SOUNDTRACKING: On The Two Black Flags And Which One Plays Vancouver On July 20

by Daniel Colussi | Since discovering them sometime in Junior High School, Black Flag has held a kind of otherworldly, god-like status to me. I’ve read and re-read Rollins’ tour journals. I listened and re-listened to Damaged. The intensity and heaviness of their music totally spoke to my teenaged self, but at the same time it was completely beyond my comprehension. They were so angry, so jacked up on their own anger, and so heavy about being Black Flag. They were the most badass band of all time, ever, except maybe for Black Sabbath (hard to say). So it’s perhaps fitting that the heaviest band of all time would pull off something that’s never been before: reunite two times, concurrently, as two distinct and unrelated entities that don’t even like each other.

It’s like this: Greg Ginn – who we all accept as the originator/leader/soul of Black Flag – is touring as Black Flag with Vancouver’s own Ron Reyes (Chavo Pederast) on vocals, plus two other dudes no one knows. But wait, there’s also this thing called Flag, comprised of Chuck Dukowski, Keith Morris, Bill Stevenson, and even Dez Cadena, plus one dude no one knows. If it’s all a bit confusing, maybe a diagram will help. Personally I have no gripes about all these guys reuniting and playing the old songs. And frankly, even if it’s all just a cash-in it’s still cool because lord knows these guys never made any money back in the day. But what does trouble me is the Sophie’s Choice-like decision that’s forced upon fans. On the one hand, there’s Ginn’s Black Flag. The fact that Ginn is in the line up makes this version of Black Flag appear totally legit, and yet Ginn’s playing on his own pedigree when he slags Flag as a poseur cover band. Because Flag features four foundational BF alumni all playing together, and they seem to be legitimately psyched on getting the band back together, man. At this point, an amicable, super line up of Ginn + Flag seems unlikely…

Whether or not you care about Black Flag reuniting will depend on certain things, like your age, your feeling towards 80′s hardcore, and your willingness to accept these aging rockers as they are now and not as they were in their prime. Whatever your allegiance, Ginn and Reyes are playing Vancouver in July and that’s for sure going to be a great show. Regardless of the cross-band drama, I highly, highly recommend that you commit a full hour of your life to the little seen Super 8 document of Black Flag’s final 1986 tour, a film by Dave Markey entitled Reality 86′d.

It’s Black Flag on their final legs. The hair is long, the jam’s are long, everyone’s really burnt out, and no film better shows the inanity and pathos of being in a band on tour. Enjoy!

SOUNDTRACKING: Five Minutes With Angel Olsen When She’s Not Making Sandwiches

by Daniel Colussi | Angel Olsen has a commanding voice. Even through the crappy pinhole speakers of my Macbook Pro her voice comes across like a wave. The Chicago singer has done time in Will Oldham’s Babblers (a pick up group that covers Kevin Coyne and the Mekons at house shows/pajama parties) and she’s released some small run cassettes and 7″s. But it’s on her recent full length, Half Way Home, that Olsen really shines. The songs on this album possess a sincerity and directness that not all singers are capable of, much less without crossing into schmaltzy bathos. This music almost sounds beamed in from a previous age. The effect is transfixing, as if Olsen is playing a private set for you in your living room. That’s her over there on your couch, with a guitar and a bottle of wine, just telling it like it is. She’s is actually totally nonchalant in conversation, seemingly just happy to have a break from her day job of making sandwiches at a cafe counter. Her first Vancouver show – at the Media Club later this month – should be a good one. Readers, I give you Angel Olsen…

Tomorrow is the start of a pretty big tour for you. You’re touring up the West Coast, over to the UK, and then back to the East Coast. Have you toured a lot? For my own music, not really. I went on an East Coast tour in November and then I went to the Netherlands in September when the album came out. I’m trying to plan more tours on my own, for my own music. But for the last few years I’ve toured a lot with Will Oldham, which is a totally different experience.

Back in Chicago what are the cool spots you like to play? My friends own a cafe in Chicago and I’ll play there, just solo sets or whatever. I like the smaller bars. I think they have way more charm. There’s a place called The Burlington in Chicago that’s been around forever and they just opened up a back room that’s awesome. It’s really mellow. There’s another place called The Hideout that’s really cool. But yeah, I like playing in bars, which is a bit weird because you’d think that someone who plays solo a lot would like intimate situations. But I think that bars can be intimate. You go see someone play and you buy a drink. I’m not turned off by it.

I’ve been listening to Half Way Home and it’s really nice. You have a really strong voice. Something that I appreciate in particular is that your voice is pretty much unadorned. So much music today masks the singing in dollops of reverb and delay. My first album was super lo-fi and not really well done, and going from that to working really hard on making things sound good has been a really good step for me (laughs). But I prefer playing live. It’s just more…I feel like I’m having fun, too, and I’m not just giving my record to people and saying, “See ya!”

So it’s a little more immediately satisfying? Yeah, totally.

