Twee pop is often described as ‘dreamy’ and ‘whimsical’, but Dominant Legs’ frontman Ryan Lynch is more of a realist. Like Girls’ Christopher Owens, whom Lynch has performed with, Dominant Legs’ music is overflowing with sincerity and the type of true-natured story telling you would expect from a Roald Dahl novel. Lynch started the project while performing with Girls, before being introduced to Hannah Hunt, an ex-architecture student who had recently returned to California from New York. They started collaborating, with Lynch on guitar and Hunt on keys, both sharing vocal duties. Their music quickly took the shape of a dancey Belle and Sebastian, with Arthur Russell’s swinging synth sounds flowing through their music. The duo released their first EP last year titled Young at Love and Life, and have since been growing in size and working on their debut album Invitation, due for release on September 27 via Lefse Records. On the strength of their debut EP, an album of similar stealth should propel them into the indie limelight. Listen to two tracks from Young at Love and Life below.
I can’t believe I haven’t gotten hooked on Ty Segall sooner. His woozy, laissez-faire garage rock is perfectly formed sing-along anthem material. Goodbye Bread is his new album, released yesterday, and it’s so lovable – the insanely catchy melodies resonate immediately and have a wonderful classic style. The pop melodies are balanced by Ty’s raw, unaffected delivery and scuzzed out production, but he’s not new around here. Ty’s a stalwart of the San Francisco scene, having played in Sic Alps (hear this possible influence in his song ‘I Can’t Feel It’) and made a name for himself with Epsilons, The Traditional Fools, Party Fowl and The Perverts.
All the songs on his fifth solo album are golden standouts, and not one is out of place. Starting with the super slow serenade of the title track, Ty earns your attention from the beginning, and goes on to riff about his observations of changes in the scene, all to the pummelling guitar gutter rock he’s honed to make his own. It’s jarring and repetitive on ‘California Commercial’ but, like ‘The Floor’ later on, shimmies with delightful little outbursts of guitar solos and raucous drums. All songs are short, keeping you guessing. There’s a storybook approach to lyrics and songwriting, with very illustrative bass parts and occasionally aggressive singing that’s not unlike JEFF The Brotherhood.
An adept guitarist, Ty has a brilliant strength in his voice, with a classic slant that’s particularly noticeable on slower songs like ‘I Am With You’. He’s got the increasingly rare talent of reaching the right level of production values, in a way that the scratchiness really compliments his pop songs. His imagination runs free and this experimental spirit is well and truly captured here. Read a great interview with him at Prefix magazine, and download the single that everyone’s buzzing about, below.
Ex-Mika Miko sisters Jennifer and Jessica Clavin have a new band called Bleached, which was announced this week on a number of popular US music sites, including The Fader and Stereogum. Since disbanding Mika Miko in 2009, the sisters have been touring with other notable bands, Jennifer as a vocalist in Cold Cave and Jessica on bass with Puro Instinct. Jennifer’s time with Cold Cave saw her briefly relocate to New York, but she’s now back in Los Angeles working again on a musical project she started with her sister in late 2009, post-Mika Miko. Bleached resembles Mika Miko in many ways, with driving surf-punk guitars and Jennifer’s distinctive voice, but with Bleached there’s more melody and less of Mika Miko’s scatter-brain vocal style that was very much cut from the ’70s British punk mold. Bleached follows more current trends, resembling Cassie Ramones’ Babies or the likes of Coasting and Grass Widow. They’ve still got their punk edge, but it’s more romantic than punchy.
Bleached’s debut release, a limited run 7″ on Art Fag Recordings is due out on July 19.
Chelsea Wolfe is another artist from the hub that is Los Angeles, California. Her voice seems to violate you, taking you deep into a world of thaumaturgist witch craft and seance rituals. It’s a genre now commonly labelled witch house, but it’s all part of a psychedelic underworld that literary figures have been exploring for decades. There’s something seedy about it, and something scary that translates into images of an imaginary poetic goth cult, meeting to discuss ways of speaking to creatures in another language. Chelsea’s songs portray these themes, with song names such as ‘Cousins of the Antichrist’, ‘The Wasteland’ and ‘Demons’. She’s got a somewhat mystical sound that’s drawn out through bleak sounding guitars and a rustic drum kit. Similarities can be made to PJ Harvey’s recently composed and violently confronting album Let England Shake, although Chelsea Wolfe’s soon to be released Apokalypsis album comes from the darkest corners of an underground basement, directly contrasting Harvey’s grand masterpiece which sounds like it was recorded in the dining hall of a grand English mansion.
