ISSUE 5 by HASH Magazine

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF M. Sean Ryan @mseanry sean@hashmagazine.com

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Monica So @hellomoso monica@hashmagazine.com

CONTRIBUTERS WRITERS: Brandon Specktor @beardspeck Will Ewing @wkewing Alyssa Noel @alyssanoel333 Alyssa Pereira Carly Lewis @carlylewis PHOTOGRAPHY: Gavin Thomas / www.gavinthomasphoto.com Brian Collins / finraz@gmail.com Joshua Sarner / www.jsarnerphoto.com Tim Bugbee / photos.tinnitus-photography.com DESIGN: Francisco Hernandez / www.siftkid.com ILLUSTRATION: Christian D. Capestany / www.graphicsindust.com

CONTENTS LETTER FROM THE EDITOR PLUS 1 Ty Segall Band / White Fence / The Men / Lambchop / Vijay Iyer Trio / M83 / Liars / Bear In Heaven / Frankie Rose

Q&A

4 6 25

FIDLAR / The Maccabees / 2:54 / Liars / Christian Scott

FEATURE Women To Watch : Kell i Scar r / Lianne L a Havas / Kather ine Whitaker of E va n s t h e D e at h / Hannah Cohen / Sadie Dupuis of S p eedy O r t i z

NEW ALBUM REVIEWS

Ty Segall Band/ Yeasayer / Lionel Loueke / The Tallest Man On Earth/ Thieving Irons / Metric

THE HASH New and old tracks

LETTER FROM THE

EDITOR

Had enough summer already? We’re happy to give you an extended reason to stay planted in the shade, or, hopefully, the comforts of central AC. Our fifth issue is conveniently plump with food for summer nostalgia. We’ve got an eclectic set of summer concert photos, captured by returning contributors Josh Sarner, Tim Bugbee and Brian Collins. After that however, the usual program gets a bit funky, at least if you’ve been with us for issues past. This time around, we’ve got more interviews with artists responsible for a range of exceptional summer releases—from jazz’s trumpet visionary Christian Scott, to the anthemic guitar squalls of The Maccabees and 2:54, and jumping back across the pond to the West Coast: home to skate-punk misfits FIDLAR and the protean rock trio Liars. This issue also presents our first extended feature, a clutch of thrilling female artists bound together by promising music and unique voices; like the ascending English punk troupe Evans the Death (fronted by 19-yearold firebrand Katherine Whitaker, who checks in with contributing writer Brandon Specktor before shoving off to her day job); or for those given to murkier waters, our returning-contributor Will Ewing wades in deep with the slashing guitars and wit of Speedy Ortiz frontwoman Sadie Dupuis. Then there’s our cover subject, Kelli Scarr, whose newest recording is a burnished country gem. As for the others, they’re waiting for you just around the corner of this page.

TY SEGALL BAND, WEBSTER HALL

I want to extend serious thanks to Gavin Thomas, whose photography flushes so many of these interviews. Same goes for our other returning contributors: Francisco Hernandez, Carly Lewis and Christian Capestany. We also welcome two new writers, Alyssa Noel and Alyssa Pereiraâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;they bolster a sturdy selection of new records, reviewed at the back. Last and never least: Infinite gratitude goes to our Creative Director Monica So. Together, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re looking to push HASH into the app marketplace, and the third dimension, so keep glued to our social channels for updates on the magazine itself. Support the music and artists here that you enjoy. If you hear something, say something.

#MSR Editor in Chief Subscribe | Follow

TY SEGALL

WEBSTER HALL, NYC PHOTO: JOSH SARNER

WHITE FENCE

WEBSTER HALL, NYC PHOTO: JOSH SARNER

RICH SAMIS OF THE MEN WEBSTER HALL, NYC PHOTO: JOSH SARNER

THE MEN

WEBSTER HALL, NYC PHOTO: JOSH SARNER

IN BROOKLYN, LAMBCHOP COAST ON A FAINT, HUMBLE BREEZE

therapy in the drones and sonic unions construed by usual producer Mark Nevers, and equal nourishment in the string arrangements by Mason Neely and Peter Stopschinski.

“So we’re just gonna keep bumming you out.” It could

These lush treatments were absent from Lamchop’s

have been a snatch of dialogue or interior monologue

performance here in Brooklyn. They were echoed faith-

from any of the songs he sang before or after, but this

fully at points though, as in the vacuum-like thud

was Kurt Wagner’s way of introducing “N.O.,” a song by

closing “Gone Tomorrow,”or the voice-message inter-

his band Lambchop, from one of its earlier incarna-

ceding “2B2.” Triggering these audio landmarks was

tions. Though older than most of the material that

keyboardist and guitarist Ryan Norris, whose input

brought the band—a come-and-go collective since the

rarely exceeded a faint top-layer. The same could have-

early ‘90s—to the Bell House in Brooklyn one Friday

been said for anyone in the five-member arrangement

late in April, the song merged unflinchingly with its

in which Lambchop is currently touring. Matthew

surrounding pieces.

Swanson’s bass-lines were more suggestive than they

It began with soft strokes of guitars and brushes on drums: a careful surrounding to lyrics packaging

stuck to brushes.

impressions of squalor and vice right from the open-

Their harmony was hushed, and suited to the

ing couplet. “This is not New Orleans / No party in

tracks from Mr. M, which comprised the bulk of the

my head,” Wagner began, the words trickling out in a

set. Where that album’s production distinguishes it

hollow shudder, the vowels rounded, their consonants

from its predecessors this performance underlined

clipped.

their similarities. The highlight of the evening arrived

Like everything else the bandleader sang that

in “My Blue Wave” from Lambchop’s sixth record Is A

evening it invited the crowd to lean closer. But keep-

Woman. An unhurried elegy, it grew taut with tension

ing the room in this state was Wagner’s way of making

as macabre matters encroached upon innocent charac-

sure his audience was paying attention, too. Like

ters, its thickly ordered chords ripening in lockstep.

during “2B2,” a typically windswept and loosely-rooted

Just as he had all evening, Wagner played and sang

country ballad from Mr. M (Merge), where Wagner

with bodily motion. He rocked in his seat with his

recounts reeling in Christmas decorations on February

acoustic guitar, cradling it, shaking it; letting some

31st—don’t look for it on your calendar.

ideas ring, playing others closer to the vest. Before

Those turns of phrase and sidelong glances are what

they arrived to a final chord Wagner stuck one that

keep Wagner’s songs from suffocating in their darker

was out sync with his band, introducing an element of

moments, which, as he acknowledged, are prevalent.

suspense neither he nor they intended. It also injected

And the music—staid and nebulous, blown along by

the moment with a humility that tied it together with

the gentle breeze of the bandleader’s baritone—ensures

every song that came before or after, and made the

those lyrics remain the foremost surface. That’s as true

resolution of the next and final chord that much more

as ever with Mr. M, the Nashville group’s latest and

human. #MSR

best release. But its tracks also find a great deal of

were a harmonic engine, while drummer Scott Martin

KURT WAGNER OF LAMBCHOP

VIJAY IYER TRIO BIRDLAND, NYC

PHOTO: JOSH SARNER

PLUS 1 | 15

M83

OGDEN THEATRE, CO PHOTO: BRIAN COLLINS

LIARS BOSTON

PHOTO: TIM BUGBEE

JESSE TABISH

BEAR IN HEAVEN MELTS MINDS AND HEARTS AS ONE

drummer Joe Stickney’s skip-stepping patterns churn even more crucially in tracks like “World of Freakout,” or in “Idle Heart,” where his snares and toms sound thrillingly engulfed in distortion by the second verse.

By the middle of his band’s stroboscopic (see, not

Adam Willis’ guitar-work and limber bass lines are

epilepsy-friendly) performance, John Philpot was

less overt but a flexible ligament between the drum

dancing alone at the center of the Bowery Ballroom

thunder and Philpot’s keyboards, which permeate and

stage: elbows hiked up around mid-torso, legs and

evolve throughout the album with a creative rich-

fists pumping, his face an exuberant half-grin, half-

ness: they hiss in the valleys or splash into focus like

grimace. The Bear In Heaven frontman had abandoned

fireworks when the moment is climactic. Most impor-

his post at a deck of keyboards, which continued

tantly though, however howitzer-sounding the music

rippling loops of sharp-edged synthesizer, leaving

becomes, Philpot rarely sounds as though he’s raising

the rest of the musical equation to the capable rhythm

his voice—or needs to. In “World Of Freakout,” the

section rounding out his trio.

sonic megalith of the album, his boyish bellow floats

On some nearby plane, Philpot was enjoying newfound freedom: “I want to run to you but my legs

to the surface in soft, placid arcs. If you can’t understand him, you’re not supposed to.

won’t respond,” he sang moments before. Yet there

So it wasn’t as surprising, then, that Bear In

he was, transcending paralysis and making good on

Heaven concocted an inordinate degree of motion

a promise repeated at the song’s chorus: “If you come

and aural whorls here as it might have been were

dance with me, I think you will like my moves.”

it a group not as reliably—and oddly—galvanizing.

Like so many songs from the latest album by Bear

The latter was more the case when the three-piece

In Heaven, “The Reflection of You” celebrates aban-

dipped toward its older songs. Those came from Beast

don, as a liberator and as a conduit for the intimate

Rest Forth Mouth, a more languid walk of dance-

or unique. Which puts the song at the heart of I

able gloom-pop from 2009. The band played that

Love You, It’s Cool (Dead Oceans/Hometapes), a circuit

album’s most compelling tunes here, which made for

of synth-driven, frenzied dance tunes that allude to

striking contrast. “Lovesick Teenagers” and “Dust

emotional or physical surrender along many fronts,

Cloud” marched through even hazier malaise when

but always in the positive—or at least neutral (inso-

situated between their adrenalized contemporaries.

far as songs like “Sweetness and Sickness” or “Warm

Such was the thematic current the Brooklyn trio

Water” are completely unintelligible). “The Reflec-

channeled during its homecoming after more than a

tion of You” happens to be the only track to actually

month of touring behind I Love You, It’s Cool (released

conflate hedonism with dancing, rather than, say,

in April), but they weren’t alone. Arriving first on

sex (“Kiss Me Crazy”), drugs (“Sinful Nature,” ”Idle

a three-band bill this evening was Doldrums, the

Heart”) or madness (“World of Freakout”).

electronically loquacious project begun by the young

Even for an effects-heavy record, it’s remarkably

Toronto comer Airick Woodhead. Wildly energetic,

robust-sounding coming from a three-piece. It’s know-

though never to the point of sloppiness, Woodhead

ingly produced—by David Wrench and Philpot, who

interwove elaborate sequences of midi-activated

has a background in audio engineering. Which means

patches that relied on sudden, sonic upheavals for

dramatic contrast. Some of them came from Empire Sound (No Pain In Pop), an interesting EP packed with diverging rhythms and cryptic couplets shot through with Woodhead’s reedy-voiced holler—the strength of which was much more evident here. At its best, Doldrums verged on the shamanistic: Woodhead stumble-dancing opposite his doppelgänger co-vocalist, often with a finger improbably glued to a keyboard. The set wasn’t without its kinks, but it offered more in unexpected and brilliant intensity than the middling performance by Blouse, a Portland trio specializing in tuneful but tepid rock indebted to ’80s new wave. The guitarist and singer of the group Charlie Hilton kept the emotional hatches battened down. “I was in the future yesterday but now I’m in the past,” she sang with an unwavering expression. It sounded flat and polite—a far cry from what had come before, or would soon follow. #MSR

FRANKIE ROSE

MUSIC HALL OF WILLIAMSBURG

[L to R]

Elvis Keuhn Zac Carper Brandon Schwartzel Max Keuhn

Story by

#MSr

It’s a Friday night late in June. Inside Terminal 5 sits a table of FIDLAR’s handmade merchandise. There are CDs with simple white slipcases, spray-painted titles, and handwritten tracklistings across the back; some buttons sporting black-and-white mugshots of the band’s four members, Zac Carper, Brandon Schwartzel and brothers Elvis and Max Keuhn are scattered nearby; at the back, above FIDLAR-tagged skate decks, hangs a custom-screened tee with the band’s name and a puzzled “…Groovy?”

Gavin Thomas PhoTos

Francisco Hernandez Design

I had a real shitty

stoned all the time

phase for like six months where I was

and listening to dubstep.

It’s a small treasure of handcrafted, homemade goodies—all done by the guys themselves, their tour manager is quick to note. But don’t get the wrong idea. When it’s nigh time for FIDLAR to wrap its set inside Terminal 5’s multitiered chamber, Carper—the de facto lead imp of the Los Angeles power-punk pushers—makes his case for the merch table: “The shitty part about DIY is you gotta do it yourself.” It’s FIDLAR in a nutshell: meticulous care enmeshed with snot-nosed nihilism. Beneath the sneers and shrugs of the band’s two EPs (2011’s DIYDUI and more recently Don’t Try) lies an acute, pop sensibility. Like a perfect storm of hardcore-punkabilly, it carries the inebriated glory of their songs along at breakneck tempos (“Wake Bake Skate,” “Wait For The Man”) or sticky two-chord jangle (“No Ass,” “Oh”), and buries them under blankets of lo-fi static. They more or less live up to the smirking deviance of the their songs, too. When FIDLAR shows up the afternoon of their biggest New York show to date, Schwartzel still has a sizable bruise-like burn on his leg that was documented months ago at SXSW. (He kicked a pumpkin filled with gas, and it exploded.) The bass player also has an outstanding warrant from lighting fireworks in Austin, TX, on 6th street, he says, chewing a toothpick behind the mini-arena, “It’s like a $500 ticket. I’ll deal with it when I have to.” A few feet away, Carper replaces the ‘dork’ caption he sharpied into a service door behind Elvis and writes ‘hippie sex addict’ for Elvis’ younger brother Max. It isn’t altogether surprising in light of choruses like “I don’t have a job and I don’t have a phone/ Don’t have a life and I’m always stoned.” Mostly, the young band plays a card of indifference as far as reputation goes. But when it comes to slackerdom, they draw a hard line. And they should; a couplet like “I’ve got that co, co-co-co cocaine / I’m drinking Four Loko in the rain” wants to be taken as vapid when really it underlines an intuitive knack for irresistible singalongs. Apart from the touring, FIDLAR—short for the local skater colloquialism Fuck It Dog Life’s a Risk—is firming up its debut fulllength. It’s recorded, they say, and should be out in September. The band promises songs that recall Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Providence, RI, noise-duo Lightning Bolt, and ultimately confide, their diligence: “We want to take our time with it.”

