Stuck in the middle of a global pandemic shutdown with plenty of material and energy, and nowhere to go to promote it or expend it, All Them Witches decided to record and livestream a full concert during that weird time and bring fans together in their living rooms. The result was Live on the Internet, the title of which is a play on their song “Internet” (Opening lyric: “Guess I’ll go live on the internet.”) from their excellent album, Sleeping Through the War.
Having no time restraints set by a venue or local ordinances, ATW start their live set with “Blood and Sand / Milk and Endless Waters,” which is nearly ten minutes long…and all of it is amazing. “Dirt Preachers” is fuzzy and raw, like a bison shaking frost of its body before it prepares to charge across a meadow. Ben McLeod‘s guitar work on “Saturnine & Iron Jaw” ranges from metal shredding to Helmet-like chugging to psychedelic mind trips. “41” rumbles with the pent-up energy we all had during lockdown.
This energy is unloaded with all the subtlety of a cannon on their classic track “When God Comes Back,” and their equally classic “Alabaster” (all seven-plus minutes of it) rolls in afterward like charging cavalry. It has to be the most aggressive version of it I’ve heard. “Diamond” has a brooding menace to it that seeps under your skin. Robby Staebler‘s drums on “1×1” sound like the crushing feet of a mastodon.
“I am focused!” yells lead singer / bassist Michael Parks, Jr. on “3-5-7,” making you think he’s either lying to himself…or he is so damn focused that he’s terrifying. “The Marriage of Coyote Woman” highlights their love of Black Sabbath. “Charles William” grows like a wildfire until it threatens to consume everything in its path.
“Rats in Ruin,” often a closer of their shows, drips with mind-warping vocal effects and subtle bass that purrs like a large cat. Parks takes over on guitar for “Open Passage,” and for a moment it feels like the lights are dimming are we’re about to fall into REM sleep…
Then comes “Enemy of My Enemy” with Parks yelling, “Behold my power!” as McLeod plays like he’s trying to summon something at Stonehenge and Staebler unloads drum fill after drum fill. The brief instrumental “Everest” drifts into the always lovely (and heavy) “Bulls” to close out the session with powerful riffs, beats, and vocals that hit you like sporadic thunderstorms that break out on a hot summer day.
All Them Witches are one of the best live bands around, and their catalogue doesn’t have a weak spot. Live on the Internet continues that trend.
Today, Austin, Texas band Holy Wave continue to push their historically psychedelic sound in an airy, ‘90s-indebted direction on the single “Bog Song”. The dream-poppy track is accompanied by a retro futuristic visual, put together by band member Ryan Fuson and animator Joshua Kirk Ryan. It follows psych-tinged single “Happier” which features Mint Field’s Estrella del Sol. Both songs taken from their upcoming new album Five of Cups, out August 4, 2023 on Suicide Squeeze Records. The band also have select upcoming US tour dates this summer.
On the track, Fuson offers: “Bog Song is a recounting of a trip I took with my dad in Idaho while he was guiding some elk hunters. I was both in awe of the landscape and wildlife while also feeling conflicted about our reasons for being in the mountains. I would sit in the dark, before the sun would come up, and look into the mountains and hills for elk. Sometimes seeing headlights cruising along some mountain road and I would wonder what their drivers intentions were and if the animals in those mountains ever watched headlights like those and wondered the same.”
In Tarot readings, the Five of Cups card signifies loss and grief. Depicting a cloaked figure with a bowed head looming over three spilled chalices while ignoring two remaining vessels, the Five of Cups is generally interpreted as representing a forlorn dwelling on the past and an inability to appreciate the positive things in the present. It was this card that struck a chord with vocalist/guitarist Ryan Fuson, member of the Austin TX subversive subterranean pop outfit Holy Wave, during a Tarot reading at the height of the pandemic. “I was really sure that the music world was finished and it seemed like internet aggression and, well, aggression in general was at an all-time high, so I was ready to stop playing music,” Fuson says. “It could be so easy to become jaded and pessimistic and I had to really decide what perspective I was going to take.”Rather than abandon music, Fuson and his compatriots chose to immerse themselves in their work. Fittingly, the Tarot card became the muse for Holy Wave’s sixth full-length album—Five of Cups.
