San Francisco’s Thee Oh Sees are widely acclaimed as one of the best regularly touring live acts, and if you’ve ever been to an Oh Sees show, it’s easy to understand why. The band’s catalogue is full of rowdy surf punk gems, guaranteeing a lively set list for each and every show. The members of Thee Oh Sees go on to execute them perfectly, as though they’ve played them a million times – but each performance feels like the first in terms of its energy and urgency. John Dwyer is an indefatigable front man, spitting and sweating and shouting and yelping and sounding like pretty much no one else; Brigid Dawson’s keys and backup vocals are the perfect foil, the duo possessing a synergy unseen since Frank Black and Kim Deal shared a stage. But it’s hard to take your eyes off Mike Shoun, whose pummeled, abused drum kit often creeps toward the edge of a stage. He plays as though he’s octopus in the body of a musician. Petey Dammit nails it down with unrelenting bass and hilarious stage banter. And you never really know who else might show up; Thee Oh Sees have toured with lots of additional musicians and featured countless stage set-ups.
In support of this year’s excellent Floating Coffin LP, Thee Oh Sees embarked on cross-country tour. Their last stop was an all-ages show at Eagle Rock Center for the Arts in Los Angeles, and AudioFemme’s West Coast photographer Michelle Halac got some amazing shots. See for yourself below!
The self-described “psychedelic group” Temples, from Kettering, England has made quite a name for themselves within the last couple of years. After the immediate success of their self-recorded debut single “Shelter Song” (one of the two songs featured on the now collectible Colours To Life/Shelter Song 7”), the band has gone on to release a second, well-received digital EP and scored a gig alongside the Rolling Stones in London’s Hyde Park just this past summer.
“Mesmerise” emulates SoCal psych rock of the 60s made popular by the The Beach Boys, The Byrds (one of Temple’s biggest influences) and so many others. Their redux of this style–complete with fuzzy guitars, lyrical surrealism and a driving bassline–could easily pass off as a b-side from any of the aforementioned bands. The production is remarkable considering the song was pieced together in the “box-room” of Bagshaw’s Kettering abode.
Temple will be playing a run of US shows for the rest of November, including two NYC dates next week (Nov. 25th at The Bowery Ballroom and Nov. 26th at Union Pool in Brooklyn). “Mesmerise” will be featured on their debut full-length Sun Structures (recorded and produced by singer/guitarist James Bagshaw), and is scheduled to be released February 11th through Fat Possum Records. Until then, be sure to check out “Mesmerise” right here, via Soundcloud:
An album that has a high level of alteration put into it—synth-laden vocals, electronic effects, trumpets and strings—often results in chaos. Shimmering, vocals-obscuring production can blunt the point of the music’s ability to emotionally grab. That’s not the case on Caveat Emptor, Brooklyn-based Empty Chairs’November 5th release. Although the new album emphasizes a kind of floating and dream-like ambiguity of intent, this somehow does not detract from the powerful connection forged with the listener, and I’m still trying to figure out exactly why that is.
The vocals, from the very beginning of the first track, demonstrate a yearning, loving vitality. The earnestness of singer/guitarist Peter Spear’s voice harnesses the often-obscured lyrics, cool, delicate detachment of the synth lines, and soft-landing drum beat into a sound that’s focused and emotive. This isn’t to say the vocals overcome an otherwise cacophonous record, though, because despite the fact that Empty Chairs incorporate a large instrumental scope into their sound, all the various lines within the music seem to work from different angles towards a common goal: deliberate chaos.
Each song begins with a set of rhythmic samples, gradually stirring in different elements as the melody repeats. But, since the album takes place on a wispy, dream-like plane, the dynamic range necessary to accommodate this kind of repetition is not present. There is no underlying driving power to kick up the intensity of the music’s progression as it cycles along, leaving the tracks to just sort of hang for minutes, suspended in time. Within a greater dynamic spectrum, this could be mesmerizing.
The last of Caveat Emptor‘s ten tracks, “The Night Sky Becomes An Ocean,” hints at this expansion of sound: the string section builds the song to a wondrous, cinematic head, and a corresponding warmth of vocals comes across earnest without seeming too navel-gazey. Including more tracks like this one, and slimming some filler in the repetitive sections of the songs, would have added depth to an already emotive collection.
Flume and Chet Faker first teamed up for Flume’s track “Left Alone,” featured on his self-titled debut from 2012. The pair are now returning with a collaborative EP, “Lockjaw,” written over the course of four short days this past year. Their new video for “Drop the Game,” the first track off of the upcoming EP, was filmed in Brooklyn and features renowned Brooklyn street dancer Storyboard P.
Directed by fellow Australian artist Lorin Askill, the video begins with Storyboard P warming up to the song, stationed on a slick, wet street outside some warehouses. The nearby streetlights are softened by the hazy night, but cars occasionally drive by and brightly illuminate Storyboard’s shape. His shadow, often cast on the concrete in front of him or on the metal warehouse doors behind him, is his only dancing partner.
Storyboard P’s effortlessly fluid movements are perfectly matched to the song’s seductive, downtempo beat and Chet Faker’s soulful crooning. “I’ve been feeling old, I’ve been feeling cold,” he says, as Storyboard skillfully manipulates and inverts his body. The dimly lit industrial backdrop is ideal—it’s urban, bleak, and lonely and provides a stark contrast to the video’s only human figure.
As the song ends, he slowly shuts his body down, lowering himself to the ground and crawling along the pavement with his hood on and a snarl on his face. And with that, the video comes to a close.
It’s a subtly captivating visual that feels sexy as well as dismal, corresponding perfectly with the song. “Drop the Game” will be one of three tracks featured on the “Lockjaw” EP, which is due out Nov. 26 via Future Classic. Check out the video below:
It’s tough to feel at home at an unfamiliar venue, seeing relatively unfamiliar bands, so I was pretty pleasantly surprised by my first experience at Baby’s All Right for Quilt’s Nov 15 show. The new Williamsburg spot was the ideal setting for the dynamic show—a swanky place, but without any sense of pretense. Quilt had two highly disparate openers (Mexican Summer labelmates Happy Jawbone Family Band and newcomers LODRO) but none of the three performances that night felt out of place, and neither did I.
Happy Jawbone Family Band kicked off the show at 9 p.m. sharp on a stage swathed in bright blue lighting that made the space feel something like an aquarium. They drew in a sizable crowd for an opening band, emanating an energy akin to a bunch of weirdos gathering amongst their own. They commented that “Quilt makes us look like a bunch of slobs every night,” which turned out to be a very true statement but in the best possible way. The jangling “Everybody Knows About Daddy,” for example, from their recent eponymous release, sounds a little like Spoon’s “The Underdog” went on a mushroom trip and got all loosey goosey, a quality that was accentuated in the song’s live form. The very sunny “D-R-E-A-M-I-N,” on the other hand, infused the show with a Wavves-y, West Coast feel. Their whole set was enjoyably laid back.
Following Happy Jawbone was brand new Brooklyn outfit LODRO, a self-described “neo noir punk” trio from Brooklyn. They have a very dense sound—bass-heavy and sinister—that occupied the entire room. The second number in their set, “Big Sleep For Alice,” had the most kick, but their music lurks as much as it stomps. The band’s main allure came from bassist/vocalist Lesley Hann, formerly of Friends, who, I feel, should seriously consider dressing up as Cruella de Vil for Halloween next year. She completely embodied the gritty and cooly ominous sounds of her band. The guitarist, meanwhile, slumped his way through the entire set, laying heavy on the distortion.
By the time Quiltcame on, the room was rather packed. They started out a bit rocky with some technical difficulties, their vocals drowned by the crisp, surfy sound of their guitars, but they quickly squared it out and dove into their set. “Cowboys in the Void,” from Quilt’s 2011 eponymous debut, was my personal favorite of the night. The psych-y, overlapping vocals at the start of the song made for a perfect display of Quilt’s ability to harmonize as well as any church choir, and the track’s midway shift from drowsy to peppy showcased the band’s range—they can shred just as much as they can soothe.
But, for the most part, they soothe, their dulcet harmonies taking center stage over the languid instrumentation, particularly in tracks like “Penobska Oakwalk” and the new “Arctic Shark.” The band swayed gently and happily with their instruments, and the audience followed. I got the sense that the entire show was a scenic drive and everyone was just enjoying the views. Live, Quilt’s music seemed to sound a lot more breezy and less contemplative, but it might have been the effects of having such an engaged and exuberant crowd. At the end of the night, everyone left with a pleasantly dazed look on their faces, a pretty good sign of a successful show.
Part mix-tape, part choose-your-own-adventure, AudioFemme leaves the confines of NYC to bring you long-form accounts of the crazy things we do for the love of live-music. In this installment, Lindsey travels to Philly for Moonface and My Bloody Valentine, with plenty of pit-stops along the way. – Eds.
