We'll start off with the most temporally proximate - Tonight - Lager House - Timmy's Organism 7" Release / Greg Ashley / Wizzard Sleeve / Kelly Jean Caldwell
Next... we'll get to the shows that don't have any posters...at least none that the internet/glowing box genie/google-demon will reveal to me...
Hell City Rock/Fashion & Art show with designer Angela McBride -5 / 1 - Small's
May Days at the Bo-House - Pinkeye / Carjack / Oscillating Fan Club / Duende / Marco Polio & The New Vaccines / Friendly Foes / Red China / Gardens / James Semark / Detroit Artist Workshop / and more more more 5 / 1 - 5 / 2 - BoHouse
Mick Bassett & The Marthas / Divine Comedians / Dooley Wilson / The Wildfire - 5 / 2 - PJs Lager House
The Rogue Satellites / Electric Fire Babies / Marco Polio & The New Vaccines - 5 / 2 - Trowbridge House of Coffee ~
and..., also - at the Berkley Front - 5 / 2 -Desolation Angels / Darling Imperail / Trick 9
Charlene Kaye, Ann Arbor-based baroque pop songstress, has formed a full band for live interpretations of her debut full-length, Things I Will Need in the Past. Listen on myspace.
The Ark in Ann Arbor, often a folk-focal joint, is featuring Free shows on Tuesdays, attractively titled "Take a Chance" Tuesdays. Kaye plays with a line up that includes: (James Hart - bass/mandolin, Emily Haltom - violin/cello, Jared Saltiel - guitar/drums, Dave Koenig - upright bass, Miguel Mcquade - drums, Woody Goss - wurlitzer, Kiana Weber - violin)
For the wavering whimsy and crashing crescendos of strings, pianos, driving percussion and Kaye's sweet yet soulful voice, there's no better place to start than "Magnolia Wine." See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1wMTe9UXy8 (Directed by Liann Kaye)
Sunday Worship courtesy of Grand Rapids gospel idol Marvin Sapp. I heard this song on the radio this afternoon and was taken aback by Sapp singing his heart out. Religious beliefs aside, it's quite uplifting... and plus... Pimp's got some pipes!
"See, I don’t see change as a curse. It’s just part of my make-up. Without change the whole thing will just fall apart. I’m not just talking about rock n roll here…I’ve got to keep moving somewhere." – (Neil Young – Nick Kent Interview, 1993)
"Is this not what you expected?" Korin-Louise Visocchi, from "The Memo."
The Hard Lessons singer/guitarist Augie Visocchi, a son of Michigan, a son of Italy, a son of rock n roll, has always looked to Neil Young throughout his musical development. The answers to his ponderings on maintaining integrity in career path, echoing back in silent prayer from Neil to Augie on strung out nights of writing with his now-wife and bandmate Korin-Louise, always leading to chaos; the embrace of healthy chaos, or confidence in the face of the haphazard. It’s meant the true path to complete freedom.
Their 3rd proper release, the flavorful B&G Sides (2008), a four part series of EP’s spanning from softer, fuzzy synth-led ballads, to hand-clapped pop hurrahs, to murky twang to shreddy-indie-rock, augmented the “Neil Young mentality” of scattering out in all directions. Their second full-length, Arms Forest spurs numerous personal metaphors: reversing the name of former Wayne-State centered apartment complex Forest Arms, it allegorizes the building’s destructive fire in 2006. This leads into lyrics that scrutinize a hypocritical martyrdom – particularly in the face of a “falling empire” like Detroit. These dark themes resist all this apocalypse by promoting things that are “Made to Last,” which leads into the rebirth of, hopefully, our city, but more assuredly, the rebirth of a band; a band that’s not sorry for anything its ever done, with nothing but time on its hands. “No, I don’t have a past to live in yet,” they sing on ‘Tired Straits’, over a moody snaky guitar groove and solemn organ hum’ “and I don’t have a single regret, not yet…”
Year to year, since they started at MSU in 2003, from skyrocketing to the ceiling of local heights by mid 2005 and now being put up in a Dickies-sponsored house for their blog-documented jaunt through SXSW last month, the Hard Lessons have always (and will continue to) change. The album runs the gamut of lo-fi acoustic, shimmery dream-pop spume, piano-pounded builds of anthemic poignancy (“Manoogian Zoo,” “The Memo,”) buzzy bass booms almost-lurching over hard-hit-hip-shaking drums (“Sound The Silent Alarm”) under echoey vocals that waver into newer, fried falsettos and guitars that meld space-rock to metal (“Arms Forest”). No garage rock, no grimy swagger, but still a lingering, ever-passionate blues (the bloodshot, last-call/morning-after ballad “Talk It Over”) – intertwined with more intimate, biographical songs (“Wedding Ring”) and the glitzy dance/rock flamingo-flared, mandolin-led (indirectly-hip-hop inspired) epic, “Roma Termini.” Given a fine touch by engineer Zach Shipps, the album is also notably bolstered by board work from Blanche’s Dave Feeney. Wrapped up nicely by the poppier-pair of the sunny sway of cute-but-endearing “See You Again,” and the sparse-n-spindly to warm-n-explosive “Made To Last.”
“Some things are made to last, I’m capable to heal,” –Augie Visocchi, “Made To Last”
Alasdair Roberts – Spoils(Drag City) Garbed in styles of hallowed Scottish minstrels and rural folk, humble English buskers, classic American folk and new millennial spins on the back-porch poetics of Appalachian country-twang, Alasdair Roberts soon reaches the 15-year-mark of writing and recording; his savoir faire worn like orange-y scuffs on leather boots. His latest, Spoils expectedly finds the middle ground between his two most recent releases: stripped down, warm-beer-swilling Scottish regional folk (his trilling melodious voice warmly spilling honey through the headphones) mixed with intricate accompaniment. Prickly baroque guitars, harpsichords, and glockenspiels flutter like the frilly gold ends of curtained tent entrances. Drums rumble like nonthreatening thunder behind far off cumulonimbus clouds while Roberts, not only leading the way with the soothing glide of his humming vocal vacillation, also provides light synthesized simmering, the cheer of a fiddle and the more unique gestured swoon of a dulcimer and psaltery.
