Author: Jennifer

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Deafheaven: Roads to Judah

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Deafheaven was initially George Clark (vocals) and Kerry McCoy (guitar), and now includes Joey Bautista (guitar), Derek Prine (bass), and Korey Severson (drums). They are from San Francisco, and Roads to Judah is their debut album.

And oh, what an album it is, too. I guess technically their genre is metal, or hardcore, or something like that – I think I saw one description that referred to it as “metal sludge” – but all of those terms are either wholly inadequate or just wrong.

Roads to Judah is a lot of things, but mostly it is awesome, in the original sense of the word: both beautiful, and a little scary. It’s majestic. It’s orchestral, if the orchestra in question had listened to Metal Machine Music several times, meditated on it for a week, and then sat down to jam about their feelings.

Here is an example of what I mean. This is Violet, the first song on the record:
 

 

And in contrast, here is Tunnel of Trees, the last song:
 

 

And here is an excerpt from their SXSW 2012 set:
 

Deafheaven - "Language Games" @ The Bat Bar SXSW '12

 
For more information visit the Deafheaven official website.

Band photo by June Zandona.

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Hella Better Dancer: Living Room

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Hella Better Dancer is Tilly Scantlebury (Vocals/Guitar), Josh Cohen (Bass), Soph Nathan (Lead Guitar/BVs), and Chris O’Driscoll (Drums). They are from London, and Living Room is the dreamy, melancholy, low-fi masterpiece they recorded using just the internal mic on a laptop.

It is only about ten minutes long, but it is a very beautiful ten minutes.

This is the video for the first track, Brother:
 

Brother - Hella Better Dancer

 
This is After School, the second track on Living Room, which, you guys, this is a gem of a song. A dark, delicate gem, glimmering amid a pile of fallen leaves in a bruised post-rainstorm landscape:
 

 
And finally, here they are live and using regular mics, at Stop Look Listen at Native Tongue with Hands, which was one of their demos:
 
http://youtu.be/nSJ3ldZAmLo
 

They also have two other EPs out, Swimming and Please Stay Here; you can hear selections from those records at Soundcloud and the band website.

Upcoming shows:
May 11, Amersham Arms, London, UK
May 19, Power’s Bar, London, UK
May 21, Birthdays, London, UK
May 24, The Lock Tavern, London, UK
May 26, Spice Of Life, London, UK
Jun 10, Sebright Arms, London, UK
Jun 16, 93 Feet East, London, UK
Jun 29, Leefest 2012, Highhams Hill Farm, Warlingham, UK

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Residency with a Twist: Rock for a Difference Los Angeles with Decoded

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Decoded will be in residence at Amplyfi on Thursdays for the month of May, and they’re doing something special with it: every show will conclude with a raffle, and the proceeds from the raffle will go to a local charity. This weeks recipient is CreateNow, and you can see the full list of bands and charities on the flyer below.

And here are some of Decoded’s tunes!

Decoded – Lost No More by Decodedmusic
 
Decoded – Open Season by Decodedmusic

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Deathline: Ten of Clubs

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This is 10 of Clubs, a song by Deathline, who are Jennie Werlemar (Vocals/Bass) and Kaoru Sato (Guitar/Programming). They are from London, and they can shred.

They also warm the cockles of the cold heart of your aging gothy correspondent. Major grinning at the computer screen and chair dancing happening here. I’m ready to dig my stompy boots and jingle-bell faerie skirt out of the back of the closet and go out on the town.

Make sure the volume on your computer is all the way up before you press play:

Deathline – Ten of Clubs by Bright Lights Management

They are also running a remix competition for this song on their Facebook, which will conclude on May 20th.

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Video Grab Bag: The Beastie Boys

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I’m pretty sure this was the first video I ever watched on MTV, somewhere around 1986-1987:
 

The Beastie Boys - (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)

 
I have to confess, you guys, I was 11 or 12 and had very Victorian sensibilities and had just no idea what to do with what had just happened on my television screen. Actually, my grandmother’s television screen, since I’m also pretty sure I was watching MTV with my somewhat older cousins at the time.

It’s kind of difficult to explain now, when the Beastie Boys are Grammy-winning elder statesmen (!), but then they were like a cold bucket of water in the face.

And every time I hear the opening chords of that song I feel an echo of that heady mixture of bafflement and excitement and quasi-intrigued, quasi-horrified what the hell?? as I did then. This music was a jolt. A wake-up call. I wasn’t totally on-board at the time (see above re: delicate Victorian sensibilities) but, you know, I eventually came around.

