Nephila - Belladonna

Imagine progressive rock and psychedelic dreams combined with heavy blues and theatrical expressionism. The seven-headed rock orchestra Nephila brings out the best of ‘60s and '70s experimental movement, while adding a touch of mysticism and visual storytelling. The band travels freely through history and strange, otherworldly dimensions, bringing back plenty of intriguing tales that open up new realities of understanding in the form of dynamic songs with folkish melodies, proggy stylings, and a pair of fantastic female vocalists. Nephila has been described as a kind of a musical spider, with its sprawling legs represented by the different shades, hues, tones, and techniques prominent in the space rock pioneered by visionaries of the 1970s, such as Jefferson Airplane and Sweden’s Abramis Brama. Members of Nephila come to us from retro band Children of the Sün, where melodies and rhythm spiral like a pulsing red thread stitching together a most marvelous tapestry.  From: https://doomedandstoned.com/post/644741209841188864/nephila

Kansas - Don Kirshner's Rock Concert 1975

Kansas members Rich Williams and Phil Ehart admitted they still can’t understand what pop impresario Don Kirshner saw in them. In a recent interview with Billboard, the two remaining founders said Kirshner, who signed them in 1974, was the only person who showed an interest in their prog-edged music, even though he was better known for his work with the Monkees, the Archies and others. In allowing them time to establish themselves with their fourth album, Leftoverture, he gave Kansas a career that’s lasted more than five decades.
“When we were forming, it was right at the time the band Emerson, Lake & Palmer was coming out, Yes was coming out, Genesis,” Ehart said. “That stuff was just starting to hit the United States... and it showed us you could play different time signatures and things like that. We could do a song like ‘Carry On Wayward Son’ – all the different changes in that song might not have been performed before, especially on a single.”
Williams added that the band was “tired of playing the required music you’d play in a bar. We were very inspired by what became called progressive music. That taught us you can sing about anything you want to, you can use any time signature, any approach you can think of, any instrumentation that appealed to us. We didn’t want to emulate anything or copy the trends on radio. We wanted to do things our way, and we were very stubborn in that.”
They agreed that Kirshner seemed an “unlikely champion” for a band like Kansas. "We never had another offer," Ehart noted. "Nobody showed any interest except him. We could never figure out what he saw in us, a bunch of long-haired guys in jeans, cowboy boots and overalls… To this day, we still scratch our heads and go, ‘Wow. Whatever he saw in us, he definitely delivered.’ He made it happen. He put his money where his mouth was and let us make very good albums, and they weren’t cheap. He gave us tour support. And of course, he recouped, but the point is he believed in us and was willing to invest in these young guys. Man, we owe that guy a lot."
Williams praised Kirshner’s patience, noting that in the 21st century, a band wouldn’t be given the time and support to release three LPs before finding success with the fourth. “By the third album there was a little more pressure,” he explained. “The feeling was it was time to deliver. But that would never happen today, being given all that money … in hopes of something coming out of us. Donnie was patient with us, and [in 1976] Leftoverture exploded.”  From: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/kansas-don-kirshner/

