Secret Carrboro Ninja Patrol

Some Army Debut 7"

2012-01-11T13:48:00.003-05:00

The debut Some Army 7" is a gentle lover with a forgiving embrace. Arrangements are subtle, choruses and harmonies distant, and drums beat so as not to disturb. Its opener "Servant Tires" lulls to sleep with four minutes worth of bedroom eyes and its closer "Fallen On Your Sword" beckons them back awake with just as much sensitivity. A forty second long instrumental dream scape of lush synth keys and ethereal harmonies makes up the middle. All three tracks are reasons to fall in love. On this debut, lead singer Russell Baggett holds candied melodies in his hands and gently blows them to the wind...picked up and carried away by evanescent guitar rubbed with just enough grit to dial Some Army into the Indy rock genre, yet softened enough to keep them pop. --Carrboro Ninja

Servant Tires

post script

Some Army will perform songs from their debut 7" Friday 1/13 at Local 506 with Fan Modine; a pop inspired rock outfit with a taste for bouncy rhythms and vintage esthetics...and Prypyat which is a time capsule to sixties French pop brought to us via deft classical guitar plucking by Duncan Webster (Hammer No More The Fingers) and the deep stretchy cello of Leah Gibson (Lost in the Trees). Doors 9pm, $8.

screen print by Steve Oliva / Kitchen Island Show Prints

SCNP's Top 15 Song in 2011

2011-12-31T12:36:00.006-05:00

Counting them up and counting them down, the local squeeze box kept Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill in the comfortable style, pulling in and pushing out hits throughout 2011. Here is this blogger's summation of the best fifteen songs from this year's releases.

15. Only One of Me
Greg Humphreys
People You May Know

First I was to say thank you to Greg for this song...its a classic feel good tune. Tongue-in-cheek hilarity, wise cracking hipness, and solid pop sing-a-long goodness give us plans for a song which could have only been drafted my a master songwriter. Greg Humphreys is a local treasure and a few coins were stolen from the chest on this one.

14. Empty Bottle
Slingshot Cash
From Aftermath to Exile

I am a sucker for a song with deeply drawn imagery and with the sorrowed plight of the song's fallen protagonist now fully understood after the somber telling of the first line "hello empty bottle, I've missed you" ...we are left to enjoy the rollicking jangle of Slingshot Cash's country rock.

13. fight/flight
I Was Totally Destroying It
Preludes - Greyday Records

"fight/flight" is an epic which spans massive builds and monuments crashes, souring choruses and bottomed refrains and it defends a little more ground for the power pop I Was Totally Destroying It upon the predominately alt-country, indy rock local battle field.

12. Time Alone
Birds and Arrows
We're Gonna Run - 307 Knox

"Time Alone" is a full frequency face time with the lovable voice of Andrea Connoley. This recording features a few more sounds than we'll hear live...namely a feedback dialed electric guitar and a stretchy organ...for a studio version which amps the energy to match Andrea's shimmering vocals. Quality in the studio also gives the song's fit and finish a time capsule retroness with depth and intrigue.

11. Blue Moon
The Moaners
Nocturnal - Holidays for Quince

"Blue Moon" is a raspy fragile eeriness that showcased lead singer Melissa Swingle's most interesting talent; playing the saw. The song's gentle pushing and pulling rhythm is accentuated by the spooky haunting whisper of the saw and creates an other-worldly effect in which to become lost. Found on an album which could have been farmed for several best-of songs, "Blue Moon" is a run-away favorite of 2011.

10. The Road to Mocharabuiee
Sinful Savage Tigers
Last Night of the Revels

Songwriter Seth Martin has a witty pen and mind for beautiful metaphors, band mates Andrew Marlin and Seth Barden are ringers on the mando and upright. The Road relates the up's and down's of love in terms that are easy on the ears and interesting for the mind.

9. Pills
Wembley
You Are Invisible

A band loved for their pretty songs sneaked in a blush worthy ep early this year and "Pills" was likely the track that spent the most time in front of the mirror. Boldly made up with the Wembley trademark harmonies and laced with Neven's art crafted guitar riffs, "Pills" gives us more reasons to stare.

8. A Day Without Fairies
Bitter Resolve
Bows and Arrows Against the Lightning

This song is rock purity. Starkly emotional and charged with the lung collapsing push of amp speakers being driven to limits and the primal scream of drums being beaten to death. Its built around the desire for rock to be drenched in its own loudness and the effect is honesty and truth channeled through a volume knob cranked to the right.

7. The Pony Express
Bombadil
All That The rain Promises - Ramseur Records

Bombadil came back in style in 2011 with a new release brimming with their quirky old fashioned pop goodness. "The Pony Express" is a story teller track that is so interestingly arranged that it hits the replay button very easily.

6. Jam Up and Jelly Tight
Jennyanykind
The Moaners / Jennyanykind Split7 - Holidays For Quince

This song represented a white-hot resurgence of one of Chapel Hill's most charismatic rock bands. Jennyanykind shared a hand in carving Chapel Hill into the greater independent rock map in the nineties and "Jam up and Jelly Tight" delivered one of the best hooks of the current decade. It's hip and confident rock and roll kept the summer moving strong.

5. Heartbreak, TX
Magnolia Collective
Ghost Stories

Magnolia Collective's most sincere effort to tell a love or lose story that would be felt in the heart by Americana strings and folk rock guitars turned out a country hit. "Heartbreak, TX" was found unassumingly in the middle of their debut EP but it quickly found its way to the top of my play list.

4. Come With Us
The Light Pines
Into The Night

Chilling and dramatic, enticing and suspensful. The Light Pines were pure granulated talent and "Come with Us" was the flame under the spoon. Watching it performed live was an intoxicating breath of beauty and deftness. Alas, after a half-decade long exercise in expectations, Josh Pope broke up The Light Pines and cancelled their headliner spot in The Independent's Hopscotch Music Festival, leaving and empty spot on the roster, and an empty spot in our hearts. "Come With Us" remains one of the best songs released this year.

3. I Would Say
The Huguenots
The Huguenots

The Hugueonots are another band break up story that broke hearts. Calling it quits shortly after the release of the self titled "The Huguenots" left us without a benefactor for the gorgeous "I Would Say" ...a timeless pop gem that was dipped in fun and rolled in summer.

2. This Goes On
Once and Future Kings
Dead Lions

OFK packages their 2011 album Dead Lions in ocastraic swells lifting front man Jess Henderson's falsettos to angelic heights. "This Goes On" provides the album's best example and does it in a memorable way. Light and poppy key strokes dazzel with poignant guitars and heart spoken poli-sci lyrics for a chest heavy anthem that rewards each listen with satisfying clarity.

1. Lament
Mount Moriah
Mount Moriah - Holidays for Quince

This high stakes loving and leaving tale replayed its way to the top of my list for the sheer draw of it's impossible harmonies and engrossing lyrics. In Lament, heather and jenks reason on a higher level with a lucid melody and elgant hooks to deliver an instant classic, and IMHO...the best song of the year.

Magnolia Collective - Ghost Stories

2011-12-02T16:13:00.003-05:00

If I were to describe the songs of Ghost Stories on a margin equal to how I listened to them it would read as if "Heartbreak, TX" is the only track on the album. From the moment of the first spin his song has played back and forth, up and down...and heard differently in each direction. The dark, heavy, and sublime melody is the song's first habit forming trip. It pulls and pushes, lets you fall and jerks you back up...a struggle that resolves only with an inevitable submission to the current. Drowning in it's thick and opaque textures may just be the first listen. Sink a few spins deeper and the mesmerizing grip of a hauntingly strummed banjo delicately weights the senses and hastens the fall. Weeks later you may, as I did, become enraptured with the song's provocatively visceral electric refrain that claws with emotion following a thorough vexing of the song's spirit stealing antagonist. Which ever element of this song is heard, Magnolia Collective is completely owning it. This is a Southern rock outfit expanded with a full accompaniment of Americana strings and they've pulled them all down from the wall to fix this song with surly smooth and tantalizingly moody textures.

No shortage of poets found in this seven person cast, every song is penned from a quill inked in the blood of a broken heart and the pages of their album bleed with the memories of lovers past. "Stolen Car" sets an early pace and coins the Magnolia Collective playing style as upbeat Americana rhythms, slinky C&W electric leads, and breezy harmonies. It also testifies for Magnolia Collective's urge to dive deep into the emotions of break-up's, make-up's, and fuck-up's. "Willow Tree" continues the knack for the deeply drawn plot with a sobering tale of the human condition as experienced by those who have loved and lost. MagCo hits stride for a big finish on "Owls" ...a charging waltz that swells and crashes on a grand scale. But I beg of you, don't let this be a six song EP, scratch for the seventh, there is a love song hidden within this album and you'll hear it if you dream steady.

You'll get this album with the eight-dollar ticket for Saturday night's EP release party at Local 506 in Chapel Hill, and Magnolia Collective will be in form for a raucous night of tight Southern rock. When you get to a disc player, go ahead and start on track four. That's "Heartbreak, Texas" and its not the only killer song on the album, but its the one that kills elegantly. --Carrboro Ninja

EP release party details:
Saturday 12/3 at Local 506 with The Moaners and Stag. $8 buy tickets on etix

Bombadil - All That the Rain Promises

2011-11-09T10:55:00.003-05:00

Ramseur Records

All That the Rain Promises marks Bombadil's welcome return to the studio following their extended hiatus in 2009–2010. For those of us who have loved and evangelized their first three releases – Bomdadil EP (2006), A Buzz, A Buzz (2008), and Tarpits and Canyonlands (2009) – Promises provides yet another album’s worth of baroque ballads, neo-pub canons, and trapper keeper torch songs to keep us warm through the cold winter. Expect standout tracks such as the anthemic indie rocker “Laundromat” and the twilit “Short Side of the Wall” to begin popping up on “best of” lists and year-end mixtapes.

As beautifully crafted as it is, however, Promises gives the distinct impression of a band in transition. As you might reasonably expect of a band returning from a long and uncertain layoff, there are moments here when the talented four piece sounds somewhat unsure what to keep from their past work and what to let go. The overly nice “Flour Water Sugar,” for instance, initially recalls Tarpits’ “Kuala Lumpur” but never quite manages the latter’s romping descent into anarchic joy. So too the near-twee confessional “A Question” is the kind of musical meet-cute that the band should probably put behind them.

That said, Bombadil’s commitment to lighter fare has always worked to clear away emotional space so that their heavier material can hit with greater impact. Longtime listeners will think of Buzz’s “Three Saddest Words” or Tarpits’ “Matthew” as songs that are all the more devastating given the sweetness and light that surrounds them. Reviewers have rightly pointed to Bombadil’s impressive use of vocal dynamics to create depth
and space (the arranged vocal harmonies on Promises, as ever, are rich and surprising), but too few have noted this dynamism at work in their lyrical themes as well – an initial childlike wonder often lays the foundation for a later sobering heartbreak. In a departure from previous releases, however, Promises’ opener “I Will Wait” plays the part of the emotional heavy here. A beautifully spare hymn that calls out for spiritual strength and perfect understanding, “I Will Wait” challenges the listener with a raw humility and divine frustration not often found outside of John Donne’s holy sonnets. It’s an immediate call to attention and establishes a powerful theme for a collective that has been forced to confront – in a way that many others have not – their own musical mortality. All of which must make the rebirth that the rain promises seem all the sweeter. --Hidden Tiger

Post Script
Bombadil will celebrate Promises with a release show this Saturday Nov. 12 at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, NC. The Future Kings of Nowhere and JKutchma open. 9 PM $12 advance/$15 door. tickets

Prevue: Carter Tanton, The War On Drugs - Kings Barcade 10/11

2011-10-10T11:28:00.003-04:00

When Kings Barcade reopened last year in the fabled Martin Street upstairs space, the skeptics voiced concern over the spot's lack luster history as a rock venue, having opened and closed under three different names since 2004...but the wise voiced reason that Kings' ability to attract solid out of town headliners will be the difference that stops the name game for 14 West Martin Street. Tomorrow's line-up stands as evidence that the wise were right. Ex-Tulsa front man Carter Tanton tours through town in support of his first solo album Freeclouds which gives us plenty of reasons to make it out on a Tuesday night. Tanton's is a refreshingly talented voice and this performance will be a excellent option for the bar hopping acoustic singer-songwriter crowd who is ready for something more upbeat and original. Freeclouds possesses a David Gray softness with delicate and sophisticated instrumental refrains, but the powerful harmonies are the album's real show. The War on Drugs headline with their signature stripped-naked indy rock loosely covered by a fuzzy ambient blanket. --Carrboro Ninja

Per King's; admission is twelve dollars the day of the show, or ten dollars in advance. Doors are at 9:00 pm, show at 9:30. buy print-at-home tickets: etix

Album Review: Greg Humphreys - People You May Know

2011-10-08T11:44:00.003-04:00

The first couple tracks on Greg Humphreys People You May Know are a delightful journey to a long forgotten era when humor was as big a part of performance as was enjoyable rhythms and a comfortable voice. These songs look back to the smooth and steady bump and thump of acoustic bass, softly brushed drum kit, a tickling of the ivories and a sultry voice crooning into a ribbon microphone for a slowly waltzing room of flapper dresses and pin stripe suits. Humphreys succeeds in a very delicate and elegant style here. The album's lead off song "Only One of Me" is a classic finger snapping waltz possessing fun Christmas song-like cheer which is kept in check with a few quick witted one-liners. The devilish grin in his eyes is evident in the recording and it translates to an amused smile for the listener. And where the former is a devilish grin, the second track "Must Be the Moon" is an evil little wink. Humphreys cleverly orchestrates the ol' one-two as the song's helplessly romantic protagonist leads us away with a chorus singing "must be the moon," just to bring us back chuckling on the ending "...shine," ...an unexpected hilarity within the context of a golden age lost-in-love piece.

From here, Humphreys slowly evolves the album through the free love decades and into modern singer-songwriter territory. "Oo La La" (I Love You) is a shimmering tale of chance encounter resulting in sparks, long walks on the beach, and lots of "I love you's" all wrapped in the haze of a 60's pop ballad aesthetic. "Low and Meddlesome Sound" is the soulful telling of a deep South blues story, beginning with heartache, ending with pain, and recounting sins for all involved. One after another Humphreys leads us through the remainder of the album's softly spoken ballads, each heavily accentuated by experience and brought to life by his smokey voice. --Carrboro Ninja

The album can be streamed and purchased at the artist's Bandcamp page: greghumphreys.bandcamp

Greg Humphreys performing at The Cashbah in Durham on September 18th 2011.

Show Review: Monarchs, Anna Rose Beck, Jordan & the Sphinx

2011-10-01T16:33:00.006-04:00

The Cave, Chapel Hill
Sept 29, 2011

As I walked down the middle of the dark and gritty ally that serves the seedy rear entrances to the four-hundred block of Franklin Street diners and pubs, I noted the mild weather. "Could have brought a jacket tonight." I thought. The heat had finally begun to lower the flag of Summer. It's foot soldiers just days before had gathered in force at every corner of Chapel Hill. Humid, cloaked in vapor, and standing steadfast, they peered over the tops of the tin covered flat roofed buildings skirting the length of Franklin Street and glared down upon the oppressed who traveled in groups from bar to bar quietly protesting the occupation with cut-offs and tank-tops. On this night however, the soldiers of the heat were in retreat and their grasp loosened. A soft breeze rustled the first fallen leaves across cool pavement under my feet was I walked. The streets were soon to be reclaimed and those who diligently maintained life and culture performing during the hottest of days on sweaty out door stages and sticky narrow rock clubs now celebrated out loud with smiles and new found energy. My night was spent with such folk, at The Cave in Chapel Hill where alt country songstress Anna Rose Beck gave redux of her July performance at a sweltering Nightlight and soulful Southern Rock young sons Jordan & the Sphinx emerged from shelter to pick up their smoldering guitars and perform a controlled burn on stage.

Jordan & the Sphinx embody blue collar rock and roll. This is a husband and wife fronted band and together they work hours which I doubt either have, or will ever, count. For seven days a week they punch out late from work only to wearily pick up guitars and punch out rock and roll even later. Playing shows, hosting shows, running sound at shows, going to shows... no matter how tired, they earn their life back after dark and revel with its creatures. At front, Jordan Dupree is a vastly underrated entity. The only thing better than the sweetly formed crunch of distortion from his Peavy tube amp is his deft and skilled maneuvers on his vintage six string. Thursday night's set however, was a stripped down acoustic and percussion performance. Jordan on the guitar, Robert Cantrell slapping the cajón, and Adrienne Christina was shaking a tambourine, laying down Motown-esque R&B harmonies, and for one killer moment....ripping hearts out with a harmonica. The sparse arrangements gave Jordan & the Sphinx opportunity to showcase their best instrument; Jordan. He is vocally set, no need to change a thing. Gravelly yet piercingly clear, commanding range yet happy staying close to home. His louds are soft and his softs are emotional. He is an eyes closed singer...its being drawn from within.

Up second was Anna Rose Beck who is both fun and mysterious to watch. Her arrival to the gigging circuit of the alt country Americana scenes Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh, NC was hastey. Her transition from a senior at Duke having just picked up guitar and plucking it sparingly at open mic, too head lining her own cd release party was the course of a short year and a half, time which consistently moved her forwarded and has resulted thus far in creation of a well known and appreciated brand. There is mystery to observe in Anna Rose Beck's lyrics also. Born in the twilight years of the decadent eighties, her cheeks still glow with girlish youth under the lights of the stage, but her lyrics sing of experiences matured well beyond her years. Mysterious also in her confidence. So comfortable in her approach to a microphone and so underscoring with her hushy middle soprano intensity that you will seek explanation for how one so fair can reach so far.

With youth in one hand and car keys in the other her approach to what ever is next is being sought with just as much fervor. West to Ashville, east to Greenville, and points as far south as Georga have been recent drives for solo appearances. Midway through the set Anna also made mention that she was flying out to Austin in the A.M.

Speaking of the devil...Thursday's eye opening headliner, Monarchs, is on tour out of Austin and breezed through with a fresh and exciting indie rock-a-billy meets vintage swing mash up sound that I fancied is probably what's cool in Austin right now...and if so then they are probably the band which made it that way. Monarchs is fronted by the magnetic Celeste Griffin, a working man's Jenny Lewis...just as talented but likely will work harder just to proove her salt in smaller clubs. This is not to say that Monarchs are a poor man's Rilo Kiley however, if they finish out this tour with the same dazzle and spark displayed Thursday night, then they could be moving onto that block...might be moving into that house.

This is how the streets were taken back from the Summer heat Thursday night. We emerged from The Cave to a vacant chill and walked freely through the darkness up Franklin Street to find the day's last toast. Victory was celebrated at The Station and the mercury was still dropping as we drifted homeward well after last call. --Carrboro Ninja

click to stream:

Monarchs "Arm's Length"

Jordan & the Sphinx "Too Bad, So Sad"

Anna Rose Beck "Begin to Sing"

Monarchs

Jordan & the Sphinx

Anna Rose Beck

faces in the crowd

Chris Jones (left) being his normal cool self with Slingshot Cash band mate Jon Ackley

The Tornado pumping cool outside air into The Cave

Anna Rose Beck violinist Omar Ruiz-Lopez poses with Christina Kestler (left) and Jessica Stein just minutes before midnight and his b-day which was observed at The Station after the show.

Album Review: The Wigg Report - Bicycle Pop

2011-09-15T16:15:00.003-04:00

Bicycle Pop is the latest from Durham lo-fi garagers The Wigg Report and its beautifully intriguing title appears to parallel two things in life that the Wiggs love the shit out of. Sorry, grammar check, which sounds right; "of which they love the shit out" or, "of which the shit out they love" ..bleh...they love the shit out of some pop music and BICYCLES, which they pack upon and and carry everything...to include their instruments to and from gigs. Yes, bicycles are directly referenced on this album. Their is a song on this album which boldly notates in title and lyric that "bicycle" is their religion, so you know what they'll be doing Sunday... *blink* ...blank stare...moving on... Pop music is also referenced here, but with far more nuance. The Wigg Report is constructed of four instruments; an acoustic guitar jacked to a over driven tube amp, a stand-up half cocktail smattery drum kit, a small frame keyboard processing some synths, and a sax...this is the chemistry set for some home cooked garage folk punk, not what we would entertain as pop music. The references dig much deeper than what pop music appears to be on any recognizable surface. These tracks climb backwards into the retroness of the eighties, the alt sarcasms of the nineties, and the purposefully dense DIY of socially accepted punk rock from any by-gone era. The album practices song structures that build and fall from bouncy fun acoustic openers to fragile stripped middles, and on to thunderous blood rushing outtros. Hooks are not forgotten as the second track "Vibrant" gives a memorable chorus backed by the sax at just the right moment. And all of this leaning in the direction of pop is accentuated by a very successful harmony mash up of the gravely Stephen Mullaney and the soft Christine Fantini whom go together like whiskey and water.

"In Between" is a notable track in that you can feel Mullaney's desire to just bang on those strings. This was probably a fun song to make. It leads to a driving chorus and oh...their they go with that horn again, brilliant. In Between is your classic fun poppy light song but beware, there is a torrential downpour of emotion within the lyrics. You may or may not notice with all that pop happening though. "Random Lunacy" cracks me up. Its broken and agitated...they got their weird on (on their weird they got? jeebus I'm turning into Yoda) ...just when you think this song is weird...that's when a chorus of telephones start ringing...which given the context of the song is kinda brilliant, so you are busted Wigg Report...its not random lunacy after all. This much fun woudn't be fair unless their was a ying to the yang, and that comes in the form of a emotionally fueled "R.I.P." (we miss Jay Reatard). All of their faculties are in play on this song, it feels as though it was the product of an overwhelming late night spree of passion and remorse where making every instrument in the room make every noise it could make was just exactly the masking effect that they needed (to make.) It is believable.

The album weighs in at 12 songs the good amount of them being two and three minuters. Given its propensity to be light, easily digestible, and a fun time I think we can call this album good driving music...ahem, or shall we say "pedaling" music. bwa...ha..ha..ha. ba-dat-chhhh. --Carrboro Ninja

Bicycle Pop can be purchased as a digital download at the band's Bandcamp page here: The Wigg Report on Bandcamp

The Wigg report's next show will be on the garage stage at Motorco in Durham, NC at 5:00 PM EST Saturday 9/24/2011 as part of the venue's one-year birthday party celebration which promises music, food trucks, a scrap exchange, and surprises. Click here for the facebook event page: Motorco Birthday Party

Show Review: The Last Tallboy

2011-09-03T12:49:00.003-04:00

Kings Barcade, Raleigh
September 1, 2011

The sort of grandiose climb that would crest the epic, if not for the opposing weight of down-tuned vocals and gazey chord grinds...that is The Last Tallboy. As they stretch out a song, the questions are posed "is this remember-the-good-times grunge revivalist? Or is it entirely avant-garde score-cause-you-heard-it-first new wave?" By the time fuzzy memories of the '90's grunge core and fuzzy understandings of current rock boundaries begin to fire an answer from synapse to synapse it doesn't matter any more; the hooks have hooked and "where are these guys playing next" and "where are they from" are already queued.

