Archive for the ‘7 Points’ Category
Los Campesinos – “These Are Listed Buildings” Super 8 Video
October 20, 2009
Hollands- Faces EP
September 10, 2009
Hollands
Faces EP
November 25th 2008
Hollands
Hollands – Coughing Boy
A review of Hollands first EP Faces simply does not require the verbiage of the common critique. If that’s what you want visit their web-site. Granted, a review drenched in metaphor and simile has its purpose—to convey a description of an artistic aesthetic that cannot be truly experienced without an encounter, a close approximation by deference to a literary and poetic image. My first thoughts on Hollands are uncomplicated and antique in their creativity. I believe that by deferring the experience of Hollands’ music to memories of our bucolic summer evenings, and self reflective and still mornings we are missing an opportunity to tell it like it is. Save the gobbledygook; save the bullshit.
Hollands is a wide ranging roots rock band that draws heavily from early 70’s classic rock and country. The band has the pop sensibility of Rick Springfield, the poeticism of The National, and the sincerity of Wilco. The band is simply excellent. John-Paul Norpoth plays guitar and sings, sometimes with the awesome discipline of CSN&Y, and sometimes with the raucous croon of Uncle Sticky. In this respect they’d get on exceedingly well with the likes of the Whiskey Go Gos. The energy is strong and the music well written. Though Faces is a mere 5 songs long, it covers a lot of ground. Hollands release their 2nd EP this fall. Having begun from such a sturdy, straightforward debut, Hollands is destined for good things, great times, and increased attention.
7/9
-FF
http://www.myspace.com/hollandsss
http://www.hollandsss.com/Wilcommen%20friendos.html
Tour
Sat Sep 12 2009 – 6:00 PM Boulder Coffee Company – B…Rochester, NY
Sat Sep 12 2009 – 8:00 PM Lovin’ Cup Rochester, NY Age
Fri Sep 25 2009 – 9:00 PM Nines Ithaca, NY
Sat Sep 26 2009 – 8:00 PM Lovin’ Cup Rochester, NY
Tue Oct 13 2009 – 8:00 PM Mother EP Drop Drop! New York, NY
Brian E- Yellow Light District
June 25, 2009
Brian E
Yellow Light District
Record Label Records
July 15th 2009
“Don’t Stop—Just Slow Down”
This motto on the cover of Brian Ellis’ newest project speaks volumes. Yellow Light District, due to be released as a limited series of 500 individually numbered 12” vinyl in July, is vintage sonic pornography for those who get a hard-on when they listen to the likes of the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack, or are obsessed with 1988’s Bloodsport…err anything Jean-Claude Van Damme. This record is no conservative, veiled throwback; it is a neon headband inspired synth-feast.
I listened to the LP while jogging through industrial Bushwick and Williamsburg. I quickly transformed into Little Mac training for my final bout with Mike Tyson in NES’ Punch-Out. Yellow Light District’s most penetrating hook is its style; It isn’t intellectual—it isn’t professorial—it is its own weird science. The first track, Theme, flawlessly begins the record with rolling waves of soft synth melodies that eventually starburst into a dance floor beat, textured with free form keyboards. As every track passes, Mr. E never lets up, always reintroducing the listener to an era some wish was long forgotten. But like the venerable Dov Charney seems to believe, some things don’t die for a reason, and there should always be those creatives out there to remind us why.
7/9
-FF
http://www.myspace.com/technoirdisco
http://www.recordlabelrecords.org/
Other Music
Tech Noir
Beast Beats EP
Sinistyle Video Below!
