tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35139064115075332412024-03-01T08:28:00.085+00:00The Album WallA blog about albums and music and stuff.Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.comBlogger564125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-28820708679408395152017-04-26T13:28:00.001+01:002017-04-26T13:28:10.201+01:00Winding DownAs of today, The Album Wall <b>will no longer be updated on a regular basis</b>. I've been posting three blogs a week - one on Monday, one on Wednesday, and one on Friday - for nearly four years now, and while I'm proud of myself for sticking to that schedule so rigidly, I've had a think and I've decided that it's time to stop now.<br />
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I started this blog in 2013 because I had loads of things to say about the music I was listening to; these days, by contrast, I often feel like I'm only listening to music so that I've got something to blog about. <i>I'd better have a browse on Badncamp,</i> I'll find myself thinking of a weekend afternoon, <i>so that I've got something for the blog on Monday.</i><br />
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I've loved writing The Album Wall, and it has not been without its perks. I've heard loads of great music that I probably wouldn't have come across otherwise; I've been lucky enough to speak with some of my very favourite bands and songwriters; I've had countless great conversations with fellow music fans on Twitter and broadened my horizons in all sorts of different ways. And I still get a thrill when somebody shares the words I've written, or when one of my followers buys an album on my recommendation, or when an artist thanks me for taking the time to write about their songs.<br />
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But I'm afraid I can't keep this up any more. For one thing, writing three blog posts a week uses up a surprisingly large portion of my spare time - I do have a full-time job outside of The Album Wall, and doing both puts a real squeeze on how much time I have to relax and do all the other things that I enjoy (like playing games, reading, writing non-blog stuff, and making music of my own).<br />
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More importantly, I fear that I'm losing my ability to enjoy music in the pure, simple way I used to. Nowadays, whenever I'm listening to an album, I'm always trying to come up with an angle - a hot take for the blog - and I want to relearn how to appreciate and lose myself in music without feeling the need to pick every sound apart and probe each lyric for some deeper meaning.<br />
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I'm a horrible judge of my own work, and so I'm honestly not sure whether I'm going out on a high here or simply burying the dead horse that I've been flogging for far too long. The Album Wall won't cease to exist entirely - I still have a few things in draft that I'll be publishing at some point in the near future, and I'm sure the blogging itch will revisit me every so often when I discover an album I really love or hear a song that really makes me think. (I'm listening to <i>50 Song Memoir</i> by The Magnetic Fields a heck of a lot right now, and I may well have to put pen to paper - or finger to keyboard - once I've organised my thoughts on that.)<br />
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For now, though, I'd like to say <i>au revoir</i> and thank you very much for reading The Album Wall and indulging my over-thinking these last few years. Every read, retweet, share, comment, submission and recommendation meant a whole damn lot to me. I don't want to name too many names because I'm bound to miss somebody out, but extra-special thanks are due to my girlfriend Vicky for bearing with me on all the evenings when I came home from work and leapt to my laptop to frantically finish off that day's post; to Jamie from Audio Antihero for his encouragement and for all the great music; and to all the lovely people who ever wrote guest posts for The Album Wall and gave me an occasional day of rest.<br />
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Goodbye for now - keep an eye out for the odd new post, and do bear in mind that I'll still be semi-active on Twitter (<a href="https://twitter.com/TheAlbumWall">@TheAlbumWall</a>) if you ever want to say hi or tell me about the awesome new album you've just heard.<br />
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Thanks for reading,<br />
Joel.Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-2648525770119544622017-04-24T15:29:00.000+01:002017-04-24T15:29:10.313+01:00The Crimea: Secrets of the Witching Hour at 10<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The Crimea's <i>Secrets of the Witching Hour</i> came out on the 30th of April, 2007 - ten years ago this coming Sunday. It made headlines at the time not for its musical content (more on which shortly) but for the fact that it was released as a free download on <a href="http://thecrimea.limitedrun.com/products/502351-secrets-of-the-witching-hour-free">the band's website</a>.</div>
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That seems unremarkable now, so here's some context. In April 2007 - more than a year before Bandcamp was launched, more than a year before Spotify was launched, several months even before the release of Radiohead's pay-what-you-want seventh album <i>In Rainbows</i> - The Crimea, whose previous LP came out on Warner Bros. Records and included a UK top 40 single in <b>Lottery Winners on Acid</b>, decided to give their new album away for free over the Internet.</div>
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And it's not like <i>Secrets of the Witching Hour</i> was just bashed out on autopilot. It's clear that a lot of thought and feeling went into the creation of this album, and giving it away gratis was a very generous move on the part of its creators. These eleven tracks are dressed up in a lot of pop culture references and apocalyptic imagery, but strip it all back and what you're left with is a nakedly emotional and darkly honest break-up album. (<i>"She did you no good; she brought you only harm,"</i> Davey MacManus tells himself repeatedly at the beginning of <b>Requiem Aeternam</b>.) It's one thing to spin your heartbreak into songs, but to then set those songs free - to allow people to store your deepest, darkest feelings in their iTunes libraries without asking for a penny in return - is something else entirely, especially given that the decision to charge nothing for <i>SotWH</i> pretty much ensured that all press coverage of the album would focus primarily on its price (or lack thereof) rather than on the songs themselves.</div>
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<a name='more'></a>So let's talk about those songs now, because I love this album and it's high time it got its dues. The first track is <b>All Conquering</b>, which opens with a darkly turbulent intro that is perfectly evocative of the storm that will shortly roll in.<br />
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I always wanted to make a music video for <b>All Conquering</b>. It would open with a couple arguing in a bedroom, gesticulating angrily as that ominous, foreboding intro sets the tone. Then one of the people storms out, slamming the door behind them, leaving the other person to collapse devastated onto the bed just as the drums limber up and - bam - that mighty guitar riff enters like a knife through a mountain. <i>"Our love is blown to smithereens,"</i> sings MacManus; <i>"the future bleeds..."</i></div>
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<i>Secrets of the Witching Hour</i> starts at ground zero, beginning at the exact moment when the relationship explodes and affording the listener a front-row seat for the ensuing earthquake. MacManus cleverly projects his own pain - his own sense that everything is over, that his future has been mortally wounded - onto the face of the Earth itself, so that the end of his relationship becomes The End of the World. <b>Raining Planets </b>tries nonchalantly to shrug it off (<i>"it's only the end of the world"</i>).<i> </i><b>Man </b>grasps desperately for a connection that's strong enough to endure Armageddon. The bruised, brooding <b>Loop a Loop </b>begins as a 'waiting for you to change your mind and come back to me' kinda song (<i>"damn girl gon' loop, loop a loop a loop"</i>) and ends up trying in vain to bring the whole world back to life (<i>"damn world gon' loop, loop a loop a loop"</i>).</div>
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Mind you, for an album that contains such hilariously nihilistic lines as <i>"throw another small child on the fire"</i> and <i>"it's a beautiful day to die"</i>, <i>Secrets of the Witching Hour</i> is surprisingly hopeful and heartwarming when it wants to be. The invigorating <b>Light Brigade </b>pulses with the heroic abandon of a doomed cavalry's defiant last stand, but the two tracks that follow - <b>Several Thousand Years of Talking Nonsense</b> and <b>Requiem Aeternam</b> - are where we hear The Crimea at their most human, their most open to the possibility of happiness, and thus their most affecting. As a whole, this album is like a big, flaming asteroid that looms fearsomely in the sky and darkens the Earth with its promise of extinction, but here - as the end of both the record and the world draws nigh - a few beams of light are permitted to burst through that darkness.</div>
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<b>Several Thousand Years</b> (my favourite song on the album - I especially enjoy headbanging along to its joyously noisy second half) is a list song. MacManus names all sorts of things that he's thankful for - including <b>Fairytale of New York</b> by The Pogues and Ben & Jerry's ice cream - before coming to the conclusion that, <i>"when all is said and done, we are not worthy of this world we do our damnedest to destroy."</i> He marvels at people who <i>"believe it's their God-given right to survive"</i>, but he also leaves the slightest bit of room for a glimmer of hope: <i>"it's not over, there is still time to repent..."</i></div>
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And then, on penultimate track <b>Requiem Aeternam</b>, that glimmer grows into a warm, dazzling glow. This track has a more stripped-down feel than anything else on <i>SotWH</i>, and while it starts out sounding spooky and haunted, it eventually swells into a life-affirming testament to love and the pursuit of happiness.</div>
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<i>"Happiness is possible...just keep rolling the snowball up the hill...your ship will come in...just keep on stumbling..."</i></div>
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<b>Requiem Aeternam</b> would have made a lovely ending for <i>Secrets of the Witching Hour</i>, suggesting as it does that our narrator has finally laid his pain to rest and made peace with whatever heartbreak it was that triggered all this drama. But The Crimea wisely realised that failing to end an end-of-the-world album with the actual end of the world would be kind of a cop-out, and so we also get <b>Wierd</b> [sic], a perfect snapshot of everything going up in flames as reality finally tears itself apart. <i>"Pterodactyls take on the helicopter gunships,"</i> reports MacManus from the thick of the action; <i>"brace yourself, this is the apocalypse."</i></div>
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And so, instead of closing with a solemn string chord and a whisper of <i>"God rest her soul"</i>, <i>Secrets of the Witching Hour</i> ends with someone hammering the cacophonous crap out of a piano as a choir of voices curse <i>"the bastard that made us all"</i> in droning unison. It's absurd, it's excessive, and it's over the top - but then, the end of the world is no time for understatement.</div>
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<a href="http://thecrimea.limitedrun.com/products/502351-secrets-of-the-witching-hour-free"><i>Download </i>Secrets of the Witching Hour<i> for free here.</i></a></div>
Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-84971812824978747562017-04-21T14:11:00.001+01:002017-04-21T14:11:59.301+01:00EP Corner: Four Songs Too Long by Low Horizon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Low Horizon are a band from Houston, Texas. There are currently four people in the band - John Gottlieb, Brandon T. Cane, David Dao and Jasmine Fuller - but it wasn't always thus. In fact, <a href="https://www.lowhorizon.net/about/">Low Horizon's website</a> is home to this rather ambitious Venn diagram that maps out all the present and former members and the things they have in common:<br />
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You see, the band were originally a three-piece, and when two of the three members went off to medical school in 2015 it looked like the sun had set on Low Horizon. But John - the one remaining member - decided to keep going, and with the blessing of his former bandmates Jack and Travis he rebuilt Low Horizon from the ground up, re-recording their songs in his home studio and recruiting a new group of collaborators to help him keep the fire burning.</div>
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<a name='more'></a>Today, Low Horizon Mk II release their debut EP <i>Four Songs Too Long</i>: five tracks of fun, Weezerish rock music with jolly lyrics about death and grieving and stuff. Fuzzy electric guitars rub up against each other like balloons on woolly jumpers and are occasionally interrupted by bursts of buzzy 8-bit synth, as happens 32 seconds into the short and sweet <b>Next Time</b>:<br />
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<i>Four Songs Too Long</i> is a mixed bag of emotions. As mentioned above, most of the songs deal with death and the question of how you move on after death claims those close to you; penultimate track <b>40//Death</b> is a particularly bittersweet number whose narrator is witnessing a loved one's final moments and coming to terms with the fact that the dying person won't be there for the whole rest of his life.</div>
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<i>"When I'm 40, you'll be dead...don't leave me here, don't leave me alone..."</i></div>
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But contrary to what that might suggest, <i>Four Songs Too Long</i> is never a harrowing or depressing listen. For one thing, the band's sloppy, chunky blend of pop-punk and garage rock music is too colourful and full-hearted - more <i>Blue Album</i> than <i>Skeleton Tree</i> - to evoke anything approaching despair, and even as Gottlieb battles bleak topics like bereavement, you always get the sense that there's a bright new dawn just over the (low) horizon. Just as this band rose from the ashes of a band that split too soon, their EP acknowledges that death doesn't have to be the end - <b>Funeral</b> looks forward to a possible reunion in the afterlife, while <b>Just Fine </b>puts an arm around your shoulder, offers you a lick of ice cream, and reminds that you've still got plenty of life to live before you go.</div>
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Four Songs Too Long <i>is out today as a name-your-price download. Buy it from <a href="https://lowhorizon.bandcamp.com/album/four-songs-too-long">Low Horizon's Bandcamp page</a>!</i></div>
Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-71936757724725333062017-04-19T14:53:00.003+01:002017-04-19T15:21:56.338+01:00Fly Towards the Moon: Q&A with Morgan Murphy from Mothpuppy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<i>Maryland band Mothpuppy make scuffed-up indie rock music that, in spite of its slightly melancholy side, is as warm and as comforting as that well-worn, increasingly threadbare jumper that you've had in your wardrobe for as long as you can remember. Their new LP </i>Cool & Pretty<i> is out now and Sad Cactus Records, and the band's singer/guitarist Morgan Murphy very generously agreed to answer a few of my questions about the album and how it came to be...</i></div>
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<i>image source: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mothpuppy/photos/a.1608966409384931.1073741828.1516624418619131/1904475236500712/?type=3&permPage=1">facebook.com/mothpuppy</a></i></div>
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<b>The Album Wall:</b> So why did you call your band 'Mothpuppy'?<br />
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<b>Morgan Murphy:</b> I don't really have an interesting answer for that! It's something that people were calling me in my first year of college, and I couldn't think of anything else when I made <a href="https://mothpuppy.bandcamp.com/">my Bandcamp page</a>. And then it stuck and people wouldn't let me change it.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> Ha. And here I was looking at it and thinking 'ooh it's so interesting how they've put a universally reviled creature alongside a universally adored creature, I wonder what it means???'<br />
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<b>MM:</b> Ha, well I do love moths and puppies alike so maybe that was part of the reasoning.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> What do you like about moths?<br />
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<b>MM:</b> I think they're beautiful and super-interesting to look at. Someone told me the reason they're attracted to light is because they're always trying to fly towards the moon - I'm not sure if that's true, but it's a nice thought.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b>TAW: </b>Let's talk about your new album, then - I know that <i>Cool & Pretty</i> is named after a line in the song <b>Basketball Court</b>, but what does that phrase signify to you?<br />
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<b>MM:</b> Well, that song is about moments that were meant to perceived as romantic really kind of altering my perception of myself. In those instances, I was meant to be the feminine recipient of these really superficial or backhanded compliments, and I for some reason put a lot of value in those relationships - probably because I was raised to be devotional and nurturing, right?<br />
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3784173408/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=3086523758/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://mothpuppy.bandcamp.com/album/cool-pretty">Cool &amp; Pretty by mothpuppy</a></iframe></div>
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And so when these people whose opinion I valued and whom I thought very highly of expressed how they felt about me - and it didn't match my own self-image - it kind of set off this miniature breakdown where it was like, 'what kind of person am I presenting to the world?' rather than 'there's nothing wrong with me, it's just that the people I am choosing to value aren't getting it and so maybe I need to change who I value'.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> So do you feel like you're better at choosing what and who to value nowadays?<br />
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<b>MM:</b> Ha ha - after a lifetime of those sorts of experiences, yes.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>One of the most striking elements of this album's sound is the violin - how did you end up with a violinist in the band?<br />
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<b>MM: </b>The violinist is our friend Becca Kotula, and I asked her to join because 1) she's wonderful, and 2) I'm kind of always trying to get people who play different instruments to play with me without really worrying about how it'll sound in the end. I feel like this habit will get me into a lot of organisational trouble one day; it's already hard to coordinate between 5 peoples' schedules, and I'm sort of in the market for a horn section at the moment too. You can see how this might only get more and more difficult.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>How long have you been making music? Where did your life as a musician begin?<br />
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<b>MM: </b>I've been singing since I can remember. I was a big chorus kid in elementary school and junior high, so I have some traditional voice training; I've been playing the guitar since I was about 11, maybe? Weirdly enough, my youth group pastor taught me the basics in exchange for reading the bible with him for 15 minutes afterwards. I ended up playing guitar at church on Sundays even though I wasn't religious at all. I guess I just felt like I owed him, and it was good practice. I messed around with it a lot after that - I would play covers in secret when no one was home. I was really shy when I was in high school, but I wanted to perform in front of people so I would go on those live streaming sites, play a few songs, and then get embarrassed and log off.<br />
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I didn't start feeling confident enough to write and perform my own songs until I was about 18 or 19 years old.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>How do you write songs? Do you write them yourself and then tell the band what to do, or is it a more collaborative process?<br />
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<b>MM: </b>I write the very base of the song - the basic guitar part and the vocal melody. Then I bring it to everyone and they all figure out their own parts. So it's kind of a mix of both: it's collaborative in the sense that I don't really have any bigger expectation for what the song should sound like, and I kind of just let it come together based on everyone's unique styles. It's really cool and fun because the end product is always way different then I anticipate, but I'm always happy about it.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>What is <b>Flea</b> about? After what you said about moths, the title and the opening line (<i>"Why'd you kill me? My body was perfect!"</i>) make me picture a little bug wondering why they've just been squashed, but then I'm not sure how the <i>"I could have made millions" </i>bit ties in with that...<br />