I have no answer for the first...no idea where they are playing next. These guys are so underground you won't find them unless you've wired the receiving end of a Tesla machine to one of their amps. They are the fifth band on a four band bill. They played the house party that you heard about a day after it happened. But the second is easy, The Last Tallboy is a Raleigh townie band. A band's band, formed by the guys who are either at your show watching from the audience...or at your show serving from behind the bar. If you've been to more than a couple shows in Raleigh, the smart odds are that one of them scribbled the smiley face on your hand with a sharpie when you paid five bucks at the door. So now we're putting them on stage and who saw it coming...they are fucking great. Front man, Bart Tomlin, is a crooner. Intimate, breathy, bel canto...he can tell an entire story within a singular scale of rich baritone notes, and then pull a tear as it tapers to a fragile and broken ending. It's a vocal formula of strong yet vulnerable character and when mixed with the band's mesmerizing balance of confidence and faults, unassuming irresistibility is the product. --Carrboro Ninja

The Last Tallboy

a Sasquatch sighting

Jake Bredenberg smiles for the camera just in front of the King's Barcade smoking lounge after The Last Tallboy's set.

Bloody Brunch and The Magnolia Collective

2011-07-27T16:25:00.003-04:00

Motorco, Durham
July 24, 2011

A coincidental mash up between two efforts with near exact grass roots make ups made time together last Sunday afternoon at Motorco when The Magnolia Collective framed up their emerging brand of Southern rock inside Motorco's progressively successful new Sunday afternoon concert series Bloody Brunch and dTown Market.

Of Bloody Brunch and The Magnolia Collective, the first grass roots story is that of the performers. The Magnolia Collective, who also answer to MagCo, or to Rich and Mimi's side project, or Zach Terry's side project, or to Daniel Snyder's side project...sprung to life a little over a year ago atop the bar stools of the The Station at Southern Rail with promoter Scotty Fuller serving whiskey to Daniel and Zach...the three of them dreaming up a recurring Americana themed concert series. In the dream each show would open with a "house band" warming up the crowd with a few country classics before handing off to a featured group chosen from local alt country stock. Forming the band, Zach and Daniel recruited Rich and Mimi McLaughlin of The Pneurotics, Jonathan Truesdale of Red Collar, and members of their own bands The Whiskey Smugglers and Gambling The Muse who would together become The Magnolia Collective. Their set list cherry picked the best songs from their own bands along with some good time covers and put them in the hands of an large Americana outfit who crammed on stage shoulder to shoulder plucking banjos, mandolins, six strings, accordions, and a plethora of you-name-it noise makers. An opening act was expected to grow from these roots...it wouldn't be long however that MagCo would out grow those expectations.

By the end of the first Summer season the walls of The Station bursted to capacity during every Americana Revue and as MagCo became the main draw, the featured acts became the openers. By the fall they were no longer just The Station's house band as they were on the short list for promoters across town and regularly rounding out billings at Nightlight in Chapel Hill, The Pinhook and Broad Street Cafe in Durham, and anywhere else that called for energy and excitement. The grass now grown, they began to write original music and Sunday at Motorco, a half dozen tracks were brandished as what will soon become their first album.

Bloody Brunch can trace its beginnings back to a similar humbleness. Local art promoter and vintage clothing marketer Kala Wolfe was given the Motorco Garage to host an art swap meet on a cold early Spring afternoon during a trial Sunday rock show. Anchoring the swap with choice items from her own vintage shop RetroK, Wolfe filled the garage with tables from the local artist community and began promoting the event as "Bloody Brunch and dTown market." The combo was a hit and Motorco has slowly grown into a Sunday afternoon destination faring Bloody Marys, local rock, local art, the Ko Kyu barbeque food truck, and about as wild a time as you can have after church.

The Magnolia Collective

hijinks at Bloody Brunch

Amy Laura Hall shows off her awesome...hula hooping

one girl shows me her tatoo, another girl gives me the stink eye. what did I do?

dTown Market swap meet vendors

Melissa Smith displaying her Ladybug Lemonade art and wearables

Susan Frosch of Susan Frosch Art and Design

Larisa Harrison and Adam Fox. Larisa has a vintage etsy store called Scatterbugs Vintage.

Ko Kyu bbq

Show Review: The Bamfs

2011-07-18T22:05:00.004-04:00

The Pinhook, Durham
July 13, 2011

The lightening cracked through an untimely early darkness as rolling thunder boomers crowded out the last glows of the late evening light a good half an hour before the earth turned its shoulder on the sun to gracefully meet nightfall on its own. Shortly, the unnaturally pale absence of light brought forth streams of rain which poured and poured turning every surface into a violent pool and every grade into a determined rush of dirty water. This torrent erupting just outside the window perched next to my warm comfortable living room couch was affecting the chemicals in my brain that influence ambition, and the drive I had for seeking a night of rock and roll was fading faster than the twilight did just moments before. Oh but the rock and roll god is a generous god and the clouds soon parted out as quickly as they had closed in. Unaware that the skirmish was over and still gushing towards battle, the rivers of run off filling the streets and back yards were the only sounds of the storm left when the crystal night sky opened up displaying a bright full moon. Looking up through the glass I caught the eye of the moon looking down just as it whispered, "Ok, you can go to The Pinhook now."

The Pinhook's own imagination of a thunderstorm was loud rock drenching a wiry eyed Wednesday night audience all holding long neck bottles instead of umbrellas. This was promised by the intriguing new post-punk revivalists The Bamfs, a high performing young group fronted by super energized Tiffany Banwart (The Mighty Good Ship). Not a guitar player like the other 99% of rock and roll front girls, Tiffany rather saves the thought spent articulating a six string to concentrate it fully on making a microphone replicate emotion. Just as punk as you need it to be, but the wild contortions of emotion that accompany any worthy punk inspired lyric convey less like outward angst from Tiffany, and more like the climactic moment of vapor lock while being tickled to death. It looks painful and fun at the same time and you'd like to have your turn next.

The sound track to this performance is courtesy of the intense characters behind her like lead gtr Tim Surrency (Barron) and Zeke Van Fossen (The Homewreckers) on bass. Their thundering is early and often but its not the storm that shut the lights off earlier, it's more of a rolling warm fuzz...an endless cloud bank of fluffy distortion too dense to see through, yet so light that eyes can easily lay upon it. They take everything and turn it all the way up and still maintain a melody as clear as if you are being lulled to sleep by a singular whispering voice. The Bamfs take hard and make it easy, heavy able to carry, and punk feel like pop. --Carrboro Ninja

The Bamfs

the Tim and Zeke reel

The Moaners/Jennyanykind Split 7" Release Show in Pictures

2011-06-22T23:23:00.002-04:00

Saturday night at Cat's Cradle Jennyanykind played their first local show in years along with The Moaners who were playing their first show of a new East Coast tour. Both ripped the six strings loose in support of their new Moaners/anykind split 7" out on Holidays For Quince. A collection of Photos is below including opener Pinche Gringo.

Jennyanykind

The Moaners

folkses

from left;Ford, April, Deborah, Jay, and Stephanie

Pinche Gringo

Show Review: Skylar Gudasz and the Ugly Girls

2011-06-16T13:43:00.004-04:00

Nightlight, Chapel Hill
June 9, 2011

Summer in Chapel Hill's Alt Country music culture is announced by sun dresses and cowboy boots, trumpeting along the edge of a warm Thursday evening last week rode two dozen such cherubs who winged down the ally way and into the warm red glow of Nightlight. Attracted by the smooth witness of folk rock music and the cheer of a gathering they alighted with song on their lips and sparkle in their eyes. As I arrived at their heels, the wonderfully descript in form and name Skylar Gudasz and the Ugly Girls were rallying in mid set. I joined in and found my stand within the half circle of couches and bodies which had formed about the stage filling the room with clam cool demeanor. Not a chance encounter by any stretch, Skylar has of late been on my too-see list for a couple of good whyfor. Their debut album Two Headed Monster was recorded at Arbor Ridge Studios by Jeff Crawford and given the album's penchant for hazy retro vintage touch and feel I'll hedge that Crawford as well lent tutelage in production. Arbor Ridge has carved itself into that extra generational Alt Country vibe with which Carborro and Chapel Hill flows and their brand is worth seeking anytime you are on the street. Upon two streams of the album now, I've come to the same end of drifting into a film grain daydream of 1970's mellow drama cinema. Perhaps Gudasz' powerful yet delicate rasp is akin to the vanguard divas of the classic rock era, or maybe the story book lyrics and complex vintage arrangements call upon the past...something there is triggering nostalgia. And with that album shimmering on the merch stand behind the crowd and the stage, their live performance ranged like an untamed yearling, loose from the halter and passing both modish rockers and heartfelt ballads alike toward a galloping escape. Folk rock is at its best when it carries you away to experience something you wouldn't have without it. Skylar Gudasz and the Ugly Girls have demonstrated this quality on stage and in their recordings. --Carrboro Ninja

post script
Skylar Gudasz and the Ugly Girls perform next at Open Eye Cafe in Carrboro, NC on June 25th 2011. Jeff Crawford and Liz Janes share the billing. 8 pm.

Andrea Connolly lead voice for local darling folk trio Birds and Arrows shared the stage with Skyler for a couple songs

adorable left to right; Jess Streeteam, Stacy Thomas, Kala Wolfe, Anna Rose Beck

Show Review: LiLa

2011-05-02T20:25:00.005-04:00

Casbah, Durham
April, 28 2011

When light hits LiLa just right the reflection illuminates an alter image of the Durham underground rock scene not often seen by the naked eyes of its faithful. The film negatives of these compressed light show flashes reveal hands hung in the air, bodies shaking, and wide eyed faces laughing wildly as they dance...images not so apparent in the color positive of the same floor a day after...a day before. Their sound is serious about fun. It's hip hop, and rock, and jazz, and all of it more energized than those parts standing alone. It begs questions; is it OK to be so excited that you can't stop a smile from taking control of your face when playing hip hop on stage? Is it OK to dance like no one is watching when you are at a rock show? Answers came in the form of motion, exhilaration, and brilliance. Lila front man Eli McDuffie has elapsed from being charismatic to being a drug. Going to need more soon, going to need more soon. --Carrboro Ninja

Big Hell front man Tommy Rau is handed the mic by Eli as LiLa covers a Big Hell song mid set.

faces left to right; Stacy Thomas, Kala Wolfe, Stephanie Mosley.

Kala 1

Kala 2

Album Review: Once and Future Kings - Dead Lions

2011-04-28T14:59:00.002-04:00

Masked and just out of reach for visual recognition, the characters in this album recant the turbulence of a life spent with feelings pasted on sleeves and answers sought in extremes. Relaying their fractured stories across a seven track journey of darkened classical dramas, joys found in a vacuum, and life lessons painstakingly remembered...the bolder the story becomes, the more distant and unreachable our protagonists fade. We are made to feel the weight of their conscience and we find empathy in their struggle, but its difficult to place a thumb on just what is going wrong here, and to whom it has gone wrong.

Standing with chins up and hands down next to the piano ambitiously reciting the soaring harmonies in "Twenty Watts", we are first introduced to these doted genteels as they voraciously devour nods of approval and stares of jealousy as sustenance desperately fueling a heartbeat well in excess of what is needed to survive as contented and balanced. They exude both intimidation and vulnerability in the same expression, signals that are interpreted with fascination, sorrow, and pure attraction.

Their becoming smiles and able manners find you no reason to discount their nature, still an eye is kept keenly upon them rather than not. "Say Hello" follows along to the high school dance where our experience halts at the edge of the floor as theirs haphazardly closes eyes and careens into slow dance dreaminess chasing disco lights across the floor. Wildly belting choruses they claim to have known-it-all-along singing out a rebellious cautionary tale of memory distortion which wasn't found so fitting in the proper surrounds of the albums earlier tracks. The plot thickens.

Observations now lend to beliefs that our story is being colored with a brush filled on a palate different to the one used for the base coat, thusly we are readied for the melodrama heart ache of "Stick Together". The veil now lowered enough to see sparkling eyes and with the album at its midway point, the most profound electric guitar statement of the collection rips asunder the song's refrain and bleeds the poison from the story's long lost lovers. A quiet turning point in the story, a kink in the armor, their enemies rejoice as their admirers level expectations. Closely following is "Test the Waters" with an offer that it can be just as calm after the storm. Steps from here are taken on a slightly downgraded slope and trade an uneasy excitement of the unknown for gnawing realization that the only thing imperfect souls can do in an imperfect world is "put one foot in front of the other" ...and try not to look too far back. The aftermath was predictable from the beginning and solace is found in that not much has changed, they are still out of reach, and the heart beat of their ambition is still deafening.

Our next chapter begins the true tragedy of the tale, the beginning of the end, and the slow revelation of faces for our characters. "This Goes On" is the first itch under the eye, the first sniffle briskly smudged away with a blunt wipe from the back of a hand, the first finger jabbed deep in the corner of the eye vainly attempting to stifle welling tears. "This Goes On" begins the unwinding of these for whom we have followed and sorrowed. Fragile bones now showing through softened skin return that a life spent in turmoil takes a toll even upon the strong. And as the drum marches along with heavy hearted minor chords and the melody exhales toward finality, the procession parade of "I Drink From a Drip I.V." latches a ragged tether and pulls closed a tall curtain. Only in this final measure are we granted closure on whom we have watched and loved through this markedly troubled opera of emotions, as laying before us now unmasked and naked upon the cold ground of the final scene...are Dead Lions. --Carrboro Ninja

post script
Once and Future Kings' Dead Lions can be streamed and downloaded for free at the album bandcamp page. The official release of Dead Lions will be celebrated Saturday April 30 2011 at Slims in Raleigh. Pecosa supports. 10 pm.

SPARKcon 2011 Talent Mixer Next Wednesday

2011-04-27T15:37:00.002-04:00

Last year's three day 100+ band downtown Raleigh mega bar crawl music festival whose name doesn't rhyme with smopscotch is clock-working itself back into shape and spinning gears en route to a 2011 edition slated for September 15-18. SPARKcon, offered by emerging-artist-loving not-for-profit Visual Art Exchange, transforms Fayetteville Street into a three day circus of mediums ranging from fashion to theater and crossing music and art along its voyage. The first musicSPARK meetings is being held this week and an open-to-all SPARKcon mixer is next Wednesday May 4th at Isaac Hunter's Tavern, 7:30 PM. Call it a pre-party for The Love Language's Slims residency day 2. Read the e-mail I just got from SPARKcon organizer Sarah Corpron:

SPARKcon Talent Mixer

Date: Wednesday, May 4
Time: 7:30pm
Place: Isaac Hunter's Tavern (112 Fayetteville Street)

Ever wanted a chance to just meet and mix ideas with some of the amazing artists, performers,
musicians and designers you have seen at SPARKcon? Then come to the SPARKcon Talent Mixer
next Wednesday at Isaac Hunter's Tavern!

Reasons you want to come hang out with us:

* You were part of the SPARKcon talent last year and/or you want to take part in 2011
* Like us, you enjoy being around amazingly creative people
* You think sharing your ideas and collaborating with other creative types sounds like a fun time
* You have some talented friends who you think should get involved (bring them with you!)
* Meeting new creative people + beer in downtown Raleigh is fun, and you know it.

Let's get SPARK organizers, past talent and future talent of SPARKcon together to share ideas and collaborateon events & projects for 2011!

Please pass along this info to anyone else you know who might be a good talent addition to SPARKcon 2011.

See you next Wednesday!

Album Review: Birds and Arrows - We're Gonna Run

2011-04-20T15:52:00.002-04:00

Since the curtains were drawn and the stage lights illuminated on Chapel Hill trio Birds and Arrows, their audience has been stalked with dramatic moments within subtle deliveries. With a scaled down drum kit steadily strummed with brushes and thumping a soft beat behind a single yet brightly shining acoustic guitar and a low slung cello, Birds and Arrows' instrumentation is as minimalist in design as is the three piece arrangement of musicians whom take to them. Their trade-mark move has been the entrancing rhythm of this soft play jarred and pushed by the excitable drive of singer Andrea Connolly's powerful vocal and in their latest body of work We're Gonna Run, these elements harmony together once again for delicate yet defensible performances.

At full swing, this work is an articulated ballet of keen-edged acoustic strings lifting acute piano key taps in and around heart broken falsettos. Exploring their penchant for describing the longing side of love, We're Gonna Run finds Birds and Arrows explaining away the pains of falling in and falling out with softly whispered remedies mixed into their simple, catchy versus and soothing harmonies. The album's falling out tales are best characterized as Connolly chokes up and cries through the unlucky-in-love "Time Alone" ...a track haunted with hurting emotions and recaptured with brilliant rhythm. Pretty pop gems "Arrows in the Air" and "Another Life" are more steps in the albums intricate dance of folk confession and round the performance with a sense of satisfaction, for Birds and Arrows that they produced a beautiful album and for audience...that we got their best. --Carrboro Ninja

We're Gonna Run is out May 7th on 307 Knox with a release party at The Local 506 in Chapel Hill, but you can see them this weekend Saturday April 23rd on the patio at Sadlack's Heroes for a highly recommended show with the highly regarded Where the Buffalo Roamed.

Prevue: "Sing For Your Meat" Record Store Day Release - Rich McLaughlin Bull City Records In-Store

2011-04-15T22:08:00.007-04:00

Sitting in on a 2 AM passenger seat screening of sombody's pre-release copy of Sing for Your Meat in The Station's parking lot after the Mag Co set last night I came to the conclusion that this album will steal the show for me tomorrow. Holding the disk in my hand reveling its art and reading our local bests paired up with indie royalty such as Kelly Deal and The Flaming Lips was as sobering with the weight of sweat equity that producer Misty Dawn Briggs must have poured upon it as it was exhilarating to see such a stupendous dream project come true.

With my first listen I skipped right to our locals and first to The Pneurotics "I Am a Tree". Recognizing that signature crunch and squeal of Rich McLaughlin's boutique amp dialed to unreplicable frequencies had me blushing like proud dad excited with the knowledge that within a couple days the outside would learn what we've known on the inside for a long time, Rich's guitar playing just makes you feel good. I Was Totally Destroying It goes electronically wide open on "I Am Produced", Western Civ brings their signature layering applique of varied driving rock sounds and lofty vocals on "My Valuable Hunting Knife" and North Elementary appears to have gone the creative route by merging two songs together which will be a surprise for me tomorrow as I didn't spin that one last night.

The album is on sale tomorrow 4-16 for the galaxy wide Record Store Day and our local celebration for Sing For Your Meat will be hosted at Chaz's Bull City Records 1916 Perry Street Durham, NC as our own Rich McLaughlin plays his Guided By Voices cover at 3 PM.

Chaz' facebook event page: here

The Magnolia Collective images from last night 4/14. most featuring Mr. Rich McLaughlin.

Show Review: The Huguenots, Album Release Party

2011-04-14T17:09:00.002-04:00

Local 506, Chapel Hill
April 8, 2011

Stealing through the energy field of razor sharp smiles and angled bodies that made up the Local 506 bar room in the space between a cliff hanger opening set by The Tomahawks and the highly anticipated album release set by The Huguenots, I shuttered my camera rapidly catching revelers in high action. I took the door and and rounded the corner with my camera shouldered catching a half dozen smoke breakers off guard. Antagonizing a few group shots and handing out matches I swapped a few stories...only one of which was based on fact. That is...I'd seen The Huguenots perform on two occasions, once as an opener for The Love Language at Gerrard Hall hall on UNC campus and again as the opener for both Aminal and Ther Mercators at Motorco in Durham. These as well as many other times I'd seen them billed they were "also playing" ...a welcomed attraction for a night of local indy pop, but not quite the headliner. A hyped crowd awaiting their performance just in side the door hinted that The Huguenots will likely have their name in the bolder print at the top of many show posters in the near future.

I was interrupted just a few dramatic versus into a rant-observation in the direction of Tomahawks keyboard player Jeff Crawford about the paradoxical nature of "sounds like The Beatles" beatings and the degree of talent that it actually requires to "sound like The Beatles." About then the chiming bars of The Huguenots first song drifted from the open door. Ears perked up and then a loud voice from the group announced, "oh man, that's my jam!" ...The Huguenots were opening the set with the single worthy "I Would Say" and the out siders stamped cigs and rushed the door creating a slip stream clear to the front of the stage room.

I caught the wave and washed right to stage right where my shutter found a dazzling light show animating The Huguenots in a primal spectrum of darkened hues...emergency melt-down red, alien invasion green, dark side of the moon blue...for the attentionaly challenged this was better than methylphenidate, but for the music appreciative, it was just something interesting to accompany the already great sound. This was their album's release, a work they have been at for over four years and they grabbed the audience with it and pulled them through a high voltage set reproducing their time in the studio. Self titled The Huguenots is at its core, a fun album. Songs are written with memorable pop hooks in mind and rock instruments in hand. The runaway favorite "I Would Say" is a defining pop gem that introduces The Huguenots as a band capable of enrapturing their audience with dreamy arrangements, clever come-ons, and gleaming harmonies that shine through the mix with British age feel. This is an album offering dynamics well beyond the typical four-piece rock outfit and its arriving just in time for a summer season of fun on the local rock circuit. Keep and eye open for show posters with a scribed "The Huguenots" in bold at the top and go let them sharpen your smile. --Carrboro Ninja

The Huguenots

The Tomahawks

Missy Thangs, Matt, Lenny Kravitz

party supplies

DJ Craig Powell,
Patrick Phelan, Spike

sharpened and angled

caught off guard

left to right Jeff Crawford, Molly Ferguson, James Wallace, Mark Connor

Album Review: Slingshot Cash - From Aftermath to Exile

2011-04-08T16:41:00.003-04:00

Country Music has it's own version of the runaway train that is today's pop music...and its called Country Music. Tilting and churning wildly with hype and fueled down the tracks by big business studios pushing garbage into the furnace and heralding the smoke that bellows from the stacks as worthy tenure for ten dollar festival beers and brokered ad revenue campaigns...long has it been since Country was ridden by the enlightened. Some time in the late eighties around the twilight albums of Country and Western greats like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, it happened quietly and soberingly in the darkness. Miles way from the glow of Austin and well before the deafening brightness of Nashville, the believers inconspicuously separated themselves from the crazed fakeblood hijackers gathering toward the few cars at the back of the train. With a collective nod they kicked loose the coupler and let the Country part of the train throttle toward oblivion, then switched the tracks and rode a coasting Western into a salvaging sunset. Slingshot Cash front man Jonathan Ackley stood on the deck of the caboose and with a harmonica in hand, softly played taps.

Now experienced with a lifetime of riding that Western train, Ackley identifies once again with the side he chose by releasing From Aftermath to Exile, an album that plants a boot heal in the dirt and drags a line between the normal understandings of modern burgeoning Country and gentleman's Western. Well slid slide guitar, haunting harmonica, and a galloping six string Gretsch electric demarcate the album's Western zip code while Ackley's stylized twangy crooning spot the album an unmistakable identity. The rhythm section behind the microphone has effortless and natural poise. Track three "Miss Singapore" is a Southern roots whip cracker that is bestowed with the most natural shine and it represents the honky-tonking half of the album well. Reminiscent of Stones country tracks like "Honky Tonk Women" it is a rollicking guitar song that out paces its own lyrics until the third or forth listen when your mind finally catches up and hears something other than the bounce and lift of a western tuned guitar.

There was a time when Country and Western music flowed from the AM radio on the nightstand as we drifted to sleep, those are called glory days. There are very few making modern independent rock who are old enough to remember it, and even fewer brave enough to recapture its spirit in new writings and recordings. Tip the hat to Slingshot Cash for the memories. --Carrboro Ninja

Track Review: The Huguenots "I Would Say"

2011-04-05T17:02:00.002-04:00

If the bell like chiming of The Huguenots clean cut guitar strokes and bouncy vintage wrapped vocals aloft in "I Would Say" are chief to the look and feel of their ready and approaching self titled LP then the Spring is about to kick off with a fun album. "I Would Say" puts on a 1950's doo-wop-esque smile and swings for three and a half minutes of smart indie-pop guitar licks. Layers ranging from acoustic guitar to stomp-box drive give the track depths of creativity and maintain the flow of interest in and out of the songs changes as Sam Logan's toneful vocals turn the title chorus into a memorable hook.

