Computer Magic’s (otherwise known as Danielle Johnson) Obscure but Visible EP is a nice treat. Ms. Johnson puts the whole thing together via synths, computers, drum machines, and lovely vocals for a refreshing record in a world of so much damn noise.
The opening vibraphone-like beats of “Dimensions” instantly calm you, but the snappy beats get your toes tapping. “Lonely Like We Are” soars along free of gravity as the beats get you dancing even though they seem to be miles away from you. “New Generation” has a fun Caribbean beat to it. “Gone for the Weekend” has Johnson requesting, “Don’t bring me down. I’m gone for the weekend, so build me up.” She wants and needs someone to give her a boost because not even the weekend is enough to completely lift her out of her funk. “Been Waiting” sounds like a lost 1980’s synth-pop classic at times.
This is a good introduction to Computer Magic. I need to seek out more of Ms. Johnson’s work. You should, too.
Day three of the Pitchfork Music Festivalstarted out a bit chilly as the Windy City was living up to its nickname, but we soon got our sweaty groove on thanks to a great set by Chicago house music legend and pioneer Derrick Carter.
Derrick Carter dropping beats like an Olympic power lifter dropping a barbell.
For those of you who weren’t dancing during his set, please see a doctor because something is wrong with you. He put on a house music clinic. It was a great way to start the day.
We also heard a bit of Colin Stetson‘s set. He plays this wild, droning, hypnotizing saxophone music that is difficult to describe but quite mesmerizing. We had plenty of time before Ride‘s set, so we met up with my college pal and his husband again before heading off to do a little shopping and eating.
Ride put on a good set of shoegaze that was a great switch from all the hip hop, electro, and funk we heard during the festival. Unfortunately, they had a shortened set due to some early technical difficulties, but they played new and old material and blasted all of us with the final song of their set. It was a loud, distorted, fuzzed-out assault. “I needed that,” said one man next to me by the time they were done.
Ride melting faces in a killer finale.
Ride did a signing at the record fair afterwards, and I scored a signed copy of their newest album, Weather Diaries (review coming soon). They were happy to meet everybody, and I’m happy to report they had a long line of fans there.
Mandy caught Jamilla Woods‘ set, which she enjoyed very much, after she’d been moved from the Blue Stage to the Green Stage due to the Avalanchescancelling their performance. According to their Twitter feed, a family member one of the band members had some sort of dire medical emergency. My college pal came to the festival mainly to see them, so he was more than annoyed they weren’t playing. He and his husband learned via a Google search that the Avalanches are about as finicky as Morrissey when it comes to performing.
Thankfully, Nicolas Jaarput on an excellent set of his experimental electro / trance music that was both psychedelic and dance-inspiring at the same time. At about the halfway point of his set, a guy in front of me turned to his friends and said, “This is the best set I’ve seen all weekend.” and then left.
Chilean DJ Nicolas Jaar creating intricate beats on the fly.
We split after that, beating the crowds and stopping to meet artist Jay Ryan so we could get one of his posters. He does really neat and cute art for a lot of bands and other projects. We already had a Bob Mould tour poster of his hanging in our living room, and now Mandy has a “It’s Time to Read” poster that will go in her office featuring bears, cats, and a wooly mammoth reading books.
I walked out with a new pair of sunglasses and CD’s by Screaming Females, Vacation, Waxahatchee, Tycho, Priests, Slowdive, She-Devils, Ride, and Wavves, and even a cassette by a band called Diagonal. I’ll have reviews of all this stuff in the coming months.
All in all, the Pitchfork Music Festival was a good time. We’d go back if the lineup was good and we could stay close to the festival. As it’s been for the last few festivals I’ve attended, VIP tickets don’t look worth the money. It’s not as laid back as a Levitation festival, but still fun. It also could’ve used a little more rock, in my opinion, but it was worth the trip.
Keep your mind open.
That’s my pal, Chris, on the far right and his husband, Darin, on the far left. Chris and I hadn’t seen each other since 1993.
