Page 139 – Audiofemme

SHOW REVIEW: Iceage, Pharmakon, and Dream Affair @ Home Sweet Home, 1-26-13

LES bar Home Sweet Home is like a lot of other NYC venues, and then again, it isn’t. I was reminded of a handful of seedy lounges, kooky galleries, and DIY show spaces, but the reality is that Home Sweet Home takes elements of each and rolls them into something completely immersive. From the moment I showed ID to security outside, I felt I was being led back to parts of myself I’d forgotten, as if through a maze. I felt the way I used to feel about going to shows at Glasslands or 285 before the magic of those places became almost commonplace to me. Maybe I’ve been somewhat jaded about show-going in NYC. Though I live in a city where beautiful and amazing musical events happen every day and am so, so lucky in that regard, it can feel a little rote when it’s something you do constantly. There’s no one identifiable reason Home Sweet Home felt like a breath of fresh air, but there are lots of equally inspiring aspects and moments that awed me over and over.

I had to get a ticket from the box office, located upstairs in the Fig. 19 gallery space acting as offshoot of Envoy Enterprises. Rather than a simple stamp on the hand, the lady in the booth offered me a gorgeous hand-numbered screen-printed ticket specifically designed for the event.

The gallery show was curated by Iceage members and featured an eclectic array of pieces, including zines from Adam Rossiter, drawings and paintings from Screaming Female’s Marissa Paternoster, intricate black and white ink drawings from Genesis Crespo, illustrations from Alexander Heir, the chaotic sketches of Sam Ryser, photos from Nina Hartmann and Cali Dewitt and everything in between, from screen-printed t-shirts to video projections. Though the media was varied, the air and attitude was consistent – one of discontent, alienation, and attraction to decay, all themes that run common to the bands that played downstairs.

It’s a little bit strange, I think, to know you can be soothed by a line-up that includes goth punk, harsh noise, and hardcore. It could be indicative of the mental distress I was in prior to attendance, but even if my headspace was questionable the quality of the performances was not. Dream Affair were first, a Brooklyn-based trio of disaffected kids who look too young to have the kind of post punk and cold wave reference points that clearly inform their music. Their youthful appearance is misleading in that way, because Dream Affair pull off those sounds with unrivaled authenticity, the sound more fleshed out and visceral in a live setting than the somewhat hollow approach on 2011’s Endless Days. Hayden Payne delivers deep-voiced vocals with a healthy dose of sneering vitriol, backed on stoic bass by Bryan Spoltore. But it’s the addition of Abby Echiverri that provides the band’s most compelling sounds; her squalling synths and backup shrieking are essential, but when she pulled out an electric violin it launched Dream Affair into a whole other realm for me.

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It took a while for Margaret Chardiet to set up her various pedals, electronic gadgets, and other blinking things with gobs of knobs. But these are the instruments of choice for her Pharmakon project, in which this tiny, unassuming Chloe-Sevigny look-alike with silken blonde locks becomes a feral howling creature possessed by something demonic.

The demons came out before she even started, as technical difficulties proved frustrating; the miked sheet of metal she’d set up wasn’t making the right kind of racket when she hit it with her fist, and eventually she became so enraged that she knocked the entire apparatus over like a petulant child would. It sat inert and forgotten on the stage exactly as it fell for the duration of the performance, which consisted of punishing drone and gut-wrenching screams. Pharmakon is a project that hounds its creator, but also provides catharsis and connection with her audience. It is impossible not to be moved, not to be captivated by Chardiet’s vocal onslaught, but she takes it several steps further by leaping into the audience, cradling random show-goers in her intense gaze, forehead to forehead (including Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, lead singer of Iceage, who looked on intently). She lurches through the crowd, wailing, and it feels thrilling but wholly genuine and free of gimmicks, as if this is just how she always behaves. Recordings from the project are made few and far between and are often released in small editions, making the much sought-after material rare. But that seems appropriate given the raw nature of Pharmakon’s live set, in which her physical presence dominates a room entirely. It’s as though her being becomes a channel for something otherworldly, outside of itself, and that’s something that can only be witnessed as it happens before one’s eyes.

Iceage didn’t waste anytime in setting up and unleashing their brutal, blistering brand of industrial-influenced no-wave. The set opened with “Ecstasy” from the much-anticipated sophomore album You’re Nothing, out on Matador February 19th. If a band like Iceage seems a tad out of place on the label that birthed bands like Cat Power and Yo La Tengo, there are two important things to remember. The first is that Matador’s catalogue is actually pretty diverse (especially in terms of its “alumni”), spanning many a genre, hosting many a genre-defining act. The second thing to remember is that if there’s anything that ties its roster together, it’s that Matador has represented the biggest, best, and brightest acts and are in the business of making them legendary in ways that independent acts rarely enjoy.