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<b>MM:</b> Okay, so that song is very literally about my house being infested with fleas and them living off of me while I slept. I really try my best to not kill bugs and treat every little creature with respect, but (and I'm not proud of this) I hated them. Their bodies are 'perfect' because they are really, really difficult to kill. They were ruining my life, but because of this I got really good at killing them by basically decapitating them with my fingernails (gross, sorry). I would kill every one that landed on me if I could.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3784173408/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=1843742329/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://mothpuppy.bandcamp.com/album/cool-pretty">Cool &amp; Pretty by mothpuppy</a></iframe></div>
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So I guess that song is me grappling with my guilt by imagining the perspective of the flea. I feel like I did what I had to do at the time, but I am sorry it had to go down like that. <b>Flea</b> is my homage to them - they're still my worst enemies though. Oh, and the line <i>"I could have made millions"</i> simply refers to their reproduction rate. I was being dramatic.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>Why do you want to go to space?<br />
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<b>MM: </b>Ha! lots of reasons.<br />
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3784173408/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=443799252/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://mothpuppy.bandcamp.com/album/cool-pretty">Cool &amp; Pretty by mothpuppy</a></iframe></div>
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I have the same kind of fascinations about space that I think a lot of us do. I watched a lot of Carl Sagan growing up. and so part of it is just that I think it'd be cool. But the song <b>Space</b> is also kind of about disassociating and leaving your body and becoming someone you don't recognise in bad situations, like the real you is looking down at yourself from space. Also I was watching an <i>X-Files </i>episode about astronauts when I wrote it.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>What other bands have you been listening to lately?<br />
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<b>MM: </b>We played a show with Nana Grizol and Bad Moves recently, so I've been listening to them a bunch. Nana Grizol are a band I started loving in high school, so it's been really nostalgic and nice to listen to them again. I appreciate them a lot.<br />
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<a href="https://badmoves.bandcamp.com/releases">Bad Moves</a> are new to me but they shred. Also my partner has gotten me into <a href="https://cerce.bandcamp.com/">Cerce</a> - they put them on if we're driving somewhere. They're awesome too, and it's somehow great driving music.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>What do you hope your listeners will take away from <i>Cool & Pretty</i>?<br />
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<b>MM: </b>Art and music leave a lot of room for interpretation, and so I'm interested in all of the ways that people experience our music. Sometimes I disagree with with what someone thinks a song is about, but once it's out there it's out there, you know? What I really want is for people to just listen to it! As much as I write songs for myself, I get so much joy from sharing that with other people, and if people feel like it's had any positive effect on their life or been empowering in any way, that's amazing and part of the reason I love making music that hits close to home.<br />
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Links:</h3>
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<ul>
<li><a href="https://mothpuppy.bandcamp.com/album/cool-pretty">Buy <i>Cool & Pretty</i> from Mothpuppy's Bandcamp page</a></li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/mothpuppy">Follow Mothpuppy on Twitter</a></li>
<li><a href="https://thealbumwall.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/cool-pretty-by-mothpuppy.html">Read my review of <i>Cool & Pretty</i></a></li>
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Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-92187505491475767652017-04-17T21:41:00.001+01:002017-04-17T21:45:07.709+01:00Beautiful Bugs: Cool & Pretty by Mothpuppy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2jtlLQ3E_hf4W2Fzg8FIetOM68BW4d34omjgjD_cX0E70y6fMrGtpctpBZBszKx-6HpLmlSexG_pid-yegct-FdIHXNnuAYxpDLiVUbzZl0f1TEXIZ_cpk41aABwCOV8982rhhNBedOM/s1600/a0449224197_10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2jtlLQ3E_hf4W2Fzg8FIetOM68BW4d34omjgjD_cX0E70y6fMrGtpctpBZBszKx-6HpLmlSexG_pid-yegct-FdIHXNnuAYxpDLiVUbzZl0f1TEXIZ_cpk41aABwCOV8982rhhNBedOM/s320/a0449224197_10.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Kittens and puppies are cute. Moths and fleas are gross. Boys are tough; girls are pretty. Violins belong in orchestras, whereas electric guitars belong in garages. Good is good and bad is bad and everything is either one or the other.</div>
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These are the sort of pointless divisions and categorisations and over-simplifications in which Mothpuppy chew all kinds of holes on their new LP <i>Cool & Pretty</i>. Led by singer/guitarist Morgan Murphy, the Baltimore band revel in putting things in the wrong boxes, or even in emptying all of the boxes onto the carpet and just mixing everything together. The result is a raggedy slacker-indie album that's incongruously decorated with golden ribbons of gorgeous, mournful violin - ribbons that bring out the gorgeous, mournful side of the songs themselves. On the face of it, these songs are about drinking cranberry juice and taking out the bins, but on a deeper level, they're really about seeing the beauty in the things everyone else perceives as ugly.</div>
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<a name='more'></a>Take opening track <b>Kilgore Falls</b>, for example. <i>"Let's spend five dollars and go to the park,"</i> sings Murphy; <i>"it's such a nice day outside."</i> What will we do at the park? Admire the flowers, have a picnic, feed the ducks on the lake? Nope: <i>"We'll count all the centipedes and dogs that pass us by!"</i><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3784173408/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=4288532442/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://mothpuppy.bandcamp.com/album/cool-pretty">Cool &amp; Pretty by mothpuppy</a></iframe><br />
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Centipede-spotting isn't most people's idea of an idyllic day at the park, but by putting centipedes next to dogs in the context of a springtimey 'I'm too shy to tell you how I feel' song, Morgan Murphy makes them sound less like disgusting creepy-crawlies and more like something...y'know, rad. <b>Flea</b> plays a similar trick - Murphy's heartbreaking lyrics (<i>"Why'd you kill me? My body was perfect!"</i>) slot beautifully into the song's melody, and together with the keening violin and the tenderly-strummed guitar, they create a real sense of pathos that will probably make you feel really guilty the next time you squish a bug.</div>
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3784173408/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=1843742329/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://mothpuppy.bandcamp.com/album/cool-pretty">Cool &amp; Pretty by mothpuppy</a></iframe></div>
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Mothpuppy, whether seeing perfection in the anatomy of a flea or feeling a burst of optimism on trash day, are great at finding beauty in the ugly bits of day-to-day life. They make hungover-sounding lo-fi rock music, but they use their rough 'n' ready stop-start guitar riffs to carve out shiny silver linings - on <b>Cranberry Juice</b>, Murphy even sings <i>"I am the fortunate consequence of a bad situation"</i>. But they're just as good at finding the sourness hidden in the seemingly sweet.<br />
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Case in point: the album title. <i>Cool & Pretty </i>is named after a line in its second track, <b>Basketball Court</b>, a stuttering song that describes the sense of unease a young Morgan Murphy experienced upon hitting puberty and finding themself suddenly subject to a set of seemingly arbitrary new rules. <i>"Why can't I take my shirt off on the basketball court? I wanna run around in big mesh shorts!"</i><br />
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Male attention is another source of unease. <i>"Tom told me he liked a woman with meat on her bones,"</i> sings Murphy; <i>"I think he was talking about me?"</i> This attention manifests itself in the form of seemingly pleasant but actually rather shallow compliments:<br />
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3784173408/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=3086523758/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://mothpuppy.bandcamp.com/album/cool-pretty">Cool &amp; Pretty by mothpuppy</a></iframe></div>
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<i>"He told me I was cool and pretty, he told me I was 'cool' and 'pretty'...anything else? Am I anything else?"</i></div>
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It's nice when someone thinks you're cool and pretty, but these things aren't achievements, really, and this is where the other side of Murphy's talent shows its face: just as they can see the beauty in the gross bug, they can also taste the bitter almonds at the centre of sugar-coated compliments like these. <b>Basketball Court</b> (and, by extension,<i> Cool & Pretty</i> at large) is a plea to be judged against a taller yardstick than coolness or prettiness - intelligence, perhaps, or athleticism. Or songwriting ability.</div>
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Cool & Pretty<i> is out now and you can get it from <a href="https://mothpuppy.bandcamp.com/album/cool-pretty">Mothpuppy's Bandcamp page</a>.</i></div>
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Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-32378512681690213082017-04-14T11:00:00.001+01:002017-04-14T11:06:16.022+01:00Through a Kaleidoscope: Q&A with Philippa Zang<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<i>Philippa Zang's album </i>Embarrass Yourself<i> came out earlier this year on No Dice Tapes and it's an oddball DIY pop gem - listening to it feels like getting a fresh start in a sweet new world of fun opportunities and video games and oversized jumpers. There are lots of different feelings and ideas packed into its twelve little tracks, and I was lucky enough to ask Philippa a few questions in order to get to know the album better...</i></div>
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<i>image source: <a href="http://philippazang.bandcamp.com/">philippazang.bandcamp.com</a></i></div>
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<b>The Album Wall: </b>Please introduce yourself - who are you and what should everyone know about you?<br />
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<b>Philippa Zang: </b>I am Philippa and I come from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but am currently living in Dresden, Germany. I love the guitar, language and mango juice, and I don't trust rules or gender.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>Why is your new album called <i>Embarrass Yourself</i>?<br />
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<b>PZ: </b>'Embarrass yourself” was something I wrote absent-mindedly on the cover of a notebook when i first arrived in Germany in September. At the time it felt like everything I did had the potential to be embarrassing - I was in a country where I didn't know anyone and didn't speak the language. It was necessary for me to put myself in uncomfortable situations in order to open up even small opportunities and build a new home for myself abroad.<br />
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I don't think that vulnerability only applies to being in a foreign country. We are often left with a choice between being comfortable but possibly missing an opportunity and risking embarrassment but possibly opening up a door that makes a big difference in our lives. Being abroad just made the embrace of embarrassment and vulnerability a central part of my life, and since I wrote almost all of <i>Embarrass Yourself</i> while in Germany, I felt that it applied most naturally to the the album. I want to encourage people, myself included, to embarrass themselves more often - it's never as bad as you think it's going to be, and more often than not, it is extremely rewarding.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>The album is of course available digitally but it's also been released as a cassette tape - what is it that you like about this format?<br />
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<b>PZ:</b> The idea to release <i>Embarrass Yourself</i> on tape came pretty situationally. <a href="https://nodicetapes.bandcamp.com/">No Dice Tapes</a>, an independent tape label based out of Leeds, reached out to me in the spring of 2016 after my best friend and I's band, <a href="https://laurelpgh.bandcamp.com/">Laurel</a>, released a set of demos on Bandcamp and <a href="https://twitter.com/BasementSceneUK">Basement Scene Radio Show</a>, based in Bradford, featured one of our songs. They wanted to do a release with us, and I was enthusiastic about releasing a hard-copy version of my music at all. In general, I think digital music is a fast and easy way to share and hear music - my development as a musician came largely from recording and releasing songs I wrote on the internet as free downloads - but I think there’s a beautiful sentiment in being able to have a hard copy of the music you are hearing, and it feels better to support artists by buying something you can hold in your hand.<br />
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<i>"charmander red, squirtle blue or pikachu yellow"<br />(image source: <a href="http://nodicetapes.bandcamp.com/">nodicetapes.bandcamp.com</a>)</i></div>
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The meticulous process of dubbing each tape is also just one more thing that adds to the intimacy of DIY music production/distribution. Some people are sceptical of my decision to release music on tape because of its practicality (people don't commonly own tape players any more), but as a physical format, I believe tapes have great artistic personality, and the medium left lots of room to feature the artwork of my talented friend <a href="https://mercelemon.bandcamp.com/">Merce Lemon</a>.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>What are this album's main themes? Distance - being far away from someone you care about and waiting to see them again - seems to be a big one...<br />
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<b>PZ:</b> Yes, distance was one main theme. Distance put a whole new value on the people and places I used to have close by and caused me to reevaluate a lot of my relationships. At around the same time I moved to Dresden, my partner moved in the opposite direction into a particularly isolated situation for school. My friends, my dog, my mom are all still in the US. Distance made me realise a lot about the preciousness of what I left behind when I moved. It dramatises everything, makes little obstacles like time zone differences seem like tragedies and a gesture like a love letter seem epic. Learning how to maintain intimacy and closeness across an insurmountable distance of time and space is incredibly challenging, and that challenge set the emotional tone for <i>Embarrass Yourself</i>.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1992760477/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=2089606782/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://nodicetapes.bandcamp.com/album/embarrass-yourself">embarrass yourself by Philippa Zang</a></iframe></div>
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But another major theme for me was courage: not just naturally growing but fighting to grow, facing fears and coping with lots of challenges at once and being strong enough to grow even if it is through seemingly pathetic means - clumsy, confused or embarrassed.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> On the song <b>Distant Love</b>, you sing: <i>"I am learning to see things through a kaleidoscope"</i>. What do you mean by this?<br />
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<b>PZ:</b> That things really aren't as they seem! And they certainly aren't orderly, or black and white - but we are often taught to see things like that anyway, because capitalism and other structures of power rely on our limited vision to function.<br />
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1992760477/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=2942000369/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://nodicetapes.bandcamp.com/album/embarrass-yourself">embarrass yourself by Philippa Zang</a></iframe></div>
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The reality is that things are painfully complex, and if you have ever looked through a kaleidoscope, you know it is the perfect combination of beautiful and disorienting. I get a similar feeling when I look at the world, and although it doesn't ever feel steady or certain, I think learning to see the many dimensions of the world for what they are is important in being honest with myself. It's a damn wacky perspective though.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>To turn your own questions back at you: how do you feel? And how do you wish you felt?<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1992760477/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=1652641934/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://nodicetapes.bandcamp.com/album/embarrass-yourself">embarrass yourself by Philippa Zang</a></iframe></div>
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<b>PZ:</b> Thanks for asking! Right now I am feeling pretty energised; spring break is this week and I will soon be travelling to the UK for the first time! I wish I felt a little less nervous…<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>You mention different months and seasons quite a few times over the course of <i>Embarrass Yourself</i>. What's your favourite time of year?<br />
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<b>PZ:</b> I have never lived anywhere with such clean-cut seasons as here in eastern Germany! Maybe this region just hasn't begun to feel the effects of climate change yet, but I really appreciate being able to experience one place in all its different climatic states. I can't really choose a favourite season, because, as one of my favourite lyrics (from Told Slant’s <b>Pine Tree Lines</b>) says, <i>"we all get bored of all our favourite things"</i>. I tend to fall in love with a season, and then be ready to cut it off after a while; winter, for example, is charming at first but sinister once you get to know it.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1230244092/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=298858374/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://toldslant.bandcamp.com/album/still-water">Still Water by Told Slant</a></iframe></div>
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I draw a lot from the weather and the seasons when I write, because it influences my emotions a lot. During the making of <i>Embarrass Yourself</i>, i felt myself charting changes and progress more than normal, as a way to reassure myself when I lost sight of my reasons for being abroad in the first place. But right now, it is spring, and my favourite season is spring. I am currently invigorated by all the blossoming, warm breezes, rainstorms, and new growth. I love riding my bike in this weather, but also being able to curl up under a blanket and watch the lightning.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>How did you end up living in Germany?<br />
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<b>PZ: </b>I am actually doing a ten-month exchange program in Germany right now. I moved in September, and I won't be able to go home - even for a visit - until July. This is my first time living outside the US, though I am living as a student with a host family which makes it unique.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> Having sampled both Germany and the USA, which country do you prefer living in?<br />
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<b>PZ:</b> The political situation globally has sometimes made it feel impossible to live away from my support network in Pittsburgh, but at other times it makes me feel like Germany is the most exciting place to be living. Right now, Germany is where I want to be and where I need to stay, but I am drawn in a peculiar way to the States - I feel a special commitment to the political movements, the music scene, and the people there.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>What's the best way to listen to <i>Embarrass Yourself</i>? Out for a walk? At home in bed? In spring, summer, autumn, winter? Feeling happy or sad or angry?<br />
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<b>PZ: </b>I hope people find it fitting to listen to this album no matter how they feel, and that they define its mood with whatever they are experiencing in the moment. That said, I personally associate this album with moving on, moving forward, and getting over petty conflicts that are stifling rather than nourishing.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> Final, huge question: what do you think is the secret to being happy?<br />
