Aston Neighborhood Pleasure Club

"...the idea is that this kind of music—like orchestral, one might say—is best heard (and recorded) live, with no studio trickery..."

The Aston Neighborhood Pleasure Club plays a bit of a different tune than most of the artists that come up on this site. Not rock, hip-hop, neo-techno, psych-pop or whatever else... No, this quintet is more jazz-inclined, but specifically tapping in to street bands in New Orleans tradition. We're talking Dixieland; we're talking ebullient, strut-and-swing, shimmy-and-smile string-band jams; finger-snapping, toe-tapping, frenetically-melodic ditties, graceful and versatile to improvisation. The ANPC is Erik McIntyre: banjo and guitar / Matt LoRusso: guitar / Dave Vessella: Trumper and vocals / Jorian Olk-szost: Upright bass and Joshua James: sax, clarinet, vocals.

"We draw inspiration," said James, "from the sounds of many bands and street ensembles currently active in the New Orleans music scene. Though its labeled as 'trad-jazz,' the music (that ANPC enlivens) encompasses early blues, Americana, folk and gypsy music." The ANPC is getting ready to record their next album, and they're planning to do it LIVE with YOU in the audience. On Sunday, Aug 5, they'll perform two sets (12:30pm & 2:30pm) at Howe's Bayou in Ferndale. After that, they'll get to mixing the magic and preparing a proper album, and if you're in attendance, that Sunday, then you're going to receive that hard copy once it's completed (as part of your ticket purchase). Both sets will be completely unique in arrangement, each song will be captured onto the album. Oh, and you'll also have the full bar service and a special limited brunch menu, when you get to Howe's. Click here for more info.

I caught up with James to chat about ANPC and the exhilaration of the live performance...

What do you enjoy most, -actually, what do you think it is that all of you cats enjoy most-- about playing this style of music as an ensemble...compared to your other avenues, be it jazz, folk, or whatever else
Of course inherent within this music is a sense of improvisation, which speaks to all of us. But rooted within the musical tradition is the art (and irreverence) of the busker. This music forces us to develop a patter with the audience that is equal parts vaudeville and carnival barker. The music also allows us to develop characters, which we’ve honed to our present show. Dave and I are two sides of the same coin when we sing, and the patter between us in a song is distinct and part of the show.

Describe the build up, psychologically? emotionally? to a LIVE recording...what's that like as an artist/performer? What's the key to fighting off whatever it might be, anxiety or whatever else...
The concept for the live recording actually came from two places. The first was the success of my last recording with my other band, the TBO. That album, “Dance with the Devil,” was performed and recorded in the same way. (That album won a DMA for best jazz recording, I might add.) The second bit of inspiration comes from my friend Charlie Halloran, a fantastic trombonist based out of New Orleans. His most recent recording, which is doing quite well, nationally, was done in a similar way: live to tape. (Actually, his was live using one mic only, direct to acetate, and it sounds amazing!) The idea is that this kind of music—like orchestral, one might say—is best heard (and recorded) live, with no studio trickery. Since this musical tradition is based upon the interaction with and energy that comes from an audience, it seemed only right to record our next album in a live audience setting.
And since we’ve been holding down a monthly residence there at Howe’s Bayou for well over a year now, it seemed like the best place to do it. As far as mental preparation, beyond our regular time spent in the (practice) shed, it’s more a matter of selecting the right tunes, considering who to feature at any one time, and being as convivial as possible.


And, I hear that you've been working with The War & Treaty? That's unrelated to ANPC, but we still wanna hear about it...
Michael Trotter and I struck up a friendship, and he asked me to arrange several songs for him, hardening back to an earlier Motown style, with strings and horns. For now I’ll say there’s more to come...