While Iceage’s new record sees the band dealing with more interior thoughts and experimenting with some lighter touches, Matador hasn’t turned them into Belle & Sebastian by any means. The searing live performances the band is capable of delivering prove that, and the new material is every bit as ferocious as the old. Rønnenfelt was at his spastic best, model-gorgeous and buttoned up as usual but thrashing, moaning, and tearing electrical wires from the low rafters above his tall frame. The skittering drums, scorched guitars and insistent bass that marked Iceage’s sound on 2011’s prolific New Brigade have carried over to the tracks the band developed for You’re Nothing, and though the band has been touring behind its older material for what seems like eons now their delivery packs every bit as much gusto. In every way, Iceage makes it clear that they’ve taken to heart their role of ushering in a new era of punk rock, even if they seem removed from the hype that surrounds them.

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NEW AMERICAN NOISE

There is more to a city then meets the eye, especially when it comes to music. “New American Noise” gives us 6 distinct films, each set in a different city across the U.S., showcasing a slew of young talent. We get to see the naughty, rowdy, soulful music sub cultures that we know exist, but are not able to be a part of except through a digitized long distance relationship. View the documentary at newamericanoise, and see what New Orleans’ sissy bounce is all about.

SHOW REVIEW: Eddi Front at The Slipper Room, 1/24/13

image from a set in London last August, by Howard Melnyczuk

It’s freezing outside, the kind of brutal cold that makes the skin of your forehead ache as you push through the night air. You can’t find the recently re-opened venue right away, because its door is around the corner from where you thought it would be, hidden in plain sight. Up a flight of stairs, where a doorman greets you with superfluous cordiality, you say “I’m here for Eddi Front” and you can already hear her singing. The doorman explains to you that she’s been playing for ten minutes already, and that coats may be checked right around the corner in the vestibule. The vestibule leads to a stunning show space taller than it is wide, cluttered with candlelit tables, decorated with flowered maroon wallpaper, heavy velvet curtains and gilded moulding framing the stage upon which Ivana Carrescia, otherwise known as Eddi Front, sits strumming a guitar with bashful bearing but direct gaze, her wispy frame clad in all black, her black hair hanging in her eyes.

And you look through the dark, searching for a particular face, but the face isn’t there – only slightly different versions of the face you expect to see, like dreams in which the familiarity of your lover is inaccessible to your subconcious but still makes strange visitations, slightly off true. You see someone with posture just like his, soft hair sloping to a gentle curve around the shoulders. But it’s not him. So you focus for a minute on the performer, who is poised to become the ‘next big thing’, thanks to a beguiling persona that’s both fragile and hints at the possibility of violent, wild combustion, thanks to a voice that’s tremulous and angelic but spits words that are at times angry or terse or forlorn. She puts down the guitar and a piano player to the side of the stage helps her finish the set, which expands on the four songs she’s thus far put out into the world with new material that is as lovely and as peculiar and as melancholy as those that drew you into the warm heart of this room on such a frigid evening.

Eddi Front sings songs that are just like that: a sort of frozenness permeates them, but then there is a warmth, a hope, a nostalgia for times past and things lost. Her songs are like maroon flowered wallpaper and black hair in eyes and searching the crowd for a face that isn’t there and will not come. They are slightly inaccurate dream-versions of lovers. She is the piano player with fingers depressing his black keys over and over, lost in his most mournful tones. She is like the burlesque that followed the show – seemingly exposed, but obscured by theatrical artifice until you cannot tell where Ivana ends and Eddi begins. She is you, waiting at a table for nothing, feeling your heart shatter. You remember her words in “Gigantic”, with which she closed the show: I’ve always been slow to get off of some drugs, to let go of some loves. I’ll crawl out of this hole soon enough. Take my ring off. And eventually, you stand up, put on your sweater and your coat and your gloves, and make your way out into the frozen city once again.

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BEST OF: New Orleans 2012

It’s said that New Orleans’ seasons aren’t like any place else’s; instead of the usual spring, summer, fall, and winter, we get Carnival, Festival, Hurricane, and Football. This year, the majority of my live music experiences – in this town that is chock full of them – centered around the bookends to the Festival season, namely, the JazzFest and the Voodoo Music Experience, aka, the Voodoo Fest. Bringing up the rear of my short list of the best live is something we call lagniappe: a little something extra.

