Chvrches and Wet at Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, Nov. 26, 2013

This is Chvrches year.  Their first EP, Recover, was released last March and their debut album, The Bones of What You Believe, came out last September.  They've been on tour almost constantly since at least SXSW last March.  We caught them last September at MFNW in Portland's Roseland Theater and then the next morning at a KEXP radio set at the Doug Fir Lounge.  Last night, their tour took them for the first time to Atlanta.

But first, the Brooklyn band Wet opened.

According to The NY Times, Wet play "majestically downcast love songs topped by vocals with an unexpected Celtic and country tinge."  The Deli Magazine calls them an "electro mellow-core" project that "offers a musical recipe reminiscent of the wise, caucasian soul-pop of MS MR, but with an added personal twist consisting in a subtle quirkiness and an intriguing sonic spaciousness."

Whatever.  They were great last night, very nearly upstaging Chvrches.  Here's a sample:

The audience, of course, was there to hear and see Glasgow's Chvrchess, fronted by singer Lauren Mayberry, the Sweetheart of Scotland.  At the front of the stage, the bros outnumbered the babes by about an 8-to-1 margin. 

There's really nothing to complain about in Chvrches' radio-ready electro-pop, except perhaps a lack of spontaneity.  They played the songs the audience wanted to hear (The Mother We Share, Recover, etc.), and Mayberry was as charismatic and appealing as one could hope for, but given the limitations of her vocal range, the songs all start to sound the same after a while, and the whole thing felt at times a little mechanical and scripted.  I wouldn't go so far as to say they were phoning it in, but I do think the rigors and redundancy of their relentless touring are starting to get to them.

I didn't make it, but kudos to the band for performing an in-store show at Criminal Records before last night's concert.  It's nice to see that they're not "too big" to still reach out to the fans.

Their light show was much more sophisticated than I recall in Portland, one of the perks, I suppose, of their lucrative tour.

Their songs will make nearly everyone's end-of-year lists, and you'll be hearing them on the radio, in car commercials, and on movie soundtracks.  They're good and deserve the recognition and success, and quite frankly, it couldn't have happened to a seemingly nicer trio.

Here's their latest video for their song Lies:

It's Raining

The Casket Girls

Savannah's The Casket Girls, who were scheduled at one point to play Friday night's Stomp & Stammer anniversary party at The Earl, will kick off their 2014 tour in Atlanta and are booked at 529 on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2014. 

Set your calendars now.

Hilang Child

Prince Rama at The Earl, Atlanta, November 23, 2013

Stomp & Stammer is a local Atlanta music newspaper, perhaps the only living survivor of the fanzines of the 70s and the 80s.  As a matter of fact, last night Stomp & Stammer held their 17th Anniversary Party, with a lineup every bit as interesting as called for by the occasion.

The opening set was the premier performance by White Woods, a new band fronted by Julia Kugel of The Coathangers.

No one knew what to expect from White Woods. Creative Loafing, Atlanta's alternative weekly, described the band as a "retro- and Americana-toned" solo project, which gave us a little bit to go by.  But I don't think anyone expected the performance to be such an immersive visual and musical experience. 

The six members of the band, including Julia and two backup singers, took the stage all wearing white.  The stage lights were turned off, and the only illumination was by a projector playing a black-and-white German film with lots of titles and on-screen text, so that the white clothing of the musicians served as screens for the film, words and images playing across their bodies. 

Julia wore a long, flowing white dress and a large, pope-sized tiara and, frankly, never looked lovelier.  She sang, not in her high-pitched Coathangers squeal, but in an earthier, more emotive voice, and although the music certainly wasn't punk rock, it really couldn't be categorized as Americana, either.  She was backed by a very minimal drum set, just a snare and floor tom, keyboards, and alternately a second guitar, accordion, and even theremin.  The closest approximation I can suggest to their sound would be the recent acoustic efforts by Chelsea Wolfe, and the songs started out soothing and soft, but grew more and more menacing as the set progressed, with lots of interesting noise and dissonance brewing in the background behind Julia's vocals, but rather than let you guess what it was like, here's a sample:

The rest of The Coathangers were in the audience cheering Julia on, as well as who I can only assume was Julia's mom or at least some lady with the words "Coathangers Mom" on a napkin cloth-pinned to the back of her coat.  

In short, it was an amazing set and a most promising debut for this new band, whom I look forward to hearing more of in the future.

The heavy lifting of the middle set was ably provided by Atlanta's Zoners, filling in for Savannah's The Casket Girls, who were originally slated to perform.  Nonetheless, Zoners played loud, muscular and aggressive punk rock, featuring three guitars backed by drums and bass.    