When did you start singing? I dunno. I’ve pretty much being doing it since I was a little kid. But trying to seriously write songs, I didn’t start that until I was 15 or 16. I think I’ve always wanted to be a performer, definitely.

Your singing is really strong and it’s got a really classic quality, almost like someone from the 50s or 60s… I think I draw from a lot of different singers. I really like Spanish music. I really love Amalia Rodrigues. There’s just something about it that really moves me. And I also like The Miracles and The Everly Brothers. I like a lot of old music and I know my music has a kind of nostalgia to it and I don’t really mind that it does because I don’t think I’m writing in the same way that they would’ve written back then.

What was the first cassette or cd you bought when you were a kid? I think it was a Mariah Carey CD or maybe Boyz II Men (laughs).

How does it feel to have your music get this much attention? Interviews, kind words from The New York Times, etc. Is it unexpected? It kind of feels weird. It’s kind of unexpected. We were talking earlier about how Half Way Home is really kind of dry and you can hear my voice, versus my first album which was drenched in reverb, a rainshower of reverb. I wasn’t sure if everyone was ready to hear something so dry because everyone likes that comfortable distance, you know? I don’t really want to listen to what someone is singing about. I’d rather listen to this zoned out music. And I was just kind of like, well I don’t know if people are going to like this at all but we’ll see. I mean, I played a show in Los Angeles last January and I didn’t expect anyone to be there. And it was full of people and I thought, “Who are these people? I have no idea why they’re here!” It’s a strange experience, but not a bad one. Before I was just over here making sandwiches, living my life. It’s surprising but it’s good.

So it gets you away from the sandwich counter for a little bit. Yeah, I can stop making sandwiches for a minute!

Angel Olsen plays the Media Club on Sunday, Apr. 21st. Tickets at Zulu, Red Cat and the venue.

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Daniel Colussi is the Music Editor of Scout Magazine and a contributing writer to Ion Magazine. A veteran employee of Zulu Records and tuneage aficionado, he DJs on an infrequent basis (about four times a year) and is a musician around town who plays in several ensembles.

SOUNDTRACKING: Talking Spirit Animals, Philly & More With Nightlands’ Dave Hartley

by Daniel Colussi | Talking with Dave Hartley, you get the whole package. As a sideman (he plays bass in cosmic-Americana band War On Drugs) and frontman (of his own band, Nightlands, ostensibly the subject of this post), Hartley knows every angle of the music game, and then some. He’s all over the map. In addition to being a full on rock ‘n roller he’s also a total NBA freak (scope his WXPN basketball column here) and a gifted photographer. But Hartley never comes across as an over-achieving show-off. The 2002 James Madison University philosophy student of the year still strikes me as a totally cool, laid back guy. Oak Island, his second album as Nightlands, came out on the venerable Secretly Canadian label back in January. Its richly layered vocals sit atop guitars, saxophones, and motorik drum machines to form some kind of 21st century version of Beach Boys pop. Hartley describes the sound as “bedroom baroque pop.” It’s awesome. I caught up to Hartley and his band as they were driving through West Texas. Naturally, they were in the midst of discussing their spirit animals…

So what’s your spirit animal? I hit a hawk with a frisbee once, so we were talking about whether that makes the hawk my spirit animal or my not spirit animal. It was crazy, were were playing frisbee golf and we were a little high, and I threw a frisbee and it went the wrong way and it hit this hawk, like, square on…I swear to God. I felt bad.

Tell me about going from being a sideman in War On Drugs to crafting this strange Nightlands music on your own in your bedroom that you then took on the road as a four piece band. It’s really challenging, and really rewarding. It’s weird because I write the songs as I record them; it’s not like a sit down with a guitar and write a song and then go and record it thing. I kinda tinker around in my studio for long periods of time and construct the songs from the ground up. I’ll often start with a drumbeat or a drum loop or something. I like old drum machines, so a lot of times I’ll start with one and write on top of that and then start layering until I get something that connects with me. But then when you go to play it live you basically have to re-write the song. I’m really lucky that my band is really musical and they all sing. It’s really fun, actually, to see them put their mark on the songs. It’s really scary at first, but the process is very fun. I’m enjoying it.

I wonder, too, about transitioning from being a sideman to being a frontman, the guy out front… I’m starting to realize that it’s like anything else: you get better at it over time. Like the first Nightlands tour, which was a couple years ago: I didn’t really have any business being a frontman in a band. I kinda didn’t know what to say or when to say it; I didn’t feel comfortable singing necessarily. I still have so much to learn. The whole thing is just about being comfortable and being yourself. I’ll never be the kind of guy who runs around on stage and makes eye contact with everybody in the crowd. But I think you can be captivating in your own way. But you know I’m working at it. I drink less. In War On Drugs I can be as drunk as I want to be and still play, but I just have one drink before a Nightlands show. Loosen up a bit.