The strutting groove of drums mixes in with a hearty hooked-arm-swing and pub-set folk, that slides into a burning guitar arching over a gushing organ (“Hazel Forks”) – which exemplifies Roberts brilliant straddling of his two most oft-identified sound-bases: traditional English/Scottish folk revivalism and Will Oldham-esque American-twanged literate, melancholic country balladry. The baroque guitar promenades ornately before giving way to Roberts disarming coo “As I walked the woods and the mountains high…” on “So Bored Was I (Dark Triad)” restating an unacknowledged thesis that though a full band bulges readily beneath this earthy, hill-set solemn sanctimony, it is never more than an admittedly striking frame for the heart of any song, Roberts intimate vocals, as calming and heartwarming as sitting beside a sonorous piano in a sparse wooden floored room in some flat on the outskirts of Glasgow.
Bachelorette –My Electric Family(Drag City)
New Zealand based multi-instrumentalist Annabel Alpers sounds so natural surrounded by machines. Her vocals, as wispy as they are chalky, looped and double-tracked, seem to gush in dreamy dizzy reverie as it soars over blippy synths and disco-rumbled beats as it narrates a somewhat insular world very much at terms with the coldness of technology (“Her Rotating Head”). Alpers’ Drag City debut is her 2nd full length under the Bachelorette moniker, though she’s banded around New Zealand in the realms of psychedelia and surf (which shows on some of the clangy guitars and head-swimming fuzz effects persistent throughout My Electric Family). The buzzing hummed heart beat swizzles over a steady beat in “Technology Boy,” the stressful utilitarian resentment between human and artificial life, as her vocals bounce, sweet and serene yet with a mechanical stab, up-and-down at each syllable, “technology boys encapsulated by apollonian equipment creating uncontainable fissures as the Dionysian inside him intensifies…”
The middle section of said-song, arguably the centerpiece, spreads out into a quiet moonlit waltz of looped voices, made robotic through vocoders over innocuous electric clicks and clatters from what seems like stirring “family” members. Synths can pound away in slightly sunny pop struts (“Dream Sequence”) and earthy acoustic guitars and warble out rolling country-twangs (“Instructions for Insomniacs”); but at its heart the album feels like a conceptual space-opera, rolling back the screen of the computer or the shield of the skull to drown in the ven-diagram cramming of the electronic, the synthetic, and the human, the organic. Cold, seemingly lifeless structures (or, any sort of technology) are envisioned as somewhat-living organisms with natural functions like digestion and comparable powers like influence, all gleamed over haunting looped feedback roars that seem to be re-layered over a steady beat (“The National Grid”).
All in all, you’ll find waves of classic-dream pop recalling more recent flares like School of Seven Bells, but free of any said-revivalists potential for the ostentatious; and, be it danceable at some points, you’ll not find any true floor-burners, more like nocturnal groove ballads apt for night-driving; and, also, be it psychedelic at some points, it’s not necessarily the rooftop perched strung out stoner trip, but it certainly does spin your mind around and make you feel a bit Daft Punk-y at points, questioning where you end and where your walkman, your lab top or your car stereo…begins.
Often all-over-the-place, like a distant cousin of Animal Collective, Akron/Family weave an explosive rock style wrapped in mysticism, tribal exertions, propulsive polyrhythms, tasty garnishes from any decade of rock, brash brass, soft strings, and that Talking Heads-feeling tight, snaky style as an American art/rock observance of world music intrigue. "Everyone is Guilty" has funk meeting disco, smattered over tribal rhythms, swathing in Harrison-via-Abbey-Road-style guitar riff waterfalls and poignant string stabs – which morphs into soft shimmering Caribbean/jungle-pop on "River" that sends Vampire Weekend back to school.
Set apart from the spookier enchantments and slightly-alienating drum circle existentialism-meets-Buddhism of 07’s Love Is Simple, this yera's Set Em Wild, Set Em Free is a more palatable, rewarding, strong-front-to-back listen, glowing and gushing with rich vibrant styles and flavors from all instrumental points, voice, drum, guitar…heart, mind, life. World music – meets folk delicacy – meets the fried flared experimental swagger of our contempo-indie-rock style, in such a stately presentation and still maintaining that earth/communal/sanctimonious vibe distinct to Akron/Family’s style.
Oakland/CA- based trio (recently quartet) expands upon the jittery, knotty sparse rock forged on their 07 debut, Dig That Treasure, juxtaposing running, marching percussion with melancholy ballads and strangled guitar flares. Not so much pop, or indie or even rock – singer Nedelle Torrissi morphs her usually soft cutesy cross-legged folk style into a starry eyed Broadway-stage-traipse full of longing and a steady hardening; guitarist Chris Cohen (the spindly once-key-component to Deerhoof) brings his skirled tones and surfy reverb like a leashed beast that he perfectly tames to soft accompanying jangles that let loose into shredded crescendos; while drummer Michael Carreira's sounds like he’s playing a completely different song under the often delicate vocal melodies, offsetting them with spastic patters that urge ever-forward, yet preternaturally, these seemingly conflicting energies coalesce into something that feels right, makes sense. It’s that baffling effect for the listener that makes Cryptacize so appealing.
A cutting, echoey guitar starts rumbling along like the stiff gravely wheels of an oncoming Harley, slogging and growling its way up over the horizon of some desolate desert squeezing a lonely roadway. The drums start stepping along as a surf-toned second guitar weaves its way in before the heroically crashing crescendo collides like a bull through plate glass. Singer Tony Moran conjures a snaky vocal melody that swaggers along with the bass and sets a shoulder-shimmeyed-groove before exploding again into a sanctimonious yearning for the open road, a declaration to run free.
And, thus, all of the haunting capriciousness of the Friends of Dennis Wilson is captured in the opening minute of “Thunder Header”: their provincial crunchy metal-y riffs, their head-swimming reverb, their soulful grooves, their surf-rock incantations. It’s all bound together by a reverence for classic 60’s rock, and early rough-hewn psychedelia; a belief in the danger that rock n roll can represent; a dark swirling shoegaze-blazed dystopia that inspires escapism, a feeling like the brighter the acerbic flames of your pedal-pushed guitars than the more cathartic the reinvigorating pull upon your soul, pouring out into the ether; that sweet, scary as hell ether that sits waiting for you at the indeterminate end of “the open road.” After years of forging on down this psyche-rock road, Moran finds himself with a set line up forging a stronger chemistry than any FODW formation before it.