In February I lay on my couch with headphones on, slow tears streaming from the corners of my eyes and into my hair. I was listening to m b v, the first record by Dublin shoegazers My Bloody Valentine to be released in over twenty years and I felt as though my blood was running backwards. I’d discovered them long after their seminal Loveless had been released, unearthing the quintessential record as a high schooler at the dawn of digital downloading. In college, I dated a guy who introduced me to their earlier releases, and I fell in love with those songs as hard as I fell for him. They were a band that I considered mostly inactive, even as Kevin Shields involved himself in side projects here and there, even as Lost In Translation brought the band’s music to larger masses. Even when they “reunited” for shows in far-off places like Indio and London and Niigata (places it seemed impossible to get to) I thought of My Bloody Valentine as a completed project from which new music would never really come. And I’d pretty much given up hope of ever seeing them live. But then out of nowhere came m b v, with its gliding, grinding guitar on “who sees you” which felt like an extension of Loveless, its punishing flanger on “wonder 2” sounding not just like the end of the record, but the end of the fucking world…
My pulse quickened not only to hear these new compositions, but also because I knew there’d be a tour behind them. And I could already picture myself in the audience with more tears streaming down my face.
* * *
Months later when My Bloody Valentine tour dates were announced, I could already see that the NY dates at Hammerstein would be prohibitively expensive. But they were playing Philly, too – at The Electric Factory – and ticket prices were literally half the cost of those here. A good friend of mine who’d been begging me to come down all summer offered to host me for the weekend and the decision was made. So last Friday, I stood shivering on 6th Avenue, waiting for a Bolt bus.
[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”]seeing these made my heart leap.
I felt almost melancholy; it had been a strange week. I’d lost my wallet after getting wasted at my ex boyfriend’s birthday bash on Tuesday, gone home with him, and burst into tears mid-makeout. It was no secret that I’d had flings with this Philly friend off and on for the last eight years of my life, and my ex didn’t really want me to go, sometimes saying it was only because he felt left out, other times admitting that he didn’t want things to be over between us. Philly friend had come down with strep throat and though he claimed to no longer be contagious that pretty much ruled out any hook-ups anyway. So my weekend of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll seemed doomed from the get-go. But the thought of missing My Bloody Valentine filled me with a dread so excruciating that all I could do was shuffle onto that bus, find a seat, and watch the skyline fade behind me.
On the way down I listened to She’s Gone, the debut of supergroup Upset. Vocalist Ali Koehler and guitarist Jenn Prince are contemporaries of what can be described most simply as the Vivian Girls scene (both played in the band at one time or another, as well as several of its satellite projects) but what blew my mind most was that Patty Schemel (as in, Patty Schemel of fucking HOLE) was drummer of the band. My anxieties started to fade in a wash of bubblegum-snapping, toe-tapping pop punk. The little details took me back to my youth, from the disaffected chuckle at the beginning of semi-snotty “About Me” through the brazen “I just want to take you under the covers” coo on “Game Over”. All the songs stay short and sweet and two minutes at a time, my heart lightened.
And then “Let It Go” summed up my exact position in the universe at that moment:
i kissed the bottle when i coulda been kissin you / i know that i shouldn’t be missin you / so i’ll try / but how will i let this one go / i wish the subtle things i say to you / would read the way i want them to / but i know i should try and / just let this one go / you can call this an obsession or an indiscretion but i just dunno if / i can let this one go / you wanted romance well here it is / i just wanna love you from afar / and keep you just the way you are / safely distant from my heart / but close enough still / to keep that spark
…caught geographically and emotionally between two boys, neither really a viable option at this point.
I was so nostalgic for the days I’d spend driving around with my high-school punk rock partner-in-crime Patti that I actually sent her a facebook message though we haven’t spoken in two years.
There are so many albums coming out lately that I really wish I could listen to driving around Northeast Ohio with you. You have to check out Swearin’ and Upset and Perfect Pussy and Priests and Joanna Gruesome and Waxahatchee and Hunters and Tweens!!!! It’s a golden age of girl-fronted pop punk and a GREAT time to start up our band 73 Cents (or the Vanities as I wanted to call us). Hope you’re well!
No response yet. I tweeted:
Pretty much every band I've been listening to lately sounds like a that dog. throwback and I couldn't be happier
Then I actually put on that dog. and melted into wistful reverie until my phone warned me my battery was at 20%. So not punk.
* * *
Philly friend fed me grilled cheeses and spicy tomato soup and meatloaf sandwiches and tater tots from his favorite bar as soon as I got in. We dropped my things off at his house and I met his cats and his roommate and her pug who has a licking-things compulsion. Spencer Krug was playing at Underground Arts that night under his solo moniker Moonface to support his new record Julia With Blue Jeans On and I insisted we go; I’d been lucky enough to see him at Littlefield in Brooklyn the spring prior when he’d debuted a lot of the material that wound up on the record and the set was just gorgeous. In the bar earlier while I was shoving food in my face they were playing Wolf Parade’s flawless 2005 record Apologies to the Queen Mary so I was already primed for Krug’s crooning.
Underground Arts is a new venue in Philly with a lot of big plans. After Moonface they were hosting an Afrobeat dance party in the back room, which was actually larger than the one where Krug was set to play. I glanced at a poster on the column we’d committed to lean against and noticed that Thee Oh Sees had played there at the end of October and if I’d known how great this venue was I would’ve come down for that, too. Their beers on tap were legit, the sound was perfect, the floor plan pretty open (they’d set up chairs in clusters around the stage for the night’s performance that could easily be reconfigured or removed depending on the performer).
Saltland, a.k.a. musician Rebecca Foon, was already playing when we arrived. Foon is best known for stints in Esmerine and A Silver Mt. Zion and her solo project, while hinging on her very skilled cello compositions, also features some loops, backing tracks, and powerful if occasional vocals. She gave shout-outs to her mother’s charity organization, repped Montreal, thanked Krug and called his audiences “beautiful” and kicked her right leg like a marionette with a charley horse as she sawed her bow across the cello’s strings in more urgent passages. The songs took turns as dramatic and expansive as the imagery inherent in Foon’s nom-de-plume would suggest.
Krug and Foon have been friends for a while, coming from the same city and sharing a music scene, and they both display the trademark humility Canadians are stereotypically known for. Krug’s long hair obscured his face anytime he leaned over to play piano, but he would conscientiously tuck it behind his ear when he turned to address the audience with anecdote or gratitude, casually flashing a million-watt smile. He explained that he’d mainly planned to play through the material from his latest record before opening with album stunner “Love The House You’re In” . Even from the get-go, his voice was emotive and intense, needing no build-up or practice to slip into its full-bodied range. His piano playing was deliberate and complex and though he complained of some broken keys and out-of-tune-ness it sounded perfect with or without the supposed flaws.
True to his word, he stuck to material from Julia, moving through powerful renditions of the title track, singles “Barbarians” and “Everyone is Noah, Everyone Is The Ark”, as well as “Black Is Back In Style”, “First Violin” and “Your Chariot Awaits”. There was one song with the line we both know that we’re both crazy that had really stuck with me from the show I caught in May and was particularly delighted to find on the record. Krug introduced this song, “November 2011”, as his most straightforward love song. “If you’re thinking of proposing to someone now would be the time” he laughed. Someone in the back of the audience shouted “Marry ME!” but Krug politely declined before launching into the relatively bright, sweet melody.
It’s hard to know how personal to get here, how much to reveal. I can tell you that the first time I heard that song I was standing next to my ex and we were in the midst of a doomed reconciliation, but he looked down at me and took my arm and held my hand and I’ll never not think of that moment when I hear the song. I can also tell you that in 2005, a few months after I met Philly friend, I invited him to come visit me in Ohio and we had a time that very closely follows the narrative of the song. I can tell you that when Krug was one verse in, a lady near the bar fell off of a table she was sitting on and it clattered and it broke some of the gravity of all those memories, just a little. I don’t know how many details it’s appropriate to share, ever.
* * *
We went to a whiskey and go-go bar after the show that made me wish New York didn’t have weird cabaret laws. I drank Willet on the rocks and an elderberry cider and I can’t remember any music we might have heard in the bar or otherwise discussed. We went to another bar and got late night snacks (duck confit potato skins and pineapple habanero chicken wings) and he confessed he was kind of involved with another girl who sort of wanted to get serious and I confessed that I had no idea what was even going on with my love life and we laughed all the way to his place where I immediately fell asleep under an electric blanket trying to watch movie trailers on the Carnosaur DVD I’d found on his shelf earlier that day and had been making fun of him for owning since.
* * *
The next morning we drove to a Tex-Mex brunch place where I got a breakfast quesadilla filled with eggs and smokey pulled pork and something called a Cowboy Coffee which had Kahlúa and Bulleit in it. They were playing a pretty decent punk mix which is so different from the Michael Bublé bullshit I’m used to hearing at brunch that I got really wound up when Thee Oh Sees came on. We checked out a couple junk stores and I insisted on listening to the new Swearin’ record as we drove around because they’re from Philly and I’m an obsessed creep.
