Deradoorian At the Drunken Unicorn, Sept. 15, 2015
Angel Deradoorian (Deradoorian, Dirty Projectors, Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks) will have a new Deradoorian album, Find The Sun, available September 18. It can be pre-ordered here. Meanwhile, here's the song Corsican Shores from the new album.
On last night of Too Many Shows, we had to limit ourselves to only one so we found ourselves in the intimate confines of The Drunken Unicorn for sets by LA's Deradoorian, Atlanta's Adron, and France's Laetitia Sadier. Deradoorian started us off.
We saw Deradoorian earlier this year opening for Zola Jesus and were looking forward to hearing more. They played about the same set they did before, which was fine as that was exactly what we wanted to hear: a combination of art-rock, tribal drumming, world-music flourishes, occasional chanting, and multi-layered choruses of looped vocals. It was just as good - if not even better - than the first time and the highlight of our evening.
Bonus points: Deradoorian have finally released an album - their first - and you can buy it here.
Not that anything that followed was by any means a disappointment, but Deradoorian, wow!
Adron performed next with a new backing band instead of the usual members of Little Tybee we typically see her with, and she seems to have finally found a sympatico drummer who shares her innate sense of tropical nueva bossa nova music. One of the pleasures of living in Atlanta is getting to hear Adron perform on a fairly regular basis and last night, with a set of mostly new songs (at least to us), she showed how her creativity and artistry are continuing to evolve.
The headliner and clear audience favorite was Laetitia Sadier. She's best known for the band Stereolab, and it was pretty clear that most of the audience was appreciative but not familiar with her solo work. Her compositions don't feature the spacey electronics of Stereolab, but aren't all that different either, for the real pleasure of hearing Stereolab was Sadier's warm, evocative vocals, which are front and center in her solo songs.
Her set seemed to fly by, and even she seemed surprise when she reached the end of her song list, but we were all charmed by her down-to-earth presence and warm alto voice.
So yes, we missed Thee Oh Sees and Chelsea Wolfe last night, but tant pis - if we had gone to either we would have missed all of this.
The weather outside is already noticeably cooler than it was last month, and football has officially begun. More significantly, today is one of those embarrassment-of-riches days like we get in Rocktober (which technically might already have started this year) where one has to choose between a number of great shows on a given night. Specifically, appearing at The Mammal Gallery this evening are Thee Oh Sees.
Meanwhile. at The Drunknen Unicorn, we have Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab), with Adron and Deradoorian opening.
But wait, there's more! Over at The Earl, Jenny Hval is performing.
And finally, Chelsea Wolfe has a sold-out show over at Aisle 5.
There are many, many evenings where there aren't this many good shows on one night in New York City, much less Atlanta. Alert readers already know which show I'm going to, which may or may not be the best of the night but the first one that had tickets go on sale.
Siren Song, by Flying Lotus, featuring Angel Deradoorian (voice), from the new album, You're Dead. Plus an ad for some sort of video service or something.
In an August 2010 article in London's The Guardian titled Will Zola Jesus herald the second coming of goth?, Sam Richards compared Nika Rosa Danilova, aka Zola Jesus, to "an imperious ice queen in the Siouxsie/Diamanda mould who's currently making music bloggers go weak at the knees."
"Though swathed in eldritch atmospherics, Zola Jesus's songs pack a brutal, emotional punch, rendering the genteel witchery-woo of Florence + The Machine and Bat For Lashes a tad twee by comparison. Danilova worships David Cronenberg and 1970s Italian horror, but says her plangent gloom-pop is influenced as much by Rihanna as it is by Bauhaus."
We last saw Zola Jesus during Rocktober 2011, when The Earl had a remarkable week of shows that included Zola, St. Vincent, and a double-bill of Austra and Grimes. Our paths were not to cross again until last night, when she performed at the luminous Terminal West. First, though, Atlanta's Death Domain opened.
Their set started at 8:30, just as we walked in the front door, which was a bit surprising as the show was advertised as "Doors 8:00, Show 9:00" but also cool as there was no awkward waiting around for the show to begin. We had time to get a beer and a spot one row back from the stage as their first song began.
Fun fact: Death Domain were at one point Nika's backup band for an earlier, 2009 edition of Zola Jesus (i.e., The Spoils era).
Death Domain is Billy Ruben, who has apparently relocated to Baltimore, and last night the band included Ruben on keyboards and voice, a backup keyboardist, and a violinist. Their music was satisfyingly dark and gothic, "as bleak as anything recorded during the lows of the Reagan years" according to one of Ruben's favorite reviews. Ruben himself looked the part, in a leather jacket with off-center zipper and Gary-Numan-meets-Robert-Smith hair, and the music sounded like what you'd expect to hear at an after-midnight goth party.
Next up was former Dirty Projector Angel Deradoorian, performing with one other musician as the band Deradoorian. Angel left the Projectors before 2012's Swing Lo Magellan, and we didn't see her with the band during their 2012 tour in support of that album, but we did catch her in 2011 at Alpharetta, Georgia's sponsored amphitheater opening for Animal Collective, and at the godforsaken Masquerade as a member of Avey Tare's Slasher flicks.