That they had to fight for this record (against breaking equipment, band-mates leaving, or mother nature herself) shows in the moaning bass, the fiery guitars and the tripped-out tones (“Casting Yarrow Stalks”), it bleeds through with epic builds and slow-chugging, layered narratives of hovering haunts, jangled guitars, yanked backwards and stretched out into supernatural middle-grounds of shoegaze, folk and druggy singer/songwriter dirges (“Death Valley Dune Buggy Brigade”); it shines in the steady strummed spook-pop of whirled guitar drifts and dual vocal haunts (“To Come To Now).” FODW records before Self-Titled had their own powerful punches, but none seemed to ring with as much assurance – they were more like a formidable tumblers of colliding ideas in the feedback-heavy world of dark-psyche-pop, but the hard cutting swoon of the riffs (“Angela”) and the brazen atmospheric grime (“Zodiac Mindfuck”) mixed in with tunes that shine out the bands energetic live show (“Liquid Space”) sets a reaffirmation-vibe for the group – and holds promise for what’s to come… listen at: myspace.com/friendsofdenniswilson
The thing I’ve always loved about Deep Cutz is that Milo has always been able to transcend the music scene and write about any facet of art that hits the Detroit area. Here’s me throwing my hat in the ring…I’d like to do this more and we’ll see how it goes, but here is the first installment of Six Questions With ... It features local artist Laura Deljanin, who has taken the power and put it into her own hands by booking all of her own shows and setting up exhibitions for other artists as well. Check out her one day show tommorow, April 18, at the Octane Gallery in Ferndale, which will feature work from Edward Vauth, Mike Chizzy, Brian Taylor, Judy Cho and many more.
Six Questions With … Laura Deljanin
Question One: How did you get into art? What did you set out to do in the art world? LD: I got started like every little kid drawing with crayons. It started in first grade [laughs]. From there I went to CCS and Henry Ford. I started in Graphic Design and I did that for a while. I remember one of my counselors was like, “What do you want to do?” and I said, “I want to be a commercial artist.” His face got kind of mad. He was like, “No, you don’t want to worry about selling the artwork, you should just worry about the artwork.”
Question Two: Who do you look to as a hero in the art world or someone you have learned a lot from? LD: The people that are masters or that are people to watch are not dead or in a textbook. They are alive.
Question Three: So, don’t look up to the Dalis and Warhols of the world? LD: No … I mean, that’s what got me started in art. I’m just saying a lot of people that should be watched are not ghosts. They are with us right now. Instead of buying old stuff, why not buy something local from a local artist.
Question Four: Explain your style of painting and graphic design … LD: When I do my artwork I keep it very technical and precise. I’m old school where if you didn’t know to draw … that was part of graphic design. I always knew how to draw and paint I just never got rid of. I’m doing a lot of drawing and painting right now. A lot of painting.
Question Five: What inspires you right now to wake up and work on your art everyday? LD: My son, right now, is my biggest inspiration. He’s five and half. He’ll tell you five and seven/twelfths. The whole fact that you ask him, “What does mommy do?” and he says, “My mommy is an artist.”
Question Six: How did you end up deciding to become an artist full time? Why did you want to put shows on and help others out? LD: I was with a group and it was just kind of like an art social club and I was like, “This is stupid. I need to be doing this myself.” I started doing the PR all myself and everything by myself. Now, it’s a year later and I’m doing two shows a month. When I do these shows … I do everything … It’s the fact that I just want perfection. I want to be like an inspiration to kids in art school and then I want to keep the vets on their toes.
Super Furry Animals Dark Days/Light Years (Rough Trade)
(words: milo)
Getting started on this, I feel like some buzzcut recruit in muddy fatigues skinning potatoes in a indeterminately dim mess hall kitchen – where more and more potatoes keep getting dumped down on me from some ominous chute above me – each with a unique contour of bumps and eyes, some of them purple, some of them green, some of them glowing – and the potatoes just keep dumping down. At this point particularly, after ten albums and a handful of compilations, b-sides and side projects, it’s become increasingly difficult to document the veritable sprawl of the band’s sound, at least by any definitive edges.
Countless catch-up screeds have splurged on about these Welshmen’s origins rising up in the dying days of indie/brit-pop-revivalism in the mid 1990’s and their steady output since, distinguishing them from that scene and placing them more into either the Beach Boys-reverent sunny-surf and harmony-heavy pop, or the weird wavy nebula of psyche-rock. They’re not entirely musical chameleons – yet since 1999’s breakthrough Guerilla, they’ve dabbled in glam, folk, disco, space-rock, and on their latest Dark Days/Light Years particularly heavy on the krautrock – well, it starts to enter Bowie-like territory of elusive categorization. This leads to a healthy bit of stretching for the listener – because while you cannot say that any Super Furry Animals song sounds distinctively like a certain specific influence or genre, you also cannot say that any Super Furry Animals album sounds distinctively like any previous Super Furry Animals album.
Through the 00’s, they’ve been quite industrious – at almost an album-a-year pace. But 07-08 saw an increase in side-project work, which slowed things down a bit, but not for long. If the band’s known for anything, it’s dreamy melodies, fuzzy guitar streams, sideways space rock and bent-but-comforting take on sunny 60’s pop – captured most efficiently, in terms of a front-to-back strength, on 99’s Guerilla. Rings Around The World may be the quintessential weird glowing-potato-schizophrenia manifesto, to sum up the band’s capricious tastes (doo-wop, punk rock, space-rock, disco, even some piano-pounding crooner stuff). Since then, their albums have hovered just a few clicks above hit or miss – offering some brilliant moments muddled by airier, awkward or just underwhelming material. Not to fall into some latest-release-review-cliché, but I think (or, at least, let’s hope that…) Dark Days/Light Years is their return to form; that form being not only a comfortable, confident schizophrenia but an ability to piece together a captivating album from open to close.
