The making of Young Magic’s 2012 debut Melt was as international an affair as the band itself; Isaac Emmanuel was born in Australia, Melati Malay in Indonesia, and though the two met and started making music in Brooklyn, they’ve rarely been home for a breather since. May 6th marked the release of their sophomore record, Breathing Statues, on Carpark Records, and much like the album that came before, it was written and recorded all over the world – Morocco, France, the Czech Republic, Australia and Iceland to be specific. During a recent stop in NYC, Young Magic played an album release party at Manderley Bar in The McKittrick Hotel, the iconic location of long-running immersive Macbeth re-imagining Sleep No More. The setting was a fittingly opulent and evocative space in which to showcase Young Magic’s latest material, which is a good deal darker and far more sensual than their earlier work. The move has served them well, taking the shoegaze-infused dream-pop that characterized Melt and adorning it with a tribal flourish.
Young Magic’s core duo were joined onstage for a few numbers by a harp player, though she was admittedly difficult to hear in the mix, and also by their touring drummer, who punched up Emmanuel’s drum machine and synth rhythms. Malay manipulated her own vocals from a black box attached to her mic stand and let her voice dissolve in and out of the music. Clad as she was in a nearly-sheer, pearlescent tunic, she seemed both mystical and spectral, her stoic vocal delivery cementing this impression.
The release party was populated mostly with masked attendees spilling over from the evening’s final Sleep performance, so it’s unclear what they might have been expecting after disoriented explorations through the three-story warehouse. But aspects from Sleep spilled over, like remnants in a dream – a male dancer performed some breathtaking interpretive maneuvers to a few of the most provocative tracks, beginning with “Something in the Water.” Like most of Sleep No More‘s cast, he was incredibly lean, wearing only trousers made from the same cloth Malay dressed in, each muscular striation visible under the skin, his ribs on display for the counting, in every sense a living, breathing statue. For “Cobra,” his movements seemed to channel a Trans identity, figuratively acting out motions that felt like references to gender reassignment and other transformative processes. Though there was no costume change, as the number went on the subtle cues and movements seemed to grow more feminine, his gaze challenging the audience right along with Malay’s breathy words: I’ll ask you to believe it. His thoughtful performance elevated Young Magic’s songs, highlighting all of the intricacies and possible interpretations that the band have built into the new record. It’s a record that shows growth in the more atmospheric and intimate approaches it takes.
The album is available now digitally as well as from Carpark.
Juana Molina hails from Argentina, and, like the rich, full-bodied Malbecs her homeland is known for, Molina’s tunes sit robustly on any musical pallette. Molina is just as intoxicating, too, an experienced live performer with five records of material to cover, she managed to hit every sensitive nerve, like ripe fruit and tannins lingering on the roof of the mouth.
Molina sings mostly in Spanish, and admittedly, I understand only enough to order confidently (maybe impressively?) from a taco truck. But listening to Molina, little is lost in translation; her experimental, polyrhythmic vocal style doesn’t beg lyrics to be discernible and I suspect that even the fluent folks in the audience at Le Poisson Rouge were listening for the inventive vocal stylings, creative loops, and exuberant expression moreso than lyrics themselves. She acquiesced to the packed audience’s assumed language between songs, her stage banter spoken in warm, sparkling English stage banter with genuine sincerity and humor.
Beyond her impressive, hypnotic vocal stylings, her guitar work was simply breathtaking. Of course, she didn’t play just any guitar; that night, she was strumming a 1966 SG Special – an electric, classic style instrument. Though she vented to the crowd about how everyone has been bugging her to purchase a tuner, Molina’s layered tones rang golden, her old school flair updated within the modern movements.
Juana Molina’s performance was made extra special by how visual and fearlessly romantic it was. She sang graciously yet powerfully in her native tongue. “Eras” brought the crowd into her realm of energy through the velvety smoothness of her voice and melodic beat. As I stood there, I felt a sort of vibrational force wash over me, the rich, textured noises providing an expansive yet swaddling cocoon. No matter how varied these sounds were, they came together with a similar resilience. Her mesmerizing abilities did not stop there– in “Un Dia,” the title track from her 2008 release, she used a loop pedal to create that unique background for the song, layering keyboard atop masterfully. She was very in touch with the details – let it be said that Juana Molina does not mess around with the preciseness of her music. She knew that at one point, her guitar was having trouble tuning because of the air conditioning hitting the strings and delicate wood. Her songs are made more intimate and spiritual because of the relationship she displays with her instruments.
Molina is touring in support of Wed 21, released this past fall. Reaction from her fans? Well worth the five-year wait. Molina’s brilliant dynamism is sure to take audiences on a journey that will feel both spiritual and of this world.
Darkwave, coldwave, new wave, no wave, disco-punk, dance-punk, synthpunk, post-punk. As the music industry strives to coin new terms that will effectively pigeonhole each and every grouping of human beings making sounds with instruments, these vague definitions start to sound like some twisted Dr. Seuss book. Enter Post-Everything; it’s not a genre, but a cleverly-titled record by emerging Brooklyn duo Weeknight, aimed at obliterating the lazy classifications so often used to explain what we think we’re hearing.
It’s not that Weeknight don’t fit in to any of the above-named genres; in fact, they borrow heavily from more than a few. They don’t seem particularly concerned with crafting a wholly original sound, nor are they attempting to reinvent any wheels. In the two years they’ve been bouncing around the Brooklyn music scene, they’ve established something much more compelling. With Post-Everything, Weeknight have crafted something bigger than genre itself; they have curated an entire atmosphere. This is music that takes on a life, splashing through wet neon reflections in gutters or echoing through misty caves rimed in crystal formations. Ethereal synth washes, hollow drumbeats, and distant, hazy guitars unfold layer by layer, revealing the dual voices of Holly and Andy (who have withheld their last names, perhaps in keeping an air of the mysterious about them). The two share a beautifully removed method of delivery, almost always singing in breathy unison. Andy’s voice is not unlike the somehow spacious deadpan of The National’s Matt Berninger, while Holly’s laconic, whispered counterparts are a bit more feathery and harder to pin down. The lyrics read like a nihilistic but earnest love letter – tragically cursed scrawlings inspired by fatally unrequited adoration, less desperate but more impatient.
Those dark elements are conveyed as successfully live as they are on the record, which comes out March 4th via Hand-Drawn Dracula subsidiary Artificial Records. In support of its release, Weeknight are heading out on a two-month tour that kicked off last night at Mercury Lounge. Moments of fuzzy ecstasy, like their rendition of “Tonight”, were tempered with lush comedowns like “Whale”, each track perfectly articulated by deft synth patches and taut movements. The band’s sultry first single, “Dark Night”, offered just the right kind of slow build, bathing the rapt audience in a swirl of bleary reverb. Andy and Holly have toured tirelessly in the time that it’s taken them to piece together their brooding tunes – both headlining and supporting acts like Phantogram and Besnard Snakes – and in so doing have honed a perfect choreography, a seamless give-and-take.
The band’s moody aesthetic extended to the bill’s supporting acts; sets from BK dream-pop duo Courtship Ritual (who invited black-clad belly dancers to the stage), the slithering glitch of Certain Creatures, and carefully culled goth gems from DJ Mar Bar of Rituals NYC, all longtime friends and collaborators with like-minded sensibilities who helped Weeknight celebrate the past year’s successes and transport Mercury Lounge into another world. It happened to be the 20th anniversary of the East Village venue but the party was solidly for Weeknight. Post-Everything is poised not just to become one of the most talked about albums of the year, but also to redefine the way we talk about music in the first place.
Perhaps some of our older readers will remember the NES/arcade game classic Paperboy, in which you, as a blob of bike-riding pixels, are tasked with throwing papers at houses painted a certain color (denoting their subscription status) while avoiding rabid dog-shaped pixels and mini-tornados and dudes exercising in the middle of the sidewalk. If you manage to do this and successfully deliver newspapers to all the white houses, the red-painted non-subscribing houses change color and you have more subscribers in the next level. There’s almost nothing simple about this game; it has frustrated generations. That little ol’ lady waving her shoe came out of nowhere.
Teen Girl Scientist Monthly isn’t an actual print magazine, it’s a Bed-Stuy based six-piece that plays invigorating rock songs. They are the Paperboy of Brooklyn bands – hardworking, perfect aim, and maybe a little vandalism. They’ve built a tremendous fan base in the few short years they’ve been performing, in part because their songs are so vibrant and catchy its impossible not to tap a toe to them, and also because their live shows are more like spending time in an arcade than reading a stuffy research journal. The band released their excellent debut album Modern Dances last year after a successful indiegogo campaign. Many of their hilariously-described perks included songs written specifically for their supporters – enough that funding the first record made recording a 10-track follow-up a necessity.
And so we have We Run With Gangs, TeenGirlSciMo’s exuberant victory lap/thank you note. At the release party at Mercury Lounge last Monday, the band’s devout fans shimmied to the new songs as though a high score depended on it. Vocalists Morgan Lynch and Matt Berger bopped around the stage, humbly dedicating the set to everyone who had ever supported the band whenever they were able to catch a breath. Pete Scalzitti wielded the most serious key-tar I’ve ever seen on stage, while Daniel Muhlenberg pummeled his kit and Matt Gliva thumped out elastic basslines. Melissa Lusk’s bright keyboards and vocal harmonies were also a nice treat, as was her turn as lead vocalist on We Run With Gangs standout “These Days” (no, it’s not a Nico cover).
Fans of Teen Girl Scientist Monthly subscribe (see what I did there?) to a simple formula (the puns come so easy!): F + U + N. They have a great sense of humor, a winning catalogue, and energy to spare. Their relatively frequent live shows are highly recommended, and in the meantime, We Run With Gangs is available for free via TGSM’s bandcamp – you don’t even have to paint your house a different color to jump on the bandwagon.
Last year around this time everyone I knew was nervous about the world ending. At the very least, friends of mine made Mayan Apocalypse jokes until I wished the sky would just blow up already. But on the morning of December 21st, everything was the same as it had been the morning before. There were no explosions. There were no human sacrifices and no meteor and no floods and no getting sucked into a black hole. The world went on unchanged.
If you’re ever in the mood to fantasize about where humanity might be if gravity had reversed, causing catastrophic disasters, shortages of resources, and mass rioting, and you need some kind of soundtrack to compliment it, you could certainly do worse than TV Ghost or Holograms. Both bands played 285 Kent last Friday and the mood was calamitous to say the least.
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]Holograms prefer to play in the dark behind a veil of fog and wall of synths
Holograms hail from Stockholm, an area of the globe closely linked to black metal and kidnapping. In December they only get six hours of daylight. In terms of culture and architecture and progressive politics though, it’s probably far less bleak than living Lafayette, Indiana – the birthplace of TV Ghost, and of Axl Rose. Both bands released highly-regarded records this year – Holograms’ sophomore effort Forever is an unflagging deluge of melodic Scandinavian post-punk, and Disconnect promises to be the dark gem that will finally put enigmatic no-wavers TV Ghost on the map after two stellar but mostly underrated albums. They’re on tour together throughout December and one can only imagine the conversations they have (or don’t have in favor of morosely staring off into space), but if their albums are any indication then disillusionment, synths and slasher flicks are topics that probably come up frequently.
On stage it’s interesting to note the way each band’s approach to live performance skews Scandinavian vs. Midwestern. TV Ghost frontman Tim Gick swivels and stumbles like a drunken Frankenstein, climbing speakers one second and crawling through the crowd the next, black curls trembling on his forehead, his voice somewhere between haunted croon and hollow moan, Adam’s apple looking like it’s about to burst through the pale skin at his throat. He’s fascinating to watch, at once unabashed and seemingly wounded, his bandmates plugging away with intense focus, as if there is no maniac writhing between them and the audience.
Gick’s gothic antics come off distinctly American next to Holograms’ minimalist approach. The band was mostly obscured by fog machine and strobes (and by the synths that took front and center stage). But somewhere in the haze, past the tumultuous mosh pit, Andreas Lagerström’s monolithic howl rang out, ominous and urgent. It’s the constantly undulating synths that permeate each track and pierce the somber moodiness of the band’s shows. I saw Holograms last fall on the tour that famously broke them before sending them back to Europe destitute and both times I was astounded by the sheer energy Holograms project and inspire, regardless of the weightiness of their work. On their Facebook page, the band implores followers for floors to sleep on, on “Ättestupa” Lagerström wails “I’m so tired”. Maybe that’s true, but you also get the sense that Holograms are plodding ceaselessly onward toward some indefinable future, and will continue to do so until the fire so frequently mentioned on Forever consumes the Earth and each of its inhabitants.