What’s also interesting to me is the amount of emphasis on vocals in Nightlands, transitioning from playing the bass to creating music with a lot of vocal presence and layers of vocals. I guess it’s just that singing is something I don’t get to do in War On Drugs. Because I love singing. I sing in a men’s choir in Philadelphia, and I sing in church choirs. I just love to harmonize. I grew up on the Beach Boys and Simon and Garfunkel. That’s just a huge part of my genealogy, musically. And I also think it’s really hard to do live and I’m really proud of my band that we work hard at it and sing really well together, because it’s just a rare thing when you see a band of four people who can sing really well together. Read more

SOUNDTRACKING: With The Frontman Of “Psychic Ills” Before Their Electric Owl Gig

by Daniel Colussi | For the past ten years New York’s Psychic Ills have bobbed around the fringes of the modern psych/art/freak-rock scene. Over four albums and more than a half dozen singles and EP’s they’ve covered a lot of ground. Their debut, Dins, was a masterstroke of psychedelic space rock. Universally acclaimed, it placed them way above their contemporaries. Less celebrated were their middle years – an abruptly stark second album and several EPs of throbbing, meandering group jams. During these wilderness years Psychic Ills threatened to drift away from planet earth completely, and the critical response was generally along the lines of, “What the fuck am I supposed to think of this?”. Personally, I dug their commitment to aimlessness; I’d throw on a record and let it waft through my apartment while I puttered around. On their brand new long player, One Track Mind, the band pull out the rug from under us once again. Never have they sounded so reigned in. It’s an album of concise jams – with recognizable choruses and hooks even(!) – recorded by the legendary Neil Michael Hagerty of Royal Trux fame. Currently on a three month tour of North America and Europe, frontman Tres Warren kindly responded by email and helped put Psychic Ills’ career in context for us, in particular their very excellent new album (which you can stream in full here).

What’s it like to transition from long, freeform, almost aimless jam music to the last two albums, which are more concise, direct, classic rock sounding? I’m still a big fan of freeform and aimless stuff, but I’m concerned with expanding the parameters of the music inside me. Sometimes I want it more concise. I don’t spend too much time making sense of it.

Does it feel fresher to be playing more direct music nowadays? I think it just feels fresh when you’re playing your newest stuff – the stuff you’re most interested in at the time.

Do shows feel different? They may be more dynamic. More song-oriented.

Did your approach to writing lyrics change with the last two albums? It just became more about writing a song. Sitting down when the idea is there. I was reluctant to do that before.

Does working in a more classic rock mode change what you want to sing? No. I just sing about simple stuff.

Tell me about working with Neil Michael Hagerty – how’d that come about? I had gotten in touch with him a while back about doing something, but the timing wasn’t right. It’s almost a coincidence that he worked on the stuff from One Track Mind because he got back to me right around the time we were going to start working on it.

I imagine you’re a Pussy Galore/Royal Trux fan. I heard Royal Trux first and worked back. I used to work at a few different record stores and found them that way. They were almost done by the time I got to them.

What did Hagerty bring to to the table? He brought an outside ear to the mixing. That’s what I was looking for. Someone from outside the band to apply their approach to the mixing.

How much was it a collaboration? He played some guitar on I Get By. I didn’t give any direction on that. He did backup vocals on Might Take A While. I had recorded back ups but wanted him to re-do them with him singing, and I think it’s better for that.

Did you record in Colorado, or did he come to NYC? We did it in Brooklyn and Neil’s stuff happened in Denver.

You recently toured China. How was that? It was crazy. That place is one of the last great mysteries. We loved it. The people we met were great.

How did that come about? We were brought over by a label that puts out bands from China and also brings foreign bands over to play. We were lucky. The band has logged extensive tour time over the years. I would tour forever if it was possible. Playing music and seeing different places and meeting new people is pretty cool.

What do you guys do in NYC when you’re not on tour? Play music, hang around and work different jobs to pay the rent.

(photo credit: Samantha Casolari)

Psychic Ills, Follakzoid (from Chile!) and Student Teacher play the Electric Owl Sunday March 3. Tickets at Zulu, Red Cat and Highlife.

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Daniel Colussi is the Music Editor of Scout Magazine and a contributing writer to Ion Magazine. A veteran employee of Zulu Records and tuneage aficionado, he DJs on an infrequent basis (about four times a year) and is a musician around town who plays in several ensembles.

SOUNDTRACKING: Fervent Local Music Lover Mark Richardson Spins A Scout Mix

by Daniel Colussi | Photo: Steve Louie | In the interest of providing you with the best and brightest music that this city and the world has to offer, I give you the second all-original Scout playlist (the first is here). This mix was curated by one of Vancouver’s most fervent lovers of music, Mark Richardson – Music Waste programmer, Color Magazine Music Editor, and host of CiTR’s long running Pop Drones program (Wednesdays at 10 am). This mix is thirty minutes of primo cuts from some overlooked, underdog titles of 2012 that you may not have encountered before. It spans the broad terrain of modern pop and features acts from various reaches of the globe – Australia, NY and Victoria,BC (!) are all represented. Do you need to know more? Sure, Mark has kindly provided further clarification and context after the jump. Enjoy.