There Is No Mountain - Listening to Sadness

There Is No Mountain - Luna: There Is No Mountain has released an experimental/folk/Americana/psych-pop-rock record that takes inspiration from all kinds of genres. This Portland-based duo is made up of vocalist/percussionist/guitarist Matt Harmon and vocalist/drummer/keyboardist Kali Giaritta, who happen to be married. There’s a ton going on with the guitars, whether they’re big and fuzzy or faint and picked, but it’s like life going on below the surface of a body of water. When the guitar is at its most intricate, it’s also at its softest volume. There are big, fuzzy chords on “Listening to Sadness” and “Waterbound,” but there are also soft, plucked parts hiding in there. “Hiking” is one of the few songs where the guitar gets all the solos it needs to really stand out. Because inspiration was taken from so many sources, at times the guitars sound like ‘90s alternative, or Latin (think of a world music CD being played at a Ten Thousand Villages store,) or a little Renaissance Faire-esque when it gets classical, or kind of folky Americana. I’m pretty sure I even caught a touch of zydeco in “Black Hole (Part 2).” Now keep in mind that all of those different styles may exist within the same song. There are tempo changes all over the place to accommodate for all of the style changes. Add in the vocals and you have even more styles for which to account.
The vocals are shared by Harmon and Giaritta, though their voices sound absolutely nothing like each other’s. They harmonize, but Harmon basically speaks all of his lead vocals while Giaritta has a clear voice I last heard from a church’s choir director. They harmonize well when singing together, but it’s a strange mix when they take turns singing because they styles are so different (even within the same song.) While the music has dark moments, it’s punctuated by things like really audible maracas and tambourine – who can be sad with maracas and tambourines? The lyrics, however, are pretty dark. They’re full of anxiety and depression, like not feeling worthy of the sun’s rays on “Listening to Sadness” because she’ll be dead soon, worrying that she’s not a good wife on “Good Life,” or Harmon wondering what happens if he dies while laughing after announcing that he doesn’t take care of himself on “What If?” Despite the anxieties expressed, “Good Life” has a pretty upbeat sound, and along with “Cat’s Away,” kind of sounds like it was inspired by a sea shanty. “Benjamin” is full of warnings to the title character about how life is sucky and lonely, but it has these cute little plinky keyboard notes that sound so happy. Many of the songs reminded me of being dragged to church as a child, mainly because of Giaritta’s voice and some of the vocal arrangements being really reminiscent of some of the more modern hymns, but also because some of the lyrics start to sound a little preachy. “C’mon Friends” implores us all to give ourselves a break and forgive each other; “Listening to Sadness” wonders why no one listens anymore and guilts us into it; “Black Holes (Part 2)” tells us that we have a choice when we’re afraid. Then there’s “Song of Seikilos,” which sounds like it came from church because the oft-repeated lyrics were taken from an ancient tombstone in modern-day Turkey and translated to English. They basically tell us to live life for the moment because life is short, which is quite a different message than asking a body of water to let you drown (“Listening to Sadness.”) Again, “Hiking” stands out as being different because its lyrics seem to recount a good hike at dusk – though there’s still the worry that it will be too dark to safely find their way back down from the summit of the hill they just climbed. There is no such thing as happiness, you guys. Everything sucks, even successful hikes.
This album is unique, which is a difficult word to use in a review. It blends the many styles and genres it uses well, though the vocals can be a strange mix with each other. The juxtaposition between the sound and the words is a little odd, too. Those lyrics are depressing. It’s all sonically blended together, but somehow all of the parts still stick out as not-quite fitting together. These two are clearly very talented musicians who have crafted a well-produced album with plenty of layers. But as a listener, you have to be in the mood for a little bit of nearly every genre and a lot of anxious lyrics. Maybe this album is a statement about depression, trying to keep a positive sound despite the invasive thoughts and fears. More power to them for confessing so many anxieties.  From: https://survivingthegoldenage.com/there-is-no-mountain-luna/

The Who - Disguises

"Disguises" is a song by the English rock band the Who, written by guitarist Pete Townshend. It, along with "I'm a Boy" are of the earliest compositions in which Townshend questions gender identity and identity crisis', a prevalent aspect found later in his songwriting. Both "Disguises" and "I'm A Boy" were written to be parts of a concept album titled Quads, in which parents would be able to choose the gender of their children. However, this idea was later discarded and the pair of songs are the only ones that survived. They were first attempted on 14 June 1966 as demos, And were worked on for some months, before being recorded on 31 July to 1 August of the same year. It is one of the earliest songs recorded by them that features claves, played by drummer Keith Moon, who would also later use them on "Magic Bus" in 1968. French horn is featured in a distinct solo played by bass guitarist John Entwistle. "Disguises" was never performed live by the band. The only live recording of the song originates from a session the Who recorded on 13 September, which was later broadcast on 17 September for an episode of Saturday Club. This version, apparently recorded as a joke, ends with Moon smashing his drums, interrupting presenter Brian Matthew, much to the bands' approval, with Matthew exclaiming "I see". This version can be found on their 2000 compilation album BBC Sessions.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disguises_(The_Who_song)