When I lived in the Midwest the place I listened to music most was in my car. Now I’m on a bike constantly (at least before the winter winds turn me into a wimp) or taking public transportation from Point A to Point B either lacking headphones or with my only mechanism for playing mp3s threatening a swift death if I open Spotify. So these days, it’s a bit weird to find myself in the front seat of a car cruising down highways and side streets and everything in between. Swearin’s first single from Surfing Strange puts me right back in the driver’s seat, if not literally.
We picked up my friend’s roommate and headed to the Trenton Punk Rock Flea Market. She has this wry sense of humor, not wholly unblemished by the bitterness that goes along with sticking close to the same music scene your whole life. Having grown up in the Trenton area, it seemed like she knew everyone. The flea was filled with hand-made jewelry and record crates almost too overwhelming to dig through and the softest thrifted tees in bins labeled 4 for 10$ and lots of horror-movie paraphernalia and vintagey goodness. We drove back to Jersey with No Age blasting and the sun setting against Philly’s approaching skyline. We refueled with food and beer flights at Johnny Brenda’s where Tim Kasher was playing later that night. But we’d be at My Bloody Valentine, of course.
* * *
As showtime drew nearer I felt an excitement growing that I rarely feel about shows anymore. Most of the time I’m attending shows to check a new band out, or sometimes just because it’s something to do instead of staying home. Even with bigger bands whose catalogues I cherish I don’t feel jittery and I knew it was more than the Cowboy Coffee. I really felt poised to have a moment with Kevin Shields & Co., to be cleansed by intense volume and lose myself in guitar haze.
We got to the venue after Dumb Numbers had played. It took almost an hour for My Bloody Valentine to set up, a ring of monitors and amps poised to surround Shields like a sonic Stonehenge. I’m normally pretty good about weaving my tiny self politely toward the front of a crowd but the way Electric Factory was set up it bottlenecked between the impenetrable bar and the sound booth and a wall of the tallest people I’ve ever encountered had already posted up shoulder-to-shoulder between the two. I thought the crowd might shift a little and open up but nothing moved so we decamped to a balcony. The sightlines were great but it certainly wasn’t as excruciatingly loud as I’d wanted it to be, and the psychedelic light show couldn’t quite penetrate the darkness up there in the rafters in any retina-scorching way. Still, I was pretty pumped for things to get started.
They opened with “Sometimes” before I even felt prepared for it and it oddly felt like they were just trying to get it out of the way. As the show went on it felt more and more like the band didn’t even want to play with each other. Like chewing pot roast in silence at an awkward family dinner after mom and dad have been fighting, the quartet plodded through “I Only Said” and “When You Sleep” before appropriately introducing their most recent material with “new you”. By then, some worrisome sound issues were cropping up. I’d expected the mix to be a little muddy, especially as they visited works from Isn’t Anything, Tremelo, and You Made Me Realise – that is, after all, part of the allure of My Bloody Valentine’s oeuvre. But it wasn’t that the vocals were buried under fuzz – it was like the fuzz was flat. It all felt sloppily executed; the layers of distortion feeling disparate instead of layering gracefully on top of one another. Several times, Shields stopped songs a few bars in and restarted them. It was unclear whether these technical difficulties were occurring due to fault of the venue, but even from so far away I could see Shields point an accusatory finger at the audio engineer present on stage. Worried techs rushed out here and there in a desperate attempt to try to alleviate some of the problems but the whole thing seemed like a train wreck.
In the purest, most unsullied moments I felt a sort of dizziness, and though part of that was true exhilaration, I think it also happened because I had to hold my breath lest the magic dissolve in some tragic technical difficulty. “To Here Knows When” went off without a hitch and exuded an incredible warmth, “wonder 2” was almost as assaulting as I’d wanted it to be but I couldn’t help feeling like it should have been bumped way up in the set instead of buried near the end. The squall of closer “You Made Me Realise” almost approached bliss but the so-called “Holocaust” section felt like little more than an “Off-handed Anti-Semitic Remark” section. Which, referring to the jam session you tack on the end of your set as one of the most tragic genocides in human history probably is. And then Shields, who said little all night in terms of between-song banter except to apologize here and there for the technical difficulties, said what I could have sworn was “Fuck” but I guess could have been “Thanks” in heavy Brogue. Either way, he stomped offstage like a petulant child, the lights came up, and there was no encore.
The roughly 80-minute set was about as long as it had been in other cities, other venues, and the list pretty much identical. But I felt so jilted by the experience it was all I could do to not immediately buy tickets to the $70 Hammerstein shows I had been trying to avoid in the first place. I was stunned and crushed and not in the way I had expected to be at all. I didn’t want to believe that it had gone so badly, that what would likely be my only experience with a band so beloved would be utter rubbish. And almost everyone tweeting about the show had only glowing remarks with almost no mention of the sound issues, which made me feel as if I was going crazy. Other attendees were saying it was the best show they’d ever seen (do you even go to any shows ever actually?) and using pretentious phrases about “angelic drone” and all I could feel was total jealousy of their ability to suspend disbelief and make delusional snap judgments. I wanted to love that show more than anything and instead it was one of the hugest let-downs in terms of concert-going that I’ve experienced in my life.
* * *
I get that sometimes things aren’t the way you expect them to be. That often, disappointment goes hand-in-hand with any expectation at all. That you might imagine one scenario and have the reality end up completely opposite from the fantasy.
I spent the rest of my evening stress-eating cheesesteaks (from Pat’s – far superior to Geno’s in my opinion) and decompressing in front of a pinball machine. In the morning over cream-cheese filled Pumpkin French Toast and Chicken N’ Waffles Benedict I apologized to Philly friend for being so emotionally detached and physically hands-off, citing weird feelings I was having about my ex in NYC and my resent lack of self-esteem as factors contributing to why I’d been less than present. He shrugged and said he’d just assumed I was worried about catching Strep. Then he asked me why I’d been feeling so bad about myself. “I’m just tired and I feel old” I said, “and I haven’t been going to yoga.”
I am searching for a balance right now, but the ease I long for has been elusive. Weighty memories and distorted renderings are fine when it comes to a live music experience but there’s been too much of both in my personal life lately and it’s really complicating my ability to make decisions about the future of my relationships.
Back on a Bolt bus and headed home, I listened through Static, the newest from Brooklyn-based dream-poppers Cults. Vocalist Madeline Follin and guitarist Brian Oblivion had formed the band as couple but split up after a grueling tour in support of their critically acclaimed self-titled debut. No one wanted to make a big deal about the break-up, worried that the focus would shift from the music to the personal lives of the duo behind it.
For what it’s worth, the record stands alone without that back-story; it’s a bit grittier and fuzzier than the last collection of songs we heard from the group but is still akin to that material in its updated 60’s girl-group pop vibe. Follin and Oblivion are joined by members of the touring band they enlisted to help flesh out the material live, and that synergy and practice shows on Static. While there aren’t as many standout singles on the record, the dark undertones that the band typically bury in sunny melody here have their moments in the forefront, allowing for greater depth. Cults has grown up.
That being said, the fact that Static was written and recorded by former lovers lends another kind of weight to tracks more outwardly breezy. Follin is known for her impish vocals but lyrically she displays a no-nonsense bravado. She comes across as disappointed in the turn of events despite knowing that things are over and is determined to move on, castigating her former lover and her former self on “Were Before” and then delivering healthy doses of inspiration in the soaring “Keep Your Head Up”.
Follin and Oblivion could have chosen to break up the band when their relationship ended, of course. Instead, we have Static, because there was too much there to walk away entirely. The force behind their creative collaboration was all the glue that was needed to pull everything back together, and it’s a permanent fixture in the group’s trajectory. “Always and Forever” highlights and celebrates the remnants of that relationship and the form that it’s now taken on, with Follin unleashing her sky-high falsetto.
I suppose there are just feelings that endure no matter the circumstance, no matter the disappointment involved as time marches forward. I’m not going to throw my copy of Loveless in the trash based on one lackluster live performance. And even though I wish I possessed the strength to whip my personal life into shape, I’m more in a position to be bandied by unpredictable whims than I am to take control. At the root of all it is true sentiment unraveling endlessly from my sensitive heart, drowning out everything else like so much noise.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
There has been much attention and discussion circulating around the name Angel Olsen, from her critically acclaimed album Half Way Home released just last year, to her now infamous, “blood-curddling” performance with Kentucky native singer-songwriter Will Oldham (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy) back in 2010.
The Midwestern indie-folk singer and guitarist has drawn comparisons to contemporaries like Sharon Van Etten and the 50s era songstress Connie Converse, but Olsen has crafted (and perhaps even perfected) her own amalgamation of indie-folk influenced Americana. Half Way Home exhibited Olsen’s spellbinding vocal range as she serenaded us with everything from soft-spoken hums to blasts of soulful croons that join the likes of beloved country singers such as Patsy Cline.