Back in 2011, when she opened for Animal Collective, Angel played solo, seated behind an electric piano. Last night, she played keyboards and occasional bass guitar, and stood facing across from the other performer on stage with her, who mostly played percussion and provided backing vocals, such that her back was to me for most of the set.
Deradoorian's set relied heavily on looped passages of the drums and vocals for their rhythmic underpinnings over which she added keys and vocals into fascinating compositions that touched at times on tribalism and world beat, uplifting psychedelic rock a la Animal Collective, and swirling, mesmerizing folk rock. It was by far he best post-Projectors stuff that I've heard from her, and I'm looking forward to hearing more. Here's a small sample:
According to her Soundcloud profile, Angel "is currently living in Los Angeles and working on an album inspired by singing and the space in which sound can reside." Do not miss her, with or without Zola Jesus, if you have a chance to hear her perform.
Apparently, some people were there just to hear Deradoorian, as the folks in the row in front of us left immediately after her performance, leaving the front row open. We grabbed a spot on the rail for Zola Jesus' set.
This video isn't necessarily my favorite Zola Jesus song (I have to admit that after all these years, it's still her encore closer Vessel) but it does pretty effectively capture her movements and dancing during her live show. According to StereoGum, "Nika Roza Danilova just has to stand in a bare warehouse and strike some dramatic poses while a camera flies around her, and it’s pretty much game over."
Her backing instrumentation was rather unusual, even by quirky electro-goth standards, consisting of a powerhouse drummer, keyboards, and trombone. Somehow, it all worked and even sounded great, and gave a refreshing new spin on standard Zola Jesus material like Sea Talk.
But the main attraction at a Zola Jesus show is and always will be the amazing, force-of-nature voice of Zola or Nika or whatever you want to call her, an operatic alto that can fill a room even without a microphone. In fact, at one point in the show, she sang solo and unamplified, allowing her voice to reverberate through the Terminal West space, reminiscent of her recent outdoor performance during last week's snow emergency in New York, where she was one of the few performers not to cancel her scheduled set and took her set out onto the snow-clogged street.
Other fun moments: just like she did at The Earl back in 2011, at one point she wandered down into the audience while continuing to sing, brushing against as many people as possible, and at another point, she walked to the edge of the stage and touched hands with those in the front row, including your humble narrator. She gave a shout-out to Atlanta native Killer Mike and his latest project Run The Jewels (in related news, she's allegedly a contributor to a remix album of Run The Jewels being produced for charity), and at another time, stood on a folding chair to belt out some particularly powerful lines.
The stage set included several iceberg-like, geometric sculptures, possibly the inspiration for this Zola Jesus portrait:
The set ended with a two-song encore, concluding with the aforementioned Vessel.
In a 2013 interview, Nika said, "I was mostly inspired by experimental music because it showed me a canvas for what you can create. Bands like The Residents, Throbbing Gristle and Diamanda Galás were really exciting. I loved Bikini Kill and Kathleen Hanna so much – she was such a spitfire and did whatever she wanted. , , With books, my favorite author is Philip K Dick. I’ve basically read everything he’s ever written, which is a lot. He just had the most amazing view on the world and he completely changed me in the way that Nietzsche has, or any philosopher has." Earlier today, she re-tweeted this picture from NYC.
The winter of my discontent is about to come to an end. After months of few to no shows in town, there will be a show every night of the week starting tomorrow. There's no way I'm going to be able to make all of this, but here's the schedule:
MONDAY - THE WORLD/INFERNO FRIENDSHIP SOCIETY AT THE EARL
If this is a little too intense for you, there's "nice" bands GEMS and Vacationer playing the same night at Vinyl.
TUESDAY - ANTIBALAS AND ZAP MAMA AT VARIETY PLAYHOUSE
We saw Antibalas (without Zap Mama) at the 40-Watt in Athens back during Rocktober 2012, and some of the finest Afrobeat music being performed today since the passing of Fela Kuti is coming back to Georgia to play at the Variety Playhouse.
WEDNESDAY - EARPHUNK AT TERMINAL WEST
To be honest, this one's in here somewhat as filler, but if you're late jumping on board the music train this week, this is as good a place to start as any.
THURSDAY - PARQUET COURTS AT THE EARL
This one I've got tickets for, which is a good thing because it's sold out. In other words, if you don't have a ticket yet, you're probably not going, unless you're willing to bribe a doorman or pretend to be a roadie or something.
FRIDAY - LITTLE TYBEE AT 529
Hometown band playing at a low-key, late-night club. It's always a treat catching these guys, and Cousin Dan, who "stars" in the video above, will be doing a dj set.
SATURDAY - ZOLA JESUS AT TERMINAL WEST
This is kind of a major event in my little corner of Music-Nerd World, and I bought my tickets back when the show was first announced. I don't think she's played here since Rocktober 2011 and am surprised that the show hasn't sold out. Also, former Dirty Projector Angel Deradoorian, who we saw open for Animal Collective and as a member of Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks, opens. This is going to be great.
So that's the week. If you can make all of these shows, you're a better fan than I, On Sunday, we can all finally take a break and rest at home and watch the New England Patriots defeat the Seattle Seahawks in the Superb Owl.
