each note delivering hope for renewal and the redemption. “Love lost, but look what you found now. Give it to the past ‘cuz you’re such a young heart,” she sweetly croons, giving optimism to those who’ve had love vanish before their eyes like a magic trick.

You can thank the sibling’s unique parental influences for the spark in their songwriting: their father taught Bruce the beauty of noodling on the electric guitar, while their music’s Bossanova undertones can be credited to their Brazilian mother–a classically trained pianist. Check out “Young Heart,” off of their forthcoming full length due out 2/11 on Tender Tender Rush.

TRACK OF THE WEEK 01/20: The Mast, “Luxor”

image

Riding over ruins on a red balloon twilight

For all those who have yet to satisfy their thirst for experimental electro pop this year, don’t worry, you will soon be satiated. Brooklyn based duo The Mast is releasing their newest album, Pleasure Island on January 28th off of Channel A Records. “Luxor” is their fourth single off of the upcoming album.

 The Mast (percussionist Matt Kilmer and vocalist Haleh Gafori) have been constantly evolving as a duo. From the more instrumental beats and subdued vocals of Wild Poppies (2011), to the ethereal, other-wordly sounds emanating off of Pleasure Island, Kilmer and Gafori’s have taken experimentation to a new level.

“Luxor,” the most recent single off of Pleasure Island falls right in line with the album’s first three releases (“UpUpUp,” “Raining Down,” “So Right”) with its intricate and mesmerizing vocal effects. Gafori’s voice entrances, as it soars above the beats, reaching new heights (literally and figuratively), and displaying a range octaves higher than anything off of Wild Poppies. During “Luxor,” she not only collaborates with the beats, but also with her own voice: at  any given point there are at least two different vocal tracks  interacting with one another.

Percussions on the track took a turn for the experimental as well. Kilmer seems to have put down the instruments and picked up the synth to create beats that are driving and nonabrasive simultaneously, complimenting the vocals perfectly and in turn creating a sense of dialogue, rather than background and foreground, between him and Gafori.

In the true spirit of modern collaboration, Kilmer and Gafori created Pleasure Island while they were on other sides of the world. Kilmer laid down the beats and Gafori added vocals, melodies and her own arrangements. They would send the tracks back and forth to each other for tweaking, until the album was complete. Subsequently when hearing “Luxor,” one gets the sense that the two are listening intently to each other to create musical discourse.

While “Luxor,” the first track off of Pleasure Island is only 3.17 minutes, in no time at all it manages to transport you into another world. Gafori’s ethereal soprano voice over Kilmer’s textured electro pop beats pack enough power to send the listener to Pluto (to start up a dance party) and back. The Mast will be having an album release party at the Mercury Lounge on February 8th.

VIDEO REVIEW: Agnes Obel’s “The Curse”

agnes-obel-2013-2-w1280h420@2x

Danish artist Agnes Obel has recently released North American tour dates in support of her latest album, Aventine.  She will be hitting up NYC’s Bowery Ballroom on March 2nd, and given the video for her song “ The Curse “, I expect it will be a sullen but beautiful set.

The music video was certainly composed with an artful eye; it’s filmed in black and white, yet the palette ranges from crisp achromatic shots to hues of sepia and cream.  The opening scenes, which feature almost everything but Obel herself, remind me of the sinister imagery of Ingmar Bergman.  In one frame archaic buildings come in and out of focus while birds-or maybe tadpoles-smear across the sky.  Cloudscapes, architectural compositions reminiscent of M.C. Escher’s staircases, and showers of sparks all contribute to an unsettling and ghostly short film.  The ambiance produced by these visuals is perfectly matched with the moody ballad, which features piano, viola, and cello, as well as Obel’s haunting voice.

Though the video was shot in Berlin, it has an otherworldly quality that can’t be confined to a particular place or time.  Enjoy the video, and catch Obel on her tour.  If you’re not in New York, see the remaining tour dates below.

 

Feb 20 – Wakefield, QC – Blacksheep Inn

Feb 21 – Toronto, ON – The Great Hall

Feb 22 – Burnstown, ON – Neats

Feb 25 – Montreal, QC – Gesu Centre

Feb 26 – Quebec City, QC – Palais Montcalm

Feb 27 – Montreal, QC – Gesu Centre – Montreal Winter Highlights

Mar 1 – Cambridge, MA – First Church

Mar 2 – New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom

Mar 4 – Philadelphia, PA – World Cafe Live

Mar 6 – San Francisco, CA – The Independent

Mar 8 – Seattle, WA – St. Mark’s Cathedral

Mar 9 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir

Mar 12 – Los Angeles, CA – The Roxy