Back at the beginning of their fifteen-year career, Holy Wave leaned into a tranquil realm of psychedelia, eschewing long-form jams and guitar heroics for a dreamy pop-oriented approach. As the band evolved, the early Sgt. Peppers-meets-the-Velvets sound yielded to more sophisticated melodies and tripped-out instrumentation, effectively steering their music away from sun-bleached nostalgia to a color-saturated dimension where sounds of the past, present, and future intermingled.
The childhood friends of Fuson, Joey Cook,Kyle Hager, and Julian Ruiz grew up in El Paso, where they cut their teeth in the local DIY scene. Hungry for more music and broader perspectives, the members made frequent road trips across the Southwest to catch touring bands who opted to skip West Texas markets. That wanderlust eventually prompted their relocation to Austin, but it also permeated in their adventurous songwriting and love for touring. No small surprise then that these aural explorers felt that a whole way of life was taken from them with the onset of the pandemic. But on Five of Cups, it sounds as if the physical limitations of quarantine life prompted Holy Wave to wander even deeper into new sonic territories.
Five of Cups opens with the title track, establishing the album’s auditory and thematic modus operandi from the get-go. Holy Wave’s lysergic textural palette is immediately apparent in the song’s woozy synth lead and anti-gravity guitar jangle, but the atypical chord progressions and vocal melody steers the music away from anodyne escapism into a pensive grappling between self-determination and defeatism. Holy Wave continue to ride the wistful and phantasmic train on “Bog Song,” where the members vacillate between swells of austere minor chords and layered electric orchestration. From there, the previously released digital single “Chaparral” plays with the band’s own sense of nostalgia, weaving references of their El Paso past into a tapestry of transcendental triumph.
Like so much classic album-oriented rock music, the real magic begins to unfold in the latter half of Five of Cups. On “The Darkest Timeline,” Holy Wave recruits their friends Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto Gonzalez from the Baja California, Mexico psych duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete to add additional ethereal layers to their intoxicating after-midnight grooves. “Nothing in the Dark” functions on a similar principle, using a steady propulsive drum pattern as the bedrock to tape-warbled synths, arpeggiated guitar chords, jet streams of fuzz, and serene vocals. Five of Cups’ ruminations on combating defeat and disappointment are directly confronted on album closer “Happier.” Once again straddling the melodic line between melancholy and breezy sophistication, Holy Wave examines the synthetic construct of happiness in our modern age and how so often the attainment of comfort lacks any true sense of joy. Yet this isn’t some nihilistic dirge. Rather, it translates as a buoyant reminder that the bandwidth of human experience inherently requires peaks and valleys, and that euphoria is often found in the search outside of the familiar.
As with the Tarot card from which it got its name, Five of Cups is an acknowledgement of hardship and a reminder to embrace the joys available to us. And like early ‘70s Pink Floyd, Holy Wave have figured out how to conjure a sense of profound exhilaration out of pathos, filtering dark elements through a lens and bending them into a kaleidoscope of light.
Suicide Squeeze is proud to present Holy Wave’s Five of Cups on CD/LP/DSP on August 4, 2023.
Live Dates Aug 8 – Andy’s – Denton, TX Aug 9 – Opolis – Norman, OK Aug 11 – Back Alley Ballyhoo – Indianapolis, IN Aug 12 – JJs Bohemia – Chattanooga, TN Aug 13 – Upstairs at Avondale – Birmingham, AL Aug 15 – Alabama Music Box – Mobile, AL Aug 16 – Continental Club – Houston, TX Aug 17 – Paper Tiger – San Antonio, TX
“The ice melts and reveals the New Spring. The neon forest comes alive, a lush environment with a mind of its own. This bubbly psych-bop has hypnotic layers of acoustic and electric guitars that guide you deeper into the dense atmosphere. Instruments like bugs, scatter and shimmer panning through your sonic spectrum. Harp sparkles with whimsy while crystal singing bowls+tongue drum is the moss. Explorative and playful drums+auxiliary percussion have you skipping deeper into the mind-mending journey, while saxophone wails in the distance. Only a few words are understood, like overgrown ideologies that you run into the ground. The Few who walk here are explorers of the known and unknown.” – Kali Horse
Kali Horse (formerly Kaleidoscope Horse) is a psychedelic art-rock band from Toronto, ON. Their sound is theatrical and dreamy – bouncing between highly melodic and rhythmic, groovy sections. Driven both by strong song-writing and abstract sound-play, the band creates dimensions that are often jarring in comparison to one another, playing on tension and release. The contrast between Desiree Das Gupta’s (*Das Gupta all one last name) powerful alto, and Sam Maloney’s feathery vocal timbre creates a balance of light and heavy, backed by full band harmonies.