Seth Bernard - Eggtones 4 Directions + Clean Water Campaign

Seth Bernard has been on an Eggtone odyssey. Below, you can listen to a song from his latest, Eggtones 4 Directions, which is the capper to a series of Eggtones albums that included Fun, Blues, and being for Peace. These post-millennial folk odes flourish a colorful kaleidoscope that inverts and refolds and expands and observes the human experience--specifically the experience that we humans have in a world of slow-awakenings to swift calamities, calamities of ecosystems and of ethics and calamities of compassion and of spirit, providing potential answers to this social entropy such as community, collaboration, reverence and a 21st century common sense.





Each of the four Eggtone albums have had their own distinctive feel, style, energy..., but each have found unique ways to transmit the same message of an urgent need for a more soulful intuition in our regard of our environment, of public policy, and of elemental truths. Yes, they've covered a lot of ground, but always with the calming and welcoming air of a raconteur around a campfire. Directions blends in jazz, Americana and some groovy twang, with Bernard indulging melodies that are effervescent and lighthearted in their aural ambles but often bringing it back down to the brass tax with pleas and poetic spoken word.

Beyond these albums, Bernard has joined the Clean Water Campaign for Michigan: An advocacy campaign inspired into action after the crisis in Flint and the subsequent failed response, as well as the aging oil pipeline known as Line 5. Using storytelling and music, the CWC events have been hosted across the state as a means of amplifying the groundswell of public support for clean water issues, (particularly heightened in the aftermath of the decision to grant Nestle permission to increase its permitted amount of groundwater pumping). The priority is simple and clear: protection of our water...….. ….which leads us into this next event:

Bernard joins Audra Kubat, Will See, Gregory Stovetop, and O N E F R E Q at HopCat Detroit on Thurs., Aug 2.  Click here for more info...

Eddie Logix - 'Why Would You Splash Me?'

You'll find this new beat-tape by the Detroit producer/emcee online FRIDAY, July 27

Eddie Logix just unveiled a new beat tape called Why Would You Splash Me. Logix is a producer/emcee who's been honing his knack for taut composites of spacey jazz, cinematic soul and future funk over the last decade. 

While he may have made his early marks on the local scene primarily in the realms of hip-hop, he's since diversified his musical modes to meld a signature swath of ambient electronica that demonstrates an adventurous mind for arranging complex rhythmic patterns with atmospheric drones, frenetic flashes of melody, and propulsive bass. 

Two videos for songs off Splash dropped online--created by Evan Zott

Logix is making his case as a potential future soundtrack composer, as "Cold Sweat" could easily fit as a b-side to a Blade Runner sequence. But "Large Freeze" is in a whole other zone, cultivating a pulsing bass and an urgent kind of beat that blends trance-like dance with a hi-hat crashing march, recalling a kind of Shigeto-esque vibe. Elsewhere, he's not afraid to get a bit weird, noisy or disjointed with "Fish Faces," and later he's bringing in some swooning pianos and chimes over one of the slickest beats of the bunch with "Appetite." He employs found sounds and spoken-word samples throughout, most strikingly on the closer, "Young Birds From a Truck." And while his voice becomes garbled, one word cuts through to the top, for me... "drum..." The drum is incessant; the perpetual flow of the spirit, the heartbeat, the pulse, the progression... The final track fades away into an ellipses, and we're left to wait for Logix' next 24 tracks...

Eddie Logix Music

Height Keech "Zen On Ten" -ft Mister (VIDEO)

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Computer Rocker is the latest album from Baltimore rapper Height Keech, featuring this stellar/gnarly single with Detroit-based emcee Mister. Keech oversees his own label, Cold Rhyme Records, which I highly suggest checking out. These two have distinctive voices that you might not otherwise expect to fuse together so fluently, but something about Mister's baritone growl goes nicely with Keech's higher register drawl. This video was, obviously, produced while they were on tour--showcasing some ingenuity by framing and lighting the otherwise mundane ambiance of a Super 8 Motel room.

