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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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!
“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.”
There’s a lot more good music out there that I still need to find, and a lot more due out this year. Thanks for giving me a listen. I’m back on air July 6th on WSND.
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
Tucson’s Zia Record Exchange is a fun place full of CD’s, DVD’s, toys, games, and a bunch of other stuff I probably missed. They cram a lot into a small space at 3370 East Speedway Boulevard.
The number of CD’s alone was a bit staggering. I had limited time there, so I didn’t get to browse as long as I would’ve liked. Don’t worry, vinyl lovers, they had plenty of records, too.
All in all, a fun place. I picked up a used CD copy of Neko Case’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood for only eights bucks (review coming soon). It’s located in a shopping center with a great bookstore and a great bakery in it, so it’s worth a side trip if you’re in Tucson.
Keep your mind open.
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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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Fort Wayne, Indiana’s Middle Waves Music Festivalhas released its 2017 lineup, and it includes some festival favorites for you.
Headlining the show is none other than MGMT, who just headlined the first night of the 2017 Mamby on the Beach festival and are promoting new material. Other notable names on the list include Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, Shannon and the Clams, the Lemon Twigs, and Flint Eastwood. The lineup list is a good mix of folk, pop, punk, electronica, and hip-hop. There’s also a good mix of local artists like Left Lane Cruiser, Flamingo Nosebleed, Belle and the Strange, and Love Hustler.
More acts will be announced soon, and tickets are now available. A general admission weekend pass will cost you just $75, which is a steal. Even if you can’t afford that, three of the four stages at Middle Waves are free to the general public.