Chelsea Wolfe has recorded two full length albums. The first, titled The Grime and the Glow was released in December 2010, and her second, titled Apokalypsis will be be released on August 23. Both albums are with New York label Pendu Sound.
Describing his band as “label polygamists”, Sic Alps’ drummer Matt Hartman talks about label hopping, album sequencing and reading reviews of Sic Alps’ latest album Napa Asylum.
A character of acute sensibility, Matt Hartman’s personality instantly takes shape. He’s totally in control of every aspect of his band’s output. For seven years the band he fronts with guitar/vocalist Mike Donovan has refused to be tied down, releasing music in all formats on eleven different record labels without ever feeling a sense of obligation to continue working with any of them. Their latest offering, a functionally deranged double album titled Napa Asylum was released by Chicago indie label Drag City, one of few remaining twenty-plus year old independents who have passed through the revolving door off big label takeovers and held their ground in a now vastly different musical climate.
Hartman cites Drag City’s staying power as a major motivation for wanting to work with them, along with their desire to remain focused on releasing a quality product without being overrun by profit margins and distribution packages. He describes Drag City as “a good place to land”, musing that “I guess they’re the label that got us to stop messing around,” referring to the last six years of their career when no label was able to land an ongoing deal. He remembers when they decided to do their second full-length album U.S EZ with Siltbreeze that their previous label Animal Disguise “were bent out of shape a little bit.”
But what Hartman describes as the band’s ‘label polygamy’ hasn’t bothered him or Donovan. “I have a bit of an idealistic view of the world I think, and it is my hope that folks will discover music as long as it is good enough. I’ve always hoped that the music could speak for itself and that you didn’t need these brokers that sort of come in and dictate to some extent that you ought to be writing about this band.”
“it’s not a lo-fi record, he termed it something like ‘old-fi’”
Remembering a time when an email appeared in the band’s inbox asking to speak with their manager or press agent, it puzzled him to find a journalist so unaccustomed to dealing directly with the people they in fact wanted information from. “A year or two ago we got these weird emails from someone at Interview magazine… they were trying to get in touch with our manager or our press agent. We had to write back and go well we don’t have one but you’ve actually got the band here, you can actually talk to us and we’ll be more than happy to supply you with information… we never heard back from them.” He quickly picked up on the fact that many writers lazily want a quick fix; a press release or biography to bulk out a poorly researched article.
Reading reviews, he says, “I can tell if a journalist has done their homework or not because you can look at a review and if they’re basically spitting back the one-sheet that they get then you realise.” It’s that failure by many music critics to critically assess the music that has led fans to follow and champion certain magazines or websites. A recent review of Napa Asylum published on the music website Pitchfork helped Hartman discover things about his music that he himself had been unable to describe. “I wasn’t convinced they would get it but what’s funny is that they really got it, there’s so much of that review where I’m like, woah, no shit. The one thing that the guy picked up on that I particularly liked was that it’s not a lo-fi record, he termed it something like ‘old-fi’. That was the catch phrase that I couldn’t really come up with in my own head but he just kind of took the words out of my mouth.”
Pitchfork’s influence on alternative music has become such that the band, along with staff at Drag City, ran a poll to guess the rating out of ten that would be assigned to Napa Asylum. Someone, Hartman can’t remember who, guessed right with an 8.0/10. But when it comes to influencing the public’s opinion, a review can only go so far. “At the end of the day you can have the best review of a record, but if the public doesn’t agree then everything kind of falls accordingly. Whether you get a really good review or a really shit review, you have to keep in mind that that’s just one guy’s opinion.”
So far, the 8.0 hasn’t quite spiralled into critical acclaim for Sic Alps, being less accessible than many other highly rated Pitchfork bands. Napa Asylum has moments of complete rawness that only fans of a certain ilk will appreciate, while its radio friendly hits have a scuzzy, rustic quality that don’t tie in easily with many alternative top 10 playlists.