And here, if you haven’t seen it yet, is Fight For Your Right (Revisited), a short film directed by MCA, which came out last year. I suggest you read this fantastic New York Magazine article, which is an oral history of the first 25 years of the Beastie Boys, before you watch it.
 

Beastie Boys - Fight For Your Right (Revisited) Full Length

 
And then, in closing, Intergalactic, from Hello, Nasty, because I love it, and there are giant dancing robots:
 
Beastie Boys - Intergalactic

 
Rest in Peace, Mr. Yauch. We shall miss you very much.

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Y’all Need to Listen To This: Father John Misty, Fear Fun

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Fear Fun, by Father John Misty (aka J. Tillman) is: the soundtrack for an adventure. Not the twee hipster kind either; to paraphrase NTSIB-friend Cam Rogers, this is music for the bad ideas that will end in bruises.

Or possibly with In-and-Out fries, consumed slowly while perched on the hood of a van, watching the sun rise at Venice Beach.

Or maybe with bruises and fries.

 
I’m Writing A Novel by subpop
 

Fear Fun is also: a record I want to share with everyone, because, seriously, y’all need to listen to this, and a novel that I find myself circling back to, just to see how the characters are doing.

If it actually was a book, it would be one that I would I know if I lent it out I’d never get it back. It would also be one that I would deliberately lend to people who needed it. And then once they had finished it we could go down to the beach and eat our fries, drink fizzy drinks, wash our cuts and scrapes out in the sea, and watch the skateboarders zoom around the skate-park together.

 
Now I’m Learning to Love the War by subpop

 

It’s possible to get lost in this song – to get distracted by the interaction between his voice and the beat and come up for air halfway through a verse thinking Rome is burning, you go on and keep fiddling, I’m going to dance – and then also realize you are Alice standing athwart the Ironic Looking-glass and he probably means every word sincerely.

This happens every time I listen to this song.

 
Only Son of the Ladiesman by subpop
 

For good or for ill this one is my favorite.

 
Tee Pees 1-12 by subpop
 

This is the one I have listened to the most often, because it came out first. Also because it has steady thump-sway beat which I particularly enjoy.

 
Everyman Needs a Companion by subpop
 

Joseph Campbell and the Rolling Stones / couldn’t give me a myth / so I had to write my own: I don’t think I want to tattoo this lyric on myself.

I think I’d rather write it on the back of a postcard and mail it off, and hope whomever I was mailing it to would read it and know it meant come meet me where-ever I am, I want to mis-spend an afternoon (or a lifetime) with you.

 
Tee Pees 1-12 by subpop
 

J. Tillman will be taking his show on the road (scroll down for dates) this spring/summer. I won’t be able to see him when he stops through New York, so I’m hoping he’ll be back again in the fall. But the rest of you, if he’s visiting your town: go and see him.

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Shana Falana: In the Light

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I have a mix I call “Chill Out Drown Out” for when I need to, well, chill out, and also drown out extraneous noise around me. Its music that enables me to calm down and concentrate on important tasks like memorizing the finer points of real property law, or, you know, just provides a chunk of peaceful time in a hurricane of a day.

One of the artists in the mix is Shana Falana, formerly of San Francisco but now living in upstate New York, who, with drummer Michael Amari makes heavy, sweet, dreamy tunes that I find particularly soothing.

Here are four from In the Light, which she released in January:

http://youtu.be/_M7oGHXpY3g
 

Light The Fire - Shana Falana (In the Light EP)

 
DIZZY CHANT VIDEO by Shana Falana "In the Light" EP out now

 
TRAGIC by Shana Falana "In The Light" EP out now

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Band I Really Love: The Magnetic Fields

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The Magnetic Fields: because nobody else does hilarious, cranky, sweet, biting, romantic songs like Stephin Merritt (vocals/ukelele/harmonioum/keyboard) and his merry crew, aka Claudia Gonson (vocals/percussion/piano), Sam Davol (cello/flute), John Woo (banjo/guitar) and Shirley Simms (vocals/autoharp/ukelele).

For example, Andrew in Drag, from their latest record, Love at the Bottom of the Sea. It’s been stuck in my head for weeks and so now I’m going to share it with you, so I won’t be the only one singing the chorus under my breath at random and inappropriate times. (Note: contains nudity, may be unsafe for work!)
 

The Magnetic Fields - Andrew in Drag

 
This one is called With Whom To Dance and every time I listen to it, I observe, wistfully, that really as far as I’m concerned the only wretched part of being single is not having anyone to slow dance with at weddings. You know? Everyone else gets up to sway and spin and there I am perched on the edge of my chair feeling kind of lonely and awkward about everything. Thank you for capturing that emotion in song, Mr. Merritt!
 
