Nine Inch Nails - Reptile

On Reptile, Trent Reznor reveals the ugliest side of his persona, wounded by broken relationships he treads a crooked line between misogyny, body horror and a burning hatred for Courtney Love. If The Downward Spiral is an album that charts a narrator lost in a blizzard between the twin poles of his own egomania and self-loathing; Reptile is perhaps the song that best explores what happens when our inner pain becomes a way of seeing others.
On Reptile we hear a voice, divided, this time torn between attraction and repulsion – the narrator is caught in contradiction – he loves the one he hates. He finds a female antagonist: seductive, seemingly promiscuous and enticing, perhaps he is spurned, rejected and so he becomes the victim exploited by a cruel woman who toys with his feelings. Like the snake that seduced Adam and Eve she drips honeyed poison into his ear; so Reznor pours scorn upon her beauty, the dread weight of her attraction.
In the context of the album, Reptile confirms further loss of faith in others and relationships,  this time in the ‘goodness’ of beauty, women or perhaps even love itself. The female becomes othered and vulgar as a deceitful reptilian creature, void of form. The narrator feels so let-down by this [now] figure of hate, she/it becomes an object into which he can pour all of his gathered resentments of soured relationships. In the narrator’s attempt to find and appreciate beauty within his terrible headspace, he ends-up resenting it, seeking to destroy what he cannot have, control or contain; the reptile is some kind of monster, but the narrator’s bitterness at being denied or discarded by it, culminates in a deep self-hate projected onto other, that is even uglier still.
Onto her, he can project the true source of his pain and misery as target for blame and derision; the more he knocks her down, for making him feel this way, the better he feels about himself and the truer his feelings become until it is perhaps all women who have become monsters in his eyes.  From: https://adamsteiner.uk/2021/06/26/nine-inch-nails-reptile-reznor-beauty-and-self-courtney-love/

Characteristic of the band's mid-90s industrial rock sound, Reptile opens with an eerie and quiet machine-like sound collage sampled from the film Leviathan, which transitions into an imitative musical composition. The structure, repetitive in nature, contains three distinct but similar sections, all driven by machine-like percussion loops and undulating rhythm guitar and synthesized bass. Two looped mechanical sounds that run through the song are sampled from the film Aliens: a metallic thud from the opening scene immediately after the chamber is cut open, and a pitched-up mechanical sound from the first power loader scene. The choruses reflect a brighter mood with prominent melodic synthesizers and glimpses of guitar. The three sections are joined by two quiet instrumental breaks, a technique used later on "Even Deeper." The ascending synth melody from 5:13 to 5:20 could potentially be a reference to or an interpolation of "Laura Palmer's Theme" from the television show Twin Peaks. During this same section, there is a looped sample of a woman saying, "Kirk, help?" from the film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The "gong" sound that appears midway through the track and after the bridge is also used near the end of "Hurt", but the pitch is changed. The synth melody during the outro has the same voicing as that heard during the outro of "Last". The drums used are the same as on "Fell From Heaven" by Lead Into Gold (a Paul Barker side-project, and one whose music video for "Faster Than Light" features a cameo from Reznor.) This may be strictly coincidence, given that some of the same or similar instruments may have been used, or it could be an actual sample.  From: https://www.nin.wiki/Reptile  