We find out more on what this album is made of this Friday as The Huguenots is released on stage at The Local 506 in Chapel Hill. Always-favored-to-win The Tomahawks open. 10 PM, $6. --Carrboro Ninja

IWTD Fight/Flight Video Review

2011-03-31T16:03:00.004-04:00

Trianglemusic blog just posted a a degree of radness that is bumping the temp on I Was Totally Destroying It 's mercury. The heat is emanating from a vid for their new song "Fight/Flight" and its steaming with master control cinematography and high def romanticism. Strong voiced front man John Booker steps away from the light on this one giving way to soft voiced Rachel Hirsh who makes five minutes worth of camera eyes in bullet time whilst a bazaar of icy hot scenery and reveling figures carousel through the shadows around her. Strapped in black leather and staged in a striking dream scape of time stretched focus, Hirsh is a visual harbinger for the track's breathy and whispering high altitude vocals. "Fight/Flight" is tracked on Preludes which is releasing April 12 on Grayday records. Thanks Jesus for my Motorola Droid2, Im'a streaming this one on the drive home. --Carrboro Ninja

Show Review: Joy in Red, Illbots, Fujiyama Roll at BSC

2011-02-11T19:46:00.010-05:00

Broad Street Cafe, Durham
Feb 5, 2011

Humbly reserved and unassuming while plucking the bass and oooh'ing back-up harmonies from three steps to the left and two steps to the back of the spot light that catches tender folk singer Bonnie Pivacek in their acoustic duo Sequoya, the alter ego of Matt Yearout angles toward a darker energy when illuminated at the front of the stage for his shocked and jarred anti-folk side project Joy in Red. Those understanding the calming character of his normal supporting role stood in witness to an opposing degree of animation found in his stage persona leading the charge at Broad Street Cafe last Saturday night. As if possessed by a discontented spirit pushing and pulling him into a conflicted world where a simple mountain born folk banjo is forced by the hand of a hot tube driven Vox guitar amp, Yearout viciously cracked and whipped simple and alert folk songs until they became twisted and desperate.

The Joy in Red Yearout is mechanized by the suspense driven forces in their writing, and he's not alone. The sheepish Dr Jekyll banjo is provoked and prodded into the biting snarling Mr. electrified Hyde by a devilish six string found in the shadows cackling gleefully at its successful undoing of the lord's Appalachian folk. Wielding this staff is none other than lovable bohemian Rob Beloved whom is most famous as the guitar half of Durham's off-kilter indie pop duo Beloved Binge...and with Proteus character shifts defining Joy in Red, we are free to understand Beloved as a juiced and dynamic stage force creating hooks and riffs that pulse life into their songs. Bewitched signature song "Mama's Milk" is as hauntingly captivating as it is alarmingly dramatic and the heavy undercurrent that pushes the log jam down river is a frighteningly pronounced rhythm delivered by Beloved's bright and sanguinary electric guitar handling. Seen again as the prime mover in the obsessively addictive "Flash Flood" ...Beloved's ability to craft lucidly spellbinding guitar arrangements underneath Yearout's eruptive song creates a mezmorizing forty-five minutes of performance.

Measuring the successes of their first year as Joy in Red, Yearout and company earned the headliner spot Saturday night playing late to a Durham proper eclectic billing of J-pop Fujiyama Roll and Roanoke slap-stick hip hop Illbotz. The exotically alluring Junko Berglund introduced her opening act quite matter-of-factly and commenting in true-form J-pop stylized "ro-ken-roll" accent, gave thanks to the Durham underground music scene before ripping through a set of geisha girl style indie jazz rock fusion.

The Jim Carey of hip hop, Stevie D of Roanoke's Illbotz delivered the song and stage version of their blushingly hilarious youtube library of music videos. Illbotz can be taken seriously for not taking it seriously and they borrow (and occasionally steal) from old school hip hop and rap turning every verse into a one-liner. The music videos of their songs are nothing short of late-night cable TV variety show satire quality and Illbotz on stage at Broad Street Cafe was riotous.

Broad Street wound down with its own tradition of all the late nighters hauling each others gear to open trunks in the parking lot, making plans for next shows and deciding where to after party. Cosmic Catina was the destination and Roanoke might be the next stop. --Carrboro Ninja

images

Joy in Red

all smiles left to right: Stephanie Hodges, John Smith of Somerset Frisby, Melissa Smith, Rob Beloved, Elinie Binge, and I *think* that's Joe Rizzo of Sawteeth McTweedy on the far right facing away

lazer tag, I won

Fujiyama Roll

Illbotz

Illbotz clowning birthday boy Matt Yearout

Secret Carrboro Ninja Patrol recommends
"Illbotz Rock The Spot And Go Crazy " on YouTube

special moments:
"Are you kidding me" at 2:30
"Nickleback LOL" at 4:21
"Shake yer belly meat" at 4:46

The Moaners: Nocturnal

2011-02-04T14:20:00.005-05:00

Laura King and Melissa Swingle best known as Chapel Hill cool The Moaners pumped Nocturnal last Fall on Holidays for Quince Records and gave us ten new reasons to dig on their raw rattling two piece garage romping style. Albums past gave us constructs of down tuned Southern blues rock surliness and tempered lyrics offering straight truths which together ferociously guarded delicate feminine vulnerability. In Nocturnal, the signature surliness of Melissa's grinding guitar and of Laura's washy kit is built again, but this time with a wind burned wild west eeriness that takes shape in the blurry light of its more personal and reflective tracks, delivering them a bolder more fearless persona.

The album gets going with the old school beat box-esque "Humid Air" which feels like its building up a Tarantino Western scene just before the hero begins a villainous killing spree. Its slide guitar textures and deep cutting strokes give it big screen imagery and drive you for answers on what and where you are when listening. "Humid Air" offers a color to the album and sets time period and universe which aids listening. Before navigating the natural flow of the tracking I most often found myself skipping from there to the albums most complex and advanced arrangement "Blue Moon". Dry and dusty metaphors stack up on the chest like a heavy decision as questions of "what does it all mean" meander in and out of the clamoring, ever working, mechanical instrumentation and Melissa's despondent heart broken calls, "you saw the wolf at my door, you knew just what was in store..." With her trademark bow and saw, the message blows like a cold wind to a silent soothsayer whom shares the story.

The albums mid range tracks offer the real staying power for a full album listen with a host of rich dramas and interesting story lines. "Cowboy Bob" is a story teller song of legend, infamy, and folk heroism. A character named Peggy Jo Tally is simply described by The Moaners as taking a masked joy ride through the bank coffers of little towns, but as the instruments tell the story with a deep voice and a darkened inflection, we are reminded that its not the story you tell, its how you tell it that counts. "Ramblin" gives us the first real bridge back to their honky tonk roots with a porch floor stomper perfectly suited for picking up steam on a smooth Friday evening just before shit breaks loose in town. The album loosens up just enough with the the latter tracks to give you a boost on the way out. "Bartender's Lament" is a Steven Malkmus style lackadaisical satire. I can see Melissa tossing down the bar rag and walking out on this one. It's a "get out of my face, no wait, I'll get out of yours, god where is the closest door, who has a cigarette" moment and it's delivered with heart's honesty. "Happiness is the Road" gives us whimsical character with age old wisdom. Its a nursery rhyme for rock and roll.

The Moaners closed out a solid 2010 releasing Nocturnal, running out for a couple of tours, performing at the inaugural Hop Scotch music festival in Raleigh, and filming a showcase for the upcoming "40 Nights of Rock & Roll" documentary in which they will own a featured spot. 2011 seems to be picking up with great pace. The Moaners have already announced a split 7" with fellow Chapel Hill rock royalty Jennyanykind which had a nearly half funded kickstarter goal within the first week and The Moaners will also play a local show at Slims in Raleigh on Feb 11th with Chapel Hill fi-hi rockers North Elementary. --Carrboro Ninja

Mac McCaughan at Moving Islands Benefit - Saturday Afternoon Pics

2011-01-31T16:33:00.004-05:00

804 West Street, Raleigh
January 29, 2011

Stepping on to the room's raggedly carpeted and mix matched speaker dressed do-it-yerself riser stage with nothing but his Gibson hollow body and a rock and roll state of mind, a trim and tautly Mac McCaughan plugged in to the first fender amp he found and ripped through a selection of Portastatic and Superchunk numbers with ageless form. A good decade and change beyond the blood sweat and tears that Mac's rock bands poured out upon the road helping to stick a pin through Chapel Hill on the indie rock map, Saturday's solo set was cliff notes that caught the room up quick. Planting every hook and mastering every falsetto amidst deftly maneuvered early-indie guitar work, Mac entertained an afternoon crowd of young bloods with a reminder from where our rich music culture is rooted.

Mac's Merge Records darling Kelly Crisp of the Rosebuds introduced his performance with a quick thank you to the chipper crowd for being part of the Moving Islands kick-off benefit, an effort for which she is a co-founder and brain equity investor. Until this weekend, the spot at 804 West Street in Raleigh has existed as a club house slash rehearsal space for a handful of bands to anchor themselves. With a festive two-day benefit concert Friday night and all day Saturday, it has emerged from the underground into full view of the community in the form of Moving Island, an art/music/culture destination which is seeking to establish permanent residence and expand into their vision. With splendid plans to grow the space into a multiple roomed performance, education, and rehearsal space...the founders of this aspiring not-for-profit deserve to be heralded as doers who powered their way from the overly common "wouldn't it be cool if" to the fleetingly rare "come in, we're open."

A successful Moving Island may also be the answer to the Raleigh indie music subculture's missing community space. Raleigh is often left out of the conversation on underground rock movements in part due to lacking a venue which is booked, operated, and attended true to its own kind. Deep down a dark alleyway, Nightlight is home for experimental rock and art in Chapel Hill and The Pinhook on Durham's concrete and steel downtown loop is its musician founded and supported, creativity welcomed spot (since BCHQ wrapped it.) An owned locale may be the call to arms that gives Raleigh bands identity others can rally to.

Perhaps Moving Islands most endearing quality is its offer for anyone to become a meaningful part of its success. Moving Islands is gaining financial support from the community by offering memberships in exchange for a donation of thirty dollars (or more) which can easily be slipped to them on-line via this paypal donation page. --Carrboro Ninja

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Mac McCaughan

Mac McCaughan and a youngin' setting up gear on stage at Moving Islands Saturday Jan 29th 2011 in Raleigh, NC

Moving Islands co-founder Kelly Crisp introducing Mac McCaughan and Moving Islands

804 West Street - Moving Islands

Young Volcanoes entertained an early crowd with a brand of indie quite adept at building energy amoung peaks and valleys within a song.

Show Review: Mandolin Orange, Sinful Savage Tigers at Local 506

2011-01-28T11:39:00.007-05:00

Local 506, Chapel Hill
Saturday January 22, 2011

As a bundled up line of scarves, heavy coats and toboggans the length of Franklin Street's five-hundred block filtered slowly in to Local 506 and thawed into cheery faces charmed with anticipation for the evenings headlining act Mandolin Orange, openers Big Al Hall and The Sinful Savage Tigers turned the stage room into a zippy folk skiffle ball room and threw them a welcoming party.

Stacking the room shoulder to shoulder, the fully charged capacity crowd and an electrified Sinful Savage Tigers beamed energy back and forth through a full set of peppery three minute acoustic Americana romps and near honky-tonk foot stompers which were cut up and glued back together by enamouringly quick witted banter on the mic between songs. A fun, funny, and fascinating Seth Martin held attentions in suspended animation for the length of his string trio's time on stage. "He's so weird!" came a gleeful exclamation from within ear shot after Seth left the audience smitten with laughter on a sharp one-liner. Song in, the crowd fixed with SST's confident rollicking and jolly hook driven Americana tunes, song out the crowd cheered and giggled with SST's character and charisma. Wilmington's Southern and stately Big Al Hall lead the night off with true-type folk croons designed for the solo spot light. "I love the old timey stuff" I over heard as Hall picked a high stepping bluegrass rhythm on the banjo. Across the length of his set, variety was maintained with a host of style changes from six strings to four strings and set the pace for an evening of the areas best acoustic music.

With Big Al Hall and The Sinful Savage Tigers having given all they could give to an absorbing crowd, Mandolin Oranges took the stage and lulled the cheerful chatty room to a calm as still as the countryside at dawn. As the crowed diminished into silence, two song birds pierced the air with perfectly true harmonies and delicate melodies. Country gentleman Andrew Marlin soft pedaled the first few songs with boldness and poise wise beyond his years as Southern belle Emily Frantz sparkled out crisp clean notes on electric guitar and softly hummed backing vocals. The crowd momentarily woke from their trance and cheered as Andrew reached for his trademark mandolin and Emily shouldered her violin. Emily stepped to the mic and gracefully let go a set of sultry ballads which were quietly sung along with by those around me who were seemingly swaying in time with the rocking of her violin bow.

From the opening set by Big Al Hall through the final whispers of Mandolin Orange, the stage room was as packed with warm bodies as have ever been at The Local 506, yet for the charm of being part of a wonderful night, not a soul seemed to mind the close quarters. Spirits held high in the enthusiasm of being part of the grand local Americana music culture which the evening's performers showcased. --Carrboro Ninja

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Mandolin Orange

The Sinful Savage Tigers

Seth and company set up next at Jack Sprat in Chapel Hill on Wednesday Feb 23 alongside Richmond, VA's touring folk troubadours The Itchy Hearts. The Itchy Hearts will play back to back local dates, the second being Thursday the 24th at The Pinhook with Durham folk rockers Jordan & the Sphinx and Effingham.

Big Al Hall

Big Al Hall performs locally again on Thursday February 10th at the Station at Southern Rail along side stellar The Magnolia Collective for The Americana Revue

Big Hell, Soft Company, The Big Picture at Local 506

2011-01-21T15:48:00.005-05:00

Local 506, Chapel Hill
January 20, 2011
By the time I stepped into the room at ten after ten, Big Hell was already heavily grinding a lot of hip hop into a measured amount of rock with three microphones and enough wires, controllers, and Mac Books to make the Local 506 stage look like an alien synthesizer home world. Towards the left front of the stage to warm up the shutter on my Pentax, I angled just behind a lit up foursome of girls who were animated in dance while the rest of the indie faithful crowd stared on from the shadows with intrigue. Big Hell was burning impressions in the form of lyrical hip hop and electronic rock and had nearly emptied the bar room, everyone was at the stage watching.

Thursday night was a mix and match bill of indie rock and hip hop with Big Hell, who steals the hipness from mainstream R&B and chop shops it into edgy electronic rock beats of their own proprietary post hop brand, and with two decidedly alternative indie rock acts in the Missy Thangs fronted Chapel Hill mainstay Soft Company and newly plied The Big Picture, whom is jointed with members of more Chapel Hill mainstay bands such as The Never and Lost in the Trees.

The billing provided just the opportunity for live action consideration of the importance and impact of local hip hop on the alternative music audience.

The last line in measuring hip hop worth is; if it sounds good, then it is good. While that should never sound simple to the degree of being easy, Big Hell demonstrates that when hip hop meets those requirements it often looks it. Big Hell summoned vast energy with effortless and natural poise. As these match ups offered us, a sincere advantage that deeply talented rock-hip-hop mash up artists hold versus their equals on the other side of the indie spectrum is the unabated creative room to bring it. This form has no tethers to the indie pop expectations of a lyric which sets up a chorus which better have a hook or no one is interested...and it maintains no rock creedo to an electric guitar burning like a shrine for forty five minutes of rock and roll prayer. Big Hell's set last night cascaded genres of mainstream rap, R&B, soul, and electronic indie...stripping the better elements of each and leaving the bull shit behind.

Big Hell is definitely not a fluke instance of legitimate hip hop round these parts either. Lila & the Midgrade Lifestyle is another Durham based underground hip hop act which is intoxicated with charisma and kill you softly charm. WKNC dedicates an entire night of the double barrel benefit to hip hop this year and local flavor indie music compilation promos are burning more hip hop into the mixes as well. So where are the grass roots of the hip hop that is growing around here? It's unlikely that it could thrive in a town built on indie, or can it?

The idiosyncrasies of hip hop is its unwillingness to be underground. Seemingly, everyone on the make in hip hop is a producer, rolling phat, has deals in the works, connections to the big time, and are fully in control of their own destiny and the last thing they want to be considered as is an artist. But fool us not, we know ninety-nine percent of up-start hip hop writing about high living with cars booze and bitches is done from a low rent apartment and not knowing where the next buck is coming from. The paradox continues with indie which romanticizes minimalist poverty. Songs about being lost to the point of despair are being written from mom and dad's comfortable couch in the suburbs and the artists writing them will reluctantly admit that they even own a computer. But here in lies the separation between the two cultures that typically damn themselves to not coexisting.

This is where Big Hell crosses over. They shatter mold across the board and boldly emphasizes reality in their lyrics. Every line is sellable as a life experience and finds an audience readily able to relate. I may be bold, but I offer that the hot bed of indie rock song crafters that dwell here have influenced young hip hop writers in town to throw down their guards and seek glory in the truth, and the brand of hip hop being generated here has tremendous quality in part by it.

As Big Hell finished their set and moved their entourage from the stage area to the bar, we were demonstrated just that degree of influence with Soft Company and The Big Picture.

Soft Company is the stage embodiment of the pure energy flowing in Missy Thangs' veins. Having performed in Chapel Hill for nearly five years now, Missy Thangs has just recently retooled the machine with members of The Huguenots and ramped the energy to a new level of awareness. Missy drives a keyboard controller with a heavy hand and pushes a lush stream of synthy fuzz through the speakers for the surrounding rock rock band to fork into. High energy arrangements with a Rickenbacker lead six string that is not gun shy to the pounding attack of the rhythm section are the traits of Soft Company they offer a baseline for electronic infused rock to shoot at. A fledgling two month old Big Picture rounded things out with impossibly talented vocal melodies that end every lyric with hooky twists and curling falsettos. If The Big Picture didn't possess such ascending ability then young and beautiful would be their trademarks, but with their collective vocal might and dexterity of instrumentation and arrangement...we'll be expecting songs that we wake up singing. --Carrboro Ninja

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Big Hell

Soft Company

The Big Picture

Troika Friday

2010-11-06T18:30:00.008-04:00

Durham, NC
November 5th, 2010

Like a well spring unexpectedly popping up to nourish a garden, Hopscotch's influence on Troika 2010 Friday night at packed Motorco, Fullsteam, and Trotter Building was evident. Three hundred plus filled into tres chic Motorco, over four hundred across the street at Fullsteam and a slap happy melange of both crowds anchored at trotter for the late night stretch and while the faces of Troika past were all present, the Hopsctoch effect grew into them an energized mix of new locals awake to the local scene and hungry for a bite of it.

My night started with being surrounded by a reanimated Dillon Fence crowd who knew every lyric and sang every song that this Southern rock institution brought on stage. Flashing charm and winks to the faithful, front man Greg Humphreys occurred as in his prime through an encore demanded set and added just a little more age to a 67' Gibson SG that's already lived lifetimes of road wear. When John Mayer left his day job as a tween pop idol to try and form a blues rock band, this is the cool he dreamed of (and never reached.) Dillon Fence owned Motorco's stage with their thick cut brand of rock and made good on their offer to trade 250 dates a year for 250 plus hometown crowds on special occasions.

Across the street at Fullsteam, the IPA vats were pouring out everything they had for the crowd and so was Wilmington folk rock band Onward Soldiers. Style and poise meets rhythm and swing to create Onward Soldiers' drawing power. Last night front man Sean Thomas Gerard let loose his driving storyteller vocals on Fullsteam and filled the warehouse's expanse with its energy.

Careful going to the bar for a refill between sets before Chapel Hill Americana cuties Mandolin Orange takes stage because you'll not get your spot back. My friends just three bodies deep into the crowd were unreachable upon my return as Andrew Marlin's dreamy Southern soul voice and Emily Frantz's elegant and crisp harmonies pulled the air from between audience bodies like a vacuum pack and sucked everyone tightly to the stage. Mandolin Orange headlined the Fullsteam troika line up Friday night in duo form and served a heavy spoonful of old time Appalachian folk.

The explosive face rock of Red Collar at the trotter Building was the perfect outtro for Troika Friday and along with the colorful personalities that I rolled up with throughout the night we jittered and jeered over the last Triangle Brewing Co. white ales of the night while we stomped feet and shook fists at the commotion happening onstage and right at the brim of it. --Carrboro Ninja

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Dillon Fence

Motorco crowd for Dillon Fence

Onward Solders

Mandolin Orange

Red Collar

Album Review: Where The Buffalo Roamed - A Wolf in the Works

2010-10-27T16:00:00.003-04:00

With sweeping narrations of the big sky American West and the socially removed yet complacent inhabitants surviving there, A Wolf in the Works is written and performed as an epic. Wonder filled plot lines and deeply drawn characters are thrashed about in a storm of reverberated electric guitar and washy drums producing a color pallet of imagery for places and times long forgotten by anyone except those who remain to gather the pieces of personal tragedies. Derived from a station wagon odyssey with his family across the sun drenched western plains as a teen, North Carolina native son Corbie Hill wrote the album not from personal experience, but as a near fiction biography of the ghosted personalities he either encountered or drove by in bewilderment of what life stretched between two mesas must feel like.

Track five "Isolation" most precisely embodies this intention as its forlorn victims lament "we don't check the mail any more, and I'm going to sell my guitar. It hasn't been played since nineteen eighty-seven." The lyrics alone are enough to send a knot to your throat but the truest emotion is derived from the tracks near mechanical, toothy, and hardened chord progressions which grind from start to end like the eternal specter of the song's subjects, caught between thought and action. The breadth of the track's range is as expansive as the time capsuled plains it sets stage in and echos the finality of a life spent in isolation. Track two "Missouri" is a run away favorite for its sheer story telling worth alone. The clouds are drawn and a foreboding shadow cast with the opening drama inducing lines while a simple two chord rhythm angrily simmers from Hill's guitar. So full of visual cues that you are cast into its dreamscape to experience first hand the punishment of both its villians and victims alike, so drugged with distortion bent guitar that you could just as easily glaze over and pretend evil only exists on the news. "Crossing the Missouri" deviates from the faded and reflective candor of the album in favor of a gritty and saturated blues rock riff stomping with enough attitude that Jack White might even take notice if it passed him by.

The album has the look and feel of lo-fi tempered recording, but the right pedal effects, drum fills, and backing instruments plugged in at all the right places prove that Where the Buffalo Roamed spared no effort in production. The writing is penetrating with no shortage of emotional moments and no loss for guitar licks to emphasize them. This is a true to form garage rock album built the way garage rock is supposed to look and heard the way its supposed to sound. --Carrboro Ninja

post script
Where The Buffalo Roamed plays this Friday October, 29th 2010 at Sadlack's 2116 Hillsborough Street Street next to NC State campus along with Battlestar Canada and Once and Future Kings. Show time is 7 PM and free.