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<b>PZ:</b> Wow, I wish I knew! I've been focusing on lessening my expectations - expecting happiness to be long-term or permanent is denying the capacity of other mental states to be valuable. Being able to acknowledge and comprehend frustration, anxiety, dissociation, sadness, neutrality, et cetera...for me that has often been one of the best methods for returning to happy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. but giving less of a shit about what other people are doing or what they think about what <i>you</i> are doing is helpful.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1992760477/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=1632608406/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://nodicetapes.bandcamp.com/album/embarrass-yourself">embarrass yourself by Philippa Zang</a></iframe></div>
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<i>Huge thanks to Philippa for taking the time to answer all my questions. Some useful links:</i><br />
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<li><a href="http://nodicetapes.bandcamp.com/album/embarrass-yourself"><i>Buy </i>Embarrass Yourself<i> on Bandcamp</i></a></li>
<li><a href="https://thealbumwall.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/how-do-you-wish-you-felt-embarrass.html"><i>Read my review of </i>Embarass Yourself</a></li>
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Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-68956432976983310182017-04-12T11:43:00.000+01:002017-04-12T12:11:36.808+01:00Standing Where The Point Used to Be<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I am standing on Mount Stuart Square, about five hundred yards from the waters of Cardiff Bay. It is a warm and sunny April evening - the busiest part of the day is over, and aside from a few stray pedestrians and the odd seagull, the street is more or less deserted.</div>
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Before me looms the spire of St Stephen's, a Gothic-style church and Grade II listed building that has stood on this corner for more than a hundred years. Back in the noughties, this place was a 500-capacity music venue called The Point; I can still remember spilling out onto this very pavement, exhausted and ecstatic, in the middle of a sticky August night in 2006. Broken Social Scene had just finished a gargantuan two-hour set, plus multiple encores, and I (a shaggy-haired GCSE student, just barely fifteen years old) had been in the thick of the crowd for the whole thing, jumping around and sweating buckets and shouting for them to play <b>I'm Still Your Fag</b>. That show at The Point remains one of the best gigs I've ever attended - The Rolling Stones were also in town that night for a concert at the Millennium Stadium, and I must say that I feel a little sorry for the thousands of people who spent the evening with Keith and Mick instead of with Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning and goodness knows how many others.</div>
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The following year, I saw another great show at The Point: Willy Mason was touring his second album, <i>If the Ocean Gets Rough</i>, and he and his band stopped off in Cardiff for an evening of lush folk-country-blues music and...um, a screening of Jim Henson's 1982 classic <i>The Dark Crystal</i>. The film was projected onto the wall behind the band as they made their way down the setlist, and so songs like <b>Simple Town</b> and <b>Where the Humans Eat</b> and <b>The World That I Wanted </b>were accompanied by muted footage of wise Mystics and self-serving Skeksis and whatever Fizzgig is supposed to be. Halfway through one number, Willy's laptop ran out of battery, bringing the movie to an abrupt end, at which point the band ended the song mid-bar and immediately cleared the stage. Feeling a little unsatisfied, we in the audience hooted and hollered until Mr Mason returned to the stage and rounded the night off with a wonderful solo rendition of his signature rallying cry <b>Oxygen</b>.</div>
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I have many other memories of The Point. There was the time I went to see Half Man Half Biscuit and spotted my DT teacher amongst the people singing along with <b>Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo </b>and <b>99% of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd</b>. There was the time Franz Ferdinand played an intimate sold-out show there and brought along as their support act a Chilean band called Panico, who sold small bags of their drummer's chest hair alongside the Franz T-shirts on the merch desk. There was the time I tried to pass as an eighteen-year-old and was quickly caught out when the bouncer asked me when I was born and my maths skills cruelly deserted me. ("The fourteenth of August." "Yeah, what year?" "Nineteen...um.")</div>
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But all of these memories are nine, ten, eleven years old. In early 2009, The Point's owners announced that they would be going into liquidation and that The Point itself would be closing down. A notice posted on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090228191623/http://www.thepointcardiffbay.com/">the venue's website</a> explained why:<br />
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<i><b>To all customers, promoters, fans, bands and supporters of The Point Cardiff Bay</b></i><br />
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<i>It is with deep regret that we announce the closure of the venue today. On 27th February 2009 the Director of The Point Cardiff Bay Limited signed the appropriate notices to call a meeting of creditors pursuant to S98 Insolvency Act 1986.</i><br />
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<i>A number of factors have contributed to this situation. Many of you will be aware that during 2008 we began receiving noise complaints from one or two neighbours that had moved into the new apartments that have been built next to the venue. After some difficult negotiations with the Cardiff City Council we undertook a huge amount of work to soundproof the venue in an attempt to secure its future. While that has largely been successful, the burden of the debt that we took on, together with greater restrictions in our banking facilities and more difficult trading conditions in the last few months, as well as the loss of revenue whilst the refurbishment works were undertaken, has meant we are unable to meet our current liabilities and have been left with no option but to seek voluntary liquidation.</i><br />
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<i>Many people have put their heart and soul into making The Point the magical venue that it is and we have received huge and loyal support over the years from fans and bands alike. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for that support. It is a very sad day for us and for the live music scene in Cardiff.</i><br />
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St Stephen's church still stands in Cardiff Bay, but it is no longer anything more than a building - no longer a place of worship, no longer a turning cog in the city's culture, no longer a place for music fans to gather and watch performances that they'll remember for years afterwards.<br />
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There are other great music venues in Cardiff, of course - Clwb Ifor Bach, Gwdihw, Fuel, The Globe, The Big Top, Tramshed, Undertone and Buffalo are all alive and kicking at time of writing - but their own futures are far from guaranteed. The local live music scene is currently in crisis, and as things stand, there's a very real possibility that some of the capital's favourite hotspots will go the way of The Point before long. Dempseys, for years the home of Cardiff's famous Twisted by Design indie night, has closed and will now be converted into a sports bar. Just last week, The Full Moon sadly and abruptly <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheFullMoonCardiff/photos/a.188259174581343.44758.185298481544079/1448615928545655/?type=3">shut its doors</a> after creditors "lost confidence" in the bar's "long term sustainability". Fuel Rock Club is under pressure after receiving a noise abatement notice from Cardiff City Council. Even Clwb Ifor Bach - a local institution, est. 1983 - could be in trouble if plans to put a new block of flats right next door to the venue are somehow allowed to go ahead.<br />
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And while I'm obviously not the one making noise complaints and building apartments where apartments don't belong, I can't help but feel guilty. I've been very lazy on the live music front lately; I'm constantly hearing about gigs that I'd like to check out, but all too often I'll come home from work on the day of the show and decide that I haven't got the energy to go back out again. It's not even like I just skip small local acts - last year, Titus Andronicus played a gig at Gwdihw, and I couldn't be bothered to walk twenty minutes to see one of my favourite bands in a space scarcely any larger than the living room where I spent that Wednesday evening instead. I'm not a long-haired, wide-eyed teenager any more: I'm a long-haired, bleary-eyed adult, and I've allowed myself to believe that I can support independent music venues by blogging and tweeting instead of by going to gigs, getting my hand stamped, and buying a drink while I wait for the show to start. If Cardiff does eventually lose all of its cool little venues, I honestly don't know that I'll have any right to complain.<br />
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But even if I'm missing 99.9% of what this city's live music scene has to offer, I'd still like to keep it going so that younger and/or more energetic fans can have the same experiences I had when I was still eagerly attending as many gigs as possible. Happily, Cardiff's loyal gig-goers aren't prepared to let their favourite haunts disappear without a fight, and there are plenty of easy ways to pitch in with their efforts right now. The people behind the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Save-Womanby-Street-200471403769378/">Save Womanby Street</a> campaign are currently working hard to persude local politicians and decision-makers to protect the likes of Clwb and Fuel from closure, and just yesterday, a group calling itself the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/creativerepublicofcardiff/">Creative Republic of Cardiff</a> launched a crowdfunding campaign to 'reboot' The Full Moon.<br />
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Whether you live in Cardiff or not, I hope you'll join me in supporting these campaigns as they strive to ensure that we don't lose any more of our venues to the kind of problems that turned The Point - the place where I was blown away by Broken Social Scene, the place where I was treated to a sneak preview of a Franz Ferdinand album that wasn't due out for months, the place where I watched Willy Mason singing folk songs in front of fantasy muppet monsters - into just another building in Cardiff Bay.<br />
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<a href="http://twitter.com/CreativeRepCDF">twitter.com/CreativeRepCDF</a></div>
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<a href="http://twitter.com/savewomanbyst">twitter.com/savewomanbyst</a></div>
Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-41253691427763587462017-04-10T17:00:00.000+01:002017-04-10T17:05:06.643+01:00How Do You Wish You Felt? - Embarrass Yourself by Philippa Zang<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I first came across Philippa Zang's music on <a href="http://www.thelesigh.com/2017/03/premiere-philippa-zang-how-do-u-feel.html">The Le Sigh</a>, who premiered the short 'n' sweet video for Zang's track <b>how do u feel</b> last month.</div>
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Perhaps it's just the sight of that animated pink teacup smiling alongside his cracked brethren on a charity shop shelf, but <b>how do u feel </b>makes <i>me</i> feel really weepy. (Weepy in a happy sort of way, mind you - not the sort of weepy you get when Ellie dies at the beginning of <i>Up</i>, but the sort of weepy you get towards the end of the film when Carl finds her 'Thanks for the adventure - now go have a new one!' message.)</div>
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<i>"How do you feel? How do you wish you felt?"</i></div>
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<a name='more'></a>The two questions that begin and end this song are striking in their simplicity and their hopefulness. Obviously, feeling good isn't always just as easy as just <i>deciding</i> to feel good - many people don't have the means or the physical ability to do what would make them happy, and many more struggle with mental health issues like depression and anxiety - but in prompting you to gauge the distance between where you are and where you'd like to be, Zang's gorgeous little gameboy pop song feels like it's gifting you a rare opportunity to take charge of your own happiness for a change. The message of <i>Embarrass Yourself</i> - <b>how do u feel</b>'s parent album - isn't so much that you can control your feelings (and therefore have only yourself to blame if you feel sad) as that you shouldn't let anyone else take responsibility for own sense of fulfilment.<br />
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Much of <i>Embarrass Yourself</i> sounds like it was written and recorded while waiting for someone - a friend, a lover, a family member, who knows? - to return from a long absence, and Philippa Zang comes comes across as someone who is sitting in their bedroom and passing the time by composing melancholy songs about the mundane little moments that stand between them and their much-anticipated reunion with that much-missed other person. <i>"It's a long way to the other side of the sun,"</i> laments Zang on opening track <b>plane</b>; <i>"a year seems way more daunting ever since you've been gone." </i>To make that daunting year go faster, Zang tries to fill the days up by inflating each small experience - making soup on a Monday, finding an earring on the ground, getting a hug from a friend - into something big and poetic, perhaps so that the gap left by the absent person seems smaller by comparison.</div>
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Over the course of the album, however, Zang gradually comes to the conclusion that waiting for someone else to come back and bring your happiness to you isn't particularly healthy. The hip-wiggling <b>how u love me baby</b> is kind of a cautionary song about investing too much of yourself in another person; Zang sings <i>"I want to be wanted, I want to be loved...I want to fill you in, I'll be your colour scheme"</i>, but in the end, this reliance on somebody else for validation inevitably results in a feeling of dissatisfaction.</div>
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<i>"How you love me, baby, isn't quite enough..."</i></div>
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<i>Embarrass Yourself</i>'s conviction that you should keep the kite string of your happiness in your own hands is neatly reflected in its DIY aesthetic. Philippa Zang's recordings are endearingly rough and lo-fi, all laptop synths and unembellished electric guitar chords, and these qualities make the songs about missing somebody seem all the more lonely while simultaneously making the songs about being independent and self-caring sound all the more uplifting and cathartic. The final track on <i>Embarrass Yourself </i>is called <b>mattress</b>, and its climax is notably angrier-sounding than any other part of the album - the music speeds up and Zang's singing voice intensifies, eventually becoming the exhausted, over-stretched yell that issues this final 'done with you' declaration of dissatisfaction: <i>"I hate when I'm the only one hurting - I thought it was a two-way street, but clearly not!"</i></div>
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And with that, our protagonist ceases to be someone else's satellite - like a fiery rocket boost, that last cry pushes Zang out of the other person's orbit and into the freedom of open space. So where to now? How do you feel; how do you wish you felt?</div>
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Embarrass Yourself<i> is available as a name-your-price digital album or a limited edition cassette from the <a href="https://nodicetapes.bandcamp.com/album/embarrass-yourself">No Dice Tapes page on Bandcamp</a>.</i></div>
Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-68304789494870524302017-04-07T07:00:00.000+01:002017-04-07T07:00:21.152+01:00Happy Birthday Barafundle (Guest Post)Barafundle<i>, the fourth LP from off-kilter Carmarthenshire outfit Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, came out on the 7th of April 1997 - exactly twenty years ago today. Christophe from <a href="https://soundcloud.com/la-forme">La Forme</a> has written a few words to mark the occasion.</i><br />
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A sharp contrast to the bloated rock star posturing of Oasis's <i>Be Here Now</i> and the pre-millennial stress of Radiohead's <i>OK Computer</i>, <i>Barafundle</i> arrived in April 1997, seemingly cut off from all current trends and influences and with none of the bullish, misplaced self-confidence of the 'Britpop' that preceded it. Instead, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci created their own world of childhood memories and half-remembered stories from the Welsh coast and furnished it with a wide array of delicate, imaginative acoustic instrumentation.<br />
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Over sixteen brisk tracks, <i>Barafundle</i> celebrates the simple pleasures of visiting relatives, good weather, warm fires, and growing up in West Wales. Musically, the band file back the often dizzying psychedelic eccentricities of their previous albums and replace them with spacious acoustic arrangements, soft brass, and odd medieval flourishes. This approach gives the band's wonderful melodies and harmonies clarity and space to breathe.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b>Better Rooms...</b> features a gentle, rolling sea of vocals that manages to sound slightly queasy and wonderfully heartening at the same time. Once heard, <b>Heywood Lane</b>'s singalong ending is never forgotten, and you'll always find yourself humming it while doing the washing up. <b>Pen Gwag Glas</b> is bookended with the choral singing of faux-medieval Welsh monks and takes in stately verses before opening up into an infectious, bouncy chorus; a sort of prog-folk song in miniature.<br />
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Despite the album's nostalgia for first loves, stamp collecting and china plates, it never becomes too sickly-sweet for the ears. The inquisitive and morbid nature of children's minds and imaginations provides the album's dark corners: opening track <b>Diamond Dew</b> best encapsulates this, contrasting its memories of an idyllic home life (<i>"room is warm, organ plays..."</i>) with a disconcerting line about the <i>"uncovering of the bodies"</i>. This is possibly a reference to medieval burial sites being found along the Pembrokeshire coast - catnip to imaginative young minds. <b>Dark Night</b> marries another wonderfully hummable melody to lyrics concerning the death of two young girls on Halloween. It's a story that you can imagine children embellishing for years on local schoolyards. <b>Sometimes the Father is the Son</b>, a melancholy and brittle paean to (possibly) an absent father, is one of the album's highlights; a mournful violin line weaves through the song, adding to the protagonist's subtle moment of clarity during the chorus.<br />
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The mischief of youth (and of the band) also works its way into many of the songs. The album's most poignant moment is followed by its heaviest and strangest track, <b>Meirion Wyllt</b>, an incongruous 'cut-and-shut' song that starts with a rare distorted guitar and features an ear-piercing vocal welded to a restrained, gentle chorus. It's there again on <b>The Wizard and the Lizard</b>'s strangled backing vocals, and in <b>American Narrator</b>'s ending, and in the sound of the piano lid slamming shut and the just-audible 'ow!' at the end of <b>Heywood Lane</b>. And then there are the flashes of medieval instrumentation (apparently added in hindsight once the album had been completed) and the use of a Jew’s harp to 'awake' the album's opening track, <b>Diamond Dew</b>.<br />
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These quirky embellishments simply add to <i>Barafundle</i>'s eccentric charm, and as good as their later albums are, it was this aspect of the band that I came to miss.<br />
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<i>Barafundle</i>'s simple and understated artwork - a pin board of memories, childhood photographs and trinkets - echoes the album's main theme, with a postcard of the titular Barafundle Bay pinned right in the middle. The rise of the internet and the common practice of posting 'digital memories' online has elevated the cover's quaintness, and the image really encapsulates the magic of <i>Barafundle</i>. In the twenty years since its release, progress has made the world created by this album seem all the more distant and romantic. As the record has grown older, much like a treasured memory, it has become more and more precious. This must be the reason why, in two decades, <i>Barafundle</i> has never strayed too far from my stereo.Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-17185659689541899842017-04-05T14:15:00.001+01:002017-04-05T14:15:56.958+01:00EP Corner: Halogen Days by Vassals<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There's an edgy, insomniac nervousness to <i>Halogen Days</i>, the new EP from Brooklyn band Vassals. Shay Spence's staccato basslines twitch like sleep-deprived eyes as she sings of nights spent awake and days spent wandering around in an aimless daze, squinting in the fuggy sunlight.<br />
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Spence's lyrics are rather opaque for the most part, conjuring vague ideas and images rather than making plain statements or carving out straightforward narratives, but her words and the band's music come together nicely to create a compelling - if somewhat hazy - overall impression. You listen to opening track <b>Sea Spells</b> and you see a restless creative sitting on her bed in the middle of the night, pulling wild, romantic thoughts out of the air and taming them, spinning them into sinewy songs that land on the floor with a heavy thud; writing not because she wants to but because she can't <i>not</i> write, as though she is somehow hypnotised or bewitched.<br />