If you’re mind, soul and ears are ready for a trek, Dark Days spans the usual (vast) terrain preferred by SFA, fuzzy guitars, wispy yowl vocals, subtle synth fluttering, and some nice brass and string accoutrements; but the recurring flavor is krautrock and fringe new wave. The stormy fuzzed wave of “Inconvenience” recalls Faust’s reverence for driving rhythms; “Inaugeral Trams” with its cockeyed squeaky synths and bubbly bounce and robotic vocal effects sounds like a game of mental pong between the pop sensibilities Gary Numan and Paul McCartney. “Cardiff In The Sun” in its 8-minute-glory, recalls the stretched out patience for a bit of a spook jam, ala Can, culling haunting tones and transfixing vocals over a steady running beat, it builds and massages into a guitar-gushing chanter of dreamy rounds of “sha-la-la-la-laaa-laaa-la-la.” While restating my begrudging indulgence of cliché – you listen to “Helium Hearts” and tell me you don’t hear early-80’s Bowie, with its enlivening strings and syrupy chorus shimmying over this “Come On Eileen” recalling shuffling beat. And, just like any SFA album, be it good or bad, there are moments where you can say, wow – I’ve never heard anything like this from them before… See: click-clack glam-groove of “White Socks/Flip Flops” and jittery-post-punky/Brianiac-meets-Led Zeppelin opener “Crazy Sexy Girls.”
So per-usual, you’ll find everything and more on this record, just as any SFA record. But don’t let the potato-avalanche overwhelm you. Just remember that this band isn’t like most in the sense that you can judge the latest release by past habits. The question is, whether said latest release is balanced, or channeled, to avoid an aural tummy-ache of varying flavors, ideas and styles. If Dary Days doesn’t get you through sufficiently, it comes damn close.
Early on, Camera Obscura were sometimes tied to their predecessors, fellow-Scots, Belle & Sebastian – with similarly flavored soft wispy folk that begged to twinkle and crinkle along leafy paths with hand-locked lovers under autumnal twilight skies. Their 2000 debut seemed to also rake in a bit of light twee and sweet pop ala Heavenly. But somewhere around side 2 of this quintet’s second LP from 2003 – the guitars started subtly burning with this sunny surfy swagger, waving its grinning tones around like the smoky soundtrack of greasers cruising the main streets of America at the turn of the 60’s, or slick-back hairdos and Donna Reed pearls linked into some awkward slow-dance in a stuffy gymnasium.
It’s become apparent on their fourth full-length My Maudlin Career that the string-loving orchestral pop group fits much closer to early rock n roll, that American-feeling rhythm and blues backbeat, with its unassuming waltzy-percussions and flaring guitars – you could just as easily hear Jonathan Richman’s wooing, rock reverent baritone leading the way on vocals during certain tracks – but singer Tracyanne Campbell’s cherubic and soulful swoons is just part of this band’s vital distinctions setting it apart from all the other indie-pop acts out there. Another would be the addition and expansion of shimmering dream-pop recalling synths (“My Maudlin Career”) going in rounds in some transfixing shooting star barrel roll over a steady beat. The other distinction, often noted on their past two albums but amplified to an even stronger, more emotive level here (“You Told A Lie”) are the strings, the drift-and-stab of the violins that dip and rise into wintry plucked hooks, sawing along side a pedal-effected burning guitar drone.
Just as before, much of their explosive hooks and rolling rhythms balanced so nicely by soft and sunny guitars lends the songs (“French Navy,” “Swans”) to feel like the perfect road trip soundtrack. Standouts include the somber wander “James” with steadily churned bass and soft cymbal shuffles as a bonfire like guitar lights the way for Campbell’s weary-yet-childlike spell.
...one of the more poignant themes of Arms Forest – the fall of an empire - Detroit as an Empire, and the bemoaned antipathy from the rest of the world...
"...this mentality of ‘Let Detroit die…’ I just think It represents a close-minded American perspective. Yeah, ‘let Detroit die…’ Ya know what comes shortly after let-Detroit-die? ‘Let New York die.’ Ya know what comes after let-New-York-die? ‘Let America die.’"
Part 2: Made To Last (An interview with Augie Visocchi from the Hard Lessons)
(words: milo)
[Arms Forest] centerpiece “Roma Termini,” a flamingo-flavored dance/rock epic (with mandolin solo) also references the fall of an empire. “…the fall of this empire [Detroit] and here we are in what used to be the Paris of the West.” And the decline-inducing hubris referenced above is quickly expanded beyond a city or GM, and applied to the music industry.
Augie sat down with his father, an auto-industry worker, and reflected that he felt the two of them were in the same boat. He said to him, “You work for an industry that has been very standoffish against developing greener technologies, and now that’s coming to bite you in the ass because of a failure to accept new means to do business…And, look at the record industry; suing their fans? Instead of looking for ways to meet these new and changing demands, they clung to their old ways tighter and tighter. “
I don’t know how, but I bring up the MSU talent show back in 2003, that I was at…I bring up how different he and Korin must feel now, going from the local popularity and now deep into the spinning cogs of tours, SXSW, festivals, sold out shows and on and on…Being now, “in the biz…” Whatever this biz may be, now…
“I think the hardest thing for a band like us…who had people paying attention from day one, is sometimes I feel like it’s impossible to grow. It’s impossible for people to deal with the fact that their little brother is growing up, he’s going on dates, he’s got a steady girlfriend. That’s the closest thing I can say to dealing with this…the little brother who forever has to be relegated to that. We can’t play every show like we used to, we can’t play every bar, there’s just all these opposing forces that we’re placed under… It’s something that we can’t pay attention to…I don’t have time to worry about things like that.”
(Life in the Dickies-House, during SXSW - a morning wake-up-performance)
(Recording Arms Forest)
Let’s shut up about Detroit for a minute. This band’s been all around the country twice over in the last year alone and were recently put up in a house sponsored by Dickies – (with a sort of Real World blog-like-diary-accounting their experiences at the festival). Let’s move away from the little brother of the scene-shit…and into SXSW.
“Awesome shows…a ton of people coming out…the line wrapped around the block with the show we played with the Hold Steady and we had a lot of fans who put up with that to see us and that was really cool. This was the first year that it sort of feels like ‘a band.’ It feels like all the hard work and finding our footing, the first four years is starting to pay off.”