Three Songwriters Survive Awful Venue
May 24, 2009
Brad Hoshaw
Midwest Dilemma
Peasant
The Living Room
May 20th 2009
The miserable venue—cynically named The Living Room*—was cold and covered with stickers and fliers advertising upcoming and past shows. Songwriter Justin Lamoureux of Midwest Dilemma sat in the back corner, humbly offering his merchandise while Brad Hoshaw completed his brief sound check. Hoshaw, a folk singer from Omaha, sang songs that recounted low life moments and hurtful memories. It isn’t that these songs were uncomplicated because they were thoughtless or uninteresting; they were uncomplicated because they dealt with the “oh fuck” moments of every individual who has drank in bars too long and made bad decisions with clouded and deluded minds. Some may say these states of bar stool savagery are rooted in some inner turmoil born in childhood and thus are necessarily complicated, but Hoshaw isn’t a damn psychologist. He has a formidable voice and a sharp stage personality. While many might criticize his attachment to the stagnant genre of whiskey pickled folk music, he could just as easily explain that this music has existed forever and will continue to exist as long as there are local watering holes willing to cater to the legions of eager drinkers roaming the mother-fucking world. Oh and that Blue Bicycle song was so damn cute.
Justin Lamoureux took stage, traveling to New York under his pseudonym Midwest Dilemma. He explained to the folks listening that he often feels conflicted when playing the City. He comes here wide eyed and wondrous, but he sees people move through New York without awe or interest. Do they know where they live? Is he supposed to expend every ounce of energy and soul, playing in a city where people are despondent and unimpressible? Should he sing his guts out for a few navel gazers? The thing is, Mr. Lamoureux is good enough that he can ask these questions. He can have these expectations. His record Timelines & Tragedies is simply incredible. Despite all his ambivalences, Lamoureux picked up his high-action, nylon acoustic guitar and told his family’s stories with piercing emotional expenditure. His lack of accompaniment did not detract from the songs, which are typically performed by a multitude of musicians. This is not to say that the 22 other musicians heard on Timelines & Tragedies are unnecessary or superfluous, rather simply that the heart of Midwest Dilemma can be defined by the narrative told by Lamoureux. The stories are without question prime.
Peasant began his set without so much as a peep of a sound check. For those who have not been hip enough to know who Peasant is, take some time and do yourself a damn favor. Go out and buy, steal—whatever—Peasant’s latest release On the Ground. As Frederick Foxtrott has been mentioning for nearly two years, Peasant, aka Damien DeRose, has a voice that is as tender and contemplative as they come. He simply began his set performing his material chronologically, singing some old dusty songs. Peasant’s stage presence continues to be unassuming. Another Brooklyn musician sitting in the audience mentioned to me that he couldn’t believe DeRose’s voice was coming out of his body. The dude’s voice is flawless. His set of love damaged ballads was a great match up with the other voices and stories in the night’s line-up. Musically, the night was well worth the trip to the Lower East Side.
7/9
-FF
http://www.myspace.com/bradhoshaw
http://www.myspace.com/midwestdilemma
http://www.myspace.com/peasant
* The Living Room is the worst fucking venue in NYC. Okay this may be a bit of hyperbole at work, but here is what you need to know about this shit hole. The shows are free, but the catch is that every audience member has to buy one drink every set in order to stay in the venue. Now I have to say, I am not one to go to a show and lay off the sauce, but for fuck’s sake! My 5’4” girl had a beer and wasn’t exactly ready for a second when the waitress approached. She asked what she could bring Hills, who naturally declined. Hills was then informed that she’d have to leave. I had drank 2 pints during the last set, you would think that the boyish bodied waitress would have had enough brains to put this all together. So I kindly ordered two more beers, both of which I drank. This fucking bar is so insecure about their ability to sell alcohol that they mandate a drinking schedule to their guests. I suppose Hills should have had to drink 5 pints in 3 ½ hours. I count the days until The Living Room goes out of business.
Kinase Moves the Audio- After Silence Part 1
April 25, 2009
Kinase Moves the Audio
After Silence Part 1
December 24th 2008
Unsigned
Kinsase Moves the Audio- The Flawless Veil
Scientific moments, measured and compartmentalized, structure the expansive debut EP from Lansing Michigan’s Kinase Moves the Audio titled After silence Part 1. However, the aesthetic projected out of that structure is proto-science; it is alchemy in the sense that the band transforms regulated units of time and sound into something else, something that reaches beyond its natural parameters. The ubiquitous Ryan T. Johnson, producer of the EP, writer of much of the music, and band member, has taken up a project of ambiguity. Perhaps stemming from his academic interest in the sexual dimorphism of the amygdala, Kinase Moves the Audio transverses the categories of masculine and feminine. They are at times brooding, while other times deeply melodic. The music shuttles and negotiates the boundaries between mechanistic synthetics and the natural elements of Afro-Latin rhythms, which are themselves an instantiation of music as mestizo. Even the track titles reflect an interest in hybridity. Anthrobotic, Idiology, and A Flawless Veil, are all titles that imply subtraction, compromise, and impurity.
