Five Things I Learned From CMJ 2012

Five years ago I tackled my first CMJ by drinking jitter-inducing amounts of free Sparks at an insane Crystal Castles blow-out, haunting le Poisson Rouge until 2am to see Kria Brekkan and Beach House, and getting lost on my way back to Queens after a School of Seven Bells show I’d managed to weasel my way into for free.  Every CMJ I’ve attended since has had shades of that first whirlwind foray, although I’m happy to report that I’ve gotten a bit better at navigating the mess.Some might say CMJ is becoming irrelevant, thanks to the shorter and shorter attention spans of listeners in a digital age.  But I can’t think of a time where it won’t feel exciting to me to analyze schedules in a quandary over how to parse out the day, or standing before a stage on which a nascent act buoyed by buzz will make or break their career.  And there’s nothing more sublime than being blown away by a band barely on your radar on the first place, glimpsed while you were waiting to see the next big thing in the following time slot.  Or knowing you were part of the crowd for the pivotal performances destined to be talked about weeks, months, even years in the future.  Despite this year’s slightly lackluster lineups, there were still memories to be made; here are the things that will stand out to me about CMJ 2012 five years from now.
1.) 2013 will be the year hip hop comes out of the closet.
As a fan of a good beat with a fondness for wordplay I adore hip-hop, but it can be really hard to reconcile that love with the homophobic and misogynistic attitudes so pervasive to the culture.  It’s not that I need every rap song to be a PSA about gender equality, but is the use of the word “faggot” ever really necessary?  Because I don’t care what it rhymes with – that word is ugly, especially when it’s in the middle of a verse about beating up queer people.The ironic thing is that no one does swagger better than a man dressed in drag.  And when a queen stops lip-synching “It’s Raining Men” and starts emceeing, you get something like Mykki Blanco, whose dark rhymes and party-ready beats turned a Saturday night performance at the Knitting Factory into an all-out dance party.  It was not the first of Blanco’s bombastic CMJ appearances, in which fabulous outfits were as standard as adept rhythm and fierce, noir-tinged rhymes – there had been a handful, including one I caught on Thursday at new party space Autumn Bowl. While the de rigeur drag show sashaying is in full effect, Blanco takes it someplace darker, appearing at Knitting Factory in black lipstick and spidery dreads, crouching low on stage and hissing into the mic as though presiding over a Satanic Black Mass.  Still, danceable hits like “Wavvy” brought the audience to its seething, shimmying full potential.  In those moments, it’s easy to understand what makes these artists so vital.  It lies in that ability to work a room into a wicked froth and yet still full command attention.[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”][jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1959″]Kalif Diouf, otherwise known as Le1f, also brought killer style and mad game to the stage at the Pitchfork Topman CMJ Party, but the sound in raw new venue Villain didn’t travel as far back as you had to stand to be able to enjoy the show without a bunch of aggro Vice types getting all up in your business.  Luckily, Le1f played a slew of other shows; I caught him the next evening at a late night party deep in Bushwick, closing out a bill that featured a JD Sampson DJ set.  Le1f’s flow was smooth, direct, and delivered with a healthy dose of booty bounce. Over relatively minimal beats with creative textures, Le1f rhymes a mile a minute, hypnotizing audiences with heavy hip gyrations.

[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1960″]

I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not about to sing the praises of these two artists simply because they are gay and in the rap game – the talent with each is so consistent and concise that it’s a shame to have to mention sexuality at all.  But, especially with hip-hop, we aren’t at a point where we can pretend that what these two (and a handful of others who didn’t happen to play CMJ showcases) are doing isn’t absolutely revolutionary, even if they are essentially just being themselves.  It’s the fearless approach to the spotlight – a rightful place for either to be regardless of gender identity or sexual preference – that could change the way hip-hop regards queer artists and hopefully the LGBT population in general.  If nothing else, it’s intensely satisfying to know that when I’m at a Le1f show, one of my fabulous gay homies can pick me up and spin me through the air like the queer Patrick Swayze I always dreamed would do that, and not have to worry about winding up as the victim of a hate crime afterward.  Safe spaces, y’all.

2.) I’d really like to be adopted by the Woodheads of Toronto, or at least invited to a Thanksgiving dinner, but I’m not sure Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving.
Did you ever visit a friend’s house in grade school and feel like you were on another planet?  Maybe because your friend had laid-back parents, or their decor was more World Market than, say, Cracker Barrel, or maybe even just because they had HBO.  I don’t know what was going on in the Woodhead household but I imagine it to be a more musical, more Canadian version of The Royal Tennenbaums.  I base this assumption on the fact that brothers Daniel and Airick Woodhead are two wildly talented and wonderfully weird musicians whose projects kept popping up in all sorts of CMJ venues.The brothers’ first band, Spiral Beach, was known for energetic live shows that resulted in much hype a few years ago.  Though in some ways the band’s studio recordings fail to capture that energy and are musically all over the map, they established deep ties during this time within Toronto’s music scene.  Maddy Wilde, the group’s female vocalist, went on to form Moon King with Daniel, a folksier, more direct offshoot of the ideas that the Spiral Beach had begun to explore.  Daniel is also a frequent co-conspirator in Airick’s electro-psychedelic pop outfit Doldrums, and Airick’s been involved with AudioFemme favorites Phédre.I saw two Doldrums performances, and as the week progressed so did their confidence.  The thing is, these kids are weird.  They’ve got this neo-hippie stage vibe, barely stopping short of performing meditations and crystal ceremonies on stage.  When they play, it’s really a head-down, focused on making odd sounds come out of keyboards and electronic gear kind of affair, though by the time they played the Knit on Saturday Airick was ripping off clothing and writhing around on stage.  But Doldrums isn’t a straight-up electronics driven band – the guitars and drums are live, and so are the vocal loops which give Doldrums songs such trance-like power.  For as focused and autistic as they can seem, the boys aren’t hiding behind laptops, and the results have positively psychedelic moments.

[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1962″]
By comparison, Moon King is a bit poppier, and the set at Cameo was even more mellow and toned down than I expected it to be given the EP’s frequently hyper moments.  But they didn’t spare any sentiment or dreaminess.  Maddy’s and Daniel’s vocals, scaled back from shriek to serenade, soar over ecstatic melodies and blend almost seamlessly together, no small feat considering the trademark almost-sneer of a Woodhead singing.  Moon King isn’t really classifiable in terms of genre, but it recalls a lot of things ranging from folksy sing-along to call and response protest punk.  But it’s not really any of that; it’s simply capable of evoking those moods.
[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1961″]

If Daniel and Airick never performed together, you might assume they were the same person, and even when they both grace the same stage it’s necessary to remind oneself that there’s not some mirror trick at play.  I imagine their early lives to be a bit like a classic Parent Trap movie, the two of them playing clever tricks on outsiders.  Or else I imagine them huddled in a blanket fort, making up secret languages only they knew how to speak.  Growing up as Woodheads obviously stoked some creative fires within these boys.  It’s no wonder that their various projects have become a nearly collaborative effort, and it’s interesting to note the particulars of each and speculate on what that must say about them as individuals.3.) Merchandise needs a drummer, very badly.

Merchandise released Children of Desire, an absolute gem of an EP, earlier this year.  Carson Cox’s plaintive vocals and thoughtful lyrics complimented the band’s brand of new wave punk cum noise pop well.  The EP shows remarkable growth for a band who built a solid following in Tampa’s punk and hardcore scene, but it became astonishingly clear at the shows I saw them play that it is mainly a studio project, without much of a live show to back it up.  Cox’s vocals deliver, the guitar work was deft, and the bass as immediate as on the record, but in place of a live drummer was a drum machine, hollowly keeping time but not providing anything in the way of the heart that these songs really deserve.

With the conflagration of acts who rely on drum machines as their only form of live percussion, you would think that it might not result in so much of a let down.  But Merchandise needs a drummer to really pull off the material on Children of Desire; playing without one simply doesn’t do them justice.  And I saw several bands this week that I would consider contemporaries of Merchandise, all of whom delivered with blistering performances.

Savages, for instance, absolutely blew me away and were possibly one of the best bands I saw all week.  Hailing from London, the all-female four piece astounded an entire room with a set that nearly bordered on sonic violence.  All these ladies know how to handle their instruments; they’ve built a reputation around playing out rather than focusing on recording their material.  Lead singer Jehnny Beth seethes on stage, her eyeballs wide, her gestures imploring and dramatic.  The kind of energy they create is contagious, driving fans into fits, but it couldn’t be pulled off without a drummer.

Metz also brought that kind of intensity to several performances throughout the week, playing loud and fast and heavy, creating the kind of punk rock paroxysm that edges them out over other purveyors of such.  But these aren’t just songs that are thrown together – they’re smartly crafted and seriously executed, never sloppy.  And it’s not just about assaulting eardrums and working audiences into frenzied thrashing, because you could just as easily dance to many of the songs, as long as you weren’t in an audience full of folks hellbent on moshing (sometimes, that happens, as evidenced by the ultra-shaky video I risked life and limb to shoot at Pitchfork’s CMJ party, hosted by new party space Villain).

[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1963″]
Gap Dream scale things back just a touch, but also illustrate how fun it can be just to see a full band play and play well together.  They’re from Cleveland (my hometown) and kind of have a sleazy seventies throw-back thing going on.  But they had everyone dancing at their Big Snow performance.  Lots of vocal reverb, elastic guitars, and pummeling drums could have filled a much bigger room than the tiny space into which we were all pleasantly crammed.
[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1964″]

These bands definitely have different things going on, but Merchandise could stand to learn a lesson from any of them.  If you want to get audiences engaged, start dance (or thrash) parties, move people beyond standing with crossed arms, you need percussive power to back up even the best material.  Here’s hoping their next shows will feature someone behind an actual kit.


4.)  Brooklyn’s new party spaces keep the live music scene vital.
Aaaaah, Brooklyn.  Years ago, CMJ was a thing that happened mainly on the Lower East Side, but each year more and more performers cross the bridge to play this lovely borough.  Though I’ve been disappointed by closures of some of my favorite DIY venues, from Monster Island to Silent Barn, the scene is constantly evolving and new locales keep opening up to replace the others.I was really impressed with Autumn Bowl, formerly a skate park (though maybe it still is?).  The circular stage was smack dab in the middle of the cavernous space, and risers lined the walls, making it easy for plenty of show-goers to catch the action.  It sounded great and as collaborator with Nuit Blanche New York hosted some incredible light installations.  Security is around, but pretty chill.  I’m hoping they’ll be hosting a lot of parties in the near future, and if they Four Tet DJ set they’ve got scheduled in a few weeks is any indication, there will be a lot to look forward to from this venue.I was slightly less impressed with Villian, though it was mainly the sound that got to me.  There are two large space separated by a wall, which makes capacity for shows smaller than what it should be but also helps keep crowding down to a minimum.  Villain is operated by a marketing firm, so the events they host there definitely have the earmarks of being a bit commercial.  The Pitchfork showcase I attended there was sponsored by Topman and Svedka, for instance.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – I can’t complain about free drinks.  But the bottom line is that it turns shows into sales pitches for other things, and that’s one of the elements that makes huge festivals like SXSW something of a drag.  I’d hate to see the same thing happen to CMJ, which for whatever reason has escaped this fate til now.

I also got a chance to check out Big Snow Buffalo Lounge, a Bushwick rehearsal and performance space that opened just a few months shy of a year ago.  The performance area is cozy to say the least, and you’re right on top of the bands as they play since there’s not an actual stage, which makes it hard to see if you’re in the back and slightly awkward if you’re up front.  But that’s not to say the venue doesn’t have its charms, and the sound is unimpeachable and really, really loud.

I was super excited to check out Delinquency, especially since they’d booked a bunch of awesome shows and dance parties and were said to inhabit five or more separate rooms of an old warehouse.  Unfortunately, the venue was lacking the permits it needed, proving that operating a space in NYC isn’t the least complicated thing in the world, and rescheduled all its events at other venues.

The thing is, the venues I’ve here mentioned don’t even begin to scrape the surface of all that Brooklyn has to offer in terms of raw DIY spaces, and in the course of researching for our showcase (see below!) I found out that there are so many that I’ve yet to hear of.  Once resource I’m absolutely grateful for in sorting all of that out is Brooklyn Spaces, a compendium as complete as any I’ve seen of art collectives, galleries, performance spaces, studios, nonprofits, party places, and underground theaters.  Attending these venues is paramount to keep Brooklyn’s thriving underground and DIY scene going, so we encourage you to check them out and support them when you can.

5.) Putting together a showcase is hard.
Okay, so maybe this should have been more obvious to me to begin with, but we AudioFemmes barely had an inkling of what we were getting ourselves into when we started booking our blog’s showcase.  There are spaces to contact, sponsors to reach out to, and then there are the bands.  We’d have loved to host handfuls of them – picking bands out was certainly not the problem.  But tracking them down, or tracking down their management, or the label, or whoever, was just the first difficult step in actually confirming anyone to play.  Even if it hadn’t come together, we had quite the learning experience, but we’re happy to report that we put together a lovely little shindig featuring Datalog, Which Magic, Foxes In Fiction, and Autodrone.  The fact that it was on a Tuesday afternoon mattered little, we pulled it off for those that showed up, and recorded each brilliant performance (look for a stream of the audio from the show soon!).

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

MIXES: With A Little Help From My Bands

 

Whatever it is about the change of seasons in New York City from summer to fall that makes me feel especially nostalgic is something I hope I never lose. Maybe its the crunching leaves underneath my foot as I rush from my apartment to the subway and onward to class every day. Or maybe I’ve already consumed more pumpkin-flavored food and drink than one person should in such a short period of time.

Because of this overwhelming sense of nostalgia, when I’m presented with the idea of sharing the songs that have gotten me through tough moments in my life, I had the problem of having one too many songs to choose from. Music has always been a fluid element in my life; it weaves through the moments and people and feelings I encounter. The most meaningful musical moments weren’t always the ones that let me wallow or the ones that incited me towards action; they were the ones that allowed me to just exist in a singular moment and reflect. The songs that feel like a warm blanket on a cold day are always been the most comforting.
This collection I curated is ten songs that have done, and still do, just that.

 

“With a Little Help From My Friends” – Joe Cocker

I could’ve very easily gone with an Elvis Presley tune in place of this one. I wanted a song that reminded me of my grandpa, and Elvis had been a constant presence in our relationship. However, even more constant in hazy childhood memories from the dusty basement he spent all of his time in and the rickety blue pick-up truck that took me to and from elementary school is the sound of my grandpa mimicking Joe Cocker’s voice. It would echo through our house on Saturday afternoons while accompanied by the blaring noise of his stereo. When my grandpa passed, I listened to this song on repeat because it felt like I could still hear his voice. The soulful rasp of Cocker’s belt is warm and inviting as he wistfully answers the questions posed by the gospel choir backing him. His uncertainty comforts and eases to the point where I feel like I should respond, too.

 

“Silent All These Years” – Tori Amos

My mom played this song for me when I was still in the single-digit age bracket. I remember she played the track on our relic of a computer for me while my grandma cooked dinner in the kitchen. My mom was only 21 when I was born, so her taste consisted of 80s pop hits and angry 90s alt-girl singer-songwriters. I didn’t understand a single line of the song then, but I would put the track on repeat every time we were in her car before flipping to RadioDisney after the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth play. I’d spend my time dissecting the lyrics and wondering if she was saying “mermaid” or “moment.” But the title and chorus resonated with me outside of the mysteriousness of the context. Shy and always too scared to speak up, I knew what it was like to be silent for too long. And I was glad Tori Amos understood.

