JHONI JACKSON

Something and Nothing All at the Same Time: The Changing Folk of A.A. Bondy

2011-11-23T16:59:00.009-05:00

Feature published in the November issue of Stomp and Stammer

People turn to folk music for meaning. These days, whether the melodies are memory friendly or barely there, the genre's go-to method is metaphors that allow for individual interpretation. More than any other lyrical approach, that technique leaves every song open to individual personalization. But what if you can't break apart the words? What if you can hardly pick out a single phrase, and you're not sure if you're even getting it right? Can you still get the same satisfaction?

A.A. Bondy thinks you can.

His first two indie-folk works, 2007's American Hearts and 2009's When the Devil's Loose, took a more straightforward route. You can pick out memorable lines, like on the former's "There's a Reason": "And it's love that's tearing them down/ And it's love that turns them around." On the latter's title track, you get, "Oh, the living and dying, how easily you bruise/ Oh, Delia, don't go 'round when the devil's loose." It's that kind of potentially gut-tugging stuff that's the bedrock of folk. It's been the basis of Bondy's songwriting – until Believers.

Like the first two LPs, Believers was released on Fat Possum. But on this effort, Bondy's one-liners are scarcely understood. Instead, he's shaped a certain mood, a relentless sentiment. It's desolate, cynical and romantic, too – all without relying on lyrics.

It's his most lush record to date. There's reverb, for one, like on "The Twist," a dark and vocally-layered track that's deep with doom. For the most part, guitars ring like hopeless echoes. Bondy's made the soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic world without saying much about it.

"It's like I made the record and I'm still at a loss in a lot of ways," Bondy says. "I don't really know what the songs explain entirely, to be honest."

Bondy recalls his life of late as somewhat nomadic. In the accompanying press notes for Believers, he describes the LP as "the last couple years in one long exposure."

Ted Newsome

"I just mean as a reflection of the constant travel and constant movement," he clarifies. "That starts to define everything. For a more stationary person to go to Europe or to get into the ocean, those things are kind of extraordinary. And then for me, for the past few years, they weren't. It's the longest period of touring and the most touring I've ever done. You're always either coming home from or leaving for someplace. Nothing ever settles all the way. I think that was just a way of me trying to say, maybe give an impression of, what something was like – without being able to articulate what something was like."

Even when he's not in the middle of a stint of shows, Bondy doesn't sit still for long. He's been a wanderer, to some extent, since his childhood. He was born in Louisiana, then moved to Alabama at 13 years old. He was in California to record for a while, but actually lives in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. He lived in Mississippi as recently as a year-and-a-half ago.

Maybe he's always been this way, but his demeanor also seems somewhat determined by the persistent traveling. He's doesn't readily give concrete responses and comes off introverted, like he's been alone with his thoughts so long he's forgotten how to interact with the world.

But that doesn't mean A.A. Bondy doesn't care about people. It's the opposite, really. Like most singer-songwriters, he wants listeners to have an emotional reaction to his music.

"At best, [Believers] captured whatever mood I was in at the time they were written and hopefully, [the songs] were engineered in a way that could give that impression to someone else," Bondy says. "And that those songs would find somebody, you know what I mean? That whatever it was that was going on in that piece of music or that arrangement kind of reflects something in somebody else. I guess that's the hope of it."

There are only a couple of songs on Believers with decipherable lyrics, like "Surfer King." But even on that track, which is likely the album's lightest and breeziest cut, the lyrics you do get mold a murky, morose territory: "Out on the tide/ Strangers all are drowning by/ Under eclipse, I wait for your kiss/ With the beating of all/ These idiot hearts." It's a gorgeous, red-sunset song, but let's be honest: It's damned depressing.

Bondy doesn't give the impression that he's self-deprecating, though. He wrecked his motorcycle on Memorial Day last year – he lost control when not "paying as much attention as [he] should have" as he rode through a construction site. He couldn't play music while he recovered – he says he couldn't wrap his hand around a guitar neck. That could easily cause a downturn for an emotionally delicate person, but Bondy just calls it "weird."

"It was a pain to put clothes on, or get in and out of the shower, that kind of stuff. I was missing maybe six inches of skin from my shoulder and a lot off my kneecaps...the back of my knuckles. It covered enough of me that it was annoying."

Bondy's been playing music longer than we've known him as A.A. Bondy. Back when he went by

Scott Bondy (his real name is Auguste Arthur Bondy), he fronted Verbena, a noisy alt-rock outfit, in – you guessed it – the '90s. The disparity between that era-specific sound and his current is stark, but Bondy doesn't really see it that way.

"Chuck Berry will be Chuck Berry until he goes into the ground, but some of us want to do different things," he explains. "I wanted to do something where I could be responsible for the whole entire piece of music by myself, and not have to have a Marshall guitar amp and cabinet.

You just go from a big busy machine to...a more natural wooden one."

Ted Newsome

That's simplifying it for sure, particularly for a person who ultimately transitioned into making gorgeous songs where gentle slide guitar wanes behind soft-spoken croons of "hear your haunted ocean song" and "all the hours tracing skin" ("Drmz"). Maybe the lyrics could be transferred, but the subtle, ghostly vibe is something altogether new. It's not even on American Hearts or When the Devil's Loose. And though Bondy admits Believers is a fresh output, his only real comments about it are that it's "more cohesive" and "probably a little more out there." I told him it was more abstract.

"You're right," he laughs, then pauses. "I don't know what the reason was that we wanted to do something different or wanted to have songs that were a little more open. The meaning could be a little more meaningful. I just wanted to say something and not say anything all at the same time."

King Louie and the Fire Under His Ass

2011-11-23T16:47:00.003-05:00

Feature published in the November issue of Stomp and Stammer

The last thing you'd expect a garage-rock icon like King Louie to be doing is driving his dad to Rite Aid, but that's exactly what he was doing on a Sunday night in October. He'd have to call me back, he said.

"Yeah, my dad...we work at a hardware store, and I was just trying to get him to the place to get what he needs," he told me about 30 minutes later. "I'm just tired, man. Sunday's one of those days where all week, you make plans on Sunday because it seems like an easy day, far away, to do stuff. But when you actually get there, it's like fuck. I can't believe I told everybody I'd do all this shit today. It's the only day you can recharge your batteries."

King Louie – born Louie Bankston – is the kind of guy whose productivity is mind-blowing. He kicked off in the late '80s, then a few years after founded the Royal Pendletons, then the Persuaders, then the Bad Times, which included Eric Friedl (of the Oblivians) and Jay Reatard. He was in the Exploding Hearts too, then a number of self-dubbed acts: King Louie and the Loose Diamonds, King Louie One Man Band and now, King Louie's Missing Monuments. He's worked with or shared a stage with Alex Chilton, King Khan, Paul Rotzz (of Die Rotzz) and Harlan T. Bobo, to name a few.

Sure, all that over a period of more than 20 years. Since his start, he's released something – whether an EP or LP of his own or as a guest on someone else's – every few years at minimum. He certainly didn't chisel out a cozy niche for himself overnight. Still, a resume like that is enviable, and an undeniable guidestone for any upstart punk rocker in their right mind.

Funny enough, the New Orleans born-and-raised musician works at a hardware store. His mother's shop, to be precise, and his dad works there too. Couple that with all his rock 'n' roll endeavors, and you've got 15 to 18-hour days, Louie says.

Jhoni Jackson

"I bust ass as much as I can with my family's business. They're getting older, I'm getting older. It's getting harder to just say, 'Hey, I gotta go to Europe for five weeks,'" he explains. "But as long as I kick ass and really get done what I need to get done, I can go out and do whatever I need to do musically."

He almost sounds like a teenager who needs parental permission post-homework to go out on a Friday night. But Louie's almost 40 years old. And somehow, he's doing more than just chugging along. He's relentlessly barreling around the bends of garage and punk like his ass is on fire.

"I play drums in a psychedelic band – that takes a little of my time. I'm doing the one-man band again – that's taking more time," Louie adds. "It's just: Keep on moving. If I get a half-hour of sleep before rehearsal, I turn on the air conditioning in the practice space and I sleep for half an hour, then I get up. I drink a fucking Red Bull and I keep going."

While Louie's best known for his power-pop-inclined tunes, he encountered a snag in that genre when he "lost some good friends." One can only assume he's recalling Jay Reatard's death early last year, but he did say "some," and he didn't elaborate. He'd already formed Missing Monuments sometime in August of 2009, and had written the band's entire first LP by the end of the year. The following April, Douchemaster Records dropped a 7-inch, then the full LP, Painted White, in June.

Louie hadn't taken much of a break, especially considering the Royal Pendletons covered the Rolling Stones' "Tell Me" on a Norton Records split with the Bo-Keys in 2008, and he lent help on harmonica to Guitar Lightnin' Lee's 2009 EP, Call Up the Band. But he had – and decidedly so – taken a break from crafting pop-driven jams on his own.

"It was something I had to come back and prove to myself, to me, that I could do and would still be happy doing," Louie says. "'Cause it was always in the back of my mind: Are you gonna do it? Are you gonna do it? Can you do it? And I think I did that. I came back, I'm happy with the record, I did it the way I wanted to do it. Now I'm getting beyond that and I'm working with this group and I'm glad to be a part of a group again."

For an overachiever like Louie, a couple-year lull qualifies as a hiatus. If he's calling it a comeback, then Painted White is a perfect, powerful return. It's heavy enough on guitar to earn it a certain rock 'n' roll cool, but its melodies are classically power-pop. There's not an individual track unworthy of a single release. In particular, "Girl of the Nite," "(It's Like) XTC," and the title track are stellar songs that straddle straight-forward, polished pop and the rawness of garage like all good power-pop should. So from the sounds of it, Louie's progress hasn't been held up by any stretch.

"I've always believed that I just have to keep moving forward," he says. "Sometimes it's not the healthiest thing because I should just deal with my problems right in front of me, but I had to move forward. So I kept creating music because that's what I do – create music. When the time was right, I just went up to the tree and picked the fruit, and that was it."

With his current group, King Louie is moving forward in a personal way, too. He's dropping the "King Louie." The band is now called simply Missing Monuments – Benny (bass), Aaron (drums), Julian (lead guitar) and Louie (rhythm guitar and vocals).

"I've always wanted to get in a band with a bunch of my friends. It just so happened that it kind of worked out for me in a different way, being King Louie and having a band," he says. "When we first started with the Missing Monuments, it really was just me writing songs and showing everybody how the songs go and everybody falling in line, whereas the second year we really came into all being a band."

I recalled a conversation with Mark Naumann of Atlanta's Die Slaughterhaus in which he mentioned releasing Louie's next project. It was Missing Monuments apparently, but the deal went to another Atlanta label, Douchemaster. He didn't explain why Naumann didn't land the releases, but opted for a more positive spin and detailed why he opted for Douchemaster. Before going into it, he paused to order his thoughts chronologically. It was Jesse Smith of Gentleman Jesse and His Men, a staple of both Atlanta music and Douchemaster, who lured him in.

"[Jesse] came out and just embraced this type of music that was a little more songwriting and pop sensible. I really liked his group; I saw what he was doing. When I decided to come back into the mold and do this, he was just right there," Louie recalls. "He saw us play and he called Bryan [Rackley of Douchemaster] and said 'Bryan, I just saw these guys play, Louie's new band - put out a 45.' So we did a 45 and we just started there and they liked it. Then Jesse called me one day at work and said 'Who are you doing your album with?' And I said I don't know Jesse, who am I doing my album with? And he said 'You're doing your album with us.' Pretty much, within about 30 seconds, I was like, you know what, I like what happened with the single, I liked what he was doing, I liked where we were going. And I really enjoy being part of the Douchemaster roster. I enjoy being part of that roster and although it's a rock 'n' roll label, the writing with the bands that they're doing, it seems to fall into place with us. I'm not trying to stereotype a genre or anything like that, but it seemed like the right place. I felt solidarity there with how my music will be presented to the world. I thought that they could do it right, and I have no complaints."

Louie has a tendency to be long-winded with his explanations, but it's appropriate given how long he's been a player in garage and punk. His plight is interlocked with other people's histories and it's all been so meaningful to him. It's probably hard to keep it all straight. Every move, every memory – even if recent – seems to demand a meticulous recollection.

Despite how scrupulous Louie is with his tale-telling, the origin of his nickname, King Louie, isn't well known. But it might be because there's not much reason to it.

In high school, his band released on vinyl while CDs emerged and Nirvana and grunge lorded over music. A reporter from the school paper was interested, and Joe Pestilence (he's still around too) told them who was in the band: On bass was King Louie.

"When I got the newspaper, I opened it up and it said King Louie the 69th," he laughed.

The title stuck, and quickly spread.

"It was funny because the couple years after the King Louie name stuck, I would book pretty much all my shows. When I would want to go out of town...they didn't have Facebook or all that crap in '91, '92, '93, '94...if you wanted to book a show you had to call them and wait for them to call you back. I'd get these phone calls at work like, 'King Louie, is there somebody named King Louie here?'" he says in a tough-guy voice and chuckles. "And I'd be like, 'Oh, that's for me.' I'd book the show, write it down and hang up the phone. Whoever was working the cash register would be like, 'Who the fuck's King Louie?'"

Louie never tried to shake the name. He embraced it, and latched onto a rock 'n' roll lifer persona he'd also never shake, even as he nears 40. He says he stays home a little more and has to "choose his battles" these days, but output-wise, he shows no sign of letting up. We'll be hearing from King Louie until he's six feet underground. Really, he's blatantly set on outlasting everybody.

"Where some people are trying to run away from the power-pop tag, I'm really not," he says. "Because when it comes to rock 'n' roll, I can rock 'n' roll your ass six ways to fucking Sunday. And you're gonna fucking give up and be dead by Tuesday."

Feist is in it for Herself, You Just Happen to be Listening

2011-11-02T13:55:00.002-04:00

Feature published in the November issue of Stomp and Stammer (cover story)

Feist tiptoes along a shaky tightrope. For a lot of artists haphazardly grouped as the Canadian-American's peers, plummeting from that wire into a pit of maudlin music at some point in their career is easy – and most often fatal. The pathway to sugary and sentimental seals up right behind them, and they can't go back. Some musicians start out that way, and comparisons to Feist were always blasphemous. (Don't believe me? Just listen to Feist's Pandora station. Sheesh.) But there are plenty who start out as promising – like Regina Spektor, for one – and regress into a contrived condition, misled by a mission for mainstream appeal.

On the surface, 35-year-old Leslie Feist's music has the potential to be that saccharine. Birds and cicadas and moons and even secret hearts are the stuff of Feist's music. Love songs are by no means off limits. It's not a stretch to say that, on the three albums she made before this year's Metals, it's all been one big love song for Feist. She's explored the delightful derivatives, like utter content ("Mushaboom"), to the more melancholy residues, like perpetual self-analyzing ("How My Heart Behaves") and hopelessness ("Limit to Your Love").

Her third LP, 2007's The Reminder, was especially beloved by both critics and consumers, and even earned her a Grammy nod. It's been four years since then. The need to repeat the avalanche of acclaim on Metals, released in September, felt urgent. If Feist were ever going to fall victim to an earnest want to gratify, Metals would have been it. She's always been a crowd-pleaser. But there's a catch: It's merely a happy coincidence that we like her music.

"I guess [the albums are] similar in that I approached [Metals] from the same kind of place in myself, where I wrote for myself and I wrote with the same sense of curiosity and, I guess, selfishness," she laughs, "to kind of please myself."

Feist could have squinted in the blinding achievement of The Reminder. She could have squirmed, buckled and rehashed pop standouts like "I Feel it All" and "1234." Those singles specifically were influential in amplifying her appeal.

But that's not what Feist is about. In fact, Metals is generally free of anything like those gems. It's got a charm all its own.

The album is a fist-in-the-air take on the same brand of rich folk Feist has been cultivating throughout her career. "The Bad in Each Other," which leads the album, could rest comfortably on the fringes of any Feist work if it didn't crescendo to an almost anxious clamor of horns and drums in its final 40 seconds. "How Come You Never Go There" boasts the subtle sauciness ofLet it Die's lounge-y tunes, but blunt lyrics and breathy accents take the sass to more brazen territory. Near the end of Metals, Feist tricks you into thinking she's coasting into a lullaby on "Comfort Me," then shakes you awake. The track isn't a pretty-please request, it's a renouncing of sorts: "When you comfort me/ It doesn't bring me comfort actually."

Surprisingly, Feist's newfound grit – the most integral reason why Metals is a triumph – came from looking back, not anticipating the future. "I sort of reclaimed guitar playing for myself which...it's always been something I've been engaged in, but I sort turned back up," she says. "I was just motivated by different parts of my past and different types of bands that I've played in. That's sort of where it ended up."

Even some of Feist's most fervent followers only know her group work through Broken Social Scene, the Canadian indie-rock collective of which she's still a member, albeit mostly passively now. Apparently, however, that's neglecting some vital moments in Feist's chronicle.

"Even before Broken Social Scene, I was in a band called By Divine Right where I was just a rhythm guitar player. Before that, my first band was a hardcore band from my hometown, and that was quite loud and quite different from Let it Die or The Reminder or Broken Social Scene," she explains. "At this point, there's a long and mottled past that I can draw on."

Taking from that noisier period and reintroducing herself to guitar was what made Metals "louder and brasher and bigger," she says.

Feist hasn't completely rekindled a more riotous spirit, however. She's never been categorized as a hippie by any means, of course, but she's still as nature-driven as she ever was. Metal is, after all, a natural element. Is that what inspired her?

