Month: April 2014

TRACK OF THE WEEK: Bebe Panthere “Gimme All Your Money”

[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”]

Bebe Panthare
Steven Chu Photography

Brooklyn based pop diva Bebe Panthere (aka Effie Liu, former backing vocalist for French Horn Rebellion) might be classically trained on the piano and violin, but if “Gimme All Your Money,” the first single off of her upcoming EP Pink Sweat is any indication, she’s doing everything she can to defy her classical roots. With heavy bass lines, electronic instrumentation and sexually suggestive lyrics, “Gimme All Your Money” is about as far away from Mozart, Vivaldi or Brahms as you can get. Bebe Panthere’s more contemporary influences, mainly ‘80s pop and ‘70s punk, however can be easily detected throughout.

“Gimme All Your Money” sets off with a dynamic bass line that bends and shifts throughout the track. After minimal musical development, Panthere’s vocals enter into the mix. She starts off with a slow, breathy, sultry whisper. Her voice grows stronger as she sings for a fleeting moment until it climaxes into a growling squeal, only to instantly pull back. As if the various facets of her speaking and singing voice weren’t demonstrated clearly enough in the chorus and and opening verses, she even goes so far as to tack on a rap verse at the end.

A song titled “Gimme All Your Money,” is expected to possess a certain amount of attitude, and Panthere does not disappoint. The opening line, “Gimme all your money, hand it over honey” is repeated throughout for emphasis while the song transitions into new sections musically. The vixen assumes sexual dominance when she declares, “You and I are going to rage… tonight. Face the truth. Are you trying to be funny, be a dummy? I’ll take you to school.”  Though aggressive, she never appears as if she’s over exerting herself.  Words fall out of her mouth calmly and spontaneously as she transitions seamlessly from one style to another.

Bebe Panthere describes herself as une bébé dans la discothéque and I couldn’t agree more. From her textured, dynamic music to her haute pink colored hair, she’s as  confident musically as she is aesthetically arresting. Keep an eye out for Pink Sweat, but until then check out “Gimme All Your Money”, AF’s track of the week, below.

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

TRACK REVIEW: Haley Bonar’s “Kill the Fun”

 haley-bonar-press-photo-1
All great stories often start with an open mic; Haley Bonar‘s included. What’s more inspiring than a nineteen year-old on a quest for musical discovery? One who actually finds it. Haley is here years later, with an eagerly awaited album, Last War (via Graveface Records), set for May 20th. With a solid band by her side I expect Last War to be every bit as poetic as her previous albums. And by the sound of “Kill the Fun,” the album’s first release, I can tell it will be the perfect summer soundtrack. The track is opposite to the title, in it’s actually lively and enjoyable. It’s structure is carefree, and  contains visually evocative phrases like “laughing at the future that was hanging from the trees.” Despite darker its darker lyrics, the synths and melodic guitar are exceptionally breezy. This uninterrupted ditty is going to be perfect when I can finally lay outside, over a quilt, and staring into the sky of nothingness.
Listen to “Kill The Fun” here via Soundcloud:

INTERVIEW: Teeny Lieberson of TEEN

Teen Teeny Lieberson

Teen Teeny Lieberson

AudioFemme caught up with Teeny Lieberson to chat about TEEN’s new album The Way and the Color, what the possibility of motherhood means to musicians, and advice for ladies aspiring to become musicians.

AudioFemme: I heard that you’re touring with Phantogram, which is awesome.

Teeny Lieberson: Yeah. We’re really excited about it.

AF: Are you going to be with them for the entire tour?

 TL: For the US leg. I think they go to Europe after that. We’re not going with them.

AF: Can you talk a little bit about how you got started with this record?

TL: I actually started it as a solo recording project. It kind of just grew from there. I was recording a little album on a four track recorder and then it just felt like the songs were strong so we decided to make a record. I asked my sisters to come play because they were free. Then, it just kept developing from there. Jane was an original member and she kept playing bass for about two years. She recorded the Carolina EP with us. She left the band this year and now we have a new bassist.

AF: What is like playing in a band with your family? Any sibling rivalry? Family drama?

TL: Not a ton. It’s good in the sense that taste-wise and choice-wise we are often on the same page and it’s pretty unspoken which makes writing easy. That’s why we’re able to do things quickly. Bickering happens. But it resolves itself pretty quickly.

AF: What was it like growing up with so many musicians in your family? Did you play together when you were young? Are either of your parents musical?

TL: Both of our parents are musicians. My father was a composer, my mother plays rock and folk music and toured. We had it around us all the time. We didn’t play our instruments very much. Catherine just started playing the drums. It hasn’t been long at all, so it’s pretty impressive. It shows the genes are there. But you know, we sang a lot. We sang constantly around the piano. It was a part of us being kids. But then as we got older we started to ignore each other [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][laughs].

AF: Your album has very heavy r&b influences, but there’s also electronic music. Can you talk a little about that process? Mixing the electronic stuff into the live instrumentation?

TL: A lot of that stuff happens post. We usually start with the bare bones of the band when we’re tracking the songs. Our producer likes us to get as much live material as possible. We record drums, bass, guitar, and keys and that forms the basic layer track. From there we go in and add whatever we want to and the producer chops things up or adds in synth or takes the drums out or adds reverb or a sound to the snare at a certain point. A lot of that is in the production. He was chopping things up as I was playing them sometimes.

AF: What are some of your earlier musical influences? What did you grow up listening to?

TL: There are so many influences. I’m definitely attracted to powerful singers, no matter what genre. When I was younger I really idolized Ella Fitzgerald and how imaginative her vocabulary was. Hearing her scat is just totally insane. I would listen to Courtney Love. Of course, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Al Green, D’Angelo, Mary J Blige, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu. I tried to sound like them when I was a teenager. I loved that R&B singers use their voice to tell a story while also doing all of these other things and creating so much color throughout. That’s definitely what we were going for with this record.

AF: You’ve probably listened to this album a thousand times. Has your feeling of it changed now that you’ve listened so much and played it live?

TL: Yeah. It goes both ways. It kind of loses a bit of its story, of its personal touch. You have to find a new story with it when performing. So much of my writing has an indirect correlation to an experience so when the moment has passed it changes how you feel about a song. When you’re performing it, it becomes its own separate thing from the recording. That’s really fun. You can explore in a totally different way. We like emulating what we did, but we also really enjoy trying things really differently live. I know not everyone likes that, but I really do. It makes something more exciting for us and in the long run for the audience to hear.

AF: Do you have a favorite song off of the album?

TL: It changes. I definitely love “Sticky,” that’s one of my favorites. It’s one of the more personal songs. Well, that song is just about motherhood and exploring that – what comes with it, what comes with the possibility of it. The inner workings of someone’s mind; deciding whether or not to have a child. Every woman goes through that at some point. I would imagine most women go through it because it’s biological. It’s something I didn’t want to be afraid to explore. I was wondering why more people aren’t talking about it. There are so many female musicians and not many of them talk about motherhood or even just the question of it. I think it’s changing now, too, with being a modern woman and the idea of not having children. As a musician, I’m on the road all of the time I just wanted to embrace that. It seems a little taboo, which I think is ridiculous.

AF: Do you feel like you’ll eventually have kids?

TL: I don’t know. I’m getting older so it’s something I’m thinking about actively. It’s become a topic of conversation more now that I’m getting older. But my career has also become a bigger part of life. I don’t think they can’t go hand-in hand, but what I do unfortunately, requires a lot of travel. I don’t have an answer yet.

AF: “Sticky” has a really strong gospel element to it. That makes it stand out to us. Did that happen organically in the song-writing process?

TL: I actually demoed that song separate from the rest of this record. I had worked on it with this other project that I was doing with another producer we work with. I started it based on – not trying to compare it at all, but the inspiration for the song – Max Roach and Abby Lincoln. They did this record called We Insist, a totally amazing civil rights record. There’s this one song called “Driving Man” with a section in a different time signature. I actually wrote the song starting with that signature in 5. “Driving Man” has that thump and the strong vocal. It sounds spiritual, not sure if it actually is. It was a direct inspiration, for sure. I liked the idea of it being bare in the front section and building up into the chorus. It happened naturally, while also having the spirit of that song. Gospel music is also just the most powerful music in my opinion. So anytime I can channel that feeling…

AF: Now that you’ve finished this album and you’re touring, do you see the band staying together and making more albums? What’re your thoughts for the future?

TL: I think all of us are pretty into it. We’re going to keep making records for as long as its possible. Both of my sisters make music on the side. I’m going to make a solo record when there’s time. But for us as a band, we’re definitely going to keep going. We’re only just getting good now, so it can only get better. We’re starting to touch on things that make sense musically with each other. That feels good.

AF: Do you have any dream collaborations? Some that are in reach for you?

TL: D’Angelo. I’m so obsessed with him. There aren’t too many people I’m obsessed with. But he doesn’t make music anymore. Love Little Dragon. That would be really cool. I love the way she sings, love the way they approach music. I love St. Vincent, also. She’s amazing.

AF: How is it touring? Exhausting? Exhilarating? Any touring stops you love?

TL: I am somebody who I think does very well with touring. I really enjoy the freshness of a new city every day. It’s really exciting. I love how many new people you meet, relationships you make on the road. I love how spontaneous all of it feels. Festivals are definitely the highlight of touring. Especially in Europe because you meet so many musicians and it’s always the most fun. Good weather makes touring so much better.

We went to Europe last year and we actually did really well. We were surprised by how well we were doing. Audiences were great. But it was gray for thirty days straight. And cold. We were thinking, why are we tired, why are we bummed out? Also trying to stay healthy and sleep a lot. Sleeping and eating become number one. Of course they’re number one in everyday life. But on tour you’re always panicked about sleep and food. But something about your life becoming that basic can be really relaxing for people like me. All I have to worry about is when I’m gonna eat or sleep. For others, because you don’t have control over those things, it can be really uncomfortable.

I love touring. I live with my boyfriend, so being away from him is the worst part. But that’s it!

