Siouxsie & The Banshees - Kiss Them for Me

I can’t say I followed the punk rock scene of the mid-1970s, though I suppose I observed from a distance what was going on due to my constant fascination with music. But English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer Susan Ballion, better known as Siouxsie Sioux, sure did. She first saw the English punk rock band the Sex Pistols in 1975 (the year they formed) and became a regular follower. I imagine their grungy, anti-authoritarian, often-screamed songs might have touched a part of her that needed to be met with after growing up as a childhood sexual assault survivor in an isolated life with an admired but alcoholic father, whose death when she was 14 plunged her into terrible health.
As a devoted punk-rock follower, Ballion (who adopted the name Siouxsie Sioux) was known at the time for the makeup and bondage-inspired costumes she wore at shows but, eventually, after being beaten up at a concert, headed in another direction. She focused on her own, recently-formed band, Siouxsie and the Banshees. (In my post on David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream,” I briefly refer to the fashion that I, as a thirteen-year-old with my parents, witnessed in the fans while waiting to be let into the Liverpool Empire Theatre to see his concert. I imagine the avant-garde style of costumes there in 1973 as a precursor to those Ballion/Sioux and her contemporaries would be sporting a few years later.)
As an artist, Sioux earned much acclaim; I recall hearing about her early in her career, though again, I didn’t connect directly with her music back then, for whatever reason, though the sense of it always carried a mystical quality I can’t quite explain. But her musician peers certainly connected. Siouxsie Sioux has been held up, her songs covered by others, and just generally admired by many of music’s most highly regarded artists. Many bands and singers like PJ Harvey, Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins, Dave Grohl, Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries, Joan as Police Woman, Alison Goldfrapp, and so many others revere her. She also influenced Joy Division, U2, Sinead O’Connor, among others. the list seems almost endless. Siouxsie Sioux has also collaborated with Morrissey, Angelo Badalamenti (famous for his soundtrack for the original Twin Peaks TV series), Suede, John Cale, Yoko Ono and others. Film director Tim Burton asked her to write a song for his movie Batman Returns (1992).
Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees released “Kiss Them for Me” on the album Superstition in 1991. It’s a song I’ve heard quite often on one of my go-to stations, KEXP Seattle, on The Morning Show with John Richards. After genuinely enjoying hearing it many times (and it playing in my head a fair bit) lately, I looked up the song today. Wikipedia tells how the piece marked a departure for the band’s style, being more of a pop-oriented, mid-tempo dance song. The online magazine PopMatters listed “Kiss Them for Me” as one of “The 20 Most Memorable Songs of 1991.” I wonder why I’ve only come to know the song in the last year or two!
The lyrics for “Kiss The for Me” are a tribute to American actress and singer Jayne Mansfield (1933-1967) and include the use of the term “divoon” (a superlative she used for “wonderful”). The song touches on the provocative lifestyle that became Mansfield’s trademark and the automobile crash that ended her life. Having witnessed how our male supremacist society has historically dominated females and manipulated and exploited their careers, I’m left wondering how much of all that, in such a high-profile lifestyle, hastened Mansfield’s turbulent life and very young death.
The song begins with a percussed and somewhat synthesized chant/mantra type of vibe with an Eastern flavour carried to a degree throughout the song’s structure, effects, and treatments. There’s a synthesizer line that in part cleverly mimics the chorus, “Kiss them for me… ” The YouTube music video, which isn’t available in Canada, emphasizes the Eastern influence. (There are copies of the video on YouTube, but not authorized, and I always hesitate about sharing access to a post that allows a random channel owner to profit off someone else’s art.) “Kiss Them for Me” is definitely a current favourite. And all the history aside, I love the song in its brilliance and as an example of and a tribute to beauty. It’s a powerful and somewhat tragic piece by a bold and brave artist.  From: https://songoftheday.ca/2021/02/15/kiss-them-for-me/

It glittered and it gleamed
For the arriving beauty queen
A ring and a car
Now you're the prettiest by far

No party she'd not attend
No invitation she wouldn't send
Transfixed by the inner sound
Of your promise to be found

Nothing or no one will ever
Make me let you down
Kiss them for me, I may be delayed
Kiss them for me if I am delayed

