Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Dude, I Was There! (Quiet Hounds)


Here's an IndieATL video directed by Matt Rowles of Quiet Hounds' performance at The Goat Farm before a crowd of about 800.  Quiet Hounds constructed the staging, lights, sound and artwork for this event in honor of the soldiers who died at Andersonville prison in 1864.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside


In the two years since we saw Ms. Ford and company play Pioneer Courthouse Square during MFNW, the brassy, bluesy quartet put out a great debut album, played Letterman, and blew up in France, and—if the barroom-brawlin’ promo video for its second effort is any indication—got even tougher in the process.





Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside will be playing Smith's Olde Bar in Atlanta, Georgia on Monday, March 18 with Thao & The Get Down Stay Down 

Monday, January 14, 2013

Thao & The Get Down Stay Down's Common Cause


Oh, look. We The Common [For Valerie Bolden], a single from the new Thao & The Get Down Stay Down album We The Common, has been released, following the prior preview of the song Holy Roller.  The album comes out February 5, and pre-orders via The Ribbon Mart will receive a bonus limited edition 7" titled We The Covers featuring Thao & The Get Down Stay Down covering Melanie's Brand New Key and The Troggs' With a Girl Like You.

This The Making Of. . .  video is one of the funniest things I've seen, and beats about any episode of Portlandia at whatever it is that Portlandia's doing.



Thao & The Get Down Stay Down will perform on March 18 at Atlanta's Smith's Olde Bar, with Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside opening.  A must-see show.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Pillowfight

Emily Wells at 529, October 17, 2012

Oh, look.  Our multi-instrumentalist girlfriend Emily Wells has formed a new band called Pillowfight with hip-hop producer Dan the Automator, and has released a single Used To Think. Another track, Get Your Shit Together, is streaming at their Soundcloud site.





We last saw Emily Wells opening for Dark Dark Dark (featuring Walt McClements) at 529 back during Rocktober.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Prince Rama


Prince Rama at Farm 255, Athens, GA, Dec. 4, 2011

Taraka and Nimai Larson, the sisters behind the band Prince Rama, have a song on their latest album entitled Welcome to the Now Age. What is not well known is that the Now Age is more than a song, it's a philosophy.
"The Now Age cannot be named, for once named, it becomes part of a fixed moment in time, and is thus lost.  It is not to be confused with the New Age, because there is nothing new about it.  It is, always was, and always will be."
Taraka recently gave a lecture at the Brooklyn Museum on this philosophy, which began with a discussion on the devolution of the cross and the triangle into kitsch (kitsch being a symbol divorced from its original historical context) and continued onto an examination of the mirrorball as panopticon ("the closest thing the Now Age has to a deity" as it does not create but only reflects) and Now Age aesthetics, which seek to embrace the potential of beauty through the rejection of actual beauty. 

It would be hard to imagine Taraka simply speaking in front of an audience for an hour, and the lecture did not disappoint.  It included dancing, face paint, and a lot of glitter.




Not to let Taraka do all of the explaining, here's an amusing little essay written by Nimai.




Friday, January 11, 2013

More Low (Though Not Lower)


Oh. look.  Minneapolis Mormons Low have released Just Make It Stop, the first single from their forthcoming album, the Jeff Tweedy-produced The Invisible Way.  The song is reportedly but one of five songs with lead vocals by Mimi.



Low are touring in support of the album, but are not coming anywhere even near the American South.  However, they will be playing Portland's Mississippi Studios on Friday, April 5.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Iron Jayne, Lonesome Leash, Spirit Temple at 529, January 9, 2013



The Winter Doldrums have finally passed and the 2013 concert season has kicked off with as fine a show as one could hope for a season opener.  The show was held in East Atlanta Village's 529, which for some reason has replaced the wall that had been torn down during the Om/Daniel Higgs show.  I was anxious to see how the club would expand into the new space, but was surprised to instead see the old wall back up.

The evening's headliner was new Atlanta band Iron Jayne, but the star of the evening was Lonesome Leash, the solo project of Dark Dark Dark's Walt McClements.  Spirit Temple opened with a revelatory set, and Atlanta's Cousin Dan provided retro DJ sets as "Moreland Brando" between each act (I hadn't heard Patty Smith's Gloria in years, and I especially enjoyed his segue from Bowie's Fame to Destroyer's Kaputt).

The opener was Atlanta's Spirit Temple, Walter Fox's very enjoyable and interesting one-man band.  Performing in silhouette behind a screen, he looped guitar, recorder, and percussion to build beautiful sonic soundscapes.  


While he played, various abstract video images were projected onto the screen, apparently by members of Atlanta electronic duo Featureless Ghost.  That's Emily Kempf (see below) in front of the screen in the picture above.  

Spirit Temple sounded at times like Frippertronic-period Robert Fripp, and at other times a little like Owen Pallett.  Near the end of the set, when he overlayed bells, drums, and flute over a bass-like guitar line, he  even evoked the spirit of Pharaoh Sander's Upper Egypt.



Walt McClements' Lonesome Leash is another, slightly more traditional, one-man band. Walt primarily sings and plays accordion, while simultaneously playing a small drum kit and occasionally adding flourishes of trumpet.  The resulting output has a somewhat gypsy-flavored, Slavic sound, and Walt's songs generally build up in intensity to an emotional climax before cooling back off to the conclusion, much like a jazz soloist. A native of New Orleans, McClements brings some of the Crescent City's eclecticism to Lonesome Leash's music.

 

His set included the rousing Feeding Frenzy as the second song in his set, and closed with Ghosts, played without the drum machine he usually uses for the song, as it reportedly broke during his recent performance with Franz Nicolay at Brooklyn's The Sycamore.  Undaunted, he still managed a terrific and emotive performance which was well received by the appreciative audience.





Lonesome Leash was the reason I came to this show (that and nearly two months of Winter Doldrums), but the evening had still more in store for us. The evening's headliner was Emily Kempf's new band, Iron Jayne. Kempf, formerly of Atlanta's The Back Pockets, has stripped away not only the theatrics and audience participation of The Back Pockets, but also turned away from the freak-folk sound that characterized the former art-damaged band for a more straight-forward pop rock. Gone are the violins and horns and other odd instruments, and in their place the band consists of Kempf on keyboards, Garrett Goss on drums, Ryan Odom on guitar, and Chad  LeBlanc on bass.  Kempf's vocals are still simultaneously quirky and appealing, especially when she came out from behind the keyboards and sang at the front of the stage.





The band has gone through a few personnel changes since forming last August, and this was the first performance by this line-up of Iron Jayne. At one point near the end of the set, Kempf declared, "Alright, now we're really a band."  The set was surprisingly short, probably because they don't have all that many songs yet, but still conveyed a sense of potential greatness for this new band.  

Iron Jayne's next performance will be back at 529 on February 7, when they will be opening for U.S. Girls.  


This was my first show since the Of Monsters and Men concert at The Tabernacle back on November 29.  The Winter Doldrums were cold and long, and I'm glad they seem to finally be over. On the other hand, between the lush ambiance of Spirit Temple, the rousing folk polka of Lonesome Leash, the assertive rock of Iron Jayne, and Cousin Dan's nostalgic DJ set, I couldn't ask for a better return to the Atlanta music scene.