When that day comes, lets hope our record players are still working.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
What started as a fundraiser for Philly’s very own High Line-esque project (known as The Rail Park and every bit as awesome) became something different entirely when Peter Bauer (The Walkmen’s organist and bass player) announced last week via a Washington Post interview that the band had absolutely no plans to make a new record, tour, or really be much of a band in the future at all.
“We really just have no idea,” Bauer said. “I don’t think any of us wanted to write another Walkmen record. Maybe that will change down the line, maybe it won’t, maybe we’ll play shows. I think it’s weird to make a hubbub about something if there’s nothing to really make a hubbub about.”
He went on to include sentiments that have been echoed by other members in the band – that because they’re not the “archetypal rock band where everyone lives in an apartment” but in reality have lived in different cities since the release of A Hundred Miles Off in 2006, getting together for a show is more like Thanksgiving or a bachelor party or a family reunion. In the fall they played a short stint in Europe, and the summer prior saw them added to several festival line-ups, including Brooklyn’s Northside. With each one-off they left behind wives and young children, saying goodbye to one family to be embraced by a family of a different sort in what must have been an exhausting cycle.
When the “indefinite hiatus” was announced, there were two shows left on The Walkmen’s calendar: one in D.C. at new venue Dock 5, and the gig at Philadelphia’s gorgeous Union Transfer. Up to the moment they took the stage, it remained a benefit show for Rail Park as scheduled, supported by a full roster of all-star acts.
Sharon Van Etten was joined by Adam Granduciel (of The War On Drugs), Mary Lattimore and Jeff Zeigler for a three-song harp-inclusive set comprised of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day”, Van Etten’s own “I’m Wrong”, and Big Star’s “Thirteen”. Philadelphia’s Birdie Busch and the Greatest Night gave an impassioned performance, Busch stating between songs that in all her dreams, a project like the Rail Park was the best thing she could imagine for Philly. Spank Rock’s similarly short but charismatic set blended into a rousing performance from Sun Ra Arkestra, led by Marshall Allen. The stage was filled with nearly twenty vibrant jazz musicians, clad in glittering garb, horns lifted to Saturn (the claimed birthplace of the group’s now deceased founder) in an incredible performance that fused free jazz, ragtime, and big band sounds. All this after a fully catered shmooze-fest where I binged on fancy cheese and pumpkin mousse.
The celebratory tone changed only slightly when The Walkmen took the stage for what would be the last time until who-knows-when. Members of Sun Ra Arkestra remained to provide brassy accompaniment for “Red Moon” and “Canadian Girl”. Ever the charismatic frontman, Hamilton Leithauser’s voice was in top form, his gangly form outfitted in a blazer and tie per usual. Matt Barrick’s indefatigable drums ricocheted throughout the venue, punctuating Paul Maroon’s confident guitar as well as Walter Martin and Bauer’s turns on bass and organ. They performed dutifully but never dispassionately. There was no question that as a whole, the group was leaving behind a legacy as one of indie rock’s most exciting and skilled syndicates.
In looking at a typical Walkmen setlist, there was nothing wholly out of place in the band’s chosen sequence of songs, which included material spanning the band’s fourteen-year run. But it was hard to escape the feeling that it was curated specifically for a farewell show, seeming at times like a mixtape you’d give to someone you were dumping. Cast in this last light, the latently wistful themes and lyrics about looking back stood out and took on a whole new tone. From the hopeful line “You will miss me when I’m gone / But the happy music will carry on” in “Canadian Girl” through the world-weary “All the years keep rolling / The decades flying by” in “On The Water” to the anthemic “And my heart’s in the strangest place / That’s how it started / And that’s how it ends” bellow of “In The New Year” the set could have been a manifesto as to why the band was choosing to leave its spotlight. And that was just in the first few songs. They spoke for themselves; when Leithauser mentioned the break-up early in the evening he was almost dismissive of the gravity of it, encouraging the audience to have a great time and celebrate along with them.
And The Walkmen did parlay a well-deserved celebratory attitude. The sardonic undercurrents, delivered as always with a trademark sneer, gave a sense simply that no one had wanted to overstay their popularity as a band. In The Washington Post, Bauer put it this way: “It’s been almost 14 years now. I think that’s enough, you know?” There hasn’t been a dramatic blow-up or falling out – it’s just that all five members of The Walkmen are ready to go their separate ways. No one is interested in becoming a band that tours for all of eternity, on into their older years. Instead, everyone is focused on solo projects. Leithauser has collaborated with members of Fleet Foxes and Vampire Weekend for an album slated for spring release. Bauer speaks emphatically about his upcoming solo record Liberation!, a psych-tinged project released under his full name that sees him not only playing guitar but actually singing. Martin is releasing an album of “cleverly done” children’s songs (Leithauser’s description), Maroon’s doing soundtracks for an unnamed documentary. And Barrick will likely go in a completely new direction, having shot beautiful photos of the band’s tours, street performers in New Orleans, and his family life among other subjects, now finally able to focus more acutely on that passion.
A victory lap was in order, and the last half of the set was just that. “We Can’t Be Beat” provided the build-up – Leithauser’s voice arced easily over the crowd on the line “It’s been soooooo loooooong but I made it through” before ending the set with what could arguably be considered their most triumphant swan song, “Heaven”. He literally lifted a fist into the air during bouyant cries of “Remember, remember!” and the rest of the song was just as sentimental: “Our children will always hear / Romantic tales of distant years / Our gilded age may come and go /
Our crooked dreams will always glow”. Those feeling particularly nostalgic need only watch the video for the track, which collages archival photos and footage from the band’s career.
Amid thunderous (and maybe even some tearful) applause, they returned to the stage for “138th Street”, a fitting ballad about growing up from Bows + Arrows, serving as further explanation to anyone still in need of a reason for the hiatus, or maybe a reminder that life unfolds no matter what antics you pull. The crazy things we do as kids recede into memory someday, not unlike that one time, in the spring of 2006, when I spent twelve hours wasted on the lawn of OSU’s campus during a little event my good friend Ahmed Gallab had organized (appropriately called Springfest). The Walkmen headlined that year, somewhere around the eleventh hour of my drunkenness. I think I was dancing on top of a speaker when a girl I didn’t know ran by, grabbing my arm.
“Hey,” she said, breathless. “Wanna dive off the stage with me?” Well, yeah. I did. So we ran backstage, and then onto it, past Barrick and Bauer and Leithauser and Martin and Maroon and leapt into the crowd. It went by in a blur. I don’t even remember what song they were playing – just that at the time, they were one of my favorite bands. On the walk to legendary Columbus divebar Larry’s (RIP to that place), I “knew everyone I saw” so to speak, and everyone had seen me do it, and we all had a pretty good laugh, right there in the streets.
Sometimes, I really am just happy I’m older. Seven years later, the twinkling, ramshackle piano line of “We’ve Been Had” stirred fans at Union Transfer. Leithauser introduced the song as the first the band had written, back in the day when the boys really were that archetypal band making a go of a music career by moving to New York, living together, running amok, not knowing where the road would lead. Everyone shouted those iconic lines along with Leithauser: “We’ve been had /I know it’s over / Somehow it got easy to laugh out loud”. The jangling melody stretched longer as Leithauser introduced his bandmates “for the last time in a long time”. Then he made the rounds down a runway set up for the fashion show that had been part of the Rail Park fundraiser, shaking the hands of fans who stood alongside it.
For years I’ve taken The Walkmen for granted, assuming they were a band that would be around forever. I basically “grew up” listening to them. Not in the way that you grow up dancing in your diapers to your parents’ Beatles records, to be sure. But these songs were with me throughout my twenties, as I made my way through college, out of Ohio, adrift in the wilds of Brooklyn, and into some semblance of adulthood. And Wednesday’s show was every bit the reminder of just how good a soundtrack The Walkmen made for anyone going through that process, because they were honest and true in their songwriting as they went though it themselves. As their narrative ends, the relevance of that contribution only skyrockets.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
Philadelphia native Kurt Vile(and his touring band, The Violators) drew in a large crowd for his Friday night show at Terminal 5. Vile plans to begin touring extensively across the US and Europe for the remainder of the year in support of his most recent album, Wakin on a Pretty Daze, released earlier this year through Matador Records. The bill also included Lee Ranaldo and The Dust–consisting of Sonic Youth’s guitar virtuoso, Lee Ranaldo and drummer Steve Shelley–and Brooklyn indie band Beach Fossils.
Vile, who has been a musician since the age of 14, has cited lo-fi legends like Pavement and Tom Petty as some of his major influences. Wakin on a Pretty Daze (Vile’s 5th studio album) has received much acclamation and has been referred to as his most musically solid work to date.
Beach Fossils took the stage first, opening with material off of Clash The Truth, including the dreamy, new-wave song “Generational Synthetic” Joy Division-like post-punk “Shallow,” and the lighter indie-pop melody entitled “Careless.”
Fellow Matador labelmates Lee Ranaldo and The Dust followed, bringing forth material from their most recent work, Between The Time and The Tides. Songs such as “Xtina as I Knew Her” and “Fire Island (phases)” exhibited Ranaldo’s desire to drift away from his signature experimental work in Sonic Youth, and instead hinted a number of 60’s rock influences, such as the Grateful Dead and the blues rock band, Hot Tuna.
The setlist for Kurt Vile and The Violators mostly included material from the Vile’s last three albums. The band started off with the 9 minute opener “Wakin on A Pretty Day,” Vile’s face buried underneath his infamous mangled, brown hair, muttering a quick ‘thank you’ before following with the drowsy tune “Jesus Fever” from 2011’s Smoke Ring for My Halo. Vile then resumed performing material off of Wakin on a Pretty Daze, such as the droning indie-psych single “Never Run Away,” as well as the Petty-esque “KV Crimes” and the bouncier “Was All Talk”, the background instrumentals slightly reminiscent of 80’s pop. Vile took a moment to perform a couple of acoustic songs–including the fan favorite “Peeping Tomboy”– while sitting on a tie-dye blanket draped couch near the corner of the stage. The lights throughout the venue dimmed, save for the spotlight focused on him. Vile resumed alongside The Violators after a couple of technical difficulties (“We’re sorry, this is a very blue-collar production we have here” he mumbled jokingly), playing a couple songs (“Hunchback,” “Freak Train”) off of Childish Prodigy, and was greeted with much enthusiasm.
Though some may argue that Wakin on a Pretty Daze greatly differs from Kurt Vile’s earlier material, there is no doubt that he and his now semi-permanent touring band have the potential to enrapture audiences through live performance. Kurt Vile and The Violators offer a truly innovative type of psychedelic, lo-fi that will keep ardent listeners talking for years to come.
“Our tours are cursed,” Radical Face frontman Ben Cooper explained from his position seated in a chair onstage. Elaborating, he detailed a series of misfortunes including surgery on his head and a recent chiropractor visit for his injured back as an apology for his seated state. This opening remark was an unfortunate foreshadowing for the rest of the concert.
Even before Cooper and the band took the stage, the atmosphere at Le Poisson Rogue was uneasy as the audience endured what at first was a promising opener in Johnny Rodgers, who uses reverberating glass recorded on a loop to enhance his songs. However, after the first track, the novelty and impressiveness of this skill wore off and exposed mediocre lyrics and strange, contorted facial expressions Rodgers displayed while performing. By the end of the gig, the buzz of the audience talking rather than listening was apparent.
Then it was Radical Face’s turn to save the show. Crew aided the band in setting up the stage, scattering tiny, electronic candles throughout the equipment and placing a chair directly behind the leading microphone. Unfortunately for Cooper, his injury made it more difficult to connect with the audience, as they could barely see him from his position so close to the ground. He did make an effort, however, to bridge the gap by engaging in conversation with attendees and explaining the meaning behind each song before performing it. On the opposite end, the audience responded in unfunny, unnecessary shouting matches, hopelessly trying to communicate with Cooper, forgetting that they were attending a concert and that dialogue between the artist and the crowd in a packed space is pretty much useless.
In accordance with the “tour curse,” Cooper snapped a string partway through the set and try-too-hard-overdressed-drummer whose name I can’t even remember was recruited to fix the broken string while Cooper covered Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Cooper explained the misfortune by stating, “Nothing we do is planned. We decided you pay money to watch us practice.” The self-deprecation was meant to be humanizing and funny but came off as unprofessional and juvenile. This coincided with occasional jokes about how depressing and dark each of the songs are and declaring all of their romantic relationships unsuccessful. The string replacement itself was an awkward moment that was next filled by the “former professional yo-yo-er” drummer’s yo-yo performance. Sadly, the tricks were the most impressive portion of the show.