Parquet Courts | “Master Of My Craft”
Probably my most listened to record of 2012, and I only heard it in December! One of the dudes was in the mostly forgettable Fergus & Geronimo, which had me overlooking a press release that landed in my inbox one day. I eventually gave it a shot and they pulled me in instantly with album opener “Master Of My Craft” and they never let up throughout the oh-so perfectLight Up Gold. Never before has an album revived my faith in indie rock, a genre that has basically had the life sucked out of it by being mis-labeled and watered down so often. Ultra-catchy, quick, snide, and, above all, smart, Parquet Courts deserve your attention if you feel the same way I do about the recent state of so-called indie rock.

Peak Twins | “Only Sun”
Something is happening in Australia right now. Maybe the overheated continent and global-warming warning signifier is causing the kids to take shelter in their garages and bang out some of the best contemporary odd-ball punk and garage before everything bursts into flames. Peak Twins, alongside Total Control, UV Race, Woollen Kits, Lower Plenty, East Link, and too many more to bother listing here, have been steadily releasing a slew of top notch singles and albums, draining the bank accounts of collector nerds who snap up the pricey imports quicker than they can be released. Luckily for those of us on this continent Iowa City-based Night People Records dished this great split release, with the formidable Scott & Charlene’s Wedding (named after some sort of Aussie inside joke based on a soap opera) on the flip. Peak Twins hit a sweet spot between not-so-subtle Phil Spector teenage dramas and primal basement pop.

Freak Heat Waves | “Correction”
One of the stand-out “new” bands that I had the joy to see during last year’s Music Waste Festival. I had little expectations going into their show at They Live Video, but they had a new fan after they hypnotized that room with their elliptical, kraut-heavy drawl. I had the pleasure of putting on a show for them at Pat’s Pub last December and they were even better than that first time. Head to yer local grocer and grab their self-released debut LP as soon as you can.

King Blood | “Vengeance, Man”
It doesn’t get too much heavier than this one-man wrecking crew from heavy-hitters Snake Apartment, who are on a bit of hiatus right now. Looped guitar lines are intertwined and overblown with fuzz as Mr. Blood shreds on top of it all. Fans of bombed out psych-ers Les Rallizes Denudes oughta do themselves a favour here and giver a listen.

Fabulous Diamonds | “???”
Another great Aussie import, this duo has been slugging it out quietly for several years, having already released two great LPs on Siltbreeze Records. Their third record, Commercial Music, is probably about as close to Commercial as these two have ever gotten. Featuring repetitive organ and tribal drumming, this is probably what it would have been like if Terry Riley fronted a post-punk band.

U.S. Girls | “North On 45″
U.S. Girls (aka Megan Remy) has been a bit of a puzzle to me since her debut LP, released 2008 on the great Siltbreeze Records label. While her earlier releases were much more experimental, her last few have seen her make some big leaps in production, practically going straight pop on her newest LP, Gem, though it should be no surprise she took this direction, as she once covered Monica & Brandy’s “The Boy Is Mine”. Produced and partially written by her new musical partner, Toronto’s Slim Twig, Gem is a damn near a perfect record of retro-futuristic pop that has to be one of 2012’s most overlooked.

Koban | “Down In The Well”
These two have been at it in Vancouver for about three years now. The duo, who is also a couple off the stage, began as kind of dark surf outfit with the regrettable name Mantaraygun. A quick name change and a slant towards UK post-punk gave Koban some traction around town. A pretty killer seven inch single and a 4 way split single.

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Daniel Colussi is the Music Editor of Scout Magazine and a contributing writer to Ion Magazine. A veteran employee of Zulu Records and tuneage aficionado, he DJs on an infrequent basis (about four times a year) and is a musician around town who plays in several ensembles.

SOUNDTRACKING: 5 Minutes With “Mister Lies”, One Of The Waldorf’s Very Last Acts

by Daniel Colussi | There’s certain music that’s best suited to those bleary hours in between night and day, when your vision is gauzy and the world moves in slow motion. Enter Mister Lies, aka Nick Zanca, who’s proven himself to be a true professional at conjuring up the asleep/awake feeling of those lost hours. Working out of his dorm room in Chicago, Zanca’s nocturnal pop is purposely minimal and dreamy but nevertheless carries an emotional weight that’s foreign to the more vacuous forms of genre. The kid’s only nineteen but over several EPs and a new full length, Mowgli, he’s shown himself to be the natural heir to the trip-hop greats of the mid 90s. His show at The Waldorf tomorrow night will mark his first Vancouver appearance, and it’s going be a bitter sweet affair as the venue is being forced to imminently shut down in one of Vancouver’s cruelest fait accomplis. Send The Waldorf out with a bang, or even better — see it off as if in a slow-motion lethargic dream…

Electronic music can be a tricky thing to pull off live. What’s your approach? With the live set, these are songs that I composed in my room, usually by myself, maybe with two or three other people in the room but usually just by myself, and so what I’m trying to do is make these tracks a little bit bigger, especially since they’re going to be on loudspeakers. Also with this set, and I’ve not done this in the past, I kind of revised a lot of my older material and made versions of these songs that are a lot more suited for a dancy environment. There’s a lot of debate and conflict between people about the “liveness” of electronic music. I feel like you’re either doing everything up there or your doing nothing. For me, I’m doing a run of the mill laptop and controller set, but I’m actually deconstructing my songs as opposed to just DJing them. There’s an element…there’s a game about what I’m going to do with the songs. There’s a lot of open opportunities. I won’t play the song the same way twice, which is really exciting.