Do you remember your first gig?

E: We would have big house parties at Zac and

Elvis Keuhn: I had done a lot of shows with other

Brandon’s. We would make it our own show. I did

bands for these big, late night bike rides—every

a lot of the booking early on, just emailing lots of

stop a different band would play in a random

clubs and people trying to get onto good shows.

place where you could find an outlet. There was

We played a lot of weird shows.

a skate park and a jungle gym right next to it,

Z: We hardly played venues though.

in Culver City, and we found one outlet and just

Max Keuhn: The first one was pretty crazy so I

plugged all of our gear into that. That was our

think it kind of got a reputation. It just snowballed.

first show.

E: None of the parties at our house have been

Zac Carper: We set up in the grass area and right

broken up though. The space is good; it was built

before we were supposed to play the sprinklers

as a live room so it’s all soundproof.

came on.

Z: It’s like a commercial building. And it’s cheap

The house parties you built buzz around, did

as fuuuck.

those come together because you guys are just

Did that loose environment allow you to test or

popular or was it more the part of a scene?

see things that didn’t work for your act?

Brandon Schwartzel: We’d play with our friends’

Z: It was more about us having fun, instead of:

bands. Someone would be like “Hey, we’re having

“Dude, listen to our songs, man.”

a house party. Do you guys want to play?” And

B: We were serious about the songs, enjoying

we started getting better as a band because we

making them and playing them. But we didn’t

were playing more, and people started getting

know what was going to happen.

into it more.

M: If you have a new band in LA, especially

The music videos are associated with the lyrics

…It’s our version

ofdigital

playing at a venue they don’t give you money.

graffiti.

visual aspect to it would make it more interesting.

You either play at a venue and it’s probably not

It’s a way to get more people to listen to music;

super-packed because you’re a new band, and

Youtube is universal. And the music videos are

the energy won’t be as good. Or you play a house

associated with the lyrics.

party and you get the same thing, but it’s fun.

E: People have short attention spans.

Does Max really have “dubstep in his veins”? M: I had a real shitty phase for like six months where I was stoned all the time and listening to dubstep. Z: He was listening to dubstep so fucking much! Every day he’d be, “No, Zac, you’ve gotta listen to it. It’s really tight, actually!” M: I realized that was not a good genre.

Z: People can listen to a song and it goes over their head. You put a video out—people like looking at things. It’s our version of digital graffiti. I’m from a one fucking road town in Hawaii and the only thing I had was the Internet; I’m a big believer in the Internet, and making that happen. M: Also, Zac’s brother in law [Ryan Baxley] does the more put-together videos—the ones that aren’t the youtube-rip ones—and he’s awesome.

Do you see music videos as a missing medium —

He comes up with great ideas.

or what’s your motivation?

B: He’s been kind of involved since the beginning.

Z: I went to a party one time, and, I swear to God,

Pretty much the fifth member—he would

the DJ or person playing the music was going on

come to the studio, hang out with us, help us

Youtube and making playlists. I was watching

write sometimes.

him do that, like [snaps fingers] “Fuck, that’s how kids listen to music now.” I thought putting a

What’s the deal with the Reaper on the cover of The video for “West Coast” splices all of the your No Waves/No Ass single, and in the video

classic anti-drug commercials. How old were you

for “No Waves”?

when you started seeing those commercials with

Z: That was a weed haze.

sarcastic eyes?

M: That was the only video that Ryan didn’t do.

Z: I’ve always looked at it with sarcastic eyes; it’s

Z: We were supposed to be surfing, actually and just retarded. we decided to go to the sand dunes instead.

E: Probably since we were teenagers. Once you’re

B: Our friend Brendan Donnelly — and Dave Black a teenager and you see that you’re like, “What...? too — who’s an artist. They were early supporters Z: Nobody’s just like, “Dude, you wanna smoke a and fans; Dave would take pictures and then joint?”—at school. Brendan, we were talking to him about artwork.

B: “Hey, do you wanna hang out with my dad’s

E: He really likes Grim Reapers.

shotgun?” Remember that?

B: It doesn’t mean anything. There’s no Z: Anti-gun one! significance.

B: The one where they’re smoking a joint in the dad’s study, like, “Check out my dad’s gun.” Then it zooms out and it’s the gunshot: “Don’t do drugs.”

W e ’ r e

n o t

t i e d

‘fuc k.’

to the word

M: What the fuck?

is way cheaper and way fucking easier. People talk

Z: I had the idea in my head for awhile and I didn’t

shit, “Oh digital this, and digital that,” and they

have a song to do it with. And then once the song

say “DIY, DIY.” DIY is just doing it yourself no matter

came along… We did a similar thing with this one

what—tape or not. I’ve gotten flack for that. “You

song—it doesn’t really have a name, it’s just a sad

don’t use tape? I only use tape.” I respect that

face, and it’s with the Sarah McLachlan sad puppies.

completely, but our DIY is: “Hey, we got a computer.

B: Dying of a broken heart.

Hey, we got ProTools, there we go.”

Z: You always see those commercials on TV and

B: We just can’t afford tape.

you just change the channel automatically. B: It’s become a thing in our house where we hear it come on and someone will just start yelling “No.” “No! No!” It’s the most depressing shit.

There’s a FIDLAR Technology Services company. Have you had any issues with them? E: No, but I’m sure that they’re probably not too happy.

Are you guys analog-heads?

B: If you Google image search FIDLAR it’s pictures

Z: Nope, nope. No, nope. Nope. There are some

of us playing, but then there’s weird pictures of

songs we did record to tape, but, fuck man, ProTools

families, like “The Fidlars!”

W e ’ l l

j u s t

s a y

“Forget It Dad Life’s All Right.”

You were Fuck The Clock for a brief spell, before

E: The crowd probably won’t be drunk. That always

FIDLAR. Hypothetically, if this company forced

helps. I don’t know who’s gonna watch us.

you to choose a new name, would your new

Z: Who cares.

band name have ‘fuck’ in it?

B: We get to see Sabbath.

Z: We’ll just say “Forget It Dad Life’s All Right.” B: FILDAR. B: We’re not tied to the word fuck. Z: I would rather not have the word fuck in our name. B: We’re going to have ‘winter’ in our name—one of those three-name band names that always get really big.

You’re opening for the Hives tonight, what should people who’ve never heard of you expect? Z: A lot of wrong notes. I usually put somebody’s phone number on my amp and then tell people it’s Justin Bieber’s. Max really likes to do cocaine while he’s playing. M: I did that once.

It just so happens that the FIDLAR company

E: Expect us to look uncomfortable because we’re

is based in Illinois, as is Lollapalooza. Are you

playing this place.

nervous to be playing this year?

B: All of our friends, they’re like “What are you

Z: Yeah, we’re terrified. I am! It’s also hard to

guys doing in town? Where are you playing?

play at one o’clock. 1pm.

Terminal 5?” And every single one of them is like,

B: It’s hard to get pumped up.

“Whoah, that’s big.” Not like, “Oh that’s big; you

Z: Usually we wake up at 1. B: It’s not very easy getting drunk at 1pm.

guys are going to have fun!” This uncertain, like “Whewww. Ooh.” Z: I really wanted to put up a sheet and spraypaint something while we play. I don’t think the Hives’ tour manager would really like that—I might not do that. M: You should do it. Z: Fuck it. Gonna need some spray paint.

Story #MSR . Photos Gavin Thomas . Design Francisco Hernandez

“No one slaps the floor in England!” It’s mid-afternoon, just before sound check at Webster Hall, and Orlando Weeks is taking a break from watching the European Cup. But he’s still caught up in the drama. Yesterday there was a Portuguese man, or so he presumes, cheering and applauding for Portugal by feverishly spanking the floor at a local bar. Such fanaticism isn’t entirely foreign to Weeks, or any of the five members of his band: since they released their first LP in 2007 The Maccabees have been pretty much galvanizing masses for a living, frequenting festival circuits in the UK and abroad. Unsurprisingly, when they play later that night, the soaring multi-guitar rock suites from Given To The Wild (Fiction), released earlier in the year, are met with stadium-like fervor. There’s no floor slapping, but the floorboards do rattle beneath the crowd’s coordinated stomps, and Weeks’ swooping vocals at the close of “Pelican” are echoed like full-on soccer hollers. Earlier in the day, between blasts of tepid techno that guitarist Felix White insists their sound engineer needs to replace with something less dreadful, White’s older brother Hugo acknowledges that it will probably feel like its 2 a.m. when they hit the stage tonight. They’ve gotten used to it, he nods, overlooking Webster’s stage from the second-floor balcony. Hugo seems nothing but stolid next to his brother. “It’s kind of fun,” Felix elaborates, his eyes wide and earnest. Ducking away from the unsavory noise and into a dressing room, he smiles: “You just get used to that level of disorientation, I suppose.”

Felix White

It’s been three years since your last record, and you’ve mentioned how making Given To The Wild was different from prior albums. Why the change? Felix White: From the start we did it how any band would do it: you save up all your money, then you write the music on Sunday or whatever, in the rehearsal room. We hadn’t really clicked to make music beyond that way, even when it got to another level. At the end of the second record we started writing a different way, learning Logic—things like that. It just felt like it would be pretty liberating to make a record outside of a studio. Everyone’s got so many ideas now; you don’t wanna be just like, “I’m the guitar player, so I only write the guitar parts.” If you’ve got an idea, you can present it a bit better. Then the boys go “I love that, I wanna work on that,” rather than the kind of confrontation that happens from the very start to the very end. Was there much confrontation in the past, or during the writing of Wall of Arms? Did the band feel in danger of crumbling? FW: That would’ve happened much earlier, to be honest. We kind of had that moment—[former drummer] Rob [Dylan Thomas] left for, I suppose you could say health reasons or just he wasn’t really together enough to do it. That was the moment we could’ve. Beyond that point I think we’re fine. It’s kind of the opposite, because it’s trying to have enough perspective to realize why bands break up and why it gets so horrible: You pigeonhole each other’s roles. And the idea was to avoid all that stuff, which of course you can’t help; things happen when people spend their whole lives together. It was trying to be sensible enough to allow everyone to feel like they could keep being creative in The Maccabees.

We just are ourselves; THeRe’S NoT lIke aN aeSTHeTIc WHeRe You’Re plaYING a Role. So you’re writing independently—was what you were listening to seeping into your writing, personally? FW: Talk Talk was something I was obsessed with for about three months. So it must have happened, in terms of records having enough space in them to breathe, setting up an atmosphere that moves you through. We talked about the first Stone Roses record, or Low by David Bowie: as soon as you put it on you know what you’re listening to, rather than just a wellrecorded indie band. Which for better or worse I think we did sound like with the last two [records]. Would you do the next record like this, or try for yet another approach? FW: We’re trying to evolve another way, whether it be a horrible word, but actually trying to jam for a week. I heard Public Enemy, apparently, how they would write is they would set everything up and just make loads of noise, and record everything. I’m really excited about the energy of doing that. The deliberate nature of the other two—it would be another way to do it. [L to R] Orlando Weeks, Hugo White, Rupert Jarvis, and Sam Doyle

You guys had a memorable radio interview in the Netherlands earlier this year. What’s been the most uncomfortable one you can remember? FW: We did Triple J in Australia; it’s kind of the Radio 1 of Australia. We did a session for them a couple weeks ago and they’d cottoned onto that Dutch radio interview. They decided, since that’s such a stereotypical European thing to do—What Animal Having Sex Is This?—that they would play this weird game with us: Guess the Racial Slur, and play a jingle. And we’re just like, [throws hands up] like, ‘Fuck…” we did not wanna be involved. We’ve just always been a band—we just are ourselves; there’s not like an aesthetic where you’re playing a role. Sometimes that’s dangerous because it’s easy to mess around with that. People can take advantage of that better than other bands that are so controlled—the Strokes, their kind of thing, or an Interpol. A lot of bands play with a kind of mock bravado, but we never really had anything like, which I don’t regret but it kind of gets us in some sticky situations sometimes [laughs].

oNe oF THe MoST ReaSSuRING THINGS IN THe WoRlD IS: eveN IF IT’S FouR IN THe MoRNING IN aN aIRpoRT, Flavor Flav’s got his clock on. The Maccabees have played a lot of radio spots since the new album was released. Does radio seem more relevant in england than here? FW: Radio is extremely powerful still in England. It doesn’t happen if you don’t get on the radio. It’s just one of those things that needs to fall into place for bands. Radio 1 is funded by the taxpayers as well, so there’s a lot of responsibility there. The english press tends to refer to Given To The Wild as a creative peak? How does that sit with you? Do you care? FW: I decided to read the reviews—because we felt proud of it. I felt old enough to absorb it all. But you read all that stuff, you can’t help but take in the two horrible reviews; they’re the ones that kill you. And then, I don’t know about the “peak.” We definitely don’t make a record and then all sit down together and go, “Well I think that establishes us as one of the most important guitar bands around.” That stuff isn’t to be taken seriously at all, I don’t think. You just played some big shows in australia. What’s been the most memorable event of the recent festival circuit? FW: We just came off this Australian festival tour, and Public Enemy were on it. I didn’t realize we were going to get on every flight with Public Enemy. And one of the most reassuring things in the world is: even if it’s four in the morning in an airport, Flavor Flav’s got his clock on. That is fucking fantastic. That’s not a memorable gig, but that’s one of the beautiful things you realize from music: some people ain’t making it up! You’ve mentioned public enemy twice now. Did you get friendly with them? FW: We did a song with Roots Manuva, and I just thought, “I’m gonna play that for Chuck D.” So I got Chuck’s email and sent it to him and he emailed me straight back, saying, “brilliant” and he played it on his radio show.

any other recent highlights from the road? FW: We saw the Hives the other day. They are fucking the best festival band you can think of, man. I queued up for their autographs when I was about fifteen and the singer got me to tie their shoelaces. Me and my mates went to see them and [Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist], he put his foot on my shoulder [slaps indignantly] and goes, over me, “Tie my shoelace!” Who would play your dream festival? FW: The Hives would open it up because they’re the most fun. I really like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and I’ve never seen them. Who else… they’re logistical nightmares, music festivals, aren’t they? Richard Hawley— he’s made loads of crooner, Eddie Cochran-type records, and just made this phenomenal, big guitar-sounding record. Which, the Arctic Monkeys, the Horrors have started making psychedelic-type pop records, and it’s—not in a bad way—like, “That’s how you fucking a psychedelic rock record.” Get him on the bill.