Dan (Height) Keech and Bryan (Mister) Lackner have been touring pretty regularly together throughout the year, much of which was discussed in a recent episode of a podcast that's produced by Chad Stocker of the High Strung. I mean, this is probably a good time to remind any of my readers that I also have a podcast on Soundcloud, where I sit down with musicians and pick their brains...If you like the audio-version of my interview style, consider following Chad and I on soundcloud.



For more info, follow Cold Rhyme Records. 

Shady Groves: And the future of Quiet Wolf, Quells, and Underflow Records

Shady Groves is giving us an album before they go on hiatus. The Detroit-area dream-pop five-piece are still going to be making music in the year ahead, but with one of its key contributors moving away to Scotland soon, it's uncertain when they'll each be able to get back into a studio together. Nevertheless, their second album, Dreamboat, is coming out soon, and "Quiet Wolf" is the lead single...



Shady Groves manifested in 2015, the collaboration of songwriters Adam Fitzgerald, Dylan Caron and Jeff Yateman. Colt Caron (piano), Sage Denam (drums) and Jamie Dulin (bass) would eventually join, filling things out after Yateman left the band in late 2016. They found a slick, smooth electro-pop sound that was keen on rich tones, propulsive arrangements and a hushed kind of crooning vocal melody. I always felt like they found this serene musical field where they could fuse something melodramatic the Smiths, contemplative like the Shins, post-chill-wave vibe-outs like Wild Nothing and an adventurous sense for reconstructing the possibilities of pop, like Tennis.

Fitzgerald is heading to Edinburgh to continue teaching and pursue another dream of becoming a published author. Dylan Caron, meanwhile, is going to launch a solo career under the moniker Quiet Wolf. Yateman, meanwhile, is better known as Hazeman, Jemmi Hazeman, that is, the musical leader of the Honey Riders. While he's overseas, Fitzgerald is going to continue releasing music with his own solo project, Quells, while the members of Shady Groves keep in creative partnership with their new label Underflow Records.



Both of these two new tracks appeared on Underflow's new soundcloud this week, click here. 

Crash Detroit

July 20-22 at various locations

It's a pity how much music is relegated to various backgrounds. It's white noise for study-work, it's amorphous muzak for department stores, or it's chill-wave ambiance at house parties to avoid awkward silence. But there will be no awkward silence this weekend in Detroit...

...Crash Detroit is a refreshing remedy to the troubling trend of an audience-nonchalance that can sometimes be observed in clubs where the crowd opts to chat and drink at the bar instead of participate or engage with the live music happening on a stage. You know "crash bands" even if you don't know their name, because you'll often see them (like, say, The Detroit Party Marching Band), manifesting as a flash-mob-style music parade of 20 players bandying brass and bass drums, voluminously spicing up (or splicing through) another event, locale, or otherwise unrelated (and unaware) gathering.

This three-day festival will include live rogue marching bands from across the country at various locations, Lincoln Street Art Park, the Marble Bar, and the Dequindre Cut Freight Yard. The Detroit Party Marching Band (pictured above) launched this free annual music event launched in 2014. Several unamplified (and ultra exuberant) ensembles will perform multiple sets of brass-heavy music. But there will also be kids craft tables, build-your-own-instrument workshops, an "instrument petting zoo" facilitated by Charity Music, and lots of food and beverages from local businesses.

On Friday night, bands will "crash" through Detroit by roaming the city and bringing pleasant surprises of boisterous music to unaware audiences at local bars, restaurants and public spaces. The idea is to make the music an impromptu, drop-everything sort of celebration. Let the music take over!!

The Detroit Party Marching Band will headline day-long performances and musical exhibitions on Saturday at Lincoln Street Art Park; the party keeps going that same night, when Crash Detroit transitions into the Marble Bar at 9pm. Then, on Sunday, Crash coordinates with the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy to roll through the Dequindre Cut Freight Yard in Eastern Market.

Proceeds for the event will benefit Youth Crash Corps initiative. Youth Crash Corps provides music education to kids in Detroit who do not have access to music programs at their school. Certified music educator Nichole Hartrick helps students learn how to perform and read music, providing them free access to a band instrument. The YCC classes culminate with a performance during the Crash music festival!