“Forgiven/Forgotten” is the first single from her upcoming release on Jagjaguwar Records, Burn Your Fire for No Witness, produced by John Congleton (the unsung hero producer behind records by Modest Mouse, Okkervil River and William Elliott Whitmore). “Forgiven/Forgotten” displays Olsen’s impressive range once more, this time through the exhibition of a number of haunting, distorted chants. She veers off from her trademark Folk-Americana genre, but fear not, as she also knows how to orchestrate an energized, pop-driven indie song that mirrors a cross between the Pixies and Funeral-era Arcade Fire. Olsen masterfully crafts an innovative, alternative-influenced version of the undeniably catchy pop song, the kind you wish you’d stumble across more often.
Angel Olsen’s new album, Burn Your Fire for No Witness is due out 2/18/2014, and her tour kicks off next week. For now listen to “Forgiven/Forgotten” right here, via Soundcloud:
Musical virtuoso Neneh Cherry recently announced that she’s returning with her first solo album in 16 years, Blank Project, due out Feb. 25 on Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound. The highly anticipated album is a collaboration with RocketNumberNine, produced by Four Tet and featuring an appearance by Robyn. For a taste of the upcoming release, Neneh has shared the title track, “Blank Project.”
The track sounds antsy and angry, with Neneh’s soulful voice saying “Too many times, you come crawling, say sorry too late.” Instrumentally, it’s pretty sparse—a lot of throbbing percussion and bass, along with a few little embellishments here and there in the form of bell chimes or a tambourine—so her lyrics really shine. They come off as a sort of spoken word poem, with lines like “I feel so small / I hate you I hate you, I love you I love you, I love it all.” The ten-track record is said to have been born out of a recent personal tragedy in Neneh’s life, and subsequently recorded and mixed over a short five-day period.
After a long career experimenting with elements of hip-hop, post-punk, and jazz (among other genres), this minimalist aesthetic presents a new side of Neneh. Listen to the new track below via Soundcloud:
Last week, I had the opportunity to see The Blow and Love Inksat the Music Hall of Williamsburg. Although I initially had my doubts about what I presumed would be a sickeningly hip experience, I was pleasantly surprised by the relaxed atmosphere of the venue. The beer was cheap, the acoustics were solid, the crowd was laid back, and the main attractions were pretty great as well.
The Blow
The Blow is an electro pop duo comprised of Khaela Maricich on vocals and Melissa Dyne on synth and lighting. Songs are catchy, poppy and upbeat, and paired with Maricich’s distinct voice, the music is just about as infectious as anything you will ever hear. Lyrics are quirky, sarcastic and lighthearted. Their newest album, The Blow–which came out September 30th– was reportedly written for Lindsay Lohan and is about “someone who is quasi-lesbian and might have gone off the rails.”
Khaela Maricich stepped on the stage barefoot dressed in all black and sang “You’re My Light.” It was a subdued performance, without any accompaniment. Then she came to life. She spent the rest of the show dancing around the stage, crouching, convulsing and crowdsurfing into the audience. She even freestyled at one point. Melissa Dyne was stationed in the middle of the crowd on a raised platform with her synth and lighting equipment, producing sonic and visual elements that Maricich spontaneously reacted to with voice and movement. For instance, at one point Dyne projected Maricich’s silhouette against the back of the stage and Maricich in turn danced to her silhouette.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of their performance was the palpable tension between Maricich and Dyne. It may have been friendly banter, but it seemed to escalate towards the end of the performance. At one point Maricich attempted to get Dyne to interact with the audience, and when Dyne did not comply Maricich chastised her for being “off-putting and terrifying.” By the end of the show Maricich asked the audience if they wanted to hear “Parentheses,” which was probably the last song of the night. Although the crowd was enthusiastic, Maricich unceremoniously walked off the stage after barely finishing “A Kiss.” After a couple of awkward moments where everyone was processing what had just occurred, it became clear that the show was over and the crowd migrated towards the exit. Were we witnessing the culmination of an onstage lover’s quarrel? Perhaps.
My favorite aspect of live music is the element of surprise, and The Blow certainly achieved that last night. Overall, with all the crazy dancing and Maricich’s nonsensical musings (my favorite was her rant about the “blackness” of the music hall), Maricich and Dyne were on point.
Love Inks
Love Inks is an Austin-based, synth-infused dreamy pop trio consisting of Sherry LeBlanc on the vocals and synth, Derek Brown on the guitar and Kevin Dehan on the bass. While they describe themselves as minimalist, the instrumentation in each song is wonderfully crafted, interweaving synth, guitar and bass parts. When it comes to Love Inks, less is definitely more and they know exactly when to pull back. These elements, when combined with LeBlanc’s dreamy vocals and heart wrenching lyrics, yield a weightless effect.
Prior to the concert, I was only familiar with Love Inks’ E.S.P. and had no idea what a live performance would consist of. I couldn’t have been more impressed. While The Blow’s straightforward beats and accessible melodies are more obviously entertaining, Love Inks heralds from a more subdued place. The moment Sherry LeBlanc opened her mouth it felt as if there was a collective sigh and everyone’s baggage was momentarily forgotten. LeBlanc’s ethereal voice melded with Brown and Dehan’s interactive and complementary guitar and bass parts. While Khaela Maricich of The Blow’s banter was nonsensical and lighthearted, LeBlanc took a more intimate approach. She invited the audience into her life by telling stories about the group’s creative process and personal experiences.
They stuck close to the recorded versions of their songs, which made the occasional, sporadic variations all the more special. While Love Inks is minimalist, the most magical parts of the music occurred when all of the composite elements came together. For instance, at one point Brown walked over and played directly into the amplifier. The combination of guitar feedback, bassline and LeBlanc’s vocals created a wall of noise. My personal favorite performances from Love Inks were “Skeleton Key,” “Leather Glove” and “Rock On.” Their newest album, Generation Club was released on September 24th and is available on iTunes.
***
Last week, Audiofemme’s Editor In Chief, Lindsey Rhoades, was lucky enough to catch up with the oh-so talented Love Inks, while the crew was on the road for their current tour. Here are all the state secrets they divulged to us:
Audiofemme: The new record is great! You wrote these songs a few years ago but didn’t record them until this year. How did that incubation period affect the material?
Love Inks: Thanks! The incubation period gave us a lot of time to develop the songs. We actually recorded the album twice over during these last two years because we realized we were going in the wrong direction at first. The incubation period was really terrible, we just wanted the album to come out and to get on the road again. All of us were frustrated and felt like we were slowly disappearing – we’re relieved to finally have it out and be able to move forward.
AF: Was it a conscious decision to let the songs have a little breathing room before tracking them?
LI: It wasn’t… If we had things our way, the second album would have come out immediately after the first one. If only to keep momentum going. We were worried that after two years people would have forgotten about us. It just happened that we had a lot of different road blocks thrown in our way – our label went under, our band mate Adam left to teach, my father’s passing took a lot out of us as well.
AF: There were quite a few demos and versions of songs that you posted to facebook in the interim between records, including one, “Be Brave”, about the loss of Sherry’s dad, which didn’t make it onto the record. Can we expect an EP or some other release?
LI: We’ve started putting all of our unreleased songs on a bandcamp so people can download them for free. We do a lot of covers for kicks and have started posting those as well. One track that didn’t make it on the album is the title track called Generation Club, which was released on a 7″ through Conditions Records.
AF: A lot of people have noted that there’s a heavier synth presence on Generation Club. Is this new direction in your sound something that happened naturally in the time period between the two records, or was it a deliberate move away from the minimalism of ESP?
LI: Our primary intent with the first album was to focus on the power of silence and space in the songs. It’s a lovely idea but doesn’t always translate when you’re playing in bars night after night. We wanted to stick with our minimal aesthetic but grow the sound in a way that would help us combat the noise in a live club. There was synth on E.S.P., it was just more understated. When you start as minimal as we did with the first album, any minor change can alter the entire soundscape.
AF: On ESP’s “Leather Glove” there’s a line about writing to a lover in a special kind of ink – I always kind of assumed that was where the band name came from. The songs on that record in particular feel like a sort of intimate letter, and while Generation Club has its intimate moments is less personalized. Almost as though ESP is addressed to one specific entity and Generation Club is blown open in terms of its scope. Is there anything in particular that, for you as a band, feels different about the newest record when compared to your debut?
LI: Ah, good ear. We actually had the band name before Leather Glove was written, but that line is a reference to the name Love Inks. As far as the album feeling less personalized, I guess I can see that. There are some songs, like Outta Sight, that were written to a specific person in a more intense way than anything on E.S.P. was. I think the primary difference that I can see is that we spent a lot of time talking about E.S.P. before it was written. There were months of discussion about what we wanted to hear in music and what we felt wasn’t available at the time before we even picked up an instrument. We exchanged mix tapes, it was field by the excitement that comes with starting a new project. With the second album, there was the pressure of sticking to our aesthetic but making something that expanded on that. There are a lot of songs that reference the topic of time because we could feel time ticking away as it took longer and longer for everything to solidify. I will say that I personally like the new album better. I guess if we didn’t like it better, there wouldn’t have been a second album.
