Search Results for “holy other”

Liz Nistico of HOLYCHILD is Reborn as Revenge Wife

“I’m definitely the type of person who doesn’t really care what the medium [is] – if I’m feeling the need to express myself, I will do it with whatever’s around,” says Liz Nistico, and she’s more than proven herself a Renaissance woman with her newest project Revenge Wife. After eight years as one half of “brat pop” duo HOLYCHILD (alongside multi-instrumentalist Louie Diller), Nistico released a debut EP under her solo moniker this summer, Background Songs For Your Boring Life, Part I. It compiles four singles Nistico shared in the lead-up via a series of linked short films, as well as an additional track. A few weeks ago, she also shared “Die Together,” the lead single from Part II.

Revenge Wife is a fresh, modern and emotional project – at its root is Nistico’s ongoing self-interrogation of her fears surrounding intimacy and relationships, while on the surface, it makes good on hyperpop’s best tendencies to sonically hybridize high-dosage time-release Adderall with the early 2000s Hampster Dance Song thing that happened when people first started using the internet. Textural electronic jams meet with deep, raw sentiment that’s reflective, self-aware, empowering, vulnerable and captivating.

The videos add another complex layer to the Revenge Wife persona, establishing Nistico as both director of and actress in her own twisted visions. With a Lynchian aesthetic, the viewer has the ability to enter and inhabit the noir surrealist dream world of Revenge Wife. The shots have an ominous, out-of-context sensuality, teasing homage to “Criminal” era Fiona Apple.

Born and raised in New Hampshire by a pilot and a nurse, Nistico was encouraged as a child to study dance, musical theatre, and creative writing, all of which clearly inform her current work. Though she studied International Affairs in D.C., she began to feel her true calling was to make art, exploring filmmaking at first. When asked about visual reference points, she explains, “At this point, I don’t really make stuff with visual references. I mostly have a story, and use my own eye.”

Though they were released out of sync, (it’s just how it happened according to Nistico) and appear in a different order on Background Songs’ tracklist, the videos can (and should be) viewed sequentially, beginning with “Home.” “Home is about a long distance relationship, but from an anxious state,” Nistico says. “The music video was the start of the horror era for me.”

Shot about a year ago now, “Home” initiates the series with a dream sequence that sets Nistico’s character on the journey she continues with “Earthquake.” On YouTube, Nistico poses the question, “Have you ever had a dream that changed your life?” The song’s earnest lyrics (“you’re in all my dreams”) depict longing for someone who’s far away, but the video’s unsettling imagery hints at something much darker, which only deepens with “Earthquake.”

The tragic yet upbeat track boasts organic and thoughtful production, Nistico’s timeless lyrical storytelling sitting pretty with auto-tuned vocals over bright, fidgety synth. Nistico ponders whether her love interest would be there for her when disaster strikes, a prescient and somber reminder of the true colors we’ve seen from friends and lovers over the last chaotic year. In the video, Nistico looks like the aggressor her moniker suggests, while red-hued flashbacks scorch the wintry landscape she drives through, in disguise, toward an ambiguous end point.

“This music video is about trusting yourself and moving toward love, even when you’re haunted by past trauma,” Nistico describes on YouTube. “Our main character is trusting the unknown despite flashes of past trauma, and leaving her life behind.. for what?”

We see what she’s headed for when “Manifest” picks up the story. In some ways, perhaps, it’s the most violent of the series; John Karna plays Nistico’s maniacal lover, and the two are locked in a toxic battle for dominance over the other. Described as “a story of love that’s wrong for us, set to a song about a life that’s wrong for us,” “Manifest” grew out of Nistico’s response to living in LA, but it also became an edgy driving soundtrack perfect for my ongoing habit of errand hopping around Manhattan in rush hour traffic (woops).

Poking at the flawed concept of “manifesting” what we desire by obsessing over it, Nistico’s incisive lyrics expose the internal frustrations of new age toxic optimism. It’s actually surprising that there are few, if any, songs that tackle this topic in this way. “I’m working on me today/Same day as every day/I spend a lot of time trying to grow/But what do I see from it?/Ok, my body’s fit/Yet I’m always struggling/Got nothing to show,” Revenge Wife emotes with refreshingly cathartic and childlike urgency. “They say manifest (Fuck that)/They say to de-stress (Fuck that)/I don’t even know myself/How am I supposed to know what’s best?”

Nistico wants what we all want – a supportive partner, money, recognition – but the video lays bare just how damaging chasing a lifestyle can be, and it doesn’t end well for Nistico’s lover. Ironically, Nistico made these videos on a relatively small budget; they were shot using an iPhone in the midst of the pandemic. The one exception is the next video in the series, set to “Dream I Had,” which Nistico says is her favorite visual. There’s some carry-over in the imagery and editing style to aesthetically tie it to the other videos. Nistico incorporates more of her dance background into this fever dream of a clip, eventually reaching her own distorted form of enlightenment only to find herself trapped in it.

“‘Dream I Had’ is actually a conversation with my higher self, where all the verses are from her perspective,” Nistico says. Her inner wisdom waits patiently to guide her decisions, only to be pushed away by self-doubt – a battle of conscious empowerment so many of us wage internally. “The choruses, ‘I never see you,’ are from her perspective. She’s like, ‘I’m always outside of your window, you never open your window, you never ask for me, what the heck? I’m always here.’ And then the [response is], ‘You’re just a dream, you always get away from me.'”

The final installment of the video series hints at more to come, but it’s unclear which direction Revenge Wife will take as the project evolves. For now, Revenge Wife owes its richness to the four years Nistico has spent developing it. Those familiar with HOLYCHILD’s self-directed music videos and performance art pieces will remember Nistico’s unparalleled vision and confidence not only as front woman, but as the band’s creative director with a reel of visual masterpieces. But like many artists Nistico was dissatisfied working creatively in the confines of the music industry’s big machine. The oppressive withholding of releases, and the creeping tensions for musical autonomy led Nistico to commit her efforts full time to the new era of Revenge Wife. So HOLYCHILD went on “indefinite hiatus.”

Expressing with utmost professionalism an ongoing positive relationship with her former HOLYCHILD bandmate (who is currently releasing solo music under the moniker Louie Louie!), Nistico says they were thrown into the deep end, with little concern for maintaining flexibility or consistency within their release schedule. “I met Louis, my bandmate, and we moved to LA to launch HOLYCHILD. It all happened really fast. Within a year of moving to LA, we were signed and had every major record label trying to work with us,” she remembers. “It was pretty crazy, but I’m really grateful for that experience.”

After releasing debut The Shape of Brat Pop to Come in 2015, Nistico was at a turning point, brought on by ongoing surgeries over the course of six months for a cyst on her vocal cord. Scared that even talking could risk her recovery, she became a hermit, and delved into Tarot Card reading and existential and internal spiritual work and meditation.

“I had this crazy ayahuasca journey when I was at a crossroads in 2016. Should I continue with music? Should I just focus on directing?” Nistico says. “The next day I got a piano and then wrote all these songs. A lot of them made their way on to [2019] HOLYCHILD record The Theatrical Death of Julie Delicious. Those were my first songs writing alone.”

Leaning on her newfound mindfulness, she discovered herself in a new way and from this era of self-reflection and healing Revenge Wife was born, “out of the feeling of wanting to be empowered just doing things by myself,” Nistico says. “Especially the writing part of it – I feel like it’s such a masculine thing. Even though directing might be too, I feel like I mastered my confidence with that. I know it sounds weird, but I really believe that I was able to play piano in a past life. When I look at the piano, it just makes sense to me.”

Still, Revenge Wife is in many ways an extension of the interests Nistico has explored in previous projects, all the way up to her most recent single “Die Together.” “I actually made a short film called ‘Forever’ about the same concept. I was making a lot of art around the concept of murder-suicide for love, because you’re at this insane apex of love,” she explains.

The song was written over the course of a few years, she adds. “Later I felt like the chorus meant different things to me – like dying together when you’re really in love, because your ego is dead,” she says. “I’m really interested in the spiritual realm and death, and there’s the lyric ‘We’ll find out what else there is.’”

“The verses are more real, coming from a place of insecurity,” Nistico adds. “Do you want me/Am I pretty/Do you ever really even think about me?” she sings, as if these things are enough to pull someone to the edge of oblivion. Nistico wants to be the center of someone’s universe, and to have that someone prove it in the most final of ways, taking to extremes the desire so many of us have for approval and love. So too, does Revenge Wife as a whole take that yearning to extremes; by making her own desires so garish and out-sized, Nistico has a vehicle to examine them from an almost tongue-in-cheek view – and invites us to do the same.

To celebrate the song’s release, Revenge Wife plays a show this Saturday October 23rd at the Moroccan Lounge in Los Angeles. With plans to spend the next few months hibernating creatively in Italy, then potentially making a move to a slower-paced creative hub in the Catskill Mountains to satisfy her creative urge of being in nature, there’s no doubt Revenge Wife will continue to push creative boundaries.

Follow Revenge Wife on Twitter and Instagram for ongoing updates.

Lily Talmers Chooses Her Words Carefully on Remember Me As Holy EP

Coming of age: we all do it. But a very select few of us do it with as much grace, self-awareness and poetry as Lily Talmers. The Birmingham, Michigan native and recent University of Michigan grad combines her stunning mastery of the English language with her unorthodox classical music training to create a viscerally raw and beautiful debut record, Remember Me as Holy.

For someone who never really set out to be a songwriter to begin with, Talmers’ poetic lyrics and intrinsic sense of melody make her a very, very good one. “It’s kind of a weak thing to do,” Talmers says of songwriting. “At least in my mind, I think I wanted to be an engineer or a doctor, something so hard and objective… objective is the best word to describe what I wanted to be.”

Sure, performing open-heart surgery or aiding in developing the COVID-19 vaccine can be seen as more “objectively” utilitarian than writing a song. But, as we all know, music has a unique healing ability that can’t be found in any medication or surgery – especially, at this moment in time, songs which pull on the tender strings of a desperate nation teetering between change and stagnancy.

<a href="https://lilytalmers.bandcamp.com/album/remember-me-as-holy">Remember Me as Holy by Lily Talmers</a>

In “Miss America,” Talmers meets us at a moment of reckoning and rebuilding, begging her country to see through the smokescreen it’s been looking at for years. “I’ve been staring at you darling/Sitting back and wonderin’, what the hell you’re gonna do,” Talmers sings to the millions of undecided voters. “‘Cause it all comes back to you who eat your dinner with the T.V. on/And who smile thinking everybody else is wrong/Yes, you who drink your coffee with the curtains drawn/Yes, still it’s you that we’re all counting on.” It’s a simple and poignant way to describe the MAGA masses that stayed loyal to 45 throughout his hack job of a presidency without dismissing them completely. And she does all this in a voice as soothing as the ocean – even when she’s talking about a nation’s proverbial nose-dive.

Though Talmers is a multi-instrumentalist (piano, guitar, banjo and cello), she explains that the most important part about songwriting, to her, is the language she uses. “My compulsion and obsession with songwriting is definitely lyricism, and the spirit of a song, what it’s trying to say,” says Talmers. This focus on words is befitting for the musician who studied literature and English, although that wasn’t always the initial plan. For her first few years at university, Talmers was a neuroscience major with the goal of eventually becoming a doctor. Even with the rigorous coursework, she was still moonlighting as a musician. “I was finishing my homework so I could feed my obsession with writing songs,” Talmers remembers.

An awakening came when Talmers was in Copenhagen for a neuroscience internship in the summer of 2018 that made her question the path she was on. But the artist found solace in her songwriting. “[The internship] was so bad and tortuous that that was what compelled me to go to my first open-mic in Portugal,” Talmers remembers; she was gracious enough to share a Facebook video of the performance.

The song she played there ended up being an important one for her for the validation it would provide. “I wrote it in a fit the night before and and then the next day I found this open mic in a random bar in the middle of Lisbon,” she says, crediting the bar “full of old men” (and other encouraging voices) for the inspiration she needed her to pursue music – even though the vulnerability of it makes her uneasy at times. “Even to this day it feels sort of vulnerable to perform – I never feel good,” Talmers says. “It’s not like I’m bad or anything. I just think it’s not that glamorous if your soul is on the line.”

Talmers’ summer in Europe also held another musically formative moment; sitting in a hostel in Copenhagen, she heard Adrianne Lenker’s voice for the first time. “I heard ‘Masterpiece’ playing ambiently,” Talmers says. “And then I became obsessed.” She describes how Lenker’s songwriting style, both solo and with Big Thief, inspired her to take a more experimental approach with songwriting and trust that the listener will catch on. “She just digresses so much from normal songwriting rhetoric,” says Talmers. “The way that she writes is so sonic, the words that she chooses, I feel like she has really given me permission to express myself in an incoherent way almost, trusting that it makes sense.”

In addition to Lenker’s palpable influence, Talmers cites other folk legends like Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Simon & Garfunkel as shepherds of her path. In fact, she says hearing “Scarborough Fair” opened her up to listening to pop music, which she didn’t have much time or patience for at the time. As a student of the piano from a young age, Talmers revered classical music and wasn’t interested in much else. “I had this old Russian piano teacher named Yuri who was also my dad’s piano teacher growing up,” Talmers explains. “He forced me to do scales the first two or three years and nothing else… then suddenly instead of giving me, like, ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,’ he just started giving me like insane classical pieces and expecting me to memorize them.”

She would watch Yuri play phrases and use her melodic sensibility to repeat them back. Eventually, she memorized entire classical pieces like Chopin’s “Waltz in C# minor” this way. Though she didn’t realize it at first, this intense ear training undoubtedly plays a role in her complex and clever songwriting style.

That’s how a lot of Talmers’ songwriting feels: effortless, accidental, and primal. Remember Me as Holy serves as a roadmap of Talmers’ deepest thoughts, feelings and desires. It echoes the cries of a nation and the cries of a regular old broken heart. At the bottom of her Bandcamp, Talmers writes, “I do forgive you, after all,” a message to anyone who can see themselves in one of her lyrics. “I wrote that in recognition that it’s all good. I don’t believe that you write songs about people, I think you write about tons of different relationships in your life,” explains Talmers. I think the record could be perceived as like a burn and it’s simply not that – it’s sort of like self-reconciliation.”

Follow Lily Talmers on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Estonian Rockers Holy Motors Reimagine the Wild West on Horse LP

Guitarist Lauri Raus and vocalist Eliann Tulve, the main members of Holy Motors, are from Estonia — but their music is infused with Americana roots, and they draw inspiration from movies about the Wild West.

They often get asked about how being Estonian influences their music, or how their country’s music compares to the United States’. But for them, songwriting is more about playing on cultural tropes and motifs than representing any real place. Accordingly, the band describes itself on Bandcamp as “a Tallinn, Estonia based dark twang & reverb band from a nonexistent movie,” elaborating, “it bows to engines and echoes and film-directors.”

“Estonia is mostly connected to peasantry and noblemen, and the states are [considered] more free-roaming, and that’s up our alley,” says Raus. “I wouldn’t want to write a song about a landlord putting peasants to work — it’s more fun to write about a cowboy. But we make it up in our heads; it’s mostly what we see in the movies. It has nothing to do with what the country is about.”

Their latest album, Horse, co-written by Raus and Tulve (with two songs, “Midnight Cowboy” and Trouble,” co-written by Hendrik Tammjärv), is based on a combination of these fictional stories than have captured their imaginations and their own life experiences. Incorporating indie rock and country elements with hints of shoegaze, it’s a collection of vignettes about loneliness and life on the road, with Tulve’s deep, meditative vocals taking the listener on a journey around the world from the beginning to the end.

The LP, released October 16 via Wharf Cat Records, opens with the catchy breakup song “Country Church,” then segues into “Endless Night,” which was based on the band’s experiences while touring in France, when a window in their hotel room was smashed. In the song, they imagine that thieves have broken in and stolen jewelry, a metaphor for the fears that haunt our minds. “There’s haunting throughout the album,” Tulve explains.

The next track, “Midnight Cowboy,” a ballad reminiscent of ’50s love songs, was also based on touring experiences; Tulve wrote it about wandering through Spain at night. “I kind of felt like the guy from the movie Midnight Cowboy, and I was imaging him,” she says. “I remember also just being kind of torn about something and just longing for someone.” She also had another pop culture trope — a girl in an ’80s movie waiting by the phone —in her head when she wrote it. “It’s kind of like being sad while everyone else around you is having the time of their life, like at an American-style high school prom,” Raus agrees.

