Washington D.C. punks Priests have unleashed a lot of post-punk / no wave protest music in the last year, and the world is better for it. They’re smack dab in the middle of the current political climate’s hotbed, and they’re not just speaking out, they’re shouting out. A lot of their songs build to high tension, which is an apt reflection for much of the country right now.
Priests open the Green Stage at the Pitchfork Music Festival on July 14th. It’s sure to be a raucous way to start the day.
Keep your mind open.
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“they pack both a purist intent and an inescapable weirdness into songs
as adventurous as they are catchy.” – NPR Music
“a wonderful retro-futuristic mess” – Los Angeles Times
“spacey, proggy, psych detour.” – Rolling Stone “Artist You Need To Know”
“Theirs is a fuzz-shrouded kind of rock ‘n roll displaying an imaginative urge to re-smear the already kaleidoscopic boundaries of the inventive modern crop of modern psychedelic music.”
– Paste “Best of What’s Next”
Los Angeles-based Wand announce the release of Plum, out September 22ndvia Drag City Records, as well as lead single, “Plum,” and its accompanying video, and a tour that embarks on the heels of the album’s release. Plum is Wand’s fourth LP since the band formed in late 2013, but their first new album since 2015. After a whirlwind first two years of writing, recording, and touring, their newest document focuses teeming, dense, at times wildly multichromatic sounds into Wand’s most deliberate statement to date, with a long evening’s shadow of loss and longing hovering above the proceedings.
In late winter of 2016, the band — Cory Hanson (guitar, vocals), Lee Landey (bass) and Evan Burrows (drums) — expanded their core membership to include two new members — Robbie Cody (guitar) and Sofia Arreguin (keyboards, vocals). The change in lineup naturally led to a shift in working method. The songwriting process was relocated to the practice space, where for several months on and off the band improvised, while recording and archiving as much as they could manage. And while previously Wand songs had often been brought to the group substantially formed by Hanson, now seedling songs were harvested from a growing cloudbank of improvised material, then fleshed out and negotiated collectively. This new process demanded more honest communication, more vulnerability, better boundaries, more mercy and persistence during a year that meanwhile delivered a heaping serving of romantic, familial and political heartbreak for everyone involved. The resulting Plum delicately locates the band’s tangent of escape from the comfortable shallows of genre anachronism.
Watch the video for “Plum” below. As Hanson describes it, “The song transpires between our collective harmony and individual dissent. It felt like we were each trying to obstruct a clear path in order to discover new space. As a total accident, ‘Plum’ wound up being a miniature blueprint to the musical language we developed together over months of dedicated writing.”
Two Montreal psychedelic powerhouses, four-piece Suuns and producer Radwan Gahzi Mounmeh (otherwise known as Jerusalem in My Heart), teamed up in 2012 (but didn’t release the collaboration until three years later) to create a new project that mixes Suuns’ rock aesthetic with Mounmeh’s tripped-out Middle Eastern sounds. It’s mind and tongue twisting.
What do I mean? Well, the first track is titled “2amoutu I7tirakan.” The numbers are used to reflect Arabic sounds that have no good western written translation. The track sounds like a forgotten relic from Vangelis’ Blade Runner score. “Metal” is a great cut that shows how western rock and Middle Eastern beats can work so well together. “Self” blends Middle Eastern chanting with weird electro-blip percussion. “In Touch,” with its almost subliminal bass and building beats, is perfectly suited for playing in the glass elevator you’re taking to the upper floors of the casino hotel to meet your lover / the contract killer you’ve hired.
“Gazelles in Flight” begins with what sounds like a film reel flapping after it’s made its run through a projector. It builds into weird insect-like sounds and then into something that sounds like a Claudio Simonetti giallo film score track from the 1980’s. It’s wonderfully weird. The album closes with “3attam Babey,” an eight-minute track of desert mirages and a mix of touches from the likes of Bauhaus, Joy Division, and early Pink Floyd.
One of the most incredible things about this mind warp of a record is that it was recorded in one week back in 2012. One week! A longer team-up between them may produce something that can transport us to the astral plane. I hope they do this soon. I’d love to check out that place.
