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A Good Read A Good Listen and a Good Drink: Miss Shevaughn and Yuma Wray

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It’s a simple yet sublime pleasure, and just thinking about it can make you feel a little calmer, a little more content. Imagine: You bring out one of the good rocks glasses (or your favorite mug or a special occasion tea cup) and pour a couple fingers of amber liquid (or something dark and strong or just some whole milk). You drop the needle on the jazz platter (or pull up a blues album on your mp3 player or dig out that mixtape from college). Ensconcing yourself in the coziest seat in the house, you crack the spine on a classic (or find your place in that sci-fi paperback or pull up a biography on your e-book reader). And then, you go away for a while. Ah, bliss.

In this series, some of NTSIB’s friends share beloved albums, books and drinks to recommend or inspire.

Some of you may have seen Miss Shevaughn and Yuma Wray at Couch by Couch West, where they came to us live (if somewhat delayed) from their wedding reception. They did five songs, including three – Drifter’s Compass, Coyote and Bleed Me – from their most recent record, Lean Into The Wind.

They are all great tunes, but I’m especially fond of Drifter’s Compass, because I think it’s the kind of song you’d put on at either the beginning or the end of a long trip, as encouragement, or as solace:

Drifter's Compass - Miss Shevaughn & Yuma Wray (Wedding)

And also of Bleed Me; it’s a raucous stomper, and the one that hooked me on the record as a whole:

Bleed Me - Miss Shevaughn & Yuma Wray (Wedding)

I do not use the phrase “the record as a whole” casually; I really do mean the whole thing. It’s solid, no dead weight or filler, and good company, especially, as I discovered, on the downtown bus on frigid evenings.

Here’s one more song that I really liked; it’s called Oh Tornado, and it made me smile in wry, pained recognition. Yeah, we all have that person, the one who tears everything apart, and yet – and yet – when it works, it works so well:

If you’d like to catch them live, they are out on tour starting Sunday, April 6, in Fairfax, VA – New York, your show is April 11 at Grand Victory in Brooklyn – and ending June 4 in Washington, DC, but covering huge chunks of the United States between those bookends.

With that I will turn the floor over to Miss Shevaughn and Yuma Wray, who have graciously assented to share their favorite books, records and drinks with us.

Miss Shevaughn:

A Good Drink

Since writing, road testing, recording and releasing our latest album, Lean Into the Wind, process has been on my mind a lot. Yuma and I recently moved into a house in Paso Robles, CA that is the first place we’ve gotten to live by ourselves in the three years we’ve been touring.

Painting and fixing up the house took almost a month, and having my own kitchen has prompted me to embark on ambitious culinary adventures like cultured non-dairy cheeses that take days, or even weeks. I’ve been deeply enjoying things that take commitment, patience, craft and the willingness to slow down. One of these long-term experiments was a strawberry shrub that I made to serve at our wedding on March 1st tour.

A shrub is a vinegar-based drink that was popular in Colonial times and has recently enjoyed resurgence. It takes 2 weeks to make the shrub, but it is totally worth it! It also looks beautiful on the counter while you’re waiting for it to mellow. Here’s how you make it:

In a quart jar, muddle a few sprigs of thyme, basil or mint along with sliced ginger from a peeled piece about as long as your thumb (peeling ginger with a spoon is the easiest method)

Fill the jar with fresh sliced strawberries almost to the top

Completely cover the berries with coconut vinegar or apple cider vinegar. Make sure they are covered so that mold won’t grow on top.

Cover the jar securely with cheesecloth and leave it out on the counter for 12 hours

Put the lid on the quart jar and shake the mixture once every day for 4 days

Take out the herbs but return everything else to the jar shake daily for 3 more days

Strain out the solids and add 1 cup of sugar and juice from 5 limes to the liquid

Store in the refrigerator shaking once daily for 6 days

Now it’s ready to drink!

Sublime Smokey Strawberry Shrub

1 shot of silver tequila over ice

4 Tablespoons of shrub (modify this to taste)

splash of mescal

garnish with lime

Worth the wait.

A Good Read:

Speaking of waiting, all this thinking about the rewards of time and anticipation makes me think of one of my favorite books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I was originally drawn to this author through One Hundred Years of Solitude, but I’ve grown to truly love the slow unraveling of Love in the Time of Cholera. This novel’s entire existence covers the distance that usually makes up only the climax or ending of any other story: the point where two people fall in love.

