"Music is part of being human, and there is no human culture in which it is not highly developed and esteemed."
Neurologist, Author and Professor of Psychiatry, Oliver Sacks, wrote about the curious powers of music upon the brain in his 2007 study, Musicophelia...
"It's very ubiquity may cause it to be trivialized: we switch on a radio, switch it off, hum a tune, tap our feet, find the words to an old song going through our minds, and think nothing of it."
And now that I've read it, these lines impacted me. Or, maybe just thinking, intensely, soberly, appreciatively, about the impact, over all, that music can have... ...it's disturbing how easily it could go unappreciated. Since...
"...to those who are lost in dementia, the situation is different. Music is no luxury to them, but a necessity, and can have a power beyond anything else to restore them to themselves, and to others, at least for a while."
Anyone familiar with the work of OFFICE knew that singer/songwriter Scott Masson was capable of crafting, competently, keenly, almost inherently, minor masterpieces of pop-rock pizazz.
A bemusing and subtly calculating mind that meticulously, discernibly considered the minute merits of numerous sonic nuances and knew how to still give some edge to the grinning disposition of major keys.
Anyone familiar with the work of OFFICE, also knew that certain words replicated themselves upon the write-up sheets churned out by the weeklies in their hometown Chicago or on blogs across the burgeoning Internet-scenes of the mid-00's... that the sound was "glossy." Dig the latest single (and, also, my personal favorite "glossie" track: "The Opportunist")GLOSSIES - The Opportunist by DC/Milo
You can read the full interview with Scott in a forthcoming post on The Patch - wherein, the Milford, MI-raised songwriter talks about the combustion of his old band in the face of major-label-wrought compromises and scene politics, as well as his descent into a nervous breakdown that left him bedridden for majority time of a calendar year.
In this detachment from the scene and all other similar distractions, he worked himself back to health, physically/mentally -even writing while under the fleeting bleakness of those bed covers- and started crafting a heavily surreal "pastiche" of songs, with no set guidelines for composition and with an elevated inflection upon some more diary-esque (more pesonal, if you will) lyrics, but dashing in dips into the deep-end of out-of-body/self-effacing "character studies" -some kind of musical montage.
Thus - GLOSSIES' - Phantom Films - which will see a proper release asap - and has its completion tacitly celebrated June 12th @ the Loving Touch (with The Pop Project and Jeremy Messersmith.)
Masson is ready to return, now, with a full band backing these glossie tunes. "It's funny, because the record is a study in narcissism. So, you would think that spending time alone in my basement would lend itself to even more narcissism but that's the ironic part about this whole thing - in literally cutting myself off from life - and youth culture, and all that, I was able to really grow up, finally."
"(A nervous breakdown) forces you to just stop what you're doing. You have to back out. So you can then take a step forward into the future. It all ended up being a very positive thing."
A surreal slide into the kaleidoscoping persona's, peaks, valleys and boundaries of the subconscious... Masson has done it again.
This is just what I needed to get into the summer mood...
-The cherubic jig of recorders -The hazy grin of dulcimers -The warped wring of slide guitars -Bubbly vocals crooning and cooing out coaxing folk ballads
Where has this record been all (our) lives? Most of us weren't even alive when it was recorded... These Trails are yet-another-long-lost/bottom-of-the-treasure-chest gem, yanked upwards by Drag City (the same way they did with Detroit's garage-fathers, Death).
This record begs to be listened to outside...or at least on some idyllic shoreside cottage's porch with the windows open; the gentle acoustic guitars elucidate the flicker of sunlight through verdant green leaves flapping in the warm breeze; the vocals are a delicate balance of sublime and spiritual, soothing and ghostly...and the eclectic blend of instrumentation (including an arp synthesizer simmering under an often dazzling, but not dizzying, cascade of acoustic dances) gives it an air of something alien... or, you know, -just a substantially spaced-out, blissed-out acid-folk trip.
Not that I want to drudge up eye-rolling "genre" pre-occupations... But...but... This record might be the missing link to the, er, "freak-folk" troubadors from the mid-00's... see: Joanna Newsom / Devendra Banhart. The intriguing kick here - it's bemusing delivery of Os Mutantes-flavored obscuro-pop (if it were high on hammock-swayed tranquilizers) with a uniquely Hawaiian-tinged vibe. These are the day-dreamy pennings of singer/songwriters Margaret Morgan and Patrick Cockett, as they wander the hills and mountains of Honolulu and Kaua'l, a way-out-west perspective churned in the dying days of hippie-dom.
You need some sweet sounds to quench your thirst for groovy-yet-cerebral chill-out music?
