The Big Moon - 2 Lines

The Big Moon come across like four different parts of the same person. They finish each other’s sentences between sips of coffee, all the while dutifully filling in holes in one another’s biographies. But perhaps to the surprise of some, frontwoman Juliette Jackson writes the band’s songs in complete solitude. “Juliette lives near the market where I get my groceries from, so sometimes I’d be like, ‘Wanna come in for a cuppa?’ and she’s like, ‘No! I’m trying to finish this song!’” says the band’s Welsh drummer, Fern Ford, miming Jackson’s blustering frustration. At a bustling central London cafe on a brisk British morning, the entire band – Ford, Jackson, Sophie Nathan (lead guitarist) and Celia Archer (bassist) – are crammed around a table built with only two adult-sized humans in mind. They’re here to discuss their upcoming second album, Walking Like We Do, although the conversation often finds itself coming back to the travails of the modern music industry, as well as the prospect of an impending apocalypse.
The Big Moon formed in 2014 after Jackson posted a call-out on Facebook in search of instrumentalists to help her execute a budding songwriting vision. The call-to-arms worked: soon after coming together, the group began hitting a stride, combining ’00s-style indie with Jack Antonoff-ed hooks and production. It was a sleek guitar band sound as indebted to Taylor Swift as it was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The quartet burst into wider prominence in 2017 with their debut album, Love in the 4th Dimension, which earned them a place on the Mercury Prize shortlist. Thematically, the album was interesting with the metaphysical: infatuation dragging you headfirst into the unknown. This time around, though, Walking Like We Do’s songs offer a liveliness only this plane can. Optimistic, danceable pop rock shot through in flashes of modern anxiety and heartbreak, where keyboard chords have mostly replaced the grungey guitars. A bigger audience has meant more shows. During a soundcheck in Toronto last year, the band’s punishing schedule appeared to physically and mentally grind Ford – who was juggling roles as tour manager, driver, and drummer – to a halt. She collapsed, crying, even though she didn’t feel sad.

Because of the position you’ve found yourselves in, it might seem ungrateful to complain about working conditions. But musicians – especially independent or less commercially successful ones – are increasingly flagging mental health as being a big issue.

FF: It’s the best job in the world, but it’s not the easiest. It takes its toll in so many different ways. You’re away a lot from your closest friends and family. You’re away for long periods where there’s nothing, then you have this burst of adrenaline for like an hour and it’s… [gestures a sudden deflation] afterwards. So that, everyday, fucks up my moods. You have to find some kind of equilibrium in all of that.

It’s essentially a 24/7 job when on tour.

SN: It’s about finding a way to do it that gives you a sense of routine – in a healthy way. We’ve toured enough now that we’re getting more professional about the way we see it. At the beginning, it was more like, ‘We’re on tour, this is so much fun!’ But you can’t keep that up.

CA: Musicians complaining and suddenly starting to moan about their mental health is good. It’s quite nice to hear people who do the same job as you being like, ‘Hey, I feel weird at the end of a tour. Does anybody else feel weird?’

JJ: We have to work with it at the end of the day, because this is what we all want to do. It’s hard to be honest about those feelings because, well, this is a dream job. This is my dream job – every time I have a bad day, I remember what it felt like to work in a cloakroom, or work in a bar. This is still better. But it’s really hard to be honest about when it’s shit because people just don’t get it. I still have friends who joke about when I’m going to get a real job.

SN: I feel guilty sometimes with friends who work full days.

So when you say that you’re suffering from burnout, do they almost struggle to believe you?

SN: When I’m at home, they’ll say I’m not doing anything. I am – it’s just in a different way. It’s not like people always make me feel like that, but I do sometimes get that feeling. I’m not really doing anything, then I go away for a month and it’s like, ‘Oh my god, this is so intense.’

CA: Then you cry.

SN: It is comforting to know that other people feel weird and that it’s normal [for a musician].

An awkward segue, but one of the things that has caught my eyes has been your visuals. Juliette, do you think about songs visually – and who comes up with the ideas for the videos?

JJ: We usually come up with the ideas ourselves. When I’m writing, I do think about visuals a bit. I quite like watching videos while I’m listening to a song that is half-written.

Because I work on my laptop, with my guitar or whatever, you can get really stuck looking at these little blocks of music that you’ve recorded – graphics, sound waves. But if you watch a video on mute while listening to your song – and I’ve got some favourites, like Robyn, who has got some great videos – you can suddenly hear your song.

Just music videos or other types of videos, too?

JJ: Just music videos, because they have loads of slow-mo and dancing and flashing lights.

SN: It’s a great idea! Your senses are distracted and you’re not overthinking with your eyes.

Your videos have a strong sense of self-awareness.

JJ: The video for ‘Your Light’ – which is the one where we’re riding bicycles – we spent ages just trying to decide what to do for that video because it was our first single back after the first album and we wanted it to be more serious than previous videos.

CA: ‘It’s not a joke! We’re not a joke!’

JJ: Like, we mean these things – we’re a serious band. We developed this little routine on the bikes and then, obviously, the puppets appear. There was a moment where we looked at each other and went, ‘Oh, we can’t help it. This is just who we are.’

Is this lack of self-importance central to your music?

JJ: I think it’s just our personalities. We take our music seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

SN: The songs aren’t sad, even though some of them are about sad things, or are moving in certain ways.

CA: With our first album, there was a lot of, ‘Who are these girls that just bounded onto the scene? Oh, The Big Moon? Lol!’ It was a bit like, ‘Do you not take us seriously? Maybe we should make people take us seriously.’ But then we realised that’s boring, and we’re not like that.

And where does the album title come from?

JJ: It’s a lyric from the song, ‘A Hundred Ways to Land’. It just summed up the whole feeling of the album, which is about growing up and moving on and going forward. But also about trying to feel strong when everything in the world feels quite unsteady. 

From: https://www.huckmag.com/article/the-big-moon-interview-walking-like-we-do-album

Sarah Jarosz - Song Up in Her Head

For Sarah Jarosz, it had to be validating to earn a Grammy Award (her fourth overall) for 2020’s World On The Ground, an album released in the thick of the pandemic, when so much great music fell into a lockdown-induced black hole. Produced with style and restraint by studio veteran John Leventhal, the Best Americana Album winner is a beautiful piece of work, propelled by inventive arrangements and one pristine melody after the next. It’s also one of the finest things Leventhal has helmed since Shawn Colvin’s 1996 breakthrough, A Few Small Repairs. After 2021’s low-key song cycle, Blue Heron Suite, Jarosz aims to regain some commercial momentum with the new Polaroid Lovers (Rounder), the 32-year-old singer/songwriter’s seventh studio album in 15 years. A mandolin prodigy raised in Wimberly, Texas, she was just 18 when she released her debut, and the accolades have rained down pretty much ever since. Polaroid Lovers was produced by Daniel Tashian, who’s best known for his work on Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour, a 2019 Grammy winner for Album Of The Year. For the most part, Jarosz’s latest comfortably follows in the same refined folk/pop vein as World On The Ground, though with a bit more of a rock edge. We caught up with Jarosz in her newly adopted hometown of Nashville, where she’s prepping for a tour that kicks off in Washington, D.C., on February 1.

From a songwriting standpoint, Polaroid Lovers is your most collaborative album to date. How did that come about?

I hadn’t really embraced cowriting with other songwriters before this record. Any cowriting I’d done was with other musicians—people in my band, for example. Every song on this record is cowritten by someone—mostly Daniel Tashian, but also Jon Randall, Natalie Hemby, Ruston Kelly … So, yeah, it does feel more collaborative in that sense.

How much did moving to Nashville play a role in your urge to collaborate more?

I moved here in March of 2020, so there wasn’t a lot of meeting up with people at first. I spent a lot of time at the house with my husband (acclaimed bassist Jeff Picker) making music. But when it came time to start thinking about a new record, I wanted some outside inspiration in terms of fleshing out what I wanted to say. In the spring of 2022, I decided to reach out to some writers I’ve always admired. I was sort of closed off to doing that on my earlier records because I was still finding my voice. It was cool to finally reach that moment where I felt there was actually something to be gained by meeting up with other writers I really respect.

How was working with Daniel Tashian different from your experience with John Leventhal?

Daniel’s studio—the way he has it set up, the vibe—is almost like the Nashville version of what Leventhal has in New York. It’s a home studio. Its comfortable. It’s cozy. It feels like a safe space to try stuff. But with Leventhal, we were recording in bits as we went along. The demo would sometimes become the track itself. He plays everything, so something like “Orange And Blue,” for instance … He actually built out that track, playing drums, piano and bass, and recording a verse and a chorus. I wrote the vocal melody and lyrics and recorded my part over top of that. With Daniel, we wrote everything on the front end. Our first writing session was the first day I met him. We wrote “Take The High Road”—the song that got me so stoked and made me see what this record could be. Then he put together a band, and we tracked the album in eight days, mostly live. That’s a very common occurrence in Nashville, but it was new and different for me. I think the energy from that process comes through on this record.

