A Young Gypsy: Joan Baez

I am from Las Vegas, Nevada. Las Vegas calls to all the outsiders to unite in this seemingly small city. Nothing surprises me anymore. From the time I was ten I could have named 20 strip clubs. My middle school English teacher was once a stripper. I’ve seen a drunk man masturbate to billboards of call girls. The lights and constant ebb and flow of dreamers and addicts makes me forget the natural red rocks that surround me.

The most surprising part of Las Vegas isn’t the addicts who constantly scratch their scabs but rather the area that surrounds us. The city is consuming but the sheer emptiness of the vast desert that lies at the city’s borders makes even the grandest of hotels look small.

In Las Vegas, I was raised by a single mother. I never knew specifics about my father but I know that he was raised in the deserts of Nevada. He loved the red sand, the cactuses, the billowing mountains. It was not until the beautiful singer and songwriter Joan Baez coerced me to retreat into the land that my father loves so dearly that it caused him to recoil from me.

Joan Baez captures the essence of the Southwest in the soulful song “In the Quiet Morning.” She speaks of a girl who is tormented by loneliness, much like the feeling one gets when they realize how epically minuscule they are in comparison to the vast Southwest landscape. She also remains true to the real essence of Las Vegas, a place before Jay-Z’s club openings and Criss Angel, but rather a place where the clothing on your back was enough to ensure a sense of content.

She embraces the natural in her song “In the Quiet Morning.” Her voice is not grandiose but rather sweet and simple alongside the noise of a lone guitar. The lack of fluff is central to this song’s dynamic and seems as though she is in the middle of the desert herself and happened to stumble upon a group of vagabonds with guitars. It is charmingly authentic.

The chorus is exceedingly cheerful and consists of the repetition of the words “la la la”. There is a sense of jubilation. I can only compare the chorus to the way I feel when I look at the desert landscape I once detested because of its reminders of my father, only to realize the frailty of human life and its beauty. The rocks that surround me will last far beyond my time and my father’s relationship. They have endured much worse than I ever will. I look to the desert mountains and Joan Baez, the woman who loved them so much, to remind myself to forgive because I am just a temporary fixture in the desert landscape.

By Michelle Merica

Staff List: Most Anticipated Music of 2012

WVAU’s executive board shares their picks for 2012’s most exciting music.

Event Director Ryan Gaffney’s picks:
1. Chairlift – Something
Chairlift has the misfortune of being a band with a song that was featured in an iPod commercial, because their big single “Bruises” is known by a lot of people as “that song from the iPod commercial” (or if you’re the guy in the audience from when they opened for Peter Bjorn & John, “the blowjob song”). It’s a shame because that overshadowed what was a really cool pop album that probably came from outer space. The lead single “Peculiar Paradise” suggests they haven’t lost their touch by touring for, like, years.

2. Franz Ferdinand
They’ve got two great albums and a pretty good one under their belt. It’s been three years since the last album, leaving the ‘nand comfortably in the window between “it’s been so long that they’ve lost their touch” and “cranking another album out too soon after the previous one.” Scientifically speaking, this album can’t not be good.

3. The Killers
Here’s a really controversial opinion: I like The Killers. Scandalous! World Humblest Musician Brandon Flowers promises that the new album will synthesize all the best parts of the previous three albums. Those albums all have distinct sounds that don’t necessarily sound like they would mesh, but this album is exciting at the very least for being so ambitious. Even if it’s not great, it will still be interesting.

4. Kaiser Chiefs/Muse
These are two bands I was really fanatical about in high school whose last albums were, in my esteemed opinion, a steaming pile and a bit of a let-down, respectively. Here, the anticipation is less of a “can’t wait to hear new music from groups I love” and more of a cautious “should I run their older albums over with my car” sense of dread. Don’t let me down.

Librarian Allie Porambo’s pick
Sleigh Bells – Reign of Terror
I am generally a quiet person. I don’t like to brag or show off, and I would much rather prefer a night in watching a movie with some close friends to going out for a night on the town. When it comes to music however, there comes a time in everyone’s’ lives that you just need to be louder, more obnoxious, and cockier than the Donald Trump as the king of Karneval. And when I’m in that mood, I reach for Sleigh Bells.

Back in the summer of 2010, when their debut album Treats was released, the Brooklyn duo’s release was permanently stuck in my car’s stereo system. Whether I was dropping off my mom at Bunco night with her girlfriends or picking up my cats’ medicines, I’d turn up the volume, roll down the window, and feel like the coolest kid in the veterinary office parking lot.

Treats was the perfect mix of guitar-driven aggression and angelic vocals, and if the single Born to Lose is any indication, Reign of Terror will not be much different. Though the album may be dropping in February, I will certainly be blasting it from the speakers of the family van well into the summer.

Music Director Emily White’s picks:

1. The Return of Legal Music
Music sales actually went up in 2011. Major labels and album sales may be down overall, but music is more popular and assessable then ever before. I know that music pirating will never stop completely and I am by no means a supporter of SOPA or PIA as a means to prevent it– But my hope for 2012 is that the music business finds a better alternative. Ideally, legal streaming services like Spotify will iron-out their kinks, find a way to get more revenue back to the artist, and put a damper on illegal downloading.

2. Pictures of Blue Ivy Carter
Will Beyonce’s genes prevail? We can only hope.

3. The possibility of new Spoon, Grizzly Bear, or Animal Collective
Some of my favorite bands are well overdue for a new album. Hoping these three come through in 2012 and give me something to look forward to!

4. The soundtrack to Moonrise Kingdom
Yes, Wes Anderson movies typically feature similar casts, themes and cinematography BUT they never fail in the soundtrack department. The trailer for his latest, “Moonrise Kingdom”, features Françoise Hardy’s “Le Temps De L’amour,” which bodes well for the rest of the soundtrack.

General Manager Alex Rudolph’s picks:
1. The Magnetic Fields – Love at the Bottom of the Ocean/Magnetic Fields, April 9 @ 9:30 club
My favorite band gets back to the label (Merge) and dense, gloomy synth-pop that originally turned me into a Stephin Merritt obsessive. After a trilogy of records made with mandolins, violins and guitars, Merritt has let himself return to his weapon of choice. The tracklisting is a little too punny and the album art is ridiculous, but when the funniest/saddest band in the world makes a return to form, you can allow them a few dud song names.

2. Pulp’s U.S. tour
When Pulp, the secret winner of the Blur/Oasis brit-pop war, reunited to play European festivals in the summer of 2010, I sat waiting for the announcement of American dates. And none came. And there was a year of silence. But then, earlier this month, they were revealed to be playing Coachella and this morning they announced a single date in New York. Tickets will be impossible to get and travel will be inconvenient, but there is a near-endless list of things I would do to see Common People live, and Pulp is about to test the limits of that list.

3. The World Forgetting About Odd Future

Music Director Maxwell Tani’s pick:
James Blake – anything
Although there are no signs that a new James Blake EP is in the works (hell, he released a new one a little over a month ago), I think we can be fairly certain that the 24 year-old British crooner has something exciting planned for 2012. Riding off the heels of 2010’s wildly successful CMYK and Klavierwekre EPs, 2011 was Blake’s year from beginning to end. His self-titled debut LP dropped in February, incorporating minimalist singer-songwriter piano and vocal stylings with his trademark post-dubstep splicing. He quickly followed this with two solid EPs, Enough Thunder further showcasing his angelic vocals, and Love What Happened Here harking back to his earlier punchy, sample-ridden releases.

The last two years have seen Blake successfully build and maneuver his way to the forefront of a genre that he has pioneered, fusing the unlikely pairing of balladry and cut-and-paste post-dubstep to create a sound uniquely his own. So while there is no clear indication of any new records from the already prolific songster, Blake’s penchant for ambitious experimentation, genre-defying innovation, and consistently frequent quality releases is enough to keep any music lover excited for more.

Web Director Maeve McDermott’s picks:
1. Sleigh Bells: Reign of Terror
It’s a real shame that Sleigh Bells pushed back their album release date from February 14th, because you can’t ask for a better Valentine’s Day antidote than baddest bitch Alexis Krauss. The sheer thrill of being wailed over the head by Sleigh Bells’ riffs has subsided for me by this point, and though the thought of a followup album of “Crown on the Ground” soundalikes may be tempting, Sleigh Bells’ sledgehammer guitars-meets-airy female vocals gimmick isn’t tenacious enough to stay interesting on a carbon-copy second album. It’s time for Sleigh Bells to evolve a little, and from the lead singles we’e heard so far from “Reign of Terror,” it sounds like Krauss and guitarist Derek Miller have risen to the challenge, adding a little nuance to their trademark genre-defying sound. Try to snag a ticket for Sleigh Bells at 9:30 on February 16, or catch them opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers (wait, what?) this May.

2. The Shins – Port of Morrow
We all started listening to music somewhere, and I started with the Shins. As my adolescent music library ballooned from the OC soundtracks outwards, I’ve always been fond of the Shins, nothing more and nothing less. Some indie rock that introduced me to music in general has grown even more dear to me since junior high school, like Sufjan Stevens and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, while my pre-teenaged idolization of Colin Meloy and Ben Gibbard didn’t make it past 2007 (though I will indeed defend Transatlanticism always and forever). But my feelings for the Shins have remained constant, and I’ve immensely enjoyed their previous three releases while remaining entirely uninvested emotionally in James Mercer’s music. I’m curious to see where James Mercer takes his next release Port of Morrow, after he traded the sun-kissed preciousness of 2007’s Wincing The Night Away for the Danger Mouse-assisted Broken Bells project and basically handled every part of Port of Morrow’s recording by himself. And if the album sucks, I’ll be more than happy to just forget all about it and keep laughing about my 10th grade Motorola Razr cellphone with its “Phantom Limb” ringtone.

3. Jeff Mangum, Jan 27 @ Lincoln Theater
Just because.
Editor’s note: Update – it was perfect.

London Calling: 65daysofstatic @ Duke of York Picture House

I can honestly say I’ve never seen a live performance of a movie score, much less heard of the concept, until now. In late November, English band 65daysofstatic took their alternative score of the 1972 sci-fi flick “Silent Running” to the Duke of York Picture House in Brighton, Britain’s oldest continuously operating cinema.