The evening's headliners were Brooklyn's Prince Rama.  We last saw Prince Rama at the Farm 255 restaurant in Athens almost two years ago, and have been looking forward to seeing them again.  They did not disappoint.

Prince Rama shows have a reputation for being unpredictable affairs, and last night's show started with Taraka Larson on the shoulders of some stagehand, riding through The Earl audience covered by a veil while singing, as sister Nimai Larson drummed on stage in a gold lame bodysuit..

The Larson sisters famously grew up in a Krishna community in Alachua, Florida, just outside of Gainesville, and although they are no longer practicing Krishnas, the influence has obviously seeped into their music and performance.  Their parents drove up from Gainesville for last night's show; the father is the gentleman with the silver hair and denim jacket on the left side of the first photograph above of Tanaka being carried around The Earl.  I actually had a chance to talk briefly with him before the set began, and he told me that his daughters had recently come back from touring Australia and will be doing an installation piece at Miami's Art Basel festival this winter.  Mom had baked fudge and was giving samples out to the audience over by the merch table.  Cool folks.    

Taraka plays keyboards and does most of the singing, and Nimai plays percussion, sings, and dances.  Both Larson sisters wore colorful outfits, teased hair, and lots of glittery makeup, adding a visual spectacle to the performance.

Their set consisted mostly of songs from their latest album Top Ten Hits of the End of the World, in which the band "channels" ten imaginary bands at the time of an invented apocalypse, or something like that.  Their music was pop-py and eminently danceable, although not without weird psychedelic flourishes and their own enigmatic presence, especially on the last song, which was performed as they acrobatically danced in the middle of the audience, Nimai lip-synching covered in fake blood and using her water bottle as an imaginary microphone.      

It was all over far too quickly but still made quite an impression.  More pictures from the evening are posted on the Flickr site.  I understand that Prince Rama's not actually on tour right now, and did this gig as a one-off performance for Stomp & Stammer, but if you get a chance to see them, either at Art Basel or elsewhere, you really owe it to yourself to go.

Of Monsters And Men in Rome

Another set from La Blogotheque, this time featuring Of Monsters and Men in Rome.

Mike Doughty, Terminal West, Atlanta, November 20, 2013

Last night, Mike Doughty, formerly of the band Soul Coughing, performed at Terminal West.  New York's Moon Hooch opened.

Moon Hooch are a trio fronted by two guys on saxophones and backed by a drummer.  On first impression, their dance-oriented music is not dissimilar to moments of Big Gigantic, but unlike Big Gigantic, whose music I once described as consisting of all climaxes without any build up or release, Moon Hooch aren't afraid to vary their approach and to throw in some skwonk and experimentation. In fact, I don't think they're afraid of much of anything.   

It was my first time hearing Moon Hooch, and I enjoyed them a lot.  EDM meets avant-jazz, with a little old-fashioned funk thrown into the very modern mix.

The equally eclectic Mike Doughty headlined.  Doughty's music exists at the intersection of rock, hip-hop, and post-beat jazz.  He was the front man for the former band Soul Coughing, and one of my favorite concerts of the 1990s was Soul Coughing's free outdoor set in front of the old Criminal Records location on Moreland Avenue in Little Five Points.  I got a new printer just yesterday, and was able to scan in some of my old photographs of that set.  I'm not sure of the year of these pictures, but I believe it was about 1993 or so.  

Although I loved the Ruby Vroom album and their subsequent recordings, after that show, I didn't see Doughty again until 20 years later when I saw him, again at Criminal Records (although now at the new location), during last September's L5Fest.

During the L5Fest, he performed Soul Coughing songs solo, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar.  Last night, he had a band, or at least a very able drummer and an acoustic bassist, and he played electric guitar, keyboards, and turntables. It was all quite different, although equally enjoyable, from his L5Fest performance, and he included Screenwriters Blues in his set list. 

So, since L5Fest was the beginning of the surfeit of seasonal concerts that I call "Rocktober," and one of the highlights of L5Fest was Mike Doughty's performance, it seems appropriate to end Rocktober with this bookend, second performance by Doughty.  In other words, that's it for the longest Rocktober yet.

In a related note, I almost didn't go last night.  I got lazy and convinced myself that I just saw Doughty two months ago and it wouldn't be worth the $25 ticket to see him again so soon.  But I rallied at the last minute, but even driving there I decided that if I couldn't find a parking space in the nearest lot to Terminal West, I would just turn around and go home.  When I pulled into that nearest lot, it was full and several other cars that also couldn't park were turning around and leaving.  I turned around too, ready to go home, when suddenly, as if from nowhere, a young woman walked back to her car, got in and drove away, suddenly leaving the only open space in the lot right in front of me. Well, if the cosmos was going to be that obvious in its message that I should go, who was I to say "no?"