Website www.themaccabees.co.uk

2:54

MOLTEN & RISING “I just want to be close.” The words ooze from Colette Thurlow like a deep, sullen undertow. It pulls lugubriously at the wash of guitars and echoing sighs f loating through “You’re Early,” a nebulous single from 2:54’s eponymous first album. Whether Thurlow means what she’s singing or not sounds beside the point; there is a knowing f latness to the yearning, as if already she knows she can never achieve intimacy. The resignation will have to live side by side with the longing. Or not. Like most of the English newcomers’ short yet sturdy body of songs, “You’re Early” scrapes an emotional gap by way of stylized fog: cymbals smear together with guitars; words are smudged into impressionistic splotches via rounded vowels and noirish affect. It’s a crosssection of sound that’s unmistakably unique to this band.

And that’s a striking feat considering the first 2:54 demos were uploaded without fanfare to Myspace not two summers ago. It was there that the Thurlows—Colette and younger sister Hannah—found a perhaps unlikely viral trampoline. Internet hype accumulated in short time, but 2:54 was still a bedroom project, the aftermath of the sisters’ short-lived punk undertaking called the Vulgarians—who played about ten shows and “expired quite naturally,” as Colette puts it. “There was a definite gap after,” the singer says, in her soft-mannered way, but “music wasn’t going to stop being made.” Within months Hannah, the guitarist-composer yin to Colette’s lyricist-co-guitarist yang, was channeling a dreamy strain of guitarwork and just plain “writing better pieces of music,” her elder sister remembers. “She sent them to me and I was totally intrigued and inspired to write.”

By looks alone the two barely resemble siblings. Colette’s sharp, angular features are accentuated by a barely-there undercut, out of which f low long, straight locks: the antipode to Hannah’s short-coiffed curls and soft mien. But interviews have revealed the two to be bonded by a well-mannered refinement that defies their towering songs and thrashier past. “Hannah and I have been playing for fun since our teens,” mentions Colette. “Just the two of us, bashing around.” The politeness with which she describes her bashing days is ironic—even more so when the singer offers gracious def lectors like “It’s good to be doing interviews,” or “We’re just

performance they gave as 2:54. “We were playing on a boat, upstairs,” she begins, describing a tiny stage in a corner fit to hold a DJ. “We all crammed onto it. We really were at the very beginnings of knowing anything about performing, but it felt great: the four of us being onstage.” The Thurlows are the songwriting core of 2:54, but they’ve counted bass player Joel Porter and drummer Alex Robins as crucial ligament since the band put a foot forward early this spring with its Scarlet EP. Initiated by the smoldering title track, Scarlet resonated a savvy synthesis of goth-chic glare and balladized bloody

happy to be playing.” Playing shows is something they’ve taken a small pause from, she admits from home in Bristol on this day in early-May. Just returned from a run of touring in the US and the UK, the 2:54 frontwoman is already looking ahead to her next show. In a few weeks they will open for The xx, who are funneling anticipation for a new album with intimate concerts in London two weeks from today. “We’ve known The xx before they were The xx,” says Colette, not so much nervous as excited. “Now that we’re back in London for a bit we’re kind of dying to rehearse.” Refusing to give an inch of humble ground, she claims the group’s concert-legs are still getting planted—”each [show] felt like shedding a skin”—and readily recounts the first

valentines. It was released in the first few days of March, and within weeks 2:54 was a predictable slide on the Artist To Watch galleries of any site or blog with a vested interest in pre-SXSW hype. Fixating on the band’s smoky intuition, the favorable critical consensus was an indirect endorsement of longtime P.J. Harvey producer Rob Ellis. (Before potently producing Scarlet, he lent similar tinctures to the 2011 debut album by Anna Calvi, another Londoner favoring darkly lit corners and operatic rock.) Unsurprisingly, Ellis is behind the boards once more for the band’s first full-length, simply 2:54 (Fat Possum). By the time this article is published the album will have already been available for about two months, but at this stage

LYRICS CAN LEAD YOU PLACES, AND I’D RATHER JUST LEAVE IT OPEN, HAVE PEOPLE WORK IT OUT FOR THEMSELVES.

it remains in waiting—in the shadows, if you like. And that seems like an appropriate place for it to be; by title alone a handful of its songs (“Creeping,” “Easy Undercover,” “Watcher”) suggest distant observation, but of the prickly sort. Most conjure a similar spookiness through the repetition of open-ended couplets, like “If you go, you’ll never know.” But usually the production alters these refrains so they come marred if not altogether buried. “Creeping” is full of them. So is “Sugar,” save for the discernable but no less reassuring “you’re mine” Colette harps throughout. The lack of clarity is a device unto itself. “I’ve never really tried to analyze the lyrics,” the vocalist ref lects, offering the words as part of the larger sound. They’ve also been intentionally left from the album’s packaged-inserts: “Lyrics can lead you places, and I’d rather just leave it open, have people work it out for themselves.” That sentiment comes into focus when talk turns to Thurlow’s taste in turn-of-the-’90s rock. (2:54 references the time-stamp of a drum

break from a Melvins song the sisters mutually worship.) But as a band they find more direct lineage in the transcendent guitar symphonies and blurred verses of Cocteau Twins, or another favorite: My Bloody Valentine. Fittingly, Alan Moulder, once a producer for that band—and at one point or another a producer for nearly every band to follow in their droopy wake during the 1990s—lends a hand to 2:54 , as a guesting producer on “Creeping,” the album’s muscular finale. Moulder’s involvement with her band’s proper debut was a highlight, but Colette admits it wasn’t the closest she’s been to the Dublin distortionists: When My Bloody Valentine reunited several years ago, one of their few dates included a stop at the Roundhouse, in London. She happened to be working above the venue. “I snuck into sound check,” Thurlow says, beginning to gush. “I just couldn’t believe it. It was this huge, huge sound that just felt physical. I almost cried.” #MSR

WARMING UP WITH

LIARS WORDS #MSR

L-R: Julian Gross, Aaron Hemphill, Angus Andrew

PHOTOS GAVIN THOMAS

Below the stage-floor at Webster Hall the lobby space readily calls to mind a haunted mansion. The dim lighting lends ominous depth to the dark floorboards and eeriness to the wallpaper, which is scraped thin and shedding in patches in some corners but immaculately preserved everywhere else. It’s the kind of place you’d probably rather not listen to a Liars record, though it would be an odds-on favorite to inspire one. For WIXIW (Mute), the trio’s sixth and most electronically-tempered studio album, Liars wrote and recorded in seclusion—first at a remote location in the woods north of Los Angeles, later an abandoned office not far away. That city, where the band has been based for roughly five years, was the implicit inspiration for Liars’ 2010 LP Sisterworld. It’s shifted over the years, but setting has consistently figured as something of an antagonizing force with this band. Liars seemed almost perversely out of place at first, beginning as a notional part of New York’s garage rock revival during the early 2000s. They went on to cut two of the decade’s most rapturously propulsive albums, in Drum’s Not Dead (2006) and the namesake Liars (2007), from a liminal formation, with bandleader Angus Andrew mostly isolated in Berlin. The byproduct of the self-imposed exile Liars have carried from one place to the next has been one of the most compelling trajectories of any band in the past decade. It’s pushed them deep into the interior worlds they construct for each record, even as they chart altogether new sonic landscapes to map them with. Now, with WIXIW, their process itself becomes one of the puzzles to extract from the bleak grooves and cryptic utterances. It’s a few hours before Liars have their first US performance since the album’s release, here at Webster Hall. The trio moves from the Shining-esque hall space into a small, unused ballroom that’s completely upholstered with mirrors, settling onto a low platform at the back. Drummer Julian Gross sits at one end and signs promo posters as his bandmates Andrew and multi-instrumentalist Aaron Hemphill take in the new domain. Andrew snaps a quick panorama using his cell phone, perhaps for future reference.

YOU’VE PLAYED A FEW EUROPEAN

IN THE MAKING-OF VIDEO

CONSIDERING THIS ALBUM,

DATES RECENTLY. HAVE YOU FOUND

THAT PRECEDED THE ALBUM’S

OR ANY OF THE PRIOR ONES,

PLAYING

RELEASE, SOMEONE MENTIONS

DOES

THAT MAYBE THE PROCESS FOR

THE

NEW

MATERIAL

DIFFICULT?

WORKING STEEPED

ON IN

SONGS CREEPY

Angus: It’s harder than any other WIXIW LASTED TOO LONG, CAN

PRODUCTION

PARANOIA

material that we’ve played be- YOU ELABORATE?

FOR AN EXTENDED LENGTH OF

fore. We made a lot of it within a

A aron: When that was said on TIME DESENSITIZE YOU TO

computer, so it’s about trying to

camera how we felt about it was THAT ASPECT OF THE MUSIC?

inject a bit of physicality into

definitely very ominous. With

the songs. I think we still feel

the benefit of hindsight I think fear—all that is kind of height-

like when we get onstage a lot

working ourselves into the posi- ened as you work more and more

can go wrong, which is a good

tion—where we have no idea what

on it. There’s also a point of desen-

thing. We want stuff to happen

it sounds like or what we’ve done

sitization in the sense that it’s

that’s unique to the night, not

to ourselves—I think we need to

hard to hear the music the way

just paint by numbers.

do that to ourselves. I think that’s

you would’ve in the first month

a sign of putting as much as we

or whatever. After you’ve worked

can into a record.

on it for a year you start to lose

Angus: When we began writing

perspective; you’re too close to it.

Angus: The paranoia and the

we wanted to experiment a lot. As it goes with those sort of things you also think, “Oh well what would it be like if we just

WHAT ABOUT THE BACKGROUND EFFECTS FROM “III VALLEY

forced ourselves to record it and

PRODIGIES”:

ARE

THOSE

ties that you give yourself when

found sound, in this record is

you’re working on it a long time—

really processed. To the point

it starts to drive you insane.

where it’s irrelevant, really,

write it in two days or some- CROWING BIRDS? thing?” It’s the endless possibili- Angus: Everything, even if it’s

what the original sound was. I think it’s kind of good to leave it open-ended. People have told me they thought I recorded someone having sex or something. It’s really not anything close to that, but I like that there’s that possibility—that people could think that.

WE TRIED A LOT OF...

WAYS

IN VENTIN G SOUND — WHETHER THAT’S

CUTTING

YOU

ENJOY

LEAVING

THINGS UNCLEAR OR GREY BECAUSE

IT’S

THE

KIND

OF ART YOU ENJOY? OR IS IT SOMETHING YOU THINK IS LACKING IN MUSIC? Angus: It’s interesting for us to develop whatever intrigue, mystery—these elements where things aren’t necessarily what they appear so you can’t just write it off superficially. You need to explore it and think about it. We want to challenge

the way we think about it as well.

AMP OR STEPPING

surface glitz or glamour in any

ON A BALLOON IN

A aron: I think it has a lot to

HOLE

It doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate really immediate-kind of pop, of the arts, really. I like a good action movie more than anyone.

do with our security, as far as musical ability. Angus and I

A HIGH-HEELED

appreciate ZZ Top or AC/DC; action movies or really bizarre movies. But I think when it comes

SHOE, THE SOUNDS THAT

WERE

OPEN

WERE

to what we’re going to make we like to push ourselves.

VAST.

SOMETIMES

REALLY

LOVE

ARE

WITH

THE

OVER-THE-TOPNESS OF AMERICAN CULTURE…

LIKE,

“OH LET’S WATCH FRICKIN’ WRESTLING LOOK

WWF OR HOW

MANY TOOTHPASTE PRODUCTS WE CAN BUY.”

AND YET THIS ALBUM HAS YOU

WAS THIS ALBUM MORE SOUNDS

SO WHAT WILL LIARS’ DAD

SINGING “THIS CULTURE’S

YOU

ROCK SOUND LIKE?

A DISEASE”. IS THAT REALLY

OR REPLICATE, OR HAPPY

A aron: We really appreciate a

HOW YOU FEEL?

ACCIDENTS?

lot of, I would even go so far as

A aron: Well it could be as silly as

A aron: We tried a lot of computer

to say mom rock, but dad rock

a type of culture [gestures, as

stuff, a lot of analog-synth stuff,

definitely.

if holding a petri dish]. I don’t

but also really just tangible ways

Angus: What’s dad rock? Dire

know. It spreads pretty quickly.

of inventing sound: whether

Straits?

A ngus: It depends on what day

that’s cutting a hole in an amp or

you get us on. Sometimes we

stepping on a balloon in a high-

really are in love with the over-

heeled shoe, the sounds that we

Angus: Oh, Michael Franks?

the-topness of American culture,

were open to were vast. It’s also

A aron: And late-era George Michael.

and really get into, like, “Oh let’s

hopefully exciting for people to

watch frickin’ WWF wrestling

see that an electronic album can

or look at how many toothpaste

include all those things.

SOUGHT

CREATE

products we can buy.” But at the same time it can be overwhelming, and crippling. It’s two sides to the coin, and [“No.1 Against the Rush”] is addressing when it’s tough to deal with.

A aron: Like “Eggplant.”

Angus: Yeah we love a lot of music like that. I think you could make a Best Dad Rock of Liars catalog. There are songs on each

BY THIS POINT IT’S ALMOST A GIVEN THAT A NEW LIARS

record that I think might fit into that category. If you fit ‘em all

ALBUM WILL SOUND DRASTI-

together, maybe that would be it.

CALLY DIFFEENT FROM THE

A aron: That would be quite an

ONE

experience.

THAT

CAME

BEFORE.

DO YOU EVER THINK ABOUT HOW MUCH LONGER YOU CAN CONTINUE THAT EVOLUTION? Angus: It’s a natural urge to explore

and

keep

ourselves

interested and excited. If we ever think about it, it’s with admiration for people who can stick to one kind of thing and perfect playing piano or something. That would be kind of nice, and there’s a beauty in that, but that just doesn’t work for us in terms of keeping excited. Maybe we’re just a result of the culture, where there’s so many choices and ways of doing things it’s hard not to try them.