I get a real British 90s vibe from your music, the kind of trip hop stuff coming out of Bristol in the 90s. Is that scene a conscious marker that you’re after? Yeah? I’ve actually never gotten the word “British” from a journalist before. Granted, people will throw out Massive Attack or Portishead and stuff like that, but they’ll never say that it’s British-sounding — that’s interesting. With this new album, Mowgli, I’m not necessarily going out and saying, like, “I’m making a house track,” or “I’m starting with this specific BPM.” Usually it’ll start with something more melodic; a field recording or something like that. Read more

SOUNDTRACKING: “Destroyer” Spinning Wax At The Waldorf In Support Of The PHS

by Daniel Colussi | It was only last week that Destroyer wrapped up their Never Ending Tour in support of 2011′s very fine long player, Kaputt. Over the last eighteen months, Dan Bejar and ace backing band, The Kaputt Players, have criss-crossed the North American and European continents, hitting all the major festivals and too many seedy clubs to count. From Coachella to Utrecht, their focus remained the same: bring Kaputt to life every night. But now the tour’s finished and their last official band duty of 2012 is to DJ at The Waldorf this Wednesday night as a benefit for the Portland Hotel Society. The timing couldn’t be better; having lived a communal life on the road and spent nights in dark clubs only to walk out and see the sunrise (or not rise), the band is perfectly positioned to convey the madness and immorality of the road life through a carefully curated selection of mood music. I spoke with guitarist Nic Bragg and organizer Amber Webber about what to expect. Read on…

Nic give me some perspective on what a Destroyer DJ might consist of. We’re like marauders, we’re seasoned old dogs. We just got back from a tour in the land of no sun – Scandinavia – and the cold hard streets of Helsinki, where everything gets really real in a hurry. It’s enough to destroy your mind when you’re living on a bus and you wake up in a new city, and you’re never quite sure how you got there. So for me, I’m going to recreate some of the feelings of being out on the cold streets of Copenhagen, looking into the eyes of Scandinavia. I’m going to be playing wax. My set is going to be golden nuggets, I’m going to have some soul music, some blues, because my tour persona is smokestack, as in the song Smokestack Lightning, as in Lightning Hopkins, probably the best blues guitar player that’s ever influenced me. And a little bit of the crazy vibe of the Muscle Shoals, which I’m addicted to.

So the tour itself is going to inform your playlist? On tour, at the end of the night, after the after-party, the band is still just sitting on the bus playing tunes off Bejar’s iPod, because he’s still trying to teach us what it’s like to listen to jazz music.

Give me just one tour tale that’ll help attendees get into right frame of mind on Wednesday. A crazy thing happened to me in Stockholm. We wake up on the bus…everyone’s groggy. Usually Ted has already scoped out where the best coffee in town is, the best thing to get your life back on track, to find out where you are. The good thing is that when we play these clubs they’re usually in the bourgeois centre of town. So we find the place, we all enjoy some delicious coffee and as I’m coming out this woman starts speaking to me in Swedish. And I’m like, I’m sorry I don’t speak Swedish I just speak English, and she said, Oh no that’s the wrong answer. And then she asks me, How long are you going to be in Stockholm? And I say, I’m only here for six hours, and she says, Oh no that’s the wrong answer. So I had to ask her, What is this? And she says, I’ve been following you and I want to cast you in a Swedish television commercial and you’re perfect for the part. So I just said, Look I’m sorry I don’t speak Swedish and I’m leaving town after the show. But of course I had to ask her, What is this for? What am I perfect for? And she says, The commercial is for a person who loves to go to the racetrack and gamble on horses. So who knows, I could’ve stayed behind and made my career as a two-bit actor in Swedish TV commercials, and that’s the thing, when you’re on tour everyday something could change your life, and that day it happened to be that one thing. Read more

SOUNDTRACKING: Ty Segall’s Gig At The The Waldorf To End A Very Generous Year

by Daniel Colussi | 2012 has been a kind year to Ty Segall, or maybe I should say that in 2012 Ty Segall has been kind to us. Let’s see: he toured the hell out of his wonderful, Beatles-with-ADD album Goodbye Bread, and said touring including a couple stops in Vancouver. After one show at the Biltmore, Segall and band decided to play a wild impromptu set at an East Van house, you know, just for the hell of it. Next, he and pal White Fence saw fit to release the warped and wonky mess that is Hair, an all too brief album that cruises by on John Lennon and Syd Barrett psychedelic pop fumes. He also gave us Slaughterhouse, a savage ripper of an album that showcases his backing band’s ritualized slaughter of his trashy pop songs.

