I have to admit something. I've lived in Chicago for nearly three years now, and I still haven't listened to any local music. I usually arrive late to concerts when I know a local band is warming up. I would even go so far as to say that I have avoided the local scene here. That all changes now.
I've been listening to Golden Birthday's "Infinite Leagues" pretty steadily ever since Andrew handed it to me at our Meet-Up last week at Billy Goat Tavern. I knew absolutely nothing about the band when he handed it to me, and now (due to their major lack of web presence) still feel as if I know very little. But, the music. The music is simple, yet highly engaging. There is an honesty involved that many musicians try to stray away from that Golden Birthday gleefully embraces. Blending together drum loops and guitar hooks that aren't much more advanced than a high schooler with a 4-track, the music somehow finds a way to work. Synthesizers help. As do Ryan Sullivan's lyrics.
Regardless of the content of his lyrics it is hard to take Holding Mercury frontman Matt Hoffer seriously. For starters his music sounds like a slightly glammed-up Gin Blossoms cover, but it is mostly because of his national television debut. Yes, Matt Hoffer was a contestant on Rock Star Supernova. Well, if you are like me and don't remember or have never heard of Rock Star Supernova, a quick check of Wikipedia reveals that it aired back in 2006 and was hosted by the lovely Brooke Burke and Dave Navarro (how quickly they fall!). Matt was able to perform "Yellow" by Coldplay and "Planet Earth" by Duran Duran before being eliminating the first week of the contest. Supernova's loss is Holding Mercury's gain. There is a certain strength in Hoffer's vocal and an uncommon bit to his lyrics.
Holding Mercury consists of Andrew Titchenal, Jason Batchko, Ashok Warrier, and Matt Hoffer. Their latest album, Downfall of An Empire (Bad Nero Records), is an album about struggle, conflict, and political turmoil. The highlight for me, as I sit here in a beige cubical and down my fifth cup of coffee, is "Stuck in a Box". It's an arena rock anthem for the underpaid and overworked and it kicks off this ten track mainstream melodrama. The package is shiny, the music is clear and fast-paced, and it is all paart od the product. The cover and interior artwork for the album was down by fellow Chicago rocker and artist David Downs, and is like a beautiful mini-graphic novel about the downfall of life and times.
Lost in the excitement of yesterday's Election was the latest release from our friends over at Flameshovel. Lake Toba is the US Debut from Norwegian popsters Lukestar. The band will be touring the US this Spring, and I am sure will be hearing more from them in the months to come.
Maybe it's the neighborhood I live in or maybe it's just me, but I rarely speak to my neighbors. It's not that I dislike them (well, most of them), but most just keep to themselves, lock their doors, hide their secrets. It takes a vocal and social soul to step out and "Warm Up" or ask "To Be Held" or just say hello, "Nice To See You". Leave it to the bearded one, Phil Spirinto of oRSo to step out and release an album called "Ask Your Neighbor" (Contraphonic). It was recorded over three years at oRSo's home studio and at Four Deuces with Jim McGranahan, and it was mixed with Griffin Rodriguez (Icy Demons, Bablicon) at Shape Shoppe. The evolving line-up of oRSo continues on this release, with contributions from Tim Rutilli, Jim Becker and Ben Massarella (Califone), Nick Macri (The Zincs), and others, including full-fledged oRSo member Libby Reed (Coat). Musically, oRSo plays a gentle yet wandering brand of experimental folk music that seems oddly warm and inviting. This is the sixth album in ten years from Spirito and oRSo, and it is a beautiful addition to their catalog. As I drive home, surrounded by sunset and oRSo softly playing, all of the issues and confusions of the day seem to blend then blur then be blown away like crisp autumn leaves. So take a break from the election coverage, and relax a little bit.
Tracklisting:
All Suffer Fools / Anniversary / Warm Up / I'm High / Not Likely To / Nice To See You / Protest Song / See Me / To Be Held / The Hope / Egg / Way Way
Even when I took that Ingmar Bergman film class in college, I didn't feel as compelled to learn Swedish as I do after listening to the latest album by the band Dungen. Pronounced "DOON-ghen" (or, so I've been told), the acclaimed outfit put out its fourth studio album, appropriately titled 4 this fall, and head to Chicago this coming weekend.
Listening to 4 I'm struck over an over how the lyrics, all in Swedish (granted, it's the band's native tongue), and all hardly even pronounceable by my lazy Southern tongue are simply gorgeous. Typing in a few phrases to an online translator, I discover simple lines, like the refrain in the track "Det Tar Tid" means (I think) "It takes time", which is a perfect answer to the song's breezy, yet straightforward structure. For once, I'm not hung up on memorizing lyrics (I can hardly wrap my mind around the words), but I'm focused on the progression of the songs, which is appropriate with Dungen's evolving music style on this album. Somewhere between psychedelic pop, folk music, Jethro Tull-ian flute ragas, and jam band guitar noodle, Dungen is kind of a delicious musical stew. There are piano, organ and perhaps even a xylophone in the mix, and it all works in this wonderful psych-pop melange.
Songs like "Fredag" (an instrumental piece) and "Samtidigit" with its psychedelic jams are perfect for nodding to on the train in the fall light, or rocking to as the band hits the stage this weekend at The Bottom Lounge. Tickets are $15 (adv) and $18 (door) and the show is 18+. Headdress, Chandeliers, and Life On Earth open.
Hey, hey! Right now, the first reader who writes us at contests (at) gapersblock (dot) com with the subject line "Swedish Fish!", will win a free copy of Dungen's album 4. Chop chop! UPDATE: We have a winner! Congrats to Jessica!
There is no better time to release a dark and ominous drone album then three days before Halloween. This should give you time to obtain a copy or find a digital download before the trick or treater's come knocking. You should set a speaker next to your door and have something loud, dark, and frightening blasting through the darkness. In fact, that maybe exactly what Chicago's White/Light or their label Smells Like Records were thinking when they chose October 28th for the release of Black Acts. Two years in the making, Black Acts is a seven song journey through the thick and slow moving noise that Jeremy Lemos and Matt Clark love to create.
What I like most about White/Light is that they don't take themselves too seriously. Don't get me wrong, they are talented musicians and engineers, but there is a certainly is a lighter side to this duo. They are always joking about how drone (or drrrr-oh-oh-oh-oh-ne as they put it) bothers their parents. They also have described their music as "beautifully hilarious and hilariously beautiful". I know beauty is subjective, but for me this album is not beautiful in the conventional sense of the word. However, if you were to look at it from a purely technical standpoint there may be an inherent beauty in the layers and effects and the overwhelming force of their sound.
If you missed Lemos and Clark's performance earlier this month at The Empty Bottle you can download the entire set from their blog for free.
Chicago (by way of Orlando) emcee PJ Sumroc will release his debut album, PBR, on November 4th via The Secret Life of Sound. The first single, "Just One Hit", was produced by k-the-i???, and this video was shot in various parts of the city. Among those locations, the most notable is Stray Dog Recording Co.
Local trio and thrill Jockey recording artists Pit Er Pat aren't averse to playing home-town gigs, so chances are you might've caught them playing at the Hideout or elsewhere lately. In case you haven't, the word on the streets for a while has been that they've altered their sound recently -- specifically that frontwoman and vocalist Fay Davis-Jeffers has largely set her keyboard aside in favor of a guitar, and that the band's moved into territory that bears a "dub reggae influence." Judging from the band's new High Time CD, which releases on Thrill Jockey this week, there's more than a little truth to the rumor.