Not ones to take a break, A Perfect Circlehave announced fall tour dates throughout North America. No new album has been announced, but they have played new material during recent shows. Here are the announced dates:
October 21 — Sacramento, CA @ Aftershock Festival
October 23 — Colorado Springs, CO @ Broadmoor World Arena
October 25 — Albuquerque, NM @ Tingley Coliseum
October 26 — El Paso, TX @ Don Haskins Center
October 30 — Knoxville, TN @ Thompson-Boling Arena
November 1 — Fairfax, VA @ EagleBank Arena
November 2 — Brooklyn, NY @ Tidal Theater at Barclays Center
November 4 —Reading, PA @ Santander Arena
November 5 — Uncasville, CT @ Mohegan Sun Arena
November 7 — Camden, NJ @ BB&T Pavilion
November 8 — Boston, MA @ Agganis Arena
November 10 — Portland, ME @ Cross Insurance Center
November 11 — Albany, NY @ Times Union Center
November 12 — Syracuse, NY @ The OnCenter Arena
November 14 — Montreal, QC @ Laval Centre
November 15 — Toronto, ON @ Air Canada Centre
November 17 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Petersen Events Center
November 18 — Cleveland, OH @ Wolstein Center
November 19 — Highland Heights, KY @ BB&T Arena
November 21 — Detroit, MI @ Fox Theatre
November 22 — Grand Rapids, MI @ The DeltaPlex Arena
November 24 — Chicago, IL @ UIC Pavilion
November 25 — St. Paul, MN @ Xcel EnergyCenter
November 28 — Spokane, WA @ Spokane Arena
November 30 — Vancouver, BC @ PNE Coliseum
December 1 — Seattle, WA @ Key Arena
December 2 — Portland, OR @ Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum
December 4 — Eugene, OR @ Matthew Knight Center
The New Pornographers returned in 2014 after a far too long absence to bring us another masterfully crafted album of power pop. The Canadian supergroup’s Brill Bruisers sounds like a long-lost ELO record and is a fine piece of work desperately needed in this world of pop divas, TV show idols, bro’ rock, country-rap, and booty call music.
The opener (and title track) starts with blaring guitars, powerful drums, vocals that swirl with great melodies, and a touch of psychedelic synths. Vocalist / guitarist A.C. Newman and his crew seem to channel the stadium-filling power of early ELO records on it. “Champions of Red Wine” doesn’t refer to my wife and one of her best friends, but is rather a fun song from outer space (judging by the poppy space lounge keyboards) sung by the always mesmerizing Neko Case. The band knocks this one out of the park.
“Fantasy Fools” will have you jumping and dancing, as it’s nothing but joyful. The keyboards on it are the hidden key to the song’s power. Those same keyboards are front and center during “War on the East Coast,” in which Dan Bejar worries more about potentially botching a relationship than about world chaos and bad news. “Backstairs” brings back the ELO influence and is big, booming, and wonderful. I can’t wait to hear this one live. It swirls into mind trip material and is all the better for it. “Marching Orders” is peppy with happy keyboards and Neko Case’s happy vocals. You can visualize her dancing in the recording booth as she sings. I love the way “Born with a Sound” dabbles in electro. The New Pornographers have the luxury of being able to do whatever the hell they want, so an electro-rock cut doesn’t jar the flow of the album at all (and Kathryn Calder’s backing vocals on it are excellent).
If you’re worried the New Pornographers are turning into an electro band, have no fear. “Dancehall Domine” sounds like something off The Electric Version with its big guitars, great Newman and Case vocal trades, and straight-up rock drums, and “Spidyr” sounds like it could’ve been a track from Mass Romantic. “Hi-Rise” and the closer, “You Tell Me Where,” dive back into the synth-heavy sounds, but it all works. “You Tell Me Where” is a nice grand finale and I’m sure is a big set-ender at their live shows.
We needed this record. It’s refreshing and lovely – the best kind of porn, really.
Keep your mind open.