World On The Ground came out at pretty crazy time, yet it still got some great recognition. How weird was it to snag a Grammy Award in the middle of a pandemic?

The awards were virtual that year, so it was challenging. But that time was challenging for everybody, so I’m obviously not alone in that. We mastered the record in January or February of 2020, and there were a lot of conversations about whether we should even put it out at the time. Ultimately, I’m glad I did. I think it was comforting for people who dug into it, and I’m happy about that.

It seems like you’ve finally settled into a sound you’re comfortable with. How has that evolution felt over the past 15 years?

I feel confident and comfortable right now, especially with this record. But more than anything, that comes from time and growth—not being 18 and knowing myself a little better. It’s a never-ending thing. I hope that I never feel like I’ve arrived. There’s no finish line with art. The goal is to keep running the race.

From: https://magnetmagazine.com/2024/01/29/a-conversation-with-sarah-jarosz/

The Asylum Choir - Tryin' To Stay 'Live

You've mastered the basics of late-'60s pop-rock: Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, Kinks, Dylan, Who, Hendrix, Joplin, Doors, Creedence, Stax, Motown. You've explored the second tier: the garage rock and mild trippiness of the box sets Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968 and Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 1964-1969; the stirrings of singer-songwriters; fusions of pop and rock with new forms such as metal and old ones such as country and jazz. You've liked much of what you've heard from these sources, so you've acquired a taste for early-'70s pop-rock that carried on late-'60s traditions: the power pop of Badfinger and Big Star; the glam of David Bowie and T. Rex; the folk-rock masterpieces of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and so on, and so... Where do you go next, time traveler? Consider visiting the Asylum Choir.
Don't let the name fool you; the Choir consisted of a duo on its first album. Additional musicians appeared on its second, final release, but the assembled multitude never added up to a full choir, not even through the then-limited art of multi-tracking. In whatever form, the band probably never played in an asylum either. The duo consisted of Marc Benno, who sang and played guitar and bass, and Leon Russell, who sang and played guitar, piano, and drums. Benno hailed from Texas, Russell from Oklahoma. They met in LA, where Russell enjoyed an active career as a session musician, from early-'60s work with Phil Spector to mid-'60s work as a member of the so-called Wrecking Crew.
Benno and Russell's debut, Look Inside the Asylum Choir, appeared in 1968. It runs all of twenty-six minutes on the original LP, forty minutes or more with bonus tracks on CD (and the bonus tracks consist of mono mixes or alternate mixes). Benno and Russell cowrote all the songs, either just together or with others.
Like the best work of power-popsters and other lovers of period pieces from the '60s and '70s, so much about this album feels both retro in a good way and totally fresh. The original cover depicted a roll of (unused) toilet paper, a choice so controversial at the time that the album was soon reissued with a photo of Benno and Russell on the cover. Toilet imagery was forbidden in those days--the john on the cover of the Mamas and the Papas' If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears (1966) had to be hidden, and the graffiti-laden loo on the Stones' Beggars Banquet (1968) was replaced with an elegant but faux invitation card. Decades later, indie rock bands would use shots of toilets, even the contents of unflushed toilets, for their album covers. The original Look Inside cover would fit right in--and has been restored on reissues.
Likewise, the duo's music, so affectionate toward its sources and painstakingly crafted, would fit in with late-'60s-style sound collages, pastiches, and homages from the 1980s through today. Think of the Paisley Underground bands Rain Parade, Opal, Three O'Clock, and early Bangles (and don't forget these bands' one-off side project, Rainy Day); XTC's psychedelic recordings and Dukes of Stratosphear alter ego; Bongwater and the Shimmy-Disc Records catalog generally; the Flaming Lips; the Fiery Furnaces; the Lennon-Claypool Delerium. If those references signify for you, if you've grooved on the box set Children of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era, 1976-1995, you'll probably love Look Inside. However, you might want to get your sugar fix there and not venture further into the Asylum Choir. Or at least you should go into the second album expecting something different than the first one. If Look Inside delivers high-quality bubblegum, its follow-up tastes more like homemade falafel, hummus, or baba ganouj.
Benno and Russell recorded Asylum Choir II in 1969 and were joined by studio musicians. The guitarist, Jesse Ed Davis, is now best known for work with Taj Mahal, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. One bassist, Carl Radle, worked with Eric Clapton, including in Derek & the Dominoes. The other bassist, Donald "Duck" Dunn, played on more Stax and other classics than this sentence could possibly do justice to. The drummer, Chuck Blackwell, played with Taj Mahal and Leon Russell as a solo artist. Asylum Choir II wasn't released until 1971, by which time the Asylum Choir was over and Russell had established himself as a star. While Benno and Russell cowrote seven of the songs here, Russell wrote the remaining four by himself, and the collection feels much more like his self-titled, guest-enhanced 1970 solo debut than like the original Asylum Choir. Eschewing his clipped vocal delivery on Look Inside, Russell lets his drawl hang out. Abandoning that first album's tightly controlled, highly produced, mildly psychedelic freneticism, the band sounds organic, relaxed, pleasantly stoned, a bit ragged. Filter Look Inside the Asylum Choir through Music from Big Pink and The Band and you might get Asylum Choir II. Put another way: this Southern-fried music sounds more like 1971, when it was released, than like 1969, when it was recorded. Maybe this analysis comes across as fitting angels on the head of a pin. However, the history matters if the music matters. Oddly, Asylum Choir II has been reissued on CD with most of Look Inside as bonus tracks, as though the first album was just a warm-up. Taken in chronological order, the two Asylum Choir albums illustrate how '60s pop transitioned into '70s rock.
Since the end of the Asylum Choir, Benno has released solo albums. He is most well-known as the second guitarist on the Doors' L.A. Woman (1971), which is one damn great album to be best remembered for. He also played guitar with Rita Coolidge and wrote a song by the System on the Grammy-winning soundtrack to Beverly Hills Cop (1984). Leon Russell's career peaked in the early '70s, when he worked extensively with Joe Cocker, released albums that remain lower-tier classics, and enjoyed hit cover versions of his songs. In the following decades, he experienced partial eclipses and reappearances. His eclipse was nearly total by the time Elton John, a fan from way back, invited him to collaborate on 2010's The Union. Russell died in 2016, his recordings a mix of highs and lows, his time in the Asylum Choir a footnote, even a footnote to a footnote, but a highly entertaining and enlightening one.  From: https://www.furious.com/perfect/asylumchoir.html

PJ Harvey - Naked Cousin

"Naked Cousin" by PJ Harvey explores themes of identity, self-reflection, and the pursuit of freedom. The lyrics depict a complicated relationship between the narrator and their "naked cousin," who serves as a symbol for aspects of the narrator's own self that they dislike or want to distance themselves from. In the first verse, the naked cousin is portrayed as being scared and vulnerable, running around aimlessly in the headland. This can be interpreted as a representation of the narrator's own insecurities and fears, which they may be trying to avoid or escape from.
The line "My naked cousin can cook till he's good and done" can be seen as a metaphorical reference to the cousin's struggle to find his own identity and purpose in life. The image of his skin frying in the sun suggests a sense of discomfort and unease, highlighting the challenges he faces in navigating his own existence. The chorus, which repeats the phrase "He's running," emphasizes the theme of escape and the cousin's constant need to flee from difficult situations or confrontations. It can also be seen as a broader commentary on society, where individuals often find themselves running from various forms of oppression or personal struggles.
The third verse suggests that the cousin is actively running away from anything that disrupts his "master plan." This implies a desire for control and an aversion to anything that challenges his comfort zone or predetermined path. The narrator, on the other hand, acknowledges that if they "flip," they are as good as done, further emphasizing their sense of powerlessness in the face of their cousin's relentless pursuit of freedom. The outro repeats the phrase "He's running" multiple times, accompanied by lyrics that describe the narrator's fear and their willingness to go along with the cousin's escapades. This can be interpreted as a combination of admiration for the cousin's freedom and a desperate plea for the cousin to take them along on their journey. Overall, "Naked Cousin" delves into the complexities of self-perception, the struggle for autonomy, and the constant desire to break free from societal constraints. The use of vivid imagery and repetitive phrases adds to the song's emotional intensity and invites listeners to reflect on their own relationship with identity and freedom.  From: https://www.songtell.com/pj-harvey/naked-cousin

Pauw - Visions

The last couple of years have been a bit of a whirlwind for Dutch psych-rockers Pauw. They have followed hot on the heels of their compatriot Jacco Gardner and just before Christmas unveiled their debut LP Macrocosm Microcosm – a spangly piece of 60s-inspired pop that has drawn comparisons to Tame Impala and Caribou. What’s more, they’ve already bossed some pretty huge spaces after touring with Kasabian and Temples in Europe. The four-piece touched down on UK soil for the first time at last year’s Liverpool Psych Fest, but for those who missed them, we set out to find out a little more about Pauw with frontman Brian Pots.