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<i>"Can anyone break a spell they put on themselves?"</i></div>
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Vassals are a three-piece unit with a lean, muscular sound that flickers and jerks and occasionally explodes into a feral, furious fireball. <b>Moonless</b>, my favourite track on the new EP, has a blustery beginning but drops to a whisper immediately afterwards, as if the band just heard something rustling in the bushes and now they're listening out for it, hearts in throats. Eventually, the noise begins to build back up again, and the tension is held brilliantly until Spence cuts loose and lets out a series of wordless, unearthly-sounding shrieks. It's a real adrenaline shot.<br />
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<i>Halogen Days </i>seems to exist in a fearful place where the passing of time is arbitrary: the sun comes up and the sun goes down, but everything stays the same here on the ground. <i>"Now morning just brings unbearable light,</i>" sings Spence on final track <b>Ghostwood</b>; <i>"unbearable light, the hot shower steam"</i>. An uneasy sense of discomfort - of feeling out of place and unable to settle into any sort of groove - permeates and pervades this EP, and it manifests itself in numerous different ways, from the unnamed and unseen but nonetheless fearful spectre that haunts <b>Moonless</b> to the uncertainty of Spence's repeated assertion at the end of <b>SoHo</b> that there's <i>"something I'm forgetting..."</i></div>
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Then again, there are also moments of great catharsis here, and these parts are all the more striking for how they contrast with the unsettled, out-of-sorts feel that otherwise prevails. The climax of <b>Moonless</b> is one such moment; another one arrives at the very end of the EP in the form of <b>Ghostwood</b>'s minute or so. At around 2:49 on that closing track, the band snap out of their daze and everything snaps into place: the drums sound more purposeful and uptempo; the guitar is free to roam around and explore; the bass sounds strangely optimistic and hopeful. That final jam has a renewed, refreshed feel - as if everything in the world suddenly makes sense and feels right - and it's a fabulous way to bring <i>Halogen Days</i> to a close.<br />
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<i>The </i>Halogen Days<i> EP is out this Friday (7th April 2017). <a href="https://vassals.bandcamp.com/album/soho">You can pre-order it here.</a></i>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-81989024941076951192017-04-03T14:53:00.000+01:002017-04-03T19:58:19.248+01:00No Faith in the Future: We All Want the Same Things by Craig Finn<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The artwork for Craig Finn's new album <i>We All Want the Same Things</i> depicts a sodden motorway beneath a dismal grey sky. Red brake lights glow weakly in the rain, and the cars ahead slow to a crawl as they approach some unseen obstruction. Has there been an accident? A collision, a collapsed bridge? Or is it just ordinary congestion...?</div>
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Uncertainty about the future is kind of a central theme for this LP. Finn reminds us that nobody can really know what lies ahead; all we can do is try our best to be ready for it. The penultimate line of the album's final track, <b>Be Honest</b>, is as follows:</div>
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<i>"If revolution's really coming then we all need to be well"</i></div>
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<i>We All Want the Same Things</i> is an album for interesting times, and its release was very well timed indeed because there are a lot of interesting things happening on both sides of the Atlantic right now. Theresa May triggered Article 50 last week, which means that the Brexit process is now officially underway, while over in America Donald Trump and his team are still battling allegations of Russian involvement in last year's presidential election. Right now it feels nearly impossible to predict where we'll all stand next week - let alone in a couple of years' time - and for that reason, <i>We All Want the Same Things</i> feels like the perfect set of songs for this moment in history. Unimaginably huge changes could be just around the corner for all of us, and so the important thing to do right now is to look after yourself and embrace the here and now.</div>
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<a name='more'></a>As any fan of Craig Finn or his band The Hold Steady would expect, these new songs are filled with colourful and troubled characters, all of whom are forced to live in the present because they can't rely on the future. <b>Tangletown</b>, a dreamy pop song that's punctuated with immensely satisfying horn stabs, focuses on a middle-aged divorcee and his younger lover, both of whom seem kind of lost and appear to have no goals except to surround themselves with <i>"finer things"</i>. Then there's <b>God in Chicago</b>, the centrepiece of <i>We All Want the Same Things</i> and the song from which the album's title is drawn: sounding like something from Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat's <i>Everything's Getting Older</i>, this piano-led spoken word track tells the story of a man and a woman who travel to Chicago to handle some <i>"unfinished business"</i> and realise, once the deal has been closed, that they've nothing else on their to-do list. They've taken care of the one thing that needed taking care of...so what now?<br />
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They decide to take a look around the city, and we follow them as they eat, drink, and lose themselves in the <i>"glass and light"</i>. Perhaps inevitably, they end up falling into each other's arms and spending the night together in a hotel room. Finn's narration ends with the woman bursting into tears on the drive back to Saint Paul.<br />
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While it does have its share of rootin' tootin' rock numbers (<b>Tracking Shots</b> springs to mind), as a whole <i>We All Want the Same Things</i> has a far more muted, melancholy feel than any prior Craig Finn or Hold Steady album. There's loads of piano on this LP, and a generous helping of woodwind too - the clarinets on <b>Be Honest</b> and <b>It Hits When It Hits</b> in particular give the album's second half a heavy, overcast mood that's neatly reflected in the gloomy cover art. But this isn't supposed to be a depressing, downbeat listen - quite the contrary, in fact. The real message here isn't just 'the future is uncertain'; it's 'the future is uncertain, so enjoy yourself in the present!'</div>
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Friendship is another hugely important theme on this record, with several tracks joyously celebrating the bonds that people share. Opening track <b>Jester & June</b> reminisces with a smile about a tight friendship between two partners in crime; the stompy-booted <b>Ninety Bucks</b> rotates around a cry of <i>"Nathan, you're my only friend!"</i> But my favourite song on <i>We All Want the Same Things</i>, and in my opinion the purest crystallisation of everything this album is about, is the stunning <b>Birds Trapped in the Airport</b>.</div>
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Characterised by its driving, almost motorik beat and the crazy accordion notes that flitter around it, <b>Birds Trapped in the Airport </b>is a thrilling and powerfully uplifting track about making the most of the time you have left and the wonderful people who are still with you. <i>"James, I'd like you to dance with me - we'll be skeletons and ghosts next year."</i> A bit like <b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDpuuT6YsJg">P.S. You Rock My World</a></b> by the Eels, this is a song that acknowledges the inevitability of death but understands that we should celebrate life all the more jubilantly for the fact that it eventually ends. Sure, we're stuck in traffic; sure, it's raining; sure, we might encounter any number of horrors on the road ahead. But none of that means we can't enjoy the journey.</div>
Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-6216358936152257852017-03-31T13:26:00.000+01:002017-03-31T13:26:07.679+01:00Get It Out: Q&A with Joe Sherrin (a.k.a. SLONK)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<i>Released earlier this month, </i><a href="https://slonk.bandcamp.com/album/songs-about-tanks">Songs About Tanks</a><i> is the new album from SLONK (real name Joe Sherrin) and it serves as an unflinching document of just how hard a break-up can be. Much of the record was written and recorded within just a week of the break-up, and though Sherrin's words are draped in all kinds of lovely, cosy-sounding instrumentation, you can hear that his wounds are still painfully fresh. Here, he answers some questions about </i>Songs About Tanks<i> and what was going on in his life during its creation.</i></div>
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<b>The Album Wall: </b>Please introduce yourself - who are you, what should we know about you, and where did the name 'SLONK' come from?<br />
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<b>Joe Sherrin: </b>My name's Joe Sherrin. I play in lots of Bristol-based bands, and SLONK is my solo project. 'SLONK' is just a nonsense word I used to use, e.g. "just slonk that over here please, Steve". I was pretty stuck trying to find a name for my solo stuff, so I just went with that - I like that it's silly and a bit weird. Turns out 'SLONK' has an <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=slonk">Urban Dictionary definition</a> though, so that pissed me off.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> Your new album, <i>Songs About Tanks</i>, is a break-up album. What's the story behind that title? What do tanks have to do with breaking up?<br />
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<b>JS: </b>I put the song <b>We're Both Going To Be Fine</b> up online in its original demo form (just guitar and vocals) back in November, and I put in the comments to my friends who found the song upsetting, "don't worry guys - the next batch of songs will be about tanks and harlots, like usual". That was a lampoon, though; none of the songs are about tanks. They're wetties.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b>TAW:</b> Did you find it difficult to mobilise yourself and channel your feelings into a creative project so soon after the end of a long-term relationship? Or did it all come quite naturally?<br />
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<b>JS: </b>Yeah, it all came really naturally. It just sort of poured out of me, it was easy. It was just about the only thing I could do that month. That and liberal weekend indulgence. And quite a lot of running, actually. I kept myself busy.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>If you don't mind me asking - what sort of break-up is this album the result of? Did the relationship come to a very abrupt end, or had it been a long time coming?<br />
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<b>JS: </b>Well, we were best friends prior to getting together; we went to school together; we lived together with our best friends; and it'd be about six years from exactly now that we got together. So it was and still is pretty devastating. It felt abrupt to me, yeah.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> <b>We're Both Going to Be Fine</b> seems like quite a positive, optimistic thought with which to open an album that mourns the end of a relationship. Is that song's title supposed to be taken at face value?<br />
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<b>JS: </b>It is an astonishingly optimistic line, yeah. Optimism was how I tried to go about dealing with it initially, or at least that was how I portrayed myself as dealing with it. I don't think the line should be taken at face value, though; although it's also sweet and endearing, it's a really miserable song.<br />
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Saying that we're both going to be fine is more about <i>hoping</i> that we're both going to be fine. That's what people tell you constantly, don't they? "You'll be fine, SLONK, pull your socks up." Thankfully no one told me to pull my socks up...actually! My boss did in front of the whole office when I couldn't face going in to work one day. My socks are always high anyway. I have great socks.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>Speaking of <b>We're Both Going to Be Fine</b>, why did you decide to end the album with a reprise of that song (<b>We're Both Going to Be Fenne</b>)?<br />
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<b>JS: </b>Whilst mixing the album, I played around with just soloing the vocals and seeing how the songs sounded with different instrumentation and stuff. On this one, I took out the drums and guitars and really liked the sparse sound - it made the vocals more audible, and I like the way Fenne, Oli and I all sound together here. It was just something I was messing around with, really, and I liked it enough to put it on the end of the album.<br />
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Also, having nine songs on the album made me feel uncomfortable, so it was nice to round it up.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>Was making this album a kind of therapy for you? Did it help you to make your peace with what had happened?<br />
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<b>JS: </b>It felt good to 'get it out', as they say, and I'm pretty pleased with how the songs turned out. It's good that I managed to do something with my misery, but no, it hasn't helped me make my peace with what happened. They're just songs, aren't they.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b><i>Songs About Tanks</i> was initially released as a cassette tape (which has now sold out). What is it about this format that appealed to you?<br />
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<b>JS: </b>The cassette itself was an afterthought. I put so much into making this album and I wanted to do something different for the release, so it's released on cassettes housed in handmade matchboxes accompanied with a photo album. It's just a nice little DIY package; it represents the album well I think.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>What music were you listening to around the time you created this album?<br />
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<b>JS: </b>Mainly sad folky/country stuff like Songs: Ohia and Bright Eyes, and emo like The Promise Ring and Lync. I discovered Palace Music's <i>Viva Last Blues</i> last year and I was completely obsessed with it. Also Waxahatchee, Sharon Van Etten, Alex G, and the first three Modest Mouse albums, which I've not really stopped listening to for the last few years.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>What does the future hold for SLONK?<br />
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<b>JS: </b>I'm playing with Happyness at <a href="http://www.thelouisiana.net/events/19-apr-17-happyness-the-louisiana/">The Louisiana</a> next. That'll be with Fenne singing, Oliver Wilde on bass, Phil on drums, and Jamie on slide guitar, so it will be a good one! I'm also playing at Dot to Dot and have a few other gigs lined up.<br />
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<b>TAW: </b>Do you have any ideas for your next album?<br />
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I've got 16 songs for another album so far, but I haven't been able to write any lyrics for ages so I don't know when I'll get around to finishing them off. I imagine that'll be ready by the summer.<br />
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<i>Thanks to Joe for answering my questions about his new album - </i>Songs About Tanks<i> is available from <a href="https://slonk.bandcamp.com/album/songs-about-tanks">SLONK's Bandcamp page</a>.</i>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-71338708887000696932017-03-29T13:17:00.000+01:002017-03-29T13:23:00.286+01:00Unsteadied: A Craig Finn Playlist<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Craig Finn's new LP <i>We All Want the Same Things </i>came out last week and you should definitely buy it because it's his best yet.<br />
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I'll probably write a proper review of <i>We All Want the Same Things</i> at some point in the very near future, but for the moment, I'd like to take a quick look back at Finn's last two solo outings: 2012's <i>Clear Heart, Full Eyes</i> and 2015's <i>Faith in the Future</i>. It's been really interesting watching the singer from The Hold Steady build up his very own body of work outside the band, and so for the benefit of any Hold Steady fans who haven't yet sampled Finn's own-name stuff, I've chosen five of my favourite tracks from each of those records and sequenced them into this nifty little playlist. I hope you enjoy it - maybe have a listen while you wait for your copy of the new album to arrive?<br />
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<a name='more'></a><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="468" src="//playmoss.com/embed/joel-dear/unsteadied-a-craig-finn-playlist?skin=dark" style="text-align: center;" width="100%"></iframe><br />
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1. Western Pier</h2>
from <i>Clear Heart, Full Eyes</i><br />
<i><br /></i>A delightfully creepy track from <i>Clear Heart, Full Eyes</i> that staggers like an axe murderer with a wounded leg. <i>"Someone saw something just east of here..."</i><br />
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2. Newmyer's Roof</h2>
from <i>Faith in the Future</i><br />
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A rollicking, driving track about 9/11 and everyone's state of mind in the aftermath of that day. 'Doubting Thomas' is one of the many Biblical characters Finn threw into modern America on <i>Faith in the Future</i>.<br />
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3. When No One's Watching</h2>
from <i>Clear Heart, Full Eyes</i><br />
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It's got a nice little guitar riff, this one. A rather cynical song aimed at <i>"a weak man living off of weaker women"</i>. Finn sounds kind of disgusted as he sings.<br />
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4. Sarah, Calling from a Hotel</h2>
from <i>Faith in the Future</i><br />
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This one struck me like a brick when I first heard it because I had not long gotten out of a relationship with someone named Sarah and it all felt eerily close to home in a number of ways. One of <i>Faith in the Future</i>'s quieter moments but definitely one of its best.<br />
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5. Rented Room</h2>
from <i>Clear Heart, Full Eyes</i><br />
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My favourite song from <i>Clear Heart, Full Eyes</i>. It so perfectly evokes the feeling of hanging around by yourself in a squalid little flat on a hot summer evening and wondering if your life gets any better further down the line. Strangely soaring.<br />
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6. Going to a Show</h2>
from <i>Faith in the Future</i><br />
<i><br />"I try so hard not to talk to myself, but it's hard 'cause I'm always alone..." </i>Man, there are some really lonely vibes on some of these songs, aren't there?<br />
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7. Honolulu Blues</h2>
from <i>Clear Heart, Full Eyes</i><br />
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This song is just a dang good time. The band jam out a loose 12-bar blues while Finn sings about travelling and religion and some demented door-to-door evangelist who stole his chainsaw.<br />
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8. Christine</h2>
from <i>Faith in the Future</i><br />
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Another quiet, melancholy moment from <i>Faith in the Future</i>. I like this description from <b>Christine</b>'s entry on <a href="https://genius.com/Craig-finn-christine-lyrics">genius.com</a>: "It concerns the unrequited love the (perhaps too) cautious narrator has for his (perhaps too) adventurous friend."<br />
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9. Not Much Left of Us</h2>
from <i>Clear Heart, Full Eyes</i><br />
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A gorgeous break-up song with more than a hint of that ol' country and western sadness. Perhaps it's so affecting because it focuses not on the end itself but on that little doomed period just before the break-up during which both parties know it's over but neither are ready to formalise it yet.<br />
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10. I Was Doing Fine (Then a Few People Died)</h2>
from <i>Faith in the Future</i><br />