Yes, Pit Er Pat has largely abandoned their prior post-rock/fusion cocktail lounge sound; the one so richly crafted and fleshed-out via John McEntire's production of the band's last LP, 2006's Pyramids. What chiefly remains, however, are the band's frail, elusive melodies -- except now they're intertwined with some roots-rocker grooves that give drummer Butchy Fuego and bassist Rob Doran something meatier to tuck into. And the pair seems to enjoy themselves on tunes like "Evacuation Day" and "Copper Pennies" as they tie and untie various rhythmic knots and guide the tunes through unexpected and crafty transitions.
I recently asked Chicago's Nick Butcher what he was looking to accomplish with his latest album, Bee Removal (Hometapes), and his answer was in the form of a question, "How far can you push the format until it falls apart?" Listening through the quiet spaces of Bee Removal I would say he has pushed it pretty far, but nothing has fallen apart. There is structure and melody and gentle movement inside the seven songs on this full sized vinyl LP. A vinyl LP that is icy white to match the hand-screened illustration by Chicago's Chris Kerr, and to add some surface noise this adventure in sound. It is an album that you need to explore while perfectly still in the center of your room on a dark and chilled October night.
Nick is probably more well-known for his work with Nadine Nakanishi and their print shop and studio called Sonnenzimmer. A one time intern at The Bird Machine, Nick has a unique style of creating concert posters, and together with Nadine they have worked The Sea & Cake, Cocorosie, RJD2, Menomena, The Walkmen, and more. Now that Sonnenzimmer is up and running, and making incredible prints, Nick is finding more time to work on his personal paintings and exploring sounds.
Bee Removal is an album that requires focus, but the deeper you look into the sounds that have been created the more you will want to explore. There were only 500 albums pressed, and you can visit Hometapes for more information.
Make no mistake, the Chicago quartet Chandeliers are enamored with keyboards and tricky beats in a big way; but thankfully they don't have much truck with the sort of electro or that chincey, flat blog-house fare that's so glutted the indie market these past two years or so. Comprised of various members of local outfits like Icy Demons, Bronze, and Bablicon, they're one of many local projects that's spiraled out of the South Loop-based Shape Shoppe network. After numerous appearances about town and putting out a 3-song EP, Chandeliers have made their full-fledged recording debut with the recent stateside arrival of their debut LP, The Thrush.
With the opening track "Mr. Electric," Chandeliers lay their aces on the table, giving the listener a strong sense of what's in store. The music glides on a spacey shimmer inspired by vintage Italo-disco, with slight electro and synth-pop nuances billowing to the fore every now and again. The more crafty and complex underpinnings of the band's em-oh, however, reveal a deeper debt to early 70s jazz-fusion and astro-funk (a la Headhunters-era Herbie Hancock). Beneath all the sheen and shimmer, Chandeliers delight in the interplay of contrasts and balances -- the interplay of playing warm tones off versus cold, luster over grit, hefty riding shotgun with lite, and often floating crafty rhythmic shifts and sleights-of-hand against stark drones and subtle modulations.
So, which one of you's Jesus?: Lydia Lunch with fellow Jerks Bradley Fields and Gordon Stevenson, 1977.
With its recent release of the comprehensive CD anthology Shut Up and Bleed and the companion DVD Video Hysterie: 1978-2006, the Chicago-based experimental music label Atavistic aims to offer a chronicle of the early work that established Lydia Lunch as a doyenne of the underground NYC post-punk music scene of the 1980s. As a collection of recordings by Lunch's first two groups, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks and Beirut Slump, the CD's release follows on the heels of a one-off TJ&J reunion gig that took place at The Knitting Factory back in June, as well as the recent publication of Byron Coley and Thurston Moore's co-authored volume No Wave.
Admittedly, Lydia Lunch has had an unwieldy legacy. Cultishly iconic and influential, her status doesn't quite fit anywhere specific. Too art-damaged, amusical and nihilistic to be "punk," too snarlingly toxic to be "goth," too existential and misanthropic to be a precursor for Riot Grrrl-iness. Just plain difficult, in every respect. Which is how she'd prefer it -- i.e.: Up yours with your labels, your niches, your attempts to make everything 'fit' into some sense of accepted, make-believe societal order. Life, for many of us, just isn't anywhere near that easy or 'neat.'
This kind of difficulty was often the point of late '70s NYC No Wave coterie, especially the music of Teenage Jesus & the Jerks. Jagged and disjointed, off-puttingly raw, it involved a confrontational (if not antagonistic) relationship with the audience or listener -- deliberate guerilla-theater "it sucks to be you if you came here looking to be entertained" type stuff.
"If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll get more of what you got."
Minnesota's Jonathan Nelson, whose radio program Some Assembly Required has been heard on WLTL LaGrange, waited ten years to release the follow-up to his debut album as Escape Mechanism. However, his timing could not have been better. His self-titled debut, recorded in part in Chicago while attending Columbia College, was released 1998, and featured a style of sound collage composition utilizing only 100% recycled parts. The result was an incredible journey in sound using dialog, found sounds, and music samples. It was around that same time (January 1999) that Nelson started his radio show, Some Assembly Required, that to this day is dedicated to "artists and groups who work with bits and pieces of their media environments, and giving something back to the cultural landscape from which they so enthusiastically appropriate".
His new sound collage album, (Emphasis Added), was released yesterday, and carries a message that is unmistakably a product of the current state of our government, economy, and our attitude in general as consumers. I've thought for a while now that more can be said in a well placed sample then in a well-written song lyric, and Nelson proves that idea to be correct. Taking chunks of audio from what sounds like motivational tapes and various movies, Nelson is able to tackle consumerism and politics, but also adds a great deal of humor and wit. With a line like, "People are worshiping sunglasses and orgasms", you realize quickly "What's Happening". He is calling for change, and at same time telling everyone to lighten-up, relax, smile, take a look around and then start moving in the right direction. My favorite track is called "Oh Well", and is just a fun little romp with coral swing singers, Susanne Vega samples, and a doo wop back bone. It's just plain fun!
Asthmatic Kitty, the label of Come on Feel the Illinoize album creator Sufjan Stevens, is having a little ole sale until October 6th. From now till then, you can get Sufjan's album of outtakes and extras from the Illinois project, titled The Avalanche along with his 5-cd boxset Songs for Christmas for just $15 (that's about half off, friends). Whether it's a love of our sweet midwestern state, a need for cheap tunes in this sad economy, or a desire to support the little label who's putting out the music, this is a good deal. Head on over to Asthmatic Kitty to take advantage.
From the sound of it, High Places are providing the soundtrack to the travelogue for an imaginary country. It's an island country perhaps, one located in the waters somewhere many miles off the coast of Malaysia -- a land of open skies and fields grown tall with lemongrass, and of dense and verdant canopies teeming with little scurrying things, of evenings illuminated by fireflies the size of cellphones, and where the forest-dwelling natives spend their afternoons lazing about and eating rambutan sherbert while building a musical cargo cult around Aphex Twin's "Donkey Rhubarb." Maybe the place is called Walamalau or something like that. Whatever the case, their message from afar arrives reading: Everything is so otherly, we wish you were here.
But in fact, High Places is the Brooklynite duo of Mary Pearson and Rob Barber. With this, their newly released CD on Thrill Jockey, the pair follow up on anticipation generated by their previous singles and opening appearances for the likes of No Age and Deerhunter with a proper full-length debut.
Barber and Pearson are clearly taken with the traditional music of faraway places, particularly that of Indonesia and Laos. They both play stringed instruments and other things, as well as every object that can be put to percussive purposes -- mainly bells, anything that sounds like a marimba, and numerous found objects that make a good noise when struck the right way. What results are songs filled with sonorous clanking and clattering of the gamelan sort; creating heady musical vistas while Pearson's dreamy vocals float atop, as if narrating the excursion from high above the treetops.