The story takes place over an expanse of time between the late 1800s and the 1930’s in a Colombian city that is dirty, ancient, haunted and colonial in a way that reminds me of New Orleans, where I spent a lot of my childhood. On some level the plot is simple. A man loves a woman. Her father doesn’t like him. She marries another man and is happy for the most part. He dies when he is old in a silly accident involving a parrot, and her childhood sweetheart once again professes his love.

He doesn’t win her over for 51 years, 9 months and 4 days, but finally persuades her to take a riverboat cruise with him. They end up drifting on the riverboat forever with the yellow flag of illness (cholera) raised so that no one will let them dock, and with only the captain and his lover as companions.

It seems simple and romantic but under the sweeping ideals of true love are human failings and frailty. There is also the strangeness of a love that has waited until old age to see itself through. Death, aging and illness are ever present behind the flowers and love serenades. Yuma and I first had a fling when I was in college and we just got married some 13 years later after I was diagnosed with cervical cancer and we sat on a long train ride down the coast wondering what would happen. In some ways we could have been suspended on that train forever.

Love in the Time of Cholera doesn’t stop where the young lovers take their lives or live happily ever after, it continues into death and beyond and forever.

A Good Listen

For my album, I chose Blue by Joni Mitchell. This record has all of the pace and surprise both musically and lyrically of something completely spontaneous, but is also clearly a work that was born out of real living and the processing of events, emotions and experiences. I know that I was exposed to this album at some earlier point. I grew up performing traditional folk music, and that folk music that enjoyed a Renaissance in the 60s and 70s with my mom. I also took a rock and roll history class in college while I was studying opera and I remember scoffing at the confessional songwriter styles of the 70s. I was really into punk rock at the time.

One thing that I’ve enjoyed about getting a little older is that I no longer feel the need to define myself by musical style or fashion. Something wonderful broke free at some point that enabled me to return to the folk songs I learned as a child with absolute love, and to listen to new music with a very open heart. When our first album, We’re From Here came out, several critics compared my vocal style to Joni Mitchell so I decided to check her out. Blue was the first of her albums I listened to and I am completely hooked on it.

It is one of those albums that I know I will listen to for the rest of my life. Sometimes it’s not about discovering new things so much as stumbling blindly across the things you had previously cast aside at a time when you’re ready and willing to let them enter your world. Time may be a completely imagined thing, but you do notice yourself change. Take the time to dig in. Listen to full albums, ponder a thought for days and create art that says what you really wanted it to say in as long a format as that takes. Others might see this as laziness or indulgence. But sometimes speed is carelessness or insincerity. Breathe deeply, think and enjoy.

Joni Mitchell - Blue

Yuma Wray:

A Good Read:

Starting with the book – I spend a lot of time driving on our tours, so my choice of novel may seem a little bleak, but… I really must begin with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

I’ve yet to watch the cinematic version of this tale, but I’ve read the book at least half a dozen times. And even though I usually end up shaky and tense with this tale of a man and his son wandering through a post-apocalyptic nightmare with nothing but a shopping cart full of whatever they can carry – all the while attempting to avoid the few remaining members of humanity that have survived (most of whom have turned to cannibalism) – it hasn’t stopped me from returning to read it time and time again.

Is this a metaphor for the plight of the few “starving” record companies left in the music business? I’m sure McCarthy didn’t mean it that way, but The Road is not quite as hopeless as it initially comes off with the first perusing. It is actually a tale about change and rebirth. It ends with the father (who remembers the world before it all burned up) passing on, and his son (who was born after the world burned) being taken in by another family with children of the same age. Is this hinting at a chance of a re-birth for the human race, perhaps? It is here where my joking comparison to the “burnt-out” music biz actually offers a little more comfort.

Without running the metaphor into the ground, for those that haven’t read The Road, it is horrifyingly stark and minimal tale of a world almost completely devoid of life where the remaining few devour what is left of themselves . . .

Did I mention that The Road might have influenced the lyrics at the beginning of When The Pumps Run Dry on our recent release Lean Into The Wind?

