Quiet Hounds

The "best parts" of Quiet Hounds' November 22, 2014, performance at The Goat Farm, brought to us by the nice folks at indieATL.

Sylvan Esso

Sylvan Esso at Georgia State University.  #saveWRAS

Update:  Right after posting the above, I came across this:

Hello Ocho

IndieATL's first video of the year, showcasing the indie prog of Atlanta's Hello Ocho.

Quiet Hounds' Good Bones

Good Bones, a new song by Atlanta's Quiet Hounds, performed back on October 4 at The Swan House as a part of the Hounds' Phoenix & The Swan performance and captured by IndieATL.

West Meets East

As we settle into the month of December and the end of 2013, I'm as surprised as anybody to find myself becoming more and more thankful to be living here in Atlanta with its multiple resources and outlets for new music.  If I'm not careful, the rest of this month might be spent extolling the virtues of the local music scene, both the performers and musicians, the venues, and those behind the scenes making it all happen.

F'rinstance, take this video released today by the kind folks over at IndieATL from a set at their Georgia State studio by Portland's Dresses.

Quiet Hounds at The Swan House, Atlanta, Oct. 4, 2013

The Swan House was built in 1928 for Edward and Emily Inman, who had accumulated their wealth from cotton and investments in transportation, banking, and real estate. After their house in Ansley Park burned in 1924, the Inmans commissioned design of a new house on 28 acres in Buckhead. Sculpted and painted swans provide a recurring motif throughout the house and grounds, and the mansion's rear facade is sited at the top of a small hill with terraced gardens and a fountain cascading down the hillside. The grounds now host the Atlanta History Center, and the Swan House served as the Capitol for a party scene in the upcoming film The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and as both a backdrop and a character in the Quiet Hounds' performance Swans and Embers on the warm Atlanta evening of October 4, 2013.

The performance consisted of four acts in three locations on the Swan House grounds.  Act 1, Cat In Ashes, began with an actor portraying an Inman family member from 1928. After some brief interaction by the actor with the audience, a female character, The Phoenix, was introduced, who symbolized the City of Atlanta from 1864, the year Sherman burned the city to the ground. 

Quiet Hounds eventually took over the Swan House terrace at the top of a staircase and performed a brief four-song, acoustic set.  

After Act 1, the band reassembled on the lawn at the bottom of the staircase for a brief brass-band number for Act 2, No One Alone, before marching down to the bottom of the hill where a stage was set up for Acts 3 and 4, Reconstruction and We Burn, We Rise, which were basically a Quiet Hounds' performance.

The Quiet Hounds' sound can be called classic indie rock, combining strummed, jangly guitars with harmonic vocals into rousing, anthemic songs, sort of like a less bombastic version of Arcade Fire. Whether or not they need all of the theatricality and dramatics that have come to accompany many of their recent performances is open to debate, but you can't blame a band for stretching a little bit and expanding their artistic boundaries.  They are not a touring band and don't perform live all that often (I believe this is their first performance since a set at Athfest last June), so they make the most of each opportunity when they do.  

The Swan House served as a stunning backdrop for their set, and they didn't project their sigil, Bat-Signal style, onto the house (top photo) until the last song of their set.  The Inman and Phoenix characters made a brief appearance on stage toward the end of their set, possibly bridging Acts 3 and 4, but otherwise the band spent their time onstage doing what they do best - performing their intelligent and enjoyable songs, including a few new numbers thrown into the setlist for good measure.

They included a three-piece horn section to the band for this performance, which complimented their sound nicely.

The whole set wrapped up by around 10:00 pm.  Quiet Hounds have perfected the art of transforming each of their performances into an event, and this one was no exception.  No one, possibly including the band themselves, have any idea of what they'll do next or where they'll do it, and that only adds to the epic sense of the here and now that accompanies each of their performances.   

The IndieATL film crew was on hand recording the performance, so we can probably look forward to some video from the set in the near future.

School of Seven Bells

Here's School of Seven Bells playing an acoustic set on the concrete campus of Georgia State University (Georgia's Great University) for indieATL.

Don't know if I have anything to say about this, other than how come I don't know about these Georgia State gigs?

Dude, I Was There!

Here's more of Tikka heating up the Atlanta Film Festival's Sound & Visions Experience at The Goat Farm back on March 20, an evening much, much colder than this video suggests.

Thanks and a tip of the hat to IndieATL for posting this clip!

Dude, I Was There!

Here's Tikka heating up the Atlanta Film Festival's Sound & Visions Experience at The Goat Farm back on March 20, an evening much, much colder than this video suggests.

Thanks and a tip of the hat to IndieATL for posting this clip!

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.