AF: Does he ever join you on tour?

TL: He did this last time which was really nice. He surprised me on the road. I think our next tour is only six weeks long. So, hopefully he’ll visit me on this next tour.

I think Phantogram and TEEN is going to be a great match on this new tour, too. Hopefully the audience will embrace us.

AF: Do you have any words of wisdom or advice for a younger girl or woman aspiring to be a professional musician?

TL: I’d say: practice as much as you possibly can, do not be intimidated by anyone (male or female), and the most important thing is to keep going at all times, even if you get a bad review or someone writes a horrible comment. I know people say this all the time, but it really is true: perseverance is number one. Perseverance separates the people who can from those who can’t. It’s really hard. I mean you’re doing what you love. But there’s so much competition in music. It’s difficult but it’s worth it.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

LIVE REVIEW: Baths & Young Fathers at Bowery Ballroom

“We just announced a new EP today. This is the title track and it’s about dead people,” Will Wiesenfeld stated before launching into the darkly expansive “Ocean Death.” Contrary to the somber introduction, Wiesenfeld, better known as electronic musician Baths, was all smiles. It could be that he’s excited to release the five-track collection, a companion piece to last year’s widely praised Obsidian. Or maybe the fact that, at the age of 24, he’s selling out a headlining show Bowery Ballroom on the merits of what initially amounted to a solo bedroom recording project has something to do with his good cheer. Either way, the crowd hung on Wiesenfeld’s lush washes, thudding bass beats, and cheered in encouragement during the expectant breaks and builds. That his audience’s familiarity and excitement over this ultra-new material made it seem like he’d been playing this song for ages speaks to the resonance of Baths’ music. It underscores something universal despite the honest and unabashed references to Wiesenfeld’s personal life.

Baths’ new material is certainly in keeping with the sound of last year’s moody Obsidian. Wiesenfelds’s trademark falsetto haunts the mix like a specter, floating ghostly above churning rhythms and samples of wave noises. What words one can pick out as the lyrics loops back on themselves are at once morbid (there are references to graveyards) and grandiose (“I am the ocean”). Wiesenfeld slips easily back and forth between the serious, searching quality that lends gravity to such declarations and the warm, carefree nature he exudes between songs, thanking his fans for filling the venue “On a Friday! New York City!” when, as he goes on to note, there are so, so many options.

That dichotomy gave Wiesenfeld some hesitation when it came to presenting the follow up to 2010’s Cerulean. As a debut, Cerulean introduced Wiesenfeld as a bright, bubbly beatsmith given to bouts of romanticism. His Los Angeles address drew automatic comparisons to like-minded producers Flying Lotus and Nosaj Thing, though he hadn’t really come up in any sort of scene; he’s classically trained but is also something of a savant when it came to recording his own electronic compositions, a habit he got into as early as thirteen. In many ways, Obsidian was a departure for the artist, focused on the sinister aspects of human relationships, or at the very least, bitter realism with regards to them. It’s a move that showed maturity and gained Baths plenty of accolades, but more importantly, it’s a sphere that Wiesenfeld feels absolutely confident in. His set on Friday mixed in favorites like “Lovely Bloodflow” but by and large, his more recent work dominated. Though it might seem like the heft of that material would be out o place in a live setting, it actually makes perfect sense – Obsidian (and likely the entirety of Ocean Death) is more performance-based, with a much greater emphasis on Wiesenfeld’s vocals. And the boy can certainly wail.

Baths play Bowery

In the interim between Cerulean and Obsidian, the popularity of electronic music skyrocketed. While that meant that Baths would have greater shoes to fill, it also made electronic musicians a staple at many festivals. It’s clear that Wiesenfeld is intent on rising to the challenges that both truths present. He’s done so by bringing back that human element into his electronic compositions. And far from simple sampling, DJing, or playing tracks from a laptop, Wiesenfeld recreates these pieces in their entirety while also playing his role as charismatic frontman, even if his companions on stage consist of one other performer (Morgan Greenwood of Azeda Booth) and a bevy of complicated-looking synths rather than a full band in the traditional sense. More than once, Wiesenfeld’s falsetto erupted into something more akin to screamo, his whole body trembling. These outbursts lent a personality to songs like “Phaedra,” criticized for sounding like  more wounded Postal Service. His deft renditions of the piano interludes on “No Past Lives” also served as proof of his authenticity as a true musician.

Anticon labelmates Young Fathers face the same sort of hurdles when it comes to translating their alternative hip-hop project from mixtape to stage, but they had more than enough energy to get the crowd pumped. Fronted by three MCs of eclectic backgrounds with both live and electronic drums punching up the back-up tracks, highlights of the set included the wonky stop of “Rumbling” and “Get Up” from this year’s Dead LP (the group’s debut studio recording). The Edinburgh, Scotland-based trio alternately croons and raps, the voices of members Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole, and ‘G’ Hastings blending and bending around the others’ as often as lead verses emerged with aggressive, intelligent delivery. Bankole had a particularly spastic strut he liked to do as the sonic pace picked up; Massaquoi kept things pretty serious, a long black trench coat enshrouding his extremely tall frame.

Young Fathers play Bowery

Both Baths and Young Fathers have some growing to do, but they’re making huge strides early on in their careers. It’s noteworthy that despite the popularity of their works in the digital realm, both are set on raising the bar when it comes to delivering their compositions in a live setting. That’s a good thing, as their tour continues throughout the next month.

LIVE REVIEW: Fascinator at Pianos

Fascinator

Fascinator

As with all art, it started with a glimpse. As with all art worthwhile, my gaze lingered. This describes my first encounter with Johnny Mackay, the shaggy-haired Australian known for Children Collide, and now the force behind the psychedelic group Fascinator. I was intrigued by him, as well as his lovely girlfriend Bridget, an oboe player clad in a floral-print dress. I noticed the two while they was still part of the crowd, unaware that soon they would be covering their streetwear with glittering robes and black flat brim hats adorned with googly eyes to take the stage. Johnny introduced the world to Fascinator this past October with the video “Sexuality Mystery” and the release of a five-song EP Birth.

Yet it wasn’t just John and Bridget who ascended the stage. They were accompanied by a group of friends who danced behind them playing imaginary instruments. It took me an entire track to catch on that the drummer wasn’t actually playing the drums. To the dude playing the air guitar: mad skills homie, but I was onto you. I wasn’t even high, but it was sort of like getting really stoned and seeing a film on mute at a party and trying to figure out if the music playing is coming from the film or speakers elsewhere.

To compare a musical act to an acid trip is as cliché as it is to tell someone it’s not you, it’s me during a breakup (even if it actually tends to be the case in most instances) so I’ll go ahead and say boldly that the performance was a bit (okay, entirely) a trip. If you weren’t part of the scattered crowd, and have slowly rolled your eyes at a LSD comparison in a music review, please enjoy the music video for Fascinator’s “Mr. Caterpillar” to see what I mean:

The small back room of Pianos didn’t quite do Fascinator justice. It would have been great for a DJ set, yet if they’re going for the matching robed cult look, I want to see them perform out in a field with sunflowers Edward Sharpe-style. Unlike Edward Sharpe shows, there’s no risk of the audience sitting down during a Fascinator show. The charisma and costumes are enough to keep you dancing and stomping grass, not to mention the delectably experimental electronic beats.

LIVE REVIEW: Factory Floor @ MHoW

Factory Floor

Factory Floor play MHoW

As electrifying as Factory Floor’s self-titled debut record was, there’s only one way to truly experience the post-industrial outfit’s particular brand of tachycardiac disco – to be utterly immersed in it. At Music Hall of Williamsburg last Wednesday, the British trio’s mesmeric visions became the crowd’s own, thanks to floor-to-ceiling pixel-patterned projections and pulsating rhythms. Standing by the soundboard with the base of my skull on the booth, I could feel each throbbing beat reverberate down my spine, in my brain. Like an elixir, Nikki Colk’s anodyne vocals drifted over the manicured drone, a syrupy echo bouncing off bright-light flashes. Like a synaesthetic, it was hard for me to tell which sense was what; the synth lines purple laser beams, the drum punches articulating somewhere on the roof of my mouth rather than in my ear canal.

With an all-enveloping blitz such as this, it didn’t need to be deafening. The sensory onslaught was amplified in its repetitions and the drama of drawing them out. As danceable as the band’s catalogue is, the crowd hardly moved, transfixed and moving as though submerged in thick liquids. And you get the sense that this is exactly how Factory Floor wants its audiences to feel. They’ve existed in some form or another for almost a decade, but their singles have trickled slowly from various boutique labels in just half that time, serving as a primer for what they’d later dish via DFA. This trajectory is also a clue as to how Factory Floor operates; each spin of lead single “Fall Back,” for instance, builds the dance club around its listener, no matter where the listener is. So imagine, then, hearing that happen with the band is right there on stage, constructing an almost tangible atmosphere in real time. There are very few acts of similar ilk who even attempt to do this, let alone succeed in it.

What sets Factory Floor apart is that you get the sense they’ve thought all of this through, that this is far more orchestrated than it is by accident. It’s as if founding members Gabriel Gurnsey and Mark Harris sat down and decided to make this project as expansive and hypnotic as it could be, as though they wanted to invent an experience yet unestablished in the club scene in London, or else replicate the essence of Europe’s most notorious dance parties. When Harris left and was replaced by Dominic Butler, it was a torch he was willing to carry; but the addition of Colk’s manipulated vocals and samples were the essential elements that galvanized their aesthetic and made their record so buzzworthy. If you haven’t basked in the live iteration of their stellar debut, though, you’re missing something; they’re a must-see act, whether you come to bask in the atmospherics or move along to their voracious velocity.