Top Headliners:

I didn’t expect Feist to be as much of a powerhouse performer at the JazzFest as she was – she was on one of the major stages of the festival at the same time as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were on a different stage, and the style of her singles and her more recent albums The Reminder and Metals seemed more intimate, countering the spaciousness built for bombast of the Gentilly Stage. Leslie Feist’s stage show was more than up for the challenge – she conquered the large crowd (large despite Petty’s presence across the JazzFest grounds) with her guitar work, the backing of some great musicians, her inclusive stage manner, and with some strong renditions of songs like “Undiscovered First” and “I Feel It All.”

In October, Neil Young and Crazy Horse mounted the even larger Le Ritual Stage at Voodoo Fest, and though they mostly physically confined themselves to a setup consisting of a Persian rug and some of the amps and instruments close-in around it, the sound they made was huge, heavy, and joyous. Occasional past gems like “Cinnamon Girl” and “Needle and the Damage Done” were interspersed with longer, old-is-new-again work from Psychedelic Pill. The shredding and stomping in “Walk Like A Giant” was worth seeing all by itself, but Young and the Horse kept that energy and fire alive all through the performance.

The Locals:

Shamarr Allen and the Underdawgs are thus far underwhelming on their studio albums but incredible live, and JazzFest was no exception. Only Allen can whip out songs that decry the sad state of affairs of his best girl not having sex with him and tout himself as being an atypical rock star (in a song entitled “Typical Rock Star”) with a burning intensity that this time had him destroying a trombone a la Pete Townshend. The next moment, however, had him performing first with his young son and then with a troupe of young players he and the Underdawgs have been teaching music to on a weekly basis through the Silence Is Violence program in New Orleans – and everybody brought a spark of that same intensity to the stage. Allen is a hardworking mass of talent who remains open and free with his time and teachings, and it’s beautiful to see all of that live.

Even in New Orleans’ biggest festivals, a nod must be given to the local hip-hop phenomenon that is Bounce, and Katey Red’s Bounce Azztravaganza at Voodoo Fest was a convergence of far more than Triggerman beats and twerking – it was a chance for Cheeky Blakk to strut and call to a huge audience that seemed to appear out of nowhere once the show started. Blakk has a tough personality of her own that is one thing to hear on a recording but is absolutely stunning to observe in the flesh. Though Katey Red had scheduled other bounce greats to go on after Blakk, she set a bar for the rest that was tough to beat.

Lagniappe: The One That Got Away

A month before The Flaming Lips’ 24-Hour Tour was to come to town, I got some tickets for the final concert of the eight they were intent on doing – only to have to give them up due to a scheduling conflict. Still and all, I kept tabs of the Lips’ travels down through Mississippi and Louisiana via Twitter postings (not tough to do with the #OMA hashtag), got wind that they were coming to Baton Rouge’s Varsity around the same time I would be in town, and I lingered outside in the heat to see what I could see. Sadly, it consisted of a long line of mostly college-age kids waiting to get in – then the doors opened and those with the coveted armbands made it past the air-conditioned lobby entrance into the club itself. Ticket scalpers for the tour? There was no such thing in Baton Rouge, as this was a Class-A event that would likely never come to the area again. Besides, the bus was running a little behind schedule, a consequence of the Lips and their opening acts actually giving their all on the few songs they were performing at each venue on the tour. It was time for me to go.

The people who got my tickets for the New Orleans finale said it was a great show. One of them thought the balloons, confetti, and streamers Wayne Coyne fired off from the stage constituted the biggest mess the House of Blues had ever experienced in its history. I sit here in happiness for them, tinged with some jealousy – one of these days, I will see this band live.

SHOW REVIEW: A Sunny Day In Glasgow @ Pianos, 1-16-13

A lot has changed since A Sunny Day in Glasgow last took the stage together.

On the one hand, their particular brand of shoegaze-influenced dream pop has quite a few predecessors, most notably My Bloody Valentine, with the coy experimentalism of groups like Broadcast. But from 2006-2010, when the band was most active, there weren’t very many people doing what they were doing in quite the same way, despite whatever obvious cues they might have taken from bands that came before.

2013 is a different story. We’ve got Tamaryn, we’ve got Young Prisms, we’ve got Wild Nothing, we’ve got a slew of other bands releasing LPs that all kind of exist in this soupy, soothing blare of hazey indie rock. I don’t mean to imply that the sound is worn-out or adopted too often. You could do worse than to reference shoegaze. But it’s interesting to wonder this current revival and subsequent proliferation was spurred at least in part by the acclaim that releases like Scribble Mural Comic Journal and Ashes Grammar garnered at the time of their release.