Kristeen Young - Your Mouth Is Going To Get You In All Kinds Of Trouble

If Tori Amos had been a feral child, she might have sounded a bit like Kristeen Young. Like Amos, Young has a broad vocal range and a fondness for exploring the upper register, and embraces the piano as her musical instrument, but there's a wildly aggressive emotional energy in her songs, as well as an intelligently transgressive mindset that marks Young as a true original. Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Young was sired by parents of Apache and German descent, and adopted at an early age by a couple who had embraced Christian fundamentalism. Young's strict parents strove to keep her away from what they deemed corrupting influences, but as a youngster she developed a passionate interest in music, and after graduating from high school, she attended St. Louis' Webster University, where she studied piano. After completing her education, Young began performing with the bands November 9th and Water Works. While playing in the latter group, Young hit upon the idea of performing in a duo with just piano and drums, and after teaming with drummer Jeff White, she recorded her first solo album, 1997's Meet Miss Young and Her All Boy Band, which was dominated by Young's direct, powerful piano style and White's percussion.
In 1999, Young released a second album, Enemy, and in 2001 she and White pulled up stakes and left St. Louis for New York City, where Young began developing a following for her powerful performances and sharply satiric viewpoint. In 2003, Young approached legendary producer Tony Visconti to produce her next project; Visconti was enthusiastic about her music, and was behind the controls for 2003's Breasticles (which featured a vocal cameo from David Bowie) and 2004's X (a concept album inspired by the Ten Commandments, which included guest vocals from Brian Molko of Placebo). Young's 2006 album, The Orphans, attracted the attention of another of Visconti's production clients, Morrissey, who invited her to join his world tour in support of Ringleader of the Tormentors as his opening act; he also signed her to his Attack label and released a pair of singles from Young, "Kill the Father" and "London Cry," in the latter part of the year. Again produced by Visconti, Music for Strippers, Hookers, and the Odd On-Looker followed in 2009, and V the Volcanic, a concept EP with songs written from the perspective of various film characters, was released in 2011. Longtime fan and first-time collaborator Dave Grohl contributed drums to all of and guitar to some of her explosive 2014 LP The Knife Shift, which also featured guitar performances by Visconti, Lou Rossi, and longtime Morrissey guitarist Boz Boorer. The album led to a fiery performance of the single "Pearl of a Girl" on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson -- Young's U.S. TV debut -- where she was joined by Grohl, Grohl's former Nirvana and Foo Fighters bandmate Pat Smear, and bassist Megan X Thomas.  From: https://www.tellallyourfriendspr.com/artists/kristeen-young

Converge - Wretched World

Converge are this generation's Black Flag. This generation might not remember Black Flag, so here's a refresher. In the early 1980s, Black Flag and peers like Bad Brains and Minor Threat took punk beyond "three chords and the truth." The result was hardcore punk. It was deliberately ugly and harsh; Clash-fetishizing critics have mostly ignored it. Black Flag epitomized DIY-- they booked their own shows, handed out their own flyers, rehearsed with military discipline, and put out records on guitarist Greg Ginn's label, SST. Despite shifting lineups, their mission never wavered: to destroy.
Destruction isn't Converge's agenda. They differ from Black Flag in that aspect: They build things up, not tear them down. But they can do so because of Black Flag's groundwork. Black Flag made it okay to fight cops, to fight fans, and to do what punk always promised but rarely did: be oneself. The band was both explosive and implosive. It was destined to end.
Converge have learned from Black Flag's mistakes. They work as a team and have taken DIY to new levels. Singer Jacob Bannon runs the Deathwish, Inc. label and does artwork for Converge and other bands. Guitarist Kurt Ballou runs a recording studio and has become this generation's Steve Albini. Bassist Nate Newton and drummer Ben Koller have made waves with other bands like Doomriders and Cave In. Together, they whip up a catharsis matched by few. They play hard and wear their hearts on their sleeves. As a result, kids in droves wear Converge on their sleeves. (The band's Twitter handle is "convergecult.") No other current punk band's imagery is as iconic. The face on the cover of 2001's Jane Doe, the hand on the cover of 2004's You Fail Me-- they are the Black Flag bars of today.
The band wasn't always so potent. It took a few albums to work through a wiry hybrid of mathcore and metal. Jane Doe was Converge's watershed, honing their sound to a lean, abrasive essence. Over You Fail Me and 2006's No Heroes, it expanded to include slower, abstract sludge. Black Flag went through a similar transformation. Their landmark album My War was equal parts lightning and Black Sabbath. Axe to Fall is Converge's My War.
The album is, to quote The Exorcist and Pantera, a vulgar display of power. Bannon's howl is exfoliating. His lyrics aren't hard to parse: "I need to learn to love me"; "No longer feel anyone / No longer fear anything." Basic stuff, but it reaches deep and pulls no punches. Ballou's guitar dials up the crackle of Metallica's Kill 'Em All. It gallops, shoots electric arcs, dives down to subterranean depths. Ballou mines the upper register more than ever before, turning leads into leitmotifs. The frenzied pull-offs in "Dark Horse" are pure Kirk Hammett; the supercharged chug of "Reap What You Sow" recalls the fire of early Megadeth. Ballou isn't really playing metal-- his band is too short-haired and quirky for that-- but he's out-metalling 99% of metal bands today. The title track rotates through thrash beats, blastbeats, and d-beats like a race car driver shifting gears. It's fast, greasy, and loud as a motherfucker.
Axe to Fall isn't all axes, though. It's also anvils and stone pillows and beds of fallen leaves. The record is perfectly sequenced. It starts with three seamless barnburners, then settles into smooth toggling between slow and fast. The slow numbers likely won't get live airing-- kids prefer speed-- but they're amazing constructions of texture and friction. Near the end, piano and glockenspiel make like Tom Waits and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. They're elegiac and haunting, an inversion of the napalm death that preceded them. A huge array of guests help out, representing acts like Disfear, 108, Genghis Tron, and Neurosis. They are too many to list, but the bottom line is, they work. Whether they're yelling, singing, or laying down leads, they fit their songs. And that in itself is fitting.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13625-axe-to-fall/