The performance continued in the same shaky way it began, with the band not quite sounding like themselves. No one expects artists to sound the same live as they do on recorded albums, but they were so far off the mark it was depressing. Radical Face is by no means a barrier-breaking band, but the greatest strength they possess is that their songs sound so pretty. The live version just doesn’t transfer that sound. The littlest salvation came when the band united as one and jammed out on several tracks, with swooping guitar chords that — albeit simple, basic skills — were effective in rallying the crowd. Crowd-favorite tracks such as “Wrapped in Piano Strings” and “Always Gold” elicited joy and nostalgia from the crowd.
When it came time for Cooper to introduce the band’s most popular track, “Welcome Home,” he declared that he needed some assistance for the crowd to sing along to the chorus: on the recorded track, there are multiple voices present and on stage there is just Cooper’s. He informed the crowd that the drummer “is kind of a dick” and compares each city’s rendition of the song, that they should sing as loudly and as heartfelt as they could. This seemed to convince them to ban together, as many voices filled the small space when the chorus came around. However, not even the nostalgia for the hit and assistance from the crowd could save the performance.
Radical Face gave it their best effort, and they truly did try. Unfortunately, this time it just wasn’t enough.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
On Saturday night, half of New York City filed into Grand Prospect Hall for DFA Records’ twelve-year annivesary party, hosted by the aural, modern day equivalent of Jay Gatsby – Red Bull Music Academy, who have been throwing insanely well curated parties, shows and talks in far-flung venues all over the city over the past month or so. Tickets were hard to come by, released in bunches only to sell out immediately. So if you couldn’t get one, or if, say, you don’t prefer the glossy synths and throbbing beats of Yacht, James Murphy, or Planningtorock so much as you do Pharmakon’s heart-rending shrieks or Vår’s punishing electronic wave of noise, then you did what around a hundred or so people did instead and crammed yourself into pop-up DIY venue The Rink.
At the former (possibly current?) photo studio, there were no laser beams. Just a built-out loft with a sweep in one corner, covered in white plastic, Anthony Naples DJing remixes of the theme from Twin Peaks, a metal tub filled with water, and a pile of dirt. That was, until Pharmakon and Vår took the stage, together (billed cleverly as Vårmakon), just after 11PM. They wore matching white shirts and black pants that vaguely gave them the appearance of cater-waiters, but instead of rattling off the nightly specials with the skill of a Marlow & Sons pro, they hunched morbidly over a table of gear illuminated by red spotlights and took turns playing each others songs, each seamlessly blended into the next.
The event was hosted by Pitchfork and Sacred Bones Records, the latter of which just released Abandon (Pharmakon’s debut) and No One Dances Quite Like My Brothers (Vår’s first full-length). As such, it was meant to serve as a release party, but toward the end of the set it turned into something a little more like Spa Castle; each member of Vår doused themselves in water and rubbed dirt all over their clean white shirts, faces, arms, each other. When Margaret Chardiet finished performing “Crawling On Bruised Knees” (her quintessential set closer) she joined the boys in literally soiling themselves, then the group played one last song as a filthy whole.
I’ll admit that antics like this make my job as a music writer and observer of musical happenings way, way easier. It also makes Instagrammers blow up Twitter with pictures of Elias Rønnenfelt wearing a blindfold. And that’s probably the goal Pitchfork and Sacred Bones had in mind when staging the whole thing. It’s not that I wasn’t expecting something slightly controversial to occur during the performance after witnessing Vår’s onstage makeouts last summer. But honestly, it would have been better if Vår had just played their record, which is phenomenally beautiful and heavy but has these very strange, ultra-gorgeous pop inflections.
And Pharmakon? This woman does not need gimmicks. Her voice, and her vision as an artist, have made my pulse quicken every single time I’ve had the pleasure of catching her riveting performances. I liked the idea of the two entities collaborating, but I had imagined Chardiet’s signature shrieks over Vår’s dark, atmospheric washes, something new created by the act of playing collaboratively. I almost heard in my head her voice blending with Loke Rahbek’s, or with Rønnenfelt’s, or the three of them singing (or screaming, or whatever) together.
Instead, I was reminded of Johnny Ray Rucker III, a goofball kid I went to art school with. We referred to his girlfriend as Art Boobs because he hung all these naked pictures of her covered in fake blood up in the dorm hallway (it was with her consent; she was a bit unhinged as well). I know art school is a magnet for weirdos, but even among weirdos this kid stood out as weirder then the rest. Once, he announced a noise show he’d be performing by himself in the fluorescently-lit student center. During it, he screamed, he writhed around on the ground, he mauled a perfectly innocent sandwich, and doused himself in chocolate syrup. This is what Pitchfork has reduced Pharmakon and Vår to in my mind, and both are way, way better than that.
So what’s behind the shenanigans? Is social media to blame? Are record labels and blogs and booking agents so desperate to generate buzz that they’ll encourage bands to forgo any emphasis on their music and turn its live iteration into a circus? Should we veteran show-goers be glad that someone is giving us something to comment on, whether those comments are snarky or awed or some mix of both? It’s hard to know for sure, and that’s one of the reasons it’s a weird and wonderful time to be in thick of it. I might have found Vårmakon’s performance piece slightly trite, but I certainly enjoyed scrolling through my friends’ Vine feeds of the lasers over at Grand Prospect Hall.
The first twangy strains of Angel Olsen’s “Lonely Universe” drift over a packed crowd at Glasslands. The girl next to me goes breathless. She swoons, gasping this is my jam as though we’re teenagers and Rihanna just came on the radio, but Olsen’s measured, sorrow-tinged crooning is far from club jam, and the girl standing next to me is actually Sharon Van Etten.
This is how you know Angel Olsen is the next thing in indie folk – her biggest fans are the heaviest hitters in the same genre. Whether it’s Bonnie “Prince” Billy asking her to join up with his Cairo Gang or Marissa Nadler posting a lilting version of a Richard and Linda Thompson song the two covered together on soundcloud, Olsen is poised to follow the same trajectory.
The singer-songwriter honed her unique vocals by recording homemade tapes as a teenager in St. Louis before relocating to Chicago. It was there that she perfected her warbling, soulful wail, channeling something at once mournful and powerful. She released a six-song EP, Strange Cacti, on Bathetic in 2010, and it managed to grab the attention of the right people. Soon after, she was introduced to Will Oldham through Emmett Kelly, and her work with the pair taught her the joys of singing with a full band, learning harmonies and traditional folk songs while writing the material that would appear on last year’s stunning full-length debut, Half Way Home. Jagjaguwar is set to release her next offering, having signed her in April of this year, so at this point there’s pretty much nothing stopping Angel Olsen.
Whether her confidence is innate or bolstered by the reality of impending success, Olsen is far from a shrinking violet onstage. Lyrically, her songs are intimate and confessional, even seeming forlorn at times, but she infused them with an unflinching fierceness during her set at Glasslands last Sunday. Comprised mainly of familiar material, the live renditions were fleshed out by a full band that even included lush cello. It was a pleasant surprise to hear these usually sparse songs transformed, but the most poignant and heart-wrenching moments came during an encore in which she performed solo, calling on the same unabashed strength she’d displayed with four other musicians behind her. It was impossible to keep my eyes from welling up, and I imagine that this was the case for many other attendees.
Olsen might be billed as singer-songwriter but in a way she’s also a hypnotist, able to project a compelling electricity into a crowded room; the show that night was sold out but there were moments when I could have been the only person there. Part of that is in the revealing nature of the stories she is willing to sing, but there is also magic and seduction in the space she creates just by singing at all. With that voice, names from a telephone book might sound just as devastating. Instead, she casually delivers lines like “it’s known that the tiniest seed is both simple and wild” and it comes off simultaneously as winsome musing and a kind of warning; simple and wild are the perfect pair of words to describe Olsen herself. What comes next from her could be totally unexpected, but it is sure to possess all the timeless allure that’s captivated fans and her musical contemporaries alike.
After thoroughly enjoying last summer’s set at Webster Hall, I was pumped to see Liars not once but twice this past weekend. The first show was in the Met’s Temple of Dendur, which is about as epic as a setting gets. The band literally played amongst the ruins of the monument, built in 15 BC by Petronius, Roman governor of Egypt and relocated to the museum’s Sackler Wing in 1978 after being gifted to the United States to save it from flooding created by the Aswan Dam. The acoustics were either awesome or jarringly echoic depending on where you were standing, and where you were standing depended on gallery officials adhering to fire codes, but hey. The trippy projections flashing behind Angus Andrew and company were probably more than twenty feet wide and plenty enthralling if your vantage point was less-than ideal for watching the band.
The following night, Liars visited (le) poisson rouge for a show that by then was starting to seem like it had been cursed by King Tut himself. First, the venue changed from Brooklyn’s Masonic Temple for unspecified reasons. Scheduled openers Lower Dens dropped off the bill around the time the venue change was announced. Doldrums stepped up to occupy the opening spot but were foiled by the theft of Airick Woodhead’s laptop and passport, so the Toronto band never made it to Brooklyn, and Liars took the stage promptly at 8:30.
Both sets included songs from WIXIW, Liars most-recent (and most electronic) release. Considering that they’d already toured in support of the record, it was surprising they were doing these shows at all; as it turns out, the purpose of both was to debut all-new material. The new songs are, once again, heavy on the electronics and driven by pounding beats, but possess a darkness and urgency not unlike the mood of 2004’s witch-worshipping classic They Were Wrong, So We Drowned. The only actual foray into that material was during the encore at LPR, which ended with crowd pleaser “Broken Witch”. There were no encores at the Met so for those who, like myself, had attended both, it felt like a treat.
You can watch a video for “Who Is The Hunter” (from WIXIW) here. Below, check out video of a new song, which according to their somewhat cryptic handwritten setlist might be called something like “Can’t Hear”. It’s far more relaxed and sparse than some of the other new stuff they played, lest ye naysayers worry Liars are losing their edge. The fact that Angus Andrew is pushing forty at this point doesn’t seem to be slowing him down at all. They’ll be playing MoMA PS1’s Warm Up this season on August 31st.
Deerhunter released their fifth studio album, Monomania, and didn’t play an NYC show.
So Audiofemme went to Washington, DC.
Bradford Cox seems to me at times less like a human being and more like a mutable idea, an enigma, more persona than person. And after nearly ten years of Cox’s well-documented onstage antics and acerbic attitude I’m almost positive that’s the way he wants it. The music he’s made, both under his solo moniker Atlas Sound and with his band Deerhunter, has defied definition by drawing from many stylistic elements so as never be pinned to just one genre, but with newest effort Monomania (out May 7th on 4AD) Cox may be making an attempt to affix himself to a grittier, more garage-influenced sound.
This time around we see him ditching the dresses for a get-up one might find on a thrift store mannequin – ratty black wig and snow-leopard print polyester. He famously debuted this alter-ego (referring to the character a few times in the media as “Connie Lungpin”) during an unhinged performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, walking offstage at the end of the performance with his band still playing, his fingers bandaged and looking bloody (which was a supposed tribute to his father who’d had a woodworking accident a few days prior). The amount of buzz the performance generated is as good an indicator as any that Cox knows exactly what he’s doing.
There’s a specific segment of the population that can hear a phrase like “nocturnal garage” and go oooooooh! and with Deerhunter fans, the overlap is ridiculous. When the band’s website announced Monomania describing the material as such and casually hit other reference points like fog machines, leather, and neon, Cox’s single-minded obsession became our own. Recorded in NYC in January and February by Nicolas Vernhes, the material on Monomania is culled from a supposed caltalogue of over 600 songs which seems like a lot unless you’re familiar with the way Cox operates. Just before the record’s completion, the band saw the departure of bassist Josh Fauver, an event that almost shelved the whole project. Josh McKay stepped up to fill the position, and along with new guitarist Frankie Broyles, the newest incarnation of Deerhunter was born.
With it has come announcements to headline and curate ATP London, where Cox and co. will reportedly play three of their studio albums in entirety and Cox will also perform as Atlas Sound, meaning that Cox is going to be playing pretty much nonstop that entire weekend, and that it’s clear he thinks the only music worth hearing is his own. The band is also scheduled to play a slew of other festivals, from Austin’s Psychfest to Portugal’s Primavera to NYC’s Governer’s Ball, but no proper tour has yet been announced. I kept waiting for an announcement about some secret show in Brooklyn’s back alleys, but the closest they were coming was to Sixth & I in DC. And I had to know. Would Cox show up as Connie Lungpin? With or without fingers? And what would nocturnal garage sound like in a synagogue?