I really adored A Sunny Day in Glasgow. Always kind of hated the name, but track for track obsessed over what they were doing sonically. The reverby harmonies, drowning in a drone that at times was even something of a challenge to listen to (see 5:15 Train) created a constant tension between the lovely aspects of the songs and the echoic harshness that threatened to destroy that beauty. There were so many layers to dissect, but you had to be willing to sit there and listen. And in those days, as silly as it might seem, I defined my musical identity by being someone who would listen to that sort of thing, and felt in a very real way that it gave me a separate identity from those who would not.

It had been a while since I’d heard anything from them. There had been a kickstarter campaign to help them finish their upcoming album. But in the internet age, attention spans are unfortunately shortened by the zillions of releases that come out constantly, by the fact that those releases are at our fingertips, by the fact that most of them don’t warrant more than a few casual listens before moving onto the next big thing. I’d fallen a bit of a victim to that, and nearly forgot about A Sunny Day in Glasgow.

That is, until I noticed they had scheduled a show for LES venue Pianos last Wednesday. What could it mean? One thing it meant was that they were still around, still making music. And another thing that it meant was that I’d be seeing them soon.

I arrived at the venue just a few songs into opening band Friend Roulette’s set (they have a residency at Piano’s in January). The match made immediate sense to me; Friend Roulette play intense, orchestral indie rock. Not one but two drummers graced the stage, energetically backing the yearning coos of vocalist Julia Tepper, who gracefully played a swoony violin. Also of note was the presence of John Stanesco, or more specifically, his EWI (which stands for Electronic Wind Instrument). This is one of the most mind-boggling contraptions I’ve seen recently. It’s definitely a woodwind-ish instrument, played like an oboe or clarinet, but with synth-like keys that can allow it to sound like anything from a flute to a keyboard. I was so obsessed with discerning what it was that it almost distracted me from the band playing.

Being completely distracted, however, was bit of an impossibility, considering how aggressive they are for an indie-rock outfit. While Friend Roulette is a chamber-pop band that likes to consider themselves kitschy, there was an underlying moodiness to some of their work. I was most taken with their newest track, “Golden”, featuring a gorgeous, moaning swirl of violin between choruses. But just a few songs later, they played what I seriously thought was going to be a cover of “Eye of the Tiger”, the opening riffs lifted directly from the iconic Rocky theme. It then it morphed into something more original, leaving me thinking that maybe it was just sort of a jokey intro to their own song. Later in the song, however, whiffs of “Eye of the Tiger” came back, so that turned out not to be the case.

Despite all that, there are intriguing elements to this band’s compositions, especially the quieter, more subtle plucked violins – but also the cacophonous builds and the drama that comes from them. This residency could be a great boon for an emerging band like Friend Roulette, still trying to suss out what works and what doesn’t. The audience seemed quite enthusiastic, so that’s a good start.

A Sunny Day in Glasgow took the stage a little later than expected, though that did not stop them from playing a full set. Pianos loves to deafen its patrons, so the sound wasn’t so much “mixed” as it was excruciatingly loud. As a result, lead vocalist Jen Gorna had to strain to be heard, pushing her already lean voice to its thinnest points. Likewise, Annie Fredrickson’s vocals got a bit lost, and as such there was really no hope to bring to the forefront the unique harmonies that set the band apart from their contemporaries. There didn’t seem to be much reverb on the vocals either, which I consider an essential characteristic behind the band’s recorded sound. Rather, the two girls tried to rely on playing off of one another to achieve the same effect, which unfortunately didn’t come across with guitar and keys drowning them out.

The band has a great energy though, even shrugging off a heckler who cried “Play the song the drummer knows!” Gorna did mention that they had not played onstage together in two years, but it was more a statement of fact than an apology for any shortcomings. She also said that she hoped everyone in the audience had done some drugs before arrival (I had not, not realizing it was a requirement). They played a healthy mix of tunes from all three releases and, of course, unveiled some new songs, which seem to hold a similar aesthetic to the material on Autumn, Again; the songs were more pop-oriented, with fewer pockets of noisiness and straightforward lyrics. With the mixing being what it was though, it was honestly a bit hard to tell what they’ll be like on the new record. So many of the little details that make A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s songs unique were lost in the sheer volume so typical of the venue, but perhaps this will be the first of many more shows. If nothing else, it served as a perfect reminder that A Sunny Day in Glasgow are still around. And that was a good memo to get, indeed.