Angus: Maybe you just inspired the next phase.

INNER VISIONS DIGGING DEEP WITH

CHRIS TIA N SCOTT WORDS BY #MSR

The trumpet stylist Christian Scott plays with a magisterial command. Has for some time tooâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;his uncle, saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr., wasted little time bringing the prodigious talent onto the road and into the studio. Scott has endeavored to cut his own path ever since, and settled these last few years years into a reliable band of peers determined to stretch jazz in order to keep it in fighting-shape.

PHOTO CREDIT: DELPHINE DIALLO

Christian Scott always knew there would be consequences. It’s been a minute since his last album, the acclaimed Yesterday You Said Tomorrow, broadcast the trumpeter among jazz’s vanguard of composing bandleaders under 30. In the two short years since, Scott has seen and sanctioned a spate of pivotal changes: he’s become engaged, toured extensively, uncovered a new wealth of underreported controversy to germinate fresh compositions, and completed, as he terms it, his name with West African nomenclature. It all finds a place within the sprawl of Scott’s new, and jaggedly brilliant double album Christian aTunde Adjuah (Concord). Joining the trumpet player once again is his sterling coterie from the previous record,save for the entrant Lawrence Fields on piano. To Scott this latest offering continues the musical math already begun by that band, also drummer Jamire Williams, bassist Kris Funn and, in lieu of a more conventional quintet’s second horn, electric guitarist Matthew Stevens. The theory behind their approach—codified as “stretch music”— is detailed in an essay Scott has written for the liner notes to Christian aTunde Adjuah. As it turns out, those musical equations are the product of a deeper philosophy, which Scott ties to his own past, in several tiers. There’s his upbringing, evident in the Mardis Gras Indians plumage he wears on the album’s cover, but also in the few songs that point to New Orleans in title and rhythm. Then there are the roots that extend to his heritage along the Gold Coast: They seem to account for the reach of the album in a macro sense, but also give it some of its specific track titles. Scott also leaves room in his essay to recall a debate over jazz’s strictures, wherein some elder statesmen dolefully discuss the waves being made by contemporary—and presumably younger—musicians. “They felt that what we were creating should not be called Jazz,” writes Scott. He disagreed. But the conversation does little to sway his priority of education, of grasping the past in order to innovate more convincingly in the present. Most important, the trumpeter seems to argue, is the history of jazz itself. His dogma isn’t righteous or even inflexible, but it is fierce. It links him to some of the music’s most familiar trumpeters, whom also happen to be synonymous with the extremes of that same argument. But if Miles Davis’ progressivism is a pole to Wynton Marsalis’s classicism, then Scott owns a unique swatch of his own design, and he’s more than willing to defend it.

Two discs, nearly two hours of music: Why so many songs?

When we first started about doing it there were rumblings amongst the people at the label because I had so much material. It could be spread out over two or three records. Maybe some point in my career I’ll do that; with a double record like this, the subject matter, there could be a Yesterday You Said Tomorrow Volume II. I don’t really see it in terms of the norm in the market. Whatever the music is, makes the most sense: I’m going to do. If I’m hearing 30 songs, and I know my band can execute them, then for me it makes more sense just to put all of that into the same document.

You’ve completed your name with aTunde Adjuah, after Beninese locales. Did you grow up with a sense of your ancestry, or did you trace it more recently to the West African Coast?

I never thought it was really that important to go back and pinpoint. My family history could be from anywhere along that coast. But as far as the name is concerned, I just found something that when I saw it, I said it, I thought about it, I felt it represented what I wanted. At the end of the day it doesn’t make me not Scott; my dad is Scott and his dad is Scott. But it was important for me to make sure that I was called what I want to be called. It’s your right to be able to do so. I wasn’t privy to the discussion when they decided to name my forbearers Scott, but I’m here now and I can do something about it. So I did.

The publicity around the new album explains the track “Pyrrhic Victory of aTunde Adjuah” as a response to criticism of your name completion. Where is that coming from?

It’s expanded since the album has come out and gotten press, to the point where I’m getting—on Facebook and Twitter—fucking death threats from people. It’d make the hair on the back of your neck stand up to see some of the stuff that people write to me, after this. But that’s not why I did it. If you don’t want to be called something exclusively then it’s your job to do something about it—that was the impetus for why I decided to complete the name. And we’re not just talking about the public; things that my friends for almost 15, 20 years, the things they had to say about it—it was definitely more negative than positive. But I’m not angry at anyone expressing how they feel about a choice that I made, as long as they respect that I made the fucking choice [laughs].

Tell me about the specific argument over jazz and stylistic innovation mentioned in the liners: Was that a root of this album, or did it happen later and change the direction you’d already begun?

No that’s been happening since I was twelve. That is just me explaining one of the things that can act as a motivator for why people of my generation want to create music that can be a catalyst for change. There’s definitely no one thing that made me say, “I have to make this document, for this reason exclusively,” because there’s too much that goes on, on a daily basis that inspires me.

At the end of the day it doesn’t make me not Scott; my dad is Scott and his dad is Scott. But it was important for me to make sure that I was called what I want to be called. I wasn’t privy to the discussion when they decided to name my forbearers Scott, but I’m here now and I can do something about it. So I did.

Was there an overarching theme that did shape your inspiration?

Something that was more of a catalyst, and more about me just as a person—an adult, someone that wants to have children—was looking back into my my own personal history and excavating a lot of things out of that return, and figuring out who I am. And who I want to be for my kids, what my aspirations are for them, and for the world at large. That affects what goes into the album, not an argument between musicians about notes—that’s bullshit. The thing is: people are always going to disagree about notes. I’ve always found that the people that do the most talking about the notes are the ones that don’t have to really play them. These arguments happen with some jazz musicians and they’ve happened over the course of my musical life, but the vast majority of the guys that can really play are never having these arguments. It’s more writers, actually.

PHOTO CREDIT: KIEL ADRIAN SCOTT

Your song titles are either acutely personal—referencing or naming family members— or charged with a very specific, relatively obscure controversy, like “Fatima Aisha Rokero 400” or “Berlin Patient (CCR5)”. How long have you been looking for charged, neglected topics to bring to light? When did that become a priority?

My grandfather was the guy that had four different volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Africana— we went to them wanting to know something. It’s a totally different thing asking a question and getting an answer than to find something new. When I was a kid I got into searching, just always keeping my nose in a book or having conversations with people. It’s just something that translated. If something peaks my interest I have to know about it.

“When Marissa Stands Her Ground” references the type of issue the Trayvon Martin shooting brought to mainstream consciousness. Can you elaborate on why you switched its working title away from “Trayvon”?

Most of the songs were titled months before we even recorded them. That was one that I didn’t know what I wanted to call, but I knew what it was supposed to be about. I realized: You call it “Trayvon,” you’re not really doing anything to help; all you’re doing is shining a flashlight on something that already has headlights on it. It’s not my job to pander to people, to point them in the direction that everyone else is pointing. I think it makes more sense to try and create music or speak about music that lets people know that there are certain issues that have to be changed, or something that can give a deeper understanding or another perspective on a dynamic that you may know about. I thought the Marissa Alexander story was a very captivating story, and I just thought it made more sense to deal with that dynamic from that stance, as opposed to Trayvon.

You mentioned parenthood earlier. Considering your adulthood and also your music, would you say you have more or less to prove at this point in your career? Do you play differently?

Of course people are going to have their own perception on what you do, but I don’t think I’ve ever played with a chip on my shoulder. I’ve always known I could play; I did enough homework when I was very small, and started going on the road and touring when I was 13. Based on the history and the canonical elements that go into this music I knew I could play. So by the time I was 14 or 15, if someone thought I couldn’t play, usually that meant they probably had a problem with me on a personal level. I think what’s different now from five or ten years ago is just that I continue to grow. If a man is dealing with the same issues when he’s 50 as he did when he was 20, he wasted a lot of time. So yeah, I’m different from the way I was when I was 20, but I should be.

I’ve always known I could play; I did enough homework when I was very small.

What jazz record have you most enjoyed this year?

My record! You want the truth right? I could lie to you but I’m not going to. Yeah, I think my record’s great.

REGARDLESS of age, experience, or relationship to the industr y, these singers, songwriters—some of them bandleaders—are all wearing similar (proverbial) shoes. Their respective strides var y: some stomp and trudge; others glide witht softer poise. But in their own way, they’ve each already begun something distinct and special. That in mind, the idea here is less Female Artists Of Tomorrow (though we feel confident in that assumption, too). We’re thrilled to share what they’re up to right now.

The ballad of

How a singer-songwriter from Brooklyn made the stunning, essential country record of the year WRITTEN BY #MSR

PHOTOS BY GAVIN THOMAS

I t was 3 a.m. and the early-January snow was coming down hard. Somewhere

on one of Woodstock’s country roads Kelli Scarr was riding shotgun, zoning out to Radiohead’s The Bends, and coming down from maybe her most emotionallyridden recording session ever. “’I’ll Always Wait’ was the heaviest thing,” Scarr says over coffee one afternoon in June. She’s looking back at the sojourn that yielded her latest album, Dangling Teeth, and referring specifically to the protracted desert ballad that brings the album to a shuddering close. Beleaguered and hazily indebted to the Crazy Horse-vintage of slow-rolling rock, “I’ll Always Wait” sways between two chords for nearly ten minutes—long enough for it to peak, break, recede, rejuvenate, and pretty much repeat again. Which it does, first in the type of lengthy, lyrical guitar solo that would have earned droves of baby boomer fans had it only hit the radio in time. But Scarr’s voice is where the real journey happens; it gathers dust and deflates until her ad-libbed sighs and moans become the melody. “Promise me you will never change,” she whispers, her band huddled around, propping her, even. The fatigue is gripping, and convincing enough that the crescendo that comes next arrives with unexpected force. But there are Scarr’s pleas and promises: rebounded to a high growl inside a gale of cymbal crashes, strings and streaking pedal steel. “It was the last song we did that night,” the Brooklyn-based singer and songwriter remembers with a grin that’s suggesting both mischief and pride. “We

only did it once and it’s what’s on the record,” she says “Because we knew.” After some prompting, Scarr, her hair balled into a loose bun atop her head, goes on to explain that although they’d nailed the version she envisioned for that tune, such efficiency was rare during the overall process. It was however just as much a part of the deeper ambition she carried into her second album, which had Scarr on the hunt for the tangible vitality unique to a live take. That search brought the group to The Isokon, the secluded cabin studio in Upstate New York where they recorded the ten tracks that would become Dangling Teeth. Each of the album’s country-strung songs were recorded live, with all six players in the same room, across two sessions and a total of 300 takes, the singer estimates. “She was going for the takes that maybe weren’t the most picture-perfect,” reflects guitarist Scott Metzger.” That’s what she wanted going into it, and she knew how to get it out of us.” Originally from Folsom, CA, Scarr has fronted bands for most of her life. Before her cross-country transplant, to attend Berkelee as a vocal major, she’d led big bands at major jazz fests like North Sea and Montreux as a teenager.

She and Metzger met some time later, roughly ten years ago, he guesses, back when their respective old bands shared similar festival circuits. They lost touch for a spell, as Metzger moved to Los Angeles and Scarr was busy becoming a mother to her son Liam, now five. But their paths would cross again, while Scarr was wrapping a tour with Moby—whose 2009 album Wait For Me featured her as a vocalist. By this time Scarr was recording some of the new songs she’d been writing for a solo album, and Metzger sat in on one of the few live sessions. The result was Piece: A straightforward, if not predictable document of acoustic singer-songwriter fare, its songs unfolded in a thin, plaintive stream of confessions and conversations that scanned as mostly autobiographical. Scarr describes that album as a stitch-work, a compilation of isolated instrumentals—contributed by many of the same players who returned to record Dangling Teeth together—along with Scarr’s overwhelmingly breathy vocal. There wasn’t exactly room for anything else, she explains, since most of her singing had to be recorded whenever her son was home asleep. “It’s a huge difference between the first and second record, being able to sing out and wanting to be in there with a live band,” says Scarr. “This one I definitely feel a lot more confident with, and I think it comes from making mistakes.”

It’s not a Brooklyn-sounding

record. It’s very easy to put on [Dangling Teeth], close your eyes, and picture yourself snowed-in at a cabin in the middle of the woods.

ike Dangling Teeth, Scarr’s first album was released on Silence Breaks, a small Brooklyn label founded not long ago by Joe Rogers, a producer-engineer factotum from Moby’s camp. Piece arrived in 2010, as the debut release on Rogers’ nascent imprint. Two years later Dangling Teeth figures as something of an alien sibling of a record, and for a number of reasons. Its decidedly country air finds true kinship in but one song

from Piece, “Come Back To Me.” That track featured steel player Jonathan Lam, whom Scarr subsequently brought on the road. She recounts that stretch of time with great enthusiasm, as an extended listening session dialed into Vince Gill and classic outlaws like Merle Haggard or Waylon Jennings—oeuvres stamped with steel pedal signatures. “That definitely started it,” Scarr continues, “And it was a conscious effort: We all really wanted to make this album sound like something you would want to listen to while driving through the plains—that was an image that kept coming.” The singer also cites newer albums by Dawes and Deertick, whose records she says “are very representative of all the stuff they’ve grow up on, but also have a home today.” The triumph of Dangling Teeth, and why it lands like a marked step forward from her first, is the variety of forms in which the album makes good on Scarr’s intention. It’s manifest in the lively takes on Appalachian-sounds, like the jaunty, fiddle-led “Our Joy,” or the fleet-footed “Phoenicia.” But also in “Airon” and “Trouble”: quietly intense show-stoppers that swing on Lam’s steel pedal lines and Scarr’s flowing murmur. You hear traces of Kelli Scarr’s past in those moments. The warble at the end of her phrases suggests the reach of jazz’s bold chanteuses—Scarr mentions Betty Carter and Carmen McRae as key influences—and it comes through in the hushed passages, though not exclusively. But that’s merely a shade in the diffuse palette of vocal dispositions that turn up. As she set out to, much of Dangling Teeth broadcasts Scarr’s back-row bellow as the formidable instrument it is, recalling that of Neko Case, or Patsy Cline before her. Whether any of this means she’s found her voice as an artist, however, would depend on who you ask. For her part, Scarr is ambivalent, but concedes she

feels considerably closer. To Rogers, 30, who co-produced the album along with Scarr, the voice winding through Dangling Teeth sharpened during performances from late in 2010. “This record kind of came out of those live shows,” he says. “It just became clear that there was some magic in the idea of capturing it as a take.” But did they need to flee the city to realize that esprit? Metzger proposes that they did. “It’s not a Brooklyn-sounding record,” the guitarist contends. “It’s very easy to put on [Dangling Teeth], close your eyes, and picture yourself snowed-in at a cabin in the middle of the woods.” He isn’t exactly using his imagination there: “I think it snowed two feet the first night that we got there” for the January session, he adds. “It was the-land-time-forgot-type of vibe. There was weak internet, pretty much no cell service. It was beautiful.”