A Good Listen

So, next, the album – As Miss Shevaughn & I have finally got a place to hang our hats (we moved to California after concluding our fall 2013 tour) – we also have a place to plug in our record player. My choice for album is the double-LP, self-titled deluxe re-issue of the 1998 debut by Queens Of The Stone Age.

I must preface this by saying I am currently a Queens fanboy – but I didn’t start out that way. The first song of theirs that I can remember hearing was Feel Good Hit Of The Summer from their 2002 sophomore release, Rated R. Most people know the song even if they don’t recognize the title – because the lyrics are just a list of drugs spat out over a single heavy chord pounding away for three minutes. And that song
cemented them (at least, in my mind) as nothing more than a bunch of drugged-out California frat boys with guitars.

Fast-forward to 2008 – when I took a job at a bar in Chicago that had at least three Queens albums on the jukebox. Over the next three years that I was employed at this establishment – the riffs that were both aggressive & heavy and also laid back & subtle burrowed their way into my brain and have yet to be dislodged. And the deluxe reissue treatment that the double LP version was given saw some of the REALLY weird & more experimental songs that were originally left off returned to their rightful place alongside hypnotic hits like “Regular John” & “Mexicola”.

Queens of the Stone Age - Regular John (Rock AM Ring 2003) HD

The repetitive drone of Josh Homme’s guitars, the robotic drumbeats and the simple, understated pop format that these songs are presented in makes Queens Of The Stone Age’s first offering perfect not just for reading along to, but for long stretches on the road – driving from one show to the next. I love everything about it – as it both exciting and tranquilizing every single time I give it a spin.

A Good Drink

And now for the cocktail – which, unless I want to attract the attention of law enforcement, does NOT go equally well with driving or reading. Just reading . . .

I’m going to have to offer up a stripped-down version of the same cocktail that Miss Shevaughn has touted. There is something magical about the flavor of good tequila and mescal – a combination which I would love to take credit for myself, but which I actually discovered during my time as a doorman at Big Star bar & taqueria in Chicago. They make some of the based tequila-based drinks I have ever tasted.

To put the flavor of smoke and the desert in your cocktail, just mix the following:

(Over Ice) – 1 part silver tequila (preferably Don Julio Blanco – but, dear god, no Patron!) – mix with:

– 1 part soda water

– splash of mescal

– fresh lime juice from about 3 lime wedges (which can go in the cocktail once they are juiced)

Stir the cocktail, read the book, listen to the album!

Thanks for reading!

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Guest Post: Joy Goes to SXSW, Pt. V: Friday, March 14

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In which our intrepid reporter finds out SXSW really is as exhausting as everyone says it is, but rallies to attend more shows.

By day three, I had personally confirmed what we’ve all been told: SXSW kicks your ass. I managed to drag myself downtown before noon only by promising myself a cup of coffee at Mellow Johnny’s, where Wye Oak was playing a 12pm set.

The band was already playing as I bought my coffee, but I couldn’t tell if they were playing an old song or a new one. Like mr. Gnome, Wye Oak hasn’t changed their sound very much between albums #3 and #4. Jenn Wasner has switched from electric guitar to electric bass, and Andy Stack has added an electronic drum-pad to his kit, but at SXSW they were quite recognizably the same band. Wasner even managed to make her bass sound light and silvery at times, which was the most unexpected thing to jump out at me from their performance.

Ultimately this is unsurprising, considering the lyric-based character of Wye Oak’s previous records. Now as before, listeners should expect to make the music into a contemplative experience in order to really absorb it. Wasner — an extremely approachable frontwoman, if anyone ever wants to stick around a show to chat — understandably feels that anyone who doesn’t “get” it should listen to virtually anyone else: she performs for herself and for her fans. She’s quite open about her difficulties with writing a fourth record, and maintains that switching her instrumentation reinvigorated her creative process while inspiring her to keep getting onstage day after day. Judging by their latest single and the SXSW show I saw, fans of her established sound will definitely be interested in and not alienated by the band’s new work.

Next: blogmistress Jennifer had put in detective work to find out when Charli XCX was playing, so I put her time to good use and went to see my favorite British pop star play at the Flamingo Cantina.

Since I’d learned a lesson about being late, I went early, and that was a wise choice. For one thing, plenty of free swag was available for my free choosing. For another, I was treated to a charmingly eccentric set by a Welshman called Gruff Rhys, whose style shifted from guitar-driven folk to semi-pop to the only reggae I’ve ever heard played by a white man that didn’t make me feel instantly angry.