FKA Twigs - Pendulum

FKA Twigs, the British musician and performer born Tahliah Barnett got her start in the pop-industrial complex as a backup dancer in music videos, a career that led, for a spell, to a strange kind of almost-fame—you walk around and you get recognized, but not for being you, necessarily, just for being that girl from the video. And so, she has said, you learn to lie: "No, that's not me. No, I get that a lot." She addresses this situation on her debut album, LP1, with the song "Video Girl". It's actually one of the album's most straightforward songs, but its chorus is unequivocal in its equivocations: "Is she the girl that's from the video?/ You lie and you lie and you lie."  And all that artifice, in turn, is a way of making truth out of the lie. Because what is her music, what are her videos, if not an elaborate way of saying, "No, I'm not that girl from the video. This is who I am"?
She hides in plain sight on the cover of LP1, wearing an expression that's—what? Coy? Distant? What exactly is going on there, beneath those strands of just-so curlicue and that weird, plastic sheen across one slick cheek? And that splash of red, what is that supposed to be—a blush, a bruise, a birthmark? Is she a teenybopper post-popped bubblegum, a cartoon character post-exploding cigar? The image expands upon the subtle surrealism of last year's EP2 cover, where her neck was almost imperceptibly elongated, and the more aggressive post-processing of her "Water Me" video, in which her eyes are enlarged, anime-style, until they threaten to pop like a Panic Pete Squeeze Toy. These tweaks are crucial to twigs' eerie, post-humanist, Uncanny Valley-girl aesthetic.
More than anything else, the image reminds me of Björk's Alexander McQueen-designed Homogenic cover, in which the Icelandic singer hovered in the middle distance between larger-than-life pop icon and superflat fantasy gloss like a digital scan of a wax figure. Listening to LP1, it's immediately clear that twigs is aiming for similar heights—and easily capable of scaling them. Quiet as it may be, this is a huge album, a monumental debut. On a formal level, it takes the kinds of risks that few pop artists, and few "experimental" artists, for that matter, are willing to take these days. As far as the making of the artist known as FKA twigs goes, it gives us a sense of who she is without shedding any of the mystique she has developed so far.
Building on her co-produced debut EP with Tic and her Arca-produced EP2, the sound throughout is a crystalline jumble of splinters and shards, of stuttering drum machines cutting against arrhythmic clatter—metronomes winding down, car alarms bleating dully into the night. Her voice, the most awe-inspiring instrument on the album, flits between Auto-Tuned artifice and raw carnality. As an acrobat, she's a natural, but she's not afraid to lean on a little digital enhancement. One minute it's a flash-frozen sigh; the next, it's a melon-balled dollop of flesh. As futuristic as her music is, no single technology dominates. Elastic digital effects brush up against 808s, and icy synth stabs share space with acoustic bass. The common denominator is the crackling sense of dread that persists when the notes go silent and the beat drops out, which is often. The overall effect is that of R&B that has been run through some kind of matter-transporting beam and put together wrong on the other end, full of glitches and hard, jutting artifacts.
The most obvious reference points, aside from the spectrum of breathy, synth-heavy R&B that stretches from Ciara through the Weeknd and Beyoncé, are first-gen trip-hop acts like Portishead and Tricky, with their charcoal-streaked affect and sumptuous sense of texture. There are also clear links to contemporary UK artists working the margins between R&B and electronic music, like James Blake, the xx, and even Sophie, she of the deconstructed Saturday-morning rave choons. Her own vocal style, or at least her stratospheric range, evokes Kate Bush and even Tori Amos. More provocative, though, is the way she and her producers wrangle a whole host of unlikely references into the mix: "Two Weeks" features blushing chords reminiscent of late Cocteau Twins and a junkyard guitar lead straight out of Tom Waits' Rain Dogs. Even more incongruously, "Two Weeks" cribs a fleeting riff from Air Supply's "All Out of Love."
FKA twigs is not a masterful lyricist, at least not yet; some of her couplets feel clunky, like she's grasping in the dark for rhymes and coming up with the objects closest to hand ("If the flame gets blown out and you shine/ I will know that you cannot be mine"). But when she zeroes in on the essence of a thing, she hits hard. The brazen "Two Weeks" features lines as vivid as red welts: "Higher than a motherfucker", "I can fuck you better than her." (The Weeknd only wishes he could make depravity sound so soul-destroyingly desperate.) On top of that, there's a whole thing about pulling out teeth that tips the song into some kind of freaky David Cronenberg territory, making her drugged-up and tied-down fantasies all the more tantalizingly surreal.
If "Two Weeks" represents the album's sensual core, "Pendulum" is the epicenter of the record's underlying sense of heartbreak, with its glum mantra, "So lonely trying to be yours." Lyrically, the song finds twigs at her most plainspoken—it's a long way off from last year's similarly devastating, but far more cryptic, "Water Me"—so it feels significant that it's one of the album's most sonically out-there songs, with a rhythm built out of what sounds like a roulette wheel run amok and its wash of synthesizers like a sky full of fireflies in death spirals.
Early in the song, she sings, "Lately I'm not so present now," and the line goes straight to the crux of FKA twigs' whole identity. After all, this is an artist whose name itself suggests a fundamental displacement. Spelled out, it's "Formerly Known As twigs," (no) thanks to the lawyers of some other artist named Twigs. (Barnett earned her nickname from her habit of cracking her joints like dried sticks; is it any wonder her beats are so brittle?) That "FKA" is a way of masking the bigger question mark. Formerly known as, sure. But who is she now? Are you that girl from the video? "I can't recognize me," she sings at the close of "Video Girl", but for the rest of us, with LP1, she's zooming into vivid focus, and it's impossible to look away.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19590-twigs-lp1/