“Fancy Cars and wine and women. Flashy clothes and gold and fashion. Now you sport a freshly sculpted face. Now you stand out in a crowd.”
The music is a garden bed expressing the pollination of an unmentionable number of influences from Maynard James Keenan to Bowie’s short introduction to Diamond Dogs. John Gapp’s vocals are impressive, exuding a noir romanticism and Aristotelian condescension. Modulated effects are woven through a mesh of organic drums and accenting Brass instruments. The orchestration skillfully assembles layer over layer without digressing into a cacophonous annoyance. This skill is a product of exceptional recording and production, as well as the ability of the numerous musicians to coalesce. Kinase Moves the Audio takes disparate parts and makes them one. The energy accumulated and exploded throughout this process is epic.
While it might be true that After Silence is conceptualized and anchored by a specific objective, the self-proclaimed genre that Kinase Moves the Audio operates within allows for an exceedingly large range of sounds. Mod prog—can we move on to post prog yet?—is a tricky genre to attach one’s self to. As a simple label it does little to describe the mode of music production, except to say that the songs are probably long, experiential, and mathematical in terms of composition. After Silence, while containing these components, is an EP that does not commit the foul sins of pretension and hyper-convolution. The aside comment being that prog often misunderstands the nature of music; it is not a collection of notes and time signatures; complication alone is not art. It should also not be contrived, having artificial meaning clumsily masking a clearly blank expression. Kinase Moves the Audio understands this and have sought to produce an opus that stands monolithically unified. The music is the album art.
7/9
-FF
http://www.myspace.com/kinasemovestheaudio2http://www.kinasemovestheaudio.com
Tour
May 1st @ The Small Planet in East Lansing, MI
May 22nd @Basement 414 in Lansing, MI
June 12th @ Gone Wired Café in Lansing, MI
Keeping Tabs…
January 27, 2009
Darla Farmer and Wintersleep are starting 2009 with bright proclamations.This week Wintersleep are #26 on the College Music Journal’s Top 200 chart. They released Welcome to the Night Sky last November and have toured with a number of great acts including Wolf Parade. Their mix of calculated, guitar driven rock gives Canada a good name. They left us wondering, what is in their water… just how many bands can Canada export? They are now touring their homeland and will zip over to Europe February 10th. They will be back in the US soon enough though, and we’ll be happy to welcome them.
Darla Farmer, after releasing their 2008 debut Rewiring the Electric Forest on Paper Garden Records, and touring with a slew of notable artists, has landed a spot on NPR’s All Things Considered. The spot is sure to expose their circus sideshow to millions. They are also rereleasing last year’s debut on February 17th. Check out both of these fine bands and your ears will be kindly rewarded.
Wintersleep- Welcome to the Night Sky Review
Darla Farmer- Rewiring the Electric Forest Review
-FF
Matt Mays & El Torpedo- Terminal Romance
October 7, 2008
Matt Mays & El Torpedo
Terminal Romance
September 30th 2008
Sonic Records
What is going on in Nova Scotia? To borrow a phrase from a dear friend, “What the fuck’s in that water?” Perhaps we as children of the 70’s and 80’s have some strange Freudian obsession that lingers late into adulthood. We want to destroy our proverbial fathers and godfathers, not to dispose of everything that they stand for, but to take their place in the hard fought legacy of rock and roll. This is the difference between acts that sound in style like their forbearers and those that so completely embody those that have come before them that they simply aren’t recognizable as part of our time. When a band of this caliber is discovered your affinity for them is involuntary. Innovators like John Cougar and Rick Springfield drew on trend heavy subcultures to create the most perfect pop radio rock songs. Matt Mays & El Torpedo are so stylistically imbued with this same project that it is difficult to claim mere mimicry. The band recorded in England with Chris Tsangarides, a producer who has had experience channeling pop rock in its greatest days. Having produced for Thin Lizzy, Tsangarides is sure to have been shuttled back by their performance.
