Bill Callahan and Richard Youngs Demonstrate Two Very Different Approaches to the Singer/Songwriter Tradition

From Metro Pulse.

It’s been more than 20 years since Bill Callahan first began releasing no-fi four-track home recordings under the name of Smog. Not only were the songs probably recorded in his bedroom, much of their material was sourced there, too, as he sang of love affairs gone bad and sketched out painfully intimate details that left no question about their autobiographical authenticity. Gradually, he moved further away from bare-bones recording and overtly confessional songwriting to embrace a polished sound and more mature, measured songwriting, and a few years ago he even stepped out from behind the veil of Smog to perform under his own name. These have been almost universally hailed as net gains. The early records still have their charm, but there’s a reason Callahan rarely dips too far into his back catalog during live performances.

What may have been sacrificed in all this, however, is surprise. Dream River (Drag City) is Callahan’s 15th full-length record, and it is a good one, but many of the songs seem interchangeable with material from his last few albums. Once again there are references to eagles, whales, rivers, Armageddon—things that appeared not only in his recent songs, but also in actual album titles.
The music is similarly familiar. Held over from 2011’s Apocalypse are non-fussy arrangements executed by a core instrumentation of drums, electric piano, flute, guitar, and violin. The music does seem a little more involved here, likely due to the musicians who accompany Callahan this time around. Complementing returning guitarist Matt Kinsey’s jazzy psychedelic tone, Thor Harris’ congas, claves, shakers often have a Latin feel; Chojo Jacque’s violin sounds just as often like a country fiddle; and Beth Galiger’s flute turns out to be the perfect emotive foil for Callahan’s singing, especially on “Spring” and on “The Summer,” where it weaves in and around his vocals, Astral Weeks-style. Overall the band conveys a fairly laid-back, autumnal sound for most of the album, despite the fact that fall is the only season not name-checked in a song title here.

Tying it all together, as ever, is Callahan’s voice, a smooth, deadpan baritone that at times borders on the dispassionate. Listen closely, though, and you might hear a powerful instrument that’s especially fitting for his lyrical content: wry, keenly observational, slightly melancholic ruminations on existence. Callahan is one of those artists who has a fairly narrow range, but knows how to make the most of it. He seems to acknowledge this, in his own humorously skewed way, when h
e declares during the opening track, “The Sing,” “I’ve got limitations like Marvin Gaye.”

Bubbling underneath the casual delivery of stoic ruminations and dry humor at which Callahan excels (“The only words I said today are ‘beer’ and ‘thank you’”) is an existential twinge about what the future might hold—perhaps not surprising for a peripatetic single man approaching 50. Instead of drifting into a midlife crisis, though, Dream River finds him nudging closer to some sort of peace. “I have learned when things are beautiful to just keep on,” Callahan repeats at the close of the album, and it sounds like a mission statement for his music and life, one that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago.

Like Callahan, Richard Youngs is a 47-year-old musician who began releasing fairly odd, abrasive recordings in 1990. Unlike Callahan, though, Youngs seems as restless as ever. The British musician shows no signs of giving up the experimentation that is present throughout his work. His new record, Summer Though My Mind (Ba Da Bing!), is ostensibly Youngs’ take on country music. Those familiar with Youngs’ music, steeped as it is in minimalism and improvisation, know not to expect anything too beholden to the Nashville sound of any era, but the songs on Summer test the limits of what constitutes country music.

Possessing a sonorous tenor well-suited for the folk music of the British Isles—from which he often borrows—Youngs can’t help himself from experimenting with a recording. It’s as if he doesn’t fully trust the way most musicians approach recording or has an aversion to what most people might think of as “pretty.” Summer, for example, contains two songs that likely rank among his loveliest—I can’t say for sure, as he has close to 200 recordings, counting collaborations, and I’ve heard only a small fraction—but whose presentation here might test many listeners’ patience. “Spin Me Endless in the Universe” is a hypnotic 12-minute tune with longing lyrics built around a repetitive guitar figure, rendered here with out-of-sync double-tracked vocals and woozy slide guitar—think early Guided by Voices doing Gillian Welch’s “I Dream a Highway.” “Goodbye Oslo Rose” is a lovely, romantic farewell tune, but its chances for inclusion on soundtracks and mixtapes might have been blown by the atonal free harmonica blowing with which Youngs punctuates its choruses, not to mention the high-pitched EBow that permeates the track.

Part of Youngs’ process has always been upsetting expectations or norms. How many more emotive-guy-with-guitar songs, no matter how lovely, how many more tasteful arrangements and coffee-shop ambient singer/songwriter songs does the world need, this album seems to ask. It’s not always the easiest or most relaxing listen, but as Youngs continues to explore and interrogate song forms in the manner of few other musicians operating today, Summer Through My Mind stands as one of the more approachable entrees into his world.

Mountain Oasis Festival 2013

As printed in Metro Pulse.

 
Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit is the Asheville-based festival AC Entertainment launched after parting ways with Moog Music, who will continue Moogfest next spring. Aside from the new fest’s name being much more of a mouthful, there was not really an appreciable difference between it and the three Moogfests AC produced in 2010-12. While there was still an abundance of DJs and electronic dance music, and the marketing seemed to skew that way, the festival’s diversity was such that it was possible to fill all three of your days without hearing much in the way of those things.
Such was the case Friday, when I took in a string quartet backing a composer playing a guitar and ukulele (Jherek Bischoff), an old old-school indie rock band (Half Japanese), a cult songwriter with just an acoustic guitar (Daniel Johnston), an art-pop duo performing off-off-Broadway-style material (Sparks), and Neutral Milk Hotel. Even Deltron 3030, the only hip-hop act present over the weekend, brought a full band, choir, horns, string section, and turntablist Dan the Automator, keeping the electronic backing to a minimum. That’s a pretty fun evening, and I still missed things I would love loved to have seen, like Laurel Halo and Silver Apples.

It’s easy to be wary of the nostalgia and hype surrounding the return of Neutral Milk Hotel, but the fact is they put on a great show and were easily the highlight of the night. Countering their primary legacy as an emo-y folk act, it was great to see that they functioned as a raucous rock band as much as anything. Their excitement for playing again after a 15-year hiatus was evident, as was their gratitude for the crowd’s enthusiastic response.