“We know that students who don’t have access to a quality music education are missing out on the benefits of learning to play an instrument," Hartrick said. "Students who study music perform better in their core classes and on standardized tests, and we’re excited to be able to provide this opportunity for students in Detroit.”

Going back to allowing yourself to fully engage with music, it makes Crash an excellent time to consider how crucial music can be to the cultural and intellectual development of young students. So if you happen to have any used instrument(s) that you'd like to donate, Crash will be collecting them for next year's YCC, with a drop-off area at the information booth on Saturday (2-8pm).

The featured lineup of bands includes:
Detroit Party Marching Band
Hungry March Band
Bitch
Thunder!
Gabriel Brass Band,
Filthy FemCorps
The Drumadics
Chaotic Noise Marching Corps
Big Blitz
Jefferson Street Parade Band
Youth Crash Corps
and The Party Band

FIND OUT MORE VIA FACEBOOK
https://www.facebook.com/crashdetroit/


Visit www.crashdetroit.org or the Facebook event for the full schedule of performances.

The War and Treaty - "Are You Ready To Love Me?"

The War and Treaty have released their official music video for “Are You Ready To Love Me?"



The powerfully soulful duo of Tanya Blount-Trotter and Michael Trotter sharing this beautiful song in an empty school house (probably near their home in Albion MI), as sunshine pours in through the windows. There might not be a light source inside this ornate and rustic structure, but there's plenty of radiance from these two effervescent performers. This song comes from the aptly titled "Healing Tide" (out August 10), and that's just what a War and Treaty song can do for you..., bring on the healing, the restoration, and the revelry.

Follow the War & Treaty on Facebook

Super Birthday

photo by Brian Rozman

You're dropped right in to "The Phantasm Ball;" pushing play on Super Birthday's new album feels akin to triggering an unlocking mechanism hidden in amid the creaky bookshelves of a cobwebbed cosmic mansion's lounge and being whisked away with great suddenness to dimensions of erratic possibility and wayward wonder.



Super Birthday channel the danger and intrigue of metal, the theatricality of glam-rock nocturnes, and the cerebral detachment of psychedelia. The way they stir and swirl their instrumental phrasings and intonations can spellbind the listener's senses, to where--if they close their eyes and allow the band's tidal sonic energies to draw them deeper--they'll likely feel as though they're on some kind of quest, a a strange trip, or a profound daydream's surreal reverie. There is a gnarly vibe about this album, but it's wound with precision. It's angular and mysterious, but it doesn't speak any language that you don't already understand.

For all the misfits out there who've had their minds melted by the horrors of humanity, this Detroit rock quartet tap into that tender lunacy and meld it into eerily beautiful melodies with gnarly tones and cathartic wails. Lead singer/lyricist Troy Gregory, who has always been a bit of a mad scientist in the realms of goth pop and rock mysticism, just put out an epic rock opera. But the bassist/songwriter seems to be possessed by some other kind of entity on the cover of the album, identified in the liner notes only as "Misty." Nevertheless, it's evident, here with Super Birthday's Matthew Lannoo (guitar/vocals), Vince Rodriquez (synths/guitars) and Fido Kennington (drums/vocals) that he's still resonating with an energy that's comparably supernatural.

But it's go so much of a groove to it, that it's never as obtuse or wobbly as Zappa; it's too cool to sound cult, or perhaps too logistical and philosophic to be freaky. "A skeleton key gets you into a skeleton club..." And while that suggests a "crypt," it's not cryptic. This album, be it through the standout percussive arrangements in "Cracked Mad and Crazy," the stunt-pilot-on-uppers sort of flightpath of the dueling guitars on "Phantasm Ball," the gong echoing over the ceremonial synths on "Ice Cream," or any other vaporous corner of the album suggests an invitation, an arrival, an acclimation to some new place, be it a basement or be it oblivion, you are, as stated at the outset, pulled somewhere fantastic but foreboding. Each musician brings so many colors, many of them neon, ultraviolet, or midnight blue, to the notes that they blend in their performances--evoking a wide-eyed sense of a we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore epiphany.