"[The title of the album] came after [the music], for sure. I feel like sometimes this album-making can be a little bit of an invisible process. It's not that concrete," she says. "It's taking things from the air and moving them into shapes and making them into songs, then ultimately, even when you're pressing play on the album, it turns to air and is going back into to your ears. Again, it becomes something that's not concrete and tangible. They're ideas and sound, but it's not necessarily something that you hold in your hands. I've often worked in a kind of more idea way, or a more conceptual way, and I really wanted this record to have a more concrete, sort of physical basis within its title."

Considering the financial flourishing The Reminder must have provided, it's hard to imagine that Feist didn't consider the toll an album without a clear-cut hit would take on her bank account. Apple, it's fair to assume, pays well. But again, that's not the point. Feist isn't writing jingles, or even singles for DJs to remix into club jams, although that's certainly happened with a bevy of her more beat-friendly songs.

"I didn't work for that to happen the last time around," she clarifies. "It's sort of funny if anyone was ever to aim at having some type of hit. It's a pointless endeavor because you can't really guess. There's sort of a formula, if you're in R&B or something, you can imagine that there might be a formula to make a banger (laughs). I don't think in the world that I live in that there's a way that I could be sure, and I'm not really aiming at a kind of mass appeal, dancefloor type thing. It's a little more subtle."

"A Commotion" is the most likely candidate for a pop hit, but it's too wild and frantic to be welcomed by the masses. Lyrically, Metals takes a few more risks than its predecessors in terms of sentimentality. "Bittersweet Melodies" repeats its namesake, followed by "like a sweet memory." Luckily, that's one of few banalities on the album, and it's positioned as a relief between more intense and abstract tracks. Feist frequently relays unambiguous, clear-cut messages on Metals than on albums past, but she counters that simplicity with meticulous instrumentation to either exaggerate or soften the message, like on the final track, "Get it Wrong, Get it Right." It's a slower-paced song made featherweight by breathy backup vocals that match Feist's. It's almost a quiet anthem of acceptance that offers closure to the album, and maybe even the world-weary.

"I suppose it's more of an observation of just the stumbling and finding your way and recovering, and you know, when you kind of take a fall and you recover," Feist makes clear. "Basically that cycle, and how best intentions can keep you grounded. Keep the intention that you want to eventually get it right, even if you're stumbling around, and you don't feel like you are getting it right, you're still motivated by the right thing at the core."

Where Feist has made a misstep – as a solo artist, at least – must be too minute for memory. For the fourth time in a row, she's gotten it right, all while catering only to herself. And while there may not be a lot of hooks to hang onto, Metals is still very much magnetic.

Wax Idols: The Hether Fortune Show

2011-11-02T13:20:00.001-04:00

Feature published in the October issue of Stomp and Stammer

It's rare to figure a musician will be important before their first LP even comes out. To be fair, it took a full listen to Wax Idols' No Future for it to be clear. But it's probably safe to go ahead and call it: Hether Fortune is a badass, and she's going to be important.

Katie Miller

She emits the vocal oddities, those sporadic screech accents, of Karen O, but can croon even more sweetly. And Fortune's just as imposing as Karen O seemed around Fever to Tell. It's probably a comparison she'd bemoan, but no matter, Fortune's got the same too-cool but just weird enough magnetism that helped gain the Yeah Yeah Yeahs a place in the mainstream.

Even more impressive about Fortune is a sense of staying power, of a boot already planted firmly in a crevice of rock 'n' roll. Maybe we didn't know there was a vacant spot, but she's going to kick it in until it's hers – whether we like it or not.

But thankfully, we'll probably like it. On No Future, out mid-October on HoZac, Fortune showcases a wide range of already near-mastered niches. There's the proto-punk guided "Hitman," some girly Go-Go's tinged New Wave on "Gold Sneakers" and even a pair of dark, brooding retreats, "Nothing at All" and "Human Condition."

And best of all, it's all pretty thoughtful. Unlike some of her punk-rock counterparts, Fortune presents a raw but comprehensive emotional spectrum, giddiness and introspection included, with a clenched fist. Turns out, Hether Fortune's got more than solid melodies and repetitive riffs on her mind. She's smart – street smart even, as dumb as that sounds. She's self-aware, cynical and curious all at once. That petulant type of progressive attitude gives Wax Idols a bit of grit – like she's carved this plan into sheets of sandpaper with a dirty knife.

"I've never had any trouble, but I guess I'm pretty thick-skinned," Fortune says of her Oakland, Calif., neighborhood.

Some of Fortune's harshness seems to come from her past, but she appears resilient by nature, too. But she's not cold.

Earlier this year, Fortune tended to a preteen girl she found wandering around, covered in cuts and bruises, a few driveways from her house. She was barefoot and tiny, she says, and was hyperventilating.

"She had these red welts turning to bruise marks on her back," she says. "Her mouth was all puffy. She looked like she'd gotten her ass beat."

Fortune ended up taking the girl, Jessica, into her house while they waited for the police. The girl's mother had "laid into her" after her sibling, who'd she'd been watching, fell off a bed. She told Fortune she was having an asthma attack while her mother taunted her with an inhaler.

"It was just a really heartbreaking, horrifying situation," Fortune says. "She was a really sweet girl, and I eventually calmed her down enough and soaked her feet, made her tea. And we watched Pretty in Pink, which she'd never seen. I gave her some stuff of mine, a backpack and stuff like that, while we waited for the cops to come. And then they took her, and that's it."

Fortune says her own mother would "smack" her, but only when she "deserved to get smacked." it "was never a life or death situation," she says, clarifying that she never feared her mother and loves her. Even with a history like Fortune's, that's some kind of test of values: Do you help the girl or avoid getting involved?

"She was a little thing. I don't even want to think about what would have happened to her if anyone else found her," Fortune warns. "Especially out here."

At just 23 years old (she'll be 24 this month), Fortune's surprisingly brimming with an old-soul feel. She's got an unprecedented amount of depth for her age – either that, or a youthful naivety that makes her adventurous. Less than six months ago, she was an active dominatrix. Her interest was sparked from reading Marquis de Sade, and the aesthetics of S&M in general.

"I've always been into that, the way it looks. But I've never been sexually turned on to that kind of thing, so I never thought about being a dominatrix ever," she admits.

Until the cosmos aligned, that is. Various friends had suggested, almost persistently, that she could earn a good deal of money – and that she'd be good at it. While on the phone with one of those pals at her job (at a consignment and record shop), a shopper chimed in. She offered help connecting her with the right people.

"I just felt this sort of weird, sort of cosmic thing," she says. You can almost hear her eyes widen. "That's too weird – this girl happens to be in here, randomly overhearing my conversation."

Fortune was then trained by a woman she calls her Dom Mom, and together they came up with her new dominatrix alter ego: Mistress Eden. But, like a few other titles in Fortune's life, it was eventually revoked. Because she was "too good looking."

"That's literally what happened," she explains. "I intimidated the other girls. They thought that I was going to steal all their clients, then leave and go independent and ruin their business."

In tune with a lot of things about Fortune, her stint as a dominatrix is startling. (Although, Fortune assures, it's not technically sex work and anyway, in Oakland, it's common. She even knows a few rent boys.) But the fact that she's outspoken about it isn't a shock – she's not shy in the least. She's avidly vocal through various mediums, especially Tumblr and Twitter.

Her latest outlet is a zine called Orgazm Addict, which she's compiling herself but has several contributing friends helping out with. One of them is Alexis, a crossdresser who's made a sort of personality for himself in California (and probably elsewhere, for more informed readers). Another name in the mix is Jennifer Finch of L.A.'s defunct L7. And, of course, Fortune squeezed in a tale or two from her dominatrix days. What zine would be complete without that?

It makes sense, though. Fortune seems fascinated by sexuality and gender. A lot of the zine is about personal sexual experiences. A question about feminism led directly to the subject.

"I feel like it defeats the purpose of feminist to focus on the fact that you're a woman all the time," Fortune says. "That's my personal philosophy. I don't think it helps anything to constantly reiterate that you're a woman."

She then details related beliefs about the "ultimate androgynous being."

"I think men and woman are derived from one human species that, at one point in time, was both male and female. And I feel like that is the way it will be again in the end. Everything in between is just a bunch of Christian hubbub," she remarks.

Religious or godless, however, there's more than just hubbub between life and death. Fortune spoke in an obsolete, heart-like-a-bone way, but again – she's not cold. "Gold Sneakers," likely the peppiest cut on No Future, is a love song about an ex who died in January last year: Jay Reatard. She'd stayed with him in Memphis during the previous Gonerfest until he left for tour shortly after.

"I wrote him this little note thanking him for his hospitality and all the nice things he did for me, blah blah, and tucked [it] into one of his sneaks," Fortune wrote in an email.

In a follow-up response, she clarified that the lyrics state "a few SIMPLE things I should have said." She wrote that she should have "addressed...concerns, told him that I loved him and that I was there for him if he needed me. Instead of just saying, 'I had a lot of fun! Thanks for everything, you're awesome, blah blah."

Katie Miller

"Dead Like Me" is about Reatard as well – she wrote it right while coping with his loss, which for Fortune meant no sleep, "devastating dreams about him," an inability to eat and little desire to leave her house. That's about the time she was kicked out of Hunx and His Punx.

She'd met Seth Bogart, frontman for Hunx, through a roommate (Alexis, the crossdresser, to be precise). While she "felt like [she] was dead too," she explains, she was pretty unbearable.

"I never fucked up onstage or did anything wrong, but I was an emotional disaster. Offstage, I was a total bummer to be around," she says. "[Bogart] just couldn't handle it, and he kicked me out."

Though Fortune wasn't with the late singer at the time of his death (they "weren't romantically supposed to be together," she says), he was someone she knew she'd be friends with forever.

"I just felt really close to him," she says, "so when I lost him, I was fucking psychotic."

But getting fired, essentially, was the impetus to ramp up progress with Wax Idols. She'd just started Blasted Canyons, a heavier, brattier punk band, "for fun." Fortune mainly drums and sings. While that band's still going, it's Wax Idols that seems truest to who Fortune is. The LP grazes all sorts of emotional territory, slowing for contemplation on occasion but maintaining a nose-in-the-air bravado all the while - just like Fortune does.

"My friend has been telling me for years that I should write a book," she laughs.

Committing absolutely to that now would be slightly preemptive, but her friend's probably right. She should start outlining a rough draft.

Gonerfest

2011-10-09T15:46:00.004-04:00

Four-part review published in Stomp and Stammer (online), Sept. 22, 2011
All photos by Jhoni Jackson

DAY ONE
The trek from Atlanta to Memphis, where Goner Records holds its annual multi-day punk and garage festival, falls somewhere between six and seven hours by car. It was within the first 30 minutes that my buddy and I realized we'd planned poorly financially. After hotel costs, we'd have about 200 bucks total to share for four days. And that's not counting gas money.

But it's worth it, we reminded ourselves. Neither of us had been to the fest before, and it was high time for me at least – it's in its eighth round, and I've known about it for a couple years. We'll spend every last cent and come home penniless, we were sure, but we'd have some good stories to tell. After all, the lineup included well-known names like Ty Segall and Missing Monuments, a bevy of new bands we'd never seen and some rejuvenated old timers like Icky Boyfriends, Brides and the Gories.

So we rolled the windows down, blasted the bands we were most excited to see through my rattling speakers and picked up a Lil Caesars $5 Hot 'N' Ready to stave off hunger during our pilgrimage. We arrived with rumbling stomachs and wind-whipped hair to Motel 6, but wasted no time - we dropped our bags, called a cab and went to Goner Records, where the festival kicked off.

Goner Records is tiny. It's narrow, covered in posters and absolutely packed with records, most of them of the punk and garage variety. There's a nice homage to Memphis and its historical contributions to music, however, in its well-curated soul section. On the first day, you couldn't access much without inadvertently rubbing rumps with a stranger. Turns out, that was a motif we'd experience more intensely that night.

We'd made it to the store about an hour early, but I started growing restless. There was a white-columned gazebo around the corner where Gonerfest banners were hung, but nobody seemed to setting up. There was a band playing on the sidewalk a few doors down, but I knew it wasn't the Limes, the Memphis band charged with the inaugural set. It brought to mind a nearly decade-old debacle that happened in Atlanta when a friend and I went to see our first in-store at Criminal Records at its previous incarnation by Aurora. We wanted to see Lucero, but missed them completely because we weren't sure where to go. For once, I'm glad to be so far away from my teenage years.

Limes eventually played in the gazebo. The fest booklet dubbed the first two sets part of opening ceremonies, but no torch was lit, a ribbon wasn't cut and no canons were fired. The start was a bit slow, honestly, but in hindsight, it was better that way. Easing into a weekend of rowdy crowds and extra-late nights was the right choice – thumbs up, Goner dudes.

So it wasn't a nutty initial set, it was just the lo-fi Limes churning out songs that were, funny enough, like a version of Lucero that's far less whiny and better executed. Finally, I got the open-air show of gritty but lazy twang-rock I missed when I was 18.

Jack Oblivian took the stage – er, gazebo floor – next. The garage-leaning Memphis musician's band the Oblivians, defunct since the late '90s but touring sporadically, includes Eric Friedl, co-owner of Goner Records. Jack's Rat City was just released on the imprint. Notice a theme here?

The evening shows at the Hi-Tone started around 9 p.m. with Sex Cult, a newer Memphis band that's said to have members of Bake Sale and Magic Kids. They haven't recorded anything, as far as I can tell. But it's not like I can Google this troupe of noisy punks. They've got one of those unsearchable names that pulls up the most awful shit, from dirty deviance to some crappy electronic music. I'm pretty sure they don't care, though.

Hans Condor (top left) plays rubbed-raw catchy punk that's made nuttier live by a wild-haired frontman with a penchant for bum-rushing the crowd. The sea of increasingly sweaty folks parted when this guy jumped offstage. He writhed around on the floor energetically while everyone looked down, then got up and plowed through everyone, only to do it again on the opposite side of the crowd.

Mikal Cronin plays with Ty Segall and, unsurprisingly, plays like Ty Segall, too. Though Cronin's sound is a far cry from the alt-rock shift of Goodbye Bread, Segall's latest LP, the two still have a lot in common: Hushed calms between furious outbursts and a decidedly melodic approach to punk. It's the kind of stuff that, in a push-and-pull mass of people, is hard to grasp onto live if you're hearing it for the first time.

There's another stronghold at Goner besides the Memphis bands, and it's an unlikely one: Australia. Eddy Current Suppression Ring, a Goner band, is from there – but that's not where the label stopped its investigation of dingo-land. Royal Headache(above, right) proved worthy of its late-lineup slot with a performance and look completely opposite of its sound in the best way. Yeah, Royal Headache plays punk, but it's way more lightweight than the four-piece's crazy-eyed, shirtless frontman would imply. And – this is something I'm still confused by – his wide-legged pants and white running shoes really threw me off, but are probably the reason I remember the band's set so well.

I almost wish I'd ended my night with OBN IIIs (left), the Austin band that played second to last. Hands down, the best band of the day. They won me over by teetering on a fine line between fun and frantic, both in sound and show. It's teeth-clenching punk, but repetitive and bouncy. Ringleader Orville Neeley looks almost too clean-cut to front OBN IIIs –- he sports a haircut your grandma would approve of. But he actually gives a general frenetic, relentless performance, the kind where veins start popping and people start pushing.

Pushing is an understatement for what happened next. Ty Segall (bottom right) closed out the night, and came close to closing out my entire festival experience. Posted up at the front, I was smashed from the start. Not even halfway through the set, which actually centered on cuts from the slower-paced Goodbye Bread, a giant girl knocked me to the floor. When I pushed her up, an effort that came from both reflex-style rage as well as necessity, she turned around and palmed my face like a basketball. We }exchanged a few words, and I thought it was over. I turned around to see her shoving my friend, and my friend shoving back. Luckily, it didn't come to blows. But if it had, it would have been two smaller girls against a single massive and drunken one – I think we would have won.

With all the possibilities for fights and hordes of people falling on top of me, it was hard to actually hear the show. I'd seen Segall in Atlanta, but it wasn't like this. Not by a long shot. But despite my grievances – and my fully-bruised and cut legs that still haven't healed – the show was pretty stellar. I mostly heard the crowd sing, not Segall, but it's sort of an amazing spectacle to be in the midst of a sweaty mass of folks with stars in their eyes for a band that most people – outside of Goner, of course – have never heard of.

DAY TWO
Everything ramped up a bit on Friday. The afternoon shows started at 2:30 p.m. at the Buccaneer Lounge, a dark-and-smoky dive with plenty of room outside for a stage and a generous amount of Gonerfesters. There was a $5 all-you-can-drink PBR special, which created a separation between the music and socializing. To one side of the always-long line, people watched bands. On the other, they hung out – or recuperated from last night, more likely.

I woke up feeling like I'd been jumped, so needless to say, I slept in a bit. But we made it in time for Cyclops (left), a duo that featured one of the girls from Midnite Snaxxx on drums. I couldn't make out who the guy was – their caveman costumes and eyeball accents made it difficult. Anyway, it was sort of a joke band, as far as I can tell.

Sets were about 30 minutes long and back-to-back. Coasting (right), a two-woman band that shares drummer Fiona Campbell with Vivian Girls, was a highlight. Their generally sweet, delicate harmonies (except when they shout) paired with distorted guitar and pounding drums is decidedly DIY, which makes it a treat to hear live when some of that fuzz is cleaned up.

The Down Under group made another appearance with Straight Arrows, a super-fun, pop-inclined outfit that rounded out the daytime lineup. They've got a blend of punk and rock going, but most importantly, it's all head-bob inducing.

Friday night was a mixed back of solid, younger bands and somewhat obscure and highly anticipated '80s and '90s acts. Oakland, California's girly trio Midnite Snaxxxand Portland's Mean Jeans (below, left) provided the party punk. The latter, who'd played Atlanta earlier in the week, got particularly insane. They mostly write songs about partying, so naturally, the Hi-Tone was much like a lawless house show for 30 minutes, with beer cans flying and Silly String being sprayed on everyone, the band included.

