Dude, I Was There!

Quiet Hounds' The Last Days of Snake Nation at The Goat Farm.

Quiet Hounds at The Goat Farm, Atlanta, Nov. 22, 2014

One of the great things about living in Atlanta is that several times a year you get to go to a show by Quiet Hounds.  One of those several times was last night, when they played at their home stage in The Goat Farm.

The Quiet Hounds do a pretty good job of making each of their shows an event, mixing theatricality and other events into their shows.  Last night's show was titled The Last Days of Snake Nation, a reference to the name formerly given to the Castleberry Hill neighborhood of Atlanta back when it was occupied by brothels and frequented by snake-oil salesmen and other characters of ill repute. The show started with a mock debate between a 19th Century reform-minded politician and one of those aforementioned snake-oil salesmen.

There were hand-out leaflets describing the two characters (Jonathan Norcross and Clark Stanley), their political parties (The Moral Party and the Free & Rowdy Party), and their positions.  There was a booth purporting to sell snake oil, or at least glasses of wine.  There were many characters walking around in 19th Century attire.  All of these little flourishes helped elevate the show from just another indie rock performance to something a little more special. 

Past Quiet Hounds performances have been titled An Ode To Lost Souls and focused on the Civil War's Andersonville POW camp, and Swans & Embers and focused on the reincarnation of Atlanta after Sherman's scorched-earth campaign. While I admire their interest in history and theater, I don't think the Hounds particularly need all these theatrical flourishes to make their shows interesting, so it's all the more unusual that they feel compelled to do so.   In any event, the mock debate only lasted about 10 to 15 minutes before the music finally began.

Members of Quiet Hounds have played on albums for CeeLo Green, Gnarls Barkley, Washed Out, Asher Roth, and The Constellations.   Last night, the band included a three-man horn section and an occasional guest second drummer, Julian Dorio of The Whigs. 

Much of the set consisted of songs from The Quiet Hounds new album, The Wild Hunt.

They also included several favorites from past albums as well.

The theatrics resumed before the final song to bookend the performance.

Even though the Quiet Hounds were the only band on the bill last night, they played a nearly two-hour set (including the theatrics), making it a more than full night.

The Last Days of Snake Nation was a recipient of a Goat Farm Arts Center Arts Investment Package, a vehicle that funds, produces and presents experimental and innovative works that “pattern-break” and excite new thinking. The Goat Farm’s Review Board recognizes that consistent vanguard arts programming contributes to Atlanta’s global relevance.

Kudos to the Hounds, the Goat Farm, and the people of Atlanta for putting on, and coming out for, a fun night of music, theater, and history.

Last Night at The Goat Farm

Not that I was there, but here's a video from last night's performance by Little Tybee.

Faun & A Pan Flute

Faun & A Pan Flute at The Goat Farm.  Dude, I was there!

Dude, I Was There!

Jungol, at the April 3, 2014 Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision event at The Goat Farm.

Dude, I Was There!

@ Faun and a Pan Flute, Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision, The Goat Farm, April 3, 2014

Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision

Before I start falling too far behind, let's recap last Thursday night's Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision event at The Goat Farm.  I've already posted pictures of some of the visual offerings from the event over at the other blog, so here's a summary of the musical portion of the events.

When I arrived, Florida's The Dewars were on stage.

I hadn't heard of The Dewars before and wasn't quite sure what to expect - they describe themselves as "adult sing-along."  What they performed was witty and entertaining folk pop, as in their song Switzerland, the video of which was also periodically projected outside on a large screen.

Atlanta's electronic band Jungol were up next, and they brought a friend on stage with them.

The friend is a character from their short film/extended video Go Softly, which seems to fall somewhere in the Animal Collective-to-Bjork continuum of strangeness for strangeness's sake that doesn't need to be explained.  

Anyway, the friend lent an enigmatic and powerful presence to the stage while Jungol performed.  

Here's the entire Go Softly film, which was also one of the featured "experimental films" being screened in the building across from the band's performance.

Atlanta's eight-piece Faun And A Pan Flute took the stage sometime around 10 pm.  FAAPF play an indescribable brand of music that's equal parts Harry Partch, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, jazz fusion, math rock, minimalism, and prog, and I'm probably leaving out a half-dozen or so other genres that they covered.  It can be pretty adventurous and avant garde stuff at times, and I think it says a lot of good things about Atlanta's musical audience that the band seems to be so well loved and appreciated.

