Gentle Giant - On Reflection

 

#Gentle Giant #progressive rock #British prog #eclectic prog #classic prog #hard rock #experimental rock #jazz rock #neoclassical #medieval #1970s #animated music video

Free Hand was Gentle Giant's seventh studio album and first for new label Chrysalis Records. It was also their highest charting album in the States. It’s a strange prospect to promote an album 46 years after it was recorded. “I don’t think any of us were thinking back then that any of this would happen now with us in our 70s… it is a bit odd, really,” says Gentle Giant’s Kerry Minnear (keyboards, mallet percussion, vocals and a multitude of other instruments) in his soft, Dorset burr. Derek Shulman (lead vocals, main lyricist, woodwind) adds: “Honestly, I’m enjoying talking about it, because when the band finished… it could have been grief, but I just didn’t want to go back and revisit [Gentle Giant]. But now it’s a pleasure. There was no expectation that this was going to be preserved.” “That’s very true,” says Minnear. “I think the multitracks only survived because Gary [Green – guitar and vocals] stepped in and then dumped them on me when he moved to the USA. They’d been up in my loft for years, until interest started to bubble and they’ve served us really well.”
In many ways, the creation of Free Hand in the spring of ’75 was an artistic venting at the relief the band felt having finally escaped from a troubled professional relationship with the WWA record label and from equally disheartening management obligations. They were primed and ready.  “We were at a pretty good high, we’d established the band and were doing comparatively good business in Europe and North America. I think we were quite mature as a band and recording Free Hand proved a happy experience,” says Derek. Ray Shulman (bass, strings, vocals) expands, “As bands develop they tend to splinter and move apart, and I think that it was the last album we made where all of us were together in Derek and my home town of Portsmouth to write and rehearse.” “And we weren’t in London,” Derek emphasises, “we were in Portsmouth of all places, so that was us cocooned on the south coast! And Gary and poor Kerry were sequestered to leave their own homes and join us.” “That’s alright,” says Minnear with a laugh, “I got a wife out of it!”
Reportedly, the whole writing and recording process for Free Hand took about seven weeks – “I don’t think we ever spent longer than four weeks doing the actual recording,” recalls Ray. “In fact, [1973 album] In A Glass House took about 12 days from start to finish,” adds Derek, “We worked our fingers to the bone to get what we wanted when we recorded. We didn’t like to drag things out and jam all day – that would have been a terrific waste of time.” Ray agrees, “We were very structured in what we did.” The focus was very much on Ray and Kerry to deliver the music. “Although Kerry and I had collaborated on earlier albums, by the time we recorded Free Hand we were working on our songs independently initially. I’d go to Kerry with my backing tracks for help with top lines and to Derek for the lyrics. Kerry was a bit more self-contained, he’d get a little bit further on before looking at lyrics with Derek. I used to start the Revox and just play. Then, listening back, if phrases caught my ear, I’d develop them,” explains Ray. Derek elucidates his role: “Lyrically, it was partly abstract, but as the album title suggests, it was about getting out of the record deals and ugly contractual obligations and I think we felt free and at ease. Free Hand was much more personal than our previous album, The Power And The Glory, which was a statement on world affairs and how power corrupts, and the whole Nixon/Watergate thing. Free Hand looked at things that were personal to the band and what was going on immediately around us.”
As far as musical influences are concerned, the group were rarely tuned in to the sounds of their fellow proggers. “We never really listened to any of our contemporaries, not that I recall. For me it would be more like James Brown or things like that!” says Ray. “I listened to Charlie Parker. We listened to a lot of modern jazz, the American band Spirit, and Frank Zappa – Zappa was an influence, I have to say. Hot Rats was one of my favourite albums of that time,” Derek recalls. “We had such eclectic tastes and weren’t really interested in other bands labelled the same as us, although not for any particular reason,” says Ray. “Ray was classically trained on the violin, but we were both in pop bands in the late 60s,” says Derek. “R&B and soul were major factors in our upbringing and we loved that music, and Kerry was classically trained and considered Tchaikovsky a sort of mentor. Whatever was good we liked – ABBA or whatever – I don’t think we shut anything out.” “Those diverse backgrounds were also part of our secret,” reflects Ray, “Gary would play these kind of progressive, jazzy lines with a blues inflection, which made it quite unique, and the combination of all of us perhaps shouldn’t have worked but did.”
Displaying maybe some of Gentle Giant’s trademark precision and attention to detail, Ray Shulman isn’t about to give their 1975 album a completely uncritical ear. “Funnily enough, on Free Hand, some of it sounds a bit under-rehearsed to me. The next album, Interview, is a lot tighter playing wise. There are some loose bits on Free Hand, which kind of annoy me…” He won’t be drawn however on exactly what he might want to change. “All of it!” he exclaims initially, much to his compatriots’ amusement. “No, there are just some bits I hear now and go, ‘Hmm.’ It’s a great album, it’s just parts we could have done differently… and if I’d realised I would have commented at the time, but we didn’t have the time!” Minnear also recalls a missed opportunity, “One of my laments is the fact that the track Free Hand had a different ending live that Ray wrote – it was a much better ending than what I wrote on the album. Live Free Hand came over as a much more killer track when it went into this sort of interesting French waltz.” Derek, however, is unperturbed about any perceived weaknesses: “I’d rather do an Édith Piaf: ‘I regret nothing’ –  it was what it was,” he affirms. He is clear about something he particularly likes, though: “I think the beginning of Just The Same, with the finger snaps and the counterpoint piano and other instrumentation, that’s really clever. It’s pretty hard to hear where the downbeat is. Having dealt with many other bands [Shulman has worked in various record label executive roles over the last 30 years or so], there aren’t many who’d have started a song like that.”
Conversation moves over to Steven Wilson’s role in remixing and preparing the Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround sound versions. It’s been a positive working relationship since 2014’s re-release of The Power And The Glory, as Ray explains: “He originally contacted me through my involvement with DVD and Blu-ray authoring, and asked if we still had the original tapes for In A Glass House, because that was the one he could really see sounding better. Unfortunately, I had to tell him that they had gone forever. On some albums, like with some of the Octopus mixes, he said that he really couldn’t make them sound much better than the master we had, because he’s enough of a fan and technocrat that he knows what’s achievable. He’s a fan and wanted to remix stuff and we were like, ‘Well, yeah, okay.’ We had talked about getting some 5.1 mixes previously but Kerry and I felt that we didn’t have the experience or equipment, so he came along at absolutely the right time. I think we’re probably among the least fussy of the artists he’s worked with. Other projects give him explicit notes after every mix and he’s on to version five or more before they master. What he brings to it and what his ears suggest really works and we’re always really chuffed by what he does. He lightens everything up and there’s more space around everything – I don’t know if that’s a technical feature or whether it’s just his ears… I think probably it’s just his ears. I don’t think we’re ever done more than two revisions, have we, Kerry?” “No, it’s just been one or two places where it would be nice to hear some specific things,” agrees Minnear, “but usually what he brings out is very sensitive to what we were doing. You just have to mention something and he’s quick to see what you mean and he gets it.” Ray chips in. “Yeah, tiny bits really, nothing major.” “He’s really nice to work with as well,” offers Minnear. For Gentle Giant and Wilson fans alike, Derek has some additional breaking news and a heartfelt plea. “Ray has been working with Steven on two other albums, which will be released in the next few months: The Missing Piece and Interview. Hopefully, people will like the Free Hand remix enough to generate further interest. I really wish we could get hold of In A Glass House because it was a milestone for the band – I would love Steven to work on that, it’s a really interesting album. No one seems to know where the multitracks went. Could Prog put out an APB for it, because we would really love to find it? The best thing we could ever do would be to remix it and make it sound like it should have sounded, because it was done under such bizarre circumstances that it really deserves it.” “Possibly check in a skip outside WWA’s offices in Mayfair first!” quips Ray. Alongside the Atmos and 5.1 versions there’s also a Blu-ray included with Free Hand with specially created visuals accompanying each track created by Derek’s son, Noah.
Derek shares some final thoughts; “Everyone’s done their best possible work on this and it shows. Our music has really stood up and more and more young musicians and fans have caught on to what we were doing 40-45 years ago. We’re not Led Zeppelin, we’re not Pink Floyd – for that to have happened is very heartening. To know that what we did has some legacy to it. What we did was authentic, we weren’t following anyone, and the fact that the audience has become much, much larger is the most bizarre thing – kids are listening to it and trying to play it – something for all of us to be proud of.”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/on-reflection-gentle-giant-and-the-making-of-free-hand