The album may be title, Abracopocus, means that you haven't been tricked by the magic, but that two disparate spells collided, and in the likely explosive sequence of their canceling each other out, another kind of consciousness opens like a portal. Consider it a rebirth. Consider it a rebirth party. A super rebirth party. That's why they invite you to a Church in a Basement in the Woods...it's a religious (sort-of) "revival." Only they're reviving you! And you're "learning" how to heal. It's deep, sure. But any listener can jump in and just enjoy the ride, if they'd prefer. No one has to think of it as supernatural, after all... Consider it "super-natural."

____
Super Birthday perform Friday, July 20
@ Outer Limits Lounge
INFO

Siamese - New Video ("Tarrare") + New Album ("Host")

We are bound to our darker sides. It's not so much physically as we are emotionally... It's like a twin we might not show the outside world, one that's been toughened by the tumult of relationships, the encroaching of self-doubt or the dread of world events. Whatever it is, Siamese tap into it, lyrically and sonically, and what results in "Host" is the manifestation of coming through the otherside, back into a world of light and oxygen and other people, but bringing with it a cold wisdom from freshly healed wounds.

Perhaps a less graceful but still apt metaphor would be that of a boxer getting a rematch. Siamese feel and sound like a contender coming back into the ring of focused ferocity, unphased by the black eye they might bare, marching in, uppercutting and K.O.-ing some grievous opponent with one punch. That said, it's also a sleek composite of post-grunge grit, spacey electronica and melodic new-wave.

The release party for "Host" is on Friday, July 27, at The Loving Touch. The video for its lead single, "Tarrare,"premiered today via popmatters.



For more info on the filmmaking team behind this video, check out Obscura Broadcasting.....

Back to Siamese
From the get go, "Host" brings the band to a position of an earned vindication. There comes a point where our stronger side comes out, often in response to a prior wrong and that's just what keyboarist (lead singer) Johanna Champagne's lyrics and emotive vocals are bringing to the fore. "If I want it //I'll get it," she belts on Tarrare, with this scorched vocal effect. In other words, get out of her way!

Steve Thoel (guitar), Angie Kaiser (drums) and Eric Cojocari (bass) take that energy from the lyrics and, with Champagne, create a cathartic kind of alt-rock house music. While there are some ambient, slower ballads in between, several of the arrangements match that laser-like vigor of the vocals. Again, to put it less gracefully, several songs sound like they're already soundtracks to the best kind of Matrix-esque kung-fu sci-fi special-effects-splashed polychromatic climactic fight scene you could imagine!

But unlike badass fight scenes, the rhythm of these punches comes packed with way more substantive emotions. We are but a host to those emotions--and songs like the title track, as well as "Tarrare," allow for the proper expression and poise for expelling them--with maximally cathartic results.

INFO

Siamese Album Release Show
Friday, July 27th
WSG/Tart & WOMB
The Loving Touch
22634 Woodward Ave
Ferndale, MI 48220
All Ages
$8 Cover
Doors 8pm

Sorrow Inc - 'Lush"

I have this favorite band of mine....that you can't see. You can hear them though. It's just that they aren't on social media and they're probably never going to play a show.

Oh, but I also have one more eccentric deviation... ...this band changes names, identities and genres every six months.

Tom Bahorski and Steve Olshove are Sophisticated Professionals. 


They're a two-person music production company that writes and records their own original music, but challenge themselves to morph into different personas and aesthetics for each album. They've done country, they've done proto-punk, they've done krautraock. Now, it's on to a sweet spot of late 80's shoegaze and early 90's Brit-pop revival.