 

“True Colors” – Cyndi Lauper

Senior year of high school was filled with change and small steps towards maturation and growth. As we all prepared to move away from home and dive into adulthood, the most meaningful gift graduation gave me was the strengthening of important friendships in my life. Throughout the stress and anxiety of leaving my Midwestern hometown to live a big city life on the East coast, I learned to survive with and from my best friend Jonathan. I dedicated this song to him after he came out to me that year, and since then, we’ve adopted it as our theme song. Lauper’s vulnerable vocals are such a beautiful reflection of what it means to truly love another person for all that they are. Everyone should listen to this song when they’re feeling a bit lonely or missing a close friend; nothing serves as a better reminder of what it feels like to be loved by another.

 

“Hallelujah” – Jeff Buckley

Buckley’s cover of the Leonard Cohen hymnal sounds deceptively melancholy. The first time I heard it, the song drifted through the speakers in my mom’s car about a month into my freshmen year of high school. It was the first song to elicit tears from me. After repeated listens over the past six years, I’ve begun to better understand the underlying glory rather than the sadness. For some reason, I feel like I turn to this song during some of the most painful portions of my life — death, fights, stress, etc. Buckley’s range and the ease of his emotive capabilities have been able to express my sadness and recovery from all different kinds of pain better than I ever could.

 

“The Resolution” – Jack’s Mannequin

Andrew McMahon will always top my list of inspiring musicians. His battle with leukemia, subsequent recovery, and lyrical reflection of this battle have been moving to me since I first started listening to his band Jack’s Mannequin. Another song that defined Senior year of high school, “The Resolution” became my personal anthem to make it through the seemingly endless obstacles that separated me from having a sane year. What makes this song lack the cliche of other “inspirational” jams is its honest search for answers and clarity. It’s not about what happens when you’ve reached the end of the tunnel; it’s about figuring out the most effective way to navigate the tunnel first.

 

“Wicked Little Town” – Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Hedwig and the Angry Inch happens to be one of my favorite films, so the soundtrack holds a special place in my heart. The summer between senior year of high school and freshmen year of college, I watched the film at least once a week with my best friend and listened to the soundtrack almost every night. The chorus’ repeated message of “and if you’ve got no other choice/you know you can follow my voice/through the dark turns and noise/of this wicked little town” resonated at a time when I felt desperate to escape the confines of my small, directionless suburb. It was my own wicked little town, and the omnious lyrics of the song felt like a glimpse into my future if I stayed there.

“Landslide” – Fleetwood Mac

The perfection of this hit record lies in its universal appeal. My mom would sing along to the lyrics in her car whenever it played on the radio. I remember her always directing the lyrics of the chorus to me (“Well I’ve been afraid of changing/‘Cause I’ve built my life around you/But time makes you bolder/Children get older/I’m getting older too”). It felt like a lullaby when I was younger, but as I’ve grown up, the song has transformed into a musical embodiment of my growth into adulthood as I continuously speculate “can the child within my heart rise above?” My mom still sings that chorus to me.

“Chicago” – Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan Stevens’ outstanding track from the incredible album Illinois literally hits close to home. After moving to New York from the Chicago suburbs, I’ve adopted this track as my official homesickness jam. When Chicago and the people I love who are still there feel especially distant, I listen and remind myself just how much “all things grow, all things grow.” The idea of being in love with New York “in my mind, in my mind” feels especially pertinent in those moments when I just want to curl up on an old friend’s couch and be reminded of those high school inside jokes and all the mistakes we thought we had made.

“Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” – Elton John

Not many singer-songwriters can pluck at my heartstrings the way Elton John can. I had never heard this song until the spring semester of my freshmen year in college, and if there’s ever a situation when a song fell into my lap at the right time, it was this one. “My own seeds shall be sown in New York City” felt like a beckoning to me to never give up on what I came to the city to do. If the subtle inspiration wasn’t enough, Elton reminded me of the wonderful friendships I had formed in this city with his line “I thank the Lord for the people I have found. While “Chicago” draws me back to the past, “Mona Lisas and Matt Hatters” makes homesickness feel like a silly idea in the first place.

“Don’t Rain On My Parade” – Barbra Streisand

With all the stress, anxiety, and whirlwind of emotions life can throw at you, sometimes it’s worthwhile to remind yourself that you actually are the baddest bitch on your block and quite possibly the universe. My ever-growing adoration towards all things Streisand makes me incredibly biased towards any of the tunes she sings. However, this particular track from the classic film Funny Girl keeps me from forgetting during my more anxious moments that it’s never worthwhile to let the world get me down when life is just waiting for me to take a bite out of it.

Content by Brittany Spanos for AudioFemme

audiofemme//mix 1 from ohheybrittany on 8tracks Radio.

AUDIOFEMME PRESENTS: CMJ 2012

<

AUDIOFEMME PRESENTS: CMJ 2012 AT SPIKE HILL // 10/16

 

Please join us on Tuesday, October 16th at Spike Hill, for AudioFemme’s inaugural CMJ showcase. In order to give you a preview, we’ve written a little introduction to each artist in the lineup. We love them, and hope you will too! Doors are at 12:30 PM.

See you there!

XO

The girls at AF

AUTODRONE

Autodrone combines many of the best elements of our favorite genres, including dreampop, shoegaze and experimental indie rock. Formed in 2002, their career has spanned an entire decade of music—a decade during which technological innovations in live and recorded performance have changed the face of the industry, changed how we listen to music and upped the ante for bands looking to make an inimitable mark on the scene. Autodrone has managed to withstand the crucible of the aughts, emerging with gusto. This in our opinion is due to a few important aspects of who and what they are as musicians. First, Katherine Kennedy’s voice is timeless, both reminiscent of early 90s post-punk—in particular Kim Deal and her ability to vocally walk the line between angelic and grating (a thing that can leave one feeling emotionally vulnerable)—and also unique in its own right, melding seamlessly with the band’s more experimental elements. Second, they are possessed of the capacity to straddle what some may think of as conflicting genres. While tracks like “Through The Backwoods”, off Strike A Match employ catchy drums and accessible melodies, the subsequent track “Moth Of July”, is a seven-minute long, droning, synth-laden psychedelic journey into what feels like the band’s deepest, darkest musical intimations. Lastly, however, is their compelling group dynamic, which is also their thread of continuity. Their cohesion with one another is palpable even through the opacity in which studio recordings tend to enshroud a song. This goes to show that longevity in and of itself can make for better music. It also nearly ensures that they will be a great live act.

12 Pictures, by Autodrone

 

FOXES IN FICTION

Foxes in Fiction’s Warren Hildebrand first stole our hearts at the Moodgadget Showcase back in September. Originally from Toronto, Hildebrand is a multi instrumental, multi talented, genre bending one-man show. At first glance, he is shockingly young. His blond hair gleams from behind a table full of impressive looking electronic gadgets. He performs in his socks. When he starts his set, however, he transforms into a self-possessed magician and master of his craft. Yes, what he produces is electronically driven, but he plays guitar and sings too, blending and looping his live music into a dreamy atmosphere that spins and builds from the setup before him, which by the third song appears like a perfectly designed stage plot, even though the props only occupy a small surface area. He is so mesmerizing, that at times it feels like he’s raising something from the dead as he builds and shapes each track. He reminds some people of Bradford Cox. We think he’s much better. There are ineffable qualities about him as an artist, and about his music, that leave a space for one’s imagination to inhabit as his set develops, and goes from droning, ambient electronica to innovative, thought provoking, multi-dimensional live performance. Plus, he really is a youngin’. At the tender age of 23, he has decades of musical trends to herald. And we fully expect him to do just that.

 

WHICH MAGIC

Sara Autrey, jangling guitars, tinkling bells, a “shitty” keyboard, and an eight track are all it takes to make Which Magic; the recipe may be simple but the resulting jams are spellbinding. Autrey’s earnest and astral incantations swirl through a haze of chill beats and warbling guitar loops. Lyrically, Autrey mines her dreams and earthly desires alike for material with an authentic heart; listening to these tracks is not unlike drifting in and out of sleep in those first early morning hours of waking. For a project that began only recently, Which Magic has already achieved a compelling evolution via Autrey’s own musical curiosities. Her self-titled debut cassette is a rare lo-fi gem full of dissonant bells and softly strummed ukele, layered vocals and heady, sylvan frequencies fuzzy with tape hiss. High Already (her split EP with fellow Baltimore-based band Wing Dam ( in which she also plays) sees a migration from woodsy thickets to a beachy boardwalk thanks to the addition of thumping drum machines, sunny claps, and airier synths. And Autrey has plenty of tricks left up her sleeve, including an album of hip-hop influenced tunes and an exclusive AudioFemme track. We’re so excited to host her New York City debut!

 

DATALOG

Datalog is the brainchild of Conor Heffernan, whose tight productions and complex, jazz-influenced beats oscillate from cool and collected to grandiose and flashy, sometimes within the same track. Unlike many bedroom producers, Heffernan is a classically trained pianist who has put in hours as an internationally touring musician. As Datalog, he’s remixed tracks from Bjork to Brooklyn indie darlings Phone Tag, DJed runway shows and composed movie scores, but it’s his personal work that stands out most. With its ethereal touches, dramatic flair, seamless sample collage, and chopped rhythms borrowing from a variety of globe-spanning genres, his music is a cosmic beam of light endlessly refracting through a smoky, pitch-black club. Fans of Four Tet or Flying Lotus will appreciate his knack for building complicated, intelligent soundscapes from the expertly-curated digital depths while reveling in an dark romanticism completely his own.

SHOW REVIEW: The Jesus And Mary Chain

Not shockingly the Jesus And Mary Chain concert a few weeks back felt like a strange clash of generations; a milieu whose parameters constantly shift and become obscured by its inhabitants’ conflicting schemata, or really, their respective ideologies around music.

Attending the show were those who remember Jesus And Mary Chain as a group of kids from the early 80s who would sneak into venues and fool sound engineers into thinking they were the opening act for the night, play a set, and then quietly leave. Or those who’ve been fans for decades, and who saw them in 1985 at North London Polytechnic right before they became huge. There were those who discovered them in the 90s during an angsty teen phase, perhaps, after Stoned And Dethroned came out and everybody had a crush on Hope Sandoval. And then of course, we were there in hoards: ah yes, the Millennials, who more than likely started listening to them during sophomore year of high school in 2000, well after the band’s hay day was up. By then, their music had taken on a new meaning, and was no longer shaped by the sociocultural context into which it was born, but rather occupied an ineffable gray area, one in particular, that exists between the realms of nostalgia and reinvention.

In the year 2000, we listened to JAMC albums not because they were novel for whatever reason, and not because they represented something bygone that we never got to know or apprehend. We were too young for the former and too old for the latter. We listened because the songs are timeless. Boring, a bit, but ever so resonant.

Removed from the culture that inspired their creation though, they both lose and gain certain dimensions, thus allowing for new ways of experiencing them. Which is what it’s all about, right? This is what separates music that is bound to its age from that which lives, and continues to influence and herald trends to come. My early experience with the albums was one of deep, and in hindsight stupid confusion, about why all the guitars sounded so loud. Then I came across tracks that transcended my distaste for noise rock, like “The Hardest Walk”, for instance, which follows a simple and pretty accessible chord progression, but contains endless seeming layers of heavy distortion. It wasn’t grunge music because there was no yelling, really. It wasn’t new wave because there wasn’t tons of synth. It wasn’t anything that sounded like what “the future” would bring, i.e. all the electronic music I was listening to. There was no band to go see, to make it all more palpable. Yeah, I was confused, but I found the space for it, and subsequently developed a more generous understanding and appreciation for their sound.

I didn’t start loving their songs until 2003, when Lost In Translation came out. I needn’t say much, I’m sure. But the first time I saw the final scene, as she’s walking away and the opening chords of “Just Like Honey” start, with that marching drum beat, as Bill Murray’s character catches up to her, and whispers into her ear, and Jim Reid’s ethereal voice starts singing the first line, about taking on the world…I cried through the entire closing credits. It was that moment when the songs acquired  context for me.

In any case, I still hadn’t actually SEEN this band until two weeks ago. They don’t release new albums. They don’t tour. I had always thought they were done. So I was excited, but had no idea what to expect. Their music had always been detached from even the idea of  live performance.

We got to Iriving Plaza, which unfortunately is my absolute LEAST favorite venue in NYC, and walked up stairs to the stage. The opening act, Psychic Paramount was playing  their set, shrouded in a haze of red fog, so heavy you couldn’t see any band members. Though I do like their recent album, I didn’t like how they sounded live because there was too much noise and no cohesion, and the mix in that room is always so muddy, it made it impossible to really hear anything.

Finally after what felt like eons, JAMC came on, Obscured by billows of multicolored smoke, apparitional, like ghosts of times past. It was exactly how I had always pictured them. They opened with “Between Planets”, which sounded pretty good for the most part, save some excruciating (for those of us with sensitive ears) feedback issues coming from the lead guitar, that ended up persisting for the whole show, that made me want to jump up onto stage and reposition the entire mic and speaker setup (please refer back to “Irving Plaza is my least favorite venue in NYC”). It ultimately didn’t distract too much from the songs, however, which sounded nearly identical to the studio recordings. This can be a good thing, because people generally like consistency,  and it demonstrates the band’s technical competence as musicians, but it can also be a bad thing. It can make the music sound formulaic and monotonous even to those who are playing it. This, if anything, is my one criticism of their performance. There were times when they seemed on autopilot, or maybe even a little bored with themselves. Also, Reid forgot the lyrics to “Happy When It Rains”.

They’re lack of energy aside, it was a cool night. The woman who accompanied them on “Sometimes Always” and “Just Like Honey” had a great voice, and brought a vibe to the stage and to the songs that made both duets highlights of the show. They mostly played tracks from Darklands and Automatic, saving the louder, more raucous and distorted jams of Psychocandy and Honey’s Dead for the encore, during which I almost got trampled to death, when the theretofore mellow crowd started a circle pit in which I found myself. Up until that point I had pretty much forgotten how truly fanatical people are about this band. It was both heartwarming and a little scary.

Throughout the entire night, all I could keep thinking was that even as I watched them play, I’ve listened to their songs so many  times without having a notion about what they’re like as a live band, that I couldn’t get specific references out of my head, that the tunes have always elicited–certain people, places, smells, drinks, etc.

And this alone made the whole thing so worth it.

 

 

SHOW REVIEW: Twin Shadow

It was not without drama that I came into a ticket to Twin Shadow’s second of two sold-out NYC performances.  I’d planned to skip both sets since tickets were $22 and one of them was at Webster Hall, which I kind of hate.  But a friend of mine who’d gotten tickets in advance had just turned thirty, thrown a temper tantrum, and bailed, so I found myself at Music Hall of Williamsburg.  I’d seen Twin Shadow play a CMJ show at Le Bain in October 2011, with the twinkling ribbon of the West Side Highway unspooling across giant glass windows behind the band.  I’d ruined a suede skirt by spilling wax on it in attempt to light a joint in the bathroom; I’d also embarrassed myself during the dance party afterward when I toppled sideways in uneven heels at the very moment I’d finally caught the eye of the tall, bearded dreamboat I’d been spying all evening.  As it turns out, he had a girlfriend anyway.

But I’ve come a long way in the last year, and so has George Lewis Jr., the man behind Twin Shadow.   He has released two albums to tons of critical acclaim (including Pitchfork’s coveted Best New Music for this year’s Confess on 4AD), survived a motorcycle accident to have an epiphany that majorly influenced the songwriting and recording of his sophomore album, and headlined a two month tour across the United States and Canada.  The MHoW show was the second-to-last stop on that tour, and the fact that Lewis is a bit fatigued from it all was likely a factor in his somewhat bitter between-song banter.