It's divoon, oh it's serene
In the fountains pink champagne
Someone carving their devotion
In the heart-shaped pool of fame

On the road to New Orleans
A spray of stars hit the screen
As the tenth impact shimmered
The forbidden candles beamed

Nothing or no one will ever
Make me let you down
Kiss them for me, I may be delayed
Kiss them for me if I am delayed 

The Dukes Of Stratosphear - The Mole From The Ministry

On the surface, it made no sense at all. Their first two studio-only albums bombed. Critical reaction to Mummer and The Big Express was mixed at best; the latter album was almost entirely ignored by critics and music buyers in the United States. The recording sessions approached the chaotic and weren’t all that fun for anyone involved. XTC seemed headed straight down the road to oblivion.
So when Andy Partridge informed Virgin that the next project would attempt to revive a form of music that had been dead for over a decade and would be recorded under a different band name, management responded by limiting the budget to a mere £5,000. Given that Virgin had spent £33,000 on the video for the single “All You Pretty Girls” from The Big Express (which also bombed), it seemed that the suits were getting pretty wary about indulging in Andy’s fantasies.
Andy’s idea involved recreating and recording the psychedelic music of the 60s. Both Andy and Dave Gregory were devotees of the form; as far back as 1978 they had mused about the possibility of making a psychedelic album, even before Dave joined XTC. Andy explained to Todd Bernhardt that while they were hard at work on The Big Express, the urge to realize his dream overpowered him: “. . . during spare minutes I’d sneak off upstairs in Crescent Studios, in Bath, with my cassette machine and whisper these ideas for psychedelic songs into it. I was beginning not to be able to contain the desire to do this. You can see it leaking out earlier—you can see it leaking out on Mummer—‘Let’s get a Mellotron! Let’s put some backwards so-and-so on here.'”
Due to the limited budget and a two-week timeline, they had to hope that some good karma was headed their way. Andy managed to get top-tier producer John Leckie excited about the project and Leckie found a suitably cheap studio with 60s-era equipment while the boys scoured the music stores for period instruments. Caught up in the excitement of transforming themselves into a forgotten ’60s psychedelic band called the Dukes of Stratosphear, they dressed in Paisley and gave themselves fresh pseudonyms. Alas, they didn’t have enough time to create a full album, so the project was whittled down to a six-song mini-album.
Everything I’ve written so far sounds like the perfect recipe for a career-killing embarrassment, but lo and behold, 25 O’Clock sold twice as many copies as The Big Express and did pretty well in the USA. The keys to its stunning success were the ingredients missing in Mummer and The Big Express—a clear artistic vision, an accomplished producer and exceptionally positive vibes. From the documentary This Is Pop:
Dave: I had more fun in those two weeks than I’d ever had in the studio with anybody. We just put ourselves in the mindset of bands from the mid-60s and just find as much vintage gear as we can so we can it sounding as authentic as possible.
Andy: There’s a long tradition of - whatever media you’re in, writers do it all the time but musicians do it as well - where you want to not be you, to go to like a costume ball as some other character - a masked ball - wouldn’t that be great fun? So in our case, let’s make an album by a different band. So in two weeks, we wrote, recorded and mixed the Dukes of Stratosphere’s first record. It was so much fun, I’ll tell ya. So much fun not being yourself.
Ironically, the recording approach of “tarting things up” and overloading the mixes with superfluous sounds that made Mummer and The Big Express unsatisfactory listening experiences turned out to be just what the doctor ordered on 25 O’Clock. Psychedelic music is one of the few musical forms that embraces excess—you expect to hear all kinds of weird and unusual sounds coming out of the speakers. The key difference between the great psychedelic songs and the mucky messes released in the 60s was the presence of a skilled producer, and John Leckie cut his teeth at Abbey Road, where much of the best psychedelic music of the era was engineered and produced.
25 O’Clock and its follow-up Psonic Sunspot are truly labors of love. The Dukes worked hard to reproduce the sounds and styles of their favorite psychedelic bands and have been open and honest about which bands inspired each song. You will hear clear echoes of the Electric Prunes, Pink Floyd (especially Syd Barrett), the Move, Small Faces, Tomorrow, the Smoke, the Pretty Things, the Stones of Satanic Majesties, and of course, the Beatles. I found myself giggling with delight every time I recognized a classic psychedelic trope: “Oh, there’s the cheesy organ!” “And there’s the anti-resolution chord!” “Yay, backward loops!” “Oh, my, that is so walrusy!” I am thoroughly convinced that at least three of the tracks would have been Top 10 hits back in the day and the other three would have made for excellent B-sides.
That said, the Dukes had several advantages over their forebears. They were accomplished musicians in contrast to the sometimes questionable skills of fly-by-night psychedelic bands. The Psychedelic Era operated under the mantra “anything goes” and many of the experiments should have been left in the can. The Dukes had no need to experiment because the practices and values of psychedelic music were well-established. By embracing those core elements, the project became a testament honoring those who came before:
“In the later ’70s, I found myself longing to be doing the music that I loved as a kid of 13 or 14. I’d be listening to the radio then, and there’d be stuff like “See Emily Play,” or “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “My White Bicycle” — you know, all these great psychedelic singles, and I thought, “This is wonderful! When I grow up, I’ll be in a group, and we’ll make music like this!” Of course, as a kid, I had no grasp that this was just the whim of fashion, and that this music was going to last only a year or so, and then it would be gone! But it affected me so profoundly that when I was in a position to be in a group and making records, I thought I should say thank you to the people who made those records, and to say thank you to them by sounding just like them.” -Andy Partridge. From: https://altrockchick.com/2023/12/10/the-dukes-of-stratosphear-25-oclock-classic-music-review-xtc-series/