Rilo Kiley - The Moneymaker

 

#Rilo Kiley #Jenny Lewis #indie rock #alt-pop #folk rock #alternative rock #music video

It's the prerogative and privilege of any pop act to change direction. It's one of the things that makes pop music so exciting. But change always carries a degree of risk, and in the case of Rilo Kiley's fourth album Under the Blacklight, it manifests a wonderful sense of irony: Under the Blacklight is Rilo Kiley's riskiest album because it's their album that takes the least risks. Finding the band's music polished to an almost blinding sheen, Blacklight is not a commercial album so much as Rilo Kiley's conception (or misconception) of what a commercial album is. It's their "Project Mersh", an alternate-universe sell-out move. But beneath that surface - and Under the Blacklight is at first listen almost overwhelmingly surface - Rilo Kiley must know they're full of shit. Either they're utterly serious about their flirtation with the mainstream or they're taking the piss with a wink. In both cases, the songs suffer a smothering slow death by context. At the same time, the fun - or maybe "fun" - disc stresses how humorless and full of shit Rilo Kiley's former indie brethren remain, scared stiff of the prospect of unabashed pop in the true please-the-masses sense. But it's still an audacious, fascinating exploration of banality, almost to a patronizing point. Perhaps it's no coincidence that the big, straight down the middle-sounding first single is called "The Moneymaker".
From note one, the album's musical allusions and the references come fast and furious, and are often strikingly specific. The mock swagger of "Moneymaker", for instance, sounds like Heart doing Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero", and the rest of the disc revels in similar oddball but specific collisions. The title track sounds like Aimee Mann writing a song for Mandy Moore. "Dejalo" is Rilo Kiley's take on Miami Sound Machine. "Dreamworld" is *Mirage-*era Fleetwood Mac. "Smoke Detector" is Blondie by way of the Beatles. "15" does blue-eyed soul like Dusty Springfield. And so on. The saving grace for something so shallow is, as usual, Jenny Lewis, a strikingly direct singer and an even better lyricist. Especially following the verbose More Adventurous, she's almost ruthlessly efficient with her words here, making the most of a few choice lines. "Smoke Detector" demonstrates nearly as many derivations and variations in meaning of the word "smoke" as there are of the word "fuck," including "to fuck." "I took a man back to my room," she coos. "I was smoking him in bed/ Yeah, I was smoking in bed." In "Close Call" Lewis wryly observes "funny thing about money for sex/ You might get rich but you'll die by it," while the title track features the withering pun of an aphorism "even dead men lie in their coffins." "15" tracks the seduction of a wounded and vulnerable young woman, ripe like a peach and "down for almost anything." Many of Lewis's other character-study lyrics plum the sexual, too, not like a cop-out coy pop princess (even though someone like, say, Hilary Duff could do a fine job with the obvious cell phone metaphor of "Breakin' Up") but in a grown up sort of way. Or at least a distorted, corrupted, grown-up-in-L.A. sort of way.
Ah, L.A., where there's a thrift shop on every corner, the breakfast spots bustle well into the night, the lines at clubland bathroom stalls snake to early 1980s lengths, acts get signed at karaoke bars, and the plastic surgeons know just the thing to do with all those rough edges. Forget that Rilo Kiley's songs namedrop Brighton, New York, and Laredo: Under the Blacklight adds up to the familiar headline "California Band Makes California Album." Were all the AOR indulgences at least tied together into a concept they might have been more easily forgiven. And were any of those lyrics a little more pointed and less generalized, like they were in the anomalously galvanizing anti-Bush protest "It's a Hit", they'd add up to more than just a 40-minute short story collection on tape (with incidental music). For the relative few who really, really care, debates may rage over whether Under the Blacklight marks some sort of progress, though what's just as likely is that Rilo Kiley's earlier output was artificially regressive in a bid for some sort of cred. But leave that stuff to the conspiracy theorists. To be fair, most everyone would be well served giving in and enjoying Rilo Kiley's pop for pop's sake, smart, dumb and especially smug in equal measure. Song by song it goes down awfully easy, but be warned. The band sure cleans up well, but there's a fair amount of guilty washing and hand-scrubbing to be done afterwards.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10555-under-the-blacklight/

Diane Coffee - Soon To Be, Won't To Be

 

#Diane Coffee #Shaun Fleming #ex-Foxygen #retro-1960s #retro-1970s #art rock #pop rock #psychedelic rock #glam rock #animated music video

A ’60s-ish rock-and-roll experience that recalls Phil Spector and doo-wop and leisure suits and even a slew of one-hit-wonder bands from back in the day are somehow updated and given present-day indie-rock treatment in this band that is named after a fictional character. No, I don’t think that Diane Coffee is front man Shaun Fleming’s alter ego, even though he crowds the issue a bit by wearing eye shadow and presenting in a distinctly feminine voice. Adding confusion to the issue is the band’s Wiki page — it states that “Diane Coffee is Shaun Fleming...,” and later, NPR likened Mr. Fleming to both David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Yes, Fleming’s a true Motown-glam show-stopper in that respect.
Diane Coffee’s leader and chief songwriter got his start in showbiz as a child actor by voicing characters in Disney cartoons. Later, he got busy with the drums and joined the band Foxygen, a group that started during high school in the L.A. suburb Fleming grew up in. The Diane Coffee thing came about after he moved to New York. There, he hunkered down with a guitar and wrote songs that would see the light of day via a DIY recording and subsequent release titled My Friend Fish. The pop-music critics at the internet music magazine Pitchfork resonated with the new music Fleming made; they, too, made subtle jokes about the band name, but they posted releases of Coffee’s singles and later gave Diane Coffee a performance slot in their own music festival.
Fleming got tired of New York, lives in Indiana now. He claims the band name is a hybridization combining the singer Diana Ross with a song titled “Mr. Coffee.” He once told a reporter to pick any name — just make good music. Which, at least on its face, appears to be what Fleming is doing.  From: https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2016/feb/24/of-note-man-called-diane-coffee/

 

Paula Cole - Sessions at West 54th 1997 / Live at The 9:30 Club 1997

Sessions at West 54th 1997

Live at The 9:30 Club 1997 - Part 1

Live at The 9:30 Club 1997 - Part 2

 #Paula Cole #singer-songwriter #alternative rock #alternative pop rock #indie rock #art rock #piano rock #1990s #live music video