Things got a bit moodier on Saturday, beginning with the electro-punk Bosnian Rainbows. Zola Jesus’ Nikola Danilova performed with a string quartet playing arrangements by Foetus’ Jim Thirwell, who conducted from behind a MacBook as he cued the beats. This seemed a completely natural setting for Danilova’s classically trained voice, and while the arrangements were occasionally repetitive, the set-up worked best during the more theatrical material. British drone ’n’ bass duo Raime executed a darkly atmospheric, bass-heavy set that rattled the seats in the small Diana Wortham Theatre, accompanied by eerie slow-motion films of a trench-coated man in various states of action. Though there had been some question about how it would go over, Godspeed You! Black Emperor in an arena absolutely worked, their music still maintaining a dramatic intensity that could make you forget you were in the middle of a few thousand people.

I peeked in on a couple of Gary Numan songs, and while Trent Reznor has been singing his praises of late, watching Numan perform makes clear his influence on Nine Inch Nails. Numan’s a pretty cocky frontman, strutting around stage like a middle-aged goth-pop Mick Jagger. As for Nine Inch Nails, I haven’t deliberately listened to any of their music since The Downward Spiral, but they loom so large I figured I should at least catch part of their set, and hung around for about half an hour. They have quite a light show, and that bassist is really good.

Sunday started out with the drowsy ambient soundscapes of William Basinski, then kicked into a much higher gear with South London soul singer Jessie Ware. Have you seen Fish Tank? From the balcony, Ware kind of looked like that film’s protagonist, and was similarly full of cheeky humor and attitude. She’s a fantastic singer, and, like with Danilova, it was a pleasure just to be in the same room with her voice. How to Dress Well has come a long way from his early hypnagogic sample- and vocal loop–based music, playing more or less straight blue-eyed soul backed by a cellist and keyboardist.
Darkside was the most buzzed-about newcomer, and the duo’s set stuck out as quite a bit different than everything else going on around them. They play EDM with guitar accompaniment that occasionally takes a bluesy turn, something like grafting Manuel Göttsching’s Ash Ra Tempel guitar solos onto his electronic music. Last year British house-pop duo Disclosure played the festival’s smallest club; this year they played the arena. Though their music hasn’t changed much, the change of venue made a huge difference to the atmosphere, and their stage presence was much more confident as they engaged with the crowd.

With the festival happening so close to Halloween, costumes were encouraged, and this year a costume contest was sponsored by Four Loko (presumably because few beverages are scarier than Four Loko). Also added to this seasonal ambience was the appearance of John Carpenter associate and horror/sci-fi soundtrack master Alan Howarth, performing excepts from his best-known works on the final evening. Accompanying the music were digitally tweaked scenes from such films as Halloween, Halloween II, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, The Thing, Assault on Precinct 13, and They Live. Howarth sat behind his keyboard for most of the set, but finished with a wailing guitar solo from that classic ode to urban dystopia Escape From New York while photos of him and Carpenter in the studio back in the ’70s appeared on the screen behind him. Following the scenes of terror and gore (and a bit of camp), it was an unexpected and surprisingly moving moment, and the final image I took from the festival.

Hopscotch Festival 2013

Review originally ran here.

You might have seen it written in a preview, or overheard it around Raleigh, NC a lot last weekend, but a popular line on Hopscotch is that it's the music festival created by people who really like music. That's obviously true of any music festival, of course, but the point seems to be that unlike other large festivals, the masterminds of Hopscotch don't have the muscle of an industry showcase, popular music website or powerhouse promotional booking company behind them. Rather, it was conceived of by employees of Raleigh's alternative weekly, Indy Week, in 2010, and has grown with each installment. This year saw 175 bands performing in 15 venues (not counting the numerous free day shows) from Thursday, September 5 through Saturday the 7^th.

The music lovers' tag also refers to the incredible amount of musical diversity available at the festival, and while diversity is the name of the game of most festivals these days, I'm not sure any other one would position as their opening act an experimental banjo player (Nathan Bowles), and make audiences choose as their final act of the weekend a member of one of the most influential rock bands of all time (John Cale), a long-defunct legendary band that helped pioneer stoner rock/sludge metal (Sleep), a hardcore band (Coke Bust), a neo-pigfuck band (Pissed Jeans) or an avant-psych-folk band that's been around for over 20 years (Charalambides).

There was a good deal of Americana, folk, electropop, EDM, old time music, rock, and a lot of things that fit somewhere in between all that, but as usual for this kind of festival, there was some grumbling about the limited number of hip-hop acts present. (Though it surely was difficult to complain about Big Daddy Kane filling in for Action Bronson when the latter threw his back out.) Avant-garde/out/whatever you want to call it music was represented very well, with acts like minimalist composer Charlamagne Palestine, several drone and noise acts, a couple of jazz sets, and Japanese noise merchant Merzbow, who was all over the place, collaborating with about half a dozen bands at the festival. Two free day parties hosted by record labels featured other acts in this vein, North Carolina's Three Lobed label hosting Thurston Moore's Caught on Tape duo with drummer John Maloney, and the North American debut of Desert Heat, one of the most buzzed about underground bands of the fest. The new-ish Philadelphia-based label Paradise of Bachelors hosted a day party at an outdoor amphitheater, joking about Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii vibes as people lounged about in the bright sun. Guitar heroes Steve Gunn and Chris Forsyth led their bands through fantastic sets, while indescribable outsider artist and musician Lonnie Holley puzzled and wowed the sleepy, largely hungover noonday crowd with his improvised keyboard playing and ruminations on flowers and the universe.

The headliners played the large open air City Plaza, Friday night's lineup devoted to the very now electropop/EDM sounds of Future Islands, Holy Ghost! and A-Trak, while Saturday was devoted to indie rock bands who started out in the '90s, The Breeders and Spiritualized. Attending these shows felt like a different festival altogether, as the other venues were primarily small clubs and bars, and even a church. There was also Raleigh's impressive if unfortunately named Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts, which features an intimate black box venue, a sizable Opera Theatre and the much larger Memorial Auditorium. About the latter venue, cult British artist Richard Youngs commented that he had never played half a stadium before. Youngs performed to an audience of less than 100 people in a venue that seats 3800, and as someone joked in a tweet, 80% of the audience was musicians. Though not very well known, and hardly a draw, the organizers obviously love his music, so he got to open for John Cale in the festival's largest and lushest indoor venue. That's Hopscotch.