Formed in 2001, in the halls of an unnamed Chicago high school, the boys of Caw! Caw! have been around the block a few times. They have played the local venues, even the men's room the aforementioned high school, but have never taken the show to the national stage. Originally a punk band, through the years they have experimented with a few different sounds. From atmospherics to jangle pop, this trio has now come to play and record somewhat of a hybrid sound. Still heavily guitar driven, they kick off their first national tour this Tuesday in support of their new ep Wait Outside (Slanty Shanty Records).
Wait Outside is an energetic set of seven songs about fantasy and escape, with plenty of thoughts about friendship. It is filled with patchwork guitars and driving rhythms. However, one of my favorite aspects is the wonderful cover art by Liz Born. Unfortunately on my copy the cover is hidden by a huge sticker, but if you were to purchase the album at their record release show this Tuesday at the Abbey Pub I'm sure there would not be a sticker.
Caw! Caw! will be performing at The Abbey Pub with Sam Knudson and the Shame Train and Sugarfoot on Tuesday Sept 23rd. Doors at 7pm and show at 8pm. Tickets $6 in advance and $8 at the door. This show is 18+.
I know we are in the middle (or maybe the final years) of a raging '80's revival in music, fashion and just about everything else, but is it too early to talk about the early signs of a '90's revival? When I first played the new EP from San Francisco's The New Up I was instantly transported back to the early 90's and began craving my flannel shirts and Doc Martins. Theirs is an irresistible combination of power pop with just enough attitude, "grunge" if you will, to keep you interested. By the end of the 24 minute six track romp that is Broken Machine, I find myself searching for my copy of Veruca Salt's American Thighs, Siouxsie and The Banshees' Superstition, Belly's Star, PJ Harvey's Rid of Me, and even my copy of Bloodletting by Concrete Blonde.
The New Up, originally formed here in Chicago, are led by the powerful vocals and Linda Perry-like dreads of singer/songwriter Es Pitcher. In 2003 they fled for the warmth and history of San Francisco and released their self-titled debut album the next year. In August they self-released their latest EP, the first of three that will be released over the next 18 month's, Broken Machine (stream). Touching on the "lonely machinery that distracts us from our lives," and themes of pollution and technology, this album is not only packing with 90's glory, but some serious topics as well. Es is supported by guitarists Noah Reid, drummer Jack McFadden, bassist Dain Dizazzo, and the fascinating flautist/electronic wizard Hawk West.
-9th Wonder & Buckshot "THE FORMULA" In Stores Now
-Kidz In The Hall "The In Crowd" In Stores Now
-DJ Revolution "King Of The Decks" IN STORES TODAY
-Heltah Skeltah "D.I.R.T." (Da Incredible Rap Team) In Stores September 30th
-Sean Price Presents Ruste Juxx "Indestructible" In Stores October 28th
-Rock, of Heltah Skeltah, "Shell Shock" In Stores Now
I am always amazed by duos that can create massive sounds with just two instruments. Examples that come to mind are The Black Key's and the full on roar of Daniel Auerbach or the room shaking sound of Matt & Kim or The Dodos. If I had just one word to describe the sound of Shalloboi it would be reverb; room filling, ever-growing and growling reverb. This Chicago duo, consisting of Tyler Ritter and Stefanie Goodwin, has figured out a way to capture their impressive sound without too much processing. Recorded through utilizing natural room sounds, mic placement, doubling and pure volume, Tyler is able to use this as an additional instrument. The huge drone makes for an unsettling, but always interesting platform for the hazy and wondering vocals of Stefanie Goodwin. All of the vocal effects were achieved through the use of natural reverbs courtesy of an abandoned stairwell in the apartment building where the band lives and several spaces in the congress theater. I'm not sure if I would want to live in their building, but I love how their latest album turned out.
Down To Sleep is actually their fifth record, and it took about two and half years to record. The opening track, "The Sun is so Bright" begins like a sunrise, slowly moving and illuminating the edges of the sky. It is clear and clean with faint electronics, tambourine, and whispered vocals. However, at the 4:37 mark the song filled with a forceful and heavy drone. The sound is powerful and unexpected, and it can be followed through the rest of album. Shalloboi is a member is cllct.com so this release and all five of their albums can be downloaded for free.
We here at Gapers Block Transmission aim to cover the local music scene and emerging Chicago artists as much as our resources permit. What follows is the transcript for a proposed review of the new CD Eve, Adam & the Apple by Chicago-based artist Slow Gun Shogun. The editors fanned the CD out to a potential contributor (PC) and an unaffiliated party (UP) in a focus-group styled experiment. What follows is a transcript of the results. Believe it or not, the transcript that follows was heavily edited and abridged in order to remove the more pedantic, digressive, and profanity-strewn passages. Needless to say, we will not be hiring either party for any future assignments.
UP: Yeah, but I don't feeling like getting up to get it just yet. What have we got?
PC: Some new CD by an artist who calls himself Slow Gun Shogun.
UP: Can't say I'm familiar.
PC: Local guy, apparently. It's a seven-song EP called Eve, Adam and the Apple. Judging from this, he plays a lot of the instruments himself -- one-man band style -- with the help of one "Miss Palanti" on drums. Appears to be self-released, on a label called Devil's Bedpost.
With several collaborations over the last few years, Chicago's Apoc (rhymes) and Rel (beats) (a.k.a. The Ritz) have come to know each others style and sound, and the result is the well-crafted debut, The Night of Day (Lab-o Records 8/19/08). With nods to the themes and aesthetics of the gritty noir films of 40's and 50's, these two have created an album filled with beats, samples, and lyrics that are both fresh and original yet always mindful of history. Highlighted by appearances by Psalm One, Moodswangz, Elfamail, and Brendan B., the standout track in both name and sound is "Langston Bukowski" featuring Racecar of Modill (video). It's an exploration of alcoholism and all of its ill effects.
Apoc has a well-established history both here in Chicago and in San Francisco since 2003 and the release of his debut album Salesmanshipwrecked. Know for his wild live performances, that energy really comes through on every track he appears on. Rel is a Chicago producer who has worked with several local acts like Elfamail and Moodswangz. He has once again proven that he is a man of many sounds from orchestral slow jams to bouncy summer beats or the electro-creep, Rel keeps it moving. Pulling the entire album together with his skilled and knowledgeable cuts is DJ Onceamonth, a veteran Chicago battle DJ.
Location can be everything, indeed. The best live recordings come from such circumstances, occasions where an artist finds herself at home with a warm, and responsive crowd, and the result is a friendly and intimate interaction between performer and audience. Live albums like Etta James Rocks The House and Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison and Roland Kirk's Kirk In Copenhagen leap to mind, but there are plenty of others in the history of recorded music that serve as evidence to this effect.
Better yet, there's nothing like returning to a welcoming fold of friends after a long journey. Such was the case when Mavis Staples played a homecoming show at the Hideout this past June. Alighting from an extensive tour, Staples and her band played a 14-song, career-spanning set to a sold-out house. Given the Hideout's modest digs, the crowd topped out at about 200 attendees, making for a cozy and up-close show. Reviews and reports of the performance were radiant across the board, and the Anti- label was on hand to document the whole thing.
And now from the Hideout and the artist's website comes word that the resulting disc, Mavis Staples Live: Hope at the Hideout, is scheduled for an official release date of November 4th. Check the Hideout's website for the full tracklisting, links to reviews, and photos.