Reflecting on the ‘old-fi’ sound, much of which comes from the band’s home recording studio set-up in Hartman’s basement, he describes their writing process akin to piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. “Typically, coming into Napa Asylum Mike had a backlog of songs that basically in my mind are like starting points. There’s kind of two different versions of the song being written; there’s the first step which is Mike’s genesis for the song, there’s a riff or a fully formed structure and some lyrics and melody, and then the second version of that is when we get to the studio and get the main idea down.”
“I remember reading an interview with Greg from Deerhoof about how he sequenced Reveille using Queen’s News of the Word.”
After recording and mastering was complete the hardest part was arranging a tracklist, which Hartman took full responsibility of doing, although like the most challenging jobs he left it to the last minute. “I was trying to do something silly and really kind of Zen where I was ignoring the responsibility… One of the drawbacks about recording at home, particularly here because it’s at my house, is that I can tend towards a very laissez-faireattitude about getting the work done, because you know, I’m at home. You’re not paying for studio time and you’ve not got someone looking over you making you work.”
“I just basically sat down with a virtual pile of songs sitting there and went well ‘Jolly’ is first, then I’d hear the song end and go well what do I want to hear next… We were basically on the verge of cutting a lot of material to make it a single album but I didn’t want to let the dream die and once I got that sequence I emailed it to the other guys in the band. The subject was like, ‘A fucking good A (grade) double-album’ or something like that. I basically gave it a giant vote of confidence and everyone else agreed.”
The Zen-like approach thankfully didn’t flow over into sequencing the album. Hartman laughs about reading different methodologies used to justify album sequencing. “I remember reading an interview with Greg from Deerhoof about how he sequenced Reveille using Queen’s News of the Word. He was basically like, ‘What’s the Deerhoof song that equals each track on the Queen record?’” Not surprisingly Hartman found a much easier way, “You kind of have to just do the mixtape thing and try and just get them to interlace together.”
Released a few days ago, Puro Instinct’s latest track ‘Silky Eyes’ has engraved itself on my mind. It’s slack comatose vocals are lazy and infectious, with shimmering discord guitars starting all loose before descending into an incredible pop melody. There’s a hint of ’80s prog in the rhythms that the band seem to be channelling, and as a concept it ties in perfectly to create a carefree, easy listening sound. Ariel Pink has obviously been an influence as well, evident in the wavy guitar chords and imprinted samples; Ariel is also a close friend of sisters Piper and Skylar Kaplan and appeared on their previous single ‘Stilyagi’.
Those who thought chillwave would be fading away about now might need to reassess, with new releases from Puro Instinct and Beach Fossils about to drop it appears it might do a third US summer dominating the stoner stations. Puro Instinct’s debut album Headbangers In Ecstasy will be released on Mexican Summer Records on February 22.
Released today via Drag City, Sic Alps return with their first LP since 2008. Titled Napa Asylum, the double LP comes after a long stint touring, during which the band took time to reflect on previous endeavours and decide on a new direction. But after all that reflection not a lot has changed, Napa Asylum is again packed with scuzzy garage rock and heavily gouged anti-folk psychedelia. Twenty-two tracks is a lot to pack in, but this is Sic Alps’ second attempt of sorts, having released a double LP compilation of former singles and 7″‘s in 2009, titled A Long Way Around To A Shortcut. Napa Asylum is their third album, following their critically acclaimed US E.Z in 2008 on the Siltbreeze label and their 2006 debut Pleasures & Treasures. In between a few singles, most notably ‘L. Mansion’ released via Slumberland Records, and a split 12″ with Magik Markers, both in 2009 have keep fans happy, but Napa Asylum is a triumphant return with a new found maturity. An obvious highlight and a song likely to gain radio play across the world is ‘Do You Want To Give $$?’, with a rock and roll swagger and sing-along chorus it’s easily accessible and catchy and is an early musical highlight of 2011. Elsewhere they get twisted up in some lo-fi noise rock (‘Trip Train’) and sing with a folksy crust flanked by an acoustic guitar and a bit of emotional sentiment (‘Low Kid’ and ‘Ball Of Fame’). The time Sic Alps had to think about this album and piece it all together is shown off by it’s contrasting elements, each song is jagged and vastly unrepetitious but they all bind together to form a clattering, obnoxiously fascinating album.