U.S. Girls - Mad As Hell

Early in Naomi Alderman’s 2017 novel The Power, teenage girls gain the ability to produce an electric charge with their bodies. This “electrostatic power” is channeled through a set of muscles at the collarbone called a skein. It allows women the ability to change their circumstances, and the way that individuals grapple with their new authority is a primary concern of the novel. Alderman’s book is one of a series of new works of art that are helping to, in the words of the writer Rebecca Traister, adjust “American ears to the sound of female anger—righteous and defensive, grand and petty.” Another, one that shares many qualities with The Power, is Meg Remy’s striking new album as U.S. Girls, In a Poem Unlimited.
Remy, an American expatriate who lives in Toronto, has been making music under the name U.S. Girls since 2007, but the moniker used to be a kind of joke. Her music was so idiosyncratic, even, at times, solipsistic. Responding to those qualities early in her career, Artforum called her “a woman who clearly spends a lot of time in her apartment with the shades drawn.” And reviewing her 2012 album GEM, the last released before she signed to 4AD, Pitchfork said of U.S. Girls that “you can tell without peeking at the liner notes that this is a project born of solitude and isolation.”
But by the time her 2015 record, Half Free came out, Remy had begun to open the band to external voices. And three years later, U.S. Girls has become a cacophony. In a Poem Unlimited, at once the most accessible and sharply violent U.S. Girls album to date, is the product of more than two dozen collaborators, many of them members of the Toronto funk and jazz collective the Cosmic Range. Not a single song was written by Remy alone; two were even written without her input. And yet, the glam and surf rock, disco and pop, (glorious, danceable pop!) on the record speaks to a unified vision, one of spit, fury, and chuckling to keep from crying.
Though it is unmistakably a record about women’s anger in its various shades and forms, Remy signals her awareness of male canons throughout (its title comes from Hamlet and the song “Rosebud” is a clear reference to Citizen Kane.) Those landmark texts are there to be turned inside out: Remy is interested in creating new mythologies, fertilizing stale old ground to nurture a different sort of harvest. The shuffling funk of “Pearly Gates,” for instance, turns a story of quotidian male cluelessness into a religious allegory, asking how a heaven controlled by men could ever be safe.
That might sound to some like a facile observation. But none of the songs on Poem can be folded neatly into a box. Remy remains a narrative savant wedded to the thrill of the unexpected, the razor under the tongue, and she fills her songs with cryptic passages and unexpected allusions. Making a record without psychological depth (or music fit to accompany it) might cause her to break out into hives. The album’s first track, the foreboding, psychedelic “Velvet 4 Sale” sets up a woman’s revenge tale. With its breathy ad-libs and spiraling, almost-Western cinematic synths, it would slot nicely into the soundtrack of Kill Bill: Vol 2, and it includes that most phallic of all musical passages, the guitar solo. The song, co-written with Remy’s husband, the musician Max Turnbull, begins in media res: “You’ve been sleeping with one eye open because he always could come back, ya know? And you’ve been walking these streets unguarded waiting for any man to explode.” It ends (spoiler alert!) with a woman instructing another on how to ensure that her male target is dead.
Hamlet, too, is nominally a revenge tale. But just as revenge becomes a portal to the many layers of Shakespeare’s play, so too do does In a Poem Unlimited soon migrate to more complex scenarios. On the extraordinary “Rage of Plastics,” Remy explores, with sax and surf guitar, the bubbling resentment of a woman whose job at an oil refinery has made her infertile. And good luck solving the riddle contained within the funky dirge “L-Over,” a song about ditching a mysterious lover, an animate being with no heart. With few exceptions, these are stories about how women react after being done wrong. But the reactions are so varied that it feels as if each belongs to a different individual, and the album comes to feel like an entire community in tense conversation with itself.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/us-girls-in-a-poem-unlimited/