Twenty-five years ago, singer-songwriter Paula Cole released her sophomore album and major-label debut, This Fire, which spawned the perennial future Dawson’s Creek anthem “I Don’t Want to Wait” and the top 10 hit “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” The latter was Cole’s breakthrough single and was nominated for Record and Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 1998 Grammys, but not everyone appreciated its irony or subtext. Cole, a staunch feminist, intended the moody tune — about a disillusioned, barefoot-and-pregnant housewife and her no-good cowboy husband — to be a social commentary on traditional gender stereotypes. But that message was lost on many listeners (including conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh!), who mistook it to be about a woman literally yearning for a macho Marlboro Man-type hero to come rescue her.
“Oh, yes. And they still believe that — there's still those folks holding out!” Cole laughingly tells Yahoo Entertainment/SiriusXM Volume. “It was so bizarre. You put out a piece of work and you know what it means, but then you let it go out into the world and it's like witnessing, I don't know, like an anthropological study. You learn about people. It was one of Rush Limbaugh’s favorite songs; he’d play it on his radio station! In some ways, it was horrific. In the moment, it was galling. I remember even though Spin magazine had been supportive of me, they didn't get it. One of the writers wrote that I was the ‘Tammy Wynette of Lilith Fair.’ And it was so the opposite — I was actually one of the most outspoken feminist dark horses on that whole stage.”
Cole explains that she was listening to a lot of British new wave band XTC at the time of the song’s creation. “Their writing is so funny and smart and clever, and I thought to myself, ‘I want to write something clever and turn it on its head.’ There's irony woven in, there's melancholia woven in, but from a woman's point of view. So, it really was like a gender-role wink-wink- nudge-nudge kind of laugh, kind of an examination of our society with some sadness, and with a little bit of a country song in there too. And then you blend it all together and there's this conversation and there's this learning — and confusion.”
Cole notes that “all the feminists got it” then and now (she’s very proud that indie-rock sister trio HAIM covered “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” in 2019), and that the song’s nuances were always better grasped by international audiences. “Another observation is that America has the fundamentalist, puritanical approach to things, but when I went to Europe, they so got it,” she recalls. “I remember in Spain especially, they loved the irony and the laughter — like, the ‘shiny gun’ is a phallic reference, totally tongue-in-cheek. Whereas this ‘shiny gun,’ America didn't get that.”
Along with the three nominations that “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” received at the 40th annual Grammy Awards, Cole was an overall seven-time nominee that year, winning in the Best New Artist category and making history as the first solo woman to be up for Producer of the Year. Cole reflects on that year — when some of the other major Grammy nominees were her fellow female singer-songwriters Shawn Colvin, Sheryl Crow, Jewel, Fiona Apple, and Lilith Fair organizer Sarah McLachlan, and playing Lilith Fair “felt like the original feeling of Woodstock” — fondly, even though her whirlwind success was admittedly daunting at the time.
“It you look at the Grammy nominations that year, it was really diverse. It was fantastic. I loved that time,” she says. “And the hip-hop scene then too, with Lauryn Hill and Missy Elliott and TLC and Lil’ Kim, was a really interesting time. Before, DJs were literally told not to play a woman after another woman on the radio, or you couldn't play more than one woman in an hour. It was difficult to move that needle, but we did move it. It did feel like we were changing culture a little bit. I think it kept coming back down to the art of the song and the point of view, being articulate and smart and badass; that perspective was embraced, and it didn't matter even what genre you were in. It was just about, do you have authority and authenticity in your voice? And the thing is, we're still here. All of those artists that we've named are still here. Like, we're in it for life. We're lifers.”
That being said, while Cole has released nine albums since This Fire, and is most definitely a lifer, she didn’t follow-up that double-platinum album with another overtly commercial release, and she has kept a relatively low profile ever since. “I felt like [Peter Sellers’s Being There character] Chauncey Gardner; it all happened very quickly,” she says of her ‘90s success. “I'm a wicked introvert, like a very thoughtful writer and kind of a shy person. And I was incredibly humbled and gratified by the success, but it was a lot to handle. I guess I wanted to shed off that ill-fitting snakeskin and retreat a little bit.” Cole’s third album, 1999's Amen, was therefore a massive stylistic departure from This Fire, a “neo-soul album with neo-soul influences” that, once again, was misunderstood by many fans.
“I didn't know necessarily what the public wanted, and I wasn't making my next album for that. I had no clue,” says Cole. “I just knew that I was listening to a lot of hip-hop and soul and Marvin Gaye's What's Going On album, and it just moved me so much. That album was really like a guide for what became Amen. I think it surprised people. You know, I'm a white girl and I've probably received some unnecessarily harsh criticism around that stylistic influence. But it was authentic to me. I felt like I wanted to sing about spirituality in a soulful way. I wanted to sing about social justice. I didn't want to sing about my boyfriend all the time. I wanted to expand upon lyrical themes, and weaving in social justice is really important to me.”
Cole took a seven-year hiatus after Amen to focus on motherhood, and she confesses, “I definitely thought about leaving the music business.” It was her idol Emmylou Harris, who had taken hiatuses in her own career, who ultimately convinced Cole to keep going. “She said to me, ‘You can't quit. It just happened too fast.’ For me, it happened really fast, and I needed to take myself away from that and find my authentic path and make my eras of different albums. You know, like Picasso had his ‘Pig’ era and his Blue Period, and Joni Mitchell had her Mingus album and everyone dumped on her for doing that. So, I just have to be truthful to myself. I can't predict what people will like. I needed to have my daughter and take some time, and now I'm back and on my own label, and it's much more flowing and prolific and free. And I'm so much happier.”
And so Cole, a self-described “frustrated jazz singer” who says she thinks “about race every day because my daughter's biracial,” continues to follow her own path. She just released her 11th, social-justice-oriented album, American Quilt, a collection of traditional folk covers that includes one original composition, “Hidden in Plain Sight (I Dream),” inspired by historical stories about slave quilts during the Underground Railroad era. She admits she still has some mixed feelings about the This Fire/Amen period of her career, because at the time she “got caught in a corrupt record deal [with Imago/Warner]. I'm still dealing with all that. They don’t reissue or remaster my work from that, even though this year is the 25th anniversary of This Fire, so it's really frustrating. I feel like I'm kind of locked, like that part of my life is locked in a cage, like inhumanely locked in.”
However, a few years ago, Cole decided to re-record her above-mentioned other big ‘90s hit, “I Don’t Want to Wait.” And after the song had not been featured on streaming or DVD versions of that TV series for years because Sony had only purchased the on-air rights to the track, Cole’s new version has finally been restored to all six Dawson’s Creek seasons on Netflix — which, in a full-circle development, has boosted what she describes as her “tortoise”-like career.
“I can feel it at the shows; I can feel it in the new fans that are coming to my socials,” Cole marvels. “The millennials knew “I Don’t Want to Wait” from the original Dawson's Creek, and then it kind of disappeared. And now, again, it's starting. It's really sweet. It's really sweet to see it touch new generations. That's got to be one of the best feelings in the world, when new young people are finding your work — and they find it for themselves, without bias, without context, and they just love it for what it is and in its simplest form. I love it. It's just so beautiful.”  From: https://www.yahoo.com/video/paula-cole-recalls-how-her-biggest-90-s-hit-was-misunderstood-it-was-horrific-184814249.html

New Candys - Sun is Gone

 #New Candys #psychedelic rock #alternative rock #neo-psychedelia #post-punk #Italian #music video

I find this record simply enthralling. Stars Reach The Abyss. New Candys. Doped, sedated, highly pop-psychedelic and buzzing in keeping a low profile. Foot and root into The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Black Angels, The Velvet Underground, The Warlocks. And in whateverelse these bands I cited keep their feet and roots in. A long walk through the desert under the burning Sun.
A lysergic record, actually: You fall in a trap while chasing unicorns in Half-Heart and get high eating the sand with Dry Air Everywhere; then you can only stay down on the ground, moving your hand in the air trying to catch the little fairies flying up your nose with Sun Is Gone ('Till Day Returns): highly lyrical, with sitar sounds and percussions. Give a look to their stage set up, I love it. Then it is again time for more black magic and visions chanted by the slow pace and saturation of Meltdown Corp. There are two singles here, Black Beat and Blue Magic Hat. Then you can count the endless black and white rounds of a rotating hypnosis spiral with Welcome To The Void Temple. Again: lay down on bed and listen to Nibiru. Then it's a romance with Butterfly Net. From Treviso (northern Italy), an excellence for a debut record such it goes mesmeric along every track: it is like  Foolica records had stolen this band from ATP's roster.  From: https://www.inkoma.com/k/4012/

Toni Childs - Welcome To The World

 #Toni Childs #alternative rock #folk rock #world music #contemporary folk rock #art pop #singer-songwriter #1990s #music video