TRACK REVIEW: NEEDTOBREATHE “Where The Money Is”

NEEDTOBREATHE’s forthcoming project Rivers In The Wasteland is Southern rock at its most handclappingly jubilant, and brand new track “Where The Money Is” stands out as one of the album’s catchiest. “Ain’t no gift like the present tense,” the song opens, with bubbling cheerfulness and an energy that grabs you from the get-go. With its epic hooks and smooth, buttery vocal harmony, this track will take you home to sunny Carolina in a pickup truck. But NEEDTOBREATHE have never settled for the easy-going party folk endemic to their genre–the pop is always balanced with complicated rhythms and swinging guitar lines that evoke love of a home and strong, introspective storytelling.

The group began as a brother duo between Bear and Bo Rinehart, who started playing together in their gloriously named hometown of Possum Kingdom, South Carolina before teaming up with bassist Seth Bolt in college at Furman University in 2002. NEEDTOBREATHE gained traction first in the Christian Southern rock circuit, and their 2006 label debut Daylight was seen mostly as a devotional album. In the four releases that followed, though, NEEDTOBREATHE began a shift beyond the Christian rock niche into the larger tradition of back porch power folk. To be sure, their blend is hybridized with indie pop, laced with choruses of oohs and whoas. But NEEDTOBREATHE have never dropped their music’s devotional slant, as Rivers In The Wasteland confirms in track after track. The shift isn’t a slackening of religious themes in the lyrics, but rather an incorporation of those themes into the larger experience of love for the south, for storytelling, and for feel-good music.

NEEDTOBREATHE is not a band composed of preachers brandishing guitars; in fact, the anthemic singing slyly disguises a lot of less in-your-face introspection. “Where The Money Is” is one of the album’s loudest, hardest rocking tracks, but still contains a glimmer of how ponderous the album can be. Rather than relegate them to niche status, the band’s complexity deepens their music, making Rivers In The Wasteland an album that will surprise you, bringing a new flavor to every track.

 Rivers In The Wasteland dropped  on April 15th. To order the album, and to take a listen to what else these smooth-harmonizing gentlemen have in store, go here, and check out  “Where The Money Is” right here!

INTERVIEW: Juana Molina

maxresdefault

Juana Molina’s music has an associative, evocative magic usually reserved for smells: it can time-travel you to different seasons, countries, and decades. She chooses rhythms over images, harmonies over words, and the spooky beauty of her albums etches out a world that feels familiar but that is usually only accessible through the subconscious. To call it electronic folk minimizes its strangeness. Molina’s records are feats of editing, but it’s difficult to consider them clinically as you’re mid-listen. That’s because each track is a fully-formed world, with not just characters and scenery but also laws of physics and tidal patterns of its own.

In the mid-nineties, Molina was a successful Argentinian television comedian with a hit sketch show called Juana y sus Hermanas. Her decision to begin making records in 1996 was unpopular amongst her fan base, who figured the music for a vanity project and refused to come see her perform. Outside Argentina, Molina’s recognition has come almost exclusively from her musical career for years, but within her home country, her sixth and latest release Wed 21 marks a milestone. It’s her most overtly danceable record to date, and also her most extroverted. Argentinian audiences have responded in kind, showing up for shows in unprecedentedly large, enthusiastic numbers. That Molina’s audience and her new record share a common mood–buoyant, joyful, and ready to be transported into the little world created by her harmonies–is no coincidence. Just as she tightly stitches her loops and melodies together without leaving a trace of their seams, Molina approaches each new record with her audience in the back of her mind. As the audience grows, the music gains momentum.

I called Juana Molina up last week to talk about Wed 21, her changing audience, and her intricate, solitary recording process. Molina spent her childhood in France and is trilingual, and she told me that the title can be pronounced three ways–she says the number twenty-one in Spanish, English, or French, depending on who she’s speaking to. Words have never meant much to Molina, but the way people experience her music always has, and so it’s fitting that Wed 21 holds different nuances in different ears. Read on for more:

AudioFemme: So, Wed 21 has been out for a little while. How has it been having it out there in the world?

Juana Molina: Well, we should ask the people, but I think it’s going well. I’m very happy with the response I’ve known about. I think it’s a very happy record somehow, without being too light. I don’t have–well, I shouldn’t say that, I do have preferences for my records–but I didn’t know that this one was going to be so well-received.

AF: Is this your favorite record that you’ve made?

JM: No, my favorite record is always the first one that I produced myself [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”][Segundo], because I think that that record, which I made in’98, kind of set the course for the path I was going to take. It’s like the seeds for every record I’ve made since.

AF: Did you know how you wanted it to turn out when you started making it?

JM: No, not at all. I wasn’t even thinking about making a record. We had just moved to Los Angeles at the time, and I had a few things recorded from earlier, I think from ’97. So I bought a computer and I was trying to understand how it worked. After a few months, or maybe more, I had something that I thought was a demo. I thought I would record the songs again later, in a real studio. I didn’t realize that all the takes, everything I’d done, would be impossible to repeat with the same freshness. So I decided to use it as a record, even though the quality of the recording wasn’t excellent. There’s lots of haze–things producers would hate–but I took as more important the feel and intention of the moment that I made it. And I think that’s why I love it so much. I had done a previous record, three years before that, but that record [Rara] doesn’t really belong to me, because a producer took charge of the sound. And I think he did a very good job, especially because I didn’t know how to transmit what I wanted to do. It was a time when everybody thought you needed a producer to make a record, that it wasn’t possible to make one on your own, but then the sound of the record doesn’t really represent what I do. So that’s why I consider Segundo my first real record.

AF: Has your songwriting process remained the same since your first records? 

JM: I think what’s the same about it is the fact that I get taken, absorbed–I can’t quite think of the word–by what I’m doing in a certain moment. I just start playing, and some things I record just take me somewhere else. Somewhere else totally. I am not in a room recording with a guitar, I am somewhere else. When that happens, I start working on whatever it was that absorbed me. Now, I also think about the listeners, which I didn’t do before. Somehow, unconsciously, the public and the audience is present. I can’t get rid of that presence. They exist. They didn’t exist when I was recording Segundo. They have started to exist since. When I have this thing that comes and takes me, it’s like I’m absorbed and totally taken into this new world, and I think that can happen also to other people, too. I know I’ve said this many times, but when [I get absorbed into this world,] thought and thinking disappear. You have the feeling of things coming to you, like animals coming to Snow White. It’s a very special moment and I love it when it happens; I think that when that happens you have found a truth.

AF: Is there anything except for songwriting and recording that makes you feel that way? Can you decide to get absorbed into that other world, or does it always happen by accident?

JM: No, it is absolutely impossible to determine how to get there. You can’t say, okay, today I’m going to get into the right mood to record. Once I’ve started making a record, I keep being in that mood because I keep working every day. I need space and time to dive in, like a tunnel. If I’m not playing, I don’t get into that mood. If I’m traveling, say, touring, I’m only playing the shows. It’s rare that I would play somewhere else than the shows. Sometimes I get ideas during soundcheck. I get a bit of a feeling–I wish I were home, so I could work on this–and I record it somehow, but I usually can’t really use it afterwards. I can’t get back to the same idea. But occasionally there are a few songs, “Bicho Auto,” for instance. That song was created (to use a big word) in soundcheck.

AF: You’ve said before that lyrics come last for you. I don’t speak Spanish, so I can’t understand most of your lyrics, but I’ve always thought the way the words sound is a huge part of your music. Is rhythm the thing you think about most when you’re coming up with lyrics?

JM: Absolutely. The thing is that I think lyrics are the disguise for the true melody. I make the lyrics totally fit into the melody that was there before. Lyrics have to respect–or, to submit to the melody’s desires. Sometimes I need to change letters around, because it’s not always you  can find words that fit your melody, but in general they’re pretty similar to the original. That’s why they sound so organic in the song–because they were there from the beginning, even though I write them after I’ve finished the last beat of the last little note of the song.

AF: Why do you occasionally sing in English?

JM: Very occasionally. On the first track  [“Eras”] I sing in English because that’s someone else saying that to me [The lyric is “Come, come quickly.”]. That person spoke English in the story. It’s not me talking, it’s the other person talking. And then…when I moved to Los Angeles in the late nineties I wrote “The Wrong Song,” in Segundo. It was a strange track because it was in English. The English is really wrong, that’s why it’s called “The Wrong Song.” Even though I speak English, I am in Spanish. I could do it in French and I actually have done it, because I lived in France when I was a little girl, so French is really my second language, and English is still a borrowed language. I can use words but they aren’t my own words. I sometimes don’t know if I should write in English or not. I have a very good friend, a musician, she’s from Canada. She told me once, “Listen, we’ve been listening to your music for so long. The least you can do is write us a song in English.” If I see it from that point of view, I thought it was a nice idea. So I wrote a song in English, but I didn’t dare to publish it. It feels weird [to sing in English], and I can’t really be singing if I need to think about the pronunciation. I wish I could do it. I think it would be a good thing to do. But I can’t.

AF: Four years passed between your last record (Un Dia) and this one. Why such a long break?

JM: I don’t know what happened. Just life. Love and despair. Sadness. These kinds of things get me away from recording. Then last year I thought, Oh my God, it’s been four years, and I really, really didn’t feel that four years had passed. So I started to work. I forced myself, I needed to make a record now. I started working on nothing. I just really wanted to have a record out.

AF: Do you find that your records reflect your personal life? 

JM: I wonder. I don’t know.

AF: You were talking about sadness, but as you said earlier, this record is pretty joyous.

JM: Maybe I was happy because I had gone away from those feelings, and because I was making a record again. But also, playing live has changed the way I write. When you’re on stage in a standing venue and you play very mellow songs, people get a little disturbed. They need something that takes them. I’ve discovered that I really love playing standing venues more than anything else. There’s an energy there that comes from people standing. If they’re dancing, and moving, we’re all going to the same place together. Sitting venues, even if people are really enjoying the show, I need to drag them a little bit. That’s why, when a tour is coming, I beg the booking agents to put me in standing venues.

AF: And you took all that into account while writing the songs on this album?

JM: Yeah. The possibility of there being a show influences me to do something different. Also, the audience itself has changed a lot. It’s like a party when I play, especially here [Argentina]. And I’m so happy, because that didn’t happen for years. 