Dada - Here Today Gone Tomorrow

Cast your mind back to late 1992. Grunge was busy conquering the rock world if it hadn’t already. The scourge known as Hair Metal had been put out of our collective misery, at last, swept off the charts by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and their Seattle kin. Then, between endless replays of “Alive” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, a catchy tune utterly incompatible with the prevailing zeitgeist somehow plied its way onto MTV rotation and the Modern Rock radio charts. Jangly, noodling guitars; delicate Simon and Garfunkel harmonies; plus snide, ironic, of-the-moment lyrics even more cynical than Cobain’s or Vedder’s rebellious dirges, if that be possible. Yet dada’s “Dizz Knee Land” still had plenty of muscle behind it, including whooped YEAH YEAH YEAHS and a couple of shredding Hendrix guitar solos. Call it a gimmick or a novelty song if you must. But “Dizz” was a huge indie hit, and people remember it – even if I.R.S. label guru Miles Copeland hated the single at the time.
Bassist Joie Calio echoes his fellow band members when he calls “Dizz Knee Land” both a blessing and a curse. “That song made us. It changed our lives,” he says today. “Fans loved it at our shows, even before Puzzle was released. But it became an anchor too.” Certainly never hurts to name a song after one of the world’s best-known brands, right? Moreover, dada did what every debut act is supposed to: deliver a hit for their record label. But both the band and their dedicated fans rate “Dizz Knee Land” as merely the introduction to a fantastic pop-rock record, with half a million in sales to prove it.
So now, with THAT SONG mercifully out of the way… How did these kids initially get together? “Guitarist Mike Gurley and I went to the same high school, but different grades,” says Calio. “Our first band was called A French Invention.” The duo then formed Louis and Clark with guitarist Louis Gutierrez, formerly of Paisley Underground darlings the Three O’Clock. “All our friends were getting signed, but not us,” according to Gurley. He stayed afloat as a sushi waiter while Calio worked in the Geffen Records mail room. “We decided that instead of trying to live the grand rock-star life, we needed to write better songs.” Which they did during a feverishly creative span in Los Angeles lasting somewhere between eight and eighteen months (depending on who you ask).
Quizzed about early influences, one word comes back: Beatles. Then the Byrds, Simon & Garfunkel, Led Zeppelin. Calio also mentions punk pioneers the Clash and the Ramones, while drummer Phil Leavitt cites the Doors’ John Densmore as a touchstone. All three members take pains to point out that AM pop radio was king back then. (Meanwhile, this urbane south Floridian still waits for somebody out there to credit AM stalwarts KC and the Sunshine Band, who out-charted all of the above except the Fab Four.) Thus the soon-to-be trio honed their sound: Beatles melodies topped by Simon & Garfunkel harmony, with a touch of Hendrix thrown in for brawny marbling. Much like Big Star and the Raspberries before them, dada would resurrect an anachronistic yet proven pop-rock formula that starchy conventional wisdom had left behind.
In one of several huge breaks along the way, Gutierrez heard Gurley’s and Calio’s initial batch of songs and invited them to open on tour for his new band Mary’s Danish. After famed producer Ken Scott caught their act at the Highland Grounds coffee shop, he offered to produce a demo tape – which may or may not have been the one Gurley claims he left inside I.R.S. exec Copeland’s Chrysler LeBaron cassette deck, in yet another lucky twist. Opportunity had officially knocked: Time to deliver that sparkling debut album!
Which, of course, I.R.S. summarily rejected. This led to a second self-produced studio session, which according to Leavitt yielded some of Puzzle’s best tracks. “Joie and Mike had originated most of the material,” he says. “I helped with the arrangements, and we reworked some other elements together.” Indeed, so well-produced and engineered was Puzzle that it served as a demo CD for Hi-Fi audio equipment at the time. Production was one aspect; the songs were another. Puzzle remains as musically intricate and rewarding today as it was then – a universally appealing, type-O record that adults, MTV teens, rockers, and even their girlfriends could all get behind. And not just because of THAT SONG, which we’ll return to in due time.
Gurley and Calio claim they invented the female name for album opener “Dorina” out of whole cloth, and that the song was based on a psychic who worked the Santa Monica pier. Right away dada’s effervescent vocals strike the listener: harmony is the focus of every verse, right up to the plaintive, begging chorus. The song is a confident six minutes, lengthy for a debut’s first track, and boasts a couple of ragged, wailing guitar solos. Is this Beatles pop-rock, or “Let’s Go Crazy”?