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BEST OF: Soundtracking 2012

Oh, the treacherous end-of-year best-of list. What makes the cut, and what doesn’t, is always going to stir up controversy. The tradition endures despite its shortcomings, the biggest of which being that it’s a bit arbitrary and trite to say that something is “the best” and compare it side-by-side with things that may be completely different; often the only common denominator amongst the albums on these lists are that they contain music, period.

That being said, I actually enjoy skimming through the majority of them; I always “discover” a record I missed in the previous months, maybe two or three, maybe more. It’s impossible to hear everything, after all, so it stands to reason that if you trust the source of the list then the list might reward you.

As for me, I often make my own list (usually before reading others) and I base it only on one thing – what albums resonated with me most? It’s less about what I deem “best” and what was most meaningful or provocative or simply played over and over and over again without me really tiring of it. Albums I can go back to next year or the year after and say – “YES, that was my 2012”. The following records go beyond those prerequisites, and are ones that I hope will both prove to be timeless and yet also will transport me back to this time in my life.

Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan

In the past I’ve been annoyed by Dave Longstreth’s maniacal attention to detail and perfection, even as much as I loved many of his records. Part of the reason for this is that I feel like he’s bragging with every turn, saying, “Look at me! Look at my genius! Look what I can do!” and in a way it’s also that his headiness around composing and inspiration is almost too daunting. But Dirty Projectors have worn me down with their undeniable originality and lush arrangements and impossibly gorgeous female vocal virtuosity. Whereas the tracks on 2009’s equally brilliant Bitte Orca meandered and shifted arrangements abruptly, some of Swing Lo Magellan’s magic lies in the actual catchiness and accessibility of these tracks. They are a little less mathematical and so slightly more vivid. Because the album eschews theme in favor of Longstreth’s personal stories and feelings, it resonates in ways that past albums haven’t approached, from a completely different angle. Plus, the first time I listened to this record I was in a blanket fort.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!

The exclamation point, usually appearing after an interjection or strong declarative statement, is used in grammar to indicate strong feelings or high volume. Never, then, has such rampant use of the punctuation mark been so appropriate than in the release of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s fourth studio album and its first in ten years. The core members of the revolving collective reunited to tour in 2010 after a seven year hiatus, so it’s appropriate that the release contains two reworked versions of unreleased songs that saw a lot of live play. In every towering movement, GY!BE proves that they haven’t lost that which makes their music essential – the droning, see-sawing build-ups to explosive orchestration, anarchistic echoes in both sonic spirit and whatever sparse voices can be heard around the din, an intense sense of mood and purpose. Godspeed is a band that means a lot to many, and it might have been easy to take advantage of that and throw together something trite that didn’t add much to a dialogue that had ended in ellipses in 2003. But ‘Allelujah! feels entirely right in every way, as though it was made alongside the band’s previous records. It cements Godspeed as the singular purveyor of such darkly cathartic and moving pieces. And I’m pleased to say that the live show holds up, too – it had me crying actual tears more than once. Strong feelings and high volume, indeed.

Grizzly Bear – Shields

Listening to Shields had a peculiar effect on me. It was like seeing someone for the first time in a long a time that I used to date when we were both very young, and realizing that they’d grown up. And knowing that it hadn’t happened suddenly, but that the person’s absence from my life had made it seem that way, and wondering if I’d grown up, too. Horn of Plenty and Yellow House may represent the Grizzly Bear I fell in love with, and Veckatimest represents a period when the band meant less to me, when I fell out of touch with what they were doing. But Shields has an incredible power behind it, one that I recognize and respect and receive with a knowing warmth. It manages majesty while showing restraint. It’s measured and beautiful in an almost mournful way that reins in the poppier tones on tracks like “Gun-Shy” “A Simple Answer” and “Yet Again”. After a controversial article in New York Magazine used Grizzly Bear as an example of the impossible task indie bands face at making a living doing what they love, Shields proves that there’s something to be said for just making art the way you think is best, regardless of what success it brings.

Chromatics – Kill For Love

It was a banner year for Johnny Jewel. The songs featured in last year’s indie blockbuster Drive helped bring his work to a wider audience and set the stage for what would become the opus that is Kill For Love. First came the tour-de-force Symmetry, an ambitious “electro-noir” faux soundtrack project released with Nat Walker. The thirty-seven tracks on that album, which featured collaborations with Ruth Radelet, were in a way a precursor to the studied moods and dark nuances that persist on Kill For Love, particularly in its instrumental tracks. But those tracks act as tendons, both vulnerable and powerful, for the real muscle – like “At Your Door” “Lady” and “A Matter Of Time” in which Radelet’s haunting, detached desperation are both frightening and sexy at once. And then, of course, there’s the glittering, anthemic title track – nearly four minutes of ecstatic synths and lyrics like “I drank the water and I felt alright, I took a pill almost every night, In my mind I was waiting for change while the world just stayed the same”. It would practically hold up in a courtroom if, in fact you did kill someone in the name of love.