Of all the reunited bands, Icky Boyfriends (below, right) was the most fun to watch. In part because the songs are off-kilter and almost absurd (see "Frank's Mom"), but mainly because singer Jonathan Swift held lyrics on a small piece of paper, maybe even a flier from the fest, throughout the set. Swift wasn't as fit, to put it nicely, as he was in the '90s, and every time he dropped his handwritten help, someone from the crowd would hand it back to him before he could bend low enough to grab it. It was certainly giggle worthy, but the band was probably similarly smirk-worthy in its heyday. Swift sings slowly enough for lyrics to be discernible – and lines like "I am rubber/ You are glue/ And when I wanna get fucked up/ I like to sniff you" from "No Duh" are entertaining enough to carry the show, even when the band trips over itself every few minutes.

The Gories (below, left) brought the blues onto the bill – with a heavy dose of garage, of course. The Detroit trio wasn't well-liked during its run throughout the '80s, or so I've read, at least. But everyone seemed to appreciate and ardently listen to them.

It was a true blessing that the crowd calmed, actually, because I was in for the latest night of the weekend. I'd been handed the same flier multiple times – Acid Baby Jesus, Cheap Time and Peach Kelli Pop for $5 at Escape Alley, starting at 2 a.m. I've spent many a night at the Star Bar, where headliners don't start until 1 a.m. sometimes, but I'd never attended a show that had opening acts slated for 2 a.m. I told the blonde girl who handed me the flier that I was going because I really wanted to see Peach Kelli Pop. She replied, "That's me!"

So we took a cab over to the venue, which was mostly empty despite the scheduled event. Some friendly guys outside offered us what seemed like a never-ending supply of 10-ounce Bud Lights. One of them was Bennett Foster of Memphis' resident weirdo-pop band, Magic Kids. I turned around to what was empty space minutes ago and a sudden horde of people was in line for the show.

Acid Baby Jesus opened, which I suppose in the case of such a wee-hours show is more like headlining. Like Mean Jeans, I'd seen Acid Baby Jesus that same week. The Athens, Greece guys play a brand of punk that's, although it sounds like a cop-out comparison, a helluva lot like the Black Lips. But that's not a bad thing – not for me, at least. I was glad to see them again, although I wondered if I gave them some sort of déjà vu by showing up at two of their American shows.

Nashville's Cheap Time (right) took the middle slot, serving up the classic kind of punk that's simple, but bratty and brash. The venue ran out of beer by the end of the set, and the thinning crowd reflected that misfortune. Apparently Escape

Alley is more of an art space and typically doesn't sell alcohol. That's what some drunk locals told me, anyway.

I realized how little Peach Kelli Pop, a cutesy kind of punk band, had to offer when they asked the dwindling crowd to stick around for 15 minutes, because that's all it would take. The band is mostly Peach's (she also goes by Kelli and Allie – who knows what her name is), and though she had enough songs for an LP, the set list wasn't a showcase of it by any means. She had a couple of the Mean Jeans guys playing too, which was confusing because she's Canadian. But considering the incestuous nature of all types of independent music, it makes a little more sense. I'd met the tambourine player the night before, but I figured she didn't remember – she was rolling around drunk on the asphalt with some New Yorkers I was talking to. Short set and that girl's (likely) hangover aside, I was glad to see them play "Do the Eggroll." It's one of those cheeky tunes you find on a random mix (a Going Gaga sampler, in this case) and end up including it in all of your own mixes for the next six months.

DAY THREE

It goes without saying that I felt like the inside of a dying liver on Saturday. I was still sore from Friday's show, and now I was bogged down by the booze, too. I didn't drink anything but water for several hours while at Murphy's, the site of the afternoon shows.

The Goner guys really pushed the limits that day. Bands played every 30 minutes, both inside and outside the venue. You had to leave each set a little early to get close enough to see, and for someone trying to take photos, that means a lot of "excuse me" coupled with a lot of stink eye. I managed to see almost every band. I hate that I missed anything, but I didn't have much of a choice – I missed one set just standing in line for the bathroom.

Inside, Outdoorsmen and Kitchen's Floor were favorites. The former hails from San Francisco, while the latter from Brisbane (more Australians!). Both played snarling, in-your-face punk that manages to come off as cool instead of cold and abrasive. Outside, King Louie's Missing Monuments (left) took the top spot. He's getting older, but the power-popper's going as strong as ever. He almost knocked my camera with his guitar at one point – it was intentional, and a nice gesture to a photographer, really.

At our final night at the Hi-Tone, my friend and I decided to try the bar's signature slime shot. It was blue and looked poisonous. In a way, it was. Downing it after a few PBRs was a terrible idea, and by the end of the night, I was visibly sloppy. Very professional of me, I know.

But that was close to the end of the night. I watched Bridesannihilate a set like they'd never called it quits before 2000, though the Chicago band's onstage banter bordered on arguing. It mostly seemed like it was all in good fun though. They joked that they were getting along better, but likely because they hadn't spent a lot of time together.

Melbourne's Deaf Wish (left) was probably the heaviest on spacey and strange, and stood out like the sore thumb of the entire festival. It was in the best of ways, however, and a break from straight-up punk was a breath of fresh air. This four-piece is like an experimental version of indie rock that dabbles in a variety of noisy genres, and ends up sounding like something altogether new. I heard a lot of folks say they liked them best. I wouldn't go that far, but they were definitely entertaining – especially the female guitarist's erratic back-bending.

Shannon and the Clams (right) are always a treat to watch. The '50s pop throwback motif never gets old, especially when the band throws a little glitter on it. Wearing matching (glittery) suspenders, the two singers – Shannon Shaw is also a Punkette in Hunx and His Punx – sang like few others did all weekend, save for the soulful afternoon set from Rev. John Wilkins (above, right) and his three daughters, which happened earlier that day. (I didn't mention it because I only sat through a couple of songs. Too many songs about Jesus caused me to make a break for it.) But there's definitely still a punk underpinning to the Oakland band, what with the hiccup-like accents and occasional growls.

A rejuvenated Human Eye (left) closed out the evening. I'd watched the video for "Chew Raw Meat" beforehand, so I knew I was in for something odd. (It's basically those chattering teeth wind-ups running amok, and looks like it's ripped from an old VHS.) Frontman Tim Vulgar calls it alien punk, which is a fair descriptor. If you thought the now defunct Clone Defects, Vulgar's former band, were weird, imagine that oddity three-fold. With a giant eyeball onstage and blue paint on his face, the show was more of a fist-to-the-face spectacle to a soundtrack of harsh guitar and sci-fi sights.

We'd met up with a friend who lives south of Atlanta, and he shacked up with us at the Motel 6 – which saved all three of us some cash. He repaid us at the show, and the two of us stupidly took our individual $20 and went straight to the merch tables. I grabbed a Brides 7-inch and two buttons, one for Shannon and the Clams and the other for Human Eye. I tried to get a slice of pizza too, but the Hi-Tone had stopped serving. (Side note: Why doesn't Atlanta have a venue that sells slices during shows?)

We heard of a Quintron and Miss Pussycat show happening in the park adjacent to the Hi-Tone, but both my friend and I were spent. My friends and I went back to Motel 6, and while they hung out a bit longer, I crashed – hard.

DAY FOUR

A couple of guys we'd met over the weekend informed us that last night's impromptu park show was shut down within minutes. Phew! I wish it'd happened for everyone else, of course, but I'm glad I didn't miss it.

After clearing out the hotel – we'd made a pretty gnarly mess since Thursday, including a buffet of Asian takeout that was starting to spoil – we headed to Goner Records for the final two shows.

We had a couple of hours to spare before the shows, so we ate lunch at Young Avenue Deli, a giant restaurant and bar that's remarkably unlike a deli. King Louie was at the other end of the bar while we chowed down on cheap (but tasty) vegetarian chili. My friend and I budgeted for the last time, and figured out a way to pick up a few more records and a light lunch. She snagged a '60s garage compilation and I got an OBN III's 7-inch. On the way to my car, a pair of guys offered us free 7-inches from their band White Crime. They said they were supposed to play with Predator (they accidentally called them Predator Visions) a few nights ago at 529, but it didn't pan out. To be honest, I haven't checked them out yet, but they promised that we would "love that shit."

We watched Two Tears, a one-woman band that made up in showmanship what it lacked in depth of sound. We stayed for most of Jam Messengers (left), a bluesy act which is fronted by a nutty, vocally woman-lovin' older guy. He climbed the gazebo, did splits and wrestled with his button-up blouse (he'd cut the sleeves off, but it was frilly enough to be dubbed a blouse) before what was the sparsest crowd of the entire weekend. It seemed everyone else was just as exhausted as we were. We dropped off someone we'd met at the Memphis airport, then headed back to Atlanta.

The money issue became an actual issue as we approached the city. With the gas tank on empty and about $10 between us, we barely made it home. Human Eye was playing the EARL – we hoped we'd make it, but we didn't. The bar had already made last call, but Timmy Vulgar saw me and offered me some of his vodka. He'd remembered me from a brief chat the night before.

Everyone took notice of my heavily bruised legs. I really looked like I'd gotten beat up. A few friends who'd been to Gonerfest before recalled how drained they were by the end. Damn right, I was drained. And broke. But it was worth it.

Lucy Dreams: Decatur's Golden Kids

2011-09-15T11:46:00.002-04:00

Feature published in the September 2011 issue of Stomp and Stammer

Lucy Dreams make pollution-pretty pop that's most closely comparable to Slowdive's English shoegaze, albeit a bit happier take. But that couldn't be what the five-piece had in mind when they crafted the intricately layered tunes on Vivian, their debut LP out this month.

Jhoni Jackson

That's probably because the five-piece is so young, and they're still in the early stages of playing music knowledge catch-up. They made a near-perfect album rich with lush harmonies and elongated synth that's supported by a pedal-loving bedrock, but did they even have a clue it'd turn out so damn good?

Not a single one of the Lucy Dreams kids is of legal drinking age. Guitarist Nick Lynds, a 19-year-old Georgia State sophomore, is the oldest. Three members are stepping foot on that college campus for the first time this semester as straight-outta-high-school freshmen. And Dani Lyman, a reserved Jane Birkin lookalike who plays keyboard and sings mostly back-up, is still a junior at Decatur High School, where the rest of them graduated from.

At such an early stage in their music careers, it would seem they have a lot to learn. But despite ranking as mere toddlers musically, they've actually figured a lot of it out - and fast. Within a year of playing, they're releasing an album on Pretty Ambitious, an up-and-coming but promising label that counts Mermaids and abby gogo on its roster. And Bon Allinson, who worked at Little Azio with bassist Graham Tavel a few years ago, has been behind them since their demo days. Allinson asked them to play their show at 529 last December.

"They put on a Sonic Youth album and analyze the whole album," Dani says laughingly of Graham and frontman Lloyd Wingard. "Then they'll put on another one."

A technical misfire at their second-ever show – and their biggest to date – is one reason to speed up the seriousness. It was an opening slot at a sold-out Black Lips and Deerhunter show that served as Eyedrum's last event at its MLK Jr. Drive location. Naturally, the crowd was sweaty-thick and there were plenty of media folks roaming around.

The trouble started as soon as the band arrived at the venue, as they watched Deerhunter – a favorite band shared by a few members – sound check.

"They were sound-checking for an hour and a half, and we thought it was because they're such a big band," Lloyd says with a shrug.

Once they were told they needed to check – Lloyd says they stood around like "really really awkward teenagers" until then – they realized there was a setup issue. The vocals didn't work at all, and the crowd was filling in.

"I sang in the mic like I was actually singing...and halfway through our set I just gave up on the mic and was just making a lot of noise, because I know people love noise," Lloyd says.

Not only were the vocals nonexistent, but they'd also had so many name changes that the Black Lips' Cole Alexander thanked them incorrectly onstage. Oops.

Lloyd recalls that "the most amazing part" of that experience, however, was Deerhunter's Bradford Cox appearing onstage to try to figure out the issue midway through their set. Drummer Jacob Armando remembers being asked to hop on the bill quite fondly.

"I had the flu and I went around in the street running barefoot, like, 'Fuck yeah!'" he says, arms waving above his head.

Clearly, they've recovered from that snafu. Considering their impressionable ages, a screw-up like that could have been a detrimental blow – the quitting kind of blow. Not for these kids. They've trudged on tirelessly since, playing shows and readying for the release of Vivian.

While the boys sit outside Suburban Lanes where a few bands are playing a show, random people shout at them to come inside. One guy, a stranger from an Alabama band that already played, even sits down with them. He asks what kind of music they play.

Atmospheric noise-rock, noise pop and shoegaze are all thrown around. Then someone says to keep the "S word" out of the interview.

"I like shoegaze, and I play my guitar with the tremolo pedal, but we're not shoegaze," Lloyd says. "There's too much of this man right here," he says, pointing to Jacob, "for it to be shoegaze."

"That's the thing I love about this band," Nick says. "Everybody has their thing. All the songs reflect that. We all work together to create the song as a whole."

Nick wasn't part of that whole from the get-go, though. He more or less weaseled his way into the band by posing a super-fan. At a coffeehouse show last winter, he was jumping up and down, wildly twirling a T-shirt above his head.

"That was him!" Dani and Jacob exclaim in unison when I describe the sight.

Nick's desire to be part of Lucy Dreams stemmed somewhat from jealousy – and that he really did like the music so much. He'd graduated from Decatur High two years ahead of the boys and didn't know them well. He was still playing with Wowser Bowser when Lucy Dreams appeared on the Black Lips/Deerhunter bill. That's when he "took notice."

"I hatched this plan in the back of my mind to pester them until somehow they asked me to join the band," he says. "I never thought it would actually happen."

The timing wasn't too bad, actually. Nick hopped on once the band was better solidified and going by a permanent name. They were Circa '90s (a reference to a "loud, Butt Face grunge pedal" they use, not their birth years) then Buffalo Buffalo (an homage to the average English nerd's favorite sentence) before finally settling on Lucy Dreams. They came to the decision by way of a shared Google document they all contributed to – something they don't realize is humorously indicative of their generation.

"We were so done, we were so done, more done than you can ever convey," Graham says of the naming process. His dog, Lucy, gave him the final push needed to finalize the name. "I saw [her] and she was fidgeting on the sofa and I was like, 'Lucy Dreams.'"

Graham called members individually to get their opinion, somewhat tricking them into agreeing on it.

So if Lucy is a dog, then who's Vivian? It's their recording engineer's baby.

"Vivian was born while we were recording our record," Graham explains.

There's little on the album that reflects how they've dubbed it. And the name Lucy Dreams – it suggests they're a psych act, but the hazy, indecipherable vocals and sluggishly cheerful melodies are only distant relatives of that sound.

They're probably some of the most together-sounding teenagers out there (both on record and live), but they've still got some ironing out to do. Questions about touring raised some issues – "we'll figure it out" was the consensus. The guys all have college schedules to work around now, and of course Dani has two more years at DHS.

Like Nick, Lyman wasn't part of the initial lineup, though she joined early on. One night when a few of the boys were "hitting the dub real hard" (clarification: drinking Evan Williams), Lloyd decided he needed a girl with "no strings attached" to harmonize with. He knew Dani from Rock and Roll Revue, an annual Decatur High School program where student musicians audition, are arranged in bands and perform cover songs.

Tim Song

"It was at like two in the morning and Jacob messaged me," Dani says.

She agreed to play with them at SkaterAid, a yearly charitable skating and music event in Decatur. They ended up practicing together every week, and Dani almost quit.

"I think I kind of did want to stay in, but we were practicing on Fridays and I wanted to hang out with my friends and shit," she says. "I just decided to stay. And then we opened for Deerhunter. And these guys are my best friends now."

Dani says once she's done with school, she wants out of Decatur. Jacob says he felt the same way until he graduated and got his own place. True, it's hard to tell what the city's really like while your parents are still hovering over you. All of their opinions of Atlanta will change once they hit 21.

It's possible they won't be together by then, but let's hope they at least keep playing, even if that means they branch off. Producing such good music at such a young age – with so short a grooming period to go on – implies something even better is on the way.

White Mystery: Rock 'n' Roll Dream Team

2011-09-15T11:37:00.002-04:00

Feature published in the September issue of Stomp and Stammer

Anybody who says rock 'n' roll is dead isn't listening. Not to White Mystery, at least.

The Chicago brother-sister duo is oozing with everything that makes the genre so cool and cathartic: intensity, grit and know-how. They've got it all, and they're prepared to punch you in the face with it.

Frontwoman Miss Alex White is a 25-year-old powerhouse on the guitar who's been shredding on a Rickenbacker since her early teens. Drummer Francis Scott Key White, 24, pounds the drums so furiously they rattle away from him constantly. And on both self-released White Mystery LPs – the eponymous 2010 debut and this year's Blood & Venom – that raw energy is more than audible. It's physical.


Diane White

Where's fuel to this fire coming from? It might be in their genes. Their flaming red genes, to be specific. Both of them sport naturally orange-red curls. Onstage, they're like runaway zoo lions wearing denim, bouncing up and down relentlessly. And though they look like a couple of badasses now, it wasn't always that way.

"I grew up feeling really ugly," Alex explains.

"I definitely felt ugly," Francis adds.

But before it turns into a sob story, Alex shifts the mood. She brings up The Who.

"They all started off with these nerdy mod haircuts. Like Roger Daltrey had this goofy, like, almost what you would call a raver girl hair cut," she laughs, "with bangs and [it was] short in the back."