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I’m not surprised that Goat’s Commune opens with a track called “Talk to God,” because a Goat album (let alone a live performance) feels like a direct transmission from another plane where beings beyond our understanding dwell and bless us with insight and wisdom.
Goat, the mysterious Swedish voodoo rock band, had another solid record that went straight into my “Best of 2014” list with Commune. “Talk to God” hypnotizes you out of the gate with its Arabic / African guitar licks, humming bass, and those sultry, mysterious female vocals (sexily singing “Call my name when you talk to God.”).
“Words,” with droning guitar that sounds like something Giorgio Moroder composed, furthers Goat’s theme of communing with things beyond our ken. The weird, high-pitched chants on “The Light Within” definitely sound like something from beyond this reality, and the guitar solo may well send you there.
“To Travel the Path Unknown” could be the theme of listening to any Goat album. You never know where it will lead you and it may change each time. The opening lyric claims, “There is only one true meaning of life, and that is to be a positive force in the constant creation of evolution.” Heavy stuff, but a Goat album is not for the weak. Don’t play one unless you are ready to face the consequences of an expanded mind.
“Goatchild” continues the band’s theme of using their name in at least one song title per record. It’s also the first song on their first two albums to feature male vocals, which contrast nicely with the duo female vocals throughout most of the tracks as the lyrics take us beyond the moon and sun.
“The spirit world is everything,” Goat claims on “Goatslaves.” They’re right, of course. This world here, in which I am typing a review that cannot truly encapsulate this record, is illusion. We are slaves to it because we fear what lies beyond the veil we keep over our eyes. The beats on this are so good they’re almost terrifying, which is just how Goat likes it. A bit of fear keeps you honest, and liars never do well in the spirit world.
“Hide from the Sun” is a magnificent song to take with you across the desert during your pilgrimage to a holy temple, an oasis full of sweet water and fruits and beautiful naked people, or the treadmill. Just don’t be surprised if you abandon that run on the treadmill for a good sweat in the sauna while listening to this track, because it may make you seek sweat lodge visions.
“Bondye” is a fantastic instrumental with swirling, mesmerizing beats that build to a frenzy best suited for whirling dervishes. Let it wash over you. It’s hard to write this even as I hear it. It tends to overwhelm everything else in your immediate sphere.
The album ends with a “Gathering of Ancient Tribes” (Notice the initials?). The vocals are powerful (chanting “Into the fire!” at one point), and the band behind them seems to be playing from a mountain temple for all in the valley below to hear. The guitar solo drops from Mount Olympus, gathering cacophony in its wake, until it hits you like an avalanche.
This is one of the most powerful, mind-altering records I’ve heard since, well, Goat’s first album. You aren’t the same after hearing a Goat album. It will bend your brain. Proceed with caution, but by all means – proceed.
Steven Ellison, otherwise known as Flying Lotus, is probably the biggest name in psychedelic electronica right now. His sets combine jazz, trance, house, soul, and trip hop with psychedelic electro jams. I wanted to see him at Levitation Austin last year, but the festival was cancelled due to bad weather and I couldn’t get tickets to his rescheduled set. He recently announced that he’s performing a 3-D show, so that should be amazing. He’s also a close friend of Thundercat, so I think the two of them grooving together is a certainty.
Keep your mind open.
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Australia’s Cut Copywill bring their electro-pop to Chicago’s Mamby on the Beachfestival June 25th. What started as a home recording project in 2001 has bloomed into a four-man band within the last sixteen years. I’m hoping they’ll play a lot of tracks off their upcoming (and as yet unnamed) album. It would be a delight to hear them before a good chunk of the world.
Keep your mind open.
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Bass guitar whiz, rapper, singer, and producer Thundercat(Stephen Bruner) is one of the funkiest musicians around right now. His music ranges from funk to soul to psychedelia to prog-rock (and he also plays bass in Suicidal Tendencies). His collaborations with Erykah Badu, Flying Lotus, and Kendrick Lamar have all earned him wide acclaim (and a Grammy). His June 25th set at Mamby on the Beachis sure to be a must-see.