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The name of the new Blanck Mass (Benjamin John Power) album, World Eater, could refer to several things: the Fenris Wolf from Norse mythology that eats the sun at the end of the world (the cover art – a photograph of a snarling dog’s teeth – certainly suggests this), the rising population numbers of the human race and the effects of that on the planet, the Internet, Galactus from Marvel Comics, cancer, world politics, religion, or a hundred other things. World Eater attempts to unveil this looming threat (whatever it is) to us, and he does so with fury.
Take, for instance, World Eater’s opener, “John Doe’s Carnival of Error.” It’s a little over two minutes of what sounds like an antique music box in need of repair. This belongs in a horror film score, if it’s not already in one. It’s not a carnival of terror, however. It’s a carnival of error. Our errors, both in real life and especially online, often define us. No one is given the benefit of the doubt anymore, and plenty of us like to sit back and watch the circus as celebrities are taken down, politicians stumble, and even “normal people” suffer pratfalls both physical and emotional.
“Rhesus Negative” brings in frenetic electric beats, fuzzed bass, and short, choppy samples perfect for the short, choppy way we’ve come to want our entertainment, news, and human interactions. “Please” could be Blanck Mass’ asking us to pay attention to our world be swallowed up by seemingly everything. It’s one of the brightest tracks on the record, so I can’t help but figure he thinks we can heal the world and ourselves if we have some compassion for it and each other.
“The Rat” is probably an allusion to scavengers plaguing the world with feeding off of / exploiting the poor. The beat and sound of the track, one of the best, is like something out of a future post-apocalyptic movie (but one with an uplifting ending). I wouldn’t be surprised if “Silent Treatment” refers to the way human beings tend to interact with each other nowadays. We’d rather stare at little screens and type silent words than actually look at each other and tell stories. The song is anything but quiet as it mixes in trance touches with rainfall-like synths.
I have no idea how to explain the title of “Minnesota / Eas Fors / Naked,” but maybe that’s the point. It’s chaotic and seems to come at you from several directions, and I definitely think that’s part of the message. The things that tend to gobble us up in this world come at us all the time from every direction imaginable. Perhaps Blanck Mass wants us to be naked of such distractions, and this song is a reflection of those distractions. I’m going with that.
World Eater ends with the song “Hive Mind.” We’re all nearly there, aren’t we? Everyone wants to be famous, liked, upvoted, tagged, retweeted, and shared. As a friend of mine once put it, “They all want to be individuals like everyone else.” We want to belong, but we don’t want to put in the effort of belonging to something. The song’s slick beats and popping synths keep you nodding and awake. It keeps you from falling into the hive mind.
Blanck Mass wants us to wake up and readjust. He wants us to remember that nature is truly highest on the food chain, but he also wants us to remember that we can avoid being consumed by the beasts we’ve created. This record is a warning, an alarm, and a solid piece of work – one of the best I’ve heard all year, in fact.
We were happy to learn that the folks at Pitchfork Music Festival decided to open a second entrance on the east side of Union Park. This saved us from having to walk around the park to get into the lone entrance (unless you were a VIP), and saved probably thousands of people from waiting in another long line at the start of the day.
The new entrance, located at Ogden and Washington, sent us straight into the poster and print exhibition.
Posters and prints everywhere!
We immediately noticed it was far busier than the previous day. The weather was better, too. It was sunny and just a tad humid, whereas it had been mostly cloudy on Day One. The new entrance also put us near the craft and record fairs.
Clothes, jewelry, sunglasses, hats, one-hitters.It’s a bunch of wrecka stows under one roof!
I’m curious to see how much prices drop on Day Three, as I’m sure all of the vendors would like to pack up as little as possible.
As for the music, we started off the day with George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. We managed to find a college housemate of mine in the crowd. I hadn’t seen him in over 20 years, and it was fun to jam with him, his husband, and Mandy while Mr. Clinton and crew went nuts. I was surprised when they ended their set with some trap music. I expected more funk. As my friend said, “They need to have about fifteen more people on stage.” The group did include a foxy lady whose job was to stand next to the drummer and look sexy. She succeeded on all counts.