How has the reaction to the record been?

It’s been amazing, especially in the Netherlands where I think people already knew us.  It was exciting to get the reaction we did because a lot of people had already seen us play live. They have extra patience so it was nice fulfill them. It’s all been positive, really great.

Did the success of those early live shows give you a lot of confidence?

Yeah, it gave us confidence, but also it made us kind of insecure. It put a bit of extra time pressure on recording the album. At the same time we were playing live a lot and we were still studying in school. We had to fit the recording in between these things – and some of the writing because there were still some songs that weren’t properly finished yet. It was pretty heavy, but we made it through!

Have the live shows felt different since you got the record out there?

Some people were singing along, which was pretty cool. The crowds were getting bigger and bigger at shows. Afterwards people were asking for autographs and to take pictures with us. That was all new for us, so it feels pretty amazing.

Was that a strange feeling, the sensation of sudden fame?

Yeah I think so. You know how the process goes, we’re still the same people as before the album came out, we’re still human beings. We couldn’t believe all that stuff at first, but overall it’s pretty cool.

You had some pretty big support slots early on – including Kasabian – how did that help your progression?

It was amazing. Kasabian were a band I was planning on going to see anyway, and then we ended up supporting them! I learned a lot from this experience of playing on the big stage and the whole production that comes with that. The day of the show is really different. There’s a much tighter schedule and obviously a lot more people are coming. Even though we were just the support act the crowd seemed really into our music!

Pauw clearly have an ear for a melody, who are some of your favourite songwriters?

It kind of depends from song to song, but in terms of stuff all four of us are into, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, also The Small Faces and King Crimson. With this particular record we took a lot from the 60s and 70s psychedelic scene.

Psychedelia has had a bit of a resurgence in popularity over the last few years, is that something you have noticed in the Netherlands too?

Yeah, somehow there is some hype from somewhere. There is something going on in the psychedelic scene. We already had our own Jacco Gardner, and you guys in the UK seem to love him too, which is pretty cool. And we have many more, so it’s great to see it is still alive!

Speaking of the UK reaction, how was Liverpool Psych Fest?

It was our first show in the UK and a really great experience. People are coming specifically to see psychedelic music so it was perfect for us. The reaction afterwards was really great, a lot of good reviews. We want all our future shows in the UK to be like this.

What’s next for Pauw? Any early ideas for the second record?

We’ve got some ideas floating around but we’re not really ‘writing’ at the moment. We’re playing live a lot at the the moment and really still focusing on that. But then after we will take some proper time for writing. From tomorrow we’re just going to rehearse for three days and really work on the set we have now. Some of the songs were written in the studio during the process of the recoding. So we need to really get them in our fingers, you know? It’s a bit like we’re playing covers of our own songs!

From: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/interview-a-far-out-introduction-to-pauw/

L'Ham de Foc - Voldrien

Cor de Porc is the third record from L'Ham de Foc and on this one they have taken the next logical step and actually lived in the Northern Greek city of Thessaloniki for six months before recording it. The forty hours of material that led to the twelve songs on The Pig's Heart were recorded between Efren Lopez and Mara Aranda's home regions of Valencia and Greece.
What led them to temporarily move to Greece was the need to more carefully explore the Oriental rhythms, still active in the city due to its proximity to their source, and the particular social characteristics of the city. They even utilized some Greek musicians to achieve this, on instruments such as ney, kaval, rebec and Black Sea lyra. Their Iberian spirit is very much alive, particularly in their use of a style of playing from Valencia called the Cant d'Estil, where a poet whispers the lyrics into the singer's ear who then improvises over a fixed melodic line in a mode not too dissimilar from flamenco. They named the record after the eternal human quest to delve deep and unearth the secrets of our existence, just like a pig searching for food. The results are fascinating. L'Ham de Foc have already proved that they can assimilate their influences from across the Mediterranean Sea, but this time they have moved further East, creating what I feel is the first entechno record by someone who is not Greek (a real accolade for a style of interpretation that is based to a great degree on the specific social parameters of Greece) while at the same time staying true to their own homeland.
The daring process that led to this record has produced a work that, while highly idiosyncratic, is rooted in the musical comings and goings of the Mediterranean and the Near East, the vast cultural space extending from Iran and Afghanistan (here lending instruments and modes of playing) to Valencian Spain. Like their previous efforts, there are moments when things might seem to get too serious or involved, but the sparks that fly as a result of this tension lend it a sense of timelessness.  From: https://rootsworld.com/reviews/porc06.shtml

Love - Live And Let Die

Love “Forever Changes” is one of the seminal sixties albums and one of the top psychedelic albums of all times according to serious music fans and critics. The band may not be familiar to many people but Love was Los Angeles’ biggest band before the incredible ascent of the Doors. Love also influenced many of their contemporaries including The Doors, The Seeds and The Strawberry Alarm Clock, and decades later have been a source of inspiration for bands including The Stone Roses, Teenage Fanclub and The Teardrop Explodes.
The early years of Love were defined by the dichotomy of their two lead talents – singer/songwriter/guitarists Arthur Lee and Bryan MacLean. By the time they released their third album “Forever Changes” in 1968, the band were in disarray due to broken down relationships and heavy drug use. The recording sessions started with Lee and MacLean enlisting the help of session musicians for the first two songs. As producer Bruce Botnick remembers, “The group were present, too. I remember them physically crying at this session. The band was so shocked, so put out, so hurt that it caused them to forget about their problems and become a band again.”
Despite the tentative start, the final results were groundbreaking. Unlike other bands at the time, Love took cues from many musical sensibilities and fused together psychedelic pop, punk, folk-rock, and Latin with a heavy dose of lush orchestration. The sentiment of “Forever Changes” also set the band apart as it was juxtaposed to the prevalent “Summer of Love” attitude. Instead the album featured dark and brooding lyrics. Writer/producer Harvey Kubernick says, of Lee’s lyrics “He described things that were very menacing. We’re coming out of the Summer of Love, and he’s singing ‘Bummer in the Summer’. He’s talking about racial tensions, tensions between men and women.”
Despite this, the album was the band’s biggest success and even reached the Top 30 in Britain. Upon its release, critics such as Gene Youngblood of LA Free Press hailed the album, “Soft, subtle. Forever changing in tonal color, rhythm patterns, vocal nuances, lyric substance. Exquisite nuances.” Contemporary critics now view the album as a major musical turning point as Pete Pashides of The Sunday Times declares, “Forever Changes preserves, in notes, words and breathtaking energy, the precise moment that 1960s idealism started to sour.”  From: https://classicalbumsundays.com/love-forever-changes/

Children of the Sun - Reflection

Things don't always have to be related to negativity and the depression that has been going on worldwide, instead, life could be celebrated, enjoy the now and the hope that it could be better one day. There has been a long line of positivity, yet, most of it died after the 60s, leaving a huge gap for the actual reality to take over. The Swedish Hippies, Children of the Sün, wished to head back decades ago in a spiritual way and relive the Flower Kids through music. Steinmetal talked to Jacob Hellenrud of the band, about being a Hippie type of band, working with a new label, the new album "Flowers" and more.

Hello Jacob, it is a pleasure having you for this interview for Metal Temple online Magazine, how have you been doing?

Hi! It's going great! A bit stressful with all that comes with releasing an album and going back to school again and so on... But I couldn't be happier!

Well, it is not every day for me that I interview non-Metal artist, yet I must say that I find your band Children Of The Sün quite intriguing. Let's start a little about the band, how did this group came to be?

The band was formed in 2017 in the deep woods of Värmland in Sweden after a soul-concert our school made. So you could say in a way that the soul brought us together. Our bass-player and lead-singer wanted to create a Rock band and play covers by idols of theirs such as Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin, but when I got involved we started to write our own music. Soon people started to join our music collective and after a couple of weeks we were Children of the Sün, and hopefully we'll never stop playing.

Recently, you guys released your new album "Flowers", via The Sign Records, absolutely the right platform to hash this album out. How has it been received by your fanbase? What is your overall appreciation of the end result?

It has been really cool to be able to work with The Sign Records. We are all big fans of other bands at the label and to be a part of it is a dream come true. The album has got a good receive I believe from our old fans but we've noticed that we've get a lot of new fans along the road as well, and for that we are grateful. We are satisfied with the result and we hope that more people will discover 'Flowers'.

Why title it "Flowers"? What is the philosophy behind it?