AF:  Are you becoming more well-known for your singing, as opposed to acting, in Argentina?

JM: Yes, but it took a long time. People just didn’t like that I changed careers. Press was pretty mean, and absolutely ignored all the work I was doing, as a punishment. I kind of understand, it’s not that I am resentful. I was really popular making comedy, and people don’t want you to change. People just didn’t come to my shows because they thought that, because I was an actress, what I was doing was shit. But in the past five or six years, that has changed completely. Over the years I have built a completely new audience with completely different people, and only a few are fans of both things. 

AF: Would you consider doing both comedy and music?

JM: No. I did, but it was a mistake. It’s such a different mood, to make someone laugh or to make someone listen–or dance. A completely different activity. I was so vulnerable when I started to play music, because while I was acting I was impersonating a huge number of characters and making fun of them all, so nothing could hurt me because it wasn’t myself I was being. I was someone else. Being someone else allows you to act and react in a completely different way. Playing music, it’s exactly the opposite. That’s why I think they’re absolutely incompatible.

AF: Even though you’re more vulnerable, music is more rewarding?

JM: Yes, because the whole point is not to be strong. I’d rather die–we have a saying, “to die with your boots on.” You’d rather die in war than be hidden away in your house. Meaning: you’re a real soldier.

Visit Molina on Facebook, and get your copy of Wed 21 here! Check out the music video for “Eras,” off the new album, below:
[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

FLASHBACK FRIDAY: The Bodysnatchers’ “The Boiler”

back

Originally I was planning on writing this week’s FlashBack Friday on The Specials’ sophomore album More Specials. I own the record on vinyl, and am more than familiar with it, but I was primed to do some research anyway. I was in the middle of reading the generic titles and associations: “2-tone movement,” Madness, The Beat, Chrysalis Records, etc. when I came across a new name: The Bodysnatchers…The Bodysnatchers??? An all-girl ska/2-tone band from London couldn’t be more perfect for our weekly nostalgia bomb here at AudioFemme. My first question was: how had I not heard of these ladies?

So I was reading up about More Specials, looking through the track list, and I noticed that the female vocals supplied on one of my favorite songs on the album, “I Can’t Stand It” belong to Rhoda Dakar of The Bodysnatchers. It’s not such a surprise that these gals slipped under my radar for this long-they played together for less than two years between 1979 and ’81, releasing a few singles but no full length LP. The band’s singles were all released in 1980, their biggest hit being “Let’s Do Rock Steady” which reached number 22 on the U.K. charts that year. Other singles included “Easy Life,” “Too Experienced,” and “Ruder Than You,” the latter being a Double A side with “Let’s Do Rocksteady.”
All of these songs are pretty mediocre and commercial, with the mild exception of “Ruder Than You.” “Let’s Do Rocksteady” sounds like a cheesy record exec’s idea of 2-tone hipness; it’s like an early eighties version of The Twist. Of course, the band’s greatest song was swept under the rug due to its controversial subject matter and rough sound. “The Boiler” is a true argument for songwriter’s intuition. Prior to writing “The Boiler” The Bodysnatchers only performed Ska covers, and the song remains the first and best track the girls ever wrote.
Sung by Rhoda Dakar in the first person, “The Boiler” is the narrative of a young girl with typical Western self-esteem issues. She compares herself to the shelved, unwanted likes of “ an old boiler “ and is wooed by a tough guy who eventually rapes her. This wasn’t exactly the sort of thing Chrysalis Records was looking to push in 1980, so they demanded that The Bodysnatchers record the watered-down “Let’s Do Rocksteady” in its place. Aside from ultimately censoring a group of women who had a legitimate message to send to their audience, Chrysalis robbed the Ska-listening public of a wonderful track.
The Bodysnatchers never did get to record “The Boiler” as a group, which is a shame considering the impact it would have made coming from an all-female band. The song only exists as a bootleg live version and an un-released John Peel session, which I’d love to get my hands on. Rhoda eventually recorded the song with the bulk of The Specials in 1982 and released it on the 2-Tone label. The ensemble performed as Rhoda with the Special AKA, and while their version is haunting and certainly worth a listen, I personally prefer the organ-heavy, distorted bounce of the bootleg version.

Dakar’s vocals on The Bodysnatchers’ ‘Boiler’ are crisp and Cockney, and despite the song’s heavy lyrical content, it’s doubtless a dance track. The idea of skanking to a song about rape does lend this version a complicated air-I supposed I’d feel a disconnect between what my ears were processing and what my feet wanted to do-a real dilemma in moral ambivalence. This may have been the reason the version recorded in 1982 with The Specials took on a more somber, eerie quality. The consistency between sound and subject matter is much more digestible in the latter recording. Be sure to listen to both below:

Bootleg:

Rhoda with the Special AKA:

Though they occupied a sliver of real estate in the saga of the 2-tone movement, The Bodysnatchers left their mark with a killer song. Afterall, it’s the tiny pearls that get lost in the oceans of music history that excite me, and I’m glad to add this one to my collection. Six-degrees of separation is a fitting game for the music industry, and The Bodysnatchers opened for some of the most influential groups of their era, including Shane MacGowan’s The Nips, The Go-Gos, Madness, and The Specials. They even played the same bill as Toots and the Maytals, and got a gig performing at Debbie Harry’s birthday party in ’79.
You go girls.

[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”]
[retweet]

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

ALBUM REVIEW: crash “Hardly Criminal”

crash

Awww yeah.

That’s my initial and abiding reaction to “Motion Animal,” the first single off Chris Richard aka crash‘s solo debut, Hardly Criminal. Crash, backup singer for the Magnetic Zeros and frontman for Deadly Syndrome, finally gets to spotlight his tenor at its sultry finest on this dressed-down soul track, and the motown gods are surely pleased.

Anyone familiar with the singer’s work would be surprised to see him stick fully in one genre for a full album, though, and Hardly Criminal expands satisfyingly from soul outward. Crash grew up in Louisiana, imbibing a country-fied blend of Americana, folk, and New Orleans street-performer blues, and he can do all those styles with equally endearing swagger. “Motion Animal” comes two tracks in and holds its title as the catchiest number through the end of this record, but we hear plenty of that danceability on the down-homier “If God Was A Cajun” and the string-happy “All My Friends.” What’s especially impressive about Hardly Criminal, though, is how well crash pulls off the slower, sweeter stuff. On the succinct “Song For The Birds,” crash keeps his oddball charm in the lyrics (“Was feeding you worms/but I forgot that you don’t eat them”) but strums introspective layers of round-like, repetitive acoustic guitar, angling his voice away from soul flourish and towards a simpler, more vulnerable croon. “Britches Catch Fire,” one of the album’s most impressive demonstrations of crash’s sheer power to sustain a high note, hints at gospel in the harmonies. His versatility looms large, and surprises again and again on this record.

All told, the quieter tracks add up to a majority of Hardly Criminal, and I would have liked to see the album filled out with a couple more swingers – “Motion Animal” left me jonesing for more groove – but both in terms of songwriting and vocals, crash skillfully pulls off every style he ambles into on this collection. No matter the flavor, every single track on Hardly Criminal is worth a replay. This cat is it.

Hardly Criminal drops May 6th. You can preorder it here, and check the “Motion Animal” music video below for a soulful blast of groovy get-down:

ALBUM REVIEW: Jeffertitti’s Nile “The Electric Hour”

Jeffertitti_prism_over_face

Jeffertitti’s Nile may be one of the most eccentric bands to come on the Los Angeles scene as of late. They define their music as “transcendental space-punk doo-wop,” three ideas that may seem arbitrary at a glance, but work pretty well together when actualized. Their second full-length album, The Electric Hour, is out April 29th and it takes that definition to a new level. Recorded largely on analog tape, Jeffertitti has described it as a “sense of travel in ten-thousand directions.” This record definitely runs on its psychedelic rock vibes, but sounds more like the soundtrack to an action-packed space opera than Jefferson Airplane or the Beatles. In defining itself by putting emphasis on words that feel more literary, the project challenges the importance of more typical genre or categorization in music.

Titles like “Golden Age,” ”The Day the Sky Fell,” and the mix of sounds rapidly evoke a combination of the urban, industrial, and cosmic, though there’s not much about Jeffertitti’s Nile that is electronic. They instead combine 60s psychedelic vibes with heavy punk influence and ethereality. The “doo-wop” makes entrances in songs like “Blue Spirit Blues,” a Bessie Smith cover that lends its own unique hues to the classic. Though they are not concerned with ambience, there is still a strong sense of atmosphere in the music. The band jumps between rhythm and melody throughout the album, but they are always devoted to the idea of space. Even the titles recall some kind of special movement. “Midnight Siren” could be a ship hurtling through the darkness and a kind of screaming lullaby at the same time. The constant dynamism and fusing of musical elements works really well with something as incredibly complicated and vast as outer space.

Like most psychedelic music this is a very visual album, recalling motion through the held-out guitar notes, the ethereal background vocals. This is given focus with the “space” theme, right down to the colorful album art recalling arbitrary figures positioned in the stars. But the “punk” element is truly surprising – the quick and heavy drums that break out of the psychedelia give the intergalactic effect more human qualities. It opens up the narative of the record into something that not only transcends earth or the typical human mind set, but actively rebels against these things. Jeffertitti is serious about making themselves difficult to pin down. The “transcendent” aura shows itself in tracks like “Stay On” where wind instrument sounds temper the chaotic guitar and drums and the imagination and artistry that obviously went into the tone of the album set it apart from other acts of their ilk. The band doesn’t try very hard to make intriguing structures of rhythms; they rarely need to. If you’re intrigued by the concept, you’ll find the music mosaic enough.