It's obvious in their live show and fully reaffirmed on the phone that these two aren't whiners. They're both easy on eyes regardless of hair color (hey, some folks dig that in itself, anyway), but it seems they wouldn't have wallowed no matter what came their way. They're tough, and they can laugh at themselves too.

"My sister is a deadly machine, and no one should stand in her way because she'll just trample them to the ground," Francis says matter-of-factly.

As hard as the opening tracks on each album are ("White Widow" on the first and "White Mystery" on the second), they're a bit campy, too. Each serves as an introduction to the band – they either mention the name or announce themselves blatantly. Tracks like "Kickin' My Ball" and "Party," both on Blood & Venom, do the same. They're churning out the kind of rock 'n' roll that can be fun – it doesn't always take itself too seriously. But if you're not paying attention, it blindside you, slapping you silly with lines like "Pigs and dogs are laughing at the blockade/ Burying my hatchet in their smiling faces" ("Smoke").

They've extrapolated the core of rock 'n' roll and turned wild rage into exactly what none of their counterparts are doing, effortlessly stepping into the ogre-sized shoes of giants like The Who. It's clear: These two are smart. They know precisely what they're doing. A conversation about the differences between punk and garage turned into deciphering the meaning of garage rock.

"It's just underground. You actually have to go into a basement or garage or some weird, shady warehouse," Francis explains.

Later, Alex says, "Punk is kind of a snotty counterculture, maybe lyrically kind of a genre. I feel like what Odd Future is doing is punk in the sense that what the Sex Pistols did was, like 'God Save the Queen,' burn stuff, like anarchy, basically."

Hip-hop as punk? That's a strange alignment, but she makes a solid point. Genres are so mashed together in sound, why not go by the message and meaning instead? That hip-hop collective is not only battling expectations, but also anyone that stands in their way – even Steve Harvey. Just watch Tyler, the Creator's video for "French." It's almost frightening, similar to how jarring Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious were in the '70s.

"When people ask what kind of band White Mystery is, I say rock 'n' roll," Alex says.

And somehow, there's no stereotypical interpersonal feud to be mentioned. The Whites finish each other's sentences, offer supportive "yeahs" when the other makes a point and miraculously sound like they're on the exact same page about every topic.

"My sister is pretty business oriented, and I guess I'm more of a grunt when it comes to the band, or an errand boy, maybe," Francis says.

"Francis is a big part of the band as the driver and the merch dude," Alex assures. "You need to have a dynamic between two people and designated roles. So we each know our place, just as people who have cooperated our entire lives...as brother and sister. It's really cool when you can share all the fun and coolness of being in a band with someone like your brother."

"Hell yeah," Francis says.

The shows can get wild, though. At a hometown Chicago show when they kicked off the current tour, a couple jumped onstage and started "bumping and grinding" on Alex.

"The woman was like, whispering in my ear, she was like, saying stuff," she laughs. "And when we were in Canada and that guy ran up to me and made out with me. I was like, whoa!"

Francis says even he doesn't know what the woman said to Alex. She won't repeat it. That she's not the least bit vulgar is a bit of a surprise, but it all works toward that ultimate picture of them. They're not unnecessarily brash – it's all in good fun, and they want everyone to have fun with them. They named themselves after their favorite Airheads flavor, but they play dirty, rough rock. It's a strange brand of rock 'n' roll that's as smart as it is assaulting. Who woulda thought?

"I'm kind of a nerd," Francis says. "So I take advantage of being up in front of people – let it all out at one time, then I sorta climb back into my shell, I guess."

"We're both definitely intense people, but it's a balance," Alex says. "You need peace in your life to counteract all the partying and playing punk shows in front of a crowd of enthusiastic people."

Where Alex finds a relaxing middle-ground, however, is hard to determine. They tour frequently, and both albums are self-released on the White Mystery Band label. Plus, she's still booking all of the shows. She's savvy enough to know that the work will only become more arduous as they continue, but she has no plans to hand over any responsibilities.

"It would be cool to franchise the band and get redheaded stunt doubles to go on tour for us," Francis ponders.

"It would be awesome. No one would know the difference; everyone's so racist with hair color," Alex remarks. "Seriously, I mean, I brought a friend with curly hair on tour, and someone was like, 'You were great tonight!' And it was a guy."

She's likely immune to such ignorant confusion by now. Before playing as White Mystery, Alex fronted another band – Miss Alex White and the Red Orchestra. It's been kaput for a few years now, though. She chalks up its dismantling to natural progression.

"It's funny because we were playing...the last Red Orchestra show – it [was] basically not working out anymore. I booked these two bands for their first shows, and it was the Smith Westerns and the Vivian Girls," Alex says. "It was a passing of the torch, in retrospect."

That's kind of her to say, but let's be honest. White Mystery's torch is still ablaze. With constant touring, promoting and all the D.I.Y. efforts in general, even a flicker of that flame seems unlikely. Alex says she and Francis will push until they "can't do it anymore."

Jackie Roman

"We have a new music video coming out next week where Francis threw a kick drum through a pane of glass, and that's the same kick drum he's going on tour with, Alex says. "We push ourselves really hard until shit breaks and then we replace it. I'll book until I can't book no more, then replace that with, maybe, a more competent person. Until then, we're a little unit."

Black Lips obliterated Southern Comfort homecoming

2011-09-15T10:51:00.003-04:00

Show review published on Creative Loafing's Crib Notes blog, Sept. 14
Photos by Jhoni Jackson

Atlanta is a city that does more than appreciate irony, it nurtures it. On the same night that hometown garage-punk heroes Black Lips headlined a show at Southern Comfort — that outside-the-city-limits trucker bar where twentysomething Atlantans embrace redneckery and drink alongside the truest of Southern swillers — another punk show venue was booked at an odd. This one was at a barber shop — the Cut on Stovall Street — with younger bands the Husseins and A. Grimes, who owe some thanks to Black Lips for solidifying Atlanta as a worthwhile city in punk rock land.

Black Lips

I wanted to see both shows, but poor planning left me restricted to just one, and I couldn’t turn down a raucous, sweaty throw-down at what’s arguably one of the city’s favorite places for a culture mashup, SoCo.

The crowd was a melting pot of familiar faces (I spotted Kenny Crucial before even entering), kids I’d never seen before who likely came out of love for Black Lips and, of course, Southern Comfort’s regulars. While waiting for Turf War to kick things off, the owner of the bar, an older man wearing all black (hat included) and a bolo tie, thanked my friends and I for coming to the show.

I asked if the regulars had to pay the $20 cover. In a plain, gruff he replied, “no,” but explained that they had to help move tables to make way for standing room and they’d have to help clean up, too. Them’s the breaks.

A lot of people complained about the higher beer prices. Supposedly, the bar jacked up the cost of PBR. Instead of griping, I thought of how much smarter the folks at SoCo are than most assume. They didn’t raise the price of all drinks, just the ones they knew this crowd would gobble up. What else were they to do when all hell breaking loose seemed imminent? Anyway, they were slinging sporting event-sized drafts at the bar at a better value — sometimes $4, sometimes $7, depending on the bartender.

Turf War’s set was not only good, but also self-aware. They’re a little Southern-fried to begin with, but a closing cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising” was a nice touch. Through it all the band’s punk rock ‘tude remained intact as members crawled on speakers, welcomed guest singers (friends, but they climbed on and off the stage enough to alert security) and were generally pretty wild. One older, thin SoCo regular sporting a Jeff Foxworthy/Larry the Cable Guy tour T-shirt danced around, arms flailing and hooking the necks of unsolicited dance partners.

Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls took the middle spot. On stage, they said this was the coolest show they’d ever played. Take that, Brooklyn! The trio of ladies didn’t add a single Southern homage to their repertoire, but that’s OK. Their set, full of slower-paced, creepy doo-wop laced cuts from their latest LP, Share the Joy, was a necessary break before the crowd became a sea of screaming Black Lips fans. They did play some older and faster tunes, and even jumped in the crowd at one point. But it was all much calmer than what came next.

Vivian Girls

Black Lips annihilated their set, of course. Several projectiles wizzed by overhead: legs, beer, maybe even blood. A friend mentioned the following day that she’d lost a shoe, and although she later found it, “irreparable damage was done.” Black Lips are close to being too big to allow stage diving and random people on stage, but that element has become a permanent part of the show. It’s part of the group’s appeal. Toning it down to a nudity-free set is fine, but to chuck the balls-to-the-wall vibe altogether would be blasphemous.

The band was keen enough about it being a hometown show to add something extra, something Atlanta music fans would appreciate: Bradford Cox of Deerhunter hopped on stage for a cover of a cover: “Do You Wanna Dance?” Donning a black wig, leather jacket a la Joey Ramone, and everyone went nuts. Though I regret missing the barber shop show, I’m glad I devoted my night to this one instead because I sincerely doubt that it will happen again — not like this.

Heartland Rock Revival: Kurt Vile is the Answer

2011-08-17T14:37:00.002-04:00

Feature published in the August issue of Stomp and Stammer (cover story)

Few musicians are speaking for the common man these days, despite that there's arguably more to begrudge now than ever before. There's as much beauty to bask in too, of course – a natural flipside; the light that creates the gloomy shade.

Garage, punk and all sorts of electronic music prevail on today's indie radar, but nobody's really reaching to get the fists of listeners clenched for any reason beyond to pump along to a melody. There's an emotional gap to fill, and a rebirth of heartland rock could be the answer – with Kurt Vile as the right man for the job.

Raised just five miles from Philadelphia in Lansdowne, a borough birthed by a railroad stop, Vile grew up in the most blue-collar of environments. His father drove trains and his mother stayed home to raise their 10-child family. Until a few years ago, Vile worked, even for a while as a forklift operator, because he simply had to, he says.

But those aren't Vile's only qualifications for the title. He has more to offer than a very American story and an acoustic-based sound that's repeatedly (and justifiably) compared to the seminal purveyors of heartland rock. Vile embodies all imaginable characteristics of a person who could make the genre, albeit an updated variety, work-now.

Its pioneers – Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Bob Seger and the like – wouldn't prosper today in the same way they did in the '70s. More than half a decade has passed since heartland rock could flourish with freshness, plowing through the mainstream to full-blown reign. But what made that sound more than just another brand of mainstream rock – the society-reflective sentiment which fueled its importance – sure as hell still does.

Rock hasn't found such a combination of accessible sounds and plainly profound, layman-level lyrics, where a duality between bitter decay and romantic nostalgia can thrive, since the heyday of heartland rock. That's not to say societal woes and upswings haven't been interpreted by countless bands. They have and always will be, but most often, the method is aggressive, through fun-time escapism or other routes that show little regard to balance.

And it's all in the balance. Over a four-LP span, Vile's lyrics have remained consistently indicative of a very American push-and-pull. On "Puppet to the Man," one of the grittier tracks from this year's Smoke Ring for My Halo, Vile speak-sings almost like he's preaching, "Well I think by now you probably think I am a puppet to the man/ But I shout it out loud because I know that I am/ Sometimes I'm stuck in and I think I can unglue it."

"Be as little of one as you can get away with," Vile says of that label, "but you have to cooperate a little bit with that guy if you're going to keep going. I'm not going to run a revolution of resistance."

In a society that simultaneously praises and condemns rebellion against the norm – in other words, utter individuality – that outlook of that lazily defiant tune is one that's easily embraced.

Vile doesn't fully accept the heartland rock stamp, though. Maybe he's afraid of pigeonholing himself. However, his reluctance certainly isn't due to a denial of similarities between himself and the genre's motifs.

"We have other influences," he says. "But we are a very American band."

Vile's musical plight lines up, at least symbolically, to the American dream – he self-recorded tracks on CD-Rs, piecing LPs together into lo-fi collages until finally recording Smoke Ring as a proper whole with the seasoned John Angello (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr. and even John Mellencamp's Uh-Huh). But practically every moderately successful musician or band somewhat parallels that path.

And it's true there's a spacey, echoing touch to Vile's mildly distorted sound. In addition to the obvious roster of influences, an artist-on-artist interview with Brain Idea's Joe Wetteroth published in the Chicago Reader revealed Sonic Youth as one of his inspirations. He even said osmosis might be to blame for the lyrics to Smoke Ring's "Society," which contains a line much like a Sonic Youth song ("Society Is a Hole") that Thurston Moore, according to Vile, said originated from misinterpreting a Black Flag song.

What truly sets Vile apart is the way he's grasped the late '70s blue-collar sound and twisted it with modernity in a way that dodges the cornball tendencies of Americana entirely and sounds new, but oddly familiar. Even when it's subtle and soft, there's a hint of badass, too.

And again, it's the lyrics that seal the deal. Like Springsteen's "Born in the USA," Vile writes lines that could register as positive upon a light listen but are actually the stuff of scathing social commentary. "Society," of course, is one of those gems: "Society is my friend/ He makes me lie down/ In a cool bloodbath."

Vile says Smoke Ring was intentionally mellow. He added "Puppet to the Man" and "Society" to afford the album some "balls."

His repertoire is mostly calm sonically, but when he plays with his backing band, the Violators, there's balls aplenty. He'll play acoustic occasionally, but with his onstage counterparts the sound is most often fully plugged in and a lot more rock 'n' roll.

Shawn Brackbill via Matador Records

As Vile's prominence elevates, capitalism has become opportunity. "Baby's Arms," the romantic, slow-paced opener on Smoke Ring, found its way into corporate America through a promotion with Microsoft in which an artist was paid to make the song's video entirely on one of the company's smartphones. Surprisingly, Vile wasn't reluctant to accept the collaboration.

"You know, it's funny, I thought that was the iPhone," Vile laughs. "That's how slightly disconnected from society I am. These are also different times. [Consider] Neil Young – he was always against that kind of thing. But he was already a millionaire talking about that, don't put yourself in commercials, selling a million records people couldn't steal on the Internet. These are different times."

Vile notes he wasn't paid, although the videographer was. He readily admits accepting money for allowing HBO's Eastbound and Down to borrow "He's Alright," a lo-fi acoustic tune from his second full-length and Matador Records debut, 2009's Childish Prodigy.

"You have to use your discretion. If McDonald's called me up, I'd probably just ask to not know how much that check would be. That's obviously not something respectable," Vile laughs. "Walmart or something – it's not a respectable commercial to be on. You would totally look like a tool."

But what musician doesn't want to make a living from their work? Vile's no different. At 31, he has a wife and child to support. Vile could probably sell his work to McDonald's or other dirty corporations for near-permanent financial security, and he'd probably never forgive himself.

To be American now – at least for Vile's generation and younger – seems to necessitate an equilibrium that can be as satisfying as it is depressing. It's the fight between money-making and virtue, assimilation versus independence and – most of all – trying to be a better person, but accepting you probably never will be.

"I think it's 50/50 is what it is," Vile says. "You enjoy [life], but you curse it. That's the way I am anyway – sometimes. I try not to be that way."

Black Lodge's debut outshines Mickey's return

2011-07-13T12:47:00.001-04:00

Show review posted in Creative Loafing's Crib Notes blog, July 11

Imagine your band is playing its first show. Do you want an under-the-radar debut in a near-empty bar in the ‘burbs, just in case you screw up? Or would you rather the potential for a balls-out introduction to your local music scene, opening for a much-ballyhooed band of young punks? Black Lodge, a new Atlanta four-piece named after David Lynch’s epicenter of evil in Twin Peaks, chose the latter and got off to a rocky start Sunday, July 3 at the EARL.

Bassist Jennifer von Schlichten has faced large-scale crowds as a DJ on bills with Diplo and Spank Rock, but essentially, when paired with second bassist Karen Horn (yes, two basses, no guitar), the two are the greenest of green in terms of brandishing instruments onstage. The moral support of seasoned musician Jennie Castillo (keys) and the super, super-seasoned Adam Bruneau (drums) helped the band live up to the gloomy connotations of its name.

Ominous synth lines, deadpan vocals (mostly from Castillo and von Schlichten) and deep, minimalistic bass made for a generally Joy Division-like sound -- spooky enough to match the wild, murder-hungry grin of Twin Peaks’ mysterious antagonist BOB. Mid-paced songs were a highlight, as the slower numbers sounded empty, and dragged on.

Husseins played with the necessary energy of a super-speed punk band, but with little effort or sweat—a commodity only youth and varieties of ectodermal dyplasia can offer. (Yeah, I Googled that.) Apologies were made for sound issues, but none were easily audible. Either that or I was too busy wondering if, even mid-set, they’d outshined the headliner. On almost any given bill an upset in the Husseins’ favor could be feasible. But the feverish Mac Blackout (Mark McKenzie), frontman for Chicago foursome Mickey, wouldn’t let that happen.

Back for a second stint after April’s Mess-Around, the group’s second coming seemed highly anticipated. Unfortunately, however, the turnout was most shallow for Mickey -- even Black Lodge had more listeners, although many were friends of the band.

Regardless, Mickey played as though it was their final performance, steaming with energy and sweating from the get-go. McKenzie displayed a naturally manic intensity that’s altogether ageless. Let’s hope the fresh-faced Husseins were watching.

Mickey is a rabid throwback to ’50s rock ‘n’ roll, with a little weirdo glam here and there. One shirtless player wore a wig that, from afar, looked like a bunch of blue-grey bananas atop his head. The band ripped through their mostly fast-paced repertoire while McKenzie plowed through the audience, knocking down a guy with a cane at one point. But he picked him right back up, palmed the fellow’s head and shouted gargled lyrics right in his face.

I missed one band at this year’s Mess-Around, and it was Mickey. I thought I’d kicked myself enough over it, but after seeing McKenzie -- an irresistible, albeit dirty, crazy-eyed frontman bringing the band’s energy to a point, I deserve another punt. And for the hordes of folks who typically turn out for punk shows but bailed this time, you missed out.