Show Review: The Love Language, Twelve Thousand Armies

2010-10-25T10:57:00.003-04:00

Motorco Music Hall, Durham
October 23, 2010

Having rounded down the breadth of a six week road heavy tour to Saturday night at the lovely new Motorco Music Hall in Durham, The Love Language appeared no worse for the wear. Easily returning smiles and laughs to an exuberant crowd, front man Stu McLamb stood in as fine a character as ever and lead the exudingly charismatic The Love Language through a fully throttled set before a home town crowd. Culminating years of experience perfecting his art and craft of Christmas light ornamental re-purposing, just before the first chord was strummed McLamb switched on his Battle of Anghiari, an eight foot tall hanging multicolored heart which was met with a collective "Ahhhhhh" from the audience. Looking bright as ever, Missy Thangs made grand use of the broad stage at Motorco, pushing her dual key board rig to the front of stage right engaging the audience with searing energy and fluid rhythm. The animated Thangs is a metaphor for the rest of the five piece who key together in the music like clothes being tossed about in a washing machine.

By the time The Love Language took stage, the 300 plus crowd was already keen on charisma having watched Justin Williams open with his stellar Twelve Thousand Armies. Long time confidant of the Love Language, Williams is a monolith of a human being at what must be six foot five, it may as well be ten feet as on stage his presence is Brobdingnagian. His spruce topped twelve string dreadnought guitar blends with Thor-like golden locks for larger than life poise. Backed by some of the most familiar faces in local rock, Williams delivered a Drug Horse proper sound, bouncy and hip lo-fi rhythms welded to lyrics describing extremes.

Doors have officially open now for two weeks, however, Motorco debuted to many last night. Half way into the Des Moines, IA opening act Chases Rivers, the line to enter extended to the street, mostly from first timers getting a new membership card to lose...present company included. Once inside, Motorco's expansive shiny and blackened atmosphere is impressive. Its dark ceiling is bolstered with beam lights aimed at the stage like a battery of cannons on the under belly of a spaceship and the sound system is thick and penetrating at volumes still at ear level. With all the thought and effort placed on the room being a state of the art performance venue, its easy to over look one of the venue's more supple feature, a long, wide and very accessible bar busy with the most chipper and quick to serve bar staff you'll find anywhere. More eyes will be opened to Motorco in coming weeks. A couple to look out for; The Pneurotics play with the touring Thrift Store Cowboys on Wednesday October 27th and Troika books three days the first weekend in November. --Carrboro Ninja

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The Love Language

Stu and Jordan McLamb's great uncle killing it old school

Twelve Thousand Armies

Motorco has a nice wide front sidewalk which serves as a patio landing for after show gatherings. Hi-jinks ensued at 2 AM. If anyone knows this girl, please tell her she is crazy.

wait, she has a trick. here is the cigarette...

here comes the kazoo....wait for it....

...and there is it, smoke through the kazoo. nicely done.

Show Review: Mount Moriah

2010-10-22T17:04:00.004-04:00

WKNC & Tir Na Nog's Local Beer, Local Band, Raleigh
Oct 21, 2010

Mein auto is beginning to represent the character featured in Aaron Tippon's classic country song about the junker car that was worth keeping for the merits of the radio. ...indeed "more than once it's left me on the side of the road" and "the older it gets, the slower we go." I would also offer that the vents no longer vent and the defrost no longer defrosts. I feel a parting of ways in the air so I'm treading lightly and remembering the good times most of which involve its one redeeming quality, "there aa-iiin't nothing wrong with the raa-aa-dio." GM got one thing right, their radios are brilliant. Volume and seek controls in the steering wheel, speed compensated volume (gets louder the faster you go...fucking brilliant) self learning eq settings per radio station, but the best is its LCD which smartly scrolls artist and song name across the display when dialed to a station that can broadcast it and WKNC 88.1 does a keen job in flowing that out on to the airwaves along with the jams. WKNC is a juggernaut for launching new music to the local indy populace and when I'm dialed in cruising to or fro and something fantastic comes on I train to the read out and watch my new favorite a song be revealed one letter at a time. Thanks to 88.1 and and its clever merging with my radio I've recently become hip to The Generationals, Kitty Daisy & Lewis, and Edward Sharpe (of whom I purchased the album, listened to it non stop for three months, and saw the show at Cat's Cradle. Now just listen to them when they come on a Ford or NFL commercial.) Never before however, has a band pulled my attention from steering between the lines to staring at my radio more than once, Mount Moriah in fact has on three occasions with three different songs.

The first head turn was a couple months ago when "Lament" started to play just as I pulled into a parking space and went for the seat belt (click-it or ticket suckers.) The angular guitar pattern and eerily crisp vocals were an immediate hook and I pulled back for a moment, watching and listening. I was surprised as the word MORIAH began to scroll after MOUNT...I was familiar with Mount Moriah having even seen them live as an opener for a Nightlight show a few months back and while I left the show with a good feeling about them, the "wow" impression happened after hearing "Lament" on the car speakers. Deja Vue a few weeks later with "Reckoning", a low-fi string sliding Americana rhythm telling its fractured tale with constrained emotion and deeply reflected melancholy. By the end of that track I had pretty much decided I wouldn't miss another of their local shows. By the time "Telling The Hour" drifted through the speakers a couple weeks ago I was already pretty well tuned into their style but glanced at the LCD anyway, just to be sure I was sure. And I'm sure.

Last night at Tir Na Nog for Local Beer Local Band (sponsored by WKNC, is that irony?) was my follow up to the Nightlight show where I was introduced to Mount Moriah, but this time with the appreciation of having been blown away by their recorded works for the past month and a half. These songs that I had been digging into on the radio emerged on stage last night with deep seated and primal emotion. Heather McEntire and Jenks Miller tag teamed with a pair of extremely hot guitars and lead the crowd through a forty minute long energy field of Americana seared rock and roll. Mount Moriah is in style with the vintage folk/country rock sector of the broader indy music genre and based on crowd reaction last night they have found the right way to wear it. Judged also by the excited chirps from the audience as Heather picked up the tambourine, the wild swaying during and the deafening cheers ending, "Lament" is a stone cold hit and one that shouldn't wait to get on the road. Mount Moriah begins a dozen stops up and down the East beginning Sunday in Alexandria, VA and finishing up roughly a month from now in Baltimore. Here's to hoping that the newest "most exciting" local band turns a few heads on tour. --Carrboro Ninja

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Album Review: The Tomahawks - Cut Loose

2010-10-15T11:32:00.003-04:00

I'll make the argument that The Strokes are the reason I just listened to Cut Loose by Chapel Hill's The Tomahawks, stay with me... In 2001 I was the guy who would get a late night call from friends asking to solve an argument on who is singing the song currently blasting on the speakers at the bar that they were getting wasted at. "That's Thin Lizzy," and the response in the receiver would sound like a a truck load of money was just dropped on a crowd. Yes, I was a classic rock junkie, completely addicted to gas station compilations and obscure dollar-album record store buys and had comfortably given up on any new rock being made to rival the glory of the seventies, a stubbornness that resulted in missing out on the root of indy in the nineties. But then came Is This It with its visceral guitar work and emotionally drenched lyrics to shake me out of the classic rock cradle and drop head first into a world of indy rock. Now I'll bring it full circle. A few years later on the road back from Music Midtown our van load of exhausted festival trippers collectively decided that if we were game for jetting all the way to Atlanta for indy, we should be taking in the local fare on a regular basis too. Over the course of the next few years I would create yet another polarizing addiction, this time for local rock. Voila...The Strokes got me to indy, indy got me to local, local got me to The Tomahawks.

A stretch yes indeed but this story held relevance for me because in listening to Cut Loose I found a unique parallel in the projections of The Tomahawks front man Nick Jaeger and one of the most defining members of the Strokes, Albert Hammond Jr. I'm not going to draw a similarity in sound, I am going to cite a commonality in the paths they have both walked however. Both lent their skill as lead guitarist for brilliant establishments prior to their solo work, Hammond Jr of course The Strokes, Jaeger the locally famous MAX Indian. And each were able to take the best parts of their formers and make something truly brilliant of their own. In 06' when The Strokes were talking break-up I was down and out until the release of Yours to Keep, Hammond Jr's first solo album. Like a shot with a diamond bullet right through the forehead I suddenly realized what about The Strokes that pulled me so hard, it was Hammond Jr's guitar arrangements which were so dazzling on his solo work that I remarked "this is the missing Strokes album." My first listens to Cut Loose with its rollicking back beat and bouncy spirit hit me just as precisely. Instantly feeling the same luster and energy present in MAX Indian, it was like re-articulating my memory and associating Jaeger more closely with the genes that made his former so wonderful.

Found in Cut Loose are nostalgia evoking AM radio appointments that can carry your thoughts between surf rock and southern hospitality in the same track. Bouncy chompy piano keys and drifting harmonies hurry to announce the album as upbeat and winsome while sure footed electric guitar work firmly label it rock. Jaeger being a principal architect of fret board arrangement and design, there is no shortage of licks and hitches, more so like a life savings worth poured out and evenly shaken across the album falling into every crack and crevice in the rhythm where a ditty could stick. Reminding me of the softer side of Ween, and the best sides of Wilco, the vocal character on Cut Loose is a smooth respiring candor intent on accounting for an unraveling story of affection which uses all ten tracks to tell, but any given one of them to feel. Hammond Jr. made a momentary departure from comfortable establishment to create something unique and personal, Cut Loose finds our own Nick Jaeger answering the same call with the same passion. --Carrboro Ninja

post script

The Tomahawks release Cut Loose with a performance at Local 506 in their home town Chapel Hill today October 15th, 2010. Show time is 9:30 PM and tickets are seven dollars at the door. Floating Action and Josh Moore open.

Album Art

Images: musicSPARK Thursday Night at King's

2010-09-17T11:59:00.002-04:00

musicSPARK Thursday night images at King's Barcade. Left Outlet headlined with Battlestar Canada and A Tin Djinn.

Left Outlet

Battlestar Canada

A Tin Djinn

Kings Barcade

Tender Age in Bloom

2010-09-15T10:06:00.000-04:00

The Old Ceremony Tender Age

“All at once I lost it,” Django Haskins laments during one of the more low-key moments on the The Old Ceremony’s fourth full length release, “the thread that kept me here…and then it reappeared.”

The sudden reappearance of a lost thread is apt enough to describe the experience of listening to Tender Age itself. The fourteen-song companion piece to last year’s Walk On Thin Air trades out the latter’s stadium rock ambitions for a breezier, more intimate approach, one better suited to the quieter moments off stage, beyond the reach of the floodlights. But much as Haskins worries in “All at Once,” it’s easy to lose Tender Age’s larger musical threads, particularly as so many ghostly sonic moments, which seem at once familiar and strange, appear quickly, fade away, only to resurface later in odd and delightful ways. Tender Age has many pockets to turn out, and while some prove deeper than others, the album avoids appearing in pastiche by relying on subtle detail (a plinking piano key at low decibel, an organ on a feedback loop, a squeaking door hinge) to create depth rather than simply cluttering the stereo field with shiny things to look at or, more precisely, listen to.

What’s more, the musical allusions that Haskins and Co. make here -- and there are many, ranging from Liu Mingyuan to Guided by Voices to Linda Thompson to the Tindersticks – have the happy effect of feeling earned rather than merely lifted from the source. On “I Don’t Believe It,” for example, the beautiful verse section lilts with all the sparse power of an After the Gold Rush deep cut (perhaps a knowing nod to “I Believe in You”?) before turning suddenly into a bright chorus that sends you scrambling to unearth your worn copy of Double Fantasy. And yet, in the final tally, songs such as the title track, “Ruined My Plans” and “Guo Qu” are all the more enjoyable for seeming to embrace rather than shy away from these quotations.

In keeping with the theme of slipping threads, however, it must be said that the album’s best cut – “Wither on the Vine, Part 2” – succeeds in a way quite unlike the other stand out tracks. Wither’s effortless charm is totally self-contained; it’s haunting sense of familiarity derives not from any musical antecedent but by its willingness to inhabit a kind of wistful but unromanticized melancholy that feels immediately lived-in and authentic. Although the least representative of Tender Age’s sonic character – the song is a lo-fi love letter to the easy interplay of guitar, banjo, and floor tom – Wither best exemplifies the essential character of the aesthetic here: playful, searching, at times prodding, but always and ultimately tender. --Hidden Tiger

The Old Ceremony will release Tender Age with a performance in Carrboro at The Cat's Cradle on Friday September 17th. Lifted Praise Gospel Singers open. Tickets are $10 advance or $12 at the door. e-tix link to tickets

SPARKcon Prevue, Battlestar Canada to Debut.

2010-09-14T23:31:00.003-04:00

There will be no rest for the Downtown Raleigh music subculture following a sold out week of Hopscotch as the arts festival SPARKcon kicks off Thursday 9/16 with musicSPARK, a one-hundred and seven act four day long music festival hosted on outdoor stages sprouted on Fayetteville and Hargett Streets as well as core music venues indigenous to downtown such as Slims, Berkley Cafe, The Pour House, and the newly reincarnated Kings.

musicSPARK, guided by the big-hearted love-everybody local promoter Mary Ellis, has built the most eclectically derived bill of local acts as can be brought together for one-hundred and seven performances over four days. At musicSPARK this season, big local rock and roll names like Tomahawks, Knock Out Roses, Bright Young Things, A Rooster for the Masses, and Once and Future Kings join forces with local grass roots hip hop like Inflowential, smooth as silk rap rap of MicSavvy, downtown Friday spinner DJ Haekmatic, and every possible in between like Celtic folk artist Gray Beard and hook-heavy Americana string trio The Sinful Savage Tigers. Speaking of in between, Durham experimental group Battle Star Canada takes stage on day one Thursday night at Kings with Left Outlet and A Tin Djinn.

If you are not familiar with Battle Star Canada, think back to May of this year when this duo's previous project, Scientific Superstar played their last show prior to reforming minus their charismatic lead Junko Berglund who departed to focus her attention on her new j-pop group Fujiyama Roll. Scientific Superstar was several years into the making of one of the most unique experimental groups in town having fashioned themselves a band who writes the music of a fictional comic book series authored by its members. Says Paul Gallant of Battlestar Canada, which yes, is a reference to the brilliant syfy channel remake of the original Battlestar Galactica, "The name change was a bit of a break," further explaining that while their style and delivery of synth heavy sub-dance rhythms and heavily vocoder flavored vocals has not changed, without Junko fronting it didn't feel like SS. Not missing a step, Battlestar Canada debuts four months later with fresh songs at musicSPARK this Thursday night and will announce intentions to release a split 7 inch "in the next couple of months."

The Raleigh Downtowner has published a splendid over all explanation for SPARKcon and you can download the SPARKcon full festival schedule with venues, activities, dates, and times...including the "experimental" here. --Carrboro Ninja

Album Review: Battle Not With Monsters

2010-09-10T11:11:00.001-04:00

The Durham rock followers are delightfully accustomed with the two person rock group. Minimalist duos such as Beloved Binge, Sequoya, and All Your Science are the glacier which has shaped the mountain into a lo-fi DYI garage rock destination for the best part of the decade. Now basking in the twilight glow of 2010, enter Battle Not With Monsters...Durham's most recent incarnation of the two man band. With their complex studio arrangements and resourceful vocal production however, this duo is everything except minimalist. Two microphones and two guitars are layered for thickness throughout their debut self titled album and each track suggests a varying skill set on the strings ranging from off kilter banjo picking to brilliant coma inducing electric guitar. The album's lead-off track "J20" exudes interesting as the slightly off center echo melody engages the mind while the fearless acoustic Neutral Milk Hotel chord banging grasps the soul.

So prominently positioned in their music and so emboldened to step forth and be seen, their charged political message represents a third character in the band. Harking folk music to the turbulent sixties, Battle carries a poignant anti-poli scorn that chomps at all who war monger. The soberly penned "Song About Freedom" and "Send You To War" are delivered with the passion and purpose of early Stones and Dylan bridging the timbre of 2010 with what this generation knows only from videos and documentaries of a time when folk music was its own political party. Like any emotionally charged rock song, its means for persuading the listener to understand the views of the performer are bound tightly to how easy the tune is to like and on this album, Battle presents us with a collection of tunes that put the toe tapping first, and the firm message closely behind. --Carrboro Ninja

Battle Not With Monsters will perform at the Carrboro Music Festival at 7 PM on September 26 on the Armadillo Grill upstairs stage and at Open Eye Cafe in Carrboro on Oct 1st.

Their self titled album Battle Not With Monsters is available to preview and purchase from CD Baby here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/battlenotwithmonsters

Album Reviews: Gasoline Stove, Vultures on the Mainframe & The Brand New Life, Brand New Life

2010-08-26T09:46:00.002-04:00

Gasoline Stove will appear at the Station in Carrboro today, Thursday, August 26th.
The Brand New Life will celebrate their Chapel Hill release party at Jessee's in Carrboro Friday, September 3rd.

The first album from Gasoline Stove, songwriter Scott Morgan’s new acoustic outfit featuring the nucleus of his seminal country rock band Memphis, feels like the cool Sunday morning following the latter group’s hot Saturday night. And while you might therefore expect to find plenty of regret and sober reflection on Vultures on the Mainframe, Gasoline Stove also know that Sunday’s in the South are often days of celebration and hopeful rededication.

One of Morgan’s best attributes as a songwriter has always been the trust he places in the listener to stay with a song, even if it (gasp!) doesn’t dive into a hook within the first minute. On the album’s opener, “Streamline to Memphis,” for instance, Morgan and wife Shannon sing over an anxiously strummed guitar that continually threatens to break into a furious chorus but never quite does. The effect is one of increasing tension as the haggard voice of the narrator delves deep into his memory in attempt to connect past with present. The song is a suitable primer for the album as a whole. Whereas much of Memphis’ work was built around soaring instrumental jams, the pared down approach of Vultures allows Morgan to go long form with his lyrics. Songs like “Miss Purcell” and “Sunny Day Suicide” read more like lost character notes from a William Gay novel than the glib or scrubbed down image making you generally expect to find in this genre.

Of course, Vultures has a number of more polished radio ready tunes as well. The two songs at the thematic center of the album showcase Morgan’s songwriting talent in more conventional terms. The infectious, call’n’responder “Snakes!” features Morgan’s sly eastern philosophizing masquerading as a stomping spiritual, and the lovely, bittersweet “Love and Rockets” is both a love song and a prayer to be made whole.

Gasoline Stove introduces local musician Anthony Lener to provide upright bass and features Memphis alum Pete Lucey on piano, organ, and accordion. Lucey again figures as Morgan’s alter ego here, adding strokes of color and light to Morgan’s sometimes stark arrangements. As you might expect from a married couple, the Morgans’ intertwining vocals hint at secrets and unspoken understanding even as the songs themselves seem to lay bare so much shared wisdom about love, trust, and forgiveness.

A very different but no less welcome debut comes from the young guns in Greensboro’s free form funk septet the Brand New Life. Their self-titled release is big and lively, balancing balls out bluster and finely turned craft to create a sound that impresses immediately and deepens with repeated listens.

Musical collectives that excel at improvisation can sometimes feel small and cramped on record, but BNL does a fine job here of translating the energy and imagination of their live shows to wax. Most of the members of BNL developed their musical identities playing alongside one another in informal musical projects in Greensboro, so they’re generally able to make their complex arrangements feel like a seamless fit and create the necessary space for each other to shine.

The album begins with the tropicali yawp of “Ra!” before settling into a funky middle section that glides with the irrepressible cool of a 70s era stakeout film. The rhythm section – consisting of bassist Seth Barden and percussionists Daniel Yount and Evan Frierson -- is bold without ever being showy, while guitarist Ben Rayle’s sidewinder phrasing adds an otherworldly air that serves as an effective counterpoint to the horn sections’ muscular lyricism. Lovers of horn driven music will find much to enjoy about the dueling partnership of saxophonists Casey Cranford and Walter Francourt, who provide BNL with its essential voice. Vocalist and tuba player Jared Mankoff plays alternating roles as a devilish shaman who wrily unsettles the more structured works and as a boisterous ringmaster who conducts the raucous six-ring circus swirling behind him.

To call Brand New Life a promising debut album is to mistake the product for process. The young musicians here already possess the singular voice and sound of a seasoned band. Whatever transformations their musical expression continues to take on will owe more to creative exploration than a refining and polishing of talent. --Hidden Tiger

Post Script
Gasoline Stove will appear at the Station in Carrboro Thursday, August 26th.
The Brand New Life will celebrate their Chapel Hill release party at Jessee's in Carrboro Friday, September 3rd.

Album Review: The Honored Guests - Please Try Again

2010-08-14T19:20:00.002-04:00

Artwork by Jerstin Crosby

With many of its most intricately exciting moments revealing themselves in deep tracks and late within them, The Honored Guest's Please Try Again fires in defense of the increasingly battered and shell shocked full album release as a worthy endeavor for a band. Album is the dieing king of artist presentation and its borders are being beat back by the energy efficient single and cost conscience EP, the unfortunate casualty is precious narrative which unravels an artist's body of work track by track. Please Try Again is just that sort of response...a start to finish listen which becomes a more meaningful understanding of The Honored Guests with every listen.

From the sepia hued nostalgia textures of it's opening track "Paper Trails" to the built-in falsetto hooks on the outtro tracks, Please Try Again is an epic sweep across the timescape of influence, meandering through seventies pop rattle, alt country sway, and Brit indie coolness all branded heavily with the signature Honored Guests aridly hot electric guitar riffing. A ninety-nine cent dl of what will probably be this album's most celebrated song, "Talk, Talk, Talk"...will invoke chemical tears of happiness with its visceral rush of emotion on the jaw breaking lead guitar refrain at 1:49, but a front to back listen of the entire album will fully lift your feet from the ground for 40 minutes.

Offering an alternating pallet of easy and hard, the album maintains engagement throughout it's journey. The soft and distant haze of the opening tracks comes to focus with a rattling and shaking feel and are first to introduce the album as an intensive study on rhythm section, gears are shifted at song three "No Holy Ghost" and we are reminded that the Guests are a rock band first and they are writers of hooks before that. A full album listen with cuffs on your itchy "next track" index finger will reward you at song five with a gushingly euphoric adrenaline delivering instrumental-only track which inconspicuously begins but ends with you trying to get the last little bit of volume out of your player...twisting it and pushing it like an accelerator pedal infused to a right foot and nailed to the floorboard.

Mid album tracks on Please Try Again are a thrill and worthy of repeated spins, but pure magic awaits deep within. With a guttural low reaching lead riff and grit-filtered vocal mic, "Last Time Next Time" casts an altered hue on it's own little spectrum of the disc and waltz's with an alt country rollicking through the better part of a love sick confession before a dramatically fulfilling outtro plants a heal and delivers a minute and fifteen seconds worth of one of the most beautiful, mystical, and amazing moments in the past five years of indie music, a lofty angelic crooning refrain with otherworldly chiming guitar play. Not to be ignored, "Opportunities" at track eleven provides us with one of the best one-liners of the day, "bar tenders and waitresses with feelings that it can't fix"...reminding us of gravity and pulls the toes back to earth with a deep breath.

Throughout its lyrically masterful eleven song parade of metaphors and tears, the ebb and flow of intensity and dreamscapes on Please try Again render it an album with purpose and may well be The Honored Guests most accomplished work. --Carrboro Ninja

post script
The Honored Guests will celebrate the release of the album at The Local 506 in Chapel Hill on August 28th 2010 at 9 PM with local celebrities Calico Haunts and Schooner.