Bush - Comedown

In a new interview with iHeartRadio's JD Lewis, Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale spoke about the title of the band's upcoming album, "I Beat Loneliness". He said : "Well, it's one of those weird titles. It's an infinite title because you can never beat loneliness; you can just only beat it temporarily.
"I feel that the connection with the band and the power that we have, from talking to a lot of people that see us, is people can kind of connect with the music and connect with the words and make their own narratives about it," he continued. "But we've created this blueprint for people through the years.
"More and more mental health has been sort of brought to the discussion kind of around us all at the moment — people are talking about people's wellness a lot. And I've always been into that human-condition thing since the beginning of Bush — it's like music of complaints and hopes and sort of disappointments and aspirations and all that stuff. So it's just like living.
"A lot of people are struggling so much that it's just such an ironic title, I thought," Rossdale added. "It's one of those things, when I thought of it and it just came, I was, like, 'Oh my god, it's a precious phrase.' And I just like that idea of that sense of bravado that you've beaten loneliness, because we all suffer from melancholia or whatever, and I think that's a healthy thing because it makes you reflective and sort of appreciative of the good times. And I'm not a negative person — I'm really positive — so I just think that you have to go through this sort of like storm clouds to get to the good bits. And so the title just stuck with me."
Rossdale also talked about the importance of youth mental health, especially as it relates to his three songs Kingston, Zuma and Apollo. He said: "I think it's absolutely essential, because I think that what happened is that with COVID, one of the biggest things for kids is COVID took away all that socialization. So all those two, three years where they were meant to be sort of learning how to be with their peers, I noticed with my own kids, that was taken away from them. They didn't have that time. And so I think that's been a real struggle for people, for kids especially, to learn how to adapt, how to be social, because they haven't had the same things that maybe we had. We didn't grow up through a pandemic. And so that is what really affects me. And kids are so mean — bullying in schools, ostracization, all that stuff. Kids are mean. And the way the world is set up is really scary for that."
Gavin went on to speak about the dangers of social media and how it is not an accurate reflection of society but more like a funhouse mirror distorted by a small but vocal minority of extreme outliers.
"Social media, expectations, people feeling they're not having a fulfilled life 'cause they look at Instagram or wherever and they see people with these great lives, when we all know that those lives are kind of hollow and have their have their troubles as well," he said. "But things are portrayed that people just get lost in that sort of rat race of thinking that they've gotta try and keep up with their friends. I mean, I look at Instagram and I'm always, like, 'Man, I need to live better.' I'm just, like, 'No, no, don't fall for it. Don't fall for it. Your life is fine. You have great things going on.' So I think that's where it's really difficult for kids, the sense that they're not in the right place at the right time. They're generally of the opinion that they're in the wrong place at the wrong time and everyone else is having a great time. And that's super dangerous for people to think that."  From: https://blabbermouth.net/news/gavin-rossdale-on-upcoming-bush-album-i-beat-loneliness-its-one-of-those-weird-titles