The band premiered their revamped “Silent Running” soundtrack at the 2011 Glasgow Film Festival, as part of a series in which several artists composed and performed alternative scores to old films. 65’s take on the environmental space odyssey, the film that inspired the director of Pixar’s 2008 hit “WALL-E,” was so well-received the band decided to take it on tour, playing cinemas all over the UK. After further popular demand, 65 recorded their score, initially only released on vinyl and digital download in mid-November.

As a bit of a movie score geek, this was an exciting, intriguing new experience. How would 65 pull off exactly matching the pace of the film to their sound? Are you supposed to sit like when at the movies or stand like when at a gig? And where do you even look – the band or the screen? Answers: Lots of practice; sit; and both, the band played directly under the screen, so all that was required to switch your focus was a slight shift of the eyes.

The primary focus of the performance was the film, which was logical considering how the music so closely depends on the mood of the plot and pace of the editing. The band even made sure the audience was paying attention to the film, softening the volume when important dialogue kicked in so the audience wouldn’t miss out on major plot points.

The composition was in the same vein as Academy Award-winning “The Social Network” score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross: a recurring, sweet piano theme floated over distorted, industrial guitar riffs and racing, determined drums. The range in styles and sounds featured throughout the soundtrack also shows off the band’s versatility. In the 90 minutes of movie, 65 seamlessly weave in and out of melodic piano, galactic electronica, “Twilight Zone”-esque synths and epic post-rock swells.

65daysofstatic managed to hit that perfect balance of composing a soundtrack that had all the qualities, served all the functions and unmistakably sounded like a movie score, all while maintaining their distinctive sound and staying true to their experimental, glitch-rock roots.

Here’s the trailer for the vinyl release of “Silent Running,” featuring music from the score:

65daysofstatic Silent Running Vinyl Release from 65daysofstatic on Vimeo.

By Marissa Cetin

A Young Gypsy: Metals

You know that time of year when you just stop caring? You visit your friends less because maybe it’s snowing and you have too much homework then all of a sudden your dog has the runs all while your mom is calling to tell you that bitch across the street has the same Christmas decorations as her. All you want to do is curl up in bed with apple cider (spiked with rum if it’s one of those days that ends with the letter “y”) and maybe watch a few episodes of the O.C. to help you remind yourself of the time before you knew what the words “adorkable” and “fupa” meant.

So if you’re feeling this way, first come with me to the doctor so we can both be diagnosed with a case of the SADs, and then go and listen to Feist’s new album.

Leslie Feist, known just as her surname, has a new album out called Metals. Although her new album does not have as alarmingly catchy of a song as “1, 2, 3, 4” that we all know and love from the Apple commercials, Metals offers a more soulful look into who Feist is as a woman. This album is wrought with more heartache than her previous ones and presents a more mature outlook on life. She has not made a new album in years since The Reminder and the break has done her good. Now 35, Feist has lost the whimsy she once knew. Her days of singing about teenage love are over. Instead, she is now a woman who brings an enlightened wisdom to her music.

It is evident after listening to Metals that Feist offers a less naïve and quite honestly, a less annoying, take on love. In “The Bad in Each Other,” Feist harkens on the darkness that pervades two seemingly sane people after falling in love. This is the perfect album for anyone who feels torn or bruised by past love, especially the song “Bittersweet Melodies,” where Feist tugs at your heartstrings when she sings “Can’t go back. Can’t go on”. Feist does not offer advice on how to mend broken hearts or stay away from unhealthy love, but rather proves to the listener that the pains of love even affect a millionaire celebrity like herself. No one goes unscathed by misery.

Don’t get me wrong, Metals is not a pity party. On the contrary, it is almost a celebration of heartache and a testament to survival. Feist turned sadness into a brilliant soulful masterpiece proving to whoever broke her heart that she has the last laugh. This is not a “fuck you” album to her past lovers, but rather a “thank you for helping me grow as a human being” kind of album.

I highly recommend this album not only because I have been a Feist fan-girl since Broken Social Scene, but for the story behind the production of the album alone. In a quest to find herself, Feist traveled the country and ended up in Big Sur, California, a past haven for intellectual bohemians like Allen Ginsberg, where she bought a barn and renovated it into a studio where her and her friends made a truly beautiful album. As a lover and visitor of Big Sur, Feist captures the relaxed essence of her surroundings and offers an album that encapsulates the sometimes devastatingly beautiful nature of love and love lost.

Buy this album and let Feist teach you how to be the bigger person.

By Michelle Merica

CMJ 2011: Twin Shadow @ Santos Party Haus

A new wave prince of the 2010s, George Lewis Jr. is the captivating lead singer and musical intellect behind current Brooklyn-based band Twin Shadow. Closing the last hour and a half of a Wednesday night with soft, sparkly melodies at the Santos Party House, Twin Shadow’s set at the Noisey showcase was part of the CMJ Music Marathon in New York City. Lewis played a set that with an emotional sophistication and a strong stage presence that could make him an underground indie rock sex symbol.

Lewis himself looked like a star reborn from the pool of 1980s New York club kids’ scene. The lead singer’s stage appearance was tremendous to see, as he sported a gold chain and flat brimmed hat a la Boy George of Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me,” gave him the already famous look, but the mostly under-the-radar indie rocker was one of the many faces of CMJ who were trying to expand their audience by choosing to perform at CMJ’s music marathon.

As George Lewis Jr. and his band jammed out in the packed upstairs of Santos, the playful, mellow reverbs of “Slow,” droned the crowd’s atmosphere into a sea of sound. “Forget,” the title track of their debut album, followed up from a slow start and built up rock jammery that displayed the band’s cross-genre aesthetic of chillwave and new wave. While many chillwave bands stick to low-profile jamming behind their synthesizers. It is sex appeal and stage execution that separates Twin Shadow apart from the current scene.

Lewis has a stunning live performance, and captures the audience’s eye by tantalizing them. The performance didn’t explicitly demonstrate any physical or direct references to sex, and none of the lyrics would be characterized by being “obscene,” but it is a figurative attraction, and the impact of George Lewis Jr’s physical essence that makes the band tantalizing.

For an opening night at CMJ, Twin Shadow kept the crowd dancing and bobbing their heads throughout. Balancing emotionally rocky, heartfelt ballads like “Tyrant Destroyed” that make up their debut album “Forget,” and progressing into the key singles “Castles in the Snow,” and “I Can’t Wait.” The collection of songs performed really spoke to the impact of the melodies, lyrics, and dynamism their one album of songs can have.

All in all, Twin Shadow was my choice for best live performance of CMJ 2011. Carrying an emotional drive laced with rock vibes is what Twin Shadow does best. George Lewis Jr. has a shyness, delicacy, and sex appeal paired with a guitar on stage that made him an unparalleled dream to the chillwave and indie rock fangirls of CMJ.

By Louise Brask

From the Outside: Ἀποκάλυψις

Chelsea Wolfe is truly something demonic. In her follow up to her 2010 debut The Grime and the Glow, Ἀποκάλυψις (pronounced ‘Apokalypsis’), Wolfe engages in a forlorn study of absolute darkness in all of its many aspects. The result is a gripping, deep, and mature piece of work that improves on all aspects where her previous faltered.

Graduating from a mere 8-track self-recording technique used on her debut, Wolfe has the luxury of an actual studio, which she uses to great effect. The recordings are much cleaner and concise, with every track coated in a constant, subtle reverb. This could be worrying, as it has become commonplace for artists to distract from a lack of song writing ability with glossy and expensive sounding echoes. The worries are unfounded, however, as a mastery of the songwriting craft is demonstrated admirably on every track of the LP.

Ἀποκάλυψις begins with a twenty-four second introduction (“Primal/Carnal”) which features solely Wolfe, snarling and producing horrendous death metal growls entirely unexpected due to their ferocity and animalism. Though the growls never return in the coming nine tracks, the introduction sets the dark tone for the entirety of the collection. Immediately after is the eerie “Mer,” a single-ready writhe of a song laden with a precise amount of gloom. “How can you live with yourself?”, Wolfe breathes in the chorus, backed with subtle howling winds, as if she’s directing the question directly at the listener.

The songs continue in this vein, evolving the theme past mere gloom on tracks such as “Demons,” which boasts tribal drums and pseudo-psychedelic instrumentation that compliment Wolfe’s wispy vocals. Chelsea wears her inspirations on her sleeve throughout, with a clear nod to shoe-gaze in the use of reverb as well as on the appropriately titled “The Wasteland,” and a presence of Nick Cave that I cannot put my finger on exactly, but is there undeniably. The seven-minute epic “Pale On Pale” is a smoldering burn of a track which takes clear inspiration from the doom or drone genres in bands such as Earth or Boris and seems like some giant metal beast, lurching across a vast, cold and dead landscape.

The album ends with the haunting “To the Forest, Towards the Sea,” a sonic collage of the most nightmarish sense shows her affinity for Norwegian black metal artists such as Burzum. Despite no real song or melody to speak of, the effect of the track is gripping, plunging the listener into an unsettling void of darkness, but one that you want to dive back into the moment it concludes.

Chelsea Wolfe views the apocalypse not as a fiery explosion of terror which will come immediately and painfully, as many metal artists seem to believe from their immense volume and lyrics. Rather, she views the apocalypse as something that will come slowly and visibly, ending with a silent and icy cold whimper of despair. In this, she is darker and more sinister than even the most extreme black metal groups. In Ἀποκάλυψις, Chelsea Wolfe has lovingly constructed a beautiful and bleak portrait of darkness that will remain listenable for repeat experiences, begging to be deconstructed. Ἀποκάλυψις is gorgeous, bold, and, above all, absolutely pitch-black like no other release this year. It is worth your time. Embrace it.

By Richard Murphy

Label Fables: Jagjaguwar

The role of the independent record label in the 21st century is to curate and to catalogue music, even through the great multitude of pressures and distractions of society. Their mission is to represent a group of bands that set themselves apart and share an interest in preserving the important aspects of music. In a world where there wasn’t an Internet to preview music, one had to solely rely on the name and product of labels to determine what albums to purchase.