Followup “Mary Sunshine Rain” cements the point, demonstrating that those surprising powerhouse solos were no fluke. The song opens with Puzzle’s most haunting acoustic refrain, before delving into further guitar pyrotechnics in the Hendrix vein. Granted, the term “schizophrenic” is usually an epithet. No whiplash here, though – the melodies flow effortlessly from soft to jagged and back again, with those buoyant harmonies high above. Such gentle edges around a rough center were a hardy Page/Zeppelin trademark; it’s called a ‘formula’ because it works. Meanwhile, pressed for the inside scoop, Gurley reveals that the sunshine/rain “Mary” in question was his girlfriend at the time and a serious downer. But fear not Mary: unlike the rest of us, you’re officially immortal.
My personal favorite “Dog” is up next, featuring not only Puzzle’s greatest harmonies but some of the best of that decade. Gurley became convinced early on that he and Calio sang better together than separately, and the celestial sounds they produce on this track prove him spectacularly right. How about that chorus: “I know a girl / who believes a girl / who believes she used to be a dog”? Interviewing three band members often leads to conflicting stories or memories. But “Dog” is all about reincarnation, says Calio. “A girl one of us knew thought she was a dog in a former life. Being stoned might have had something to do with it,” he admits. Exactly who was stoned is a question we’ll graciously leave unasked. But the trailing-verse melody “Keep looking to the sky, ayyy, ayyyyy” never ever gets old, and never will.
Now saddle up: We’ve officially reached track four, which means it’s time to revisit THAT SONG. Mystical provenance? “Basically, the only radio hit dada ever had came to me in a dream,” says Calio of “Dizz Knee Land” today. “I heard the melody, and then a bus with the word Disneyland drove by. I woke up at five a.m. and started writing lines like I just robbed a grocery store. The first Gulf War was on TV the night before (‘I just flipped off President George’, unforgettable line), along with that famous Super Bowl commercial saying the winner was going to Disneyland. I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition. Later that morning I drove to Mike’s house, and he added the Zeppelin-style bridge. The spelling was changed in the studio later on.”
Hit, schmit: Thanks to some luck and a ton of hard work, dada had officially made it. Leavitt recalls touring with Sting the following year: “I looked around the stage, and here we were on tour with Sting. My whole life I expected early success, so I had absolutely zero doubt that we belonged there.” Road-movie soundtrack “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” is another gem, perhaps the most biting cut on Puzzle yet also the most unadulterated fun. Its deep, drawling Lou Reed intro builds to a laconic Joe Walsh-style guitar solo, along with hilarious “Bonnie and Clyde” fantasy lyrics like “We robbed a bank in Santa Monica / Bought a Caddy and a gold harmonica…” The song also applies its vocals straight, with zero harmony, shoving its subversive desperado nature to the forefront.
Not to belabor every track, but broken-family dirge “Timothy” deserves special mention as well. Each lyric is beautifully harmonized, and the tearful string section brings subsequent 1990s Divine Comedy ballads to mind. Gurley credits every youthful bully, liar, or weirdo they ever knew for inspiration: “The teacher asks, oh where are your parents Tim / It’s been five months and I’ve seen no sign of them / My dad’s not here, he flew back to Mars…” Timothy also conveniently rhymes with ‘sympathy’, thereby justifying the choice of the song title.
Most music acts have trouble getting along for an hour, let alone three decades together. What’s dada’s secret for not hating each other’s guts after all this time? “Musical and creative respect,” answers Gurley. “Giving each other space, and coming together wherever you can.” Leavitt also credits the tail end of the old-school record business, pre-streaming, and pre-Napster, contending that the industry’s late 1990s upheaval made everything more difficult. For his part, Calio applies the classic ‘marriage’ analogy, but then grows philosophical: “Everyone involved has to understand that a rock band is like a submarine. You can’t get halfway off, and shit never leaves.”
So: After 30 long years (!), the music on Puzzle hasn’t aged one iota, but the rest of us sure have. Leavitt and Calio are focused on their roots-rock band 7Horse, while Gurley’s solo work includes his 2020 release Ultrasound and chasing his three-year-old son around the house. That enchanted period from ’92 to ‘96 understandably remains a bright spot, however. Gurley describes not wanting to take days off from the studio because the trio were having so much fun together, while Calio somehow still possesses every shred of the band’s notes, schedules, and other materiel from those golden days. “We were something back then, all three of us. I’m really proud of Puzzle and all our records,” says Leavitt in conclusion. “We connected with people, who continue to listen and be moved by our music to this day. That’s no easy trick, and I would never downplay it or take it for granted.”  From: https://www.popmatters.com/dada-discuss-puzzle-at-30