Terminal Romance is kids living in the city, looking at the lights, riding downtown with nothing but adventure in their hearts and perhaps a touch of coke in their nose. It is big guitars and youthful melodies that together sing celebratory anthems to the night. It is ¾ sleeves and cut off jeans. I mean com’on, this guy owns a fucking DeLorean! Or at least he drives one in the video for Tall Trees, easily one of the album’s best cuts. Digital Eyes and the record’s title track cement Matt May & El Torpedo as visionary time travelers—faster than 85mph and we are back to the future. This ain’t no costume party—this ain’t no remake.
Like any pop-rock anthem of any era, the lyrics, while invocative, aren’t exactly fine art. The words aren’t completely vacuous in that Sarah Palin sort of way, but it’s fair to say the songs rely more on their pop appeal and accessibility than deep rooted meaning. It is incredibly difficult to write a song about loving someone until the end of time without coming off as a complete tool bag. Terminal Romance figures out that it isn’t always the words that matter— it’s the alcohol content. Matt Mays & El Torpedo have put together an entirely entertaining record worth every moment that we are shuttled into our former selves. They give us the ability to see the modern city through a different lens, one that frames it as a playground for the rebel, for the lover, and for those unsatisfied by the quiet streets, dim lights, and slow nights of small towns.
-FF
http://www.mattmays.com
http://www.myspace.com/mattmayseltorpedo
Other Music
Matt Mays- 2002
Matt Mays & El Torpedo- 2005
When the Angels Make Contact- 2006
Tour
Oct. 1 Middle East Upstairs Cambridge, MA
Oct. 2 Jammin Java Vienna, VA
Oct. 3 Piano’s Bar New York, NY
Oct. 7 M Room Philadelphia, PA
Oct. 9 Club Cafe Pittsburgh, PA
Oct. 10 Beat Kitchen Chicago, IL
Oct. 11 First Avenue Minneapolis, MN
Oct. 15 Garrick Centre Winnipeg, MB
Oct. 16 Odeon Events Centre Saskatoon, SK
Oct. 17 Dog House Rocks Medicine Hat, AB
Oct. 18 Edmonton Events Centre Edmonton, AB
Oct. 21 B.J.’s Grande Prairie, AB
Oct. 22 Blue Grotto Kamloops, BC
Oct. 23 Queens Hotel Nanaimo, BC
Oct. 24 Sugar Nightclub Victoria, BC
Oct. 25 Commodore Ballroom Vancouver, BC
Oct. 28 Red Deer Memorial Centre Red Deer, AB
Oct. 29 Flames Central Calgary, AB
Oct. 30 Pump Roadhouse Regina, SK
Nov. 1 The Outpost Thunder Bay, ON
Nov. 4 Barrymore’s Music Hall Ottawa, ON
Nov. 5 Barrymore’s Music Hall Ottawa, ON
Nov. 6 Phoenix Concert Theatre Toronto, ON
Nov. 8 The Casbah Hamilton, ON
Nov. 11 Element Night Club Kitchener, ON
Nov. 12 The Ale House Kingston, ON
Nov. 13 Cowboy’s Ranch London, ON
Nov. 14 Les Saints Montreal, QC
Nov. 15 Chez Dagobert Quebec City, QC
Nov. 28 Cunard Centre Halifax, NS
Nov. 29 UNB SUB Fredericton, NB
Midwest Dilemma- Timelines & Tragedies
October 4, 2008
Midwest Dilemma
Timelines & Tragedies
May 20th 2008
Self Released
Maybe, just maybe, the cooption of music that has largely flown under the radar for the better part of the last decade by soulless corporations can be avoided. The Billboard oriented marketing machines are systematically being dispossessed of their tastemaking power. Major labels, when they can acquire them, harvest artists who have already established a national following from their independent releases. Fortunately for independent artists, a major label contract is no longer seen as always the optimal circumstance for national exposure, sustained industry influence, and market representation. This enervation of the gate keepers has fostered resistance against artistic compromise in nearly all sectors of the music industry. It is evidenced by the emergence of successfully branded indie labels such as Kill Rockstars, Matador, Jagjaguwar, and Saddle Creek; it is evidenced by the successful dislocation of goliath music makers such Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails from their respective and restrictive major label bonds; it is even evidenced by interlabel dealings such as Wilco’s refusal to accommodate Reprise’s critical observations of their seminal release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which led to their auspicious migration to Nonesuch, a label that ironically along with Reprise are both subsidiaries of the major conglomerate Warner Bros. Records.