Jagjaguwar, the Indiana-based label, was created just like most – to produce albums for a single band. In this case it was the Curious Digit, a relatively unsuccessful band from Charlottesville, Virginia. But the fear from the Curious Digit remained the same for all bands in this situation, having a record label’s influence and strong presence in the sound.

But Jagjaguwar didn’t just stop at one record label, and in 1999 became partners with the label Secretly Canadian. From that point on, both labels shared office space, staff, and talent. Nowadays, it’s often that labels will work within each other to produce side-projects or even completely different bands. More recently, both Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian added a third label, Dead Oceans, to their offices and staff. These three continue to work together and release quality records.

Jagjaguwar has its diversification very high up on its priorities; many bands are progressive, yet some seem to stand still in time. Sunset Rubdown compared to the Cave Singers shows an aggressive yet quiet mix of upbeat, multi-instrumental music versus a simple riff with standard instruments combined with a raspy folk voice and lyrics of rural open space. Also look at Black Mountain, the distorted psychedelic rock band, versus Women, the ambient pop band. One can clearly see that Jagjaguwar picks bands based off more than just a specific sound. Label founders Chris Swanson and Darius Van Arman have discussed how their process of signing a band to the label not only requires listening to demos, live performances, etc., but it also involves creating a personal connection between the band and the label.

Secretly Canadian also has a notorious list of released music. The War On Drugs makes the list of the label’s newest and best music, and Jens Lekman and Yeasayer has released most of their discographies on Secretly Canadian. Dead Oceans doesn’t have quite as impressive resume, but they do have The Tallest Man on Earth, one of the best contemporary folk musicians in the genre.

Bon Iver definitely is the biggest success story on this progressive label. Justin Vernon released both of his albums under Jagjaguwar because he thought that the label’s ideals matched the closest with his own. The rapid commercial success of Bon Iver spoke to the ability of musicians in this era; Vernon produced all his own music and continues to do so. Considering his handful of Grammy noms he just picked up, it’s safe to say that Bon Iver is a common name among music enthusiasts, and with his collaborations with Kanye West, St. Vincent, and James Blake he’s made a name for himself in the independent community.

This small-town label definitely avoids the pressures of vast media industries. Starting out in a small city made money less of an issue and attention to the music the primary concentration. Although the label’s bands seem random, that is in essence the definition of a record label. After all “Jagjaguwar” comes from a random “Dungeons and Dragons” name generator. The smaller town sound is apparent throughout Jagjaguwar’s picks, since most aren’t typical and all are unique. Jagjaguwar continues to deliver quality records without the influence of a corporation or an urban setting. After all, it’s easy to compete with the others when you’re self-dubbed “the mightiest record label on earth.”

By Leo Zausen

London Calling: Johnny Foreigner @ Relentless Garage

English indie punk rock trio Johnny Foreigner played Islington venue Relentless Garage earlier this month to a mixed crowd with demographics ranging from Warped Tour teenagers to normal twenty-somethings to a significantly older couple who I’m pretty sure weren’t dragged along by a rambunctious son.

Going into this gig, I was almost completely unfamiliar with Johnny Foreigner aside from the few YouTube links a friend sent me and a distracted album listen, but I could tell this show was going to involve a bit more yelling and moshing than I’m used to. The opening acts were mediocre at best and brought me back to my early teenage years of listening to Fall Out Boy on my green iPod Mini. Luckily, and as expected, Johnny Foreigner’s set was a refreshingly smart and fun indie-take on pop-punk.

Johnny Foreigner, hailing from Birmingham England, is made up of lead vocalist and guitarist Alexei Berrow, bassist and additional vocalist Kelly Southern and drummer Junior Elvis Washington Laidley. All have a spunky, youthful edge, but Kelly is clearly, and deservedly, the band’s sweetheart. “Kelly” chants and shouts of “I love Kelly” arose from the crowd throughout the night.

Just before taking the stage, the band played an automated voiceover of NME.com’s grating and uninformed review of their new album Johnny Foreigner vs. Everything. Even though I wasn’t aware of the cool statement until my friend clued me in, surely fans picked up on it, and that seems like what Johnny Foreigner is really all about – playing music because they want to, not caring about those who don’t like it, connecting to their fans and, through it all, having fun.

Check out the music video from my favorite track played during the set and the third single off their second album, Waited Up ‘Til It Was Light.

Another bonus – here’s my favorite song off their newest album, Johnny Foreigner vs Everything, “200x.”

johnny foreigner – 200X by alcopop

By Marissa Cetin

A Word From Our GM: Defending WVAU’s “Strange Tunes”

Right now the most popular section of AU’s student newspaper is Eagle Rants, a daily opinion column where anybody can anonymously post their thoughts on anything. On November 16, in between notes about being lonely in the dorms and arguments that communications students don’t have ‘real’ majors, The Eagle published this:

“Dear wvau,
Most of your shows that I have sampled played hipster music. I am not a hipster. I do not enjoy your strange tunes. Also, other hipsters will not admit that they enjoy the same music as someone else. Where is there room for a fan base?”

The next day’s edition contained this response rant:

“@The person ranting about all the hipster music on WVAU: I heartily concur. I have a show with them and have to bring in all my own music because I like mainstream music. TOO MUCH INDIE.”

As General Manager of WVAU, this was frustrating to read; you never want to hear that people inside or outside of your organization are unhappy with it. As we close the semester and get ready for a new year of college radio, I’d like to address both of these people, starting with the idea of what a hipster is and where that personality type exists in WVAU (spoiler alert: it doesn’t).

The first problem with the word “hipster” is that it’s been used to describe everybody— at this point it basically means “person I don’t like and don’t associate myself with.” It’s like the word “quirky” in that we’ve used it so many times to get across so many different ideas that just saying something is “quirky” doesn’t actually help to define it at all. Still, I’m not going to play dumb— the idea here is that a hipster is somebody who exclusively loves obscure music, who will hate anything popular and who will judge the people in his or her life who love popular music.

Right away I can disqualify myself from this definition. Queen is one of my favorite bands, and, while I can’t tell you what the quadratic formula is or does anymore, I have the lyrics to entire Duran Duran and Prince albums committed to memory (despite the fact that I was born in 1989, years after either band had peaked). I bought the Beatles reissues two years ago despite already owning all of the albums and when my favorite bands sign to major labels, I don’t bat an eye. I don’t shut things out of my life because other people like them and I don’t know anybody who does.

I don’t think you do either. I’ve never talked to anybody who rejected my beloved ABBA because they were too popular; I’ve only heard the argument that ABBA is dated or cheesy or hollow. Calling somebody a hipster because they don’t like music that you like is selling short the idea that people come to music for different reasons. I dislike The All-American Rejects because I think they write boring songs, not because they do well on the Billboard chart. If you dislike The Jesus Lizard, I’m not going to assume that those feelings stem from a hatred of underground music; that would be as unfair as the assumptions made in Eagle Rants.

And God, do I love The Jesus Lizard. I could write an article twice this size about Duane Denison’s guitar work on that band’s first four records. I could tell you more than you’d ever care to know about the days I’ve spent parsing out the seemingly nonsensical lyrics Carey Mercer writes for his band Frog Eyes or about the intersections between my discovery of Grandaddy and the onset of my mother’s breast cancer during my senior year of high school.

What I’m saying is the music I love matters to me in the same way that the music you love matters to you, it just happens that my taste has possibly taken me to more idiosyncratic places than yours has. And that’s fine. There is nothing wrong with that.

I don’t know how to respond to the line “Also, other hipsters will not admit that they enjoy the same music as someone else” without pointing out that WVAU is a radio station with over 120 DJs. We share music with each other every time we put on radio shows. We have massive digital and physical libraries where we house literal years’ worth of music. If we wanted to hide our musical discoveries from each other, we wouldn’t broadcast them to the world. The comment that we won’t admit to sharing anybody else’s taste seems to come from an ignorance of how the radio works.

The Eagle Rants response brings up something that WVAU is guilty of, though— we do not encourage Top 40 shows. I can at least defend myself and say that I’ve never gone out of my way to make anybody feel bad about their music taste, Top 40 or not. If I’ve said or done anything that has implied that I think Top 40 fans are bad people or illegitimate music fans, I am sincerely sorry. Nothing could be further from my intentions as GM.

What I do want to do is uphold college radio as a haven for obscure and weird music.

Mainstream radio plays nothing but Top 40 and if you want to hear that music, that’s where you go for it. Historically, college radio has always been an outlet for the little guy to get heard. WVAU does not condescend to the person who owns The Black Eyed Peas’ discography, but it also doesn’t cater to that person. Why should it? When every other radio station in the country is designed to deliver you Kings of Leon singles, why shouldn’t WVAU spend some time celebrating artists you didn’t know you would love? The idea of college radio isn’t to prove to the listener how cool its DJs are, it’s to put a spotlight on the bands operating in the darkness.

Otherwise, I don’t know what the point would be.

By Alex Rudolph

From the Outside: The Shape of Jazz to Come

When Ornette Coleman’s now classic The Shape of Jazz to Come was released on May 22nd, 1959, no one was quite sure how to react. At the time, bebop was the dominant form of jazz, reaching its second wave of popularity, and Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue was to be released in a matter of months, paving the way for cool jazz. Jazz was in a very harmonic, very smooth, and very stylish place at the time. Ornette Coleman rejected the accessibility and grace of the period and instead took a route unheard of up until that point. The result was liberating, jarring, and, most importantly, immeasurably influential on the world of jazz.

Along with backing musicians Don Cherry (Cornet), Charlie Haden (Bass), and Billy Higgins (Drums), Coleman entered the studio and began recording the album with only the barest of sketches as to what the six pieces were to become by the end of the recording. This approach was not entirely uncommon in the world of jazz, and had been used by other musicians such as Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. However, whereas past musicians had laid out a chord structure and pattern for where the song was to progress, allowing room for some improvisation, Coleman did nothing of the sort. He instructed his musicians to improvise on all fronts, including with the very key that the piece was in. Blasphemy though it may have been to jazz purists of the 50’s, the resulting album is among the most compelling jazz records of the period.