Toni Childs’ musical compass has taken her north, south, east and west. Seeking inspiration for her third album, the American singer decamped to Madras, India, with a 24-track digital recording unit. It wasn’t her first field trip though. Childs’ debut, Union (1988), had been partially recorded in Swaziland, where she incorporated African voices into her art pop. (Fun fact: Union also features Marillion’s Steve Hogarth on keyboards.) Working with Indian musicians, Childs demoed four brand new songs in November 1992.
Womb, lyrically about a baby that is apprehensive about leaving its amniotic nest to enter the unknown world, suggested a conceptual direction for the rest of the album.The Woman’s Boat starts with that song of birth and ends with Death. The intervening nine songs trace a lifecycle of womanhood with all its triumphs and tribulations. Heavy stuff. But then Childs had plenty of life experience to draw upon. At 15, she ran away from the religious home she was raised in. Her early music career in Los Angeles foundered when she was briefly imprisoned for smuggling cocaine. A move to London heralded a fresh start. It was there that Childs befriended Peter Gabriel’s guitarist, David Rhodes, who became a key player on her early albums.
The Woman’s Boat was recorded at Gabriel’s Real World studios, which accounts for the album’s credits reading like a WOMAD festival bill. It features players of non-western instruments such as tamboura, mridangam, moorsing and didgeridoo, plus Pakistani superstar Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Belgian/African group Zap Mama. Producer David Bottrill also enlisted Talk Talk drummer Paul Webb, Trey Gunn on stick and Robert Fripp on guitar. Oh, and Peter Gabriel himself duets with Childs on I Met A Man.
Toni Childs’ utterly distinctive voice — as earthy and celestial as that of a gospel singer — sits atop the album’s verdant textures. On I Just Want Affection, the sultry desire of her vocal breaks through the cool reserves of the ethereal, bowed notes of an Indian sarangi. Her voice darts between the sinister shadows of Fripp’s soundscapes on Predator, and she sings with force-10 gusto over the heavy artillery of programmed beats on Lay Down Your Pain.
Upon release, The Woman’s Boat sunk without a trace. It would be 15 years before Childs released another record. Now living in Australia, she has since released several excellent albums via her website but The Woman’s Boat remains the album in which her musical compass pointed true north.  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/toni-childs-the-womans-boat-its-prog-jim-but-not-as-we-know-it

Calexico - Falling From The Sky

 #Calexico #Americana #indie/alternative rock #alt-country #Tejano #post-rock #music video

Calexico is a American indie rock band formed in 1996, in Tucson, Arizona, by Joey Burns and John Convertino, who were members of the band Giant Sand at the time. The duo’s distinctive sound is driven by a blend of Americana, Tex-Mex, and post-rock influences. They have released 10 studio albums, including their critically acclaimed 2003 album Feast of Wire. Over the years, they have collaborated with various artists and musicians such as Iron & Wine, Neko Case, and Mariachi Luz de Luna. In 2017, they released their latest album The Thread That Keeps Us. Calexico’s music has been featured in films, TV shows, and commercials, and they have toured extensively in the US and internationally. They have become one of the most respected and influential indie rock bands of their generation, praised for their unique sound and impressive live performances.  From: https://radio.callmefred.com/en/artist-biography/calexico-biography/

Calexico have shared a new video for "Falling From the Sky", a cut from their new LP Edge of the Sun that features Band of Horses' Ben Bridwell. Bridwell doesn't appear in the video; rather, it stars José González as the caretaker for a loved one who happens to be a giant, writhing, worm-like creature.
Director Mikel Cee Karlsson said of the video: The ideas for this video have been lingering for a while, ever since I saw Albin Karlsson and Björn Renner's worm-like creation made for a show at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm. In original form, the "worm" was strictly covered in black leather. But I wanted to make it more like a living thing, like an evolutionary side step, a creature that is stuck in its codependency and has rather few possibilities in this world but still has the capacity to dream of better things. I also had the idea that I wanted to make a two part video on the same story and tell it from two different perspectives. When I heard Calexico's "Falling from the Sky" I felt that I heard the perspective of the creature, or rather the perspective of anyone who find themselves in a similar mindset or situation. So, this video is actually part I of II, or more precisely, perspective I of II of this relationship.  From: https://pitchfork.com/news/59376-jose-gonzalez-cares-for-a-creepy-worm-creature-in-calexicos-falling-from-the-sky-video/

Żywiolak - Bóstwa

 #Zywiolak #Slavic folk music #folk rock #world music #folk punk #folk metal avant-folk #neo-pagan folk #Polish #music video

Żywiołak, initially formed in Warsaw in 2005, is a Polish folk rock band steeped in mythos. Its name references the Elemental, a magical being said to harness the power of nature in the form of air, fire, water, or earth. Their lyrics sing of epic battles (in Wojownik, or Warrior) and explore the traditions of the early peoples of Poland, including the Vandals, a Germanic tribe that originally lived in Southern Poland and whose conquests spanned throughout Europe (in Epopeja Wandalska, or Vandal Epic). Żywiołak revives the history of its native nation while also connecting to a larger global community.
Before the release of their debut album, Nowa Ex-tradycja (New World Tradition) in 2008, Żywiołak’s line-up was in flux. A percussion instrumentalist, Maciej Dymek, joined original members Robert Jaworski and Robert Wasilewski and was followed by two female vocalists named Anucha Piotrowska and Izabella Byra. From 2008-2011, singer Monika Sadkowska replaced Byra. Following her stint with Żywiołak, Sadkowska pursued climate activism and worked with the World Wildlife Fund.
Musically, Żywiołak blends classical folk instruments with rock and metal elements like distorted guitar and heavy bass. Many tracks feature the hurdy gurdy, a crank-operated instrument with similar range to a violin found across cultures in Medieval Europe. In addition, the female vocalists occasionally utilize diaphony, a dissonant vocal harmony found in traditional Slavic cultures, to create tension and contribute to the witchy feel of many of their tracks.
Despite Catholicism’s religious dominance in Poland, Żywiołak is unafraid to reference pagan magic, evil spirits, and witchcraft. Oko Dybuka (Eye of the Dybbuk), a track on their first album, references a malevolent ghost from Jewish folklore. Czarodzielnica (Witch’s Night) is a vivid incantation, a song that invites in a myriad of mythical mischief makers including Slavic folk icon Baba Yaga, who often appears as an old crone who lives in a house with legs.
The song Bóstwa (Deities), included on 2017 album Pieśni pół/nocy (Midnight Songs), mirrors Żywiołak’s place as an ambassador between Slavic folk tradition and modern, Western rock through its depiction of Kupala, a pagan holiday celebrated on the longest day of the year. Originally practiced as fertility rites and an homage to the Sun, Kupala became Ivan Kupala, and fused with the Christian John the Baptist in a process known as syncretism.
Istanbuł (Istanbul) begins with an acknowledgment of the social effects of Catholicism and embraces Europe’s religious diversity. This track is featured on Żywiołak’s concept album Globalna Wiocha (Global Village), where the band composed songs based on major cities in Europe, including Moscow, Berlin, and Oslo. Through this album, Żywiołak reveals its modern, pan-European stance without losing the pride of its original Polish source material.  From: https://popkult.org/zywiolak/

Genesis - Pop Shop - Belgian TV 1972

Part 1

Part 2

 #Genesis #Peter Gabriel #Phil Collins #Steve Hackett #progressive rock #art rock #symphonic prog #theatrical rock #1970s #music video

In the early 1970s, legendary prog-rock band Genesis were at perhaps the first pivotal moment in the band’s long and storied career. The group — consisting at the time of core members vocalist Peter Gabriel, bassist Mike Rutherford and keyboardist Tony Banks — had hired a new drummer named Phil Collins in 1970 after placing an ad in Melody Maker. The band would also bring on guitarist Steve Hackett a year later. But adding future rock stars didn’t guarantee immediate success. Genesis struggled to gain footing in their native UK and in 1971 played their first overseas gigs in Belgium. Around the same time, Genesis began work on their third studio album, Nursery Cryme, which came out in November 1971. But the band’s penchant for experimentation didn’t sit well with UK crowds. Mainland Europe, however, was more receptive and the album did well in places like Italy where Genesis would subsequently tour to enthusiastic audiences. During the touring around Nursery Cryme, the band also returned to Belgium where they performed for a television program called Pop Shop on March 20, 1972. For their Pop Shop performance, Genesis offered up three songs from Nursery Cryme, the experimental epics — at over eight minutes — “The Fountain Of Salmacis,” “The Musical Box” and “The Return Of The Giant Hogweed.” “Twilight Alehouse” — which would later appear as the B-side to the band’s first charting single, “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)” — fit into the second slot in the band’s four-song set.  From: https://www.jambase.com/article/genesis-pop-shop-1972