Though this album doesn’t always keep your attention, it demands recognition through its rejection of musical norms. There are moments of delight and moments that take you away from reality. Give The Electric Hour a shot and listen to “Blue Spirit Blues” below:

LIVE REVIEW: Nathaniel Rateliff @ Mercury Lounge

nathaneilrateliff

Can we take a little time to talk about Nathaniel Rateliff?  Though we were all a bit smitten here at AudioFemme upon hearing Rateliff’s most recent release, Falling Faster Than You Can Run, his live performance last night at Mercury Lounge has left me slack-jawed and palpitating.  I for some reason expected Rateliff to perform solo and was pleased to see a full-band set up when I entered the venue.  Accompanying Nathaniel was a drummer, electric organist, guitarist/harmonica player/vocalist, and a bassist/vocalist cellist.  Rateliff himself volleyed between electric and acoustic guitars, taking center stage amongst this cluster of phenomenal multi-insrumentalists.

 

Despite what you’d like to say about the Mercury Lounge, maybe because of its cast of regulars and location, last night it struck a high note with me.  The show was intimate, filled to a comfortable capacity with a very chill and respectful crowd, and the sound was piercingly clean.  I can’t imagine a better setting for the band, save for a roadside tavern in somewheresville Montana.

 

Of the simple criteria that form my opinion of a live performance, the deciding one is this: does the artist sound better recorded? or in the flesh?  Naturally the latter is the most desirable, and Rateliff proves to be a true showman-someone who thrives outside the studio-womb.  His entire band communicated intricacies that exist faintly on the album, but provide much impact in person.  All of the backing band were so in sync, it was as if they were siblings breathing through one lung.

 

Rateliff’s music characterized by restraint, thoughtfully placed silence and emotive crescendo, all of which were delivered with enviable precision.  His songs have a way of creeping up on you, commencing with curt, whispering guitar strums and the lower end of his dynamic voice, they eventually explode into biting anthems that are prone to attack Rateliff’s oppressors-be they drink, women, or himself.

 

On Falling’s opening track “Still Trying” Rateliff berates himself with a dose of humor and honesty:

 

There’s moments I forget to tell myself//If you’d rolled in it enough you know your shit won’t even smell

 

This air of self-deprecation was certainly present last night, though it was met with a refreshing wealth of kindness and humility.  At one point Rateliff told the crowd how lucky he felt to be on stage with his best friends making music.  He repeatedly thanked the audience “…for coming out and giving a shit” an understated token of gratitude I think we all can relate to.

 

One of the most fascinating things about Rateliff’s sound is that it is freakishly accessible, and yet it could be ruined so easily.  His blend of folk, rock, and blues-tinged pop is nothing if not soulful, but it would only take the syrupy brush of a commercial producer to paint it up like Of Mice And Men, Fisher Price: my-first-folk-band garbage.  Let’s hope that Rateliff remains true to his beautiful sound and is able to dodge such unfortunate branding.  I have faith he will continue to make the right decisions for his music, that he will continue giving a shit, if you will.

 

Check out the video for Nathaniel Rateliff’s “Don’t Get Too Close” below:

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

LIVE REVIEW: Juana Molina @ LPR

Juana Molina

Juana Molina

Juana Molina hails from Argentina, and, like the rich, full-bodied Malbecs her homeland is known for, Molina’s tunes sit robustly on any musical pallette. Molina is just as intoxicating, too, an experienced live performer with five records of material to cover, she managed to hit every sensitive nerve, like ripe fruit and tannins lingering on the roof of the mouth.

Molina sings mostly in Spanish, and admittedly, I understand only enough to order confidently (maybe impressively?) from a taco truck. But listening to Molina, little is lost in translation; her experimental, polyrhythmic vocal style doesn’t beg lyrics to be discernible and I suspect that even the fluent folks in the audience at Le Poisson Rouge were listening for the inventive vocal stylings, creative loops, and exuberant expression moreso than lyrics themselves. She acquiesced to the packed audience’s assumed language between songs, her stage banter spoken in warm, sparkling English stage banter with genuine sincerity and humor.

Beyond her impressive, hypnotic vocal stylings, her guitar work was simply breathtaking. Of course, she didn’t play just any guitar; that night, she was strumming a 1966 SG Special – an electric, classic style instrument. Though she vented to the crowd about how everyone has been bugging her to purchase a tuner, Molina’s layered tones rang golden, her old school flair updated within the modern movements.

Juana Molina’s performance was made extra special by how visual and fearlessly romantic it was. She sang graciously yet powerfully in her native tongue. “Eras” brought the crowd into her realm of energy through the velvety smoothness of her voice and melodic beat. As I stood there, I felt a sort of vibrational force wash over me, the rich, textured noises providing an expansive yet swaddling cocoon. No matter how varied these sounds were, they came together with a similar resilience. Her mesmerizing abilities did not stop there– in “Un Dia,” the title track from her 2008 release, she used a loop pedal to create that unique background for the song, layering keyboard atop masterfully. She was very in touch with the details – let it be said that Juana Molina does not mess around with the preciseness of her music. She knew that at one point, her guitar was having trouble tuning because of the air conditioning hitting the strings and delicate wood. Her songs are made more intimate and spiritual because of the relationship she displays with her instruments.

Molina is touring in support of Wed 21, released this past fall. Reaction from her fans? Well worth the five-year wait. Molina’s brilliant dynamism is sure to take audiences on a journey that will feel both spiritual and of this world.


video by YouTube user Raul Romero

UPDATE: Check out Carena’s interview with the vivacious Molina here.

Album Review: Pink Mountaintops – Get Back

Pink-Mountaintops-by-Julie-Patterson

I saw a photograph lying in the street

Picture of you 

Oh and how times change

Though it has been five years since we’ve heard anything from Pink Mountaintops, frontman Steve McBean has remained incredibly busy. Moving from his homebase in Vancouver to Los Angeles didn’t stop him from releasing Wilderness Heart with Black Mountain in 2010, retooling Black Mountain songs for the Year Zero soundtrack in 2012, or forming Grim Tower and putting out Anarchic Breezes under that moniker last year. Always a musician who has shuffled from project to project with a surprisingly clear vision for each (despite the generally stoney vibes that tie them all together) McBean tapped producer Joe Cardamone in releasing the band’s sixth studio album, Get Back.

With any of his endeavors, McBean’s never focused on experimenting with new instruments, electronic beats or fancy vocal effects, and Get Back is no different. With this record, he set out once again to create a pure, plain and simple rock’n’roll document, and he accomplishes exactly that; there are no frills, no underlying agendas or messages, no subtleties. Get Back sets a scene, creates a mood and proves that you don’t have to look to the future to create something new and interesting. To the contrary, McBean riffs on the past and creates an album that captures the truest essences of a rock’n’roll lifestyle, which according to him consist of “Alleys, curbs, walls, and cigarette stained gig flyers. An island on the Pacific coast. Fake British towns. Slayer posters. The beauty of youth. It’s about listening to ‘Driver’s Seat‘ and ‘Guns of Brixton‘ and hotboxing The Duster.”

Get Back may be only ten tracks long, lasting for just under 40 minutes, but for those 40 minutes it’s easy to be transported back to the irresponsibility of youth. It evokes those times when I thought it was cool to litter floors with cigarette butts, those times I had to wear sunglasses inside because I was too hungover for fluorescent lighting, those times getting drunk in the woods behind the powerlines because I was too young to go to bars and had nowhere else to go. With hook-driven guitar riffs, lyrics that sometimes veer into the nonsensical, and McBean’s dramatic yet sincere vocals, Get Back perfectly encapsulates the angst, spontaneity, romance and irresponsibility of youth.

It is no accident that Get Back brings one back to their reckless teenage years. The whole album is a nostalgia trip, and McBean makes this no secret. From “The Second Summer of Love,” which, according to McBean, was in 1987, to the distorted doo-wop of “Sixteen,” where McBean laments “and all we want tonight is to fall in love beneath the midnight sky” McBean clearly looked back to his teenage years, dredging up all of the drama and recklessness that comes along with it. This thematic approach works well, as no two things go together better than teenage kicks and rock’n’roll. When Joe Cardamone told McBean to “Sing it like you would’ve sung it when you were 21,” I doubt that he expected him to do so with such sincerity.

But it’s not just nostalgia that drives Get Back; the record is also a sentimental exploration of hedonistic West Coast urges and how they play out in McBean’s newest home. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the record’s lead single, “North Hollywood Microwaves,” which features Giant Drag frontwoman and Cali native Annie Hardy.  Her adenoidal, X-rated ramblings over bass-driven beats and dystopic melodies give it a hyper, free-wheeling zaniness, and set it apart from the rest of the LP’s more straightforward brand of stoner rock. The album opens with driving drums, urgent guitar and grungy vocals on “Ambulance City” and moves through a veritable buffet of dirty, psych jams before ending, appropriately, with “The Last Dance.” Rather than striving to separate himself from the rock influences of the past, McBean celebrates and elaborates on them at every turn.

Get Back brings out the teenage miscreant in all of us. Make sure to pick it up when it comes out on 4/29 via Jagjaguwar records.

Flashback Friday: Roy Orbison’s “Mystery Girl”

mystery-girl-roy-orbison-24034328-1052-1000

Few musicians have effectively sidestepped the descent into mediocrity. Even fewer have remained truly great up until their deaths, and ascended into legends long after. Johnny Cash, Lee Hazelwood, and Lou Reed are among this musical elite. And then there’s Roy Orbison. Though most famous for recording “It’s Over” and “ Oh, Pretty Woman,” in 1964, Orbison has written, recorded and produced some of the most original and memorable ballads in pop music history. As part of the golden legacy of Sam Phillips’ Sun Records, Orbison has had a total of 22 songs placed on the Billboard Top 40, and boasted a phenomenal vocal range that stretched three or four octaves. This ability to transition between baritone and tenor popularized Orbison as “the Caruso of rock.”

Though Orbison’s most prolific years were the 1960s, his posthumously released final record Mystery Girl is one of the finest departing albums I’ve ever heard. Recorded in the Fall of 1988 three months before its release, Mystery Girl is a flawless pop-opus which touts production quality as slick as Orbison’s signature onyx pompadour.