Finally, I got to watch the venue fill to capacity from an actual seat with an actual view of the stage.

Which was lucky, because Charli XCX‘s sets are made to be seen and not just heard. The young Brit, who is currently touring with a full female band, has a true rock-and-roll sense of style and stage performance — she roams the stage, dances, thrashes, flings her head of huge curly hair, and generally lets herself be free.

Some of it is surely due to the fact that she’s only 21, with years of international pop performance already under her belt, but none of it is obviously faked or put on: her rock-stardom seems as honest and natural as her breezy offstage attitude does when you, say, run into her at a vendor’s stall. She clearly makes big, brassy, sometimes silly, but nonetheless sincere pop music because that’s what she wants to make, just like she dances “like you’ve never seen anyone dance before” because that’s simply how she dances. The straightforwardness makes her live shows into a genuine thrill and a front-to-back good time, whether she’s belting out an ode to drunken crushes or a break-up song, and I genuinely hope age (and years in the industry) never tarnishes her luster.

Speaking of age: despite being somewhere just south of thirty myself, that show wore me out. After trying for the second time that week to see a Felice Brothers show and being thwarted by a long line, I scrapped plans in favor of taking a break. Somewhere along the way I helped myself to one of many Deap Vally posters as a reminder to gather energy for their set later that night.

That break became longer than I’d expected, though, since I did not arrive early enough to beat the line for Klassik either.

The best I could manage was snapping a shot through the Thirsty Nickel window:

My lesson was relearned, too: thick drunken crowds on “Dirty Sixth” Street notwithstanding, I arrived at Trinity Hall when the Cherrytree Records party was just gathering steam. In fact, I even had time to catch a quick nap-sitting-up in one of the venue’s deep windowsills, and was a little revived for Sir Sly.

Since this band was one of Jennifer’s picks that I’d never listened to before, I briefly thought a pair of stage-divers were the actual band — although to their credit, they played a pretty decent impromptu song before exiting to cheers and clapping.

The real Sir Sly, however, combined surfer-ish rock with some hip-hop beats and no small number of huge pop hooks. Hearing that they hail from Orange County, CA, brought it all together for me: some bands sound like someone squeezed their geographic area into a pure living distillation, and Sir Sly is a particular subset of Orange County poured straight onto a record.

They threw themselves into their songs with untempered spirit, singing about love and angst the way only a recently-post-teenage Californian band can, winding the crowd up into one chanting sweating almost-entity. It reminded me of a sunnier version of that time we saw New Jersey kids moshing unrepentantly at a Titus Andronicus show.

After Sir Sly shook themselves off and loaded their gear out, it was Deap Vally time, though not everyone in the audience was excited for the same reasons.

The duo came onstage in some awesome outfits:

And I was really not in the mood for certain individuals’ reactions for many reasons, not least because it was clear within half a second of the set that these women were serious musicians. I was closest in proximity to Julie Edwards, who eagerly laid into her drumkit like it had wronged her. Meanwhile, guitarist and lead vocalist Lindsey Troy proved she could nail the ’80s-hair-metal thing live as well as she can in the studio, gleefully shredding and growling and screaming as though personally putting Steven Tyler in his place. They were everything I’d expected: loud and crass and good at what they do, purely and simply very entertaining.

Although this is obviously not their first rodeo, I would still happily punch anyone who ever reduces them to their bodies in my earshot again, and I think they’d approve of that on the basis of punk rock.

The only truly unfortunate part is that, as usual, I couldn’t stay for the whole late set. Instead, I met up with a fellow audience member I’d overheard delivering a perfect verbal smackdown to her own sexual harassers; we walked one another to our bus stops, taking more souvenir Deap Vally posters from the phone pole along the way. Although it was a little less showy than punching some asshole in the face would have been, looking out for each other seemed pretty in line with the band’s ethos too.

-Joy/@paleotrees

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Guest Post: Joy Goes to SXSW, pt. IV: Thursday, March 13

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Our intrepid reporter goes to see some (more) live music. Also a mechanical bull.

On Thursday, I woke up to more than a dozen text messages asking if I was okay. Until I saw a news story about the night’s fatal accident, I had no idea why so many people would be concerned and wondered if I’d been sleeping for more than one day.