The Nields - King of the Hill

The Nields are a five-piece band who you might call folk-rock if you were a marketer under the cowardly impression that everything must have a recognizable label or people will gather in the square at night and put it to the torch. Three of the five are Nields in person, as well. Katryna sings, Nerissa sings and plays guitar and writes most of the songs, and David plays guitar and writes the rest of them. David also provides a first-name link to drummer Dave Hower and bassist Dave Chalfant. Their back-catalog includes the 1994 album Bob on the Ceiling, which includes, among other things, a striking cover of Sinéad O'Connor's "Black Boys on Mopeds", and an EP and a live disc that I haven't heard yet because when I ordered them from the band's Web page I got a note back from their manager saying that they were out on tour and it might be a while.
Calling them folk-rock isn't accurate or evocative, but it's still probably the best place to begin. They use acoustic guitars frequently, and both Nields sisters (at least, I assume they're sisters) sing with fragile voices that sound like they'd be most at home in a small-college-town coffeehouse. And though there's plenty of overdriven electric guitar and loud drumming on this album, none of the Nields seem to have mastered the machismatic bluster with which rock drama is customarily executed. So if folk-rock is what you get when people raised on folk try to play rock, that's sort of what this is.
There's more to it, though, because the Nields' upbringing appears to have been a bit more complicated. Or perhaps everybody's upbringing is complicated, and the Nields just reflect more of theirs in their music than most people do. They remind me of Suddenly Tammy, not because the two bands play similar styles of music, but because the family is evident in the music. There's something fundamentally different about the music you get from four random individuals who gather in a basement to become a rock band, and the music you get from siblings and their assorted friends who play music as an extension of their lives together, and while I don't know anything about the real history here, if the Nields the band didn't evolve out of the Nields the people in this latter manner then this is a cunning imitation all the same.
The result is that the Nields have a large number of interesting elements that you would probably not have thought to include in a rock band constituted from scratch. Neither of the sisters' voices are that impressive on their own, but they play off each other instinctively, one soaring into wailing harmony while the other drops into a quiet, elfin confidence. One of them (or both perhaps, it's hard to tell) is fond of letting notes trail off into wild pitch modulation, and at other times they produce passing hints of a Polly Harvey-like whisper, Jean Smith's flat intonation, Sinéad O'Connor's tense circling and even the Beatles' psychedelic flourishes. David's electric guitars produce a range of sounds from a digeridu-like throaty drone to squeaky rhythm chords to a ragged-sounding lead that could easily be coming out of a cheap amp in the family rec room, and they combine this with the folkier acoustic guitars as if having both in a band at once is the most natural thing in the world.  From: https://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=twas&id=twas0060

The Move - Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisited

Very few Americans have ever heard of The Move unless they found themselves bored enough to dig deep into the liner notes for one of the Electric Light Orchestra’s commercial successes and learned that Jeff Lynne and drummer Bev Bevan were ex-members. Lynne was a johnny-come-lately, however, and did not appear on Shazam, a forgotten masterwork originally designed to properly introduce this long-popular-in-the-mother-country British band to the colonies, courtesy of A&M Records.
Things didn’t work out as planned. A&M was out of its league when it came to promoting rock bands (the “A” stands for Herb Alpert, for chrissake), and arranged a comically disastrous tour that required the band the lug their stuff around the USA in a U-Haul trailer. Creative and personal tensions between band members didn’t make things any easier. When the rubble had cleared, however, what survived was Shazam, one of the most fascinating rock recordings ever made.
The album has been buried for years, and I only vaguely remember hearing parts of it while growing up. I rediscovered it accidentally while browsing through iTunes and tracked down an extraordinarily expensive import CD version for my collection. I fell in love with it on the first listen, knocked out by Bevan’s drumming, the sheer diversity captured in a mere six songs, the intense riffs, the gorgeous harmonies and the great good fun captured in random street interviews and band chatter.
The album explodes with the no-bullshit guitar and pounding drums of “Hello, Suzie,” the story of a ditzy British teenybopper featuring an introduction that almost forces you out of your seat. Roy Wood growls out the lead vocal with good humor and strong support in the form of a thrilling backdrop of harmonies that come together with a huge exclamation point at the end of the bridge. I keep praying that somewhere out there a band will cover this sucker and use it as an opening number for a gig, as I’d love to see this done live with the same great energy as the original.
After a short interview with some native Brits, Carl Wayne steps to the microphone for the lovely and bouncy string piece, “Beautiful Daughter,” delivered in a perfect combination of romantic sincerity tempered by a touch of tongue-in-cheek and supported by the energetic strings that would later characterize early ELO recordings.
Then a door creaks . . . footsteps . . . the door closes and we hear a diffident voice narrating the story of how he would end up going off his HEAD!!! The band explodes with heavy bass, drums, the works! This is “Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisited,” a high-power remake of one of their earlier songs, and a delightfully wacky remake it is. The heaviness fades into acoustic guitar playing Bach, no less, and ends with an over-the-edge falsetto picking up the tune and eventually blending into layers of perfectly executed harmonies.  From: https://altrockchick.com/2012/05/02/classic-music-reviews-shazam-by-the-move/

Mr. Gnome - Barb's Revenge

For nearly two decades, Cleveland-based couple Nicole Barille and Sam Meister have been producing otherworldly rock epics under the moniker Mr. Gnome. From the very beginning, the duo’s swelling psychedelia has resonated with a grandeur typically associated with larger bands, while Barille's ethereal vocals add a layer of intimacy that sets their sound apart. They’ve grown more ambitious and expansive with each album, culminating with the dazzling double album The Day You Flew Away in 2020. After a period of relative silence, mr. Gnome is back with a new record, A Sliver of Space, set to drop on Sept. 27. The duo will also be embarking on its first tour in years — accompanied by Jonah Meister on bass/guitar, who also contributed to A Sliver of Space — stopping in Asheville on Wednesday, Oct. 2, at Sly Grog Lounge. Early singles “Nothing and Everything,” “Fader,” and “Mind’s Gone” showcase their continued evolution, featuring an increased use of synthesizers alongside Barille’s soaring guitars and Meister’s powerhouse percussion, which remain as hypnotizing as ever.