A Decade of Debauchery: Die Slaughterhaus Hits the Double Digits

2011-07-13T12:27:00.001-04:00

Feature published in the July issue of Stomp and Stammer. All photos courtesy of Adam Bruneau; captions by Jeff Clark.

Mark Naumann didn't intend to run a record label. He didn't plan for his first house rental after graduating high school, a slumlord-run place off 14th Street, to play host to raucous, near-frightening but completely unforgettable shows on the regular, either. July marks 10 years of Die Slaughterhaus, the house venue-turned-label that, since its start, has been a major player in shaping Atlanta's punk-rock scene. And the whole thing -- and the community created because of it -- it all just sort of...happened.

Peel slowly and see: Bobby Ubangi goes

bananas.

Besides Naumann, the residents who left home for the Haus in 2001 were three Black Lips members (Cole Alexander, Jared Swilley and Ben Ederbaugh), Colin Mee (Deerhunter's first guitarist) and the Harris brothers, who Naumann says "don't really do anything anymore." The house itself, he says, was already a punk house. They rented it after a friend who'd knocked out walls to form a massive living room. That's where the shows happened.

More than the aforementioned bands played Die Slaughterhaus since its debut in 2001, of course, and though a lot of them are now obsolete -- like the Lids, Tabitha and the Spooks -- many of their members have regrouped as different outfits. Bands associated with the era, like the Carbonas, who were already active before Die Slaughterhaus, have also been reincarnated (in this case, as GG King). But it's not the music that made the house notorious -- it was the deliberate debauchery that ensued at every show.

"It was literally just a bunch of fuckups getting together, getting completely wasted, playing punk rock and smashing shit," Nauamann laughs. "Throwing bottles against the wall, trying to jump through walls. I saw a bathroom door get thrown out of a window. There was a bunch of kids outside throwing bottles against the house, and literally right after, Jared [Swilley] had come outside and was berating them and saying, 'This is not a trash-the-house party! Fuck you guys, what are you doing?' And literally right after he said that, a door came flying through the window."

Pillow fight!: Bradford Cox rises above.

Despite the antics, the music did matter. Within a few years, Die Slaughterhaus' two most prevalent performers, the Black Lips and Deerhunter, surpassed the scene to become indie-realm giants. Not only did the Haus provide a place for those bands and others to hone their skills (or onstage personas, in some cases), but Naumann and company also cultured a collective of punk-rock pushers and lovers -- and it stuck.
"At the time and the place, Die Slaughterhaus was the punk scene for Atlanta. Most of the bands started on their own, but we all kind of came together," Naumann recalls.

A lot of the Die Slaughterhaus clan was already together, really, before the notion even existed. Naumann's older brother played in a band with Derek Pressnall of Tilly and the Wall, as well as Jack Hines, one of several Atlanta ex-pats on the K-Holes lineup. Coyote Bones' David Matysiak and Mason Brown (then forming Jet by Day) were on the same roster -- they all attended Dunwoody High School. So did Naumann himself, who played in the Renegades with Swilley and Alexander. They all went to Dunwoody, too.

How one school bred so much solid music is beyond bewildering. That those bands were, coincidentally, so likeminded and all generally functioned under the Die Slaughterhaus motto, "Fuck shit up and die," elevates that grooming ground to mind-boggling.

"When we were 15 and in the Renegades, that was the logo and motto," Naumann says of the Die Slaughterhaus credo.

That crude one-liner was emblazoned on their jackets, he recalls, and at one point, the school deemed all Renegades paraphernalia gang-related.

Cole Alexander briefly considers steering the

Black Lips in an acoustic folk direction.

"I remember walking through the neighborhood over to my friend Julian's house and this car full of Mexicans pulled up," Naumann says. "They're like, 'Hey man, are you in the Renegades?' The kid in the front seat had a baseball bat -- I thought I was gonna get the shit kicked out of me. What happened was one of our friends wrote 'Renegades' on the wall in the stairwell [at school], and he didn't notice it was next to a swastika. So they thought we were a racist gang, and I had to explain to him -- he's the bass player."

Soon after, the Black Lips emerged from the Renegades, though without Naumann. That's when Die Slaughterhaus debuted -- with the Black Lips' first 7-inch, Ain't Comin' Back.

"It was really more of a self-release," Naumann says. "I didn't have a whole lot of involvement in that first record. So it was really more of the Black Lips started the label, and then the responsibility got passed onto me."

He and Ederbaugh decided to start releasing friends' albums. But in 2002, Ederbaugh died after his car was hit by a drunk driver. The Black Lips continued -- they'd just released their first full-length through Bomp! Records -- and Swilley and Alexander focused more on their own objectives, not the label's.

"I just kind of stuck around. I was putting all the money in," Naumann says. "[On tour, the Black Lips] were constantly pushing the label, networking with people, introducing me to people that they met in cities that I would have never met before. But as their career grew, they had more of their own responsibilities. The record label became more and more my responsibility."

Naumann mentions the label's financial side in stride. It took some prying to figure out that, in the upkeep of the label, he depleted his savings, a sum he'd been accruing since elementary school. At the time, money was just a footnote for Naumann, if that. Shows were a bigger concern.

"We didn't really stop having shows at the [house], just people starting moving out on me, one at a time," Naumann says. "I couldn't afford to stay there by myself. After that, I just couldn't ever find anything with a basement."

So Naumann increasingly orchestrated -- or at least slapped the Die Slaughterhaus name on -- shows at legitimate venues. The Neutron Bomb, Somber Reptile and Echo Lounge (all defunct) were frequent go-to spots, as well as MJQ and the EARL. The label also brought Atlanta its first punk-rock fest -- the Shutdown.

Beware all ye who enter here: Die Slaughterhaus #1.

A lot of the details are blurry for Naumann -- how many Shutdowns? Who played? When did they dub it Die Slaughterhaus Fest instead, and why? -- but he remembers the one held at the Neutron Bomb as an especially rowdy event.

"As soon as bands started playing, it was just a sea of beer cans back and forth," he laughs.

"By 2004, Naumann moved the remainder of the Die Slaughterhaus gang into a new, slightly more organized house in Grant Park for about another year's worth of mayhem. But when two new local labels, Rob's House and Douchemaster, emerged around 2005, Naumann's label was nearly ecliped -- mainly for lack of funds.

"I got kind of cut out," he says. "By the time I can afford [to put out an album], it's already been released and promoted and mastered."

Surprisingly, Naumann isn't bitter. He's thankful for Rob's House and Douchemaster, even when they've snagged releases he'd been eyeing.

This is not a trash-the-house-party:

Jared Swilley don't need no doctor.

"It bummed me out for a while," he admits. "But it's better for the scene to have someone with more money to be able to promote our friends. It's better for them; they get more exposure. I don't have the money to put behind records like they do."

At 19, Naumann says he hadn't found his footing as a one-man label -- and 10 years later, he's not finished figuring it out.

"I'm still learning what I'm supposed to be doing," he says with a shrug. "I think, had I put a lot more work into it, had I know how to promote stuff properly...things would have been more profitable, I guess. Hindsight's 20/20. There's no telling what the reasons are for why we're here today, but it is what it is."

The Spooks get silly.

Releasing 7-inches from the Frantic and Crusaders of Love, though, are high notes for Naumann. This year, he hopes a few new highlights will materialize. One is Adrian vs. Predator, which Naumann says will either be a split between Barreracudas and Predator or a mash-up of both, and a new project from King Louie of New Orleans.

And although Naumann's struggled plenty with the lineup, the 10-year celebration fest will likely be another highlight. He attributes some of those issue to dealing mainly with friends.

"A good analogy is like, way back in the day when everyone worked at the Majestic [Diner], I would go in there several times a week and just sit and hang out. So then when I was actually hungry, I'd be sitting for two or three hours waiting for someone to take my order," he laughs.

Lately, Naumann's been playing bass for Baby Dinosaurs vs. Extinction, working six to eight shifts per week (in the EARL's kitchen and at a pizza joint in Norcross) and living in a place that wouldn't work as a venue. Besides the fest, he hasn't booked many Die Slaughterhaus shows in the past few years.

"It's just the amount of headache," he explains. "There's always 100 different schedules you have to work with and the amount of bullshit you have to deal with to put a decent show together...It's fun every once in a while, but doing it full time isn't something I want to get into."

For a while now, Die Slaughterhaus releases have been cut down to two each year, tops. He's reaching for more, though.

"I'm trying to get my financial situation back to where I can put all the bands out I want and actually be able to do records on a more regular basis. Ideally, I think once a month is good," he pauses. "Between three and five a year is probably more feasible for me."

Humility is a quality not readily found in punk rock, but Naumann boasts a healthy amount of it. He hardly claims Die Slaughterhaus as his own, though now, it truly is. He's quick to note the help and support from all ends of the scene has fueled the label from the start.

But sometimes, it's okay to pat yourself on the back -- sometimes it's deserved.

"I don't think Rob's House would have started if they hadn't seen what [Die Slaughterhaus was] doing and been motivated by that. But there's no telling," he grins.

Bass Drum of Death: A couple of dudes?

2011-07-13T10:00:00.001-04:00

Feature published in the June 2011 issue of Stomp and Stammer

If a band’s not sizeable enough to overwhelm a stage, the number of players isn’t a selling point -- unless it’s a duo. There’s an involuntary shtick in performing as a pair, despite decades of famous twosomes in all genres. “It’s just two guys…” is how the go-to description typically starts. In the same way that a lady leading a troop is always the conversational centerpiece, something’s still outside-the-box about a couple of musicians presented as a full band.

Oxford, Mississippi’s Bass Drum of Death, in most circumstances, gets the same treatment. In short: They’re two dudes doing the garage-rock thing. It’s a logical description, even if vast and vague. Some of the many comparisons to duos they’re scooping up, however, don’t sync with that by a long shot. For one: The Black Keys.

“I don’t really get The Black Keys thing at all,” frontman John Barrett says. “They’re really more bluesy, you know what I mean?”

Courtesy of Fat Possum

There’s another connection between the two, though. Bass Drum’s first 7-inch and debut LP came courtesy of Barrett’s hometown imprint, Fat Possum, which earned its reputation championing for blues-rock in the ‘90s—and released two early Black Keys full-lengths. Still, most people will side with Barrett, and rightfully so. There are about two molecules of resemblance in sound between Bass Drum and the ever-present blues rockers. But Barrett also rejects references more akin to his gritty garage than that.

“There’s maybe a couple of No Age songs we might sound like, or a couple of Japandroids songs we might sound like -- but all the way around, I don’t think we sound anything like those bands,” Barrett adds.

And what about Nashville’s JEFF the Brotherhood? With searing, wailing riffs and a garage-rock bedrock, they’re easily the most accurate match among Bass Drum’s peers.

“It’s awesome being compared to them, because they’re the best two-piece going right now, I think. Then again, their songs, especially the new record, are veering in a direction that’s pretty different from how we sound,” Barrett explains.

True, We Are the Champions, JEFF’s latest, Barrett says, “sounds like the fucking blue album, Weezer or something.” Barrett notes he and drummer Colin Sneed are pals with JEFF, but he’s quick to separate himself sonically.

What makes the worst links from critics -- the blatantly lazy Black Keys comparisons, in particular -- so blasphemous is that not only do they lump Bass Drum into categories they’re unfit for, but such associations also ignore the complexities of the band. As a writer, I’m thankful for a 1000-plus word count: There’s plenty of room to break up the bullshit.

Barrett spearheaded Bass Drum of Death, and sort of found himself going for it after just messing around.

“I was living with this guy who had a drum set in one of the extra rooms at our house. I started writing songs and banging the bass drum at the same time I played guitar, just to keep a beat,” Barrett says. “I was like, ‘Well, I could probably pull this off live if I wanted to.’”

For a while, he performed alone or with anyone who didn’t mind jangling a tambourine or knocking a cymbal.

“It was just a way for me to play some shows and drink for free,” Barrett admits.

Fat Possum released Stain Stick Skin under the name John Barrett’s Bass Drum of Death in 2008, then Barrett produced GB City alone from home with USB microphones. Barrett says hailing from the same city made it easy to keep in touch with Fat Possum, but the label lost interest by the time the LP was ready.

“I just kept working on stuff and sent my record out to a bunch of different places,” he recalls. “I never wanted to be the kid from down the street, like ‘Hey, put my record out!’”

New York-based label Inflated pressed the first 500 color copies of GB City on vinyl -- then Fat Possum wanted back in. Naturally, Barrett soon realized he needed a permanent drummer. After a few didn’t work out, he found Colin Sneed.

“Colin’s been pretty on it in all phases. He loves getting out and touring. He’s really easy to be on the road with; he doesn’t require a lot,” Barrett says. “There hasn’t really been any point of contention between us at all.”

And while Bass Drum belongs primarily to Barrett, Sneed’s not just a hired hand.

“He doesn’t play everything note-for-note how I play it on the record, and I kind of like it that way,” Barrett says. “He throws his own thing on a lot of the songs and that tends to work out pretty well. It’s stuff I wouldn’t about or am not able to do. It keeps it a little different for the live show as opposed to on the record—and I kind of like that.”

The slower pace of the greater part of Oxford, combined with the college-town energy of Ole Miss nearby, is something Sneed knows firsthand as well as Barrett does -- he’s from Oxford as well. It’s fair to assume the free-for-all party vibe Bass Drum exudes -- both in its reeling rock ‘n’ roll sound and lyrically, like on down-and-dirty lines like “I talked to Elvis in my sleep/ He said I’m cracked out/ Oh yeah, I’m cracked out/ But at least I got nowhere to be” on “Velvet Itch”—was born, somewhat, in that coupling.

“There’s a big separation between the town and the college. The only effect it had on us is that we started playing in bars and stuff with different bands when we were 16, and figured out how to drink in certain bars by the time we were 17 or 18,” Barrett says. “I rolled around like I was 21 for, like, four years before I was 21.”

And local watering holes aren’t the only spots Barrett’s been pillaging for parties. He’s about to move into a mini-commune of sorts.

“It’s a five-bedroom, sort of shitty country mansion—we call it the Dude Ranch,” he says. “We’ll go to bars -- the bars close really early -- then we’ll go out there until 5, 6 in the morning sometimes.”

The 20-acre respite is headquarters for the Cats Purring Collective, and is home to enclave members like R. Cole and his spacey chill-rock project Dead Gaze, as well as Dent May, whose lite-FM, ukulele-based pop earned him an LP on Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks roster a few years ago. Bass Drum is included in that amalgam of southern players, along with Barrett’s distorted, borderline goth-rock, New Wave side project, Flight.

Expectedly, the Cats Purring Dude Ranch doubles as a venue -- shows are practically nightly. Bass Drum’s video for “Get Found” was shot there, and again, not surprisingly, it depicts a raucous late-night party where Barrett wails and Sneed pounds through one of GB City’s best tunes.

The latter’s been the focus of the first promotional pushes since the album’s April unveiling, but it’s literally chock-full of singles. With “oohs” and “ahhs” and a hint of a Phil Spector-like melody, “Young Pros” is a safe bet for a follow-up, but the mid-tempo “Religious Girls,” executed in the same vein, is a risk-free option too.

But where Barrett’s done his best work -- and where he seems most at home -- are the wilder tunes that comprise the bulk of GB City. “Nerve Jamming” rips a little from the White Stripes’ “Fell in Love with a Girl,” but filters it through a brand of lo-fi grit Jack White’s only heard, not made. “High School Roaches,” the aforementioned “Velvet Itch,” “Heart Attack Kid” and the title track all exude the dizzying rebellion of punk rock for a the kind of garage rock that makes people push each other while the bar sells out of Pabst.

Live, it’s even more obvious that Barrett belongs in that realm rather than the Motown-inspired end of the garage-rock spectrum. Onstage, his hair falls forward and never comes back, blocking his face almost completely. With his feet turned awkwardly inward, Barrett’s visibly clenching with determination while blissfully lost—subtly reminiscent of Kurt Cobain, who Barrett names first as an influence.

“I like pop songs that are loud,” he says. “Especially some of the songs on Bleach, [they’re] old-school pop songs. They play[ed] them loud and they sound[ed] nasty,” he says. “[Nirvana] is obviously a huge influence in songwriting.”

Still, Barrett does have a penchant for glossier pop: He covered The Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine” for a friend’s 7-inch that never materialized and it landed on the album as a bonus cut. Barrett opted to keep the male-targeted lyrics as-is, and he nails the falsetto, albeit with echo effects.

“We’re a pretty dude friendly band, so I thought it’d be funny,” he laughs. “We’re a couple of dudes playing loud rock music, so I thought it’d be cool to bend it a little bit.”

The cover aside, even when Barrett does lean toward pop, raw aggression is more than a suggestion on any given GB City track. What’s seemingly a coo written down is, by habit, a snarl for Barrett -- “oohs” aren’t peaceful accents but instead untamed, unruly releases that ooze blood like rare meat from every hook. So when somebody asks who the heck Bass Drum of Death is, starting with “a couple of dudes” is fair -- just don’t stop there.

Fleet Foxes, "Helplessness Blues" [Sub Pop]

2011-05-16T15:04:00.001-04:00

Album review published in the May 2011 issue of Stomp and Stammer

Fleet Foxes are speaking for the masses, whether the Seattle band knows it or not. Pastoral folk-pop has far surpassed the indie realm to become to voice of the flannelled youth gone "green." The eco-conscious kids who find no irony in swiping clean the sale racks at Urban Outfitters are gobbling up this radio-ready granola, and in the case of Fleet Foxes, they're spot on.