We wanted to make a concept-album about earth in the beginning. And for that reason we wanted to use flowers as a metaphor for humans. We grow from being a seed to become this beautiful flower. None looks the same. But everyone is beautiful. It's also our reincarnation in a way. It is Children of the Sün becoming one with nature. The rest is up to the listener to discover their own idea of what the album is to them.

Children Of The Sün's music is obvious at first, especially the leading characteristic of the hippie movement in the notes. However, I sense that it is much more than that. There is Soul, classic Rock, Blues, a bit of vintage Folk Rock, a chance for the listener to sway between the lines. Do you agree with that assessment?

I would totally agree. We love music, and we love writing music. We don't define ourselves with just one genre, rather we write music with the world as our inspiration. Maybe that is a reason why the songs sound kind of different to each other sometimes. It's a musical goulash of all the music that we love.

What do you guys find so fascinating about the 60s? In particular, since your music sounds like a fine homage for the Woodstock Festival?

Simple. We are old souls in young bodies. Basically we're born in the wrong era. After hours digging through our parents' vinyl collections, we've all found a connection to this particular genre and era. It touches a bit of your soul and gets you high on music, and that's still legal. The music doesn't have algorithms made by a computer - It is made by real people with real feelings. That for us is very important because we put a lot of emotions into our own songs. We think that it is impossible to create something with emotional value without putting a bit of your soul into it.

In your songwriting, how were you able to connect Rock music, and its surroundings, with spirituality?

I think that they go well together. Often the spirituality comes first and it's the main focus of each song. Then we lay the groove to back it up.

Was the songwriting for "Flowers" a joint effort or rather an effort of a leading musician that carried it forward?

I almost always come up with the idea of the songs. Then Josefina writes the lyrics. Then we combine the two and arrange it together with the rest of the band. It is at this point the song becomes more than a just a demo, for every member of the band contributes with their own experience and their own style of playing the instrument.

Would you say that "Flowers" is a piece that represents that there is still hope for this world or there is rather an inner message suggesting otherwise? Does "Flowers" symbolize a string of positivity?

Even though many songs are about depression and anxiety about the climate, there are more songs about taking care of each other and becoming one with earth. So it's a balance between good and bad. But it is a record about more than hope. It's a celebration of life.

Continuing with that direction, how can such harmony, as you present in your music, exist in such a world, where apparently society is slowly decaying, as plenty of the harsher music artists suggest?

Music is hope, music is what unites people and music is healing. Therefore, we can never lose hope. But we can try to affect people with our music. I agree with you, but we can never stop living. If we do, then it's already too late.

How did the connection with The Sign Records came to pass? Was it mutual interest by both parties?

It's actually kind of funny. We reached out to The Sign Records two years ago when we were going to release our debut EP. We didn't get any answers back then. But a couple of weeks before we signed with The Sign we got a mail from Kaj at the label saying; “Sorry for the late response”. But the important thing is that they responded and we couldn't be luckier to be able to work with them. They are professionals dealing with 8 kids that wants to play music. Respect to them for dealing with us.

Which of the album's songs do you find the most meaningful to you? Please elaborate on your pick.

I would have to say "Flowers". It's a different song for us. I wrote it as a metaphor for earth. The song is touching more in the folk genre which I love and it's easy to listen to and remember the hook. It's hard to describe what I think is so good about it, but I really enjoyed writing it and I enjoy playing it. I don't think that it is the strongest song on the album, but it has an aura of sitting in the forest and just listening to what nature has to say to you.

What are your plans to support "Flowers" in the coming future?

For now, we are looking for bookers in Europe. A dream would be to buy a “hippie van” and drive through Europe and play at every venue that wants us. But for the future we want to make a new album with new songs and try out things we haven't done before, maybe add more instruments? We'll see!

From: https://metal-temple.com/interview/jacob-hellenrud-children-of-the-sun/

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - Sessions at West 54th Street 1997

I've always been a big fan of Gillian Welch's albums. She and her musical partner, Dave Rawlings, made two records (Revival and Hell Among the Yearlings) for Almo Sounds with producer T Bone Burnett that I enjoyed. But it was the next album, the Dave Rawlings-produced Time (The Revelator) on their own Acony Records, which put them onto my desert island list. It's quietly stunning, both musically and sonically, and Gillian's new album The Harrow & The Harvest is equally as strong. I got a chance to speak with them while they were on tour supporting Buffalo Springfield. At first they seemed a bit bored by yet another interview, but when I mentioned I wanted Dave to stay in the room so we could talk about recording, they both visibly perked up. Although Dave is credited with production, Gillian also has some deep knowledge and opinions on recording. As befits two people who have worked together for over a decade, they often finish each other's sentences and thoughts. Their strong connection as musical partners is evident.

Time (The Revelator) is one of my favorite records. I think it's a classic album.

G: We made it in the old RCA Studio B in Nashville that was built in the late '50s. It had no gear in there.

D: We were looking for a recording space and I had been driving around Nashville trying to find an old studio to rent, or possibly buy. One day I drove by Studio B and the door was open. I thought, "Oh my God, that's Studio B. I've never been in there." I walked in, heard my footsteps on the floor and knew that I liked the sound of the room. Bob Moore was there that day — Elvis's bass player. He just happened to stop by. I was really interested in [renting] it. I then found out that the Country Music Hall of Fame — who had been running a lot of tours through it and whatnot — were building the new Hall of Fame. In the interim they were going to be too busy to do anything with RCA B. We approached them through a friend who was on their board and they said would it be all right if we brought our gear in and rented it on a monthly basis. They treated it as a donation to the new Hall of Fame, which was real nice. We rented it out for about 14 months. When we first got in there, I spent a month or two cleaning out the troughs and I fixed the plate reverbs. The place hadn't been used much as a professional space in quite a while.

G. It had not been a functioning studio.

But they had a little bit of gear, like the plates?

D: They had the plates in the other room and they had somebody doing some karaoke sessions out of the live room. The control room was basically empty.

G: The speakers were still there.

D: Oh yeah, the old Altec 604s were still there, but they needed to be fixed.

Is that what you monitored on?

D: It was mainly [Yamaha] NS-10s and the Altecs. What we ended up bringing in was all the gear from the home studio — stuff that we've assembled over the years. Our tape machine is a [Studer] A800.

Is it 24- or 16-track?

D: 16-track. I actually bought the headstack before the machine. I found some unused 16-track heads when I was buying some other gear, and I threw those in. Then I found a 24-track machine. What else?

G: The Neve desk.

D: Yeah, we started buying [Neve] 1084s really early on. I bought a BCM-10 frame and every time we went on tour I would come back and buy a couple more modules. I found some other 1084s from the next console made, so the serial numbers were still pretty continuous. We hadn't filled the frame for ...Revelator, but we had enough — we only needed four or five.

G: That board came out of WGBH Boston. It was the old Sesame Street board.

So it had a Muppet vibe.

D: Yeah, rubber ducky. I got this other old BCM-10-style console made by Neve that has 1055 modules in it; they're the wide, black ones with three fixed bands. They basically have a high, low and a mid — you can't select the frequency — and 10 dB steps. They are very unforgiving with transients; they really don't like anything barking. There is distortion all over our records because of those modules.

Does it squash the transients or distort?

D: They break up in a weird tear-y way. If you hit them with the top of a vocal it will have a little "kkkrrrrrr" on it. I would go through those, as well as the 1084 at line level to get five dB gradiation; as a buffer stage. I had some 1084s that bypassed the fader, and those were the ones that I used before the tape machine. So the signal chain was two [Neumann] M 49s, a [Sony] C-37a on my guitar and an M 582 Neumann on Gil's guitar. There are other setups: "Dear Someone" would have been an Altec 639a, one of those birdcage mics, with a [Neumann] U 67 right on top of it. They end up perfectly out of phase and you just flip them. We were in there and we would have to break down every couple days 'cause they would run a tour, so we weren't able to leave the mics set up or anything. It was a difficult process.

G: With us, millimeters of difference in the mic setups are huge because the picture is so affected by overall phase between our four mics.

D: Everything is pretty close together.

How far apart are the two of you when recording?

G: Two and a half feet. As close as can be.

D: Some days we would set up, the phase would be great and everything would click in. Then a tour would come through and we would have to tear down. We got a little rug with everything spiked, but we would have to get within millimeters. That's the difference with this new record. Since we were finally working in our own studio, we set up and we never touched the mics.

So a lot of the same gear has made it from record to record?

D: Yeah. There are two tracks on Hell Among the Yearlings that we did at home on those same preamps. By then we also had the [Neumann] M 49s. That was the beginning of what I look at as that incarnation of duets, like "Miner's Refrain" and "Rock of Ages." "Rock" is a banjo song, so it's a little different because I used a [Neumann] U 47 on the banjo.

