Solar Temple Suicides The first instrumental element you’ll take real note of in a Solar Temple Suicides song is the bass. It’s not shy, that bass. It’s prominent in the mix: bold, booming, probing, a sweet, mellow groundswell carrying the rest of this Baltimore-based group’s earthenware psychedelic grooves on its muscular back like an...
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spermwhales Spermwhales songs have titles like “Daydreams,” “Dwell Forever,“ and “Surf Out Of Forever” that telegraph the cerebral, blunted atmospheres that Spermwhales’ Brent Grant taps into with little more than a guitar, effects pedals, and an impeccable melodic intuition. His prismatic, hypnotic drones, tonal-pond ripples, and Wavves-esque surf-noise is nothing short of beautiful. Occasionally,...
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Things That Fly Baltimore’s Things That Fly need a superhero movie to soundtrack like sparrows need nests–something hopeful, inspiring, and flashy, teeming with twentysomething angst and hormones and moral prerogatives and slow-motion explosions. Comic-book drama would be a perfect fit for the stirring emo-pop singer/guitarist Jeff Henley, 26, and guitarist Arthur “Paul” Hemlock, 27,...
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Warpaint The guitars of Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman interlocking in sequin-sparkle shimmer or sinuous smolder; Jenny Lee Lindburg’s bass notes pacing thoughtfully at melody’s edge; Stella Mozgawa’s keyboards adding depth and texture to the whole even as her drumming propels it. This is the intoxicating sound of Warpaint , an Los Angeles-based foursome...
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GayBomb By day, Andrew Barranca works as a special educator, assisting children with autism. In his spare time, the Fredrick native (who now resides in Rockville) moonlights as GayBomb, whipping up sonic-slurry shakes–created in part using a card reader Barranca discovered “in the supply closet of my first classroom”–that suggest a hybrid of industrial...
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You're Not As Weird As You Think You Are A week-long, multi-venue festival, a packed-to-the-gills one-night stand, an ambitiously incestuous remix project-qua-baccanal, a 7-inch series, abject silence: there’s no right or wrong way for a record label to celebrate an anniversary. While the compilation is among the most common commemorative expressions, there’s an unfortunate...
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Fred Schneider sounds exhausted. It’s an evening in mid-March, and the party-pop icon is at home in New York City—holding forth about his recent musical exploits and the impetus for tonight’s performance at the American Visionary Arts Museum—and he just seems wiped out, like most mere mortals are at 10 p.m. on an average...
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The first thing you notice about Unsung Stories from Lilly’s Days as a Solar Astronaut is its distinctive packaging, a cryptic collage overlaying a backdrop the color of faded parchment paper: ragged, Ralph Steadman-esque lettering interspersed with distressed typefaces, washed-out snapshots of an ’80s-era sedan and an unidentifiable action figure, aimless doodles, a gray...
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| Image by Chester Given the sulfuric dissonance, clamor, and strife present in White Suns’ noise-punk tumult, it’s hardly shocking that the Brooklyn trio count Sightings among their favorite bands. Performing and recording together, Kevin Barry, Rick Visser, and Dana Matthiessen blaze with a gunfire-stipled, sunspot intensity that befits their handle and recalls, at...
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When we chewed the fat with sonic collagist James “Twig” Harper about his latest compositions recently, the Nautical Almanac co-captain and HereSee co-operator had a great deal to tell us-more than we could cram into the print version of our recent story. In the full-length interview below, Harper clues us in on his unusual...
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In the mid-1990s, Nuclear Power Pants would have been lucky to snag a third-string indie stage gig on selected Lollapalooza dates. In the late-’90s, they might’ve found themselves opening for the Make-Up, Olivia Tremor Control, or Love As Laughter. Today, at the twilight of the penny-pinching ’00s, this daffy, nomadic octet—formed in New York...
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| Image by Takahiro Immamura Listening to Gang Gang Dance often feels like drowning in a flood of mysticism: exotic instrumentation trickling down on synth flutterings and dense, bent percussion of both the electronic and organic persuasions, while frontwoman Lizzie Bougatsos lends the surrounding melee an idiosyncratic voice. At times, she’s fiercely ornamental, doling...
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Baltimore’s Creepy Murdle—bassist Anne Feinstein; her husband, guitarist/snarler Rich Feinstein; and drummer Clay Holland—might be MT6 Records’ most accessible signees yet. Sure, their macro-aggro crunch on debut The Little Things That Kill You comes cloaked a scrim of psychedelic bubblewrap; sure, Feinstein’s clipped, anarchistic dispatches seem to have been recorded via a busted CB...
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Almost as a rule, we don’t expect weavers of mercilessly dark, navel-gazing music to be forthcoming about either their craft or themselves. So we were shocked, during an e-mail exchange with Jasper TX’s Dag Rosenqvist, to find him so voluble an interview subject. Below is the full interview transcript, much of which wouldn’t fit...
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NYC trio Black Dice doesn’t so much make music as it dumpster-dives for sonic refuse, smashes together its findings, and shapes the shards and fragments into disarmingly odd, wobbly sculptures. Listening to albums like Creature Comforts, Beaches and Canyons, or recent dispatch Repo (Paw Tracks) isn’t rock-out-with-your-cock-out gratifying or cathartic; it’s intriguingly puzzling, mysteriously...
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If a pop-techno album ever warranted its own Surgeon General’s warning, Super Animal Brothers III is it. Something along the lines of: “This disc contains high does of sacharrine and obnoxious cuteness, which may trigger diabetic comas in some listeners. Do not ingest more than once in a single 72-hour period.” What Ear Pwr‘s...
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Listening to Washington, D.C./New Jersey trio Sonic Suicide Squad is comparable to watching naturalists attempt to ensnare sharks, cougars, or grizzly bears for scientific or educational purposes. The thrill and thrall are couched in seeing how the capture will play out. Will the struggle be quick and easy, or long, bloody, and visceral? The...
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Nathan Williams’ passport is getting a serious workout these days. February and March found the 22-year old San Diego resident and Wavves nucleus blazing a whirlwind noise-pop path through Europe, hitting Prague, Hamburg, Paris, and Leeds, among other cities. Over the past couple weeks, he’s rocked South By Southwest and issued sophomore disc Wavvves...
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The taut, tense guitars lash out with gut jabs and, with the drums slamming along in time, it’s as though the instruments have been coiled and waiting forever for their chance to strike. Yet now that they’re free to do so, they’re determined to unfurl in as surgical a manner as possible: gray-black polygraph...
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The annals of rock history don’t want for passionately perturbed malcontents who punt from and perch precariously upon piano stools–Tori Amos, Elton John, Alicia Keys, and that dude from OneRepublic immediately leap to mind. Ben Folds is, nonetheless, a special case. As frontman for the egregiously named Ben Folds Five and later as a...
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