Kali Horse’s world is an immersive world that they invite the audience into. Kali Horse are storytellers, their music is about telling a story with sound rather than a specific genre. The band are queer, multi-instrumentalist performers whose friendship is the bond of the band.
Sam and Des have been best friends for a decade and have been making music together for 7 years under different names, they are a huge part of the Toronto music community. In the live band, Sam and Des are joined by Cassandra Ellen (Synth/ Vocals/Percussion), Cameron Kirk (bass) and Brandon Bak (drums).
Guest players on New Spring include Luna Li (Hannah Bussiere-Kim) on harp.
TOUR DATES 2023 June 30 – Maud’s Variety, Sarnia ON July 01 – Cole’s Bar, Chicago IL July 03 – Raccoon Motel, Davenport IW July 14 – Entrepot 77, Montreal QC July 21 – Pinball House, Guelph ON
My friend, Gavin and I were surprised at the entrance to Columbus, Ohio’s Kemba Live! venue that the Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade show wasn’t in the outdoor portion of their venue. After all, it was hot and humid (low 90s Fahrenheit) and it was the first time Mr. Claypool had taken a version of this particular side project of his (among the dozens of them by now, it seems) on the road in twenty years. The surprise came when the woman checking I.D.s said we couldn’t bring in our folding “lawn seat” chairs because it was an indoor show.
Which, of course, meant it was even hotter inside than outside once you packed in the bodies at the intimate indoor venue. We’re not sure air conditioning was ever used during the show, although there is a chance it was finally turned on just before the Frog Brigade’s encore set.
Up first, however, wasChicago’s Neal Francis and his stellar band, who play a neat style of 1970s funk and soul mixed with a bit of 1960s psychedelia. At times the set reminded me of BozScaggs, other times like T. Rex, and other times like Pablo Cruise. In other words, good stuff all-around. Mr. Francis even had an electric organ with what appeared to be a giant whammy bar attached to it, allowing him to bend notes at will.
Neal Francis on piano. The “whammy bar” can just be seen on the right side of the top keyboard.
The crowd appreciated Mr. Francis’ set, and were amped to next see and hear Mr. Claypool and his soldiers. By “amped,” I mean “many were drunk and / or high.” I haven’t been around that many drunk and high people since a good number of the crowd was tripping during Moon Duo‘s set at the end of Levitation Austin last year. Thankfully, no one near Gavin and I was an angry drunk or on a violent trip. Two big dudes to our right were loud drunks, but never rude. One other guy to my right was hitting his vape pen so much that I’m surprised he didn’t set off a fire alarm.
The Brigade, with Sean Lennon on lead guitar no less, came out and jumped straight into the quirky, jumpy “David Makalaster” and “Rumble of the Diesel.” Claypool’s backing band consisted of a keyboardist, drummer, and percussionist, and all of them were stellar musicians. The percussionist often riffed on xylophone solos and even brought out two tabla drums, which always makes me happy.
“David Makalaster, your ten o’clock newscaster.”
They played two tracks from The Claypool Lennon Delirium project – both parts of “Cricket and the Genie” before playing Pink Floyd‘s “Animals” in its entirety with no breaks before or during the long set. They pulled it off to perfection, and then followed that mammoth set with two songs they hadn’t played before, “Running the Gauntlet” and “Holy Mackerel.” “Gauntlet” is especially fun, as it gives each band member a chance to play a solo. It was during this that I learned that Sean Lennon can shred. I’d never seen him play before, and had only heard a few of his songs until this evening, and I left with a new appreciation for his skill.