AF: The songs on this record draw inspiration from photos, dreams, infamous groupies. Is there a particular feeling you get when you come across a snippet in pop culture and know you have to write a song about it? What is the process of turning that inspiration into a song like?
LI: A lot of the songs were taken from snippets of poems that Kevin wrote. He would go to the library and look through Art In America magazines from the 80s and write poems about the pieces he saw. It was meant to be a writing exercise but it turned out that some of the lines really lent themselves to being songs. With that process, you have a song and you have a melody and you can pick the really great lines and fit them to the rhythm. The Pamela De Barres homage, Tattoo, was written after all of us spent a tour reading her book ‘I’m With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie’. It was clear we had to write a song for her because her passion for music was so inspiring. As a musician, you can only write so many love songs before you start looking to new places for inspiration.
AF: How do you tackle the songwriting process between the three of you?
LI: Kevin is a prolific writer. When we’re not on tour, he spends anywhere from 6 to 12 hours a day writing music. We have a library of songs to choose from but it’s always clear when one is going to turn into something special. He writes everything on his Korg MS-20 in a sort of synth-symphony. We then take it apart from there. Usually I’ll listen to it and try to determine what the song made me feel. Sometimes there isn’t a melody in place and I’ll get to write that as well. Sometimes Kevin will write half the lyrics and I write the other half. Other times we write everything together. After that initial synth-symphony it’s not a set process with us. We each pick and choose what we’ll contribute or what we’re drawn to working on. Derek always spices up the bass lines once we get the song into a practice space.
AF: You’ve self-produced most of your music. Can you talk a little bit about that process? Is there a particular reason you choose not to get other parties involved in fine-tuning your recordings?
LI: We tried to get other parties involved in this album. We thought it would be great to go into a studio and get a really clean recording. A friend of ours in Austin recorded the entire thing in March of 2012. It was a great recording but we felt it was missing the soul of an analog recording. So we scratched it and went back to the beginning with our usual process. It just works for us. Aside from the ease of recording at our own house and our love of an analog sound, it also makes sense financially to record on our own. We did have Matt Oliver at Big Orange studio in Austin mix the album and he really helped solidify the sound we wanted.
AF: A couple of years ago I went to a SXSW day party at the Monofonus Press compound and was bowled over by their whole aesthetic, by the music and art and literature they were putting out. How did you get involved with Monofonus Press?
LI: I played in a band called the Hunnies a few years ago with a guy named Will Slack, he became one of my closest friends through that musical project. He plays in a band called Soft Healer now and works at Monofonus Press. On our last tour he sat me down and talked to me about representing the city we love and essentially putting our ‘money where our mouth’ is by going with an Austin label. We feel they’re really ballsy in terms of putting out product they really believe in and we knew they would let us have creative freedom.
AF: Monofonus has a quintessentially Austin feel to me. Are there other ways that living in Austin has influenced your music?
LI: The pace of the town is a huge influence, everything moves slowly and people spend a lot of time just enjoying being there. We didn’t realize it until we started touring and seeing the different ways cities work. If we lived in New York, for example, we wouldn’t have been able to make an album with so much space in it. I think we would have kicked it up a notch in any bigger city because we would be moving faster in general. It’s a subconscious thing but I really see it to be true. The other half of that is that there are thousands of bands, so even though there’s a great music community, it’s very competitive. I think that keeps us on our toes. We’ve been to cities on tour where there are only a dozen bands or so. When there’s no one else making your genre of music in the town you live you’re less likely to push yourself to be the best you can be.
AF: Austin’s also known for its phenomenal music scene; who are some of your favorite Austin musicians?
LI: Deep Time has been one of my favorite bands for years. Mirror Travel rules too. My new favorites are a band called Polio Club. Our friend Zach is making some great outsider music under the name Time Supply and Kevin produced his album. I highly suggest checking all of these out.
AF: You’ve been on tour for a month and you’re about halfway through some dates with the Blow. How did that lineup come together? How has this tour compared to others?
LI: We did a short tour with the Blow in 2011, just some southwest dates. We really clicked with them and have become close friends since that time. The two of us went through the recording process together and it was comforting to have another band to relate to and lean on when things got tough. We were emotional/spiritual support for each other during recording, mixing searching for labels. Our album came out in late September and theirs was released in October so it ended up being perfect timing for us to tour together.
Comparing to other tours, this has felt a lot more like our first European tour. The Blow have a big following so we’ve had good crowds, even in the smaller towns we’ve played. It’s cool because their audience understands our music and vice versa. It’s been amazing to see their show and to have a chance to fine tune ours on such an extensive trip.
AF: What’s your favorite thing about touring?
LI: It has to be having the chance to see our friends all over the country. I get to see all of my friends more than anyone I know. It’s also always great to tour because you become tighter as a band and really have a chance to generate new ideas about your music. We’re really excited to go home and record our next album this winter.
Thanks for chatting with us, Love Inks!! We ♥♥♥ you. Catch you soon.
Magik Markers’ career began with an impressively long and prolific streak, with almost forty releases since their 2002 debut Beep Beep. February 2010’s Volodor Dance, though, was followed up by nearly four years of (no pun intended) radio silence. The band’s lyrics, album titles, and even the name Magik Markers evoke a fun, whimsical refusal to grow up (to say nothing of founding member Leah Quimby’s decision to leave the band and pursue a career in ventriloquism in 2006) but it appears that the break in Magik Markers recording stretch came about partially due to an onslaught of adult realities. The band’s three members scattered, geographically speaking, and members Pete Nolan and John Shaw had children.
In spite of, or more likely because of, the changes that the band has undergone (since their last release), the November 2013 album, Surrender To The Fantasy, is a lavish love letter to the teenage rock and roll dream. Liberated, context-less noise rock, thoroughly distorted and by turns joyous and disillusioned, Surrender sounds like it’s being performed underground, which in fact it was. Much of the recording took place in the basement of guitarist Elisa Ambrogio’s father’s house, returning the band to to the hard, unadorned sound of its earliest efforts. There’s a vulnerability to that unadornedness, courtesy of Ambrogio’s sweetly dissonant voice, which transports standout tracks like “Bonfire” and “Mirrorless” back in time to seventies-era rock recordings.
I wouldn’t call Surrender a nostalgic album, more of an attempt to get back to basics. Tracks that would otherwise be straight noise rock are informed by a droning, generous pace—almost every song breaks the five minute mark—but do away with the flinching self-reflection that often comes along with the introspection and spaciness applied to this record. The last track, “WT” (standing for “White Trash,” presumably) features refreshingly snotty vocals over clanging guitar riffs that aren’t afraid to be ugly, and that zero-fucks-given attitude serves the band well over the course of the album.
Surrender To The Fantasy comes out tomorrow on Drag City in the form of an (imitation) SOLID GOLD USB DRIVE! In the meantime, watch the video for “Mirrorless” here, via Youtube:
Sometimes I wonder if bands love or hate Fred Falke. Imagine you write, record, and release a song. A good song. Imagine then, that some swanky French guy takes your song, fiddles with it, a makes it into a bangin’ dance track. You’d hate him a little bit, wouldn’t you? Well, he’s done it again. Fred Falke, known predominantly for his work with French Touch bass god Alan Braxe, dropped his remix of Pompeya’s“90” last week, and it’s damn fine.
Pompeya is a four-piece synth-pop group from Moscow, who recently released their debut LP Tropical on Brooklyn label No Shame. “90″ is a great song to begin with; it’s light yet textural, mellow, and sexy…a bit like The Beegees on opium.
Then Fred Falke dressed it up in his signature disco-robe, and got us all dancing. In a way this remix sums up Falke’s body of work in under 6 minutes. The track starts off with a synth pulse, simultaneously steady and light. In come the keys, drums and a richer, more sinister melodic undertone. The song pauses at 1:06, and right at 1:09 emerge the toned-up, sparkly synths, which sweep in, followed by breathy vocals. Around minute three the robot chorus fleshes out the track: a vocal effect reminiscent of French House giants Daft Punk.
I can’t wait to dance to this live on 12/12 at Le Poisson Rouge. Until then, I’ll have to keep dancing in my chair.
Within recent years, Brooklyn has been known to spawn some pretty over the top and deranged experimental acts, which invariably transcend the most esoteric of the borough’s neighborhoods and their myriad galleries and dive bars.
Happy Lives is no exception. To file them under “experimental” wouldn’t do any justice. There’s almost no consistency in the music they create, and no two songs sound the same, a feat most bands couldn’t fathom accomplishing. One minute they may go from a Nirvana-inspired alt- rock ( “Slacks and Slippers”), to a campy 50’s and 60’s ditty (“Feelin’ Right”). Audiences don’t seem to care though. Going by a number of the band’s videos on their YouTube channel, the music of Happy Lives is enough to get even the most blase of all hipsters dancing, or at least nodding their heads along to the beat.