     Thursday, Day One
  

Wolf Eyes w/ Merzbow

Surprise!

Angel Olsen

I'd heard Angel Olsen sing live and on record with Bonnie Prince Billy, and she has an undeniably striking, gorgeous voice. Cursory listens to her records left me a little cold, but that all changed after seeing her perform solo live. With riveting performances of songs like the personal and pained “Creator, Destroyer” and some very Leonard Cohen-ish thing of which I don't know the title, she was captivating throughout. I wish I had a picture for you but it was such a quite and intimate performance I didn't want to sully it with a clicking shutter. Anyone, she's been photographed plenty, and will be even more after her next record is released on Jagjaguwar.

Best Show to Catch Some zs

Grouper

It's no insult to say I nodded off a bit during Grouper's set, and I know other people did as well. Liz Harris probably wouldn't take offense, as her droney, ambient Grouper project is designed to sound like a hazy half-dream state. She kept motioning for the lighting guy to turn the lights down lower, which elicited a laugh from the audience who must have known what they were in for. So, not much to see, really (from the balcony I could barely make her out sitting behind a table onstage), but there was plenty to hear as we let the sound wash over us.

Highlight

Wolf Eyes/Merzbow

Stalwart Michigan noise dudes Wolf Eyes are always changing up their approach, even as at their base they remain committed to extreme sonic explorations. The recent addition of guitarist Crazy Jim Baljo has been nothing but a boon for the group, adding new texture through his freak out solos and power fuzz. Japanese noise legend Merzbow contributed the first of several collaborations over the weekend, joining Wolf Eyes for a lengthy encore. Not surprisingly, it was easily the most intense and loudest thing I heard all weekend. (Though word is Wold got pretty far out.)

   Friday, Day Two 

Pere Ubu's David Thomas

Surprise!

Protomartyr and Pere Ubu

I basically spent all Friday night in a church watching artsy guitar, drone and minimalist performers, except when I snuck out to see Protomartyr and Pere Ubu at Kings Barcade. I had to see Protomartyr after one of my festival companions read that they were compared to Pere Ubu and The Fall, and looked up a live video performance by them. “This can't be them,” she said. “It looks like a group of teenagers and their drunk uncle.” Hey, that does sound like The Fall! Well the band turned out not to be that young, but man, their singer sure does have a case of the Mark E. Smiths. The do sound like The Fall, and also reminded me a lot of Tyvek, which makes sense as both bands hail from Detroit. Great guitarist, a solid rhythm section and a goofy but charismatic frontman, these guys were the best surprise and probably the best straight up rock act I caught at the festival, along with...

Pere Ubu, led by a true Drunk Uncle, David Thomas. Anyone who has seen them live knows how cranky and unpredictable Thomas can be, and honestly I wasn't expecting much as I closed out my Friday night with the band. But it was an amazing show. The band was great, the sound was good, and Thomas was in a jovial mood (for him), cracking jokes about Sting and Billy Jo-el. They encored with “Final Solution” and “Heaven” before Merzbow came out to join them for one more song. Never thought I'd see that.

                                                                    

John Truscinski and Steve Gunn

Highlight

Paradise of Bachelors day party

New Philadelphia-based label Paradise of Bachelors threw a day party at an outdoor amphitheater and it was a blast. The label head joked about the Pink Floyd at Pompeii vibes as everyone lounged about in the sun. Rising guitar heroes Steve Gunn and Chris Forsyth each led their bands through fantastic sets, Virginia's Black Twig Pickers played some old time music, Spacin' and Birds of Maya brought the psych rock vibes and kicking it off was indescribable outsider artist and musician Lonnie Holley, who puzzled and wowed the largely hungover noonday crowd with his improvised keyboard playing and ruminations on flowers and the universe. It would have been worth the trip to Raleigh for the free day shows, and this one seemed extra special.

Lonnie Holley

The Legend

Charlamagne Palestine

It was kind of a tough choice between Charlamagne Palestine and Earl Sweartshirt and last minute Action Bronson replacement Big Daddy Kane, but I didn't know when I'd have the chance to see the minimalist legend again, and the guy's almost 70 years old and drinks a lot of cognac. (Later I heard Earl was having some sound issues, so I have no qualms at all about my choice.) Before playing, he always places stuffed animals in front of his piano, and has a bottle of cognac handy. The animals are some sort of totem or something to do with his childhood, I think, and he probably just enjoys cognac. He begins the performance with a high-pitched vocal chant and rubs the edge of his cognac glass to produce a tone, before sitting down at the piano to “strum” on it for 45 minutes or so. The constant runs he makes up and down the keyboard produce undertones, and it was pretty remarkable to be sitting in a church, everyone bathed in red light, 10 feet away from the piano making these sounds. Big Ears brought Philip Glass and Terry Riley to Knoxville, Tony Conrad has played here a few times, and it was a thrill to get to see a lesser known but seminal American minimalist performer.

     Saturday, Day 3 

Spiritualized's Jason Spaceman's got those old shoegaze blues again

Surprise!

The Breeders

I know it sounds stupid to say The Breeders were a surprise, but I hadn't listened to Last Splash in probably 15 years or more, and I honestly forgot how good it is. The band and crowd were both in a great mood and people lost their minds during “Cannonball,” as they should. Great song, great album, great band.

Highlight

Richard Youngs

The British musician is known for his unpredictable and prolific output (he probably has close to 200 recordings counting collaborations), and no one seemed to know what he would be doing at Hopscotch. So much of his stuff leans to the noisey/experimental side of things, it was kind of surprising when he took to the stage with an acoustic guitar and performed a hypnotic, 15-minute long version of “Spin Me Endless in the Universe” from his new album. He then performed a few songs a cappella, one in which he petitioned the audience to accompany him by imitating a sped-up wah bass and drumkit falling down the stairs. I'm sure we've all been in situations where audience participation can seem a little forced and cheesy, but despite the odd request, it ended up sounding quite nice and a little haunting. Youngs is a big believer in repetition, from his guitar playing to his chanted vocals, and there was a hypnotic feel to the entire performance which, excepting the audience participation part, had the large auditorium hushed. The most unique and affecting performance I saw all weekend.