The weather was absolutely lovely the whole night - warm and dry, with a pleasingly low pollen count.  But despite the weather, and despite the terrific performances, fascinating films and videos, and fantastic art installations, I still called it an evening after Faun And A Pan Flute so that I could get home at an early enough hour to get a good night's sleep and be ready for another evening of live music on Friday.    

Meanwhile, Back at the Goat Farm

The Dewars performing at the Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision event last night at the Goat Farm.  More on this soon.

Jonathan Richman at The Goat Farm, Atlanta, March 6, 2014

March Madness, Day Three: Jonathan Richman kicking off his 2014 tour with the second of two nights at The Goat Farm. He says that he likes the place, both for the sound of the room and the artistic ambiance of the center, and the intimate setting seems perfectly suited to him.

Photo by Alex Weiss

I've lost track of the number of times I've seen Richman since the first performance I caught back in 1986 at the QE2, a club located in the back of a White Castle in downtown Albany, New York.  That night, I knew that I would never pass up a chance to see him play again, anytime, anywhere, and over the decades since that night, I've lived up to my vow.  This is now the fourth time I've seen him in recent years (post-2010), following performances at The Star Bar, the Highland Inn, and last year at this same venue, and I'm confident that I've seen him many more times than I've seen any other performer.

Photo by Alex Weiss

Sorry for all of these "borrowed" photos from Facebook, but it's a testament to Richman's performance that even though I brought both a camera and a Droid with me, I was so mesmerized by the performance that I forgot to take any pictures until the one cell-phone pic at the top of this post.

Photo by Alex Weiss

Last night's setlist relied heavily on relatively recent material, with many songs sung in French and Italian. The only "old" song from the "classic" Jonathan Richman period was I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar, but he also performed newer favorites like Vermeer and Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild. But Richman's performances have long ago surpassed mere covers of classic favorites or the rolling out of a bunch of new songs to promote the latest album, and have become intimate, unique expressions of the present moment in whatever venue he's finds himself playing.  

As always, he was accompanied by his long-time drummer, Tommy Larkins, with whom he's developed near-telepathic empathy, and together that make their minimalist yet highly expressive music sound like it rolls naturally and effortlessly out from their heart.

Beyond the above, I don't know what else there is to say about a Jonathan Richman performance, and I mean that as a compliment of the highest order.  Words don't justify, etc.  It was a great show, and I'll leave it at that, except to add that I also appreciated the fact that the show wrapped up by 10:00 pm, and that I was home in bed by 11.  Yes, I know, unlike the eternally youthful Richman, I'm getting old. . . .

March Madness: Talking Heads, Phantom Fest, and More

March Madness began last night. No, not the collegiate basketball tournament that goes by the same name, but the overabundance of musicians and bands that seem to come through the City of Atlanta in March of every year.  My theory is that the bands are either heading to or from SXSW, the first major festival of the year, and picking up a gig in Atlanta on their way between Austin and Brooklyn or Chapel Hill or wherever, or if they're coming from the Left Coast, making a tour of the trip by playing up and down the East Coast. Either way, Atlanta's strategically located between Texas and the big Bos-Wash cities of the East.  There's even a festival down on the coast called Savannah Stopover for bands en route to SXSW, but almost all the bands playing the Stopover are also stopping over in Atlanta at some point or another for a show here in town.  So, welcome to March Madness!

However, last night's kickoff of March Madness had nothing whatsoever to do with the annual indie-band migration.  One of the other curious things about Atlanta is that is seems that the big touring acts rarely play in town on weekends.  Sure, there are exceptions, but by and large, the national artists seem to play here on Mondays through Thursdays (way too often on Mondays for my liking, as that's the one night of the week it's difficult for me to catch a show).  There must be an economic reason for this - perhaps the bands can draw bigger crowds on weekends at college towns like Athens and Knoxville and Gainesville, and every band manager from Seattle to Austin to Brooklyn knows this and purposely plays elsewhere during the weekends and only plays Atlanta during the week between gigs in the college towns. I'm just speculating here, but that's what it feels like.

This leaves all the stages in town open on Friday and Saturday night for the local musicians, which is no problem as Atlanta has an excellent local music scene.  Case in point:  last night, the Atlanta collective known appropriately as The ATL Collective put on a show at The Goat Farm featuring two terrific bands, Atlanta's Hello Ocho and Athens' Reptar, supported by vocalist Natasha Williams, performing The Talking Heads' classic album Speaking In Tongues in its entirety.   