Show Review: The Whigg Report, 2702 Lawndale House Party

2010-08-12T18:58:00.003-04:00

The Durham underground rock sub-culture has an energy infusing movement within its roots which braces the broader fruit bearing branches at campus edges, downtown spaces, and everywhere else troika takes us. Not easily detected in motion and leaving very few traceable signs, the d.i.y. house party rock and roll phenomenon in Durham is quietly extending a meaningful impact on the sub-culture as a whole. Bringing forth excitement and yielding buzz, the movement is rising from the realization that when a music culture is grown by the hands of those living among it, the sense of ownership and pride feeds its growth. With a spade in one hand and a half busted PA in the other, seeds have been sewn in living rooms and dining rooms across town and rock shows are springing up for the harvest.

Nicked "The Layabout", one such back forty is being cultivated at 2702 Lawndale and turning the earth is it's primary resident, DJ, and show promoter Criag Powell who is turning the lights down and amps up a few times a month. Clearing tables and chairs and making b.y.o.b. space in a bachelor's fridge is the formula for The Layabout's show prep and steady stream of new friends is the crop. On Friday last week, the sweet and salty anti anti of The Whigg Report report poured an aestival shimmer on The Layabout with their jazzed up one-horn rhythm section, tore down garage rock drum kit and show-you-how-its-done acoustic-through-a-tube-amp crunchiness. Representing all good time bands for a good time rock and roll show, The Whigg Report may indeed be a perfect billing for a hot summer Durham house party. The whimsical and fun chasing nature of their song writing pairs up with dead serious musicianship for unanticipated magnetism and charisma, but its was their ability to engage the audience playing off kilter and unique anti-folk or by chatting up between songs that kept the mood house-party on Friday.

"The Layabout" opens the front porch screen door for another open to all rock show this Sunday August fifteenth at eight PM, this time hosting local hot rock Pink Flag and two out of towners Eux Autres and Byrds of Paradise. --Carrboro Ninja

Album Review: Rat Jackson - Midnight Get Right

2010-08-04T22:18:00.002-04:00

It’s now a matter of shared faith among all of us – tweedy Chomskyites, Oprahfied eat-pray-lovers, Farm Town enthusiasts – that we can uncover vast regions of the individual psyche simply by boiling life down to a couple of choices between two related but dissimilar items.

You know the ones. Is my stepsister’s new boyfriend going to take her on a six state killing spree? Hey there, Aldo, Beatles or Stones? Do I really want to plan a surprise birthday party with my fiance’s grandmother? Would you say you’re more of a boxers or a briefs gal, Joanne?

But can all this weighty Column A’ing and Column B’ing actually take us to the heart of anything meaningful?

Rat Jackson frontman Tad Jackson faces just such a choice in the opening moments of “Sexy Waitress” when he’s asked if he’ll be having the chicken or the steak. But as anyone who’s witnessed Rat Jackson’s balls out live show over the last few years knows, Rat Jackson will never worry about food when there’s a waitress to be had instead. And that choice does, in fact, tell us all we need to know about the Rat Jackson Rock’n’Roll Band.

Whether they’re dealing with sex, love, rock, sex, booze, sex, or sex, much of what feels exciting and fresh on Rat Jackson’s new debut record, Midnight Get Right, comes from their dead-eye focus on what really matters in love and music: making the heads bob and the knees shake. True to form, there’s no foreplay here. The band kicks off the covers in mid stroke with the call and response screamer “Holler and Jump” before stepping out into the swaggering back alley braggadocio of the title track, pursued by the wild dog slide guitar of lead guitarist Steve Oliva.

Although Get Right’s best track is probably “Summer Hummer” (a staple of the live set and the perfect showcase for bassist Rusty Sutton and drummer Chester Jackson’s skillful interplay of dance party rock), it’s a newer composition “Motorcycle Horse” that really warms up with repeated listens. As a love song to an imaginary chariot of female procurement it exchanges the more comic book dimensions of White Zombie’s “Black Sunshine” for the inspired trapper keeper fever dreams of a ninth grader in biology lab. But even at the heights of their most adolescent fantasies, Rat Jackson always manages to throw out the telling detail that keeps things grounded, as here our hero lothario promises to ply his new woman with round of cider and erotic photohunt.

We’ve known from our cradles that rock is at its best when it’s loud, fast and about fucking. But we tend to get caught up in thinking the answer lies somewhere on one side of an either/or divide. While other local rock bands are busy trying to figure out a clever angle or a new way to dress up to their craft, Rat Jackson walks up wearing nothing but an ascot and a jock strap and gets on with getting it on. They’ve built an aesthetic around the ability to recognize and eliminate these false choices that sometimes blind us to what we really want. And what we really want is a half motorcycle half horse. --Hidden Tiger

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Post Script:

Saturday August 7th, Rat Jackson pulls together Red Collar, Aminal, and Reid Johnson at Broad Street Cafe for the Midnight Get Right album release party. Broad Street owner/promoter John Hite comments;

As a warmup for this event, the Broad Street Cafe will be tapping a special cask of of Triangle Brewing's Imperial Amber at 6pm! This strong amber ale has a strong malt presence that holds this brew together. IBUs of around 90 balance the brew which is dry hopped to add an invigorating citrus and floral aroma that linge...

Broad Street Cafe
1116 Broad Street
Durham, NC

click for facebook event link:

A Look-back at The Moaners Blackwing Yalobusha

2010-07-29T15:45:00.002-04:00

The Moaners will play Tir Na Nog's Local Beer Local Band tonight, Thursday July 29, 2010 with The Springtime Collection. Moaners on first at 10:30 PM

Un-threatened and comfortably vulnerable in a wild jungle of low slung, warped, slide harmonics and loose stormy drum washes is the docile and bewitching vocal demeanor of Melissa Swingle whose shy and shoegazy confessions are like a best friend explaining the unexplainable across a forty minute long late night phone call.

Blackwing Yalobusha kicks in with a run of tracks strung together along the common thread of a cranked up amplifier and a down tuned guitar weeping out blues riffs between the hisses and strikes of rich chord strokes. A very candid lyrical style adds contrast to this active and engaging two piece rock instrumentation and draws the arrangements off guard for a mesmerizing flow. Five tracks in, the album is spinning guitar hooks one after another and the album seems set in its ways just then the needle lifts with "Pour Souls" ...a melodic ballad which parlays the blues rock shuffle of the album openers into sparse despondent reflection. The change is nuanic, like a transparent shadow casted at high noon beneath the overhang of a river side willow. The bright shimmer of Laura King's drums and smokey rasp of Melissa's guitar rig flicker and shine through the swaying leaves, but with a softer touch, allowing the song to be a singular cool spot in the heated rumbling undercurrent that carries their style down river.

On this album, The Moaners find strength in candid sincerity, delivering their own delicate unguarded persona as the style sheet for the album. Their formula of straight forward narration backed by matter-of-fact blues rock rhythms is calculated on each song and where many songwriters would see dangerous repetition, The Moaners find "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" logic and confidently drive Blackwing Yalobusha home in the same purposeful and enlightened way that they brought it to the party.

Released 2007 by Yeproc, Blackwing Yalobusha is The Moaners' second and was received well across the US and at home. Recently introduced to The Moaners, I've just picked up my copy as a prelude to Nocturnal" which is set to release in September this year. The Moaners kick off a long weekend tonight when they will play Tir Na Nog's Local Beer Local Band along side The Spring Collection before packing up and heading for two shows in Georgia. --Carrboro Ninja

Show Review: Blag'ard, Free Electric State, Lonnie Walker, The Tomahawks

2010-07-23T14:51:00.002-04:00

The Berkley Cafe, Raleigh
July 22, 2010

The canopy of oaks blacked out the shiny haze of the Raleigh summer night sky as I passed through Nash Square, domain of the biggest oak trees in the world which stand eternal guard over the entrance of The Berkley Cafe. Tonight's bill at The Berkley Cafe was a showcase of acts that are fun to know about and follow before the masses "catch on" and stepping into the street towards the front door and away from the realm of the oaks I could faintly make out the rumble and thump of the opening set played by The Tomahawks, a Chapel Hill group which has significant potential to "get caught". This being my fourth or fifth The Tomahawks live show in the past year and a half of their being, I am familiar. Nick Jaeger and crew calculate together easy rolling simplified style with exacting dominant guitar choruses and they are pacing with the vintage roots rock influence that is gaining local popularity. Tonight, the performance garnered a new impression I can add to their descriptions, that of Nick Jaeger's vocals having a pronounced similarity to Jeff Tweedy's alt country warble.

Just after The Tomahawks tore down their half dozen instruments, Chapel Hill minimalist rock duo Blag'ard set up all both of theirs, served an obligatory ten second sound check and hit the go button. Blag'ard may be a two piece because guitar player and vocalist Joe Taylor's Marshall half stack ate all of the other instruments or they may be a two piece to so that there is no confusion; what you are hearing is guitar rock. Taylor drives tube amp tone from start to finish while maintaining a respect for the purity of the instruments. The only thing between his Fender strat and a turned up Marshall half stack was a wrangly cable. Not a single stomp box in sight, just purist vintage rock and roll spoken between a guitar and its amp. Aside from the hauntingly melodic "Stay" which plucks harmonics and falsettos, Blag'ard holds court on the darker side of indie rock and let's the guitar do most of the talking.

The Tomahawks and Blag'ard capable of headlining any event they play may have drawn the short stick against a couple of power acts as the show literally had four headliners but someone had to play at ten o'clock. Appearing a little over a year ago but with quick silver popularity, Durham psychedelic rock group Free Electric State took the third spot on a four band bill and exerted a forceful presence in the Berkley stage room. Free Electric State's set can best be described as a volumed up trance rock opener song with a grandiose and high energy six song long outtro. An electric guitar in the hands of both David Koslowski and Nick Williams provides a push pull effect as they each transition between lead riffs, chord crunching, and super interesting sound manufacturing while flowing into the rhythm section and vocals from Shirlé Hale and drummer Tony Stiglitz. Free Electric State's large prominent sound was an interesting contrast with the last to play Lonnie Walker who uses space between vocals, guitars, and drums to build the same kind of energy. Lonnie Walker may have delivered their brand of Americana punk last in the evening but the performance was an opener to a two month long tour which they embarked upon the moment they pulled the cables out of their guitars at the end of the set. July and August will deliver Lonnie Walker across the US before landing back home in Raleigh in time to play Hopscotch. --Carrboro Ninja

images

Blag'ard

Free Electric State

Lonnie Walker

Show promoter and youth role model Bart Tomlin manned the door of The Berkley Cafe to greet all who enter.

EP Review: Honored Guests Into Nostalgia

2010-06-17T16:42:00.002-04:00

(Breakfast Mascot Music)

One of the welcome outcomes of the recent implosion of the music industry has been the reemergence of the EP as the de facto release format for independent artists. Enter on cue the The Honored Guests' new release Into Nostalgia, a record not only designed musically for the middle distances of the EP but one that also dives headlong into thematic issues of size, proportion, scale, and measure.

While the Guests’ first two releases, iawokeinacityasleep and Tastes Change, established their bend for the reflective and the understated as well as their interest in notions of maturity, Into Nostalgia is their first fully mature record; it expresses throughout the wisdom of those who have lived a little space beyond the false bravado and certain idealisms of youth. Just a few years ago the Guests were one of the more nomadic local bands, playing shows anywhere from Florida to California; now, they’re comfortably settled down, pleased to spend the long winter making a record and emerging every so often to play a local show.

As the title of the EP suggests, the heart of these songs’ maturity rests in a wholesale understanding of nostalgia. Too often a dress-up emotion donned by young artists, nostalgia is here presented in its proper light, full of both the self-discovery and the self-deception involved in why and how we remember. While the sprightly, Brit-poppish “Jimmy’s A Cop Now” represents frontman Russ Baggett’s clearest and most sustained sojourn into specific memory, it is on the gorgeous standout track “Paper Cuts” where his keen insight into the meaning of these memories finds fullest form. “Taken one by one, paper cuts, “ Baggett sings over a breezily-strummed acoustic guitar, “funny how the world sized me up.”

It is this bittersweet recognition that the world has our measure, despite all of our efforts to the contrary, that shines through here and pervades the beautiful simplicity and space of the Guests’ arrangements. They remind us that it often isn’t the momentous and large-scale lapses that wound us most meaningfully, but the thousand little cuts that the world inflicts. With this recognition, however, comes not bitterness and resentment but a certain happy resignation and even love for the world as it is.

Nostalgia is a fiction, we’re told, an artist’s rendering of the past. Into Nostalgia expresses a devout wish to move beyond the false tones of artifice. “I want you to see through me,” Baggett announces on the EP’s concluding track, “I don’t like how words suggest when the poetry’s right.” Not that the Guests have given up on their feverish dream poetry; see, for instance, the marvelous, lulling “Chasing Some Wild Sheep Chasing the Wasp.” But there is something clear and stark here that propels the six tracks purposefully, something that’s wary of indulgence or saying too much. Something that wants to feel exactly right. --Hidden Tiger

post script
The Honored Guests play their first show after releasing this EP at Nightlight in Chapel Hill on Saturday June 26 with Pros and Cons , and Western Civ. 10 PM $5 cover.

Birds and Josh Starmer and Arrows: or, How Andrea and Pete Learned to Stop Worrying and Drink Barleywine

2010-06-06T00:55:00.000-04:00

Carolina Brewery - Pittsboro
May 22, 2010

It's been two weeks since this show, but my memory's not completely shot just yet. Give me a few more weeks guzzling peroxide and eating raw catfish and it may be a different story. Out with it...

The rains hadn't been gone long... but long enough. Pete and Andrea brought their friend, cellist-about-town Josh Starmer, to join them at the first of the Brewery's summer music series concerts. In Pittsboro, as in Chapel Hill, when you say "the Brewery," it means a place that brews its own beer and serves unimaginably tasty burgers. Their hot dogs are no joke either. Their homemade potato chips, if you can get them fresh from the frier, are about as close to religion as I care to tread. Don't get me started on what "the Brewery" means in Raleigh. That lousy place has as much to do with craft beer as a... hold it... I can come up with an analogy here... as a day care? Yeah, we'll go with the day care analogy. That one fits Raleigh's Brewery pretty well.

Close to 7:30 on a 7:00 start time, and it looked like the rain would hold back. Biblical torrents had hit Pittsboro, making loose clay of the red soil that is surprisingly good for cultivation, but the sun was now shining through fitful mountains of cloud as they marched frantically with the wind. Andrea, Pete, and Josh had held back, watching the skies for signs of anger, but none came and they got started. I was interested to see how a band I was accustomed to seeing play regular rock shows - 40-45 minute sets, natch - would do with 2 1/2 hours to kill. Quite the challenge, as the Brewery's time slots had more in common with cover band set times than original bands. But they did it, only pausing briefly to cover a Genesis song before rolling back into their own material.

I had no idea how much of their own stuff they had under their belt, but it makes sense that Andrea and Pete would be so prolific. They're married, Chrissakes. They have all kinds of time to make music together. Plus, their other project (Graveyard Fields).

I didn't think to take notes, so I don't know which songs were played in what set, but I do know that they broke out some new jams - and they're in a sweet new direction. The crowd wasn't what I was used to, a lot more people eating supper and treating the music as their background, but they knew how to work with it. And a drunken philosopher, not far from me, was trying to talk people into boycotting BP. The people weren't arguing with him, but he was to that point of idiotic inebriation where he figured everything was cause for argument. "No, maaaan... just do this one ffffthing for me, kay? No, 'm ser-ee-yusss...." and he babbled briefly and distractedly about how the new generation "doesn't know how to make music, maaaaan..." even as one of Chapel Hill's finest pop duos was kicking ass, taking names, and ruling the monkey bars on every playground within a twenty mile radius. But he can be forgiven for his blather, career alcoholics need an ear every now and then.

This was a fantastic show, especially for people with a love for Birds and Arrows (guilty!) as they played most of their record, as well as most of the Woodgrain Heart EP, if not all of it. And this is a band perfectly at home on an outdoor stage. In fact, they may inhabit an outdoor space better than an indoor one - as their music blends so well into the natural world. Much like all human endeavor, what they do must answer to the forces of time and nature - so they write and play accordingly. Because, even as they were finishing, there were warning flashes in the great distance as lightning asserted itself, illuminating the billowing caverns of faraway stormclouds. And though no more storms came that night, the presence of these big, dark clouds on our evening's periphery were almost directly opposite to Birds and Arrows music: which is a small corner of hope and civilization planted in the overgrown weeds of a graveyard. And just because the cops say you can't play there doesn't mean you shouldn't. Seriously. That's what the dead would have wanted, right? For people to come and spend quality time with them without weeping or getting histrionic or reflective (boring! useless!). The spirits of the departed probably want to see people acting like they're having fun, so it makes much more sense to play hide and seek or to make out among the tombstones than to bring some lousy bouquet of flowers and look sad.

So when, on a rare warm day in Winter, Pete and Andrea got kicked out of the Carrboro cemetery for picnicking there, they wrote a song about it. But this wasn't their life inspiring their music - this was their music being their life. And if that's not genuine, I don't know what is. -Wild Bill Heroic

Lizzy Ross and The Magnolia Collective at The Station's Americana Revue

2010-05-28T18:07:00.004-04:00

The Station at Southern Rail, Carrboro
May 27, 2010

If it wasn't for the occasional necessity to slip down into a Lucinda Williams style push-pull grit, Lizzy Ross could spend an entire set tip-toeing through upper air of her powdery soft falsetto. With a range so at home and comfy in the thin frequencies of the upper atmosphere, even her more honky tonking tunes like "Wedding Cake" can pass for hushed ballads. Though her silver tongued vocals have the strength and confidence of a prowling tom cat, her songwriting reveals the occasional country-girl soft spot. Stripped down by nature and Americana by arrangement, Lizzy's lyrics are a fluent interpretation of the heart break tempered joy that swirl around young love. Early into the evening the slowly unspooling rhythm and easy spirit of "Maria" congealed the stage with the audience who swayed to Lizzy's Taylor guitar whispering sweet nothings in their ears.

Lizzy Ross' sweet shop brand of roots music served up in the traditions of country soul was the perfect musical ethos for the stage last night at The Station at Southern Rail's newly christened monthly Americana Revue Night. Set to re-occur on the second Thursday of every month beginning June 10, The Station at Southern Rail is hosting free concerts showcasing local folk, alternative country, and roots rock acts as a celebration for the deep well of local talent creating music in this space as well as their expanding base of Americana thirsty followers.

Carrboro being a music town's music town...it will come as no surprise that there is also an interesting and unique twist on the night. While the event will present a different local headliner every month, a loosely gathered recurring cast of local folk and roots artists will always open the show. Representing as the house band and coined "The Magnolia Collective" this group pulls it's base members from Gambling the Muse, The Pneurotics, and The Whiskey Smugglers and in delightful fashion, it will also include guest members from previous headliner bands who appeared on the revue to shape into an ever evolving and always interesting ensemble.

Booking for The Station at Southern Rail Americana Review Night is nearly set for the summer with June 10 finding three piece string trio The Sinful Savage Tigers' mandolin seared acoustic romps and modern, urgent, and inspired Americana song writing on stage at the revue. --Carrboro Ninja

more images from The Station at Southern Rail's Americana Revue yesterday

Lizzy Ross

The Magnolia Collective

16 image slide-show of Lizzy Ross and The Magnolia Collective along with 1600 pixel down load-able jpegs

EP Review: Actual Persons Living or Dead

2010-05-27T14:18:00.004-04:00

On their self titled release, Actual Persons Living or Dead presents a soft studio side which is a comfort that this three piece Durham garage rock confederacy seems to have saved back especially for the days and nights in the recording booth. Standing in a dimly lit house party living room on a hot August night two years ago, a modest group of Durham underground rock connoisseurs watched Actual Persons flex their strong arm of marchy drums, hot riff driven electric guitar, and despondently honest vocals as Joyce, Dave, and Kerry rolled up their sleeve and debuted a rocked up mix of emo garage punk. Live shows since then have delighted in following suit and assure many rockus head bobbing moments through the course of their set. Surprising then, that the first track of this release departs from classic garage rock style and trips toward a comfortable haze of chimes and mood interlude sounds for a solid minute before even hinting that you are listening to a rock album. The slow build of the first track's instrumental opening vibe followed by guitar in the middle and pointed vocal outtro serves as metaphor for the disc's six songs which are tracked for the same flow. Hints of the one-two punch build up are given early into the second song "Dogtown Commons" as the dense resounding of earthy and broad guitar work move across the track like a heavy freighter parting deep water through a sound. Prominently positioned guitar tone becomes a common theme from this point on and vocals are used late in the songs and only when the guitar has already said everything that needed to be said. The EP rounds out with the guilty pleasure of the re-purposed 1983 Cyndi Lauper cult classic "She Bop". Subliming the eeriness on an already darkened track, Actual Persons bleeds the pop out of "She Bop"...slowly transfuses emo vengeance back in, and re-animates it as a sanguine specter of it's former shape now possessed to serve as a vessel communicating the sobriety of emotions found within the album. From the sparse early arrangements of "Turkish Bloomers" to the hazy illusions of happiness drawn on a canvass of heartbreak in "...Or It's A Bunny" this EP is comfort food for the guitar hungry and Actual Persons serves it up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner across the album.

A free download of this EP sans "She Bop" is at the Actual Persons Living for Dead bandcamp profile. The EP in CD format with album art and the "She Bop" bonus track is available for a hand shake at live shows.

Actual Persons Living or Dead plays the Eskimo Kiss Records showcase at the Soapbox in Wilmington, NC for WE Fest this Sunday, May 30 2010.

For more on the Eskimo Kiss (goodbye) showcase, please click through to Deckfight

album art

Show Review: Rat Jackson, The Pneurotics

2010-05-18T14:58:00.004-04:00

Triangle Brewery, Durham
May 15, 2010

Accessible by Mark Twain romantic figures drifting down the Durham Railroad Street right-of-way via boxcar and by SUV driving Durham city street going realists alike, the Triangle Brewing Company's "Pub Crawl Training Session" held this past Saturday afternoon at the oaken bar between the fermenting tanks and grain stores at their brewhouse was an oasis of entertainment in a desert tempered city-scape of warehouses and silence. The Twains need only jump off a slow rolling coal car and hop the brewery's low slung wooden fence to be where the wind blew them. Everyone else illegally parked on the sidewalk up the hill from the brewery and followed the succession of Sharpie written posters each one reassuring that beer and live music would be rewarded should they steep deeper into the corridors of the factory grounds. Rounding the corner of the thirty foot tall barn like structure there was rejoicing that the scene was not a mirage. Just beyond the taco truck parked in the gravel drive busily serving a couple hundred sun bathed trainees was the raised concrete loading dock now in rock-show-stage configuration with amps lining the back wall, microphone stands fencing the front, and a lively bunch moving in and out of the brewery sampling its taps.

The event not only show cased a fabulous line up of micro brews brought to life on the very premises but it served as as hot spot for The Pneurotics bass player Mimi McLaughlin's rock and roll birthday party and a stage where micro brew sipping party goers stole a few glimpses into Rat Jackson's soon to be new release. As Rat Jackson geared up and got into their set I was standing next to a few out of towner guests and offered commentary who/what Rat Jackson is. Drawing from the previous impressions that their high energy riff running and drama educed refrain story's made, I began my comments. "These guys bring it. They are indie rock meets rock-a-billy." It was just about then that my ears were tuned to an entirely more articulate presence bouncing off the factory walls...one of Rat Jackson's new songs. In a momentary caesura of commentary I noted that the happy beat scale climbing that defines their character and sells-out PBR was sheered back on this one. A longer more purposeful driving guitar rhythm showed through and the largely underrated lead guitar player Steve Oliva was taking the strings to places a lot of people had never been. The glimpse was enough to build upon the anticipation for their album, re-excite my impressions of who/what Rat Jackson is and look at Steve Oliva a little differently than before.