Jonny Leather: I couldn’t find any record of previous shows here. Will this be your first time performing in Asheville?

Nicole Barille: We played in Asheville earlier in our career, but it was so long ago I couldn’t even tell you what year or where we played! We’re super excited to come back. We’ve gotten a bunch of requests over the last year or so from Asheville fans, so we wanted to make it happen on this tour.

JL: New singles “Nothing and Everything” and “Mind’s Gone” indicate a slight shift in your sonic palette, placing greater emphasis on synths and piano, while “Fader” is a ripping rocker. Are fans in store for a more synth-heavy edition of mr. Gnome?

NB: When we were writing this album, we really had no rules regarding where we could go. So it covers a lot of ground — a lot of genre shifting going on. It wasn’t intentional, rather just a complete self-discovery process without any limits. The entire album is not necessarily synth heavy, but we did dabble with synths more than ever on this one. I think we were always searching for sounds and melodies that excited us, and we weren’t too concerned about what style we were leaning into during the writing process. “Fader” was an exciting moment because we were really leaning into our roots, into the influences that made us excited about music in the first place. But throughout the album, there’s also dance rock, punky rock, electronic pop, doo-woppy ballads…lots of other styles.

JL: Can you talk a little about how your approach to making A Sliver of Space differed from your earlier work?

NB: It’s hard to talk about A Sliver of Space and not talk about what we were going through mentally at the time. We started writing this album during the COVID-19 pandemic — we had just lost two of our closest family members, and we were dealing with a mountain of grief, all in complete isolation. It was a very difficult moment to work through, and there was a lot of pain and confusion that we began pouring into the songs we were creating. On the flip side, our son was only 2 years old when we started writing, and so this time was also one of the most beautiful, happiest moments we had ever experienced. It was a real study in contrasting emotions. Writing this album was 100% our therapy sessions during this time, and we were forced to write in a different way because of our son being in the house with us.
There were more lone sessions — us creating sonic beds by ourselves and then presenting them to one another. We gravitated towards the songs that we felt had the most potential; the songs that were evoking the best melodies and overall feel. I think this might explain the longer songs we ended up choosing as the main singles. When we would latch onto a song or an idea, we would really throw ourselves into the journey of that song, allowing it to go every which way we could push it, and really losing ourselves in the sonic experience. As long as it evoked the emotion we were after, we felt like it was the right way to go. I’m not sure we’ll ever write in this way again now that our son is in school. We’ve been rediscovering our rock ’n’ roll side over the last year, and it’s been so wonderful.

JL: From your music to your album covers to your videos, you’ve always had a distinct artistic vision. How important has it been for you both to maintain control over the entire process?

NB: We’ve both always been obsessed with all things art, and really bonded over our love for art and music from the first day we met. So when we started Mr. Gnome, it was so exciting to not only create music together, but then get to create album covers, press shots, and music videos as well. We’ve always felt like our album covers are just as important as our music, and it would be hard to have someone else create the visual representation of that for us. We are control freaks in that way, wanting to pick the colors and mood and feel when creating art for our music. We have such an intimate relationship with our music — we want the visual side to perfectly capture everything we’re feeling when writing it as well.

JL: Cleveland has always been a bit of an underrated rock city, producing such incomparable artists as DEVO, Pere Ubu, and NIN. How has the city influenced your own journey as artists?

NB: Cleveland has completely shaped who we are as people. I’m Cleveland born and raised; Sam was born in Canton, and then moved around a bunch as a kid, but came back to the Cleveland area for high school, which is where we met. The midwest vibe is so wonderful and the hardworking ethos that emanates from this city has definitely shaped who we are as musicians as well. When we first started playing out a lot, we played our hometown way too much, and quickly understood that we needed to leave in order to grow. So we started touring non-stop, building up our stage presence and a following around the country, and when we would come back home, our audience would grow and grow every year. Our Cleveland fans have been very loyal to us and so supportive and it’s meant so much to us.

From: https://ashevillestages.com/music/interview-nicole-barille-mr-gnome