“Pigs (Three Different Ones)”
A fun treat during the encore was the instrumental “Whamola” (also sometimes known as “Simon Says”), in which Claypool, clad in a disco ball helmet, played his electric “whammy bar-viola” (sort of a washtub bass) by beating on it with a stick and using a whammy bar handle at the top to change the pitch of the single string on it. The whole crowd was jumping.
It was a fun time, and everyone on stage in both bands was damn impressive. Don’t miss this tour. Claypool has so many side projects that he might not take it out again for another couple decades.
But I would love an Oysterhead tour, Mr. Claypool, if you’re looking for suggestions.
Keep your mind open.
[Hop over to the subscription box while you’re here!]
Thanks be to the Reverberation Appreciation Society for capturing Thee Oh Sees‘ first performance at the Levitation Music Festival back in 2012. As a result, we have Live At Levitation (2012). Thee Oh Sees / Oh Sees / OCS / OSees have since played Levitation many times, but this wild set featuring the band’s incarnation of Petey Dammit (bass), Brigid Dawson (keyboards, hand percussion, backing vocals), John Dwyer (lead guitar and vocals), Lars Finberg (drums), and Mike Shoun (drums) is a rare treat. They’d played in Austin, Texas (home of the Levitation festival) before, but not at the festival itself, so they were pumped.
It starts with one of their biggest fan-favorites, “The Dream,” and Dwyer’s guitar already sounds like it’s begging for mercy within the first few chords. Dammit’s bass on “Devil Again” (which is actually a guitar tuned to sound just like a bass) is relentless, and Dwyer sounds like he’s taking a belt sander to his guitar at one point.
The live version of “Tidal Wave” here is even faster than it normally sounds live, showing how amped the entire band was just three songs into their set. They take a moment or two to tune, and for everyone to take a couple deep breaths, before they stomp the gas pedal and launch into “Enemy Destruct,” sending the crowd into a wilder frenzy than just moments earlier.
You could almost call “Robber Barons” “Rubber Barons” because it has this slow bounce to it thanks to Dammit’s bass and Finberg and Shoun’s double-drumming that hits the heavy spots at just the right moments. The centerpiece is “Block of Ice,” which clocks in at over thirteen minutes in length and never relinquishes its groove. Dammit’s endurance on it is stunning, and every time you think the song has reached some kind of crescendo, Dwyer and his crew take it even further.
Dwyer assures the audience that he’s “mostly in tune” before they start the lively “Meat Step Lively,” which has this garage rock jangle to it that I love. The set ends with “Minotaur” and Dwyer singing about being stuck in the maze of a job that he hates but forces himself to wander through each day.
Then they’re off to “the Red Roof Inn” as they hand off the stage to Meat Puppets and The Brian Jonestown Massacre that year.
It’s a great addition to the “Live at Levitation” series and the Osees’ catalogue. Don’t miss it.
Keep your mind open.
[Levitate over to the subscription box while you’re here.]
Released in the early days of the pandemic, Acid Dad‘s Levitation Sessions caught the band in a weird moment that many other bands were experiencing: They had a new album and couldn’t tour to promote it. Thankfully, the folks at the Reverberation Appreciation Society brought them into a safe studio and let them play many tracks of Take It from the Dead and some new stuff they were whipping up during lockdown – because, like every other band out there, what else were they going to do?
Staring with cool synths, interesting vocal samples, and other stuff that sounds like the opening to some early 1990s VHS instructional video, “Contact” immediately lets you know that this is going to be a weird trip (I mean, just look at the album cover.). “BBQ,” a staple food of their hometown of Austin, Texas, is a shoegazey tale of well-made plans going wrong at the slightest opportunity. “Mess with us and you’ll die hard,” they sing on “Die Hard.” The song is fairly upbeat for such heavy lyrics. It’s like a happy warning.