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My favourite song from <i>Faith in the Future</i>. In my opinion, Craig Finn's music is at its best when it's at its most straightforward - <b>Birds Trapped in the Airport</b> and <b>Tangletown</b>, two of my personal highlights on the new LP, work wonders by just finding a groove and ploughing straight ahead without feeling any need to jump around too much - and this is a great example, with Finn sitting atop a simple but superbly effective chord progression and describing two friends getting together during a turbulent time and chatting about their troubles over a few bottles of wine.Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-988129889808631522017-03-27T14:55:00.001+01:002017-03-27T14:55:46.066+01:00Our Corpse: Songs About Tanks by SLONK<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUAZ4C4Z4lpWzDZaFFh9ydR8xWgdN2e-V63jGAOZxNUhgyOKtqQCF3wHGyJSI7r0_M39HsZu3yR2fjDINKWaMfPa9LIQ_urTRkyabd2hyYdPr1CPDQjTu6h6WyyzSoys2aMF6yGr7qbI4/s1600/a2396213157_16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUAZ4C4Z4lpWzDZaFFh9ydR8xWgdN2e-V63jGAOZxNUhgyOKtqQCF3wHGyJSI7r0_M39HsZu3yR2fjDINKWaMfPa9LIQ_urTRkyabd2hyYdPr1CPDQjTu6h6WyyzSoys2aMF6yGr7qbI4/s320/a2396213157_16.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Countless artists have written songs about breaking up, but few break-up albums cannonball into the deep end of that experience like <i>Songs About Tanks</i>, the new LP from Bristol's SLONK (real name Joe Sherrin). This record isn't funereal and sombre like <i>The Boatman's Call</i>; nor is it as resigned a farewell as The Walker Brothers' classic break-up song <b>Make it Easy on Yourself</b>. Most end-of-relationship albums, even the really angsty and depressing ones, find some sort of closure by the end, but <i>Songs About Tanks</i> isn't so much about finding closure as it is about painting a devastatingly detailed picture of the immediate fallout. There's no real 'journey' here, no healing process that ends with our protagonist getting over it and moving on - this album simply seeks to capture exactly what it's like to have your heart ripped in half.</div>
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And it does that very well indeed. Sherrin has a great eye for detail, and his lyrics do a superb job of documenting the tiny little pains that follow the end of a relationship: changing your passwords so that they no longer include your ex's name; realising that the little songs the two of you used to sing to each other will never be sung again; going back to their flat, the one you used to share, and noticing that all the photos of you have been taken down. Rather remarkably, the lion's share of <i>Songs About Tanks</i> was written and recorded within a week of the break-up that spawned it, so as a listener you feel very close - almost uncomfortably close at times - to the centre of it all. You feel like you're standing right there at ground zero, looking over Sherrin's shoulder as he surveys the debris.</div>
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<a name='more'></a>Mind you, <i>Songs About Tanks</i> isn't a totally bleak listen. It actually opens on a strangely optimistic note with a song called <b>We're Both Going to Be Fine</b>:</div>
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2311753672/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=55192916/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://slonk.bandcamp.com/album/songs-about-tanks">Songs About Tanks by SLONK</a></iframe></div>
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I find this track positively uplifting - it's nothing more than a voice and an acoustic guitar to begin with, but it quickly swells into something big and beautiful, with a violin and a piano and several other voices gradually joining the fray. Eventually, it builds up to a cacophonous, soaring climax, with the assembled singers chanting <i>"we're both gonna be fine!"</i> again and again until you're compelled to believe that it's true. (Whether Joe Sherrin himself believed those words when he wrote them is debatable, but it's a lovely start to the record either way.)<br />
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Given the context, <i>Songs About Tanks</i> could have been a very lonely album, but it actually doesn't sound lonely at all - each composition is fleshed out by a whole bunch of musicians besides Sherrin, giving the impression of friends rallying around a heartbroken comrade and trying to lift his spirits. Even when the lyrics are at their most desperate and existential, there's great comfort to be found in the lush. layered music itself - indeed, aside from the one track that sounds like Beirut, <i>SAT</i>'s overall sonic palette reminds me more than anything of <i><a href="http://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/comfort-songs">Comfort Songs</a></i> by Cloud. These arrangements are like big, raggedy blankets that are slightly tattered but nonetheless soft and warm.<br />
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2311753672/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=1613559417/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://slonk.bandcamp.com/album/songs-about-tanks">Songs About Tanks by SLONK</a></iframe></div>
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Because of this, you may not notice just how gut-wrenching this album is on your first couple of spins. One of the tracks on <i>Songs About Tanks</i> is called <b>Bridges</b>, and it features a truly harrowing line that is nonetheless very easy to miss. I didn't notice it at all until I found myself reading the lyrics as I listened along:</div>
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<i>"By then I'll be higher up in the rubble; for now I'll sleep with our corpse"</i></div>
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The 'our corpse' part sort of gets lost in the mix, Sherrin mumbling it quietly as he gears up for the chorus, but that one line offers a jaw-dropping image that sort of encapsulates this album as a whole. Our protagonist knows that he will get over his ex and get on with his life eventually, but for now, all he feels like doing is wallowing in the 'rubble' of their time together - the photos, the in-jokes, the memories - and hugging the lifeless body of their relationship in the vain hope that his warmth might revive it.<br />
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2311753672/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=811743576/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://slonk.bandcamp.com/album/songs-about-tanks">Songs About Tanks by SLONK</a></iframe></div>
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<i>You can get </i>Songs About Tanks<i> from <a href="https://slonk.bandcamp.com/album/songs-about-tanks">SLONK's Bandcamp page</a>.</i></div>
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Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-4249254733543012202017-03-24T13:33:00.003+00:002017-03-24T17:01:44.081+00:00To Journey Freely: Q&A with Mo Kirby of The Nightjar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<i>The Nightjar are a post-folk quartet from London whose debut LP, </i><a href="https://thenightjar.bandcamp.com/album/objects-lp">Objects</a><i>, came out last week. Recorded in rural Portugal, the album is a bewitching listen indeed: The Nightjar's music is evocative of wide open spaces, of flickering candles, and of a vast sea lapping at the shore of a pebble beach on a moonless night.</i></div>
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<i>Ahead of a gig in Camden next month and a number of other live appearances after that, The Nightjar's lead singer Mo Kirby very graciously took the time to answer some of my questions about </i>Objects<i> and its constituent songs and sounds.</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaFHcHBq8zeSk5RcQBrVFA4IXZteA4ytTNRDza58reCReUmDcD4EnQn5pvrtughjr-ktBxGSA8e8opdkceZfu6gcvTvHqzMu7mvseX1lYRHs4PXZEKvRZ2jnP9CGKNbB-v0CUtuDtAVyY/s1600/nightjar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaFHcHBq8zeSk5RcQBrVFA4IXZteA4ytTNRDza58reCReUmDcD4EnQn5pvrtughjr-ktBxGSA8e8opdkceZfu6gcvTvHqzMu7mvseX1lYRHs4PXZEKvRZ2jnP9CGKNbB-v0CUtuDtAVyY/s640/nightjar.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>Image credit: <a href="http://paulblakemore.co.uk/">Paul Blakemore</a></i></div>
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<b>The Album Wall:</b> Why did you choose to call yourselves 'The Nightjar'?<br />
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<b>Mo Kirby:</b> A nightjar is a bird with silent flight. It hunts at night, has a strange call, and nests on the ground. They are unusual birds with lots of interesting folklore attached to them. The characteristics and behaviour of the birds attracted us to the name, but we also heard that - very unusually - nightjars had been found nesting in marshland next to where we lived in London. We were already considering using the name, but that sealed the deal.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> You describe your music as 'lo-fi post-folk'. What is 'post-folk', and how is it different from regular folk music?<br />
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<b>MK:</b> Folk music as a genre is very hard to pin down. To me, it is music rooted in and referencing a tradition, and it is shared and passed on in a particular way. I would feel uncomfortable describing what we do purely as folk music. We reference folk traditions, but we have taken it somewhere else. What we do is inspired by traditional folk music and folk revival, but it's developed in response to these...hence the 'post'.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b>TAW:</b> You also describe yourselves as playing 'songs for the end of time' - what sort of end do you think your music evokes? How does the world end in the apocalypse for which you're providing the soundtrack?<br />
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<b>MK:</b> 'The end of time' does suggest the apocalypse, because we can't imagine existence without time. I think our music asks the listener to imagine the two are separable, time and existence. To me, the apocalypse is a manifestation of the moment time and existence separate.<br />
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3379887653/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=196117555/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://thenightjar.bandcamp.com/album/objects-lp">&#39;Objects&#39; LP by The Nightjar</a></iframe></div>
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Our music would be the soundtrack to some kind of post-apocalypse, the aftermath of a world destroyed by natural disasters.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> Why is your album called 'Objects'?<br />
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<b>MK:</b> The theme of attachment, and liberation from attachment, crops up a lot on this album. The songs were written during a time of transition and during a significant journey. To journey freely, it's important to get rid of baggage - and I mean that literally and metaphorically. The title 'Objects' refers to the things we carry with us, and what it means to dissolve our attachment to these things.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> <i>Objects</i> was recorded in a Portuguese farmhouse - what were those recording sessions like, and how did this environment shape the album itself?<br />
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<b>MK:</b> The album was recorded over a three-month period. This is pretty unusual, as independent bands at our level will usually save up to pay for recording sessions in a studio with all the equipment there and try to blitz a whole album in a few days. We had the opposite: an abundance of time and very little equipment. There were many long recording sessions, and we experimented with recording techniques and spaces until we developed a way of capturing our sound that we were happy with.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> <i>"Look, do not see. Hear, but don't listen to me."</i> There's sort of a zen thing going on with opening track <b>All Objects Will Cease</b>, but then the line <i>"I hear you object - all objections will cease!"</i> kind of sounds like something an evil supervillain would say. What is this song actually about?<br />
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<b>MK:</b> I'm tempted now to say that it is about the trials and tribulations of an evil supervillan - I like that idea!<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4aqBDR17BF0" width="560"></iframe></div>
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The song <b>All Objects Will Cease</b> is the song we took the album title from. It's about dissolving attachment and meaning. It's also about the difficulty of expressing meaning and emotion in words, and attempting to bypass language as a method of communication.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> <i>Objects </i>sounds like an album that draws a lot of inspiration from the world around it. (In particular, it sounds like it exists in very close proximity to the sea, especially on tracks like <b>Cockleshell</b> and <b>Black Waters</b>.) What kind of places and environments have inspired your music?<br />
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<b>MK:</b> Landscape is a massive inspiration, and lots of different landscapes are present in our writing and recording. On our way to record this album in Portugal, we toured Europe and wrote music in response to our surroundings. We also sought out inspiring and evocative environments - for example, we recorded in the derelict concert hall of a deserted Soviet village outside of Berlin, and did some writing in abandoned shepherd huts in rural Portugal. I'm also keen on the uncanniness of suburbia and otherworldly industrial landscapes.<br />
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<b>TAW:</b> In addition to your own compositions, there are also a couple of interesting covers here, namely <b>Dle Yaman</b> and <b>Hangman</b>. Why did you choose to include these two numbers on the LP?<br />
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<b>MK:</b> <b>Hangman</b> is a folk standard - there are so many versions of it, and we have been performing it for quite some time. We included this in the album as it helps to establish our roots in folk tradition. Developing our own arrangement of the song shows how folk music evolves. <b>Dle Yaman</b>, an iconic Armenian song, was included on the album because it allows us to reference the universal nature of folk music; although traditional music can be very different from one place to the next, it is defined by people's relationship to it and the part it plays in our cultures and history.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3379887653/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=938388451/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://thenightjar.bandcamp.com/album/objects-lp">&#39;Objects&#39; LP by The Nightjar</a></iframe></div>
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<b>TAW:</b> What's next for The Nightjar? What are your plans for the future?<br />
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<b>MK:</b> Well, we've just released our album, and we are so excited to see it out in the world! We will be touring in the autumn, and we have a gig coming up at the <a href="http://www.greennote.co.uk/production/the-nightjar/">Green Note in Camden</a> on the 20th of April. We have been writing lots, and after a bit of a rest, I imagine we will get going on a second album.<br />
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<b>Links</b></h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://thealbumwall.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/post-folk-objects-by-nightjar.html">Review: <i>Objects</i> by The Nightjar</a></li>
<li><a href="http://thenightjarmusic.com/">The Nightjar's website</a></li>
<li><a href="https://thenightjar.bandcamp.com/album/objects-lp">Buy <i>Objects</i> on Bandcamp</a></li>
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Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-15748153087157147522017-03-22T15:13:00.002+00:002017-03-22T15:13:39.366+00:00Post-Folk: Objects by The Nightjar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnRB3LY0HBqxpLF3xFkgQ9CWGaO7exETwcqA6WrF_tTCm_3QIgSUWZ-XLLnDdZYcIZUiH2c3mEcc9AP4np0IBt6mnZMJWdyykXrITpkt-oF_ENrd3e60sLf1KCTR_6QzbNfvuXnJrynUo/s1600/objects-the-nightjar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnRB3LY0HBqxpLF3xFkgQ9CWGaO7exETwcqA6WrF_tTCm_3QIgSUWZ-XLLnDdZYcIZUiH2c3mEcc9AP4np0IBt6mnZMJWdyykXrITpkt-oF_ENrd3e60sLf1KCTR_6QzbNfvuXnJrynUo/s320/objects-the-nightjar.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The word 'folk' used to refer to a type of music designed to be enjoyed by large groups of people. Old-fashioned folk songs aimed to create a feeling of community and togetherness, emphasising simple tunes and lyrics that everyone could join in with. Far more recently, 'folk' has come to denote a far lonelier sort of music: the word now gets thrown at acts like Bon Iver and Nick Drake and early-period Leonard Cohen. These days, 'folk' is one person with an acoustic guitar singing fragile, solitary-sounding songs to a room full of quiet, attentive listeners rather than to a choir of bawdy drunks in a crowded pub.</div>
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<a href="http://thenightjarmusic.com/">The Nightjar</a> are a band from London who describe themselves as making "lo-fi post-folk" music. As the phrase 'post-folk' suggests, their sound is a step beyond that of the quivering, poetic mopes who commonly purport to be 'folk' musicians nowadays - not only is their particular twist on folk music <i>not</i> designed for consumption by large, loud groups of people, you almost get the sense that it's designed for a time when all other people have disappeared off the face of the Earth entirely.</div>
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<i>69 Love Songs</i> by The Magnetic Fields features a song called <b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAp6z18gprU">Two Kinds of People</a></b>, which goes like this:</div>
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<i>"There are two kinds of people: a) my love and I; b) other</i> </blockquote>
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<i>Two kinds of people: 1) the grey, and 2) me and my lover."</i></blockquote>
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This song <a href="http://69lovesongs.info/wiki/index.cgi?Two_Kinds_Of_People">has been described</a> as "a kind of solipsism for two", conjuring up a world in which only two people - the singer and his lover - truly exist, and everyone else is just filler if they're even there at all. <i>Objects</i>, The Nightjar's debut album, evokes a similar sort of scene: two people walking hand-in-hand across some deserted beach as night falls on a world wiped clean of all but two inhabitants. "Songs for the end of time" is how The Nightjar sum up their repertoire, but while the sparse, brooding arrangements do indeed imbue <i>Objects</i> with a kind of 'after the end' feel, this album is one of the most romantic pieces of post-apocalyptic fiction you're ever likely to encounter. With nobody else left around, our two protagonists begin to feel as though the whole world - or what's left of it, anyway - was made just for them. Just for them to enjoy; just for them to stroll through, hand in hand; just for them to explore, trying to make sense of whatever was there before.</div>
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A more traditional type of folk music is represented here by two tracks: <b>Dle Yaman</b>, a plaintive rendition of an Armenian folk song accompanied only by the ominous arpeggios of a church organ; and <b>Hangman</b>, The Nightjar's take on a very old song also known as 'The Maid Freed from the Gallows' (number 144 in the Roud Folk Song Index). It's tempting to view these as artefacts that survived whatever unseen armageddon left our two lovers entirely alone with each other - just another couple of found 'objects' like the <b>Wardrobe </b>and the <b>Cockleshell</b> after which two of the LP's other tracks are named - but <b>Hangman</b> in particular bears certain parallels to the overarching 'just the two of us' theme of the album itself.</div>
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This song tells the story of a young woman awaiting execution by hanging; she sees her mother coming and urges the hangman to hang fire for a moment in the hope that mum will be able to pay him off. However, the girl's mother has <i>"brought no gold"</i>, and is merely there to watch her daughter die. The same thing then happens with her father; we never actually find out what crime the narrator committed, but both of her parents seem pretty eager to see her hanged for it.</div>
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Just as things are looking bleak and the song sounds as if it's about to disappear into nothing, a third potential rescuer appears on the horizon: the woman's lover. Unlike mum and dad, the lover <i>has</i> brought gold <i>"to pay this hangman's fee"</i>, and so the woman is presumably un-noosed and allowed to ride off into the sunset with her beau as <b>All You Need is Love</b> plays over the end credits.</div>
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And this ties back perfectly into that 'solipsism for two' idea. The two lovers at the centre of <i>Objects</i> need only each other; everyone else might as well not even exist. This is folk music, but instead of catering to a large group of people, it lights a candle and sets a secluded table for two. It's post-folk music: folk music for when all the other folks are gone.</div>
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Objects<i> is out now, and you can purchase it from <a href="https://thenightjar.bandcamp.com/album/objects-lp">The Nightjar's Bandcamp page</a>.</i></div>
Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-66421644796122760852017-03-20T14:08:00.002+00:002017-03-20T14:50:11.093+00:00All at Sea: We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank at 10<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If you ignore the various EPs, mini-albums, and rarities compilations they've released over the years, Modest Mouse's discography can be roughly divided into two equal parts.<br />
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Their first three albums - <i>This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About</i> (1996), <i>The Lonesome Crowded West</i> (1997), and <i>The Moon & Antarctica</i> (2000) - were made by a tight-as-hell trio who knitted together weird, wonky riffs and strong, sinewy rhythms to create brilliant and bizarre indie rock that perfectly evoked the immense, sprawling, spread-out strangeness of North America. Having only ever driven on British roads, I can't really speak from experience - the longest journey I ever completed took me from Cardiff to York and covered roughly 250 miles, which is slightly less than the distance between Seattle, Washington and Spokane, Washington - but whenever I listen to those first few Modest Mouse albums in all their long-playing glory, the feeling I'm left with is similar to the feeling I imagine truck drivers get about eight hours into an eleven-hour shift. During longer tracks like <b>Truckers Atlas</b> from <i>The Lonesome Crowded West</i>, you begin to lose all sense of time and space, until eventually all you're aware of is Jeremiah Green's drumming stretching off into the distance like endless yellow lines on the tarmac.<br />