La Era De Acuario - White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane cover)

La Era De Acuario are a Mexican Psychedelic Rock band, formed in recent times but with very well defined characters. The marked influences of the late 60s mixed with more modern and always refined sounds make them fresh and original. We are here to tell you about their self-titled album released in LP by Necio Records on 16 March, 2021 and containing 8 tracks also available in digital. As soon as I approached listening to this work, I hoped it was what it turned out to be, not the usual Psychedelia album, but something sophisticated and with original sounds, while still respecting traditions. Album that right from the start immediately immerses us in the sounds of the band with a song, “Om Ganesh, “involving and well developed, certainly successful. It highlights both the vocal parts that accompany us in a lysergic journey where they find space also pleasant intertwining of guitar and keyboards. “Lunar” is softer and more dilated than the previous one, where in the instrumental parts the guitar inserts are heavier and dreamy melodies are created with the keyboards. “Agujero Negro” connects with the previous one in the initial riff to subsequently insert Latin influences and give life to an interesting long-lasting instrumental section. The intensity increases with the passing of the minutes, the mix of several styles is interesting and original. “Etéreo” has a more 60s character projected to the present day, an example of those traditional sounds but interpreted with a personal and modern character. The mix between the keyboards and the guitar is good and the vocals make us travel in time, while the keyboard and guitar solo takes the sound to another level. “Fotografía” is more in the form of a softer and more linear ‘song’ than the previous ones, a good piece that still has positive and engaging melodies. “Bailando en el Mar” shows again a 60’s inspiration, in the Doors in particular, adding that personal touch that characterizes their sound. The melodies are darker and more intricate here, with a good guitar and keyboard solo in the final instrumental part. “Orgón” slows down in the rhythmic session, also dilating the melodies on dark tones and frequent tempo changes, and leading keyboards, while the acid guitar riffs blend well. “Hippie Hippie Hourra” is a cheerful track that is very reminiscent of the 60s, which closes by paying homage to the positivity of the sounds of the past. A band that succeeds in interpreting the Psychedelic sounds of the late 60s in a modern key, always giving their own modern and original touch to the tracks. An album recommended to all lovers of Psychedelic music with an even more modern vision, while remaining faithful to traditions. Well-developed and well-executed textures respecting the classic sounds of the genre, adding however a more modern and personal interpretation that guides us through this well-made lysergic journey.  From: https://progrockjournal.com/review-la-era-de-acuario-la-era-de-acuario/