Sally Rogers - Folk Exposure / The Acoustic Cafe 1989

 Sally Rogers - The Acoustic Cafe 1989

 Sally Rogers - Folk Exposure - Part 1

 

 Sally Rogers - Folk Exposure - Part 2

 

Sally Rogers is a woman of many talents. She’s a singer-songwriter, a music educator, a collector of stories, and as though that’s not enough — she is a painter and a quiltmaker. Sally’s website is sprinkled with all kinds of quotes from the media, teachers, parents, and audience members. Imagine being the recipient of this message: “Whenever I wonder why I should keep living, I listen to your music and hope keeps me moving.” It sure seems to me that Sally is quite good at her chosen profession to elicit such a response from a fan. Music is indeed a vibrant channel into people’s hearts and souls. This is proof.
After reading about your background, it sounds like you grew up in a pretty musical household. What are your fondest memories having to do with music when you were small?

My fondest memories are sitting under the grand piano while my mom played Aaron Copland’s “The Cat and the Mouse.” I would pretend I was a cat and looked through a knothole in the floor into the basement looking for my prey. . . . My sister and I also danced around the living room to Beatles’ songs. When my parents had parties, my Dad would get out his cornet and play Purcell’s Voluntary March. We lived in Brazil when I was 13 and all I wanted to be was a Bossa Nova singer, and join the Sergio Mendes band.

What’s the first instrument that you learned?

I tried to learn piano, but my mom was a piano teacher and interfered with my learning :). So I sang. I remember being in church as a little person and looking up at a very tall man who said to me, “You have a lovely voice!” I’ll never forget that one early comment. I don’t even know who it was. I started playing guitar during the folk boom in high school because it was the cool thing to do.

How did you become interested in the Appalachian dulcimer?

My neighbor’s grandmother had one of Jethro Amburgy’s very simple dulcimers hanging on her wall. When I was in high school I was introduced to Jean Ritchie’s music and remembered seeing that dulcimer. I was able to borrow it until I bought my own: a 3-string made by Thomas Deason in Corydon, Indiana. The sides were maple that came from a fence post.

Tell us the story about how Stan Rogers encouraged you to become a touring musician. (By the way, there’s no relation to you and Stan / Garnet Rogers, is there)?

No, we are not related. I met Stan through folk festivals and running the Ten Pound Fiddle Coffeehouse in East Lansing Michigan. We invited Stan and band to perform there and they stayed at our house. After hours, Stan told me about an audition for all the Canadian Folk Festivals that was happening in a few weeks in Toronto. He told me I should go and was quite insistent about it. They were specifically looking for women to perform, as they were in short supply (there were plenty of them, but the men running the festivals were blind). I took him up on the offer, borrowed a car and went to the audition in the Spring of 1979 and got hired at four major festivals, including the Winnipeg Festival.

Your career was given a big boost after your appearance on Prairie Home Companion. What was your experience like when you performed on that show?