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Green left the band in 2003, and this is where Modest Mouse: Phase 2 began. From 2004's <i>Good News for People Who Love Bad News</i> onwards, the Mouse ceased to be a lean power trio and became a colourful, ever-changing carnival that whirled around singer/guitarist Isaac Brock, the only person to appear on all six Modest Mouse LPs to date. <i>Good News</i> brought a whole rattle-bag of new sounds to the table, from mellotrons and pump organs to horns and tin whistles; just as interestingly, it signalled the beginning of Brock's lyrical preoccupation with all things nautical. Before 2004, Isaac Brock wrote lots of songs about long road journeys, but <i>Good News</i> - spearheaded by surprise hit <b>Float On</b> - left the land behind and led its listeners out to sea for a change.</div>
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And Modest Mouse haven't looked back since. <i>We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank</i> - which came out ten years ago today - took the seafaring themes at which <b>Float On</b> and <b>Ocean Breathes Salty</b> hinted and swam with them, resulting in a deranged ocean voyage of an album that sailed straight to the top of the US album chart. In a <a href="http://musicyouneed.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/rolling-stone-interviews-isaac-brock.html"><i>Rolling Stone </i>interview</a> published shortly prior to the release of <i>We Were Dead</i>, Brock explained his newfound obsession with the sea thusly:<br />
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<i>"There is something genuinely freeing to me about the ocean. There are no borders - it's fucking beautiful. I'm not going to get to do space travel, so what's under the water is quite a bit more interesting to me. I just went snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef with my fiancée. Also, I've gotten into surfing a bit. I can't stand up for more than five seconds, but I like the fact that I can paddle out into oblivion."</i><br />
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From the unhinged stomp of <b>March Into the Sea</b> to the wistful shimmer of <b>Missed the Boat</b> to the coiled-snake strum of <b>Spitting Venom</b>, there are all kinds of different sounds to be heard on <i>We Were Dead</i>, but if these songs have one thing in common, it's the fact that they all seem to exist in very close proximity to the sea and all the mystery and promise that it offers.<br />
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Of course, the sea and the vessels floating upon it mean different things depending on which of <i>We Were Dead</i>'s fourteen tracks you're listening to. On <b>March Into the Sea</b>, the opening number, the sea represents regression, devolution - humanity returning to the briny blue from whence it originally crawled. <b>Fire it Up</b>, by contrast, talks about finding <i>"the perfect water"</i> for a skinny dip with a lover; here, the sea represents a start rather than an ending, the butterfly-stomach beginning of a relationship as opposed to the bitter end described elsewhere on this album.<br />
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Boats, too, are used as a changeable metaphor throughout <i>We Were Dead</i>. The aforementioned <b>Missed the Boat</b> is a melancholy indie-pop gem that uses 'the boat' in its most popular idiomatic sense as a symbol of opportunity - an opportunity to leave the shore behind and find out what else this planet has to offer, and an opportunity that the narrator of that song seemingly failed to seize. In the gorgeous post-breakup relationship autopsy that is <b>Little Motel</b>, however, ships - specifically sinking ships - represent the arguments and <i>"mishaps"</i> that occur between romantic partners. <i>"I know that I don't want to be out to drift,"</i> sings Brock's protagonist, but the implication is that he needs to start ignoring that urge to abandon ship at the first sign of choppy waters.<br />
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Isaac Brock's comments about the "genuinely freeing" no-borders nature of the ocean are very interesting when viewed in the context of Modest Mouse's back catalogue. As I mentioned earlier, Brock wrote quite a few songs about driving back in the band's early days, and after reading that <i>Rolling Stone</i> quote, it's tempting to imagine that he was always trying to reach the coast - striving to find the outer edge of his home continent, plunge into the water, and "paddle into oblivion". If that's the case, then <i>We Were Dead</i> - rather than being the madcap departure from the band's signature sound that many view it as - is both the splashy realisation and a wonderfully in-depth exploration of what Modest Mouse were all about from the very beginning.</div>
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Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-69281452377757909182017-03-17T14:09:00.002+00:002017-03-17T14:11:17.814+00:00Fourteen Floors: Hurray for the Riff Raff & The Long Journey Upwards<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Buried deep in the second half of Hurray for the Riff Raff's wonderful new album <i><a href="http://thealbumwall.blogspot.com/2017/03/to-all-who-had-to-hide-navigator-by.html">The Navigator</a></i> is a track called <b>Fourteen Floors</b>.<br />
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Gentle and slight, <b>Fourteen Floors</b> is not <i>The Navigator</i>'s most memorable song by any stretch of the imagination. It doesn't have the purposeful drive of pre-release single <b>Hungry Ghost</b>; it certainly doesn't scale the same spine-tingling heights as <b>Pa'lante</b>, the album's stunning climax; it's not even on quite the same level as <b>Halfway There</b>, the lovely little acoustic song that mostly stands out because it provides a gentle moment of calm between <i>The Navigator's</i> two fieriest tracks (<b>The Navigator</b> and <b>Rican Beach</b>).</div>
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Nevertheless, I find <b>Fourteen Floors</b> strangely intriguing, and so I'd like to take a closer look at this song today. What is it about? What does it add to the album? And what are the 'fourteen floors' supposed to represent?<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Blind googling led me to <a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/03/30/woman-falls-to-death-from-14th-floor-balcony-of-bronx-apartment-complex/">this five-year-old CBS article</a> about a woman named Sienna Edwards who died in 2012 after falling from the fourteenth storey of a high-rise in the Bronx. This incident was initially reported as a suicide, but Edwards reportedly called 911 shortly before her fall, and during that call, the police dispatcher heard a voice somewhere in the background saying, "you are not going to leave here alive". Another woman, Kenya Edmonds, was arrested and charged with murder and manslaughter, but she was later <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/exclusive-bronx-woman-blamed-slay-cleared-charges-article-1.2243146">acquitted</a>.<br />
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Now, Hurray for the Riff Raff frontwoman Alynda Segarra is from the Bronx, so it's quite possible that she knows the Sienna Edwards story. To be honest, though, I don't really see how a reference to this possible homicide that happened half a decade ago would fit in with <i>The Navigator</i>'s overarching themes of identity and self-actualisation. Granted, it wouldn't be Segarra's first song about <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KvXteZkByE">violence towards women</a>, but...well, it seems to me that the pieces don't fit. I don't think that <b>Fourteen Floors</b> was specifically written about Sienna Edwards and her untimely death.<br />
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So what else could it mean? The phrase 'fourteen floors' also appears in <i>The Navigator</i>'s second track, <b>Living in the City</b>, but in that song, it's simply there to evoke the towering, tightly-packed claustrophobia of life in a cramped NYC apartment; in the context of <b>Fourteen Floors </b>itself, however, those two words are shoved into the centre of the stage, where - one assumes - they take on a far more significant meaning.<br />
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To my ears, <b>Fourteen Floors </b>sounds like a metaphor for the slow social progress that has been made in the USA over the years. Every time the country takes a step forward - by legalising gay marriage, for instance - it ascends another 'floor' of the progress skyscraper, getting that little bit closer to becoming a perfect utopia of freedom and equality. Of course, progress happens at an agonisingly glacial pace (<i>"my father said it took a million years,"</i> sings Segarra; <i>"well, he said it *felt* like a million years"</i>), and it can be undone instantly if the wrong person gets into power and signs that progress away.<br />
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The march towards equality is a long and arduous one - not unlike ascending a steep staircase. We in the Western world have come a long way from the days when women couldn't vote, homosexuality was a crime, and dark-skinned people were segregated from light-skinned people, but progress is a precarious thing, and it doesn't take much to force us backwards. It takes a long time to climb up fourteen floors, but tragically, it only takes a second or two to fall all the way back to the ground.</div>
Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-49832203761211565682017-03-15T14:02:00.000+00:002017-03-15T14:02:31.072+00:00EP Corner: List of Equipment by Lusterlit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Lusterlit are two people - Susan Hwang and Charlie Nieland - who write songs about books. This fun little collaborative project grew out of the Bushwick Book Club, a loose collective of NYC-based songwriters who come together once a month for what <a href="http://bushwickbookclub.com/info-test-2/">the Club's website</a> describes as "an hour-long orgy of book-related songs and book-inspired food and drink". It's like a regular book club, but you have to write and perform a song about the book instead of just talking about it (which I imagine makes things far trickier for the people who just come for the wine and only <i>pretend</i> to have done the reading).<br />
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Both Hwang and Nieland have released collections of their own work in the past, but the <i><a href="https://lusterlit.bandcamp.com/album/list-of-equipment">List of Equipment</a></i> EP (which came out a couple of weeks ago) is Lusterlit's first release as a duo. It features five different songs about four different books:<br />
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<li><i>Blood Meridian</i> by Cormac McCarthy</li>
<li><i>Mastering the Art of French Cooking</i> by Julia Child</li>
<li><i>The Day of the Triffids</i> by John Wyndham</li>
<li><i>The Fortress of Solitude</i> by Jonathan Lethem</li>
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At this point, I should confess that I haven't read *any* of the above books - I did skim a brief summary of each one on Wikipedia before writing this blog post, but my knowledge of <i>List of Equipment</i>'s source material sadly ends there. However, even I am aware that this is a pretty varied selection: you've got a gory Western, a French cookbook, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi classic, and a magical realist superhero novel.</div>
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Better still is <i>List of Equipment</i>'s title track, a jazzy number that perfectly encapsulates the chaos and the creativity of the kitchen and somehow uses Julia Child's best-selling recipe book as the springboard for some delightfully nihilistic life advice. <i>"Non-stick emotions, non-stick sadness" </i>indeed.<br />
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<i>"When you're feeling bad and you need a hand against the doomy forces, cheer up! We're all just walking corpses!"</i><br />
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At the tail end of the <i>List of Equipment</i> EP are two songs - one sung by Hwang, the other by Nieland - about <i>The Fortress of Solitude</i>. This closing combo is arguably the EP's crowning moment because, in serving up two different takes on the same book, it demonstrates that even a single work can breed an infinity of unique worlds when it's received by different readers. <b>Flight</b>, Hwang's <i>Fortress of Solitude </i>track, is a funky bass-led corker, while Nieland's <b>Genius of Love</b> sounds more like an old James song with its spaced-out sound and baggy drum machine beat. Same book: two vastly different musical interpretations.</div>
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<i>The </i>List of Equipment <i>EP is available to buy from <a href="https://lusterlit.bandcamp.com/album/list-of-equipment">Lusterlit's Bandcamp page</a>.</i></div>
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Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-23317714497980904822017-03-13T20:44:00.000+00:002017-03-13T21:05:27.639+00:00To All Who Had to Hide: The Navigator by Hurray for the Riff Raff<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the wake of Donald Trump's election victory last November, there was much talk about 'identity politics' and the possibility that the left, by placing too much focus on the concerns of minority groups, drove a significant number of moderate white voters to the right.<br />
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I don't wish to debate the validity or otherwise of this theory right now (although I largely agree with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/02/identity-politics-donald-trump-white-men">Hadley Freeman's assertion</a> that it's kind of shitty to suggest that gay rights, racial equality, and other issues that don't primarily affect straight white men are 'niche' concerns) - I only mention it because this line of thinking has spawned a toxic 'THIS IS WHY TRUMP WON!' atmosphere that effectively tells certain people to keep certain parts of their identities hidden so as not to piss anyone else off. Discussions about racial profiling, abortion rights, LGBTQ+ issues, et cetera are seen as counterproductive because they don't involve everyone, and some people have suggested that we on the left will only bring Trump voters back onside if we stop banging on about this stuff and focus on the issues that 'normal' people (i.e. straight white men) are worried about too.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>This is a problem for two reasons. Firstly, the discussions that are supposedly alienating the average voter are discussions that urgently need to be held. The rights of gay and transgender people are constantly under threat; many women in Ireland, the US and elsewhere currently have no way of safely terminating unwanted pregnancies; and racially-motivated abuse has been on the up in both the United States and the United Kingdom of late. None of these issues will be solved if people keep quiet about them.<br />
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Secondly, it's a problem because people are being made to feel like they should suppress and stop taking pride in any element of their identity that deviates from Western society's mainstream. This pressure to downplay the very things that make you who you are is the force against which Hurray for the Riff Raff's new album <i>The Navigator</i> pushes back; frontwoman Alynda Segarra is of Puerto Rican extraction, and her latest opus is both a celebration of her heritage and an impassioned show of resistance in the face of creeping gentrification and white nationalism.<br />
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<i>The Navigator</i>'s first few tracks sound restless and frustrated. Our narrator is a <i>"lonely girl"</i> who is <i>"ready for the world"</i>, but she's stuck on the fourteenth floor of some high-rise in the Bronx and she feels smothered, marginalised, and entirely out of place. These tracks sound pointed and purposeful, but there's an underlying sense that Segarra is spinning her wheels, waiting - <i>itching</i> - for something to come and ignite her life.<br />
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Said salvation arrives in the form of track five, <b>Nothing's Gonna Change That Girl</b>. This song - the album's big turning point - starts out as a tender acoustic number embellished only by a distant fantasia of fluttering strings, but each time Segarra sings the title (<i>"ah, but nothing's gonna change that girl..."</i>), she is joined by a crackling electric guitar figure that lights up the sky and champs at the bit like a motorbike engine spluttering thrillingly to life. After two minutes and thirty-one seconds, everything suddenly shifts - the motorbike zooms away into the distance and Segarra finds herself in the middle of an exotic, swaying mambo that's a world away from the bricks and back-alleys of the Bronx. As you listen, you feel like you're on an aeroplane that has just left the ground and will now carry you to some new land full of possibilities and exhilarating new experiences.<br />
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This transition is immediately followed by <b>The Navigator</b> itself, and it's here that the album really finds its sense of purpose. Spy-movie strings sprawl across the sonic landscape and Segarra asks <i>"where will all my people go?"</i> as an electric guitar corkscrews to and fro behind her, emphasising her words with a sharp zigzag underline.<br />
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Of course, as many other reviewers have already pointed out, <i>The Navigator</i>'s real centrepiece is actually its penultimate track: the stunning <b>Pa'lante</b>, named after a Puerto Rican exclamation that means 'forward!' Here, Segarra sits down at her piano, eliminates all excess from the mix, and offers a simple plea to her fellow women, her fellow Puerto Ricans, her fellow human beings: <i>"be something"</i>.</div>
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This first part of the song is striking enough, but after a brief interlude and an excerpt from a <a href="https://monthlyreview.org/2004/06/01/puerto-rican-obituary/">Pedro Pietri poem</a>, Segarra stops, takes a deep breath, and - as the song's close-up production opens out before her like a great yawning chasm - sings:</div>
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<i>"To Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Manuel: pa'lante!</i></div>
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<i>To all who came before, we say: </i><i>pa'lante!</i></div>
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<i>To my mother and my father, I say: </i><i>pa'lante!</i></div>
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<i>To Julia and Sylvia: </i><i>pa'lante!</i></div>
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<i>To all who had to hide, I say: </i><i>pa'lante!</i></div>
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<i>To all who lost their pride, I say: </i><i>pa'lante!</i></div>
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<i>To all who had to survive, I say: </i><i>pa'lante!</i></div>
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<i>To my brothers and my sisters, I say: pa'lante!</i></div>
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<i>Pa'lante!"</i></div>
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The last Riff Raff album, 2014's <i><a href="https://thealbumwall.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/hurray-for-riff-raff-small-town-heroes.html">Small Town Heroes</a></i>, was something of a bloodless coup, peacefully seizing decades-old blues and country music tropes and galvanising them with a modern, feminist viewpoint. Those songs were not uniformly jolly by any stretch of the imagination, but even the darkest moments were relatively gentle, and politics rarely entered the fray; thematically speaking, <i>Small Town Heroes</i> was more interested in positivity, female empowerment, basic compassion, and the importance of knowing that you are a citizen of the world as much as you are a citizen of a specific town or city.<br />
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<i>The Navigator</i>, by contrast, is a brawling bruiser of an LP. We're living in the Trump era now - not a small, friendly town, but a big, scary city - and there's a fight to be fought. People's very identities are under attack, and in response, this album wears its identity like a superhero's cape, offering itself up as a symbol of strength and endurance for all who feel minimised and marginalised by the present state of affairs. <i>The Navigator</i> is about knowing who you are and where you're from and who came before you, and knowing that this knowledge in itself can give you the extra strength needed to resist those who want to erase you.<br />
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The Navigator <i>is out now and can be purchased from <a href="http://hftrr.bandcamp.com/album/the-navigator">Hurray for the Riff Raff's Bandcamp page</a>.</i>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-40905557741719609342017-03-10T13:31:00.000+00:002017-03-10T13:33:21.181+00:00Unpresidented Jams: Tunes for Trump's America<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Truth be told, I'm not sure how many of the songs on <i><a href="https://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/audio-antihero-presents-unpresidented-jams-for-splc-nilc">Unpresidented Jams</a></i> - the 'fuck Trump' charity compilation that Audio Antihero released the other week - are actually *about* Donald Trump and the current political climate in the USA. I know that at least a few of the tracks featured here were written and recorded back in the relatively halcyon days of the Obama administration, but...well, I don't know. Maybe it's because every single breaking news story these days seems to revolve around Trump and his cabinet of horrors, or maybe it's just because it's difficult to enjoy music at all right now without asking what it has to say about the present mess we're in, but either way, I didn't have to listen too closely to <i>Unpresidented Jams</i> to start hearing every line as a piece of political commentary.</div>