The album is a sonic homage to mid-century American pop-rock-n’roll, a fitting soundscape considering the era’s cultural revival in the late 1980s. Mystery Girl includes songs written by giants of the industry: Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne (of ELO), and Elvis Costello to name a few. Its cast of producers is no less impressive. Mike Campbell (of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers), T-Bone Burnett, and Brian Eno highlight Orbison’s own distinct production style.

“You Got It,” the record’s opening track, is one of the most recognizable. This is in part due its use in advertising. It is an upbeat number that recalls a breezy summer romance in the 1960s-or at least what our lens of synthetic nostalgia renders that to seem like. It’s a great pop song, but the meat of this album lies in the sweet melancholy of its more orchestral tracks.

Chief among these is “In the Real World,” which ranks with Orbison’s great songs of heartache. The song is distinctly Orbison, beginning with the gentle strum of a Spanish guitar and a single thread of that signature quivering croon. With haunting backing vocals and the emotive use of strings, it possesses the same sweeping quality of his early work, leaving the listener in a somnolent limbo between misery and bliss. This is the Orbison condition: an ambivalence that results from a sound so beautiful, you’d rather die than go on listening (or die before listening to anything else).

This condition is perfected on the album’s near-title track “She’s a Mystery to Me” which was written for Orbison by U2 members Bono and The Edge. The song’s power is undeniable. Orbison’s voice is sorrowful and slips over you like opium molasses: slow, astringently sweet, and twice as addictive. Meanwhile the orchestral accompaniment concocts a warm-whiskey sound that dissipates outward from the sternum to the cuticles. It’s the perfect medicine for gluttons of sorrow. The all-star credits continue from there; Elvis Costello’s contribution to the album is the tragic “The Comedians” which delivers Costello’s patented contrast between audible joy and verbal dejection. That Costello had written the song makes perfect sense in retrospect, but when Orbison sings it, it becomes his instantly.

My favorite song on the record is undoubtedly “She’s a Mystery to Me,” but a neck-and-neck second is “The Only One,” written by Craig Wiseman and Orbison’s son Wesley. While “She’s a Mystery to Me” has a consistent sound throughout verse and chorus, “The Only One” is far more dramatic. Its verse eases us into a simple and downtrodden ballad, and then the chorus crescendos into a crooning reprimand. The Orbison condition is contracted yet again.

Though Roy Orbison was a permanent fixture in my musical rearing, I didn’t hear this album (as far as I can remember) until two and a half years ago at a friend’s apartment. I was dumbstruck immediately. Orbison’s voice is like butter – as in, you can put it on anything and it’s improved tenfold – but I was still shocked at how timeless the record sounded. It at once seemed old, new, and impossible to date. It’s sad that Mystery Girl had to be the last album Orbison would ever record, but man, what a way to go out.

Listen to “She’s a Mystery to Me” and “The Only One” below:

 

PREVIEW: BROOKLYN FOLK FEST

20140206-paxton-x1800-1391712604

You’re probably wondering why I’m so happy today. I’ll tell you. It’s because Brooklyn Folk Fest is this weekend at The Bell House and I CANNOT WAIT. I am so excited and I just can’t hide it.

Six years ago, Eli Smith of the Down Home Radio Show partnered with The Jalopy Theatre, a Brooklyn-based venue and music school, to create the Brooklyn Folk Festival. With its rigorous schedule of live performances and music classes, the Jalopy has long been a beacon of folk music within New York City, particularly folk music played live, and the festival quickly became a way to expand and showcase the scene in New York. This weekend, the annual three-day event returns for its sixth year with an exciting lineup of string music and Americana as well as traditional music from other parts of the world–Balken traditional singer Eva Salina, for instance, is a returning performer who will join the festival again in 2014.

This year, the Brooklyn Folk Festival has also boldly scheduled itself to coincide not only with Easter but also with Record Store Day. That makes this weekend the BEST WEEKEND EVER–after you’ve picked up your rare, new, or limited edition vinyl, come down to The Bell House and settle in for one of the most spectacular offerings of the city’s live folk music scene. Attend a mandolin workshop! See a screening of John Cohen’s films! And hey–you might even win a free banjo.

I’ll be hanging out there all this weekend, trying not to suck at square dancing. The full schedule is listed down at the bottom of this page, but before I get there, here’s a list of the things I’m most excited to check out this year. They range from performances I’m anticipating in particular to promising reading and talks to festival traditions, because Brooklyn Folk Fest is more than a three-day hootenanny–it’s a celebration of where folk music is today, in New York City as well as out of it, in all its incarnations.

Okay, here goes:

1.  The Pete Seeger Tribute Singalong at 6:30 PM on Sunday, April 20th.

Pete Seeger was not only among the most beloved musicians and song collectors of the folk revival, he was also an environmental activist who made a special impact on New York state by helping clean up the Hudson River and founding the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater organization. It’s difficult to imagine the folk scene in New York without Seeger, who died this January. I can’t imagine a better way to pay tribute to him, though–every time I saw Seeger play, the best parts of the show, and the parts of the show that he seemed to enjoy playing the most, were singalongs. Seeger may be gone, but the momentum he created for community folk singing is alive and well.

There’s Pete Seeger leading a sold-out arena in “Amazing Grace” on his 90th birthday. Yeah, just try to stay dry-eyed.

2. Tahuantinsuyo

This pioneering Andean folk music group emphasizes preservation of their roots, using regional instruments and costumes in their performances. Tahuantinsuyo performs on guitars, flutes and panpipes, deliberately keeping the sound and rhythms authentic to their origins. While it’s a rare treat to have the chance to hear music from the Andes performed in New York at all, I’m especially excited to see these guys in the context of this festival–with so many traditions and cultures operating side by side, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a spontaneous jam session or two. Check them out here. 

3. The Downhill Strugglers with John Cohen

The ass-kicking, rip-roaring Downhill Strugglers come straight out of the old-time string band tradition, but they’re very much in the business of bringing old music into the present day. They’re based out of Brooklyn and contributed to the ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ soundtrack, and their live shows are way too much fun for anyone watching to call them preservationists. On Saturday they’re playing with John Cohen, founding New Lost City Rambler and folk music collector.

4. The Banjo Toss

What is the Banjo Toss? This is the Banjo Toss. It’s a time-honored Brooklyn Folk Fest tradition, and it’s an excellent opportunity to throw a musical instrument into the Gowanus Canal while a riled up crowd of folk fans cheers you on. If you throw the banjo farther than anyone else, this happens:

5. Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton

Known for his intimate performance style (so intimate, apparently, that he won’t mind if you call him Blind Boy), Jerron Paxton is a versatile blues songster who flips easily between the guitar and the banjo and plays a slew of different styles: hokum, old-time, and cajun tunes, to name a few. Though Paxton’s only in his mid-twenties, he speaks and acts like an old-timer, with a baldly honest approach to the music he plays. “Old music is the least sucky thing of any type of music you can run across,” he told festival organizer and radio host Eli Smith on Down Home Radio in 2010. Paxton’s playing doesn’t suck, either, and neither does his broad-smiling energy on stage.

Those are the acts and activities that I’m anticipating most about this weekend’s festival, but they are MERELY THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG. Check out the full schedule here.  All this weekends’ events will take place at The Bell House in Brooklyn, between Friday, April 18th and Sunday, April 20th, and you can still pick up tickets here (a three-day pass is $75, and a one-day pass is a steal at $20). And while you’re dusting off your overalls and warming up your banjo-chucking arm, tell me what you’re most excited for at Brooklyn Folk Fest! The party kicks off this Friday, April 18th, with Brotherhood of the Jug Band Blues at 8 PM.

 

TRACK REVIEW: Amen Dunes “I Can’t Dig It”

The two tracks off Amen Dunes‘ forthcoming album Love that have surfaced  (“Lilac in Hand” and “Lonely Richard”) are both on the murky side of things, but neither can touch the newest single, “I Can’t Dig It” for sheer liberated noise. Lo-fi and howly, the track is an ingloriously atonal celebration of being no good in all the right ways. Rough rhythms and war-cry vocals abound.

As always, the music is the product of Damon McMahon and friends, but Love is probably the first Amen Dunes recording that can’t be considered a solo album. Not only do we see McMahon’s longtime collaborators Parker Kindred (drums) and Jordi Wheeler (piano, guitar) join him for the length of the album, but several of the tracks feature input from other friends and neighbors. In fact, “I Can’t Dig It” gets its guitar and sax lines, respectively, from Efrim Manuck, of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, and Colin Stetson, of too many projects to list here.

Truth be told, there might be too many people on this track. Stacked as high as a too-tall deli sandwich, “I Can’t Dig It” has too many instrumental lines, rhythms, and sections to keep track of, let alone rock out to. Which is a shame, because the high-flying vocals and fast-paced, moshable rhythms would make for fantastically distorted and dirty party music if the song’s structure were a little bit simpler.

Amen Dunes newest album Love, including “I Can’t Dig It,” will be out May 13th on Sacred Bones. Can you dig it? Yeah, I thought I was gonna get through the whole review without making that joke, too. Give the track a listen below via Soundcloud:

VIDEO REVIEW: Chet Faker “1998”

Recently, a lot of our favorite music videos have come from the one and only Chet Faker, so its no surprise his latest release is eye-catching and creative. The Australian producer and singer released his debut album, Built on Glass, this week via Downtown Records/Future classic, and “1998” is the second single off of that record following “Talk Is Cheap.”

“1998” revolves around a fairly simple but mightily catchy beat that provides an breezy, dancy background to Faker’s soulful croon. The video, directed by Domenico Bartolo, is a fully animated artwork that begins with inkblots jumping, twirling, and morphing into various shapes to the song’s infectious beat. An animated Chet Faker walks through the black and white landscape, and we watch his journey through this pseudo-Chalkland from many perspectives—the camera switches from looking straight at him as he walks towards us, to following him from behind, to staring directly down or up at him. His surroundings pick up color towards the end of the film and we get an impressive 360 pan of his silhouette before it disappears into an inkblot.