“This Song Is Called I’m Dead” straddles the boundaries of electronica and experimental indie rock, and the sound the band produces with this track meshes together snippets of indie “neo pop”, and the result of much-fidgeting-with a digital sampler. It bounces back and forth from a crashy drum loop, which is in turn layered over creepily altered, child-like voices, and eventually a slowed down deep, melancholy vocal track accompanied by a whimsical bassline. It is at times grating and inaccessible, perhaps by design; however by the end you’re taken over by it, and left wanting. We can’t wait to see the direction in which these guys evolve sonically and creatively. In the meantime catch them live at a smattering of hip warehouse/art/DIY parties that you can stumble upon, tucked in the folds of Brooklyn, like tonight, for example. Until you see their exceptional live performance, listen to “This Song Is Called I’m Dead”, right here on audiofemme.
My dad has more records than your dad. Just about 4,000 of ‘em. He used to have more too, when he owned a record store in the late 1970s in a remote part of Eastern Washington called Chelan. It was aptly titled: “The Music Store”(my dad even got the whole titular minimalism thing before it was big!) He used to stock The Music Store with all the best in pop/rock, country, bluegrass, jazz, folk, blues, and countless sub-genres. He would peruse thrift stores for rare finds as well as record discount sections, then known as cutout bins due to the rectangular chunk punched out of the LP’s sleeve. He’d buy milk crates full of LPs for a few bucks.
To this day the cutout bin records are my dad’s scapegoat of choice when defending ownership of such releases as A Flock Of Seagulls’ Dream Come True from ’86, and a surprisingly large body of Huey Lewis And The News albums. Yet the thrift stores and cutout bins were also responsible for some of the more strange and obscure gems. Take for instance my dad’s album of whale songs, narrated by none other than Leonard Nimoy. Or perhaps Ambrosia’s 1982 release Road Island, which, although sonically horrible, boasts a Ralph Steadman illustration on the cover. He also has a rare copy of A Tribute To Uncle Ray, an album released by (Little) Stevie Wonder at age 11, that had him singing the songs of Ray Charles.
I must say giving the milk crates and cutout bins all the credit would be unfair. The truth is, the majority of my dad’s record collection, in all of its diverse awesomeness, is due to his shameless LOVE of music. It’s the reason he has everything from Todd Rundgren’s Runt to Marlene DietrichReturns to Germany, an album of the starlet singing in her native tongue over Burt Bacharach’s orchestra. It’s the reason he has Tom Waits’ first seven albums, and T-Bone Burnett’s first two. He owns every album Harry Nilsson released, and as much of The Kinks discography he could locate. He even has an unopened copy of a speech by JFK, which could probably pay a few bills here and there if he could part with it.
These records were road signs for me all the way through childhood, and they’re still guiding my infatuation with music today. In the same way I rummage through my mother’s closet each year and find something previously overlooked, I spend hours in front of my dad’s massive library of records, eyeing each spine for a hidden pearl.
The last time I went home, I found that my dad had mixed my record collection with his in a recent move. I started plucking my copy of Wire’s And Here It Is Again…Wire from the W’s and he caught me. This immediately spawned an argument about whether the album was in fact mine, gifted to me by my mother, or his from before they were married. I was tempted to challenge my dad to name five Wire songs as proof that he even liked them, but I was smart enough not to do that (I love you dad!).
When my parents separated 16 years ago the retrieval of records was probably the most painful order of business. Was that copy of The Pretenders’ first LP mom’s or dad’s? What about The Specials, or Hunky Dory? These disputes still surface, but I like to look on the bright side: my parents have amazing taste in music.
What if they were bickering about who ended up with the Kenny G record?
Things could be worse.
Here are a few tracks inspired by my awesome dad, and his impeccable taste:
When I first heard “The Whole of the Law,” it was nighttime and it was snowing outside. Though it’s the ninth track on the eleven-track-long Painful, I discovered it as a standalone, stumbling upon the song on YouTube. I’d been listening to something else—who knows what, at this point—when I noticed the name “Yo La Tengo” in the “related videos” sidebar. I thought, Might as well try it out.
The video began, with just the nondescript, blurry dark blue and grayish album cover for a visual, and a soft, ethereal guitar riff came floating out through my headphones. I sat at my desk in my dark dorm room, my roommate already fast asleep in her bed behind me, and listened intently as two voices (one male, one female) began singing. “I used to have the notion / I could swim the length of the ocean / If I knew you were waiting for me,” they practically whispered in perfect harmony. A low thump on the drums occasionally joined them, along with a sleepy, owl-like hooting in the background. It was like a lullaby, both tragic and blissful. Near the end, the female voice became an atmospheric hum as the male voice sang:
Maybe I’m in love with you I had to contact you I found out I was in love with you I had to contact you That’s it, that’s the law, that’s the whole of the law
And in just two minutes and twenty seconds, I was completed entranced.
I guess it might be appropriate that I discovered Yo La Tengo through what’s actually a cover of a song by The Only Ones. Yo La Tengo have a legendary penchant for covering little-known treasures—the sort of songs you only unearth after hours of browsing through buried, old vinyl records (which is definitely what this band does in their free time). So it’s no surprise that most of Yo La Tengo’s discography come off as meticulously curated little collections of original works and revamped numbers. Painful, which turned 20 years old just over a month ago, is a particularly impeccable example of the band’s artistry which set the standard for all of Yo La Tengo’s albums to follow. Not to mention, it’s my personal favorite of theirs.
But genius comes pretty close. The thing about Painful is that it’s full of paradox. Its opening track, “Big Day Coming,” is slow and dream-like, almost hypnotic with its repetitive, simple organ riff. Kaplan provides a distorted feedback that echoes off the walls of the song, his voice hushed as he opens the album with the line “Let’s be undecided, let’s take our time.” The second-to-last song on Painful, “Big Day Coming (2),” is the same song facelifted into headstrong, pure ‘90s alt-rock. The organ is replaced by a loud, pulsating guitar reverb, and Kaplan’s voice becomes emphatic as he declares, “There’s a big day coming, about a mile away / There’s a big day coming and I can hardly wait.” The song goes from shy and subdued to downright raucous.
Other songs are similarly, though not as obviously, contrasted. In the two songs that Georgia Hubley sings in, “From a Motel 6” and “Nowhere Near,” she goes from saying “Dream a quiet place for us to fight / Oh no, your heart is broken / Don’t you think that’s a little trite?” to “Do you know how I feel, how I feel about you? / All I know is when you smile, I believe in everything.” Later on in the album, an angry song about the end of a relationship, “I Was the Fool Beside You For Too Long,” is placed directly before the lovesick ballad “The Whole of the Law.”
There are no smooth transitions. It’s jarring, and yes, it’s painful, in a hurts-so-good kind of way. So take 50 minutes to flash back to this quietly momentous album—an album that was essentially ten years in the making (Kaplan himself has admitted the “group really started when we made the record Painful”) and has remained an influential indie rock staple for twenty years and counting.
Listen to “The Whole Of The Law”, here via Youtube:
One man band turned trio- The Entrance Band shows us a thing or two about mixing sexy with morbid love hopelessness…
Guy Blakeslee‘s voice is far from scared or submissive. However, The Entrance Band’s new single, “Spider”, proves otherwise. Blakelee seems to be captivated-unsure if willingly- by a Ms. Spider. “Use your silk, tie my hand…your wish is my command.” The song has many elements, but all comes together with an awesome riff, in a trippy-fantasy web. Alongside Paz Lenchantin and Derek James, this song delivers. There aren’t many bands that still have their MySpace up and with a post more current than three years old. I can see why this trio has a solid fan base. Their album Face The Sun (Beyond Beyond is Beyond) is scheduled to drop November 19th. In the meantime, check out “Spider”, and get entangled in its web, just like we have here at audiofemme.
Spirits were high, in a drone-jam sort of way, on Wednesday night, as head-nodders with their hands stuffed in their jeans pockets filed in to Mercury Lounge to hear CAVE‘s set. The stage had been converted into a kind of planetarium, all dark with a twinkling night sky projected onto a screen in front of the black wall. The band, whose new album Threace came out on October 15th, unceremoniously and succinctly introduced themselves: “We’re Cave,” said bassist Dan Browning, and immediately launched into a five minute pulsing, jam-happy introduction.
This was partially logistical—there were no vocal microphones on stage, and the band’s set was entirely instrumental. The Illinois-based group did make for a particularly serious, introspective live act, though, and were so absorbed in their playing that they hardly seemed to notice the audience at all. Flickering, black and white strands of what might have been DNA took the place of the stars flashing against the back wall. Cave channeled droning, incanted reels of psychedelic rock, surreally stretching out simple instrumental lines into repetitive, ten-minute magnum opuses. On stage, Browning and guitarist Jeremy Freeze remained virtually motionless as they played their instruments, focused and blissed out as they smiled, closed their eyes and nodded their heads.
“I love trance,” yelled someone in the crowd.
But double helix background notwithstanding, this was no swirly psychedelic hippie rock; the bass formed Cave’s backbone. The set incorporated too much beat and groove to be hazy—so much so that at certain points, if they’d dialed up the synthesizer just a bit, they could have been mistaken for electronic dance music.