Through the democratizing power of the internet, and an increasingly ability for local communities of artists to obtain national exposure, we are beginning to see a number of bands release music independent of any label at all. They are the “self-released” categories of burgeoning blogs everywhere (I love me). Even though their trajectory might lead many bands to any number of market deals, their injection into large scale networks of critical discourse through modest industry connections has clearly signal a shift in the fundamental paradigm of artist ascendancy, and this change it seems will be long lasting and far reaching.
From Omaha, Nebraska Midwest Dilemma has caught my attention with their densely organic and texturally rich debut Timelines & Tragedies. While consisting of as much as 10 core members, Midwest Dilemma recorded in bloom with 23 musicians and vocalists, an indication of the ambitious and highly masterful orchestration of the project. As their name implies Midwest Dilemma’s endeavor is steeped in folksy Americana. It not only seeks to lyrically reconstruct the narrative of songwriter Justin Lamoureux’s family as they traveled from Montreal, Canada to Nebraska in the 19th century, but it also serves to define a musical tradition whose flair and flavor has definite regional roots. The Midwest is an incredibly rich landscape that is colored by the lived experiences of both its colonized and marginalized pre-European inhabitants and the various pioneers and traders that eventually came to form the towns and cities that today spot the vast plains, prairies, and bluffs from Wyoming to Ohio. The resulting constructed music culture is as distinct as the Southern-Gothic genre explored by artists like Iron & Wine and Phosphorescent.
Timelines & Tragedies is a string heavy odyssey that incorporates woodwinds and orchestral percussion to accentuate its epic recollection of the Lamoureux family’s journey. Using stories passed from generation to generation through old letters and family folklore, Lamouroux and company have produced an ethnographic testimonial. The record is more than episodic; it is a beautiful and memorizing patchwork of individual characters that in their juxtaposition recount a shared history of the Midwest. The themes, while specifically engrossed in a particular family’s past, speak as much about how we reflect on all stories of exodus. Timelines & Tragedies does an extraordinary job of telling the immigrant’s story, one that distills the shared experience of severed roots and the dismembering and intimidating shift out of the safe boundaries of home into an uncertain future. Each song moves through time toward the present, allowing for each successive generation to contextualize current predicaments with the preceding memory of past struggle. Timelines & Tragedies is a genealogy; it is thick, articulate, and captivating.
As far as Midwest Dilemma’s place in establishing their own relevance beyond the role storytellers, I applaud their emergence as a sign of the times. With their impending tour toward New York City this fall, I look forward to catching a show. I often wonder when this flood of independence might subside, leaving only the most contrived and commercially viable bands to suffer the dictates of the Billboard hierarchy. Midwest Dilemma gives me hope that we have entered a new age of production, one that like the band’s own inspiration, relies on local communities and personal relationships to direct ascendancy. Timelines & Tragedies is a debut produced with extraordinary talent and ambition, the limits of which may only be bound by the degree of Midwest Dilemma’s interest in telling their story.