It must be weighing on his mind. Because we start to, again, reflect on the band, the progress, the battles, the scene …
“We didn’t have any elaborate plans when we started this band, we were just kids at school that wanted to rock out because that’s what we liked seeing our favorite bands do. So we just hit the ground running and we never really stopped until (2007-08)’s B & G Sides…” (EP – a four part series of EP’s, complete with unique, original artwork, with songs spanning from softer, fuzzy synth-led ballads, to hand-clapped pop hurrahs, to murky N. Young-twang to shreddy-indie-rock). “B & G was the first time where we were like, ‘alright what are we doing here? We’re all over the place cuz we have all these songs and they all sound different and we don’t have time to try and make some sort of…’album.’ So, let’s just go in every direction, go 100%-no compromises, when we wanna go raw and loud, we go raw and loud, when we wanna go quiet…push it all down.’”
The experience provided growth, but it was also stressful…”draining,” in fact, because the band felt stretched in all these different directions. But…eventually, came growth, and soon after, confidence. But, I offer, it must have felt like chaos…was there any uncertainty…any panic at the chaos?
“Not really. I wanted chaos. I started feeling suffocated by the ‘retro-garage’ label. [04’s Gasoline] was definitely a product of our upbringing.” Raised on rock and brit-pop, Augie dove head first into garage rock during Detroit’s boom in the genre at century’s turn. Their debut reflected this new-found reverence for energy, for a healthy spaz, for a hard driving blues style…but (06’s) Wise Up’s songs, though still fiery, was considered some dramatic shift. Frustration quickly followed, especially when one critic called them another garagey-blues in a press preview admittedly without listening to their more pop-flavored 06 EP. (Ya know, a band from Detroit…so it must be…)
He brings up the “Neil Young mentality…no matter if it’s a rockabilly record or a slow country record or the rawest Crazy Horse records – it’s still Neil Young. That pushed me to think, ‘let’s just do whatever’ and that’s what B & G Sides was about, throwing off the shackles, going as far in the opposite direction as we could and discovering ourselves as songwriters.”
He says Arms Forest is “the first time that I feel like we’ve created an album’s worth of music that stands up to the live show…that runs deeper sonically, or lyrically than anything we’ve ever done. And, that’s because we’re growing, because we’re evolving.”
They’re growing, not only as individual songwriters, but as collaborators. (This is also due, in some part, to the duo getting married in 2008). The glittery buzz and shunting rhythm of electro-popper “Roma Termini” has almost too much significance to qualify. It’s named for a train station in Rome, where the couple met each day, while studying abroad from MSU. Later on, from said-station, they rode a train that served as the setting for their engagement. It features the interpretation of a hundred-year-old folk song from rural Italy, taught to them by Augie’s emigrated grandfather, on mandolin.
The song was almost a b-side, but the last tweaking placed upon it by engineer Zach Shipps (of Electric 6) in his home studio, facilitated a poignant realization for the duo – that this song was too good to leave off the record. Shipps, whose culinary recording regiment transported Augie’s diet from occasional fast-food indulgence to organic fruit smoothies, also instituted a ‘no rules’ approach – on top of his fine ear to sound and fine touch on the board.
Sometimes rules make it easy to write. You’re a blues-band, so you know which chords to chug. But as Augie said, he wanted the chaos. “When I sit down to write a song I can write anything… being a band that can go anywhere....you have infinity possibilities…”
The rules…rules of a scene…how your band should sound, what your band should look like…which venues you should or shouldn’t play…which label you should sign to (if you should dare to try ‘signing’ and attempt walking that line between mainstream and indie/underground). Rules…
“If I wanted to have all these rules to live by, or write my songs by, or perform by…” Augie shakes his head. “I could go work in a gas station…”
So Forest Arms burns down…Tiger Stadium gets torn down…GM and an abominable amount of its blue collar jobs, disintegrates… is this a phoenix thing? A rebirth thing? Rise from the ashes and all that…
“It’s definitely been a rebirth. Every bad thing that we’ve been through in the past year was a complete blessing in disguise. We came out of it with the record of our lives.”
I sputter out an awkward statement about the album’s imagery of a building burning down…and try connecting it to the past garage-sounding material versus the newer tighter sound. “I don’t know if we’re ‘burning down’ what we’ve done – I’m proud of everything we’ve done. We’re definitely starting anew but I don’t feel the need to get a new name…that would be silly. The Hard Lessons is…the musical output of Augie and Korin Visocchi. That’s what we do. And I can’t help but be excited.”
The boom and stomp, spindly shred of title track “Arms Forest,” features the frying falsetto chorus “They’re pulling me down off the ceiling…” Well, to qualify…Augie has constantly climbed, mid-solo, to many a-ceiling, in Detroit, in New York, in St. Louis even…But it also has a wide arc of meaning, just as the album’s title does… The ceiling that a band hits, a glass ceiling, of local notoriety – followed by the inevitable shit-talking of bloggers and snobs who, inexplicable save for a shrugged suggestion of human nature, have to ‘pull you down.’ But it also is tied to an anecdote…a time when, while home from tour, Augie visited a local art gallery (nestled nearby where Detroit’s 67-riots went down) that featured a popular all-night dance party/hang-out…where he did eventually end up climbing to the ceiling, simply blowing off steam. He was ‘pulled down’ by a bouncer, thrown out, banned for life and verbally “dressed down” as some suburban kid who doesn’t know a thing about the city of Detroit.
“So, here I am…” he says, the air quotes go up and he rolls his eyes, “’local-rock star’ and I can’t even hang out…So, a couple minutes later people around tell [the bouncer] quote-unquote ‘who I am’ and of course I can go back in. Like, ‘oh, I didn’t know who you were, you can come back in…”
“’No,…’” came his answer. “’fuck you, I don’t wanna go in…I don’t need to go in…’”
In my head, I heard him quoting himself as saying ‘I don’t need to go back in…’ and I instantly make said-art gallery into the metaphor for the scene…and the Hard Lessons shrugging off its limited ceiling. But no…(I'd be reaching...)
“The Detroit music community,” said Augie, “from which we came, I can never not be grateful or happy to have been from that community.”