You had 14 months to make Time (The Revelator). However, it wasn't really 14 months because you were constantly interrupted?

D: We made that record in five weeks. Most of the album was probably created within three weeks, and then there was a little bit of time on either side. I also produced part of the first Old Crow Medicine Show record in that time period. We just happened to be renting the studio for that long.

How long did Harrow & The Harvest take to record?

G: Four weeks. That's about how long our records take.

Is everything recorded live?

G: Totally.

D: Yeah, everything is live. It is pretty much all from takes one, two or three. Very few mixes. This is the first record we've done that Stephen Marcussen [our mastering engineer] listened to and said, "Okay, Let's transfer it." We didn't compress or EQ anything. Just transferred it from a machine of his that we really like, through the nice converters and a clean signal chain.

When you are two-feet away from each other there is no way you are going to punch in and fix a part.

G: We have never done that.

D: About half the songs on the album are complete takes. Five of them are composites of adjacent takes. G: Edits between takes.

Edits on the 2-inch master tape?

D: Yeah, I do a lot of 2-inch editing. I've always done that.

G: Dave's really good at editing. I'd put him up against anybody at this point, because he's not even getting to cut on drums. [Drums make it easier to find the edit points. -ed.]

D: I know where the edits are on this record, but they are pretty hard to find. I bet you can find a few on ...Revelator.

G: But I don't even mind. I like the sound of a tape edit.

Sometimes they're cool. It can totally change the ambience in an unexpected way.

D: Yeah, as long as it's musical.

What speed, 15 ips?

D: 30 ips. I think Soul Journey was at 15, but everything else we have done was at 30.

Why 15 for Soul Journey?

D: Drums. There was more of that vibe. There might be a couple [of songs] at 30, but I just wanted to try it. But that was a very different rig. That was mostly [Shure] SM57s and API preamps.

Was that still mostly tracked live with the band?

D: Yeah. The only thing I should say is that I overdubbed some organ on a few things. I'm a terrible [Hammond] B3 organ player, but if I get one pass at something I usually do a really good job. So I go in, do one pass and that's it.

G: One band song went down without any singing and I had to go back in and sing.

D: We were jamming with the chords of it and it sounded good, but then I think we used your scratch vocal to see if it worked.

Do you have an engineer helping you?

D: We have worked pretty closely with Matt Andrews in Nashville for a while now, and our methodology has developed around the three of us. I'm not in the control room while we are tracking, so we rely on Matt, to some degree. We have some sense of whether or not we are getting there, but it's always good to have another set of ears. If we are going to be editing between takes, it's generally good to get parts from adjacent takes. I suppose I handle most of the responsibilities that you'd associate with a producer.

G: We all listen and weigh in on what the good takes are. Happily, we pretty much agree. It's pretty evident.

Do you do the mixing?

D: I do a lot of mixing. On The Harrow & The Harvest, we weren't really moving faders very much — we never really ride stuff. For most mixes we set the faders and let them run. It's very rare for there to be fader moves within a song. Matt did a lot of live mixing, where he would get the picture a particular way. If we liked it when we came in, we might only tweak things slightly. He did a lot of riding the preamps and then we would adjust from there as far as color and compression.

I'm assuming you work out the arrangements well in advance and bring them in?

G: No.

D: Some of the writing goes down in the studio.

G: It's a very "in the moment" dynamic process.

D: The improvisation is usually better early on, and of course you always have time later if you fail.

G: I tend to be... the positive way to say it is that I'm really consistent. But once I've been playing a song for a while it tends to solidify for me. That can be a problem if we are having trouble recording something, as it's unlikely that I'm going to change what I'm doing enough to make a difference. Dave's really good at suggesting arrangements. But, even broader than that, he creates musical changes that really crack things open. For instance, having me move from guitar to banjo or totally recasting a song from major to minor. A lot of these songs are very spontaneous takes on a new arrangement or even new music.

D: "Hard Times" is the second time Gil ever played it on banjo. The first take is un-listenable 'cause there are so many chord mistakes.

G: It's clam city.

D: As the second take was going down, I knew it was magic. I actually cut the solo short because I didn't want there to be any more time — I wanted less time for things to go wrong.

G: He shot me this look of, "Start singing again."

D: Let's get through the fucking thing! It was moving me so much.

G: "Six White Horses" was maybe one of the first times we ever performed it, with me hamboning and with you at the rack [harmonica]. This runs through the whole record — it's very spontaneous

D: ...but only after quite a bit of writing and working. The studio time is the culmination of the writing. "The Way the Whole Thing Ends," has approximately 25 verses. The studio is where we figure out how long the songs need to be and where to cut them down. It was the same situation with "I Dream a Highway;" it's a very long song and I thought it was appropriate for it to remain long. Most of the time they get better if you shrink them, but that one seemed nice long.

G: We had only ever sung that twice.

D: I said, "We shouldn't ever play that until we...

G: 'Til we have tape rolling."

D:We didn't know if it would fit on a reel. I cut out a couple of verses in the final — that's a composite of takes one and two.

You've done enough records in this format, and it seems like it's quick to get set up with Matt.

G: The interesting thing about this record is that we had never had a room that was great sounding to do duet records in at Woodland Sound Studios [Gillian and Dave's studio].

D: We made Soul Journey in the A room at Woodland. We have tried several times to do acoustic stuff — even during the first record with T Bone. We worked in Woodland in '95 and tried to do some acoustic stuff, but never really got anything satisfactory. AES held an event where they brought in Glenn Snoddy, who'd built the studio. We looked at the room and realized that what we didn't like was basically a '90s renovation. So we took the B room and tore it down to studs. We took the wood floor up and basically restored it to how it was in the '60s, when it was built, with linoleum floor and acoustic tiles — basically the same construction as RCA B, which is what Woodland B was built to mirror. We didn't know what we were going to get. We came back, finished the trim, worked for a few weeks, buffing the floor with the same wax compound. Then we set up mics and did one take of a song that ended up being an outtake. The next thing we played was "The Way it Will Be." We did one take of that and it was a master. We felt like, "Okay, this room is working well." ...Revelator sits back in speakers in a very nice, mysterious way — The Harrow & The Harvest throws out the speakers and combines in the space you are in.

G: ...Revelator you have to listen into more. I feel like this new record comes out.

Tell me a little bit about working with T Bone Burnett. How did the transition go from working with him to essentially producing yourselves?

G: I kind of learned how to make records from him. Rik Pekkonen (engineer on Revival) and T Bone came up with our mic'ing rig.

D: From the first days of Revival, we had Gil sing into a [Neumann] [U] 47, [U] 67 and an [M] 49. It was pretty apparent to everyone that the 49 was a great mic for her. When we got done, Rik Pekkonen sent me a very nice list of, "This is what you would need to buy in order to make professional recordings." We started out with an [Ampex] ATR-102 and a couple of U 67s.

G: T Bone is really the one that pushed us to have a recording rig in our house.

D: ...and the methodology when it comes to tape editing. That's how T Bone was working at the time. In my mind we record in a mid '70's methodology, and I think that's the pinnacle of fidelity in the recording world.

G: We have to capture a performance and T Bone got that. That's why he said, "Have a way to record in your house."

It sounds like he really encouraged you guys to move into producing yourselves.

D: In a way, he forced us into it. He was not around at the end of either of the first two records. We mastered Revival without him. T Bone is an incredibly talented, fantastic producer. Listen to his track record and listen to his music. But oftentimes he is working on a lot of things, and he had a lot more energy at the beginning of these projects than he did at the end. There are tracks on Hell Among the Yearlings that he never heard before the record was out. That's just the truth of it — we needed to finish the record.

G: You would be hard-pressed to find someone who commences a project with more inspiration and enthusiasm than T Bone.

D: The man is a genius.

G: I think it is part of his process of how he goes to the next project. He has to mentally get out of the one he is in. Sometimes that happens before the record is done, if that makes sense.