John Cale

The Legends

John Cale/Sleep

What can you say about John Cale? Look on his CV, mortals, and despair. He opened with “Hedda Gabbler,” played a coupe of songs I didn't recognize, and had a really good stripped down rock band. But it all seemed too tasteful and civilized a way to close out this great weekend, so I went to Sleep.

What can you say about Sleep? A legend before their time, the stoner rock/doom metal band have influenced so many bands since they broke up in the late '90s that they don't sound quite as awe-inspiring and heavy as they did 20 years ago, when their classic Holy Mountain was released. Still, it was thrilling to see, and especially hear, them live, a sentiment shared by a packed out theatre which included members of Spiritualized, Scout Niblett and a hoard of revelers who didn't want the weekend to end. “No sleep 'til Sleep” was a sort of unofficial rallying cry for many at this year's Hopscotch, and they were the perfect band to close out the festival.

To be sure, Hopscotch draws a lot from the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle, and there were a lot of local acts on the bill that most out of towners had never heard of, let alone heard. So that 175 bands might not seem as impressive when compared to Pitchfork or Bonnaroo, but on the other hand there was a lot of opportunity for discovery, and there's something great about the fact that the festival organizers schedule two of their favorite North Carolina bands to open for the big City Plaza shows. This seems to be what makes Hopscotch so unique and beloved; it can draw established and respected acts that pack the city plaza or auditorium, but allows plenty of room for up and comers and more esoteric performers in fairly intimate settings. I am certainly not alone in saying it's one of the best music festival I've attended.

Cropped Out Festival, Louisville Kentucky

The fourth annual Cropped Out festival  took place in Louisville, Kentucky last weekend, September 27-29, and since it was a relatively inexpensive ticket ($40 for both days) and a reasonably short drive, my girlfriend and I decided to go. A total of 36 bands played on Friday and Saturday, and due to a late start on Friday and tooling around the city on Saturday, I saw around half of them perform. (Freakwater and Lambchop played Sunday night as a separately ticketed event, which I didn’t attend.)

Cropped Out was started by a couple of Louisville guys who look to be in their early to mid 20s, and as the name implies they started the festival to host bands that tend not to be invited (or don’t want to play) some of the bigger music festivals. This primarily means a lot of bands who’ve had limited exposure, and the lineup did lean heavy toward young bands doing the standard garage/psych/punk moves with guitar/bass/drum and occasional organ. Given the predominance of these kind of bands, combined with a Google Image search I did to get an idea of what the venues looked like, I thought we would be walking into a raucous rock and roll weekend packed with drunken kids crammed into filthy garage-like venues. That turned out to be about half right.

What I wasn’t expecting was how many middle aged and older people attended, and a kind of county fair-like atmosphere created by the presence of food trucks, record and crafts vendors, dudes skating and playing basketball, and generally just how laid-back the whole vibe was. There weren’t many children running around, but some teenagers were there with parents, and it seemed like a lot of family members of band members were there. There were three performance spaces: an indoor bar a little smaller than Pilot Light, an outside alley and a larger outdoor covered space. One of the best things about Cropped Out is that unlike most festivals, there is hardly any overlap of bands, maybe 5-10 minutes at most, and as the stages are literally half a minute walk next to each other, you could see every band if you so desired. Oddly, though the stages were so close, there wasn’t any real audio spill over.

As for the performances, the oldsters in general turned out to be more cutting edge and out there than all the young dudes doing the garage/psych/punk rock thing. I love a lot of these bands, but I doubt I would have made the trek for a weekend exclusively made up of them, as Pilot Light does such a good job of bringing these kind of acts to town, and Knoxville has a number of rock bands every bit as good as a lot of these acts that get nationwide exposure. (That being said, my favorite rock act of the weekend was Bloomington’s Thee Open Sex, who stop by Knoxville with some frequency.) But mainly I went for the weirdos, which happened to be mostly old guys. No acts was harsher or more intense than long running jazz terrorist trio Borbetomagus, no guitarist wilder than noise veteran Bill Orcutt, nobody’s songs more lustful and surreal than Mayo Thompson’s, and nobody’s freak flag flew higher than Endless Boogie’s, headed by old head Paul Major.

Bill Orcutt and Chris Corsano’s guitar/drum duo performance turned out to be a weekend highlight. Watching the looks on people’s faces as they took in what these guys are capable of with just guitar and drums was almost as fun as watching Corsano work his way around his kit as Orcutt sort of sang along as his fingers leaped around his fretboard. As Borbetomagus’ blistering set started I happened to be eating an insultingly hot pork belly banh mi, so my mouth, stomach, ears and brain were all on fire. (btw, the best food I had in Louisville was from that banh mi truck and a taco truck parked at the fest, and both were much more reasonably priced than the city’s raved about restaurants. No wonder Market Square restaurants are worried.) Borbetomagus’ twin sax and electric guitar trio are pioneers in using traditional jazz instruments and methods in a noise setting, taking the lessons of Ayler, late Coltrane and Brotzmann to extremes. Their physical involvement with their instruments was about as intense as any group I’ve witnessed. Wolf Eyes were working on a fantastic outdoor set in the vein of their more subdued, barely “noise” at all new album (though I did have to move toward the back as the bass vibrating my entire body started to become uncomfortable), when they cut it short about 25 minutes in after Nate Young made some punk rock remarks about the cops, who had apparently made some complaints about the noise. Wolf Eyes did, however, play a make up indoor set later that evening after the scheduled festival wrapped up around 1 a.m. Guitarist Steve Gunn’s sets are always a pleasure, and his newish rock trio is flat out fantastic. Shit and Shine brought the grotesque Halloween and bunny ears but only three drummers, instead of the more expanded battery they sometimes have. Their set seemed a bit short, too, and I have a feeling their trance stylings work better in an extended periods.

Will Oldham (sorry, I hate calling him Bonnie “Prince” Billy) and Matt Sweeney were the festival headliners, performing for the first time their 2005 contemporary classic Superwolf. Oldham is always a joy to watch perform, in part because he has such an odd physicality when singing. It’s as if he has to twist and contort his limbs and face to get to the right note or emotive quality he wants in his singing, which is probably why he favors loose shirts and short shorts on stage. The lust, longing and heartbreak that appear throughout the songs on the album proved a nice compliment to Mayo Thompson’s earlier performance of his comically bawdy album Corky’s Debt to His Father. It turned out to be a fairly lighthearted performance of such heavy material, but Oldham is a hometown hero, so the mood was pretty good all around.