But simultaneously – fuck all those rules. “I just don’t have anybody to answer to…that’s exactly what we want. …completely freedom.”
tour: Michigan dates in bold (for CD Release shows)
May 1 2009 Union Hall Residency / Arms Forest Release Party! Brooklyn, NY
May 21 2009 The Belmont / Arms Forest Release Party! Hamtramck, MI May 22 2009 Small’s Bar / Arms Forest Release Party! Hamtramck, MI May 23 2009 Lager House Early All-Ages BBQ / Arms Forest Release Party! Detroit, MI
Jun 6 2009 Riverbend Festival w/ The B-52’s + MORE! Chattanooga, TN
Jun 20 2009 City Stages Festival w/ Janes Addiction, Young Jeezy + MORE! Birmingham, AL
Jul 2 2009 July 2-5 ROTHBURY FESTIVAL w/ Bob Dylan, Black Crowes, Broken Social Scene, Hold Steady + MORE!
Japanese psyche-rock mystics, Ghost - a collective of musicians centered around singer/guitarist Masaki Batoh - play the Crofoot on Wednesday 5 / 6. Formed in 1984, the band strikes a nomadic hippie commune vibe, with a worldly wanderlust that supposedly led them to live on the ruins of Buddhist temples and in the shadowy urban dungeons of run down subways. Reference points include the best of 60's lavalamp hallucinogens like Jefferson Airplane or Velvet Underground, mixed in with the more sparse-and-spooked out dreamy-disertations of krautrock ala Can.
Releasing material through the 1990's on Drag City (highlighting said-label's wonderful ability for cultivating hidden treasures from the various undergrounds of the world) Ghost brings their tribal-rhythms, psychedelic whirlings, intricate guitar styling and transfixing vocal spells to the Pike Room.
Pure Detroit, (an online retail shop purveying Detroit-themed/glorifying items that bolster Motown pride, featuring everything from tote bags to coffee mugs to shirts and shoes and almost-anything) - is hosting "Pure Acoustic."
A classy, folk-ified evening of sights, sounds and tastes, The sights facilitated by the still 20's-swathed art-deco austerity of the Guardian Building's Promenade (500 Griswold Ave); the sounds are brought by 4 stellar local folk acts in the realms of earthy jangle, to neo-country, to Americana-goth, to traditional pop:
Chris Bathgate -
Frontier Ruckus -
and
Sisters Lucas;
the tastes are brought by Rowland Cafe - offering "illy"espresso and gourmet deserts.
Show starts at 8:00pm - all ages.
For tickets: You can email an RSVP (providing number of attendants) to ryan@puredetroit.com Or, just buy 'em at the door...
(Seats are limited, so reservations are encouraged).
The crafted-art-enthusiasts of Handmade Detroit are hosting "Craft Revival" Saturday, April 18, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., inside the Magic Stick (2nd floor of the Majestic Theatre complex). It's that lull of Spring, where the motors of warmth, cheer and a more laid-back fancy free are still being stalled by lingering chills or spitting rains. So in comes a cadre of DIY-artists with a swath of flavorful knick-knacks, jewelry, clothing and art to sufficiently spruce things back up.
The Craft Revival features 30 vendors offering everything from unique homemade t-shirts, hand-thrown pottery, stellar silk screened posters and stained-glass nightlights resembling famous folks' faces.
Handmade Detroit is joined by the Detroit extension of Yelp.com, a popular local review site where shoppers can find out where and how to support local businesses like restaurants, shops, markets, bookstores, record stores...anything.
So, revive your taste for not only the arts, not only the outdoors, but also festivals - as Craft Revival can whet your appetite before other big to-dos like the Detroit Urban Craft Fair or the DIY Street Fair.
P.S. The man once known as Smog, singer/songwriter Bill Callahan released his 2nd LP under his given name (on top of more than a baker's dozen of Smog recordings). The album, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, as well as dream-talk, cryptic poetry and tree branches resembling a cerebral cortex...are all discussed on my first interview/assignment for Tiny Mix Tapes read here
As far as "dreamy-sound" goes, Papercuts takes the blurry yowl vocals of shoegaze and makes it feel more like a lucid dream, more palpable. Your floating, but you have control, you feel grounded. True the swirling organs and shhh-ing fuzz of the flitting guitars can often feel like its rambling on (albeit pleasingly) until the edges of one song slowly disintegrate into ever thinning watercolors that spackle and spill off into the next. But, the coo of sole-papercutter Jason Quever is so soothing, like the pause you give yourself on daydreamy days staring up at the clouds, that certain errant drones are welcomed.
Beats start to step and Brit-pop hooks ameliorate into a steady pop song ("A Dictator’s Lament") and other times he tops supposed-infallible druggy-pop auteur Beck in terms of trippy-yearning-nocturnal balladry ("The Machine Will Tell Us So"). However he’s read, he fits nicely into the neo-psychedelia of the West Coast scene: the fuzzed psyche and traditional singer/songwriter style of The Skygreen Leopards, or he leans (slightly) into freak-folk territory, ala early Grizzly Bear or Vetiver. When you escape the cacophony of suburbia and head out to those idyllic beaches on the slopes of sleepy dunes – this will be your soundtrack as the sun sets and the stars awaken.
~milo~
Magik Markers
Balf Quarry
Drag City
At its heart, Magik Markers are a guitar, drums, two human beings (Elisa Ambrogio, Peter Nolan) and their own minds. What they’re able to do with seemingly so little leads to some pretty haunting music; lurching, swooping, driving, coaxing, dancing, shouting. Their sound and style, particularly on Balf Quarry, lays transfixing elements like raw reverb swarms, military marches and sparse guitar scrapes and applies jazz improvisation (ominous drum spills, bowing guitar slides, roaring feedback spells), beat-inspired/art-punk-fricasseed poetry (the unapologetic, postulating swagger of a Patti Smith), and a reverent reach into the roots of no-wave (see: Sonic Youth) and hardcore (see: if nothing else, Black Flag). It’s something like a weird and lawless middle ground between serious fucking punk ("Jerk," "The Lighter Side of…Hippies") and smoky blues ("Don’t Talk In Your Sleep") while also having that alienating or intriguing ‘soundtrack of insanity’ vibe ("The Ricecar of Dr. Clara Haber") where it sounds like a gremlin clanking around in your head, yanking and biting your cerebral chords.