Mr. Clinton is in the striped shirt. The foxiest go-go dancer / back-up singer I’ve seen in a long while is to his right. MEOW!
We had plenty of time until the next set we wanted to see, so we headed to the food vendors for drinks and snacks. The festival organizers made another smart decision by not checking I.D.’s at the entrance gates (like they’d done on Day One, creating an even longer wait time to get into the park), but instead checking them by the tents where you bought drink tickets. One extremely dry cider and two teriyaki chicken buns later, we were off to see Madlib.
Madlib not caring if you expected more bass or trance beats. He’ll play what he wants, and we’re all better for it.
Madlib gave a master’s course in mixing and spinning. He played a lot of tracks features different rappers he’s collaborated with in the past such as J Dilla and MF DOOM. I geeked out when part of his visual display showed clips of the psychedelic movie Phase IV.
I caught part of S U R V I V E‘s set, which was a neat blend of dark wave and film score music. I saw more than a few kids at their set and figured they were probably jazzed to see the guys who made the Stranger Things score. One man was tripping hard during their set and dancing like he was having a religious experience. More power to him.
S U R V I V E gets bonus points for one of their members (far left) wearing a Goblin shirt.
We couldn’t get even halfway to the stage for A Tribe Called Quest. The crowd for them was massive, and having P.J. Harveyon a nearby stage before their set only added to the number of people on the main lawn of the park.
A photo of a video screen. Mandy and I are somewhere in the back right of that crowd.
Nevertheless, we had a blast during ATCQ’s set. They ripped through classic and new tracks, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad is still one of the best DJs in the business.
Representin’ Linden Boulevard.
The crowd around us was a bit low key, for reasons unknown to us. One woman was wandering around asking random strangers if they had any weed to share. A drunk man danced with Mandy and mumbled nonsense before learning I was with her and then freaking out a bit when he saw me. I patted him on the shoulder and told him not to worry.
One of the best, and most bittersweet, parts of ATCQ’s set was the unmanned microphone on stage for Phife Dawg, who died last year from diabetes. They still played his vocals, and even an a cappella version of one track that had the stage dark and only Phife’s vocals carrying across the lawn. The band was big on “Dis Generation” and “Award Tour,” which they restarted twice.
It’s an award tour so far.
It was a fun way to end the day, but getting out was another story. Pitchfork has VIP entrances and exits, but they don’t open these exits to everyone at the end of the day. As a result, hundreds (at least) of us who figured we could get out through the east VIP exit were sent back through the record fair tents to the entrance and exit gate for the plebeians. This gate still had a folding chair, a box, and some cattle gates across it that should’ve been moved before thousands of people started to leave.
I must admit that the Pitchfork Music Festivalcrams a lot of stuff into a small park. I’m used to larger spaces like Levitation Austin, but Pitchfork gets a lot of bang for its buck at Chicago’s Union Park.
Speaking of cramming, the lines to get in were long, but moved well when my wife and I got to the festival close to 2:00. By the end of the day, we were hearing stories of the line to get in wrapping around the block and going the whole length of the park. One friend posted on Facebook that it was almost as bad as getting into the massive Star Wars Celebration convention.
Once inside, I was surprised to see how close two of the stages are to each other. The Red and Green Stages are almost a stone’s throw apart. Mandy and I wondered how noisy it was going to be with the bands playing on each stage, but the Pitchfork programmers wisely schedule the bands so that none are playing on the Red and Green stages at the same time.
We missed Madame Gandhi‘s set, unfortunately, but arrived in time to see Priests.