Finally settled after a jostled morning. I was setting out today to write about something unrelated, or independent of-- music, but soon felt the wind knocked out of me...
I've found I need, or at least rely-upon, terrible and beautiful guitars, melodious moans and the unrelenting, jarring stomp and punch of drums steadily reverberating into my ears, as a vital ignition... to start up the whatever-it-is, inside of me, -maybe, some kind of demon that demands appeasement or merely an engine of primitive design, forever mangled by numerous dents wrought by the Devil pounding upon it with the wrench of rock n roll.
I hit the already humid morning air under an up-and-at-em sun, pedaling down the service drive in the opposite direction of the rat race river of autos, angling past the same soaked plastic bag, a mud-splattered expired jellyfish, under the interstate bridge and then onwards, huffing diesel exhaust, pumping my way up a nearly 45-degree angled paved sidewalk...
...only to get to the coffee shop and find out that the "wi-fi" is "down" and thus feel shame in the Luddite/pen-and-paper-purist quadrants of my being for being caught red-handed for Internet dependency.
What to write about today?
***That Apple unveiled The Cloud? Thus that you can listen to songs from your iTunes-Library ANYWHERE...assuming you have your iPod/iPhone/iPad on-hand as well (and here's betting with dystopian surety that you will!)
***...I could write about music - and let you know that mangled-folk/indie-punk upstart Ty Segall seems to be on a considerable upswing, with a lot of Internet-eyes already peering forth through the staticy seas to the proper release of the 5th album (in three years) from the San-Fran-based troubadour of all things reverb, haze, aloof melody and dadaist-flirting lyrics...with the venerable/eclectic Drag Citygetting behind his ramshackle blends...
***Or, maybe I could follow through on actually ruminating on the anniversary of D-Day; not only, first and foremost, out of respect for the lives lost and the admirable dedication of the soldiers who fought, died or were injured, on that day, back 67 years ago on Normandy and Ohama Beach respectively... but also as, (if you'll indulge my unusually flaring cynical side), another opportunity to reflect, with genuine concern more so than high-horse repudiation, of the apathy, or disconnected complacency, of majority of Americans...
~ I don't usually write about non-musicalissues because once I do wade my way out into the deep-end, beyond the buoy markers, I end up getting pulled down, to where my craning neck just barely juts my chin above the surface, sucking for air as the anchor of negativity coaxes me deeper...
It's amazing what "hope" and "change" looks like, at one instance, and what it winds up looking like, two years later:
I always come back to music because I don't have the energy, or rather the masochistic/misanthropic fetishist leanings necessary in order to genuinely inspire in me an urge to consistently return to what is, most often, a circus of madness, misappropriation, malcontent, misdeeds, and fanatical posturing of bellicosity and impressive(ly empty) rhetoric...
I always come back to music because it is often the ideal escape. (Justifiably, an intellectual escape...but also, a universal means of communication as old as language itself).
~ I'll be frank with you...
I started writing this piece, this piece, with two intentions:
To tell you about Ty Segall's newest album, "Goodbye Bread" (mostly a stylistic step forward for the auteur of acerbic-pop into slightly cleaner palettes of dreamy/druggy/drifting acoustic-jangled chorales)...
...and then to maybe start thinking out loud what it would be like if I stopped writing about music...stopped writing here... at least for a little while... It's something that's been nibbling on my mind. Milo without the music.
But, I'm not ready to follow that to it's inevitable -staring-out-into-the-ether-at-the-edge-of-a-cliff--conclusion...
So, instead...
I'll expound upon Segall's latest - a keen sculpting of sun-fried psychedelia - some kind of bewitching blend of late 60's reverb-soaked Brit-rock--think Pretty Things on S.F. Sorrow! ...like a revival of that curious era when the paisley prance of mainstream-co-opted Mod sensibilities had been warped into a beautiful nightmare swathed in an edgier smokescreen of surrealism...
But then, dash in an almost bluesy cut of cathartic guitar shreds ("The Floor"), or even an early-70's era Lennon's take on snarling ballads ("You Make the Sun Fry"), add in a grunge-feeling growl to the low end guitars ("Where Your Head Goes") and turn it all on its head with early prog/glam dashes on the acoustic strut and slide of "I Am With You" as it rings of quintessential Bolan or Rebel-Rebel-Bowie. And then, of course, Seagall's typical sardonic, scuffed, tumbling ballads shine through on brow-cocking shrug-and-shred outings like "Comfortable Home (A True Story)."
Goodbye Bread is out June 21st - but you can check out a 7" "I Can't Feel It" (now, by clicking here).
~
P.S.
