#live picks

David Grubbs; Photo by Julien Sitruk

BY JORDAN MAINZER

"People seem willing to jump in with both feet when working with sound." Speaking to me over the phone, composer and multi-instrumentalist David Grubbs was specifically referring to an upcoming book he was working on about cross-disciplinary collaborations he's done with visual artists and writers, and "sound as a welcoming space for co-authorship." I couldn't help but think, though, that his description of his book encapsulated the ethos of many of Grubbs' projects, from his legendary post-rock band Gastr del Sol to Whistle From Above, his first solo album in 7 years.

When combing through live and studio archives for Gastr del Sol's 2024 box set, We Have Dozens of Titles, Grubbs rethought material he was currently recording. That is, listening to his camaraderie with not just Jim O'Rourke but featured artists like one-time Gastr del Sol members Bundy K. Brown and John McEntire, Bob Weston, and multi-instrumentalist Thymme Jones, inspired Grubbs to reach out to other musicians to join forces with. Taking advantage of the Internet--something he didn't have during Gastr del Sol's days--Grubbs chose to invite mostly folks who lived across the pond, such as harpist Rhodri Davies, cellist Nikos Veliotis, and drummer Andrea Belfi. The result is Whistle From Above, released late last month on Drag City, a collection of experimental composed guitar works.

On Whistle From Above, the songs journey. The gentle title track ascends and descends subtly, Grubbs holding notes to create an echo as if to toy with space and time. Distortion and noise also enter in ultra-fine ways, as on the softly wincing "Hung in the Sky of the Mind" and "Scrapegrace", the latter of which juxtaposes a catchy guitar riff and a pulsating bass note. Best, the guests complement Grubbs rather than seem layered atop his guitar playing. Nate Wooley's blaring trumpet serves to mirror Grubbs' chirpy plucks on "The Snake on Its Tail", while on "Queen's Side Eye", it, along with Cleek Schrey's ten-string fiddle, encourages Grubbs' bluesy licks to continually speed up and propel the song to its finish. Such a phenomenon is notable considering Grubbs' process for Whistle From Above, wherein he sent material to his collaborators, they sent back their contributions, and he stitched it all together to make something that sounds like it was recorded live.

Last week at Sisters in Brooklyn, Grubbs played a record release show with Schrey, Wooley, and free jazz guitarist Wendy Eisenberg. Starting tomorrow, he's on tour in the UK for nine days, playing solo, save for two nights with Luke Fowler in Glasgow and London, where the two will be performing alongside sound material provided by, and Fowler's films about, composer Brunhild Ferrari. And at the end of the month, Grubbs will arrive in Knoxville for Big Ears Festival, where he's playing with Squanderers (his trio with Eisenberg and Kramer) at Regas Square on March 28th, as a guest of Water Damage on March 29th at The Standard, and solo on March 29th at The Point. Below, read our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Whistle From Above cover art

Since I Left You: How exactly did working on We Have Dozens of Titles make you want to revisit material you had you had written?

David Grubbs: I'd slowly been recording a record of what I though was going to be solo electric guitar. Working on the Gastr del Sol material made me think how nice it would be to reach out to other folks, and to build upon these solo pieces...Cleek Schrey lives in New York, but everybody else who plays on the record lives in the UK, Germany, or Greece--that's one of the things records do so well, overcome distance. There seemed to be no reason for the record to be limited to one person.

SILY: Had you been workshopping the pieces live?

DG: Gastr del Sol forward, I would either write in the studio, or the studio was a culmination of an intense period of creation. It probably had more to do with a period during the pandemic of not being able to tour as much. Most of these pieces I've been playing for a couple years now. Normally, I have this sense of, "One makes a record, and now I really know how to nail these pieces." It was good to have the extra time with these pieces before recording them.

SILY: When you reached out to these collaborators, did you have in mind what tracks would have what elements and who would play on what? How did that process come about?