The current state of hip-hop, especially in Chicago, is eclectic to say the least. You can basically come from any direction, electro-glitch, old school beats and rhymes, slick well-produced, raw bedroom beats, it doesn't really matter. At its core, to quote Rakim, the role of the MC is to the move the crowd. Everything else is just window dressing, bling, trash, whatever. Chicago emcee Phashara released his debut album, The Storybook Adventure (Beatmonstas Entertainment) last month, and it really speaks the diverse nature of hip-hop today. He is not trying to break new ground. He is not claiming to be the original or the abstract. He wants to take it back to the days when hip hop was golden, and everyone was bouncing over chopped up funk and soul. He wants to tell a story and move the crowd.
Featuring beats by Chicago producers Noble Dru and Radius, The Storybook Adventure touches on all aspects of life. From the hopeful to the hunger, from the deadly to the daring, Phashara speaks to the youth and the experienced a like, revealing rich portrayals of life through the eyes of a west side Chicagoan.
Above: Locrian. Inset: Cover of Greyfield Shrines LP (Diophantine Discs)
Like a raven perched on an electrical transformer, Locrian summon elemental human dread, the type hinted at in medieval passion plays and Shakespearean dramatic interludes, but do so electrically, without the pretense of ancient wisdom or nostalgia-laden "spectral folk." The duo of Andre Foisy and Terrence Hannum stalk the barren forests (or maybe not, since the cover of their LP contains a picture of an abandoned shopping mall…"Leave the City," anyone?) with delay-laden guitars and round, full, low-end synth textures. Although their music is steeped in darkness, Locrian never condescend to the darkness, nor do they invoke it cheaply or take shortcuts to bring us there. Each summoning is done carefully, thoughtfully, and with considerable toil.
This week, Diophantine Discs releases Greyfield Shrines, the band's debut vinyl LP.
Sic Alps killed me in just over 90 seconds - it didn't take much time at all. The 1:30 slice of perfection in question is "Bells (with Tremolo and Distortion)," off of their recent Description of the Harbor 12-inch (don't bother looking, it's long gone, unless you've got $75 and an Ebay username to spare) and it just nailed me - it's like a breath of air straight out of Lenny Kaye's record cellar, a lost psychedelic Nugget(s) lifted from obscurity, dusted off, and then killed and reborn anew, because it's not a cover, it's a new song with moves for moderns. The main lyric is pretty much one line: "I don't care 'bout what you say/meet me down on the lawn, lawn lawn," and that might not even be how it goes! The singer drawls the last word so exquisitely, it's hard to tell. Or care. (Youtube video here…count the visual music references/influences!)
Bespeaking the cultural effects of globalization via Myspace, Mexican indie act Los Dynamite sings in English, and counts the Clash and the White Stripes among their influences. Oh, and they idolize Interpol, too. This Mexico City band just had their debut at Metro this past Saturday, as part of the INDIEcent Latino music series. Listening to the eleven tracks on their first album, Greatest Hits, it’s hard to imagine these four 20-somethings aren’t the latest indie wonder to emerge from Brooklyn.
Even though they sound American, or anglicized, these guys are pure Mexicano. The band started out as a solo project of Diego Solorzano, who then recruited Eduardo Pacheco, Miguel Hernandez, and Felipe Botello, three of the most prominent indie musicians in Mexico City. Their first single, “TV,” was introduced via the band’s Myspace page, quickly earning them a stable of gigs. It’s not hard to imagine why -- the music is steeped in electronic synth pop sensibility of Daft Punk, yet with the exuberance of well, yes, Interpol. Mexico’s largest cellular company, Telcel, chose “TV” as their main theme song of summer 2005. Other frequently played Greatest Hits played in Mexico: “Ready Read,” “Katonic,” “No me Suelte,” and “Frenzy.”
“Ready Ready” resonates the heady punk influences and detached singing style of the Talking Heads. In contrast, “Frenzy” and “Katonic” exhibit the band’s explosive character. Guitar heavy and swaggering with a sense of unabashed exhibitionism is commonplace. Perhaps that’s what’s most interesting about this band, in terms of their brazen sound and international character: they reflect an amalgam of bands and genres (punk, indie, and electronic) all at once. Los Dynamite has opened for bands like Interpol, Bloc Party, The Killers, Dirty Pretty Things, The Secret Machines, and Radio 4.
Between his quickly sold-out 2007 New Years Eve appearance at the Empty Bottle and the overwhelming crowds that swamped his third-stage appearance at the Pitchfork Festival last summer, it's fair to say that Pittsburgh-based mashup maestro Girl Talk (aka Gregg Gillis) has a solid fanbase in this town. And in case you were too busy to catch the news as it spread across the web yesterday, he's now making his forthcoming album, Feed The Animals, available in advance by way of a pay-what-you-want download via his own website and label, Illegal Art.
As far the download is concerned, Gillis is giving his fans three options. For the interested, any price will get you high-quality mp3s of the album, five bucks will get you the same plus one additional continuous-track version of the entire album (which is how Gillis claims he'd prefer people listen to it), and ten dollars gets you the downloads plus a physical copy of Feed The Animals when it's officially released in September.
Since the Illegal Art site was inaccessible at the time of this writing, it appears that traffic might be heavier than the site can handle. Whatever the case, it looks like there's now a mirror link for the download here.
Girl Talk hits the road later this summer and will be making his appearance in Chicago at Lollapalooza on August 3. Feed The Animals will see hardcopy release on September 23.
[Note: This review came to us from former Gapers Block: Transmission staffer Dan Snedigar.]
David Berman and unidentified pooch. (Photo by Brent Stewart)
Chicago's Drag City has a reputation for putting out challenging, diverse music, and plenty of Chicago scene superstar side projects. This week, the label cranks out the latest from poet David Berman's musical vehicle Silver Jews. Though occasionally and for the most part wrongfully categorized as a Stephen Malkmus sidecar, the Jews music has always trafficked in simple but potent music layered with some of the most intricate lyrics of the past few decades. On Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, the band's fifth full length effort, the music draws from a well that has seemingly deepened since the band started touring extensively after over a decade as something of a studio lark.
The music remains country-tinged, often sounding like background music in a David Lynch honky-tonk. Songs like “Suffering Jukebox," are musical oddities, sounding at once like modern Nashville pap, but maintaining a jewel-like clarity and a respectably poignant lyrical punch. “Party Barge," borrows notes from the Rolling Stones and maintains an almost Jimmy Buffet-like irreverence while weaving in shore sounds and driving guitars.
The shiny new production can at times be frustrating, leaving fans of the Silver Jews early work pining for the stripped down simplicity of albums like American Water, and while there may be as many near misses as hits, the album represents an interesting step forward. It shows a band coming into true professionalism musically while maintaining frontman Berman's lyrical voice, unmatched in modern music.
-Dan Snedigar
Dan was a Chicago resident until he recently moved to Montana where he's a freelance writer and attorney.
Have you ever wondered what it would sound like if David Bowie and Slug (of Atmosphere) decided to join the space program? While on their first mission they might record a few tracks about their escape from Earth and all of the reasons for leaving. Unrehearsed, just pure improv rock and vocals mixed with hip-hop. The sounds from mission control and the odd space noise would occasional interfere with the recording, but it would all come together nicely. I may be dreaming, but that was the first image that popped into my head while listening to the latest shoegaze noise-rap album from Chicago’s Remote Control Frequencies.