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Mature Themes

Lo-fi recording savant Ariel Pink has been working at making a name for himself for almost a decade, releasing a handful records on Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks imprint. But in 2010, backed by 4AD and with high-quality studio recording at his disposal, Pink released Before Today and the world finally took notice. Previously renowned for his slipshod home-recording techniques, odd sense of humor and quirky compositions, Before Today signified to Pink’s audience that he was first and foremost a songwriter with a knack for thinking outside the box. Pink’s most recent release, Mature Themes, offers a convergence of these two realities; bizarro arrangements, sound effects and subject matter abound, but are anchored by authentic psychedelic flair. The record’s underlying ideas about sexuality seem ‘mature’ by any censor’s standard but are here addressed with biting irony, approached the way a twelve-year-old boy might make a joke about, well… schnitzel. That’s the genius of Ariel Pink – one is never sure whether he’s providing valuable social commentary or just poking fun at the fact that he’s in a position to do so. He sings “I’m just a rock n’ roller from Beverly Hills” and that is, perhaps, the only way to describe the enigma of his work in any succinct manner. But Pink never forgets to throw props to the acts that inspired the creation of this record and everything that came before it, having brought attention to “father of home recording” R. Stevie Moore through his own enthusiasm for Moore’s work, and here championing brothers Donnie and Joe Emerson, whose transcendent lovesong “Baby” Pink covers in collaboration with Dam-Funk to close out the record.

How To Dress Well – Total Loss

Tom Krell’s first proper record under the moniker How To Dress Well is a sprawling but sparse meditation on human relationships, namely on the ways that they can support us or disappoint us. There are two elements at work that make Krell’s work so remarkable. First, there’s Krell’s heartbreaking falsetto and the passions inherent in his pushing it to its most yearning extremes, helped by his earnest lyrics. And then, of course, there’s the production – the hue and texture of the music that provides the backdrop for those heart-rending vocals. Whether Krell is letting thunderous white noise roll over ethereal R&B hooks, distorting distantly plucked harp, utilizing grandiose samples, or melding soaring strings and churning beats, he does it all with grace and clarity. The static and crackle that coated 2010’s Love Remains have melted away, and though there’s plenty of HTDW’s trademark reverb on this record, Total Loss as a whole feels more direct and even beautiful for it, sparing none of the atmosphere. Krell has managed to essentialize what it is that makes his music so moving and with Total Loss has found a way to distill and perfect it in this gem of a release.

Goat – World Music

Labeling something “World Music” is kind of a bizarre practice; after all, the entirety of music is composed on planet Earth – at least, as far as we know. Goat, for instance, are apparently from a tiny village in Sweden founded by a voodoo-practicing occultist and populated by past incarnations of the band currently touring being this, the first album the band has ever recorded. It contains the kind outrageous and well-traveled psychedelica that actually makes joining a cult, or a commune, or a collective of mysterious musicians, or whatever, seem like a good idea. The members pointedly keep their identities shadowy, part a comment on the fleeting nature of celebrity in modern society but also as a means of forcing focus on the music itself, though it would be hard to ignore the joyous intensity and effortless virtuosity that infuses every track even if you knew who was playing. The anonymous female vocalist on these jams is what sends them over the edge; in an era where wispy or witch-like feminine affectation is rampant, the songstress in Goat offers urgent chants, wailing until her voice breaks, her singing sometimes frenzied, sometimes devotional, sometimes both. Yes, there are more than a few nods to goat worship, but there are almost as many to disco. At its core, World Music is about carefree hedonism, about the act of devouring disparate influences and letting them wash over the senses, about auditory transcendence and the trances it induces.