-FF
http://www.midwestdilemma.com/
http://www.myspace.com/midwestdilemma
Related Sounds
Decemberists
Bright Eyes
Beirut
Tour
10/17 – Omaha, NE @ PS Collective – 10pm
10/18– Ames, IA @ Ames Progressive Office – 7pm
10/19 – Sheboygan, WI @ Paradigm – 8pm
10/20 – Louisville, KY @ The Space at 6th and Oak – 8pm
10/22 – Muncie, IN @ Village Green Records – 7pm
10/23 – Philadelphia, PA @ Green Line Café – 7pm
10/24 – New York, NY @ Café Vivaldi – 8pm
10/25 – Biddeford, ME @ Hogfarm Studios – 8pm
10/26 – Cambridge (Boston), MA @ Lily Pad – 7pm
10/27 – New York, NY @ The Living Room – 7pm
10/28 – Hamden, CT @ The Space – 8pm
10/29 – Montpelier, VT @ Langdon Street Café – 8pm
10/30 – Buffalo, NY @ Bon Vivant – 8pm
10/31 – Cleveland, OH @ Barking Spider Tavern – 8pm
11/1 – Chicago, IL @ Red Line Tap – 8pm
11/2 – Des Moines, IA @ Vaudeville Mews – 10pm
Oh My God- Fools Want Noise
September 10, 2008
Oh My God
Fools Want Noise
October 14th 2008
Split Red Records
Oh My God- Facewash
Oh My God- Houston
While I have loved many bands over the years, there have only been few that I really give a shit about. Would you believe it, Chicago’s Oh My God is one of them. I first met Bish, Ig, and Billy many, many years ago when they played Duffy’s Tavern back in Nebraska. I had seen them a few times prior and was very impressed with their performance. My sister also happened to be in town from Chicago and I wanted to take her to a great show at my favorite dingy bar. They did not disappoint.
Rumors circulated that there would be an afterhours party with the band. Memory from that night being hazy, I can’t exactly remember how I scored the address, but I later found myself with my sister and a friend parked in a gravel lot outside a big house in the country. There didn’t seem to be anyone around and our first instinct was to scram, but the van was there and I was determined to meet these freakishly performative people. I don’t remember much about the night save the phrase “flying fish farm”, a bottle of Makers Mark, absolutely delicious vegan lasagna, Ig’s massive hair, and the extremely kind company of Ig and Billy as we sat around a living room table discussing who knows what. My sister, my friend, and I were thrilled to have imposed on their late night festivity.
Later, when booking a show at a venue in Lincoln named Knickerbockers, I learned that Oh My God was on tour again and that my band was to open for them. This had my gut in knots. There was certainly no way we were going to compare. But we suffered through it, knowing what was to take place on the same stage only moments after our breakdown. It was a blissful evening, regardless of the sad circumstance of less than capacity attendance. Eventually I moved to Chicago where I saw them at the Double Door for their tour’s homecoming. This time I brought my cousin and a few friends. They were equally impressed with the band’s visceral performance.
Oh My God is aggressively eccentric. You haven’t ever seen a scissor kick until you’ve seen Billy fling his body around the stage. To give you any idea of their antics, Billy often begins shows dressed as a clown or plays the show in a kimono, or a clown in a kimono. As the show progresses he loses an article of clothing here and there, until he ends up in his skivvies, sweat run makeup, and a white tee-shirt that has some handwritten social critique such as “legalize prostitution” printed across the chest.
I always liked Oh My God’s combination of instruments. Their songs are structured around the drums, bass, and organ. The drums are often schizophrenic, the bass is distorted and fuzzed to excess, and the organ is tweaked beyond recognition. Since those days in Chicago and Nebraska, they have added guitar to the amalgamation. Tragically, while on the road in Ohio during a recent tour in 2007, a car collided with their van head on. Every member received terrible injuries. Billy shattered a kneecap, cracked a few vertebrae, and broke three ribs. Bish broke his left wrist and Ig broke his right. Matt, playing guitar on tour, broke his tibia, nose, and thumb. To be honest, I thought the band was through. It is extremely difficult to tour year in and out, record after record, only to be forced to postpone an upcoming record release and take a year off for physical therapy, psychologically to start again. I can only imagine the difficulties they encountered. I wished them the best in a dire situation.