Since their 2008 EP, Sun Giant, they've been growing into their critically acclaimed britches. Three years after their self-titled full-length debut, they've incorporated heavier lyrics and far more complex instrumentation. (Literally, frontman Robin Pecknold penned the info for Helplessness Blues and notes it's drizzled with a bevy of new instruments. Among them: wood flute, zither, tympani, upright bass, tambura, clarinet and even Tibetan singing bowls.) On "Bedouin Dress," there's a solo violin accenting featherweight acoustic guitar that positions the snappy number on the fringes of both folk and orchestral pop, and "The Cascades" is a dainty, instrumental showcase of a slew of new sounds. The band's trademark crescendo from quiet vocals and soft strums to rich, glory-almighty gospel choruses is still the prevalent motif, but on Helplessness Blues, there's an obvious spotlight on lyrical content. Pecknold and company have become more pensive, less concerned with hooks and sing-a-longs and more into self-awareness. The words on this outing are undeniably closer to social commentary than the woodsy metaphors of Fleet Foxes.

On the title track, nestled in the middle of LP, Pecknold makes apt points for any youth: he was raised to think he was special, but after some introspection, he'd "rather be a functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond" himself. It's a near-classic sentiment, but it's timelier now than ever, as the country's economic pendulum constantly slams hopes and the 24-hour news cycle makes Armageddon seem imminent. Pecknold doesn't deserve kickbacks from the Peace Corps, but on Helplessness Blues, he offers a heaping helping of earnestness that really resonates.

Sometimes Pecknold stretches for Donovan-style simplicity and misses, like on "Blue Spotted Tail." The minimalism – it's just Pecknold and an acoustic guitar – works sonically, but lyrically, it's a little cheesy. Pecknold pleads, "Why is life made only for to end?" and then drops an inadvertent MGMT reference: "Why this frightened part of me that's fated to pretend?"

Mostly gorgeous mid-tempo tunes though, like "Lorelei," "Montezuma" and even "Sim Sala Bam," make up the bulk of the album. They direct Pecknold's dreamy vocals to center stage and save Helplessness Blues from falling too deep into hippie self-questioning. Truthfully, it's hard to harp on any of Pecknold's musings when his voice is so damned pretty.

It's trite to say, but this album will probably make a few young folks feel less alone. Kids will border their notebooks with the lyrics, beg their parents to drop them off at the band's next show and, for the boys at least, they'll treasure that first chin hair in hopes one day sporting a gnarly, folksy-dude beard. And for the cynical crowd that's accepted that life never gets easier, the enchanting soundscape of Helplessness Blues serves as a respite from the discouraging droll of the day-to-day – so long as they don't mull over the lyrics.

Crib Notes catch-up

2011-05-05T16:12:00.000-04:00

Stories published on Crib Notes (Creative Loafing), March through May 3

Show previews
Q&A with JEFF the Brotherhood
Low 5 returns for another round of rooting for the underdog

News
Black Lips reveal Arabia Mountain's NSFW cover
Carnivores do Daytrotter

Album reviews
Those Darlins, Screws Get Loose
Vivian Girls, Share the Joy

Tour log
The Back Pockets, March 14-19
Day 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

The Raveonettes: Undervalued revolutionaries, revitalized

2011-04-25T14:37:00.002-04:00

Feature published in the April 2011 issue of Stomp and Stammer (cover story)

Their last album almost marked The Raveonettes' final hoorah. After about a decade making music together, Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo wondered if the band's relevance had expired.

"It's just that at some point in any kind of relationship, you sort of ask yourself, and each other, if you still have any justification, if you can still do something together. I think that's where we were at a little bit," Sharin says.

The fuzz-pop pushers weren't sure if another release would be right. Sharin, who lives in Los Angeles, says being an entire coast away from Sune, who resides in New York, caused the pair to lose touch from time to time. But when talk of a new full-length began, the Danish duo found something to be excited about again.

"We started throwing ideas back and forth, and immediately, we didn't really doubt anything anymore," she says. "We just became very immersed in the process of making the record, and got very inspired by the creative conversation we were having. Luckily, it worked out.

"It's not necessarily that there had to be a change for the sake of change – it [was whether] we still felt inspired by the collaboration. And we did," she continues. "It was good."

Raven in the Grave, The Raveonettes' fifth full-length, marks a stark transition. The album is reminiscent of the pair's debut EP, Whip it On¸ in its heavy-handed synth. But '80s elements aside—and not accounting for the familiar airy vocals—Raven has little in common with anything The Raveonettes have released before.

From the get-go, the album's downright different. With a wailing, screeching riff as its backbone and sluggishly new wave keys underneath, "Recharge and Revolt" is a triumphant opener, like its namesake implies.

"It came [from] a little bit of a crisis, I guess you can call it," Sharin says of the song. "And then from that kind of sense of being recharged; revitalizing and feeling reinvigorated and inspired again. It's that energy that comes from moving on and conquering obstacles."

The video for the song features Sune trudging through familiar and not-so-familiar parts of the U.S. bearing a white flag emblazoned with a raven. He's walking solo until the end, when Sharin joins him. So what's the deal with the raven, anyway?

"It's actually a line from a poem," Sharin says of the LP title. "Which I have to admit, I don't remember which poem it was."

It's probably from some obscure prose, but it could easily be a throwback to Edgar Allan Poe's black bird. It might be too simple of a comparison—it's more likely that they're recalling a poem unheard of outside academia that contains the literal line "raven in the grave." But still, what The Raveonettes intend with this album meshes well with Poe's message. In the well-known work, the raven has been said to represent at least a couple of applicable ideas: personal torture and the nature of self-interpretation. Putting that symbol in the grave, then, makes sense for where The Raveonettes are now. They're shedding all stereotypes—they're burying the past.

"It has some kind of reference, in a strange way, to this album being a little bit of a reinvention or a rebirth of ourselves and the band," Sharin explains.

On the album, there's only one track that easily fits the band's typecast: "Ignite," a fast-paced tune with a recognizable chorus. It almost sounds like a b-side from the Dum Dum Girls, whose latest EP was given Sune's co-production touch. The song stands like an awkward stepchild on Raven, which mostly presents a moonlit brand of atmospheric, haunting and romantic soundscapes. There's no "The Great Love Sound" (Chain Gang of Love) or "You Want the Candy" (Lust Lust Lust) to rock out to. And there's absolutely no second edition of "Breaking Into Cars" (In and Out of Control). This time around, the memorable chants and one-liners take a backseat to mood—an effectively chilling one. Like any band with a fervent following, there's bound to be dissenters when change comes. Some people will be supremely pissed about Raven in the Grave. But die-hard Ravers, if they've really been listening, will welcome the shift in sound. Though they've generally been sure-footed in a mainstream friendly variety of garage, in truth, the band's been swaying from synth to shoegaze to ultra-pop and back throughout their repertoire.

"We don't really cater to anybody," she says. "If you listen to Pretty in Black, it's a very different record from Lust Lust Lust or Whip it On. And In and Out of Control is like this super pop sounding record with a lot of choruses. I think The Raveonettes can sometimes confuse people a little bit. I think. Maybe."

But what's been a driving inspiration for the band since their start in the early 2000s—the romanticizing of desolate darkness—is still intact. As chorus-free as Raven is, it's still clearly identifiable as The Raveonettes.

"Come to think of it, you can definitely hear the Scandinavian influence in our music," Sharin says. "There's always that kind of rainy element, sort of overcast. A Scandinavian sort of darkness, I guess."

Sharin says American and British pop culture permeates Danish culture, and she and Sune's upbringing was no exception. But the doo-wop influence that's propelled the bulk of their distortion-laden collection into easy-on-the-ears pop is altogether absent on Raven. Instead, it seems the true Denmark—the dreariness of the country—loomed over production like a beast, bigger and more powerful than ever before.

"I guess it's just the dark north," she adds. "It is a lot of winter and a lot of overcast days. We only have a couple of months or three a year where it's really stunning, and we have the white nights late at night in the summer, and it's really beautiful. But it is just a lot of darkness—literally."

A newfound inspiration for Raven was long-gone composer Bernard Herrmann, who scored works for various Alfred Hitchcock films like Psycho, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo, among other notable movies.

"I think you hear [Herrmann's influence] specifically on the intro to 'Evil Seed,'" Sharin says. "It's the kind of suspense feel that you get on a couple of the songs."

Raven, as a whole, is certainly suspenseful. Without lyrics, it would make a stellar soundtrack to a creepy indie film. Subtle but speedy drum machine beats accent eerie keys—it's twinkling terror behind morose melodies. Even on the lullaby-like "Summer Moon," prettiness is parked in a dark dimension: "Most of all / I can't let go / This perfect thing is dying," the pair's layered vocals echo. Downtrodden songs are the most prevalent, like "Let Me on Out," a plea for freedom from love's stronghold, and "My Time's Up," the album's depressing but gorgeous finale.

Though they spend most of their time at their respective "home bases" in the U.S., Sharin says both she and Sune retreat to Denmark often.

"I sort of love and hate LA at the same time," Sharin says, adding that she lives with her American husband and daughter, who's two-and-a-half years old.

"The weather is really easy; it's an easy life in that kind of sense. But I miss the seasons. I miss something about the moodiness [of Denmark]. The contemplativeness that it adds to your mental state," she says. "I guess it always be like that. Wherever you grew up, especially when you move away, you sort of romanticize it. It's in your DNA."

Sharin and Sune still have work visas, not U.S. citizenship. Sune was recently held up in Europe as a result, and they had to cancel their SXSW performances.

"That was really a bummer," she says. "We were pretty upset about it because that was kind of the first time we were going to come out and play the new songs."

Sharin doesn't speak for Sune, but full-fledged American citizenship, though she's considered it, doesn't really seem plausible.

"I'm undecided," she laughs. "It feels like quite a step."

Converting to American citizenship, she says, is symbolic.

"It's great to have the combination of two different cultures, actually. Go to LA and then back to Denmark—that's a great combination, I think," she says.

Maybe it's a result of the mash-up of cultures, maybe it's not. But the way The Raveonettes incorporated '50s and '60s pop nuances, particularly early on in their career, helped build the bedrock for practically every current and popular garage rock band. With that in mind, The Raveonettes appear vastly underrated. Sharin notes that bands that used to open for them have gone on to sell out venues that they still don't fill. But she doesn't resent them for it.

"We don't feel bitter. We feel pretty grateful and pretty lucky to get to do what we're doing," she assures.

She isn't fearful that the band's reserve of ardent followers will dwindle, either, despite the changes in sound. Instead, they're more akin to a security blanket.

"Oh well," she sighs. "We have some good fans."

In defense of Jessica Lea Mayfield: She's not depressed

2011-03-27T13:49:00.001-04:00

Feature published in the March 2011 issue of Stomp and Stammer

Just because someone makes depressing music doesn't mean they're unhappy. Case in point: Jessica Lea Mayfield.

Mayfield's murky, dark pop that's drenched in blues and twang has the press buzzing – and they're all talking about how cynical and moody she must be. At only 21, Mayfield is the media's walking country noir. But Mayfield isn't depressed.

There's evidence that she's only as emotionally wrecked as the next singer-songwriter, and it's more than just a personal statement. You can tell in her voice, her attitude. She's no self-loathing musician.

As she prepares for the next day's Europe and U.K. press tour, Mayfield was driving in the snow to her Kent, Ohio, home with her dad, who'd taken her to Walmart in his truck.

Nonesuch Records

"All I have are two 15-passenger vans, and you cannot drive those things in the snow," she says.

Mayfield learned that the hard (but adorable) way in a Vermont snowstorm not long ago. After playing a solo show, she and her manager got stuck in a McDonald's parking lot, and an unlikely rescuer emerged: a children's hockey coach.

"He put all the kids in my van for weight," she recalls. "And my tour manager pushes the van and they get it unstuck. But I have this, like, van full of children hockey players - it was kind of amazing."

Mayfield says the kids were somewhat star-struck when she told them she's a touring musician. She gave them each a CD.

Her latest, Tell Me, released in February, was produced by the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach. He's often credited for discovering Mayfield – he also produced her 2008 debut, With Blasphemy So Heartfelt, after hearing her home-recorded EP. That kind of long-term guidance reads as a mentorship of some sort.

"More than anything, [Auerbach] just doesn't want me to censor myself. I'm the kind of person who is always worried about if what I'm doing is good," she says.

Auerbach, Mayfield notes, has been one of her biggest encouragers.

"I'm the kind of person that always needs that second opinion, or that little push to kind of get out of my cocoon," she says. "I'm not the kind of person who writes a song and is like, 'Oh, man, I love it.' I write the song and I'm my own worst critic."

Mayfield says that over time, Auerbach's help has stretched beyond music.

"He's a little older than me, and it's been an advice-riddled friendship, whether it's musically or otherwise," she says. "He's told me he didn't like my boyfriends and stuff. I dated this one dude that he just absolutely hated, so his advice was for me to break up with him."

Mayfield says she took Auerbach's suggestion, but mostly because the guy "was a douchebag."

Her troubles with men – or boys, if you're referring to the content of her first full-length, all of which was written when she was a teenager – is another favorite subject of the press. And though Tell Me is as much about heartbreak as her first work, Mayfield doesn't sound as obsessed with love as her music implies. It's simpler than that.

"I just had to get old enough to see that I just have really awful taste in men," she says.

The songs on Tell Me mirror complete relationship normalcy: unrequited love ("I'll Be The One That You Want Someday"), mismatched love ("Our Hearts Are Wrong") and, in true country fashion, the cheating, sex-driven kind of love ("Sometimes At Night").

Naturally, with three years between releases, Tell Me is a more grown-up record than her first. The complexity of sound has eclipsed the minimalistic feel of Blasphemy. There are a few stripped-down tracks, like the mostly acoustic "Sleepless," but the occasional heady, bluesy guitar riff is hard to ignore on "Somewhere in Your Heart," a similarly-minded track. More often, the songs are backed by lush and layered instrumentation. There's even drum-machine style beats on the polka-like pop tune "Grown Man."

The lyrics, however, are still trademark Mayfield: matter-of-fact and often rife with near-cliche lines that dodge sounding trite when sung in her sweet and sluggish subtle drawl. But this time around, Mayfield's more often the heart breaker than the heartbroken, like on "Trouble": "I lie 'cause it's what I know how to do/ Should have listened to my friends and the words they told you/ That girl is trouble, she's a player and she'll play you."

Another result of her growth between albums: Mayfield was finally able to collaborate with her older brother, who she grew up playing music with and names as her best friend.

"I feel like I had to mature as a person and a songwriter before I could [work with him]," she says. "Collaborating is a really touchy thing, because it's like, here's my unfinished piece of work. Here's my unfinished song...It's like an artist painting half of a painting and then showing it to someone else and going, 'Here, finish it.' It's like, what is it supposed to be? It's just hard. I'm sensitive and shy when it comes to that kind of stuff."

Whether it was her brother's influence or the familiarity between she and Auerbach, Tell Me is quickly exploding into the mainstream, unlike her stellar debut that, sadly, didn't quite register for media heavy-hitters. Billboard and SoundScan numbers aren't much of a concern for Mayfield, though. In fact, they seem to piss her off a little.

"People will tell me, 'Jessica, you're above this person on this chart.' It's not a football game," she says, adding that bands and musicians are often competitive about numbers. "There's enough fans for everybody and everybody needs to quit saying they're better than everybody else."

Instead of gauging her success by sales, Mayfield says, she relies on the satisfaction of the people she cares about.

"It's the happiness of the people that work with me and around me, and my family and friends," she says. "Like how excited my brother got when he found out I was doing Letterman, or my parents getting excited."

Another marker for Mayfield is materialistic: "Just being able to have the things that I need to be comfortable," she says. "I've got a house that I got when I was 19."

Mayfield is content with where her music is moving her, even if it means her life is chaotic. After the promotional stint across the pond, she'll be home for only five days.

"I haven't been able to clean my house in forever. There's, like, mold in my coffee cups," she laughs.

She'll then conquer SXSW with 10 shows, which she says "sounds like a small miracle."

"I think I'm playing a showcase for everything. I think I'm playing every stage. Whatever's going on, I'm doing it, from the sounds of it," she says.

Mayfield laughed about a friend entered to win a trip to the Austin festival on Facebook.

"I looked over at my brother and I was like, 'Should I tell him that he doesn't want to go to South by?' I don't want to go to South by. Can I enter to win a trip to just stay home with my dog?" she joked.

She really is kidding – she actually seems grateful to be so busy.

"It's good, because when I have too much off time I never know what to do by myself anyways," she admits.

Maybe Mayfield would rather be spending time with her dog and shooting guns with her dad (he hosts barbecues every summer where "he just breaks out 20 or so guns and we all just shoot," she says), but everyone has to work – and Mayfield isn't ambivalent about how lucky she is. And she certainly doesn't seem depressed.

It's true, emotional lyrics and a voice that exudes sadness have to come from somewhere. But that doesn't mean she's miserable. She's generally happy, albeit not completely satisfied.

"I'm really hoping sometime this year to get a really big, street-legal monster truck," she says plainly. "I think that once I have that, I'll be fully successful in my mind."

Baths' beats: 'All the music is my own'

2011-03-27T13:34:00.001-04:00

Feature published in Feb. 1, 2011 issue of The Signal

Most electronic music acts dip heavily in prerecorded sounds, sampling and splicing until a unique song is made. But Will Wiesenfeld, the 21-year-old one-man-show operating as Baths, doesn't do that. Every bit of every track of his debut LP, Cerulean, from guitar to percussion to keys, is Wiesenfeld-made.

"That's the thing, is that it's all me. I'm not outsourcing anything. All the music is my own; I'm not taking it from any other songs. So there's a mishmash of things happening," Weisenfeld said.