Recorded at Stray Dog Recording Co., Tempus, finds old friends R-Rock (sampledelic songwriting and vocals) and L. Grant "LG" Meadows (drummer) back together again. With the help of friends, recording engineer David 'Player 1' Whitcomb (proprietor of Chicago's Stray Dog Recording Co), PJ Sumroc and Sharkula, this duo takes the listener on audio adventure through genres, time periods, space, sounds, and life. R-Rock (also the founder of The Secret Life of Sound, one of Chicago’s most eclectic labels) sing/raps over his own chopped up samples and LG’s raw beats. The album has almost a mysterious feel to it, aided by the lack of tracklisting and the use of alias, but also by the recording technique. R-Rock has this to say on the process, “sometimes we would record his drums at Stray Dog with me playing keys, and then I would take them home and chop them up and bring them back. Other songs on the record were completely improvised, recorded live in one take.” Another mystery is why the band has not updated their myspace page (since they do not have a website) since August 2007. That is explained with the plea to the all too famous Tom in the liner notes, but nonetheless it is not easy to obtain current information on these two. I think they like it that way.
For an escape from the earth's gravitational pull, check out Tempus from Remote Control Frequencies (TSLOS 017) released June 3rd. You can stream album here and purchase a copy here.
Late last year, I got unexpectedly punched in the mouth by a little EP called Bridget Quits, a five-song rock’n’roll assault from local band the Sharks, that sounded like Weezer and Pavement had sex and this was their five-headed monster. Rather than sounding completely derivative, though, the Sharks offered a fresh take on time-honored material, a loose, chaotic, boozy assemblage tackling the truly important subjects (drugs and girls). A few months later, after the lawyers got to them and they holed up tearfully in their parents’ basement (okay, I made that last part up), the Sharks are now the Prairie Spies and they’re set to drop their very first full length, available from newish local label Comptroller Records.
Surplus Enjoyment picks up right where the previous record left off. Despite the name change, not a damn thing about band’s aesthetic has been altered, and that’s just fine by me. They play fierce and fun goodness that is simultaneously raw and overtly poppy, and songs like “Unresolved Anatomy” and “Who’s Been Gettin’ High” delight with pleasing hilarity. It’s “Iowa”, though, that takes the treasured prize, a balance of fuzzed-out guitars and kitschy keyboards with shout-along vocals that soar snarl howl and lyrics that tend toward dryly ironic with just a dose of savagery. This ode to our neighbors to the West finds the Spies at their very best, not reaching but playing comfortably to their strengths and loving every second of it. While a few tracks falter (most notably, their Clash rip-off, “Vigilante”), Surplus Enjoyment is by and large a terrific and accomplished record, and will receive consistent summer rotation in the library of at least one fan (though I suspect there’s more than just me out in the wilderness).
The Prairie Spies take the stage at the on Friday for a kickin’ record release party. Opening are dreamy boy-girl combo (and Comptrollin’ label mates), the Spectacles, and Cincinnati band Bad Veins. The Killer Whales headline. Show start at 10pm.
Considering that they've only been active for just over three years, the Chicago-based trio Russian Circles has managed to rack up a high ratio of praise throughout the webzine community in a short period of time. It seems there's something unique about the group's music that resonates with those who've heard it. The band's 2006 debut album, Enter, met with enthused accolades across the board, and quickly the landed them a slot on the top of the bill at Drowned In Sound's End-of-Summer festival in London last August. With the pending arrival of their sophomore LP, Station, Russian Circles are set to kick off another tour, beginning with a record-release party and a headlining set at Subterranean this Saturday evening.
I tried to express that true Chicago soul sound, and natural feeling. Just giving thanks to being from the south side and Chicago overall.” ~ Radius
When everyone was talking about this coast or that coast, Chicago hip-hop was brewing deep in the basements and warehouses, surround by house and jazz and blues. Waiting for the day that the world would finally allow them a moment to explain where they come from. Even though the roots of Chicago hip-hop date back to the early ‘80’s with acts like OZ & the D.V.S. Crew, Sugar Ray Dinki, Cassius D, and Shakespeare, and on into the ‘90’s with Twista, Kinetic Order, Common, The Molemen, and so on, it took someone like Kayne West to allow the casual fan to dig through crates, both past and present, of Chicago hip-hop. There is a rich history in this city, but more then just hip-hop, Chicago has soul. Deep in the walls and sidewalks, in every neighborhood, at every El stop, there is an ever-present soul that vibrates the windows and moves the youth.
Nicole Mitchell continues to grow and impress as a band leader and composer, creating another stellar album that reflects a diverse musical aesthetic and vision. Released this week on Firehouse 12 records, the Chicago based creative flutist and composer has been enjoying an increased awareness of her work in the last year that is sure to continue with Xenogenesis Suite, an album dedicated to the pioneer African American science fiction writer Octavia Butler.
I heard this music once before, in its Chicago debut at the Chicago Cultural Center earlier this year. I left the performance in a musically altered state, having been transfixed and transported by Xenogenesis Suite. The music was expansive, evocative, and perhaps most of all to my ears, a departure from her earlier work stylistically. While it retained her signature flute playing, the compositions were radically different from anything else I had heard from Nicole Mitchell, and if I had to oversimplify a bit, I'd say it was certainly darker than her other work.
Musicians from around the world have contributed 30 songs to an electronic tribute to Elektron's late CEO and co-founder, Daniel Hansson. Of course, Chicago's part of the mix, with The Sea and Cake offering the song "Sound and Vision," which you can preview on the website. If you like the album, you can download it for $5. All proceeds will be donated to the WWF.
Composed of seasoned veterans from Chicago's avant-rock heyday of the mid-late 90s, the band Singer has just this week released their debut album, Unhistories, on Drag City. And if there's one thing that should be established from the start, it's that Singer don't "do" linearity.
This should come as no surprise, given the band's collective cee-vee. Bassist Robert A.A. Lowe was previously a central member of math-rock/no-wave/prog-revisionists 90 Day Men, currently performs and records under the moniker Lichens, and has -- as a studio and touring sideman -- contributed keyboard work to TV On The Radio. Ben Vida was formerly part of the minimalist chamber ensemble Town and Country and has recently been producing work as Bird Show; while Todd Rittman and Adam Vida are erstwhile members of the defunct Chicago "rock deconstructionist" unit U.S. Maple.
Much of Unhistories unfolds by way of country-blues(ish) guitar riffs that sidewind and meander, sometimes get bogged down in briars, but are more often striking ahead in a hunting or explorative mode. With Singer, songs don't develop or progress so much as charge up to a threshold, pause, and double back to strike out on alternate courses. Theirs is a music that involves the tightening and release of torques and tension, always playfully teetering on the edge of clamor and collapse. But the guitars never roam too far from the campground, so it ends up being drummer Adam Vida who probes at the outermost perimeters, his kitwork often dancing around a rhythmic center of the song without engaging it directly. While the whole band routinely steps in with some woozy harmonizing, bassist Robert Lowe's vocals -- often straining into the upper registers in a faux-falsetto that suggests mimicry or mockery -- drape the tenuous melodies like lilies wilting under a blistering sun.
Unlike Austin, New York and L.A., Chicago doesn't have a thriving scene of singer-songwriters, folk singers or indie folk trobadours. But unlike those cities, we at least have Chris Mills. His last record, Living The Dream, was one of the highlights of the 00's. Now the similarly titled Living In The Aftermath is about to hit the streets (Ernest Jennings, April 22).
Pre-order the new record here. Catch Chris Mills at his hometown record release show at Schubas on April 26.
My musical tastes have taken such a turn that at this point what I'm most looking for in a band is hard to pinpoint. In fact it's that unclassifiable sound that is now what I'm drawn to. The Great White Jenkins have that sound in spades (whatever that sound is). On their MySpace page they call it soul-folk. The excellent music blog Catbird Seat called it “Jake-Legged, Brokedown, Spiritual Soul Revue” just the other day.