In “Road Stars,” a slow, folky, acoustic duet in the vein of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Raus and Tulve imagine a conversation between a truck driver and a woman at a gas station, alternating between melancholy verses like “I’m as lonely as man in the makin’ of land” and the comforting refrain: “I know one day I’ll be better than before.”

“Matador” continues the theme of solitude, sung in a low, flat, almost monotone voice that conjures up ’90s grunge rock against psychedelic electric guitars. To close the album, “Come On, Slowly” paints the picture of an empty but idyllic town, “Trouble” sounds like something playing in an old Western movie scene as the villain approaches, and “Life Valley” is a jam they improvised in Leo’s Basement #2, the Berlin studio where they recorded the album.

Since they had to fly to Berlin with minimal luggage, they each just brought a guitar then took advantage of additional guitars in the studio, along with a drum set and percussion toys. Producer Craig Dyer accompanied them on synths, bass guitar, and vocals, and producer/mixer Leonard Kaage played organ, synths, piano, and bass guitar.

Raus and Tulve began playing music together in 2013 just for fun then evolved into a band, releasing their first full-length album Slow Sundown in 2018. “The first album was basically a collection of songs we wrote over five years — maybe it was even too eclectic for me, but it was still fun,” says Raus. “And then this album felt really different. Just a couple years passed, and things changed. I was happier with this one; it was more smooth creatively.”

The band is about to play their first live show since quarantine in their native country, then hopes to return to the studio to record more music next year. In the meantime, the current state of the world should give them plenty of inspiration for more lonely cowboy anthems.

Follow Holy Motors on Facebook for ongoing updates.

PLAYING ATLANTA: Holy Beach Turn Up The Volume with Debut Record

When Atlanta’s heavy experimental metal-rock sextet, Holy Beach, hits you, you know it.

Beyond the sheer wall of sound that attacks with a visceral physicality, Holy Beach display an uncanny ability to harness lightning in a bottle. Far from a timid debut, the sextet – formed in early 2019 by lead vocalist and guitarist John Lally and friends/warring guitarists Jon Hilton, Mike Gibbs, and Jason Petty, bassist Kevin Faivre, and percussionist Jordan Hershaft – crashed into the Southern music scene with an unparalleled rage.

A searing cacophony of sounds, their debut record, All That Matters Is This Matter is the kind of heavy, fuzzy grunge that catapults a band to the forefront of the rock scene. Lally sat down with Audiofemme to share the details of starting a brand new band after years in the industry, recording a debut record with five of your closest friends, and realizing the one truth of life: animals are the best.

AF: You guys had a rather interesting beginning; can you take me back? How did you get together, and when did you realize that Holy Beach was more than just some friends playing music together?

JL: The other band I played in for years (Sleep Therapy) was working on new material and everything I was writing was not translating well with the band. After months of trying to force the songs, I decided to curb them and record them as a separate project. At first, I thought it would just be a recording/side project, but the more we worked through the songs, the more intense they got, and we knew we had something more than a side/recording project.

AF: How did you guys get into music in the first place? Was there a certain song or record that made you say, “Oh, yeah, music is for me”?

JL: For me, it was Disintegration by The Cure. For Kevin, it was Motörhead by Motörhead. For Mike, it was anything Jane’s Addiction. For Jason, it was Slayer’s “Raining Blood.” For Jordan, Fugazi’s 13 Songs. For Jon, Celebration’s Celebration.

AF: Who do you consider your greatest inspirations?

JL: Slowdive, Daughters, Dinosaur JR, The Birthday Party, Talk Talk, and Honest People.

AF: You guys just released your debut record, All That Matters Is This Matter. What was the writing and recording process like? Is it fairly collaborative, or does one of you come up with an idea and bring it to the rest of the group?

JL: Our writing process usually consists of me writing a song and bringing it to the band. When we are all in a room, we take the song and its structure and explore it as a group. The main idea that is brought into the collective space starts to become a part of all of our ideas and pushes the intensity behind each song.

As for recording, our engineer/co-producer Jeff Leonard comes in from North Carolina and we start by tracking drums at Tree Sound Studios in Atlanta. After drums are complete, we track everything else at Cassida Studios, which is at one of our close friend’s house. We love recording there because its super comfortable, friends swing by, and we are surrounded by dogs. Having the animals around takes the edge off of everyone and we have a blast. Animals are the best.

AF: How did the writing and recording process differ from writing and recording with bands you’ve played with in the past?

JL: My writing process doesn’t differ much in the bands I play in. Usually for any band I play in, I come up with a concept or a story for the record first; I love writing records like this because it inspires the tones of the songs and gives the record a personality. It’s also cool to hear what people take away from the record. It always blows my mind how people interpret lyrics and music so differently. As for the recording process, Holy Beach is a much more relaxed recording experience because we spend time over months piecing the album together. We don’t rush anything like other bands in my past have while recording.

AF: What’s it been like to finally share your first record as a band with the rest of the world?

JL: Humbling, rewarding, hope-filled, and exciting.

AF: What inspired the record? Is there a particular song that jumps out to you as your favorite?

JL: This record was mostly inspired by the state the world as a whole is in now, and the passing of a lot of people close to us over the past year. The song that sticks to me the most is “Skull Faced On A Horse.” A friend of mine was slowly passing away in the hospital and after he passed, the song just dumped out of me. The song is mostly about sitting in the hospital with him and listening to him going through the process of accepting the inevitable outcome of his situation. It was brutal, but something I will never forget.

AF: Atlanta’s music scene has blown up in the last few years; what has it been like to start out as a band in the music epicenter of the southeast?

JL: Atlanta’s music scene has exploded and fizzled for many years. The city is a huge island of hope surrounded by a sea of fear. No matter what you do artistically in Atlanta, there is usually a swamp of shit you have to weed through to truly find your way. I love where I live, I love where I make music, and I love the people that surround me, for better or worse.

AF: What’s your favorite place in Atlanta for a great show and a good time?

JL: It’s at tie between The Earl and 529. Both places have the best shows, the hardest working people, and the most respectful environment, as long as you leave you bullshit at the door.

AF: What’s next for Holy Beach?

JL: We are writing/recording new material now. We should be driving up and down the east coast in October playing music, so look out for us.

Keep up with Holy Beach on Facebook, and stream their new record, All That Matters Is This Matter, on Spotify now.

PLAYING ATLANTA: Sarah and the Safe Word Reinvent Cabaret with Red Hot & Holy

Ever wonder what the music at Jay Gatsby’s funeral would’ve sounded like?

I have to admit, I hadn’t either, until I saw a one-liner in the bio of Atlanta sextet, Sarah and the Safe Word that simply said, “Jay Gatsby died, we played the funeral.” Theatrical and vividly operatic in theme, Sarah and the Safe Word craft stories that range from a demon-powered car race in “Formula 666” to the swashbuckling battle on the open sea in “Dead Girls Tell No Tales,” all the while offering a place for anyone and everyone to join in and enjoy the dark, swinging sounds of the 1920s.

Adding their own twist to the rock ‘n roll ethos, the band is as committed to their craft as they are to creating a safe, inclusive space for anyone who attends. The six of them, featuring founder and vocalist Sarah Rose, guitarist Kienan Dietrich, violinist Susy Reyes, Courtney Varner on the viola, Beth Ballinger on keys, and bassist Maddox Reksten, sat down with Audiofemme to share all the details on their latest record, Red Hot & Holy, their commitment to celebrating diversity, and their circa-1997 musical guilty pleasures.

AF: Let’s start at the beginning. How did the six of you come together to form Sarah and the Safe Word? Was this your first time in a band, or did any of you have a background in music?

KD: Sarah essentially started this band as a solo project, which they later asked me to join. We put together an EP basically just with our songwriting and a couple other musicians, but through the process of working on our first full-length, Strange Doings in the Night, we reached out to Susy, Courtney, and Beth to help write parts for their respective instruments, and we didn’t scare them off despite our best attempts so they stuck around afterwards. Maddox joined on a bit later but in the same spirit.

SR: Yeah. Prior to Sarah and the Safe Word, I had played in a band called Go, Robo! Go! that toured around the south for about eight years. When that band split up, I was pretty convinced that I was done with seriously chasing music. Safe Word was initially just intended as a solo project that I’d occasionally release music under, but it was Kienan who really encouraged me to consider making it into a band.

BB: I grew up learning classical and jazz standards, as well as musical theater. I eventually started doing solo stuff and briefly was in a band called The Bystander Effect. I was introduced to Kienan when he needed a piano player for a jazz gig, and I guess he liked my playing because he called me for a couple of other projects after that, including Strange Doings in the Night. After recording, Sarah asked if I would play a couple of shows with them, and the rest is history.

MR: My family was so void of musicians, my mom still wonders where I came from. My grandfather played guitar and sang old country western style music but that’s about it. He never let me touch his guitars, though. I picked up bass from a neighbor’s step dad who I’d beg to let me borrow his bass. Then my mom bought me my first bass of my own. I was in roughly five or six bands or projects since I was 14 and was just dead-set on making something work. I joined Safe Word on a last minute gig with the release of Strange Doings in the Night, which I had actually recorded some gang vocals for. They officially asked me to become a member sometime afterwards, right before we played Warped Tour.

AF: And now, for what might be the most over-asked question in the world, how do you describe your sound? It’s completely unlike anything I’ve ever heard and I’m obsessed.

SR: We usually call it “cabaret rock” if we’re trying to explain it quickly. Beyond that, all six of us have diverse musical influences just by nature of our different backgrounds, so there’s elements of jazz, swing, bluegrass, punk rock, post-hardcore, and Latin influence in there as well.

KD: We had this idea before our second record to play off the 1920s jazz sound but make it darker. We knew some bands had loosely touched on this before, thus why we use points of comparison like the first Panic! At the Disco record, but we felt enough of a personal connection to that artistic idea that we’d be able to put our own spin on it and speak with our own creative voice to say things that hadn’t been said yet. I’m a huge history nerd and the entire pre-Great War period starting from the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 going to the Great Depression is a fascinating and relevant stretch of time.

MR: As a huge history nerd, I love to explore the history surrounding music from the Gilded Age in America and even into Victorian era and through the 30s, 40s, and 50s. My taste has always been contemporary, though, when we’re talking favorite artists. I had always noticed that those two worlds met in a lot of artists I love. Panic!, My Chemical Romance, and the like. You’ll find those threads to be common among the six of us, despite our wide range of musical tastes and influences. The best way I can describe our sound is the six of us colliding and bringing to the table what we love. That cabaret-jazz-20s style happens to be a thread that connects all of us and it sits at the center of our sound. Whether or not it becomes the focus of a song or not, it’s always there hiding somewhere. But we love to put into the spotlight details from all of our tastes, whether that be Latin influences or straight up rock and roll.

AF: Who do you consider your greatest inspirations, sonically and visually?

SR: As a kid, I spent most of my summers in New Orleans, so jazz and Cajun music is just inherently a part of my DNA. Beyond that, the first album that I grew up with and loved was Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, because it was my mom’s favorite record and really my first introduction to a “rock band.” As a teenager, I had a big fascination with visual kei bands out of Japan like Malice Mizer, Dir en Grey, and Versailles, both for their aesthetic and their genre-bending. I also really love a lot of first wave east coast punk.

KD: Sonically I love bands that create unique worlds with their studio production, like Smashing Pumpkins or even Blind Guardian. I grew up on punk bands like Bad Religion and The Germs, moved on to Black Sabbath, then went through a Beatles phase late in the game. For visual inspiration, I love the fantastic realism of Zdzisław Beksiński and impressionists/post-impressionists like Monet and Van Gogh.

BB: Both of my parents are musicians, and my dad in particular plays a lot of jazz and blues. He taught me the C blues scale when I was 6 or so years old and I’ve been hooked ever since. I listen to a lot of jazz standards from artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and Etta James, but I love anything bluesy where you can bend a vocal note or two. Sara Bareilles is one of my all time favorite artists. She is so brilliant in the way she sneaks jazz chords in pop songs, and her vocal melodies are always catchy. Stevie Wonder has always been a go to for me, and like Kienan I went through a Beatles phase as well. I’m also a big fan of Postmodern Jukebox and anything with that big band sound.

AF: How do you translate the theatrical, operatic feeling and atmosphere you create in the studio to the stage?

KD: We try to look at the studio and the stage as two different beasts. When we go into the studio, we’re essentially producing a movie, with all the cinematic flair we can incorporate. We know there will be things that just won’t work on stage, so the translation becomes more like an adaptation process. You try to find equivalents, like changing the dynamics or even instrumentation of a passage because you have more control over volume/frequency in the studio. There’s also just more room for mistakes on the stage, so you approach it with a looser, more improvisational attitude. It’s a lot of fun when you look at the studio and stage as two different mediums entirely.

AF: You just released a new record, Red Hot & Holy. What inspired the record? What was the writing and recording process like, and did it change in the two years since the release of your previous record, Strange Doings in the Night?

SR: We went into Strange Doings in the Night as a three-piece, with just the beginnings of an idea of what direction this band was heading in. I feel like that record was a good example of us “learning how to walk” in regards to incorporating strings, horns, and the overall theatricality of the band. By the time we started working on Red Hot & Holy, we were a seven piece that was writing together and able to approach all the songs as a cohesive unit. So, in a lot of ways, RH&H is the full realization of the process of discovery that we started with SDITN.

KD: We also learned not to reinvent the wheel a bit with regards to drum tones, guitar tones, etc. Our producer on RH&H, Aaron Pace, really made an impact in that respect by suggesting and incorporating sounds that matched our influences. He helped us learn which aspects of the recording need to stay grounded so we can put maximum weirdness into the aspects that don’t.

AF: You’re incredibly active in the Atlanta music scene, and you also bring a steadfast commitment to using your platform to uplift queer voices. Why do you think that’s so important, especially in the time we’re living in? How do you use your platform to uplift, encourage, and increase visibility for LGBTQIA+ artists, musicians, and fans? What else do you believe needs to happen beyond increasing visibility in order to overcome the lack of diversity in the music industry as a whole?

SR: Thank you for saying that! It’s something that’s really important to us as a band of queer people who have been privileged and lucky enough to be given a platform. We make an effort during each of our sets to let kids know that our shows are a safe space for anyone in the LGBTQ+ community. That also means being discerning about who we share bills with and where we play. The music scene can sometimes be a little unwelcoming to queer kids, so it’s always been a priority of ours to facilitate as much of a positive environment as we can for them. I think for a long time, there was this mentality that queer music should be relegated only to the DIY/basement scene here in Atlanta (and in no way do I mean to denigrate that community), but I think that’s changing. You’re starting to see more queer acts really being visible and shaping the musical and cultural identity of this city.

MR: As a queer trans man, growing up I needed so much more than what I was offered as far as places to go that were safe to explore gender and sexuality. When I was younger, there were a lot of parents (not my own) that saw me as a bad influence, whether it was my style, taste in music, or whatnot. It wasn’t safe to explore. My own mother encouraged that at home, but looking back I realize I would have thrived and become a much happier person much sooner had there been safe spaces outside my home, queer positive artists, and people putting themselves out there saying, “Hey, this is all okay!” For myself, I want to be what I didn’t have for queer youth. That’s so important to me. The music scene is a place full of queer youth who go out to shows and find freedom in that but it’s not always a welcoming place, so if we can build an environment where kids are safe and can be themselves, that’s what we strive for.

AF: How has Sarah and the Safe Word allowed you to fearlessly express yourself and be your most authentic self?

BB: When I started working with Sarah and the Safe Word, I was coming out of a really rough period of my life. My self-esteem was non-existent and it was actually encouragement from Kienan that got me feeling confident enough to work on some piano parts for the Strange Doings record. This band pushes me to new levels of playing and has helped me to grow and evolve as a musician. There are parts of the most authentic version of myself that I discovered through being involved with Sarah and the Safe Word, and sharing the stage with these talented (and very weird) friends of mine continues to show me new aspects of music and myself that I didn’t know were there.