She was going for the takes

that maybe weren’t the most picture-perfect. That’s what

she wanted going into it, and she knew how to get it out of us.

There was in fact a more practical

motive, which ultimately compelled the group’s decision to record at the Woodstock location. At the Isokon, Joe Rogers explains, recording in separate rooms was physically not an option. “We could either put her in a room where she wasn’t able to see anyone, or have her sit in the middle of the room and deal with it,” he recalls. “That’s what Kelli wanted to do and that was kind of the reason we all went up.” “That’s a pretty bold move,” Metzger adds, weighing in from a separate call. It’s something the producer also seems to account for: “If you have a drummer ten feet away from you, you tend to sing your ass off,” Rogers poses with a laugh. “There’s definitely something to be said for a singer to be playing a guitar and singing live vocals in the room.” To disciples of his music, and it’s a logical assumption that fans of Dangling Teeth would be, this may recall what Neil Young was after in 1971 when he recorded part

of Harvest in Nashville. In his installment of the always reliable 33 1/3 series, author Sam Inglis details how Young recruited an ace ensemble of local session musicians and quickly hit the studio. He wanted to be set up between everyone, next to the drummer even. The results were soft and direct, and became known to many. Scarr never forced her drummer to sit on one hand and play with the other—unlike Young—but there remain certain parallels between the recording of Dangling Teeth and Young’s best-known LP. There is comparable twang and understated poignancy between the two, sure. But Scarr also demonstrates a fluency in lyrics of the runic variety. All of this is no coincidence; Scarr jumps to name Neil Young as an influence. That’s almost a given coming from any singer-songwriter who’s digested Young’s early-’70s work and sought to find their place in its aftermath. Yet it’s interesting where Scarr admires Young as a lyricist. “My favorite songs are ones where like I don’t really know what’s going on, but I know that I understand,” she says, invoking Young, “You can find your own place in there.” Likewise, Dangling Teeth muddles the boundaries separating personal anecdotes with those of others, real or imagined. It’s a record of snapshots—of former relationships and selves, of hometowns and honeymoons—conjured out of small details but rendered vaguely, as if painted in broad strokes. “I’ll hit that smile, with my mouth,” Scarr begins in the leisurely title track, “ I’ll hunt you down / Drag you across.” “It’s a way of describing frustrations with things that I can’t have, the infatuations in my life that I probably romanticize,” she replies when pressed on the album’s title and its same-named opening number. “I don’t want to say too much about it; there’s something I want to protect in that song still. Maybe someday I won’t.” It’s a sobering reflection, and perhaps one that might only come from someone in Scarr’s position, not only as a singer and songwriter who has strafed

musical idioms with her share of groups, but also as a mother. In the same motion that she’s protective, she is revealing. “I’m very much a person,” Scarr starts before a pause, “I don’t know what I want, until I know what I don’t want. And there were parts of Piece that I didn’t want. A lot of those songs, I don’t really like to play them anymore.” If there is one person who might have helped her to that realization, all signs point to Joe Rogers. Between his influence as a producer and friend, and the role his label has played in Kelli Scarr’s time as a solo artist, the Silence Breaks proprietor would appear the most consistent force guiding Scarr these last few years—except maybe to Rogers himself. “If there’s one thing I can say that I’ve seen grow in Kelli within the last few years it’s been confidence,”Rogers says. “That confidence has transformed into this figure where, to me, I see her play and it’s like, ‘Okay this person has something to give.’” He describes his role as a producer on Dangling Teeth as hands-off: trusting Scarr’s intuition for arrangements and texture, maneuvering the balancing between maintaining logistics but also letting things happen naturally. “As someone who wasn’t a musician on it, it was amazing to sit there and watch it all happen.” And that meant following the conviction of the album’s architect, Rogers sums. “She saw and heard this record before any of us did.”

Old Soul Wise beyond her years, Lianne La Havas mends heartbreak with promising, soulful pop. WRITTEN BY #MSR

I n a short film for “No Room For Doubt” captured

PHOTOS BY GAVIN THOMAS

by the French music blog La Blogothéque, Lianne La Havas performs her song while walking through the busy streets of Paris—in platformed shoes, she’s quick to point out. “It was slightly difficult,” is how the young, and preternaturally husky-voiced La Havas euphemizes the experience inside a New York hotel more than six months later. Sipping coffee from a green leather chair, which the 22-year-old immediately pulls around a coffee table and in close, she points to her feet. “I had shoes similar to this,” she says and flashes a grin. “The first take: you could see I was concentrating, trying to not fall over.” That video is full of small wonders: La Havas demonstrates the gentler spectrum of her fluid singing; she accompanies herself on guitar, meting out bossa-like chords with her right hand and tracing a thumbed, bobbing baseline with her left; all of this while navigating the crowded, cobbled streets of Paris. Near the end, a man from a passing group can be heard assessing—in English, fortuitously—that La Havas “must be an upcoming musician.” She’s in New York today to shore up the truth in that chance remark. In a few hours the Londonreared singer-songwriter will play a showcase across

town highlighting her upcoming major label debut Is Your Love Big Enough? (scheduled to arrive stateside August 7th, via Nonesuch). It will be a solo set, so she’ll be as unaccompanied as she was in that video. “I kind of had to make myself oblivious,” La Havas remembers, “Just so I wouldn’t feel nervous, I suppose.” She’s charming, of course. But layered in with the humility is an almost intimidating sureness with which the rising star speaks, staring intently as she does. There’s a similar assurance about her singing as well—whether it’s the barrel-chested choruses, or the willowy notes she curls from a raspy high range. In either configuration, La Havas goes for the direct stuff; often on her first album, she puts a low, earthy register to the task of reproaching a departed lover. Which, along with her pipes, puts La Havas in the field with that other English singer, Adele. But La Havas’ virtuosity as a vocalist is tantamount to her ability as a self-accompanist. There’s particularly slippery rhythm in her guitar-work on “Is Your Love Big Enough?,” the title-track off her impressive debut, and mercurial finger-picking throughout the album. In that sense she’s more a throwback to Jeff Buckley’s vintage of singer and songwriter than anything. Like Van Morrison or Nina

Simone—or more recently Michael Kiwanuka, a more folk-inclined British soul comer—La Havas intuitively calls upon jazz or Brazilian pop or gospel. She doesn’t middle their extremes; she leaves those roots exposed. Her most soul-inspired turn arrives in “Forget,” a post-breakup song fidgeting with futuristic funk. If there are any wounds, La Havas convincingly covers them with bravado and attitude. “That one’s definitely one of the more literal ones,” she says, grinning. “I guess I was feeling very cocky when I wrote that.” She acknowledges the song is about a particular ex, also a musician, with whom she no longer speaks. “For a long time he had made me feel like I wasn’t very good at music and I had a lot to learn, and he knew everything, whereas I think we all have a lot to learn. But I wanted to use what I knew at the time, and I felt like making a point of my knowledge in music to show him that I didn’t need him to be involved.” Was he intimidated? “I hope so,” La Havas smiles. “That was completely my intention.” Interestingly though, she’s has taken the question to mean intimidated after hearing the song, rather than intimidated by her abilities before “Forget” was even written. Most of the budding artist’s songs are equally transparent, and hew to a vulnerable core. In “Lost And Found” she suggests a truly damaged ego, singing, “You broke me and taught me to truly hate myself.” “No Room For Doubt” is more stoic, but ultimately anchored to a similar, sultry melancholy: “We all make mistakes,” goes the refrain. “I learn from you.” Consciously or not, with her debut record La Havas is throwing her name into a soul tradition that’s produced the more memorable breakup records in recent memory—consider the ‘90s revivalism that gave us The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,

up through the mid-2000’s bubble of UK throwbacks driven by Amy Winehouse. La Havas acknowledges some of these modern torch singers. She got into Erykah Badu—whom she’ll open for a few weeks from today—kind of late, but on the other hand by age 11 she was already obsessed with Who Is Jill Scott?, which she cops to swiping from her mother’s collection. “I was fascinated by how she would sing such honest lyrics,” she says, looping Lauryn Hill, ”obviously,” into that corner of influences. “I think what all these women have in common is singing about their lives—and the blues.” La Havas covers Jill Scott at her solo performance later in that the evening, adapting the swirling piano atmosphere of “He Loves Me” onto her electric guitar. She sings “You tease me,” with relaxed delight, though earlier, as in her own tune “Tease Me,” La Havas cast the same phrase in a tone of distress. But soon after, she begins “Forget” and tips the scales overwhelmingly back in her favor. She plays this one with the most gusto, commanding a melismatic “Forgeettttt” more powerfully with each chorus. It’s intimidating, in a way, sure. She’s radiating authority and swagger, commanding instead of asking—her only request: “Please don’t try to serenade me / I am a one man band.”

Grinning at the Undertaker Rising Britpunks Evans The Death Seek Beaut y in a Terrorized World WRITTEN BY BRANDON SPECKTOR

The first thing that hits you are the apples. Tiny

orbs hurled by tiny hands, and soon the hands are hitting you too. This isn’t exactly how you expected your rehearsal to end. “When we were on the bus riding back we couldn’t stop thinking about it—’What just happened?’” 19-year-old Katherine Whitaker recalls. Before she became the vocalist for Evans The Death, the young Britpop-punk dynamo that’s been creating recent ripples on both sides of the pond, Whitaker and her future bandmates were just some

high schoolers standing with their instruments on a London sidewalk, inexplicably set upon by a devil’s dozen of sneering seven-year-old fruit assassins. “There were about 12 or 13 of these seven-yearold kids, and we were just like, ‘Are you kidding?! They’re seven! We can’t hit them back!’ “So we wrote a song instead.” The song, astutely titled “A Small Child Punched Me In The Face,” appears on Evans The Death’s exquisite self-titled debut (out now) and is a slugger itself. For 140 rollercoastering seconds, its

treble-choked major chords, meandering swing bass and jackhammering drum fills cling fractiously around Whitaker’s glorious, Florence Welch-y declarations that “this generation is one generation too many.” It’s the most exhilaratingly punch-drunk pop since Ms. Welch’s “Kiss with a Fist,” and there’s a whole album full of the same. “We really don’t hate the new generation,” Whitaker clarifies, giggling. “But I certainly never would’ve done that. I’m sure loads of people wouldn’t. But we were so angry and weirded out by the whole experience we had to write about it instead of punching a seven-year-old.” Evans The Death (named for the nostalgic undertaker of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood) took root in 2008 when Whitaker and fellow founding member Dan Moss met at a gig in Islington. Moss, now the band’s guitarist and principal songwriter, eventually recruited his brother Olly to play bass (and a little guitar) as well as Rob Mitson, a schoolmate from Essex, to obliterate the drum kit. Casual hangouts led to rehearsals, which led to “little sets in little pubs” (including one unfortunate Monday night gig in front of a single belligerent guest) and finally, after four years, enough two-to-three-minute melodic punk bangers in the bank to score a deal with Fortuna Pop! records. Barely cracking 30 minutes after 12 relentlessly single-worthy tracks, Evans The Death is a fistful of polished poprocks that leaps to satircal Smiths-album punch lines in a pithy Ramonesalbum runtime. This brand of rock doesn’t pop overnight; select songs from the album have been floating around in one form or another since Evans’ 2008 inception. “Morning Voice,” one of two songs for which Whitaker penned the lyrics (the other is slow-closer “You’re Joking,”) was written about a cup of coffee four years ago. “I was 15 when I wrote it and I liked the way it sounded” Whitaker says. “Now I can actually relate it to things.”

While sweet nothings like “melt me with your bedroom eyes” accrue new meaning over time, most tracks from the record serve as Dan Moss’ responses to actual incidents (see again: those goddamned apple brats.) Beneath surface quips of “Why do I wet the bed/ whenever a plane flies overhead?” exist real-talk reactions to a world in disarray. Case in point: the drilling guitar nausea of “Threads,” an exuberant two-minute lament for a gruesome 1984 BBC drama of the same name that describes (all too vividly) a Britain under atomic assault. “Dan watched it when he was younger, and for years he just couldn’t get over fears that there was going to be a nuclear attack” Whitaker says. “Especially in the ‘80s when all that fear was festering, it would’ve been terrifying to watch. Fear-mongering. There’s something horrifying about how realistic it is.” By funneling such realism through comically sheet-pissing narrators and unassailably upbeat git box-and-vox melodies, Evans The Death dances around terror with a smile, rendering the extreme banal and, sometimes, the banal sublime. Crossover single “I’m So Unclean” may be their early masterpiece. “When I’m watching the shopping channel / I will think of you,” Whitaker swoons like a star-crossed lover at war, a Moss brother’s bass meanwhile tapping out staccato code in knowing bedroom-window knocks. “When I’m making a sandwich / I will think of you. When I try and get to sleep / I will think of you / When I try…” The shopping channel. How Moss and Whitaker manage to turn Miss Cleo’s Psychic Hotline into Juliet’s Balcony is another one of those small miracles of music, but that’s just the bag Evans The Death is in. While it’s still too early for the project to foster a full-time commitment (Whitaker had to hang up early so she could get to her day job at a local pub,) these upstarts have already proven themselves wealthy in the talent, humor and humility it takes to make great rock. It’s only a matter of time before today’s sorry, apple-chucking excuse for youth catches on.