Why all this talk of The Great White Jenkins? Because they've just released a new EP titled Mussel Souls and are about to commence on a massive tour. Before the tour kicks off though members of this Virginia based band will be joining Ken Vandermark and playing under the name Fight The Big Bull at The Hideout on April 16 for an Immediate Sound show. I'm not sure exactly what that'll be like, but that's half the fun of music these days.
Here's the song "Wind" from the new ep Mussel Souls.
Since they first came together on the Osaka noise scene of the mid-1980s, The Boredoms have always been one of the music world's most unwieldy and inexplicable acts. Starting out as an outfit of frenetic, genre-mulching rawk'n'roll destructivists, they've since undergone a circuitous musical evolution over the past decade. Like a supernova constricting into a neutron star, the band refocused its musical energy to become purveyors of dense and droning space-rock in the late 1990s before finally arriving at their present trance-inducing, tribal incarnation as the most apeshit drum circle on earth.
Boredoms fans will have a chance to see the band play a special "in the round" performance at the Congress Theater next Wednesday evening. The show will be one of the few dates on their current U.S. tour where the group will be able to perform the way they want to -- interfacing in a circle in the center of the venue while the audience will be free to gather around on the periphery.
The Gawker music blog Idolator gave the Champaign based band Headlights much love this morning. The band's new record, Some Racing, Some Stopping, is out today on Polyvinyl Records. I'm not familiar with their catalog, but word is this dreamy pop song is a departure from the band's "spacey atmospheric" previous sound.
While the world has waited for the release of Chinese Democracy, metal has undergone a lot of changes. It's responded to the backlash against its hair-hopping halcyon days by absorbing influences and ideas from across the rock spectrum, splintering off into a number of enclaves that probe the perimeters of the genre's creedal heaviness.
Case in point, the Chicago instrumental trio Russian Circles. The band's 2006 album Enter received a lot of glowing praise via print and online venues that cover the heftier ends of the musical spectrum, and it sent critics scrambling for labels to sum up the the band's sound. If you were to string all the resulting desciptives together, then Russian Circles are reputedly a math-/prog-/post-rock metal trio with melodic, neo-Mahlerian shoegaze affinities. Or something like that.
Band: Organ Wolf Town: Chicago Moto: “Take an old Hammond organ, soak it in beer, throw it in a truck and back it into the swamp.” Members: Grassy, Lassie, Wheelie & Skid Record Title: I Didn’t Come Here And I’m not Leaving (So You Can Just Kiss My Ass That’s What You Are) Sounds Like: Greasy food, sweaty sex, the south if it were overrun with Ghettotech idiot savants from Chicago. Professionalism (Scale of 1-10): 0 Soul (Scale of 1-10): 10 Drug Use: Probable For Sale: Yes
Let's face it: Wedding dances can outright suck. Luckily, in the new album Dancing at Weddings, Essex Chanel brings the wedding dance to your living room -- albeit without the embarrassingly drunk uncle attempting to do the Worm on the dance floor.
Essex Chanel is the solo project of Chicago-based musician/artist/all-around busy bee Travis Lee Wiggins, who also performs in the Summer Salts and Fetla. Dancing at Weddings sort of serves as an tutorial, opening with a loopy, roaming bassline over background shouts to "Get up and dance!" Soon what one can only assume is a party robot intercedes. On second thought, you better bust out that Worm.
The Chicago outfit Mahjongg recently went on tour, aiming to round up converts to Kontpab--which is both the title for their new album that's now being released on K Records and the name of a post-millennial cult that the band recently started. Actually, the stuff about the cult's just a bunch of presskit monkeyshines; but the album's for real, and Mahjongg will be returning to home base to play a record-release party at Subterranean this Thursday.
If you threw a party and invited Suicide and Konono No1 to play in your basement, what would it sound like? Kontpab probably best answers that question. In the time that's lapsed since their prior LP, Raydoncong2005, Mahjongg has undergone some slight personnel changes. Their sound has changed a little, as well. Save for bass, guitars are largely out and keyboards dominate -- specifically keyboards of the gritty, pulsing electro-punk variety.
I've got this Friday feature thingy on my personal music blog called Honky-Tonk Friday. I'm always excited to include Chicago bands but it's an infrequent occurrence at best. I prepared this post to go up soon on the Chicago country band The Blue Line Riders. However, I'm swamped over there with new music and this has been on the back-burner now for a few weeks, but with an impending gig by The Blue Line Riders I thought it'd be nice to share this with the fine readers of Transmission first.
There's not more than a handful of great honky-tonk bands in Chicago. Separate those out that write their own material and those that don't, and you're down to even fewer. Sift out the bands that can write a country love song as pretty as "(Our Love's A) Bar Room At Closing Time" and you're left with just one - The Blue Line Riders. The band that's been a fixture over at the California Clipper has just released it's solo debut.
They'll be appearing next, at where else, The California Clipper on Friday, February 22.
Buy the new self-titled debut record here via CDBaby.
Back in early 2007, Thrill Jockey introduced listeners to the work of Arbouretum when it released the Baltimore quartet's sophomore album, Rites of the Uncovering. Nearly a year later finds the label releasing the first proper full-length CD by Human Bell, which hits stores on January 29.
Human Bell is effectively a collaborative side-project involving Arbouretum frontman Dave Heumann and former Lungfish bassist Nathan Bell. For the new self-titled LP, both musicians strap on their six-strings and unfurl seven instrumental tracks of exploratory fretwork. Half-composed and half-improvised, each song starts out simply and deliberately, with the duo setting the stage with basic structure and melody before setting off for more complex and expansive domains. There's plenty of cohesion by way of counterpoint and complement throughout, and there's some additional instrumental accompaniment to flesh things out a bit. The album as a whole is intricate in some parts, downright hefty in others, and admittedly borders on the soporific from time to time. But just as the whole effort seems to have exhausted its musical vocab, things take a denser, more foreboding turn in the album's final stretch. Some hazy, haunting hornwork threads "Ephaphatha (Be Opened)" with a droning eeriness, while "The Singing Trees" digs into a heavily churning and reverberous blues.
Deeply indebted to the work of Neil Young and John Fahey, and suffused with prog-y English folk-jazz trimmings, Human Bell is very much a guitar record. It's moody and evocative in a way that's best suited for soundtracking those lazier and more contemplative afternoons.
My My My, a chill local band that released this past fall their new album, Conjugation Nation, is self-described as sounded like “The Shins fronted by Cat Stevens.” This is wrong. While likely never going to share a stage with Jimmy Hendrix or end up on a Garden State reincarnation soundtrack, My My My would find a very appropriate place among big names had they put out this album ten years ago. The album is carried by upbeat alt-pop and happy crooning evident that the members really like to feel good about their music and want you to feel good about it, too. There is a twist of Jimmy Eat World in their lyrics and a dash John Mayer in their G-A-D guitar lines. And with various riffs that evoke an essence of Belle and Sebastian, it is evident that My My My wants to do more with their sound, but can’t break out of the comfortable formula that worked so well for Third Eye Blind and Everclear. They unsuccessfully drift from this standard alt-rock sound in songs such as “Stallion” and “Chemistry is for Lovers”, and have twelve too many “Oh’s”, “Whoa’s”, and “Na Na Na’s”, but that doesn’t mean you can deny the infectious catchy-ness when they hit it spot on in songs such as “See-Thru” and “Sadder at the Seams”. '90s alt-rock is good and over, and I doubt My My My is trying to dig it up again. They’re just trying to make fun music that is so forgotten about in our strictly serious sense of indie rock these days. Conjugation Nation makes you remember those naïve days when music was just good, no strings attached.