In fact, this mood dominated the festival, probably in part because so many of the bands had Louisville connections. At times it felt like I was interloping on a big reunion, and a cursory look at license plates in the parking area didn’t reveal many other cars from outside of Kentucky. Probably the most heartening and impressive thing about Cropped Out, in fact, is the celebration of Louisville’s music scene. Not just in wider known acts like Will Oldham and Freakwater, but through giving other local bands a bigger stage. Juanita are a Louisville institution whom I’d never heard of them until last weekend, and their set was probably the most fun and festive. First forming in 1978, Endtables mean a lot to members of Louisville’s influential post-punk and post-rock scene, and they were given a prime spot. Younger bands were given lots of time, too. (It was a great reminder of how important “local” bands are to any city. An ongoing criticism of many Knoxville bands is they don't tour enough, or don’t try to promote their recordings beyond the city or are just lazy or apathetic or what have you. There's some truth to this, though not as much as some people seem to think; week long or regional tours can matter a lot to people with day jobs with limited vacation time and families. Even if these bands don't get around much, though, they can have a huge impact on the immediate community. Cropped Out does a good job celebrating this fact.)                  

The venue also made the weekend memorable. A gymnastics camp that has seen better days, American Turners overlooks the Ohio River. A camping area was set up behind the stages, and tents were lined up on the banks of the river, with a large fire in their center. At dusk, we walked out on the not entirely safe, rickety dock to watch the sunset, and heard a Stevie Wonder cover drowning out the keyboard pointilism of Louisville outsider artist Montag at Cropped Out. We looked down the river to see some sort of large khaki-clad picnic going on at Louisville Water Tower Park, and the contrast between the aggressively PA’d cover band playing at a restored city park and the underground sounds bleating out from the crumbling site of Cropped Out seemed to underscore the spirit of the festival and the music it supports. Hearing the cover band’s cheesey sax solos as a family took to the water in a small yacht from the Water Tower’s new dock, we were happy to turn away and walk along the rotting dock, back to the those who, by choice or chance, are Cropped Out.

Califone

I oversold the Anthology of American Folk Music connection in this article. It's a case where a pet conceit of mine ended up dominating the first third or so of the piece. Not that anyone had never brought up the Anthology in relation to Califone, and Tim Rutili himself has mentioned it as an influence, but it's been more in relation to their earlier albums. I remember how much of an impact the 1997 re-release of the Anthology had on myself at the time, and I recall reading a lot about it in the pre-Internet-dominated press. It also had an obvious on bands like Handsome Family and Califone, and arguably to a less obvious extent on bands like Pinetop Seven, Sparklehorse and others. (The acts who cover songs on The Harry Smith Project don't really count, as most of them delivered the more or less "po-faced" versions I refer to in the article. I'm thinking of bands whose entire aesthetic seems to have been largely influenced by these recordings, without obvious homage.) Anyway, I have yet to read an article or book that thoroughly examines the influence the re-release had on a younger generation of musicians, though it's something I've though about a lot over the last 10-15 years. Surely one is imminent, complete with interviews and reflections from the musicians and listeners, or maybe one is already out there and I haven't come across it yet.


In the meantime, I kind of shoehorned it into the Califone article, and Rutili certainly admitted how much he loved those recordings, so it works to some extent here.


From August 28, 2013 Metro Pulse

Cryptic Avant-Folk Band Califone Finds Clarity on Its New Album

Photo by John Adams

When The Anthology of American Folk Music was released in 1952, it had a great influence on the nascent folk revival of the time, as singers began to include songs from the six-LP set in their repertoire. Most of the recordings, from the years 1927-1932, had long been forgotten; Harry Smith’s compilation served as something of a revelation to those who heard it. 

A 1997 CD reissue of the set didn’t have quite the same cultural impact, but a few musicians found a different sort of inspiration from recordings that now seemed almost ancient. Rather than offer up po-faced covers of the songs, some bands drew from the sound and spirit they heard in those scratchy recordings of songs about failed love, religion, and the macabre, filled with out-of-tune voices and manic instrumentals. One such band was Red Red Meat, which would soon transition into Califone, a sort of solo project for Tim Rutili with assistance from a rotating cast of bandmates.

“I heard those records when I was a teenager, and I was always fascinated with them, along with things like Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, and those Lomax field recordings,” says Rutili over the phone from his home in Los Angeles. “All those American recordings that sounded like they were documenting folk music, rather than making a record. And it so happens the Anthology was reissued right around the time we began working with computers and trying different ways of recording.”

This fascination with music from, in Greil Marcus’s words, the “old, weird America” mingled with the possibilities offered by new recording techniques resulted in the cacophonous experiments of Red Red Meat’s swan song, There’s a Star Above the Manger Tonight. A more subdued take on this style would follow with Califone; while few people would call what the band does country, folk, or blues, elements of each are apparent in Califone’s music, filtered through a bit of an avant-garde sensibility.
Rickety percussion, droning organ, stark piano, field recordings, and a multitude of stringed instruments are commonplace. Even though 15 or more instruments might appear on one track, there remains a homey, insular feel to the records. (This is a band that titled its first album Roomsound.) Califone’s latest album, Stitches, contains a directness and lucidity that’s rare for them, the result of what Rutili says is his most personal songwriting yet.

“There was a lot more recording at home this time, in solitary settings,” he explains. “Also, this record needed more space for the vocals, because these songs are more about the words. This record was less about sounds for the sake of sounds—the music needed to serve the songs.”

Califone’s lyrics often possess a puzzling, cryptic tenor; at times it appears that Rutili’s mumbled words are there more for their sound than to communicate any specific ideas. (A sample lyric from their previous album: “A dog, an exorcist, and a bride drunk and trading/Drain like dream from wine-dark eyes.”) Throughout Stitches, however, there is a marked clarity to the vocals, and the lyrics are less abstract and collage-like. A mood of regret and vulnerability seems to hang over much of the album, and Rutili’s common Biblical references have proliferated, most apparent in the tracks “Moses” and “Magdalena.”