So imagine my surprise when Frederick Foxtrott received a copy of their new record for review. The triumph of this band only underscores their tenacity and energy. While I have always said that Oh My God’s live show never quite translates onto plastic, their newest effort Fools Want Noise comes closest to capturing the frenetic display on stage, although I will always have a place in my heart for Interrogations & Confessions. New to the band are drummer Dathan DeVore and guitarist Anthony Gravino. While I have not witnessed Oh My God play in their current incarnation, I assume they will have all the excess that my memory reports.
Fools Want Noise continues Oh My God’s irreverent tradition. Billy’s voice is steeped in rhythm and blues, imbuing the rugged bass lines and industrial organ with hooks and catchy phrases that snare even the most indifferent of listeners. The melodies were forged in a popcentric factory. Oh My God is a candy coated cog. Though this combination makes for an unlikely surfacing into the mainstream, make no mistake, Fools Want Noise is infectious. Oh My God is an indulgent, intense and socially seditious band.
Every track on this record attracts the listener as much as it challenges them. Billy exudes a libertine persona that shuns social standards with confrontational words. They don’t keep safe any particular agenda; they prescribe an abandonment of all extremes, all the while shanking the status quo. Even in some of their contradiction the band seeks beauty. Billy’s soliciting eyebrows and cocky form sing songs about failure, vulnerability, and tragic love. Oh My God’s words are provocative in that they judge against judgment, while at the same time projecting themselves as iconoclasts seeking to deliberately break from the cagey grip of modern expectations. This allows some of the more saccharine elements of Oh My God’s music to be enjoyed in an abnormal context instead from the inhibiting and trite perspective of the masses.
It is nice to see you back. Catch you in NYC.
-FF
http://www.ohmygodmusic.com
http://www.myspace.com/ohmygod
Other Music
Oh My God EP- 2000
Action!- 2002
Interrogations & Confessions- 2003
You’re Too Straight to Love Me- 2004
Tour
Sept 18, 2008 Founders Brewery Grand Rapids, MI
Sept 19, 2008 The Loading Dock Traverse City, MI
Sept 20, 2008 DIY Street Fair Ferndale, MI
Sept 20, 2008 The Belmont Hamtramck, MI
Sept 25, 2008 Midpoint Music Cincinnati, OH
Sept 26, 2008 (Scene) Metrospace Lansing, MI
Sept 26, 2008 Mac’s Bar Lansing, MI
Sept 27, 2008 Beauty & the Beat Flint, MI
Sept 28, 2008 Allegheny College Meadville, PA
Sept 29, 2008 Smog @ Bard Annondale On Hudson, NY
Sept 30, 2008 Daniel Street Club Milford, CT
Oct 01, 2008 Pianos York, NY
Oct 02, 2008 Mohawk Place Buffalo, NY
Oct 03, 2008 Casa Cantina Athens, OH
Oct 04, 2008 Howard’s Club H Bowling Green, OH
Oct 10, 2008 Doug’s Rockhouse Aurora, IL
Oct 11, 2008 Subterranean Chicago, IL
Oct 16, 2008 The House Dekalb, IL
Oct 17, 2008 Triple Rock Minneapolis, MN
Oct 18, 2008 Cactus Club Milwaukee, WI
Oct 23, 2008 Cowboy Monkey Champaign, IL
Oct 24, 2008 Bluebird St. Louis, MO
Oct 25, 2008 Record Bar Kansas City, MO
Oct 26, 2008 Duffy’s Lincoln, NE
Oct 27, TBA Pittsburg, KS
Oct 28, 2008 Hailey’s Denton, TX
Oct 29, 2008 Beerland Austin, TX
Oct 30, 2008 TBA Paso, TX
Oct 31, 2008 Hotel Congress Tucson, AZ
Nov 01, 2008 Modified Arts Phoenix, AZ
Nov 02, 2008 The Mint Los Angeles, CA
Nov 03, 2008 Bottom of the Hill San Francisco, CA
Nov 05, 2008 TBA Rapid City, SD
Nov 06, 2008 Nutty’s North Sioux Falls, SD
Nov 07, 2008 Maya Jane’s Vermillion, SD
Nov 08, 2008 Maintenance Shop Ames, IA
Tom Schraeder- Lying Through Dinner
August 22, 2008
Tom Schraeder
Lying Through Dinner EP
September 6th 2008
En Prise Entertainment
After missing his flight out of Austin after playing SXSW music marathon, Chicago’s Tom Schraeder made a deliberate decision to approach his next project with a synergistic attention to detail. His stay in Texas was serendipitous,
“It’s clichéd, but everything really does happen for a reason; I couldn’t tell you what pulled me to stay in Austin with two changes of clothes, a guitar, and nowhere to sleep.”