As the Rat Jackson crew finished up, moved into the crowd, and continued the business of sampling micro brews...The Pneurotics' Chris, Mimi, and Lucifer took the stage to finish things. It was dusk by then and in the haze of contentment I almost missed the distant whistle sounding for me. Skirting edge of the crowd I met the low slung wooden fence and hopped over it...wind blowing softly at my back. --Carrboro Ninja

THREE BY THE SEA

2010-05-12T10:54:00.003-04:00

Big Al Hall and the Marching Rams The Marching Rams
Onward, Soldiers Ghosts in this Town
Charlie the Horse When U Gonna Luv Somebody?

Three new releases from Wilmington bands highlight the renaissance of roots and Americana music in Carolina’s port city. The most traditional of these is also in some ways the most dynamic. The Marching Rams marks the first full-length effort from Alex “Big Al” Hall’s new supergroup of Wilmington area old-time and traditional musicians featuring Hall on banjo and fiddle, Lincoln Morris on guitar, Jones Smith on bass, and Kevin Rhodes on trap set and accordion.

Although Hall aligns himself philosophically with much of the post-punk rediscovery of old-time music, he’s certainly no recent convert to the genre. Having spent much of his youth traveling to fiddlers’ conventions and traditional music festivals around the US searching for the pre-war arrangements of mountain songs, Hall has become as fine an interpreter and arranger of Southern and American folkways as you’ll find performing anywhere.

And it’s just these hard-won bona fides that allow Hall such freedom and joy of expression. Recorded live over the course of a single day in David Lowery’s Sound of Music studio in Richmond, Virginia, the 12 song collection burns away the layers of accumulated age and presents each song as if it were freshly written. On the oft-covered “Fall on My Knees,” for example, Hall’s rich and aching tenor lays bare the stark pain lurking beneath the easy humor of the lover’s lament. The collection’s two most inspired performances, a spirited update of Ola Belle Reed’s arrangement of “Boat’s Up the River” and a decidedly raucous version of “Red Rocking Chair,” find the Rams ready to explode into the ether while Hall’s assured phrasing keeps them grounded and centered. Indeed, throughout The Marching Rams, Hall wisely contrasts his weary, lonesome vocal phrasing with the big-tent percussive power of Morris, Smith, and Rhodes. As a result, the tunes rarely throw all their energy behind a single emotional pitch or vamp broadly as affectation. They discover, instead, that dusty patch of ground where we all go about fussing over our own lives.

Rhodes and Smith also provide the rhythm and roll for Onward, Soldiers’ debut platter Ghosts in This Town. At their best, Sean Thomas Gerard’s songs effortlessly marry sweet, progressive electric folk to the nostalgic pangs of traditional arrangements, calling to mind both the Black Crowes looser B-sides as well as the white-knuckle gothic of Texas surf. Gerard’s speakers seem at times young men frustrated by a world they want desperately to love and at others to be old souls slowly rediscovering the simple beauties. Regardless, Gerard’s ghosts are inveterate talkers and showman, drunk with the possibilities of the material world around them to broadcast their poetry. Thus in “Let the Time Roll By” parking meters become microphones just as jailed midwives are commandeered as choristers. In “Relic” a picture frame transforms into the pursed lips of a lover’s kiss and, later, a mother’s promise.

Throughout Ghosts, Onward, Soldiers builds its aesthetic on a fever dream of movement. Gerard’s anxiously strummed acoustic guitar parries meaningfully with Rhodes’ fluttering brush and stick work. Rather than simple wanderlust, however, the songs here feel pursued. As if a dark and ugly past is always threatening to overtake Gerard’s cast of highway ghosts and sidewalk preachers as they journey to the end of each coda.

Newcomers Charlie the Horse, on the other hand, are totally unencumbered by the weight of the past, focused as they are on a vivid and tumbling present. Although the least assured of these new releases, When U Gonna Luv Somebody? represents the boldest statement of intent among the three. Frontman Andrew Zucchino’s clear and confident vocal delivery brings to mind Adam Stephens of Two Gallants, but where Stephens often employs his desperate growl as a siege engine of anger and regret, Zucchino seems content to serenade the stars with his love-struck vibrato. As a collective Charlie the Horse already possesses an impressively diverse color palette intended for a wide canvas. The results can be ponderous at times, but when everything clicks, as on the bustling stomp of “Thunderstorm” or the slow burn of the stereolit “Fever,” Somebody demands full and careful attention. Charlie the Horse has quickly built a strong reputation as live performers in Wilmington, so it’s heartening to find how much of that live energy the quintet has succeeding in transferring to wax.

Charlie the Horse will be opening for Sinful Savage Tigers Thursday, May 13th at the Cave in Chapel Hill. As well as for Jeremy Blair From Effingham, Saturday May 15th at the Broad Street Café in Durham. --Hidden Tiger

Show Review: Justin Robinson and The Mary Annettes

2010-04-29T21:09:00.003-04:00

The Pinhook, Durham
April 27, 2010

To Spring forth, such as with spontaneity ...is such apt homonymy for the weather outside right now. This past Tuesday night joined a growing number of recent nights whose stay-in-and-rest plans were upended by the draw of beautiful weather and the need to be out in it. Possibilities now dancing, it felt like a Pinhook night, as have many lately. A quick look at The Pinhook's event calendar confirmed the destination. Justin Roberts and The Mary Annettes were anchoring a show with singer song-writers Bess Rogers and Lelia Broussard opening. I recalled the shimmer of sequence and violin strings from the Humble Tripe album release at Duke Coffeehouse last December where Justin Robinson and the Mary Annettes set the room up for inventive expression as the opening act and I was eager to see them in the the same element as a headliner.

Stepping across the edge of downtown Durham I absorbed through The Pinhook's front room crowd in my accustomed manner but emerging into the stage room everything was wildly different. A remodeled The Pinhook positioned a commanding stage at the opposite end of the room where Lelia Broussard was now stomping and spinning her ready-for-radio acoustic romps. A couple high fives into the crowd later I found my new favorite spot to stand at The Pinhook and treated myself to some shutter crack while the highly photogenic Lelia grinned and winked her way through a pop savvy set.

The crowd was multiplying at the this point and soon I realized that the universal Spring time spontaneity that drove me from my living room likely wasn't the same drive that was filling The Pinhook on a Tuesday night. Rather, Justin Robinson and The Mary Annettes upon only a fifth public performance are gaining followers quickly and judging from the cheers and ovation abruptly after song outtros, these are minions who are following closely.

So too should they, there are many dynamics to take note of within this music. Their graceful and elegant classical instrument adorned stage presence, the tension and depth of a violin's bow stretching across its strings, a banjo picking apart a forlorn chord progression...there is so much instrumental texture in a Justin Robinson and The Mary Annettes performance that light from a camera flash can barely penetrate to the back walls. Polishing these textures are imaginative and dramatic lyrics that wisp the songs off the stage and stand them right next to you. "Born of the earth but I'm bound to the Sea" crooned over tumultuous and yearning violin on "Bonfire" is heart ache laced up with allure which exemplifies their style. A Justin Robinson and The Mary Annettes show is worth springing for...spontaneously or otherwise. --Carrboro Ninja

Justin Robinson and The Mary Annettes

Lelia Broussard

Bess Rogers (left) performs with Lelia Bussard.

faces in the crowd

Colin and z-man destroystering it

New and promising Durham singer songwriter Anna Rose Beck who will be performing at Broad street Cafe in Durham Thursday May 6.

In Case You Missed It - Vol. 1

2010-04-16T20:12:00.017-04:00

The Light Pines
The Pour House, Raleigh
April 15, 2010

So fortunate my mental objections were overruled by the thoughts of too many "in-nights" in my Virginia-border Walden. Last Thursday night the The Pour House featured an irresistible lineup. Sandwiched in the middle of it was the somewhat recently-emerged Light Pines. Having recorded material much earlier and before making sweet, sonic whoopie with the Love Language for a spell, the Light Pines really didn't begin playing shows until the end of last year. I first saw them at the Drug Horse show in December and later at the Double Barrel Benefit. So I was not duped in the slightest when the Light Pines attempted to pull us in to a false sense of serenity with the tranquil "Come With Us." That only ropes you in for the eruption of "Black Swans" (personal favorite) and explosion of "Healers." They closed with the perfect "Climbing Towards You."

The term "drum and bass" gives me a headache, but Thursday night was better than "Mellow Mushroom-eatin', Lookie what I got at Redbox, awkwardly tense but you know it's gonna happen anyway, first-time with the new one" sex. The drums and bass are provided by real and raw musicians that absolutely ruined any chances of anyone being my second favorite band. I mention drum and bass because that's what you hear most prominently in the sound. And what a fresh sound it is. If you picked up the Drug Horse One EP (which features "Climbing Towards You"), then you've been exposed to some of the areas better bands. Just remember: you haven't truly experienced the Light Pines until you have SEEEEEN the Light Pines. I'm down for any shows that don't involve me missing work or life-saving surgery.

Their indie street cred already established from their work with The Capulets, The Love Language, and Max Indian, Josh Pope's Light Pines are likely a handful of shows like last night from being my new favorite band. It was that good. Someone sign them quick. We need a proper album and some lyrics that we can sing back as the sonic funk groove damages our hearing beyond all repair. I'm looking forward to yelling at the kids that I don't have yet who haven't even done anything wrong just because I saw every single Light Pines show I could as close to the stage as possible.

By the way: I'm new and like the stranger from the morning after a one night stand. You don't have to like me I'm here and must be dealt with quickly. Franklin Street Fighting Man reporting for duty. --Franklin Street Fighting Man

more The Light Pines images

SHow Review: Where the Buffalo Roamed, Finn Riggins, Kellie Ann Grubbs

2010-04-15T20:26:00.004-04:00

Nightlight, Chapel Hill
April 13, 2010

Where the Buffalo Roamed serves as example for why genre is meaningless in Chapel Hill, a town built upon originality and artistic expression. This three piece rock outfit sings the songs they have in their head and play the instruments they have in their hands without concern for what either are expected to sound like and there is no need for categorizing to enjoy it. True only to the picture in their mind and intent upon expressing it on stage, a war painted Where the Buffalo Roamed turned Nightlight’s stage into a theater Tuesday night. Demonstrating their emotions and feelings with razor sharp lyrics and the biggest ruckus that their two guitars and a set of drums could achieve, they transmitted a ragged collection of life experiences. I found a warm and ardent persistence in Corbie's longingly spun story telling which focuses in on distressed characters that traverse epic sad-but-true story lines. Written across the heavy weighted pages of grinding and reverberating guitar strokes are deeply earnest and passionate narrations of the American experience. Within their heart-to-heart sincerity Where the Buffalo Roamed casts a forgiving eye to star crossed lovers and burn outs alike. Theirs’ isn't to convey beliefs or defend ideas, but just to capture a singular emotion in time and describe it...good or bad, happy or sad.

Taking the stage for their agitated and animated set, they found an already primal and motivated pace left by their opener Finn Riggins, another three piece rock outfit who requires no genre sparring in order to enjoy. Idaho based Finn Riggins whose tour brought them to town Tuesday earned a few followers on the way through. Their synthish keyboard pop sound mashed up with thick cut guitar riffs matched perfectly with The Nightlight's zeal for experimental rock and left me with the thought that they could make their home in Chapel Hill easy as pie. Ironic that the t-shirt they had on the merch stand had mountain peaks on it, their music follows the same pattern. Layers upon layers of broad fronts hazed by smoky keyboard runs and textured drum fills give way to numerous unique vocal peaks poking through from any one of the three microphones arranged next to Cameron Bouiss' a-typical drum racks, Eric Gilbert's keyboard farm, or lead singer and guitar player Lisa Simpson. Listen to "Wake" on their myspace for an audible on this description, there is a lot going on in a Finn Riggin's arrangement and its just plain fun to listen to.

Chapel Hill singer/songstress Kellie Ann Grubbs opened the night with a powerful solo performance. Kelly demonstrated a strong, ranging, yet controlled vocal and quite unlike most soloists...subtly attracted attention without demanding it. Her songs were delicate in stature but profound in delivery and filled the room with a calm and tranquil composure. Kellie Ann Grubbs' performance was as far apart in arrangement from WTBR as could be perceived but they both shared a very high quality similarity; through the originality and sincerity of their song writing, the subject of their music is conveyed to their audience along with a glimpse of who they are and what they were feeling when they put pen to paper. --Carrboro Ninja

Where the Buffalo Roamed

Finn Riggins

Kellie Ann Grubbs

Album Review: Drughorse One

2010-04-09T19:21:00.002-04:00

Drughorse One pretty much just shattered the mold for what we have come to expect from musician collective compilation releases. Comps are often an enjoyable one-listen jaunt as you put a sound to a name for a band you haven't experienced before and possibly wouldn't have had they not been on a disc with a group you were already down with. Drughorse One attacks this model from all directions starting with the notion that multiple bands on a release is a comp, which this one isn't. It is true that MAX Indian, Ryan Gustafson, and The Light Pines compiled a pair of songs each for this disc but make no mistake these tracks have been matched and mastered as an album and it flows as good as any you're about to hear this summer.

Drughorse One sets off with the long awaited first physical hold-it-in-your-hand-and-look-at-it release for The Light Pines, "White Forest". A deft mix of stretchy melody enforcing synth and patient yet aggressive guitar, "White Forest" is a perfect flagship for a band whose coming of age has been as varied as the emotions this track invokes. Both Light Pines tracks on Drughorse One impress and deliver, lending as much to the anticipation of what is to come for Light Pines as much as they lend to the over-all tone of this album.

Continuing with a theme of long awaits, Drughorse One offers up two of the first new tracks from the dojo of MAX Indian which we've seen in what feels like an eternity. Within these two tracks, MAX Indian builds upon their legacy of engaging hooks and hit songs with the courage to experiment and the ability expound. "Never and Always" undeniably comes from the MAX Indian universe possessing their thumb print smooth sultry melodies over Southern rock rhythms yet the boys have intrigued it up with something different, a low key and sinister organ has moved in and become fast friends with slap-strumming guitar grooves and slow rolling back beats. The experimenting becomes even more profound and entertaining on their second track "Dark of Night" and together combine for the something new that invites you to fall for their sound all over again.

With a couple of tracks that seem like they could have come out in the golden age of classic rock, Ryan Gustafson is the cement that makes this collection of tracks an album. I love that I can somehow get a nostalgia fix about places I've never been to and things I've never seen just by listening to "Heaven". There is a vintage 60's fuzz that reminds me of the feeling I get every time I watch a Woodstock documentary or see a hazy clip of a classic rock era band drenched in the sunlight of a festival stage. Both of Ryan Gustafson's tracks maintain a good soothing retro vibe but its the song crafting that finishes the time and place feel. The images and moods captured in the versus are a relatable experience in any decade.

Standing as both a sample of three must-see acts and as an album with its own virtues, Drughorse One has as much relevance to the current indy music culture in Chapel Hill as it has power to stay spinning in your CD deck. All hail the energy that the Drughorse Collective is building up. I've had this album for less than two weeks and I'm already looking forward to Drughorse Two? --Carrboro Ninja

Album Review: Brett Harris, Man of Few Words

2010-03-31T14:19:00.005-04:00

Brett Harris Music, 2010

Too often songwriters whose sensibilities have been nurtured by the audible hiss of cheap mic’s and tape machines stumble upon first sight of the space and power of a pro studio. Given the keys to the proverbial gear closet, they prove either too sheepish or too greedy in deciding what to pull out of it. So it’s a welcome change when one of these basement troubadours takes an accurate measure of his material and emerges from the big desk with something sparkling and seamless. That’s the happy case with Brett Harris's Man of Few Words, the Durham songwriter’s first full-length studio album, and one that fulfills the spry promise of his two earlier EPs. With Man, Harris and producer Jeff Crawford have created a sound that can be big without bullying and arrangements that are lush though never overbearing.

The giddy opener “I Found Out” serves both as harbinger of a bright new beginning for Harris as well as a multum in parvo for the album as a whole. An anxiously strummed acoustic guitar quickly gives way to 12 string electrics, blond organs, pianos, tympanis, string arrangements and brassy horn sections that expand and contract along with Harris’s flights of fancy. Throughout Man, Harris’s compositions benefit mightily from the supporting cast he’s assembled, which includes Crawford on bass and a murderer’s row of local musicians familiar to fans of MAX Indian and Luego. As they did on their own debut last year, Indian’s Nick Jaeger and Carter Gaj prove here again that a well-crafted guitar fill can be every bit as revelatory as a blistering solo.

For all the help Harris gets from his friends, however, Man’s punch lies in the frontman’s vocal performance. Lithe but limber, Harris’s voice plays equally well as solo instrument or stacked in one of the album’s many rich, midrange harmonies, In the past, Harris has earned comparisons to Elvis Costello and Jeff Buckley, but in its phrasing and texture, Harris’s delivery on this effort often evokes more ethereal singers like Phoenix’s Thomas Mars or Sukilove’s Pascal Deweze, euros from whom the 80s blue eyed soul phenomenon was a less problematic influence than for Americans.

It’s a little ironic then that Man’s lone weakness comes with what Harris has to say. While his lyrics tend to satisfy the concept of the songs, they also at times suffer from a lack of ambition, especially compared to a number of the songs on his previous EPs. The album’s title notwithstanding, Harris is not a man of few words by any means, but the surface sheen and polish of the sentiment often makes it difficult to judge depth. In these cases the result is expression that is comfortable rather than particularly memorable.

Not coincidentally, the album’s two best cuts – “Perpetual Motion” and “See the Light” – find Harris developing a sustained lyrical conceit that informs and intercedes with the arrangement and the melody, rather than simply floating over the top. In “Perpetual Motion,” for example, the feverish rejoinder, “gotta keep on movin,” plays call and response as a piano signature bounces like a gypsum ball across Charles Cleaver’s roulette wheel organ.

After the light and embraceable pop of the album’s A side, “Perpetual Motion” and “See the Light” seem to promise a more introspective turn on the way out. Although what follows doesn’t quite bear out this promise (later cuts such as “Wish” and “Over and Over” feel more like genre exercises than compositions that reward what Harris does best), Harris certainly proves that he’s not just another open-mic strummer with an ear for a catchy hook, but a serious songwriter with big ideas and in full control of his material. --Hidden Tiger

View Brett Harris' myspace profile:

Brett Harris will celebrate the release of Man of Few Words at Nightlight in Chapel Hill on Friday April 2, 2010 at 10 PM. Opening will be Raleigh's Bright Young Things and Durham alt. country rockers Luego.

Two Free Passes for Jer Coons/Matt Duke at Local 506 Tonight

2010-03-30T13:36:00.000-04:00

The first legit day of spring in these parts (that in which it isn't raining or annoyingly sunny but still cold) is today and raise your hand if you agree that calls for heading out. Tonight, The Local 506 may be hosting the archetypal show for just this type of a day...brightened up, silver tongued, shiny acoustic folk pop. That is, the Jer Coons tour swings through Chapel Hill tonight with opener Matt Duke leading off at 9:30...just right for a blue cup at He's Not before the show. Am I right? Tiks are $8 at the door and I have two that I can give away right now. In lieu of a creative way to award these passes I'm going to default to the first person to e-mail me at carrboro.ninja (at) gmail dot com.

Jer Coons myspace:

Matt Duke myspace:

Spider Bags: Dog in the Snow

2010-03-26T14:37:00.004-04:00

Spider Bags' newest release Dog in the Snow is putting plenty of heavy fuzz on the table for those hungry for unrefined garage rock and God bless Durham, they didn't forget to pour some anti-folk sugar on top. Much coarser than their purposefully refined Indy rock equivalents, these tracks boil with marching heavy footed commotion. There is a very physical and complex drum kit versus guitar donnybrook trading punches on this two-song 7" and the resulting aftermath is a salt-of-the-earth analog rudder that drags and plows its way from the beginning of side A to the end of side B. Amidst the blitz however, Spider Bags offers a jesting, rascally, and playful narration. The lyrics skate across the turned up ground like a quick witted jack rabbit...whimsical, loose, and hip. Presented as pulp thought free of resolution, Spider Bags employs undeniable rock and roll rhythm with draw-your-own-conclusion anthem shouts to paint the picture of this album. In this sense they are not telling a story, the imagery these songs create between the heavy and light characters shoves you into a dramatic dream scape where you create your own.

Pressed into five-hundred good old fashioned vinyl records by Chaz at Bull City Records, Spider Bags will celebrate the release of Dog in the Snow Friday April 2 at The Pinhook in downtown Durham alongside The Dry Heathens . You can pick up the record and the record's ipod friendly download code at the show or at Bull City Records 1916 Perry Street Durham, NC. --Carrboro Ninja

poster art by Steve Oliva

Troika 2010 Band Submissions Open

2010-03-17T18:13:00.003-04:00

Proving that this lifetime bears no rest for the weary nor the inspired, 307 Knox and their fearless volunteer mercenaries have just again cranked the gears on Troika. Band submissions are now open and November 5, 6, and 7 of this fall will mark the sixth year that this three-day, 10 venue, 70 plus band local music festival has animated the Bull City with local rock denizens frenzying from venue to venue in desperate attempt to maintain their planned festival schedules.

The Troika band submission process is utterly simple and open right now through June 15 by following this link: http://troikamusicfestival.org/submissions

You won't have to wait till November for your first taste of Troika however, the annual Troika fund raiser event known as the Pin Projekt http://troikamusicfestival.org/pin-projekt is scheduled for May 28th at The Pinhook. This open to the public event auctions bowling pins which have been crafted by local artists into original works of art and raises capital for the not-for-profit Troika to ramp up to the event.

Images from Troika 2009:
Troika 2009 Day 1
Troika 2009 Day 2
Troika 2009 Day 3

Images from The Pin Projekt 2009
2009 Pin Project Results and Images

The Love Language Debut New Line Up

2010-03-15T17:01:00.002-04:00

Broad Street Cafe, Durham
March 12, 2010

This is the most fun I’ve had at a show in a while and credit the crowd. Awesome folks turned out for Reese McHenry's benefit Friday night at The Broad Street Cafe and it truly felt like a celebration. Rat Jackson bass thumper Rusty Sutton has assumed the role of booking the recently night-club ordained Broad Street and has had an immediate impact on the energy of its shows. Flipping Broad Street's dinner and a show two-band-bill-only policy into traditional rock club three and change line ups, this is the third time in as many weeks that Rusty has promoted four or more bands on a weekend night and Friday was six. This was a benefit that easily would have gone to 506 or The Pour House and it felt just as welcome Broad Street.

On stage with The Pneurotics, Mimi McLaughlin said it best, "We love you Reese" and indeed it was a big night for the girl whose friends turned out in force to lend a helping hand with doctor bills. Reese wasn't the only one there who was having an important night however. Headlining the event was the storied The Love Language performing their very first show with their new line up and their very last local show before the eyes of the galaxy glance upon them this week at SXSW.