DG: In each case, I had recorded the basic track myself in New York, and I had a sense, for example, with Nikos Veliotis, that he is really good at doing these walls of overdubbed cello. I had a little bit of a sense of how people might approach the track. If people ask for suggestions or guidance, I'm really happy to supply that, but most of these folks are people I've known for years. I love to be surprised by other people...I approached these people because they're fabulous musicians and brilliant artists.

SILY: Did you send collaborators the stems of what you had, and they'd send back their contribution, or did you record any of the album in person?

DG: No, except for Cleek Schrey. All of the others were done long-distance. I would do editing and the final mix.

SILY: Why did you decide to release "The Snake on Its Tail" as the intro to this world?

DG: It's the first track that I wrote, which isn't necessarily a good argument for why it's the first track for people to hear from the record. There doesn't have to be a 1:1 correlation. I really like the dynamic range of it. Andrea Belfi's drumming is fantastic on it. It just seemed like a good introduction to the record in all its breadth.

SILY: How do you come up with the track titles? In hindsight, they are evocative of what the songs sound like.

DG: I always think of titles as real opportunities to make the most of. Since I was a teenager in Squirrel Bait, I always have had an active list of titles that I can draw from at any point, keeping notes nearby.

SILY: "Later in the Tapestry Room" is particularly evocative to me, because it has the most layers of seemingly disparate elements you weave together.

DG: There's a very clear explanation for that, though I didn't feel the need to have liner notes on the record. I'm not shy about sharing it. The Tapestry Room is the room at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where they had concerts for 100 years. I did a sound installation there, having done research there, so I knew, for example, it was one of the first places Japanese Gagaku music was heard in the U.S., and it was the second place where Arnold Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 1 was performed. You hear a little bit of those elements of the sound installation I made for the Tapestry Room. But it also does have a sense of the room coming alive when no one is present.

SILY: You're simultaneously in conversation with the past and with your past.

DG: Yeah.

SILY: Did you name the album after the title track because something about the title track was particularly evocative of the album as a whole?

DG: I had settled on the album title a long way's back. Whistle From Above, for me, what I associate it with, is the stage in Samuel Beckett's Act Without Words, a play without any text. Whistle From Above is almost vaudeville or slapstick comedy. A character is on the stage, there's a whistle from above, they look up, something's dangled above them. As they reach for it, it's always pulled just outside of their reach. Whistle From Above is an uncomfortable, uncanny quality of being hailed. "What? Who, me?" It also made me think of the first line in Gravity's Rainbow, "A screaming comes across the sky."

SILY: There are definitely moments on the album where the instrumentation does the same thing, pulls you in one way, almost dangling a pattern in front of you before changing. On "Poem Arrives Distorted", the guitar notes start out droney and the strings expressive, and then they switch qualities. The piece lulls you to expect something and then flips on its head or takes an element away. Do you ever listen back to the album you made and make connections after the fact?

DG: I listen obsessively when I'm making demos for a record, but then, I'm on to the next thing. I have a dog that's a rat terrier--now he's blind, but for years, he was always obsessed with squirrels. I thought to myself, "Oh god, if he ever catches a squirrel, how will I get the squirrel away from him?" He finally killed a squirrel once in Prospect Park. He grabbed a squirrel, shook it, broke its neck, dropped it, and was on to the next one. That's a little bit how I make records. [laughs] It's a terrible comparison, but rather than being unwilling to relinquish it, it's kind of the opposite. I'm like the rat terrier scanning the horizon again, like, "Okay, what's next?"

SILY: In that same way, do you feel like you've squeezed every inch of life out of the material before moving on? How far does the metaphor go?

DG: [laughs] I do maybe feel like I've done it to death and it's best to move on.

SILY: Can you tell me about the cover art?

DG: That's a collage by Kevin and Jennifer McCoy, who are friends of mine. Kevin is a computer programmer, and Jenn has made video work for almost 30 years. They're more associated with interactive media and art and technology. They're people whose work rarely wasn't made with a computer or software they haven't devised. I think they needed a break from the screen. A year or so ago, they started this series of collages of environmental catastrophe imagery, like forest fires and flooding. This was one from the series. It's funny: I saw an image of it before I saw the original, and I knew it was 12'' x 12''. There's something to me about the exact scale. I often feel like I'm seeing artwork on albums that's blown up or shrunk. It's very satisfying when you hold an album cover and think, "This is the appropriate scale for this artwork." In addition to this rich imagery and color palette, it seemed like a ready-made album cover to me.