Tom’s time absorbing his environment produced Lying Through Dinner, a collection of intimate perspectives voiced with care, projecting the short lived narratives beyond the confines of a single song. Rather, each track seeks to exist in tandem with the next, so that each song serves the greater purpose of the record. Indeed, every song is a rebuttal of vanity and narcissism.
Even though his stay was unplanned, Schraeder’s experience instilled a sense of determination that served as an effective catalyst for his renewed creativity. He slept everywhere from floors, to couches, and even a homeless shelter. Speaking of how his journey contributed to this project, Schraeder says,
“I’m not saying I’d choose to spend the night in a shelter again, but something about the vagabond nature of the experience made this project happen with ease. We went from demo to mastered record in three weeks.”
The record opens with Needle Will Bite, a short and simple track that appeals to one of the most basic of internal monologs. The point of it all, what sticks in the brain, is the line “Something’s gotta give…” This is a moment that everyone has been through, and the song’s elevated tempo is perfect for the lyrics. The song quickly identifies itself with the listener and after only a few seconds makes clear that it speaks for the audience. People sing along to songs and memorize every word so that when they sing them, it is as natural as if they had written the words themselves. Schraeder should be proud; there is a certain beauty in being the guy who wrote the song that poor slobs across America sing at karaoke bars, wasted out of their gourd.
The metaphorical theme of the album’s next track, Guadeloupe Cries, forms the song’s backbone. Guadeloupe at once represents the pre-European peoples of Mexico, but she also represents the holy virgin of Christianity. She is a hybrid of an old world and a new one. She is the liminal space that exists betwixt and between. We imagine a familiar hotel room that has become somewhat lonely. We watch it rain out the window, as if Guadeloupe’s tears lament worldly events, what has been and what is to come.
Musically the record represents tradition and heritage, but in nearly every song experimentation is present. The folk, country-boy croon is at times accented with cavernous feedback, and in the case of Sorry My Dear, the distant and mournful wail of a magnetized guitar. The juxtaposition of the saloon–tuned piano and the fluctuating noise creates a beautiful atmosphere in which words are cradled.
In contrast, Don’t Look Back seems to be Schraeder’s shot at writing a standard, complete with a horn pick-up and a key change. The song says “move on, get over it, shake it off,” The song recovers from the melancholy and depth of the first few tracks, to turn the record face forward. This is a bar song. Not in the sense of alcohol drowned sorrows, but in that it celebrates that feeling you get when you realize the meaning of present and future tense. The past becomes irrelevant. The audience then becomes surrounded with possibility. The suffocating empty room becomes thrown into the social, recognition that a wider world awaits us.
Lying Through Dinner was also made possible by a number of local Austin musicians. While the heart of the record is clearly derived from Tom Schraeder, the rich Texan heritage that was brought to the table certainly added to the already excellent song writing. The challenge for Schraeder was not only to follow up to 2007’s release The Door, the Gutter, the Grave with a record as equally honest and soul soaked, but to also to step up the presence of a defined artisanship. Tom Shraeder has succeeded in this endeavor with Lying Through Dinner.
-FF
http://www.myspace.com/tomschraeder
http://tomschraeder.blogspot.com/
Other Music
The Door, the Gutter, the Grave- 2007
See CMJ Music Review October 2007