MR: Being in this band has been so liberating for me. It’s not only given me a backbone of supportive friends and family but it’s allowed me to truly embrace who I am, [and with] an audience to share that with as well. I had just begun my journey exploring my gender, not even a couple years before I joined. I rose beyond the bad relationships I’d been in and did things I was told during that time I couldn’t do. In every aspect of my life this band has pushed me to be my most authentic self and take risks to live that way. I just hope we can do the same for those who listen to us.

AF: If you could give any words of advice or encouragement to your younger selves, what would it be?

SR: Don’t give up. Like I said, I was convinced I was done with music before I started this band. Three and a half years deep now with so many amazing experiences and five best friends, I am so glad I didn’t walk away from all of this.

MR: I would tell myself never to stop, but reiterate that over and over. It won’t be overnight. When I was younger I had that wild idea that my first band would make it big. I was 14. But everyone is different, every band is different. It’s not a race and there’s no timeline, no age cut off for success. There’s a lot to figure out along the way. I stopped playing music for two years due to an abusive relationship. I thought it was over then, that I’d never succeed in music, but then two more bands came and went before I ended up here in this wonderful group. Trust me, younger self, without the journey, none of this would be what it is.

KD: It’s going to take much longer than you think, and your parents are right that you’ll be happier if you also pursue a backup plan that puts more money in your pocket. Keep at it, but you don’t need to be a martyr.

BB: Don’t compare yourself too much to other musicians. It’s easy to get caught up in competition with other artists and comparing yourself can make you feel inadequate. There are a lot of different musicians out there and it is not at all a competition. Surround yourself with musicians that are more experienced in areas you’re unfamiliar with, learn as much as you can, and take chances by getting out there and collaborating with new people.

AF: Atlanta is at the epicenter of the arts and music scene in the south. What’s it like to be part of such a growing, evolving scene?

BB: To be honest, I think I’ve taken it for granted at times. Live music, a plethora of fantastic local bands, numerous venues that consistently pull national acts in, and no shortage of open mic nights have been aspects of Atlanta that I grew up knowing were available. There is so much to do every night of the week that you could literally see a different live musician every night of the week. One of my favorite things about the Atlanta music scene is the support everyone in the community provides for each other. Open mics are safe spaces to try out new music or even play in front of an audience for the first time and they can be found everywhere from downtown Atlanta to the suburbs. Local bands promote each other and jump in to defend each other when there is a source of negativity that is bringing the scene down. I’m proud to be a part of such an uplifting and supportive community.

AF: What’s your favorite place in Atlanta for a good time and a great show?

SR: I think The Masquerade, just in terms of its contribution to the cultural history of Atlanta, is undeniable. I’m excited to play there again soon! Beyond that, we’ve been so grateful to Smith’s Olde Bar lately for their willingness to really open their doors to us and let us put on so many fun shows on our own terms. I used to be really skeptical of house venues, but Mac’s Basement has done so much lately for stimulating the music scene around here and fostering a good community. Also, Connect Live in Woodstock is making some major moves for the music scene in the north metro area.

AF: Any musical guilty pleasures?

SR: Anyone who’s been around me long enough is aware that I know every Spice Girls lyric in existence. Including the b-sides. But that’s not really a guilty pleasure. I’m just a shameless Spice Girls fan. Actual guilty pleasures? I thought some of the songs on Paris Hilton’s record from the early 2000s were pretty great. Also, Matchbox 20 wrote better pop-rock choruses than anyone.

KD: My guilty pleasure is late-90’s, by-the-numbers alternative rock like Third Eye Blind and Everclear. Something about that music just speaks to me in an embarrassing way. I would normally say there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure, since I think people should be free to enjoy what they enjoy without stigma, but I have to admit I judge myself for still listening to bands I listened to in middle school.

BB: I love Christina Aguilera. I have been following her since the beginning of her career, and I’m not even sorry about it. Having been on tour a few times now, I can confirm there have been several Safe Word van N*SYNC sing-a-longs with occasional Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears tracks thrown in, as well.

AF: Last one! What’s next for Sarah and the Safe Word?

SR: We’re heading up north in a few months to begin recording our next album. We’re also planning a big New Year’s Eve show to help usher in the roaring 20s (very on-brand?). Also I’m quitting the band to join the Spice Girls, sorry.

Keep up with Sarah and the Safe Word on Facebook.

ARTIST PROFILE + INTERVIEW: Brittsommar – One North Country to Another

“I write these answers now in a dark cabin on the Swedish country side.”

This I can imagine: Sawyer Gebauer, lamp-lit at a maple table pondering the four-year history of his musical project Brittsommar. What is difficult to picture is that he is communicating via computer, and not quill, parchment and pigeon. These dated emblems do not come to mind because Gebauer’s music is dressed in derivative costume, but rather due to the fairytale-like circumstances of Brittsommar’s formation.

“Ha, that’s what most people say-some fairytale scenario.”

Simply put, Brittsommar plays folk music. But theirs is not the saccharine-sunshine variety of Mumford and Sons and Edward Sharpe so prevalent a few years back. Something much darker and more austere is at play here, summoning the sorrow of Nick Cave and the narrative structuring of Lee Hazlewood. It’s a slice of sound that’s long been absent from American indie music, which is perhaps why Gebauer became an expat before finding collaborators with a similar mission to his own.

While most 19-year-old musicians might take a crack at ‘making it’ in New York or Los Angeles, Wisconsin-born Gebauer instead fled to Sweden in 2010, no master plan informing the decision.

“It was just the usual thoughts and confusion that comes with that age after high school. What is this life of mine? This world that we are born, live, and die in. Who am I, who are you? All those typical questions of a world unseen…the beauty of the unknown.”

It’s the kind of cryptic response one would expect after hearing Brittsommar, their swelling melodrama of strings and minor chords suggesting too many nights spent with Evan Williams and Aesop’s Fables. In both song and conversation Gebauer takes on an air of the wizened raconteur-a true storyteller who has somehow never written down a song in his life.

“I just feel as soon as I write it down it disappears. It’s down and out. It’s on the page and that’s where it will stay, between the binding. Perhaps when I start to get older and the drink eventually gets to me I´ll have to start documenting. We´ll see.”

But true to his Midwestern roots Gebauer occasionally retreats from the role of bard, admitting the more down-to-earth and banal reasons for leaving home:

“I wasn´t interested in university or staying at the pizza joint I worked in. I wasn’t interested in staying in the relationship I was in- or any as a matter of fact. There was no option besides getting out of Madison.

At the time, I was quite into Swedish musicians- Tallest Man on Earth, The Knife, Jens Leckman, Jose Gonzales. So I thought, ‘Well, I might as well go there and see what I can do.’ There was something there in the back of my head and the bottom of my gut that pulled me in that direction. One North Country to another.”

Gebauer turned to WWOOFing and found a host farm on which he could work in return for food and board. He picked the first farm listed but changed his mind last minute, settling on another called Rosenhill. It was this flighty impulse that laid the foundation for the four years to follow.

“I didn´t know anything about the country- the language, the culture etc. Maybe if I knew then what I know now, my situation would be different.

When I got on the bus to go to Chicago O´Hare from Madison it still didn’t hit me that I was doing some “radical” thing that most people wouldn’t do.

When I arrived at the farm I fell in love with the farmer’s daughter. It was her 18th birthday and I knew it was just her and I from then on out. This was to be Brittsommar´s violin player, Evelin.”

Sawyer and Evelin traveled together between Stockholm and Berlin, accumulating band mates each with compelling backgrounds of their own. Guitarist Johan Björk is a Swedish judge. Drummer Gilad Reichenthal is a former Israeli rock star. Evelin Sillén is currently studying art, and cellist Chris Smith hails from Australia where he used to build satellites for the German space agency.

What Gebauer and Sillén found in these musicians was a desire in step with their own: to form an ever-shifting lineup of contributors that would allow Brittsommar to be in constant motion, forming more of an artist collective than a traditional band.

“When Evelin and I moved to Berlin we met Chris and Gili there, by chance really. We were looking for a new band and they showed up. You just know you are gonna be friends and band mates before you even play together for the first time. There is this energy. We were all going through huge stages in our lives- just giving everything up again and moving to this dark hole that is Berlin. So we kinda clicked on an existential level.”

It’s the stuff of fate and fiction, seasoned with the kind of characters you’d find in a Jeunet film. The story doesn’t outshine the music, but it does beg to be told, and when I first heard Brittsommar’s “Tell Me” playing on a laptop in Minnesota, I knew it had to be heard.

While the group has garnered applause from European outlets, they’re virtually unknown in the States, which, as I relay to Sawyer, is a damn shame. I ask if this makes him feel out of touch with American audiences.

“Well that actually has to do with the PR. The last album was promoted to a primarily European demographic. I think the States are more jaded than in Europe. America is so fast and it has seen and created much of what’s going on over here so the mentality is kinda like, ‘yeah so what?’ In Europe it’s somewhat of an exotic thing- this guy abandoning his home in America to move out to the countryside of Sweden. Being back in NY it’s like, ” So you come from Wisconsin…mmhm.” Haha, I don’t know if that’s true really…”

The album Sawyer refers to is 2013’s The Machine Stops. Defying the sophomore slump principle and any sentiments of “yeah, so what?” Machine reveals miles of artistic growth when compared with their 2011 debut, Day of Living Velvet. While the first record is a far cry from bad or boring, it seems a bit thin in production and intensity after listening to Machine, which is a rolling maelstrom of mournful folk.

Gebauer’s voice is a resounding barrelhouse that is all the more impressive when you see that it’s coming from a beardless ectomorph. Despite its depth, it bears a solid range; it is not the monotone last resort of someone who can’t actually sing. At once painful and reckless, it is the central presence of Brittsommar’s sound, but never overwhelms the wailing surges of cello and violin or the precisely plucked guitar. Evelin Sillén’s accompanying vocals add a sweet reprieve while Reichenthal doles out trembling snare rolls fit for a funeral procession.

Machine’s opener “Sing Low” is a strong starter, relying heavily on Gebauer’s lulling baritone. The song builds layer-by-layer, first with tinny fingerpicking and eventually culminating in crashing cymbals. “Half-Inch Map” has Gebauer at his most snide and berating: “and you’re just getting by by the skin of your crooked teeth.” The track is wily and slightly sinister, implementing squealing strings that could be found on a Dirty Three record.

“Middle Man” is a favorite, though an even better version can be heard in a live performance filmed outdoors in Freiburg. The video communicates the band members’ dexterity as musicians, as well as Gebauer’s charisma as a performer, yipping occasionally like a coyote with his guitar held at chin level.

Sweeping and melancholy, “The Painter” is another high point of the record, as well as a beautiful cover of “Aint You Wealthy, Aint You Wise” by Will Oldham-aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy. It’s a fitting source of inspiration for Gebauer, whose story would seem to merit a pseudonym of his own. Much like Oldham and Beirut’s Zach Condon, there is a sense that Gebauer is a musician lost in his own time. Is there a 73-year-old man trapped in that a twenty-something’s body? There just might be.

It’s a charlatan’s charm, though nothing is false about Gebauer or his music. The mere discrepancy between his age and aura is what spawns such suspicion: is all this for real? And if so, why the hell haven’t we heard more about it?

Fortunately, there is still time to discover. Gebauer is bringing it all back home to record a solo LP in San Francisco this month, stopping by New York to play a gig on the way.

“The album is gonna be pretty sweet and lowdown compared to the others-somewhat acoustic then a mirage of grungy drums and out of tune violins. Finding the voice again. The past albums were a lot of story telling…

With these upcoming tracks I developed quite a bit compared to when I was in Berlin two years ago. I got reacquainted with the tranquil chaos that is America. This past year I returned to the states and lived in NY. Went to the west coast and drove from San Fran down to Austin where I was to play at SXSW. Then I flew to Madison for the fist time in years. So I went East to West, South to North. I found my ‘roots’ I suppose.

It was amazing. When I returned to Madison, the songs just came. Flowed out in a way that hasn’t happened to me in quite some time. I guess it was the re-realization that you can never go home again…”

You can never go home again, and you certainly can’t live forever. Gebauer seems to be comfortable with seismic change in ways few people are. In the small number of interviews I’ve found he mentions-in his own baroque way-the inevitable death of Brittsommar.

“Yeah, it´s only natural. You don’t wanna drag something out too long. Let it die in its footsteps, one can say. Doesn’t mean the music is over, just a change in direction and meaning. It has been some time and people have gone in and out. It started in a different time and we are all now in different periods with our lives. Brittsommar was then. Now its something even better.”

Gebauer will play a solo show at Troost Bar in Greenpoint on Thursday, November 20^th. Also on the bill is the lovely and talented Scout Paré-Phillips.

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Track Review: The Hawks (of Holy Rosary) “Snakes and Hawks”

“Snakes and Hawks” is not your typical track about a predator seeking out its prey; sure, the song sticks its talons into our brains with its catchy opening synth riff, but it doesn’t sweep us off to an untimely end.

Instead, the six piece San Antonio band sing along to a tune that is all too convincing about being seemingly innocuous. Musically, the song is plain ol’ fun. The Hawks have a straight-out-of-the -garage appeal to them that is apparent in their ability to maintain a high energy track for a little over four minutes (pretty unusual for a punk band). Every member also does vocals, giving it an anthemic aesthetic that makes one feel like they are in the middle of the pit at one of their shows. Its variety of musical breaks is what makes it last through the repetition and progression of the lyrics, from its sing along vocal melodies to the bridge where it breaks down with a sludgy guitar riff and male and female vocals singing back to one another.

What makes this song stray into the pop punk category is its MIDI like synth that pervades the whole track and its seemingly sweet lyrics. Thematically, it’s all about predation, but not in the “Hungry Like A Wolf” kind of way. Rather, it’s about being wily, tricking a person into believing you’re harmless. Its got the nice guy appeal initially but takes a turn when the line “you’ve got snakes, I’ve got hawks” turns into “she’s the snake and I’m the hawk.” By the time the bridge arrives, he’s sneaking into the girl’s bed and the song comes to a catchy close with its last melodic sing along.

Whether or not it dupes us into believing its intention is more sweet than it actually is, it forces you to see through to the end of the prowl. The song is the first track off of the band’s sophomore album What Team Am I On? via Texas is Funny Records July 22nd

BEST OF: Soundtracking 2012

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

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

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

Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan

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

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

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

Grizzly Bear – Shields

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

Chromatics – Kill For Love

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

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Mature Themes

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

How To Dress Well – Total Loss

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

Goat – World Music

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

Merchandise – Children Of Desire

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

Bat For Lashes – The Haunted Man

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

Flying Lotus – Until The Quiet Comes

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

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

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.”

285grimes — 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.

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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.

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MUSIQUE BOUTIQUE: Julie Driscoll, Robin Holcomb, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Honey & the Bees

Welcome to Audiofemme’s record review column, Musique Boutique, written by music journo vet Gillian G. Gaar. The last Monday of each month, Musique Boutique offers a cross-section of noteworthy reissues and new releases guaranteed to perk up your ears.

If no one told you it was a reissue, you might think that Julie Driscoll’s 1969 (Esoteric Recordings) was a new release — it sounds that modern. The British musician got her start in the blues band Steampacket, where she met Brian Auger, later joining him in Brian Auger and the Trinity (who just released the great Far Horizons box set last month, featuring Driscoll’s spinetingling cover of “Season of the Witch”). That group found success with songs like their cover of “This Wheel’s On Fire,” and also terrorized the Monkees. But Driscoll wanted something more meaningful than pop stardom, so she went solo, writing all the songs on 1969, working with her future husband Keith Tippett (though despite its title, the record wouldn’t be released until 1971).

There are folk-influenced numbers, like “Those That We Love” with its melancholy refrain “Yes, it is those that we love, who will always forsake us/And it’s those that love us, we will always forget.” The propulsive jazz-rock fusion of “A New Awakening” has an agitation that reflects the fear and excitement of charting your own course. There’s the beauty of the contemplative “Lullaby.” “Break Out” flirts with prog rock, Driscoll’s soaring voice matched by Jim Cregan’s equally expressive guitar solo. “Leaving It All Behind” tempers its description of recovering from an emotional blow by setting it against a horn arrangement of trumpet, sax, trombone, and oboe. But Driscoll’s striking voice remains the most mesmerizing element.

Musician/composer Robin Holcomb is known for her eclectic approach to music, moving from her classical training to avant garde jazz and hitting all points in between, eventually composing for orchestra, theater, and film, along with her solo work. One Way or Another, Vol. 1 (Westerlies Records) is as solo as it gets; just Holcomb and a Steinway grand piano, revisiting her back catalogue and throwing in a few covers, in a four-day session held at SnowGhost studio in Whitefish, Montana.