Igorrr - Cheval

Gautier Serre is a pretty normal looking dude. His band Igorrr is anything but. Originally a solo project, the world’s only baroque breakcore death metal band released Savage Sinusoid in 2017. With their wild shows, over-the-top costumes and bizarre blend of influences, it’s easy to see why Igorrr attracted attention. But behind the scenes, something else was going on.
Gautier Serre has a neurological condition called synesthesia. He explains it as:  “There is a connection in the mind which connects the feeling you have when you hear a sound with the feeling you have when you see a colour…Basically, I see colours when I hear sounds. The music I can see in my head, it’s also a painting. I can use a whole palette of colours. So it became a tool I use in Igorrr. When I jam with musicians, I can choose them because they have a specific colour when they play. For instance, my classical guitarist (Nils Cheville) has a very specific colour. It’s a kind of green-brown.  It is a very cool thing. I was not even aware of it until about five years ago. I thought everyone was like that.”
Like many people, Serre was unaware of his synesthesia until much later in life. He does not say he ‘suffers’ from the condition as it is “not something to suffer from.” It might help explain Igorrr’s peculiar approach to…well…everything. But regular instrumentation is one thing. Where Serre’s synesthesia really comes out is in Igorrr’s weirder sonic experiments. Serre is known for going outside the realm of traditional instruments in his search for a brand new sound. As seen in a recent video, he has used Hoover vacuums, inside-out propane tanks, cookie tins and even a chicken pecking corn off a piano to make music before.
“Human beings created the piano, the guitar, to control a sound. Anything I see around me is a potential instrument. A big metal trailer? I’m gonna tap on it to see how it reacts.”  Out of all these, Serre says his favourite improvised sound was from a piece of metal scaffolding. “I didn’t think of it at first, since the shape isn’t very attractive, but I bashed some scaffolding with a drumstick and it sounds like a piano string. Actually, it makes the same colour to me as a piano. A clear grey mixed with blue…just not as intense.”
It’s not all fun with toolboxes. Spirituality and Distortion also features a blend of breakcore and brutal death metal. Breakcore, described by Serre as “the craziest parts of jungle, breakbeats and German bass,” or a “brain explosion”, will be the hardest thing for most metalheads to accept. This doesn’t bother Serre, who started off as an electronic musician in the first place. “I think my favourite thing on (the new record) is ‘Very Noise’,” he says, “I did it for fun. It’s mostly electronic, it wasn’t even supposed to be a track before. It was just research. I was just looking for new sounds, how to calculate them, how to use them in a new way. It was extremely funny. But I found an interesting loop by mistake. Next thing I know, I’m whistling the drum part in my car! Ha!”
As far as death metal goes, Serre finally managed to snag his longtime hero, Cannibal Corpse’s George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, for the new song “Parpaing”. When asked about it, Serre gets visibly excited. “That guy, he’s like the final boss of death metal. Seriously. My hero. We were writing the song and I was saying “Damn, this is pretty brutal. Who could do vocals for this and do it justice?” I only had one guy in mind…I was just surprised by how easy it was. We sent out an email and a couple of days later he replied and said ‘Yeah, let’s do it!”
Igorrr are no strangers to death metal cameos (Travis Ryan of Cattle Decapitation featured on several tracks from Savage Sinusoid) but George Fisher is a much bigger fish(er) to snag. Overall, the reaction to Igorrr has been beyond Gautier Serre’s wildest dreams. “This is not a commercial band,” he reminds us, “I never intended it to be. I had high wishes and no expectations. It was just my thing.”  From: https://metalinjection.net/interviews/how-synesthesia-helped-igorrr-write-their-weirdest-album-yet

Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories - Live on Austin City Limits