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<a name='more'></a>I'm not talking about the nakedly political likes of <b>Dictator Seeks Reichstag Fire</b>, Jeffrey Lewis's contribution to this comp, which warns: <i>"the right way to act still doesn't change if attacked, don't let your fear of the other give a pass to Big Brother"</i>. Songs whose lyrics would have seemed trifling in another reality sound like rallying cries and state-of-the-union addresses in the context with which we're unfortunately stuck. For all I know, CHUCK's wonderfully pissed-off <b>Nothing Matters to Me Now</b> was written about someone who cut Charles Griffin Gibson up at a roundabout, but it's impossible now to hear it as anything other than a gloveslap to the face of the President of the United Goddamn States.<br />
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3168435691/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=3657213757/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/audio-antihero-presents-unpresidented-jams-for-splc-nilc">Audio Antihero presents: "Unpresidented Jams" for SPLC & NILC by CHUCK</a></iframe></div>
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<i>"Your little hands up some skirt - God, I wanna make you hurt!"</i></div>
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Similarly, Magana's <b>To Be the Same</b> - a bruised black sky of a song that, in spite of its stripped-back arrangement and laid-back tempo, seethes like a pressure cooker - might have been interpreted in any number of different ways had it been released a couple of years ago, but in the here and now, the only image it conjures up in my mind is a cinematic shot of Jeni Magana standing on some rainy NYC rooftop and dangling Donald Trump over the edge by his ankles, forcing him to look down at all the people whose lives he would shatter with a stroke of his presidential pen.</div>
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3168435691/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=1647196953/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/audio-antihero-presents-unpresidented-jams-for-splc-nilc">Audio Antihero presents: "Unpresidented Jams" for SPLC & NILC by Magana</a></iframe></div>
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Even some of the songs that were commercially released years before Trump came to power now sound like they're aimed at him. The barely-coherent rage of i hate sex's furious <b>Sleep Paralysis</b> (originally released in March 2015) feels like a reasonable reaction to the recent news cycle. The title of <b>Little Fist </b>by Mulligrub comes across as a fun dig at Trump's <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/05/yes-donald-trumps-hands-are-actually-pretty-small/?utm_term=.e351a4552ed5">famously small hands</a>. The presence of a Blondie cover on this compilation - Okin Osan's rough 'n' ready stab at <b>Sunday Girl</b> - feels like a statement of defiance, a nod to one of rock's most celebrated female performers at a time when women are being targeted and marginalised on a frankly absurd scale.</div>
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3168435691/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=2795768411/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/audio-antihero-presents-unpresidented-jams-for-splc-nilc">Audio Antihero presents: "Unpresidented Jams" for SPLC & NILC by Okin Osan</a></iframe></div>
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Indeed, it's important to note that this compilation isn't all about venting - there are positive moments amongst all the violence and bubbling anger. My personal favourite is Deerful's chirpy <b>Unlearn/Begin Again</b>, which - in addition to being easily the most danceable of the nineteen tracks featured on <i>Unpresidented Jams </i>- offers a bright message of hope and solidarity for these chaotic days.</div>
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3168435691/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=3429015567/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/audio-antihero-presents-unpresidented-jams-for-splc-nilc">Audio Antihero presents: "Unpresidented Jams" for SPLC & NILC by Deerful</a></iframe></div>
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<b>Links:</b></h3>
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<li><a href="https://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/audio-antihero-presents-unpresidented-jams-for-splc-nilc">Buy <i>Unpresidented Jams</i> on Bandcamp</a> (proceeds donated to the SPLC and NILC)</li>
<li><a href="https://thealbumwall.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/getting-it-wrong-chat-with-jamie-from.html">Interview with Audio Antihero boss Jamie Halliday</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.nilc.org/">National Immigration Law Center</a> (NILC)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/">Southern Poverty Law Center</a> (SPLC)</li>
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Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-39536010354781530972017-03-08T13:56:00.000+00:002017-03-08T13:58:37.215+00:00Behold the Once & Future Me: Sick Scenes by Los Campesinos!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"Not right to call this old age...but it certainly ain't youth!"</i></div>
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The sixth Los Campesinos! album, <i>Sick Scenes</i>, finds the Cardiff-spawned septet trapped between two great galumphing horrors of equal awfulness. Behind them gapes the terrible maw of The Past, a big patchwork monster made of break-ups and missed penalties and old gig posters; before them looms the incomprehensible massiveness of The Future, a colossal giant who towers high above the clouds and promises naught but death. You've got a big ugly mess on one side, an unknowable multitude of potential devastations on the other, and Los Campesinos! in the middle, desperately trying to ignore these two abominations and concentrate on the football.</div>
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<a name='more'></a>Both the past and the future cast long, dark shadows over <i>Sick Scenes</i> and its eleven colourful compositions. The album opens with <b>Renato Dall'Ara (2008)</b>, a crunchy carousel of a song in which the band concede that they are still, to some extent, <i>"living off 2008"</i> and the hype that surrounded their early releases. Track two, <b>Sad Suppers</b>, keeps the lens fixed on things past with a <a href="https://genius.com/Los-campesinos-sad-suppers-lyrics">lyric</a> that might be interpreted as the memoir of a young musician who spent every day on the road and every dinnertime sneaking bites of supermarket sandwiches during soundchecks. <b>Sad Suppers</b> is built upon an insistent, hammering beat - its every crotchet punctuated with a whack of the snare drum - that's strangely evocative of a relentless touring schedule: no time to relax, no space for a sit-down meal, just one stop after another after another after another. Bam bam bam bam bam bam bam.<br />
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Other references to the history of Los Campesinos! and of the band's singer/lyricist Gareth Campesinos! abound: <b>A Litany/Heart Swells</b> shares the second half of its title with two previous LC! tracks, while <b>Here's to the Fourth Time!</b> namechecks a song from their last album (<b>The Time Before the Last Time</b>) AND several streets in Cathays, the student-infested area of Cardiff where Gareth used to live.</div>
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But the past isn't solely represented here by personal experiences. <i>Sick Scenes</i> was written and recorded around the time of the EU membership referendum that took place here in the UK last summer, and Los Camps seems to recognise that this kingdom's refusal to let go of the past may have been one of the reasons why so many people voted to leave.</div>
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The face of Brexit Britain is reflected in three <i>Sick Scenes</i> tracks in particular. First up is <b>A Slow, Slow Death</b>, a sort of doomed love song that personifies the UK as a heartsick young man <i>"preoccupied by nostalgia waves"</i> and banking on <i>"the gambler's fallacy: the more I repeat, I won't be the punchline"</i>. Then there's <b>The Fall of Home</b>, the album's most charmingly simple moment, which illustrates the experience of returning to your hometown after an extended absence and finding it unrecognisable - not only because your favourite pubs are boarded up, but because the people who live there have revealed themselves to be completely at odds with your own worldview</div>
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<i>"Another family friend fell sick, gave the fascists a thousand ticks..."</i></div>
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Second single <b>5 Flucloxacillin</b> completes this little state-of-the-nation suite with its bridge about <i>"a peloton of OAPs"</i> yelling at our young narrator and telling him to get out of their way. After the referendum last June, many people noted that age was a pretty good predictor of one's vote: older people mostly voted to leave the EU, while younger people mostly voted to remain. Young Remain voters are now faced with the daunting prospect of living with the consequences of a decision they largely didn't make, and all the while we're being told - quite often by Leave voters who are a fair bit older than us - that the people have spoken, and that we ought to just stop moaning and deal with it. Gareth's lyrics in <b>5 Flucloxacillin</b> allude to this divide via a rather clever cycling metaphor, and it's ever so slightly cathartic to hear him yell back <i>"shut up your faces, I'm not your domestique!"</i></div>
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(While I'm talking about <i>Sick Scenes</i>' relationship with the past, I ought also to mention the many football references that are strewn across the face of this album like so many plastic bags on a beach. The last winking embers of my interest in football died some years ago, but The Beautiful Game always struck me as a very past-obsessed sport; of course, this is perhaps because I am from England, a country that hasn't won a single soccer tournament since the introduction of colour TV).</div>
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So The Past, as heard on <i>Sick Scenes</i>, is basically a group of pushy pensioners on bicycles. But what of that other monstrosity, The Future? Well, if the lyrics of closing track <b>Hung Empty</b> are to believed, The Future is a mass of students forcing you off the pavement and into the bus lane. Gareth Campesinos! is in his thirties now, and he's just as worried about the future as he is beleaguered by the past; <b>5 Flucloxacillin</b> isn't just about feeling marginalised by old people, it's also about medication and noticing that your ever-present mental health issues are suddenly fighting alongside an array of physical pains. Then there's <b>For Whom the Belly Tolls</b>, which deals with the feeling of watching helplessly as the grim spectre of middle age creeps closer and closer with each new day.</div>
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=4041560402/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=885168265/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://loscampesinos.bandcamp.com/album/sick-scenes">Sick Scenes by Los Campesinos!</a></iframe></div>
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In a <a href="https://www.thefourohfive.com/music/article/a-conversation-with-gareth-campesinos-sick-scenes-is-very-much-a-record-about-being-confused-and-uncertain-it-may-be-our-most-doomed-148">recent interview</a> with <i>The 405</i>, Gareth Campesinos! dubbed <i>Sick Scenes</i> his band's "most doomed" album to date. It's a set of songs about feeling stuck between a mocking clusterfuck of a past and a lifeless drought of a future, and trying to make sense of both of these things while living life to the best of your abilities in the meantime. There are no easy answers here, but in the end, Gareth seems to recognise that the world's current inward-looking trajectory - closing ourselves off in a quest for total security - probably isn't going to make anybody feel any less trapped and miserable; as album highlight <b>Got Stendahl's</b> sarcastically posits, <i>"at least when we're encased in concrete, we'll be safe"</i>.</div>
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Sick Scenes <i>is out now and you can buy it from the <a href="https://loscampesinos.bandcamp.com/album/sick-scenes">Los Campesinos! Bandcamp page</a>.</i></div>
Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-71787028082998917942017-03-06T07:00:00.000+00:002017-03-10T13:32:21.361+00:00Getting it Wrong: A Chat with Jamie from Audio Antihero<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Audio Antihero is a record label that specialises in all shades of off-kilter indie music. The label's very first release was the furiously fidgety <i><a href="https://nosferatud2.bandcamp.com/album/were-gonna-walk-around-this-city-with-our-headphones-on-to-block-out-the-noise">We're Gonna Walk Around This City With Our Headphones On to Block Out the Noise</a></i> by Nosferatu D2, and since then Audio Antihero's purview has expanded outwards to include everything from folk music to laptop pop, experimental soundscapes to route-one punk.</div>
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The man at the helm of the Audio Antihero frigate is Jamie Halliday. Jamie lived in London when the label first launched, but he has since moved to the USA, a country that - as you may be aware - recently elected TV business guy Donald Trump as its leader. In the wake of Trump's inauguration, Jamie (with the help of many cool bands and artists from the US and elsewhere) put together a compilation album called <i>Unpresidented Jams</i> to raise money for the National Immigration Law Center (<a href="https://www.nilc.org/">NILC</a>) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/">SPLC</a>).</div>
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<i>Unpresidented Jams</i> was released on the 26th of February, and is now available to download from <a href="https://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/audio-antihero-presents-unpresidented-jams-for-splc-nilc">Audio Antihero's Bandcamp page</a>. Jamie very kindly agreed to answer a few questions for The Album Wall about the comp and the political climate that compelled him to curate it - read on to find out what he had to say.</div>
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<b>The Album Wall: </b>Why have you chosen to donate the proceeds from this compilation to the SPLC and the NILC?</div>
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<b>Jamie Halliday: </b>I'm new here, but they're two lovely organisations that are committed, in different ways, to opposing the victimisation of vulnerable people. This feels pretty essential right now but it's something we should really have been ready to support had a Democrat won the Presidency too. This compilation seemed like a good way for an anxious dyspraxic who never wins arguments to do a little bit of good.</div>
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<b>TAW:</b> Are all of the contributing artists Audio Antihero alumni?</div>
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<b>JH:</b> No, I wish. I was really happy to be able to work with a few Audio Antihero artists on here, they gave me some really wonderful stuff. Benjamin Shaw wrote his first song with lyrics in about three years for this comp - time flies!</div>
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3168435691/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=2747019459/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;">&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/audio-antihero-presents-unpresidented-jams-for-splc-nilc"&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Audio Antihero presents: &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;Unpresidented Jams&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; for SPLC &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp; NILC by Benjamin Shaw&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;</iframe></div>
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Elsewhere, lots of guests. People like Jeffrey Lewis, Yr Friends and Hanging Freud have been on previous compilations that I've done, whereas Okin Osan, Pearl Crush, Deerful and the others are all new to my tiny musical world.</div>
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<b>TAW: </b>Who designed the cover art?</div>
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<b>JH:</b> <a href="http://www.lefty-scissors.com/">Shay Spence</a>! Shay fronts Brooklyn's Vassals and is frequently part of Magana's rhythm section. She's a wonderful artist, musician and songwriter. The final cover was actually a pretty last-minute solution: our planned artist had to drop out, and I found this among Shay's unused designs and she was kind enough to let me use it. I'm really happy with it.</div>
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<b>TAW: </b>Is the <i>Creature from the Black Lagoon</i> supposed to represent Donald Trump?</div>
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<b>JH:</b> Kinda. I don't think it was designed with 2017's political climate in mind, so it isn't to be taken too literally or thought of as the perfect analogy or anything. But I felt like it could be interpreted in a few fun ways. Ultimately, something terrible has emerged - something that we liked to think was buried pretty deep - and it most certainly is keen to attack women.</div>
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<i>Image source: <a href="http://www.lefty-scissors.com/">lefty-scissors.com</a></i></div>
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I've never actually seen that film though. Is the creature actually really nice or misunderstood? I don't know. One of the considered titles for the compilation was 'Republicans are Lizards' - I think this image could have made a fairly solid cover for that, too.</div>
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<b>TAW:</b> Were most of these songs written specifically for this charity compilation? A few tracks (most obviously <b><a href="https://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/track/dictator-seeks-reichstag-fire">Dictator Seeks Reichstag Fire</a></b> by Jeffrey Lewis) are pointedly political, while others are less so...</div>
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<b>JH:</b> Most of them aren't political in content, but several were written or recorded exclusively for the compilation or are otherwise unreleased recordings from 'the vault'. There are a handful of songs here that had already been commercially released too, but I really wanted to include and share them anyway. I figured I'd much rather have gorgeous songs from Betsy Ross, Fridge Poetry, i hate sex, Hanging Freud and Mulligrub than not.</div>
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3168435691/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=1475009221/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;">&amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/audio-antihero-presents-unpresidented-jams-for-splc-nilc"&amp;amp;amp;gt;Audio Antihero presents: &amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;Unpresidented Jams&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; for SPLC &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp; NILC by Betsy Ross&amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt;</iframe></div>
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I wanted this compilation to be a celebration of people and their creativity and their voices and ideas, and I think that's what it is.</div>
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<b>TAW:</b> How do you discover new acts? Where do you hear about all the artists whose music you release?</div>
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<b>JH: </b>My label started out pretty isolated; I don't really know anybody. I was working on a record from Nosferatu D2, my favourite local band, and then with Benjamin Shaw too, who was a friend. So for a long time, records have come from friends and the recommendations of my artists. I'm hoping to break out of that bubble a little more if the label lasts long enough. I receive a lot of demos, I get recommendations, and I sometimes approach people that I've found through blogs or have admired for a while. I don't end up taking on very much, though - Audio Antihero is such a small label that it wouldn't make sense for a lot of people to want to work with me. I'm also maddeningly picky about who or what I want to spend several months focusing on, as it's hard to do more than a couple of records a year any justice on my level. Just keeping up with my current roster's output can be pretty difficult, which makes new signings pretty tricky.</div>
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<b>TAW:</b> As a Brit who migrated to the USA, how are you finding life in Trump's America? How does it differ from life in the UK?</div>
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<b>JH: </b>I'm a relatively young white agnostic with a green card, a good safety network and a safe country I can return to, so aside from the looming threats of the Affordable Care Act repeal, ludicrous attacks on the environment, worker's rights, minimum wage and cuts to medicare, medicaid and social security, I'll be among those who suffer the least. But I have no respect for an administration or a country that will seek to deny people the basic rights I enjoy because of their gender, race, sexuality, identity, religion, income level or country of origin.</div>