Hanna Dryland Shapiro

To call Cerulean a mish-mash is an underdeveloped understatement — Weisenfeld is selling himself short. The melodic, beat-driven songs are smooth and lush, with layers upon layers of elements that collide to create a brand of tunes that are too guided to be ambient, but not structured enough and too complex to be run-of-the-mill dance songs. Listeners might wonder: Do people dance to this stuff?

"You'd have to see a show, I guess. I don't know how to describe it," Weisenfeld said.

Though vocals are sparse on Cerulean, the few croons, like every other sonic item on the LP, are Weisenfeld himself.

"I sing live, I do. I have a computer with me and an MPD controller…and I'm singing live on top of all of that. It's sort of a mix between different things. Because I'm the only person that's onstage, I have to be very physical and very involved in the performance so that it's actually a performance — and not, like, just watching somebody press space bar on a laptop," he said.

Wiesenfeld's take on electronic music is rooted in a few crucial elements: he was classically trained on the piano from age four until 12, and he's a big Bjork fan. In fact, the Icelandic art-pop icon was the impetus for Wiesenfeld's creative career.

"I didn't know I could compose until I heard [Björk's] music. Then everything started sort of turning around and becoming something totally different," he said.

"Everything to do with her and all of her producers and all of her artistic collaborators and graphic designers…Her whole universe is something that's been a big centerpiece of my influence," he said.

Technically, Wiesenfeld has been recording music since he was 14 years old.

"This Baths album is actually my 22nd full-length thing, I think. I've done a bunch of EPs or albums that I just distributed among friends. [Cerulean] is the first one that I recognize as being a possible career-starter, because it was the first signed release I've had," he said.

Six years ago — and up until Baths — Wiesenfeld recorded as Post-Foetus.

But the name was "hard to say and write down," and Baths felt more in line with the music he'd forayed into, he said.

"I'm just a very water-oriented person. It's the name that's been floating around for different things for a while, like maybe an album title or song title. But it just sort of fit the project. And it stuck, and now it's going to be the name that I can hopefully ride throughout my career," he said.

After taking in Cerulean, the name Baths does make sense. Electronic music that's not dance-demanding has a way of washing over the listener, and Cerulean does just that. Now that Wiesenfeld is steady in his presentation of his music — and after performing as Baths throughout the US for about four months last year — he's ready for a headlining tour.

"It's very special and awesome. Both of the bands that are opening for me [Braids and Star Slinger] are wonderful and amazing musicians. I couldn't be happier with the lineup. I think it's going to be really solid," he said.

Dee Dee the Dum Dum Girl: Ready to go plural

2011-03-27T13:24:00.002-04:00

Feature published in the March 2011 issue of Stomp and Stammer

Every home-recorded solo project that's worth a damn at some point begs expansion – usually the kind that demands more hands in future endeavors. Such is the case with Dum Dum Girls, the L.A.-based, ramped-up garage-pop band helmed by Kristin Gundred, better known as Dee Dee. Until recently, Dum Dum Girls has been less a band and more of a project – and it's always been completely hers.

After two hard-working years making music on her own, a deal with Sub Pop yielded a slew of 7-inches, a full-length and, most recently, He Gets Me High, a four-song EP. Now, Dee Dee says, she's ready to relinquish control.

Sub Pop

"[He Gets Me High] is kind of the last solo version of Dum Dum Girls," says the 28-year-old in an unexpectedly soft, reserved voice considering the deeply rooted rock 'n' roll raucousness her band exudes.

And despite her often-girly lyrics – many that boast an old school devotion to the opposite sex, like "Yours Alone" – Dee Dee is decidedly strong-willed. Paired with an utter awareness of self, her music, naturally, has always been very personal. She maintains that many of those characteristics stem from her birthday – she insists she's the epitome of her astrological sign.

"I've been very self-aware in that [I've been] kind of [a] Virgo perfectionist my whole life," she says.

But Dee Dee says a history of feeling like an arbitrary member in a band is what really reaffirmed her independent nature.

"[Working solo] was a direct reaction to previous experiences I've had with music where I felt like I really hadn't contributed anything or I was compromising what I wanted," she says. "When I finally started doing my own thing, it was such a relief to not have to factor in someone else's opinion when I knew I wouldn't agree with it."

With little skill in terms of musicianship, Dee Dee says, she did have some doubts.

"I've had the bug for a really long time. I used to record very strange arrangements because I didn't play many instruments at all," she says.

It wasn't until she joined a band that she realized her own ideas were all that mattered.

"I was in a couple rock bands and I kind of just went with the program," she says of her early career. "It just took a while for me to figure out, 'Oh, wow, this is not what I want to be doing,' and therefore, let's figure out how to do what I want to be doing."

She then retreated from bands altogether, worked a "really shitty job" and immersed herself in writing under the moniker Dum Dum Girls.

"For me, [recording alone] was this really liberating experience. Even though I'm extremely limited in my ability to record or play the bass or whatever, it was still better than trying to do it with a band," she says.

Soliciting Richard Gottehrer for postproduction on I Will Be, then, marked Dee Dee's first step in weakening a white-knuckle grip on her work. The iconic musician and producer's credits include classic pop tunes like "My Boyfriend's Back," guiding Blondie's and the Go-Go's debuts and "I Want Candy," the biggest hit from The Strangeloves, Gottehrer's studio project-turned-fake band. True to her analytical personality, Dee Dee was able to admit that something was missing from her self-recorded work, and the solution was in postproduction.

"Probably in one of [my] weird texting or e-mail back-and-forths [with Sub Pop], it was brought up that, 'Wow, what if we could get some sort of famous pop producer to do something?'" she giggles.

Gottehrer was cold-called – or cold e-mailed, Dee Dee can't recall – and something about the music must have "piqued his interest," she says. But even with an industry legend in the mix, Dee Dee couldn't let up on her strong-willed tendencies.

"Despite being in awe of him and having so much respect for him, I was still very much [like], 'This is my baby,' and I [had] very clear ideas about things," she says. "I was almost afraid that would come off offensively, that I just wasn't like, 'Oh my God, do whatever.' But I think he enjoyed that about me."

A possible setback in what Dee Dee calls a "personal journey" to accepting others' input was losing drummer Frankie Rose, the former Vivian Girls member who played with Crystal Stilts during most of her stint with Dum Dum Girls. Rose had been hard at work on her own project, Frankie Rose and the Outs, and had to leave Dum Dum Girls once momentum picked up. Surprisingly, Dee Dee calls the split amicable.

"I would never want to hold back someone from doing what they want to do, because that's essentially what I had been doing or had been dealing with. So it was really important for [Frankie] to focus on her record and get it done. We were all in support of that," she says.

Sandy Vu joined the roster soon after, and since then, the familial feeling that's crucial to cooperation has swelled – so much so that the four-piece recently had matching "dum dum" script tattooed on the inside of their index fingers. Clearly, Dee Dee's jaded outlook on teamwork is dissolving.

"I'm pretty much at the point now where I feel like we're a band, and I love all of those girls, and I love spending my life with them. We feel like a gang," she says. "I have their backs and they have mine, and they work extremely hard. I'm really grateful that I was able to find people that respected me enough to help me carry out what I was trying to do."

So the new EP, He Gets Me High, released March 1 on Sub Pop, is a shuffle toward adapting to traditional band procedure, where most players get a say and the recording setting is a studio instead of a bedroom. This go 'round, Sune Rose Wagner of The Raveonettes joined Gottehrer in production – a decision that Dee Dee says was easy to accept.

"I knew that if Sune were involved with the recording process that the sort of toughness and evilness that I wanted the songs to retain, even though I was loosening my control over the project, I knew that they would remain intact," she says.

Wagner's influence on He Gets Me High is subtle – mostly because the Dum Dum Girls' aesthetic has always been in line with The Raveonettes' darkly romantic, pop-minded brand of rock 'n' roll.

"I didn't want to put out the EP and have it sound exactly like I Will Be. Which I could have; I had demoed versions of the songs that I did in the exact same way that I did I Will Be. To some people that might be an interesting artifact to have. I love hearing demo versions of songs – as a record collector and total music fan, that's something I love. But I definitely wanted to do something that showed a marked improvement in the band," she says.

The result is a slightly more polished version of Dum Dum Girls. The reverb's not as thick and the lo-fi label doesn't really apply, but all four tracks still slide smoothly into the band's repertoire. Dee Dee says she wanted the EP to better reflect the live sound of the band instead of the bootleg-recorded feel.

"It's impossible and I think silly to try to duplicate what a home recording sounds like when you have this loud, talented rock 'n' roll band version available," she says with a laugh.

Welcoming change and help is part of Dee Dee's charm, and will likely be part of Dum Dum Girls' endurance.

"I'm very aware that [I Will Be] was sort of me maxed out, what I'm capable of myself. I love that record and it's really sentimental to me. It represents my first attempt at songwriting, and it's really special to me because of that. But I felt like it was time to put something out there that reflected the progression that I'd made as a songwriter," she says.

"I can write these songs and I can get better at writing songs...but I'm interested in moving forward and utilizing opportunities to work with people that are really good at what they do in order to make what I'm doing even better," she says.

On the next LP, slated to release by the end of the year, the other girls will sing on the record for the first time. And there will be room for "classic band collaboration," Dee Dee says.

Sub Pop

"If I have one thing, I feel like I have a voice that I know how to use and get across what I'm intending to," she says. "So it's a little scary to think of letting go of that total control. But I sing with [the girls] all the time, and our voices sound so much better together than I do singing with myself."

"I'm excited. At this point I would never go back to using a drum machine so obviously, why wouldn't I use Sandy? Even just the terminology - I'm going to use a drummer - we're a band at this point, so obviously we're going to record the record as a band."

Ducktails, "Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics" [Woodsist]

2011-02-17T11:45:00.001-05:00

Album review published in the Feb. 8, 2011 issue of The Signal

Instrumental music, whether electronic or of the post-rock Explosions in the Sky variety, doesn't grasp the memory any tighter than muzak for most. Even when its intricacy deserves commending or it's overwhelmingly cinematic, it's rarely among the ranks of unforgettable tunes. And that's not to say landscape-building albums are worthless — in fact, a good one heard in one sitting can be a more meaningful experience than your first parent-free vacation. Oh, wait — you don't remember that? It felt monumental at the time though, right?

That's how I felt about Ducktails before Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics, the third LP from Matthew Mondanile, the solo musician behind moniker. The sound has been, by and large, an instrumental, distortion-heavy and somewhat experimental offering, and it never stuck with me — until now.

The instrumental opener, "In the Swing," is in a telling beachy vein, but otherwise it's misleading. The album is peppered with similar tracks, but the bulk of the sunny songs are made easily likeable with vocals, and are more in line with the surf-pop of Real Estate, another one of Mondanile's projects.

"Hamilton Road" boasts blase, breezy vocals that pair well with the woozy guitars and general seaside vibe. It's the low-calorie version of sugary surf rock — laid-back and mellow, but masterfully catchy. The melody on "Sprinter" is sneakily dizzying and danceable, and "Sunset Liner" evokes the satisfying body heaviness of a beach day well spent

Mondanile enlisted Panda Bear and Animal Collective's Noah Lennox for "Killin' the Vibe," which yielded a permanently sing-a-longable jam that almost rivals "My Girls" (Animal Collective). "Don't Make Plans" is similarly sticky, but in a hazy and offhand fashion, and the chorus of "Art Vandelay" is of the simplistic, quick-to-be-memorized brand.

Interspersing such gems with gloomily psychedelic, vocals-free songs makes them feel like interludes. Even "Little Window," which is guided by Southerner-at-the-beach-style picking, has you wondering when the vocals come in. But adding vocals to the latter could easily take it to the fringes of alt-country territory — and that just wouldn't make sense for Ducktails.

So maybe Mondanile knows what he's doing. For every instrumental track, the lyrics-accented songs become even more desirable, even more necessary. In true Mondanile form, however, he closes out Arcade Dynamics with the 10-minute "Porch Projector," which is aptly-titled — it's like a blissfully uneventful afternoon spent rocking to and fro on a porch swing.

Ducktails' foray into the traditional song zone won't go unnoticed. Arcade Dynamics is like hearing Ducktails for the first time again — except not entirely, because like me, you probably nearly forgot about it. This go ‘round though, we won't forget.

Celebrity memoir mockery comes to the Buckhead Theatre

2011-02-17T11:33:00.001-05:00

Feature published in Feb. 15, 2011 issue of The Signal

Like long-winded versions of the tabloids that line grocery store checkouts, celebrity memoirs are rife with trivial information. For Eugene Pack, those all-too-revealing autobiographies are the stuff of gut-busting comedy.

Pack, a writer, producer, actor and playwright, co-created Celebrity Autobiography with Dayle Reyfel. The live show puts stars' books on trial in the most hilarious of ways: onstage and out loud. The rotating cast, which includes comedians and actors like Rachel Dratch (Saturday Night Live), Rosie Perez (Pineapple Express, Lipstick Jungle), Mario Cantone (Sex and the City) and Pack himself, reads straight from books penned by celebrities. From the Jonas Brothers to David Hasselhoff to Suzanne Somers, no star's book is safe from Celebrity Autobiography.

One of Pack's favorite acts in the show is a recent addition: excerpts from Tiger Woods' book, How I Play Golf.

"That's something that I read, and in [the book], he talks graphically about his golfing technique and every single sentence is pretty much a double entendre. It's fascinating — you really can't believe how these words resonate after what's happened. It's all about how he strokes his putter, and how he examines the area around the hole. It really is unbelievable," he said.

Pack is so familiar with celebrity memoirs that he's nailed down the typical formula, and why they're such great fodder for the show.

"The problem with some of the people that write these books is that they have something dramatic sometimes that happens to them. I've looked at it as a science, where they put that in the prologue — this crazy, dramatic, ‘I'm teetering on the edge of a cliff' or ‘I was given the role of a lifetime' or ‘They threw me in jail for 30 minutes,'" he said.

"And then chapter one is ‘I was born in…' And then as the chapters continue and continue, [the celebrity] run[s] out of thoughts. Toward the end of the book, they talk about how they get ready in the morning, what their favorite ice cream is or colors that they love," he said. "Those are the parts that we love reading, because [of ] those details. You think, ‘Oh my god, I can't believe they wrote that. I can't believe people care.' We do, in a strange way."

The show runs monthly in New York City, as well as in London and Los Angeles. This week, Celebrity Autobiography comes to Atlanta for the first time. Scott Adsit (30 Rock) and Luke Perry, among others, are slated for the debut performance.

"Luke Perry has never done it before. He's always wanted to do it and somehow this worked, so that's going to be really fun," Pack said.

Scott Adsit said his favorite book to read at the show is by David Hasselhoff in which he recounts his Broadway experiences.

"He did Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical a few years ago … and he gave himself a good review," Adsit laughed.

Courtesy of Celebrity Autobiography

Adsit, a Celebrity Autobiography regular, said he's looking forward to working with Perry — "He's dreamy," he said — and the rest of the seven-member cast, many of whom he hasn't worked with yet.

Adsit is also in several other acts, including one Pack is partial to: the infamous Eddie Fisher, Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds love triangle. Each star wrote a memoir that mentions the feud — and each of them told their own version of what happened.

"[It's] one of my personal favorites, just because it's such an epic, mind-blowing story," Pack said. "Because it's a story that happened in the ‘60s, but it's kind of like the Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston story revisited."

Pack said the show sometimes pits celebrities against each other by reading about one subject that's in more than one book, like when Sylvester Stallone's diet details and Tommy Lee's sexual exploits are combined.

"It's as if they're both on stage with their respective memoirs doing the celebrity mash-up, back and forth," he said. "Who's more outrageous than the other one? The guy who's talking about everything he has in his refrigerator and freezer or the guy who's talking about how to turn on a woman in this graphic, graphic detail?"

Though the comedic show pokes fun at celebrities, Pack noted that Celebrity Autobiography points to a cultural commonplace that's as interesting as it is laughable.

"The whole evening is not about making fun of that particular celebrity or anything mean-spirited. It's more about … thinking how mind-blowing it is that everybody has a book. If you're famous, then you can write a book. Whether it's a memoir at any age, if you're the Jonas Brothers, or you can write a book about health and fitness or self-help because people know who you are. It's fascinating," he said.

Stranded in Egypt, Moving Atlanta Music

2011-02-17T11:29:00.001-05:00

Zack Wolfe

Feature published in the Feb. 15, 2011 issue of The Signal

Malissa Sole isn't afraid to ask for help. When the Atlanta dweller founded 4th Ward Heroes in May of 2009, her willingness to ask for favors and advice gave her the momentum she needed to get the promotions company moving. But when Sole was in Egypt at the end of February, nobody could help her quickly get a flight back home.

Sole began visiting friends in Egypt in 2002, then studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo two years later. She's visited the country almost every year since.

"Egypt is like my second home," said Sole, who books concerts and events throughout Atlanta and sometimes Athens.

Sole traveled to Egypt to attend a wedding a few days before the protesting began.

"I had an absurd layover in Frankfurt, and I looked up at the TVs and I was like, ‘F**k,'" she said. "Immediately, I knew Egypt was going to be interesting. But I didn't think to this extent."

After the Jan. 22 wedding, Sole recalled, "all hell broke loose on Jan. 25." She was able to leave the Four Seasons Hotel Cairo at Nile Plaza where the ceremony was held, but said that the newly married couple was temporarily withheld by hotel management.

"They just got married — they want to go on their honeymoon!" she laughed.

Sole stayed with friends in a gated community in New Cairo, a recently built satellite city about 10 minutes from Tahrir Square.

"The night when the phone services were shut off, then the Internet was shut off, the only access to anything I had was CNN," Sole said. "[They] had not yet started reporting on the issue, so the other opportunity was Al Jazeera English."

"So you're in Cairo and you're seeing what's really happening, and you flip the channel to the United States and it's like nothing. That's when I started to get worried," she said.