The band seemed to melt from form to form, evoking first one genre and then another. They brought out a flute and a saxophone, enhancing the rhythmic section and swinging the audience from mood to mood in a compelling, all-encompassing hypnosis. Catch CAVE play again tonight @ the Knitting Factory in BK. Otherwise,Watch CAVE’s crazy official video for “Shikaakwa”, here via Youtube:
Soulful, funky, feel good music. These are just a few adjectives that come to mind after listening to Eli “Paperboy” Reed’s new single “Woo Hoo”: a track which I found remarkably innovative and old-fashion at the same time. The track’s beat indicates it’s ahead of its time; while its funk undertones lend to it a sense that it was perhaps trapped inside of a time capsule many years ago, only for Eli to dig it up years later, polish it off and release it back into public domain. In this regard, Reed is clearly a man ahead of his time: an old soul trapped in world where singers in his genre aren’t truly valued. When listening to “Woo Hoo” I start to feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and am inclined to get up and start a dance party. Reed’s earnest and deliberate vocal styling compel one to go find out more about the mystery man.
Originally from Massachusetts, Eli took an interest in music from a very young age. Genres such as gospel, soul, blues and R&B were a few of his favorites. After completing high school he moved to Mississippi to envelop himself in the music scene. This was where he was given the nickname “paperboy” due to the “news boy” style hat that he used to wear. In 2005 he released his own album, Sings Walkin’ and Talkin’ (For My Baby)and Other Smash Hits, which was a mix of covers songs and original compositions. In 2007, he and his band were signed to Boston-based Q division and completed their second album, Roll with You. Here, all of the songs were either written or co-written by Reed. Then in 2008, he completed his first album, Come and Get it, on a major record label.
“Woo Hoo” is all about throwing caution to the wind, and having a good time. Indeed, when listening to it I am inclined to forget all my problems and enjoy life. The upbeat positive nature of the song, in combination with Eli’s blue eyed soul singing is a recipe for success. And while I was waiting for a truly climactic moment, but don’t feel that it ever came; I can honestly say that the song is consistently solid throughout. And no matter how hard I try my feet just can’t stay still. Great job Paperboy! Can’t wait to hear what you deliver us next.
“Beneath The Black and Purple” by Morgan Delt inspires a three-minute long feeling of paranoiac elation. Within the first few seconds, listeners are transported into an eerie, acid-drenched atmosphere reminiscent of something you’d encounter on a Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators record. Think Thee Oh Sees meets Ty Segall meets Love meets ‘66 psychedelia recorded on a 4 track, and you essentially have the haunting, hallucinogenic California soundscape of “Beneath The Black and Purple”, a song where Delt muses on “being buried alive.” Delt’s pleas to ‘please let me out’ echo over twangy guitars reverberating over drums forcefully thumping in the background.
The song will be included on Delt’s self-titled debut to be released on January 28, 2014 through the Chicago record label, Trouble In Mind. For now, enjoy our track of the week!
As a music reviewer, when you get the chance to attend a concert for well known rockers at a legendary rock venue, you don’t exactly turn down the opportunity. And I’m so glad I said yes to seeing Built to Spillplay Irving Plaza last Thursday. While the band isn’t one that I follow particularly closely, they are one of only a handful of bands I’ve seen live more than once. The first time was as an opener for Kings of Leon (this was pre Caleb Followill meltdown/rehab/wife/baby situation, as in, right before they cancelled their tour in 2010) and I was surprised at how well they played live and the unique tone of vocalist Doug Martsch. Naturally, after that concert, I went home and downloaded a ton of their music, which I listened to for a few weeks and then drifted off to other bands. After receiving the news that I would be seeing them, I dug into my iTunes for those tracks I had saved and rediscovered what had originally caught my attention the first time I saw them play live. Needless to say, I recognized that the show at Irving would be awesome.
Opener Slam Dunk started the night with its cool brand of pop rock. The Canadian natives sounded uniform and their songs were interesting to listen to. They were a great pick to get the crowd amped for the concert to come, and played a lively set. However, they were followed by the less than impressive The Warm Hair, the lead singer for whom appeared to be attempting to hold onto younger days when he tore up the stage, under the influence of unknown substance, the effects of which show clearly on him in the present day. He entered barefoot with his denim shirt unbuttoned, revealing a skinny, bony chest. His long, frizzy hair seemed to be an unspoken mascot for the band name and he often mumbled incoherent ramblings about his muse, for whom he wrote what seemed to be most of the songs. By the end of their performance, several people in the audience were shouting for Built to Spill to hurry up and come out already.
Luckily, Built to Spill did eventually take the stage to save what had become a very awkward performance. As I had previously predicted, it was a great show. Martsch still has the ability to capture the room and the band followed suit, keeping up with the energy. I don’t know many of the songs by heart, but jammed along when they played familiar hits such as “Strange,” “Liar,” “Reasons,” and “Carry the Zero.” My only complaint was that several of the instrumental breaks got a little carried away. However, as that’s worst thing that happened during their performance, it is easily forgivable. As I watched Martsch perform, I remembered his signature performance style. He wags his head side to side while singing and juts his right knee up and down while playing his guitar in swift, unison motions. It looks difficult and tiring to perform this way, but it works for him and feels seamless with who he is. Without this usual feature, the performance would look almost alien.
Built to Spill fans proved themselves fiercely loyal to the band, chanting along with song lyrics and showing wells of enthusiasm for the ’90s rockers. Despite their lack of current work, they have a steady following, and are content to continue performing their favorite songs from both 2009’s There is No Enemy as well as older releases. When they finally walked off after their last song, the audience showed they hadn’t had enough. While most performances end with cries for encores, the sincerity of the crowd’s request for more music was remarkably earnest. The band had already surpassed its allotted time, but no one seemed disappointed with the opportunity to hear more. They ended with my favorite song — and the only one I know all the words to — “Car,” from 1994’s Their’s Nothing Wrong with Love: a great ending to a great show.
A protégé of Brian Eno is sure to be a success. Therefore, Jon Hopkins was. With multiple Mercury Prize nominations and many headlining artists knocking at his door, Hopkins has always been an innovator of looping ambient beats and, experimental conflicting sounds. Produced in under a year, Immunity showcases Hopkins’ true talent for providing a story, this one said to have been modeled after a night out. Subtle vibes of Trainspotting are sure to be sensed.
Immunity could be likened to Eno’s Small Craft On A Milk Sea (which he also helped co-produce) with its shimmering and clashing electronic beats and atmospheric vibrations. It’s an eight-track trip through Hopkins’ stewing mind. Immunity is a far cry from 2010’s Monsters, which is more like a movie score (something he is very much acquainted with). This album overall has an erratic and vibe, kind of like a journey to find oneself, but not as lame. Because I have a weird penchant for timing in music and I notice these shenanigans right away, the time signature seems off through 97% of the album but it somehow works with the concept. Mismatched rhythms are an unchanging theme, especially prevalent on “Open Eye Signal,” a jagged sounding pill of a track akin to a comedown from drugs. “Collider” reminds me of those songs you put on in the background to do things you couldn’t do without a repetitive flow, like studying or writing an album review (ahem). Most of the songs seem to stay steady and build up without a release, like a melodious tease, whose beauty one doesn’t mind being immersed in for a while.
Halfway through, the album makes a 180 with “Abandon Window.” A sporadic piano composition begins, surely conceived near a rain-streaked window in the afternoon, contemplating life’s faults and setbacks. That same undertone continues into the next track, “Form By Firelight,” which provides more of a beat and thus feels more tangible. The sweeping, nearly 10-minute-long closing title track wraps everything together with a tidy, piano-driven bow and makes you wonder how Eternal Sunshine For The Spotless Mind was made without it.
Jon Hopkins is a creator, that’s for sure. He can collaborate with the best of them (Coldplay, Eno, Imogen Heap to name a few) and turn out his own highly accredited albums. Immunity is surely a presentation of what’s on the horizon for Hopkins.
Hopkins is embarking on a world tour and making a stop in Manhattan at the Santos Party House on November 16th. Until then, catch the video for his single, “Open Eye”, here via Youtube.
“Pure Terror” is the first available track off of Jack Name’s upcoming album, Light Show—a “sci-fi novella” that takes the listener on a vivid trip through a fictional landscape of war between the bullies and the shadows. Though it’s the debut release for Jack Name, the man behind the moniker is actually seasoned L.A. musician John Webster Johns, who has produced and toured with Ariel Pink and White Fence.
Like an alien spaceship landing on Earth, this track comes in with spacey sound effects before bursting open at the seams to reveal an instantly appealing hit—a catchy, pop-y melody camouflaged by lo-fi, drowsy distortion. It’s psychedelic in a futuristic way, rather than a nostalgic-for-the-60s way.
The song sets up the darkly fantastical story in which the evil bullies are totally destroying the shadows (“We got letters from home, our friends were turning to stone”). Other lyrics like “I was there with the gang the time the telephone rang to say a sleeper bit the leader with his medicine fangs” give us a glimpse into Jack’s elegantly fanciful imagination.