Twin Shadow’s songs have been compared to just about every pop band from the eighties, and it isn’t hard to hear why.  2010’s stellar Forget, produced by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, was all airy synths, anthemic choruses, bouncy bass, and shimmering guitar riffs.  These parallels also grew out of Lewis’ personal style, in which leather jacket and pompadour were de rigueur.  With lyrics hopelessly meant for chanting (namely that moment in smash single “Slow” when Lewis croons “I don’t wanna believe / or be / in love”) it was pretty inevitable that Twin Shadow would blow up, and when Confess was released it was apparent that he’d stayed on that same trajectory and managed to amp up the nostalgia factor even further.

Honestly, Confess is almost too over-the-top for me.  In certain moments, like personal favorite “Beg For The Night”, it takes the form of giggle-inducing orchestra hits which are somehow still endearing.  But on album opener “Golden Light”, the backup vocals sound so much like the closing theme from Lost Boys that I can’t even see past it to enjoy the rest of the song, which is unfortunate since without that, it would actually be really lovely.  Slowly but surely, however, Confess has grown on me; it’s something in the transition of Lewis’ low, sultry moans into easy falsettos, the urgency and desperation on songs like lead single “Five Seconds”, the heartbroken but detached callousness of pretty much every lyric Lewis has ever penned.

That cockiness is something that Lewis may as well have trademarked at this point.  While his swagger is not unwarranted, it certainly permeates every aspect of his persona, from song to image to stage banter.  I had always assumed that it was a bit put on, but last night’s show may have convinced me otherwise once and for all.  When I saw him less than a year ago, he didn’t say much and mostly kept his eyes trained on the floor while he hunched over his guitar.  Friday’s performance was an entirely different thing – he wore his mohawk slicked back, jumped around on stage with his guitar swinging, and belted out his most raw lines with fierce bellicosity.

[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”]

Twin Shadow, image courtesy of BrooklynVegan

It started in a low-key manner, with a slow, stripped-down solo performance of “The One”.  A guitarist, keyboard player and drummer joined him on stage and they moved through a setlist featuring the four best tracks from Forget and all but three cuts from Confess.  While “Slow” was incredibly disappointing (he sang choruses out of turn, feedback screeched), “Castles In The Snow” had to be the show’s highlight; the live version was huskier and grinding in all the right ways, with basslines blaring and buzzing.  But even in the more rote performances, something intense was happening, at least to me, most notably during his performance of “Run My Heart”.  So much of Confess is seemingly infused with a summery mood; it was birthed in Los Angeles, where Lewis fled to escape brutal Brooklyn winters when he was writing and recording the album.  But its darker power comes from what happens when the sunshine fades, from that realization that summer is ending and that with that death, romanticism is doomed.  When Lewis sang “This isn’t love / I’m just a boy / you’re just a girl” it acted as a grim reminder to that harsh reality.

Between songs, Lewis rewarded Brooklyn with some backhanded compliments, then promised to move back and abandon his 3,000 square foot loft in Silver Lake (and its jacuzzi) if the crowd screamed loud enough for him.  So not only is he actually cocky, he also doesn’t seem to realize how a bragging about his success might sound to a bunch of folks who paid slightly inflated ticket prices just to dance at his feet.  He made this trespass up slightly by unleashing a bunch of gold and black balloons on the audience, but the kicker was closing out the show with a cover of “Under Pressure” dedicated to openers Niki & the Dove (who I’d missed).  The cover was rather epic and he proved his chops in performing it shockingly well, ensuring that it will be all anyone really remembers about this show.

[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1222″]

All in all, Twin Shadow’s live shows are a tad sloppy compared side-by-side to the obsessively glossy production on his records, but Lewis, let’s remember, is relatively new at this.  He has toured extensively in the last few years, and if nothing else has come out of it, he’s certainly perfected his rock’n’roll idol swag.  Even if this moment doesn’t last much longer than it has, his penchant for making ultra-nostalgic records will ensure his place in the collective consciousness of everyone who came close enough to touch it.  And he’ll be sneering back at us, telling us all how hollow it really is with tears in his eyes.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

SHOW REVIEW: Sinkane, Friends, Phone Tag

There are certain nights when I wish my favorite venues in Brooklyn, all of which happen to inhabit the same square block of Williamsburg, would just band together and offer three-for-one show deals, or at least build a network of secret tunnels connecting each venue  to the next – like those elaborate ferret dens you see in pet shops, all neon yellow and orange plastic.  Thursday was a perfect example of just such a night, as my buddy Ahmed Gallab and his band Sinkane were opening for Sun Araw at Death By Audio and Brooklyn-based band Friends were over at 285 Kent.  Additionally, Annie was amped for a Chris Cohen set at Glasslands, so we did what any good AudioFemmes would do and attended all three between the two of us.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about Sinkane’s set; this blog has not seen the last of him by any means.  Frontman Ahmed Gallab is a longtime friend of mine from Ohio, where I’d see him play regularly with two of my favorite Columbus acts, Sweetheart and Pompeii This Morning.  Sinkane is the most psychedelic sonic adventure he’s ever been on, and I’ve been stoked to watch it evolve from its humble beginnings as a solo project, through a move to Brooklyn and tours with the likes of Caribou and Yeasayer, and into what it is now – a four piece as much informed by seventies funk and Afrobeat as it is by indie rock.  His jams get more and more solid every time I get a chance to see him play, helped along by a recent residency at Zebulon and soon to take the world by storm as he was just signed to DFA.  On Thursday he debuted some great new material – stay tuned for an upcoming AF feature.

[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”]

Sinkane at Death by Audio

As I mentioned, Sinkane was opening up for fellow purveyors of psychedelic sound Sun Araw, though I was only able to stay for a few of their songs.  I’ve liked a good many records that they’ve put out, but have never really gotten to see them live.  Their first few numbers were droning and dissonant; hair hung in the faces of the flanneled band members who had turned most of the stage lights out just before playing.  I’m hoping the set got better as they went on.  They were sluggishly nonchalant, as though there weren’t a room filled with folks eyeing their moves, and the songs just didn’t come across as textural or integrated as they do on the albums, and the cloud of weed hovering in the front room of DBA didn’t even help.  I’ll be giving them another chance, though, and soon.

I could have probably stuck around a bit longer, but I didn’t want to miss Friends and figured they’d play at 285 Kent around 11:30.  When I arrived at the venue, Phone Tag was finishing up an adorably bouncy set that had the crowd (and it was a decently sized crowd for an opening band on a Thursday night) going wild.  I hadn’t yet heard their self-titled 2012 LP but was definitely intrigued by the ardent fanbase, not to mention the glistening keys and synths, reverb-drenched guitar and cooing vocals reminiscent of a less grating Passion Pit.  The band is led by Gryphon Graham and comprised of some pretty attractive kids.  They could just as easily be a group of hip super-heroes as a band, but lucky for everyone at 285 they chose to play instruments instead of fight crime.  Their songs are made for rooftop dance parties and flirting in bars, ultra catchy and very fun but never totally frivolous.

All of this made them appropriate openers for Brooklyn band-of-the-moment Friends, who will soon embark on a month-long tour opening for Two Door Cinema Club.  Like Phone Tag, Friends play deceivingly simple indie pop party jams, but there’s a certain depth and skill at work that goes beyond the band’s youthful exuberance.

Friends take ultra catchy jams and infuse them with beats and instrumentation so eclectic it’s hard to pin down any definitive influences.  Their live shows feature heavy, funky basslines courtesy of a new bassist known as “V” (who in a weird way looks like an avatar from Rock Band), lively synths thanks to Nikki Shapiro, and he percussive efforts of  Oliver Duncan (on a drumset) and Etienne Pierre Duguay (formerly of Real Estate) on bongos, tambourine, and anything else that will make a sound when you bash, tap, or click it.

But Friends simply would not be what it is without the incredible vocals and personality of Samatha Urbani, whose aesthetic has informed the band since its inception, when she directed videos for the band’s first and very buzzed about singles, “I’m His Girl” and “Friend Crush”.  Wearing high-waisted navy blue pants with double rows of gold buttons, a white shirt tied at the waist with gold beadwork cascading down her back and across her shoulders, Urbani was every bit the glamourous frontwoman.

Her flamboyant-meets-chic style is one thing, but her vocal chops are completely another.  She drifts back and forth easily between a higher, sweeter coo and lower, more sultry tones delivered with a dose of sass.  That much was apparent on the band’s debut LP, Manifest! released this year.  But live she’s that much more captivating, peppering her performance with coquettish yelps and squeals reminiscent of Kate Pierson from the B-52’s.  A friend of mine told me that she used to see Urbani perform regularly at karaoke and said that she completely slayed every song, which I not only believe but would have probably paid money to see that alone.

 

 

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

SHOW REVIEW: Gang Gang Dance w/ Prince Rama

Okay, so I know I’ve been spending too much time at 285 Kent.  I know you’re all sick of hearing about it.  I’m thinking of getting a tattoo of a sharpie line drawn across my wrist so they won’t have to ID me anymore, maybe even the “RANDO” stamp they use on my forearm so I don’t have to pay to get in.  For all you foursquare nerds out there, check out the mayor – it’s actually me.  But none of this is my fault.  I could quit if I wanted.  It’s just that there is too much goodness going on inside those walls on a nightly basis, really.

On Sunday night, that goodness took the form of Gang Gang Dance and Prince Rama.  It was the last night of GGD’s “Tour of Williamsburg” in which they played Public Assembly on Friday (with Sun Araw), Cameo Gallery on Saturday (with New Moods), and 285 on Sunday (with Prince Rama).  All of these shows were put together by Brooklyn-based booking agency Bandshell, whose mission is to bring bigger bands to smaller, more intimate venues.  From what I can tell their venture is a new-ish one and they don’t seem to have any events coming up, but it’s a mission we can get behind and we’d like to see it succeed.

I’d been dying to see Prince Rama but had missed the seven billion opportunities I’d been given in the past.  Now I will say this: NO MORE.  No more will I show up late to shows where they are opening, no more will I skip their free or cheap shows for some other free or cheap show, no more will this band play in Brooklyn without seeing me at the foot of their stage, worshipping every move.  These ladies (and one gentleman) do it so, so right.

First, they were wearing ultra-eccentric outfits (think animal print, think sequins) and had gold glitter all over their faces and all of them (the boy too!) had pretty hair.  The driving force of the project is sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson, joined by guitarist Michael Collins.  The three met in a Hare Krishna commune in Florida and honed their psychedelic leanings in art school.  Oddity can sometimes seem affected or put on, part of a performance rather than a way of life, but for Prince Rama it’s genuine and engaging.

Taraka sang the majority of the vocals and was also in charge of the synths, but abandoned them relatively often for a little audience participation.  The audience this night included members of the Larson family; during the second-to-last number Taraka jumped off stage and danced with what I’d assume was maybe her mother, who seemed to know all the words.  Nimai stood in a circle of drums, dancing while she played, her smile so wide and constant that she kind of reminded me of the girl muppet in Dr. Teeth’s Electric Mayhem.  She was adorable and so fun to watch, but it was hard to train the eyes on any one thing.  There were cool projections mirroring their movements filtered to look like some kind of crazy acid trip, and the stage was festooned with loudly printed textiles and gauze.

[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”][jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1213″]

Musically, Prince Rama’s sound is designed to put you in a party trance of sorts; there’s plenty of chanting and call-and-response but it’s backed up by an acute understanding of what makes a song worth dancing to.  I’ve been to plenty of psych shows that devolve into sort of boring drone, and this is the exact opposite.  To prove that, the sisters leapt off stage during the last number and performed an incredible dance routine on the floor to close out the show; this included flips, hand motions, dramatic facial expression, and probably went on for over six minutes.  Since they’d arrived late and hadn’t been able to start the show on time, yet the venue wouldn’t allow them to hold up Gang Gang Dance’s scheduled performance, the dance number ended up being a significant portion of time in their set overall.  But it was absolutely enchanting.  I cannot wait to see them again.

Gang Gang Dance play a similar brew of exotic psych, but there are way more people in the band and have a much heavier ratio of males to females – there are four dudes to the one lady, Lizzi Bougatsos.  At this particular show there was also a strange shaman-type dude in the band; he mostly hid behind the amps but he’d peer around them with some weird antique binocular-type gadget, or hit an adjacent cymbal with a piece of rope tied to his wrist.  At one point he did move to the front of the stage to hold a drum head so Lizzi could bang on it, but that was as present as he ever seemed.

I’m getting a bit ahead of myself though.  Before the show even started, Bougatsos appeared onstage in a baseball cap and a homemade hijab, asking the house DJ to stop playing MIA.  Despite Gang Gang Dance’s obvious affinity for world beats, exotic instrumentation, and Middle-Eastern influenced sonic tinges, Bougatsos proudly identified herself as a Long Island girl, glorious accent and all.  When she sings, though, it sounds like she’s coming from some other planet.  She also plays a floor tom and a smaller set of drums.  The synth guy sometimes played drums too, and then there was actual drummer.  Together, they caused quite a lovely racket, the band spooling out their off-center dance tunes into sprawling psychic meditations.  They tackled favorites like “Mindkilla” “Adult Goth” “Egyptian” and “Vacuums”, interspersed with new songs like “Lazy Eye”, which prompted Bougatsos to keep a lyric sheet on hand, though she ended up not needing it.  In addition to building kaleidoscopic jams out of their regular material, the band also debuted some expansive instrumental tracks.  The only song notably missing from the set was “House Jam”, but in such a long and tight set its omission was not exactly tragic.

[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1212″]

It’s been over a year since Eye Contact was released, and it’s exciting to see the band develop new material, though if the time that passed between their most recent release and 2008’s Saint Dymphna is any indication it will be a while longer before we see a new full length.  If this trio of performances is any indication, Gang Gang Dance are far from exhausting the font from which their reputations as experimental wunderkinds flow.

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

SHOW REVIEW: Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall

There’s not a whole lot left to say about the caliber of Thee Oh Sees’ or Ty Segall’s live shows; both acts are known in many circles for providing one of the best live experiences the price of a concert ticket can buy.  It’s not mere hype; the energy and skill which these musicians and long-time friends bring to any stage is a real thing, and best seen to be believed.

Those in the NYC area had multiple chances to do so this weekend – both bands played brand new Bushwick venue The Well on Saturday, Death by Audio on Monday, and Thee Oh Sees played ATP I’ll Be Your Mirror on Sunday.  Given the chance to choose between these shows, I’d say the show at The Well was least preferable.  Going into it, I was excited to check out the venue, which boasts and incredible beer selection as well as gourmet eats.  But I was totally underwhelmed by the interior of the space, which basically looked like someone was storing their fully-stocked bar in an empty garage.  The stage was huge, framed between the brick walls of surrounding industrial buildings, with an expanse of dust and gravel for show-goers to kick around below.  The sound wasn’t bad, but the setting was far from intimate (which would be the advantage of having gone to Death by Audio), much more reminiscent of a festival or large SXSW showcase than a punk rock show.

Thee Oh Sees had already started by the time I arrived, just after 8pm.  It was hard to get close enough to the stage to actually see anything that was going on, but I could hear just fine – crashing drums, crushing guitar distortion, and John Dwyer’s characteristic yelping.  They shredded through favorites like “Warm Slime” “I Was Denied” and “Tidal Wave” as well as “Lupine Dominus” from recent release Putrifiers II, bouncing along with the crowd every beat of the way.  It’s nearly impossible to not enjoy an Oh Sees show, and I did.  But the enjoyment stung a little; I was definitely kicking myself for not bothering to attend their shows years ago, before I had to stand in a mob to do so.

Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees are garage pop’s version of peanut butter versus jelly – an unquestionably appropriate pairing for the ages.  Their camaraderie actually borders on adorable, and it makes the vibe at shows like this that much more ecstatic and playful.  Segall brings a gritty frontman charm to a talented group of musicians that includes drummer Emily Rose and guitarist Mikal Cronin.  During crowd-pleaser “Finger” it started pouring rain, but few folks in the audience bothered to run for any sort of cover – if anything the crowd got rowdier.  Plenty of them had already been soaked by airborne plastic cups half-full of craft beer, so maybe the rain collectively drowned everyone’s remaining inhibitions.  Someone raised a pair of crutches in the air – they’d made a brief appearance earlier in the show but this time they stayed lifted.  I saw a couple of idiots go from good-natured moshing to an almost legitimate altercation; luckily someone standing by helped the two angry dudes cool out.  Meanwhile, Segall stopped the show to call a medic to the front of the crowd, where apparently someone’s ears had started bleeding.  With that issue resolved, he dedicated his next song to the medic.  In addition to unleashing plenty of classics like “Girlfriend” “Standing at The Station ” and “My Sunshine” Segall played new material from Slaughterhouse, and even showed a flair for a irony by riffing a few lines of “Sweet Home Alabama” and encoring with a snippet of “The End” by The Doors.  The rest of that encore can be seen in the video below, as this was the only time I was even remotely close enough to the stage to justify recording anything at all.

[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1209″]

I’m not as stoked on The Well as I thought I might be given its size, but depending on who is booked there in the future I can’t say I’d never go back.  Ticket prices were pretty cheap despite the professional level of the stage and sound equipment, so no complaints there.  What will be truly interesting is to see where the trajectory of Oh Sees/Segall will take them; while they’ve built a reputation playing to smaller audiences in less commercial spaces both have clearly outgrown these institutions in terms of popularity.  It’s rightfully earned and there’s no judgement in that. “Selling out” is a thing that certainly doesn’t exist when your entire goal as a musician is to incite your fans to have the best time they can possibly have; with the degree of excellence these guys bring to their performances, it’s unlikely either will find an audience so large that that can’t be done.

SHOW REVIEW: Lightning Bolt w/ Indian Jewelry

Not long ago, I joked about subletting my apartment and just moving into 285 Kent since I have been spending so much time there, and will be spending more time there in the near, near future thanks to the venue’s constant stream of awesome lineups.  Thursday night found me back at the DIY space for noise wizards Lightning Bolt.  It had been nearly a decade (!) since I’d seen them last, but in my early college days bands like this were my bread and butter, and Lightning Bolt had always represented the most mind-blowing talent of the bunch.

I got there just as controversial punk rockers Liquor Store were finishing up.  Their sound was actually pretty straight forward and they played it well enough; the controversy comes from their possible involvement in Jay Reatard’s 2010 death.  They’re from New Jersey and play shows here all time.  If you’re ever in the mood to get beaten up you should go to one of their shows and ask them directly if they know what happened that night in January.

It was around this time that something happened at 285 Kent I’ve never observed until then – a disembodied voice from the sound booth rang over the crowd with some “announcements” regarding where folks could smoke (outside only, although the voice did specify tobacco) and that no one should be taking beer outside due to the cop circling the venue in a golf cart waiting to catch people for peeing in the street.  Really?  Why do these things need to be stated?  I get that it’s a very raw space and that there are plenty of morons who think that means there are no rules, or believe themselves to be such badasses that whatever rules there may be don’t apply to to them, but it sucks that 285 even had to say it.  People should just know how to behave themselves so everyone has a good time at a show, no matter how raucous it gets.  And everyone should be more respectful of the neighborhoods that house these venues, so said venues don’t get shut down, so shows and crazy raves (or whatever) can keep happening.  GEEZ.

Indian Jewelry took the stage after a brief equipment change.  The Houston four-piece also play a genre-bending brand of distortion-drenched rock, but take more cues from psychedelic and industrial music than the headliners.  It was perhaps for that reason that some completely ill-mannered jerk-offs in the audience decided to heckle the quartet with some extremely insightful chants of “You SUCK!!!”  For what it’s worth, there were also some ill-mannered jerkoffs on the other end of the spectrum – some idiots who loved the band so much they flailed about in the audience like windchimes in a hurricane, flinging gross sweat everywhere and elbowing folks nearby.  I finally found an area unmarred by stupidity and actually enjoyed Indian Jewelry’s set.

I’ve listed to and enjoyed their records for years but had never seen them live, and it was quite the sight to behold – that is, if your eyeballs could handle it.  Before their set they shut off all the stage lighting and turned on a seizure-inducing strobe light.  It flashed bright white to black, bright white to black, through the hour long set, making the musicians on stage look like marionettes animated in stop-motion.  Erika Thrasher and Tex Kerschen divvied  vocal duties, both fronting the band with plenty of sass, swapping keys and guitar intermittently.  A dreadlocked drummer furiously pounded a stripped-down kit at the front of the stage, while a very blonde bassist donned sunglasses, presumably so that he didn’t go into epileptic convulsions.

[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1184″]

The band has been playing lots of shows in the New York area lately, presumably to generate buzz for Peel It, a new album slated to drop sometime this fall.  If the live show and the teasers they’ve released are any indication, it will see the band straying further from their psychedelic beginnings into a dancier post-punk realm while continuing to push experimental boundaries.  The truly great thing about Indian Jewelry is that they just don’t seem to care about playing by rules; they’ll do whatever, say whatever, stray from whatever convention, even if it’s viewed negatively.  As Kerschen warned the hecklers: “Every time you tell us we suck, we’ll just play another song.”  That self-possessed, devil-may-care kind of determination is pretty admirable, and to me sums up what Indian Jewelry is all about.

Lightning Bolt is known for setting up and taking a stage just moments after their openers play, taking the audience by surprise.  But that wasn’t the case for this show; it seemed to take longer than usual to set up two towers of precariously stacked amps (one of which had a cartoony, acid-trip sort of face painted on it), Brian Chippendale’s drum set (which despite being covered with Spongebob Squarepants stickers was about to take plenty of abuse) and, most challenging of all, to get everything running electrically.  For what it’s worth, the Bolt guys seemed just as antsy to get the show on the road.  But before that could happen, the 285 folks made another public service announcement, this time regarding pit etiquette (“If someone falls down in the pit, what do we doooooooo?  We PICK THEM uuuuuuuup!”).  The audience, whether due to short attention spans or all-out cult worship, were reveling in every stray note while the band worked out the electrical issues, with Chippendale apologizing.  Someone yelled out a request for “13 Monsters” which garnered disbelieving laughs from the band.  Finally, Chippendale pulled on his Mexican-wrestler-esque face mask (which houses a microphone so he could play hands-free) and the show got underway.

From the first shredded rhythms of Brian Gibson’s bass, the crowd was churning.  Distorted waves of noise issued from his instrument; it’s almost unfathomable that it’s only one guy playing one bass.  People climbed the interior supports of the cavernous venue for a better look at the virtuosity, rivers of sweat poured from every gland on stage and off.  Both guys play at a feverish pace, and while it looks far from effortless it’s simply incredible to behold.  Beholding the spectacle was challenging in and of itself since the electrical circuits kept overloading, effectively shutting off every light and amp in the venue so that only Chippendale’s drumming could be heard.  Ever the problem solver, he suggested the band somehow plug into the sole string of Christmas lights that remained lit when the rest of the venue’s power had failed.  The problems were sporadic but ongoing through the first part of the set, at which time Todd P came to the rescue.  He was showered with accolades and all but compared to God by Chippendale, who stopped the show only once more when someone in the audience lost a wedding ring (it was quickly located, but made me feel a little old; ten years ago there were few wedding rings at Lightning Bolt shows).

[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1182″]

The band ripped through a blistering selection of old and new material, leaving the stage only briefly before returning to encore with “Dead Cowboy”.  Chippendale had been somewhere in the crowd and emerged smudged with filth, his left arm dripping blood.  When he noticed that this was so, his reaction was to smear that blood all over his face, put his mic back in his mouth, and hammer through the last song.  Lightning Bolt’s method of performing is so physically intense you almost feel bad cheering for an encore; it’s like asking someone who just ran a marathon to jog another few blocks.  I’d been standing against a wall close to the stage to avoid the chaos, feeling vibrations from the amps move through my body like thunder.  I hadn’t moved much but I was still damp since the air was made humid by everyone’s sweat.  I thought back to the days when I would willingly give myself whiplash at shows like this, getting pummeled, getting my hair pulled.  Even if those days are gone, the energy and intensity that Lightning Bolt put into their shows hasn’t slowed a bit, and it’s good to know they’ve still got it.

 

SHOW REVIEW: Mount Eerie w/ La Big Vic

There’s really no entity that compares to the genius of Phil Elverum.  He’s like a mythical creature or enlightened being from another planet.  He’s been actively making music and art for nearly fifteen years under a variety of monikers, with common threads and motifs connecting each project to the next.  His soft, cooing voice sounds bashful but the words they convey are anything but; together they form a cohesive aesthetic whether the tunes are performed as a black metal band or as stripped down acoustic melodies.  I’ve been amazed and inspired by his work for most of my adult life, finally getting to see him play live (in a glorious cathedral no less!) during Northside fest in the summer of 2011.

I saw him again a few months later at le poisson rouge.  The opener both times was Nicholas Krgovich, who put out a 7″ on Phil’s record label P.W. Elverum & Sun.  This is significant because he also accompanied Phil, playing keys and synths and adding backing vocals.  The set for both shows spanned a lot of Mount Eerie material (and there really is so, so much of it) but from show to show was pretty similar.  They were both moving in their own way, although far from my dream set, or what I’d imagined a Mount Eerie set might be like after countless repeated listens to their infamous triple LP recorded live in Copenhagen.

For Saturday night’s show, Brooklyn-based electronic indie pop outfit La Big Vic warmed up the crowd with bouncy set, each beat measured against swirling synths and vocals.  Their smartly crafted dream pop is sort of like waking up from a dream you just had where you were lying on the beach sunbathing but the sky was all shifting neon colors instead of the standard blue.  The majority of the crowd paid rapt attention to the attractive trio, with Toshio Masuda casually looping guitars, Emilie Friedllander bowing a violin or cooing into the microphone, and Peter Pearson manning the keys.

During the set, Phil Elverum and his bandmates could be seen milling about the crowd – putting finishing touches on set-up, selling records, and chit-chatting with fans.  This highlights one of the best aspects of Elverum’s live performances and work in general; despite the emotional depth to his work and its esoteric facets, he is really just  normal guy.  He doesn’t take himself too seriously, preferring to interact with the crowd, making jokes at his own expense.  The band had a little trouble with initial set-up, blowing two amps and lacking connections for some of the instruments, during which Phil took it upon himself to introduce the new material as well as his four touring bandmates, all on loan from their various bands and side-projects.

I was really excited to see him play with a fuller band, especially because the additional vocals sounded particularly heartbreaking.  There was also a fake campfire on stage, which added a bit of kitsch but also a bit of setting, and setting is what the new Mount Eerie material is all about.  In his introductory speech, he’d mentioned that the evening’s setlist was composed of songs taken from each of his two newest records, Clear Moon and Ocean Roar.

These albums were recorded simultaneously in Elverum’s new studio, The Unknown, while he took a year off from touring, and he divided the material into separate records afterward.  He has stated that the records are truly meditations on his hometown in Washington state and what it meant for him to be in that one place, day after day, walking from his home to his recording studio and back and then spending quiet evenings reading about Anacortes history.  They represent two sides of the same coin; Clear Moon is as succinct and glistening as its name might suggest, in exactly the same way that Ocean Roar is murky and embattled, its dense layers rolling over tumultuously over and over one another.  In a live setting, the juxtaposition of the material highlighted the breadth and beauty of the sonic divide.  Moving from quieter, dreamier movements into towering walls of drone, Elverum knitted these conjoined twins back together to stunning affect.

[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”][jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1161″]

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

Why You Should Always Go To A “Secret” Show

Last minute, some friends and I decided to grab tickets to Ariel Pink’s Webster Hall show.  TEEN was opening and I hadn’t seen Ariel Pink in roughly two years, the last time being at Irving Plaza when I was going through some major melodrama that kind of ruined the whole thing for me.  So despite the hefty ticket price and less than ideal venue, I logged on to Ticketmaster, rolled my eyes at the ‘service’ surcharges, and was just about to click on “Submit Order” when I heard a familiar gchat ding.  My roommate was informing me that Holy Other had announced a secret show at 285 Kent via a Twitter message that had already disappeared.  All that remained was the following cryptic tweet from the venue:

Todd P’s reply tweets seemed to confirm that it would all go down after Ariel Pink finished the Webster show.  Holy Other was opening for Amon Tobin at Hammerstein, so that also seemed to make sense.  285’s facebook dangled a 3am set time like a carrot on a stick.  The matter was discussed with friends; it simply made more sense to skip Webster on the chance that Ariel would play later, cheaper, and in a rad venue instead of a lame one.

My brain was buzzing while I excitedly coordinated a new game plan for the evening.  Sure, I’d been excited to see TEEN, but had no doubt they’d play a CMJ showcase somewhere.  Holy Other was a more than suitable consolation prize.  And I was curious about R. Stevie Moore’s set as well.  But something about the prospect of seeing Ariel Pink at 285 seemed so epic, even though it was nothing if not the scaled-back nature of this alternative venue that made it that much more appealing.  There was something else at work here – the rumors, the hush, the knowing wink (or in this case, knowing retweets).  The magic of the ‘secret’ show.

What is it that makes a secret show feel so magical?  By its nature, even indulging the rumors means you are part of a club that is “in-the-know” and from there you have two options: play the part of the cool skeptic, or go all in on the chance that whatever happens might be spectacular.  It’s not like buying a ticket for a bill announced well in advance; while the anticipation might be just as acute there is the added glamour of uncertainty.  The venue could be jam-packed!  The ensuing show could be mayhem!  It might not even happen until the wee morning hours!  There could be insane special guests!  Suddenly, I was starring in a saga that had yet to unfold, knowing that if any one of these grandiose scenarios came to fruition, there were major bragging rights to be had.

After all, it was only about a month ago that Pictureplane and Grimes infamously took over 285, aided by surprise appearances from araabMuzik and A$AP Rocky.  I had been at that show; I got tickets before they sold out without thinking about the fact that I was supposed to work that evening, but it ended up taking place much later than expected so I just went afterward.  I’d had some friends in town that weekend so by the Sunday evening on which the show took place, I was exhausted, ready to keel over.  I was quite enjoying Arca’s DJ set but also feeling impatient and super-annoyed by the underaged seapunks populating the crowd.  Pictureplane didn’t go on until after midnight, as though enacting some backwards Cinderella clause.  I was simply too worn out to stick around for Grimes and her gaggle of buzzy artists, but the next day I admittedly kicked myself for not sticking it out a little longer.  A very well-known ‘journalist’ infamous for his over-use of superlatives tweeted: “Seems clear @285Kent will one day be regarded as a legendary NY scene.  Easily the wildest + most creative I’ve witnessed in my 5 years here.”

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]

Grimes DJs 285 Kent. Photographed by Erez Avissar, photo courtesy of Pitchfork.