Perhaps the song most representative of the style of the album is the crooning opener “Lonely Woman.” It opens in a fashion not unlike many jazz pieces, with a brief bass introduction, followed by a melodic line (if such a term can be applied here) provided by Coleman and Cherry. From there, however, it becomes clear that this is not a traditional bebop outing. Coleman’s distinctive timbre (provided by a plastic saxophone, the only kind he could afford at the time), shows itself on the upcoming solos, which use scales and keys not as rules which have to be followed, but as guidelines, to follow only when beneficial to his ends. The album then flows into the absolute tornado of a song “Eventually,” which greatly ups the tempo, as well as the improvisation. Charlie Haden’s bass provides a wildly fluctuating background for Coleman and Cherry to blaze improvisations over, while still returning to an incredibly impressive and tight melodic motif throughout. It is among the most impressive songs on the album not only for its finesse and technical muscle, but also for its ability to defy convention while still be gripping and listenable.

While dissonance and improvisation are the keys to this album, it manages to swing at certain points as well. The longest track on the album, “Peace” is a down-tempo groove of a song, almost reminiscent of the cool jazz which Miles Davis would pioneer shortly after the release of The Shape of Jazz to Come. The track is a near ten minute exploration of the synthesis between musical experimentation and easy listening, as it travels through both realms during its running time, appealing to both those who want to merely chill out while listening to jazz and those who think hard and long about the structure and meaning of what they are listening to. It is danceable, while still being dissectible.

Responses to the record varied wildly. Many accused Coleman and his defiance of tradition as purposefully doing so as to attract attention in a cheap manner. Even more disregarded his unorthodox playing as the result of a lack of technical skill. Even Miles Davis was perplexed by what he heard, describing Coleman as being “all screwed up inside”. These opinions, however, would give to more positive and thoughtful opinion, such as those of Virgil Thompson and Leonard Bernstein, who both praised Coleman’s work as original and genius. Miles Davis since recanted his negative opinion and admired Coleman’s efforts. The influence of the unorthodoxy of The Shape of Jazz to Come can be obviously seen on the development of the genre of free jazz, but also in many other unexpected places. Post-hardcore rockers Refused named their classic 1998 record, The Shape of Punk to Come as a tribute to Coleman. John Zorn, New York avant garde musician, has also cited the album as a major inspiration for his work. Harsh and unpleasant though it may have been at the time, The Shape of Jazz to Come has proved to be a prophetic vision of the future of the jazz music and avant-garde artistry as a whole.

By Richard Murphy

A Young Gypsy: “Rebel Girl”

Sometimes saying the word slut just feels so good. But, I used to try to stray away from this word because feminism is no longer solely focused on male-female relationships, but rather female-female relationships. We live in a world where girls are forced to be in constant quarrel with one another. Who is prettier? Who is more feminine? Who has the best combination of tits and ass? Who is the least slutty, while still being the hottest one that hooks up with the most guys?

When I go to a party I see these sort of contradictions and gender normative roles at its finest. And I know, at times, I can be apart of it. I squeeze myself into a minidress and heels and put way too much makeup on. I become bored and flirt with guys I’m not even interested in because, it’s what girls do, right? And when I see a girl who is doing exactly what I am doing, my mind immediately turns venomous. I want to call her “slut.” The word serves as a reminder of what women are inherently supposed to be. My mind has become consumed with what makes a woman womanly, which I suppose is a June Cleaver cyborg.

When I want to call another girl that, I mean it with the cruelest of intentions. The word slut is intended to point out that the receiver of this word has no sense of femininity. They do not fulfill their womanly duties. And this is where I get to my point. I am reclaiming the word slut and Bikini Kill is going to help me.

If the anti-slut is docile and submissive, I want to tell her to fuck off. I have to say, enough of playing into feminine ideals and doing what is expected of us. I am a slut and hopefully so are you. For Bikini Kill, in the artfully crafted “Rebel Girl,” (goddess of all things bad ass) Kathleen Hanna praises the “slut” and even rejects the preconceived notions of what a slut is.

The “Rebel Girl” Hanna sings about is, quite simply, awesome. She is everything I want to be. She “holds her head up so high” and she has amazing clothes. Most importantly, she is a much needed symbol for a new brand of woman. She rejects the past ideals of womanhood. She is sexual and demanding, Hanna often times calling her a “queen.” She is not immortalized for her beauty like female subjects of songs have been in the past. Instead, she, on her own, is a revolution, “when she walks, the revolution is coming.” Not since Eugène Delacroix’s painting of “Liberty Leading the People” has a female had so much agency for social change as Rebel Girl had.

“Rebel Girl” embraces the slut. Hanna screams, “They say she’s a slut, but I know/ She is my best friend, yeah.” Everyone else claims this girl is a slut, but Hanna refuses to conform and see the negativity of this word. She praises the woman who is sexy and intriguing. She celebrates the woman that goes against the grind of chastity. There is not one ounce of jealousy in the song, but rather a validation that women are beautiful in their own right. If the Rebel Girl is a slut then being a slut is not a bad thing. Instead, it is a rejection of womanly ideals. It means that I am thinking human being. It means that I have an opinion. It means that I can wear a short dress and still call myself a feminist. It means that the next time I tell a girl she is a slut for being a functionally sexual being, it is not to insult, but rather to say “Love you like a sister always.”

So to all my sluts out there, can’t we all just get along?

By Michelle Merica

London Calling: GIVERS @ XOYO

Jet lag wasn’t an issue for Givers. The sunny indie-pop quintet made the journey from Lafayette, La. to London last week, playing Shoreditch hotspot XOYO with all the energy of kids just let out on the last day of school.

The night opened with the underwhelming coed duo The Shivers, whose male singer/guitarist was more into himself than deserved and the female keyboardist and back-up vocalist wasn’t featured nearly enough. Zulu Winter bridged the gap between the rhyming bands as the second support act. The local group started their set with songs that sounded like the lovechild of The xx and Phoenix, but the set shifted to the less funky and into more alternative, generic rockier tracks. Perhaps they should’ve played their setlist backwards.

Then, with more enthusiasm than both support acts combined, Givers took the stage, signifying the start of the dancing portion of the night. Playing all of their debut album In Light, leads Taylor Guarisco and the badass-as-ever Tiffany Lamson strummed, drummed and sang though the set and shared al their boisterous, energy with the crowd so everyone in the club was in on the fun.

Highlights include “Atlantic,” Jack-of-all-trades Tiffany’s solo effort, “Go Out All Night,” the one subdued, sad track from the bright Louisiana band and the super upbeat “Up Up Up” encore, the obvious choice for the final song. (But really, why wouldn’t they close with their only single?)

Attending the gig was like being transported back to bright and sunny summer, a difficult feat considering the industrial decor of the venue often and the cold, misty London weather as the season transitions from autumn to winter. It’s been about a year since I first saw them open for Ra Ra Riot at the 9:30 club last November (they headlined at the Black Cat in October), and their growth is obvious, but their energy, which is so key to their carefree charm, has the same freshness as that bright-eyed opening act with only a five-song, self-made EP to their name, and that’s likely to never dim.

By Marissa Cetin

Golden Years: A DJ’s Musical Timeline

I turned 20 this summer and as I’ve mourned the loss of my teenage years, I’ve also been reminiscing about the music that defined them.

I can name exactly what I was listening to during every stage of my life. Every graduation, birthday, heartbreak, fight, and adventure had it’s own personal soundtrack. Sometimes, I remember the music more then the memories:

2001: I’m 10 years old. At this point, my musical tastes are largely determined by what I hear on the radio and what my older brother is listening to. I buy my very first CD: Destiny’s Child – Survivor. To this day, Beyonce remains my favorite female pop artist. I’m also playing Sum 41 – All Killer No Filler and The Barenaked Ladies: All Their Greatest Hits on repeat this year – stolen from my big bro.

2002: Cue middle school—Braces, glasses, bad hair, and questionable musical taste. I buy Michelle Branch – The Spirit Room. I read the liner notes cover to cover and know the words to every song. I ‘discover’ Avril Lavigne’s single “Complicated” and get really annoyed when it becomes popular (so hip). I also buy a Sheryl Crow album this year. If it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad?

2003: 7th grade. I make my next purchase: John Mayer – Heavier Things. At less then five feet tall I declare “Bigger Then My Body” as my own personal anthem. On someone’s Zanga profile (way too hip for livejournal), I hear “Amie” by Damien Rice. I recognize his voice from the VH1 Top 20 Countdown, which I watched religiously every week (too hip for MTV). I fall in love with Damien Rice. Cue beginning of teenage angst and lifelong pattern of having crushes on boys who are unobtainable.

2004: I’m 13 years old. Hungry for new music, I go hunting through my house and discover a CD given to my brother but never opened: David Bowie – ChangesBowie. Life. Forever. Changed. I listen on my Walkman on the bus to school every day for one year, and I’m hooked forever.

I declare all modern music to be garbage and refuse to listen to anything but Queen, Santana, the Police, the Beatles and Bowie. I save up for my very first iPod. On the back where most people have their names engraved, I choose to write: “Life’s begun, nights are warm and the days are young.”

2005: Freshman year of high school. I credit this next purchase as the defining moment in my musical story. I stand in Target with two albums in hand: a new John Mayer CD (something familiar) and Modest Mouse’s Good News For People Who Love Bad News (it has cool cover-art and some song I’d heard on a commercial break of Degrassi).

I bravely purchase Modest Mouse and pop the CD in on the way home from the store with Mom. She calls it “weird.” Which means I have to love it. I proceed to listen to that album obsessively, turn into a full-fledged music addict and never look back.

2006: I’m 15. I get a job at a bagel shop that only plays syndicated episodes of Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 and therefore learn the words to every popular song from 1970 to 2000. Tracey Chapmen’s “Fast Car” still reminds me of slicing bagels and jamming with my sassy manager Bernice.