It’s been 40 years since Genesis recorded “Nursery Cryme,”, the album that cemented the early Genesis sound, and one considered by many to be among the greatest artistic achievements of progressive rock’s golden era. Along with contemporaries Yes, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Genesis pushed the boundaries of rock music both lyrically and instrumentally. All of the essential elements of what has since come to be known as “prog” were present on “Nursery Cryme”: fantastic, often bizarre lyrics; long, thematic songs; an obvious classical influence and departure from blues-based traditions; and unparalleled musical virtuosity.
The band married some of the heaviest jams of the day to acoustic, pastoral passages to create a tapestry of light and shade, which confused some American audiences at first, says guitarist Steve Hackett. “Our idea of a guitar-based tune usually meant that the 12-string [acoustics] carried it,” he says. “Often we would have three 12-string guitars playing at once — Mike, Tony and me — which created a sound like a harpsichord, and you couldn’t really pin down what you were hearing. Mike Rutherford was very into Joni Mitchell at the time, which also influenced our acoustic side. Unfortunately, we tended to get shouted down in America on our first tours during some of our quieter moments, because people wanted to hear boogie music.”
Members of Genesis drew their inspiration from classical and folk music as much as rock and blues, says Hackett, who began his musical journey as a blues harmonica player. “I grew up listening to the blues and Bach, and I never thought that they would meet and create a third thing,” he says. “The two styles seemed to be at odds with each other.” Although it’s hard to hear much overt blues influence in early Genesis, Hackett points out that most of the innovation sonically and musically on the electric guitar in the 1960s and early 1970s came straight out of the blues. Even the most eclectic rock guitar heroes of the day were still firmly rooted in the blues. The music of Genesis—and Hackett’s guitar playing in particular—offered an enticing alternative for rock fans who were becoming bored with standard beats and I-IV-V chord progressions. “Nursery Cryme” explored odd time signatures, modal compositions, and introduced a new technique to rock music that would redefine electric guitar playing in the next decade: two-handed tapping.
“I came upon the tapping technique when I was trying to play Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue,” says Hackett. “I realized that I couldn’t play it the way I wanted to hear it using standard technique, so I started tapping onto the fretboard with my right hand. I used that technique all over “Nursery Cryme including parts of ‘The Musical Box’ and ‘The Return of the Giant Hogweed.’” Tony Banks sometimes harmonized Hackett’s legato lead guitar lines on the keyboard for dramatic effect, often using a distorted amplifier or fuzz box to achieve a similar sound. “We had a guitarist who was trying to sound like a keyboard player and a keyboard player who was very good at sounding like a guitarist,” Hackett observes.
Part of the reason that the English progressive rock bands of the early 1970s drew from such varied influences was the wide variety of music broadcast on British radio prior to the deregulation of the airwaves. “Radio was in very different shape when we were young, and I think that that helped to color the progressive music that followed,” says Hackett. “Today, many stations only play one style of music, and I suspect the people who grow up listening to this stuff may be subject to less-wide musical tastes than the ones that we had while developing our musical base. We were listening to blues, rock and jazz from America, and we were also hearing our European roots, all on the same station.”
An essential ingredient in the Genesis sound that was shared by other progressive rock bands is the use of the Mellotron, an electro-mechanical ancestor of the modern synthesizer, to achieve an orchestral sound. “We weren’t trying to sound classical, but the spooky, eerie quality of the Mellotron flutes and violins became a big part of our sound,” says Hackett. “I was in love with the sound of it for a very long time — although they were incredibly temperamental and took four men to lift, like pallbearers.” Gabriel also occasionally played flute with the band, adding yet another dimension to the sound.
Faux harpsichords and orchestras aside, however, there are musical passages on “Nursery Cryme” (e.g., the screaming guitar in the middle section of “The Musical Box”) that are as prototypically heavy metal as anything by Sabbath, Zeppelin or Deep Purple. To achieve those heavy guitar sounds, Hackett used his trusty Les Paul Custom through a Hiwatt stack with various fuzz boxes and an octave divider. He also used a volume pedal to precisely control the dynamics of his guitar to fit the album’s many moods. “Sometimes I’d be playing distorted rock guitar weaving through these delicate textures, so I had to play very quietly,” says Hackett. “I’d be playing pastoral rock guitar, if that’s not an oxymoron. Often I had to play almost like a reed instrument. At times, I even tried to sound like a synthesizer or like a voice.”
The complex music of Genesis required a team player approach from Hackett, which usually led him far afield of pure bombast. “With the core team of Mike, Phil and Tony forming the nucleus of the sound and turning out those dense, very beautiful textures, it was often difficult to be able to impose anything on the music that was relevant,” says Hackett. “So sometimes I’d beef up the bass line; other times I would highlight part of what was going on with the piano. I think that approach helped to create interesting textures, and it did enrich the sound. I was trying to think like a producer or an arranger, which has little to do with guitar heroics. I was very concerned with subtlety, perhaps more than I am today.”
Lyrically, Genesis usually shied away from “the mating ritual,” as Hackett dryly puts it, in favor of fairy tales and mythology — a direct contrast to the approach that the Rolling Stones and other English groups were taking at the time. Some critics complained that the band’s lyrical approach felt more like research than soul-searching. “It’s not that we weren’t writing romantic music,” says Hackett. “It was just romantic in a different way — we were romancing something else. Our lyrics were often third-hand and not based on personal experience, which is quite typical of the progressive approach. That’s not the approach I’ve taken post-Genesis — personal experience is much more in evidence — but these were early days, and we took a lot from literature.”
The “progressive rock” label did not exist at the time, Hackett points out, and the emerging style was often tagged “art rock” or “theatrical rock.” Indeed, Genesis was one of the first groups to combine rock and theater, a strategy that made the band’s surreal lyrics easier for audiences to digest. “Once we got our own light show and stage set and took control of the visual aspect of our performances, Peter decided that he wanted to be the literal depiction of the action,” says Hackett.
Gabriel’s thespian talents helped differentiate Genesis from the other prog acts of the day, and he used masks and bizarre costumes to bring the songs to life. “Peter had always approached lyrics rather like an actor, so it was a natural evolution,” says Hackett. “But it wasn’t a decision he ran through the band in committee. He just showed up one night and that’s the way it was on stage.” Audiences loved it, or at least paid attention. “When we were starting out, often we would be second or third on the bill, and people would be milling about, ignoring us, going to the bar,” says Hackett. “That changed as the show became more theatrical, with Peter acting out the parts.”
“Foxtrot,” the follow-up to “Nursery Cryme,” continued in the same musical vein and generated better sales as Genesis started to make a name for itself in the UK. By 1973’s “Selling England by the Pound,” the group had earned itself some high-profile fans. Hackett describes an enthusiastic Peter Gabriel bouncing into the rehearsal room after hearing that John Lennon had mentioned in an interview that he “loved” the new Genesis album. “We were incredibly proud of that,” says Hackett. “At a time when we could still hardly get a gig in the States, we had a good review from a great man. We thought, ‘Wow, maybe we’re good.’”
In hindsight, the group may have reached its creative zenith by 1973. “Selling England,” most critics agree, perfected the blueprint that “Nursery Cryme” had established two years earlier. The musicians were at the top of their game, and compositions flowed easily despite the stylistic shifts and challenging subject matter. “A song like ‘Dancing with the Moonlit Knight’ really runs the gamut stylistically,” says Hackett. “It goes from a Scottish Plainsong to English hymnal to jazz fusion to something we used to call ‘Disney,’ or more of a tone poem approach.” Although Genesis toured relentlessly, the band was not focused on success as an end game in its early years. “Our concern was quality, and we had a lot of support from our management and record company behind the premise that if we aimed for excellence, success would follow as natural consequence,” Hackett explains.
One common misconception about early Genesis is that Gabriel wrote all of the lyrics. This was not the case until his last album with the group, 1975’s “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.” “We all contributed lyrically, until Peter decided that he wanted to write all the words he would sing, and that’s understandable — things often tend to sound best when a singer is singing his own lyrics,” says Hackett. “I was quite happy to concentrate on being the guitarist. You have to be very flexible if you’re in a band, especially when it’s a band of writers; you’ve got to be prepared to wear certain hats and take the hats off, from time to time, to make room for someone else.”
“Lamb Lies Down” also marked a major change in the group’s sound, taking Genesis out of the English countryside and into more modern, chaotic, urban imagery. “It was a little closer to mainstream rock, and I was concerned about how that would go over in America — you know, taking New York to the New Yorkers,” Hackett recalls. He needn’t have worried, as the album still stands as one of the group’s most critically acclaimed works. “Of course, we had our equipment stolen and ransomed at the beginning of our U.S. tour in true New York fashion,” Hackett quips. “We had to fight for it every step of the way.”
Although Hackett would stay on to record two more excellent albums with Genesis, the now-classic “Trick of the Tail” and “Wind and Wuthering,” the band’s sound changed as Collins ably carved out his identity as lead vocalist. “Genesis spanned a lot of eras, and as the lineup changed, the sound went in an increasingly commercial direction,” says Hackett. “The earlier stuff was more idealistic, I feel, in that what we were trying to do was original music — and that’s what seems to turn on musicians the most. It’s been 40 years, and those early albums keep selling. I’m happy to have been a part of that history.”  From: https://www.goldminemag.com/features/the-classic-era-of-genesis-examined-1971-1975