PHOTO CREDIT: Isca Greenfield-Sanders

New York’s Downtown Siren Hannah Cohen Shelves Modeling for Music, Kills Softly With Beautifully Wounded Debut WRITTEN BY #MSR

I have a hard time writing happy songs,” Hannah

Cohen admits outside a West Village café, with the type of laugh that trails an obvious statement. The air around her is only growing more unseasonably cool as morning slips to afternoon. Overhead, a cloud-plagued sky is promising rain. In fact, it’s the type of perfectly portentous atmosphere lurking through much of Child Bride—Cohen’s gently elegant, and first record. That the doe-eyed singer’s speaking voice is as paper-thin as her breezy croon during that album’s most intimate moments hardly comes as a surprise. But as a result, the weather isn’t threatening our conversation today so much as the tiny but busy intersection nearby; the din of traffic is in constant competition, and when sizeable trucks pass by, her words are wiped out entirely. But Cohen, dressed in a dark top and bright blue pants, rolled generously at the cuff, appears relaxed. Alternating casually on a bench between a tucked position and sitting legs folded, she doesn’t compete. “I never really played music until recently,” she notes, pausing as a diesel engine clears the area. “I still feel like I don’t play music.”

True enough, Child Bride was only released in April, through the indie label Bella Union. (It remains available in the US as an import only.) But then again, most of its songs, Cohen says, came from two or three years’ worth of songwriting. And it’s been a handful of years now that she’s floated within New York’s downtown scene, working as a model with painters and fashion photographers, circulating within generally artistic circles (most recently with Sam Amidon and Julia Stone on tour), and frequenting Brazilian music parties at Nublu in the East Village. It was during this time that Cohen also floated her own newfangled compositions to Thomas Bartlett, a friend of hers known to some as Doveman and perhaps to even more as a supporting pianist for the scene’s prominent names, like Martha Wainwright or Antony Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnsons. “I would just send him songs before I played them for anybody else,” she says. “It was like this natural progression of picking up the guitar, but also having supportive friends and people who are musicians asking me to come play with them—especially Thomas. He was pushing me.” Bartlett’s support transitioned organically into working with Cohen on

her first album. He produced Child Bride, underlaying Cohen’s sparse guitar-pluckings and tender coos with an abutment of chamber strings, woodwinds, and tittering, barely-there electronics. “I trusted Thomas. I just let him do his thing,” Cohen offers. “Once we got to the studio it was his production.” They recorded over the course of about a year, getting together about once per month at a friend’s studio when schedules permitted. “We recorded a bunch of the songs I had just written,” she explains, but once recording began, the inspiration to keep writing took hold and newer songs funneled in with the older group she’d first planned for the album. They wrapped recording last October, and released a video for Child Bride’s lead single shortly afterward. * * * “It was like water torture. We did eight takes and every take I’d have to act as though I was drowning. Then we’d have to drain the tub, dry my hair and do my makeup.” Cohen laughs as she recalls the process behind the video for “The Crying Game,” wherein she sings unflinchingly into a camera from a tub filling perilously with water. They went with the final take. There are equally harrowing moments in Child Bride, namely sparse standouts like “Sorry,” or the baroque-sounding “Shadows.” But, like its video, “The Crying Game” renders a romantic betrayal in stark black and white. “How much can you fill in before you start crying?” Cohen sings as an arpeggio figure twirls ad infinitum. “How many times did you think of her when your heart was supposed to be with my heart?” The poignancy swells but, between her purposeful fragility and Bartlett’s ascending arrangement, there’s an endless sense of forward momentum. “I like to leave things sort of vague, but I think that one is pretty blatantly a crying song,“ she says. Considering how it applies to the impaled spirit of the album more generally, the vocalist is tentative. “I think subconsciously things were coming out,” she

allows. “I was in a relationship that I wasn’t happy in. I wasn’t able to communicate what I wanted; I didn’t know how.” To that end, Cohen continues, the songs became a vessel: “I was saying things that I really couldn’t say.” Child Bride isn’t an entirely bleak affair. For Cohen, who grew up in San Francisco, “California” is a more jocular memoir, while “Say Anything” casts her relaxed, effortless singing into equally wrinklefree terrain. Her vocal intuition is palpable in those moments too, but it’s downright piercing when Cohen goes for broken: “One way to get back at you / Is to turn it around and do the same to you,” she begins on “Don’t Say,” tossing the words upward in gentle arcs, and with a fluid relation to the beat. Later, in “The Simplest,” she wafts the line of the chorus in a compact melisma, repeating, “Our love will poison everything.” “That was about somebody, yeah,” Cohen says of the line, withdrawing with a laugh. “That was sort of… the situation.” * * * More than a week later, Hannah Cohen is playing before a seated crowd in the back room of Barbés, a small Brooklyn performance space. She’s performing most of her first album, accompanied solely by Josh Kaufman, a multi-instrumentalist affiliated with New York-associated bands like Yellowbirds and Thieving Irons. After an interlude where Cohen allows a friend some time for a brief sit-in performance, she returns to her own material with shy elegance. “I’m just going to tune,” she says, before a smile. “And then I’ll play you a really sad song.”

No Sweat Speedy Ortiz auteur Sadie Dupuis sharpens her axe on Sports EP WRITTEN BY WILL EWING In the landscape of indie music trends are the favored currency, and cash is king. That makes Sadie Dupuis a bit of an enigma. In the mid-aughties, when other musicians her age were tickling cuddly synths and piling up reverb pedals, Dupuis was going for guitar-driven grungescapes. When frequenting influential Brooklyn venues like Silent Barn or Death by Audio was synonymous

with getting noticed, Dupuis and her late outfit Quilty ditched the borough to play shows in the Bronx—in someone’s attic. Then, just as Quilty was gaining what may have seemed improbable traction (to anyone who hadn’t listened, that is) by 2011, Dupuis folded the band and moved to West Massachusetts to pursue an MFA in poetry. As an aside, she turned to recording weird,

tinny new material on a MacBook, under the name Speedy Ortiz. It was an intentionally goofy label; in typical Dupuis fashion, “Speedy Ortiz” poked at the ambitious mettle of both her Gotham peers and herself as well. Less than a year later, Sadie Dupuis is back in New York, standing in an influential Brooklyn show space and surrounded by the results of that determination. It’s a late Saturday night in June and Speedy Ortiz, fleshed out by cohorts Matt Robidoux, Darl Ferm and Mike Falcone, are making a return of sorts, at Shea Stadium—the venue. There’s subtlety and brute force; the band plays some of its already prolific songbook but takes care to keep the focus on the songs from its newest EP, Sports (Exploding in Sound Records). Connecting with her feet more than the crowd, Dupuis leads her bandmates through an anti-social version of the record, keeping onlookers and fans at arm’s length with a tirade of feedback and muddy power-chords. “I’ve always just tried to sound like the bands I loved growing up, which [included] a lot of ‘90s college bands,” the frontwoman says after the show. (Not a surprise coming from someone who once fronted an all-girl Pavement cover band called Babement.) But the proof is also in the sonic pudding that Speedy Ortiz whips together: all sludgy guitars and Nirvana-by-way-of-Pixies soft-loud theatrics. Dupuis has garnered throwback criticism for years. Clover/Coriander, her 2010 LP with Quilty, drew comparisons to both Nirvana and Fugazi. Favorable or not, the critical response has done little to alter the singer-songwriter’s macabre humor and hardnosed ethic, even as grunge revivalism has become more vogue thanks to notables like Milk Music, or Yuck. And while it is similarly influenced and inclined, Sports is a sophisticated step forward for Dupuis. Its handful of tracks are dark and muscular; they angle agile melodies and unusual rhythms on a

line, and pull a specific, sneering rawness out of the depths. On lead single “Silver Spring” Dupuis mischievously outfits the catchiest chorus of the collection with the grisly challenge: “Hack off my thighs, you’ll never drag me out alive.” She’s trapped in a murky cave that could be the New York rat race or any high school lunchroom, and rejecting salvation for something grimier. “[My songwriting] has definitely evolved since moving,” Dupuis explains. “I write more often from a character’s perspective, and usually with a sense of humor.” That dry wit comes through in Sports’ leadoff track “Basketball,” where she narrates a sexual encounter as a barely veiled pick-up game of hoops. It’s also unmistakable when Dupuis describes her current statewide tour, claiming casually, “I’d really be fine spending my life on Twitter.” It’s an oddball confidence, and it comes through during the band’s performance at Shea Stadium too. By the time Speedy Ortiz launches into “Silver Spring,” the cavernous grey room has come to resemble the dark interior of the song itself. The performance is entrancing in its incongruities: Dupuis’ cute sandals and the bludgeoning riffs; her stoic façade and Falcone’s whiplash drumming; the close-quarter-intimacy of the lyrics and the crudeness of the space. All the while, under Sadie Dupuis’ drooped bangs lies a faint, crooked smile. Happy to be back? Amused by the conceit of the whole thing? Perhaps a bit of both, but that’s for everyone else to worry about.

NEW ALBUMS

ILLUSTRATION: CHRISTIAN D. CAPESTANY 84

Slaughterhouse (In The Red)

Me What’s Inside Your Heart” and “Muscleman,”

Ty Segall Band

where it overlays the earnest coos of back

What does evil space rock sound like?

ing singers—but, in places, it’s buried beneath urgent, sludgy guitar and guttural growls.

According to San Francisco thrasher Ty

The most exciting moments on this record,

Segall—who’s used the term to describe his

though, are tracks like “Wave Goodbye,” where

latest release Slaughterhouse—it’s steeped in heavy riffs slam into hummable melodies to reckless fuzz, doused with loose, jangly melody,

create a tornado of punk destruction, ‘60s pop

and smeared with bratty sneer.

sensibilities and metal muck. Here, Segall culls

At least, that’s the backbone of the new the lean urgency from the simple lo-fi tracks on album, his first under the Ty Segall Band moni- which he built his reputation and steers them in ker, crafted with the help of his tourmates and a new direction, straight off a cliff. released via garage-

F l ippi ng

punk label In the Red

further through

Records. The album is

his

the second of three he

collection, Segall

plans to put out this

also

year, trailing a collab-

an unceremoni-

orative release with

ous take on Bo

Tim Presley’s White

Diddley’s “Diddy

Fence,

Wah

which

came

record includes

Diddy.”

In place of the

out in May.

original’s earnest

Slaughterhouse (it’s

his

seventh

grooves are driv-

LP,

though

Segall’s

ing guitars and

discography includes

an endless string of

almost

gleeful

EPs,

scream:

“Fuck

7-inches,

compilation

and

this

contri-

butions) seems especially raucous on the heels

exuberant,

fucking

song!” The result is thrilling, sloppy, and brim-

of last year’s Goodbye Bread, which is groomed, ming with impulse. gentle, easy listening by comparison. Maybe

Collectively, the record is a full-on sprint

Segall was willing to oblige his lover and buy to the 10-minute, aptly-titled closer “Fuzz the damn couch she longs for in “Comfortable War.” Comprised almost entirely of desperate Home,” but one gets the feeling she’s now sleep- hisses and rumbling noise, it saps the blistering on a lumpy futon, happy or not.

ing energy of every track that comes before

Segall and his crew set the tone immediately it; guitars scream for mercy, drums clatter in with nearly a full minute of squelching guitars confusion and a ceaseless drone gets lost in the and a stream of wonky reverb leading the album’s

ether. It’s both otherworldly and evil, and caps

opener “Death.” Dig in deeper and you’ll find

off one of Segall’s strongest efforts to date.

traces of psych-pop—especially on cuts like “Tell —Alyssa Noel

NEW ALBUM REVIEWS | 85

Fragrant world (Secretly Candian) Yeasayer

cancerous cells long outlived her body. And despite the electro-adulterated production, Fragrant World’s dark parade of dance pop actually sounds like it was made by living, breathing, odd-blooded humans (some

“We’re really trying to get away from all this David

of whom still carry guitars.) This experimental mood

Guetta bullshit,” Yeasayer’s Chris Keating says, do- makes for some of Yeasayer’s most full-bodied and ing little to suppress the blitz of club and dubstep

affecting tracks yet, and also some of its least memo-

remixes that will inevitably follow Fragrant World

rable.

(due Aug 21st). The band’s first studio release since

In a bid to make R&B dancier and dance music

the dance-frantic campfire social Odd Blood is rich

bluesier, Yeasayer abandons the immediate appeal

with the precise breed of software-augmented

of hand claps and jungle-pop dances that rendered

wobbles, whorls, blips, and burps that are likely

Odd Blood and All Hour Cymbals festival delights.

to end up sample fodder for a Guetta or a Mau5 or

“Henrietta” is still the best song here, possibly

a Moore’s festival A-game. But the key difference

because it so deftly combines the bopping cyber-

here—to Keating, as well as anyone who’s prob- pop of Yeasayer Classic with the woozy, psyche-

ably left exquisite single “Henrietta” on all-day

delic dirges of Yeasayer 3.0. Listen (again) to just

repeat—is in the delivery.

the first two minutes: those Ratatatty keyboard

There are actual stories amidst the slow drift

triplets, subterranean bass bounces, and dance-

of synthesized smoke rings—most of them a spell

floor stomp-claps courtesy of dual percussionists

denser than “and then the bass dropped”—e.g.