By the time the show rolled around I’d heard the album in its entirety and though it didn’t immediately blow me away, Deerhunter albums almost never do; something about them creeps up on me and then I realize it’s all I’ve been listening to. More than anything I wanted to hear the songs in a live setting, more raw and more raucous. The space was gorgeous and the sound super loud, the audience of around 200 seated in pews for the college-radio sponsored show. The first act, Mas Ysa, was a bedroom-producer type who sampled Counting Crows and worried he was going to cry – needless to say, a bit awkward. Jackson Scott performed in between – as a band, not as one person, although presumably one of the people in the band was the 20-year-old Asheville songwriter. While the group started off sounding a little too derivative of the headliners, by the end of the set they offered up uniquely textured shoegaze-tinged stoner jams. It had to have been one of their first shows and it’s got to be nerve-wracking to open for an act that so clearly falls in line with your influenced, but they managed to pull it together nicely.
Cox, replete in his Fallon get-up, apologized early in Deerhunter’s set for any incongruities, explaining that this was only the band’s second show (meaning with its new members, obviously). They opened with a droning jam that lead into “Cryptograms” which set the tone for the rest of the night; the majority of the set drew from Monomania, with a few tracks from Halcyon Digest, but everything seemed filtered through Cryptograms-era effects. Most tracks were lengthened by long, noisy solos and connected by interludes in the same vein. The sound cascaded in the dramatic, domed space, rumbling guitars causing old woods to vibrate. The audience didn’t move much, caught in the trance the band was bent on creating. And Cox was relatively tame, allowing Lockett Pundt to take lead vocals here and there, swinging his guitar haphazardly above his head only sparingly. They closed the set with “Monomania” and Cox abandoned the stage while his band played on, slinking down a hallway only to return for a blistering fifteen-minute-plus encore of “Lake Somerset”.
Noticebly absent was anything from Microcastle/Weird Era, but that doesn’t mean the show wasn’t satisfying. The live versions of the new material proved to have the flesh they’ve been accused of lacking, thanks mainly to the vitriolic snarl of Cox’s live vocals, so doused in reverb on the recording. Overall, Monomania has the messy feel of a careening drunk who passes out before anything catastrophic happens but in that way it’s also less exciting than you want it to be. As the band’s fifth album, it’s also a bit of a promise that Cox has made to the world – making music is not only the one thing on his mind, but that’s all that ever will be. No matter what bizarro personas he adopts or madcap stunts he pulls, no matter how he tries to obscure it with the act of performing the part of rock star, he will always be driven to create – nothing else really matters, regardless of who blogs about the charade surrounding it. The costumes, the masks, the droll, quotable witticisms he tacks to these projects are more a way to amuse himself, and he allows us to participate in that entertainment, questioning what it all means. But at the core, it’s the music which he’s obsessively written and recorded that will be his legacy. Bradford Cox does not care if you get the joke, no matter how much time you spend wondering if you’re in on it.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]If Scratch ‘N’ Sniff internet had already been invented, this would smell like weed.
Post college, I lived in a house with a couple of record nerds. You know the type – usually dudes who have more vinyl than a human being could possibly listen to and just leave everything sealed so it will be worth more money when they die alone in their basement apartments. I don’t really mean that to sound so scathing; I had (and still have) a great affection for folks whose obsessive collecting is based in music adoration and not just hoarding rare albums. Without “my” record geeks, I might never have discovered Comus, an anonymous 1970’s Satan-worshipping psych collective. The music was complex and arboreal but also sort of frightening. Mostly, I was enchanted by the idea of some cult running around in the forests of Great Britain (or haunting the moors or whatever they have there), jamming to their trippy tunes by day and sacrificing virgins by night.
I felt twinges of that same awe when I listened to World Music by Sweden’s Goat. Their multi-layerd fusion of psych, funk, and disco is energetic enough to pull anyone in, but the mythology surrounding the band is equally fascinating. They supposedly hail from Korpilombolo, a tiny village founded by a voodoo priest, where the residents have collectively composed songs and played music as Goat for generations. World Music is the first release by the current incarnation of this project, an appropriate title given its timeless and eclectic feel, where the only rule for embracing a particular style of playing is that it be ecstatic.
Videos of the band’s live performances do little to reveal their identity; the performers wear mardi-gras style masks and dashikis. Members of the band have suggested in interviews that all of this obfuscation is a way to help center focus on the music itself rather than the personalities behind it, though the irony here is that these antics tread on gimmicky territory. In the end, though, it doesn’t matter if the folklore is truth or make-believe or a little of both, because the songs stand up on their own just fine.
I was pretty excited to catch the act at Music Hall of Williamsburg; originally scheduled for Glasslands but moved to accommodate a larger crowd, the event promised to be at least mildly spectacular – it was the band’s North American debut, after all. Two guitar players, a bass player, and two percussionists took the stage in outfits ranging from “creepy vintage clown marionette” to “gold-lamé clad fencing champion”. At first, the vibe was actually pretty stoic, leaving me to wonder if the performance was going to amount to that of the animatronic characters at Chuck E. Cheese. But that vibe went from zero to sixty the second Goat’s two female vocalists came on stage, gyrating, hopping, twirling, shaking tambourines and bells, chanting, and otherwise becoming the life of the bizarre psych Cirque du Soliel I was now witness to. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from years of going to psych and noise shows, it’s that no matter how long the recorded version of a song is already, it can always be longer, and Goat took the opportunity to extend the relatively succinct tracks on World Music into longform improvisations without alienating even one member of the audience or allowing for any stale moments.
The thing is, the band kept it fun. What could have been somewhat spooky or pretentious basically felt like a happy-go-lucky hallucinogen tasting. It’s true that Goat sings about worshipping a “Goatlord” but it’s also true that Goat sings about worshipping disco, and everything else is a permutation of one or both of those concepts. In the end, the show was a party, not a seance, and those watching were primed to celebrate. During “Let It Bleed” the band was joined by a sax-playing guest in a white robe and from the level of cheers it elicited you’d think Jon Hamm was under the mask or something (maybe he was, there was really no way to know).
It’s also hard to know if Goat will have the same cult following that bands like Comus inspired; because of the internet everything these days is a little too accessible, but then again it’s way easier to disseminate legend if that’s your marketing plan. Would revealing the identity of the musicians in Goat ruin the novelty inherent in their current buzz? Probably. But even if it put a dent in the build-up, there’d be plenty left over for fans of psych to enjoy. The kitsch factor barely factors in when you consider the talent and enthusiasm that truly makes Goat an interesting act to follow. I bought my copy of the LP like any good record nerd would.
The whirlwind is over for another year. South by Southwest, Austin’s prolific music festival, drew to a close this past weekend after an onslaught of performances by close to a thousand acts from all over the globe. AudioFemme was on-hand to witness the spectacle and to attempt to cover as many of these performances as is humanly possible. For us, SXSW represents a chance to catch bands on the rise, to see what they bring to an audience in a live setting, and to chat with them as well as with others in the industry. For those who live, breathe, and love music, there’s nowhere else to be come mid-March.
But when Zachary Cole Smith, lead singer of Brooklyn band DIIV, drafted a disgruntled tumblr post early in the week about corporate greed running rampant at SXSW, I couldn’t simply dismiss it with a roll of the eyes. SXSW is a thing that exists largely due to corporate sponsorship, as is made evident by the towering Doritos advertisements, free booze, and brand names attached to most any showcase. These are all brands that are geared toward a young, music-loving demographic, from Doc Martens to Dolce Vita, from Spotify to Hipstamatic, from Taco Bell to Tito’s Vodka. There’s no better place to sell wares to a generation that can’t focus on anything for longer than five minutes than to drop a banner behind a stage where Macklemore and Ryan Lewis are jumping around. And there’s no better way to keep the ads coming, straight to the email inboxes of that hip demographic, than to make everyone RSVP to corporate-sponsored events.
So when Smith denounced SXSW as a “glorified corporate networking party” he wasn’t incorrect. Diiv has never been afraid of name-dropping, dating models, or posing for fashion photographers, and later admitted to having a blast at SXSW despite the cynical outburst. Though the post made some waves, there wasn’t a single person who disagreed wholly with the statements therein; if anything, a resounding “DUH” was heard throughout the festival. And we partied anyway.
Avoiding the corporate goons, as it turns out, isn’t all that hard. We recommend taking off the badge and trekking (or pedi-cabbing) over to Austin’s Eastside, where entrance to free shows – night and day – don’t require so much as proof of drinking age. There, the quality of local artisan food trucks is leagues above lukewarm free tacos, and girls sell vintage clothes to help save their dying pit bulls. It was home to some of the most inspiring performances I had the pleasure of seeing at SXSW this year, including a rambunctious 45-minute set from Thee Oh Sees, Impose Magazine’s expertly curated showcases, and several raucous Burger Records’ shindigs to name a few.
Burger Records represents a paradigm in stark contrast to Smith’s blithe assertion that “music comes last” at SXSW. Label founders Sean Bohrman and Lee Rickard have spent the last six years putting out limited run cassettes and vinyl to an adoring audience, breaking artists like King Tuff and Ty Segall. If you want to know what’s next in terms of noise punk or kitschy garage or lo-fi pop, you could do much worse than to spend a few hours perusing Burger’s catalogue. At SXSW, Bohrman and Rickard made it extra easy, throwing two large showcases and several satellite parties (including one at Trailer Space Records that had to be shut down by the fire department), giving the sunburned masses at SXSW a rare opportunity to absorb as much Burger in one sitting as their damaged ear drums and short attention spans could allow. Frenzied sets by Audacity, Nobunny, Lovely Bad Things, Useless Eaters and Gap Dream – among many, many others – proved that there’s a lot of diversity and innovation within Burger’s staple sounds, and much to get excited about.
[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”2420″]Lovely Bad Things
If there’s anyone more genuinely stoked about repping their local scene than Californians it’s probably Canadians. I finally got to see Young Galaxy perform during Pop Montreal’s day party at The Liberty and my high expectations were met in every way. This is a band who make songs about loving music wholeheartedly; on the b-side for the lead single from Young Galaxy’s newest album, Ultramarine (out April 23rd on Paper Bag Records) lead vocalist Catherine McCandless sings “I wouldn’t mind dying at all / If it weren’t for the songs I’d miss”. Though they didn’t play it during the six song set at The Liberty, they closed out with newest single “New Summer”, an anthem to warm-weather flings and driving in cars with the “windows down and the stereo loud”. Most poignant of all was the band’s affirming rendition of “Pretty Boy” (also on the forthcoming record). Maybe it’s the fact that the band’s drummer is out as a lesbian, that I have friends struggling with gender identity, or the current political climate toward trans and gender queer folks, but it felt huge to hear McCandless singing “I felt your pain when you changed your name / We were each other’s only family” and then follow that up with “I know you feel isolated / and I hear what you won’t say / Who cares if they disbelieve us, don’t understand / You’re my pretty boy, always”. That’s some pretty heavy shit to mask with upbeat synths and pop rhythms, but that’s Young Galaxy’s bread and butter. Tackling those epic sorts of feelings and making people dance to it is what they do best. And after playing six shows in four days, those emotions still felt authentic.
Playing zillions of shows in one week has got to be taxing, which probably contributes to the jaded attitudes that some bands have in their approach to SXSW, but there are just as many artists who embrace it. Captured Tracks wunderkind Mac DeMarco (also from Canada, go figure) claims to have played seventeen shows over the course of the week and that probably wasn’t an exaggeration; his name popped up on more bills than any other. I caught his last set on Saturday night at The Parish, where he started the evening by watching labelmates Naomi Punk from the side of the stage. He mentioned several times that he was getting sick, but that didn’t stop him from delivering an energetic performance. While he wasn’t swinging from the rafters as he had literally done at some shows a few days prior and didn’t put up much of a fight when then sound guy told him he was out of time, he retained the air of bratty whimsy for which he’s known as he mashed up favorites “Freaking Out The Neighborhood” “My Kind Of Woman” and “Rock and Roll Night Club” with the Beatles’ “Blackbird” and Rammstein’s “Du Hast” (no, really).
[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”2416″]Mac DeMarco “Du Hast/Freaking Out The Neighborhood”
Zac Pennington from Parenthetical Girls is yet another performer who proves that attitude and persona are everything. Before his band’s set, he got into a bitchy spat with Valhalla’s sound man. During the set, he paraded around an audience mostly filled with bros in attendance to see Maserati, draping himself over staircases and belting it out from the top of the circular bar like a cabaret version of Coyote Ugly. Similar bravado appeared elsewhere as well – Mykki Blanco’s ferocious party jams transformed the mermaid grotto behind Easy Tiger into vogue-fest, followed by Angel Haze’s provocative mile-a-minute raps. During “New York” Angel Haze descended from the stage, moving through an awed audience, and danced with yours truly while Edinburgh-based rappers Young Fathers looked on. Young Fathers brought slick production, badass style, and sick dance moves to their SXSW performances, and was the one act that hands-down truly blew me away this year when I saw them Tuesday night at The North Door (look for an interview on AudioFemme soon).