World Premiere of Deerhoof’s ‘Almost Everyone, Almost Always’
We’re beyond excited to have the exclusive world premiere stream of Deerhoof‘s song ‘Almost Everyone, Almost Always’, the last track from their upcoming album. We’re also proud to be the bearers of some great news, with the official announcement that Flying Nun Records will be releasing Deerhoof’s tenth album, Deerhoof vs Evil, in New Zealand on January 31. The legendary label will put the album out on CD and digitally as well as on limited edition pink gate-fold vinyl. The album will be available in the UK on January 24 via ATP Recordings and in the US on January 25 via Polyvinyl.
The songs from Deerhoof vs Evil have been gradually released for streaming over the past two months via websites including Pitchfork and The Guardian, with a map of the world charting its release (you can read more about that here).
Starting off with a bone-dry drum beat and hazy synths, ‘Almost Everyone, Almost Always’ isn’t an immediate party track like ‘The Merry Barracks’, but a slow-building crystallised avant-garde drone attack. It’s very dreamy and gentle, with Greg Saunier’s pulsating drums forming a unique bed on which the rest of Deerhoof vs Evil can rest its head.
Founding member Greg, who also sings on this song, gave us this poetic quote about it:
“Lonely character sings
from behind banks of keyboards
about World War Three
and not knowing how to have fun
audience not listening…”
-Greg
Today sees the release of Broken Dreams Club, the follow-up EP to Girls’ breakthrough debut album. The EP, released through True Panther Sounds, revisits the famed nostalgia and forlornness of the band’s debut. This means there’s just as much to aid the arguments of those who ‘get’ the band and those who ‘don’t’ – as always, Girls’ fans will cherish the band for the same points that drive their detractors away. With Broken Dreams Club the trademarks of Album (60s-driven pop hooks, lovesick guitar riffs and the seemingly endless hype that fostered their success with similar buzzwords) are back with more distinction and character. One touch of this is with ‘Carolina’, where Christopher Owens’ now more fragile vocals mark that the music is duly more hesitant to jump into the heat of things. It takes a good few minutes of eeriness and solemnly ambiguous sounds to get to the point, but when it does, it really lifts.
Melodically and lyrically, don’t expect a huge jump from Album. This is a band that’s all about its sentiment, so just as ever this time around, Owens is gunning for simplicity. Sharpen your ears for those delicate high-register notes – just one sign that this time Girls mean it more than ever. And if the signs are right their massive following will shadow their every step, for many improvements they make. If we’re lucky, this new EP’s success will finally overcome all annoying conversations about the meaning of Album opener ‘Lust For Life’.
After posting on Deerhoof’s first single ‘The Merry Barracks’ from their upcoming new album Deerhoof vs Evil, Einstein Music Journal has been invited to take part in the release of their album! The band is staging a global album leak that sees a different track from the album made available to stream on a different blog or website around the world each week. It started with ‘The Merry Barracks’ on Pitchfork on October 8, and will continue until the album’s eventual release on January 25. Einstein Music Journal will have the world premiere of the 12th track, ‘Almost Everyone, Almost Always’, along with a quote from singer Satomi Matsuzaki, on December 15.
The most recent song leaked from the album is ‘Super Duper Rescue Heads !’, streaming on The Guardian since November 1. Starting with a shimmering keyboard jaunt, Satomi’s vocals saunter in clearer than ever, with clattery percussion and the band’s trademark roughed up, ramshackle sound carefully restrained by a gritty grunge guitar. The band is stepping into ever more experimental pop territory with Deerhoof vs. Evil, right down to the method in which they’re sharing it with fans. Deerhoof has also announced a tour of the US in January with Nervous Cop, which is Greg Saunier of Deerhoof’s band with Zach Hill, plus Ben Butler and Mousepad.
Keep an eye on their website to follow the song leaks and check back here on Einstein Music Journal on December 15 for ‘Almost Everyone, Almost Always’.