A new line up indeed, everyone knows the story; The Love Language bass, drums, and organ/synth players Josh Pope, Thomas Simpson, and Kate Thompson formed The Light Pines at the exact same moment in time that Stuart McLamb wrote his album of heart break which would spawn The Love Language. Josh, Kate, and Tom then, in a near unfathomable degree of selflessness, placed their legit glory on hold to help a friend become successful first. From crowds of ten people at Nightlight three years ago to Merge today, Josh Tom and Kate can count this as a job well done and they deserve all the pay dirt that a super charged karma engine can rev up for The Light Pines. Gathering no further moss upon The Light Pines, they are now in tour mode and are no longer part of Stu's band. Stu wasted no time and spared no lemons in making lemonade out of the entire situation. But will it be as sweet as what we have come to expect?

Before we even take a sip there is a bit of "the biz" that just might be vigilant here. As a few of The Love Language folks went in other directions, Stu didn't replace them one-for-one. In fact, The Love Language is no longer the seven piece ensemble which included two key board players and stacked drummers, but rather a five piece rock outfit. This seriously enhances their ability to take care of business. The Love Language is a demand product and has to give as much as everyone wants to take. A leaner meaner Love Language will hit the road quicker and stay out longer. But with every give there is some take and removing two people from the stage means hollowing out on that extra shaky stompy rattling super sonic wall of sound vibe that has been paralyzing audiences since the beginning and replacing master level experts like Kate on synth and Tom on the kit will be no picnic.

The trademark Love Language sound is the stompy marchy big drum bombardment that beats on your head like a mallet breaking the ice away from your inner dance machine and who among us thought that this energy could be generated by any other means than Tom Simpson's flailing arms, legs, and hair? This is the question that gave me a "What the..." look on my face when I heard the news of the line up change. That look changed to a "huh, wow...ok" on Friday as we got the answer in the form of a possessed Jordan McLamb trading in his nearly-inaudible-anyway acoustic guitar for the sticks and basically reissuing a carbon copy of their drum signature. Jordan had been super handy with the shaky things and thundered with energy at the front of the stage but based on his near perfect replication of The Love Language stomping drum beats on Friday night I've got to call this move a net even.

The role likely absorbing the biggest blow is Missy Thangs who ran the piano opposite Kate Thompson's synth boarding. Those two people are now one and the wall of brown sound goodness that Kate's synth brought us is now on Missy's shoulders to continue blasting. Friday's trials came and like a Zen master kung fu artist, Missy transferred the blow with an array of stomp boxes and wattage to keep the wall standing. New recruits BJ on lead elec and as Stu joked "Justin from craigslist" on bass, both proved themselves and all in all the sound hasn't changed. If anything it has opened up a bit allowing more space for Stu's golden ticket vocals.

Alas, Stu isn't out of the woods yet. I've long felt that it isn't just a brilliant album that creates a beloved group. The path to actualization is littered with the hollowed out corpses of brilliantly arranged bands who maintained every element of success except the one that loosed the arrows upon them...chemistry. There was a remarkable charisma with the original group. Together they were strong yet vulnerable, approachable yet mysterious. Their stage presence was magnetic and from the go with the flow chill of Junis Beefmonth to the riddle wrapped in an enigma subtlety of Tom, as individuals they were just as endearing. Hollywood has a name for people like this, they are called stars. I met BJ and he's cool as shit and Justin seems equally as interesting as any of the original line up and so the challenge will be re-establishing and re-selling the character and charisma of The Love Language. I know there is at least five people dedicated to that challenge and they all got in a cold van on a rainy Sunday morning and began a long trek south by southwest, towards Austin, Texas. --Carrboro Ninja

Profiles and Pages related to this post:

The Love Language:
The Pneurotics:
Rat Jackson:
The Light Pines:
The Dirty Little Heaters:
The Travesties:
D Town Brass:
The Loners: The Loners (Label Page)

Infiltration and Movement, Vol 4. week of 2.24.10

2010-02-24T20:58:00.002-05:00

Felix Obelix Album Cover

Today's lesson: Never use the term "ninja" when speaking in public.

Available Assignments:

2/24 WED (506) Where the Buffalo Roamed, The Last Tallboy, Charming Youngsters - In a town full of folk rock heros hunting Southern Rock villains, Where The Buffalo Roamed politely keeps to themselves save they are forced to take sides. PS, this show starts in 20 minutes. chop chop. 9:30 PM, Free - Carrboro Ninja

2/25 THR (The Pinhook) Tender Fruit, Nervous But Excited, Humble Tripe - I didn't make it to Day two of Double Barrel to see Tender Fruit but I saw the pics and it appears Cristy has unsheathed the Danelectro. 9:30 PM

2/25 THR (Tir Na Nog) The Jackets, Small Ponds, & Starmount - Chris Tamplin promotes the Tir Na Nog Local Beer, local Band series and has been on a roll lately with bookings and great shows. Continuing the momentum this Thursday. 10 PM, Free

2/25 THR (506) Birds and Arrows, Lucky, Mandolin Orange - Mandolin Orange and Birds and Arrows redux their shimmering performances of three weeks ago at the 506 Haiti Benefit.

2/25 THR (The Station) Free Electric State - I almost want to get a pair of headphones with Free Electric State in the left ear and Birds and Arrows in the right ear. I would either go crazy or I would go sane, but I would hate to have to choose between these two fine Triangle bands. - Wild Bill Heroic

2/26 FRI (Broad Street Cafe) Rat Jackson, I Was Totally Destroying It, River City Ransom - Rat Jackson has successfully created a new music sub genre which I refer to as Indie Rock-a-billy.

2/26 FRI (Pinhook) The Proclivities, Mosdai Music, Shipwrecker - The Proclivities brought a great show to Tir Na Nog last Thursday, expect the same Friday at Pinhook.

2/27 SAT (The Cavern Tavern) John Harrison, Doug Keith - Out of towner Doug Keith pairs up with North Elementary front man Harrison for some soul rock at the Cave. This is important: Doug and John are playing the early show at The Cave, 7:30 PM...With more than a couple exceptional shows happening on Saturday night in Chap Hill, this will be the de facto pre-party. Straight 8's w The Gasoline Stove play late. 7:30 PM, $5.

2/27 SAT (506) The Whiskey Smugglers, Aminal, Saint Solitude - Speaking of folk rock heros and Southern rock villains, this show will be a deadly shootout between the two factions. Load up and get yourself in the fray. Reaction from Wild Bill Heroic: His solo show was the shit, he created pop masterpieces like you'd typically expect a powerpop trio to pull off... only he did so with a post rock-style pedalboard! Loops and loops and loops and loops, layers and layers of loops, endless strata of snapping and squealing telecasters and rumbling keyboards. Feedback falcons perched in full view of the dead-eyed gargoyles atop, feedback violins tucked into alcoves in a great cathedral of intelligent artpop. Now he has a band, so let's get in our stupid cars this weekend and see if the new incarnation is as radass as the solo Saint Solitude. Here's hoping.

2/27 SAT (Nightlight) Felix Obelix (CD Release) The Strugglers + string section - this will be the most creative thing that happens in Chapel Hill this Release) weekend. $8 admission gets you in the show AND a copy of the CD AND a letter to your future self. Note from Wendy Spitzer:

Yes, there will be an interactive project called "Letters to Your Future Self". All attendees of the night will get, with admission, some stationery and a self-addressed stamped envelope. Attendees are invited to write a letter to him or herself, put it in the envelope and seal it up. I will hold onto the letters for 8 months and mail them in October 2010. So if you come to this show, in addition to the Felix Obelix record, you'll get a letter from your past self, eight months from now.

2/27 SAT (Tir Na Nog) Beggar's Caravan - Beggar's has been hiding in the shadows rumored to be working on new material. Running Tir Na Nog on Saturday night 10:30 PM

2/27 SAT (The Space) All Your Science w/ poets Stacy Szymaszek, Stephanie Bolster - The Space is at 715 Washington Street in Durham. AYS is the most elusive band on the planet. Here is your look!

3/2 SAT (The Cave) Songwriters Open-Mic w/ John Saylor. - barring none this is the finest open mic in the land. Late show, 10 PM, free.

One song/one listen: Monsonia

2010-02-21T23:39:00.001-05:00

by Wild Bill Heroic

I know no one's going to lose any sleep here, but I meant to put one of these up on Friday. I have been troutscrewingly busy, Itellyouwut. I spent half the week off-planet for no good or obvious reason.

***

So I want something either really heavy or really epic to do for this week's one song/one listen. That's kind of the mood I'm in and that's the kind of writing I want to do right now. I want something I can really space into, or maybe space out of. Shit, I don't know. This is a very indecisive time to be a Heroic. Daddy Heroic would be ashamed if he knew.

So I'm going to check the show listings, find someone who's playing in the next three months who I've been meaning to check out
and
select...

Monsonia?

Monsonia.

Sure. I've been meaning to see what they're all about. I know they've shared the stage with some supreme radness in the past. So before I smumble any other craps out my mouth I'm going to do some listening and some writing. And maybe then I'll go to bed.

I promise you, this is the first time I've heard this jam. Headphones on & here goes...

Monsonia - Asshaus (link)

Starting off with some drop-D guitar. Not too wild yet, kind of laid-back, but it walks like a crocodile. It slithers low across the landscape, like you couldn't see it move except for the rustle of the high grasses. Now a bleared voice comes through, drunken and contagious, and by the time the great throat of the guitar strikes again the song's grown some in size. Now it's a family of crocodiles and we're on the roof of the house, watching them stomp wavering snake shapes in a field.

Now the lead-in to the great throaty guitar line is a scream. The drunken voice gains terminal velocity and encourages the guitars to chungle right along like gigantic dump trucks - the huge dump trucks with tires the size of houses. This song is filled with menace. Now the voice is back, screaming and tiny, insignificant in the path of whatever is coming to destroy. The menace is almost palpable, things in the room that should not scare me are scaring me now. This is a conduit to the subconscious, to the reptile brain, to the part of us that is fueled by wide-eyed diesel.

Show Review: The Proclivities, North Elementary

2010-02-19T19:09:00.005-05:00

Tir Na Nog, Raleigh
February 18, 2010

by Carrboro Ninja

Last night The Proclivities settled their brand of smooth textured rocky-pop into Tir Na Nog's Local Beer Local Band and let the energy build up around it like batteries being plugged into a charger. The Proclivities exuded a charmed grasp upon the elements of their music and performed an intensely finespun round of songs. The Proclivities appear to be in control of their craft and how it is formed on stage. Stretched out and at arm's length in one hand is strong stepping guitar rhythm and held opposite with the other hand is hip, smart, and bouncing bass jaunt, when brought down together, The Proclivities weave a decoration of hooks and textures that form up their songs. The materials that make up a woven basket with an ornamental vignette are not foreign to the eye, you understand that reeds were woven and the beads were arranged and when crafted by a master weaver you may appreciate is as a work of art. The Proclivities trademark their sound in much the same fashion. A steady rocking current is formed up as the main vessel and a vignette of slow rolling electric lead guitar is ornately stitched upon it. Matt Douglas' intensely contemplative story-telling microphone voice lulls the arrangement over a back beat which is so in-the-pocket that every craigslist hopeful would update their drummer wanted ad to read "must sound like Matt McCaughan" after a single listen. Being loud and intense is a norm for good indie rock, being subtle and intense is a mark of achievement and The Proclivities were awarded its honor last night.

With a similarly soft spoken front man but a polar opposite inclination toward the proper use of an electric guitar, North Elementary held the stage just prior to The Proclivities. John Harrison resides in this physical world but a portal to a parallel plane constituted with discord and tumult lies just at his feet sealed in analog circuits and stomp boxes. Upon a refrain or outtro when John wishes to summon forth beasts from this dimension you will see him kneel down and rip the portal asunder revealing a hive of screeching demons and feedback monsters. North Elementary is like the calm, cool, good hearted neighbor who chats you up as if nothing is amiss while holding back with tightly gripped chains a pair of snarling and growling pit bulls who seem to want to devour your liver.

Tir Na Nog has cultivated a meaningful and successful concert series and yesterday's show was its choice representation. Stu McLamb warmed things up with a solo teaser trailer to The Love Language's upcoming number two album, the a fore mentioned bands played impeccable sets and the energy in the house kept it hot. Promoter Chris Tamplin will try to maintain the momentum next Thursday with an Americana/roots dig of The Jackets, Starmount, and The Small Ponds. The Small Ponds feature The Proclivities front man Matt Douglas along with Tres Chicas siren Caitlin Cary.

Profiles related to this post:
The Proclivities:
North Elementary:
Starmount:
The Jackets:
The Small Ponds:
The Pneurotics:
Tres Chicas:

more images from last night

The Proclivities

North Elementary

John Harrison ripping asunder a portal to the demon guitar sounds world

one demon breached the portal and cleverly disguised itself as a ceiling fan

Stu McLamb

people

2/3 of The Pneurotics; Chris Burzminski (drummer) and Mimi McLaughlin (bass)

Norse viking Mary Taylor Valand taking time off from raiding to catch a show

Sarah Johnson gives a big smile for the camera

New Raleigh ink slinger Lady Jane

approaching Tir Na Nog from the huge ass Moore Square parking deck

Infiltration and Movement, Vol 3. week of 2.15.10

2010-02-17T17:08:00.002-05:00

poster by John Harrison

Today's lesson: You are always being observed. Always.

Available Assignments:

2/17 WED (506) American Aquarium, John Howie Jr. and the Rosewood Bluff - American Aquarium just finished cutting a new record at Fat Possum in Mississippi and have been burning rubber behind it ever since. The venerable John Howie Jr leads another posse of unsuspecting souls right into the bottleneck pass of heartache. - Hidden Tiger

2/18 THR (Tir Na Nog) North Elementary, The Proclivities -Tir Na Nog's weekly homegrown concert series Local Beer, Local Band presents a couple of local greats this week. And if I am wrong about this then fuck it, but I believe there will be a solo set by Stu McLamb at 9 PM.

2/18 THR (The Cave) La Snacks, Transmography, K_niv_es Austin, TX steers its college town conestoga into our quiet hamlet with a triple bill at the tavern. In celebration of the melting snow, Transmography cometh to create a mental image of a sharp shovel cutting through the sludge. La Snacks gets it on with their mid-nineties Matador records loving selves, and mystery electronicites K_niv_es remind us why we loved them so as A Problem of Alarming Dimensions. - Hidden Tiger

2/18 THR (Blue Bayou) Radar Clowns of Sedation - Pied piper of Mebane, Pete Pawsey, summons all the rats and children from of the upper counties to the Blue Bayou for free a show. His backing band of drowsy clowns will stand you up, just so his soulful British blues harp can smack you back down. Take it like a man. - Hidden Tiger

2/18 THR (Nightlight) Applesauce, Zeke Graves -The country blues duo of Applesauce is Mark Holland and his graveled hurt-speak vocals and Pete Waggoner trying to make you tear up by bending guitar strings. 9:30 PM $5. - Carrboro Ninja

2/18 THR (Reservoir) Colossus, Mortal Man, Salvacion - Holy crap, this looks wild. Buildings might be toppled (trampled?). All virgins within a ten mile radius of the Res are going to get their first true 'gasm from the vibrations in the very bedrock. METAL. MEH-TAL. METAL, MËTÄL... and not just any metal, but some of this is ridiculous hero metal! You absolutely have to love the glorious middle ground between the Hell's Angels and a level 12 paladin with a +3/+3 longsword of truth. You have to. I'll hear no disagreement. - Wild Bill Heroic

F you all if you can't find a show to attend on Thursday - Carrboro Ninja

2/19 FRI (The Pinhook) Schooner, Erie Choir, Veelee -This is the Schooner Duck Kee Sessions ARTWORK release party for their new album which was released exclusive to Cy Tunes on Feb 9. A who-is-who of local artists such as Catherine Edgerton and her TELL TALE mixed media goodness have each created exquisite artwork for this project. This Friday at show time will be the first that the art is available with download codes attached. Show begins at 9 PM with stand-up comedy by The Popular kids. $5.

2/20 SAT (506) Dirty Little Heaters, Red Collar, Pink Flag - This is the Dirty Little Heaters CD Release show and Reece has the field lined with artillery. Pink Flag and Red Collar are what we call guitar-important and if you haven't been moved by the time they end their sets, Reece's Fender will pin your shit against the wall. Be ready. 10 PM $7

2/20 SAT (Nightlight) The Whiskey Smugglers, Popsie's Field, Lizzy Ross and the Little Bear that Barks, Black Swamp Bootleggers - This show will be from 5 PM to 9 PM and is part of the Carrboro Home Brew Fest. Pre-sale tik's are sold out but their website is promising more tik's sold at the door. tik's pretel? $10. http://worldhomebrewfest.eventbrite.com

2/20 SAT (Nightlight) Monsonia, Actual Persons Living or Dead, Le Weekend - Le Weekend hasn't done a show since the deadly shark attack last September. We welcome them back with respect and reverences. 10 PM $5

more Schooner art, this one by Chip Hoppin at The Merch in Carrboro

One song/one listen: Fin Fang Foom

2010-02-12T14:49:00.001-05:00

by Wild Bill Heroic

So I'm going to try and do this every Friday... I'm going to listen to a song I've never heard before (to the best of my knowledge) and you're going to get my reaction to the song in realtime. Same rules as last time. The gods of websearch will lead me to my chosen band's page and I'll pick a song... by title. I then put on my headphones, turn the volume to a sadistic level, and let fly. I stop the sentence I'm on when the song's over, even if it doesn't make any sense.

See? That's the beauty of the thing - it might end up an F5 gibberish tornado! A CROSS-EYED GOD FINGERPAINTS A KANSAS TOWN TO SMITHEREENS. And there's nothing I can do about it! Plus, I'm rocking a head cold right now, so be prepared for some grade-A wooziness-impacted writing. Maybe I'm just exhausted. You'd think I'd be able to tell the difference by now.

ANYWAY

This week I've selected Fin Fang Foom. These guys are everywhere - especially Eddie. I think there must be at least three of him. I wouldn't be surprised if he's been photographed in two places simultaneously. Get me proof of this and I'll make you a grilled cheese.

Don't ask me why, but I've never seen Fin Fang Foom live and have not given their music a fair listen before today. Let's rectify that.

I promise you this is the first time I've heard this jam. Headphones on & here goes...

Fin Fang Foom - Magnetic North (link)

That's a pretty guitar tone. Wow, that's a really pretty guitar tone and now here comes some bass. Shit, I can barely follow the bass. These guys are technical as hell. The timing alone could confuse a Nobel laureate, and there's not even drumming yet... there it is.

Holy shit, That comes together nicely. Very nicely. Very pretty, very clipped and precise. It's like looking out your window, your dingy window, at a cold morning across city rooftops. It's like riding the back of a pigeon through the city and you're looking over the top of its head, between its wings, as it goes... then the build and now we're moving a lot faster. Can't tell what the vocals are doing, but I dig. kind of like a middle ground between Sunny Day and Slint. Not as bizarre as Slint, but it's in there somewhere.

Now they're getting kind of mathy - an abrupt math phrase then back to the original speed. "Why waste your time?" is the first line I understand and this is some good mood rock. In fact, I'm typing too fast for what they're doing.

And now we're back to the pigeon's back as it ducks and weaves through alleyways and we're two inches tall, the city is no longer something we can manage or even understand. Fire escapes rise beyond us like the Sierra Mountains and the pigeon climbs higher. Smokestacks are our volcanoes. Traffic probably doesn't exist, it doesn't effect us, it's like a rushing river of idiot metal below wherever our ride takes us.

Whatever's happening, it's awesome, but it's going to take more than one listen for me to have any idea what the structure of that song was. This is some delightfully complicated shit. I'm confused as hell - and loving it.

Retro Review: The Band "The Band" circa 1969

2010-02-10T21:23:00.002-05:00

--Carrboro Ninja

In 1969 The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were laying the foundations which would incite bar room quarrels for decades to come over whom the best-ever rock band was and the Motown nebula was spawning R&B stars by the dozens. The face of popular music was being crafted as one of the most artistically influential and culturally imperative eras of all time yet for every standard, there develops and alternative. Bursting from the mainstream fray there came pioneers who blazed a trail of experimental jazz fusion, deep south blues, and country rock, a trail which would later be paved and well traveled by all who embarked for the new genre of music to which it lead...Southern rock.

No album so singularly possessed the DNA building blocks of what would come to define Southern rock as did the 1969 self-titled release The Band. The first two tracks right out of the gate canter with a mash-up of New Orleans jazz and notey high stepping honky tonk. The prevalent horns and thick-cut guitar licks of "Across the Great Divide" are the first to establish a style for the album and weigh it heavily with jazz tone. "Rag Mama Rag" follows with a polar-opposite beatnik country tempo layered with fiddle and dance-hall piano to pull the listener head-over-heels in the other direction.

Given a retrospective 2010 viewpoint, the two influences stand gallantly apparent...as if looking at an old picture of an unacquainted night and day at the same party. If these first two tracks were jazz and honky tonk walking through the door, the third track, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", was the introduction that lead them to becoming inseparable friends within the Southern rock culture. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" simmered down the flash and fervor of the album's beginnings into a common blues thread to sew a cloth of tragedy which could only be donned by a Southerner. Adding even more textures to their American quilt of influence, "Up On Cripple Creek" introduces slap base funk and screams of the time and place Motown inspirations which thrived around The Band as they constructed the album.

Within this collage of 1960's pop music trends, the parts and pieces for a new genre were present. The vessel that granted the genesis to Southern rock was the success and acclaim of "The Night...", "Up on Cripple Creek" and the album in whole which occupied a top 10 spot on the Billboard album charts for 1969. The current respect for the album by publishers of lists is far and wide having been named #45 on Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of all time as well as recognition as one of the 100 best albums ever by Time Magazine and aptly so, The Band has stood as a blue-print for Southern rock music across the decades, a blue print that is being unrolled and studied even today.

album back cover

Post Script;
Thursday 2/11/2010 a trio of local bands represent well the modern class of Southern rock as it is currently being revived and played in Raleigh, NC. Tir Na Nog's weekly home grown music series "Local Band, Local Beer" hosts Raleigh's Bright Young Things, Durham alt-country/rock Luego, and a group from Boone, NC whose sound is eerily reminiscent of The Band circa 1969, Naked Gods.

Infiltration and Movement, Vol 2 week of 2.8.10

2010-02-09T17:16:00.003-05:00

Today's lesson: If you are captured, escape.

Available assignments:

2/9 TUE (The Pinhook) Barton Carroll, Wood Ear -The word "songsmith" gets used in the first sentence of every notice Seattle's Barton Carroll gets, so I'm not going to even mention it. Crisp and clear lyricism for a cloudy midweek. Durham's own porch rockers Wood Ear to kick out the bolts. - Crouching Tiger. $5, 8 PM

2/10 WED (Slims) Birds & Arrows, Deleted Scenes, Oblio -Birds and Arrows knocked 200 people off their feet last Saturday night at the 506 Haiti Benefit with their better-than-the-real-thing remake of "Don't Come Around Here No More" They are worth trying to stand up to again. - Carrboro Ninja. 9 PM.

2/11 THR (The Cave) Jimbo Mathis and the Tri-State Coalition, The Small Ponds, Laura Cortese -You know the side, world--motherfucking--wide. I am personally driving a van around the state of North Carolina kidnapping orphan children to bring them to this show. And yes, that's the opening gambit of my campaign for Senate. - Crouching Tiger.

2/11 THR (Tir Na Nog) Bright Young Things, Luego, Naked Gods - Tir Na Nog-Local Beer, Local Band and I was told Naked Gods sound like The Band circa 1969 which is ironic...check this blog tomorrow to see why.. 8 PM.