It was a great experience and one I’m proud to have had. It happened because Lisa Null learned my song, “Lovely Agnes” which I never intended for performance (it was written for my grandmother’s 92nd birthday). She taught it to Claudia Schmidt who I had not yet met, Jean Redpath and Helen Schneyer who were all on the show in 1980. After hearing the song, Garrison wrote me a note praising the song and inviting me on the show whenever I was passing through. I took him up on the offer and was on the show regularly for about four years.

Your song “Love Will Guide Us” is very familiar to Unitarian-Universalists and Quakers since it’s in their hymnals. It’s a congregation favorite for sure. What’s the history behind that song?

I learned the original song, “I Will Guide Thee’ from Helen Schneyer’s Folk Legacy recording. But the song was a little too religious for me. So one rainy afternoon in Nevada City, CA, while I was on the road, I penned the new more secular lyrics. The Unitarians printed it in their hymnal, but they left off all but the first verse and chorus!

You have written a lot of music for children and have been a music educator for some time. What’s the most challenging thing you need to think about when writing children’s music and performing for them?

When writing for children, you can’t dumb down the message. It helps to have a singable chorus, as it does writing for anyone, if you want them to sing along.

What’s the most rewarding thing about working with children?

There is nothing more rewarding than having them honor me by singing something I wrote. I have sung “Circle in the Sun” in schools where students knew the song already. They said to me, “Who wrote that song?” My answer was, “I did.” Their response? “No, you didn’t!” Lovely.

I’m interested in hearing about the various folk operas that you have written. Do you like doing the research for these types of projects? How have they been received?

I am passionate about oral histories and used them to create the songs for the four Mennonite folk operas I composed with dramatist Jo Carson. They were all performed in Newport News, Virginia in a theater that had been the last Mennonite Dairy barn (The Yoder Barn) in the region. I learned a great deal about their community and was honored to be included in their lives. Working with Jo Carson was more fun than I knew you could have. Kind of like being on a roller coaster of words and music. I have used what I learned to teach kids how to collect oral histories and transform their stories into songs.

From: https://meandthee.org/interviews/sally-rogers/

 

Tone of Voice Orchestra - River

While I normally love bagpipes, snappy bass lines, and rhythmic drones, I must confess I was not immediately taken with this album. On my initial listen I found the vocals too redolent of the Mamas and the Papas or the 5th Dimension. And there was flute. It was too upbeat as well. I have ingrained and strong opinions, that in this case got in my way.
And then I really listened. Once I got over myself and my curmudgeonly biases, I found a jazz-inflected musical gem full of sparkle and some truly fine music. The stand-up bass and fiddle with the sax really do it for me. I felt really good listening to this. I fell for all of the instrumental parts, and the lyrics are whip smart, witty and surprising. The songs reflect on stereotypes, daily life, bittersweet love and it's clearly and strongly voiced from a female perspective. It has some really funny bits. which I appreciate. We all need a bit more of that.
Now I love it, or at least most of it. “Barking up the Wrong Tree,” “That Kind of Day” (a wry They Might Be Giants-esque narrative complaint), “Lovey-Doveyin’“ and “You Saw Yourself Out” stand out. I may never like “Heartless”- it’s too San Francisco in the 1960s for me- but I recognize that others will adore it. The hypnotic drone, the saxophone solo and close harmonies will delight many, I am sure. The rhythm is marvelous.
Tone of Voice Orchestra is a 10 piece group out of Copenhagen, and includes a cittern, bagpipes, drums, double bass, flutes, sax, hurdy-gurdy and fiddle and four singers. The members are all award winning and hyper-accomplished artists, coming together for this one album as a special project. I would be really excited to see them play live. The impact of this kind of ensemble in concert must pack a real aural wallop.
So what is the upshot here? It’s creative and sonically complex. It draws from many traditions and influences including old time, ragas, jazz and pop and is just the thing for spring-time listening. It is truly fresh, energizing and has lush textures and beats. The press release calls it “genre defiant," a term which I am tickled by; it's my new favorite genre. The whole thing is good for humming along with, with a few genuine earworm moments thrown. It’s pop music for grownups, adult but playful. I’ll take some of that.  From: https://www.rootsworld.com/reviews/tvo-22.shtml