The musical mood is lovely and serene, but the lyrics reveal there’s much going on beneath the surface, as in this couplet from “Once:” “Cheating hearts grow lonesome, you can always tell/Diamond earrings glitter from the bottom of the well.” As for the covers, Randy Newman’s “Shining” is a perfect choice, a quietly devastating number about the trap of domesticity. She transforms the R&B swagger of Lil Green & the Howard Biggs Orchestra’s “I’ve Got that Feeling” into something more ethereal and mysterious. And her version of Stephen Foster’s “Old Dog Tray” is a haunting meditation of grief that accompanies longevity. The album’s release is accompanied by a November tour.

<a href="https://robinholcomb1.bandcamp.com/album/one-way-or-another">One Way or Another by Robin Holcomb</a>

Hard to believe it’s been that long, but yes, it’s almost a decade since the Yeah Yeah Yeahs put out an album (2013’s Mosquito). Those who wondered if they’d ever hear new material from the indie rock trio (Karen O, Nick Zinner, Brian Chase) were finally rewarded with the release of Cool It Down (Secretly Canadian). “Spitting Off the Edge of the World,” the first single and the album’s lead off track, opens with the gentle thump-thump of a drum before exploding into a lush synthesized landscape (with Perfume Genius putting in a vocal appearance, delivering the shimmering line “She’s melting houses of gold”).

The irony about this track that sounds so majestic is that it’s about the decay of the planet due to climate change. There’s a similar cast to other songs on the album, focused on the beauty that can be culled from despair. In “Burning,” the response to a melting world is one of rapture, of throwing oneself into a whirling, spinning dance as the music crescendos around you. The unfulfilled desire on “Wolf” sounds glorious, as Karen O pleads with you to run off into the wild with her. The taut, tight beats of “Different Today” echo its matter of fact observations about the sorry state of the world. Sounds to me like the perfect soundtrack for the roiling times of 2022.

Real Gone Music resurrects one of the great lost albums of ’70s Philly soul with the release of Honey and the Bees’ 1970 album Love. The group is best known for their cover of “It’s Gonna Take a Miracle” (originally recorded by R&B group the Royalettes), a sweet slice of soul with gorgeous harmonies. Lead singer Nadine Felder has the kind of cool, clear voice that has her sounding in command even as she offers up a series of pleas, as in the songs “We Got to Stay Together,” “Make Love to Me,” “Please Have Mercy.”

The group had the further advantage of working with a number of people who’d go on to build the Philadelphia music scene into a powerhouse in the 1970s, including Leon Huff, who played piano on their records and later co-founded the Philadelphia International label with Kenneth Gamble and songwriter Thom Bell. With sophisticated arrangements of strings and horns, and a crisp remastering job, this marks the welcome return of a hidden gem. Released on (what else?) honey-colored vinyl.

Dining Dead Bring Evocative Stranger Wages EP to Blue Moon Tavern

Sammy Skidmore and Emma Hayes, two born and bred Seattle-ites, first met and connected over their shared love of music at a local summer camp as seventh graders in 2006. Fast forward more than a decade later, and the two formed their group Dining Dead and released their multi-dimensional sophomore EP, Stranger Wages, which they perform at Blue Moon Tavern on Aug. 4th.

<a href="https://wearediningdead.bandcamp.com/album/stranger-wages">Stranger Wages by Dining Dead</a>

For Hayes, who grew up in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood, an interest in music was encouraged by her bass-playing dad, who played in a Beatles cover band. “My dad was really into music, so like, my first concerts were Elvis Costello at a winery and Queen at the Key Arena,” she recalls.

Skidmore, a native of the Green Lake neighborhood in Seattle, didn’t come from a musical family. Instead, she discovered rock ‘n’ roll by watching Josie and the Pussycats at six years old. After that, she asked for and received a guitar from her grandparents, and as she grew, began to take advantage of all-ages venues, like Vera Project, and other live music opportunities in Seattle.

“Yeah Vera Project was huge… for me. I was always going to Vera shows, and a couple DIY venues I don’t even think exist anymore… as a super young kid,” says Skidmore.

The summer before eighth grade, Skidmore met Hayes at a local summer camp. She recalls being drawn to Hayes’s Pixies band tee and woolen leg warmers. “We became friends, and she played guitar and so did I, so I thought that was super cool,” she remembers. “And she showed me a lot of cool bands. Like I remember she showed me the Pixies and the Ramones and I was like—wow, I’m obsessed.”

The two attended a few live shows together as preteens, including The Shins at Bumbershoot and Sound Off!—a battle of the bands for youth held annually at Seattle Museum of Pop Culture—before losing touch for a while.

After high school, Hayes stayed in the area to study at Seattle Central University and University of Washington. Meanwhile, Skidmore moved around—living in New York, Dallas, and Hawaii before returning to Seattle.

“When I moved back to Seattle about three years ago, I was like, who plays music?” says Skidmore. “Emma was like the only person I remembered from my youth that played music so I messaged her on Facebook [to see] if she wanted to jam sometime.”

Casual jamming quickly turned into writing some original material and playing at open mics nearby. Then, they added a bass player and drummer. Organically, Dining Dead—named for a quote in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—formed. In the years since, they’ve released January 2021’s Takeout EP, their debut full-length Medium Rare, which came out in February 2021, and now June 2022’s Stranger Wages.

Dining Dead creates reverby, moody and surf-informed alternative rock that at some points leans twangy Americana and at other points lo-fi indie. Blending the sounds of west coast and the American south wasn’t necessarily intentional, but a natural extension of the band’s history and sonic interests. Their bassist Shannon Barberry was born and raised in Tennessee, and Skidmore spent time in Dallas and Nashville, where she participated in a songwriting retreat and got into country music.

“I think it happened totally naturally, like Shannon definitely brings in some elements of that just from her own place but definitely happens naturally for me,” agrees Skidmore. “Living in Texas, I finally got exposed to country music in a way that wasn’t judgmental. I feel like in Seattle we’re like ‘oh, country’s so stupid,’ so finally listening to country and really being exposed to it in the country scene in Dallas was huge for me.”

For Skidmore, who does a lot of the band’s songwriting, the storytelling aspects of country and folk imbue Stranger Wages with a bit of southern hospitality.

The opening track, “Spaghetti,” for instance, brings a little spaghetti western to the table—as Skidmore tells the melancholy story of desire and wanting, punctuated with echo-y octave slides and twisty riffs on guitar, reminiscent of a guitar technique called a hammer-on more typically used in acoustic playing.

There’s also plenty of Seattle sounds on Stranger Wages, which Skidmore named after a mix-up with Social Security department called “Stranger Wages” forced her to wait more than six months for her unemployment money during the pandemic. Though the mishap gave her more time to write, tracks on the EP like “Gatekeeper” are saturated with the sort of aloof vocals and intense, building guitar you’d hear from MTV-unplugged Nirvana.

Though now gainfully employed at an art gallery, Skidmore, and Hayes, who’s a teacher, would love to make music their full-time gig—since it consumes their free time anyway.

They recently played their first-ever Capitol Hill Block Party, a popular festival in the Seattle area where many new and emerging bands get discovered and gain traction. Now, they’re playing two notable local shows—August 4th at the Blue Moon Tavern with with Ha Vay and August 12th with OH MY EYES and Zookraught at Conor Byrne Pub—in August, and the group is already planning and writing songs for their next project.

“We’ve already started writing new stuff. I’m always writing songs – it just kind of depends what makes it to the top and what we end up liking as a band,” says Skidmore. “We have some goals for the next project, so [drummer] Bogie [Pieper] and Shannon, the rhythm section, they’ll make the groove and then Emma and I are filling in on top instead of me coming with a completed song. That’s what we’re trying right now.”

Follow Dining Dead on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Erin Rae Goes Deep on ‘Lighten Up’ LP

Erin Rae’s new album, Lighten Up, is an exercise in showing up for herself.

In early 2019, Rae and a fellow singer-songwriter friend, Louise Hayat-Camard of The Dove & The Wolf, made a pact to write a song each day and send it to each other. For Rae, it was about developing a discipline, holding herself accountable to the craft. In doing so, the songs that comprise Lighten Up started to take shape, including the title track, “Cosmic Sigh,” and “Drift Away.”

“It was when those songs presented themselves that I started to imagine what the record cover would look like and see what the album will take shape around,” Rae describes to Audiofemme. She even sketched out plans for album art and wrote out a tentative track list that helped build momentum for the project, the title itself meant to inspire the listener to lean into curiosity.

“It’s not really my style to be directive and tell people what I think they should do. It’s playing around with that term and inviting people to be curious: ‘What is she talking about? Who does she think she’s talking to?’” she laughs of the “inquisitive” phrase. “Once you get into the songs and you hear that, it’s very much my experience that I’m talking to. Take what you like, leave the rest.” The album was released on February 4; Rae is currently on tour with Courtney Marie Andrews in Australia before returning to the U.S. as a supporting act for Watchhouse, beginning on March 31.

<a href="https://erinrae.bandcamp.com/album/lighten-up">Lighten Up by Erin Rae</a>

Rae’s previous album, Putting on Airs, confronted her inner darkness and past trauma, diving into her psyche on songs like “Bad Mind.” It details her experience as a queer woman in the South, the feelings she once had to suppress now finding freedom through song. “’Bad Mind’ was a song that I was nervous to share because I was like, ‘Are my collaborators going to think this is weird that I’m talking about being afraid to be gay in this song?’” the Tennessee native pondered, instead met with support from her co-writers. “I’m still aware of the intensity of the subject matter, but it feels like through playing it, I got freed up from any sort of fear around that or being uncomfortable with it.”

Lighten Up continues this healing process. Intentional about maintaining an introspective nature through the music, she wanted to honor the shift that’s occurred in her life since Airs was released in 2018. “Once you have done some of that deep digging and done some healing work, the turning point where I’ve seen all that stuff, now I have awareness and now I want to move into the next part of my life where I’m more into connection with other people and less inhibited by old survival skills or patterns of behavior, negative beliefs,” she explains.

A major part of this healing journey was allowing all of the walls she’d built around herself to come down. “Cosmic Sigh” directly addresses this, a vintage-sounding acoustic number that sounds like it was transported from the golden era of folk. Here, Rae intertwines this sense of growth with images of the natural world as she serenely sings, “The sun/Day is dawning in the soul/And warms the melancholy/And come what may/She’s won/There’s no need to be afraid/With her illusions falling.”

“Something that I’ve worked with a lot in my life is how anxiety and negative self-belief has hampered that connection, or if I’ve connected with people, being hesitant to be as open as I would like to be,” she says. “Letting myself be known, be vulnerable, be messy, and not seeking to have it all figured out before entering into if it’s a romantic connection, feeling like that needs to be perfect. I think primarily a lot of my work has been to repair that relationship with myself. It’s not so much about ‘What do you think of me?’ It’s ‘This is what I think of me now.’”

Songs like “Cosmic Sigh” and “Drift Away” acknowledge these energy shifts, touching on days when it feels like time has slowed down, to experiencing the magic of one’s own dreams coming to life before their very eyes. Meanwhile, “Can’t See Stars” finds Rae in a soul-cleanse, driving far past city lines to escape the madness of the modern world and soak in the beauty of the night sky.

“One thing that I really enjoy in writing is drawing the correlations between my internal experience and then that of my emotional experience in nature and life itself on the outside that’s continuing to operate amidst all of us in our human stuff that we do,” she shares. “It’s the correlation between an over-saturation of social media and constant distraction and people, the internet, always having somewhere to distract myself, and then how that can add to the disconnect from myself and my intuition and that inner stillness. The physical manifestation of that is literally not being able to see the night sky because we have a billion city lights going all the time, and just needing to create some space and some distance from that from time to time.”

As she continues to move forward and find inner peace, Rae has a new set of survival skills she’s cultivated through vulnerability, connection and building community, all of which will carry her through to the next bright spot in her journey. “Sometimes there’s a few steps forward and you’re like, ‘I think things are getting better and I feel hopeful,’ and then there’s ‘Why don’t I try to go back to my old patterns because that’s more comfortable and I’m a little scared to move into the unknown.’ And, and then it’s ‘No, we’re going to keep going,’” she notes. “My goal for this album is for it to be giving permission and compassion for myself and whoever listens to it and relates. My intention for this is to help there be a softness towards these deeper, emotional things that we all have, so that maybe there’s some space for them to be brought into the light to be processed.”

Follow Erin Rae on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Aarti Jadu Auto-Tunes Sound of the Sacred on Debut LP L’Ecole De La Caz

For Aarti Jadu, sound – whether voice, instrument or digital manipulation –is how they make sense of the unmapped inner geography connecting their Indian heritage and their own identity as a first-generation Australian. Jadu’s explorations have manifested as trauma-informed workshops for voice and somatics, and neuroscience-informed artworks that explore how the interplay of voice, music and physical space can convey human experience and perhaps address emotional trauma. Jadu is an anthropologist, an explorer, and an experimentalist when it comes to sound – and on February 11, they released their debut album L’Ecole De La Caz via Heavy Machinery Records.

“The concept was to try and make it like an alien choral folk album,” Jadu states. It was made under the multi-directional pressures of COVID lockdowns, an unstable home situation, financial pressures, and their own personal expectations, doubts and insecurities. But with funding from Flash Forward, the opportunity to make new work was impossible to pass up.

“You do what your life’s calling is and the gamble is that you might not feel stable,” they concede. “I called it ‘school of house’ in French; learning what it is to reinvent the idea of home and house and strength in the self as opposed to the material world around my body.”

<a href="https://aartijadu.bandcamp.com/album/lecole-de-la-caz">L'Ecole De La Caz by Aarti Jadu</a>

Jadu was raised in Perth before following their brother across the country in 2011 to settle in Melbourne. Though they loved singing, their life’s calling seemed to be another creative form at first.

“I just came out of studying fashion and did an internship with a fashion designer here,” Jadu recalls. “Through doing that and seeing how much of my energy was not being used for singing, which was a really important part of my being, I decided I should put more focus on music and make fashion a secondary creative outlet.”

For nine years, they’ve been a student of Vinod Prasanna, a performer and teacher of traditional and contemporary Indian devotional music. “I started off in devotional music, singing chants and group songs [or] bhajans, which are primarily used to activate a spiritual or deeper sense of self with a community. Only when I was 20 or 22, I started writing songs of my own that were more poetic and not for that purpose, but for my own enjoyment.”

Yoga, too, has been elemental in their mind-body-spiritual practice. Jadu’s teacher, Nina Alfers, is depicted on the album artwork, having planted the concept of finding home within the body within Jadu’s mind.

“I think yoga reminds one that it’s always a practice and that it cannot be sold and that we always have a responsibility, and an opportunity and right, to reach for something that is spiritual, and that comes from within through expressing outwardly, a recognition of ritual,” Jadu says.

Jadu’s intention on their first album was to make sense of how their two worlds – making devotional music and their artistic and electronic works – could share a language and an intention. “How do I create devotional music and also these wider spaces of my self in a club, or a performance space where the shrine is the person as opposed to this other, greater, higher existence?” she asked herself.

When the State of Victoria/City of Melbourne Flash Forward project arose, providing funding to create an album to a brief deadline (a couple of months maximum), Jadu was conflicted since they had another artistic commission and a course in public art creation underway simultaneously. On the other hand, they felt compelled to create a cohesive body of work that channeled two of their biggest fascinations: Auto-Tune and devotional music. These explorations into the digital manipulation of sound, voice and instrumentals inform L’Ecole De La Caz through each of its seven hypnotic tracks.

First single “IT/THAT” feels akin to fka twigs’ strange, digital, ghostly RB harmonies, punctuated with breathing, gasps, moans and whispers. As the twisting, modulating voices in their upward lilting melodies – both celestial and artificial in tone – layer and build, they embody the nature of gospel, hymns, chanting and sacred ritual. It begs the question: are these sounds sacred purely because they mimic all the elements of sacred music? Does it matter whether these sounds are made by human or machine? And then, where do we define who exists, who is holy and who is laity, and why do we insist upon divisions when all beings are drawn to the very natural, organic act of making music in harmony and praise whoever our Gods or higher powers are?