 

His Name Is Alive - Are We Still Married

 #His Name is Alive #experimental rock #dream pop #avant garde #alternative rock #indie rock #neo-psychedelia #art rock #Quay Brothers #animated music video #stop-motion

This was the first music video that the Quay Brothers were entirely responsible for, having previously contributed animated sequences to Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' (d. Stephen R. Johnson) in 1986. They had previously been approached by Warren Defever, the Michigan-based founder of the musical project His Name Is Alive (alongside vocalist Karen Oliver and drummer Damian Lang), who wanted to licence extracts from Street of Crocodiles (1986) for use in one of their music videos. The Quays refused permission, but were sufficiently intrigued by Defever's work to agree to shoot a music video for him from scratch.
'Are We Still Married?' was originally released in 1991 as a track on His Name Is Alive's second album Home Is In Your Head. This is very typical of the band's work, and indeed many other releases on the 4AD label, creating a dreamlike ambience through selective distortion of instrumentation and vocals, to the point where it's often hard to make out specific lyrics. Naturally, this approach suited the Quays down to the ground, and they duly ignored the song's textual content in favour of a typically oblique evocation of childhood.
The most immediately striking image is of a young girl, whose head is barely visible, but whose ankles expand and contract in a rhythmic motion. This looks as though it was computer-enhanced, but the effect was in fact entirely mechanical - the Quays' regular technical collaborator Ian Nicholas built a hinge mechanism in the girl's ankles. Around her, a somewhat moth-eaten white rabbit plays a manic solo game of ping-pong.
The video was initially inspired by an image by an anonymous photographer of a girl standing in front of a door holding a paddle. There was also a white doorknob in the picture, which the Quays initially mistook for a ping-ping ball. Although the Quays claimed not to have read Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, there are unmistakable echoes, from the general theme of little girls growing and shrinking before one's eyes, mysterious bottles of unidentified substances and doorknobs that turn into ping-pong balls.  From: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1222875/index.html

His Name is Alive are a rather eccentric experimental rock project from Livonia, Michigan, currently based in Detroit. Founded in 1990 by guitarist, composer, and sole constant member Warren Defever, the band is fond of Genre Roulette, having recorded songs ranging from Dream Pop, alternative rock, funk, prog rock, and Baroque Pop to experimental noise and gothic ambient compositions. The band was originally signed to 4AD Records, under whom they released a string of critically acclaimed records throughout The '90s, but were dropped by the label in the early 2000's after failing to meet sales expectations. After this, the band went defunct until 2006, when Defever revived the project with a new lineup. Since then, the band has steadily released new records and shows no signs of slowing down.  From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/HisNameIsAlive

Blackshape - Itiiitiatiihylihyl

 #Blackshape #math rock #progressive rock #post-hardcore #post-rock #progressive metal #music video

Blackshape’s self-titled debut has a hell of a lot going for it. For one, the record sounds phenomenal. Producer Matt Goldman and mastering engineer Troy Glessner bring the same glossy, cinematic palette here that they brought to, respectively Underoath‘s Define the Great Line and the Devin Townsend Project’s Addicted: spacious percussion, searing guitars and bass that has plenty of presence (if not always much definition). Especially considering this is their first-ever release, Goldman and Glessner provide a sleek coat of polish to the album that gives Blackshape an impressive confidence and a sense of credibility, setting them apart from the many small-time bedroom projects that populate the modern math rock scene.
Moreover, the band employs a blend of styles and influences that play together every bit as nicely as you’d expect them to. They root their sound in the CHON school of math rock—equal parts Explosions in the Sky twinkle and Animals As Leaders prog muscle — but they augment the recipe with some squalling forays into post-hardcore and metalcore, even evoking bits and pieces of Rolo Tomassi in places. As a result, guitarists Scott Shephard and Joe Woit lean away from the noodling tap-a-thons of their contemporaries and move towards a more breakdown-oriented approach, patiently building and releasing blistering, metallic climaxes with an impressive sense of restraint. The combination is, more than anything, well-balanced. The hints of punkish snarl give the tricky time signatures more heft, and the airy post-rock atmospheres give the punchier moments a sense of sophistication. It’s heavy but not brutish, pretty but not cloying and technically accomplished without ever seeming overindulgent.
So here we have a good, sturdy formula that isn’t too played-out, executed well and given an immaculate studio treatment. All should be well, however, despite that strong foundation, much of Blackshape ends up feeling somewhat plain — not bad per se, but never quite rising to meet the band’s obvious potential. Far as I can tell, the crux of the issue lies in the band’s compositional priorities. They have an undeniable gift for atmospheres, and they certainly know their way around a crescendo, but in-between the two they seem to struggle with melody.
The entire band tends to blend into a cohesive whole throughout the album, but as a result, nothing really takes center stage and offers a single, strong musical idea to latch onto, and that refreshing lack of showoff virtuosity ends up doubling as a stifling reluctance to dazzle. The guitar leads bind themselves too tightly to the grooves; they rarely spring forth with a solo or even a catchy lick or riff, and when they do it comes off as textural playing that adds welcome color to the proceedings but can’t quite hold my attention on its own. This is only underscored when the Sigur Rós-esque “Itiiitiatiihylihyl”, the album’s only non-instrumental track, proves by far the most impactful offering here — it’s the only point where a clear lead melody emerges and, more importantly, sticks. The vocals fill a space in the band’s songwriting that they often leave conspicuously empty elsewhere.  From: https://www.slugmag.com/music/local-music-reviews/blackshape/

A-Wa - Habib Galbi

 #A-Wa #Yemenite music #Mizrahi #world music #ethnic #Middle Eastern music #electronica #traditional #music video

Let us introduce you to a band of sisters with the last name Haim. No, not the ones you’re thinking of. Tair, Liron, and Tagel Haim are sisters from southern Israel, and together they form a band called A-WA (Arabic for “Yes,” pronounced AY-wah). “It felt like music chose us,” Tair Haim explains. “We really have so much love to give, and so much good music, and we are all about bringing people together.”
Their musical style is unique — it’s a combination of traditional Yemenite songs, electronic music, and hip-hop. In 2016, their song “Habib Galbi” (“Love Of My Heart”) went viral, becoming the first song in Arabic to reach the top of the Israeli charts. Their debut album, also called Habib Galbi, uses traditional Yemenite folk chants and re-imagines them with electronic beats, pop music, and more. Their music is a powerful mix of modern and traditional, emphasizing their Jewish Arabic roots. And they’re the coolest. Seriously. “Since a very young age, we all discovered the love of music. I am the oldest sister, and I was always dancing and singing around the house. We grew up in a very small desert village in southern Israel called Shaharut. There weren’t many kids around so we were always best friends,” Tair told me. “We were known at school as the musical family from Shaharut.”
Their new album translates to My Home Is In My Head, and it tells the story of their great-grandmother Rachel’s journey from Yemen to Israel. “She used to say, whenever she was asked in Yemen, why are you always traveling from one place to another? Why don’t you stay in one place, and she said, ‘I can’t stay in one place. My home is in my head.’ She was a very legendary character in our family; we heard a lot of stories about her from our grandma, and from our dad,” Tair says. Their great-grandmother came to Israel from Yemen as part of Operation Magic Carpet, in which 49,000 Yemenite Jews were airlifted to Israel between 1949 and 1950. She wouldn’t agree to stay in an arranged marriage, Tair explains, and so she traveled as a single mother. Now the Haim sisters want to tell her story. It’s a “courageous story – traveling from Yemen to Israel, coming to Israel as a refugee, and starting from scratch. And being such a strong woman. We always laugh and say she was a feminist without even knowing what one was,” Tair explains. “We had so many things we already wanted to say, and we felt like we could use her life story and her voice — things she wanted to say, but couldn’t – and kind of blended with our voices. Each song on the album represents a piece of her life.”  From: https://www.heyalma.com/a-wa-a-band-of-yemenite-jewish-sisters-want-you-to-feel-at-home/