“I’m interested in thinking about why those stories last and why people continue to transpose them on their lives thousands of years later, why these archetypes continue,” Rutili says. “Magdalena was written out of the Bible by politicians, and that character has become a symbol. I’m interested in why someone was written out of history. The story of Moses is fascinating because he led people on this long journey out of slavery, but God said, ‘Okay, you get to see the promised land but you don’t actually get to go there.’ Haven’t you ever had a time in your life when you brought something through hell but then weren’t able to enjoy it? At some point everybody thinks they’re a victim and relates to that kind of struggle.”

Califone is currently on tour, primarily playing a series of living-room shows. Though dates in more traditional venues like clubs and museums will feature a full band, the house shows will consist of Rutili and longtime collaborator Will Hendricks, with one other member possibly joining a few dates. Rutili says the stripped-down performance style and comfortable setting are good for his new material.

“These songs are good to play in intimate settings,” he says. “They lend themselves well to these kind of shows. I love to play in these settings. We did one of these tours back in the spring and it was really interesting. I’m looking forward to it—every day is something new.”

Grimes says...

In the latest issue of Vogue Claire Boucher is quoted as saying "I don't keep up with the Internet. Everything that is Grimes is the product of my brain."

Kind of amazing to me, though I know it shouldn't be, that the person who maintains this, this and this says she doesn't keep up with the Internet. What an odd phrase, anyway, "keeping up with the Internet." Obviously Tweeting and posting blog entries and links (and, er, Link) on a near daily basis doesn't qualify as keeping up.

As far as the "product" of Grimes goes, and this has to include not just music but fashion, none of what she does could possibly exist without the Internet.

This shouldn't be taken as a criticism at all. I like Grimes and I'm curious to see watch her inevitably evolution into a bigger pop star. Just thought it was peculiar that someone her age who so obviously owes much of her aesthetic and popularity to the Internet doesn't see herself as keeping up with it. What would that entail, then, and what hope for the casual online visitor?

Another Side of Provincialism

Minutes after posting my last entry, I saw that an expat friend who now lives in NYC had posted a Facebook comment about how backwards Knoxville politics is, with presumably the county sheriff  in mind. Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones (I mean, even that name...) released a statement on the Knox County Sheriff website in reference to the county being denied entry into the 287(g) program, which reads in part, in reference to "illegal immigrants": “If need be, I will stack these violators like cordwood in the Knox County Jail until the appropriate federal agency responds.”

Such an intentionally hateful and provocative statement, combined with recent news that an Urban Wilderness recreation area and many homes are under threat from a proposed parkway expansion, along with regular and dependably ignorant comments from a certain state Senator, serves as a painful reminder of how provincialism looks to those outside the area in which you are immersed. A kneejerk response might be: Why should anyone take seriously any kind of culture or opinion that is spawned from a region that is so... I don't know, trashy?

Yes there are bigots and idiots everywhere, but this is the kind of stuff that ends up making the rounds online and grabbing the attention of people across the country, certainly more so than the umpteenth feel good article about Knoxville's revitalization. It is depressing living here at times, and it makes you wonder how much art and music have been created as primarily a complaint or howl against or satire of our provincial surroundings. I mean created by adults, not just a product of young adult angst.

I don't have much use for the Drive-By Truckers, have always found their music to be an overly self-conscious, less interesting take on ground already thoroughly covered by Lynyrd Skynyrd, Randy Newman, The Band and other superior acts who are their near contemporaries. But by chance I happened to come across this essay by Patterson Hood not long after I read the Sheriff Jones' statement, and it resonated. Sort of like in his music, Hood's making an argument that's been made repeatedly for years - basically the South is a complicated place that has a lot to celebrate and a lot to be ashamed of - and the sad thing is this argument will probably continually need to be made forever.

Some days you feel like celebrating, some days you feel like crying.

Provincialism

When I reactivated this blog again recently, I began by adding older articles and reviews I had neglected to post in the last two years or so. For whatever reason, maybe simply just a chance to reminisce about the very recent past, I added commentary intros to several of them, mentioning a few things related to each article. After I had written a few of these intros, I went back and skimmed them, and they seemed to reveal someone who was hopelessly provincial. I make the fact that I saw Sunn O))) twice or talked to Michael Gira seem like kind of big deals for me. And they were.

But I read so many different  blogs and websites from professional (or more or less professional) writers who live in large cities (mostly NYC, right?) and have much easier access to a wide array of cultural events, that I've become somewhat self-conscious about how anything I write might be viewed in the shadow of all these "more connected" views, just in case Google directs some more cosmopolitan-minded Sunn O))) or Matana Roberts fan to this blog.

And this is unfortunate.

Spend enough time online reading blogs and interacting with Twitter, Tumblr et al. and you may start to feel you're part of a larger community. And there's no denying this late in the game that online community is a a real and valuable presence, but certainly no more than people we see at the supermarket or post office several times a week who have never heard Swans or Skull Defekts, and would likely care less about them if they did. If you work in most offices, chances are you are not comparing Moogfest schedules with your co-worker. We're linked online to people through our tastes, our loves and passions even, but for most of us our day to day lives are largely spent interacting with people with whom we share very little aesthetic sensibility.

Spending a lot of time online can provoke an anxiety of keeping up and a need to show how aware you are, often to the detriment of what's happening on a more localized level. Points of view about larger cultural concerns from outside major cities are extremely important. While not too many people probably want to hear about how Earl Sweatshirt's new album hits you as a white Southern male, or about how the new Thee Oh Sees was the soundtrack to your latest quarry visit (or, I don't know, how Public Enemy schooled you on the farm), there's no question our understanding and responses to popular music is dependent on a large extent on our day to day lives. Too many websites try to mediate this a great deal, and all too often we're told how we should be responding to something before we even see or hear it, but as much as we like to pretend otherwise sometimes, where you're from still matters.

I know this is all obvious, but it is often easy to forget when we're all clicking on the same links.

Local flavor has never had much favor in band profiles or album reviews of nationally-known acts, but in the more personal realm of the blogosphere, more provincial takes can be some of the most unique and revealing writing out there. Obviously I'm not trying to imply everyone in NYC or L.A. or London has the same point of view, and obviously each of these cities has community voices within them that get drowned out by the larger homogenous culture, but there's no question that by and large the tone of the coverage of and attitude toward popular culture is set by people in these cities.