Your obvious reference points will be Ride, Slowdive, Swervediver and The Stone Roses. Think: guitar-centric surges adorned with beautifully caustic and tightly wound strands of distortion ribboning in a flutter as each track all but takes flight. Synthesizers and guitars layer over each other and then layer over again in an echo-splashed murmuration. Add in the charmingly maudlin poetry of new-romantics, fever-pitch new-wave heartache and swooning soundtracks for your starry eyed drives home from any weekend's average party of missed connections. That's Sorrow Inc.



When you're in the thick of emotional highs and lows, there's just something poignant that only the right amount of distortion and woozy vocals can capture... You can fall in love with that devastated feeling with the kind of songs that Sorrow Inc. make... And I think another facet of their albums feeling like tiny treasures is that you know it's feeling...that this is an album that is a one-time-only iteration of this specific sound and style. It's like they've been a band six times over with six precious debut albums... Always kaleidoscoping into something else. This is my favorite so far, from the Soph Prof duo. I hope it finds more ears. If not, we've got apt songs, here, for catharsis.

Rogue Satellites - "We Are Apparitions"

photo credit: Liz Bedore

Detroit post-punk duo Rogue Satellites unveil their third album, Black Wings, next Friday. Lisa Poszywak and Jaye Allen Thomas are heading on tour the day after the release, hitting up Dayton, Columbus, Chicago and looping back around to Fort Wayne, Grand Rapids and more. Later on, on August 4, they celebrate at Deluxx Fluxx in Detroit with Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor and Minihorse.

Black Wings will be available on vinyl (Space Camp Records and cassette (Midwest Action), but you'll also find it on the usual digital platforms. Meanwhile, here's the brand new single, "We Are Apparitions."



When you think of birds with black wings they tend to put people on edge. Crows, Ravens...even Grackles..., they can put people on edge or just carry a general air of foreboding. Like these birds, the Rogue Satellites are not singing pretty songs, per se, but while the title track has some dystopic imagery of a deficit hope, there is still the ability to fly, to escape, to reach some higher branch or perhaps just break out of a cage.

Similar, in an albeit distant sense, to Nick Cave, Tom Waits, or PJ Harvey, the Rogue Satellites are not shying away from, nor sugarcoating, the darker sides. Their lyrics shine harsh lights on the unvarnished corners of humanity, but find vocal tones and transfixing melodic ribbons to sing these stark scenes to life. While those aforementioned songwriters might be closer to the realms of a dark folk or even goth-like trip, the Rogues are making a beautiful disassemblage of rock, with sparse flourishes from guitars and synthesizers, percussive arrangements that are like a tender industrial churn with a brooding post-punk march into the night. These are new-wave nocturnes that shine brightest (albeit like a fuzzy purple hued ultraviolet) when Poszywak and Thomas' vocal harmonies simmer and swell together through the choruses.

"Black Wings" can take us to the depths and make us see the barren trees, but there's a sense of rescue in those drums and those surfy psych-rock guitars in the opening phrase, suggesting a sort of propulsive getaway. If "Your Forest Arms" were tempoed just three-times faster, it'd be easy to call it a punk song, but there's something alluring about slowing it down to a toe-tapping sway; this is among many standout moments where the production allows each element, even that sleek and eerie synth curly it's melody at the refrain, to breathe and blossom. And then there's "War Dogs," which brings us to the edge of the abyss to greet the sense of dread that many of us feel after any runthrough of the headlines--with hypnotic drums recalling "Venus In Furs" but coated by a low but waltzing growl on the bass.

I was attracted to "We Are Apparitions" not merely because its title automatically sounds like a signature Rogue Satellites kinda song. But it's got one of the best drum hooks on the album, along with some surreal atmospheric touches that would bend the ear of any Radiohead fan. More than that, it's doing what the Rogues do best, designing a powerful melody weaving in aesthetic minor keys over a subtly cathartic punch of guitars over percolating bass and adorning synths. But it addresses the poison and division we're all troubled by and wondering what kind of effect that would have on those with more fragile constitutions--to where we might even be mutating into monsters, snakes, a swarm of bees....or worse, apparitions.