June 11th at the Lager House - 18 bands enter, 18 bands leave... But 18 bands also get documented for a forthcoming film that aims to capture "the Detroit scene..." "...at a moment" (this moment) "in time."
What the (mostly-rock, but also electro, and punk,) parties have to offer, will be on display...for your dissection and montage-esque appraisal...
"People ask the question a lot: Why did you decide to put out your own records? But, it's not like there was anyone else asking to put them out."
--Mac McCaughan - co-founder of Merge Records (founder of Superchunk)
The Story of Merge Records is more than just the story of Mac and Superchunk bassist Laura Ballance fatefully aligning in Chapel Hill, NC more than 20-years-ago and galvanizing their shared ideals of preserving the aesthetic of the crate-diving, record-collecting, music maven. It goes beyond their helping to establishing some kind of foundation, however amorphous or frail at first, upon which their friends... (i.e., their own favorite bands) could climb upon and stand together under the banner of a "record label."
It's also the story, as reporter/author John Cook pieces together in his new book, of "what went wrong at the major labels..."
"At this point," said Ballance, "we have artists coming to us that formerly would have been interested in being on a major label, which really tells me that people are fleeing that model like rats from a sinking ship and that (Merge) somehow represent ohw a record label should work."
Merge's story is a subtle indictment of the major labels and casts revealing scrutiny upon its evil agenda...rather, it's view of music with dollar-sign-eyeballs. Cook shows in his expansive book (- a blending of photo-album / oral history that sorta reads like a tome-sized magazine feature/interview) that:
--music, rock n' roll specifically, has always been forged by the passionate DIY-ers first - and that goes for its early proponents, especially. Cook draws comparisons of Merge to Vivian Carter and James Bracken, the first to release the Beatles in the U.S. with their Vee-Jay Records label (as, at that time in the early 60's, Capitol had refused). Don't forget Sam Phillips at Sun Records, by the way.
In any case - I'll make two recommendations to you as we acknowledge the 20th Anniversary of Merge Records:
B.) Treat yourself to a tribute night at Woodruff's - June 8th!
Not to glorify them, but... they proved it... A simple, all-heart (long-slogging) formula to prop independent music - and coming out the other end with not just your integrity in tact, but surplus of integrity.
Credibility sounds like too fleeting of a word. But it's pretty nice when you can count some of the most respected, yet most popular indie rock bands, i.e. Spoon and Arcade Fire, as family members. They survived their first rough five years and then caught the "wave" of seminal post-grunge indie rock (along with their comrades like Dinosaur Jr.) and wound up signing acts like Magnetic Fields... One tries not to indulge the "and they never looked back" cliche). Ah well, ...most indie rockers know the lore of Merge and 'Chunk and all that... Just enjoy the weekend and check out the book--and Woodruff's.
"Destroy This Place"...as a singular phrase, wouldn't normally conjure a sense of surety, savvy or a kind of stability.
And yet, it's the name, ...and on one level also the philosophy, of a band that is "new" only in the same vague sense that their "first show" occured just as recently as last year's Ferndale DIY Street Fair.
Destroy This Place is the allignment of "seasoned vets," who aren't trying to fit into any new fad, not trying to rub elbows in any scene, not trying to get out and tour and not trying to reinvent the wheel.
Two bands, both of considerable local renown (and substantial, intertwining resumes) started winding down at the same time in mid-2010. Singer/guitarist John Nelson and bassist Monday Busque saw the inevitable end coming for their venerable noise-pop band New Grenada just as the dashing power-pop trio Friendly Foes (with singer/guitarist Ryan Allen and drummer Sean Sommer) was essentially splintering (with its bassist Liz Wittman moving onto work with Lettercamp).
Read it aloud: Destroy This Place
...and it sounds like a senseless battle-cry from some upstart basement anarchist - But with these four, combining two bands and thus recording an entire album together (with a forthcoming release June 3rd at the Lager House in Detroit), they're the utter antithesis of senseless.
Forging the two bands -just made sense. Finally getting together to set down to work extensively and shrewdly, together on an album together -just made sense.
And bringing a healthy bit of bellicosity, an edge, and a heaviness to their sound and their stage show -just made sense. This is what happens when musicians are done fucking around.
"What we're doing is just natural," Nelson said. "There's some bands that just try to fit whatever's current at the time and I don't think we do that at all. We might sound sorta 90's or even 80's and we sound more throwback then we do current. We're playing rock songs, but we're also doing what's true to us, we're not forcing anything."