“Dissin'” tells the tale of pushing away a potential lover who brings far too much drama and not enough respect to the table. It has this cool, slow, psychedelic sound to it that’s just a touch sludgy. “Living with a Creature” and “Bada Bing” get a little countrified. Do I detect some CCR influence? “Marine” carries this sound along as Acid Dad tells a tale of dropping out of military school to go back to old friends who tend to overdose on party drugs. The guitars chug along like the best intentions of the song’s lead character and then expands into a groovy solo.
The groove appropriately kicks up a notch on “RC Driver,” which has a great guitar jam in the middle of it and killer bass throughout it. The groove cruises along so well that it flows into “2Ci” without a bump. They barely give you time to breathe before they get into “Don’t Get Taken,” the pace of which is like jumping on a skateboard and going straight down the middle of South Congress Street toward the river in Austin at midnight on Friday. If you know, you know.
They get heavy on “Mistress,” both in terms of the heft of the drums and bass, and the lyrics about being dragged down by giant squids and how love can be crushing. “Mr. Major” blends psychedelic jams with punk lyrics, and “Djembe” (which clocks in at over seven minutes) has the band telling us how ashamed they are of not only some of their past sins, but also everything we, as a society, are doing wrong.
It’s a cool session from a cool band who are exploring a lot of different ways to approach the psychedelic genre.
The Hermosillo, Mexico-based quartet Margaritas Podridas have been riding a rare wave of excitement in 2023. An underground sensation in their native Mexico, the band began to make inroads in the US with their 2022 KEXP session, which has racked up over 500k views, and showcased the band’s ferocious live show and transfixing blend of shoegaze, grunge and punk influences. 2023 has seen the group hit the road consistently, playing the SXSW, opening for The Smashing Pumpkins at Mexico City’s The World Is A Vampire festival and opening touring in support of Mannequin Pussy and Protomartyr in the US. The American press has taken notice as well, with the band featured in Rolling Stone, Spin, Brooklyn Vegan, and last month their single “Filosa” was given a glowing write up from NPR when it was released as part of the Sub Pop Singles Club series.
Today, following a triumphant headlining show in LA over the weekend, the band are sharing a new single entitled “Corazon” which is accompanied by a video directed by the group’s leader Carolina Rivera.
WATCH Margaritas Podridas – “Corazon” video on YouTube
Rivera says of the track:
“I made this song when I was angry. It’s about being hurt by the words of someone you love. I wrote it at El Corazon venue in Seattle. It is a very personal song about how my heart was at the time. I felt like nothing made sense anymore; being there wasn’t enough even although it was my dream I wasn’t happy. Probably lack of sun and all my bad choices in life.”
In July Margaritas Podridas will embark on their first European tour. Full details can be found below.
Tour Dates 7/10 – Berlin – Reverberation Fest 7/17 – Groningen – VERA 7/20 – London – The Lower Third 7/22 – Bristol – Crofter’s Rights 7/23 – Brighton – The Hope & Ruin 7/25 – Paris – Supersonic 7/27 – San Sebastian – Dabadaba 7/28 – Oviedo – Edificio Histórico de la Universidad de Oviedo 729 – Madrid – Sala Clamores 7/31 – Barcelona – Upload 8/1 – Marseille – La Molotov
Today, Austin, Texas band Holy Wave announce their new album Five Of Cups, out August 4, 2023 on Suicide Squeeze Records. In addition to the announcement, listen to the psych-tinged single “Happier,” premiering on FLOOD Magazine, and features vocals from Mexico-City songwriter and instrumentalist Estrella del Sol, of the band Mint Field. The track sounds like it was unearthed from a time capsule buried on a commune in 1970s California. It’s accompanied by an appropriately dark, trippy video directed by Arturo Baston that only heightens the acid-washed listening experience. The band have also announced a string of August US tour dates.
On the track, Fuson offers:“We had been working on this song on and off again for a while and it all kind of came together right before we started recording this album. The song is loosely a song to Kurt Vonnegut, and a song taking some of his ideas and quotes and exploring them a little further. Mainly just a song about happiness today and maybe where it was during his time. While recording this song we knew that we wanted something unique for the outro, but we didn’t really know what it was that we were looking for, so we sent the song to Estrella and basically asked her to do whatever she thought was right and she completely exceeded our vision. It really took the song to a whole new level, some place we have never been before.”