Jason Trammell and Ahmed Gallab form the catchi-

“Henrietta,” a sci-fi paraphrase of the real and

est Yeasayer hook since “Tightrope.” But suddenly,

remarkable case of Henrietta Lacks, whose unique

at 1:45, the sun melts away; we enter a high and

lonely place where even the wind is audible above

Heritage (Blue Note)

somber synth ripples. Keating’s two-minute closing

Lionel Loueke

mantra “Oh Henrietta/ We can make love forever” becomes a chorus for the whole album—at once mournful of the present, and hopeful for the future. We won’t hear emotion this vivid again until the shifty psychotropics of album closer “Glass of the Microscope.” Elsewhere on the record, the “soul, swing, and weirder elements” that Keating reportedly misses in modern dance pop takes eclectic shapes, some more effective than others. Most of the soul deficit here is satisfied by Keating’s own vocals, which range from hopeless, Vocoder-perverted trip-sitter (“Glass of the Microscope”) to falsetto-inflected *NSYNC chorus (“Devil and the Deed.”) The swing criterion, a staple of any Yeasayer release, is aptly met by Ira Wolf Tuton’s sturdy-enough-to-dry-yourflannels-on basslines, esp. in “Henrietta” and “Folk

You won’t have to dig very deep to unearth the conceptual circuitry inside Heritage, the third Blue Note release by Lionel Loueke (due August 28th). As the title posits, the concern here is lineage, of the familial but also the musical sort. At 39, the West African guitar virtuoso would appear in a suitable position for retrospection. But to followers of his work Heritage might seem a dubious and redundant enterprise; as an accompa nist and a leader, Lionel Loueke’s Benin roots have always dappled throughout his intensely rhythmic improvisations, or the soft glow of his melodies. Heritage however, is his most artistically-minded record to date. There isn’t a standard to be found here. It’s also his strongest, the most consistently

Hero Shtick.” As for those “weirder elements,” well,

inspired of his solo outings. It expands upon the

here comes “Reagan’s Skeleton”—a head-scratching

guitarist’s sonic palette, which often called to mind

slice of campy horror in the “Thriller” tradition,

the translucence of Pat Metheny, and does so with

only with way less major-chord groin grabbing and

a combustible force of purpose beyond Loueke’s

way more 8-bit blippery. Take it or leave it.

prior albums. In fact such comparison almost feels

“Live for the moment / Never count on longev-

misplaced, so organic and exacting is its probing

ity,” Keating sings over the soggy beats of trickling

of the musical traditions behind Loueke’s unique

second single, “Longevity.” This sad-but-true advice

hybridism.

is an apt reflection of Yeasayer’s shifting trajectory

As ever, on the granular level are his origins

as songwriters. In the post-Weeknd, post-Frank

along the Ivory Coast—where the guitarist first

Ocean moment of bummer R&B earning more shine

studied as a percussionist and a singer. Heritage

from pop audiences, Fragrant World is a confident

is full of titular nods in this direction (“Ouidah,”

contender. But in leaving the safe glow of campfire

“Goree”) and opens with one of its most kinetic:

pop for the darker edges of the forest, Yeasayer is

the Yoruba-sung “Ife” accrues its momentum gradu-

still working out a balance worth preserving.

ally, climaxing in a percussive flurry of vocal clicks

—Brandon Specktor

and polyrhythm-attack where the guitarist spares

NEW ALBUM REVIEWS | 87

counterpoint, as in “Bayinnah,” a tune he’s written for this record, where the ad-libs echo motives floating within Black Radio. But it’s Guiliana’s playing that gives this music its flexible, and indispensable spine. A drummer of stunningly lyrical vision, Giuliana is accustomed to adapting within multinational bands (as he does here), most often with Avishai Cohen—the Israeli bassist—and with Now vs. Now, an organ trio given to genre integration, and well-versed in compressed rhythms and group-made intensity. It no part of his steel-string’s body or fretboard. Yet

all translates into thrilling chemistry

these are pinpricks along a larger vein; this album

on Heritage, which, excluding the ballads (Glasper-

dances and charges with the coordinated intuition

Loueke cowrite “Hope” and the essential “Char-

of a solid band, which is what Loueke has here

don”) lives at a tempo between medium and light

in Robert Glasper, also the album’s producer, the pianist’s longtime bass- and band-mate Derrick Hodge, as well as drummer Mark Guiliana. In that tradition not exclusive to, but perhaps exemplified by jazz, Loueke’s retrospective search on Heritage occurs alongside enterprising impulses. And he’s joined by capable suitors to the cause. Glasper’s inclusion appears not only a practical choice—the two share a home on Blue Note—but also a strategic one: as half of Glasper’s Experi-

dynamism: his patterns come off like enthusiastic dialogue, usually with Loueke, even at full-tilt. The appeal there is a sense of play that Heritage endeavors to keep in sight. And to the credit of Glasper and Loueke, it’s also in the details of the overall presentation where that underlying sensation flickers. There is a vibe of spontaneity about the album’s feverishly jaunty tracks that feels appropriate. “Goree” fades in with Hodge and drummer Mark Guiliana already engaged in an expect-

ment both he and Hodge have one of the year’s

ant funk-flutter. Before that there’s the maddening

most rewarding gambits in Black Radio, an album

pointillism of “African Ship,” a three-minute flash

that sharply argues for jazz’s fluidity even as it

of bravura that includes the players’ in-studio cele-

exemplifies a binding potential in the context of

bration and relieved chuckles after the last note

hip-hop and neo soul. Some of that album’s electric

dissipates; it’s a collective sigh of relief, and just as

plushness is reanimated here. Glasper’s mishmash

much a a part of the ride. —#MSR

of electric and acoustic pianos is at times a direct

speed. In either case Guiliana injects a rare kind of

There’s No Leaving Now (Dead Oceans) The Tallest Man on Earth

transcendent despair—also some of the finest we’ve heard from him. Death, heartbreak, and aimlessness are the specters looming within and without this album. Matsson sweats their approach, but often counter-

Kristian Matsson isn’t the understating type. If the pseudonym weren’t evidence enough, consider some of the seriously grave titles like Sometimes The Blues Is Just a Passing Bird or, better yet, Shallow Grave. He wields hyperbole as a painter would

vails the gloom in the same breath. This is particularly true of the deceptively shiny opener, “To Just Grow Away.” “You spend so many nights just gathering stones, silver tears, and old sapphire bones,” is actually a glimmer of hope in the midst of the song’s overwhelming air of perdition. Contending

a set of drama-drenched watercolors, except for

with the morbidity everywhere else is a warm,

Matsson the brush is his expressive rasp.

steady pulse of piano and bass.

That voice reveals the Swedish folkie as more

Matsson is also careful to leave a flicker of hope

of a sculptor though; it’s the steely instrument by

in the darkness of “Bright Lanterns”—invoking

which his Tallest Man records carve their subjects

the title as a savior from “the fires and from the

down to the interior-form waiting beneath the

falling down satellites.” That’s pretty much his

surface. On There’s No Leaving Now, his third full-

deeper contention on this album. It’s eager to find

length, Matsson’s flayed tenor collides with some

light in the pitfalls of humanity, and echoes that

of his most graceful acoustic musings to date. But

untidy process in its unpolished, decidedly mussed

their beauty is skin-deep, and it hides a complex,

production.

NEW ALBUM REVIEWS | 89

The breezy lead single “1904” was our first indication of this. It arrived in May like a shimmering invitation, with all the upbeat catchiness of the Tallest Man singles that came before, but ultimately a more foreboding substratum. Pressed against the superficial allure are aftershocks of death and guilt: “When believing is hard but you go now, and you feel what you drag across the floor.” Now, with the entire framework of There’s No Leaving Now in view, “1904” appears the cornerstone of the album it announced. Throughout, Matsson’s guitar work is a whirring force, at once complimentary and distracting as his growl does the gritty work: leaping to a mottled falsetto,

BEhold, This dreamer! (Thieving Irons) Thieving Irons

where the brevity of life and exasperating relationships demand a firm nuance.

“The giving up goes away with time.” There are

Mattson depicts moral breakdown as inevitable,

many lingering sentiments that trickle down or

but he says as much for the bounce back, which is

billow up during Behold, This Dreamer!, the quietly

where he sounds most eloquent. —Alyssa Pereira

immersive second album by Brooklyn’s Thieving Irons. But this one, from the punchy “So Long,” leaps out like a revelation. Before and after that line, bandleader Nate Martinez actually builds a case for giving up: he bids adieu to purposeless gazing, to dragging feet on the sidewalk, to fantasy. “If we could walk on water,” he sings, we could “do away with time.” But we can’t, of course. And although much of Thieving Irons’ second album is resplendent with vague sensations, and Martinez isn’t above suspending reality to achieve them with his lyrics, Behold, This Dreamer! is most concerned with how we spend our reality. Its resolutions arrive in unspecific patterns, like hints or faint sensations, and they’re as carefully veiled as the gossamer sounds on this album. As in the title-track, where Martinez’s murmur echoes within spacious floor-toms and curious trickles of electronics, the ideas coming fast and muted. It’s only the tail end of the chorus—“Through the wires

in your spine”—that cleanly reverberates or sticks to mind. So it goes with most of this record. As signposts, the choruses are rarely legible. Instead it’s the concise but ambiguous aren’t

refrains,

necessarily

which tied

structure: the “arms reaching out” eddying within

horn and wooly electronics produced by an EVI—

“Gentle Hands,” or “touched with fire,” from “Below

overwhelmingly to atmospheric ends.

the Avenues.” And when the choruses are succinct

Yet Brantigan’s contributions are most compel-

they’re just as lightly stenciled in meaning: “I’ve got

ling wherever they’re less decorative. This is true

poison in my head”; “dreaming sometimes, swim-

of the fanfare, notably “Sleepwalking Into The

ming”; what exactly Martinez is leaving behind with

Ocean,” the emotional peak of the record. But it’s

his shouts of “so long.”

especially the case during the hush, which is most

Since 2010 Martinez has transitioned Thieving Irons from a self-spun recording project into

of this album and well-suited to Martinez’s voice, a taxed but melodic tenor.

a settled lineup, and it’s manifest in these songs.

In the final track he sings out from crowd of

They sound better, mostly because the last record,

ghosts, wondering aloud whether he belongs:

This Midnight Hum, was an exercise in rawness. But

“Swimming with minnows we learn to swim like

the more important distinction lies in the configu-

the rest / Hold your breath, watch the clock, stay

rations the band—Josh Kaufman on bass, multi-

in line, fold your hands.” There’s protest there,

instrumentalist Dan Brantigan, drummer Andy

but within the framework of this album it sounds

Nauss—assumes here.

more like a warning, drawing everything to a close

They form a slipstream for Martinez’s shadowy verbiage, with Brantigan standing out as the

along with one lingering cry: “With time ticking.” —#MSR

creative foil. He cradles Martinez’s compositions with understated arrangements, favoring flugel-

NEW ALBUM REVIEWS | 91

stompy New Wave throwback that would be just fine if it didn’t torpedo the raw-edged confrontation perfected by the Metric of yore. Images of hand grenades and hangmen will impart little effect on anyone who followed this band through the gritty trenches of “Dead Disco” and “Love is a Place.” The remedial synth that carries “The Void” sounds like mid-‘90s Ace of Base, an unfortunate and lackadaisical

departure

from

the heartrending piano and provocative Pro-One aphrodisiacs lead singer Emily Haines has long proven capable of.

Synthetica (Mom + Pop Music) Metric

On the album’s title track, she adopts a tough guy-voice and mean-mugs authenticity. “I’ll keep the life that I’ve got!” Haines declares. Later: “No drug is stronger than me!” and “I’ve got something

Metric’s fifth studio release begins in the same

no pill could ever kill!” Here is the woman who

fashion as its predecessors: vulnerable, brooding,

spent myriad tours crawling around myriad stages

declarative, and ominously suspenseful.

on all fours, who was “too wasted to close the

But the final notes of opener “Artificial

window,” who writhed on the ground and belted

Nocturne” are where the similarities cease on

these words from a fetal position: rebranded into

Synthetica. With the swift entrée of “Youth With-

an after-school special.

out Youth,” comfort and familiarity are kicked

This isn’t to say that Metric’s kid-friendly PSA

aside to make way for a discographical civil war,

jams won’t prove vital to some. But for everyone

one that divides the righteously tenacious Metric

else they confirm a deliberate, and irreversible shift

we listened to as righteously tenacious teenagers

into newly bland territory. There is nothing glar-

from the sugary redux that the kids of today will

ingly wrong with Synthetica. Like most precisely

tout as their own anthems.

calculated pop records it is as polished as it is

Which is to say, Synthetica is not an album for

forgettable, as catchy as it is blasé, as melodic as it

adults. This is an album for high school kids taking

is harmless. Synthetica will sound great in stadiums

the bus to the mall to get their ears pierced at

and in high school cafeterias and in the bedrooms

Claire’s: Its songs protest having curfews and not

of post-temper tantrum pre-teens seeking parental

yet knowing how to drive.

solace. Let’s hope their diaries are not as synthetic

Take for instance “Youth Without Youth,” a

as Synthetica. —Carly Lewis

The Eiggy Sea Cate Le Bon CYRK II (The Control Group) Cate Le Bon makes small sounding records that reach deep—back in time, but also inward. And on CYRK II (due August 21st), the Welsh singer-guitarist’s strongest, most minimalist record so far, the mood is ripe with ‘60s bohemia. Curious taps and spectral organs waft about like incense or decadent scarves, but Le Bon drives these six tunes: Her fashionably flat monotone

Until Then Orcas Orcas (Morr Music)

ized. “Until Then” (originally

will send your SoundHound chas-

by Broadcast) is aptly nestled

ing after Nico or Brigitte Bardot,

at the heart of this record: It

but her unkempt guitar-playing

enters

is busy tickling at a dissonant

emaciated,

murmuring

underbelly: scraping through that

The air bends slowly through

“none of us have anything” as it

the self-titled debut by Seattle’s

passes and dragging an ineffable

Orcas.

(symph-rock

swarm of pink-noise in its wake.

scribes Rafael Anton Irisarri and

It is at once frugal and penetrat-

Benoît Pioulard) explored a range

ing—not

of long-form ambience during the

“High Fences,” a one-chord finale

past five or so years, scattering

that hollows a droning chord to

releases on fringy, fuzz-friendly

canyon-like depth. Think of it as

labels like Kranky or Ghostly International. But with Orcas

the island between Owl Splinters— deceptively austere EP. last year’s instrumental evergreen

(Morr Music), they’ve reconciled

by Norway’s Deaf Center—and the

those directions into something

balearic brio of Swedish swoosh-

more elegiac and wholly real-

stros Korallreven.

The

duo

unlike

album-closer

vocal veneer to something more unrefined, and captivating. It suits Le Bon’s reproach in opener “What Is Worse,” and especially caters to the sense of awe that begins on “The Eiggy Sea”—”I fall over myself just to bask in the wealth”—and pervades this

SUMMER HASH | 93

The Burner

lays the ideological groundwork (“Pro level wordplay / No place

(f. Guilty Simpson, Damien Randle, D. Rose, TWICE, MaG)

kandodo kandodo kandodo (Thrill Jockey) kandodo triples as Simon Price’s solo pseudonym (he’s also a member of obscure Anglo rockers the Heads), the title track to his euphoric first album, and of course the eponymous album title itself. The origin of the moniker is acute—the name of a supermarket in Malawi, where Price grew up—but as the results unfold on this record it’s impossible not to situate kandodo into a grander cosmos. It’s at once insular and sweeping, a psilocybin dream of gentle rocktronics and found sounds Price recorded to his trusty Walkman. “kandodo,” the track, is among the longest of the nine desert-drone instrumentals here: a rogue radio wave intercepted from the imaginary planet where Spacemen 3 is busy rehearsing its anticipated high-concept record of Morricone adaptations.