2/12 FRI (Pittsboro General Store) Straight 8s -In a some dark cave up in SW Virginia there's a grisly, old cuss whose been dancing like a goddam machine to rockabilly for 60 straight years. In fact the fate of the very universe depends on his constant, determined motion. The Straight 8s are in heavy rotation on his victrola. Go forth to Pittsboro and multiply. - Crouching Tiger.

2/12 FRI (The Cave) Demolition String Band, the Moaners, Pneurotics - Pneurotics fronted by quite possibly the best natural guitar player alive or a man destined for hell due to his deal with the leader of the underworld, and The Moaners a Chapel Hill duo crafted from a solid piece of ice that makes everything around it a little bit cooler, and Demolition String Band which is a near favorite of each of the first two. - Carrboro Ninja

2/12 FRI (The Soapbox) MAX Indian, Ryan Gustafson, Light Pines - Josh Pope is a fucking super star. 'nuff said.

2/12 FRI (Broad Street Cafe) Jeremy Blair From Effingham, Sequoya -Jeremy Blair From Effingham is a pack of highly evolved wolves who retreated from the wilderness in search of the meaning of life and write folk rock songs about their journey. Sequoya continues to play their delicious album Sleep and Dream of Fire. 10 PM

2/13 SAT (The Pinhook) New Town Drunks, The Kinksmen - Valentines Day Mardi Gras Party in Durham, NC which which means free beads and the ability to look your friends in eye the next day, but probably with a delicious hangover. 9 PM, $5 (pay-up bitches!)

2/13 SAT (Slims) The Moaners, Demolition String Band, Chip Robinson - Day two for The Moaners and DSB, this time picking up Chip Robinson

2/13 SAT (Berkley Cafe) Lonnie Walker, Gross Ghost, Onward Soldiers - yes...Yes....YEEESSSSS! 8 PM.

2/13 SAT (Broad Street Cafe) Brett Harris - Brett brings more bad ass guitars to the Broad Street Cafe stage and plays songs from his new album. 8 PM.

One song/one listen: Organos

2010-02-05T22:36:00.000-05:00

by Wild Bill Heroic

So there's been a ton of buzz about this Organos project... a ton, a serious ton. It's the future of the internet, things can be local and viral at the same time. COOL!

I'm naturally curious, so I'm going to head to her/their myspace or reverbnation or whatever the search gods lead me to first, pick a song I like the name of, and write a stream-of-consciousness reaction to said song. When the song is over I'll finish the sentence I'm on, even if I have to do so abruptly, and that'll be that. Genuine, instant reaction. Who likes free jazz? I do! I do! Skronk! Bleek! Florp!

I promise you, this is the first time I've heard this jam. Headphones on & here goes...

Organos - October (link)

Acoustic shuffles starting off, but holyshit I wasn't expecting that discord. Like a mad chord wandering among pretty chords and now there are these big fucking things walking in the background. They're like goddamn AT-ATs from Star Wars. She's "aaaah"-ing among these marching beasts, and that's all I can tell the percussion section is, it's a bunch of war machines but they're not headed to war. They're headed to the beach. They've packed their Martin 00s and they're packing umbrellas and they're getting sand in their beer. Here comes some more percussion, more recognizable stuff like hand drums and hand claps. Now the focus is off the war machines on vacation, and her "aaaah" on its own slides out with a final, pretty, chord that denies the intentional offset of the contrast chord.

Rickenbacker "Cresting Wave" No Longer the Most Beautiful

2010-02-05T14:30:00.005-05:00

You've got to be drop dead special if you are going to keep company with these guys. You are lining up against the most storied, highest quality, most beautiful models ever to take the stage...sorry Jeff I'm not talking about you and your awesome beard, I'm talking about the gorgeous line-up of guitars that you and Luego brought to the stage last night at Broad Street Cafe.

I have publicly stated my opinion before that the Rickenbacker "cresting wave" series of six-string and bass guitars are the most beautiful instruments in the world and Jeff Crawford's gloss black Jetglo 4001 bass is one of the sweetest examples one can see around town. Also on stage last night was Brett Harris' Telecaster Thinline, with its artful single f-hole design and thick chrome humbuckers, it is an instant impulse buy for any guitar player that accidentally walks past one at a guitar shop. To round out a threesome of archetypal American guitars, Patrick Phelan was strumming what is quite possibly the most beautiful acoustic guitar ever made, a workhorse Gibson J-45 in antique finish. Between those three guitars alone there was enough glossy tonewood on deck to make a mahogany tree blush but the standout that thieved the spotlight and redirected the attention of everyone in the room was an exceptionally bewitching custom hollow body electric guitar which had been recently hand crafted by Larry Jaeger and on this night...played by his son Nick.

This guitar is special. Its chrome appointments flowed like sailboats on a lake of varnish so pristine you could almost take a swim in it. Its elegant lines and sleek symmetry shimmered with an extra-dimensional quality that could make a Lamborghini jealous. And this was just to look at it...the sound was just as angelic. Having been seen on stage with numerous classics, such as a Gibson 335, Nick is no stranger to magnificent guitars nor is he shy for getting tone out of them. The spongy stretchy hot lick guitar solos Nick is known for needed no tuning, but this custom hummed with a special sense of angry, like a cat purring and growling at the same time. I guess there is always one better, Nick has found it in this rig.

Having been allured by this guitar's form and enlightened by its tone, it's safe to consider Larry Jaeger a master luthier and its exciting to know that his art and craftsmanship; being formed on the most micro of levels, can and does upstage the best of what the heritage of American guitar manufacturers has to offer.

click to enlarge

Nick Jaeger with the custom hollow body electric built by his dad.

far right: Larry Jaeger watching Nick perform with the guitar he crafted

Luego, left to right: Nick Jaegar and his custom Jaeger hollow body, Brett Harris with a Fender Telecaster Thinline re-issue, Patrick Phelan wielding a Gibson j-45, Rob DiMauro on drums, Jeff Crawford with a "cresting wave" Rickenbacker bass, Charles Cleaver on keys.

Post Script Jaeger Guitars myspace page

Infiltration and Movement, Vol I - Week of 2.1.10

2010-02-04T16:42:00.003-05:00

Today's lesson: Accomplish the mission, failure is not an option.

Available assignments:

2/4 THR (Broad Street Cafe) Anna Rose Beck - This is Debut night for recent Duke grad singer-songwriter Anna Rose Beck who may be brilliant, we'll learn more tonight. Anna plays the early show at 8 PM, Americana-roots-stompin-music Luego at 10 PM

2/5 FRI (The Pour House MAX Indian, Bellafea, Veelee, The Light Pines -WKNC 88.1 Double Barrel Benefit #7 Day 1. The last time I watched Josh singing, it was at Kings and something about a bear. Finally I get a chance to see side project-ville that looks more like old school-ville and sounds like it could be new school-ville.

2/5 FRI (Slim's) Patrick Phelan (Luego)- Sly dog Patrick Phelan scores and early show at Slim's as part of First Friday. May as well call this the Dbbl Barrel Benefit pre-party

2/5 FRI (Local 506) Free Electric State, Retribution Gospel Choir, Rat Jackson - The hypnotically beautiful simplicity of FES in the same room with the in-your-face Indy rockabilly of Rat Jackson....Yes, Please

2/6 SAT (The Pour House) Roman Candle, Spider Bags, Midtown Dickens, The Tender Fruit(s) -WKNC 88.1 Double Barrel Benefit #7 Day 2. Roman Candle making a brief stop AT HOME before launching back out into space.

2/6 SAT (Nightlight) Mountains, Horseback, Tape, Ghost Hand - additional notes from Wild Bill Heroic: "That looks like a droned-out, noise-through-the-roof, pop your eyeballs out of your head with molten rock goodness like an extra in Beetlejuice, good time." PS, Tape is from Stockholm in case you are looking for foreigners to scam. 9:30 PM.

2/6 SAT (Local 506) A grand-master Haiti Relief benefit at 506 on Saturday. 6+ bands performing Dylan and Petty covers. Bands on the bill thus far include: Birds & Arrows, Big Fat Gap, Gambling the Muse, Mary Johnson Rockers, Mandolin Orange, THE Pneurotics, Semi-Formal, It is rain in my face. 9 PM

2/6 SAT (The Cave) The Sinful Savage Tigers, Mandolin Orange - go on with your bad selves Mandolin Orange, two shows in one night! ...murderous, The Sinful Savage Tigers string trio brings it home. 10 PM

Mad-Libs with Missy Thangs!

2010-02-04T10:29:00.002-05:00

In a futile attempt to understand what is going on inside Missy Thangs' head, Wednesday we google chatted through a side splitting Mad-Lib. Through the course of the conversation I learned that Missy's band Soft Company is making a few off-season trades to acquire members from The Huguenots and Violet Vector and the Lovely Lovelies, that The Love Language for whom she plays keys is hard at work on their legitimate business , and that she knows the difference between adjectives and adverbs quite well, quite well indeed.

The syntax of my chat with Ms Thangs;

me: you have a mathematical personality, did you know that = yes+maybe?
missythangs: well duh!
me: har har
missythangs: haha sup?
me: reading up on what the difference between an adverb and an adjective is
missythangs: ahhh speaking of mathematical
adverb = -ly
simply!
me: smip+ly
missythangs: hah. my manager just told me i look like peppermint pattie from charlie brown
sup wit that?
me: sounds like he's trying to control your ego. kick him in the knee
missythangs: haha
haha
i ran out of gas to heat the house yesterday
me: i'm looking on your reverb page and i don't see any more shows...did i completely miss the soft company business for this month...
missythangs: it's the temperature of a wine cellar in here
me: oh damn...burn pizza boxes
missythangs: a nice 50 degrees
my wine is perfectly chilled hahaha i'm FREEZING. but the wine... perfecto!
soft company biz is still rollin
me: the always resourceful missy thangs
missythangs: hah
we were asked to play a few other shows but i had to hold off to wait and see what happened with LL biz
we have a new band, and new songs, new album, new label, new hairstyles
we bizy
me: legitimate biz
missythangs: yeah definitely
that and i'm starting a new project called chalet fir
my girl
chalet
me: i was informed there may be a line up change...no one said anything about hair styles though...whoa
missythangs: hahah
naw kiddin
me: whew cause.....
missythangs: !!
me: cause because
did you have a show last sat at Nightlight or did it snow out like everyone else
missythangs: yes!!!!!
we did and it was awesome!
there were over 35 people!
which honestly.. it doesn't get that full on a summer weekend night
my new band is so great i love them so much and am so grateful
me: hot damn and ggrrrrrr...i wanted to be there (hiding of course...in the shadows)
missythangs: they are tigers of love!
i wish you had made it.. but the roads were almost impossible to drive on
me: yes tigers...symbolic of cunning and survival...rather than the lion, symbolic of lazy as shit
hey
you like mad-libs?
missythangs: hahah
why i yes.
i do!
me: SO I DO OMG
missythangs: what a coincidence!
that we are here!
both ready for mad libbing!
maddening!
rarrr!
(not a lion)
me: well since we are here both ready for mad mad-libbing...guess what i have?
oh yes
missythangs: yess????
the suspense.. it's killing me!
me: the best of mad libs! over 400 pages
missythangs: OH SHIT!
me: and i have one piked out for aaayou
missythangs: piked!
good thang i did hundreds of these as a kid
me: i'm not going to tell you the title...that would be too easy
missythangs: i'm so ready
haha
perfect
me: hheheh, i'm giddy...ok....give me a "noun"
wait, i need a pen
missythangs: hahah
okay a noun
get a pen!
me: awesome, got it
missythangs: umpire
thass my noun
me: and a good one

after that there was a lot of
missythangs: hope that's not offensive! and is that how it's spelled?
and some
me: omg my sides hurt. and wtf does that even mean?

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mad-Libs with Missy Thangs:

Show Review: The Moaners, Lonnie Walker, Liza Kate

2010-01-22T19:20:00.002-05:00

The Pinhook, Durham
January 15, 2010

The Pinhook is a deep room. From the edge of the venue's narrow door that portals you away from the concrete of the downtown loop, to tipping your hat gingerly past an amplifying floor to ceiling mirror alive with the green felt hue of a billiards table and the chatter of its gatherers, beyond the tall scenester lined oaken bar that mysteriously vanishes into an arcade themed hipster living room, to the factory sized collecting room housing the anticipations of over one hundred patrons standing at stage edge, and finally out the back door on the patio to blow smoke at the passing locomotives...is an entire night's journey. A blind man would not even need his stick to navigate it’s path, The Pinhook’s textures are alive with subliminal attractions that push you like the current in a brook...in and around, up and down and sometimes swirling. Friday night the current saw no strugglers as The Moaners, Lonnie Walker, and Liza Kate set up camp on the Pinhook's banks and strung up their guitars.

Liza Kate is a darling singer-song writer who drove down from Richmond to sit on the stage early in the night and crack jokes like a gleeful villain about to set a plan to motion. The gentle textures of a strummed six string drew an unsuspecting crowd of us to the stage where we giggled away at her wise cracks until she was satisfied that we were all off guard and wouldn't anticipate her perfect pitch and haunted voice being slipped into our chests like a satin dagger. Killing us softly with anguished storytelling over a harmony of acoustic guitar and smoldering vocals, my last words were "very nice Liza Kate, very nice."

Liza Kate gathered up the souls that lay at her feet and left the stage open for the whirl-wind dizzy Lonnie Walker. 2009 was a buzzed up year for these guys. They released These Times, Old Times on Chapel Hill Terpsikhore in May and soon earned media darling like attention from local and not so local pubs all of which culminated in the Indy naming These Times, Old Times as one of 2009's top album's of the Triangle. With the local subculture rushing to conclude who Lonnie Walker is, the expectations have often been stacked against them. Their loose around the edges and tight in the middle performance Friday night hinted that they are taller than the stack. Lonnie Walker is starting to believe that they are Lonnie Walker and their live shows are growing taller before our eyes, and theirs.

From unassuming faces in the crowd to radiant mesmerizing sirens in a single step across the threshold of the stage, I've never seen two people change so dramatically from street to spotlight as Melissa Swingle and Laura King do when taking stage as The Moaners. Wearing sun glasses and charisma, Melissa Swingle's matter-of-fact inflection and metered energy charms her starry eyed listeners to a personal level. Playing a down tuned guitar with a slide while feeding a wild animal Fender tube amp, Melissa timelessly glows in the lights of the stage like a memory of her own self being softer, younger, and meaner. If Melissa allows you to take your eyes off of her for a moment you'll fall for Laura King's shoe gaze vulnerability. Quick and mysterious when encountered turning knobs at Nightlight, Laura turns docile and comprehended when walking the kit on stage. For all of the intricacies that seek their stage persona, The Moaners flow with an effortless suave, symbolic of classic rock glory, and substantiated by neofolk importance. --Carrboro Ninja

images

The Moaners

We "saw" Melissa at The Pinhook last Friday night.

Liza Kate

Lonnie Walker

full slideshow (15 images)

Shows This Week

2010-01-20T11:37:00.004-05:00

-poster art by Daniel Snyder

1/21 THR (Secret Pirate Bar ) Oyster Destroyster - for those not privi to OD, this is a swaying and chanting period-costume wearing sing-a-long collective of Durham rockers who perform ship-board work songs from the days of sail. 10 PM

1/21 THR (the Reservoir) Where the Buffalo Roamed, Gray Young, Irata - Where the Buffalo Roamed CD release party: A Wolf In the Works 10 PM

1/21 THR (Broad Street Cafe) Birds and Arrows, Shakermaker, Not Dead Yet- Birds and Arrows are fraking awesome. 10 PM

1/21 THR (Slims) Gross Ghost, Veelee - Lest I forget about Raleigh in the Thursday rock line-up. Gross Ghost is a straight up indy outfit fronted by the dynamic and multi-dimensional what's-his-face. Veelee is the new word for cool in Chapel Hill.

1/22 FRI (Broad Street Cafe) Jon Shain Trio, The Grandsons, The Gravy Boys - This will be the Americana/roots destination for Friday night.

1/22 FRI (Black Flower) Pasadena - This will be the face rock pants-off-dance-off destination for Friday night. 9 PM

I dub this Saturday 1/23/2010 Holy Shit Saturday...FOUR benefit shows...let's walk through this;

1/23 SAT (Cat's Cradle) The Moaners, New Town Drunks, Puritan Rodeo, The Bipolar Bears, Kick The Future, HWYL, Kitty Box and the Johnnys - This is our Hope for Haiti Benefit and the first bands play at 6:00 PM.$10 at the door.

1/23 SAT (Pinhook) Beloved Binge, Trouble, River City Ransom, Up the Down Escalator - Ta Ta to the Ta Ta's Benefit Show, benefiting Durham scene fixture Colin Mauger and the doctor bills. $7-$10, at the door, 10 PM

1/23 SAT (Bull McCabe's) Karaoke for Cy - Don't forget that Cy Rawls Has a Posse, and they are wicked Jedi Karaoke killers. $5 per song which funnels through the Cy Rawls team to the Tisch Brain Cancer Center. Be ready to sing at 8 PM.

1/23 SAT (Duke Coffeehouse) Heart of Glass (Blondie Tribute Band), Princess and the Criminals, Scientific Superstar - This is a benefit show for the Girls Rock Camp Alliance which is the ying to the girl scouts yang. 8 PM.

sneak peak at next week:
Max Indian, Light Pines, Ryan Gustafson 1/29 - Duke Coffee House

The Pneurotics 1/28 - Baily's (this is the beginning of a new music series featuring local bands and micro brews from around the state)

Shows This Week (being observed from a vantage of stealth and shadow)

2010-01-12T16:55:00.003-05:00

-poster art by Dork Flag

1/14 THR (The Cave) Luego - early show, 7:30 PM. Patrick recently announced that Luego is in the studio working on album number two. video of Luego performing on Jake Seaton's Sessions at Studio B

1/14 THR (Pour House) Bobby Lee Rodgers - ex-The Codetalkers front man takes it solo with a geetar. 8 PM.

1/15 FRI (General Store Cafe) The Sinful Savage Tigers - The Tigers hold down The General Store Cafe in Pittsboro with their elegantly vicious blue grass. 8:30 PM

1/15 FRI (The Pinhook) The Moaners, Lonnie Walker - This sow starts at 10 PM (which is Pinhook vernacular for 11 PM) ...you'll want to see Melissa Swingle rock the saw.

1/16 SAT (house show) Pink Flag, River City Ransom - continuing Durham's hip house show circuit, this show will be at 2611 Stuart Dr Durham, NC "The Stately" 8:30 PM

1/16 SAT (The Pinhook) Grappling Hook, Cantwell Gomez and Jordan -CGJ suddenly showing signs. dig that.

Scientific Superstar Doomed Lucky Day CD Release Party

2009-12-17T14:20:00.002-05:00

MarVell Event Center, Durham
December 5, 2009

Paul Gallant's promo words for Battle Rockets were "come see a skinny guy play 50 guitar pedals" which caught me as both hilarious and scrupulously correct. There are only two things in this world that guitar players really care about and one of them is tone. Once slipped into the instrumental only element Corbie Hill has parsed down to with Battle Rockets he may only care about one of those. One look at the regimen of effects and stomp boxes occupying a bastion at stage end gives rise to how it's done. From stretchy ghost-like refrains through easily provoked and marked-by-fire lead riffs traversing a jagged canvas, the Battle Rockets instrumental arrangements aren't building blocks of song they are the evolution of it. Throughout the performance tones and squelches raised forward triggering primal reaction as they reverberated through the room. Listening to the eloquent versus and arrangements of Corbie's vocally oriented rock band Where the Buffalo Roamed explains that Battle Rockets screams in the tongue of stomp boxes by conviction, not by necessity. As Battle Rockets outtro of distortion soaked feedback flickered to neutral Rob Beloved and Elini Binge joined on stage as Beloved Binge.

At once abruptly jarring and directional and then smoothly grinding and meanderingly melodic, Beloved Binge doesn’t just step around on a scale they play hop-scotch upon it. Their paired speak/shout vocals led story time about all sorts of drama and wrapped angular and dissonant intervals of time and rhythm with imagery creating a spaced out sense of balladry. With satirical jabbiness of The Talking Heads and fascinating tension of the Pixies, Beloved Binge's strange phase vocals and beatnik arrangements shouldn't work together but they do and they do so well that the intrigue has tractor beam effectiveness. Apparently also the type of effectiveness that can run The Marvell Event Center bone dry of PBR. By the time the hosts Scientific Superstar began we were sipping on a mélange of micro brews and wine.

Just under the radar of esoteric comes Junko Berglund, Paul Gallant, Thomas DeVries and the incandescent fervor of electronica and exotica they vortex into Scientific Superstar which is complexedly described as the this-world physical incarnation of a fictional band within a comic series they write and publish (which is also titled Scientific Superstar). Curiously unusual or excitingly strange are choices one is faced with in the witness of Scientific Superstar. Residing just under the edge of the flat earth found in the popular music universe, Scientific Superstar's experimental rock contrasts dimensionally with the homogeneous pop music society while simultaneously challenging their best to a dance-off to the death. Perhaps least in uniform is Paul Gallant's full vertical standing drum kit bearing a macédoine arrangement of toms and found objects (such as a terracotta flower pot). Different for the discriminating indy audience maybe, different for a fictional comic book super hero band? Immeasurable, and its uniqueness is the entertainment. --Carrboro Ninja

view their profiles
Scientific Superstar
Beloved Binge
Battle Rockets

images

Scientific Superstar

Beloved Binge

Battle Rockets

Show Review: Benji Hughes

2009-12-16T20:23:00.003-05:00

Local 506, Chapel Hill
December 12, 2009

First things first: Benji Hughes live is not Benji Hughes recorded.

After releasing his debut, double album “A Love Extreme” in 2008 to much critical praise, this Charlotte native’s electro-funk musings about sweet girls in tight tee shirts and the perils of eating too much Ecstasy at a Flaming Lips show almost seemed like a flash in the pan. But beyond the catchy, danceable beats and quick-witted commentary on the modern party scene, Hughes managed to capture a deep-seated sadness that lies just beneath the surface of all great pop songs. And it is this not-so-hidden melancholy, and a full band, that makes a Benji Hughes live show so damn entertaining.

Now don’t get me wrong. This past Saturday night’s show in Chapel Hill was not all ballads and heartbreak – despite the fact that he’s got some good ones (“Waiting For An Invitation” and “All You’ve Got To Do Is Fall In Love” immediately come to mind). No, there were plenty of party anthems (sans the programmed beats) and there was plenty of dancing. At this point I feel obligated to mention that every time I have seen Hughes live, at least one person in the crowd has jumped on stage and danced with him. Saturday night was no exception.

But live, Hughes is true a crooner. He takes the stage in his trademark sunglasses and holds the mic like he’s performing on an early 80’s episode of Soul Train. And he performs every song from his album that you want to hear. And there is guttural banter in between songs. And he chides his band for not jamming out more. And it is great. But even more so, it is fun.

Personally, I have come to enjoy the unreleased material Hughes does live more than the renditions of his album tracks. There’s one where he sings to an unknown female, “You’re a lot like a shooting star but you’re more like a falling rock.” There’s one where he instructs Kenny to “cut me out another line of cocaine.” These are the real jewels of the set. Blunt and beautiful. A calm before the storm. And then it’s back to an uber-danceable tune.

After the show, sitting at the 506 bar chatting with Hughes, I said, “I like the unreleased stuff you’re doing. Are you working on a new album?”

After a moment of thought and a sip of his drink, he responded, “I’m only 34.”

His response made me feel strangely happy. --Tommy Kurosawa

Benji Huges on facespace:

photo credits:Mimi Pneurotic