The Magnetic Fields - With Whom to Dance?

 
Dipping into their back catalog a little bit, here’s a live version of Drive on Driver from Distortion, the record I had on repeat for basically the four months of 2008:
 
Magnetic Fields "Drive On Driver" 10/18/08 Meymandi Concert Hall, Raleigh, NC

 
If I ever get a tattoo, it will probably include the phrase characters bold complex and shady will write my memoirs across my heart, which is a lyric from this song, which is The Nun’s Litany, also from Distortion, here performed live in Oslo in 2008:
 
The Magnetic Fields - The Nuns Litany

 
In the category of The Best Kiss-off to an Ex Ever, there’s You Must Be Out Of Your Mind from Realism, live in St. Louis in 2010. Ideal to leave on the answering machine of someone you really, really don’t ever want to go out with again.
 
The Magnetic Fields - You Must Be Out Of Your Mind - Live at The Pageant in St. Louis - 3/6/10

 
And from 69 Love Songs, their three volume concept about love songs, here is All My Little Words, a song about being wordy but still powerless, performed live in North Carolina, in 2008:
 
Magnetic Fields "All My Little Words" 10/18/08 Meymandi Concert Hall, Raleigh, NC

 
Also from 69 Love Songs: The Book of Love, which has been covered by acts as diverse as The Airborne Toxic Event and Peter Gabriel. Seriously, click on those links and watch those videos. Y’all have not lived until you have heard Airborne Toxic Event perform a delicate chamber-pop song and Peter Gabriel aim himself, his voice and an entire orchestra at Stephin Merritt’s wry, reflective lyrics. Here is Mr. Merritt himself singing it in Los Angeles in 2008:
 
http://youtu.be/qzd9zEx6Wis
 
And then, I bring you back to the present with Quick, also from Love at the Bottom of the Sea, live in Chicago during their most recent tour:
 
The Magnetic Fields "Quick" Live

 
In conclusion: some photographs from their show that I went to a few weeks ago, here in New York, at the Beacon Theater.

The Magnetic Fields were as delightful as ever – at one point Stephin Merritt did an amazing dramatic reading of a stray gum wrapper that had made its way to the stage, and I decided that “I would listen to him/her/them read me a gum wrapper” is going to replace “sing me the phonebook” as my personal term of ridiculous fannish devotion – and DeVotchKa, who opened for them, did an exquisite acoustic set.

DeVotchKa
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The Magnetic Fields
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Y’all Need to Listen to This: JJAMZ

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First, an introduction.

Some of you may recognize those faces, but, for those of you that don’t, they are, from left to right: James B. Valentine (Maroon 5), Alex Greenwald (Phantom Planet, Mark Ronson & The Business INTL), Z Berg (The Like), Michael Runion (solo artist, The Chances) and Jason Boesel (solo artist, Rilo Kiley, Bright Eyes), and together they are JJAMZ.

Second, a brief meditation on the nature of film, and also of music and video. One of my friends recently noted that “the measure of a film may be how narratively clear and deeply moving it is even if you don’t have the language at all.”

I’d expand on that to say the measure if a music video is how narratively clear and deeply moving it is even if you’re watching it with the sound off.

I give you as an example the video below, for JJAMZ’s new song Never Enough, starring Z Berg and Brie Larson (21 Jump Street, United States of Tara) and directed by Eddie O’Keefe.

It is just exquisite. Beautifully shot, with delicate and precise use of color and light – both shimmery, golden Californian sunlight and harsher neon tones – it absolutely works as a silent film about a complex and passionate friendship between two girls.

That said, I definitely encourage you to watch it with the sound on, too, because the song is great.

Additional warning/enticement: contains tasteful semi-nudity, smoking, cute girls with guns, a glamorous party, and assorted alcohol-induced shenanigans. Bonus fun: spotting the musicians making cameo appearances in the party scene!
 

JJAMZ – Never Enough from Eddie O'KEEFE on Vimeo.

 

JJAMZ will be releasing their first record, Suicide Pact, on July 10, 2012, via Dangerbird Records.

To tide you over until then they have another song entitled Heartbeat available as a free download. I have listened to it several times now, and I can tell you that, as you might expect, they really know how to write a pop hook.

And, okay, NERD ALERT, but part of the reason I was playing it over and over again was to try and focus on the individual parts, specifically, the way the guitars are layered with the synthesizers, and then the way the guitar solo floats up through the hum and crash, like a ray of summer light breaking through dark clouds.

Get it here:

 
Finally, they will also be playing several shows around Los Angeles in the near future, and will be at The Satellite every Monday night in June. For late breaking news and updates, you can subscribe to their Facebook or Twitter feed.