#daemon records

Cursive

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Last live picks for a week (going to Puerto Rico), so savor it!

Amy Ray and her Band, Old Town School of Folk Music

Indigo Girl Amy Ray’s latest solo album is Holler, an album inspired by Ray’s experience in the South--as a woman, as a leftist, as a consumer of Southern music, as an appreciator of Jim Ford’s Harlan County. Ray’s got faith in Jesus but is the first to tell you she’s not without sin, as on the banjo-plucked “Dadgum Down”, wherein she seeks sobriety. More importantly, she’s got empathy for the downtrodden: the military, the poor, victims of racism, singers who donate an entire concert’s payout to rent, or even just those who love being from the South but hate its backwards history. As for the instrumentation itself, the album is well-paced: When slower numbers like the various interludes, the title track, and “Last Taxi Fare” threaten to deprive the album of its momentum, you get a horns-and-banjos bluegrass stomp like “Sparrow’s Boogie”. Ray will bring the album to the Old Town School tonight with some of the same band who recorded the record.

Tennessee Southern Gothic singer Amythyst Kiah opens.

Matthew Dear, Sleeping Village

The last time we previewed a Matthew Dear set, he hadn’t yet released his latest record Bunny. The album, which came out last month, is definitely uneven, with its high points (the airy, syncopated “Modafinil Blues”, chillwave throwback “Moving Man”, anything prominently featuring Tegan and Sara and not Dear’s exaggerated baritone) and low points (the faux industrial “Can You Rush Them”, anything prominently featuring Dear’s exaggerated baritone). It makes sense that Dear’s a great collaborator because he’s a great curator (see his DJ-Kicks entry). Too often on Bunny, he gets stuck inside his own head, but when he opens his eyes, we open our ears.

TALsounds, the experimental ambient project of Natalie Chami, opens. Abstract Science DJs also spin.

Cursive & Meat Wave, Thalia Hall

Vitriola is the first Cursive album since The Ugly Organ to feature a cellist (Megan Siebe). This isn’t that notable, but I’ll take any connection to what’s undoubtedly their best record. The more notable connection recalls a similar era--founding drummer Clint Schnase returns for the first time since Happy Hollow. So while the album’s dramatic, baroque instrumentation actually blends quite nicely with the band’s usual mixture of rough power chords, slinky post-rock guitar lines, meaty drumming, and shout-along choruses, it’s the themes that are in a little too over their head. No, Vitriola is not a concept record, but whereas previous Cursive albums were rooted in a topic or two, Vitriola is Tim Kasher’s midlife crisis record, considering anything and everything including the concept of free will on the opening track and not backing down for the rest of the record. “You know it’s gonna hurt / There’s nothing left to lose,” Kasher sings over and over. Looking at the plight of so many in today’s political climate, you find his words a bit insincere. And “Ouroboros” is chock full of lines that hit you over the head with their plodding delivery. (“The writer will obsess over success / Success is like the carrot on a stick / Once the writer finds it's just a carrot / The writer takes a shit all over it.”) 

Instead, the best songs on Vitriola come when Kasher and company ask questions and show some self-awareness. “Who will show remorse?” he wonders on the soft, piano-laden, melancholy “Remorse”. It’s the idea that in order to earn the right to be angry and nihilistic about the world, you not only have to validate what others are going through--you have to understand and own up to your part in it. Eventually, on “Everending”, he admits what you already know he’s going to come to: “The point of all of this eludes us.” You just wish he had gotten to the realization a little bit quicker.

If you’ve read us for the past few years, you know we love the songs and shows of ever-ascending local heroes Meat Wave, having covered three different sets of theirs. Their last full-length release was 2017′s The Incessant, but earlier this year, they released two new songs, one-minute stomper ‘Shame’ and creepy slow-burner 'Dogs At Night’. They’ve also recently released a split EP with Lifestyles; their contribution is the chugging, surf rock-meets-post-punk ditty “That’s Alright”.

Local indie rockers Campdogzz open.

The Menzingers, Cobra Lounge

The Menzingers have followed up their 2012 opus On the Impossible Past with two good, not great albums: 2014′s Rented World and last year’s After the Party. A taste of what might be next has come in two singles this year, the vocally melodic “Toy Soldier” ( “There’s so much to be sad about these days,” sings Greg Barnett, adding syllables to the final word as if to emphasize the amount of pure bummers) and slinky “The Freaks”, the latter’s loud-quiet-loud indie rock a new sound for the usually charging band.