Now then, to harp on all their steadier and sober qualities ("dudes in their 30's, with familes or future families and full times jobs") would be a disservice to how imposing, how declarative, how loud and how dynamic their sound is -
It brings a marrowy, blunt bolstering and gravelly haymaker's sledge swing to a somewhat pop sensibility. The guitars are crunchy and grimy, the drums are pounding, the bass throws body checks and the vocals are belted with ardor; it's aggressive and, yes, heavy, but compacted into 2 1/2 minute kickers that exhort the primal, almost sinister sneered fun of rock n roll.
Destroy This Place takes you back to the glory days of early 90's indie-rock, with ears that flex a penchant for happy/hazy 70's A.M. pop and early 80's metal. But again, it isn't a pack of privileged 23-year-olds naively angling their own bright-eyed tribute, it's a group of adults, Allen said, who aren't wasting any time. There's confidence and committment, Allen said, for a group that gets "together" to write and rehearse" after work and after the kids are in bed" who "don't need to go out to the bar and rub elbows or to be seen."
"With 'heaviness,'" Sommer said, "obviously we run into this with the choice of the name. It's because we're a little bit older and we thought maybe people would be looking at us that way, so we kinda wanted to come out with a middle finger and have the sound back it up."
"Heaviness," Allen said, "or hard-rocking, is up to interpretation. But the 'heaviness' comes in the form of, just, energy and maybe that spark to really want to kick the doors down a little harder than we have in other bands."
"I'm not hiding who I am," said Busque said. At 35 and a father of two, he knows there's a whisper of anxiety--that the kids might see you as the aging hipster up on a stage.
"But, I'm still playing relevant music," Busque said, "stuff that's important and catchy, but smart. It's not stuff that's rehashing or where I'm trying to be a 30-year-old wearing clothes from Hot Topic. I can still kick your ass and I can still fucking play."
"Part of that," Sommer adds, "is that we are all very secure in the reasons that we're in this band. We don't have any delusions."
The band set up at Russian Recording (in Bloomington, IN, where Nelson recorded with his other current/active band Copper Theives), and, Allen said, were considerably benefitted by its owner and engineer Mike Bridavsky's keen reading of DTP, as people and as players.
"He got our band," Allen plainly exclaimed. "We didn't dick around, we didn't pile things on, we didn't put extra anything. Songs are short and their punchy; you don't need a mellotron or a vibraphone or a saxophone" (or a six-stringed raccoon bone) "in there if it doesn't need it. There's no clutter, it's like a live show."
As the four of them chime in, charting out Destroy This Place's progression, the conversation is dotted with a handful of reflections varying on similar phrases:
"...maybe we did that before..." or "maybe we felt that way before..." with the tacit implication of learning from one's youthful foolhardiness...
"...but not now... not with this band."
Nelson said he was inspired by seeing bands like Dinosaur Jr. on their reunion tours - and noting that sound better, tighter, and yes, louder. "That's because they're just better players, now," Nelson said - mirroring the decade's worth of playing, performing, writing and recording these four have amassed around the greater Detroit area.
"Obviously, yes, we started this band to have fun, but at the same time, all of us have a little bit of something to prove," Allen said, "at least to ourselves."
"We're not gonna say anything on stage," Sommer said, nodding to the band name, "or even anything to each other, but, we're kinda throwing down the gauntles with other bands."
Out of three bands in a night, Busque said, which one will you walk away remembering? "You're gonna remember us..."
As Destroy This Place nears its one-year-anniversary, it celebrates the release of Resurrect the Mammoth - June 3rd at PJ's Lager House -with Pewter Cub and End Trails. - Free CD+LP voucher with $8 cover charge.
Martin Smith thinks Isosceles Mountain may be "hard to stomach for, say, someone just showing up to a show..."
It might just be that the noise-dabbling/hard-rock trio (with Dave Graw and Eric Maluchnik), are you're typical "band's band..."
Or, perhaps "the nature of what (ISC/MTN) is doing..." Smith said, namely, "no vocals," requires a bit more effort on the audience's part... "or...you need to be stoned."
But this isn't overly wrought/hi-brow ambient stuff,
...and it's not exactly a John Cage-ish marriage of Tortoise and Mogwai (though that might give you some taste of it). It's not some overly-prog-soaked jam thing.
"It was kind of a fluke," admits Smith, who comes to this project having played in spunky-indie-punk quartet Thunderbirds Are Now. He had demos done on Garageband ominously/tellingly titled "Doom 1 / Doom 2 / Doom 3..." that aimed to channel "Jesu through an Earth filter."
One night, Child Bite's Shawn Knight needed a band to fill-out a bill and when none could commit, Smith decided to do the show "as an outlet to thrash these 'Doom' jams I had. This is when Dave (Graw) came into the picture."