Thanks to Myspace and illegal downloading, I become exposed to an infinitely wider array of music. Maybe all modern music isn’t so terrible. I lose the concept of albums for a while here and start amassing a miscellaneous collection of maybe five tracks per artist: The Strokes. The Hives. The White Stripes. Anything with a “the” in front of it. I take enormous pride in the fact that I know different music then most of the kids in my high school in West Virginia. The song on my Myspace profile is Fiona Apple’s “Extraordinary Machine” and I put some lyrics from Spoon’s “I Summon You” in my AIM buddy profile to demonstrate how unique and deep I am.

2007: A very insightful, intelligent and beautiful friend dies. I’m 16 years old and don’t take it very well at all. It is just the kind of fuel that drives a teenager to listen to really, really gloomy music. And I do. This is the year I burrow into Bright Eyes, Sufjan Stevens, Death Cab, Radiohead, Elliot Smith, and Neural Milk Hotel. I make a lot of mixtapes and quote far too many song lyrics in my Facebook statuses.

2008: Senior year of high school. I find my Mom’s old Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Cat Stevens albums this year and fall hopelessly in love. But most of my memories of this year are just about being beautifully young and reckless with my best friends. We play “Benny and the Jets” and “Roxanne” over and over again on every jukebox we can find. We drive around just because we can, listening to Ben Kweller and Ben Folds and getting sentimental as we prepare to split up for college.

2009: This is the year I graduate, turn 18 and start my first semester of college. I listen to Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot obsessively that spring when trying to decide between schools. I discover this nifty website “Pitchfork” and read all about Arcade Fire, Animal Collective, LCD Soundsystem, Deerhunter and Grizzly Bear. My musically inclined senior prom date gives me 12 gigabytes of music he thinks is missing from my collection. I listen to the Velvet Underground, Nick Drake, and Big Star all summer long.

In the fall, I move to D.C. and go to my first real concert – Yo La Tengo at the 9:30 Club. It’s the greatest high I’ve ever experienced—and I start fiending for live music like an addict, going to any show I can or can’t afford.

2010: I’m a DJ for my college radio station and get what feels like a limitless number of albums from the station (compared to my one-per-year status long ago). For the first time, everyone knows the bands I know- and more about them then I do. Everyone else went to their first concert at age 10. I feel like less of the music connoisseur I thought I was. But it’s thrilling to find people who like the same music as I do.

My friends deem me a “hipster” when I talk about the new bands I like, but I don’t even care because I get to talk about music on my show for two hours every week. I start blogging about music, I make a best of 2010 list, I read music news fanatically, I lose count of the shows I’ve been to, I wonder what I’m even doing in school when what I really want is to be a music supervisor and make soundtracks for other people’s lives- not just my own.

2011: Currently listening to the new Feist, St. Vincent, Girls, and Atlas Sound albums on repeat. Along with all the music I’ve loved over the years and anything else I can get my hands on. When people ask me what kind of music I like, I truly can never answer because I love it all: 70’s Art Rock, Classic Soul, Female Singer-Songwriters, Post-Punk, Twee, 80’s Pop, Rap, Shoegaze, Alt-Country– whatever you feel like calling it.

And I still love Sheryl Crow and Sum41—and not even in an ironic “Ha Ha this song is so bad/silly/old but I still know all the words” way. Music should never be something you are ashamed of. It’s easy to turn your nose at music that is deemed too popular or too obscure, I’m certainly guilty of it sometimes. As guilty as I am of letting someone’s musical tastes influence my opinion of them. But music is so much more then the stigma that surrounds it, something every music lover knows. You listen to what you feel connected to– and that’s it. In the end, the label, genre, decade, and popularity just doesn’t matter.

The music I grew up with actually shaped me into a different person. I’d never abandon or disown it. I’m genuinely glad I grew up in a little musical bubble in West Virginia– because bursting out of that bubble has been nothing less then exhilarating.

By Emily White

CMJ 2011: Dum Dum Girls Acoustic @ Cantora Labs Smartlounge

There are not many bands whose live act could not benefit from a spectacular setting. Surely even the bowel-loosening, Juno-award-winning strains of Nickelback could become magical and intoxicating if you saw them in the right place (inside a burning freight car, in a tank full of rabid, bitter chimpanzees, etc). It follows then that when the Dum Dum Girls played with a full view of the New York City night skyline behind them at Cantora Labs’ Smartlounge on Thursday at CMJ, mouths frothed, cameras snapped, and people pushed hard to get to the front.

Dee Dee and Jules Dum Dum played lo-fi electric guitars without bass or percussion, stripping down songs both old and new to their bones. The music sounded entirely different without the smoke and mirrors of reverb and distortion that muddle some of their earlier releases. This led to a few revelations:

1. Dee Dee (wearing dark shades, red lips, and a penciled on beauty mark) can really, truly carry a tune. She delivered singsong melodies from new songs like Hold My Hand, Heartbeat and Bedroom Eyes with clamped-jaw intensity and steely precision that added a well-needed bit of spice to so much sugar.

2. Nearly every Dum Dum Girls song finds its greatest strength in a basic, powerfully structured melodic spine. Layered harmonies and tin-can production hid this fact on I Will Be and their self-titled LP, but live, songs like Hey Sis became direct, melodic punches to the gut

3. The new album, Only in Dreams, is worth a second listen. Don’t be fooled by the ninth-grade-photography-class cover art, or the repetition of the lead single “Bedroom Eyes”. The melodies came to the forefront at such a bare-bones show and I was converted. Thankfully it was loud enough that only the people immediately in front of me could hear me singing.

By Emily Lagg

CMJ 2011: A Place To Bury Strangers @ Union Pool

CMJ’s schedule is full of tiny bands playing half a dozen shows each in an effort to get noticed by college radio stations and blogs and to interface with promotional companies. However cool these bands may try to appear (and I watched two separate bass players try to pull off wearing sunglasses indoors, so these bands are definitely trying), deep down we all know they are desperate for attention. They want to quit their day jobs, they want to get a powerful promo company to support their next release and they want to be the band that breaks out of this year’s conference. For every Sleigh Bells or Surfer Blood, there are a hundred bands that will play CMJ and never get anywhere, and part of the experience of the conference is watching these bands put everything into a performance that will get them nothing and this is very sad.

There were a few established bands who showed up to appease their labels and promo companies who brought out the opposite emotion in me; watching a relatively large band play like they don’t expect anything magical to come of their set is invigorating. A Place to Bury Strangers did this for me when they played a full set at Brooklyn’s Union Pool during the Dead Oceans/Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar showcase on October 19.

The band has released two albums and are prepping a third for 2012; their first album blew them up into one of the country’s biggest noise-rock acts, mainly because their concept of “noise-rock” does not end with “our guitarist has a distortion pedal and the vocals are buried in the mix.” They make loud and brutal music in an indie landscape full of acoustic guitars and ironic covers of R&B songs. I skipped putting the band’s self-titled debut album on my iPod for the first few months after it came out; I was afraid I would be minding my own business in “shuffle” mode and then, suddenly, a track like “To Fix The Gash In Your Head” would jump out at me and destroy my ear drums.

When A Place to Bury Strangers took the stage, they did so directly after the loose, by-the-numbers pop of Gauntlet Hair, a band whose between-song stage presence was littered with nervous laughter and down-turned eyes. Wearing leather jackets that would quickly be shrugged off in the heat of the small venue, A Place to Bury Strangers opened their performance with a new song that began and ended in dissonant blasts of feedback. For the first twenty minutes or so there were no house lights to speak of and the band was lit only by films being projected onto the stage.

“Cool” is hard to quantify but easier to pinpoint when directly juxtaposed with “awkward.” Gauntlet Hair may one day find a way to perform live, but you stack them against a professional band like A Place to Bury Strangers and it’s hard not to see the silliness in all of their affectations. (For reference, Gauntlet Hair’s MySpace page was created two months after A Place to Bury Strangers’ most recent album came out.)

Over the next hour and twenty minutes, A Place to Bury Strangers played almost exclusively new material. I only recognized two songs, “Ocean” and “She Dies,” but the unreleased cuts were strong enough that this never became an issue. The new material still shows off A Place to Bury Strangers’ chief influences (The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Joy Division), but the new songs seemed more focused on melody than what we’ve come to expect from this band. There have always been strong hooks in the music, but they’ve usually been buried under heavier layers of haze than the ones the band was showing off at the showcase that night.

The ambience of the show was also held in stark relief against the bands performing earlier in the showcase. Most bands don’t have a look, and while there isn’t anything wrong with that at all, it really blows you away when a band can nail its presence the way A Place to Bury Strangers did. The projector continued throughout the show and, maybe twenty minutes in, singer/guitarist Oliver Ackermann began to sporadically set off a smoke machine. By the band’s last song the smoke was so think in the small venue that the projections began to show up on the wall of fog between the musicians and their audience.

Halfway through that last song, Ackermann triggered a strobe light and the visual overload, mixed cleanly with the ear-splitting noise, made the show a capital ‘e’ Event in a schedule full of good bands lacking visual aesthetics. Enough care goes into every part of A Place to Bury Strangers’ live show that you don’t want to look down to check the time or skip a song in order to buy a drink. They know what they’re doing.

By Alex Rudolph

CMJ 2011: Atlas Sound @ Ace Hotel

Without getting all Almost Famousy, what I love about music is that it celebrates what is real and messy and honest. School and society are often preoccupied with perfection and having it all together (it’s stressful, man!) but CMJ and more specifically, Atlas Sound at CMJ was a good reminder of what’s beautiful and right in the world.

Atlas Sound played a warm and soothing afternoon set in the lobby of the Ace Hotel on the third day of CMJ. Atlas Sound is the solo side project of Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, named after the tape recorder he used to record songs as a child. Less structured than the five-piece setup of Deerhunter, Atlas Sound has a lo-fi “recorded in your living room”-type feel.

The lobby of the hotel seemed to perfectly cater to Cox’s bedroom rock stylings as fans formed a semi-circle around him, sitting by his feet and crammed on every available surface. Cox helped the homegrown vibe by showing up in pajamas and moccasins.