The track builds up until its closing lyric, “pure terror makes you feel like you’re burning alive,” which is surrounded by shredding guitars, furious percussion, and high-pitched, childlike background vocals. The song ends in calamity and leaves you wondering what comes next in this compelling narrative.
Stay tuned until Jan. 21, when Light Show drops via Ty Segall’s new label, God? Records, and in the meantime listen to “Pure Terror” here.
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]
Bon Homme is the side project of electronic music aficionado, Tomas Høffding. Originally the lead singer and bass player of Danish rockers, WhoMadeWho, Høffding decided to venture out in 2011 to create a one man show of sweeping electronic synthesizers, loops galore, and his beloved glockenspiel.
Høffding recently debuted “Daybreaker”off of his A Life Less Fancy album, featuring Lydmor, a female electro Danish artist. The track garnered much praise and buzz, eventually capturing the attention of Kasper Bjørke, a Danish DJ and producer. An already captivating and hypnotic track to begin with, Bjørke (not to be confused with Björk) reworked the song from a three minute, somewhat relaxing electronic soundscape into a beat-blasting five minute anthem. Emphasizing the looped drum machine and Høffdings’ haunting falsetto-tinged voice, Bjørke created a more mesmerizing experience, leaving the listener wishing the track would never end.
“Daybreaker” is a song about realizing that things aren’t going as swimmingly as you thought in your relationship. Bjørke works his indelible magic to make the message more deliberate, embedding it into the psyche. However, one emerges with their head held high, feet stomping to the beat. Lydmor is the Kimbra to Bon Homme’s Gotye, making for a remarkable featured verse, driving the memo of detaching yourself from a relationship shrouded in miscommunication home.
The electroclash style of Kasper Bjørke is arguably his bread and butter, so it only makes sense that he chose a Tomas Høffding piece to play with. All in all, Bjørke reworked the song into a less ambient and more exuberant and purposeful track, sure to bring even the most uneducated electronic listeners into the folds of their universe.
Listen to “Daybreaker” (Kasper Bjørke remake), Here, via Soundcloud:
It’s time for a blast from the past! This Flashback Friday, Toto is going to take us back to Africa. With its calm, soothing melody, and passionate vocals, this song is more than worthy of an extensive review. Written by the rock band’s keyboardist David Paich, and drummer Jeff Porcaro, “Africa” is one of the bands most popular songs to date. The song is featured on their 1982 album Toto IV, which ended up going Triple platinum. But what is it about this song that makes it so infectious? Perhaps it’s the urgency in the lead singer’s voice when he sings: “I bless the rains down in Africa.” When he sings like that you cannot help but feel the way he feels. Or perhaps it is the impeccable use of falsetto in the backup vocals. We listeners are fortunate enough to hear these unbelievably beautiful notes crooning over the chorus of the song. And then of course we cannot forget about the use of exotic instruments in the accompaniment such as, the Marimba, an instrument in the percussion family, the Kalimba, an African piano, and the Conga. These helped give the song a strong African vibe that allows the listener to travel to another country and digest a spoonful of a different culture, if only for a moment.
Keyboardist/Vocalist David Paich explained the idea behind the song stating that “…a white boy is trying to write a song on Africa, but since he’s never been there, he can only tell what he’s seen on TV or remembers in the past.” This statement can be more closely associated with the music video for the song. The first time I ever viewed the music video for the song “Africa,” I remember thinking to myself, “If I had never visited any country in Africa, then after watching this video I would truly believe that this is what Africa is like.” All too often, the media portrays Africa in such a negative light, which in turn causes creative outlets such as music and movies to do the same; giving birth to a vicious cycle of misguided perceptions of an entire continent. Toto’s video captures Africa in its most primitive form. From the spear throwing, to the wild animals; it fails to give the viewer a true feel for what Africa is really like. While the song immerses us in so much beauty, the video takes some of that beauty away with its misguided imagery.
None the less, Africa is an amazing song, filled with passion and conviction. So amazing in fact that in 1983 the song hit #1 on the billboard Hot 100 chart, and #3 on the UK singles chart. And in 2009 a Slovenian a capella choir by the name of: Perpetuum Jazzile performed their rendition of the song, posted it on YouTube and received 15 million views. The captivating rendition intrigued listeners with the choirs personification of rain and thunder by rubbing the palms together, snapping their fingers, and stomping their feet. They used their mouths and bodies in order to create their own accompaniment, and they did an amazing job. Toto’s song awakens something inside of me every time I hear it. And I never wanna lose that feeling. I hope you all enjoyed this blast from the past.
If Elvis Costello had a reclusive older brother, it would be Nick Lowe. Among music nerds, Nick Lowe is not exactly an obscure name. However, I’d say he’s one of the most painfully overlooked songwriters of the past few decades. Within England’s mid ‘70s-‘80s New Wave scene, I can’t think of anyone who had more fingers in so many pies.
Lowe’s relationship to Elvis Costello was vital in their early days together. As well as playing live with Costello and as on his records, Lowe produced Costello’s first five studio albums. I believe it was the record sleeve of Trust that jested: “*Nick Lowe not to blame for this one.” Lowe was in fact “to blame” and it’s a great fault to bear. He also wrote :(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding?: while a member of Brinsley Schwarz (1969-75). This emotive ballad has been constantly mis-credited to Costello, and while I doubt Lowe loses sleep over it (his royalty checks know who wrote it) it’s a shame so few recognize Lowe as the savant he is.
Lowe also had a long-standing musical relationship with English New Wave vet Dave Edmunds. Edmunds and Lowe co-wrote albums worth of songs while remaining solo acts. The second they congealed their talents formally under the name Rockpile, they released one album, and broke up.
Additionally, and this is my favorite Lowe factoid, he was an invisible hand in lifting English punk to the level it is now. The man produced not only The Damned’s first single “New Rose,” but their entire debut album, Damned Damned Damned. You want more? He also married June Carter-Cash’s daughter from her first marriage and was close friends with the Carter-Cash family, chilling, playing, and recording with Johnny Cash on a regular basis.
Despite this tome of accomplishments, Nick Lowe has only had two songs in the Top 10 of the UK Singles Chart (“I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass,” and “Milk and Alcohol” which was performed by Dr. Feelgood). “Cruel To Be Kind” was Nick Lowe’s only composition to ever make the US Top 40. Cruel indeed.
My interest in Nick Lowe extends from the fact that my dad has most of his albums on vinyl. I grew up listening to them. Yet whenever my dad has a selection of albums by the same person, he always seems to be missing their first release. Therefore it’s my duty to go to record stores, find it, and then hold it above his head. My dad has almost EVERY early Elvis Costello album, yet he doesn’t have My Aim Is True; but I do. The same went for Nick Lowe. He has every album, but no Jesus Of Cool, Lowe’s debut solo album released in ’78. So I was thrilled when digging through a dusty basement in Greenpoint a few years ago and finding an original UK release of it. For ONE DOLLAR, Dad.
The record is a pop-opus. It’s also the catchiest F-U to the music industry ever written. Track one, “Music For Money,” is a heavy-hitting rock anti-anthem. The lyrics pointedly and humorously compare the sycophantic nature of the record industry to that of prostitution:
Music for money//Busking for bucks//Greeedin’ for greenies//Singing for sucks
Music for money//Isn’t it queer//Handsome promotion//No – here
Music for money//Bleeding for bucks//Quippin’ for rabble//Fakin’ for fucks
Muzak
The next two songs, “I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass” and “Little Hitler” are milestones in acerbic pop. Nick Lowe, much like Elvis Costello, Morrissey, and Bob Dylan, is an absolute master of making you smile at an insult. That is to say, lyrically his songs are biting and sardonic, but they’re the catchiest, smoothest, and most sweetly produced pop songs you’ve ever heard. Naturally, Lowe produced the album.
The record’s scope is also impressive. Each track is fully equipped with minimalist texture and perfect harmonies, but the songs range from silly pop hits, to sincere ballads, to eerie compositions. One of my favorites is 36” High, which sounds like no other Nick Lowe song. It’s a strange, bass-heavy, lo-fi, synth teasing homage to guilt and loss that proves Lowe’s dexterity and genius as a songwriter. There’s also a song on the album entitled “Nutted By Reality.” I could write an article on the greatness of that alone.
Visually the record is just as brilliant as it is audibly. The cover depicts Lowe dressed as archetypes from six distinct genres of music…everything from folk-hippie to early metal head. The record is sub-titled “Pure Pop For Now People,” but the letters of the title are hidden in the corners of each photograph. The record’s hind-side displays three tacky glass swans, floating on water with sprigs of foliage and carnations. Even the record sleeve has tedious inside jokes emblazoned upon it, my favorite being a graph of “The Artiste At Work” which plots Lowe’s commercial success over his career. The amount of thought that went into every aspect of this record is downright mind-blowing.
If you haven’t heard this album, give it a listen. If you hadn’t heard of Nick Lowe, now you have.