There was more globetrotting, and a late night network TV appearance or two. Now for his 2012 victory lap Segall releases his third album of the year, Twins, which sees him playing all the instruments himself. Phew! It’s been a year in which Segall has proved himself more than capable of wringing some life out of the corpse of rock and roll. The albums are tight and his live shows are anything but dull. Anyone who caught his last Vancouver appearance at The Waldorf saw a man and his band at the height of their powers. Remember that Black Sabbath Paranoid cover they played? Segall crowd surfed across the room when he wasn’t totally nailing his Ozzy impression. He was unstoppable. Read more

SOUNDTRACKING: 5 Minutes With Kevin & Cassie Of “The Babies” Before Their Show

by Daniel Colussi | The Babies abide by the old adage that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. They aren’t a band that tries to reinvent the wheel, no they’re more into taking the old wheel out for an easy spin around the block a few times. There’s a peaceful easiness to this band, and maybe that’s because, as a so called side project, Babies principle songwriters Kevin Morby and Cassie Ramone feel like they can let they’re primary bands do all the heavy lifting (that’s Woods and Vivian Girls, respectively). With The Babies they’re freed up to simply offer up what feels natural. In this case that’s concise and catchy pop songs. Truth be told the band has put a little fresh grease on their wheel — their new album Our House On The Hill ditches the overt fuzz of their debut for something more country and gospel-indebted. It’s cut after cut of three minute gems. And improved fidelity highlights Kevin Morby’s lyrics, which detail such modern travails as failed love, late rent, jerks and dicks – the kind of stuff we’re all familiar with. Kevin and Cassie were kind of enough to talk to me about writing songs, their new album, and In-n-Out Burger vs. the Waffle House.

Tell me about The Babies’ transition from a house party band into a more serious affair? Cassie: It was just the natural growth of a band. It was going well and felt good, so we kept doing it. The new album – Our House On The Hill – is a bit less scrappy than the first LP.

Can you tell me about your approach to the new album versus what aesthetic you were after the first time? Kevin: The new album was done in a studio rather than at my house, which is where we recorded the first album. We focused a lot of energy into recording OHOTH in a two week period, where the first one took us almost a year to get done. Also, working with Rob Barbato was a big help, too. That guy is a wizard.

Describe the creative partnership of The Babies — Kevin and Cassie, how do you collaborate on writing songs? What’s the process? Who’s the boss? Cassie: It’s different for every song. Sometimes Kevin writes pretty much the whole thing, sometimes I do, sometimes we straight up collaborate. Kevin: No gods, no masters.

Cassie you get to wail on your axe a little more in The Babies. Who are your most fave guitarists? Cassie: Neil Young and Greg Sage are my two faves. The Babies have toured a lot.

What are your feelings about Waffle House vs In-N-Out Burger? Cassie: I love both Waffle House and In ‘n’ Out. My loyalties are probably with Waffle House though, cause it’s kind of more sketchy. That’s the best thing about Arizona – it’s the only state that had both.

Touring, good or bad? Cassie: I like touring because every day is different and has the potential to be exciting, but you’re still following a strict routine. Kevin: I agree with Cassie, touring is a good balance of freedom and work. You’re doing what you want, you’re living the dream, but you still got a schedule to work with day to day. It’s the best “job” in the world, and I love doing it.

US vs Europe – which is better? It’s really hard to compare US and European audiences! I suppose an audience is an audience and people are just people. Sometimes they’re great, sometimes they suck. And as far as In and Out vs Waffle House is concerned, I’m going to have to play devil’s advocate against Cassie and say In ‘n’ Out, but only because they have those hot peppers at the ketchup bar. I do love Waffle House, though – smothered and covered.

The Babies with Dead Ghosts and Pleasure Cruise at The Media Club Thursday November 29th. Tickets at Zulu, Red Cat and the venue.

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Daniel Colussi is the Music Editor of Scout Magazine and a contributing writer to Ion Magazine. A veteran employee of Zulu Records and tuneage aficionado, he DJs on an infrequent basis (about four times a year) and is a musician around town who plays in several ensembles.