From my perspective, Talking Heads' artistic pinnacle was their previous album, Remain In Light, but Speaking In Tongues still holds a special place in my heart.  I was 29 years old when the album came out in 1983, and for some reason, it's always felt to me like "my" Talking Heads album - the one written and recorded by the band with me in mind. This is purely projection, I know, but it was released when I was at that precipice in life when I was finally old enough to critically discern and select among the bands to which I listened but still young enough not to feel self-conscious about my enthusiasms, and to believe that the band was performing, if not for me directly, at least with someone like me in mind.  In any event, I loved the album and played it incessantly for several months of 1983.   

Thirty-one years later, both Reptar and Hello Ocho took the Goat Farm stage together, and fronted by Ms. Williams, belted out the album opener and Talking Heads' most successful single, Burning Down the House.

They played the tracks in the order of the album, with Reptar and Ms. Williams leaving the stage and Hello Ocho performing the next two cuts, Making Flippy Floppy and Girlfriend Is Better.

Reptar took the stage next to cover Slippery People, followed by I Get Wild/Wild Gravity accompanied again by Natasha Williams. Both bands did a fine job of walking the line between performing purely imitative covers on one extreme and totally subverting the material for their own purposes on the other.  Except for the addition of Ms. Williams on some of the cuts, all of the songs from the album as performed last night sounded like the way either band would have chosen to cover the song if they had otherwise decided to include that song as a cover in their sets, and not just for this one-off event.   

My only complaint about the night is that for some reason, after about 20 minutes of performing the first five songs from the album, the bands took about a 30-or-so minute break before coming back on stage to play the B-side of the album.  Why two bands need a 30-minute break after a mere five songs is beyond me, but as is so often the case at concerts, as soon as the music started again, all was forgiven.

Hello Ocho kicked off the flip side of the record with Swamp, followed by Reptar performing Moon Rocks and Pull Up the Roots.

For the finale, both bands took the stage again and performed the album's closer, the lyrical This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody).

Reptar got the headline spot in the billing, and reportedly played a set after the album tribute was over, but I didn't stay around for it.  Nothing against Reptar (quite the contrary), but I wanted to get downtown to catch the end of something called Phantom Fest, an day-long celebration showcase of Blood Drunk Records artists and the EP-release party for Atlanta's DAMS. 

I've talked here before about the two music-processing systems in the human mind, the veridical system that responds to familiar sounds and lights up when, say, a favorite song comes on the radio, and the sequential system that responds to new sounds and likes to anticipate the next note or tone in a new composition. Everyone has both systems in their brain and no one is all one way or the other, although the two systems might also describe two separate musical experiences as well as two different sets of music fans.  Last night provided a workout for both system - the familiar, veridical experience of hearing those classic Talking Heads songs over again, and the sequential adventures of Phantom Fest. 

The Mammal Gallery is the newest venue in Atlanta, located way downtown in an otherwise desolate part of the City, and serves as both a stage for music and an art gallery. I understand the club is run or co-run by Chris Yonkers of Hello Ocho, who apparently couldn't make Phantom Fest as they were obviously otherwise engaged at The Goat Farm.  When I got there, the band Bees and Enormous Tigers were on stage, making an enormous amount of feedback-generated, post-rock sound.

DAMS were up next, taking the stage sometime after midnight (I was starting to lose track of time by this point).  DAMS are something of an Atlanta super-group, made up of young but veteran members of the Atlanta music scene.  Fronted by the soulful vocals of  Kace Brennan, the band also features powerhouse drummer Sarah Wilson, arguably the best drummer in town, the twin guitars of the talented Brett Reagan and David Carter, and the fine bassist Bret Phillips.

DAMS' music is complex and large, incorporating as many genres as possible, often in the same song, often at the same time.  Here's a pretty good sample:

Their set at The Mammal Gallery was nothing short of a triumph, but left me too emotionally drained to stay around for the closing set by bizarro-band Dip.  One thing about the sequential processing system - it takes up a lot more effort than the casual experience of the veridical system.

As you can tell by the show listing over there on the right, there are a lot more concerts this month - a lot more this week - and one could probably go to a worthwhile show every night of the month and still miss some good sets.  I'm going to have to pace myself (damn that gainful employment!) and see how much March Madness I can take in.  Wish me well.

Julianna Barwick at the Goat Farm, Atlanta, February 18, 2014

I could simply say that the show was beautiful beyond words, but then maybe I'm just being lazy.
 