Under warm tungsten lights Cox played a sampling of songs from his most recent release, Parallax. What’s most impressive about Atlas Sound, especially live, is how Cox can make such a deep and layered sound with just an acoustic guitar and some pedals. The music is simultaneously complex and delicate and somehow very relatable, which translates well to Cox’s strange yet endearing stage presence.

While tuning his guitar Cox told anecdotes about how he had recorded a few tracks of Parallax in his room at the Ace Hotel when he had run out of studio time. He thanked the nice Indian family living next door for letting him be so loud.

Dressed in his pinstripe pajamas, sporting bed head and looking a bit sleepy and spaced out, Bradford Cox and his music seemed to express that you don’t always have to make sense or be on top of your shit to make something beautiful and eloquent.

(ALSO Bradford Cox is super nice. Maeve and I met him and have a grainy cell phone photo to prove it!)

By Carrie Walters

Label Fables: Merge Records

Merge Records – “The indie label that got big and stayed small.” While many indie record labels strive for the “we’re doing our best” mentality (Fat Possum comes to mind), Merge seeks perfection. But does their quest for Billboard ranks and Grammys stray away from the indie sub-culture?

It’s hard to consider a label independent, at least in the sense of obscurity, when it features the Grammy winners Arcade Fire and the Top Ten-charting band, Spoon. But the sound is where it counts, and the direction of this label is unorthodox in terms of other competitors.

The beginnings of Merge matches up with that of many other indie labels: in a bedroom, where a couple of 20-something-year-olds pledged a simple mission statement to make good music. Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan started the label solely to produce music for their band, Superchunk. Early on, Merge served just an easy way to release their and their friends’ music, but has now expanded to multiple genres, bands, and nations.

In 1996, Merge had to borrow money from their first project Superchunk in order to release albums from late 90’s rising indie rock bands like Verbena, Butterglory, and a little project called Neutral Milk Hotel. Still promoting lead singer Mangum’s two albums, Merge continues to relate to the web 1.0 era of face-to-face communication, which is attributed to the success of Neutral Milk Hotel’s first album.

The beginning of this century showed continued promise for this 90’s label. Merge’s first album to reach the USA Billboard 200 was Arcade Fire’s first full-length, “Funeral.” Not only did this album receive marginal attention in Billboard’s arena, but it also achieved commercial success in the independent community. “Funeral” not only put Arcade Fire on the list of bands to watch, but it also placed Merge into the national scene. Recently, the Arcade Fire success story has seemed to overshadow the other bands in Merge. For example, the Canadian indie-pop band, Destroyer, continues to release notable albums in almost every year since 1996, and recently released “Kaputt” that keeps up with Dan Bejar’s unusual light-jazz style.

Currently, Merge’s roster is heavy in the modern folk section, featuring a prominent line-up that includes She & Him, M. Ward, Mountain Goats, and Wye Oak, with each band offering something different. She & Him released both “Volumes” under Merge, with help from various Bright Eyes members (Rachel Blumberg, Mike Mogis) as well as M. Ward himself. Conor Oberst remains an active member of Merge, touring with his Mystic Valley Band. This cooperation shows the ties between record labels – Oberst himself is a founding member of Saddle Creek – as well as displays how labels love to keep the creativity within the company.

Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle produces a passionate, folk, “bi-fi” mix of traditional lyrics and varied instruments which has morphed from a solo project, to a full band, and back again. He, just like most bands under Merge, has been producing music that spans over two decades. And while many of the band members on Merge are in their early forties, there is also promise for a more youthful sound. Wye Oak represents this category well. Their new twist on folk placed them above many with their 2011 release, Civilian. Telekinesis is another youthful, power-pop band from Seattle that released their first album in 2009 under Merge. Since then they’ve released two albums, both receiving acclaim for their relaxed hooks and energetic sound.

While Merge sometimes claims to be creative while at the same time using a business model to ensure their originality, in no sense does this show the downfall of the label’s conventionally sound driven model. True, the label’s strive for perfection may detach themselves from many new trends – try to find a synth-pop or chillwave band on the label. However, guitars seem to be enough for Merge, and they’ve been searching for and perfecting their model for over twenty years. After all, a record company that’s run by a band seems to be a successful business model to me.

By Leo Zausen

“Grandma, I’ve Been Unruly” – Purity Ring @ Soft House

“Grandma, I’ve Been Unruly” is just one unique lyric from Purity Ring’s collection of tracks. Purity Ring’s songs are as naïve as they are passionate, and their performance is no different.

Purity Ring is an electronic Canadian duo that favors abstract lyrics and synthesizers. The group is comprised of Corin Roddick, Megan James, a synthesizer, a bass drum, and a homemade instrument that Corin invented that resembles a shoddy plumbing job but sounds like a Moog. Despite the fact Purity Ring has only released three songs, they draw quite a crowd.

The concert took place November 10th in a warehouse in Baltimore called the Soft House. The site has multiple apartments inside and a performance area near the entrance. When my friend John, my fellow DJ Melissa, and I arrived at this one-of-a-kind venue the opener starting performing.

Doldrums was the the one-man opener, the project of a 21-year old Montreal-based electronic artist named Airick Woodhead. Doldrums’ songs are fairly experimental and include samplings of phrases and drum beats over his vocal performance, which culminated in the glitchy-est set known to man.

After a small dog (literally, a small dog) ran into the venue and everyone received their fair share of Natty Bo, Purity Ring took their cue and started setting up. The anticipation wuz killing me! They started out their set with “Ungirthed” and moved on to several unreleased songs.

The energy of Purity Ring was contagious – they never stopped dancing and banging their trigger-filled contraption. I heartily enjoyed their 30 minute performance, which included hits like “Belispeak” and “Lofticries.”

I was able to speak with Corin and Megan a bit and they are surely one of kindest bands on the indie scene. Hopefully they will have more songs released when they return to the DC area.

By Faith Masi
Photos by John Lichtefeld of http://www.polychronic.us/

From the Outside: No New York

The year was 1978. Brian Eno, famed English musician/producer, was in New York assisting The Talking heads produce and master their sophomore effort, More Songs About Buildings and Food. While there, Eno attended a four day long underground rock festival held at Artists Space in the SoHo Lower Manhattan District. The festival was a showcase of the emerging New York ‘No Wave’ scene, a scene which developed in the mid 70’s and is difficult to characterize beyond its blinding originality and outright rejection of mainstream musical trends and culture. Eno was incredibly impressed by what he witnessed, and was able to convince Island Records subsidiary label Antilles to release a compilation of four No Wave bands with himself as producer. The tracks, four each by the bands Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Mars, and DNA, were recorded and released in 1978 as No New York.

The album leads with Contortions, playing an incredibly noisy and unconventional fusion of punk and jazz led by vocalist/saxophonist James Chance. From the very first track, “Dish It Out“, it is very clear that the album is going to be devoid of the ambient electronic that Brian Eno made his name in. Chance plays an apparently improvised free jazz saxophone solo over a repeating dissonant guitar chord and perversely groovy bass and drums. “Sick of being on the losing end/Tired of playing the obliging friend”, Chance howls over the barely contained chaos of the backing instrumentation. Despite the unrestrained experimentation of the track, it remains almost dance-able, albeit in a wayward, almost wicked sense. This vibe of corrupt grooviness continues on the remainder of the Contortions tracks, especially “Flip Your Face,” an unrelentingly dissonant cacophony of what appears to be an attempt at a sort of avante-garde James Brown song, and has even gained recognition by Big Black and Shellac front man Steve Albini as his “all-time favorite song.”

Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, the second band of the compilation, produce some of the coldest and least accessible music of the albums sixteen total tracks. The group, led by vocalist Lydia Lunch, plays music which is depressing, droning, and almost painful to listen to at points. The guitars are not even attempted to be played in a fashion which could be called anywhere near melodic, a distinction which, coupled with Lunch’s vocals that never quite enter into a musical key, creates a wash of droning noise for the entirety of the four tracks. Their second track, “The Closet,” boils this idea down to its essence, using just over three and a half minutes of noise and suicidal lyrics (Take a bullet to my eyes/Blow them out and see if I die) to create an atmosphere which is cold, unwelcoming, and, most of all, shockingly original.

The third band, Mars, is far less distressing than Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, but remain just as infuriating and perplexing. The vocals of leader and founder Summer Crane are, quite simply, some of the oddest in modern music, lying somewhere between a mumble and a high pitched shout. Not one word is distinguishable, making it impossible to tell what any of the songs are about, if they are about anything at all to begin with. The track “Helen Fordsdale” consists of these unorthodox vocals complimented by a wall of noise created by guitar distortion and seemingly aimless bass.

The last four tracks come from D.N.A., a trio who create what can only be described as what would happen if malfunctioning robots tried to create blues music. Arturo Lindsay, D.N.A. leader, soulfully barks over his stutteringly irregular guitar strokes, singing about megalomania and absences of movement. The music is astoundingly angular and appears to be ready to metaphorically cut all those who attempt to dissect its sharp edges. “Egomaniac’s Kiss” pounds out an erratic march of a rhythm as Lindsay wails about his attempts to grab someone’s ‘sandy torso’. It is robotic, pulsating, and incredibly engaging.

The No Wave scene, for all of its originality, was not to be long-lasting, and was essentially dead by the advent of the early 80’s. No New York is considered widely to be its definitive and finest documentation. While the compilation is far from a fun listen, music this forward thinking and unique rarely is. Bands from Sonic Youth to Big Black to Blonde Redhead have all credited the album as a large inspiration and, despite its valiant attempts to be as alienating as humanly possible, its influence and recognition as a classic of outsider music is essentially a given.

By Richard Murphy

A Young Gypsy: Janis Joplin and “Bobby McGee”

This could be the hysteria of post-midterms, a 40% on a psychology exam and a C+ on a paper speaking, but sometimes I feel like I’m not supposed to be in college. More times than not, I am plagued with some sort of crisis where the only obvious answer to cure it is dropping out of school. My future would be fine without a college degree. I could play in a band and travel the country until the day I die. The fact that I lack musical talent doesn’t deter me from pursuing this fantasy.