And it is kind of true.  If there’s a venue in Brooklyn that’s really taking the reins as far as booking avant-garde artists and quirky parties, it’s 285.  While it’s no doubt benefited from its proximity to neighborhood DIY stalwarts Glasslands and Death By Audio, it has also had to set itself apart from these institutions.  It does so by catering to subcultures so specific to an ever-fleeting moment that, while the general populous tries to come up with a searing punchline to describe it, the nature of the ‘scene’ has already morphed into something else as explosive and as vibrant.  As with any scene there are downsides and caveats, but boredom isn’t in the vocabulary.

So when a place like this announces a secret anything, be there with bells on.  These aren’t just stories to tell your grandkids, these are stories that will make your relatives believe you are starting to go senile, because what you’ve described seems so fantastical.  No, you’ll insist: these are things that happened.  To me.  And they will either commit you to a geriatric care facility right then and there, or their shining eyes will widen and they will beg you to regale them with more tales from your debaucherous twenties.  You’ll play them a Grimes record, they will make strange faces.

Last Friday wasn’t quite so legendary as I’d hoped it would be, but Holy Other played an absolutely killer set.  His features were totally obscured by fog-machine sputter and pitch black lighting save for a mesmerizing laser projector cutting through the darkness.  Now, don’t go thinking I’m some stoner who could spend hours in Spencer gifts staring goggle-eyed at lava lamps and blacklight posters, but this laser thing was incredible.  It had a presence, like you could reach out and touch it, and it made geometric shapes and waves in myriad colors.  When I was living in Ohio, we had a regular karaoke spot and the DJ, Dave Castro, was the main reason behind our repeat attendance.  From time to time he’d have contests and give away this DVD he’d made for cats.  It was literally called Cat DVD and it was looped footage of goldfish swimming around or birds hopping through a forest or… that’s right, lasers.  The idea was that when you had to leave your cat at home alone, you could put on the DVD and then instead of napping the whole day away it would watch and be stimulated.  It was also really good for backgrounds at parties – much better than a lava lamp and much less likely to short out and cause a fatal blaze.  Watching Holy Other and his magical laser box was like getting sucked into Cat DVD in the best way I can describe.  When I talked about the show with friends afterward, the laser was the focus of conversation.  We wondered where we could get one, then decided that you had to know a wizard or a unicorn who could hook you up with it.

[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1153″]

Holy Other’s latest album Held makes good on all the promises of his early demos, singles and EPs.  Right at home on label Triangle Records, Holy Other is often associated with witch house, but he’s a front runner and a creator within that genre, not an imitator or piggy-backer.  He invented the sound that would define that movement, in all its sinister glory – skeletal beats marred by thumping bass, syrupy samples, seemingly random bleeps which emerge after repeated listens into blissful sonic fractals.  It’s hard not to be moved even during a subway ride with headphones over the ears or via computer speakers while you’re supposed to be casually checking email.  But with the volume up as loud as eardrums can handle, letting every pulse wash over you, the experience is truly one of holiness.

His set was plenty satisfying, but we had to know if Ariel Pink would show up so we stuck around, breathless from the experience.  What we got instead was bizarro pop Ariel Pink protege Geneva Jacuzzi, whose live performance I was surprised to learn just consists of her leaping barefoot around the stage in questionable attire while she howls over iPod tracks.  Since it was by that time close to 3AM if not well past it, and because grilled cheese from Normaan’s Kil was calling my name ever so faintly, my friend and I reluctantly left.  The reluctance was mostly mine and mostly only a byproduct of that uncertainty still reverberating through my psyche – what if Ariel Pink did show and I missed it?

While we waited for our cheeses (Solona + Vernice for LIFE!) I checked twitter for any news, mostly to no avail.  Finally someone posted an Instagram of a blurry, nearly obscured R. Stevie Moore backed by a band which may or may not have been Bodyguard and may or may not have included Ariel Pink, but there was no definitive account of who was actually onstage.  The person who posted the picture said they stayed at the venue until six in the morning.

In the end, the takeaway is this: the experience as a whole was totally worth it.  If I’d really wanted to see Ariel Pink I could’ve gone to Webster Hall, and for that matter I’m sure I’ll have another opportunity to bask in his weirdness.  In return for giving the promoters the benefit of the doubt, I was witness to an absolutely majestic Holy Other performance that I’m sure would have been nowhere near as intimate or haunting at Hammerstein.  It’s a great reminder that there is only one moment, and it’s the one you’re in.  You’re only a sucker if you stay home.

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

SHOW REVIEW: Eric Copeland and U.S. Girls

As a founding member of Black Dice, Eric Copeland has been melting my face for years.  I’d seen them live a handful of times in the early- and mid-aughts and had fond memories of sweaty thrashing and abused cilia.  I was overjoyed when they were announced as openers for Animal Collective’s Celebrate Brooklyn show last summer and pleased that they were just as great as ever, even though the venue was not the sort I was used to seeing them play.  Even though I enjoyed Eric Copeland’s solo material I’d never gotten a chance to see what it is exactly that he does by himself in front of a crowd.  At Death by Audio on Sunday, I found out.

I was in a somewhat poisonous mood despite being very excited about the show.  August was not a kind month to me, and it was beginning to wear me down; my hope was that the show would lift my spirits.  I was jazzed up for opener U.S. Girls, whose moniker is misleading in that is is actually just one girl.  That girl, Meghan Remy, layers her sultry but detached vocals over fuzzy electronic beats and looks damn chic doing it.  She’s released a handful of records, done a split with Dirty Beaches, and has an album, entitled Gem, coming out on Fat Cat in September.  She was also selling some pretty rad little collages at the merch table.

[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”]

Meghan Remy of U.S. Girls

Musically, the production values remain lo-fi enough to add a little grit to a glamorous ethos that clearly informs her work.  There weren’t tons of people filling the DIY space for her set, but those who were seemed to be under a kind of spell; heads bobbed but eyes were glued to the stage.  She closed with her lead-off single from Gem, “Jack”, a cover of a somewhat obscure glam-rock jam from 2004 by a band called Danava.  Remy also performed an awesomely perverted version of Monica and Brandy’s 1998 smash hit “The Boy Is Mine”.  While you would think R&B doesn’t have much to do with the swirling, dubby haze Remy creates, it’s actually a pretty appropriate reference point; though her distorted, witchy vocals and hazy compositions are far from slickly produced pop top forty, the diva swag is the same, and the jagged spines of these songs are sheathed in beats just as infectious.

Eric Copeland was certainly more unassuming than the audaciously blonde Remy in her leopard-print wedges, dressed as he was in a dark cap and ragged shorts.  Every so often, Copeland would croon into a microphone, his voice a distorted moan, and during those moments he’d direct his gaze briefly and furtively into the bizarro dance party he’d given rise to.  But mostly he kept his head down, sometimes whipping it back and forth during particularly turbulent rhythms.  Much like Copeland’s work with Black Dice, his solo work is layered with mashed loops and whacked-out samples, and it has followed a similar trajectory.  Copeland started producing his solo records right around the time that Black Dice moved away from the harsh feedback and persistent drone of their early material, replacing it with something no less experimental but certainly a bit more synth-oriented.  With the release of this year’s Limbo, Copeland’s created something that embraces that more playful ethos.  The beats are almost bouncy, layered in psychedelic repetitions and oozing pitch-shifted samples.  It’s still a challenging listen at times, due to its more disconnected moments.  But in a live setting, you could actually pull out some weird dance moves and shake to it.  I don’t think I’ll be walking into a dance club anytime soon to hear a DJ spinning “Fiesta Muerta”, but attending this show was a reminder that there are all types of grooves, and sometimes the kookiest ones are the most rewarding.

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

Audiofemme’s Favorite Albums of 2012 (So Far)

It’s July, a month in which listing the best albums of the year so far has become nearly as ubiquitous in the blogosphere as making a list of the best albums of the year in December. Here at Audiofemme, we aren’t so much into ranking the releases of the last six months as we are simply highlighting the music that’s made us super excited to be doing what we’re doing. The following list is by no means comprehensive – we really need some more time with the new Spiritualized record to wrap our brains around it. We can barely keep up with the bi-monthly output of, say, Ty Segall or Family Perfume. We’re saving ourselves on that Sigur Ros album til we see them live in Prospect Park at the end of this month. Dirty Projectors’ Swing Lo Magellan deserves a whole essay rather than a brief blurb. And you’re probably already tired of hearing about how great Grimes is, so we took a mini-break from extolling her virtues.  We have a feeling we’ll still be raving over the following selections in six months, so you’ve got plenty of time to run down to the record store and buy us some vinyl before the holidays hit.

Death Grips – The Money Store: Zach Hill’s newest side project melts faces in a way that last year’s Exmilitary only hinted was possible. Its innovative melding of experimental hip-hop rhythms and aggressive lyrical flow, paired with rapid-fire samples and grinding electronics manages to harness an intense energy while avoiding the pitfalls of akin genres which can be grating, uncreative, and way overhyped (coughcoughdubstepcough). It’s hard to get over an opening scorcher like “Get Got” (especially when producer Andy Morin turns up the echo on Stefan Burnett’s staccato “stopstopstopstopstopstopstop”) but the album is full of dark gems and deep jams. Fuzzy gongs resonate through “Double Helix”, detached blurbs of sampled pop keys bubble out over “Hustle Bones”, “Fuck That’s” bouncy bongos back Burnett’s riotous yells, gloried synth hooks adorn “Bitch Please”. The group will release a companion album, No Love, in the fall of this year, so it will be interesting to see how the two albums play off one another. Not to mention we’ve got our fingers crossed for an insane tour.

Purity Ring – Shrines: What began as a mysterious and infectious single from a band with the same name as a nearly forgotten emo-punk outfit has transcended its steady trickle of carefully guarded tracks into an auspicious debut that crackles and explodes. The band’s innovative live show is just one angle from which they’ve perfected their aesthetic, and every moment on Shrines feels like magic. Megan James and Corin Roddick deftly transform what are essentially pop songs into something closer to fairy tales, helped by James’ abstract poetics and Roddick’s well-timed production. Album standout “Fineshrines” is a perfect example of the way the two work together, and it still breaks my brain after about a thousand listens, somehow capturing exactly what I always want to feel in song form.

Friends – Manifest!: Anticipation for the debut from Brooklyn-based band Friends began building last year with the release of their single “I’m His Girl”, quite possibly the best argument for open relationships to garner any sort of popularity since TLC’s “Creep”. With that kind of momentum, there’s always a danger that a band might not live up to the hype. But Friends have offered a collection of songs that are not only ultra-catchy and party-ready but also delve into complex topics like female relationships and self-respect with surprising intelligence. Initial fears that lead singer Samantha Urbani’s vocals might at times become grating or that her hip-hop influenced style might lead to some embarrassing moments á la Blondie’s “Rapture” are quickly put to ease – the girl not only has style for miles but a strong set of pipes as well.

Mac DeMarco – Rock and Roll Night Club: In March Captured Tracks released Canadian creepster Mac DeMarco’s seedy, darkly-tinged debut in which he “recorded a whole bunch of songs on a 4-track, slowed them down, sang like Elvis, and slowed that down a little bit too”. The result is presented as an artifact from another universe where radio a.) still exists b.) dials from grimy “96.7 The Pipe” to groovy “106.2 The Breeze” and c.) plays nothing but blocks of Mac DeMarco tracks. The result makes me wish DeMarco would stalk me. I’d pretend I didn’t like it, but I’d start spending more time in dark alleys hoping I’d catch him in the act.  Though DeMarco’s approach is sometimes comical and his live presence purposely pushes the awkward, the languid guitar riffs do feel like something of a lost transmission from an alternate reality where pop music has been distorted for the better.  If Rock and Roll Night Club were a physical location, I’d invoke 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon by repeatedly saying “I want to go to there” until I was transported.  Fortunately, the album does aurally what science has yet to accomplish.

Phédre – Phédre: For a band that pretty much came out of nowhere (actually, it was Toronto), Phédre has managed to blow us away. Their self-titled debut is loaded with infectious production but sealed with the gritty kiss of DIY ethos. The trio (formed by Airick Woodhead, April Aliermo, and Daniel Lee) has created a perfect balance of hyperactive hooks and slowed-down sludge, while distorted, bleary male and female vocals act as oozing cherry on the melted sundae of it all. There’s rapping, there’s punk rock, and there’s lots of sexual innuendos and nods to mythology. Listening to this record feels like taking part in an orgy without the messy and awkward reality of one. What should be a hot mess is actually mesmerizing, an effect enhanced by the feeling that the band never takes themselves too seriously due to a preference for nonsense and debauchery.

Peaking Lights – Lucifer: Having a five-month old son hasn’t slowed Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis down one bit. They’re still touring and have just released a new album that sees them further exploring the experimental electronic routes they’ve breached since forming their band. Lucifer is loop-laden, playful, and showcases Peaking Lights’ trademark fuzzy disco dub on most backing tracks, but there’s more sensitive material here as well. The couple’s tribute to their son, Miko, appears early in the album as a pretty little piano ditty. After dabbling in these lovely, lazy beginnings, the back half of the record lands the listener squarely in Peaking Lights’ wheelhouse, with Coyes’ oscillating samples and eclectic, watery beats pinning down Dunis’ smoky, echoic vocals. It’s the perfect follow-up to last year’s breakout 936 and an automatically wistful portrait of the band at this moment in their careers and personal lives.

Radiation City – Cool Nightmare: This little noise-pop gem was initially circulated via bandcamp by the Portland based quintet. It’s the follow-up to a critically acclaimed debut, and the band’s pride in the new work shows – they released gorgeous physical copies on their own label (Apes Tapes), with laser-cut sleeve sheathed milk-white vinyl and a gold cassette tape being among the purchasing options. But it’s the music therein that’s truly mesmerizing. Though guitarist Cameron Spies’ vocals make laconic appearances from time to time, it is the haunting, distant coos by Lizzy Ellison that stick indelibly in one’s grey matter; standout track “Eye of Yours” blends these two elements to perfection upon a palette of ominous piano plunking that blossoms into sunny trumpets and twangy guitar. That piano, by the way, was a decrepit artifact from drummer Randy Bemrose’s basement and became the inspiration for the whole album.  Every sound it makes as at deteriorates is part of the auditory landscape on Cool Nightmare, the cover of which it graces. The band laid the ancient instrument to rest in the video for lead-off single “Find It Of Use”.

Frankie Rose – Interstellar: As a former member of several prolific noise pop acts (Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls, and Crystal Stilts) one might expect Frankie Rose’s second solo album to be very much in that same sort of vein – jangly guitars, vocal bravado, and pounding drums. But Interstellar sees Rose scale these elements back just enough to set the work totally apart. Her energetic nods to new wave, the vaguely cosmic theme, and cohesive production are perfect foils for the strength of  Rose’s songwriting, notable in that it showcases the first moments in which she’s allowed herself to explore a more vulnerable musical persona.  But the songs here are anything but wallflower’s anthems; she challenges listeners in lead-off track “Know Me” to drop the pigeonholing game for a moment and examine the depth in what she’s presented.  And really, there’s so many hazy, wonderful layers in these tracks that it would be a disservice to oneself not to obey her.

Chromatics – Kill For Love: Johnny Jewel and friends are back after a five-year hiatus during which director Nicolas Winding Refn showed the world their merits by featuring Jewel’s work in his critically acclaimed movie Drive. The band has eschewed the gloss of their 2007 dark disco classic Night Drive for material that is still tightly constructed and very assured but isn’t afraid of its imperfections. It begins with a cover of Neil Young’s “Into the Black” which sets the tone for some incredibly macabre moments made all the more heavy by Ruth Radelet’s haunting vocals. At an hour and a half (scaled down from an alleged thirty-six tracks that the band composed) Kill For Love is almost epic for an electronic album, and weaves a peculiar and solemn beauty through its seventeen tracks. Within this moody context, slightly more hopeful offerings like the title track or “At The Door” glisten and radiate. The record as a whole makes the more lazily produced bedroom pop of the moment seem like the equivalent of a blank stare.