Smith had known Graw for a while, but knew limited in depth-info about him, that: "He was a sweet drummer" and "had a reputation for being a bit of a shit-kicker..."
"...I'm not sure what I mean by that, but, it's a compliment." There only real connections came from having their respective band's, either TAN or, in Graw's case, Heads Will Roll, playing shows together. Smith got a hold of Graw, out of the blue, sent him some 'Doom' and "he was in."
New Grenada's John Nelson filled out the trio, initially, blending guitar / drums / synth / pedal / more guitar / ...and variously errant/teased-noise/feedback... But Nelson soon drifted away to focus on Destroy This Place. Since Eric Maluchnik recorded their EP at Tempermill, he wound up joining the band, more or less.
"We all really knew we wanted to be part of something that was like nothing either of us had done before..." Smith said. But he's definitely not implying that ISC/MTN are "inventing a genre," merely "pushing ourselves out of comfort zones" and then, finding -and galvanizing, whatever it is they find in those outer zones... The goal: "getting away from the stagnant habits of writing and playing music.
This was a band whose initial motivations "weren't really musical." The idea was to tear up any typical band blueprint.
The sound blends dreamy drifts with lumbering roars - a tough, gnarled groove and a bruising percussive stomp -blurred up by feedback on some trips but blunt and cutting with guitars on others...
Currently, "we're working on a concept for an album," namely, it's "storyline." Smith said that during this process, he's been listening to some "Phillip Glass" while the band tries "to think in terms of classical music, i.e. Movements, Suites, etc. That being said, we haven't actually written a complete song in a while, so we're looking forward to it. Hopefully it'll have a movie-soundtrack-vibe."
Writing, recording, performing, "we're all on the same wave-length, which helps in the improv-sections of live shows."
Smith self-deprecatingly shrugs that he might be the odd-man-out in this trio (which looks to add the element of the bass guitar, permanently, soon). "Although, that quirkiness that I bring to the table pretty much permeates within the styles of everyone, which definitely gives us our vibe..."
Good & Evil is not so subtle of a title for a band that went from being local heroes to being swept up by a major label.
Tally Hall was a pop/rock jewel, living and contributing to inspiring camaraderie of the Ypsi/Arbor scene, until their debut caught the ears at Atlantic Records..., which, unfortunately, led to having any illusions horribly dashed by a wringing of compromises, thus the band was "jostled about like Ol' Willie's skiff in a Nor'easter..."
Tally Hall's newest LP (six years in the making, or at least six years, having simmered/cooled/on-and-off the productive burner), exudes the bittersweet savvy they've attained, only it's (bitter)sweetly translated into melodious metaphorical narratives across dashing and dynamic pop/rock arrangements, dreamily balancing the poignant and plaintively punching with surreal, waltzing ambiguities of sun-soaked psychedelia. Not heady/smoky/spacey-psychedelia...no. With such honeyed harmonies and penchants for cascading pianos/hushing acoustic guitars, -this is the psychedelic-pop that conjures the scripture of Sgt Pepper's recipe of sweet-strange/dark-beautiful ballads of bemusing brevity. ("Misery Fell"'s minimalistic voice/bass/keyboard strut blends some McCartney's characteristic jaunty vagaries - think "Your Mother Should Know" married to "Eleanor Rigby.")
The string of titles on the track list seem to be considerably suggestive: "The Fate of Stars," "Never Meant to Know," "The Trap..."
Good & Evil, bares a few bruises upon examination and if you get into a staring contest with these still-admittedly-romping sunburst whirls, one might occasionally see the blink of eyes made weary, not just by the extended slog of sorting these songs together, but also the now-more-matured stare of hardened eyes that have clearly seen the disconcerting dream-straining line up of industry suits.
That said, this album isn't any downer, and not an overtly jaded monologue. Effervescent, exuberant, tumbling and taut - and made ever-that-much more triumphant by their having returned to Ann Arbor to release it with defacto family/friends, Quack!Media. As usual, their putting on a clinic in terms of graceful harmonies, delicately blending in the grayer hazy beauty of orchestral instrumentation - thus creating moods that range from breathless jogs and jumps to breezy sways all hung-up-on-a-dream.
But indeed, the sun gets a bit overcast on side two, as the eclectic, three-part arrangement "The Scarecrow" effectively opens the door to the more haunting pieces of the album... ...and again, with their potent pop sensibilities, this is the kind of haunting, a lightly used phrase, that one would welcome, even on the sunniest of days...
Tally Hall - Good & Evil release show - July 22 - at the Blind Pig
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