Most reviews never fail to mention (as I’m about to) Sonic Youth/noise-rock-aristocrat Thurston Moore as the band’s ticket to labels and major releases – which is a fine reference point, because you can find traces of SY’s Daydream Nation or the more spooked-out A Thousand Leaves soaked into much of MM’s work, which is true for Balf, but only to an extent. (Note: more psychedelic, more spook-jazz).
Balf Quarry (named for the quarry in the duo’s hometown, the rock pit that led to paving most of said-cities streets) features quiet, solemn reflections, sobering repudiations of past generations, exertive bottle smashing stage storming, and more blown-open strung out nocturnal jam-explorations. Quintessential track, "Psychosomatic" is tinged with bent and broken tones, slicing the gossamer layers of reality like a failing rubber band, percussion tapping along to imply a brief stability, then sliding off the edge to a fuzzy splurt. On "7/23" your ear drums stabbed by polite but acerbic woodblocks, your head swimming with this warbling feedback oscillating in some shattering nausea, with a guitar screeching and scorching like some hellcat’s death rattle, defiantly moaned out in the last minute before the witching hour down some rickety-fenced alley under a yellow possessing moonlight.
The chandeliers of the Fox Theatre would've suited Allen better than the moldy wood of St. Andrews.
by Thomas Matich
Personally, I wouldn't have booked Lily Allen at St. Andrews. She seems too classy and British to be playing at the poorly ventilated and overtly hollow venue with rickety wood floors and a sometimes mediocre sound system. I would've chosen The Fox Theatre or The Royal Oak Music Theatre instead (how was that Lady Gaga show?). But when my friend and I arrived at St. Andrews last night, Allen had sold the venue out and packed it with a rather diverse crowd as at one point I looked over and Jack White's brother was standing next to me.
Natalie Portman's Shaved Head were finishing their opening set when we strolled in. Their stuff is heavy on Faint-styled electro, definitely more Star Wars Portman than Garden State Portman. They looked like they just fell out of Incognito and went well with the electronic vibe of Allen's superb second album, It's Not Me, It's You.
As the crew set up the stage before Allen's set, her lead-up music blaring over the speakers was a selection of hip-hop tracks from Jay-Z and T.I. (but no Common, despite the two collaborating on Common's hit "Drivin' Me Wild" - she also didn't perform this song, which disappointed me a bit). When Allen appeared on stage, clad in an oversize hoodie and wifebeater, it seemed to clash not only with the sound of her recent album (which is more Madonna than M.I.A.) but with her rather professional backing band.
It took Allen a few numbers to find her footing on stage. She opened the show with the first track from her new album, the Spice Girls seasoned "Everyone's At It" which got a big reaction on the first notes from the crowd and then tapered off as the song fleshed out live, as Allen sounded drowned out by her band. I was standing beside the sound guy, who was juggling with the nobs in hopes to find the right balance. It wasn't until "Not Gonna Happen," a ragtime flavored number that I saw the sound guy with a smile on his face, pumping his fist in the air as Allen had finally clicked.
Vocally, Allen is more dynamic on her album than in person. Which makes me assume there must be some studio fuckery going on with her A capellas. Her stage show was rather tepid, some neon lights, smoke, a couple extended electro wah-wah outros to the songs and those requisite "Hey Detroit" shout-outs. During "Fuck You," she got the crowd doing the two-fisted middle-finger wave which was rather amusing. I suspect a couple of those middle fingers pointed towards Allen might have come with a "Fuck you... I paid 20 bucks for this!"
When Allen returned to the stage for an encore, she opened with her first big hit from her 2006 debut album, Alright, Still, the reggae flavored rumba "Smile." The island grooves of the ska jam got a big reaction from the crowd, as everyone bobbed their bodies in glee. Allen strayed away from her earlier material throughout the night and when she performed "The Fear" next, the No. 1 UK single from her latest album, it highlighted the sharp contrast in Allen's recordings in the three years since her debut. "The Fear" is a swift cut, brimming with a bombastic melody and a diva's wit. But, Allen's charm was canceled out by the final song of the night...
Last year, Allen released a striped down cover version of Britney Spears' "Womanizer." When those signature "red alert" synthesizers of Spears' original version began to pump out of the speakers, the crowd began to lose it a little bit, as if they'd finally heard a real dance song. Allen proceeded to pump out a straight-up cover version rather than treating the crowd to her own delightful rendition. I could only scratch my head. Why would an artist of Allen's stature close out her show with someone else's song?
Between the oversize hoodie, the set list aimed towards her newer material, an underwhelming stage show, a poor venue choice and the Spears cover, it seemed to me that Allen is a wonderful talent that is wandering. She still doesn't know who she is, but her stage is big enough for her to be anyone she wants. //DC//
Part-mad scientist, part-genius organ player and part-puppet show with background vocals, Quintron and Miss Pussycat put on one of the most undeniable forms of entertainment when performing live. Quintron is all flash and dash, a blur playing organ and controlling his various drum machines, while Miss Pussycat is more than capable on backing vocals and often takes over the show with her elaborate puppet shows.
The music on the duo’s latest Goner Records release, Too Thirsty 4 Love, also displays Quintron’s talent for musical production. A hybrid of punk, garage rock, classic R&B, disco, electronic and 40 other genres we don’t have space to list, the album features heavy hitting songs like “Waterfall,” “The Boss Wants To Party With You” and “Model Ex Citizen,” that are instant party starters. Regardless of who is in the room, these songs instantly make you shake your ass like a fool.
Quintron and Miss Pussycat hit town this Wednesday, April 15, with Columbus psychedelic punk kids Psychedelic Horseshit in tow. Playing the uber-old school punk/veterans bar The Old Miami, this is sure to be a great show. Here is an interview with Quintron in order to entice you out for more fun times on Wednesday night.
EA Sports: If you could, explain to me where you at right now and describe your surroundings? Quintron: We are in Fargo, the weirdest town in the entire world. Last night we played this place that had live karaoke in the bar downstairs, there was a horse race betting parlor going on, a live blackjack dealer ... This is in a saloon ... So there is this live blackjack dealer with just one table in a smoky little corner in the room and then this punk show going on upstairs.