Once I read about what had happened, I debated skipping the day’s festivities out of respect, but eventually came to a conclusion: those who could party should get on with the partying in honor of all those who cannot party. I waited for the downtown bus with a spirit of gratitude.

That spirit started to fade after three city buses, from two different routes, passed our stop with partygoers packed inside to legal capacity. Everyone who could party definitely seemed to be partying, and I found myself wishing they had timed things a little more conveniently for us old people.

The bus ride, when I finally got one, was appropriately interesting.

I made it downtown just in time to miss several shows. While trying not to miss the final Doe Paoro show of SXSW 2014, I happened to see a band called Bear’s Den playing the New Shapes Day Party; another ensemble from the Commonwealth Nations who played Americana, they were upbeat and much more musically interesting than Mumford & Co., but they weren’t Doe Paoro. I moved on.

Ultimately, however, the effort was fruitless and I took a break rather than harshing any mellow.

Way to overachieve. The first show I actually saw that day was mr. Gnome, onstage at Rowdy Saloon at 7pm.

At least, the schedule said mr. Gnome went onstage at 7pm. Actually, they went onstage at 8pm. I got there early, left to get dinner, and still returned with enough time to watch the venue’s mechanical bull do its thing by itself for a little while.

Rowdy’s definitely got points for, and set the right party atmosphere by, being the first venue in my memory to feature a mechanical bull. Singer Nicole Barille agreed, and tried throughout the night to talk audience members into giving the bull a spin, but sadly nobody did so while I was watching.

To be fair, this was probably because the night was young and everyone was too busy watching mr. Gnome. I hadn’t seen them since 2010, so didn’t know what to expect — and they hadn’t changed much in the past four years.

That is not an insult. With a sound as unique as theirs, they don’t really need to change: because no one is doing anything too similar to what they’re doing, they don’t have to worry about standing out in a sea of sound-alikes, and a significant departure in technique would risk upsetting their formula anyway.

Newer tracks from their upcoming as-yet-unnamed fourth record sounded like a logical evolution from 2011’s Madness In Miniature, which was itself a subtle progression from 2009’s Heave Yer Skeleton, so the fresh material flowed easily and seamlessly back and forth from familiar older songs.

Other people who write about music have noted that the band’s sound is hard to pin down, but I felt it was nicely represented by the mix of people in their audience that night. Most showgoers were hipsters, seeming dazed but impressed by what they were hearing; an enthusiastic minority were metal fans and punks, and at least one psychedelic burnout evened out the mix. One young man wearing liberty spikes proclaimed early in the night that he’d buy a mr. Gnome hoodie even with his last dollar, and spent the entirety of one song holding his cigarette lighter aloft with the sincerity and reverence some would devote to praying at a shrine.

mr. Gnome might be weird and hard to describe, but they’ve obviously found and earned devotion from their people.

After I realized no one was ready to ride the mechanical bull, I headed over to watch Kan Wakan play at Lambert’s Barbecue. This time, the seven members were challenged to fit onto a stage best fit for a four-piece, but Kristianne Bautista assured me they’d fit on stages even smaller than that.

Sure enough, they all piled neatly on and got to work with another somewhat-shortened set, this one incorporating more unreleased songs. Watching them in this second, very different environment reinforced three things for me: 1. I really like this band, 2. They have all the goods to get famous, and 3. Their song “Are We Saying Goodbye” is super good stuff.

Kan Wakan "Are We Saying Goodbye" At: Guitar Center

Bautista tells me she once thought of her low voice as a flaw, but has fortunately changed her mind and now claims Nina Simone as an inspiration. Though I wouldn’t call Kan Wakan’s sound “jazzy”, that influence definitely comes through — and since so few indie-rock frontwomen work from the lower end of their range, hearing one this smooth and confident is a pleasure.

Even in a sort-of loud bar that kind of smells like vomit.

Jessica Lea Mayfield went on after Kan Wakan, but although I’d planned to stay for her set, I left in order to play safe again and catch a bus. However, I did see Jessica and her husband/bassist Jesse in the audience during the first part of Bautista’s performance. That, to my eyes, seemed like a good sign.

-Joy/@paleotrees

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Late Night Listening: Two Songs from Arum Rae

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Late Night Listening: a home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.