Priests
They played a set that proved post-punk is alive and well and had a fun time. I later picked up their first record at a record fair located on the park’s tennis courts. We had plenty of time to wander after their set and that’s when we discovered not only the record fair, but also a print and poster fair, a book fair, a craft fair, and plenty of food vendors. I walked out of the record fair with not only that CD by Priest, but also CD’s by Waxahatchee, Screaming Females, and Vacation. I might go back for a Chicago Cubs World Series Champions poster and a cute one of animals reading books.
We wandered to the Red Stage to catch the Thurston Moore Group, who put down a loud punk / noise rock set with hammering guitar solos and thunderous bass. Moore told a funny story about Henry Rollins’ too during the set, so that was a treat.
Thurston Moore Group
We went straight back to the Green Stage to catch Danny Brown, who came out to Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.” He quickly got the crowd jumping with his crazy rhymes and booming beats. Water and water bottles were flying in every direction from a mosh pit that broke out in front of the stage. There was a lot of call and response stuff between Brown and the crowd, who I’m happy to say looked sharp and healthy (check out his lyrics if you’re wondering why I was concerned).
We stayed in our spot for about an hour to wait for LCD Soundsystem, who got a big cheer just from raising the biggest mirror ball I’ve ever seen above their set.
The crowd kept building as their 8:10 start time grew closer. It was so packed at one point that I had difficulty raising my arms to get this photo.
I’m glad I’m not claustrophobic. That’s the Red Stage behind us, and this is just half the crowd for LCD Soundsystem. Mandy’s checking her phone to my left.
LCD Soundsystem started their set ten minutes early, bringing seemingly enough people for an Earth, Wind, and Fire tribute band with them. They burst out of the gate hard and fast, and the crowd seemed to release energy it had been storing all day. Their big hit “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House” was the second song of the set, so they didn’t waste time.
How it looks when Daft Punk is playing at your house.
A mosh pit broke out next to us at one point, and this aging punk rocker had to get into it and show these young hipsters how its done. Other highlights included “Trials and Tribulations,” a lovely and loud version of “New York I Love You, but You’re Bringing Me Down,” and “You Wanted a Hit.”
LCD Soundsystem won’t be your babies anymore.
I warned Mandy as they started “Dance Yrself Clean.” “This whole place is going to go ape shit,” I said. She had no idea what I meant and thought the entire crowd was going to break into a mosh pit. She was pleasantly surprised when instead we all pogoed when the song kicks into full gear. It’s as great as you can imagine.
Dancing ourselves clean with LCD Soundsystem.
They closed with a wild rendition of “All My Friends.” It was well worth the waits (the hour before their set, and a few years since they called it quits) to see them. I had been bummed that I missed them when they were first on the scene, so their set at Pitchfork was my main reason for buying weekend passes. They didn’t disappoint, and lead singer James Murphy performed with a bad back and keyboardist Nancy Wong with a bum knee – although neither showed much signs of impairment (Murphy stretched at one point, and Wong would sometimes take his arm to walk from one spot on stage to another).
This is how you end a set. Stay home if you can’t bring this kind of energy.
Getting out of the festival was a big harder than getting in since the main entrance and exit isn’t huge. We plan to look for a VIP exit tonight. On the way out, a young man behind said to his friends, “Mosh pits were fun when I was a sophomore three years ago. Now, I’m not so sure.” The old punk rocker in me wanted to give him a backwards elbow shot to the face and say, “I’m getting into pits at twice your age!”
I had never attended an electronic-themed music festival before my wife and I went to Chicago’s Mamby on the Beach at Oakwood Beach this year. They’ve been running this festival for a few years now, and I’ve been meaning to get to it since it’s practically in my back yard. This was also the first time I’d been to a beach in a long while.
The weather was good, although the wind did whip across the beach and adjoining park now and then. This was especially cold on Sunday night, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
One of the first things we discovered upon entering the festival is that large bottles of sunscreen aren’t allowed inside it. “You can put some on before you come in,” said the man checking our bags. He let me keep a small keychain bottle of it, but they were apparently worried I might be smuggling drugs or booze in my new bottle of SPF 30 lotion. Heaven forbid I try to take sunscreen to a music festival on a beach.