I desire freedom. I am disturbed by the fact that I can be overwrought with giddy joy when I have two hours to eat and sit in between my classes. Or that I consider going to a club on a Tuesday night as reckless.

I look around this campus and I see ambition. But where is the jubilation of being young? Yes, alcohol seems to bring out a youthful recklessness. But where are the random acts of impulse caused by simply being happy to be alive? Does recklessness really constitute hooking up with your friend’s ex-boyfriend or not doing the assigned reading?

Janis Joplin could teach us a thing or two about throwing caution to the wind. She might have died prematurely of a heroin overdose at the age of 27, but in that short span of life she LIVED. She refused to adhere to social constitutes and embraced the grey area that scares so many of us. As seen in her beautiful hybrid between blues, country and rock, “Me and Bobby McGee,” she sings of the man she loves as “I’m calling my lover, calling my man”, refusing to force him into any sort of box. Bobby McGee is a Whitman-esque figure, containing multitudes and contradictions. She can belong to him but also be free. He can be a man of mystery and disguise but also someone who “shared the secrets of my soul”. He does not need to represent anything to her, he simply just needs to exist. The color grey has never looked so colorful.

As we are introduced to Joplin in the song, we find her “nearly faded as my jeans”. Then she embarks on a road trip with her man/friend Bobby McGee for no reason at all. Simply just because. She has no ulterior motives or worries; she just wants to wear a red bandana and drive to New Orleans. I wonder in my neurotic psyche why she got into a car with a man she hardly knows. For Joplin there is no reason, per se. Happiness is the goal. She lives and revels in the gamble. She simply does because she wants to without any sense of temporality as she beautifully sings, “You know feeling good was good enough for me/Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee”.

This song is jovial. She loudly sings “La la la, la la la la, la la la, la la la la” repeatedly proving her dedication to crafting the art of whimsy. There are gospel-like qualities to the song, praising this concept of freedom. Yet, Joplin is known as a notoriously sad person. As she said herself, “Audiences like their blues singers miserable.” Joplin suffered with bouts of depression. Oftentimes, she turned to drugs and alcohol for solace. In “Me and Bobby and McGee” Joplin sings as though she knows the feeling of exuberance is fleeting. For a beautiful 4 minutes and 30 seconds, Joplin has left her own self-doubt and she lets the happiness take over her.

So here I was, waiting for inspiration about who to write my article about while walking back from the library at two in the morning. It was cold, a radical departure from earlier in the day when it was 60 degrees. I played music to try to distract myself. “Me and Bobby McGee” came on. I smiled. And in that simple moment, feeling good was good enough for me.

By Michelle Merica

Midwest Musings: Other Lives

When you think Oklahoma, you think Pistol Pete, bombings, tumbleweeds and maybe even Hanson. You don’t think of rich, moody, harmonic folk pop, but that is exactly what Other Lives is. From Stillwater, Oklahoma, this five person group has everything you want in an indie folk band: soft steady beats, a string section to melt your heart, layers upon layers of harmonized vocals, and lyrics to make you rethink your decision not become a wandering cowboy.

The band started in 2004 under the named Kunek, and release their album Flight of the Flynns in 2006. Fast forward to 2009 and the band is still in Stillwater, but they dropped the name Kunek, got signed to TBD records, and released a self-titled album under the name Other Lives. The band enjoyed some popularity after this name change and new album, and even got some of their songs featured on “One Tree Hill” and “Grey’s Anatomy”…truly the barometer for success in indie music.

The band’s latest album, Tamer Animals, is noteworthy for many reasons, especially for the wholeness of the album. This is not an album divided into top tracks, background noise, and skippable songs, it is eleven songs that demand to be listened to from beginning to end in the correct order. That’s not to say each individual song is not unique, it’s just that the album is the musical version of a family tree. Subtle harmonies are wound together with earlier sounds and are transformed into something new yet familiar. Each song is a sibling, the same gene pool, but slightly different.

It’s hard to deny the influence that the Other Lives’s midwestern background has had on their music. The imagery is ingrained into the lyrics, in that you can see prairies going on forever, the long lonely roads, the rocking chair on the front porch, and numerous other quintessential midwestern vignettes. The instrumental arrangements are just as important as the lyrics for the feeling of the music. The acoustic guitar sounds like it came straight from a cowboy campfire circle, and lead vocals have an authentic amount of rasp. Think John Wayne meets Loudon Wainwright.

The other side is that because Stillwater is such a small town, the band had an almost ultimate freedom to explore, discover, and practice their music. Stillwater has a population of around forty five thousand people -hardly Chicago or Minneapolis, this is the real midwest. Other Lives can’t be placed into a certain category according to their hometown, because there’s nothing to judge them against.

The Other Lives’s new video for their single “For 12” is an incredibly beautiful Western a la Bowie’s “Major Tom”. The premise is the lead singer, Jessie Tabish, alone in a rocket ship exploring Mars. The website for Tamer Animals offers a deeper look into the video. The widescreen view takes up the entire screen, and there are places to stop, cut, explore, and remix the audio as it is happening. Even if you don’t like music, videos, space, beards, or anything cool (why are you here?), you will like this website. That’s a guarantee.

By Alice Quinlan

Editor’s note: Catch Other Lives opening for Radiohead this spring!

Label Fables: Fat Possum

A “fat possum” calls to mind an image of a rural southern town. It instills thoughts of 1960s jazz coffee houses, back porches, smoky bars, etc. The record corporation known as Fat Possum used to stand for these Mississippi attributes – until the blues died.

“Attempting to record the dirty blues before it dies out” was Matthew Johnson’s goal. The founder of the Fat Possum record label aimed to take southern blues artists that weren’t popularized or prominent and promote their name and sound. The label was full of unknown southern jazz and blues musicians with no potential of commercial success. They attempted to capture the blues of the middle 1900’s in a late 1900’s setting, which they did for a very slight amount of time. But now the jazz musicians on this label are either dying or dead.

So one would think that when the blues died, so would Fat Possum? Instead, Matthew Johnson thought otherwise. Fat Possum is undergoing a massive shift in sound, from a mainly black jazz perspective to a white indie sound. Now, the dead blues are rarely even promoted by Fat Possum. Instead their emphasis has been solely on indie, and today it leans towards progressive forms of independent rock.

It’s fair to say that Fat Possum displays many of the succeeding movements in the indie subculture; many unique sounds are represented. A majority of the companies’ bands are up-and-coming acts. Some notable examples:

The Black Keys have gone on to produce many Grammy nominated tracks and albums, with a large discography. Inspiration rooted heavily in blues, this is an obvious choice of analysis for Fat Possum; it makes sense to use the Black Keys as an instance of the blues to indie transformation. Yuck is a personal favorite of mine, with a late 90’s sound of Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. (who also happens to be on Fat Possum) with a homespun twist of synthetic programming and attention to detail. This London based band has only released one album (download it now), but their work has already garnered international acclaim.

Smith Westerns are also influenced by 90s rock in their album Dye It Blonde. They’ve been outspoken fans of T.Rex (also a part of Fat Possum), but have introduced youthful and psychedelic lyrics to a 90’s take. Wavves, a noise rock band who’s post-hardcore sound is assertive, yet unique, and reminds one of a garage band with some spare cash.

Youth Lagoon’s first debut album, Year of Hibernation, earned a BNM as a vintage home record indie album with exploratory lyrics, rhetorically and literally (most of the album is about voyage, exploration, and self discovery). Voyage is also the motivation of the surf-pop band, Tennis. This duo recorded their album based on experience and tribulations of their sailing expeditions. Cape Dory displays an upbeat talent of sentimental happiness and is cute, but contains hollow lyrics.

There isn’t really a similarity in sound within Fat Possum, but rather a unification in diversity, akin to other independent record companies. What “expired” a decade ago still influences the modern indie scene, which is apparent at Fat Possum. “Our guys never really fit in anywhere, including the label,” said Johnson. What the bands lack in “fitting in” they make up for in their sheer output of notoriously successful albums. Truly a success story in terms of adaptation to the times, Fat Possum should continue to consecutively release popular albums throughout indie’s history. And once indie dies out, they’ll probably move on to the next hip thing.

By Leo Zausen

Explorations in Time and Tone: Zappa’s Hot Rats

It begins like a Beethoven piece would if he had been born on a distant moon in a far-off nebula. The orchestral flushes mix with the extraterrestrial tambour of the instruments, lifting us into another world. A journey is about to begin.

Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats takes the listener up into the stars to another planet only to find that life is not too different in space. The album is predominantly instrumental. Long solos abound but constantly rest upon an incredibly composed base. In the sleeve notes Zappa describes Hot Rats as a “movie for your ears,” but this is no delicate French New Wave piece of cinema. Oh no, Hot Rats belongs in the realm of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. It takes place in a world of violent conflict where war is waged through shredding harder and more brilliantly than the opposing side.

If the first song, “Peaces En Regalia”, takes us into another world, the second song “Willy the Pimp” grounds us there. In much the same way as showing Luke’s life on Tatooine shows the viewer that life isn’t too different across the galaxy, “Willy the Pimp” empowers us while making us feel at home. For the sole vocal track on the album, the legendary Captain Beefheart makes an appearance lending his grating blues-snarl to the song.

And then the solos begin. And they continue, their ebb and flow tossing us like waves on a windy day. We discover something. Something unknown

On the third song, “Son of Mr. Green Genes”, Aaron Copland and Charles Mingus fall in love, take a trip to the local scrap yard and make love like lizards. Their reptilian thrusting both transcends and embodies us. After they are finished, they share a cigarette and crash into each other’s arms, Mingus’ head resting on Copland’s bosom.

But then Mingus leaves Copland for Bela Bartok on “Little Umbrellas”. My understanding of the story grows hazy here. But deception and mischief haunt their world. The plot deepens and the conflict is about to explode.

As if he knew that at this point we would be getting far too sucked into the imaginary world of the album Zappa starts the fifth song “The Gumbo Variations” by allowing us hear him instructing the musicians before their second take. We realize that this is an album. It has a history. People made it. And then these people begin to play.