Photo by Dominic Neitz

Photo by Dominic Neitz

Arum Rae (formerly White Dress) is from Brooklyn via Austin, TX. Warrented Queen, her first EP with producer Sanford Livingston, is due out in late April. Consider these two songs a taste of the whole:

2001: This one jammed its claws into me in a weird way. I was here, that September. Sitting on the train on the Williamsburg Bridge, watching the towers burn. Standing on Houston Street while tanks rolled downtown. Leaning on the bumper of a U-Haul on John Street, during a brief pause in helping my sister move while the fires still burned and everything was covered in ash and unnatural silence, reading the note someone had written on a nearby windshield: You can knock us down but you cannot knock us out.

A year later I moved away. Several years after that, I came back. When the anniversary comes around, I don’t watch the news.

Warrented Queen: If you need a palate cleanser after all of that, this tune is far sweeter. Love thrives, broken-in and well-loved, if perhaps a little ragged around the edges.

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Guest Post: Joy Goes to SXSW pt. III: Wednesday March 12

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Our intrepid reporter has been somewhat delayed by travel and technology, but has continued undaunted. Below is her report from her first show-filled day.

After spending numerous protracted coffee breaks trying to figure out the SXSW schedule, I finally hiked deep into the heart of No-Man’s Land — past the endless blocks of band parking, through a sea of Econoline vans and long-haired skinny-jeaned men lugging instrument cases — to The Echoplex SXSW Throwdown at Red 7. The bill featured a number of up-and-coming Los Angeles bands, but I only had ears for my new musical supercrush: Kan Wakan.

Determined to stake out a spot in front, I arrived early. But I needn’t have worried: Brandon the Swag Man still had a whole table full of free swag and the venue was far below capacity. Only a few hardcore festival-goers lingered in the courtyard, and I ran into singer Kristianne Bautista practically right away. She, too, was recovering from a fever and general travel fatigue, but was excited to meet a new fan. We chatted about her band’s rising fame while they set up, since a seven-piece act needs a little extra preparation.

Unfortunately, that extra work cut into their set time, and they went onstage with room for only four songs: one unreleased tune, the single “Forever Found”, and the two-song suite which closes their EP. And they delivered those four songs with total ease and confidence. It takes some heavy stones to play a twelve-minute orchestral piece in front of a handful of hungover stragglers at an afternoon showcase during a festival, and Kan Wakan simply threw down like it was no big deal. Bautista has an impeccable cool that makes her deep, rich voice roll like an ocean, while her band radiates technical proficiency and casual charisma. Show photographers take note, you will enjoy this band, because every single member is camera-savvy and has unpretentious stage presence.

Short as their set was, it flowed effortlessly and felt perfectly timed, like a miniature release party played live. The sound struck a sweet spot of relaxed intricacy, one that could resonate with serious fans as well as first-time listeners who were riding out a pot-and-alcohol haze. The suite wrapped up on a satisfying note, like a calling card tucked into a hand-picked bouquet, and the band amiably went on to the next gig like it was any other day in their lives. I mentally gave them eighteen months to become front-page famous, twelve-minute instrumental suite and all.

With that excellent start, I set off to Cheer Up Charlie’s, hoping to catch mr. Gnome and Jessica Lea Mayfield in one stop. To my dismay, the schedule had been updated and mr. Gnome’s set bumped up an hour; they were just wrapping up as I arrived.

Luckily Cheer Up’s is probably the most perfect SXSW venue for aimlessly hanging out, so I grabbed a cup of complimentary water and compared schedules with fellow showgoers — one of whom happened to be Nikki Kvarnes of Those Darlins. Jessi “Darlin'” Zazu and Charli XCX also happened by at the same time, so it felt like fate.

During that time, the courtyard slowly filled out until the house stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Those Darlins went on at 4, much to everyone’s delight. They growled and swaggered and laid down countryfied hair-metal-inspired garage rock for a solid forty-five minutes, part of which I spent in line for the restroom. By the time I came back, the cock rock had passed back into male hands and Adrian Barrera had the mic, which just didn’t have the same appeal.