We cheered up when we saw the “Silent Disco.” It’s a clever idea. Everyone gets a pair of wireless headphones and the DJ’s set is live streamed to them.
It looks weird at first, because it appears to be a bunch of people dancing to nothing.
It looks like a bunch of people suffering from dementia, but it’s actually a fun dance party.
I like the idea, as did a lot of others. I thought I might have to try this when I get my DJ skills up enough to do such a thing.
We arrived early enough on Saturday to catch most of Ravyn Lenae‘s set at the Beach Stage. It was an adjustment to go from our usual “dancing in clubs” to “dancing on sand,” but we managed well. Ms. Lenae had a fun time performing in front of a hometown crowd and put down a nice R&B set. Her cover of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” was delightful.
Rayvn Lenae
We headed to the MixMag Tent to see British DJ Will Clarkeafter that. He had a great set and seemed to be having a good time. It was inspiring for me, as my digital turntables have gone ignored for months while I’m finishing a book on disaster movies. I later Tweeted that his set inspired me to dust them off. He replied, “Do it.”
After a nice snack of Leghorn chicken sandwiches and free Vitamin Water, we went to see electro trio Marian Hillplay at the Beach Stage. They turned out to be the best band we saw all day on Saturday. They were funky, sexy, and even a bit trippy at times.
Marian Hill
Crowd favorites Miike Snowwere on after them, and they had a lot of us singing and jumping as the night got cooler and more people got higher. For the record, other people must have been allowed to bring in more than sunscreen because there was a lot of weed being blown at this festival, more than some of the Levitation festivals I’ve attended and those are psychedelic rock shows. We had to move to different places in the crowd multiple times to escape so much MJ smoke.
Miike Snow
We ended Saturday by checking out part of Tchami‘s “future house” set at the MixMag Tent. It was big, bright, and booming.
Tchami
It was also packed. The crowd couldn’t fit under the tent and extended well beyond it onto the beach.
So…much…house music!
We got back to our Air BNB place tired, sandy, and a bit sunburned, but ready for Sunday. We spent most of Sunday morning and early afternoon at Chicago’s Gay Pride Parade with friends, but then headed back to the beach in time to see STRFKRplay a fun set of dance rock that came complete with dancing and crowd-surfing astronauts.
STRFKR
We had time for some steamed chicken buns and turducken sausages before moving to the Park Stage for the first time all weekend to see Thundercat play a wild jazz fusion set that left some people confused and others (like me) wowed by the virtuosity of it.
Thundercat on the loose!
We zipped back to the Beach Stage to see Cut Copy, who delivered the best rock set of the whole weekend. They came to kick ass and apply sunscreen, but they were denied the sunscreen. The whole crowd was bumping, and beach balls and rolls of toilet paper (“I feel bad for anyone who ends up sad in one of the port-a-potties,” said my wife) flew in every direction.
Cut Copy
We ended the night, and the festival, with Flying Lotus. I’d been keen on seeing him for a while, and it was worth the wait. The sun had set and the temperature had dropped at least ten degrees from the start of the festival into the low 60’s by the time he started his set. Mandy was wrapped in a blanket and a lot of us were huddled in the crowd like penguins trying to stay warm off each other’s body heat.
It was a great set, full of stunning 3-D visuals and great mixes of both dance tracks and deep trip-hop stuff. One beautiful moment was when he mixed in Angelo Badalamenti’s theme to Twin Peaks.
Is this Laura Palmer’s eye?
The whole set was a mind trip. I wish I would’ve had 3-D glasses, but when I mentioned to a guy behind me how the visuals were 3-D he said something along the lines of, “I’m glad I’m not seeing it in 3-D. That would probably freak me out.”
It was a good time. Mandy summed up a lot of the crowd well. “It looks like a lot of people missing Greek culture over summer,” she said. Don’t get me wrong. We didn’t run into any douchebags. We did bump into a lot of trashed people, however. One woman was sobbing as we all left the venue. I stopped to make sure she was okay. She hugged me, told me I was “a good soul,” and then disappeared into the crowd.