Arranged like a choral album, but with a twist, Jadu used multiple Auto-Tune sources to create an Auto-Tune choir of some sort. “Choir music indicates that there’s a sense of leaving yourself and joining others and becoming one big instrument rather than having individual ego or something to say that’s separate to the other,” Jadu explains.

It’s a unique sense of comfort, one Jadu desperately needed when circumstances left them without a stable home. The impermanency was emotionally exhausting, and as Jadu speaks about it, it sounds like it remains a thorn in her soul. “Unfortunately for many musicians, it’s always a transient space – to have the rug pulled from under your feet so many times,” they reflect.

But despite all that, Jadu offers the sense of soothing too often in short supply on L’Ecole De La Caz. Even without intellectualising, or trying to tackle the big existential queries Jadu has been in dialogue with in the making of this album, it is thoroughly immersive and transportive. Listen without analysis, be moved, and perhaps be transformed subtly and incomprehensibly.

For the string arrangements, Jadu called upon Aurora Darby and Esther Henderson. Their vocal ensemble comprised Abbey Howlett, Aurora Darby, Emma Ovenden, Joli Boardman, Melanie Taylor, Olive Yaah, Siobhan Housden, Stav Shaul, Xan Coppinger and Yannick Rosette.

“A lot of the fleshing out was done at home in the beautiful room that I eventually left, so it was precious to have it as a time capsule. We set up in an empty room in the house [in Coburg]… to record strings in and the choir,” Jadu says. “I was fortunate enough to also jump into a studio and track some of the vocals that I needed to sound fairly intimate and clean.”

They’d been accustomed to Auto-Tune pedals after becoming hooked on Algerian and Spanish pop songs that heavily relied on vocal tuning. They’d been experimenting with manipulating their vocals for a couple of years and gigging with the pedals between lockdowns.

The heavily treated vocals make it difficult to differentiate between human and computer, inviting listeners to question why and how they are drawn to this sound that is both ancient and familiar, but also strangely artificial and engineered.

“I varied the microphones considerably and I also used Auto-Tune or hard tuning effects – what you’d hear on Cher or T-Pain,” they clarify. “I find Auto-Tune a very sophisticated pedal and I used software and hardware to create various version of that. Some of the synths sound like vocals and some of the vocals sound like synths. That was a whole lot of fun to try things out.”

Jadu used Logic to make the whole album and the Antares plug-in, as well as the Boss VE-20 Voice Manipulator and looping station. “I just enjoyed how crisp and tacky to process it through hardware before putting it into the digital world,” they explain.

The result on L’Ecole De La Caz is indeed an alien choral folk vibe. After the intensity of making it, discovering what they knew and didn’t know, and proving they could improvise under pressure, Jadu says it’s a relief to share it with the world. “I didn’t want to let it go. I wanted to keep fixing it,” they say. “But it’s a good process to let it go and I was quite happy to move on and make something else.”

Follow Aarti Jadu on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Five Can’t-Miss 2021 Albums from the Eclectic New Zealand Music Scene

Kendall Elise // Photo Credit: Kristin Cofer

Australian music press and fans often look to the US and UK when seeking new sounds. It is to our detriment though, when so many diverse and divinely talented musicians and producers are emerging from the North and South Islands of New Zealand (Aotearoa in Maori).

From the nufolk, gothic, country-tinged ballads of Kendall Elise to the fresh, ambient pop of French For Rabbits, the heartbreakingly soulful Hollie Smith or the dark, strange and compelling Proteins of Magic and OV PAIN, there’s every reason to indulge in a deep dive into New Zealand’s 2021 album releases. Do yourself a favour, even, and book a trip. The epic, abundant natural beauty of the landscape and its diversity might make sense of the enormous variation in art and artists from this Pacific destination.

The following list is but a drop in the ocean of New Zealand’s music scene; in the coming year, readers can look forward to many more features on New Zealand artists in Audiofemme’s Playing Melbourne column. Stay tuned!

Kendall Elise – Let The Night In

Kendall Elise, from Papakura in Auckland, released the darkly soulful country album Let The Night In in August. Her sophomore effort is rich with hauntingly romantic, gorgeously spare ballads. “I Want” is proof Elise can’t neatly be classified as pure country. It’s a crooner, wrapped up in a plaintive, weeping guitar embrace that speaks of open windows and a thundering storm approaching.

She admits she wears her jeans too tight and likes her music too loud on a rip-roaring cover of Suzie Quatro’s “Your Mamma Won’t Like Me;” furious, barnstorming guitar drives the message home with grit. There’s a whisper of traditional English folk ballad “Greensleeves” in the guitar-based melody and melancholy harmonies on “A Kingdom.”

After gaining attention with her self-produced EP I Didn’t Stand A Chance in 2017, she drew enough crowdfunded support to release her debut album Red Earth in 2019. Let The Night In was recorded in lieu of her COVID-cancelled 2020 Europe tour – it’s sparing, stormy, sultry and stunning across all 10 tracks.

<a href="https://kendallelise.bandcamp.com/album/let-the-night-in">Let The Night In by Kendall Elise</a>

French For Rabbits – The Overflow

Salty air, sparkling ocean waves, the brightness of sun glinting off mossy rocks – these refreshing sensations are easily evoked by Poneke, Wellington band French For Rabbits on their track “The Overflow.” It can be found on their third album of the same name, released in November.

Brooke Singer adds vocal gilt to the delicate instrumentals and dreamy electropop of guitarist John Fitzgerald, drummer Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa, and multi-instrumentalists Ben Lemi and Penelope Esplin. While their past albums – 2017’s The Weight of Melted Snow and 2014’s Spirits – have rooted the mood in more solemn, sad territory, there’s a languid sweetness, a freshness, to the ten tracks showcased here.

<a href="https://frenchforrabbits.bandcamp.com/album/the-overflow">The Overflow by French for rabbits</a>

Hollie Smith – Coming In From The Dark

Hollie Smith released her fourth solo album in October, and Coming In From The Dark more than justifies her four-decade strong career. The album showcases high-caliber collaborations, including the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (which features on the dramatic, full-throated title track), Sol3 Mio (on theatrical pop-operetta “You”) and Raiza Biza (on the slow burn of trippin’ R&B slow-trap “What About”).

Ultimately, the full-body feels are delivered simply by Smith’s sensational vocals. She’s an established artist in New Zealand who began singing in earnest as a teenager in local jazz outfits in Auckland. She went on to record and tour internationally with her father, an expert in Celtic music, before taking the solo path from her Wellington base in the 2000s. Her 2007 debut album Long Player sold double-platinum and scooped a bunch of New Zealand Music Awards. She followed it up with Humour and the Misfortune of Others in 2010 and her third album Water or Gold in 2016, as well as two collaborative albums: Band of Brothers Vol. 1 with Mara TK and Peace of Mind with Anika Moa and Boh Runga. Why hasn’t Australia tried to claim her yet? Maybe we tried and failed. Our loss; Smith is never forgotten once you’ve heard her sing.

Proteins of Magic – Proteins of Magic

How do you describe the unusual, totally captivating strangeness of Kelly Sherrod and Proteins of Magic? Just like that, I suppose. It’s a bizarre, wonderful pagan spell that’s conjured in her cross-border project that sees her living and working between her homes in Auckland and Nashville.

There’s a Laurie Anderson vibe to Sherrod’s operatic, gothic delivery over esoteric electronica on her debut self-titled album, released in August. If you can imagine, it capably combines elements of Enya’s dramatic, atmospheric “Orinoco Flow” and the odd sound-and-voice nightmare vision of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” with the hyperreal, disjointed techno-cool of Miss Kittin & The Hacker’s “Frank Sinatra.” But then, “The Book” is a piano-led, ghostly lament that is absolutely, heart-rendingly beautiful, defying comparisons. In November, Proteins of Magic released stand-alone single “Willow,” a multi-layered, witchy brew of synths, bouncy basslines and punchy digital drums.

Sherrod’s musical debut was as frontwoman for Punches in 2003, followed by playing bass for Dimmer before she moved to Nashville in 2009, painting and recording in her home studio when she wasn’t touring with the likes of The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Her schedule is busy with festivals in New Zealand in early 2022, and seems ample reason for organising a January roadtrip via Auckland.

<a href="https://proteinsofmagic.bandcamp.com/album/proteins-of-magic">Proteins Of Magic by Proteins Of Magic</a>

OV PAIN – The Churning Blue of Noon

Renee Barrance and Tim Player are Dunedin-originated, Melbourne-based OV PAIN. Their second album The Churning Blue of Noon is a more eclectic, experimental beast than their debut self-titled album of 2017. The duo had been nourished by a diet of drone, free jazz and instrumental work, and combined with the apocalyptic global pandemic scenario, their creative vision became murky with gothic, end-of-times moodiness. The August release was admittedly recorded in Melbourne, the duo’s second home.

Player is the Bela Lugosi-esque narrator on “Ritual In The Dark Part 1,” over a hollow-hearted digital organ. Warped, distorted synth fills the atmosphere, and from a ghostly parallel universe, Barrance’s dystopic vocals croon and hum on “Excess and Expenditure.” The track epitomises the feel of the whole album, a dark masterpiece.

<a href="https://ovpain.bandcamp.com/album/the-churning-blue-of-noon">The Churning Blue of Noon by Ov Pain</a>

Ziemba Grieves For Her Father On Christmas-Tinged LP Unsubtle Magic

“Destabilizing.” That’s the single word René Kladzyk says best encompasses her experience after the death of her father and through rising flood waters of grief. The singer-songwriter, best known under her musical pseudonym Ziemba, lost her father in early 2020 after he spent two weeks in the hospital over the Christmas season.

Her life all but burned to the ground — and with her brand new record, Unsubtle Magic, she sifts through the ash, both literally and figuratively. When her father’s health took a turn for the worse in late 2019, everything began to shift dramatically, even her relationship to holiday-themed music. “Losing a loved one over the holidays made all Christmas music take on a new tinge to me,” Kladzyk tells Audiofemme.

Admittedly, she never intended to make a record stitched with references to such classic Christmas songs as “Silent Night” and “O Holy Night” but perhaps it was a necessary conduit of catharsis to confront her pain so boldly and brutally as possible. “I just kept writing songs that had this holiday frame or holiday lens. That was the context of my dad’s death,” she recognizes.

Beyond her father’s death, Kladzyk also experienced the loss of an aunt, uncle, and good friend. “My experience is not all that unique. A lot of people have really had to grapple with mortality and loss. It’s like the ground falls out from underneath you, and you have to relearn how to stand,” she says. “I wonder about all the different ways that people are going to be struggling this holiday season.”

<a href="https://ziemba.bandcamp.com/album/unsubtle-magic">Unsubtle Magic by Ziemba</a>

In the weeks and months immediately following her father’s death, Kladzyk scrawled out the stray lyric and melody, but it wasn’t until late 2020 that she finished the first song. “Sandia Crest” finds her wondering, “Are we truly gone when we go?” over a bedrock of wind instruments and piano, making a lyrical reference to scattering her aunt’s ashes, which she says was “kind of a complicated process.”

“She died tragically, too,” Kladzyk recalls. “She had been a really bad alcoholic for many years, and I had stopped talking to her. She was a big part of my childhood, but in adulthood, I ended up stopping talking to her, as most of my family did. We all were estranged from her, which is really sad. She had very serious mental health issues — and she was alone when she died.”

As a result, the performance is sullen and weighted down, like shoving a boulder into the ocean. All the sorrow and the heartache bubbles around her as she sings, “The last time I heard her voice before she lost her soul/A goodbye to the swirling skies, swallowed by the stars,” bathing in the moment, simply existing without any concrete answers.

Kladzyk prompts another investigation into the afterlife with “Will You Haunt Me?” in which she retraces the moment when it “hit me that [my father] was actually going to die. We had to make the decision to take him off life support, and it was very fraught and confusing,” she recalls. “At first, they were really optimistic, but it quickly changed when he didn’t wake up. I remember walking down the hospital hallway and feeling my head hanging low in a way that it never had before. I don’t even know how to describe it. But it was like this utterly defeated feeling of helplessness that there’s nothing I can do.”

Meanwhile, the world around her continued to flicker right, as there were “literally babies being born. Every time a baby was born, they would play a little melody from ‘Rockabye Baby’ throughout the entire hospital. So you could always hear when a baby was born,” she says.

As her father died, the song’s sweet, bright melody washed over her. “It was a reminder that everybody’s just going about life,” she reflects. “Life is happening all around me, and my life had totally collapsed.”

The album cover, designed by Robert Beatty with art created by Dian Liang, frames her father’s final moments with a glimpse into the sun’s glaring, hopeful rays. “It’s this moment of looking out the hospital window to watch the sunrise on Christmas morning and trying to feel some amount of hope in it,” she explain.

Unsubtle Magic, co-produced with Don Godwin, relies heartily on “devastating defeat and overwhelming sadness” but filters the experiences through twinges of “sweetness and a feeling of home,” she explains. With “A Nightmare,” for example, Kladzyk observes the literal caving in of her childhood home, which her father bought in the ’70s. In 2020, she and her sister “had this incredibly painful problem of trying to deal with this property,” she says. In the song’s most incisive depiction of her ongoing struggle to cope, she sings with a quivering lip, “Part of me might die here.”

It’s a nail in the coffin, to say the least. “It felt like a whole new way of losing him,” she adds. “It was like losing the metaphysical home and physical home.”

She remembers the moment like it was yesterday. Kladzyk returned to Michigan to attend to things while her uncle was dying, so not only did she say final goodbyes but she closed an important chapter of her life. It was 17 degrees out, and snow capped decayed architecture and rotting beams offered a sobering depiction of everything in her life. “The second floor was caving into the first floor and I was running down the stairs as I heard the floor starting to cave in. I ran out of the house in a panic, and that’s the last time I ever went inside that house,” she recalls. “I was actually in the house, and the feeling was like it was falling in. My dog got loose in the yard, and it was really scary and overwhelming and sad.”

“Time doesn’t freeze just ’cause you want it to,” Kladzyk sings on “Time Doesn’t Freeze,” the exact phrase her sister said to her when dealing with the ramshackle homestead. “My dad just kind of left it as though it would stay how it was. He often wouldn’t deal with things, and he would just put it off as though you could keep putting it off forever. If we hadn’t sold it, the town was about to condemn it. It was a huge burden to put on us, because my dad hadn’t maintained it and hadn’t cleaned it out. Then, it was this emotional burden of not knowing if dad had things in there that were of value to him or would be of value to us.”

Furthermore, the piano-laced song grabbles with “the nature of change and entropy, and just how there’s no way to argue with it — and all the ways that silly humans try to pretend we can. We can try to hold onto a moment forever, but we just can’t. And then we’ll forget.”

“That’s another thing with death; you start really grappling with your own memory. You immediately start realizing all the things that you are slowly forgetting, like what it was like to hug that person,” she continues. “It’s a gradual process of going from being a very clear image in your mind’s eye to being a fuzzy image. That’s a horrible feeling. But it’s unavoidable. You can do things to improve your memory, like learning language or whatever, but you can’t bring that person back. You can’t feel the feeling again, except maybe in a dream, if you’re lucky.”

Kladzyk keeps her father’s memory alive through using the same family piano, now residing in her El Paso home, that she played growing up and her father used in his own musical career. “When my mom got pregnant, he just quit playing music entirely. He was operating at a time when the financial hurdles to record were much greater. So, even though he wrote and did demo recordings of tons and tons of songs, he only captured recordings with maybe four songs. During his 12-year musical career, he was a touring musician and had a circuit that he played and made a good living.”

Now, in possession of a collection of tapes, only four of which were complete, basic recordings, she found herself drawn to “Set In Ice,” which her father wrote in 1974. “I tried out a number of songs with the idea of covering them for this album. I really liked where [this song] sat in my voice. I didn’t change the key for that one, and I really liked how, thematically, it fit in the album,” she says.

One particular lyric struck her most. “Living by myself for so very long/Get up every morning just to sing these songs,” she sings amidst a flurry of percussion and guitar. Surprisingly, the visual brought her great comfort, “to imagine my dad in the ‘70s having those same feelings that I was having now. It felt like a way to connect to him, and it feels that way playing his songs, like a new way to get to know him and expand my relationship to a version of him that I never knew.”