From: https://tapeop.com/interviews/85/gillian-welch-and-dave-rawlings/

Soundgarden - MTV Live 'n' Loud 1996

Upon its release on March 8, 1994, Superunknown wasn’t just a highly anticipated album from a critically acclaimed rock band—its multi-platinum success and Grammy wins practically felt predestined. This was Soundgarden’s long overdue turn to come out on top. Though they were the first late-’80s Seattle-scene spawn to sign to a major label, and dutifully embarked upon traditional career-building exercises like opening stadium tours for Guns N' Roses, they would be soundly leapfrogged on the charts by their Emerald City peers in Nirvana and Pearl Jam; by comparison, Soundgarden’s metallic sonatas were seemingly too knotty (and naughty) to inspire the same magnitude of crossover success. Sure, 1991’s Badmotorfinger landed a bare-chested Chris Cornell on the cover of SPIN, and an MTV ban of the allegedly blasphemous “Jesus Christ Pose” video brought the band more attention than if the station had actually aired it, but Soundgarden appeared destined to be the perennial bronze medalists in the Grunger Games.
By early 1994, however, the playing field had changed considerably: Though Pearl Jam were still the most popular rock band in America, they were actively trying to be the least visible one, declaring a moratorium on videos and interviews in an orchestrated (and ultimately successful) campaign to kill their own hype. Nirvana, likewise, were in the midst of a similar retreat, and though their story had yet to reach its tragic conclusion, ominous warning signs were in the air. But as a band that enjoyed a steadier ascent than their flannelled friends—and whose records got progressively better after jumping to a major—Soundgarden didn’t seem so conflicted about success. Their response to the Seattle-scene media storm wasn’t to try to avoid it, but transcend it, and embrace the opportunity to, for a moment, become the biggest band in the land.
Usually, it’s a bad sign when the wild-child frontman of your favorite group cuts his hair and starts wearing shirts. But the clean-cut Cornell that emerged with Superunknown was emblematic of the album’s mission to deliver maximal effect with minimal histrionics. With its despairing worldview, gold-plated production, and CD-stuffing 71-minute running time, Superunknown is a quintessential ’90s artifact. But thanks to its still-formidable high-wire balance of hooks and heft, the album nonetheless represents, some 20 years later, the platonic ideal of what a mainstream hard rock record should be. And even if that’s an ideal to which few contemporary bands aspire (aside from, say, Queens of the Stone Age), Superunknown remains a useful model for any left-of-center artist hoping to achieve accessibility without sacrificing identity.
For Soundgarden, the push toward pop was the result of incremental evolutions rather than a spectacular leap. Where Badmotorfinger introduced flashes of psychedelia and paisley-patterned melody amid Kim Thayil’s pulverizing riffage, on Superunknown, these elements become featured attractions. The once-oblique John Lennon references gave way to unabashed homage—centerpiece power ballad “Black Hole Sun” is pretty much “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” turned upside down and dropped in a heap of soot and coal. That song counts as Superunknown’s most wanton act of subversion—setting its apocalyptic imagery to a tune so pretty, even Paul Anka can dig it—but if that element of surprise has been diluted by two decades of perpetual rock-radio rotation, the album boasts a wealth of less celebrated deep cuts (the queasy psych-folk of “Head Down,” the dread-ridden doom of “4th of July”) that retain a palpable sense of unease.
Even the album’s eternal fist-pump anthems—“The Day I Tried to Live”, “Fell on Black Days”, “My Wave”—are infected with misanthropy and malaise, making Superunknown the rare arena-rock album that makes just as much sense in blacked-out bedroom. (And yet, despite the junkie intimations of its title, “Spoonman” is really just about a man who plays with spoons.) That said, if you don’t hate the world now quite as much as did when you were 18, you may find yourself skipping over the leaden likes of “Mailman” and “Limo Wreck,” while developing a newfound appreciation for how bassist Ben Shepherd’s India-inspired oddity, “Half”, injects a welcome dose of absurdity into the mix.
By fortuitous coincidence, Superunknown hit stores the same day as Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral, an album boasting a similarly expansive scope and thematic framework, albeit approached from a drastically different set of influences (’80s new wave, goth, and electro as opposed to ’60s classic rock). The connection between the two albums is strong enough that the two bands toured together in 1994 and—despite some shit-talkin’ in the interim—are reuniting once again this summer for a joint-20th-anniversary jaunt. For casual Soundgarden fans who still own the record, a concert ticket may ultimately be a more efficient way of celebrating Superunknown’s birthday than by shelling out for this reissue (available in two-and five-CD box set iterations), whose bonus material mostly amounts to demos and rehearsal tapes that cast this epic album in a more normalizing light. However, you do develop a greater appreciation for the final product when you hear the ideas that got scrapped along the away or relegated to B-sides, like the dirgey embryonic arrangement of “Fell on Black Days” (a.k.a. “Black Days III”), the free-form ambient stew of “Jerry Garcia’s Finger”, and a club-friendly industrial funk mix of “Spoonman” by Steve Fisk that sounds like a test run for his beat-driven project Pigeonhed.
You also get a glimpse of the band’s future course with a beautifully spare acoustic treatment of “Like Suicide” that points the way to 1996’s more temperate Down on the Upside, the album that effectively triggered Soundgarden’s subsequent 13-year break-up. But then the go-for-broke, peak-conquering triumphalism of Superunknown was itself a harbinger that the writing was on the wall for this band at the time. When Cornell sings, “Alive in the superunknown” on the album’s acid-swirled title track, it’s both a valorous testament to Soundgarden’s last-gang-in-town fortitude and a telling prophecy of the uncertainty to come, with grunge’s early ’90s stranglehold on alt-rock radio soon to be loosened by the emergence of pop-punk, Britpop, electronica, and nu-metal. But amid a musical landscape now splintered into infinite subgenres, Superunknown remains the very definition of no-qualifiers-required rock—a tombstone for a once-dominant aesthetic, perhaps, but also a solid, immovable mass that endures no matter how dramatically its surroundings have changed.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19407-soundgarden-superunknown/

The B-52s - Revolution Earth

Kate Pierson is showing off the Pepto-Bismol pink cabinets in Suite No. 5. The retro furniture fits right in with the rest of the decor at Kate’s Lazy Meadow, the Hudson Valley, New York motel owned by the redhead from the B-52s and her wife Monica Coleman. There are suites dedicated to cowgirl Annie Oakley and Native American hero Sacagawea, and all of the rentals are filled with ’50s-style whimsy and a collection of B-movie VHS tapes with titles like The Incubus and G.I. Executioner. The kitschy getaway brings to mind the B-52s’ classic “Love Shack” video, where the band partied alongside a crowd of revelers—including a young RuPaul—inside of a tiny technicolor cabin. The mountain hideaway suits the 71-year-old’s eccentric onstage style, but her demeanor is more reserved than the loud decor of her motel or her hair (now magenta) lets on. For our interview, she’s dressed like a ski-bunny in black leggings and fur-lined boots, with pages of detailed notes about her favorite songs through the years, which she says took days of research to compile.
More than four decades ago, the B-52s began with a burst of spontaneity. In 1976, Pierson, Fred Schneider, Keith Strickland, Cindy Wilson and her older brother Ricky shared a flaming volcano drink at a Chinese restaurant in Athens, Georgia, headed home to jam—and never stopped. The band relied on improvisation from the start, combining the music they all loved—surf rock, Afrobeat, doo-wop—to become a vibrant fount of pure merriment. They’ve endured hardships, including Ricky’s passing from an AIDS-related illness in 1985, financial woes, and Cindy taking a brief sabbatical in the early ’90s, but the B-52s are the rare band that never broke up. In fact, the remaining founding members continue to play to sold-out crowds across the world.
Now the band is looking to celebrate their history with a documentary, a book, and a jukebox musical, all of which are in the early stages of development. This reminiscing has made Pierson excited to think about the band’s legacy. “The basic message we put out is inclusion,” she says, noting that people tell her all the time that the B-52s got them through high school or an illness. It’s the kind of music that makes a person feel less alone. “They can forget their troubles and they can dance,” she says. “That’s the greatest thing you can give someone.” Here, Pierson looks back at the music that served a similar purpose for her throughout her life.

Les Paul and Mary Ford: “Mockin’ Bird Hill”

Kate Pierson: My grandmother owned the house we lived in in Weehawken, New Jersey. She lived upstairs, and as soon as I woke up I would go up there, and she’d play the piano. She sang this song, “Tra-la-la, tweedlee dee dee, it gives me a thrill.” I don’t remember much from when I was 5, but I specifically remember her playing that. It’s almost like a vision of her, angelic, playing “Mockin’ Bird Hill.” She was singing dramatically, and that made me think, I want to be a singer.

Jerry Lee Lewis: “Great Balls of Fire”

When I heard this song on the radio in 1958, it just had this visceral effect on me. I had a laughing fit and I couldn’t stop—I started rolling around on the floor. My parents didn’t know what was the matter with me. It just hit me like a lightning bolt, and I was like, “OK, I guess I’m destined to rock and roll.” I had no idea at that age, but kids tore up auditoriums and threw chairs to this song. That’s why parents were like, “Rock and roll is the devil! It’s making kids crazy!” It did make me crazy, in a great way.

Bob Dylan: “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”

At this point I had my own folk protest band called the Sun Doughnuts, and I played this song for my other bandmates over and over, but they just couldn’t get it. Not only did Dylan’s voice grab me, but the meaning and the message made me realize that the words really matter. A lot of songs, even “Great Balls of Fire,” are kind of funny, but this song, wow—it really affected my life. I became aware of the civil rights movement through music by people like Dylan, Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell. When I look back at my life, I wonder why I didn’t run away to Greenwich Village and become a folk singer.