EA: Obviously touring is always bringing up crazy situation like this, but what’s day-to-day life like for Quintron? Q: Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of English comedy programs. I’m really into the underground English … Well, I don’t even know if it’s that underground because some of it’s on BBC, but like this one show called Mighty Boosh, this show called Snuff Box. Anything with Steve Coogan … I'm brushing up on obscure English comedies. I try to play the organ everyday and I fix a lot of things for people. Electronic stuff and instruments.
EA: Did you learn about electronics prior to building this stuff or have you really just been winging it all these years…. Q: Learning from books and my father is an electrical engineer and he had all the textbooks at the house and learning kits and stuff. So I pretty much learned from him … I didn’t go to school, I mean I went to high school, but I didn’t go to college or anything. If you study from books and apply it and have the tools … I always had the tools with the soldering irons and little tiny screwdrivers from my dad. I just learned it like that.
EA: When did you start building your own instruments? Q: I think I started building instruments when I was 16. Like this huge drum contraption that kind of turned into the one that I used with Math, my band from a long time ago. I had this big homemade drum cage that was made for that band and that evolved from the one when I was 15 or 16 in the garage… Real garage rock …
EA: Where do the ideas for your creations come from … Do you dream them or is it just like after smoking a bunch of pot you just say, “I should create a drum machine that runs on spit … ” Q: It all comes from sitting there at a soldering bench just fucking around with oscillators and playing basically. I would sit there for hours and hours and just listen to talk radio just fucking around with shit.
EA: What kind of talk radio do you listen too? Q: Local New Orleans talk radio is genius. There is this show that is on three hours a day everyday of the week and it’s only about the New Orleans fine dining scene. All he does is talk about fancy wine and restaurants and stuff, which it makes me feel rich just listening to it. It’s like listening to beautiful music, he’s got this really amazing, soft voice and he plays this really cool loungy jazz music as his bumper music. His callers are these total blue blood rich people from New Orleans. It’s just like the most entertaining thing … I listen to it every single day.
EA: It’s amazing they can do that three hours a day and not run of shit to talk about. Q:That’s New Orleans. Decadence. Decadent as hell. Three hours about food a day.
EA: What about your style of music ... It's so specifically your own and organic like the way you create instruments … How did you decide on what you wanted your sound to be like for this latest record? Q: That is just me … It’s hard to write the same song over and over and over again and I can’t make the Frog record over and over and over again. Everyone’s got their own voice, their own preprogrammed mode of how they build songs. You have to challenge yourself to try and take it in different directions and say like, “On this song I’m only going to use this one DrumBuddy oscillator.” It’s also changing your instruments or new pedals or a new organ. Every time I get a new organ I’ll record myself playing it the first time I ever play it or touch it. That takes you places …
EA: Lets talk about Too Thirsty 4 Love more in depth ... Let’s break it down track by track ala Lars from The Intelligence style … Too Thirsty 4 Love. Q: Where that song originated was … That song and “Sunday Night” were me late, late at night, drunk, testing the microphone. Just making stuff up, making up words and making up chords. What I did for “Too Thirsty 4 Love” was I took that weird, drunken accident tape and then transcribed into what I was actually doing and wrote it into a song. That song comes from a conversation I was having with this girl and she was really upset about every boyfriend she has had in the past year has broken up with her. I just said, “Well, we’re too thirsty for love” or something like that… We just thought that was the most brilliant thing ever and I said “We’re gonna name a record after that.” Then, so I did.
EA: Waterfall Q: I like the sound of Miss Pussycat’s vocals and mine … That was the innovation on that song. “We will sing every single word together.” I’m not going to talk about what songs mean I think that’s gay…
EA: You say whatever you want to say when I say the title … Walk To The Harvest Q: Uh … Walk to the harvest … Satan is there.
EA: The Boss Wants To Party With You Q: That is officially the best song on the record …
EA: I have to say my boss has wanted to party with me more than a few times … Q:It’s weird when you get to that point and you’re the employee and it’s like “Do you party with your boss? Then are they still your boss?”
EA: Dirt Bag Fever Q: Dirt Bag Fever is about the New Orleans art world. Total fucking dirtbags. Unbelievably selfish and clueless. They accept us, but they use real people to give themselves credibility. It seems like that’s what all the art world is about … finding something with credibility and just using it to exploit and amuse themselves. They remind me of 15th century French kings with monkeys and dwarves that are dancing around them while they eat duck liver. It’s not everybody, that’s a gross generalization. I love museums and I love art, but I hate that world that surrounds it.
EA: Sunday Night Q: Total late night ranting that I could not transcribe or play live if my life depended on it. I listened to it and I said, “What the hell am I playing?” And my singing is just totally off rhythm. That actually made the rounds to all these DJs in New Orleans that played Sunday night gigs. That song was recorded at least three years ago and it was lost. We finally found it.
EA: How did you find it again? Q: I just burned a CD for these DJs and I didn’t keep a copy because I was so stupid. I kept hearing and finally someone found an old beat-up copy of it.
EA: Reborn Q: Jamalicious … Jammin’ with the reverb.
EA: Grey Ghost Q: You should talk to Miss Pussycat about that… Here’s Miss Pussycat …
Miss Pussycat: Hello? EA:Hey Miss Pussycat, how are you today? MP:I’m really cold. We’re in Fargo, North Dakota. Do you know what the Grey Ghost is?
EA: No, I have no idea what it is. MP: The Grey Ghost is so crazy. He’s this man named Fred Radke that lived in New Orleans and for years he has taken it upon himself to cover up all graffiti with battleship grey. He’s kind of crazy. He goes on people’s private property and paints battleship grey like on brick or wooden fences where there was graffiti, but then it was just like a grey blob...
[Hands phone back to Quintron] EA: All right, let's go with Freedom Q: We made a video for that song. We’ve never made one before. I hate being video taped, but this guy filmed a show on Halloween and I said, “You can shoot all night, but everything you use has to be from this night.” We did the show and we went to Bourbon Street.
EA: Final Conflict Q: That’s a just a skit … Pretty self explanatory … Man v.s. Nature
EA: Model Ex Citizen Q: It’s got a good clapping breakbeat on it. I originally wanted that song to only have clapping on it, but then I was like, “It’s too good to just have clapping on it.” Uh ... that's it [laughs].
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