Her father never spoke much about his musical days, except to “drop a crazy bomb” like the time he said he “went over to Tom Waits’ apartment, and the whole floor was covered in Burger King wrappers,” she shares with a laugh.

Unsubtle Magic is fraught with emotional tension. Kladzyk both surrenders to her grief and pushes to extricate herself from it. It’s that vital tug of war that acts as a heavy duty glue to keep her from falling apart, shockwaves vibrating through songs like “Only Lonely Christmas,” “Fear,” and a driving performance of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

The holidays are in full swing, and a lyric in “Sandia Crest” ensnares these complicated strands of her emotional state. “I hope to someday love Christmas,” she sings, the phrase nearly swallowing her whole. It’s hopeful but doesn’t skirt the pain.

In our conversation, she admits to feeling like “I am doing a great job of forcing myself to get over wanting to cry every time I heard a Christmas song. While it was all happening, that first holiday season, literally hearing any Christmas song made me feel this pain in my stomach, a sadness like everything that was gone would never be again — that sort of thing. I think I’ve done a good job of reminding myself all of what I love about this time of year and the magic I’m still working on.”

Raised Catholic, Kladzyk doesn’t gravitate to the religious iconography or gift-giving aspects of the season. Rather, it’s about “believing in impossible things or believing in mysterious, beyond the realm of the material things in some ways. It’s been more like smelling pine in the air and the winter experience. It has always held this magic for me.”

Unsubtle Magic is Kladzyk’s lifeline. It’s a fearless, imposing, and visceral snapshot of her life in the throes of inevitable tragedy. It’s not the sort of record you’d expect in the Christmas season, but it’s one with unfortunate universal appeal — and one the entire world needs to witness.

Follow Ziemba on Twitter and Instagram for ongoing updates.

GrandAce Reflects on Midwest Living with “No Beaches in Ohio” Video

GrandAce takes the good with the bad while soaking up some sun for his new video, “No Beaches in Ohio.” With co-director Ciara Cruder, the Cincinnati MC traveled to the beaches at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park in Michigan for the visual, which also features shots of the song’s Australia-based producer, Inigo Magno.

“He sent the beat to me and I did what I always do: I added my own touches,” GrandAce tells Audiofemme. “It really was an active collaboration because we were talking about different ideas, switching out baselines, and doing stuff like that.”

“No Beaches in Ohio” was GrandAce’s first time working with Magno, and since the single was such a collaborative effort, it was important for him to include the producer in the song’s visual.

“It’s not something I could have made on my own because one, I don’t play guitar, and two, that type of sound isn’t where my head is at,” he adds. “I love working with people who bring their own complete sound like that, and then I was able to come in and add some sparkle. It’s literally our song, because I would’ve approached it completely differently on my own and it wouldn’t have happened without him on there.”

The sing-song-y track, underscored by synths and guitar, finds GrandAce reflecting on his Ohio dwellings, fighting against the comforts of nostalgia, and holding onto his passions.

“There was a lot of reflection on what it’s like living in the Midwest, and Ohio specifically. Depending on how you’re doing in life, Ohio can be a very bleak place,” he explains. “The winters are hard, the skies are grey. It’s a very melancholy state, which is why everybody likes to rag on it. But because everybody likes to rag on it, it’s actually becoming one of the more popular states to mention.”

GrandAce is quick to point out that there are “certain beauties” to living in Ohio, too. “Things are not as expensive as they could be, which means you can stretch your dollar to more experiences. Partially growing up in Ohio, I have a lot of really fond memories here – hanging out with friends, throwing art shows, going to malls, typical stuff,” he says. But with the simple pleasures comes a caveat: “Nostalgia is the enemy,” GrandAce sings on the track.

“There are beautiful things in the midst of such a bland place, but it’s very easy to get stuck here. It’s very easy to be complacent when you’re in a place like Ohio,” he elaborates. “I’ve met a lot of very cool, talented people who, when I met them, had very big dreams. But life can kind of beat you down, and years later they haven’t thought about what they love or their passions. Some people forget. That’s kind of what I’m trying to avoid because it’s so easy to slip into that mode, and that’s really what the song is about.”

Living by example, GrandAce has had a productive year, releasing a collaborative two-pack with Gladwell, Pad Thai. He also put out his French Vanilla EP and loosies “Granite Countertops” and “Sufficiency,” and has another single, video, and two full projects coming out early next year. “The projects are finished now, but I keep adding to them and tweaking them,” he says. “What they are now might not be what they are later.”

For now, “No Beaches in Ohio” is a great reminder to keep at it, no matter where you are in life. “The song is appreciating the good with the bad and reflecting,” GrandAce says, “but also being aware that reflecting too much can be a bad thing.”

Follow GrandAce on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Casper Skulls Build Monument to Memory on Sophomore LP Knows No Kindness

When Casper Skulls vocalist/guitarist Melanie St-Pierre was eight years old, she witnessed a murder. Playing outdoors with childhood pals, a neighbor shot her best friend’s father seemingly unprompted. St-Pierre testified at the trial, then buried the memory deep. On her band’s latest record, Knows No Kindness (released November 12 via Next Door Records), she excavates this and other moments – some bitter, some sweet – with a poet’s precision, unearthing truths about the human condition in the process.

“Witness,” for instance – the song that deals with the murder – doesn’t recount the grisly details of what she saw that day. Rather, it reframes the trauma as moment in time where a young girl fought for and found justice, resonating with strength while, understandably, honoring the innocence that was lost. “When I was young/I never knew what death was/Or that I could live next to it,” St-Pierre sings in the last verse. “Loving someone and then they’re gone/What have you done?” It’s a powerful statement about believing children, and young girls especially, and how traumatic events can reverberate through our lives to emerge in unexpected ways.

Released November 12, Knows No Kindness takes its title from Georgia O’Keefe’s description of the desert’s formidable beauty, but also the process with which she rendered overlooked objects in exacting detail. St-Pierre does the same with fleeting and forgotten echoes in her life’s history, turning them over and over until her songs, like O’Keefe’s paintings, take their larger-than-life shapes. And the rest of Casper Skulls – guitarist Neil Bednis, drummer Aurora Bangarth, and bassist Fraser McClean – help bring out each detail with compositions just as painstakingly rendered, recorded across four different Toronto-area studios.

<a href="https://casperskulls.bandcamp.com/album/knows-no-kindness">Knows No Kindness by Casper Skulls</a>

“We worked with so many different engineers on this record… We knew what we wanted for it. We self-produced it, but the engineers that we worked with really helped us get it to where it needed to be and it was a little bit meticulous,” says St-Pierre. “We worked very hard on this record. Down to the arrangements and everything – we all had helping hands, we all made contributions. It was really nice to work with some local people in Toronto that helped us, that understood our vision, and understood what we were going for and understood the songs.”

That’s vastly different from how they approached debut LP Mercy Works, whose lead single “Lingua Franca” was nomimated for a SOCAN Songwriting Prize in 2018. A noisier affair that earned them supporting slots for Thurston Moore, Julie Ruin, PUP, Hop Along, Speedy Ortiz, and Charly Bliss among others, the attention may have “spooked” St-Pierre just a bit, she says, though she notes that her bandmates help keep her grounded. Almost immediately after the release of Mercy Works, the songs that would form Knows No Kindness began to pour out.

“Actually, we’ve been trying to get to this record for a while. We started off being a bit of a louder band in the beginning – [Neil and I] were just kind of fooling around in a basement with some pals and ‘King of Gold‘ happened, and it’s just like, [your first song] ends up being the trajectory of your band,” St-Pierre says of the decidedly post-punk inflected track, on which Bednis takes lead vocal. “That’s what was coming out at the time. But that was such a long time ago. That was six years ago! And just as you grow and change, you get better at writing, you get more mature. And I think for me anyways, this is the record where I really do feel like I have improved so much with songwriting and this is the statement of that, I guess. I’m a musician, I really feel it, it feels nice.”

“This album is almost like a fresh start in a way,” says Bangarth, who joined the band as Knows No Kindness was taking shape, bringing both classical training and years of studio drumming to provide the band’s heartbeat. “There’s still a lot of sonic similarities – Neil’s guitar tone is a defining characteristic of the band. It’s still there. But it does kind of feel almost like a fresh start in a way because there’s such a different take on things.”

“I feel like we never do songwriting the same way each time. We change our sound a lot… and that’s great cause it’s a growing process, you’re learning how to write, you’re learning how to put away things that don’t serve you anymore, and you’re picking up new things,” St-Pierre confirms. “This new record was just what was serving me at the time aesthetically. I was homesick a lot, thinking a lot about Massey, which was a town that my grandma grew up in; I spent a lot of time there as a child. And [my hometown] Sudbury as well. Those are just the things that organically came out. I think it made things a little bit more melancholy but in a really nice sort of way that we could still keep it very much Casper Skulls.”

“Tommy” was the song that kickstarted things, and it opens the album with resonant piano notes. St-Pierre and Bednis had noticed that a friendly man in their neighborhood was leaving items behind in the bus shelter for others to take. “They were things that were really useful, like bike helmets or jams, CDs, things to make people happy, and they would be gone by the end of the day,” St-Pierre recalls. She began to wonder about his interior life, about the unknowable realities of everyone we encounter. “I’ll never understand that part of me that is tied to you,” she sings as the band builds up a lush sonic palette.

“The second verse on ‘Tommy’ is my favorite thing on the whole album,” Bangarth says. “Just all of those layers and pieces together… I just really love it. It’s dense but everything has its place and I’m just really proud of how that turned out.”

Like her mysterious neighbor leaving useful items behind for others, St-Pierre leaves breadcrumbs across Knows No Kindness for listeners to follow. “Honestly it really did create these helping hands to like hold up my childhood and examine these things, and it started with ‘Tommy,'” she says. On “Thesis,” she pays tribute to an English teacher who encouraged her scattered prose – and kept St-Pierre writing. But it also acts as a blueprint for the rest of the record. “The first few lines of it literally talk about ‘Witness,’ the next few lines talk about ‘Knows No Kindness,’ the next few lines talk about ‘Stay the Same’ – it’s all in there,” St-Pierre points out. “The last lines are about me being who I am. I love winter; I think that it has something really beautiful in it and for me. It reminds me of my femininity, it’s what makes me feel good and creative.”

While St-Pierre cites “Ouija” as the best song she’s ever written, Bangarth points to “Rose of Jericho” as a personal favorite. It’s named for a type of tumbleweed that goes dormant and appears dead, but dramatically revives when in contact with water. “The way that song grows, it starts off completely different but it feels natural. I think that song is a good representation of where we are now, and remember, this is where we were.”

The personal touches extend to the album’s artwork too, which St-Pierre designed (she’s also a visual artist who has directed the bulk of the band’s visual aesthetic). The 1960 photograph depicts Massey, Ontario townsfolk (including St-Pierre’s grandmother, Velma) protesting the A.E.C.L in an attempt to stop the now-defunct nuclear waste company from creating a runoff where the Spanish and Sables Rivers meet, in an area known as The Mouth Park. They were successful in running the company out of town, and St-Pierre spent her childhood swimming in the park, referenced in an album track called, appropriately, “The Mouth,” which exhibits the quiet/loud dynamics that make Knows No Kindness such a revelation to listen to. “The Mouth” ranks among Mercy Works track “Colour of the Outside” as one of the band’s favorite to play live. “I love being able to do some loud things. I love to rock out. If we couldn’t do that live anymore, I’d be sad.” St-Pierre says. “I like being able to get really quiet and little and then get really loud. I think that there’s such a space for both.”

Though Casper Skulls had to take a break from touring amid the pandemic, they’d already been working out most of the songs on Knows No Kindness on stage. “It’s almost like the album was written in two phases,” explains Bangarth. “We got all the sounds written for being tour-ready first, and then just by touring them a ton, we got really comfortable on them. Then there was kind of this second process of arranging them for the album. By that point we’d already become super familiar with them, and had been tweaking them along the way anyway.” All but one of the recording sessions took place before lockdown in March of 2020; that last session got pushed back to July. Since then, they’ve been working on new stuff – and will likely go in a completely new direction once more.

“I don’t think one person has all the answers for songs – maybe some people do if they’re like, Bob Dylan. But I personally really love collaboration. I think it’s a really beautiful thing. It’s nice to bring people into the story, into the fold and just have these ideas bouncing around and these exciting moments. I live for that,” says St-Pierre. “I think our next record I just want to make some really nice striking songs and collaborations and let things kind of breathe a bit more, and just see how that works out.”

After making such a vulnerable record, St-Pierre definitely needs the emotional respite. Writing Knows No Kindness was, at times, “pretty unbearable,” she says. “We would jam and you would be able to tell I’d be kind of getting weird, crying, or something. But then eventually it started to be better. When you bring them to jam and start working on them, you start seeing these songs taking all these different shapes. It becomes this other thing and you can detach a little bit. Then when you start playing them live, you’re the one singing, it comes back again, but then when you do it over and over and over again for a tour, you’re like, okay I got this, I’m not gonna break.”

“But there are still moments,” she adds. “Say I’m playing live and it’s getting real emotional, we’re playing really well and I’m really feeling it, I’ll cry during a set. It’ll happen. And I’ll play it off a little, but you can hear the vulnerability in my voice or something, you can tell. People will come up to me after we play and be like, I don’t know what that song was about but it made me really reflect on something that happened to me. I’ve had a lot of those [comments], like this song made me think this, and thank you for that and that is a huge accomplishment. That’s why we do this.”

This is the very fiber of Knows No Kindness, and each song is constructed in service to building up those moments and memories. It’s the kind of album you can only write once, though; while there are glimmers of Casper Skulls’ noisy past, no song here feels interchangeable with any on their debut.

“I really enjoyed like honing in on all these things but they’re very much for this,” St-Pierre says. “There’s a time and a place for each record, I think, and this one is just, this is its time and place. I wouldn’t have put ‘Witness’ on Mercy Works and I might not put it on the next record. It exists in this universe that Knows No Kindness exists in.”

Follow Casper Skulls on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Deap Vally Invite Creative Collaborators Into Their Rock ‘N’ Roll Marriage

Photo Credit: Ericka Clevenger/Kelsey Hart

The musical marriage between Lindsey Troy and Julie Edward began a decade ago when they committed their respective rock ‘n’ roll talents to Deap Vally. Their long friendship and professional partnership has been creatively fertile in the last two years, culminating in the release of their third album, Marriage, released November 19 via Cooking Vinyl. It follows two EPs released earlier this year: in February, they dropped the Digital Dream EP and in June, American Cockroach.

Both the EPs and Marriage are the products of the “collaboration series” the duo began after releasing their second album Femejism in 2016, which was produced by Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs notoriety.

“After Femejism came out, we did quite a bit of touring in the US,” says Troy. “We were on the road a lot, and then, once we finally got time to do some more writing, we were trying to figure out how to shake up the writing process and make it exciting for us again, because we’d spent so much one-on-one time with each other.”

Reaching out to potential collaborators – something that happens often in EDM and hip-hop, but not so much in the rock ‘n’ roll world – proved to do just that. One of their first acts they got in touch with was The Flaming Lips, with some unexpected results.

“That ended up turning into a full record!” says Troy. “We released that first, but originally that was meant to be a song as part of our collaboration series.” The Deap Lips album, a scuzzy, hazy-glam, psyched-out antidote to the pandemic blues, whet their appetites for more creative partnerships. The possibilities open to them as they expanded beyond their two-piece lineup felt suddenly real and immediate, as evidenced by the bleepy, trippy, Wayne Coyne-flavoured track “The Pusher.”

“The beauty of collaborating is that you can always take something new away from witnessing and participating in someone else’s approach,” says Edwards. “Although we had many of our collaborations already in progress when we wrote with the Lips, it was inspiring to see their seamless blend of practical work ethic with spontaneous inspiration. Definitely recording at the Flaming Lips studio in Oklahoma was a true highlight so far.”

“So far” refers to the ten years since Edwards and Troy formed Deap Vally in 2011. When they met in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, Edwards had been a vocalist, drummer, and keyboardist for LA-band The Pity Party alongside Marc Smollin since 2005, which toured and released EPs until 2012. Meanwhile, San Diego-born singer-guitarist Troy had (child-prodigy style) teamed up with her sister Anna to form The Troys, recording their debut album for Elektra Records in 2002 but never releasing it (Lindsey was just 15 at the time, and Elektra closed shop soon afterwards). The sisters released their solo projects in 2006: Anna’s Ain’t No Man LP; Lindsey’s Bruises EP months later. Lindsey had been doing her own solo thing until meeting Edwards, in the last place you’d expect given their hard-hitting sound.