Not that there wasn’t plenty to be blown away by. Waiting in line to see Phosphorescent, Metz and Youth Lagoon at Red-Eyed Fly, I ran into Ahmed Gallab, better known these days as Sinkane. Ahmed and I go way back, having known each other from our years in Ohio where we met over a decade ago. I’ve seen every band he’s ever played in, from the Unwound-esque Sweetheart to Pompeii This Morning (in which he played bedroom-produced dream pop before that was even a thing) and then, after he was asked to stand in for Caribou’s drummer through two tours, in Of Montreal and Yeasayer. His Sinkane project is different in that it is wholly his endeavor, and his personal signature is always apparent. He uniquely marries funk and psychedelica and Afrobeat and through consistently stellar live performances is finally starting to get the attention he deserves – even, it seems, from R&B megastar Usher. Usher invited Ahmed on stage and performed Sinkane’s “Runnin'” to a packed Fader Fort, with Afghan Whigs as the backing band. Watching this from backstage was one of my favorite moments of SXSW, not just because Ahmed got to play with such heavyweights but because they were singing his song. And it could only have happened at SXSW, in part because of the corporate sponsorship Diiv railed against. The fact of the matter is that bigwigs bring in big acts, allowing smaller bands who are trying to make it big the opportunity to meet those that inspired them and, dare I say it, connect, network, and collaborate.
That goes, too, for folks like myself who might easily be lumped into the “industry vampire” designation Zachary Cole Smith’s tumblr post pointed out. Not only do I get to spend a week basking in the sun (or, you know, burning to a crisp) and drinking free bourbon that tastes like maple-syrup infused cake frosting, it’s an opportunity for me to meet other people who actually really do care about music, to trade notes, recommend bands, invade pedestrian bridges at 2am because Merchandise is playing a show on one. Sure, it’s disappointing when bands have technical difficulties due to the strain of quick set-ups or shortened sets thanks to lightning-fast turn over, but just as often it’s inspiring to see a band make it work despite those constraints. It’s also exhilarating to walk down a bustling street and actually hear music coming out of every bar, flowing together, washing over the crowd. With any huge event like this, there are bound to be positives and negatives. It would be nice if all this was just a random grouping of DIY efforts and corporations didn’t have any hand in it, but that’s not the case. Even so, it manages to fulfill many of my music-loving fantasies, and that’s what keeps me going back over and over again.
[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”2421″]SXSW Vine Compilation. In order of appearance: Avan Lava, Young Fathers, Nicholas Jaar, Radiation City, The Coathangers, Colleen Green, Psychic Twin, Parenthetical Girls, The Soft Moon, Marnie Stern, Palma Violets, Destruction Unit, a breif tour of 6th St., Bleeding Rainbow, Thee Oh Sees, Mykki Blanco, Angel Haze, Bridge Party feat. Merchandise/Parquet Courts, Metz, T.I. / Pharrell / B.O.B. etc., Sinkane / Usher / Afghan Whigs, Usher encore, Young Galaxy, Sam Flax, Lovely Bad Things, Audacity, Nobunny, Chris Cohen, Mac DeMarco, Conner Youngblood, Brooke Candy, and a night ride in a pedi-cab.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
Imagine being an unassuming electropop band from Scotland. You get together with your mates and nonchalantly make a few tracks, posting them on soundcloud because it seems to go well. But then the Guardian notices. BBC notices. Pitchfork notices. Sirius XMU starts playing your songs, to your delight and surprise. On the strength of that, you book your first brief US tour, playing a handful of shows in Austin, which SXSW-goers rave about, and then head for New York to play a show that sold out so quickly more were immediately booked. Those shows also sell out, almost instantly. You make radio appearances. You’re featured on every other music blog or blogging outlet. Your first EP has yet to see release but Glassnote can barely put it out fast enough and the truth is, you have a whole album’s worth of smash-hit material for which your newfound fans are absolutely rabid.
All of this is not so hard to imagine for Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook, and Martin Doherty of Chvrches. The band has done everything right, remaining humble in interviews and onstage when it would be easy to gloat about their “overnight” success. The reality is that each musician has put in considerable time playing with other bands (the most successful of which being Doherty’s stint as touring keyboardist with The Twilight Sad), and although Chvrches as a project hasn’t been that long in the making, they’ve tapped into something worthy of all the buzz. Most importantly, they’re not shy about working hard, willing to headline twice a night at Mercury Lounge and then play a show at 285 Kent the next day. Rather than complain, they seem grateful for the opportunity, incredulous that anyone has noticed let alone given a damn.
But take a listen to “Lies” or “The Mother We Share” or newest cut “Recover” and it’s easy to hear why everyone’s losing it over Chvrches: glossy production, shimmering synths, dance-ready beats with sometimes whimsical flourishes, and aggressively sweet vocals that bounce along casually but deliver more weighty lyrical content than such glistening pop usually provides. Oftentimes, those lyrics focus on the emotional rift between two people and the sadness therein, but there’s always a suggestion of hope that things can be repaired. Bright percussion, playful loops, and keys alternating between airy and surging only help to emphasize that mission statement.
In a live setting, these elements are amplified tenfold, and the band as a whole has charisma that somehow manages to go beyond Mayberry’s apt persona as front woman. She is tiny and adorable and chicly stylish – sometimes wearing extravagant makeup but otherwise keeping it simple – but it seems dismissive to admit these things when you consider that she’s a brilliant pop songwriter, has a law degree and a master in journalism, and helps run the feminist collective TYCI. At the late Mercury Lounge show, she sipped tea and invited the audience to pretend it was a “huge beer” and in the next breath voiced concern that someone might put something in it, with the ominous warning “roofies are real”. She also expressed disgust over Michelle Shocked’s recent gay-bashing outburst, and befuddlement as to why there is peanut butter in everything the band has eaten stateside. Her intelligence and wit, and how those threads appear in Chvrches’ songs are what make her truly captivating.
At the same time, Cook and Doherty demand equal focus, providing back-up vocals on several tracks. Cook shifts impressively between guitar-weilding and manning the fortress of synths that surround him, while Doherty lays down drum-machine beats that he himself can’t help but dance to. During the band’s second-to-last song, an unreleased track called “Tide”, Doherty and Mayberry switched rolls, Doherty taking front-and-center with his own yearning vocals. It was a nice shift that left me longing for the band to do a track where the two alternate from verse-to-verse. There are just so many places for this band to take their sound, all of them promising, that it’s impossible not to be excited by the prospect of a proper LP.
Chvrches haven’t been around long but their set proves they’re more than ready for a full-length release. They covered Prince during the encore but the rest of the set was heavy with original pop masterpieces, any glittering gem of which could be single material. I particularly liked “If We Sink”, the refrain promising “I’ll be on your side ’til you die / I’ll be on your side for all time”, the rhythms kinetic and the energy reminiscent of M83 (and yes, of The Knife’s early work, oft cited in direct comparison).
Immediately after the show ended, I wanted more. I wanted to put on headphones and spend my train ride home listening again and again to songs that haven’t yet seen the light of day (unless you count the outside stages of SXSW, but I’m not speaking so literally here). I saw my whole summer unfold and in it, I was dancing to Chvrches, unable to get enough. If the sold-out crowds and legions of fans waiting patiently for Chvrches to make their next move are an indication, Chvrches will humbly provide for our cravings and I won’t be dancing alone.
There isn’t really a noise, audible to human ears or otherwise, safe from the all-absorbing sonic stylings of experimental electronic duo Matmos, whose ninth studio LP The Marriage of True Minds is out on Thrill Jockey later this month. On Monday M.C. Schmidt and Daniel Drew dropped into (le) poisson rouge, offering a rather psychedelic testament to their inquisitive and avant-garde creative approach.
It’s hard to define the kind of person who’d be fascinated enough by these processes (not the mention the songs produced by them) to attend their live recreation, though to say fans of Matmos tend to be sort of geeky is probably an obvious start. I never know what to expect in terms of set-up at LPR; the versatile venue sometimes offers seating, sometimes standing only, and the stage migrates throughout the club (my personal favorite set-up being in-the-round). When I bought a ticket at the door seating was offered so I took it, figuring I’d be better able to focus if I wasn’t relegated to a table-less corner where I’d be subject to constant jostling.
Focus proved to be the best asset in truly appreciating the performances that evening, kicked off by Dana Wachs (who performs under the moniker Vorhees). Wachs has been recording as Vorhees since 2005, but her live performances tend to be attached to projects other than her own – she’s soundtracked everything from short films to dance performances at PS122 to fashion shows for Rachel Comey, Imitation of Christ, Y & Kei, Wink, Sebastian Pons and Jess Holzworth. It’s worth mentioning that her resume includes production work for Cat Power, M.I.A. and St. Vincent (among others), though in a way it’s misleading to group her with those artists. The vision she seeks with her explorations in Vorhees is totally separate – a turbulent study in soft electronic loops, her hushed sing-song layered with washes of white noise, droning guitar and loops she creates in front of the audience, rather than relying on a laptop filled with pre-recorded beats. The result is towering but overtakes the listener in subtle builds. As the lone performer on stage, Wachs is a stark but mesmerizing character, releasing bursts of sonance in controlled fashion, giving each element of the track its own time to resonate before adding another airy strata.
Horse Lords approach from almost the opposite angle, attacking the senses with an onslaught of dense guitar work and pounding polyrhythms delivered by not one but two live drummers, all members of the band performing with scientific focus. That intensity revealed much about the intention behind their work in terms of both composing songs and performing them live; their material hinges on intonation tuning, in which note frequencies relate to mathematical ratios. Even if that concept is a bit over the heads of most casual listeners (mine included) the essence of what it accomplishes is readily apparent. Lead guitarist Owen Gardner actually had to add and painstakingly reposition his frets to accommodate the precise tunings, and the resulting uniqueness of the guitar sound is easy enough to perceive even without calculating algebraic equations. Their work draws on disparate influences, incorporating brass instruments and computers alike. For all of the headiness, though, Horse Lords do not fail to offer something that seems vital rather than removed from itself. If the music itself did not feel so immediate, it would be in danger of becoming obscured by its own elaborate nature. That’s where Horse Lords really get it right – by keeping the music lively they’re free to explore, to take their most intricate concepts to their fullest expression, without losing accessibility.
It’s pretty obvious why a duo like Matmos would be interested in taking Horse Lords under their avant-garde wings (in fact, Horse Lords will continue to open with the band as they embark on a US tour, and Gardner makes a guest appearance on the new record); one can just imagine the hours of music nerd shoptalk going on without end. One can also imagine the collaborative thoughts flying, oddball concepts for albums of the future taking shape, philosophies being debated and debunked, weird noises coming from nowhere or everywhere. It’s easy to imagine because everything Matmos does is based on divine collaboration – with each other, with other musicians, and with objects in the surrounding world. Sometimes that takes the shape of recording an album composed of sounds culled from liposuction surgeries. Sometimes it’s about making a recording in a cow’s uterus and dedicating it to someone who inspired them. And sometimes it means rounding up test subjects, putting them on their backs on a table in a room with with soft red lighting, covering their eyes with two halves of a pingpong ball, and pumping white noise into the headphones they’re wearing while telepathically projecting the concept of the album into the “percipient” brain.
And naturally, that’s exactly what Matmos did, encouraging these newest collaborators to hum or sing whatever sounds or melodies played through their empty, sensory deprived psyches, to describe objects or ideas that did the same. Conceptually, it explores the Ganzfeld effect as much as it attempts to prove or disprove the validity of extra-sensory perception. Sonically, Matmos take a wide berth in interpreting the data they collected and translating it to music. The most obvious difference from their previous work is the appearance of predominant vocals from a slew of guest artists (Dan Deacon, Angel Deradoorian, Jen Wasner to name a fraction) as well as from the members of Matmos themselves, harmonizing on record for the first time in their twenty-year career. But all the quirky sound collage Matmos is known for provides the backdrop – amplified rubber bands as bass lines, sloshing water, sirens, bells, and telephones, tap dancers dancing across a concrete floor. The shuffle of these myriad textures creates a ceaseless movement that makes it easy to forget it was conceived using sensory deprivation. “Teen Paranormal Romance” is ecstatic and burbling and awkward, less like the Twilight saga and more like the aural equivalent of two adolescent spectres fumbling in the dark. “Tunnel” drops out at its most frenzied moment to a creepy whispering, then speeds off again into some mysterious light, all ragged guitars and pitch-shifted synths. The album closes with a schizophrenic cover of The Buzzcocks’ “ESP” and the words “So… think”; the vinyl version has a locked groove of white noise to allow its listeners time to do just that and see what visions come along.