But you'll hear the whole of Black Wings soon. Whether the feathers are black, or if there's actual muck, mud or decay, it can't keep your wings from threshing, flapping, beating upward.... Hopefully--upward!!

More info

Jeremy Waun - New Single: "Drenched"

Jeremy Waun fascinates me. I feel like he may be a brilliant and bizarre prototype of NuHumanCreative that broke loose from some laboratory and went off into the wilds of the music scene to steadily evolve on his own. I feel like he's responding to the harmony of the spheres or some other orbital resonance we're not otherwise detecting and formulating his own musical language. For one thing, there's the versatility: he's able to shred it out with thrash-metal maniacs Child Bite, but also conjure his own face-melting psychedelic pabulum with his fretwork and lead vocals in Reverend! And now we've got this new single from Waun as a solo artist - a lush but sludgy, punk but gunky, hip-hop sauntering, 80's lo-fi recalling, space-invader-theme-song of a joint....



Jeremy Waun - Drenched from Sincerely Productions on Vimeo.

Headphones will reward the listener who can have all of the subtle reverb and dreamy delay effects splash into your ears, whether its the echoing bass, the chilly, Gary Numan recalling countermelody synths, or the caustic cymbal sounds from the sequenced beats. And then there's Waun, so in the groove with his vocal cadence, hitting curious crooning registers and intermingling a theatrical sing-speak style. I feel like this is a song that Bowie post-Berlin and 1978 early DEVO would have made if they ever got into a basement and jammed until 4am.

Links
Sincerely ProductionsReverend

Loose Koozies - Slow Down Time

As you can see, the flag implores you to "slow down..." and yet it's flown from the bed of a barreling monster truck that appears to already have hit reckless velocities. It reminds me of the first single that Detroit based quartet Loose Koozies released more than a year ago: "Rollin' Heavy..." Whereas that title might suggest some kind of aggro-riff on Cream, Grand Funk or Foghat, yet their song is a sweet, shuffling strummer of a melodic country-folk ode, stitched with sentimentality and world-wary wisdom. And while there are plenty of lyrical ballads about small towns and plaintive blue collar pleasures woven into disarming metaphors and erudite wordplay, you might be surprised to vibe nostalgically with a rockin' story about a horse track in Hazel Park where you can, if you're hungry enough, have up to five hot dogs. Yes. Loose Koozies kick your preconceptions to the curb in a lot of ways.

So slow down... But also hold fast. Expect "country-rock" but not "country-rock..."



Pete Ballard's pedal-steel is prominent on these two new tracks, recorded in Detroit with Warren Defever of His Name Is Alive; but the heart of Koozies charm is the rollicking rhythms of Nick German (drums) and Erin Davis (bass), finding the a propelling pocket for the energizing "Slow Down Time," and the easygoing sway and melodic hook for "Marita." Singer/guitarist E.M. Allen's mid-high rusty warble promenades over those rhythms at matching tempos hitting registers that you could almost qualify for honky-tonk status but you're too busy dialing in to his capricious dispositions with lyrics about lying around in your underwear hiding in the verses of a song that's got some sincere thoughts to share about the simple paths to happiness. Guaranteed in every Koozie song is the decorous fret dressings of lead guitarist Andrew Moran, weaving around each lyric, bass groove or cymbal hats and sure to bring out an elegantly face-melting solo in the bridge to each closing chorus.

Each Koozie brings something fresh to the table--with resumes that include bands more inclined toward indie-rock, punk, or something even further from "country." What manifests here is something organic, some other kind of "country..." ... a laid back yet luminous arrangement of road-trippable worry-killing ditties that just so happens to have a bit of twang and strut to 'em

Loose Koozies
Record Release
Wed., (4th of July)
Outer Limits Lounge
with Kelly Jean Caldwell and J. Walker & the Crossguards
INFO