Janis Joplin: “Ball and Chain”

This was 1968, and I wanted to look like Mary Travers and Joni Mitchell. I had long straight hair with a part in the middle, while all my classmates had these teased bouffants, which is so ironic now. I transferred to Boston University that year, and that summer, all the hippies moved from San Francisco to the Boston Common. I was like, “Wow, perfect timing.” I got into acid at that time. Of course, I was smoking pot, but LSD was my drug of choice. But it wasn’t like, “Oh, let’s have fun and drop acid!” It was like, “We are expanding our minds. We are going to trip.” So that’s the year I tuned in and turned on—but I didn’t drop out.
I became aware of psychedelic music, but the one singer that really got me was Janis Joplin. I listened to her sing “Ball and Chain” by Big Mama Thornton, and it blew me away. I could never sing like her—I mean, I can’t even try. I don’t know how she did it. She was so unique and seemed to be so free. She epitomized hippiedom, and she seemed like such a strong woman, even though she was singing about a man taking a piece of her heart. She took a piece of my heart, too.
At that time, a group of us stoners were like, “Some music sounds really good when you’re tripping and some sounds good when you’re stoned or when you’re drinking.” I never really got into alcohol, but we drank some really cheap wine and listened to Janis Joplin, and it was like, “That sounds great!” And then we took acid and listened to Janis Joplin—not so good. She wasn’t so psychedelic. She was more of a warm, visceral singer, like red wine flowing through your veins.

David Bowie: “Space Oddity”

I was in the White Panthers, which seems like a joke now, but I was supporting the Black Panthers, holding signs and protesting. After the Kent State shootings, I decided I’d had it with America and went to Europe. I left the summer of ’71 and came back in ’73. While I was there, I met my future ex-husband, Brian Cokayne, who was from Manchester, England. On the way back we went on this major cruise ship that was going one way for $99 in the middle of January. So I go to get on the boat, and who should be getting on right before me: David Bowie. He was dressed to the nines. He had on a really great jacket and these high red leather boots. Some of the crew yelled out “Faggot!” and I was like, “God, that’s David Bowie!” There was a hipster element on the boat, so someone invited what he perceived to be the hipsters to a party, where David Bowie sang “Space Oddity.” It was pretty amazing. It made me realize what an image, what a voice, what individuality he had. It was just like nothing else. It was this new brand of rock and roll that was forming who I wanted to be as a singer. I wish I had gotten to hang out with him, but I was seasick. Everyone was puking all over the place.

Patti Smith: “Horses”

It’s 1978, and this was when we started going back and forth between Athens and New York City. We played CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City, and we were the first band to play the Mudd Club. We weren’t living in New York so we’d go up and stay with friends. We stayed at Brian Eno’s place once, though he was away—I don’t even know if Brian Eno knew we were staying in his apartment. I saw the Ramones and Talking Heads and Blondie. Debbie Harry and Chris Stein were so nice, they took us to their apartment, and we had drinks over there. They were like the Patsy Cline to our Loretta Lynn.
But the artist I saw that just grabbed me was Patti Smith. She did “Horses” and, oh my god, the poetry at the end and the fact that she had this different voice and this gritty look. She was androgynous and tough and she commanded the stage. I’ve seen her perform many times, and she just takes the music by the throat. I don’t know how she has it in her to express such emotion and communicate that to the audience. It’s like a transfiguration—the wine to blood, the body of Christ. She really transforms the whole atmosphere of the room. She’s the shaman of rock and roll.

R.E.M.: “Stand”

I saw R.E.M. at one of their first concerts at this little hole in the wall in Athens, and we’ve been friends and fans of theirs ever since. But by 1988 we intersected again because they had quit their record company and wanted to sign with Warner Bros., which we signed with in 1979. Somehow we were at the Warner Bros. office at the same time, and Michael [Stipe] took me aside and said, “What do you think about them?” I said, “They never really tried to change us or tell us what to do.” That encouraged R.E.M. to sign with them. We were in the studio then, and R.E.M. came in, and we played “Love Shack” for them, and they were like, “This is a hit!”
Later that year, they were working on Green and doing the video for the song “Stand.” They came to Woodstock, and I was just tagging along and helping them location scout. While filming the video, [director] Katherine Dieckmann said, “We’ll just run into this field and try to do this shot really quick before anyone sees us.” And this guy came out with a gun and said, “Get off my land!”

The B-52s: “Revolution Earth”

We toured for a year on 1992’s Good Stuff, and I got a call from my mother to fly home when we were in Europe. She said, “Your father’s dying.” I knew he was sick, but we were on this big tour. I was devastated, of course, but also like, “I’ve got to fly home right away, but we have a show.” I felt so emotional. I sang “Revolution Earth” like my life depended on it—that song never meant so much to me as when I sang it that night. It was so sad but it also gave me this courage. It just felt like everything will be all right, I’ll get home OK and see my father. Thankfully my father lived another couple of weeks, and I got to be with him when he passed away on New Year’s Eve in 1992.

From: https://pitchfork.com/features/5-10-15-20/the-b-52s-kate-pierson-on-the-music-that-made-her/

XTC - Making Plans for Nigel

"Making Plans for Nigel" is a song by English rock band XTC, released by Virgin Records as the lead single from their 1979 album Drums and Wires. It was written by Colin Moulding, the band's bassist. The lyrics are told from the point of view of overbearing parents who are certain that their son Nigel is "happy in his world", affirming that his future, to be spent working for British Steel, "is as good as sealed", and that he "likes to speak and loves to be spoken to". The single marked XTC's commercial breakthrough. It spent 11 weeks on the UK Singles Chart and peaked at No. 17. In 2016, the song was ranked number 143 on the Pitchfork website's list of the 200 best songs of the 1970s.  It was also ranked number 73 in NME list of 100 best songs of the 1970s.
Bassist Colin Moulding said of the song: I didn't know where it came from. That phrase popped into my head, and one line followed another. Before I knew it, I'd written three parts of the song, and the rest of it just kind of fell in line probably a day or two later. When I was about 16, my father wanted me to stay on in school. But by that time, I really didn't want to do anything other than music, I think. So, in a way, is it autobiographical? Well, a little bit. I knew somebody called Nigel at school. But I think that, when you write songs, it's a lot of things all wrapped up, like in your dreams. Your dreams are kind of bits and pieces of all the walks of life you've been in.
During this time, XTC typically rehearsed about two or three times a week, at which juncture Moulding would introduce his bandmates to whatever new songs he had been working on. He remembered that "Making Plans for Nigel" appeared to receive "a favourable response. But at that time, I didn't really have enough confidence in myself to know where I was going with the arrangement. The other guys helped me on that, I suppose."
In the XTC biography Chalkhills and Children, it is stated that the song's drum pattern was discovered by accident after a miscommunication between guitarist Andy Partridge and drummer Terry Chambers. Partridge said that the drum pattern was actually a deliberate attempt to invert drum tones and accents in the style of Devo's cover of the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction". He explained that Moulding introduced the song to the rest of the band on a nylon-string guitar at a slow tempo and did not have an idea of how the arrangement should be fleshed out, "so we said to Colin, 'Do you fancy trying something like Devo for this?" And Colin said, 'Yeah, give it a go.'"
In Chambers' recollection: "Because of the subject matter, I wanted to make the beat a bit more industrial. So instead of keeping the rhythm on the hi-hat, I played it on the floor tom and used the hi-hat for the accents. It was the opposite to what drummers usually do but it gave it a juddering, production-line feel. We used a keyboard to make a smashing sound, like an anvil in a foundry. Partridge said that once the drum pattern was established, the band decided that Moulding should duplicate the tom rhythm on his bass guitar. He continued:
Our second guitarist Dave Gregory began to chop away, doing a much more syncopated version of the basic chords, on electric guitar. Almost snare-drum-like, you know? And I thought, "Well, what the hell am I going to do?" So I locked on to that with this two-note, little oriental pattern. That's really how the whole feel of the song came about, because when Colin brought it up, at about half that tempo, on a nylon-string guitar, it was a case of, "Well, this is a great melody, and great subject matter, but it's going to go nowhere like that.
Among the idiosyncrasies of the song's arrangement is Partridge's high backing vocals. He commented: Literally, as soon as it came up, it was like, 'Jesus, this is annoying! But then again, that might be a good thing. That might click with people, if they find it as irritating as I do!' [laughs] It was just a little 'byoo-doop,' sung in a falsetto. We still loved those high-falsetto, Beach Boys-y answer things. You can hear them all over White Music and Go 2, and it only starts to get out of our system over the next few albums. I still love it."
Virgin Records immediately earmarked "Making Plans for Nigel" as the lead single off XTC's Drums and Wires, although the band did not expect that the single would be successful. Partridge later complained about the amount of time spent recording the song, remarking that "we spent a week doing Nigel and three weeks doing the rest of the album."  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Plans_for_Nigel