In a live setting, Matmos couldn’t possibly go to all the trouble of recreating the experiment, and if any ticket-holders had been asked to listen to nothing and just envision a Matmos concert, a good portion might have asked for the money back. Instead they opened with an expansive, lysergic iteration of “Very Large Green Triangles” replete with incantatory instructions on how to meditate. There were, of course, hallucinatory projections flickering across the screen behind the musicians, containing visions of, yes, green triangles. There were also mystical hand gestures. This went on for roughly thirteen blissed minutes during which I was exceedingly grateful to be sitting in a chair.
[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”2286″]
The rest of the set was truly a retrospective of some of the band’s most playful moments, including material that went as far back as 1998’s Quasi-Objects, during which Schmidt blew up a pink balloon and manipulated its surface and the air within it matter-of-factly, as though it were a more conventional instrument. A song from 2001’s A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure featured some queasiness-inducing projections of someone’s insides, yet somehow retained a potent danceability. Despite the fact that Matmos have made a name for themselves as diligent sound collectors as much as musicians, they don’t take themselves too seriously. It was delightful to witness such creative music-making, and easy to laugh along with with their stage banter. One particularly tender moment came when Schmidt realized he was missing an adapter; Drew produced one from his pocket, and Schmidt quipped that it was a dream come true to have a boyfriend who kept such necessities so handy. Up to that point, I’d never considered that the two were a couple, but now it’s easy to see them as insatiable cohorts, conspiring to dream up their lofty album concepts and outlandish recording techniques, and working fearlessly together to share those visions with the world. In that way, The Marriage of True Minds could double as a title for the group’s autobiography as well as its latest record, their perfect synergy and avid curiosity being the impetus for their ground-breaking, genre-defying output.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
LES bar Home Sweet Home is like a lot of other NYC venues, and then again, it isn’t. I was reminded of a handful of seedy lounges, kooky galleries, and DIY show spaces, but the reality is that Home Sweet Home takes elements of each and rolls them into something completely immersive. From the moment I showed ID to security outside, I felt I was being led back to parts of myself I’d forgotten, as if through a maze. I felt the way I used to feel about going to shows at Glasslands or 285 before the magic of those places became almost commonplace to me. Maybe I’ve been somewhat jaded about show-going in NYC. Though I live in a city where beautiful and amazing musical events happen every day and am so, so lucky in that regard, it can feel a little rote when it’s something you do constantly. There’s no one identifiable reason Home Sweet Home felt like a breath of fresh air, but there are lots of equally inspiring aspects and moments that awed me over and over.
I had to get a ticket from the box office, located upstairs in the Fig. 19 gallery space acting as offshoot of Envoy Enterprises. Rather than a simple stamp on the hand, the lady in the booth offered me a gorgeous hand-numbered screen-printed ticket specifically designed for the event.
The gallery show was curated by Iceage members and featured an eclectic array of pieces, including zines from Adam Rossiter, drawings and paintings from Screaming Female’s Marissa Paternoster, intricate black and white ink drawings from Genesis Crespo, illustrations from Alexander Heir, the chaotic sketches of Sam Ryser, photos from Nina Hartmann and Cali Dewitt and everything in between, from screen-printed t-shirts to video projections. Though the media was varied, the air and attitude was consistent – one of discontent, alienation, and attraction to decay, all themes that run common to the bands that played downstairs.
It’s a little bit strange, I think, to know you can be soothed by a line-up that includes goth punk, harsh noise, and hardcore. It could be indicative of the mental distress I was in prior to attendance, but even if my headspace was questionable the quality of the performances was not. Dream Affair were first, a Brooklyn-based trio of disaffected kids who look too young to have the kind of post punk and cold wave reference points that clearly inform their music. Their youthful appearance is misleading in that way, because Dream Affair pull off those sounds with unrivaled authenticity, the sound more fleshed out and visceral in a live setting than the somewhat hollow approach on 2011’s Endless Days. Hayden Payne delivers deep-voiced vocals with a healthy dose of sneering vitriol, backed on stoic bass by Bryan Spoltore. But it’s the addition of Abby Echiverri that provides the band’s most compelling sounds; her squalling synths and backup shrieking are essential, but when she pulled out an electric violin it launched Dream Affair into a whole other realm for me.
It took a while for Margaret Chardiet to set up her various pedals, electronic gadgets, and other blinking things with gobs of knobs. But these are the instruments of choice for her Pharmakon project, in which this tiny, unassuming Chloe-Sevigny look-alike with silken blonde locks becomes a feral howling creature possessed by something demonic.
The demons came out before she even started, as technical difficulties proved frustrating; the miked sheet of metal she’d set up wasn’t making the right kind of racket when she hit it with her fist, and eventually she became so enraged that she knocked the entire apparatus over like a petulant child would. It sat inert and forgotten on the stage exactly as it fell for the duration of the performance, which consisted of punishing drone and gut-wrenching screams. Pharmakon is a project that hounds its creator, but also provides catharsis and connection with her audience. It is impossible not to be moved, not to be captivated by Chardiet’s vocal onslaught, but she takes it several steps further by leaping into the audience, cradling random show-goers in her intense gaze, forehead to forehead (including Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, lead singer of Iceage, who looked on intently). She lurches through the crowd, wailing, and it feels thrilling but wholly genuine and free of gimmicks, as if this is just how she always behaves. Recordings from the project are made few and far between and are often released in small editions, making the much sought-after material rare. But that seems appropriate given the raw nature of Pharmakon’s live set, in which her physical presence dominates a room entirely. It’s as though her being becomes a channel for something otherworldly, outside of itself, and that’s something that can only be witnessed as it happens before one’s eyes.
Iceage didn’t waste anytime in setting up and unleashing their brutal, blistering brand of industrial-influenced no-wave. The set opened with “Ecstasy” from the much-anticipated sophomore album You’re Nothing, out on Matador February 19th. If a band like Iceage seems a tad out of place on the label that birthed bands like Cat Power and Yo La Tengo, there are two important things to remember. The first is that Matador’s catalogue is actually pretty diverse (especially in terms of its “alumni”), spanning many a genre, hosting many a genre-defining act. The second thing to remember is that if there’s anything that ties its roster together, it’s that Matador has represented the biggest, best, and brightest acts and are in the business of making them legendary in ways that independent acts rarely enjoy.
While Iceage’s new record sees the band dealing with more interior thoughts and experimenting with some lighter touches, Matador hasn’t turned them into Belle & Sebastian by any means. The searing live performances the band is capable of delivering prove that, and the new material is every bit as ferocious as the old. Rønnenfelt was at his spastic best, model-gorgeous and buttoned up as usual but thrashing, moaning, and tearing electrical wires from the low rafters above his tall frame. The skittering drums, scorched guitars and insistent bass that marked Iceage’s sound on 2011’s prolific New Brigade have carried over to the tracks the band developed for You’re Nothing, and though the band has been touring behind its older material for what seems like eons now their delivery packs every bit as much gusto. In every way, Iceage makes it clear that they’ve taken to heart their role of ushering in a new era of punk rock, even if they seem removed from the hype that surrounds them.
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]image from a set in London last August, by Howard Melnyczuk
It’s freezing outside, the kind of brutal cold that makes the skin of your forehead ache as you push through the night air. You can’t find the recently re-opened venue right away, because its door is around the corner from where you thought it would be, hidden in plain sight. Up a flight of stairs, where a doorman greets you with superfluous cordiality, you say “I’m here for Eddi Front” and you can already hear her singing. The doorman explains to you that she’s been playing for ten minutes already, and that coats may be checked right around the corner in the vestibule. The vestibule leads to a stunning show space taller than it is wide, cluttered with candlelit tables, decorated with flowered maroon wallpaper, heavy velvet curtains and gilded moulding framing the stage upon which Ivana Carrescia, otherwise known as Eddi Front, sits strumming a guitar with bashful bearing but direct gaze, her wispy frame clad in all black, her black hair hanging in her eyes.
And you look through the dark, searching for a particular face, but the face isn’t there – only slightly different versions of the face you expect to see, like dreams in which the familiarity of your lover is inaccessible to your subconcious but still makes strange visitations, slightly off true. You see someone with posture just like his, soft hair sloping to a gentle curve around the shoulders. But it’s not him. So you focus for a minute on the performer, who is poised to become the ‘next big thing’, thanks to a beguiling persona that’s both fragile and hints at the possibility of violent, wild combustion, thanks to a voice that’s tremulous and angelic but spits words that are at times angry or terse or forlorn. She puts down the guitar and a piano player to the side of the stage helps her finish the set, which expands on the four songs she’s thus far put out into the world with new material that is as lovely and as peculiar and as melancholy as those that drew you into the warm heart of this room on such a frigid evening.
Eddi Front sings songs that are just like that: a sort of frozenness permeates them, but then there is a warmth, a hope, a nostalgia for times past and things lost. Her songs are like maroon flowered wallpaper and black hair in eyes and searching the crowd for a face that isn’t there and will not come. They are slightly inaccurate dream-versions of lovers. She is the piano player with fingers depressing his black keys over and over, lost in his most mournful tones. She is like the burlesque that followed the show – seemingly exposed, but obscured by theatrical artifice until you cannot tell where Ivana ends and Eddi begins. She is you, waiting at a table for nothing, feeling your heart shatter. You remember her words in “Gigantic”, with which she closed the show: I’ve always been slow to get off of some drugs, to let go of some loves. I’ll crawl out of this hole soon enough. Take my ring off. And eventually, you stand up, put on your sweater and your coat and your gloves, and make your way out into the frozen city once again.
A lot has changed since A Sunny Day in Glasgow last took the stage together.
On the one hand, their particular brand of shoegaze-influenced dream pop has quite a few predecessors, most notably My Bloody Valentine, with the coy experimentalism of groups like Broadcast. But from 2006-2010, when the band was most active, there weren’t very many people doing what they were doing in quite the same way, despite whatever obvious cues they might have taken from bands that came before.
2013 is a different story. We’ve got Tamaryn, we’ve got Young Prisms, we’ve got Wild Nothing, we’ve got a slew of other bands releasing LPs that all kind of exist in this soupy, soothing blare of hazey indie rock. I don’t mean to imply that the sound is worn-out or adopted too often. You could do worse than to reference shoegaze. But it’s interesting to wonder this current revival and subsequent proliferation was spurred at least in part by the acclaim that releases like Scribble Mural Comic Journal and Ashes Grammar garnered at the time of their release.
I really adored A Sunny Day in Glasgow. Always kind of hated the name, but track for track obsessed over what they were doing sonically. The reverby harmonies, drowning in a drone that at times was even something of a challenge to listen to (see 5:15 Train) created a constant tension between the lovely aspects of the songs and the echoic harshness that threatened to destroy that beauty. There were so many layers to dissect, but you had to be willing to sit there and listen. And in those days, as silly as it might seem, I defined my musical identity by being someone who would listen to that sort of thing, and felt in a very real way that it gave me a separate identity from those who would not.
It had been a while since I’d heard anything from them. There had been a kickstarter campaign to help them finish their upcoming album. But in the internet age, attention spans are unfortunately shortened by the zillions of releases that come out constantly, by the fact that those releases are at our fingertips, by the fact that most of them don’t warrant more than a few casual listens before moving onto the next big thing. I’d fallen a bit of a victim to that, and nearly forgot about A Sunny Day in Glasgow.
That is, until I noticed they had scheduled a show for LES venue Pianos last Wednesday. What could it mean? One thing it meant was that they were still around, still making music. And another thing that it meant was that I’d be seeing them soon.
I arrived at the venue just a few songs into opening band Friend Roulette’s set (they have a residency at Piano’s in January). The match made immediate sense to me; Friend Roulette play intense, orchestral indie rock. Not one but two drummers graced the stage, energetically backing the yearning coos of vocalist Julia Tepper, who gracefully played a swoony violin. Also of note was the presence of John Stanesco, or more specifically, his EWI (which stands for Electronic Wind Instrument). This is one of the most mind-boggling contraptions I’ve seen recently. It’s definitely a woodwind-ish instrument, played like an oboe or clarinet, but with synth-like keys that can allow it to sound like anything from a flute to a keyboard. I was so obsessed with discerning what it was that it almost distracted me from the band playing.
Being completely distracted, however, was bit of an impossibility, considering how aggressive they are for an indie-rock outfit. While Friend Roulette is a chamber-pop band that likes to consider themselves kitschy, there was an underlying moodiness to some of their work. I was most taken with their newest track, “Golden”, featuring a gorgeous, moaning swirl of violin between choruses. But just a few songs later, they played what I seriously thought was going to be a cover of “Eye of the Tiger”, the opening riffs lifted directly from the iconic Rocky theme. It then it morphed into something more original, leaving me thinking that maybe it was just sort of a jokey intro to their own song. Later in the song, however, whiffs of “Eye of the Tiger” came back, so that turned out not to be the case.