“Lindsey actually came into my shop, The Little Knittery, and I taught her how to crochet and knit, and that’s how we met,” says Edwards. “At this point, there’s pretty much no downtime to make stuff, but we used to knit compulsively on the road and sell our handknits at shows.”

They shared more in common than a love of crochet. The two women spoke the same language when it came to rock, bonding over a love of Led Zeppelin.

Their own raw, noodling, punk-garage-blues rock relies purely on guitar, drums and frank, feminist lyrics delivered in a full-throated holler. The duo signed to Island Records in 2012 on the strength of their first single, “Gonna Make My Own Money;” the raucous, frenetic drums teamed with fuzzy, savage guitar riffs and a Karen O-style guttural-yet-melodic moan was undeniably a anthemic feminist cry in the spirit of Bikini Kill, L7 and Babes In Toyland. It would appear on their 2013 EP Get Deap! alongside three additional tracks that Spin declared “a burst of self-reliant aggression.”

“It’s unapologetic, heavy and groovy,” the duo stated in their trailer for the EP, in which the furious, fabulous “End Of The World” soundtracks footage of Troy and Edwards looking suitably rock ‘n’ roll with their big hair, swigging hard liquor straight from the bottle and ferociously swinging their instruments about on stage. That was but a sampling of the 11-track debut to come: Sistrionix, recorded in LA with producer Lars Stalfors of The Mars Volta, dropped in June of that same year. With instant acclaim came festival spots at Latitude, Leeds and Reading Festivals in the UK, and tours with The Vaccines, Muse, Wolf Mother, Marilyn Manson and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The same album spawned one of my favourite Deap Valley bangers: “Baby I Call Hell,” a hot, hollering, anthemic rock beast in which Troy demands of her lover, “Are you gonna please me, like you swore you would, or is it just to tease me? Better treat this woman good!”

Femejism followed in 2016, and 2017 saw the duo touring with Blondie and Garbage on the Rage and Rapture Tour. But their marriage was feeling frayed at the edges and the creative spark had been dulled by domestic demands (both Troy and Edwards have very young children). The thrill of releasing music as Deap Lips only confirmed that collaborations seemed to reignite the muse, and Marriage showcases that renewed passion.

<a href="https://deapvally.bandcamp.com/album/marriage">Marriage by Deap Vally</a>

“High Horse” features KT Tunstall and Peaches. “She’s brilliant as fuck, bold, funny, and completely down to Earth,” says Edwards of Peaches. “She’s a blessing to humankind, truly.”

Eagles of Death Metal bassist Jennie Vee is a primal force on “I Like Crime.”

“A few years ago, we played a really great rock festival called Aftershock…one of the bands playing was Eagles of Death Metal,” recalls Troy. “I’m a huge fan of Eagles of Death Metal – they’re such a tasty, feel-good, unique, authentic rock ’n’ roll band. We were watching them side stage and Julie and I were like, ‘Holy crap! Who is this woman?’ We didn’t know they had a female bass player… she’s incredible, she had such good stage presence, she looked so cool. We were blown away.”

The mutual love affair resulted in studio time in LA, with “I Like Crime” completed in three days.

On “Look Away,” the dreamy, sadly romantic Warpaint vibe is unmistakable thanks to jennylee. It’s a bittersweet, ’80s-style ballad in which the refrain “This is heart, this is heart, this is heartache” smarts with the raw, hopeless lonely fog of a breakup.

“We booked a day at the Cave Studio in LA with engineer/producer Josiah Mazzaschi and we went in with jennylee, and basically the way we started writing together was just with spontaneous jamming in the live room that Josiah recorded,” recounts Edwards. “We jammed out a few different spontaneous ideas that were just springing up and then took a break to listen to what we came up with. Listening to jams can be painful and funny, and we embraced that. Then we picked which jam we all agreed was our favorite, and we started to build on that. We got most of the structure and ideas done in a day, and then did two more days to finish the song. It was really fun and easy. The whole point was not to overthink it and to surrender to the song that was forming, rather try to control the outcome.” Spontaneity and surrender: the perfect recipe for a rock ‘n’ roll marriage likely to go the distance another ten, if not twenty, years.

Follow Deap Vally on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Riki Turns Introspective on Sophomore Album Gold

Riki knew that she wanted to include a cover song on Gold, released on November 26 via Dais Records, and had been working with a couple different song possibilities when she settled on “Porque Te Vas,” the 1974 melancholy pop song from Spanish singer Jeanette. “When I was demoing it, it just felt right,” she says on a video call from her home in Los Angeles, adding that it was a song where she could inject something new into it while also conveying “the message of the song is in an honest way.”

“Porque Te Vas” is a song that’s been in Riki’s life for so long that she can’t recall when she first heard it. “It’s in my mom’s vernacular of songs that she would play, so I’ve known that song since I was a little kid,” she says. “My mom, when she would drive us— my brothers and sisters and I— around, we would listen to a lot of music in the car. Both of my parents were really into music, but that was a different vibe. It’s like everyone is having their introspective time, kind of quiet time, even as a kid, just listening.”

In her version of “Porque Te Vas,” with vocals that sound as if they are transmitting from the past, Riki captures that special connection people can have to songs first heard as children. “Songs like that, they become part of you in such a profound way, like DNA-level almost,” she says.

The cover also reflects the very slight shift in sound— and a big shift circumstances— between the release of Riki’s debut album and her sophomore effort. Her self-titled debut was released on Valentine’s Day of 2020, a few weeks before Los Angeles clubs, and nightlife throughout much of the world, shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “I had no idea what was in store, of course,” she says. Ultimately, the pandemic would impact the sound of her follow-up; the songs on Gold, from upbeat tunes like “Lo” and “Marigold” to slower numbers like “It’s No Secret” and “Florence and Selena,” are reflective of the period in which the album was made. Riki describes it as a “stay at home with your headphones and your stereo system” sort of record.

Running counter to that, Riki’s first album was steeped in pre-pandemic life. With nods to classic synthpop and Italo disco, it was music to make you move. “The first album was a bit of a dance, a club thing,” says Riki. “I think that’s where it would be best served, a club, and the second album is not at all that way.”

“When I was demoing these songs, there was an altered state of everything, everyone was in either solitude or a little pod of people that they were shut in with,” she says. “That was interesting for demos because there’s a lot of introspective energy there.”

When it came time to record the songs, Riki worked with producer Josh Eustis (Telefon Tel Aviv). “We have a huge overlap in our musical tastes,” she says, adding that this allowed them space for creative exploration. “It was really fun in that way. I’ve never had that experience before, so it was very exciting.”

Riki grew up in Portland, Oregon and began making music there, but pursued it more seriously after moving to Oakland. There, she played in a few bands, including Crimson Scarlet. “It was very fun and theatrical,” she says of the punk outfit.

After moving to Los Angeles seven years ago, Riki shifted her attention to her solo work. She says that the city has influenced her music in a few ways. “I have a little bit more of a routine here. I’m a little bit more secure and living a more adult kind of life. It’s less chaos, parties, let’s go wild,” she says. “I don’t go to as many shows as I used to before moving here, just because it’s a city that’s a little more expensive. I have to work, do all that, so a lot of my music listening has come more from getting recommendations from friends, not necessarily L.A.-based music.”

Since last summer, Riki has been able to perform again as well. “They’ve been, certainly, some of the best shows that I’ve ever played,” she says. “The energy of people coming out right now is all-in. It’s awesome.”

These gigs included her first solo show in New York, where she opened for Cold Cave at Webster Hall. “They have really wonderful people that listen to their music and are super supportive,” she says of Cold Cave. She also played her first ever shows in Florida, at Absolution Fest, and in Chicago, as part of Cold Waves Festival. “Those shows are three of my favorite shows that I’ve ever done,” she says.

Riki has also been gigging around L.A., with a stint opening for Cold Cave at The Wiltern, and sets at Los Angeles’ Cold Waves Festival in September. In 2022, she’ll be hitting the road for a U.S. tour with Choir Boy.

Follow Riki on Instagram for ongoing updates.

MUSIQUE BOUTIQUE: Abba, Joni Mitchell, Body Unltd

Welcome to Audiofemme’s monthly record review column, Musique Boutique, written by music journo vet Gillian G. Gaar. Every fourth Monday, Musique Boutique offers a cross-section of noteworthy reissues and new releases guaranteed to perk up your ears.

The songs of ABBA are like comfort food — and that’s meant as a compliment. On the one hand, you can say it’s safe and predictable. But on the other hand, it leaves you so happy and satisfied. That’s probably partially why ABBA’s return with a new album, Voyage (Capitol) — their first in 40 years — was greeted with such rapture; after the past two years of uncertainty and stress, anything delivering a dose of feel-good familiarity is most welcome.

ABBA never officially announced they were breaking up after the release of The Visitors in 1981, but as the years passed they gave no indication had any desire to release new music. What changed that was their involvement in a high-tech live show, opening next year, where they’ll be recreated as “Abbatars.” They so enjoyed recording new songs for the show it was easy to make the decision — why not release a whole album?

Voyage (Capitol) picks up where The Visitors left off, at least in sound. But it’s an older and wiser Agnetha Fältskog and Anna-Frid Lynstad singing the songs; a bit bruised by life perhaps, but with ABBA’s trademark optimism nonetheless intact. It’s something nicely summarized by the line “I’m not the one you knew/I’m now and then combined” (“Don’t Shut Me Down”). Or consider “Keep an Eye on Dan.” If this was ’70s ABBA, the title might make you think of a boyfriend with a wandering eye. But on Voyage, it turns out to be Fältskog’s instruction to her ex-husband as she drops their son off for the weekend.

In short, don’t expect the giddy spirits of “Bang-A-Boomerang” or “Take a Chance on Me.” This is a more reflective ABBA. The lush “I Still Have Faith in You” can be viewed as a song of two people overcoming adversity, or an assessment of ABBA’s own legacy. “Bumblebee” is a quietly restrained song about climate change. The Gaelic-flavored “When You Dance With Me” takes a relationship that failed to take off as a means of contemplating the passage of time.

The music (all songs written by the “Bs” in ABBA, Benny Anderson and Björn Ulvaeus) are as toe-tappingly catchy as ever. And if some think the sentiments get mushy at times (e.g. the Christmas song “Little Things”), the album closes with the yearning “Ode to Freedom,” a prayer of hope for the future. As ever, ABBA, thank you for the music.

Joni Mitchell Archives Vol. 2: The Reprise Years (1968-1971) (Rhino) takes a deep dive into Mitchell’s breakthrough period as a recording artist. The first volume in the Archives series covered the years 1963-1967, before Mitchell made her first record. The new set offers a look at the work that went into creating her first four albums: Song to a Seagull, Clouds, Ladies of the Canyon, and Blue.

Though a number of tracks are outtakes from studio sessions, most of the songs are drawn from other sources: home demos, radio sessions, and live performances. She’s heard putting together the track listing for Clouds at the New York City apartment of her friend Jane Lurie; “Instead of being such a personal album, this isn’t nearly as personal an album as the last one,” she observes, as she reminds herself to add “Both Sides Now” to the album.

While there are alternate versions of songs that were later released — such as a lovely version of “Ladies of the Canyon” with cellos — it’s especially interesting to hear the songs that might have been. Like poignant ballad “Jesus,” another demo recorded at Lurie’s apartment, Mitchell accompanying herself on piano. Or “Midnight Cowboy,” a melancholy portrait of the would-be hustler Joe Buck, written but not ultimately used for the film of the same name.

Among the live recordings is a March 19, 1968 performance at the Le Hibou Coffee House in Ottawa, Ontario recorded by an unlikely tape operator — Jimi Hendrix. A big fan of Mitchell, Hendrix had arrived at the club after his own gig in the city, bearing a reel-to-reel tape deck and asking if he could record her. She agreed. As a result, 53 years later we can delight in hearing Mitchell promoting her soon-to-be-released debut album, and the poetry of “Michael from Mountains,” “The Pirate of Penance,” and “Sisotowbell Lane.” Archives Vol. 2 is a fascinating look at a songwriter in the midst of her artistic development.

Genevieve (self-released) is the debut offering from self-described queer electro-noir twosome, Body Unltd (Irene Barber and Vox Mod). The six-track release has the clean, crisp sound of electronic devices pulsating like a metronome. But the warmth of the human voice tempers the chill, singing of desire, of the need to make a connection.

The songs evolved with Mod first creating the instrumentals, then sending them to Barber who added further music and lyrics. The words of “Coasts” touch on the isolation we’ve all felt during in recent times: “How was the long weekend?/Was it with friends, or you alone?/Is it okay I’m doing very well?” It’s not surprising that desire results from all that pent up emotion. “Where You Want to Go” is a seductive invitation to push past all your boundaries (“I give you all that I am/I got soft hands….”), but are you being taken for a trip or for a ride?

The vocals are beguiling, luring you in on “Pathways” and “Arrival.” There’s a sly humor at work too, on “Helluva Light,” an encounter with Lucifer’s daughter, who doesn’t seem that menacing; she’s just looking to have a good time. And ageless “Genevieve,” a shining star inviting you to join in the celebration and dancing until dawn.

<a href="https://bodyunltd.bandcamp.com/album/genevieve">Genevieve by Body Unltd</a>

Uffie Gets Weird on Remix of “Cool” Company Records Single

When it comes to songwriting, a lot has changed for Uffie since she unleashed her mid-‘00s club hit “Pop the Glock.”

Back then, the American-French singer-songwriter kept busy jaunting across Europe, where she typically played club nights, sometimes in a different country each night. “I started touring immediately after I released my first songs,” she recalls on a recent phone call from her home in Los Angeles. “We were literally making music to play for shows.” That meant working quickly to craft songs that would resonate with nightclub audiences.

These days, Uffie spends more time in the studio. “It’s much more concept-based,” she says of her current approach to songwriting. “What are you writing about? How does this hit you?”

In September, Uffie dropped her single “Cool” via Toro y Moi’s Company Records, where a melancholy intro snaps into a pogo beat augmented by vivid lyrics (“Mink when I’m cold/Kissing by the pool/Life’s a disco”) and a thick bassline.

The song was made prior to the pandemic during an in-person studio session. “I had never met either of the producers or writers in the room. It was our first time all meeting and I had some of the lyrics written out, but we formed it there,” she says. “It was one of those days where I feel like everything just lined up.”

Uffie says that lyrics and songwriting have always been her focus, but she’s becoming more interested in production as well. “It really lends itself to the songwriting in that it’s an extension of how you can control the emotion of what you want to portray,” she says. “That’s an evolving process for me right now.”

In fact, a new remix of “Cool,” released on November 16, was helmed by Uffie. “I thought it would be really fun to try remixing my own music,” she says. On the remix, Uffie teases the “Life’s a disco” line with a snippet of strings, but the track runs a different course as the tempo increases. It plays less like a dance track and more like blur of memories from wild night out.

“I had originally thought more about doing a club mix, but we just got weird with it,” she says. Uffie collaborated with pal Veronica Wyman (Veronica Jane of DAGR) under the name NeverHaveIEverFuckedABlonde on the remix. Uffie was featured on DAGR’s single “Fuck Knots,” earlier this year.

“Originally working on ‘Cool,’ it was such a cinematic, visual inspiration, especially through the video and pulling from those references,” she says. “We wanted to have this break in the middle that felt like that cinematic dream moment and then reverse the whole thing and have a tempo change and make it go in this whole other world.”

The remix came together quickly. “We started together and had to go to two separate sessions, so we reconnected on Zoom after and, I think, stayed up until 3 or 4 in the morning working on it,” says Uffie.

While Uffie spent much of the ‘00s touring, she took an extended break in the ‘10s. “I had been on tour since [I was] 16. I needed a moment to just be a human, mature, and exist,” she says. That break had an impact on her music as well.

“I think just maturing changed the content a lot, growing up a bit, but as well, as a mom, I’m not going to be doing club tours every day anymore,” says Uffie, who has two children. “[Touring] was very fun when I did it, but I don’t necessarily want to do now. I think all of that combined really changes where you want your music to live and exist.”