My My My will be playing this Friday, Jan 18th @ The Note
Show starts at 9, they go on at 10
Performing with Project Ultra, The Help Desk, and Meryll. 21 +
David Brewis' latest project School of Language, not to be confused with his old project Field Music (which is not to be confused with The Field {which has never been confused with Spitalfield}), has signed to Thrill Jockey for North American release of it's debut effort Sea From Shore. Fans of Field Music will not be disappointed - the album is a friendly mix of all the same ingredients, but replacing half a cup less of Pornographer sugar with a wistful whallop in the veins of Andrew Bird or Of Montreal. The four "Rockist" tracks sandwich the album in a ambitious melody of vowel pronunciations, guitar sustain, and a little love ballad for good measure. Standout "This Is No Fun" is a seafaring dirge whose form only occasionally contains the exuberant rock underneath. The album will be available from Thrill Jockey in February.
First things first: while I may not take the crown, I will definitely go down swinging in a challenge for the World’s Greatest Prince fan (if such a challenge ever existed). I remember fondly when His Royal Badness changed his name inexplicably to an unpronounceable symbal, only to be dubbed by the media with the acronym TAFKAP. And as much as I do love Prince, I’ve been marveling with glee at his increasingly ridiculous artistic choices the past couple of years (I mean, seriously, he named his latest album Planet Earth). So you can imagine my delight when I received a press release for the Artist Formally Known as Vince and his latest album, Welcome to the Show. While I expected a tongue-in-cheek send-up of His Purple Majesty, instead I was handed a surprisingly good blast of fast and furious glam rock.
Thankfully Vince doesn’t take himself too seriously, tossing off a cache of love-pump licking jams, most of them about screwing trashy women, or potentially trashy women. “Come and Touch Me” features the absolutely ridiculous line, “Don’t know where you been / Don’t know your sin”, while “More than Me” laments his lovers preference for drugs over his own diverse charms. “Heartbreak (Leads to Heartattack)” is an oddly sweet, semi-poppy, ready for radio ditty and Lauren Kurtz’s vocals provide a nice dynamic on “Tiara Blues”, a fine piece of dirty, grungy fun. The music isn’t terribly diverse (just straight ahead rock’n’roll) and there’s nothing really insightful that can be said about it but once you get locked into its hooks, there’s really no where else to go. Ultimately, what keeps the album from completely taking off is the lack of production values. While I appreciate a loose and low-fi approach, what would really make all of the jokes work is a healthy dose of nonsensical over-production. Even still, Welcome to the Show is a noble effort that is subversive, trashy and a real good time.
TAFKAVince and Lauren play December 7th at Reggie’s, December 14th at Quenchers and a special holiday show December 15th at the Pontiac Café.
Labels used to be curatorial pursuits. Basically they started out as one guy declaring this is the music I love. All that's changed, but there are still lone voices releasing only the music they love, damn the consequences. One of the best one man labels of late is Catbird Records, which sprung out of the Catbird Seat blog. Ryan's got eclectic, at times challenging taste, but if he releases something you can rest assured the quality will be up to his high standards. Some of his past releases include cd's from Get Him Eat Him, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, and Tap Tap. Besides releasing some pretty great music, Catbird also has some interesting ideas about compensating the artists. For instance, if you click the pre-order link below you'll find a box to check to donate $1 directly to the band (how cool is that?!).
For his next release (which you can preorder here) he signed Chicago's Manishevitz, they of the odd time signatures and Euro-glam indie rock. Here's "Dead Birds" from the new record East To East.
After releasing Get Yr Blood Sucked Out to critical acclaim last year, the husband and wife duo Viva Voce are re-releasing long sought after albums Lovers, Lead the Way! (2003) and The Heat Can Melt Your Brain (2004)--along with bonus material, which includes B-sides, live performances, remixes, and some demo takes. Reissued Nov 13 (tomorrow!) on the band's Amore!Phonics label, these two albums have up until now been out-of-print and wickedly hard to find. But no more!
Additionally, the indie duo play Riviera Theater 11/15 and Champaign, IL (in the Assembly Hall at the University of Illinois) on 11/16. This (plus a show in Nebraska) finishes up a 2 month tour supporting Jimmy Eat World, after which Viva Voce plans to head back to studios. A follow-up to Get Yr Blood Sucked Out is scheduled for a 2008 release.
I have a thing for circus sideshow music. Music you might hear in a Wim Wenders film, something by David Lynch or maybe in a Jim Jarmusch movie. So it should come as no surprise that I was drawn to the music of Chicagoan Daniel Knox. In fact, Daniel Knox has a David Lynch connection. He played the organ before a London screening of Lynch's film Inland Empire. His new record, HP Johnson Presents Daniel Knox :: Disaster, was just released and is part of a planned trilogy.
"Lovesmoney" is a perfect example of the campy, Victorian-organ-grinder meets snake-oil-circus-barker style I was referring to above. You can buy Disasterhere directly from Daniel Knox.
On Widow City, the sixth LP from brother-sister duo the Fiery Furnaces that lands today from Thrill Jockey, melodies, tempos and styles abruptly shift, extend, and double back. Tracks blend seamlessly together to create a giant long-form pop suite. With lyrics inspired by an imagined Ouija board and ads from women’s magazines of the early 1970s, the Furnaces take the listener on an intergalactic musical journey through the duplexes of the dead, consulting Egyptian grammars, and into the Cabaret of the Seven Devils. It’s impossible to predict where we’ll end up next, as fierce drum attacks mingle with fuzzed out guitars. The Chamberlain—a keyboard that triggers tape loops of other instruments to create a library of sound—crafts a barrage of strings, woodwinds and keys that weave in and out of the abstract song structures. The record is confusing and chaotic and requires maximum attention paid to catch all of the unique musical ideas.
Standout track “Navy Nurse” begins with a funky base, drum and guitar jam that gives way to light piano before leading a march with the repeated line, “If there’s anything I’ve had enough of, it’s today.” “Restorative Beer”, the closest thing to a single, mixes a blues riff with a rolling and tumbling vocal melody about wanting “to restore your beer to take my mind off these tears”. I salute the Fiery Furnaces for making a piece of work that is obtuse, that is difficult to listen to, that shies away from three-minute masterpieces when it’s clear that they possess an acute understanding of pop perfection. The Furnaces might be the most unique band on the planet and they refuse to take the easy way out, and this album is surprising and startling and weird.
But it’s long. Really long. Perhaps it’s unfair to criticize art for being too long (“it’s as long as it needs to be”, comes the counter-attack from the artist) but if I, as a music fan and sometime critic, sit around waiting for the album to end so I can pen my review or do the dishes, it’s too long. A little self-conscious weirdness goes a long way, and by the end of 16 tracks and 56 minutes, the genre-hopping travelogue of Widow City wears thin and I just want to go home.
The Fiery Furnaces have carved a nice niche for themselves in this pop landscape and they continually produce albums bursting forth with ideas, melodies, and strange behavior. But the music, as it relates to Widow City, doesn’t resonate. I’m never going to spin this disc at a party, or when I come home drunk and lonely, or as the soundtrack for a walk on the lakefront. I'm not asking for cheesy slow dance numbers or sappy cliches but I would like to hear some heart.
I can't resist. Really. I have to poke a little bit of fun at Danbert Nobacon, founding member of UK anarchist outfit Chumbawumba, they of the mid-90s smash hit "Tubthumper". Let's be honest: "Tubthumper" is one of those infuriatingly catchy tunes that sticks in your craw until you want to jam a fork in your eye.