Merchandise – Children Of Desire

There are two things that stopped this release from catapulting to the top of the list. First, it’s technically not a full-length record, although as EPs go it definitely plays longer than most. Second and more importantly, Merchandise let me down with their lifeless (read: drummer-less) live sets I saw this year. But I’m hoping that they’ll pull it together and blow my socks off eventually, which shouldn’t be very hard since these songs have indelibly etched their mark on my heart. The earnest crooning of Carson Cox has drawn comparisons to Morrissey – not much of a leap, especially when he’s singing the lines “Oh I fell in love again. You know, the kind that’s like quicksand. I guess I didn’t understand. I just like to lose my head”. He’s also got a bit of that sardonic sneer that Moz is known for, most evident during “In Nightmare Room” with its caustic guitar and repeated line “I kiss your mouth and your face just disappears”. But Merchandise don’t simply mimic influences; the sound at which they’ve arrived is completely contemporary and difficult to categorize. The most telling lyric is the opening line of “Become What You Are” an elegant kiss-off to inauthentic appropriation that evolves over the course of ten minutes from pop gem to kinetic, disorderly jangle. Cox sings “Now the music’s started, I realized it was all a lie -the guitars were ringing out last year’s punk” and a moment later, flippantly waves it all away: “It don’t really matter what I say. You’re just gonna twist it anyway. Did you even listen to my words? You just like to memorize the chorus”. They’re a band wholly committed to the integrity of becoming, of shucking off old skins and processing the experience.

Bat For Lashes – The Haunted Man

Natasha Khan becomes, with each album she releases, more and more essential to music at large, and with The Haunted Man she proves it song for song, from spectral lead single “Laura” to the radiating all-male choir on the album’s title track. Khan suffered intense writer’s block at the onset of writing the album, calling on Radiohead’s Thom Yorke for advice, taking dance classes, and finally finding inspiration in life drawing and movies. As a result, the album is infused with a reserved theatricality that’s more finely grained and intensely focused than much of her previous work. Khan’s voice rises and glides powerfully over her arrangements, which even at their most orchestral remain concise and unfettered by extravagant ornamentation. The power and restraint that play out on this album edge it out over those of her contemporaries and solidify her spot in a canon of greats, heir to a particular throne inhabited by such enigmatic women as PJ Harvey, Kate Bush and Bjork.

Flying Lotus – Until The Quiet Comes

Though many predicted that the end of the world would coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar, as it turned out December 21st, 2012 was just an ordinary day. But if the apocalypse had come, there would be no more fitting soundtrack than the work of Steven Ellison, otherwise known as Flying Lotus. Appropriately dark and dream-like, Ellison here eschews the density that made 2010’s Cosmogramma such a complex listen, revisiting free jazz techniques and traditional African rhythms. As the album progresses, a sense of journey unfolds, tied together by live bass from collaborator Thundercat. Each track is infused with a sort of jittery calm, fluttering and lilting and filled with epiphany. Guest vocals from the likes of Erykah Badu and Thom Yorke are treated as no more than additional instrumentation; Ellison is possessed with a sense of purpose and ownership to the music he’s carefully constructed. In these tones, one can see whole worlds crumble. It’s not unlike an out-of-body experience, really, one in which to listen is to drift outside oneself. Ellison has proven that he is a serious producer, interested in growing and exploring subtle musical shifts rather than cashing in on one particular sound and driving it into the ground. Until The Quiet Comes provides examples of the loudest kind of quiet one can experience, unfolding as beautifully and austerely as anything Flying Lotus has ever released.

That rounds out my top ten for the year, but there were a handful of others that stuck with me as well. Below find some runners up with links to AudioFemme coverage from throughout the year!
Phédre – Phédre
Purity Ring – Shrines
Swans – The Seer
Death Grips – The Money Store
Mac DeMarco – Rock N Roll Nightclub/2
Liars – WIXIW
Sharon Van Etten – Tramp
Peaking Lights – Lucifer
Frankie Rose – Interstellar
Holy Other – Held

BEST OF: Three Seminal Electronic Albums of 2012

2012 saw a handful of genres altered by a growing number of electronic music producers. These artists have convinced listeners in the mainstream to embrace electronic music, and are subsequently changing the conventions of pop, rock, indie and everything in between. Last April The New York Times released an article about the growing demand for EDM. The article quoted Michael Rapino, chief executive of Live Nation Entertainment saying “If you’re 15 to 25 years old now, this is your rock ‘n’ roll.” Here are three electronic inspired albums that have broken stereotypes and will continue to resonate in the coming year.