SOUNDTRACKING: 5 Minutes With Musician Ben Chasny Of “Six Organs Of Admittance”

by Daniel Colussi | Over the course of roughly fifteen years and too many releases to count, Ben Chasny has proved himself to be the spiritual love child of two renowned schools of the guitar: the Takoma folk finger picking style and PSF acid damaged guitar destruction style. On his latest full length album under the Six Organs Of Admittance moniker, Ascent, Chasny tends towards the latter. The sound absolutely smoulders — an unabashed celebration guitar wailing. And the best part is that it finds him reunited with the sorely missed Comets On Fire. I recently called Chasny in rural Massachusetts and flipped his wig by dredging up memories of a fateful Six Organs/Comets show at Vancouver’s own (now defunct) Sugar Refinery, a night that coincidentally played a key role in the genesis of this new album. Read on…

The new Six Organs album is a lot more fiery than any previous release, and it features the entire Comets On Fire crew. Bringing all those heads together, did you have a clear idea of what the album was going to be or was it left up to chance? Yes, we recorded back in January and it took us about a week. It was mostly written beforehand. Some of those songs were written ten years ago and then I wrote a bunch of new songs at the end of last year and I sent them demos and emailed things, so they’d heard it and practiced. We got together for a few days beforehand to work out some ideas. The actual song structures were done; it was more a matter of everyone giving ideas for overdubs or arrangements, or a counter-melody here or there.

And you did all the solos on the new album right? Yeah, the main solos. Ethan does some things here and there but it’s mostly me.

Were there any particular reference points the you had in mind when you went into the album, in terms of electric guitar shredding? Um…I don’t know. A lot of it is just playing with those guys, and the way that I’d solo in Comets. We did a 7″ and some of the really heavily reverbed stuff might have been influenced by Roland S. Howard, the very heavy reverb sound. I mean, usually in Comets I never played in an alternate tuning, but on this album I have some songs in open C tuning. So soloing in an open tuning is a way that’s different for me. The first song is in that tuning, so the solos are as well.

So it just felt like a good time to do a Six Organ album that was especially amped up and vicious sounding? The record before this was really acoustic so I wanted to do something that was sort of opposite. I mean, this record was supposed to be recorded ten years ago. When I sent it to John at Holy Mountain, who was originally going to do an electric record for me back then, he wrote me back and said, “This is the record I wanted to do ten years ago!” And that was the plan and we’d never done it, so it was kind of like checking a box off, or crossing something off a list. Read more

SOUNDTRACKING: Hurricane Sandy Blows NYC’s Jon Spencer Blues Explosion To B.C.

by Daniel Colussi | The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion…they’ve never really fit in, have they? On the one hand they’ve always unabashedly celebrated the blues, but their genesis is in the late 80′s NY pigfuck scene, that world of abrasive, atonal deconstruction of rock and roll. To meld these worlds – and hell, throw in some hip hop, soul and punk rock into the mix for good measure – could’ve easily resulted in an unintelligible sonic goop. What made it all stick was their indefatigable spirit, in particular that of frontman Jon Spencer. During the ultra serious 1990s he really stuck out with his leather pants, hyping himself in the manner of the most self assured rapper. Their’s is a strange brew for sure, but it’s sexy, it’s a good time, and it’s a powerful antidote to the seriousness of so many groups, today even more so than in’ 95. Maybe the best way to triangulate their vibe is just to say that Blues Explosion is the above all sound of New York City. Twenty years on and the band has reached a new renaissance. With their new album – Meat And Bone – the Blues Explosion have weathered many storms, not least Hurricane Sandy. Drummer Russell Simins kindly tells us why the blues is still number one…

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion is quintessentially New York City. How was it for you guys during Hurricane Sandy? It was insane. We were all affected by it in a variety of different ways. I live in Manhattan, in Soho, but I was upstate with family at the time that the whole downtown area that I live in, and Judah lives in, lost power. And that lasted for days in both areas. Jon’s place also didn’t have power, because it was below 39th street. He had a lot of problems because one of his relative’s houses was destroyed, I believe in Brooklyn. So he was dealing with that for days, helping with that situation. So there was a real question of whether or not – with the power outage, the blackout, with everyone being able to get up to the show – whether or not we could get it all together to do it. At the same time, the main show revolving around these two smaller shows – two still very important shows for us, in Northampton and Hudson Valley – was this bigger Bowery Ballroom show that was sold out for a while. It was a big deal for us but there was no power in downtown Manhattan so we didn’t know if it would be happening. We were expecting at the time that there wouldn’t be any power for days, past when our show was supposed to happen, on Saturday evening. We had Jon’s son travelling with us because he was now out of school for a week. All the confluence of a variety of events caused a lot of stress, but we put together I think three of the finest shows we’ve ever done. First show was pretty exhausting with us all having lived through power-outage life for three days, and Jon dealing with helping his family out of the wreckage. But we got it together. We found out the night before our Bowery show that power was restored and that the show will go on. So in the spirit of being New Yorkers and people coming together and moving on and being strong, the show turned out brilliant, it was a packed house. I’m not one to toot my own horn, but it was a brilliant show. There was this intensity. It was a pretty special few days. But there’s still no power in parts of Manhattan, there’s people without heating. That sounds heavy. It’s great that those shows came together. Yeah, yeah, you know, rock and roll. We pulled it together. And there was this sort of fire and bravado that persevered through it all. It was really a special few days.