If someone brings up Lisa Loeb, you will likely bring up her 1994 smash “Stay (I Missed You).” She seemingly came out of nowhere, with no record label to her name, to have a hit song off of the Reality Bites soundtrack. Many probably don’t know that Loeb had been working tirelessly to craft her skills in the industry and shape a sound all her own. In a time period of rising female singer/songwriters like Ani Difranco and Sarah McLachlan, Lisa wanted to stand out.
“I didn’t want to be too reactive after the success of ‘Stay,’ but I also didn’t just want to be pushed into the ‘acoustic’ corner. I didn’t want to be seen as a folk artist at all. My music sounded like a band and I felt like the lead singer of my band; just like some of my favorite male music artists like David Bowie or Elvis Costello. However, during that period, if a female artist went by just her name, most people assumed you were a folk artist. That’s why I wanted to make sure my band name was included on everything and why I wanted to be seen and heard playing guitar. I realized early on that if you want people to know something about you, you have to show them.”
While promoting her single “Stay,” she would join Juan Patino in the studio to record new songs along with staples from her Liz and Lisa and Purple Tape days. What came out of the process would be a joyous blend of pensive indie-rock and a sweetness that only Loeb can provide. It’s a subtle sweetness, never overpowering but welcoming.
First, let’s discuss the re-recordings of older songs in Loeb’s catalog. The album opens on the slightly more folk driven “It’s Over.” Loeb takes you through the depths of turmoil and emotional destruction that have welled up through the end of a relationship. What she’s afraid of is him rising her to some impossible level, “Too many things held precious/ Too many things held dear;/ That’s what I hate/ And that’s what I fear.”
The duality of wanting to keep the relationship alive yet just barely holding on to the foundation can be heard in the lines, “From the outside/ To the inside/ I couldn’t tell you how it really was/ There has to be more on one hand/ Keep your head above water on the other, the other.” The final lines point to the death of this relationship, setting her free. Compared to the acoustic Purple Tape demo, adding electric guitars helped cut the singer/songwriter sound of the prior version.
A fantastic evolution comes from “Snow Day.” She opts for a more finger-style guitar intro that completely evokes the falling of snow. The electric guitars add brightness and warmth to the song. Lisa dives into the themes of loneliness and depression on the track. She continually calls back to someone being her medicine to this solemn mood. The depths of this sadness are fully displayed in the lines, “It’s a sinking feeling/ Pulls me through the seat of chairs/ When will you come rescue me/ Find solace, and then take me there?” There is an interesting juxtaposition of the upbeat sound of the music against the soft sadness of her lines. Because of this, the song feels like a mantra to keep moving forward as some days it's just “It’s a long ride.”
“Do You Sleep?” keeps the absolutely beautiful fade in guitar loop at the song's beginning. It maintains this dream-like feeling as you open up into this indie rock-driven world. The themes of love lost continue through Loeb’s questioning of how he’s managing since she’s gone, “Do you eat sleep do you breathe me anymore?/ Do you sleep do you count sheep anymore?/ Do you sleep anymore?/ Do you take plight on my tongue like lead?/ Do you fall gracefully into bed anymore?” Lisa is at her breaking point. She’s more than ready to cut ties and end this with this closed-off man. The song ends how it opens, now fading out on the loop. It’s like waking from this dream.
One of the best transformations is on “Hurricane.” The song absolutely blooms through the orchestral string section. She takes a more poetic license at the tale of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This woman that appears to be a safe place will only destroy you in the end. By the song’s bridge, we go from warnings of this woman to meeting her, “‘I’ve compassion for strangers/ An affinity for danger/ Won’t you be my sacrifice?’/ ‘I’m a lightheaded wonder,’ She said.” Loeb sees through this. The song ends on this sort of crumbling mix of guitars that seem to mirror the passing of this hurricane of a woman.
One of the oldest tracks to make the album is “Garden of Delights,” which can be traced back to her Liz and Lisa days. We continue the themes of love in friction. It appears despite their tense moments, she still gets the butterflies around him, “You see my face/ You hate my words/ I hate you too/ You see my heart/ It likes the feeling/ That it gets when I’m with you.” She even alludes to a sense of martyrdom with a comparison to Jesus. In the end, even though they clash, she still sees a paradise here with him.  From: https://medium.com/the-riff/tails-by-lisa-loeb-album-review-d07c3318acd5