Atlanta Film Festival Sound & Vision at The Goat Farm, March 20, 2013

So, how cold was it?  That's the question that dominates any recollection of last night's Atlanta Film Festival Sound & Vision event at The Goat Farm.

The event, held in connection with the on-going Atlanta Film Festival, was billed as a showcase of bad-ass Atlanta bands, a music video stand-off projected on a humongous screen, a screening of experimental films, art installations, d.j. sets by Atlanta musician Cousin Dan, and the usual food trucks.  

What I didn't know until I arrived was that the bad asses were staged outdoors to the west of Building 1.  Most events at The Goat Farm have been staged in The Rodriquez Room (aka, Building 3); this is the first time I've seen an event at Building 1.  Located at the western edge of the property, the building is a low, rectangular, one-story detached structure constructed in 1919 and originally used as a machine shop and later as a crating, storing, and shipping facility. The building has a concrete floor and a flat, plank-on-timber roof with two continuous, full-length, northward-facing skylights. In modern (i.e., post–World War II) times, the building has been used as a metal fabrication plant, although it is now vacant and the roof is in a state of disrepair.  The industrial disrepair of the building provided a funky backdrop to the stage, and also offered great views of the Atlanta skyline over the adjacent railroad yards.

What I also didn't know until I arrived was that the temperatures were going to fall into the low 30s during the course of the night.  I had worked outside all of that day, and although it was overcast for much of the time, by the afternoon, the sun had come out and I was working in shirt sleeves.  I didn't know that the clear skies were a part of a cold front that had moved into Georgia, and I almost headed out to The Goat Farm in just a long-sleeved shirt, but at the last minute threw on a fleece.  As it turns out, I should have worn a hoodie on top of that and another layer of fleece.  It got cold, baby.

Anyhow, this isn't a blog about the weather.  The first band on the Building 1 stage was Shantih Shantih, a relatively new all-girl quartet, playing their first home-town show.  

As you can see, the industrial ruin of Building 1 provided a picturesque backdrop to the stage.  As the sun settled down somewhere over the State of Alabama, the last afternoon light cast silhouettes of the audience and all of the amateur photographers onto the riser for the stage, looking almost like a shadow puppet show.

Shantih Shantih plays a highly enjoyable brand of punk-pop with girl-band influences.  The band consists of Anna K on lead guitar and vocals:

Another Anna, Anna B, on vocals and guitar, and Julia F on drums.

Valentina T plays drums.

Anyway, despite the jackets and sunshine, the band was visibly cold, and commented a couple times about how chilly it was getting.

Cousin Dan, who d.j.'s under the clever name Moreland Brando (Moreland Avenue is the main thoroughfare leading to East Atlanta Village, home of many if not most of the city's rock clubs (The Earl, 529, The Basement, etc.)), provided a pleasing retro-funk mix between sets.  The next band up, second of the night, was Atlanta's Cute Boots.  I can enjoy their country-influenced roots rock but tend to lose patience with the scripted dialogues during their performances, as the corny scripts are usually lacking any semblance of spontaneity and are delivered so woodenly that it distracts from the music.  Fortunately, they kept the dialogues to a minimum last night, possibly just to get off the stage and back to the warmth that much sooner.

By the time Cute Boots finished, it was dark enough out for some of the art installations to begin, the most impressive of which were a series of projections on the windows of the 200-foot-long Building 1.

It wasn't nearly as cold in the rest of The Goat Farm as it was at the Building 1 stage, and between sets I would step into Building 2 for the experimental film screenings just to warm up. Even the outdoor music video show in the central courtyard wasn't nearly as cold as the stage. But eventually, I zipped up my fleece and pulled the collar up over as much of my neck as I could to go see Tikka, one of the bands I was most looking forward to hearing.

I've seen Tikka before, opening for someone at The Earl, although I can't remember who.  Tikka is led by singer and guitarist Asha Lakra, and they play a showgaze-y brand of experimental noise pop, which you can hear on their fine, eponymous EP, avialable on their Bandcamp page.

Tikka put on a great set but due to the cold, before a sparse audience, and I have to admit I was distracted myself by the cold temperatures and a wind that seemed determined to find every opening and seam in my insufficient little fleece jacket.  After Tikka's terrific set, I quickly retreated back to the relative warmth of the other Sound & Vision attractions.  

By the time the band PLS PLS was to take the stage at 9:15, I realized that I had now been outside for over 12 hours during the day, and most of that time on my feet.  Although I had been looking forward to seeing Dog Bite again, it was simply getting too damn cold to be enjoyable.  The alternative of sitting on my sofa in the warmth of my home with a glass of bourbon to warm my insides and watching The Americans on FX seemed preferable to standing around in the cold any longer, and I decided to bag it for the rest of the night.  I'm sure that PLS PLs, Dog Bite and Gringo Star (the headliner) all put on great sets, and I'm sure that I'll get a chance to catch them again some evening.  

I commend IndieATL and the organizers of the Sound & Vision event for putting together a great show, and the selection of Building 1 for the outdoor stage was a great choice - I hope I can get to see bands play there again in the future. No one could have foreseen that blast of cold arctic air sweeping into Georgia on a late March evening.  Hey, at least it didn't rain.

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.