Sole said she felt relieved when tanks and soldiers arrived to monitor the surrounding area of her friend's home, but was taken aback when, once mobile phone services were restored, her friends received government-regulated text messages.

"It was in Arabic; everybody was getting it. It just said, ‘Young men of Egypt, stand up and fight for your president,'" she said.

After a sleepless runaround of flight updates and repeated rescheduling with Lufthansa German Airlines — and, of course, a massive phone bill accrued by multiple calls to D.C. — Sole eventually boarded a flight to Frankfurt, and returned to Atlanta only three days later than she'd planned.

The brief panic she endured hasn't weakened her enthusiasm for Egypt, and it hasn't marred her pride in its citizens' uprising. Sole said she wanted to join the protests in Tahrir Square, but her friends urged against it.

"[The Egyptian people] have found their voice. I'm so proud of them," she said.

It's that same impenetrable ability to understand hardships as potentially constructive obstacles that's fueled Sole's success with 4th Ward Heroes. Even the company's beginnings display that admirable trait: She founded it not long after losing her job at an Atlanta architecture firm.

"When the economy fell out, I was a consultant, so my job was the first to go. I thought, ‘It will pick back up and people will start building again.' That hasn't quite happened yet," Sole said.

Sole then worked for Have You Heard, a now-defunct blog and podcast, and booking concerts was a frequent responsibility. In May of 2009, she went a little rogue and arranged a show at 529 with The Constellations and The Judies. She left Have You Heard soon after.

She's still breaking even with most events, but 4th Ward Heroes' reputation in Atlanta is widespread. It hasn't come without the help of her social network, though.

"I book all the shows, but I team up with other people. That's the beauty of 4th Ward Heroes. Even though I am responsible for everything at the end of the day … I have a lot of really great friends and they do all kinds of things," she said.

When she was only a budding promoter, Sole enlisted friends with varying talents who were in similarly fledgling stages.

"They would help me, they would work in whatever capacity, whatever their skills or talents were, and I'd promote the sh*t out of them in return. And it's worked over the years because we've all grown and people have gotten better. I like to think that I've gotten better running production — I know a lot more about sound than I used to," she said.

Sole said locals are quick to get involved with the music scene, especially if it's for charity. Under 4th Ward Heroes' name, she's organized benefits for various charities, including Haiti relief and homeless children.

"I know other booking agents who don't have the circle of people working on shows that I have. They don't have that kind of support system in place. And I think it's ‘cause they don't ask," she said. "The only difference is that I ask. I'm really good at asking for help — it's the only thing I do better than anyone else."

And will Sole return to Egypt again next year?

"Are you kidding me? I'm going to go back as soon as I can," she said, and expressed hopes to one day book a 4th Ward Heroes show in Cairo. She said that she and members of The Howlies, a local pop-inclined punk band, have joked for years about a New Year's Eve show at the Great Pyramids of Giza — but Sole is serious.

"I think we have a much better shot at it now, if [President Hosni] Mubarek steps down, for getting some honest-to-goodness cultural exchange," she said.

Entertainment Editor's note: The interview with Malissa Sole was conducted before Friday, Feb. 11, when Mubarek officially stepped down.

Air Waves, "Dungeon Dots" [Underwater Peoples]

2011-01-30T11:04:00.002-05:00

Album review published in the Jan. 25, 2011 issue of The Signal

Nicole Schneit, frontwoman of Brooklyn-based Air Waves, has a voice that exudes both the childlike fragility of Wayne Coyne (The Flaming Lips) and the dreamy breathiness of Victoria Legrand (Beach House). It's a delicate kind of croon, and it's the multifunctional core of the band's sound.

Schneit's eerie exhaust gives patience to upbeat numbers like the twang-laced "Force Fed," but adds interest to slower, repetitive tracks like the minimalistic "Humdrum."

The lyrics are rife with simplistic one-liners — the kind listeners ruminate over and want to relate to, even if they have to force it. "I'm alive/I'm on fire/For the first time in my life," Schneit sings on "Knockout," the opener. On "Lightning," there's a line that straddles the fence between deep and cliche so confidently that it works: "I'm gonna be the lightning that strikes down your tree."

And then there's the ‘90s element. "Sweetness," a strummy tune accented with "Oohs," could pass for a forgotten alt-rock-era B-side. The closer and one of the album's best songs, "Bisous," is lyrically melancholy, but the bulk of the pace could induce a pogoing fervor.

The band's debut LP isn't a work of folk, but it isn't generic indie rock either — and Dungeon Dots has been dubbed both. It almost sounds like an indie pop album that's speed has been hampered, as if it's hauling a ton of bricks.

What Schneit and company offer on Dungeon Dots rests happily in a Bermuda Triangle of categories — a place you might never come back from.

'The Fighter' not the average sports flick

2010-12-14T12:30:00.001-05:00

Feature published in Dec. 7, 2011 issue of The Signal

Let's set the record straight — The Fighter is more than just a boxing movie. The spin on the true tale of Micky Ward's plight from stepping stone to welterweight champion sticks more closely to a personal history than a sports chronology, shifting its potential audience from fight fans to, well, practically everybody.

That's largely due to director David O. Russell's gently comedic touch. His penchant for quirky personalities — the kind that are abundant in his 2004 philosophical comedy I Heart Huckabees — puts the tragedy-to-triumph tale in a fresh realm, where the characters, particularly Micky (Mark Wahlberg) and half-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), beat the plot out for the grand prize.

"This movie wouldn't exist without that beautiful relationship between the two brothers," Russell said at a recent press conference in Los Angeles where the Signal was in attendance.

Dicky, the eldest of the pair, is Micky's trainer — but only when he's sober enough to remember. Bale's character is as hooked on crack as he is to his stale claim to boxing fame. The former fighter is stuck in a what-could-have-been mindset that's constantly agitated by a bevy of hopeless sisters and an overbearing mother (Melissa Leo). Dicky's addiction is at once his only escape from and perpetual reminder of his failures.

But Dicky's heart-wrenching condition isn't the focus of The Fighter.

"If we went down that dark path, it would be a very limited audience that would go and see this movie. We thought it [had] so much more to offer," Wahlberg said.

Wahlberg is right. Instead of framing the story like an episode of Intervention, Russell relied on the Ward family's idiosyncratic personalities to guide the film. And the brotherly back-and-forth is the clan's centerpiece.

"The story between the brothers is really fascinating… [Russell] brought a level of humor and emotion that I don't think anybody else was capable of bringing to it," Wahlberg said.

Set in the ‘90s in the small town of Lowell, Mass., Russell had plenty of entertaining fodder to play with, from bad hairstyles to grating accents. But even more crucial to the success of The Fighter was Russell's earnest and committed primary cast.

"I love this movie and I would have done anything to get the movie made. And I'll do anything to support and promote the movie. It's that important to me," Wahlberg said.

"Every single person up here brought that to the film. And that's a rocket ship," Russell said.

Bale, Wahlberg and Russell said they're still in contact with the real-life Micky and Dicky — and they see them often. Bale revealed that the Wards are content with their cinematic portrayal.

"[Dicky] actually came around and seemed to really understand. After we showed him the movie, he didn't punch any of us. And I talk to him almost daily," Bale said.

The film almost didn't happen. Out of "sheer desperation," Wahlberg signed on as producer to shepherd along production.

"I'd already promised Micky, Dicky… and everybody else involved that we were going to get this movie made. And it seemed, at first glance, like it was a no-brainer. I mean, amazing parts, what a wonderful story, a really new and interesting world that you're not that familiar with… We just had to grab a hold of it and force it to happen. Very much like Micky's journey to winning the title. We just had to go and make it happen," Wahlberg said.

Wahlberg's comparison rings true — two-fold. Born in an area similar to Lowell, before his foray into cinema, the actor's life was plagued by crime and drugs like Dicky's was.

"The story has been told," Wahlberg said. "I was in a lot of trouble and then I turned my life around. It makes such a good comparison to Mickey's journey into the story. You know, nine kids in both families, and growing up 30 minutes from each other."

Wahlberg's background afforded him an intimacy with the story that, most likely, no other actor could have offered.

"Mark has a great quality as an actor, and he's able to show that with Micky — of this vulnerability, a man who's powerful and strong, yet is able to show tenderness and vulnerability," Amy Adams, who plays Charlene, Micky's outspoken and steadfast girlfriend, said. "That's really sexy."

"The fact is that the people are so unbelievably loveable," Russell said of the Ward family.

Whether the entire Ward family is actually endearing or not, The Fighter presents them — their pitfalls included — in the most likeable of lights. And the result is a film that shelves the standards of a sports flick, and delves deep into its characters' hearts — and the audience's, too.

The Back Pockets: An acid trip without the LSD

2010-11-27T09:01:00.001-05:00

Jhoni Jackson

Feature published in Nov. 16, 2010 issue of The Signal

In the afternoon inside a sun-filled Criminal Records, a six-piece fusion of neo-hippie folk and punk rock grit took the stage. It was the first performance of this year's Other Sound Festival, an annual showcase of local bands.

Emily Kempf, a messy blonde in a monochromatic red get-up of a tank top and high-waist shorts, stood at the forefront. Blasé yet striking, she was clearly the band's ringleader.

But as much as Kempf's appearance was disarming, what happened in the audience while she sang was even more captivating.

Their layered white outfits should have given some indication that the youthful crowd members were associated. A male standing closest to where Kempf was singing began ripping pages from a magazine he'd been furiously flipping through seconds before, and Kempf's eyes met his. As he crumpled one glossy sheet after another, she grinned.

That's when the rest of the members joined — and soon the binding of the magazine was discarded among the misshaped paper balls that now littered the floor. And within minutes, the group — who all appeared to be sober, but with a glaze of excitement in their eyes — discarded their clothing, too.

A long-haired brunette stripped down to a bra and thin pants, a few males went shirtless and the pioneering page-ripper wore only his underwear. The brunette handed him a pair of scissors, and to her delight, he began snipping away at her locks.

A few songs later, the group held hands and weaved — slightly bent-over, as if they were sneaking silently — in and out of the crowd of onlookers. Some people joined in; some just stared, open-mouthed. The band continued to play.

The uninhibited crowd members conducting the antics were the Back Pockets' theater group. The Back Pockets is a large band, and includes Kempf, drummer Billy Mitchell, Haley Murphy (back-up vocals), guitarist Britt Tuesink, Gage Gilmore (bassist), Lam Dang Nguyen (fiddle player), several other rotating players and a multitude of actors guided by Orion (Bryan Crook) and Henry Detweiler. Altogether, around 30 people comrpise the band.

It's an overwhelming roll call, and practicing is likely just as messy. But the Back Pockets insist on accessorizing their shows with nontraditional, outside-the-box theatrics.

"One of my goals in the very beginning was to…create a show where people thought they were on acid when they saw it," Kempf said of her vision for the Back Pockets' performances.

But before the Back Pockets was a band, the medium for the same endeavor — "a big, crazy, event spectacle," Kempf called it — was a play.

"There [were] all these people involved and week to week, we'd get together and sometimes people would come in and out and we didn't know…if everyone [would] show up," she said.

With a show booked and only a few weeks to rehearse, Kempf feared the performance wasn't going to work.

"So we were like, ‘We need a plan to pull out of our back pocket at the last minute,'" she said.

The band was an afterthought, Kempf explained, but served as the perfect replacement for her ill-fated directorial debut. When practicing, Kempf "found out" she could sing, she said. The band idea stuck.

Though she can sometimes sound childlike, Kempf's voice easily crescendos to a raw and raspy place that matches the often band's off-kilter melodies. On "Story Song," a standout track on their second LP, Blissters N Basements, Kempf talks her way into a scream. She explains how at 15 years old, she followed a boyfriend to upstate New York, took too many drugs and basically felt like she was rotting inside.

And though Kempf is clearly the outfit's experienced, steadfast matriarch, the Back Pockets wouldn't be the shocking powerhouse that it is without its theater group.

The theatrics are typically more absurd than what occurred at the Criminal Records show, a performance considered off-the-wall enough as it was. For a show at the High Museum, the band was costumed as blend of mystical forest creatures and Victorian era elite.

The theater group wore likeminded outfits, and twirled each other like it was a hoe-down before the mostly idle crowd. It looked like an Of Montreal concert, only without the stiff choreographing and rigid separation of stage and audience.

Sometimes the band members are unaware of the theater clan's itinerary, Kempf said. The band and theater acts practice often, but mostly separately.

Kempf described another recent show: "They brought a giant tarp in and unrolled it across the audience. We were looking at each other like, what the f**k? It literally covered the entire bar."

"Everyone was on chairs holding the tarp in the air. It was this epic…it was incredible," she said.

One connective element in the Back Pockets' shows is a direct offer for the crowd to participate. Drum sticks are given to as many people as possible, and everyone's encouraged to play along, whether they beat the floor, the wall or a nearby trash bin.

Once the theatrics emerge during a show, the band as a whole seems much like a commune of hippies, like the LSD-loving Merry Pranksters in Tom Wolfe'sThe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

"People use the word hippie a lot for us, which is okay. It doesn't offend me," Kempf said.

But nobody appears to be on drugs during their performances — the free-spirited vibe the Back Pockets emanates feels natural.

"Natural acid from the mother," Haley Murphy, a back-up vocalist, joked when the subject arose.

"Battery acid," drummer Billy Mitchell chimed in.

Although a cult reference did come up, considering the camaraderie and non-creepiness of the members, Kempf's description of the band as a generously inclusive family rings true.

"People come up and [say], ‘I want to be in your band,' and I'm like, ‘Okay,'" she said. "Theater is always looking for new people."

"It's Kind of a Funny Story": Depression isn't so bad

2010-11-15T20:18:00.001-05:00

Published in the Oct. 12, 2010 issue of The Signal

Leave it to Zach Galifianakis to make light of mental instability. In It’s Kind of a Funny Story, the off-kilter jokester plays Bobby, a troubled but comedic patient at a psychiatric hospital, who lends his humor and wisdom to 16-year-old Craig (Keir Gilchrist), the main character.

Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the film is an adaptation of a Ned Vizzini novel of the same name. In Vizzini’s work, Bobby doesn’t exist—at least, not with the same name, or even as a side-character. The novel’s plot slaps a ray of sunshine on depression with its messages of hope despite despair, and Boden and Fleck’s addition of comedic relief from Bobby supplies more doses of fluff than viewers see patients popping meds.

Craig narrates the story of his teenage depression, which he surmises is a result of relatable pressures: school, friends and family. His problems involve no domestic strife, drug abuse or other monumental issues — he simply feels overstressed and hopeless. And, like many struggling teens, Craig feels his problems are uniquely insurmountable. Under overwhelming stress, Craig finds himself checking into a psych ward.

That’s where Bobby comes in. Due to hospital renovations, the adult and youth psychiatric inpatients are housed together. It temporarily shatters the suspension of disbelief required to become engrossed in a film — it’s hard to believe such a situation would ever occur, especially in a seemingly state-run facility. Broken verisimilitude aside, Bobby offers Craig advice from the start, about life, coping with his maladies and girls (Noelle, a same-aged cutter at the ward and Craig’s love interest, is played by Emma Roberts).

Other patients include a noise-sensitive Hasidic Jew who lost mental control after dropping too much acid, a guy (Matthew Maher) who inadvertently makes a beaver joke in the program’s art workshop and an Egyptian man who’s perpetually asleep.
The abundance of silly characters exaggerated for comedic purposes bends the film’s take on depression into an almost offensive angle. Craig’s catapult from suicidal to hopeful and positive is fast, and easily assisted by connecting with Bobby and other patients. The film begs the question: Are mental disorders and diseases, as a whole, not such a big deal?

Clearly, mental ills are more complex and difficult to overcome than It’s Kind of a Funny Story suggests. They can, in the worst of scenarios, shred a person’s life in a way that makes it impossible to ever regroup.

But Bobby’s character provides some realism, especially when a visit from his child and her mother ends terribly. It’s obvious that Bobby’s unstable mindset has left him with long-term, life-altering results.

In a phone interview where The Signal and other college publications spoke with Galifianakis, Gilchrist and the film’s directors, Galifianakis revealed a potential reason why Bobby’s character feels genuine: he studied actual mental facility patients.

“I went to a couple of mental facilities in New Mexico. [I] kind of observed, and took some notes and asked some questions…I noticed a couple of people in these facilities that seem like they could function on the outside, and I kind of think that Bobby could function on the outside — but he does have the possibility of snapping,” he said.

Craig appeared susceptible to the same behavior before entering the ward—an attempt to end his own life is what landed him there — but, during his brief stint, relationships with other patients assuage his pain and rotate his perspective to a more stable place.

“I think [the message] has to do with not feeling alone. You know, internalizing your problems. It’s very easy for us to think that our problems are our own, and no one else is going through something similar. And I think that opening up and sharing is okay,” Fleck said.

Relationships, like Bobby’s somewhat unfit mentorship to Craig, can be life-saving. But more often, intimate connections aren’t an end-all solution.
Galifiankis offered tips for college students who, like Craig, often feel intensely discouraged and stressed.

“You know what’s really good? To go donate your plasma, and then drink, like, a six-pack. Really can calm the nerves,” he said, and elaborated on the pressure many college students endure.

“I think society is putting too much pressure on young people. It’s good for people who work on ulcers,” he said. “Chill out, young ones. And those that are chilling out too much, clean your room and study some.”

It’s Kind of a Funny Story doesn’t offer a realistic portrayal of a psychiatric hospital, nor does it develop an accurate picture of depression or other mental problems. It does, however, offer a few stories — mainly in Craig and Bobby — that might resonate with a variety of audiences.

And if viewers can ignore the film’s missteps, the story is kind of funny.