Liars – WIXIW: Liars are well known for exploring spaces and ideas which other bands fear to broach, and in the past that experimentation has manifested itself in layers of thunderous drums, menacing riffs, and hair-raising incantations or equally chilling falsetto. Their sixth studio release, WIXIW (pronounced “Wish You”) is more measured and reserved. The layers are there but they’re more delicate and subtle, taking time to unfurl and mature. Pegged pretty accurately as the band’s foray into electronic music, WIXIW still concerns itself with motifs the band has explored for ten years now, but approaches them from a completely different angle. It’s refreshing not just within Liars’ oeuvre, but against most any album with similar sonic aim. WIXIW proves that electronic production shouldn’t be written off by fans of more traditional music making; in hands so well versed in heavier-hitting rock, the outcome transcends mere curiosity and becomes something astonishing unto itself.

 

Pitchfork 2012

Last Thursday at an ungodly hour of the morning, we at AudioFemme hopped on the LIRR and embarked upon the beginnings of a three-day music going extravaganza at Chicago’s Union Park, for Pitchfork’s annual celebration of their version of what’s good (we gave the festival a 7.2). Stay tuned for our personal thoughts, reviews and videos. In the meantime, here’s a snapshot of what you missed over the weekend (granted some of it we missed too). We highly recommend trying to catch it next year, A for it’s accessibility and the remarkably low cost of passes and B for the well-crafted curatorial narrative that we noticed emerge over the course of the weekend, that made it an experience singular to a festival circuit dominated by massive and overwhelming lineups. Of that narrative, here’s what stuck out for us.

 FRIDAY:

Lower Dens

We heard they’re a marginally boring to watch, but love their new album Nootropics. I’ve been listening to “brains” on repeat these days. For some reason it reminds me of a genre I used to love but can’t quite put my finger on. I think it probably harkens back to the ’90s, when I was listening to way too much Verve.

Willis Earl Beal

What a cute kid. Also, he’s pretty much the hipster American dream personified. He worked menial jobs, even occasionally living under bridges, until the hand drawn flyers he made and then scattered about the streets of Albuquerque seeking a girlfriend  got picked up by Found Magazine (good on you, Davey Rothbart), the cover of which he soon graced. He also had been making music during that time, and the rest is history. He writes poetry too, and illustrates his own music videos. You wouldn’t think it’d be THAT hard for him to find a girlfriend…

Clams Casino

Sexy, ambient electronic music isn’t the most appealing thing to watch in stifling midday summer heat, but Clams Casino is one person for whom we would withstand the ravages of nature.

Purity Ring

I hadn’t seen Purity Ring live yet (I know, lame, especially ‘cause Lindsey had seen them I think like five times), so I was probably the most excited for this show, out of everything. They are favorites of us both and I knew that if I could see them play “Fineshrine” I would leave Chicago happy. They can cut open my sternum whenever they want.

Tim Hecker

It’s weird for many reasons–namely his prolific and decades-long career, and his omnipresence on the live music scene–that we’ve never seen Tim Hecker perform. I also have a real soft spot for Canadians, so we were definitely looking forward to this.

Dirty Projectors

Dirty Projectors is one of those bands that contain so many talented people it’s frightening. It’s also frightening because David Longstreth kind runs the project like a harem. Dirty Projectors’ intense group dynamic, and the fact that all of its members are incredibly good looking, makes for quite the live spectacle. Plus, the new album is stunning. Seriously… Every. Damn. Song. It’s even a little irritating.

SATURDAY:

Chromatics

We were so excited for Chromatics that we got tickets to their after party, in case we either missed them, or couldn’t get a good view. They’re new on the scene after doing most of the soundtrack for Drive, which I think became more popular than the movie itself, even despite the presence of one Ryan Gosling.

Atlas Sound

I’ve always wondered what Bradford Cox looks like in the daylight—like if his cheekbones really do protrude that much or if it’s just the mood lighting we’re used to seeing him in at the dark little NYC venues he so frequently inhabits. That question alone is worth the trek across a muddy field to watch him live in the middle of the day on an outdoor stage. Of course there’s also the fact that Parallax will never get old for me. “Is your love worth the nausea it could bring?”. Oh yes…it is.

 Cloud Nothings

“Stay useless”, says Cloud Nothings. And what better way to do that than idle around Chicago for a weekend?

Nicholas Jaar

Nicholas Jaar is another one of those people whom I resent for the fact that he’s seven years younger than I am and ridiculously accomplished. And really nice and smart seeming, too. However my soft spot for minimalist techno (or blue-wave as he calls it) makes me more than glad to set my wounded ego aside and catch his set.

Sleigh Bells

Inexplicably, none of us had watched Sleigh Bells live before, and we know it’s a once in lifetime experience to see Alexis rock the fuck out like she was born to, so close up that you can see sweat running down her porcelain skin. We also wanted to witness the phenomenon of her hair staying totally perfect after an hour of flipping it around in 90-degree humidity. So jealous I can’t even really talk about it.

Hot Chip

We figured we’ll most likely never see Hot Chip again unless we decide to pay $100 and catch them at Terminal 5. PLUS we knew it’d probably be a riotously fun show, given history and everything.

Flying Lotus

Flying Lotus is one of those people we will never ever tire of seeing. He is further evidence of Warp’s status as a culture-defining institution.

Wild Flag

We heard these girls are awesome live, and we like pretty much every other band they’ve ever played in (Sleater Kinney, ahem).  We knew their mission to make music that is of the distinctly ‘anti-nostalgic’ ilk would be an interesting juxtaposition to most of the other performances on this list, all of which invariably have their own respective “throw-back” qualities.

SUNDAY:

Ice Age

Not usually into this kind of stuff, but we were mighty intrigued by the prospect of seeing three 19 year-olds from Denmark do post-punk. There’s also something them so eerily reminiscent of Joy Division that I suspect Ian Curtis himself may rise from the grave and come to this show.

Araabmuzik

I’ve heard this kid is a little savant on electronic percussion. Plus, we could gather him together with all the other teenagers on the bill and throw a bar mitzvah-themed party, which has always been a dream of mine.

Beach House

Beach House is one of those bands that reminds me of what it felt like to come to New York. Their self-titled debut came out the year I moved, so all of the newness and profound complexities I dealt with during those months I strongly associate with so many of their tunes. For that reason they’ll always hold a special place for me, even as they get bigger and bigger.

Thee Oh Sees

Garage-rock can either be really good or really quite bad. Thee Oh Sees define what’s good about it.

SHOW REVIEW: Liars w/ Oneohtrix Point Never

[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”]

Liars take the stage at Webster Hall

If I had to make a shortlist of the best bands ever, Liars would probably be on it. Perfect ratios art, myth, experimentalism, talent, and persona have made this one of the most prolific bands of my formative years – perhaps not critically, but definitely in a personal sense. Until last Tuesday, I’d never seen them live. But when I heard they were playing Webster Hall I decided to put aside my hatred for this awful venue and buy tickets immediately. No way would I miss this.

That night was one of the hottest of the summer so far. I was certainly not looking forward to standing in a mass of seething Liars fans in a poorly air-conditioned concert hall while we all moshed around, but life’s about trade-offs. The first hurdle I had to get over were the opening bands. I caught about ten seconds of Bubbles, but opted to stand in front of a fan near the entrance to cool off a bit before venturing back upstairs to get in place for a show I hoped would be just the right amount of epic. This also required enduring a set from Oneohtrix Point Never, which was torture enough.

If you’ve ever looked at a photograph of Daniel Lopatin while listening to his glitchy, undulating experimental electronic collages, you’ve basically seen the equivalent of his live “show”. It was one of the most boring things I’ve ever witnessed on a stage. Granted, I am not much of a Oneohtrix fan. I like parts of his music well enough, but the stutters and wails of electronic fuzz get to me after awhile and I start wishing it was just the pretty parts. Not surprisingly, that notion climbs tenfold when you’re super hot and you’re standing around in a huge concert hall with the amps turned way up and there’s really nothing to see him doing. I’ve been to a lot of electronic shows. The best DJs and producers and beatsmiths are actually a joy to see at work, deftly twisting knobs and noodling on synths and maybe even singing or drumming. Most of the others realize they are boring to watch at work but for the sake of being able to play out employ backup dancers or projections, which is always appreciated. Even if the performer is a little stiff, usually you can at least dance to the music and ignore the fact that someone is on stage “playing” something. But none of these things apply to Daniel Lopatin. We amused ourselves with the concept that at parties he only refers to himself in the third person (as his band) and says things like “Oneohtrix Point Never changes facial expressions” or “Oneohtrix Point Never gonna sound like real songs” or “Oneohtrix Point Never playing Webster Hall again”.

People hail this guy as a genius, which I don’t understand, especially when there are far less hyped folks who go totally unnoticed and actually care if they appear completely uninteresting in a live setting. Maybe it’s the hype that makes his nonchalance seem downright smug, but either way, the impression given is that his live set doesn’t have to be engaging because he is just that brilliant, and we should want to pay money to bask in his glory. If I had paid money to see Oneohtrix I would have demanded it back. I might see Lopatin’s side project with Joel Ford (creatively titled Ford & Lopatin) but I haven’t really noticed them touring and I’m sure he doesn’t do much there either, besides what I’m doing now, which is sitting in front of a laptop pushing buttons. My hope would be that Ford is an engaging enough performer for the both of them. Meaning he would have pretty spastic and/or wearing an insane costume.

Luckily the intensity and showmanship exemplified by Liars redeemed all of this as the lush opening bars of “Exact Color of Doubt” swirled over the audience. The vibes were appropriately creepy, with a sinister Angus Andrews moaning “I’ll always be your friend/I’ll never let you down” into the mic. Julian Gross took his place behind the drums and waited patiently for the mood to steep, with well-timed bursts on an electronic hybrid kit, while Aaron Hemphill temporarily ignored his own, smaller drum set as well as his guitar, presiding instead over a collection of synths. Throughout the set he would play each in turn, sometimes sharing with Andrews. “Exact Color of Doubt” expanded into the cavernous space almost like a meditation, but it was the last quiet moment in a show so loud I could feel the floor shaking and my arm hairs vibrating. They blasted straight into “Octagon” rendered with far heavier strokes in its live setting than it is on WIXIW, the band’s sixth studio album.

Much of the material on their newest record was showcased here, but it blended seamlessly into older tracks from their previous albums. The trajectory of Liars has been notoriously hard to pin down, with each album set apart from the others by its own theme, either sonically or conceptually. WIXIW has already been labeled the band’s “electronic” album and it’s true that they’ve used it to introduce a very timely exploration of computer and synth generated sounds. But the innate weirdness, sinister sensibilities, and fearless experimentation that mark all of Liars’ releases is just as prominent, even if the finished product is one of the more reserved pieces they’ve put out to date.

If anyone was worried that the more subtle tones of the new record would inform this latest tour, that worry was shattered not only by the sheer volume radiating from the stage, but also by the energy exhibited in particular by Angus Andrews. He’s every bit the cult leader, his limbs raised fantastically above his stringy locks, never removing his black jacket despite the unrelenting heat, said jacket looking almost too small on his menacing, gangly frame. One moment he would shudder violently, the next bouncing or twirling like a mental patient gone off his meds.

While the set was definitely skewed toward the songs on WIXIW, they were offered alongside a well-curated selection from their previous records. As such, the show acted partly as revue, partly as history lesson – spanning from Liars’ emergence as dance-punk purveyors of ten years past, through art rock witchiness, percussive experimentation, forays into shoegaze, and finally the punishing, barren soundscapes of 2009’s Sisterworld. And while these selections were a treat to a longtime Liars fan like myself, the WIXIW songs were executed so well that they held their own in the cannon of favorites like “Broken Witch” “Let’s Not Wrestle Mt Heart Attack” and “Plaster Casts of Everything”. Though Andrews has said that it was unnerving to present partially formed ideas and arrangements to the band during WIXIW’s almost claustrophobic writing and recording process, none of that insecurity shows now that the album is making its live debut. It’s hard to believe a decade has passed since the release of They Threw Us In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top, and indeed I feel like I’ve spent most of my adulthood in the locked groove of “This Dust Makes That Mud”. But the Liars are nothing if not uncanny for their ability to evolve and to challenge, and the show at Webster Hall was a perfect affirmation of such.

[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”846″][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

SHOW REVIEW: Vår

On Saturday I had every intention of seeing Gap Dream and Grass Widow but had absolutely no energy left for anything not resembling sleep. My family was still in town and while it was wonderful it was still totally draining. I did make sure to catch the Sacred Bones showcase on Sunday at Glasslands, but didn’t get there until Vår were almost finished with their set.
As a side project of Danish band Iceage’s Elias Rønnenfelt, Vår could be considered a slightly darker and more electronic-based iteration of the hardcore punk for which Iceage is known. This show was supposed to be their New York debut but only a few days prior they’d played a raucous secret set at Wierd in which Rønnenfelt and bandmate Loke Rahbek made out to an instrumental track for almost ten minutes. When I arrived at Glasslands, the place was swathed in thick clouds emanating from multiple fog machines, and Vår was performing perhaps their best known single, “Hold Me In Your Arms”. The pounding beat and pleading vocals were not unlike an arrow through my chest, with any other senses obscured as they were by the dense fog.
I was slightly side-tracked by trying to locate my own crush, and by the time I found him Rønnenfelt and Rahbek were already locked in an embrace that made ours look pretty hetero-normative and not so Scandinavian, either, so we debated instead about whether their move was “brave” or “gimmicky”. The fact is that no matter how much I want a show-stopper like that to be commonplace, we live in a political climate where it’s still challenging to some. So challenge away, you beautiful Danish teenagers you.

[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”]

I borrowed this image from nyctaper, since it was way too dark & foggy for me to get photo or video of my own. Thanks nyctaper!

Amen Dunes played next, with Crystal Stilts to follow. But Amen Dunes’ set was admittedly less interesting to me at that point than going somewhere for a burger and flirting, so after they played a version of “Bedroom Drum” that (inexplicably) did NOT feature the essentially titular bass drum we took off.

Sacred Bones does a pretty awesome job forwarding the interests of the bands they represent; I think I’ve seen every band on that label play somewhere in Brooklyn or beyond at least once with exception of, I don’t know, Slug Guts? And maybe Pop. 1280 because I’m just not that into it. It’s not all that strange that label stalwarts Crystal Stilts headlined the show. But with all the buzz surrounding Vår, not to mention the fact that the band needed passports to get here, makes putting Amen Dunes above them on the bill a somewhat questionable move. After all, this was Vår’s official debut, and Amen Dunes plays NYC constantly. Then again, I can also go to Dumont anytime I like, so maybe there’s also something to be said for force of habit.

 


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

SHOW REVIEW: Tinariwen

In past years, I’ve mostly ignored Northside unless there was a specific touring band I wanted to see (last year these included Mount Eerie and Beirut, for example) mainly because the festival takes place over a weekend and I’m usually working during those. But this year my little sister and my niece were in town so I took the whole week off and began entertaining mad fantasies of putting the tourists to bed by nine pm and galavanting about North Brooklyn all night. Unfortunately this turned to be a bit unrealistic, considering that I was exhausted from playing tour guide all day and that many of the showcases took place a little too early.