Ben Folds Five - Song for the Dumped

 #Ben Folds Five #alternative/indie rock #power pop #piano rock #1990s #music video

“Song for the Dumped” is a breakup song. The singer rants in an honest and explicit way about the girl who just dumped him. The simplicity of his anger makes the song powerful. He just wants his money back. And his black t-shirt. After everything, it seems like the least she could do.
Shortly before the song, an argument between the band can be heard:
(I hope we got that on tape, because it was a really…)
(Is someone saying something?)
(…it was a really…)
(I don’t know)
(…I was thinking…)
(No, I think I hear some kind of noise — cut that shit!)
(I was thinking about, you know, respecting your work with Steven and…)

The argument was removed from some pressings of the album, although it seems to appear on current CD and digital releases. In 1999, Folds said: The talking before ‘Song for the Dumped’ was a painfully documented real argument that kept bringing up bad feelings. We decided to get rid of it and let the first pressings be for collectors. Better to keep the band together. It was ugly.

I was writing ‘One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces’ and it seemed a little complicated to Darren. And Darren, as a joke—and I guess to make a point—wrote the lyrics to ‘Song for the Dumped’ (without any music or anything) in my notebook next to ‘Dwarf.’ Like, ‘Here’s the way you should write a song. It shouldn’t be that complicated. It should be this simple.’ And I took that one day and made some music to it and showed it to him and we started playing it on tour. I don’t think we ever actually thought that would make the album, but it made the album.

So you wanted
To take a break
Slow it down some
And have some space
Well, fuck you too

Give me my money back
Give me my money back
You bitch
I want my money back
And don't forget
Don't forget
To give me back my black T-shirt

I wish I hadn't
Bought you dinner
Right before you
Dumped me on your front porch

So you wanted
To take a break
Slow it down some
And have some space

Give me my money back
Give me my money back
You bitch
I want my money back
And don't forget
Don't forget

From: https://genius.com/Ben-folds-five-song-for-the-dumped-lyrics

Ben Folds Five is an alternative rock trio formed in 1993 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The group comprises Ben Folds (lead vocals, piano, keyboards, melodica, principal songwriting), Robert Sledge (bass, contrabass, synthesizer, backing vocals), and Darren Jessee (drums, percussion, backing vocals, songwriter, and co-writer for some songs). The group achieved mainstream success in the alternative, indie and pop music scenes. The band is best known for the hit single "Brick" from their 1997 album Whatever and Ever Amen, which gained airplay on many mainstream radio stations. During their seven years together, the band released three proper studio records, one retrospective album of B-sides and outtakes, and eight singles. They also contributed to a number of soundtracks and compilations. Ben Folds Five disbanded in October 2000, apparently under amicable circumstances.  From: https://www.lyrics.com/artist/Ben-Folds-Five/359896

Laura Love - Sessions at West 54th 1998 / Philadelphia Folk Festival 1997

Sessions at West 54th 1998 

Philadelphia Folk Festival 1997

 #Laura Love #folk #Afro-Celtic #Americana #Afro-Carribean #folk rock #funk #R&B #world music #singer-songwriter #live music video

Singer-songwriter Laura Love has seemed like music's Next Big Thing for years now, a Northwest favorite occasionally brushing with national acclaim for her "Afro-Celtic" mix of exuberance, social conscience and heart. At 44, with a decade of comfort-level success behind her, the West Seattle resident has published a memoir with an accompanying CD. But "You Ain't Got No Easter Clothes" has nothing to do with Love's career, her Carnegie Hall showstopper or her folky-bluesy-jazzy soulful sound. Instead, it's about a child's bewildered love for her mentally unstable mother and a childhood so harrowing it could be used to argue for leniency if she ever committed a crime. Consider this, for instance: The scene where Love slips a noose around her own neck on her mother's command -- after being ordered to kill the pet cat as part of a planned family suicide -- is only a crest in the book's hills and valleys of tragedy. The memoir could have been a horror show, but it's eased by wry humor and amazing grace. And for Love, whose music often has been more global than autobiographical, the publishing debut is "just gravy" after the cathartic process of writing down her life. She wrote without expecting anything to come of it, she said, and found a literary agent through an Internet search after the manuscript was complete.
"I just wanted it to be written down somehow, even if it was just for me.” said Love. "There are few experiences in adult life that loom as large in my head and are as close to the surface as those childhood memories." Love and her older sister, Lisa, were raised in Nebraska by their mother, a highly intelligent, gifted teacher who was fearsomely mentally ill. Their father, Preston Love, one-time sax player for Count Basie, they were told, had died in a car crash when the girls were young. With novel-worthy characters and plot twists, Love describes how she and her sister stumbled through youth in an orphanage, a series of foster homes and their unstable home. Their poverty reached the point where a burglar who kicked down the door told the frightened children who were home alone, "Damn, y'all got less than I do."
The breaking point came not with those life-and-death struggles, but when a neighbor girl mocked Love as she walked home from church with her family.
"You ain't got no Easter clothes!" the girl taunted, as if Love's mother walking right beside her could provide no protection. Love attacked the girl like an animal, with claws and teeth. It's a scene that's hard to square now, with her generous voice and laid-back grin. "I just fell from grace that day, so hard," she said. Love knows she could have tipped either way in life. She said she needed to decide in those years "whether I was going to be a thug or enrolled in society." She was saved, she thinks, by the safety net of social programs such as Head Start and WIC, and the loving example of good teachers and social workers. "To be kind has always felt more powerful to me than to be mean and cruel," Love said. That goodness more than balanced the harsh realities she saw, such as the landlords who tried to turn her away when she began supporting herself at age 16, saying "we've never rented to coloreds."
Love committed her own cruelties and mistakes on the way to adulthood and they're also recounted in the book as plainly as if she were speaking from the stage, telling the whole story beginning to end. Where she did end is with understanding and forgiveness for her mother -- and for an unexpected figure, her father. As a teenager, Love stumbled on an advertisement for a Preston Love concert, talked her way into the show despite being underage and saw, in a shocking flash, that her father wasn't dead after all. He had fathered Love and her sister while married to another woman and raising his own family, she wrote. He was pleasant enough to Love, but never a father figure who took responsibility for her and her sister or felt any blame for the catastrophes they suffered. In her youth, "I was very angry about that and bitter," she said. As an adult, she worked on finding her own forms of family instead of brooding on all that she had lacked. College helped give her a broader perspective. "I've always lived better than 90 percent of the world," she said.
Today, Love is focused on those big-picture wrongs, more inclined to be angry about political cuts to the social programs that helped her, for instance, than to brood about the individual wrongs she endured. "For the most part, I'm grateful for all those things that happened," she said. "All the bad things, too." There's a joy in not being a powerless child anymore, she said, in not being forced to wait for the car that will take you to another dreadful foster home or bleak room. "I exercise every modicum, every bit of choice that I have now," whether it means voting in elections or choosing to eat only humanely raised meat, Love said.
Love supports herself full time with her singing career. She said she's hugely fortunate that she can spend only short blocks of time touring and long periods at home with her family. She and her partner, Pam, along with her best friend/business manager and her older sister, share a West Seattle home. They're now building a solar-and wind-powered house in the Okanogan, "swinging hammers" together, hoping to raise their own food and reduce the amount of natural resources they use and even create a cat sanctuary to protect songbirds from Love's beloved strays.
After 16 years of not knowing if she was alive or dead, Love tracked down her mother in Colorado a few years back with the help of fans who read the request on the liner notes of Love's albums. "I just love her dearly and feel like her mind has been like a torture chamber for her," Love said. In a last unexpected twist, Love is now a mother herself, to an angelic blue-eyed toddler who came to her and Pam in 2002 as a 7-month-old foster child with eight broken bones. "It had to be that bad for me to think I could be a better parent than someone," Love said. She has found patience and enjoyment over the past two years that she couldn't have imagined in herself and a happiness in responding to her daughter the way she wishes her mother could have responded to her.
Love describes the genesis of her singing career in her book as a soaring talent show where "I understood that I would never do anything else for the rest of my life but sing." She loves playing shows and festivals and the applause her music brings. And yet she isn't consumed with thoughts of selling out arenas or signing with another major label (she was represented by Mercury records a few years back), or otherwise seeking fame. Music doesn't define her, she said, it's only one of her great loves. She's truly thankful that she can play bass guitar and sing. "But, really, it's thank God I'm alive."  From: https://www.seattlepi.com/entertainment/music/article/musician-laura-love-survived-a-miserable-1151077.php