Julianna Barwick

At The Goat Farm tonight.

Happy New Year!

Julianna Barwick will be performing at The Goat Farm on Tuesday, February 28. 

Dave Nelson at The Goat Farm, Atlanta, December 18, 2013

"Last night’s show at The Goat Farm Arts Center was amazing. It is such a special place and we are glad to have had the opportunity to perform there. Atlanta is lucky to have a place so dedicated to new and experimental art of all kinds." - Dave Nelson 

I couldn't agree more.  Nelson's music is hard to categorize, but why bother?  Here's a sample video, composed of great tracking shots filmed from a moving car driving through south Georgia, for his moving song Southbound, which he performed last night.

Dave Nelson Coming To The Goat Farm

Dave Nelson (right) performing with St. Vincent

As if further evidence of the diversity of Atlanta's music scene was necessary, loop-crazed Brooklyn-based trombonist Dave Nelson will be performing with Atlanta drummer Marlon Patton at The Goat Farm on December 18.  Video artist Lana Vogestad will be contributing to the performance.

We last saw Dave Nelson as part of the David Byrne-St. Vincent Love This Giant brass band.  But to help prepare us for what the evening may hold in store, here are some examples of Nelson's solo work.

Video artist Lana Vogestad has been an artist in residence in Greece and Iceland and has collaborated with musicians in the past, most recently at the Atlanta Film Festival's Sound + Vision event.  

Rocktober & Quiet Hounds Preview

Rocktober is now in full swing.  Tonight, the discriminating Atlanta concert goer has to choose from among The Dodos and Dustin Wong at The Drunken Unicorn, Ted Leo and Aimee Mann at Variety Playhouse,  Cody Chestnutt at The Loft, and Kisses at Smith's Olde Bar.

Tonight, I'm going to none-of-the-above, and checking out Quiet Hounds at the Atlanta History Center for a special, one-time performance titled Swans and Embers.

Quiet Hounds are no strangers to theatrical, historically-themed performances.  Here they are performing Lost Souls and Pocket Change as part of An Ode To Lost Souls at the Goat Farm on November 17, 2012.  Dude, I was there! (The picture up top is the stage from their February 25, 2012 debut performance.)

An Ode to Lost Souls was performed in one of the Goat Farm's historic, late 1800's industrial buildings.   The Hounds constructed the staging, lights, sound, and artwork for the performance in honor of soldiers who died at Andersonville prison in 1864.

Quiet Hounds might be one of Atlanta's best-kept secrets.  These guys could/should be filling concert halls across the country, if not the globe, but tonight they'll be playing at the ornate Swan House mansion, home of the Atlanta Historical Society.

Little Tybee

This beautifully photographed video has some "Dude, I Was There!" moments, especially the footage from The Goat Farm, but actually traces the development of Atlanta's Little Tybee's new album, For Distant Viewing, from initial conception to album release party.

Shit I Missed (continued)

Due to my on-going struggles with bath-salts addiction,  I missed this evening's performance of Terry Riley's seminal composition In C at The Goat Farm.  That record changed my life.

Okay, so I was kidding about the bath-salts addiction. I probably couldn't find bath salts on a map - I don't even know if they're around any more.  I actually missed the concert because I had forgotten the 7:00 pm start time, early by the rock-music standards I'm used to.

I wasn't kidding about the record's impact.  I didn't get a hold of a recording of the 1964 composition until about 1975, but like most people who've heard In C, it changed my whole perception of what music was and what music could be.

Deerhunter

Bradford Cox as Atlas Sound at Verizon Amphitheater, July 8, 2011

Last night, Atlanta's Deerhunter unveiled the title track of their forthcoming album, Monomania, on the Jimmy Fallon tee-vee show.  I hadn't realized that Deerhunter had a new album coming out, so there's that.

Things appear different this time around, though.  Bradford Cox, wearing what appeared to be an outrageous fright wig, didn't play any guitar but handled vocals only, handing guitar duties over to new band member Frankie Broyles, formerly of Atlanta's Balkans.  Don't know at this point if this change is just for the song Monomania, or just for this one live performance (perhaps to allow Cox his dramatic, burned-out exit from the stage starting at the 2:54 mark?), or if it's a different direction for Cox and for Deerhunter.

Name-dropping:  don't know if I ever got the chance to mention it, but I saw Bradford Cox in the audience at The Goat Farm, watching Atlanta's Carnivores open for Thee Oh Sees.  