Despite all that, there are intriguing elements to this band’s compositions, especially the quieter, more subtle plucked violins – but also the cacophonous builds and the drama that comes from them. This residency could be a great boon for an emerging band like Friend Roulette, still trying to suss out what works and what doesn’t. The audience seemed quite enthusiastic, so that’s a good start.
A Sunny Day in Glasgow took the stage a little later than expected, though that did not stop them from playing a full set. Pianos loves to deafen its patrons, so the sound wasn’t so much “mixed” as it was excruciatingly loud. As a result, lead vocalist Jen Gorna had to strain to be heard, pushing her already lean voice to its thinnest points. Likewise, Annie Fredrickson’s vocals got a bit lost, and as such there was really no hope to bring to the forefront the unique harmonies that set the band apart from their contemporaries. There didn’t seem to be much reverb on the vocals either, which I consider an essential characteristic behind the band’s recorded sound. Rather, the two girls tried to rely on playing off of one another to achieve the same effect, which unfortunately didn’t come across with guitar and keys drowning them out.
The band has a great energy though, even shrugging off a heckler who cried “Play the song the drummer knows!” Gorna did mention that they had not played onstage together in two years, but it was more a statement of fact than an apology for any shortcomings. She also said that she hoped everyone in the audience had done some drugs before arrival (I had not, not realizing it was a requirement). They played a healthy mix of tunes from all three releases and, of course, unveiled some new songs, which seem to hold a similar aesthetic to the material on Autumn, Again; the songs were more pop-oriented, with fewer pockets of noisiness and straightforward lyrics. With the mixing being what it was though, it was honestly a bit hard to tell what they’ll be like on the new record. So many of the little details that make A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s songs unique were lost in the sheer volume so typical of the venue, but perhaps this will be the first of many more shows. If nothing else, it served as a perfect reminder that A Sunny Day in Glasgow are still around. And that was a good memo to get, indeed.
In January, Fat Possum will release Lysandre, the debut record of Christopher Owens. Owens will then play two back-to-back shows at Bowery Ballroom. In all likelihood, these shows will sell out. The reason that the music world is waiting so eagerly for this particular singer/songwriter’s first solo record is because Christopher Owens is best known as half of highly celebrated indie rock band Girls.
Christopher Owens at Le Poisson Rouge, image courtesy of wagz2it
Formed in San Francisco 2009 with bassist and producer Chet “JR” White, Girls became a huge and nearly instantaneous success. Part of the fascination no doubt stemmed from Owens’ intriguing personal history, having been raised in the Children of God cult until he was sixteen. But it was the songs that the duo created that kept audiences enthralled, their pop simplicity resonating with fans and critics alike. The effortless, often sunny chords and uncomplicated lyrics, simultaneously fun and dark, characterized the three releases the band would produce over the next few years – Album in 2009, Broken Dreams Club in 2010, and 2011’s Father, Son, Holy Ghost – before Owens announced via Twitter last summer that he would be leaving the band. Now, six months later, Owens will make good on his promise to continue to write, record and play music, but this time, he’s on his own.
With Owens poised to take this leap, what can fans expect? Oddly enough, Lysandre is a strange little epilogue to the Girls saga; it’s a loosely themed tour diary of the band’s first international outing, during which Owens met and fell in love with the French girl the album is named for. It features all the sentimentality one might see coming with such a synopsis – he describes the tender details of their first encounters and the painful realizations he came to as it ended. And in between he questions his validity as a songwriter, marvels at the cities of the world, and swoons about a million times over, all in the key of A.
I caught what I considered a slightly more than mildly awkward solo performance a few weeks ago at Le Poisson Rouge, only his second solo appearance. That’s using the term ‘solo’ a bit loosely since he was accompanied by a sort of sad looking plant, a keyboardist, a drummer, two back up singers (one of which is his new love interest) and a wizard-esque, white-bearded woodwind player who was literally playing a different instrument almost every time I looked at him. More often than not, he trilled the recurring “Lysandre’s Theme” on his rather jazzy flute. Owens and company proceeded to play his record from beginning to end, signifying further Owens’ clear intention to present the work as a whole rather than as a set of separately satisfying and sonically distinguished gems in the manner of his work with Girls. While this is admirable in its ambition, it made the material a bit harder to digest, especially coming from someone who has shown a bit of a genius as far as composing perfectly pitched pop nuggets is concerned.
The performance was awkward because everyone wanted Owens to succeed. There’s no denying Owens as an artist and when he left Girls he left the world hungry for great records that could have been. But it’s also frustrating to know that he has chosen to make indulgent and somewhat gawky folk music when he’s capable of exploring the same themes in a far more palatable way. It’s more than a little uncomfortable to watch someone coming to terms with a painful past, confronting strange desires and issues of inadequacy. It wasn’t that the music he made under the Girls moniker was less raw or honest, but the sonic intricacies of his former project provided a more clever mask for its coarser sentiments. Without that veil, Owens’ musings tend to go from earnest to embarrassing.
A perfect example of that came about halfway through the set, when Owens performed “Love Is In The Ear Of The Listener”. The lyrics are a series of questions posed from songwriter to himself regarding the necessity and worth of his work, but it sounds like something an aspiring fifteen-year-old poet might write. He wonders if everyone’s tired of hearing love songs, if he’s just a bad songwriter in general. It came across like a questionnaire Owens might send to blogs with promo copies of Lysandre, and even had the audience chuckling at certain lines. It’s entirely possible that Owens is going for a tongue-in-cheek exploration of his insecurities. It could be that he’s not actually worried about his abilities at all; someone with Owens’ degree of critical acclaim must feel that he can’t totally fail. The conclusion he comes to in the song is that it doesn’t matter anyway since he’s doomed to write what he feels regardless of what people want or expect. In this way, it acts as a sort of disclaimer for the entirety of the new material, a challenge even.
Owens closed out the set with an encore of iconic covers from Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, The Everly Brothers, and Donovan. By this point I was almost embittered enough to yell out “Cover a Girls song!” knowing that it would be completely inappropriate and even unfair to do so. But the whole thing felt like Owens had left Girls to become a glorified wedding singer – and the tables LPR had set up around the stage did nothing to diffuse that impression. Owens picked celebrated songs that definitely seemed autobiographical, communicating his fears of striking out on his own (“Wild World”), holding specific relevance to his break from JR White and Girls (“Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”), and fleeing from the only family he knew when he was still a teenager (“The Boxer”) but also belie his fascination with classic love songs (“Let It Be Me”) and folksy caricature (“Lalena”). If these celebrated songwriting heights act as reference point for Owens’ aspirations, his goals certainly cannot be loftier. One can almost parse the moments when Lysandre makes good on these objectives but the record I’ll be more excited to hear will chronicle this current solo voyage, rather than act as a sentimental look back at the artist’s time with a band I’ll miss for a while still to come.
It was not without drama that I came into a ticket to Twin Shadow’s second of two sold-out NYC performances. I’d planned to skip both sets since tickets were $22 and one of them was at Webster Hall, which I kind of hate. But a friend of mine who’d gotten tickets in advance had just turned thirty, thrown a temper tantrum, and bailed, so I found myself at Music Hall of Williamsburg. I’d seen Twin Shadow play a CMJ show at Le Bain in October 2011, with the twinkling ribbon of the West Side Highway unspooling across giant glass windows behind the band. I’d ruined a suede skirt by spilling wax on it in attempt to light a joint in the bathroom; I’d also embarrassed myself during the dance party afterward when I toppled sideways in uneven heels at the very moment I’d finally caught the eye of the tall, bearded dreamboat I’d been spying all evening. As it turns out, he had a girlfriend anyway.
But I’ve come a long way in the last year, and so has George Lewis Jr., the man behind Twin Shadow. He has released two albums to tons of critical acclaim (including Pitchfork’s coveted Best New Music for this year’s Confess on 4AD), survived a motorcycle accident to have an epiphany that majorly influenced the songwriting and recording of his sophomore album, and headlined a two month tour across the United States and Canada. The MHoW show was the second-to-last stop on that tour, and the fact that Lewis is a bit fatigued from it all was likely a factor in his somewhat bitter between-song banter.
Twin Shadow’s songs have been compared to just about every pop band from the eighties, and it isn’t hard to hear why. 2010’s stellar Forget, produced byGrizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, was all airy synths, anthemic choruses, bouncy bass, and shimmering guitar riffs. These parallels also grew out of Lewis’ personal style, in which leather jacket and pompadour were de rigueur. With lyrics hopelessly meant for chanting (namely that moment in smash single “Slow” when Lewis croons “I don’t wanna believe / or be / in love”) it was pretty inevitable that Twin Shadow would blow up, and when Confess was released it was apparent that he’d stayed on that same trajectory and managed to amp up the nostalgia factor even further.
Honestly, Confess is almost too over-the-top for me. In certain moments, like personal favorite “Beg For The Night”, it takes the form of giggle-inducing orchestra hits which are somehow still endearing. But on album opener “Golden Light”, the backup vocals sound so much like the closing theme from Lost Boys that I can’t even see past it to enjoy the rest of the song, which is unfortunate since without that, it would actually be really lovely. Slowly but surely, however, Confess has grown on me; it’s something in the transition of Lewis’ low, sultry moans into easy falsettos, the urgency and desperation on songs like lead single “Five Seconds”, the heartbroken but detached callousness of pretty much every lyric Lewis has ever penned.
That cockiness is something that Lewis may as well have trademarked at this point. While his swagger is not unwarranted, it certainly permeates every aspect of his persona, from song to image to stage banter. I had always assumed that it was a bit put on, but last night’s show may have convinced me otherwise once and for all. When I saw him less than a year ago, he didn’t say much and mostly kept his eyes trained on the floor while he hunched over his guitar. Friday’s performance was an entirely different thing – he wore his mohawk slicked back, jumped around on stage with his guitar swinging, and belted out his most raw lines with fierce bellicosity.
It started in a low-key manner, with a slow, stripped-down solo performance of “The One”. A guitarist, keyboard player and drummer joined him on stage and they moved through a setlist featuring the four best tracks from Forget and all but three cuts from Confess. While “Slow” was incredibly disappointing (he sang choruses out of turn, feedback screeched), “Castles In The Snow” had to be the show’s highlight; the live version was huskier and grinding in all the right ways, with basslines blaring and buzzing. But even in the more rote performances, something intense was happening, at least to me, most notably during his performance of “Run My Heart”. So much of Confess is seemingly infused with a summery mood; it was birthed in Los Angeles, where Lewis fled to escape brutal Brooklyn winters when he was writing and recording the album. But its darker power comes from what happens when the sunshine fades, from that realization that summer is ending and that with that death, romanticism is doomed. When Lewis sang “This isn’t love / I’m just a boy / you’re just a girl” it acted as a grim reminder to that harsh reality.
Between songs, Lewis rewarded Brooklyn with some backhanded compliments, then promised to move back and abandon his 3,000 square foot loft in Silver Lake (and its jacuzzi) if the crowd screamed loud enough for him. So not only is he actually cocky, he also doesn’t seem to realize how a bragging about his success might sound to a bunch of folks who paid slightly inflated ticket prices just to dance at his feet. He made this trespass up slightly by unleashing a bunch of gold and black balloons on the audience, but the kicker was closing out the show with a cover of “Under Pressure” dedicated to openers Niki & the Dove (who I’d missed). The cover was rather epic and he proved his chops in performing it shockingly well, ensuring that it will be all anyone really remembers about this show.
All in all, Twin Shadow’s live shows are a tad sloppy compared side-by-side to the obsessively glossy production on his records, but Lewis, let’s remember, is relatively new at this. He has toured extensively in the last few years, and if nothing else has come out of it, he’s certainly perfected his rock’n’roll idol swag. Even if this moment doesn’t last much longer than it has, his penchant for making ultra-nostalgic records will ensure his place in the collective consciousness of everyone who came close enough to touch it. And he’ll be sneering back at us, telling us all how hollow it really is with tears in his eyes.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
There are certain nights when I wish my favorite venues in Brooklyn, all of which happen to inhabit the same square block of Williamsburg, would just band together and offer three-for-one show deals, or at least build a network of secret tunnels connecting each venue to the next – like those elaborate ferret dens you see in pet shops, all neon yellow and orange plastic. Thursday was a perfect example of just such a night, as my buddy Ahmed Gallab and his band Sinkane were opening for Sun Araw at Death By Audio and Brooklyn-based band Friends were over at 285 Kent. Additionally, Annie was amped for a Chris Cohen set at Glasslands, so we did what any good AudioFemmes would do and attended all three between the two of us.