Will we go back? We might, if the dates work out and the lineup is good. I sure wouldn’t turn down a press pass!
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.
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.
One of the best albums of 2017 is a full-length debut by a band that broke up before it was released.
No one seems to know, or is telling, why New York post-punks WALL (Vanessa Gomez – drums, Vince McClelland – guitar, Elizabeth Skadden – bass, Samantha York – lead vocals, guitar) broke up after releasing one critically acclaimed EP (WALL), wowing crowds at the 2016 South by Southwest festival, and recording what appears will be their only full-length record – Untitled. Perhaps they felt they’d said all they wanted to say. Perhaps they found out the music businesses wasn’t what they wanted after all. Perhaps it was the classic “artistic differences.” I’m not sure we’ll ever know, but there are hints on Untitled – a scorching post-punk testament to desperate times and desperate measures.
The first lyrics on Untitled are “Everyone looking ‘round, looking to get high. I was looking ‘round, looking to get high.” on “High Ratings.” The band drills out the jagged punk angles they had mastered so early around a song about people looking for validation in a world in which others are easily obscured by our narcissism.
“Shimmer of Fact” unveils WALL’s love for Joy Division. The reverbed vocals about a relationship gone wrong after moving from the friend zone to the lover zone include “Something went wrong.” and “We crossed those lines.” The song “Save Me” has shared male and female vocals (“You wanna walk away, now that’s it over?” / “Save me from myself.”) and powerful riffs that underline the frantic lyrics about danger and the thrills it can bring.
“(Sacred) Circus” continues the Joy Divison-like bass, but the guitars float into shoegaze glory, and then crash into punk rock, as they sing about love, lust, and jealousy. Part of the chorus is “Nothing in this life is sacred.” That includes, by the way, our expectations of WALL and what they had planned for their musical career. “Wounded at War,” with its guitars that sound like they’re melting in the sun, is both a salute to homeless veterans and a punch in the gut to the institutions that trained them. “Go home, soldier. Back to the war that bred you, soldier,” they sing.
“Everything In Between” sounds like it belongs in a rare 1980’s VHS vampire movie. Trust me, you’ll understand when you hear the heavy bass, racing pulse beat, and distorted guitars. “Charmed Life” (a Half Japanese cover) has a great saxophone riff throughout it. “Watch everything you do and everything you say,” they sing as they mix surf rock, post-punk, no wave, and 50’s love songs. The song ends with an abrupt stop by the band and York saying, “I guess I’m leavin’.”
On “Weekend,” she sings, “The weekend, the weaker I am.” Partying has become too much of a chore. “I can’t live this way,” she sings while the band (who sizzle for the whole track) agrees to go with her and “skip town.” “Turn Around” has York telling an admirer to “pull yourself together” and forget about even trying to chat her up or risk death.
The album ends with “River Mansion,” a gorgeous piece of post-punk shoegaze that has the band wishing for good things ahead but knowing they might end up not getting them. “We built this dream on a hill…A storm is brewing. I’m safe in the house, locked in a dream.” Perhaps WALL realized they’d already achieved the dream of expressing their art (and getting critical success for it) and knew it was time to leave the mansion they’d created before success flooded and drowned them (“I’m laying in the river and the rain is getting thicker,” York sings). Maybe WALL sensed that success wasn’t going to be good for them. Maybe there was infighting (“When our eyes meet, and you’re lying through your teeth. When our eyes meet, and I’m lying through my teeth.”). Maybe they knew going out on top was going to be the best, safest option.
Or maybe it’s all a lark. We won’t know until they or their label decide to tell us, if they ever do. Until then, we have Untitled to give us clues and questions without answers. Sometimes the mystery is more exciting than the solution, and perhaps that was WALL’s message the whole time.
Keep your mind open.
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