The Accomplices The 10-90 EP (DJ Booth/The

for amateurs”) even as it features the usually pugnacious Guilty Simpson in relatively toothless

Wanderer)

form; boasting Detroit pride over

With this concentrated mixtape,

tually assumes “exterminator”-

North East production duo The

mode before passing the baton

Accomplices—The

clattering snare baps, he even-

Jake

and

Houston

rappers

Damien

BroadNMarket—build a nest for

Randle and D. Rose. The convinc-

hustling, pseudo-purist under-

ing threats arrive in the bars by

ground MC’s. “Static Life” and

TWICE: “It’s survival of the fit /

“What Happened” are clear-eyed

This is high-caliber rap, automat-

dissections of forsaken communi-

ically spit / Murder with the flow,

ties, softened by languid grooves

every line is a hit / Point blank

and enriched with dusty crackle.

so there’s never a miss.” The

In urgent cuts there are remnants

Bronx’s prodigal smoothie MaG

jumbling

ties it all together, unspooling a

battle-rhymes.

lengthy hook and tempering the

“The Burner” is the salvo, and it

machismo with assured panache.

chipmunk

against

dense

soul

turn of the knob between radio stations. The opener, “Double Reverse Psychology,” is as structurally overwrought as its title demands: it maps out like an electro-dub

sonata,

segueing

from one lethargic groove to the next. Like the album at large, its structure and balance suggest an

Ne Dona Bara Kola Seydou Balani Teguereni (ATFA) This kinetic opus opens the back half of Teguereni, a storm of balafon and bellows in cassette-for— made available on our shores by Awesome Tapes For Africa. It’s an effusive marvel, a monument to the bravura of Seydou Balani, the West African xylophonist who fashions his last name after

over highlight. And that makes

elasticized twist on the disgrun-

the thrilling double-time push

tled compression of Copeland’s

(which all of these songs build to

principal outfit, Black Dice, or a

at their close before fading out

pop-minded distillation of the

all too soon) the most tragically

digital histrionics by Terrestrial

short-changed of the set.

Tones, his project with Animal Collective’s Avey Tare.

Double Reverse Psychology

Lightworkers Call

Eric Copeland

(f. Kromestar)

Limbo (Underwater Peoples)

Om Unit Aeolian (Civil Music)

Much of Eric Copeland’s intriguing LP Limbo plays like a Dadaist’s

British beat-smelter Om Unit’s

the Bambara term for the instru- disco-minded Choose Your Own ment itself. The rhythms flare Adventure unfolding in real-time.

third EP on the London-based Civil

and demur, and Balani sings like

What would Fela’s rhythm section

is delicate thunder: a Massive

a man possessed: provoking and

have sounded like in a traffic jam

Attack of footwork rhythm and

mimicking the roiling clusters

(“Louie Louie Louie”)? Could an

trap

he extracts from that balafon for

interstellar big rig’s hydraulics

into a simmer. The record also

ten mercurial minutes. There’s

suffice as a leisurely hook (“Tarzan

broadcasts

Music proves aptly titled. Aeolian

rap

sonorities the

liquefied

DJ-producer’s

plenty of warmth and easygo- and the Dizzy Devils”)? Still, if

resourceful command of EDM’s

ing grooves to be found on this

Copeland’s 2009 full-length was

relatively

record, but “Ne Dona Bara Kola”

a channel-changer, this follow-

cosms. That said, “Lightworkers

up is a nuanced and sensitive

Call” bears the most straightfor-

its

ceaseless,

pot-boiling-

burgeoning

micro-

SUMMER HASH | 95

ward, hip-hop-informed breakbeat of the bunch—and even sports a zapped G-funk line to noodle over its woozy baseline. Although that bottom-end of the production can be credited to the dubstep veteran Kromestar, featured here, Om Unit stirs up deeper wub-rumble elsewhere, when he’s left to his devices on Aeolian, as in the gentle bubbler

but more intriguing is “Proto- crash claimed the life of Clifford type,” an underachieving Andre

Brown. More likely, 26 references

empty space and sonic crevices

3000

here

the age Brown never lived to see.

remain vital to the balance, and

into something more patient

(Richie Powell, a pianist like his

just as much a part of the rising

and beatific. It’s less studious

older brother Bud, was also killed

producer’s electro-manifesto.

stretches like these where Owens’

in that accident, and also just

deeper vision emerges. Look for

25-years-old.) This June release

it in Lee Morgan’s “Party Time,”

orders a dozen recordings, mostly

Ulysses Owens Jr.

or the few originals that turn

from the trumpeter’s tenure with

Unanimous (Criss Cross)

up here: the pair bookending

Art

the record, by trombonist Mike

1954 jewel Night At Birdland—in

Unanimous is Ulysses Owens’

Dease and another by bassist

all

second album, his first as a

Christian McBride—whose usual

disciple intensity. But there’s

bandleader. As a drummer-led

pianist Christian Sands fortifies

also the brilliant blues, be it the

record that insists upon the

the steely rhythm section—or

barnburner “Swingin’” or the

wealth within swing, it will

Owens’ own “Beardom X.”

wider, effortless swing of “Valse

“Fumes.” Whatever the mode, the

Beardom X

likely also serve as a case for

ballad,

distended

Brown’s

hard-nosed,

their Diz-

Hot” from Brown’s short-lived

Owens as Art Blakey heir appar-

Mayreh

ent. Indeed, Unanimous is almost

Clifford Brown

ing Richie Powell, as well. These

exclusively populated by deeply

26 (jazz2jazz)

recordings aren’t fresh discover-

quintet with Max Roach—featur-

ies, but together they’re a conve-

pocketed grooves that course

Blakey—specifically

within an orderly 1960s-hard-

26, the title of this digital-only

nient primer and gateway to the

bop vein. There are dutifully

retrospective, may be pointing

trumpeter’s short yet prolific

swift takes on “E.S.P.” and I-Got-

a solemn finger to the calendar

fount of quicksilver bop.

Rhythm

day in June of 1956 when a car

standard

“Cherokee”;

Sleepin’ Giantz Theme (f. Fox) Sleepin’ Giantz Sleepin’ Giantz (Tru Thoughts) The hostile tone is established early on this record by the newly formed

Sleepin’

Giantz.

The

raving hip-hop triad, all stalwarts from the grimier corners of either UK dance or hip-hop, begins on a note of discord, and

who still manages some whimsy

exceedingly more focused, and,

amidst the barrage, toying with

with couplets like “The techno

their fairy-tale moniker: “We’ll

thing is a foreign thing / I must

come into your village, start

be in the past: bling bling,”

pillaging the towns and the cities

precociously savvy.

where you’re livin’ in, delivering the hardcore killing t’ing / Fee fi fuck it tho’.”

TeKKno Scene

Honeymooners Kalob Griffin Band June Found A Gun (He Is Records)

Elliphant

“Biologically you’re a sound indi-

(self-released)

vidual / Mentally you’re as crazy

the burs only grow sharper from there. Holding forth over the

With “In The Jungle,” the first

limping 808-snap is Rodney P, a

and tantalizingly morsel-sized

reliably demotic rapper from his

single by Swedish newcomer

earliest days with London Posse.

Elliphant, the enigmatic singer-

Before slinging mud at glossy

beatstress was merely setting

adversaries— of the Black Eyed

the table for a following course.

Peas variety, in this case —P’s

This aggro-rejoinder pretty much

first order of business here is

upends that table in a raptur-

booming about his group’s abili- ous conniption of technicolor ties and credibility. It’s the most abandon: “TeKKno Scene” plies nostalgic sounding thing on this

reggaetón gallop into icier dimen-

album. Mostly that’s because the

sions, where pinched ambulance

dry-grind of producer Zed Bias

frequencies and quasi-dancehall

as a loon,” keens Kalob Griffin, prime mover and bard-at-large for the KGB. In “Honeymooners” he’s a rational man (“Let’s skip the wedding and honeymoon”) overtaken by the irrational (“If you were the last girl on earth that wouldn’t change any bit of our love”). Throughout the first

is rarely concerned with tonal- patois writhe, gnash and coil ity. It favors ephemeral textures against one another in angular instead: his beats are squishy and

harmony. If that seems like too

full of brattle, but more dance-

much for a brain to bear, wait

focused than on this initial

for Adam Kanyama, the Stock-

track, where the last Giant, the

holm-based rap wunderkind who

gravelly-voiced

looks all of twelve-years-old; his

Fallacy,

also

appears. He’s less potent split- machine-gun flow is as tireless as ting these verses with Rodney P, you’d expect of a young gun but

SUMMER HASH | 97

LP by these Philly country-rock

and ‘75. They combine rowdier,

stompers, Griffin assumes an

amplified takes cut in juke joints

array of roles: the pitiless outlaw,

as well as more cursory takes

the vitriol-spewing lover burned

from the porch. As it exists in

by a no-good woman, the prodi-

the latter, the blues is also cica-

gal son of the South. Through it all, though, you hear the reedy

das stridulating in the Missis- in its worldly, deeply musical way, sippi sun, cries for “Mama!” Clube Da Esquina is the sharpest

echo of Hank Williams guid-

from a passing toddler, the belch

voicing of their namesake move-

ing the communal good vibes

after the opening stanza of “Bad

ment. It calls into its orbit the

of revivalist kin like Old Crow

Luck.” Burnside was an integral

radical energy and tonality from

Medicine Show. These songs nod

part of Fat Possum’s electric-Delta

its rock and jazz contemporaries,

to periods where freedom was

revival, so naturally there isn’t a

executing with a wealth of ease.

tied to the river, rather than the

lick here that doesn’t turn up on

“Os Povos” is a stunning Brazilian

highway. Collectively, they’re as

any early Black Keys record. By

ballad where Nascimento soars,

cut out for the self-immolating

comparison though, the swelter

but on even-keel; he sounds

romantic—or alcoholic (“Whis-

within these takes isn’t a matter

limber, instead of overcome or

key My Love”)—as they are for a

of lo-fi crunch; it’s in the actual

coming apart. But it’s the ambi-

fratty hoedown.

air, bleeding the tunes, going

tious sonic tetherings that keep

Bad Luck

after the sore-shouldered sonu- this production intriguing, and vagun himself. indelible—they’re everywhere,

R.L. Burnside Rollin’ & Tumblin’ (Spoonful/Wolf

O Trem Azul

Records) 1998

Milton Nascimento Clube Da Esquina (EMI) 1972

of course, but no better or more serene than on “O Trem Azul.”

Big Pump

Of all the things the blues has

Now vs. Now

been called, or thought to encom- With this masterful double album,

Now vs. Now (Anzic) 2009

pass, “innocence” rarely has a

the Brazilian guitarist and august

seat at the table. But that it is—

vocalist Milton Nascimento chases

For years now Jason Lindner has

or at least it can be. Sometimes,

the gentle folk apparitions of

trafficked in a number of trios

the blues is lighthearted shouts

his early records to a maximalist

that take the format to differ-

of children playing nearby. That’s

extreme. It’s a joint opus with Lô

ent extremes, most recently with

one of the panoply of revelations

Borges, Nascimento’s compatriot

Dafnis Prieto as part of the Cuban

hiding in plain sight on this

singer-songwriter and creative

percussionist-composer’s Proverb

indispensable compilation of R.L.

partner within the artiste-clique

Trio. (Their album is a sparse

Burnside recordings from ‘91, ‘89

they’d begun by the late ‘60s. And

drum-keys-vocal

production,

entirely improvised and recorded in a single day.) With Now vs. Now,

Hoshi Neko

Lindner is at the helm of simi-

YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN

larly groove-concerned venture.

Yt // St (Psychic Handshake) 2011

The intermittent trio, also drum-

She Gonna Get Down DJ Godfather f. DJ Rashad

mer Mark Guiliana and singing

This handful of musicians, built

Detroit Booty Callin (Booty Call

bassmaster Panagiotis Andreou,

around primary auteurs alaskaB

Records) 2011

builds an intricacy that can still

and Ruby Kato Attwood, plumbs

accommodate dynamic life. As it

its share of musical and visual art

This assertive closer to a four-

comes together on their sole, self-

forms with a futurist’s fervor. Yt //

titled record, that confection is

track EP from last fall is but one

St, the Canadian group’s arresting

entry in the bottomless stockpile

redolent of sects within early

full-length from last year, rolls in

of singles and remix collections

‘90s hip-hop and jazz—when rap

amidst a rainstorm and booming

by DJ Godfather, the superin-

producers were more likely to

taiko drums. From there it spills

tendent of Detroit’s so-called

channel the latter, as opposed

across continents and traditions

Gettotech (or Ghetto Tek) scene.

to the inverted pattern of the

typhoon,

Most of those arrived on his own

last few years. There are compel-

sweeping together psych-metal

Twilight 76 label, or to a lesser

ling integrations of spoken word

minimalism and ritual music

extent its more house-inclined

with sinewy funk, as well as

(“A Star Over Pureland”), craggy

sister label Databass. (Both have

asymmetrical-metered

burners.

prog odysseys (“Reverse Crystal

been local mainstays since the

There’s also a kind of exploratory

//Murder of a Spider”), chilly

mid ‘90s, and doubled as special-

exhilaration about this album,

Siouxsie-theatrics and classical

ized conduits for whatever facet

even within the more decidedly

Japanese Noh (traditionally a

of Godfather’s eclectic palette

composed tunes. Like “Big Pump,”

reserved form of musical drama,

made the most sense.) Like

a ostensible ballad that maintains

which informs the look more

postmodern

ing bars despite Guiliana’s effu-

most of Detroit Booty Callin, “She than the sound of their perfor- Gonna Get Down” is all obstinate mances). It’s a diffuse, but still rhythm and lyric, but more than

sive sputter, a caterwauling organ

proprietary mix that rarely leaks

anything in the set it pivots

and, near the end, even Andreou’s

any urgency—reliably manifest

between infectious and crush-

own vocal flourishes—a mix of

in the drumming: walloped to

ing, on the back of choked synth

tabla-scat and mellifluous hums.

distortion throughout, and espe- riffs and a lopsided thump that’s cially on the baroque lead-single no doubt the handiwork of DJ

the sonorous bottom of its open-

“Hoshi Neko.”

Rashad, the Chicago footwork chief and featured neighbor here.

SUMMER HASH | 99