But I'll hereafter put all snarky jokes aside. Danbert Nobacon's got a new solo record, his first in twenty years, and he is (unsurprisingly) one angry man. Library Book of the World, out now on Bloodshot Records, is a time traveler's opera (his words) that casts Nobacon as a riotous folk singer/pirate of the high seas, bringing manufactured dissent to a world gone drunk and strange and adrift in uncharted waters. As backed by the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, songs like "Last Drop in the Glass" feature a snarling Nobacon lamenting Nature's illness and the world a changed landscape. It would be fairly inaccessible, were it not for some general hilarity ("Wasps in November" incorporates well-timed verbal buzzing) and good-natured country that rumbles pleasantly over catchy couplets. Nobacon may not celebrate his legacy as a tupthumping chumbawumber, but he knows how to pen a tune, and sometimes that's the best way to provide a platform for personal politics and civil disobedience. What else is this "poor planet supposed to do"?
Danbert Nobacon drops anchor locally on September 28th at the Old Town School of Folk Music in support of punk-rock stalwarts, the Mekons.
DJ Colette’s new album, Push is highly versatile—good for headphones and the dance floor alike. Particularly dance inspiring is "Funny feat. Black Spade" and "Think You Want It." This is from the same woman who helped found the SuperJane collective, a group of female DJs devoted to helping women succeed in the music business. Colette was also one of the first DJs to lay her own vocals on the tracks she mixed. Uncompromising and undaunted, Colette brings the same experimental approach to Push, on which she pushes the boundaries of house music to reverberate with her own passionate style.
Like her previous album, (Hypnotized, 2005), Push explores the ups and downs of relationships and love. The album’s first track, “About Us,” details a relationship that has seen better days. She reintroduces the track at No. 11, this time mixed up by Chuck Love into a more danceable, and thus catchier tune. “Feelin’ Hypnotized” wound up on the The Devil Wears Prada soundtrack, and in similar fashion, “About Us (Chuck Love rework)” borders on pop and could easily be adapted in the mainstream market. That’s part of Colette’s strength—bringing house to the masses.
The most striking difference between the two albums is that the artist has moved from electronica (Hypnotized) to dance (Push). With its hypnotic beats and slickly arranged keyboards, Hypnotized got you listening. Push, on the other hand, gets straight down to business—sophisticated grooves and hooks push you out on the dance floor.
The first half of the album is mellow, earthy, and sensual, Colette’s finely tuned mezzo-soprano voice a complementary instrument to the blend of laidback and uplifting deep house. In the second half the artist kicks it up a notch by falling deeper into dance music. Each track blends seamlessly into the next, resulting in a lush compilation of tracks that makes for enjoyable listening, from start to finish.
Colette performs at Metro and Smartbar on Saturday. Tickets for both venues are $21. $10 for Smartbar only. Show starts at 10pm.
You know you do it. When no one else is in the car, you make absolutely no move to switch the radio station when Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" comes on. Maybe you're nostalgic for those middle school dances, or maybe you're just a sucker for a song you know all the lyrics to, but don't feel so guilty — even the most indie of indie musicians share in your dirty little secrets.
The latest release from Engine Room Recordings is Guilt by Association — a compilation of 15 tracks of pop, rock, and one-hit wonders, all remade by artists that love them, and aren't afraid to share. There's Will Oldham and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy performing Mariah Carey's "Can't Take That Away", Petra Haden crooning an a cappella version of "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey (complete with a sung guitar solo), Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson's sweet, trembling acoustic take on Oasis' "Don't Look Back in Anger" and The Mooney Suzuki tackling "Just Like Jesse James" made famous by the incomparable Cher. Most of the artists tend to go for the "let's slow this down a little" approach, so it can take a little while to recognize the song merely from the strum of the guitar and the whisper-soft vocals. Some songs, twisted and churned through the dark soul of indie rock, come out sounding like something you'd mosh to — like Superchunk's take on "Say My Name" by Destiny's Child. But mostly, these songs are sweet, slow indie nostalgia for nights where you heard them blasted out of the bar jukebox at 2am (oh, you know it wasn't an accident that you chose "Burning for You" by Blue Oyster Cult, fess it).
A full list of guilty artists and their pleasures is online, but a free listening party for the album is happening tonight at 8pm at Alive One at 2683 N. Halsted. There'll be drink specials and special giveaways.
Signing Choir is the solo effort of Joey King, bassist for the Chicago glam-/psych-pop outfit The M's. The Choir's self-titled debut, to be released this week on Brilliante, is the culmination of of five year's worth of sideline songwriting and recording. Left to his preferences and devices, King cozies into low-fidelity space quite comfortably and furnishes it well; exploiting the four-track, bedroom recording aesthetic to maximum effect. Throughout there's plenty of fuzzy and bottom-heavy riffs, amplifier hum, and the grain of the voice cloaked in varied degrees of distortion.
Despite these deliberate rough edges, King proves himself an astute craftsmen when it comes to tailoring his songs with subtle, contrasting sonic details. He gravitates toward a post-mod mish-mash of pop stylings, and the Signing Choir sound is more pointedly "rockish" (in an early-90s college-radio way) than the Anglophilic hookiness of The M's usual material. He cranks things into bouncy mode on "Comb Your Hair" and "The Beths," and King proves himself consistently pop-savvy in the offing. But in its later stretch, the album settles into more shadowy terrain that's reminiscent of the shoe-gazing languidity of Dinosaur Jr. -- moody and ruminative, it's the sound of thoughts and feeling turning themselves over to see how their undersides fare against the light of day.
Brilliante Records and Schubas will be host a record release party for the Signing Choir CD this Saturday night, with Signing Choir -- featuring King with friends and The M's guitarist Robert Hicks -- headlining. Rock Plaza Central and Casey Dienel are on the opening bill, and DJ LA*Jesus will be spinning some tunes between sets. 3159 N. Southport. 10pm, admission is $8.
What was it that André Breton said in one of his Surrealist manifestos, that "Beauty will be compulsive, or not at all"? Or wait…maybe he said that it would be convulsive. It's been misquoted so often that I can't remember which it is. But anyway, nevermind -- it's neither here nor there. For the Chicago band The Bird Names, the answer is that it will be both.
The Bird Names are about to release their third album, Wooden Lake/Sexual Diner, and chances are this is the first you're hearing about them. They've been around for about four-plus years, and have been playing in lofts and art spaces and clubs around town since the start. At first, they changed their own name many times over; and have had a number of members, friends, and valued contributors pass through their ranks all the while. On some evenings there's only a core group of about four or five people on stage when they play, on others so many of their extended family show up and join in that they can barely fit everyone on the stage. Sometimes they play plugged-in and very loudly, and on some occasions they perform much more subdued acoustic sets.
For some time now, Marvin Tate has been keeping a diminished profile on the local music scene. As of this month, that appears to have finally ended.
Those who've been around a while might recall his appearances at the Hot House and other venues around town with his former bands Uptighty and Marvin Tate's D-Settlement, or they might know him as a denizen of the city's spoken-word circuit. Since the break-up of D-Settlement, Tate has spent the past few years dwelling of the periphery; but now he's returned with Family Swim, his debut CD as a solo artist.
What's all this about "cultural imperialism," eh? Okay, granted -- there's been no shortage of exoticist fetishization afoot in the ping-ponging of intercultural exchange over the years. But fortunately for all involved, the global village does provide for two-way traffic. Case in point: the Chinese surf-rock combo Red Chamber. When they first started up in the 1960s, the music they played was most likely not what Chairman Mao had in mind for toeing the "party" line of the Cultural Revolution. Hail, hail decadent and politically-incorrect Western influences! And "Bali Hai" while you're at it.
Red Chamber (not to be confused with these gals) reportedly went on a long hiatus sometime in the 1970s, eventually resurfacing over two decades later to give the whole thing another go. The recent CD Red Chamber Brings You The Mao Sound, released on the locally-based Far East Audio label, gives a good taste of the band's repertoire. The disc features one track from