The expert and quirky animation is a perfect visual representation of the song. Enjoy the video below!

INTERVIEW: Willie Watson

Willie Watson recorded his debut solo effort, the straightforwardly-titled Folk Singer Vol. 1, over the course of two days at Woodland Sound Studios, the studio owned by Gillian Welch in Nashville, TN. In those sessions, he played whichever songs came to mind: the collection features some well-known numbers like “Midnight Special,” along with rarer inclusions such as “Kitty Puss” and “Mexican Cowboy.” The track list has sprawling origins, spanning blues, folk, and rock and roll as well as decades. Collaged together by producer David Rawlings, Folk Singer ambles through its ten tracks with the lowlight unadornedness of a late-night impromptu performance.

And in a way, it is. When Watson split from Old Crow Medicine Show, which he’d co-founded and been part of for a decade and a half, he wasn’t sure where he would end up next. Though he didn’t start out with the goal of making a record of traditional songs, it does seem like kind of a neat return to basics: after a long run with a band that helped define contemporary folk music, Watson’s solo career so far has been an opportunity to revel in the old songs that made him love old-time folk music in the first place.

A couple weeks ago, I got a chance to chat with Watson about his new album, the traditional songs on it, and how he came to love old-time music. Read on for more:

AF: What made you decide to put out a solo album after you left Old Crow, as opposed to forming another band?

WW: You know, it just sort of happened that way. I’ve been singing old songs–folk songs, traditional songs, whatever you wanna call them–for years. Once I was on my own, I wasn’t sure what my next move was–if I was going to have another band, or try to write a bunch of songs. At first, I did start writing songs, but I don’t think I was satisfied with what I was writing. I was starting to do some solo shows, and I had a few songs I’d written, and I would do a mix of those with old traditional songs, at those early shows. I was a lot happier doing those old folk songs, and I think the crowd was a lot happier, too. I thought those were great songs that people should be hearing, and that I wanted to be singing.

AF: You’re in a position to introduce listeners to those old songs for the first time, in many cases. How cool is that?

WW: Totally cool, and I’m happy if I can be that guy. Alternately, if they heard where they came from, they might not want to listen to me anymore. I would much rather put on Leadbelly singing “Midnight Special” than listen to me. It’s surprising, a lot of people might not even realize that these are old songs. I think if they have the record, Folk Singer, and they read the reviews and write-ups, they’ll get it–but I’ve played shows and had people think I wrote all those songs.

AF: You grew up in upstate New York, right? What was the musical community like there?

WW: Around Ithaca and Tompkins County–which is right next to Schuyler County, where I’m from–there’s a lot of old-time fiddle music. There was a banjo player named Richie Stearns and all those guys from Donna The Buffalo, they’re old-time players. There would be a weekly old-time jam every week up there. So I was exposed to that first hand, being around the scene and the music every week. Richie Stearns had a band called The Horse Flies, and they were a mix of old-time fiddle music with eighties pop. They had a drum set and they all plugged in, and Richie Stearns was playing clawhammer banjo. Judy Hyman played the fiddle and would dance around the stage, doing this headbang-y thing with her eyes rolling back in her head. I was about thirteen, and I would see this stuff and thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. It was dance music, and it really moved me in a big way. That was my introduction to old-time music. I knew it wasn’t bluegrass, this old-timey thing The Horse Flies were doing. It was something a little bit different, and it really stood out. I was already listening to Neil Young and Bob Dylan. Of course, at the same time I was also listening to Nirvana, too. They did that Unplugged thing, where he sings the Leadbelly song [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”][“In The Pines/Where Did You Sleep Last Night”]. I knew my dad had a Leadbelly record in the basement, and I went and got it out. Really, that changed everything for me right there. It was all coming together at the same time.

AF: Were there other kids excited by old-time and interested in playing it?

WW: Yeah. I started a band pretty quick. A lot of the old-time players had kids my age, so they all had guitars. We started a band called The Funnest Game that was kind of the same thing–clawhammer banjo, electric guitar, drums. People liked that we were young and we were playing this stuff, so we started playing shows at clubs when we were about fifteen or sixteen. And they’d pay us. Which was nice! It was like, “Holy cow! This could be a job?!” So I quickly dropped out of high school when I was sixteen.

AF: Did you meet up with Old Crow Medicine Show pretty quickly after that?

WW: It was a few years. I had that first band, and then Ketch [Secor] moved to Ithaca when…I must’ve been seventeen or eighteen. Richie Stearns knew Ketch from the festival scene and he introduced us. Ketch moved up [to Ithaca] and then Critter [Fuqua] moved up a bit later. When The Funnest Game was about to break up, Ketch and Critter’s band had just broken up. They opened together for The Funnest Game and sang together, harmonized, did their duo thing. I was floored. As soon as they started singing, I immediately really badly wanted to sing with them. And so we made that happen.

AF: Looking back on it now, how do you feel about having been a part of that band?

WW: What can I say? It was everything to me, to us. That band was my whole life for almost fifteen years. I wouldn’t change anything. We just kind of grew apart. In the early days we played a lot of old music and not as many songs, although we were always writing. I don’t have any regrets, but I’m really happy that I’m where I’m at now. I’m playing the music I want to play, and it’s real simple, and I don’t have a big light show–I’m in a good place with that.

AF: Let’s talk about how Folk Singer became the collection that it is. Can you tell me the story of how one or two of the songs came to be included on the album?

WW: Anything in particular?

AF: How about ‘James Alley Blues?’

WW: Okay, yeah. That’s a Richard “Rabbit”  Brown song, and I don’t know too much of what he’s done, I just know that song, and also he does this great version of the Titanic story. He definitely plays ‘James Alley Blues’ different [than I do], it’s more bluesy, and he’s got all that finger picking guitar stuff. I heard it and I knew my voice would be right for it, but I had to find a different way to play guitar, because I don’t really play blues like that. That open-tuning blues stuff. I knew I really wanted to do that song because it really reached out to me. I related to what he was saying, and what the song was about really hit home for me. So I just had to find a different way to play guitar, you know, find a way that the song could come out of me.

AF: Were there any notable exclusions? Songs you were sure you wanted on the album, but that ultimately didn’t wind up making it?

WW: We recorded over twenty five songs for this album. There’s still a whole bunch of stuff in the can. That’s where Dave [Rawlings] comes in. The idea was just to get in there and sing whatever was rolling around in my head. I had a little list of songs. Then Dave would say, “Okay, that’s great, but do you have anything in the key of C?” Some songs were totally off the cuff, and yeah, some songs didn’t make the cut. Like “Kitty Puss,” that song wasn’t supposed to be on there. When I flew to Nashville to record the sessions, I was listening to that on the plane before I landed. I’d never played it before. I got into the studio and they were adjusting the sound, and the guy was like, “play something,” so I just played “Kitty Puss.” That was the first time I played the song, so I remembered what words I could. I kinda rearranged the words, I think, just because I didn’t know exactly how the guy did it on the record. He recorded in the early twenties, before there were electronic microphones. Back then they were literally singing into a funnel. It was just him and a banjo, and he’d sing a lot of children’s songs and novelty songs. I’d been listening to it for a while. I didn’t expect it to be on the record, it just came out really good.

 

A great big thank you to Willie Watson for talking to us! Folk Singer Vol. 1 will be out on May 6th, and you can pre-order your digital or physical copy here. Watch Watson perform the first track, the classic “Midnight Special,” below:
[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

VIDEO REVIEW: EELS “Mistakes Of My Youth” and Foals “Inhaler”

eels2

These past few months have brought us two new music videos that showcase the difficulty of youth and nostalgia from bands with animal monikers. EELS, singer-songwriter Mark Oliver Everett’s constantly developing alternative project has released a video for “Mistakes Of My Youth,” off of the forthcoming album The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett. This new record hones in on interiority and personal struggle, a good focus for a fairly inconsistent band. The lo-fi melody of “Mistakes” is nostalgic, steady, and bittersweet.

FOALS-21

Uk indie quintet Foals’ take on adolescence, “Inhaler,” on the other hand, is rife with wild, passionate movement. Both of these bands seem to be looking back to the early 90s indie rock scene. While EELS’ does so with melancholia, Foals’ channels desperate rage.

The “Mistakes Of My Youth” video hones in on suburban rebellion. Beautiful shots of streets, parks, and backyards frame the world EELS’ youth lives in. He watches old black and white cartoons; he smokes and drinks under telephone lines amid grey skies; he rides his bike around restlessly, listlessly, reminiscing about his childhood with lyrics like “Look back down the road / I know that it’s not too late.” This narrator is attempting to recreate his younger days by “repeating yesterday,” though he knows this is impossible. Behaving wildly as he did when he was younger – graffiti, broken windows – won’t restore his youth. Meanwhile, the boy in the video also represents the invert. He behaves as an adult, smoking, drinking, making out with a girl, in an attempt break free of childhood’s confines, however his angst remains. This complicated juxtaposition captures the spirit of weary teenage rebellion.

Look out for EELS new album The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everrett, coming out 4/22 on  E Works/Pias.

“Inhaler” shows teenagers and Foals as discreet cohorts. A group of kids stand under a train trestle with hoodies, headphones, skateboards, and backpacks. Their  rowdiness is palpable, resting just beneath the surface. The band is physically separate from them yet somehow still part of their delinquent resolve. Both groups cop a strong sense of rage and discontent, as if the sentiment itself is waiting to burst out, as opposed to EELS’ sense of emptiness. Here, the youth are full of temper, of resentment. Foals’ vocalist Yannis Philippakis  yelps hoarsely and glances ominously at the camera. The body’s import to youth is part of the visual motif: they are attempting to find freedom that is outside of their physical selves and we see them strive for this through acts of physical defiance, through the pushing of physical limitations. Their sense of entrapment to the point of sickness is communicated throughout. Their confusion and rage pulls them together, unites them as a force of movement seeking escape.