In recent years, she’s been spending her time co-writing for other artists in addition to working on her own material. “I only really write for artists where I really love what they do and feel a connection to it and I think that I can add to it. I don’t think it’s really worth it as a songwriter trying to squeeze into something that you don’t help elevate,” says Uffie.

“What I really love is that you can get outside of your own mind and, after touring for so long, when you’re writing, you kind of have a little voice in the back of your head that’s reminding you that you’re going to have to sing these words for years to come,” she continues. “You lose a little bit of that naivety and freedom. Stepping into someone else’s head, you just don’t have that. It’s getting to exist in somebody else’s world and interpret it.”

Songwriting with others, she says, has changed since the pandemic. “Before, I was doing sessions every day, whether it be for myself or for somebody else, five days a week,” Uffie explains. “But working on Zoom has really changed that pace and process. Instead of volume, it’s taking more time on things, being more selective. So some weeks, I’ll spend focusing on co-writing or doing writing camps for other people.”

While in-person writing sessions have been returning, Zoom sessions aren’t a thing of the past. “If you can’t dedicate a whole day, Zoom can be incredibly efficient, if you work well with people,” she says. “It takes out that time of banter and messing about, which is also, at the same time, one of my favorite things about the studio.”

She adds, “I definitely still do some Zooms and it can be convenient, but it is really nice to get back into the room and feeling the energy that you really can’t recreate over a screen.”

Follow Uffie on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Ellise Conjures Dark Pop Coven with Mothica and DeathbyRomy on Expanded Version of “Soul Sucker”

The concept of the “Power of Three” has existed in many religious beliefs, but it is, perhaps, its proximity to Pagan, occult, and Wiccan religions that has made it a trope within gothic-horror media since Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and more recently with cinematic hits such as Hocus Pocus, The Witches of Eastwick, Charmed, and Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. These unholy trinities have been a mainstay of the genre and persist as a symbol of female solidarity. Now, producer, musician, and lover of all things spooky Ellise taps into this theme for a new version of “Soul Sucker” featuring additional verses by fellow dark-pop artists Mothica and DeathbyRomy.

“Soul Sucker” first appeared on Ellise’s most recent album Letting the Wolf In, conceptually centered around retelling Grimm’s Fairy Tales and released just before Halloween. “Soul Sucker, Pt. 2” builds on the song’s themes of toxicity and self-destructive behavior. “It’s such a spin on what my songs are usually about, where the female is portrayed as this victim,” Ellise tells Audiofemme. “In ‘Soul Sucker,’ it’s completely the opposite…you are the soul sucker.”

While she’s always harbored a fascination with the fantastical and the so-called Halloween-pop it inspires, Ellise says, “I always want my music to be real and realistic. The reality is that we all have toxic tendencies. We are all imperfect and we’ve all hurt people just in the same way people have hurt us.” For Ellise, it’s the manner in which the sub-genre serves as the antithesis of the bubblegum aesthetic of pop. Since moving to Los Angeles from the Bay Area at the age of 17, she’s made it a tradition to release new music on or near Halloween, beginning with EPs Can You Keep A Secret? (2018) and Under My Bed (2019). Letting the Wolf In nips at the heels of her proper full-length debut from earlier this year, Chaotic; though Ellise has been prolific, there was something missing from “Soul Sucker.”

Originally produced by her brother LilSpirit, Chelsea Collins and Brandon Shoop, Ellise tweaked the vocal arrangements and production for “Soul Sucker, Pt. 2,” and wanted to activate the power of three in her own way. “I’ve never dropped a song with features on it. So I knew I really wanted to do that,” Ellise expands. “I just loved all the dynamics of that. I thought of Mothica because she has a very nice, powerful pop voice. Then I thought of Romy because I knew she would kill a sort of like, more minimal production section, and I’m really happy with how it came out.”

Mothica, who released her latest EP forever fifteen earlier this year, says she was drawn to the project because she was intrigued by Ellise’s work on Letting the Wolf In, and felt it mirrored her own. “All of us thematically cling to the darker imagery. I love her concept of turning fairytales into haunting dark pop, so when she reached out to have me on Soul Sucker Part 2, it was a no brainer to jump on it!” she says.

“I’ve admired Ellise and her project for a couple years now” DeathbyRomy adds. “I’m all for females supporting each other and bringing each other up. This industry can be extremely catty especially with women versus other women.” DeathbyRomy released her debut, Songs For My Funeral, earlier this year as well.

As with the first version of the song, “Soul Sucker, Pt. 2” immediately introduces Ellise’s clear, delicate vocals that bring to life a “beautiful vixen” with dark secrets. “Don’t get too lost in her arms/All she wants is a bite of your heart,” she warns before launching into a chorus where no one gets out alive. Sonically, the track sticks to the basics, keeping the verses bare of any overwhelming elements and allowing the listener to zero in on the singer’s haunting words.

Mothica and DeathbyRomy follow Ellise’s lead, painting practically tangible imagery in lyrics fleshed out with mainstay motifs such as the femme fatale, Satan worship, and mythological figures like Medusa. The trio play with these stereotypes to illustrate the ways in which women in horror and mythology have historically been dehumanized; their desire for obtaining power at any cost in turn makes them monstrous.

Mothica goes first, belting lines like “You drink it up but it’s dark magic/No room in her heart to be romantic/I don’t blame you, it’s hypnotic/Skeletons inside her closet.” In her considerably deeper register, DeathbyRomy narrates the demise of those who fail to recognize the warning signs: “Toxic lullaby/Kiss your comforts all good-bye/Turn you to stone with a look in her eye/But you love her all the same.”

When discussing the creative process with these three, the word seamless keeps coming up; it’s clear that this project wasn’t only a creative partnership but a collaboration between friends. Their ability to tap into each other’s psyche and create a similar tale whilst retaining their own sonic independence is testament to that.

“They really elevate and expand on the sound of it. Both of them really played off of the lyrics of what the song is already about, which is just like this dangerous… absolutely unbothered woman,” says Ellise. “Sonically, I think it added so much more like variation to the song. They both have incredible voices, but what’s awesome is that all three of us sound so different. You’re getting to hear all these different voices. It’s really cool to me. I’m very happy.”

DeathbyRomy agrees, saying, “Aesthetically we meld well… I think we all did our own thing, in our own way, and still maintained something very cohesive.”

“Soul Sucker, Pt. 2” offers yet another example of the power of female collaboration within an industry that continues to pit female performers against each other, while also adding dimension to the trope of the femme fatale as a complex, multi-layered being – one that resides within us all. As a cautionary tale, the song acts as a reminder not to let our toxic tendencies take hold, and instead reach out to those who will support and nourish us the way Mothica and DeathbyRomy have for Ellise.

Follow Ellise on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Scrappy Brooklyn DIY Synth Poppers Nation of Language Find Their Way Forward

The three members of acclaimed Brooklyn synth pop band Nation of Language were quite literally searching for a way forward after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic cut short what would have been their first major tour. After four years of scraping funds together to record one-off singles, they’d finally been able to release debut LP Introduction, Presence in May 2020; when songwriter/vocalist Ian Devaney and keyboardist Aidan Noel got married, they’d requested guests give them money for studio time in lieu of wedding gifts. But without a tour to promote the album, releasing it seemed like a lost cause – until Introduction, Presence gained unexpected traction and critical acclaim, selling out of three vinyl pressings.

Devaney, Noel, and bassist Michael Sue-Poi did what any scrappy DIY act would do in a similar situation – they decided to record a quick follow-up with Abe Seiferth (who’d worked on their debut) and Nick Millhiser (of Holy Ghost!). “There was so much uncertainty in not being able to tour that for a while we felt a bit lost while everything was locked down. Starting to write and record seemed like the only way to take a next step and get out from under the cloud that was so heavy over us,” says Devaney. Released November 5, A Way Forward takes its title from minimalist album track “Former Self,” in which Devaney sings, “”Away from you/I cover it well/But I may crumble/I can’t stop myself/A careful word/Something to guide my soul/A way forward.”

“Sonically speaking it felt like a good title because we were diving into a more expanded pool of influences,” he adds. “It felt right both in terms of life during the pandemic, and as a band finding new ways to expand what kind of sonic space we could occupy. There were so many directions that could be taken, but this felt like the right next step.”

<a href="https://nationoflanguage.bandcamp.com/album/a-way-forward">A Way Forward by Nation of Language</a>

Back in 2014, Devaney and Sue-Poi were at another crossroads; their Westfield, New Jersey-based pop rock group The Static Jacks had just broken up despite releasing two LPs and touring internationally. “The Brooklyn DIY scene is really what brought me out of just being a New Jersey musician in my early 20s and expanded the people and bands and venues I would come to know and love,” Devaney remembers. “It taught me the hard work it takes to try and stand out as a band and the fun you can have while you do that work. Quasi-legal venues like Shea Stadium were so important to my development and the friends I would make through the years.”

Devaney recognizes that NYC “looms large” on A Way Forward. “I still love the romance of New York, even as I contend with disillusionment with it on songs like ‘In Manhattan.’ It can really grind you down sometimes but that can also be a great source of inspiration, and I love the idea that our records might have some sense of place here,” he says.

Nation of Language deftly leverages the power of synth and new wave tropes, treading the line between contemporary indie rock and post-punk of the ’70s and ’80s. Anthemic while remaining authentic, A Way Forward juggles nostalgia and innovation meticulously, crafting contemporary modes of interacting with the new-wave icons of yore like Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk, and Cluster. They studied the Krautrock pioneers of the ’70s, bands whose electronic experimentations influenced new-wave bands of the following decade. “That helped us give the music some more room to breathe,” says Devaney.

One advantage of having that breathing room was the ability to revisit old ideas with a refreshed mindset. “There are elements of songs that go back a few years, and others that were written entirely during the pandemic. The act of curating from a large list of songs and making last minute changes is a really fun and challenging endeavor,” Devaney says. “I like to say that I’m writing every album at the same time in a way, so that as I write I’m never limited by what kind of record I’m supposed to be making.”

The band went into the studio with several songs in a more open-ended place so they could continue to elevate what they had already written. “A Word & A Wave” and “They’re Beckoning” both started as shorter demos, but “grew into so much more as we used the studio itself as an instrument, flipping switches and turning knobs” for each take, says Devaney. “The song you hear is essentially just one variation of the song, of which there were a few to choose from.”

With “This Fractured Mind,” the band was able to take small moments from a demo and build it out into something new in the studio. “I had written a lull into the song before the last chorus. Once in the studio, we filled it with more ambient sounds that we created from playing synths backwards through a tape machine, which gave the moment much more meaning and value to me,” says Devaney.

No matter how much experimentation goes into making an album, Devaney says he sees Nation of Language primarily as an indie rock project. “It’s a pretty broad umbrella, but I like the freedom it gives – it presents an exciting opportunity to draw from as many influences as I want,” he explains. “If I only thought of myself as a new-wave band I think I might feel more limited, whereas as an indie band I could make a shoegaze record, an acoustic record… the future feels wide open.”

This way of writing allows Devaney the freedom to explore, understanding that Nation of Language may not always have the same sound. “If I find I’m writing a song that’s all violins or something, I can finish it and set it aside as another direction to explore in the future, rather than stopping because I need to write more songs with synth arpeggios.”

This is perhaps where the band diverges from new-wave bands of days gone by. Traditional synth sounds may provide a spark, but eventually traverse a broader territory of sound – another way forward. “It’s really just chasing what I hear in my head – sometimes that may be referential in some way to a certain sound on a record I love, sometimes it might come from a place all it’s own,” Devaney says. “It’s also about leaving space to be surprised – part of what I love about not being some kind of synth master is the ways the machines can do unexpected things with the push of a button. Maybe you have some sound you think is cool, and suddenly it’s moving in a crazy rhythm and inspires a whole new song then and there.”

Balancing this point of entry while allowing oneself to be affected by the unexpected allows Nation of Language to write music that is both familiar and mercurial. Endeavoring into places unknown can snowball into new songs, new sounds, and new ways of expression, but as Devaney says, “In the end, the most important thing is to feel excited and moved by whatever is being made.”

Follow Nation of Language on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Sound Baths Helped Center Taleen Kali; Now She Pays It Forward With Free Songs For Meditation EP

Last April, as soon as Taleen Kali and her bandmate Miles Marsico were vaccinated, they headed to a warehouse in Glendale, California, just outside of Los Angeles, with a bass, a harmonium, some synths and singing bowls. Then they hooked up the bass and synths to “a mess of pedals” and recorded a sound bath. On November 5, the fruits of that session were released as a five-track EP, Songs for Meditation, for free, a gesture that Kali describes as a “gift to the universe during these wild times.”

Songs for Meditation is divided into five improvised compositions that take their titles from the components of narrative structures; it begins with “Prologue” and ends with “Denouement.” The EP is also structured similar to a traditional sound bath, although some of the techniques they use aren’t. “It’s a meditation record, a sound bath record, but sometimes it also sounds like a post-rock record or an ambient album,” Kali says on a recent phone call. It’s also a culmination of a rock musician’s journey into the healing power of sound baths.

<a href="https://taleenkali.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-meditation">Songs For Meditation by Taleen Kali</a>

Back in 2013, Kali, who plays multiple instruments including piano and guitar, had been experiencing tendonitis and was noticing the beginning of carpal tunnel syndrome. That’s when she headed to her first yoga class, which quickly became a passion. In a class she took early on, the teacher played a singing bowl; Kali was instantly intrigued. “It sounded holy. It sounded beautiful,” she recalls. Kali wanted to learn everything about singing bowls, so she trained to become a sound bath practitioner.

Singing bowls, particularly the crystal ones that Kali often plays, have some major differences from traditional rock instruments. “With rock and roll or punk, you can thrash. You can thrash on your guitar and it feels amazing. You can feedback. I feel like when I play traditional rock instruments, I can be really volatile with them and channel anger and channel all sorts of things that come up,” Kali explains. “However, with singing bowls, if I do that, I’m going to break the crystal bowl.”

In fact, Kali did have a crystal bowl once that broke when it fell, even though it was packed inside of a gig bag. The fragility of the instrument lends itself to a different type of playing style. “You really have to play the singing bowl with reverence and be very grounded while you play it, otherwise, you’re going to hurt the singing bowl or hurt yourself,” says Kali; it’s more like settling in to a balancing pose in yoga.

Still, there are elements of singing bowl techniques that Kali, who released the rock-oriented EP Soul Songs in 2018, has been able to transfer over to her work on guitar. “It was great practice for me for relearning to play guitar in a safer way in order to avoid injury,” says Kali. “The practice of playing the crystal singing bowl really has reeducated me in thinking, getting grounded, taking a few breaths before I play, so that I’m playing from a more centered place.”

A few nights before our interview, I sat in on a virtual sound bath where she played three crystal quartz composite bowls that were tuned to the notes D, F and A, respectively. “They make up a perfect triad, a perfect chord, a major chord,” she explains. The bowls were already tuned to those notes in order to achieve the harmonic sounds that they can produce.

In the sound bath, she encouraged viewers to set an intention and gave journal prompts. The latter activity, she says, is the result of the amount of people in the creative fields who attend the events. “They can be really creatively generative,” she says of sound baths. Something like a journal prompt can help direct that inspiration.

Kali has been creating sound baths for about three years now, but, for a while, she had put the practice aside due to touring. “My singing bowls were in the studio in the gig bags,” she says. “I didn’t have them out anymore.” That changed, though, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Kali brought her bowls home from the studio. “Within the first few weeks of the pandemic, I started doing these virtual sound baths because I needed them,” she says. “I needed to come down off of all the anxiety related to the start of the pandemic.”

She kept going with it, and has more recently started doing one-minute sound baths on Instagram, where she plays at times that are unannounced, although they typically come at the top of an hour. These mini sound baths are a response to the phenomenon of doomscrolling. “I also fell prey to so much doomscrolling and internet addiction, especially in the middle of the pandemic, when I couldn’t socialize normally,” Kali says, noting how she would end up spending time on social media networks even when she didn’t want to. “It started to not feel good. That’s how I knew that it was addictive.”

The Instagram pop ups are a way to offer some of her sound bath work for free, something Kali felt was important to do. “By playing the instruments, it’s actually helping me too,” she says. “It’s a fair exchange of energy. I’m not giving anything away. It’s helping me, it’s helping others, and that feels really good.”

Follow Taleen Kali on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

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