Are you guys the kind of band that writes a set list for a show or do you just go for it every night? We never have a set list, it’s just part of the way we are. It would feel totally alien to the way we are as a band, it wouldn’t be right, it doesn’t fit. Part of the whole nature of our show is – we have a way of communicating with each other that’s like a sixth sense. There’s certain ways of leading one song into another, certain signals, things that we can expect and know, one thing will naturally lead into another. Sometimes there will be surprises and often there’s things that happen in an improvisational way, which keeps it fresh for us always. It’s natural for us, it would be very unnatural for us – almost stifling – if we had a set list. Read more

SOUNDTRACKING: With La Sera’s Katy Goodman Before Her Show At The Waldorf

by Daniel Colussi | For the ultimate insight into the grisly business of rock and roll you could do no better than Katy Goodman. She’s a woman of many hats, both the bassist/sideplayer in Brooklyn power pop darlings Vivian Girls, and also a de facto front person herself in her solo endeavour, Le Sera. Not often can one person offer share what it’s like to be a shadow player as well as the person literally centre stage, in the spotlight. Her newest solo album is the beautiful Sees The Light which a fine new offering to that rock n roll tradition: the break up album. She’s also a hardcore video game junkie (she launched into an analysis of the various consoles and game genres that far-exceeded the scope of this interview) and a lover of hardcore punk and Vancouver’s favourite son, Nardwuar. If you’re a heartbroken, punk rock-loving gamer – or even if you’re not – read on… Read more

SOUNDTRACKING: Five Minutes With Mike Donovan Of Sic Alps As He Waits For Lunch

by Daniel Colussi | Sic Alps are a band whose LPs are never far from my home hi-fi. Theirs is a kind of lethargic, burnt-out rock music that sounds good in the AM or late at night, in the warm summer months or deep in winter. Alps’ main man Mike Donovan has guided the group from its humble beginnings as a barely-held-together two man garage rock combo into its current incarnation as a full blown, string-laden psych-pop affair. Yes, their newest self-titled album is a gorgeous-sounding paean to the golden age of pop music, when hooks were aplenty and no tune lasted longer than three minutes. No one could’ve predicted this trajectory for Sic Alps based on the early days of the band, so I had to talk to Donovan about he got this far, which he did while waiting for his order of shrimp mac-and-cheese to be come up. For insight into what makes a perfect pop record, indulge…

Tell me about making the new album. Well, Drag City hooked the whole thing up. They paid to have Ryan Francesconi put strings on the two tracks and have really good musicians come in and lay down the strings. It was a thing that was always out of reach in terms of a budget. You know, like working with an arranger. It was arranged by Ryan Francesconi, who did all the arrangements for Joanna Newsom.

So I take it that you didn’t record the new album in the way that all past Sic Alps records were recorded — with one mic, one instrument at a time, et cetera?Exactly. Yeah, we always did it on the eight-track down in the basement. One mic, one little pre-amp, one reverb tank, a memory man pedal for delay. Super easy. We did the album with my really good old friend of mine, Eric Bauer, at his studio called Bauer Mansion. We sort of eased our way of doing our whole record down there. It took a while, maybe about a year and half. It wasn’t a typical studio experience where you get in there and it’s like $250 a day, it wasn’t like that at all. In the end we paid pennies on the dollar for what we did. A big bro deal. But at the same time it was also the first time where we had to take a big leap of faith and just let it go.

Did you write the album specifically with this kind of approach in mind? I’m thinking particularly about the last two tracks, the two really beautiful piano ballads. Yeah, I mean we definitely wanted to take advantage of that studio to do those kind of songs, and having the piano on it sounded really nice. It was, uh, liberating. Tim Hellman, the bass player, he played lots of 12-string on the record, and he did all the piano. He did a lot of good bass parts, too. Like the song God Bless Her has some really nice bass parts, and we recorded just the rhythm section live, which is something we never would’ve done in the past.  We were always building the track by track, swaying triple-decker sandwich or whatever. I just made that up, that sounds ridiculous! But Glyhps, for instance, that was the way we’d always done it, where I laid down the acoustic track and then a scratch vocal, but then that’ll probably end up being the vocal, you know? And then from there it’s like, well ok, who’s got the best idea? It’s kind of like a democracy. So who’s here, what do you think, what do you hear? If someone hears something then they go in there and lay it down.  < strong>You’ve been pretty industrious for the last six months or so, you’ve put out 4 7″s and an LP. The Vedley 7″ was pretty rad. Ha, thanks! That was kind of like the appendix for this record, all the dirt that went into it. I did it at home by myself pretty much. I was plundering the archives. I think that was the release from doing all the hi-fi stuff. I’d kind of like to do a whole album that way. Hopefully it’s kind of disorienting. Listen, I’ve got this food coming up, it’s shrimp macaroni and cheese so I don’t want to let it sit…

Sic Alps and The Oh Sees play The Rickshaw on Saturday October 6th.

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Daniel Colussi is the Music Editor of Scout Magazine and a contributing writer to Ion Magazine. A veteran employee of Zulu Records and tuneage aficionado, he DJs on an infrequent basis (about four times a year) and is a musician around town who plays in several ensembles.

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