Foals is currently on a spring tour with Cage The Elephant and will be making stops at Terminal 5 in  NYC on 5/6 and 5/7.

TRACK OF THE WEEK: Son Lux and Lorde

Last year, producer/composer Ryan Lott, aka Son Lux, released his amazing full-length album Lanterns to immediate praise. How’s now returning with Alternate Worlds, an EP of four of Lanterns’ songs reimagined and reinvented. The tracks are all worth a listen, but Son Lux’s collaboration with Lorde on a remake of his song “Easy” is our favorite.

“Easy (Switch Screens)” ups the ante by replacing “Easy”’s originally slithering, quietly hypnotizing sound with a heavier, more intense one. The song is still rather minimalistic but the percussion takes an industrial turn here, and when paired with Lorde’s now unmistakeable voice, it’s downright sinister—but in an oh so sexy way. She sounds like a movie villain spurned as she sings Son Lux’s lyrics, “Pull out your heart to make the being alone easy.” An abrasive electrical guitar solo punctuates the track with a distorted sound that almost nears scratches on a chalkboard.

The overall effect is ever so slightly disquieting, but 100% mesmerizing. Alternate Worlds is due out May 27th on vinyl via Joyful Noise Records, but it’s available digitally right now. Take a listen to “Easy (Switch Screens)” below!

 

ALBUM REVIEW: “Enter The Slasher House”

Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks

Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks

Avey Tare has put out some nine-odd albums with pioneering psych-electronic quartet Animal Collective, but this decade, he’s focused more on solo work than he has on the band that originally made his bones. His latest creation, Slasher Flicks, feels like a deliberate push towards something new, in part because it’s really more super trio than it is side project, featuring ex-Dirty Projectors multi-instrumentalist Angel Deradoorian and Ponytail drummer Jeremy Hyman, who recently collaborated with Dan Deacon. Enter The Slasher House bears obvious family resemblance to Tare-fronted Animal Collective tracks, with similarly off-kilter harmony and a grab bag of digital effects and reverb.

With a name like Slasher Flicks, you might expect the album to sound cartoonish–and you’d be correct. It’s more funhouse than b-movie horror, though. The album is packed with bouncy synths, surreally poppy hooks, and rhythms that appear to operate at the whims of a metronome gone psychotic. Often, the latter is a highlight. Hyman skillfully controls his ear-catchingly angular drum lines, which never shy away from being the focal point of the tracks on this album. In fact, sometimes they’re the scaffolding the rest of the music hangs around. On songs like “Outlaw” and “Catchy (Was Contagious),” the strength of the drum beat leaves Tare’s singing in the dust.

Slathered in production and reverb, the vocals come across a little wimpy. When the songs are at their most instrumentally complex, Tare’s voice seems faint and watery, as if he’s singing from far away or his voice has been unceremoniously inserted to echo the melody. Tare’s anxious, yelling vocal style is easily recognizable, but his presence on this album doesn’t match the authority he cultivated in Animal Collective. Instead, the vocal melody defers to the rest of the music, or we lose it altogether.

The exception to that comes with “Little Fang,” a fantastically catchy number that brings all this group’s elements into synch. A pop hook and an irresistible bass lines serve as the big draws for this track, but lyrical repetition (“You’re always crashing into teeth,”) bolsters its blissfulness. Somehow, despite all the clicks and crashes of its oddball underbelly, the song comes across as sweet and summertime-simple as a Beach Boys single. Sadly, the magic balance “Little Fang” nails doesn’t stick in place for the rest of Enter The Slasher House – the bubbliness soon gives way to manic obnoxiousness, and the angularity of the rhythms turn toward chaos.

Check out the terrifying video for “Little Fang” below!

Track Review: Rodrigo Amarante “Tardei”

rodrigo

Brazilian singer-songwriter Rodrigo Amarante is best known for his work with Little Joy, Los Hermanos and Orquestra Imperial, but it’s the very personal journey back to Rio that informs his first solo record, Cavalo.  Out in May in the US via Easy Sound, Cavalo (that’s horse in Portuguese, but also Amarante’s conceptual alter-ego) was released in Brazil last year. In an artist statement, Amarante described the development of this album, written in many lands, as a strange and enlightening experience. “It was as a foreigner, separated from others and yet still somehow attached to the furniture I had left behind, bits of myself I hung up around me like dead mirrors I could no longer turn my face to, that came to focus the beauty of the empty room ahead, a hint,” he says.  The first single, “Hourglass” provided a lively introduction, but Amarante slows things down quite a bit for his latest offering, “Tardei,” the final track on the record.  Featuring the likes of Fabrizio Moretti, Kristen Wiig, Devendra Banhart, Adam Green, and Josiah Steinbrick as a backing choir, it’s a fitting and memorable swan song for the heady record.

While comedian Kristen Wiig’s appearance seems surprising, Moretti’s involvement as drummer in Little Joy makes a natural bedfellow for Amarante, though here Moretti lends only vocals. Devendra Banhart’s explorations of Latin flair within the New Weird America movement fall in line alongside Amarante’s style, and it’s likely that producer and multi-instrumentalist Josiah Steinbrick brought in Adam Green as he is a frequent collaborator of both Banhart and Green. On the surface, putting these voices together seems arbitrary, but they are all connected in some way – as musicians representing different genres, as non-musicians, as Latinos, as Americans, as friends.  And they remain mostly anonymous, featured as a ghostly chorus rather than brought to the forefront.

That element of “Tardei” is a great example of the explorations that inform the album; the song is full of smokey darkness, though it remains fairly minimal. Cavalo hinges on looking at oneself from a distance, a kind of depersonalization that allowed Amarante to discover his own interiority. It thinks of the human body and mind as a space that can be explored. Amarante’s words make this concept vivid: “To give room to this double that appears as an echo, that shows itself with distance reflected, I opened up space as much as I knew how, subtracted all undue, threw adjectives away and using different languages I was forced to a new conciseness.” The echoic, almost lo-fi qualities to the track make it feel like an ephemeral artifact, hearkening to a frightening open sky in an unknown place, or the feeling of being lost in the wilderness of a strange city. Amarante sings with powerful enunciation – even as a non-Portuguese speaker, it is easy to understand which words have more power than others. There’s something incredibly visual about the background singing which strikes a chord between ominous and beckoning, traits brought out by Amarante’s stoic humming and simple strumming.

Give “Tardei” a listen with a window nearby, so as to let your thoughts drift with this enchanting melody. And don’t forget to check out the rest of Cavalo:

LIVE REVIEW: Flagship, Terraplane Sun & Little Daylight

Little Daylight Santos
A couple things I recall from Santos Party House include Maker’s Mark and Jack Daniels being the same price (win!), two floors of pure musical craziness, and the fact that the place is known for filling up in .5 seconds for live performances. The venue lives up to its name; by the end of the night, I had fallen into a limbo of insanity. They book amazing musicians, some of which I have had the privilege of enjoying. The lineup April 2nd included three mesmerizing acts on the ballot for the Three of Clubs Tour: Flagship, Terraplane Sun, and Little Daylight.
I have been following Flagship since their debut EP, blackbush was released almost two years ago, “Still I Wait” being one of my favorite tracks of the year. That certainly didn’t ease the star struck syndrome I felt meeting Drake Margolnick afterwards. He’s drawn comparisons to Chris Martin, but he and his four bandmates create an aura all their own. Margolnick, Matt Padgett, Christopher Comfort, Grant Harding and Michael Finster hail from Charlotte, NC. Their fantastic ensemble of dream-like sounds and melodies are the perfect backdrop for Margolnick’s smooth vocalizing tranquility. Accompanied by what was more or less a light show, their set hardly felt like an opening act. I found myself completely in awe as I gazed upon Flagship, so much that I made friends with a girl from Spain who was similarly entranced. Imagine that – two admirers from across oceans, brought together in something magical, and you get a sense of the gravity of Flagship’s performance. It’s a ripe moment for the band, following their fall released self-titled album, via of Bright Antenna Records. They’re still fresh, maybe discovering their personality on the road. But their performance last Wednesday really showed that there’s nothing but a glistening future ahead. It happened to be Finster’s birthday, but it felt more like mine to have “Are You Calling” sung to me. That’s the best thing about the band’s live performance; every song felt intimate and personal, like it was written exclusively for that one moment only.
Flagship Santos Party House
Terraplane Sun is from Venice Beach, California and made a solid segue from Flagship to headliners Little Daylight, mixing up their jouyous, dancey pop with some doses of indie-infused folk. Charismatic frontman Ben Rothbard had the crowd clapping and singing hits from last summer’s Ya Never Know EP, but the real focus was on material from their latest album Generation Blues, slated for release in July. Rothbard, Chris “Cecil” Campanaro, Lyle Riddle, Johnny Zambetti, and Gabe Feenberg are dazzling multi-intrumentalists, Johnny exchanging his guitar for mandolin and Ben picking up bluesy tambourine and harmonica every now and then. “The Stone” was particularly energetic, which makes sense considering this is the band’s first single from their upcoming record.

[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”]

Terraplane Sun Instagram from @meggers326

To send us all home especially sweaty and was Little Daylight. I love a girl that can rock out and do it in a gold dress and high-top sneakers. Indie-electronic-pop trio Nikki Taylor, Matt Lewkowicz and Eric Zeiler were the reason the guy next to me started puking. They are infectious but not in a sickening way, it’s just that everyone was jumping up and down to every song – especially (and perhaps ironically) to “Overdose.” Maybe he had Tunnel Vision – that would make sense, as it’s the title of the band’s electrifying debut EP. Whatever the cause, Mr. Barfy couldn’t kill the feel-good vibe gripping Santos. Little Daylight will end their tour at Firefly Music Festival, and the rest of the Three Of Clubs tour will continue with the dates posted below. Nikki Taylor was so intense and wild, I danced like I was single. I guess Santos just really knows how to party.

[/fusion_builder_column][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”]

Little Daylight Santos Party House
Little Daylight Instagrammed by @flagship_

Little Daylight tour

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