As far as Knoxville culture is concerned, there are some interesting locally-oriented blogs. While my own cultural interests rarely coincide with what's usually covered in Inside of Knoxville, I know of no other blog or covering at least an aspect of the local arts and music scene to this extent. I'd love to see someone cover Pilot Light, Poison Lawn, Birdhouse, Ground Swell and other such venues in a similar fashion. There used to be more of this, like the good folks over at The Wigshop and other blogs, and I dabbled in it for a bit, at least some live reviews, but frankly I don't go to shows nearly enough anymore. I'm not sure why no one has been able to maintain such a site. There could be a point of view I might be imagining but I'm sure is held by some that the lack of this kind of coverage is part of what makes this part of the Knoxville music scene so unique. To my knowledge, there is no ongoing public record of the shows and occurrences in these venues, other than the random Tweets, status updates, Tumblr posts, Instagram photos, and Snapchats, which are by design anti-archival. There is a beauty to the more ephemeral nature of this kind of documentation, where you really HAD to be there to, and any context after the fact must be assigned by the viewer/reader, but narrative can be a wonderful thing, too, even if it is inevitably loaded with agenda and bias and misinformation.

But I think I've gotten a bit off topic. All I mean to say is, let's celebrate a new kind of provincialism as an attitude that is stubbornly embedded in and dedicated to the communities we live within, but is open to being informed by and engaged with the wider culture.

Swans

I didn't write much over the last two years, but revisiting these articles, I'm kind of amazed how many musicians I've admired for so long that I got a chance to speak with in that time. I had interviewed Michael Gira via email for the 2009 Big Ears festival, but speaking with him via Skype was both exciting and nerve wracking for me. (Plus I had to so it at 5 in the morning to do it, as he was in Europe at the time, and I had been out late at some Pilot Light show.) He's such an intense guy, and so many of these interviews are just formulaic pieces where the interviewee answers the same questions he or she has answered over and over. I know I didn't throw too much new at him, so I was pretty excited that when talking about Knoxville he brought up Cormac McCarthy. Sure, McCarthy and Agee get mentioned to the point of irritation around Knoxville, and in Metro Pulse, but they are not a bad legacy to have. Anyway, I had to mention that in the article, because OF COURSE Gira likes Blood Meridian. What I didn't mention, and is no way pertinent to anything but was kind of sweet, is that when my miniature dachshund started barking he asked what kind of dog it was. I told him, and he said he had a dachshund when he was a kid and what a great dog it was. Awwww.

Google tells me some of his quotes from this article are in here somewhere:
http://younggodrecords.com/press/98-swans/1383-more-collected-swans-press-quotes

and I think this whole story might be in here, but Young God's layout was giving me a headache so I stopped looking: http://younggodrecords.com/press/98-swans/1375-more-assorted-swans-press


From Metro Pulse

Michael Gira Raises Swans From the Dead to Play Their Most Challenging Music Yet

October 17, 2012

It wasn’t the biggest news in the entertainment world, but to a certain segment of the population it was a big deal when, in 2010, Michael Gira announced Swans would reform. The band had gradually built a sizable cult following as it evolved from its brutal, industrial-leaning origins in New York’s early-’80s No Wave scene—where Gira would often go out of his way to make audiences uncomfortable—to a more somber, atmospheric unit concerned with songcraft. Following a somewhat acrimonious ending in the late 1990s, the bandleader had made it clear in interviews (and with the title of the band’s final album, Swans Are Dead) that fans should not be optimistic about hearing any new music from the group. 

But after 10 years of fronting a new project, Angels of Light, Gira decided to assemble some of his favorite sidemen and resurrect the Swans name. Since former members of Swans appeared on Angels recordings, and some Angels affiliates are now in Swans, one might wonder what distinguishes the two groups in Gira’s mind.

“Well, for one thing, with Swans, words aren’t as crucial,” he explains via Skype while on a tour stop in Katowice, Poland. “Which is good, because words don’t come as easy as they once did. Swans’ lyrics are more like a directive along the way.”

Fitting, then, that the band opened its 2010 album, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, as well as shows on its ensuing tour, with a song titled “No Words/No Thoughts.” This taciturn tendency is even more apparent on Swans’ new record, The Seer. Much of its two-hour running time is taken up by lengthy instrumentals, and when lyrics do appear they often take the form of repetitious phrases that have a mantra-like quality. The sustained intensity of the instrumental passages is primarily a result of performing new songs live, Gira explains, where they would get longer and longer as touring stretched on.

No one would ever accuse Gira of having a lax work ethic (his discography adds up to nearly 40 albums, and he has run the Young God record label for many years), but he seems especially energized by the new incarnation of Swans, and they have toured relentlessly. He credits this enthusiasm in large part with the group of men playing alongside him.

“These guys are absolutely committed to the sound. This is the best band in terms of morale I ever had with Swans,” he explains.

Gira was keen to capture the sound of this band in the studio while they still had momentum from the road; in the press release for The Seer, Gira pronounces the album “the culmination of every previous Swans album as well as any other music I’ve ever made, been involved in or imagined.”
Guest musicians on the album include one-time Gira protégés Akron/Family, Grasshopper from Mercury Rev, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of Low, and Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O. (Former Swans/Angel stalwart and ex-Knoxvillian Larry Mullins is notably absent. Asking Gira about the percussionist leads to him mentioning Mullins’ East Tennessee roots, and eventually into a discussion of Cormac McCarthy and Suttree. Not surprisingly, Gira is a fan.)

The most surprising guest, however, is Jarboe, Gira’s former band/domestic mate, who adds backing vocals to two songs.

“It was great to have Jarboe along, albeit in a limited way,” Gira says, though he admits there are no immediate plans for her to rejoin the group. “It was sort of baby steps, to see what happens.”
The long list of guests doesn’t distract from the well-defined sound of the group, however. You’re unlikely to even place some of the contributors on the first few listens, and no artist really rises above the collective din of the music, with the exception of Karen O’s disarmingly gentle vocal on “Song for a Warrior.”