I don’t want to go into too much detail about Sinkane’s set; this blog has not seen the last of him by any means. Frontman Ahmed Gallab is a longtime friend of mine from Ohio, where I’d see him play regularly with two of my favorite Columbus acts, Sweetheart and Pompeii This Morning. Sinkane is the most psychedelic sonic adventure he’s ever been on, and I’ve been stoked to watch it evolve from its humble beginnings as a solo project, through a move to Brooklyn and tours with the likes of Caribou and Yeasayer, and into what it is now – a four piece as much informed by seventies funk and Afrobeat as it is by indie rock. His jams get more and more solid every time I get a chance to see him play, helped along by a recent residency at Zebulon and soon to take the world by storm as he was just signed to DFA. On Thursday he debuted some great new material – stay tuned for an upcoming AF feature.
As I mentioned, Sinkane was opening up for fellow purveyors of psychedelic sound Sun Araw, though I was only able to stay for a few of their songs. I’ve liked a good many records that they’ve put out, but have never really gotten to see them live. Their first few numbers were droning and dissonant; hair hung in the faces of the flanneled band members who had turned most of the stage lights out just before playing. I’m hoping the set got better as they went on. They were sluggishly nonchalant, as though there weren’t a room filled with folks eyeing their moves, and the songs just didn’t come across as textural or integrated as they do on the albums, and the cloud of weed hovering in the front room of DBA didn’t even help. I’ll be giving them another chance, though, and soon.
I could have probably stuck around a bit longer, but I didn’t want to miss Friends and figured they’d play at 285 Kent around 11:30. When I arrived at the venue, Phone Tag was finishing up an adorably bouncy set that had the crowd (and it was a decently sized crowd for an opening band on a Thursday night) going wild. I hadn’t yet heard their self-titled 2012 LP but was definitely intrigued by the ardent fanbase, not to mention the glistening keys and synths, reverb-drenched guitar and cooing vocals reminiscent of a less grating Passion Pit. The band is led by Gryphon Graham and comprised of some pretty attractive kids. They could just as easily be a group of hip super-heroes as a band, but lucky for everyone at 285 they chose to play instruments instead of fight crime. Their songs are made for rooftop dance parties and flirting in bars, ultra catchy and very fun but never totally frivolous.
All of this made them appropriate openers for Brooklyn band-of-the-moment Friends, who will soon embark on a month-long tour opening for Two Door Cinema Club. Like Phone Tag, Friends play deceivingly simple indie pop party jams, but there’s a certain depth and skill at work that goes beyond the band’s youthful exuberance.
Friends take ultra catchy jams and infuse them with beats and instrumentation so eclectic it’s hard to pin down any definitive influences. Their live shows feature heavy, funky basslines courtesy of a new bassist known as “V” (who in a weird way looks like an avatar from Rock Band), lively synths thanks to Nikki Shapiro, and he percussive efforts of Oliver Duncan (on a drumset) and Etienne Pierre Duguay (formerly of Real Estate) on bongos, tambourine, and anything else that will make a sound when you bash, tap, or click it.
But Friends simply would not be what it is without the incredible vocals and personality of Samatha Urbani, whose aesthetic has informed the band since its inception, when she directed videos for the band’s first and very buzzed about singles, “I’m His Girl” and “Friend Crush”. Wearing high-waisted navy blue pants with double rows of gold buttons, a white shirt tied at the waist with gold beadwork cascading down her back and across her shoulders, Urbani was every bit the glamourous frontwoman.
Her flamboyant-meets-chic style is one thing, but her vocal chops are completely another. She drifts back and forth easily between a higher, sweeter coo and lower, more sultry tones delivered with a dose of sass. That much was apparent on the band’s debut LP, Manifest! released this year. But live she’s that much more captivating, peppering her performance with coquettish yelps and squeals reminiscent of Kate Pierson from the B-52’s. A friend of mine told me that she used to see Urbani perform regularly at karaoke and said that she completely slayed every song, which I not only believe but would have probably paid money to see that alone.
Okay, so I know I’ve been spending too much time at 285 Kent. I know you’re all sick of hearing about it. I’m thinking of getting a tattoo of a sharpie line drawn across my wrist so they won’t have to ID me anymore, maybe even the “RANDO” stamp they use on my forearm so I don’t have to pay to get in. For all you foursquare nerds out there, check out the mayor – it’s actually me. But none of this is my fault. I could quit if I wanted. It’s just that there is too much goodness going on inside those walls on a nightly basis, really.
On Sunday night, that goodness took the form of Gang Gang Dance and Prince Rama. It was the last night of GGD’s “Tour of Williamsburg” in which they played Public Assembly on Friday (with Sun Araw), Cameo Gallery on Saturday (with New Moods), and 285 on Sunday (with Prince Rama). All of these shows were put together by Brooklyn-based booking agency Bandshell, whose mission is to bring bigger bands to smaller, more intimate venues. From what I can tell their venture is a new-ish one and they don’t seem to have any events coming up, but it’s a mission we can get behind and we’d like to see it succeed.
I’d been dying to see Prince Rama but had missed the seven billion opportunities I’d been given in the past. Now I will say this: NO MORE. No more will I show up late to shows where they are opening, no more will I skip their free or cheap shows for some other free or cheap show, no more will this band play in Brooklyn without seeing me at the foot of their stage, worshipping every move. These ladies (and one gentleman) do it so, so right.
First, they were wearing ultra-eccentric outfits (think animal print, think sequins) and had gold glitter all over their faces and all of them (the boy too!) had pretty hair. The driving force of the project is sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson, joined by guitarist Michael Collins. The three met in a Hare Krishna commune in Florida and honed their psychedelic leanings in art school. Oddity can sometimes seem affected or put on, part of a performance rather than a way of life, but for Prince Rama it’s genuine and engaging.
Taraka sang the majority of the vocals and was also in charge of the synths, but abandoned them relatively often for a little audience participation. The audience this night included members of the Larson family; during the second-to-last number Taraka jumped off stage and danced with what I’d assume was maybe her mother, who seemed to know all the words. Nimai stood in a circle of drums, dancing while she played, her smile so wide and constant that she kind of reminded me of the girl muppet in Dr. Teeth’s Electric Mayhem. She was adorable and so fun to watch, but it was hard to train the eyes on any one thing. There were cool projections mirroring their movements filtered to look like some kind of crazy acid trip, and the stage was festooned with loudly printed textiles and gauze.
Musically, Prince Rama’s sound is designed to put you in a party trance of sorts; there’s plenty of chanting and call-and-response but it’s backed up by an acute understanding of what makes a song worth dancing to. I’ve been to plenty of psych shows that devolve into sort of boring drone, and this is the exact opposite. To prove that, the sisters leapt off stage during the last number and performed an incredible dance routine on the floor to close out the show; this included flips, hand motions, dramatic facial expression, and probably went on for over six minutes. Since they’d arrived late and hadn’t been able to start the show on time, yet the venue wouldn’t allow them to hold up Gang Gang Dance’s scheduled performance, the dance number ended up being a significant portion of time in their set overall. But it was absolutely enchanting. I cannot wait to see them again.
Gang Gang Dance play a similar brew of exotic psych, but there are way more people in the band and have a much heavier ratio of males to females – there are four dudes to the one lady, Lizzi Bougatsos. At this particular show there was also a strange shaman-type dude in the band; he mostly hid behind the amps but he’d peer around them with some weird antique binocular-type gadget, or hit an adjacent cymbal with a piece of rope tied to his wrist. At one point he did move to the front of the stage to hold a drum head so Lizzi could bang on it, but that was as present as he ever seemed.
I’m getting a bit ahead of myself though. Before the show even started, Bougatsos appeared onstage in a baseball cap and a homemade hijab, asking the house DJ to stop playing MIA. Despite Gang Gang Dance’s obvious affinity for world beats, exotic instrumentation, and Middle-Eastern influenced sonic tinges, Bougatsos proudly identified herself as a Long Island girl, glorious accent and all. When she sings, though, it sounds like she’s coming from some other planet. She also plays a floor tom and a smaller set of drums. The synth guy sometimes played drums too, and then there was actual drummer. Together, they caused quite a lovely racket, the band spooling out their off-center dance tunes into sprawling psychic meditations. They tackled favorites like “Mindkilla” “Adult Goth” “Egyptian” and “Vacuums”, interspersed with new songs like “Lazy Eye”, which prompted Bougatsos to keep a lyric sheet on hand, though she ended up not needing it. In addition to building kaleidoscopic jams out of their regular material, the band also debuted some expansive instrumental tracks. The only song notably missing from the set was “House Jam”, but in such a long and tight set its omission was not exactly tragic.
[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1212″]
It’s been over a year since Eye Contact was released, and it’s exciting to see the band develop new material, though if the time that passed between their most recent release and 2008’s Saint Dymphna is any indication it will be a while longer before we see a new full length. If this trio of performances is any indication, Gang Gang Dance are far from exhausting the font from which their reputations as experimental wunderkinds flow.
There’s not a whole lot left to say about the caliber of Thee Oh Sees’ or Ty Segall’s live shows; both acts are known in many circles for providing one of the best live experiences the price of a concert ticket can buy. It’s not mere hype; the energy and skill which these musicians and long-time friends bring to any stage is a real thing, and best seen to be believed.
Those in the NYC area had multiple chances to do so this weekend – both bands played brand new Bushwick venue The Well on Saturday, Death by Audio on Monday, and Thee Oh Sees played ATP I’ll Be Your Mirror on Sunday. Given the chance to choose between these shows, I’d say the show at The Well was least preferable. Going into it, I was excited to check out the venue, which boasts and incredible beer selection as well as gourmet eats. But I was totally underwhelmed by the interior of the space, which basically looked like someone was storing their fully-stocked bar in an empty garage. The stage was huge, framed between the brick walls of surrounding industrial buildings, with an expanse of dust and gravel for show-goers to kick around below. The sound wasn’t bad, but the setting was far from intimate (which would be the advantage of having gone to Death by Audio), much more reminiscent of a festival or large SXSW showcase than a punk rock show.
Thee Oh Sees had already started by the time I arrived, just after 8pm. It was hard to get close enough to the stage to actually see anything that was going on, but I could hear just fine – crashing drums, crushing guitar distortion, and John Dwyer’s characteristic yelping. They shredded through favorites like “Warm Slime” “I Was Denied” and “Tidal Wave” as well as “Lupine Dominus” from recent release Putrifiers II, bouncing along with the crowd every beat of the way. It’s nearly impossible to not enjoy an Oh Sees show, and I did. But the enjoyment stung a little; I was definitely kicking myself for not bothering to attend their shows years ago, before I had to stand in a mob to do so.
Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees are garage pop’s version of peanut butter versus jelly – an unquestionably appropriate pairing for the ages. Their camaraderie actually borders on adorable, and it makes the vibe at shows like this that much more ecstatic and playful. Segall brings a gritty frontman charm to a talented group of musicians that includes drummer Emily Rose and guitarist Mikal Cronin. During crowd-pleaser “Finger” it started pouring rain, but few folks in the audience bothered to run for any sort of cover – if anything the crowd got rowdier. Plenty of them had already been soaked by airborne plastic cups half-full of craft beer, so maybe the rain collectively drowned everyone’s remaining inhibitions. Someone raised a pair of crutches in the air – they’d made a brief appearance earlier in the show but this time they stayed lifted. I saw a couple of idiots go from good-natured moshing to an almost legitimate altercation; luckily someone standing by helped the two angry dudes cool out. Meanwhile, Segall stopped the show to call a medic to the front of the crowd, where apparently someone’s ears had started bleeding. With that issue resolved, he dedicated his next song to the medic. In addition to unleashing plenty of classics like “Girlfriend” “Standing at The Station ” and “My Sunshine” Segall played new material from Slaughterhouse, and even showed a flair for a irony by riffing a few lines of “Sweet Home Alabama” and encoring with a snippet of “The End” by The Doors. The rest of that encore can be seen in the video below, as this was the only time I was even remotely close enough to the stage to justify recording anything at all.
[jwplayer config=”AF01 YT” mediaid=”1209″]
I’m not as stoked on The Well as I thought I might be given its size, but depending on who is booked there in the future I can’t say I’d never go back. Ticket prices were pretty cheap despite the professional level of the stage and sound equipment, so no complaints there. What will be truly interesting is to see where the trajectory of Oh Sees/Segall will take them; while they’ve built a reputation playing to smaller audiences in less commercial spaces both have clearly outgrown these institutions in terms of popularity. It’s rightfully earned and there’s no judgement in that. “Selling out” is a thing that certainly doesn’t exist when your entire goal as a musician is to incite your fans to have the best time they can possibly have; with the degree of excellence these guys bring to their performances, it’s unlikely either will find an audience so large that that can’t be done.
Ticket Giveaways
Each week Audiofemme gives away a set of tickets to our featured shows in NYC! Scroll down to enter for the following shindigs.