“The Gumbo Variations” is a 17-minutes epic containing three expansive solos over a constantly morphing and changing rock groove. Sax flows into violin that in turn flows into guitar. Like in the Judgment of Paris, these three godly beauties compete for the affections of the worldly band. In the end, the band cannot seem to choose, and the godly soloists collapse in anger.

The last song, “It Must Be A Camel” returns us to earth. We leave the world of conflict we were so recently introduced to. But what turmoil it has spawned in us! Our reflections on our experience propel us past stars and millennia back into our own world and our own time. However, we cannot help but notice it is not too different from that world so far and long ago.

Hot Rats can sustain many interpretations. All of them can only be models for understanding. But the knowledge we gain from using them seems universal. This “movie for our ears” holds a key of sorts. We have only to reach out and grab it. The beauty of the album, however, is that once we’ve grasped it there’s so many doors who can know which one to unlock?

By Jesse Drucker

A Young Gypsy: Patti Smith

I used be uncool. A few years ago I had tendencies to wear peach colored track suits with the bedazzled word JUICY sprawled across the ass. I used to dream of being a Lakers cheerleader. I had nights filled with turmoil of who deserved my love more, Justin or JC.

It was during this time I stumbled across Rolling Stone magazine in a doctor’s office. I flipped the pages open and there I saw her. Her DIY haircut was the result of a dull pair of scissors. She was adorned with crosses and leather jewelry. She was topless. This was the first pair of breasts I’ve ever seen besides my mother’s. She simply just stood there unaware that she was exposed and a handsome man happened to be standing next to her. Initially, I thought she was ugly. But in my young age I confused her authenticity with ugliness. She was real. She was rock n’roll to me.

From that day on, I have been a devote Patti Smith fan. Since that fateful day at the doctor’s, I have shed the track suits (the love for N’Sync still remains).

Her first album,“Horses” is a classic and known as one of the greatest albums of all time. While listening to it you feel as though Smith is your much cooler older sister singing in your basement while you have your ear pressed to the door. The decades between when the album was recorded and the present moment are meaningless.. She is experimentally modern and each song varies stylistically. Yet, the common thread throughout each song is her passion. You hear Smith’s heavy breathing and slight shakiness in her voice. Her lack of precision is forgiven due to her emphasis on the music as a rejection of the ordinary.

Perhaps the most appropriate song from “Horses” for our generation is “Free Money.” As a college student afflicted with money concerns, I appreciate this song much more now. Smith sings of how wonderful life would be if she had lots of money. Her desire for money is obvious and hungry. Her voice contains animalistic grunts when she harkens on all the things she could do with more money.

Yet, this song is not an homage to greed, but rather a commentary on poverty. Smith pinpoints the crux of being a working American, “See those dollar bills go swirling ‘round my bed/ I know they’re stolen but I don’t feel bad.” She sings of simply making her loved ones happy therefore she will do anything in order to see this goal achieved. She does not wish to be rich, but rather she wishes to live a comfortable life free of worry. She provides a human and artistic quality to money consumption and a real portrayal of the American dream, which is interesting and unexpected. Smith does not idealize the life of a starving artist, instead she sings for everyone working and how it is a fundamental human desire to be providers.

By Michelle Merica

From the Outside: The Shaggs

They’re either the best, or they’re the worst. Either the greatest, or the most god-awful, horrid, pain-inducing noise ever put on record. Art-rock god Frank Zappa is on record as proclaiming that they’re “better than The Beatles”, while Kurt Cobain has listed their debut as his number 5 most influential record of all time.

The Shaggs, rock/pop/outsider band from the 60’s, are among the most controversial and hotly debated bands of all time, able to conjure up praises from some of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, while being (understandably) derided by nearly everyone else. Their brand of simple, idiosyncratic, barely organized ‘pop’ music recalls questions such as “What really is music?” “Is this intentional?” And, “Who are parents?”.

The idea of The Shaggs was born even before the birth of the members, sisters Dot, Helen, Betty, and Rachel Wiggin. Their father, Austin Wiggin Jr., claimed that his mother once received a palm reading in which her son would marry a blonde woman, and their children would form a well known musical group. Apparently a superstitious man, Austin took this tale as gospel, took his children out of school, and arranged for his daughters to begin receiving music lessons with the end goal of forming “The Shaggs”.

Despite the small fact that none of the girls had any interest in being in a band, at the beckoning of their father, they began playing concerts around their hometown of Freemont, New Hampshire, the town in which they would play the entirety of their shows. At the time, the sisters had nearly no idea how to play their respective instruments. The town reacted as expected, verbally abusing and berating The Shaggs onstage during multiple occasions. At this point, Austin decided that it was time for The Shaggs to record their debut album, having so much faith in it that he spent his own money to finance the recording sessions.

It is very possibly that nothing ever again recorded will sound quite like Philosophy of the World, The Shaggs’ 1969 first and only album. The blatant disregard for even the most basic musical tenants over the course of the albums’ thirty-two minutes is simply stunning. It is essentially devoid of anything which could be called a chorus. The guitars, already played in a manner of someone who has no understanding of Western music, are perpetually out of tune. Though one of the sisters apparently plays bass, it is nowhere to be found in the mix. Perhaps greatest (or worst) of all are the drums, which appear not to notice nor care which song the rest of the band is playing, doing whatever they wish, whenever they wish.

What may very well be the albums “finest” moments take place during the “classic” “My Pal Foot-Foot”, which both begins and ends with what can charitably described as a drum “solo.” Rounding out the instrumental side of The Shaggs is the vocals, which change note on each and every syllable throughout the album and were described by one Rolling Stone review as “sounding like lobotomized Von Trapp Family singers.”

What is sometimes lost within the vast mess of sound are the lyrics of Philosophy of the World. Song titles such as “Things I Wonder”, “Why Do I Feel?” and “Who are Parents?” (now you get the introduction), can only give way to lyrics which appear to be the inner monologue of a six-year-old girl, despite the fact that The Shaggs were all at least 18 by the time Philosophy of the World was recorded. “There are many things I wonder;There are many things I don’t; It seems as though the things I wonder most; Are the things I never find out,” they philosophize on “Things I Wonder”. The awkward and painfully sincere lyrics touch on a range of topics, including their cat running away, Halloween, fat people, and cars.

After their father’s death in 1975, The Shaggs dissolved. Though Philosophy of the World received little recognition at the time of original pressing, it has since been re-released and rediscovered by artists such as Frank Zappa, Nirvana, and NRBQ, creating new attention for the group. Despite their clear lack of any musical ability, The Shaggs were undoubtedly something to behold and have become an outsider classic. This may not be what The Shaggs wanted their music to be, but it is what it’s has become. And I love them for it.
By Richard Murphy

Sounds From the District: October DC Shows

It’s finally October – my favorite month. Time for crisp autumn mornings, pumpkins, and perfect temperatures for wearing my pea coat, but no list of awesome month-related things is complete without the month’s upcoming shows. So here’s a look at some bands making a stop in D.C. in October. Is this a comprehensive list? No, of course it’s not. Rather some of the highlights like…

Dum Dum Girls stop at the Black Cat on Saturday night, October 22 to support their recently released sophomore record Only in Dreams. The album has gotten some solid reviews thus far, and I’m not just talking Pitchfork but the New York Times, too. That’s some serious exposure. I’ve never seen them live, but definitely looking forward to checking them out.

Deer Tick, my hometown heroes, headline 9:30 Club on Sunday the 16th. If I have to introduce them, you should stop reading this now and go get Born on Flag Day. Seriously.

Japanese metal may sound a little intimidating if you’re not a hardened headbanger, but Boris is incredibly eclectic and has something for everyone. They come to the Black Cat on Saturday, October 29 to play some new material from each of their three full-length albums released this year. I’ve had a chance to see Boris a few times, and I can say it’s LOUD but not your typical rock show. And drummer Atsuo always jumps into the crowd at the end of the set. Awesome.

The District’s own Beasts of No Nation play H Street’s Red Palace on Wednesday, October 26th. I got a chance to see them at Fort Reno this past summer, and they’re some standard, solid punk. If you like Darkest Hour – of whom Beasts features former members – then you’ll definitely enjoy Beast of No Nation.

Big D and The Kids Table come to the Rock N Roll Hotel, also on the 26th, with fellow Boston ska/punk band the Have Nots. Having seen and even played with both bands during my former life as a member of a high school ska/punk band, I can say it’ll be wicked entertaining. They’re both super fun and surely worth a good nostalgic time.
By Anthony DeLuise

London Calling: Wolfette

In my last post I said that it would be pathetic if I didn’t catch my first live show before my next post, and I’m a woman of my word, so I checked out Wolfette at the pub in the Islington area of London, Monto Water Rats And to further the WVAU-relevancy of said gig, I went will fellow AUer-in-London and DJ Eric Lynch, former host of WVAU’s British Invasion.

With only about a 20 person crowd in easily the smallest venue I’ve ever been to, Wolfette worked the pub’s backroom-stage with her fiery, deep voice and fierce gold jeans, accompanied by her band.

My knowledge of Wolfette prior to the gig was minimal, as Eric only sent me a link to one of her videos when he asked me to go with him, but that didn’t stop me from dancing to her catchy electo-pop with a but of a harder, more alternative edge.

Only a short set of 7 songs, as Wolfette kicked off the string of acts for a night of live music at Monto’s, the British band created the edgy and sassy, but upbeat vibe to set the tone for the rest of the night.

The venue itself has a very similar atmosphere to my pub-crush the Lexington that I last posted about — rustic, uber hip, open and dark, but still welcoming, (I’m beginning to realize that “welcoming” is part of the vibe for almost all London pubs. Makes sense, no?), and also regularly hosts live music events.

The past two weekends I’ve been living the super glamourous lifestyle and jet-setting off to Paris and Munich for Oktoberfest, so time to catch another live show has been few and far between because I’ve also had to focus on the pesky “studying” part of the “study abroad” experience (what a downer). But I’m forcing myself to make another promise to y’all to check out another live act for my next post. Until then, Cheerio!

By Marissa Cetin