As powerful as their latest albums are, Swans’ natural habitat seems to be the stage, and their live shows can be epic affairs, with sets running to two hours and reaching an impressively punishing volume. His face turning red while veins pop out, or his whole body swaying violently back and forth while the band hammers away behind him, Gira comes across as more committed to music than most performers half his age. (He’s 57.) You might worry about him if he didn’t appear so ecstatic up there, if he didn’t seem to absolutely need to be doing this.

With more press and positive reviews than they’ve ever received, Swans are often playing to larger audiences than they did during their initial run, which is somewhat odd considering they’re creating some of the most challenging music of their career. This band is still obviously not for everyone, though, and when asked what he makes of all this attention, and if multiple half-hour album cuts and endurance-test live shows might not be something of a turn-off to a potential broader audience, Gira has a frank answer.

“F--k that shit,” he says. “I don’t care. I’m conscious of my mortality and don’t want to waste my limited time on Earth. I want to try my best to make something magical. If people care and want to come along, that’s great. This is for them.”

Sunn O)))

I can't even tell you how excited I was to interview Greg Anderson. At the time of this interview, Sunn O))) was one of my favorite band of the last ten or so years, and they had just released their best album, Monoliths & Dimensions. Conceptually, sonically, aesthetically - I loved everything about this band and though they were one of if not the most exciting thing I'd heard in a long while. I had seen them previously at the Primavera festival in Barcelona, but that was an outdoor show for a huge crowd, and it suffered a bit for that. In September of 2009, I saw them two days in a row, at the Bijou Theatre in Knoxville and at the Orange Peel in Asheville, the latter time with Faust.  They were great in both venues, the Bijou's stage better for atmospherics and Orange Peel's bottom end better representing the sound.


From Metro Pulse

Maximum Volume Yields Maximum Results

September 23, 2009

There may have been stranger successes in popular music, but you have to admit there’s something exceptionally peculiar about the ascendency of drone/doom/ambient metal band Sunn O))). In the last few years, Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley’s project has been the subject of countless articles in major international newspapers, magazines, and websites, including two lengthy pieces in The New York Times. Not bad for a couple of guys who dress up in robes to play slow-motion riffs that hit an ear-damaging 130 decibels in a live setting.

“I’m constantly surprised that people are into our music,” Anderson says from the Los Angeles offices of Southern Lord, the avant-metal label through which he releases Sunn O)))’s albums, including this year’s critically acclaimed seventh official full-length, Monoliths and Dimensions. “It’s challenging, and it requires an attention span and patience to get absorbed in it for it to work like it’s supposed to.”

Starting out as a sort of tribute band to drone-metal pioneers Earth, Sunn O))) began as a simple exercise in volume and duration, playing molasses-slow riffs and feedback through massive Marshall stacks and the vintage Sunn amplifiers from which the band takes its name. (The O))), a recreation of the company’s logo, isn’t pronounced.) Their first two albums were released in 1998 and 2000 to little notice, but when the group began performing in the early ’00s—cloaked in hooded robes, shrouded in fog, and backed by walls of speakers—a cult following began to build.

“When we first started we thought of it as a studio project,” Anderson says. “We had no intention of playing live. But we discovered [that] to really capture what Sunn O))) was about, that physicality of sound we were getting off on, it can’t be produced on CD or vinyl. We had to do it live. There’s no substitute for volume.”

The presentation and loudness made the band a sort of curiosity, attracting crowds of various tastes to their shows. Though Sunn O))) is rooted in metal—both members played in more traditional metal bands—Anderson says he doesn’t really feel they’ve been accepted by many metalheads. Behind the ceremonial theatricality and volume fetish is a fusion of the iconography and symbolism of black and doom metal, with the sound distilled to a primal, powerful roar. It often seems like a lesson in the reduction of the genre rather than a celebration of it.

“The music was unorthodox, so we thought it would be interesting for us and the audience to have something ominous and mysterious going on,” Anderson says. “The robes and fog machine made it easier to get into the kind of music we were doing.”

If all of this sounds a bit high-minded or maybe has a whiff of Spinal Tap about it, know that the Anderson and O’Malley appreciate the somewhat ridiculous nature of the endeavor.

“Stephen and I laugh a lot, and we know there is something absurd and ridiculous abut the amount of equipment and volume,” Anderson admits. “But they’re the tools that help create this mood that can be ominous and dark. I mean, the music isn’t funny, it could never be, but it can get absurdly heavy”
Sunn O))) has grown more adventurous with each release. They’ve collaborated with the elite of the noise and experimental-metal underground, and they’ve worked with several American and European black-metal vocalists—most frequently the cryptic intonations of Hungarian Attila Csihar of Mayhem, who will be joining the band on their current tour, along with keyboardist Steve Moore.

On Monoliths and Dimensions, Sunn O))) expanded their sonic palette to include a Viennese women’s choir, avant-garde trombonist Stewart Dempster, and arrangements by composer Eyvind Kang. Perhaps the most unusual contribution comes from Sun Ra and John Coltrane sideman Julian Priester, who can be heard to most striking effect on the 16-minute album closer “Alice,” a song dedicated to Alice Coltrane. That track alone seems to have elicited more purple prose from critics and bloggers than any single Sunn O))) album, and if you hear it you’ll understand why. Resembling modern composition more than metal, the track winds down with a duet between Priestley’s trombone and a harpist in a finale so improbably lovely it must have surprised even Anderson and O’Malley. Though the doom duo’s drones are present throughout the album, grounding it in their by now familiar sound, it could be they’ve reached some sort of pinnacle with the Sunn O))) brand, and one can only wonder where they’ll go from here.

For all that’s been said and written about the band, you can really find out all you need to know by attending one of their shows. If nothing else, you may marvel and envy the almost primitive boneheadedness of this simple idea they struck upon, and be amazed at how far they’ve advanced it. Give yourself over to the volume and spectacle, and try to connect with a fading quality Anderson keeps coming back to in our interview: mystery.

“That’s kind of a personal crusade we’re on,” he says. “With everything being available on the Internet, there’s no mystery with music and bands anymore. There are thousands of bands playing 10 songs of verse-chorus-verse stuff in jeans and T-shirts every night. And I’m not saying we’re better, or that stuff doesn’t need to keep happening. I still go to these shows and love them and I will till the day I die. The bottom line is we want to create something unique and memorable.”