Re:GENERATION

began as a documentary inspired by a challenge given to electronic music producers. The project resulted in a ground breaking album that hybridized genres in unsuspecting ways. Released February 2012, this ambitious endeavor paired five headliner DJs with a music style out of their typical music production range. Skrillex teamed up with members of The Doors, The Crystal Method tackled classic country style, Pretty Lights took on the challenge of incorporating early R&B, and Mark Ronson melded his music with the jazz tradition. A moving collaboration between DJ Premier, NAS, and the Berklee Symphony Orchestra produced the title track “Regeneration”, which entwined the explosive sounds of a full orchestra with hip hop beats, rap lyrics and a lyrical record scratch solo. The outcomes of this album concept were widely varied, and embraced many challenges. The most exciting revelation of this project was discovering the link that connects music fans to a particular mode of expression, and exploiting that link to coax fans out into new musical territory. A dialogue was sparked between music listeners of different ages, backgrounds and traditions, and this particular spirit of collaboration continues to inspire new music projects. I found a new level of respect for these DJ/electronic music producers as they invited listeners to hear time tested styles in a daring new format.

GRIMES

has captured the hearts of electronic and pop music fans this year with her third album Visions. Her exposed vocal expressiveness and technical savvy of production and performance have centered the media around her. But what is particularly defining about her style is her rejection of mainstream media. This may sound shocking as she was not long ago featured in Vogue magazine, but her values are clearly visible in her art, music and live performances. Grimes has rejected expensive music video production in favor of DYI. She draws her own album covers. She performs with electronic music gear that she’s picked up over the years, and has learned to play with an array of hardware on stage alone, rather than streamlining her act with a hired band. She is not the typical pop model, and her emphasis on doing things for herself are an inspiration to many aspiring artists in a wide range of mediums. Visions is filled with catchy pop hooks and the satisfying synth sounds that have filtered into many popular acts this year. Yet she is also wildly original in the way she expresses herself and lets her music unfold in a beautifully unpretentious manner.

HOW TO DESTROY ANGELS

is Trent Reznor’s most understated album, yet the music churns with a deadly undertow. Looking over a career that has encompassed a long run as lead singer and songwriter of the band Nine Inch Nails, and a transition to successful film composer, the next step in his musical journey has been a satisfying one for fans. The six song 2012 EP An Omen captures the evolution of this multifaceted artist. The band includes Reznor, his wife Mariqueen Maandig, and longtime collaborator Atticus Ross. How to Destroy Angels oscillates between loosely organic, acoustic sounds such as plucked strings, and tightly knit, precisely positioned electronica beats and effects. The album pushes forward a dark electronic style that stirs with a deep restlessness. Maandig’s gentle vocals overlay the music in a way that is at once breathtaking and unnerving. Expansive, building tension encapsulates the energy, excitement and unease many music listeners may be feeling as we move into a new age of technology, advance, and the unknown.

EVENT REVIEW: African Children’s Choir Gala

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding French Music In France

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If it is, it isn’t a very good one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BEAUTIFUL NOISE DOCUMENTARY ON KICKSTARTER

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

EMBATTLED MEGAUPLOAD FOUNDER BACK FOR ROUND 2

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

ARTIST PROFILE: TalkFine

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

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

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

Take a listen here!

AUDIOFEMME: So what was the evolution of TalkFine?

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

AF: Is that your next album?

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

AF: Did you both go to college together?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AF: Finally, what’s upcoming for TalkFine?

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

_____________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SHOW REVIEW: Twin Sister + Moon King + Leapling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life After Girls: The Rebirth of Christopher Owens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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SHOW REVIEW: Reptar w/ Stepdad & Rubblebucket

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

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

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

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

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

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

Content by Brittany Spanos for www.audiofemme.com

AF EXCLUSIVE TRACK: Which Magic “Electra Light”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHICH MAGIC LOVES…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ARTIST PROFILE: Los Encantados

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

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

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

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

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

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CMJ 2012: Best Of, 1-3

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

XO,

1. Chad Valley @ Le Baron

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

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

2. Doldrums @ PS1

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

3. DIIV @ Villain

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

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

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

Coverage by Annie White, for AudioFemme

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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CMJ 2012: SESAC Showcase @ Cakeshop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Content by Kat Tingum for AudioFemme[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

ARTIST PROFILE: Harlan

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

Harlan _American__photo by Landon McMahon — Photo by Landon McMahon

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

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

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

Here’s what Harlan had to say to us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More R&B.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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SHOW REVIEW: Matthew Dear + Light Asylum + Beacon

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Life After Girls: The Rebirth of Christopher Owens

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CMJ 2012: Best Of, 1-3

1. Chad Valley @ Le Baron

2. Doldrums @ PS1

3. DIIV @ Villain

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

CMJ 2012: SESAC Showcase @ Cakeshop

ARTIST PROFILE: Harlan

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

Ticket Giveaways

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

See you there! xoxo