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3168435691/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=3510869129/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;">&amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/audio-antihero-presents-unpresidented-jams-for-splc-nilc"&amp;amp;amp;gt;Audio Antihero presents: &amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;Unpresidented Jams&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; for SPLC &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp; NILC by Jack Hayter&amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt;</iframe></div>
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I've always struggled with what I interpret as America's distinct lack of interest in its people's wellbeing, whether it's the dangerously unaffordable healthcare system, wealth inequality, institutionalised racism, police brutality, the NRA's immunity, or a lack of security for workers. But I can only see this worsening now as people have more and more to contend with. Paid holiday is important, the right to see a doctor regardless of your income is imperative, but while trans people are being told they can't take part in public life and Muslims are being told they can't enter the country...well, people are gonna struggle to keep up all of the older causes. It's becoming a huge ordeal just to speak to your representative in the US.</div>
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I haven't been in the UK since before the bullshit referendum, so I really hesitate to suggest that Britain is a dreamy place to be right now. But we do have the remnants of a national health service, which I really hope can survive the Conservatives and their seemingly endless reign. A year under the American healthcare system has really really helped drive home the value of a national tax-funded service and the dishonesty of anybody who tells you otherwise.</div>
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It just feels like we're all getting it so wrong.</div>
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<b>TAW:</b> Do you think Trump's presidency will last a full four years? What are your predictions for the future of his administration - impeachment, resignation, re-election in 2020?</div>
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<b>JH:</b> All bets are off, man. The 2018 elections will give us some indication of where things are going, but the Democrats have been pretty uninspiring lately and the Republicans have shown little willingness to challenge Trump or Steve Bannon on much of anything. It's not a prediction, but I will go so far as far as to say that I would not be shocked if Trump successfully ran for re-election. We the People apparently like to do the wrong thing.</div>
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<b>TAW:</b> You were a vocal supporter of Bernie Sanders during the primary process last year - you donated the proceeds from the <a href="https://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/bern-yr-idols">last Audio Antihero comp</a> to the Sanders campaign. What did you see in him that you didn't see in Hillary Clinton?</div>
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<b>JH:</b> Primary fever had me acting pretty feral but I should say that, had I been eligible to vote, I would have absolutely voted for Hillary Clinton in the election. I should also say that Bernie Sanders isn't a dream politician: his history on gun control is mostly infuriating, and he's made some pretty disappointing statements and votes in his career. Generally speaking, though, I really viewed Sanders as a true step forward. I don't believe that Sanders is pushed around by lobbyists, and I do think he's an egalitarian, albeit one coming from a place of privilege. He supports social programs and safety nets, especially ones that are truly designed to benefit people, rather than businesses. How his presidency would have gone is impossible to know, but he was certainly very inspiring to me. I wanted the change that people needed, rather than the change that the wealthy were willing to authorise.</div>
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<i>Image source: <a href="https://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/bern-yr-idols">audioantihero.bandcamp.com</a></i></div>
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Hillary Clinton, while she offered the basic minimum guarantee of being a Democrat, has a history that's filled with prejudicial policies and stances. Among other things, I just feel that if you needed to 'evolve' on equality then you have no place leading a country or making laws. There was a lot of talk about the 'enthusiasm gap' with millennials or how she could 'win over Sanders supporters', but it wasn't about memes, buzzwords or presentation; I just don't feel she believes that what progressives want is right. But again, I’m not above choosing the lesser of two evils.</div>
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Clinton certainly suffered a great deal of sexism during the election, in both the primaries and the general. I'm not a great fan of the Democratic Party, but she's no more neoliberal than a great deal of other Democrats (or more war-hungry than most Republicans). I wish she had won the election, because then we'd be pushing her for better healthcare, better wages, stricter banking regulations and gun control, rather than just hoping to maintain a basic democracy. But she is ultimately much too conservative for me. In my uneducated view, the Democratic Party that we have now can defer Trumpism for a term or two, but it can't defeat it. I'd rather see us beat fascism with equality and prosperity than placate it with institutionalised lower-case white supremacy.</div>
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<b>TAW: </b>What role do you think music can play in resisting Trump and Trumpism?</div>
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<b>JH: </b>I don't know. I think Trump's election may have woken up blissfully ignorant bros like myself to the fact that all some of us have been doing up to this point is giving our immediate circle of white guy friends a voice. But there's always been great political music, and how much has the message been able to change since the first protest song was written? We still starve the poor, we're still misogynists, we're still racists, we're still homophobes, we're still violent, we're still trying to deny people healthcare, we're still breaking treaties, we're still working people into early graves for the lowest price.</div>
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3168435691/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=2560643905/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;">&amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://audioantihero.bandcamp.com/album/audio-antihero-presents-unpresidented-jams-for-splc-nilc"&amp;amp;amp;gt;Audio Antihero presents: &amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;Unpresidented Jams&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; for SPLC &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp; NILC by yr friends&amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt;</iframe></div>
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But a lot of policy change comes from what society is ready for. The more people wake up to the threats faced by the kind of society they desire, the more that awareness can be reflected in music and the way we run our businesses. Maybe we can try and reshape the norm. But is my label with a crappy name going to fix the world? Fuck no; I struggle to sell thirty cassettes. Are Alex G, Mitski, Beyoncé or whoever else going to the fix the world by themselves? Unfortunately not. But maybe some of us can provide comfort to those who need it, and a few of us can help wake up the people who are as clueless as I've always been.</div>
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I'm not a smart person; historically, I haven't even been a political person. But none of this feels like politics to me. Homophobia is not a difference of opinion. Racism isn't policy. Letting guns flow across the nation isn't conservative. Lies aren't vision. I don't believe in moderation or compromise when it comes to equality.</div>
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<b>TAW: </b>What else can we expect from Audio Antihero in 2017?</div>
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<b>JH: </b>About as much as I can stand.</div>
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<i>Buy the </i>Unpresidented Jams<i> compilation here - the minimum donation is just £2.99, and all proceeds go to the SPLC and the NILC.</i></div>
Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-50574102634605683302017-02-24T15:19:00.000+00:002017-02-24T15:31:20.557+00:00All of This Will Disappear: Impermanence by Peter Silberman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"I'm disassembling...piece by piece..."</i></div>
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<i>Impermanence</i> opens with a crisis. The creative process that led Peter Silberman to write and record this album was triggered a few years ago by an injury that left the Antlers frontman temporarily deaf in one ear and agonisingly sensitive to sounds that he scarcely even noticed before. This devastating setback - and I'm sure that having your hearing wrecked is horrible even when you <i>don't</i> make music for a living - drove home to Silberman the fact that everything is subject to change, and that everything ends eventually. As he himself puts it, <i>Impermanence </i>is the result of being forced to "consider the finite".</div>
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<a name='more'></a>Track one, the slow-burning <b>Karuna</b>, is a freeze-framed snapshot of the immediate aftermath of the incident that screwed up Silberman's ears. <i>"They checked my flesh,"</i> he sings;<i> "they checked my heart, they can't detect my faulty parts."</i> The accident left no visible scars, inflicted no damage that could be detected by hospital scans, but from Silberman's point of view the impact was absolutely colossal. When you're a professional musician, your ability to hear is more than just a tool - it's a central part of your identity, and as <b>Karuna</b> gradually unfolds, you can hear Silberman rushing to revise his identity, his very self, to accommodate this latest shattering development.<br />
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'Impermamence' is more than just this album's title - it's also the overarching theme. Transience, temporariness, the fleeting nature of all things. Whether it's your hearing or your life or the objects and people you surround yourself with, everything is impermanent - nothing in this world lasts forever. <b>New York</b>, a song named for what Silberman describes as "a relentlessly impermanent place", is effectively just a list of sounds: <i>"blaring brakes...honking horns...hissing buses...shrieking trains"</i>. You presumably get used to all of these noises when you live in NYC, and eventually they fade into the background, but Silberman's ruined hearing stripped away that muffling familiarity and left him feeling like a newcomer to the city once again. His aural callus disappeared, and New York was suddenly entirely unrecognisable, assaulting him from all sides with agitated, angry noise.</div>
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After his accident, Silberman ended up fleeing New York City in order to escape that non-stop noise and, in his own words, "find rest and quiet" in "a secluded setting in upstate New York". This is where his healing process began , and judging by the record it spawned, that process focused heavily on trying to internalise the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence and accept that the material world is always changing and moving towards an end. This seemingly led him to other tenets of Buddhism, Hindusim and Jainism, as reflected in some of the song titles here: <b>Ahisma</b> means nonviolence (indeed, the chorus of that track is simply <i>"no violence, no violence, no violence today"</i>), and <b>Maya </b>refers to the idea of something that is constantly changing and thus does not exist in a permanent, eternal, spiritual sense.</div>
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This album as a whole feels markedly more sparse than anything The Antlers have ever released, with lots of space between the sounds and each song punctuated by moments of silence. Silberman's heightened sensitivity to noise may well have meant that this ultra-gentle approach was the only workable option, but even it was borne of necessity rather than artistry, the results are rather spellbinding. It forces the listener to hear the music through Silberman's damaged, oversensitive ears: every little sound stands out in a way that's simply not possible when half a dozen different instruments are competing with one another. The sparse, delicate sound complements the impermanence theme rather neatly, too - the notes themselves are so fragile that they sound like they might disappear into nothingness at any given moment.</div>
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<i>Impermanence </i>closes with a brief, uncertain-sounding instrumental track of the same name, and it's here that Peter Silberman really drives home his message that everything disappears eventually. We're escorted through most of this album by Silberman's gorgeous voice - the voice we're familiar with from <i>Hospice</i> and <i>Burst Apart</i> and <i>Familiars</i>. But right at the very end, that familiar element is pulled out from underneath us like a rug, and by refraining from singing for the duration of the title track, Silberman demonstrates that even he - the one constant at the centre of <i>Impermanence</i>'s ever-shifting soundscape - can't stick around forever. His silence during that last track speaks volumes, because it suggests that he has truly come to terms with the lesson he's been trying to teach us this whole time.</div>
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Impermanence<i> is out today on Transgressive Records and can be <a href="http://smarturl.it/silberman-stream">streamed or purchased here</a>.</i></div>
Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513906411507533241.post-90103254716539159792017-02-22T20:13:00.000+00:002017-02-22T20:24:09.296+00:00Hurray for the Riff Raff: Small Town Heroes Revisited<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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With both the UK and the USA seemingly becoming more insular and inward-looking with each new day, now would be a good time to revisit Hurray for the Riff Raff's <i>Small Town Heroes</i> even were it not for the fact that its successor is due out next month. Originally released in February 2014, this album may just be the reminder we all need right now of the importance of open-mindedness and progressive, compassionate thinking.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>You wouldn't necessarily realise that at first glance, mind: for a record made by a young feminist from the Bronx, <i>Small Town Heroes</i> actually has a pretty old-fashioned feel. This is a rich-sounding Americana record steeped in the age-old tropes and traditions of folk, blues and country music. Most of the compositions are built upon simple blues progressions; that Dobro on the album cover is variously accompanied by banjos, fiddles, and at one point a rowdy harpsichord; and even Alynda Segarra's lyrics occasionally feel like a pastiche of dusty ol' cowboy songs and foot-stompin' bluegrass tunes.<br />
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<i>"Said I got the blues for my baby left me by the San Francisco Bay..."</i><br />
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And yet, when you look more closely at this album, it becomes clear that what Segarra was really doing here was working within a very traditional musical framework while espousing deceptively progressive ideas - in other words, she took some of America's oldest songwriting conventions and updated them for the new '10s.<br />
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In some cases, this meant challenging these genres and a few of their more problematic tropes. <b>The Body Electric</b>, one of <i>STH</i>'s key songs, is a response to all those murder ballads where some poor woman gets shot to death and tossed in the river. In a recent interview with <i><a href="http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2017/02/14/bunch-fives-hurray-riff-raff/">God Is In The TV</a></i>, Segarra explained <b>The Body Electric</b> thusly:<br />
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"I was at a show where there was a young man playing a guitar, and he was playing a murder ballad about shooting down his woman. At that time, there was a lot of talk going on about police brutality and gun restrictions, and while I was listening I thought, 'this is bullshit!' You know, rap music gets criticised a lot for its supposedly misogynistic lyrics, but here we have a white man singing about shooting his girlfriend for cheating, and nobody says a word! It made me really angry"</blockquote>
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In other cases, though, the subjects on which American songwriters have dwelled for generations suit Segarra's outlook rather well. For instance, there are a few neat travelling songs on <i>Small Town Heroes</i> - most notably <b>Crash on the Highway</b> - and the timeless image of a band squeezing their gear into a grubby little van and hitting the road complements quite elegantly the album's broader point about how there's a whole world full of cities and towns and villages, each one full of individuals with their own stories and viewpoints and experiences that might differ dramatically from your own.<br />
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Speaking of individuals, individuality and identity are a very important part of Hurray of the Riff Raff's MO as well. This is made clear by the artwork for <i>Small Town Heroes</i>: a portrait of Alynda Segarra surrounded by things that she presumably considers central to her identity, such as the Puerto Rican flag, a bottle of tequila, and what appears to be some sort of gender equality symbol.<br />
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<i>Other symbols on the </i>Small Town Heroes<i> cover include a yellow rose, the palm of someone's right hand, and three arrows. If anyone knows the significance of these icons, do let me know.</i></div>
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The album's opening track, <b>Blue Ridge Mountain</b>, can be read as a very positive message of self-empowerment: Segarra sings<i>"my heart is a blue ridge mountain, and my head an overflowing fountain...but I never, never knew"</i>, sounding like she has just woken up and realised for the first time the extent of her own strength and potential. Heck, even the band's name - Hurray for the Riff Raff - is a jubilant expression of faith in people power, and the different voices and stories presented on the <i>Small Town Heroes</i> album (the sorrowful outlaw who sings <b>Good Time Blues</b>; the frustrated lover heard on <b>No One Else</b>; the incensed narrator of <b>The Body Electric</b>) demonstrate that every person has their own unique identity even when they're simultaneously part of a larger cause or community.</div>
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<i>Small Town Heroes</i> is an album with many messages to deliver and many lessons to teach, but if you need a quick summary, your best bet is to look at the title track, <b>Small Town Heroes</b> itself. This song peeks into the lives of several different characters - the cheatin' man, the young women he leaves in his wake, the popular girl who gets <i>"all her drugs for free"</i>, the father who kicks her out - all of whom are united by the fact that they really just want to love and to be loved.</div>
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Somewhere in the middle of all this, Segarra asks the listener, <i>"all these people and all these things - what's the point in a wedding ring? We might not be here when next year comes."</i> This is again representative of her restless, travelling nature, but also of the transience of life in general. <i>Small Town Heroes </i>knows that nothing is permanent, and so it encourages us all to keep moving, to see as much of this world as possible, to meet as many people and devour as many stories and give as much love as we possibly can.</div>
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Of course, this album was written, recorded and released back in the Obama years. <i>Small Town Heroes</i> isn't always a happy album - Segarra knows how to pluck a weepy hearstring, a talent she wields mercilessly on <b>Levon's Dream</b> and the title track - but it's generally a pretty *friendly* album. At no point does Segarra sound like she's spoiling for a brawl, whereas Hurray for the Riff Raff's forthcoming new album does have a distinctly fighty sense of purpose to it.</div>
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<i>The Navigator</i>, due out on the 10th of March, is a Riff Raff album for the Donald Trump years. The subversive elements that lay dormant in the nooks and crannies of <i>Small Town Heroes</i> are now out of hibernation and ready for battle - I'll be reviewing the new album properly when it's released, but for now, here's the kickass lead single <b>Rican Beach </b>to whet your appetite and set the flames of resistance burning in your belly.</div>
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<i>"The politicians, they just squawked their mouths - said, 'We'll build a wall to keep them out!' And all the poets were dying of a silence disease, so it happened quickly and with much ease."</i></div>
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Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02696100238929518822noreply@blogger.com1