Here's the studio version of Monomania:

Update:  Groupthink.  I composed the post above after coming across two separate notices on Facebook, one about the Fallon performance and the other about the new single streaming.  Then I saw that CMJ posted an article about the same thing, including the same two videos, throwing in a tweet from The Roots and a publicity photo from Late Night.  Their review said,  

It’s hard to make much of a splash on a late-night talk show—even the best performances tend to be pretty by the book—but last night Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox brought a touch of the theatrical to Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. Sporting a ratty black wig, a flashy spotted shirt and some bloody gauze on a few of his fingers, Cox led his band in a spirited rendition of the title track to Monomania, the group’s highly anticipated new record. As the dreamy garage-rock song built to its tape-loop-filled climax—nice “cut to the tape recorder” moment at 2:50—Cox makes his grand exit. It’s a pretty great moment.

Brooklyn Vegan ran the same story, too, including both videos.  They put it this way:

As mentioned, Deerhunter will release their new album, Monomania, on May 7. The title track has just been released for streaming and it's definitely on the grittier side than anything we've heard from them lately. Not sure if the song is in mono or not, but the "mania" part comes across loud and clear. . . Bradford Cox, looking very much like a late '70s New York punk, and the rest of the band stopped by Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night (4/2) to perform "Monomania" which took the track in some new directions -- like into the studio's hallway. 

Pitchfork was able to provide a little more of the backstory:

Deerhunter introduced the world to Monomania last night on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. While getting dressed for the performance backstage, frontman Bradford Cox referred to himself in character as "Connie Lungpin," donning a wig and bandaging his fingers as a tribute to his father who recently lost two fingertips in a tablesaw accident.  Cox also orchestrated the clip's final moment in advance: He walks out of the studio while the band continues playing behind him, grabbing a styrofoam cup out of a crew member's hand, and waits for the elevator.

StereoGum posted the same media, and wrote:

Credit Bradford Cox with knowing how to seize a moment. Last month, Cox’s band Deerhunter announced the impending release of their new album Monomania, recorded on eight-tracks in Brooklyn earlier this year. Last night, they posted a stream of the album’s title track, a supremely catchy piece of dessicated but jangly garage rock that devolves into a feedback tape-loop freakout before sputtering to a close. And soon afterward, the band played the song on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, turning in the sort of performance that’s going to linger around in our collective brain for a while. The band dressed in a slightly degraded take on what an early-’60s rock band might wear on TV, and Cox performed in a new persona, which he’s apparently calling “Connie Lungpin,” in a shaggy wig and bloody bandaged stump-fingers and Dracula mouth, wandering off through the studio catacombs while his band was still playing the song. It was a stunt, sure, but very few late-night performances have that sense of instability, that we can’t quite be sure what’s about to happen. Very few have me this excited about what the band’s going to do next. 

Arctic Monkeys enthusiasts We All Want Someone To Shout For wrote:

Deerhunter’s new album Monomania drops May 7 via 4AD. They have dropped the title track which just happens to also be the first single. It’s a raw, less produced version of Deerhunter that is slightly more punk, more reflective of the bands earlier days. It’s something fierce. What’s even more fierce is their performance of the song yesterday on Fallon. Be sure to watch the video all the way through, it’s worth it to see how Bradford ends it.

RCRD LBL.com only posted the studio clip, but provided a link to the Fallon performance:

Monomania seems like the moment where Deerhunter, clearly one of the best bands of the era at this point, enters their '90s Sonic Youth phase where things become crunchier, scuzzier and every move is a grand comment on rock spectacle. They unveiled this one on the Jimmy Fallon program last night, and it was one of the more subversive and exciting late night performances in recent memory – all 4:30 am gore and rotting rock 'n' roll. Highest recommendation.

No videos were included, but Atlanta's Creative Loafing might have scooped everyone when they posted their story at 7:58 am, stating, with tongue firmly in cheek and under the eye-catching headline, "Deerhunter hire new lead singer":

In case you missed it, (WHY DID YOU MISS IT? NO THAT IS NOT A GOOD ENOUGH EXCUSE) a bloodied and bandaged Connie Lungpin & The Deerhunters debuted a brash and bratty brand new tune called Monomania (click for wiki, ya bum) last night on "Lil' Jimmy's Late Nite Dog 'n' Pony Show."

So there you have it - possibly the most widely reviewed rock performance on network television since The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan.

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.