Marnie Stern - Believing Is Seeing

In the decade since her last LP, New York City lifer Marnie Stern stepped back from her solo career at the edge of math rock to focus on domestic life. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, she was at the forefront of the new millennium’s wave of noisy, kinetic rock acts, showing off a gymnast’s flexibility on a string of high-energy records. In a twist on a day job, Stern has spent much of the last 10 years playing guitar in Seth Meyers’ late-night backing band—a gig more conducive to raising kids than the interminable grind of touring. But, she says, she never lost sight of the guitar as a “blank canvas.”
Stern reclaims her place among the era’s most commanding guitarists on her polished fifth LP, The Comeback Kid, a densely packed showcase of her distinctive style. The latest set is noisy at the core and fuzzy at the edges, heavy on fingertapping and busy melodic displays that snap together elements of punk, grunge, and surf rock. Re-sharpening the rounded edges that shaped much of 2013’s The Chronicles of Marnia, Stern flaunts a reinvigorated spirit in searing songs that live up to the playfully celebratory mood she establishes in the album’s title. In press materials, Stern described making the new LP as an exercise in learning to “start being myself again.” Any time she wondered whether a choice was too strange, she’d remind herself that this was her project: “I’m allowed to do whatever I want!” In that spirit, “Plain Speak” opens the album with bright, bristly, major-key riffs that she tempers with layered vocal harmonies. “I can’t keep on moving backwards,” she barks, standing firm at the center of the song’s dizzying tilt-a-whirl spin.
She leans further into her idiosyncrasies on “Believing Is Seeing,” unleashing a creepy, almost cartoonish cry—“This place is cold! I can’t hear you!”—over icy ostinato guitar before stepping sideways into a series of riff-heavy passages. “What if I add this? And this?” she asks as she heaps layers of guitar onto the mix, playing up the self-referential humor. The churning energy of “The Natural” and the short bursts of “Oh Are They” both channel classic elements of ’80s and ’90s underground rock; her repeated yelps have the feeling of a rallying cry. Like the oaky notes of aged bourbon, the particulars of Stern’s technique have only gotten richer since The Chronicles of Marnia. Her dives feel more dramatic, as when she approaches power-metal poses in “Forward” or shreds up a storm in “Working Memory,” and she reaches piercing vocal highs that land between a ’70s psychedelic shriek and a winged mythical beast. Drummer Jeremy Hara is Stern’s reliable companion throughout, complementing her breakneck fretwork with powerful percussive blasts.
After the gleeful pirouettes of the A-side, the album’s back half becomes more reflective. Even when she pursues a more linear path, Stern moves with surprising intensity. She grapples with the blues in the striving “Get It Good,” and “Earth Eater” fizzes with nervous energy as Stern contemplates lingering pain. The ragged, grungy sound of “Til It’s Over” gives it an even darker cast. Hara’s drumming pushes the song relentlessly forward, as if hitting the gas on a long stretch of open road at night. The Comeback Kid blasts by in under half an hour, and Stern’s impulses to chase her weirdest muses serve her well throughout. She lands her adventurous leaps with breathless energy. Aglow with her triumphant shredding, Stern’s howling return is a neon-haloed song of herself.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/marnie-stern-the-comeback-kid/

The Besnard Lakes - Feuds With Guns

I think that it’s fair to say that, without The Besnard Lakes, this website would not exist. It was 2010 and I was getting to that stage of life when I was beginning to fall back on music from a former time, preferring the ease and safety of nostalgia over the challenge of the new. This was something that many of my peers had already done, Britpop somehow ossifying many of their musical tastes. However, with my wife and very young family unusually out of town, I decided to look through the gig listings for that week and alighted on what looked like an interesting double header of Sleepy Sun and The Besnard Lakes at the tremendous Brudenell Social Club in Leeds.
I had heard of neither band before but a quick listen of their music piqued my interest, and I decided to take the plunge… what followed was, for me, something of a revelation as the music of both bands just washed over me and filled those dehydrated musical pores… I was back and ready to explore new music again, and never really looked back. By the time I saw the bands again, both playing the 2014 Liverpool Psych Fest (The Besnard Lakes on Day 1, and Sleepy Sun on Day 2), fittingly the best couple of days I’ve had with live music, that sort of sealed the deal.
I will admit that I had sort of lost touch with The Besnard Lakes in the meantime and, while playing their first three albums regularly the next two did not really register with me. However, the release of their sixth long player seems to have caused something of a stir and so I decided to give it a listen, and from the off I was absolutely wowed by it. It’s interesting that a number of the reviews of this double album have stressed that this is not a set for the casual listener, that it requires some buy-in to really appreciate it. This for me is the minimum that you should afford an album to really get it, and it is certainly the case that an investment into these four sides of wax – each side of which has its own title: Near Death, Death, After Death and Life – is essential to really begin to understand what it is about.
This, then, is an record with big themes, and with it comes an overall feeling of music that is grand and panoramic - this feels like an album of vision: a grand narrative vision, and a psychedelic vision. This is case from the outset with ‘Blackstrap’ as the band play through an ominously sounding overture before the plaintiff cry of (half-of husband/ wife songwriting duo of Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas) Lasek, hits you and gives you the first taste of the pain and mystery of him facing the death of his father - a life event which informs the whole of the this sprawling suite of songs, designed to be listened to in one sitting.
After the intensity of ‘Blackstrap’ there’s a real lightness to ‘Raindrops’, with a melody that is as stunning and it is silky. This beautiful track really reminds me of that first night I saw them back in 2010. It gives me the same feeling of deep joy and discovery - it is one of those tracks that feels simultaneously like it has always existed, and yet is so fresh. It feels to me like a song of hope within the darkness. There are also references to the death of Mark Hollis, a musician who I myself very much mourn here and it is, I will say it again, simply stunning.
The third, and final track, on the ‘Near Death’ side of the vinyl version is ‘Christmas Can Wait’, a deeply affecting meditation on absence and death which, when you focus on the lyrics, is a very moving paean to Lasek’s father, and gave me cause to also think about my own father who died ten years ago. For me this is such a powerful and heartfelt moment in the album, where you really feel the music holding those both playing and listening. After this comes ‘Death’, and the first track ‘Our Heads Our Hearts on Fire Again’; and while this may be a song about death, it ultimately feels like one of hope. The chorus here is so stoic, so joyous, that your cannot help but to feel defiant and emboldened - to feel the strength gained from the experience of tragedy. Again this is intense and yet just so beautiful to listen to - the sort of beauty that can only be hewn from the rock of experience.
’Feuds With Guns’ is a trippy song which, with ‘The Dark Side of Paradise’, provides us with a much more meditative atmosphere through which to think about the ultimate nature of life and death, and consider our place within the great cycle of existence - a thought that might feel somewhat grandiose for many records - but here is just feels right as the music of the latter track sweeps to a fading drone for the last few minutes of the side. That is a good place to pause, if you’re listening on vinyl you have to change the record anyway. but it’s also good to let those first six numbers sink in for a moment before embarking on the second half of the ‘suite’, which comprises of just three tracks, kicking off with ‘New Revolution’- a song of such joyous hope and optimism. You can feel the drive here - the feeling of having steered through the darkness and emerging on the other side to a new dawn.
After that the band play tribute to Prince. Using his original name of Jamie Starr, this is a fitting eulogy to a major musical influence, and, with the mantra of ‘with love there is no death’ another defiant and uplifting moment in which The Besnard Lakes find just the right balance between remembrance and belief - a companion to the Dead Skeletons mantra of “(s)he who fears death cannot enjoy life” on ‘Dead Mantra’. Which then brings us to the title track, an eighteen minute long opus that takes up the whole of the ‘Life’ side of the album. The lyrics seem somewhat bittersweet to me, combining a certain world-weariness with self-consolation - a sense of aloneness (as opposed to loneliness) but also a sense of realism to leave us with, and as the vocal finishes the music does too, abruptly. We are left with a slow and atmospheric drone which gradually pervades your consciousness as you sit with it and think about what you’ve heard. It is a wonderful way to finish the album, giving you a rare chance to just be.
This then, and I’m going to say it again, is an absolutely stunning album by The Besnard Lakes - a career high in my humble opinion, and one in which you can absolutely lose yourself. However this is not some directionless loss but one that is both focused and accessible for those who want to contemplate the profound themes being considered here. It is an album that I am sure I will be playing frequently, and will become part of the cannon of albums that mean an awful lot to me.  From: https://fragmentedflaneur.com/2021/03/05/album-appreciation-the-besnard-lakes-are-the-last-of-the-great-thunderstorm-warnings/comment-page-1/