In Tarot readings, the Five of Cups card signifies loss and grief. Depicting a cloaked figure with a bowed head looming over three spilled chalices while ignoring two remaining vessels, the Five of Cups is generally interpreted as representing a forlorn dwelling on the past and an inability to appreciate the positive things in the present. It was this card that struck a chord with vocalist/guitarist Ryan Fuson, member of the Austin TX subversive subterranean pop outfit Holy Wave, during a Tarot reading at the height of the pandemic. “I was really sure that the music world was finished and it seemed like internet aggression and, well, aggression in general was at an all-time high, so I was ready to stop playing music,” Fuson says. “It could be so easy to become jaded and pessimistic and I had to really decide what perspective I was going to take.”Rather than abandon music, Fuson and his compatriots chose to immerse themselves in their work. Fittingly, the Tarot card became the muse for Holy Wave’s sixth full-length album—Five of Cups.
Back at the beginning of their fifteen-year career, Holy Wave leaned into a tranquil realm of psychedelia, eschewing long-form jams and guitar heroics for a dreamy pop-oriented approach. As the band evolved, the early Sgt. Peppers-meets-the-Velvets sound yielded to more sophisticated melodies and tripped-out instrumentation, effectively steering their music away from sun-bleached nostalgia to a color-saturated dimension where sounds of the past, present, and future intermingled.
The childhood friends of Fuson, Joey Cook,Kyle Hager, and Julian Ruiz grew up in El Paso, where they cut their teeth in the local DIY scene. Hungry for more music and broader perspectives, the members made frequent road trips across the Southwest to catch touring bands who opted to skip West Texas markets. That wanderlust eventually prompted their relocation to Austin, but it also permeated in their adventurous songwriting and love for touring. No small surprise then that these aural explorers felt that a whole way of life was taken from them with the onset of the pandemic. But on Five of Cups, it sounds as if the physical limitations of quarantine life prompted Holy Wave to wander even deeper into new sonic territories.
Five of Cups opens with the title track, establishing the album’s auditory and thematic modus operandi from the get-go. Holy Wave’s lysergic textural palette is immediately apparent in the song’s woozy synth lead and anti-gravity guitar jangle, but the atypical chord progressions and vocal melody steers the music away from anodyne escapism into a pensive grappling between self-determination and defeatism. Holy Wave continue to ride the wistful and phantasmic train on “Bog Song,” where the members vacillate between swells of austere minor chords and layered electric orchestration. From there, the previously released digital single “Chaparral” plays with the band’s own sense of nostalgia, weaving references of their El Paso past into a tapestry of transcendental triumph.
Like so much classic album-oriented rock music, the real magic begins to unfold in the latter half of Five of Cups. On “The Darkest Timeline,” Holy Wave recruits their friends Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto Gonzalez from the Baja California, Mexico psych duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete to add additional ethereal layers to their intoxicating after-midnight grooves. “Nothing in the Dark” functions on a similar principle, using a steady propulsive drum pattern as the bedrock to tape-warbled synths, arpeggiated guitar chords, jet streams of fuzz, and serene vocals. Five of Cups’ ruminations on combating defeat and disappointment are directly confronted on album closer “Happier.” Once again straddling the melodic line between melancholy and breezy sophistication, Holy Wave examines the synthetic construct of happiness in our modern age and how so often the attainment of comfort lacks any true sense of joy. Yet this isn’t some nihilistic dirge. Rather, it translates as a buoyant reminder that the bandwidth of human experience inherently requires peaks and valleys, and that euphoria is often found in the search outside of the familiar.
As with the Tarot card from which it got its name, Five of Cups is an acknowledgement of hardship and a reminder to embrace the joys available to us. And like early ‘70s Pink Floyd, Holy Wave have figured out how to conjure a sense of profound exhilaration out of pathos, filtering dark elements through a lens and bending them into a kaleidoscope of light.
Suicide Squeeze is proud to present Holy Wave’s Five of Cups on CD/LP/DSP on August 4, 2023.