Thursday was a total no go, and on Friday I completely missed Jens Lekman, of Montreal, and Beach Fossils playing the McCarren Park show which had originally cited as justification for the purchase of the badge. I suppose this means I am oddly doomed to only see Beach Fossils side projects live and never ever actually see Beach Fossils. While pondering how that could be, I realized that missing that show meant being able to see Tuareg-Berber jam band Tinariwen and headed to The Warsaw. The venue is a Polish dancehall that hosts more Polka than Punk Rock, but their sound was perfect and the ballroom is absolutely gorgeous.

Tinariwen had just started playing and the sight of them was stirring: five men in brightly colored traditional Berber dress beamed pure joy at the audience, seated behind traditional drums or deftly strumming electric guitars. The band was founded by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib and has included upwards of twenty members, with a rotating line-up due in large part to political turmoil in the band’s homeland

Though Tinariwen’s roots in disparate refugee camps is by now legendary, the five touring members onstage at The Warsaw played in perfect sync with one another, their voices and rhythms seeming timeless. When one man sang, another would lead the audience in polyrhythmic clapping before the two would switch roles, weaving together a variety of traditional and African pop sounds with spidering Western guitar parts reminiscent of blues rock.

Percussion also plays a huge role in Tinariwen’s sound; they utilize drumming techniques and instruments from all over West Africa which anchor clarion guitar solos. One particularly compelling drum had a cylindrical base like that of the djembe but the head looked to be more like a calebasse gourd. The top could be pounded for a deeper bass sound or the percussionist could make more rapid, sharper tones using some rings worn on his thumbs.

[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”][jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”904″]

I’ve never seen a band happier to inspire an audience the way Tinariwen did; when they shouted messages between songs in French, or in Tamashek (their native language) they were often met with enthusiastic replies. It’s not hard to understand why; in the many live performances I’ve had the pleasure to witness, few bands have met the talent I saw this particular evening. I was so moved that I signed up to see them again on Monday during a taping of an encore performance for MTV’s Iggy. Paul Simon was in attendance, and Kyp Malone of TV On The Radio performed a lovely version of “Tenere Taqqim Tossam”, then insisted on doing it again, but better.

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

SHOW REVIEW: Kitty Pryde w/ Deniro Farrar

After having my mind blown by Tinariwen, I was probably better suited for laying around on some grass looking at stars than catching another show, especially one so hyped as hip-hop chanteuse Kitty Pryde’s NYC debut at the Knitting Factory. Opener Deniro Farrar hit the stage late, his style classic and mostly laid-back with spurts of aggressive rhyme. The true highlight of his set was his ultra-chill DJ, whose jams tempered Farrar’s more unabashed outbursts. Even if Farrar, who has been plugging away at the rap game for a while now from his home base in Charlotte, North Carolina, was a bit stung that he had to open for a teenage white girl from Daytona Beach, there was no sign of it; Kitty related a story in which Farrar gave her a backstage pep talk and he was actually far better at hyping her performance than her hype man (who was actually her brother).

Kitty appeared onstage in a pink ruffled prom dress that she claimed to have bought at Kohl’s and a pair of black patent leather combat boots adorned with diamond studded cats.  Even during her more awkward moments, Kitty has that attitude specific to nineteen year olds in which they feel they can pretty much do whatever they please without a second thought of being judged. Kitty Pryde is actually very aware of what judgements are passed on her and simply doesn’t let it affect her; even her raps are rife with jokes made at her own expense which has got to cut down on plenty of naysaying right off the bat. In fact, she’s so self-aware and so good at tongue-in-cheek references to things like online dating and Justin Beiber that it’s hard to believe she’s only nineteen. She looks and acts like it, sure, but could someone that young make such acerbic and often very funny observations about pop culture? A healthy teenage bravado and her awkward Skillex-haired brother tagging along are really the best pieces of proof that she is as young as she claims, and besides that I guess it would be a pretty silly marketing ploy to fake your age and not make yourself old enough to drink even if you’ll get served alcohol regardless.

We weren’t really sure what to make of Kitty Pryde’s flirtatious anthems. Sometimes they border on scandalous, and considering her (supposed) age and coquettish attitude that leaves us just a wee bit queasy. As a rapper she’s not nearly as talented as other ladies in the biz, relying more on her wit and cutesy personae more than anything else. It was hard for her to get through a verse without giggling, some of which is actually written into her lyrics, but most of which was probably an “adorable” way of covering her fuck ups.  She basically exists in a sweet spot created by Kreayshawn, the only heir apparent to that particular throne, though she cites a slightly wider range of influence that includes several members of Odd Future and Kid Cudi among others.

The one thing that really irked me more than any other detail was the laziness behind her production. Granted, she’s been sitting in her bedroom making YouTube videos and basically only has access to beats not made specifically for her. If you have to borrow from someone, you could certainly do worse than the genius of Madlib, but that’s a guy who digs through crates upon crates of 45s and has an encyclopedic knowledge of soul and funk that would probably rival Wikipedia itself. So it’s kind of cheating when you just nonchalantly coo over “Accordion” or whatever (and also call that song “Accordion” on your demo). On the latest EP she’s posted to bandcamp, entitled Haha I’m Sorry, she gets some production help and samples some Carly Rae Jepsen, so maybe the lack of imagination will be less of a fault as DJs come out of the woodwork to get a piece of her pie, which hopefully doesn’t have to be a sexual innuendo.

[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”][jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”906″]

What Kitty has going for her (other than tons and tons of buzz) is her fearlessness and her clever charm. For someone who essentially raps about getting a crush on everything, her delivery is slightly more badass and a lot smarter than Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera were able to provide ten years ago (when Kitty Pryde was nine, for those of you not-so-quick with the math). According to the demo for “Thanks Kathryn Obvious” her trajectory went something like this: “I thought I was Sheena – you know? A punk rocker… til I grew into wanting to be Flocka” so maybe being a pop sex kitten was never totally her thing, but she’s certainly feeling out similar territory. She’s also been very quick to build friendships with influential artists, which of course won’t hurt her hype.

After Kitty’s set we moseyed over to a Lazerpop party at Glasslands where Pictureplane was DJing some not so choice cuts, but when he announced he was playing a show at a warehouse pretty damn close to Queens if not actually in it, we thought that we might as well attend. The loft was super sweaty and crowded with kids who had likely waited all night to see him perform. Once he started the floor felt like it was going to cave in so we pretty much called it a night just a few jams in. Then again it was close to 4am at that point so I guess we were actually calling it a morning.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

SHOW REVIEW: Quadron

Coco Maja Hastrup Karshøj is a pretty intense name, but if there’s anyone who lives up to a moniker like that to the fullest, it’s got to be the lead singer of Denmark’s Quadron. Listening to her honey-drenched vocals on the band’s 2009 self-titled debut is enough to make the hardest heart swoon; they are equal parts sensitive and intense and delivered with a dose of pure bliss. With producer Robin Hannibal, the band’s lush, loungey blend of electronica and neo-soul has garnered quite a following stateside, prompting the band to put the various side projects they both have on hold, relocate to Los Angeles, and focus on Quadron.

[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”]

the fabulous Coco

I truly had no idea how large and heartfelt following this band has until I attended a recent performance at Cameo Gallery. I was expecting the vibe to be a very chill version of 1950’s sock-hop, the room mostly empty as the gig was scheduled on a Monday. Boy, was a I wrong. The show was technically sold out, though my friend and I had no problem paying a paltry 10$ at the door and waltzing our way into the the little black box tucked behind Lovin’ Cup. The place was packed. Teletextile opened, but were playing their last song by then. We settled in behind one of the tallest guys I’ve ever seen – he must have been at least seven feet tall, and he was standing front and center. Now, I’m all for everyone enjoying the show, but this guy could have seen the show from New Jersey, and was currently blocking the onstage views for at least fifteen people standing in his vicinity. If you are a tall person who goes to shows regularly, please be aware of the fact that you aren’t see-through and there are tiny people standing on tiptoe for a glimpse of the action. This guy became aware of his wall-like obfuscation when someone behind him took matters into their own hands, got a stool from the bar, and brought it to the front of the crowd so this dude could sit down. With my view now unobscured I settled in to enjoy the show.

Coco is as adorable as her voice suggests, and she was dressed to kill in periwinkle cascades of ruffles and matching pointy bustier. The sheer joy that informs many of Quadron’s musical arrangements oozes from Coco as she sways, claps, and croons, her between-song banter far more shy than her singing-style, which can only be described as a full-on serenade. She introduced crowd favorite “Pressure” as a song she wrote about living in her sister’s shadow, and “L.F.T.” as an homage to the girlfriends she left behind in the process of relocating for her career. So while Quadron’s music is informed by the Motown smash-hits of 1950’s and 60’s girl groups, it is hardly a lovesick reiteration of the genre. Coco is young but fully possessed by her own powers as a jazz singer, and the year that Quadron spent honing their sound before releasing their debut record has helped them form a sound that is unique and well-rounded, never relying too heavily on any of the genres it so expertly blends.

[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”782″][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

SHOW REVIEW: Caveman w/ New Villager

Much like the Beaux-Arts facade of the Brooklyn Museum coming to meet the modern, sheer glass enclosure of the Rubin Pavilion & Lobby, there are grand forces coming together to bring Brooklyn’s Audiophile series to the masses. The three-part series, in its second year, was created by L Magazine and showcases up-and-coming and innovative Brooklyn-based musicians – once in April, then again in May and June. This year’s festivities are curated by MTV’s Weird Vibes host Shirley Braha, formerly of New York Noise. Say what you will about MTV, but Braha’s taste is impeccable and her radar finely tuned; if all of MTV’s programming was left up to her I’d be as glued to the tube as I was leading up to 1996 (before Total Request Live mentality took over/when the Jersey Shore kids were just fist-pumping toddlers).

Though I’d missed April’s installment (Oneohtrix Point Never and Body Language) I was not about to miss New Villager and Caveman. That particular Thursday was one of those nights where there are a handful of awesome events taking place on the same evening – a presentation of the ultra-rare Rock and Roll Hotel at Spectacle Theater was a close second – but the museum is within walking distance of my house and I was hoping that New Villager would do something crazy in the space. We reviewed a live performance of the band at Mercury Lounge in January, where they’d let their performance art leanings shine despite the artistically cramped setting. I figured that the glass ceiling would be the limit when they played the Brooklyn Museum.

[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”]

NewVillager at the Brooklyn Museum

As it turned out, New Villager was reserving their “A” game for Bushwick Open Studios the following weekend, in which they incorporated musical performance, dance, costumes, gameplay, and mystery into a multi-location scavenger hunt. The performance at the museum was spot-on but low-key in comparison; there were some costumed performers swaying beneath the scorching spotlights, and the set was similar to the one they played back in January, though infused with some promising new tracks and certainly no less enthusiastic. Though they didn’t take full advantage of the gorgeous, multi-level sheer glass enclosure, the grandness of the lobby took advantage of the band. While I was watching New Villager, I was also watching Brooklyn – kids dancing on the steps of the plaza, splashing in the fountains, or dashing across the elevated promenade, jets swooping toward LaGuardia against an ultrablue sky, traffic inching its way around bright orange construction fencing. This element not only seems to be what the architects had in mind, but hopefully the curators and sponsors behind Audiophile embraced as well.

[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]

Cavemen at the Brooklyn Museum

By the time Caveman took the stage the sun had gone down, the night falling like a curtain behind the performers, their shimmering brand of psych pop sounding like it could have been played by the dancing reflections on the glass as opposed to the real, live band before it. Despite their rough and prehistoric sounding name, these five guys mostly wore button ups and were more clean-shaven than I’d hoped they’d be, but their set was totally rewarding otherwise. Unlike so many bands that come from elsewhere to Brooklyn to make a name for themselves, several of Caveman’s members actually grew up here, and given the setting, lead vocalist Matthew Iwanusa was really stoked on reminiscing about the days when he was meeting guitarist Jimmy Carbonetti in school. Standouts “Old Friend” “Decide” and “A Country’s King of Dreams” from 2011’s Coco Beware rolled over marble floors bounced through columns and rolled around steel beams like a one of those gargantuan prehistoric serpents. They also debuted some great new material. Iwanusa employed the use of a floor tom, front and center stage, to punctuate rollicking choruses with next-level immediacy, never replacing the rhythms of Stefan Marolachakis’ drumming behind him but accentuating certain passages, catapulting the songs into a different realm. While Caveman’s sounds are not new territory, they are skillfully pulled off with an enthusiasm and authenticity that’s hard to come by, and there’s a level of artistry that goes on behind the scenes; Carbonetti makes all the bands guitars. They’re playing several shows in Brooklyn over the next few months and are definitely worth checking out.

Additionally, The Brooklyn Museum will be hosting the next installment of Audiophile on Thursday June 21st, and it’s a doozy – Lemonade opens for Small Black. As always, the shows are free and the museum stays open late on these nights; the permanent collection is the inspiring answer to the questions that the Guerrilla Girls have posed since 1985 by including a wide array of women artists and artists of color. There’s also a stellar Keith Haring exhibition in the Morris A. and Meyer Shapiro Wing on the 5th Floor that’s must-see and closes July 8th.

[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”786″]

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

The Most Musical Diner in Manhattan

We here at AudioFemme recognize that music isn’t necessarily something everyone seeks out, and we certainly believe that everyone experiences it in their own way. We try to be as inclusive as possible, though our own proclivities certainly skew the genres we cover here. There’s a whole segment of the population we rarely come into contact with while show-hopping at CMJ or partying at SXSW. In fact, after living here for three plus years, I’ve never been to a Broadway show (with the exception of seeing Cats on a field trip in 9th grade) so I’ve only ever come into contact with one particular segment whilst doing karaoke, and even then, I admit, I usually meet these types of music enthusiasts with a bit of eye-rolling skepticism. I hope my honesty here will be appreciated and an apology for my gut reactions rendered unnecessary. The type of which I speak is the musical theater hopeful, a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed iteration of music fan willing to belt out a tune from Fiddler on the Roof with a moment’s notice. It’s not that I have a particular disdain for the showy-ness of this action, rather for the showy-ness of showtunes themselves. And yet somehow, I found myself in Ellen’s Stardust Diner, renowned for a singing waitstaff who idolizes Adele, and between her repertoire, a back catalogue of jazz standards, and songs from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, showtunes were the best way to showcase the raw talent of these struggling artists (quotation marks around raw talent and struggling artists are implied, but excluded because I don’t want to seem like too much of a snob).

After my roommate’s commencement (she’d just gotten a masters from SVA’s DCRIT program), we stumbled into this Midtown tourist trap based on the fact that they served the shitty diner food we craved and also the fact that the graduate’s mom’s name is also Ellen (though in our house she’s also known as Optimist Prime). What transpired upon entry was less dining experience and more like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief. First, denial: I’d sort of glossed over the fact that Yelp reviews of Ellen’s Stardust Diner made mention of a singing waitstaff, and I straight up ignored the banner emblazoned across the entrance announcing the same. I figured that, at worst, the staff would assemble en masse once every hour or so to perform a song or two 1950’s barbershop quartet style (which has potential to actually be kind of nice). At best, I thought maybe our waiter would improvise all ordering conversation in a sing-song manner, rattling off the specials to the tune of Frere Jacques and providing updates on our orders metal-style the way Domino’s online service does when you get a pizza.