Spectres - Mirror

 #Spectres #noise rock #shoegaze #post-punk #alternative/indie rock #experimental #music video 

Hailing from Devon and based in Bristol, U.K., Spectres are a noise rock quartet combining elements of shoegaze, drone, indie rock, and, to some extent, post-punk. Made up of vocalist/guitarist Joe Hatt, guitarist Adrian Dutt, bassist Darren Frost, and drummer Andy Came, the group's ascent to widespread critical acclaim both on record and on the stage began after they had started to dominate the U.K. gig circuit. The outfit's first foray into the public eye was with the 2011 EP Family. The release cemented their penchant for harsh noise and uncomfortable swathes of distortion, enveloping somewhat straightforward, albeit dark, melancholy pop songs. It was this sound that began to earn the band comparisons to pioneering noise acts such as My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus & Mary Chain.
This led to Artrocker magazine crowning them "Unsigned Band of the Year," a title that spurred on more activity for Spectres as they took up residence in a makeshift bedroom recording studio to record their next EP, the highly visceral Hunger, which was put out by the group's own label, Howling Owl Records. Following this, the band went on scheduling more performances around the country, eventually deciding to relocate from Devon to Bristol. It proved to be a bold move, as the ensemble increased activities with Howling Owl, promoting the likes of Wilde, Towns, and the Naturals. A significant change came for the group when esteemed independent label Sonic Cathedral asked them to support Lorelle Meets the Obsolete on a nationwide tour, eventually landing Spectres a spot on the label roster.
Further success followed when they released their debut album, Dying, in 2015, an effort that gained further comparisons to acts such as Sonic Youth and A Place to Bury Strangers. They were hailed by NME and The Guardian, which stated the band was among those heralding a "new wave of new noise." It was around this time that Spectres had started to fully earn their reputation as a visceral and dangerously loud and raw live act.
The band unexpectedly courted controversy when it recorded and released an unofficial theme song for the 2015 James Bond movie Spectre, a move that started out as an elaborate joke due to the issue of the group's name and the film's title. However, the track ended up drawing in positive attention due to continuous airplay from BBC Radio 6. Spectres then shared a series of angry e-mails purported to be from the management of Sam Smith, singer of the movie's official theme song, castigating Radio 6 for favoring Spectres' song over his. However, the e-mails later turned out to be fake, and Spectres were forced to apologize.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/spectres-mn0000741839/biography

Zola Jesus - Exhumed

 #Zola Jesus #darkwave #electronic #industrial #experimental #art pop #electropop #gothic rock #music video

Nika Roza Danilova has been recording and performing as Zola Jesus for more than a decade. As a classically trained opera singer with a penchant for noisy, avant-garde sounds, she launched her career with a series of lo-fi releases that pitted her soaring vocals against harsh industrial clatter and jittery synths. Her work became more hi-fi as she began to explore her own skewed vision of pop music on releases like Stridulum, Valusia, and Conatus. That era culminated in the release of Versions, a collection of string quartet interpretations of her most beloved work, conducted by J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus). That album and subsequent tour were followed by her most hi-fi outing to date, Taiga. In 2017 she returned to both the Wisconsin woods in which she was raised and her longtime label, Sacred Bones Records, to release Okovi, her darkest album yet. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, and Patreon.

Zola Jesus on making a living as a musician:

What’s the best way to make a living as a musician?

Be really good at budgeting money. Don’t live in an expensive city. Don’t get too comfortable.

What’s the hardest part about making a living as a musician, as you’ve experienced it? How can you avoid that trouble?

The instability. It’s feast or famine. It’s important to understand that every good year comes with three bad ones, financially speaking. Don’t take anything for granted. Plan accordingly. Work smart. Work hard.

Do you think using social media — Instagram, Twitter — helps with sustainability?

Yes. Social media is the watering hole of our culture. For better or worse, it’s where we congregate. Also, having access to the public directly gives us autonomy and control over our art. No longer do we need to rely on some Big Joseph from Shareholders Inc to get our message out and speak up.

Where are there opportunities for making money in the music industry currently?

On a practical level, hope that your music gets played in a movie or TV show. It will help to pay the bills, especially at times when you have no active income. I’m starting to learn something else though. I think when we talk about “making money,” our ideas have to come from something capitalistic, like a sponsorship, or a record deal, or whatever fantasy of being a rich rock star yields. But really, instead of focusing on making money by selling what you do, we should focus on making connections. Fostering the relationship between you, your music, and the people who like your music. Find a community. Respect it. Once you have that, turn to it. The community can sustain you, if you let it. Forget the Apple advertisement or sponsorship or whatever else you think you might need to be a working musician in late-stage capitalism. Turn to people. Mutual fucking aid.

How important has Patreon been for your sustainability? Why do you think it’s been so successful?

Here I will repeat myself from what I said above. But, Patreon allows me to sleep at night. It has been amazing to experience the generosity of a community. I never thought about being able to be supported in this way. Before I started my Patreon, it always felt like I was forced to figure out how to package what I did as a thing to sell, and I hated it. I can’t think about my music in that way. But instead I realized, I could figure out how to change how I made money from my music. This way, I don’t need to change what I do. I just go directly to the people who my music is for, and they can all come together and support it, if they can.

How important is it to develop a digital audience for you work?

Well, I live in northern Wisconsin, so my regional audience is pretty sparse. “Digital audience” really just means audience. When you make a thing, especially a weird thing, you’re only going to find so many “matches.” That is to say, “people who get what you’re doing and like it.” These days, it’s pretty convenient to be able to have access to nearly an entire world of potential “matches.” So, while I tour as much as I can, there are only so many places I can go in order to evangelize my work. For everywhere else, I am grateful for the possibility that I could find a match of someone in some far-flung place that could never stumble upon my show. Having that channel open for us to find each other is vital.

How important is merch to making a living?

I’m horrible at merch, so hopefully it’s not super important and I’m not missing the point on all of it. For some people it’s huge I think, or so says the legend.

Is it possible to make money as a musician through streaming? How much is reasonable to expect?

Ha. Some say yes, some say no. It’s possible to make money, but not enough to live on. I would never count on it. You’re basically being paid micro amounts for each listen that could one day add up to the actual amount of the purchase of one record.

How should someone just getting started wade into the streaming waters?

I’d like to know as well. I guess getting on playlists is important? But I’m cynical about it. About all of it. Sorry, that’s not helpful! The one thing I can recommend is to use sites like Bandcamp, which puts musicians in the front seat with their music.

From: https://thecreativeindependent.com/wisdom/zola-jesus-on-making-a-living-as-a-musician/