If Those Darlins had a great turnout, Jessica Lea Mayfield did them just a little better, packing the courtyard from edge to edge. I grabbed a spot in front, just in time. She went on at 5, rocking a pair of glittery gold Martens and looking more like a Kurt/Courtney hybrid than Frances Bean currently does. Anyone deceived by Mayfield’s sparkly pink Gretsch and the kitty stickers on her pedals was quickly put right, since she laid immediately into a hard and heavy set. I stood directly in front of her, beside the central speakers, and it became quite clear why she titled her new record Make My Head Sing … : that shit will make you dizzy, in a good way.

The new, toothier treatment might be too strong to suit some of her earlier fans, but I felt it improved tracks from 2011’s Tell Me. Her band during that period was a very capable country-rock ensemble, but her current outfit has leveled up: she’s wisely eliminated a second guitarist and streamlined down to an extremely capable rhythm section, which highlights her own guitar prowess. Though she is clearly aiming for a spot in the neo-grunge pantheon, her voice is so sweetly emotive that she can never quite achieve true deadpan — which is for the better, since she can convey all the simmering resentment and barely-contained restlessness needed to layer her material with more than mere ennui or existential angst. I left impressed, my ears still swimming.

My day ended with back-to-back Doe Paoro shows, first at Banger’s Sausage House for a Dickies’ Roadhouse showcase. The band was sound-checking as I arrived, providing a pre-show teaser for the line forming outside. Although the venue did host Biebs earlier that week, they provided free gourmet sausages and a well-stocked green room trailer for talent, which slightly redeemed their karma. Talent was abundant, as well: after soundcheck, cellist and producer Yuri Hart gushed about crossing paths with Polica‘s Channy Leaneagh.

Despite taking stage while the venue’s barbecue was still heating up, Doe Paoro captivated the gathering dinner crowd. Singer Sonia Krietzer’s nimble vocals, influenced by both R&B and Tibetan opera, were rounded out by Hart on cello and keys, Tatiana Kochkareva on moog and vocoder, David Lizmi (fresh from touring with MS MR) providing bass and additional keyboard, and Chris Berry on both electronic and analog drums. Their sound was big but not overwhelming, fresh but not brassy; Krietzer tends to open shows by beckoning the audience closer, and this group didn’t hesitate. People danced and enthusiastically made iPhone videos, then talked praise after the set.

Because many downtown Austin streets were closed to auto traffic, I grabbed a keyboard case and trekked with the band on foot to the next gig. Although navigating South By Southwest crowds can be a chore even without gear, we managed to arrive at the aptly-named Holy Mountain by sheer force of will (and the people-parting powers of Hart’s cello).

Immediately upon entering the large tented courtyard, my equilibrium shifted. Until the following band mentioned the gig’s strange lighting, I thought I was having an acid flashback. Therefore, my observations of Doe’s set were slightly blue-tinged and wobbly, but I did notice the crowd having a great time; a drunk guy at the rail had an especially good experience and even seemed to know all the words. Krietzer had been worried about the logistics of singing two nearly back-to-back sets, but her voice — and characteristically dynamic stage presence — stood up perfectly to the test. Strange lighting only made it more memorable.

After the set ended, the band packed up, and I caught a licensed photographer sneaking my picture, I decided that “exhausted daze” was a bad look and headed home. The streets were full of more drunk people, most of them venue-hopping, some of them standing in groups to discuss intense interpersonal dramas; the pavement was strewn with empty bottles and discarded flyers, the city’s party not even close to winding down.

A few hours later and a few blocks away, a drunk driver would plow past police and through the traffic barricades into the crowd; four people would lose their lives and dozens more would be injured. But at the time I went home, the boogie was still swinging at full tilt strength and no one knew it would be anyone’s last.

– Joy/@paleotrees

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Late Night Listening: Still Parade, Fields

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Late Night Listening: a home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.

Fields, the title track of the latest EP from Still Parade (Niklas Kramer and friends; due to arrive in May) is a delightfully dreamy pop song and a little bit bouncier that some of their other work, which tends to be fuzzier and slower. All of it is perfect for winding down after a long day.

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Daily Video: Fé, 50/50

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Fé always has the best video locations. This one, for 50/50, which is half of their latest release, due out April 14, was shot at the Camber Sands in on the Sussex coast, in England. The majestic windswept headlands are the perfect background for a song that is about learning to think expansively about romance.

Also majestic: Leo’s beard.

http://youtu.be/PGFJ1EzskmY