Sadly, neither scenario turned out to have a basis in reality. The waitstaff here do not just sing, they are all trying really really hard to impress both the customers and each other. They remind you of the fact that they are trying to “make it” every fifteen minutes by passing around a bucket asking for additional tips (besides the ones you’re gonna give them for bringing you food and boozy shakes) and expressing their deepest Broadway desires between ditties. Denial quickly turned to Anger. We considered walking out, unable to handle the onslaught. But then I saw a fellow diner’s plate, which included a hefty portion of golden waffle fries. Everyone knows waffle fries are the most delicious and under-rated type of french fry. Plus, there was booze in my shake, even if it wasn’t much booze and carried an 11$ Midtown-inflated pricetag.

[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”]

this guy’s star is rising so fast his face is blurry, but I’m sure he’s got a headshot somewhere

Lots of show choirs from the Midwest come here as an addendum to their Big Apple field trips and while it’s all in the spirit of fun, I secretly hope it serves as more of a sobering realization. Who better to emphasize to these kids that coming here and hitting it big on Broadway doesn’t just happen – that they’ll be lucky to perform their shitty showtunes while also carrying around a tray of overpriced entrees, and most of the time they’ll just be waiting regular old tables and struggling to pay rent and wondering why they ever left the safety of Iowa. It was kind of a reflection of my own struggles as a writer, and the food had yet to arrive, so Depression set in.

That Depression deepened when the food arrived because besides the waffle fries, everything was abysmal. But here’s the thing – eating at Ellen’s was somehow still hilarious. Though we could barely believe where we’d ended up there that afternoon it’s one of those places that can only exist in New York City. It’s so outrageously over-the-top that you are helpless to write it off totally, and even if you can’t actually enjoy yourself, there’s ample opportunity for ironic enjoyment of the kitsch factor. The staff wants you to have a good time, and you can sit there like a snobby asshole or you can fucking request a song and get into it. We passed into Acceptance while gnawing our overcooked burgers, and even cracked some jokes about how this would be a great place to take someone coming down off hallucinogens, but only if you didn’t tell them what was about to happen, and/or pretended no one was singing at all.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

SHOW REVIEW: Zammuto w/ Lymbyc Systym

It must be difficult to emerge from the shadow of a ten-year-long, critically acclaimed project as prolific as The Books. Few solo projects reach the heights of the acts that begot them, and in Nick Zammuto’s case, the hope here is that his new output – creatively titled “Zammuto” – will somehow be comparable to one of the most innovative and beloved projects in experimental pop and sound collage in the last decade. It would be nice if it was possible to separate the two acts and evaluate this new venture on its own individual terms, but the reality is that there’s probably no one who will write about Zammuto (the band) without mentioning Zammuto (the musician’s) resume, and in this case especially, it’s extremely difficult to avoid.

 Nick Zammuto has a lot going for his first self-titled album. Some of the elements and ideas that made The Books’ recordings so compelling make appearances here from time to time – the curated snippets of bizarre audio from anonymous sources, carefully constructed but sometimes chaotic sounding progression, digitally processed vocals, exacting wit and clever wordplay. There are a few songs (“Too Late Topologize” “Harlequin” “The Shape Of Things To Come”) which would be right at home on any Books record, and then there are those that would somehow not. These contain a kind of straight-forwardness that obliterates the mystery, beauty, precision, and whimsy that made The Books what it is. At best, the indignant, driving undertones of “F U C-3PO” improve on the ambiguity that marked Zammuto’s prior work (though what he has against beloved the Star Wars character is not made apparent). But at its most cloying, the jam-band tendencies of “Groan Man, Don’t Cry” might make some Books fans want to groan and cry, and the disembodied female androids “rapping” through the entirety of “Zebra Butt” seem, well, asinine. Overall, however, the record is a triumphant experiment in the same spirited vein as the music Zammuto made as one half of The Books, yet sets itself apart just enough for these explorations and new additions to remain interesting (stream it below via the band’s soundcloud).

Nick Zammuto met Paul de Jong in 1999 as tenants in the same New York City apartment building, but it wasn’t until six years and two and half albums later that they finally started touring, screening unique and often hilarious video collages of found material during the shows. For Zammuto, Nick’s wasted no time in assembling a group of considerably talented band members and embarking on a proper tour, borrowing some elements from his former musical project but creating something that is wholly different. That tour culminated at Glasslands last Monday, with Lymbyc Systym opening.

Lymbyc Systym is a two piece that sounds like a band five times its size. Hailing from Tempe, Arizona (but now based in Brooklyn), brothers Jared and Michael Bell make earnest, transcendent post rock. Their intricate compositions are thought out to the most minute detail and replicated live with stunning exactness. Having not released an album since 2009, this particular set featured plenty of new material, much of it tinged R&B beats and influences. Though there’s very little to see onstage – Jared hunches over some electronic equipment, while Michael drums beneath a swath of dark curls – the sounds they make take on a breathing, seething life of their own, instantly occupying every inch of space from floor to ceiling. While the nostalgic undertones are at some points crushing, there is no room for pretentiousness and it never really has a chance to rear its head. For having played with so many huge names in indie rock, the pair have remained humble, and that nonchalance somehow makes their music seem that much more potent. They were joined on stage for a few songs by a friend with a violin, the strings adding sweetness and drama in just the right amounts.

When Zammuto took the stage it was not Nick as soloist, but Zammuto as a full band, joined by brother Mikey on bass, Sean Dixon on drums, and Gene Back (who had also played intermittently with The Books) on keys and additional guitars. Like an actual extension of the mood introduced by album’s first track (entitled “Yay”) there was a collective, ecstatic enthusiasm so apparent it could have been a fifth band member. The sense that it gave me was so different from having seen The Books; whereas The Books wanted to tickle at thought processes, Zammuto’s live show is all about the act of playing. Nick in particular seems so motivated by desire to expand on a live sound and share it with anyone willing to bear witness that it’s hard not to respect – though it is slightly ironic when you consider that he manufactures most of these sounds by himself, holed up in a shed behind the eco-house which he inhabits with his wife and children in the sprawling countryside of rural Vermont.

In terms of visual stimuli, Zammuto also had something to offer, though the projections here were less choreographed and a bit more random that the video pairings I’d seen at Books shows. A bit more akin to Found Footage Fest or Everything is Terrible, the first projection was a chopped and screwed how-to for finger skateboarding, while another took stock photos of actors “experiencing” back pains, headaches, and otherwise twisting their faces and contorting their bodies into unpleasant shapes. But the most intriguing video was one that actually formed a song – for “The Greatest Autoharp Solo of All Time”, Zammuto took the sights and sounds of a Bob Bowers-led instructional video for the autoharp player, editing the song “Battle Hymn of the Republic” until it was all but unrecognizable. The band played alongside the video, drawing on its unique rhythms to form a cohesive, moving piece with just a hint of a clever smirk.

The only real low-point of the show, for me, was a crunchy version of Paul Simon’s “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” that fell flat mostly because it lacked imagination and also because in Paul Simon’s oeuvre “50 Ways” has got to be one of the weakest, most trite tunes.
The encore of Zammuto’s set was the big payoff for fans expecting another Books show. In attempting to present “Zebra Butt” live, there had been some unexplained technical difficulties. Nick had promised to come back to it, even offering to hook up another computer that supposedly would have had the necessary files. For whatever reason, these plans were to no avail and resulted in one of the most awkward interstices between set and encore I’ve ever observed. But out of that wreckage came the first twangs of “Smells Like Content”, the seminal philosophical love-letter to living from 2005’s Lost And Safe. I’ve been trying to decide whether this was a cheap shot – if picking out the most instantly recognizable and moving track that you’ve built your musical career on as an encore to one of your new band’s first shows is somehow a weak move. Would I have felt more gratified if he’d chosen a “deep cut” as opposed to a “hit”? Did I feel slightly pandered to, being reminded in such an obvious way of one of the greatest contributions The Books made to independent music? Yes, but also no.
There’s this beautiful and sort of tragically funny truism that appears as a sound-byte at the end of the recorded version of “Smells Like Content” (Expectation leads to disappointment. If you don’t expect something big, huge, and exciting…. usually uhhhh… I don’t know… you’re just not as… yeah) and though Zammuto didn’t roll the clip at the end of playing the song, its unforgettable to anyone who’s listened to that song as much as I have. Thinking of it served almost as a caution not to expect Books-caliber output from only half of the band, that it would by its nature be the same in some ways, different in others, and there was simply no reason to obsess over the particulars when you should just try to enjoy it. While the high-minded creativity that propelled The Books is present in some aspects of this project and absent in others, Zammuto (as a band) is a new iteration in that direction. Even if in the end Zammuto doesn’t feel as wholly imagined as its predecessor (because one half of it is literally missing), there’s plenty of merit and beauty in the music that Nick Zammuto is still more than willing to create. And whether its fair or not to evaluate this album against The Books’ releases will stop being a question the longer he continues to produce work and come into his own, shedding those expectations and freeing himself for further sonic exploration.

SHOW REVIEW: Here We Go Magic w/ Glass Ghost

Here We Go Magic are crowd pleasers. When they released the video for “Make Up Your Mind” (in which a variety of women suffer seizures instigated by frontman Luke Temple’s mystical musical powers), they unwittingly unleashed a maelstrom of indignation from a some overly sensitive viewers. Rather than embrace the controversy or use the subtle sexual undertones (some YouTube commenters noted that the “seizures” were rather orgasmic) to generate buzz for their third album, A Different Ship, out May 8th on Secretly Canadian, they shelved the video entirely. This decision seems baffling for a band whose video projects often skew a bit bizarre and push some boundaries, but the choice was made to avoid any conflict that might take attention away from the music. That music was front and center on Thursday when the band played its sold-out record release party at The Knitting Factory. And once again, their crowd-pleasing nature came into play, with a nicely rendered set that showcased the newest album and offered surprising takes on old favorites.
Openers Glass Ghost, a Brooklyn-based band who have cultivated a creative friendship with Temple, were a nice compliment to the set. Offering a contemplative batch of eerily unspooling tunes, Eliot Krimsky’s otherworldly falsetto swirled through Mike Johnson’s ephemeral synths and diffused beats, then over an unusually reverent audience. The power of Glass Ghost lies in moody disconnect, which they achieve through an elevated sense of fragility and a slightly autistic manner of delivery. Both players were stoic to the point of coming off as robotic, interacting with the audience and each other minimally, while retro video projections flashed on the screen behind them. Though the subdued nature of the set was unusual for an opening band, whose typical responsibility is revving up an audience for the headliners, this wasn’t necessarily a detractor. As testament to how powerful ambivalence and alienation can be, the tragically gorgeous “Like A Diamond” served a perfect thesis statement, and somehow television talk-show host Marc Summers (of all people) became the poster child for that lost feeling.
Marc Summers is famously known as the wise-cracking host of Nickelodeon’sDouble Dare, which ran from the mid-eighties into the early nineties and pitted kid contestants against the likes of a giant ice cream sundae and some water balloons filled with tomato sauce; if they failed to answer trivia questions correctly they had to take a “Physical Challenge,” the end result of which often involved getting covered in some sort of goo. There were a bunch of spin-offs, including “Super Sloppy” and “Family” editions of Double Dare, which caused my parents to buy a second television when I threw a fit because the evening news theywanted to watch aired at the same time. Summers also hosted What Would You Do? in which guests were regularly doused with slime.
What does this have to do with Glass Ghost? Well, the irony in the fact that Summers spent the better part of his adulthood getting slimed and sliming others is that he suffers from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, a mental illness which can manifest itself in a frantic need to stay immaculately clean. That dichotomy – the disjointed sensation of wanting to participate, be involved, stay there, to feelversus the failure to do so despite having these emotions and knowing what is normal, even doing what is normal but remaining out of place – is at the crux of it of Glass Ghost’s music, a lá seminal Radiohead track “Fake Plastic Trees”. So when the projections shifted to a distorted video recording of Double Dare(including many shots of Marc Summers grinning through his despair) it brought not just a wave of nostalgia, but also served as a peculiar illustration of a much deeper theme.
the beguiling Jen Turner

For all the removed grandeur of Glass Ghost’s set, Here We Go Magic brought just as much intensity to the stage, though it was of a different variety. Backed by bandmates Jen Turner (bass & keyboards), Michael Bloch (guitar), and Peter Hale (drums), Temple’s enigmatic voice soared through renditions of “How Do I Know” “Hard To Be Close” and old favorites like “Fangela” and “Casual”. The new record was produced by Radiohead’s Nigel Godrich, who became interested in the band after seeing them play at Glastonbury. For most of the tracks Godrich employed a live recording technique with few digital flourishes meant to enhance but not perfect the recordings. It’s hard to say whether that emphasis came from his initial, inspiring exposure to the band, or if the in-the-moment improvisational methods utilized in the studio have infused their latest performances with a newfound go-for-broke energy. But something magical indeed happens when the band is playing together as a cohesive whole.

It was not uncommon to see the band extend normally unassuming musical breaks into spiraling, extravagant jam sessions more apropos of arena rock bands, or hair metal even. But instead of cock rock, the audience was treated to the plaintive, dreamy “Over The Ocean” rendered epically, in all its shimmering glory. Even if it seems overwrought for more a genre of pop that is typically more humble, make no mistake: this is exactly how these songs are meant to be experienced, with all their dormant power front-and-center. It’s a bold move in these times; as the influence of technology on indie pop becomes more and more ubiquitous, it’s become increasingly uncommon to see a band who can actually rock out but that’s exactly what Here We Go Magic do, and do well. Though Temple started this project as a solo one, he’s found some tremendously talented players whose skill is so assured that they make each other look even better. And their confidence in the new material truly gives these tunes a worthy showcase. So maybe they don’t need a gimmick or a controversy to propel their own hype. No one at the show went into seismic convulsions, but the crowd was very, very pleased indeed.

SHOW REVIEW: The Horrors, live at MHOW

Given the infrequency with which these guys tour, I had no idea what exactly to expect from them as a live act. I got into Primary Colours when it came out in 2009, because of the song “Three Decades”, which starts out seeming like disjointed a-harmonious chaos, and becomes, at the exact moment you feel you’re going to lose your mind, melodious and really quite beautiful. It’s like being handed a glass of cold water when you didn’t even know you needed it.

To me, they are what Joy Division would have become had Ian Curtis decided not to give the ghost up. However, after I listened to more, I realized I like them for one pretty obvious reason: if all the best aspects of shoegaze and 80’s new wave were to have a love child, it would be the Horrors. You could say that the former progressed naturally out of the latter, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the two sound good together.The Horrors do pull it off though, pretty brilliantly. Playing into their new-wave aesthetic, they cultivate a louder-than-life persona on stage, with Faris Badwan’s freakishly tall frame in the forefront, towering over the audience, his faced obscured by a mop of disheveled hair. The rock star ethos he works pretty hard to achieve (he prefaces each song with a slur of incoherent mumblings, for example) is tempered by the spacier lo-fi, effect of all the distortion and synth they employ. This contrast alone, adds a compelling ingredient to what could otherwise be thought of as a pretty formulaic recipe.Anyway, I’m happy to say that their songs sound as good live as they do on their albums–which I find is often a conventional indicator of any band’s ability to walk the talk.

They opened with “I Can See Through You”–an angry, incredibly loud love song, that combines post-punk lead guitar lines with various iconic, 80’s-esque synthy arpeggios (think “Bizarre Love Triangle”).  The evening progressed from there, with most of the work off their newest album Skying including “Still Life”, which I think is the track that best (and perhaps singularly) captures the above-described conceit with which they began making albums, as well as “You Said”, which to me, points to where they may be venturing next: a bigger, more ethereal and instrumentally complex sound that still maintains its basic foundations as music that induces profound nostalgia. For what? Who knows. Most of us–including these guys– weren’t around then…

The Horrors: Still Life