SILY: People are consuming media and looking at the image many different ways, but to choose something optimized for an LP seems rare these days.

DG: I really thought about what the artwork would look like at the 1:1 scale of a 12-inch square rather than on my phone or on Apple Music.

SILY: What's your approach to playing these songs live? Is there an improvisational element simply because you don't have all the musicians from the record playing with you?

DG: There's kind of a roadmap to doing solo, duo, trio, and quartet, and trying to give a flow to it with as little interruption as possible. Making records is weird, at least for me, because I'm focused on this composition that's three or four minutes long. There's very little improvisation on the album, even though I love playing improvised music and settings. It's all composed, except for some of the contributions from other folks. Even that tends to be composed through editing. Rhodri gave me three takes of his harp performance, and I shaped it into a part for the final record. I think of an album as a meta composition that might last 30 or 40 minutes. My approach to playing with others for the concert is, even if I'm playing with three other people, the four of us don't have to play from start to finish. In fact, I really love this ebbing and flowing quality of adding people to the stage, subtracting people, giving people a break. All of the people I'm playing with are playing on roughly half the set. There's a little bit of new solo material in the middle of the set. A band continually in flux would be the idea.

SILY: I always appreciate shows around a record's release that use the record as a launching point or broader musical realm to diverge from.

DG: I don't see any reason to replicate the album.

SILY: Is there anything else on the horizon for you in the short or long term?

DG: There's a second Squanderers record coming out in the fall. There's a first record by a new group called Bitterviper, which is me, Nikos Veliotis, Taku Unami, and Sarah Hennies. I'm putting that out on Blue Chopsticks in July.

SILY: Is there anything you've been listening to, watching, or reading lately that's caught your attention or inspired you?

DG: I'm loving this new book by Elizabeth Willis called Liontaming in America. It's about Mormonism and westward expansion and polygamy. It's prose poetry, but a brilliant book of American history.

Tour dates:

3/15: Glad Café, Glasgow, UK 3/16: Glad Café, Glasgow, UK 3/17: Star & Shadow, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK 3/18: NCI Sports & Social Club, Cambridge, UK 3/19: Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, UK 3/20: Cafe Kino, Bristol, UK 3/21: Pan-Pan, Birmingham, UK 3/22: World of Echo, London, UK 3/24: Cafe OTO, London, UK 3/28-3/29: Big Ears Festival, Knoxville, TN

Photo by Nicole Mago

BY JORDAN MAINZER

I'm waiting back stage at Riot Fest for Say Anything's Max Bemis to finish a photoshoot, one that sees him lie in the grass in various positions that make it look like he's stretching after a tough workout. Despite the fact that he hasn't yet gotten his real workout in yet--his newly reformed band would go on stage in a few hours--and that this photoshoot is full of capital-p Poses, I'm taken by how at ease Bemis seems with everything. When we speak, he reveals to me that, yes, while he did in fact feel awkward during the photoshoot--most of us do--he's learning to lean into his feelings much more naturally.

Five years ago, the legendary emo band disbanded, with their 2019 album Oliver Appropriate billed as their final LP for the moment. A purported sequel to their beloved sophomore record ...Is A Real Boy, the album was publicized in conjunction with a nine-page letter from Bemis, in which came out as bisexual and admitted to struggles with drug use. (The frontman has long been open about his diagnosed bipolar disorder, previous self-medication through drugs, and manic episodes.) During the pandemic, Bemis stayed busy, performing livestreams of older material, but there was always lingering doubt the band's hiatus would become permanent.

It wasn't until late last year that Bemis dropped that the band would be reuniting for festivals in 2023. In typical nonchalant fashion, he shared that the reunion would include past members drummer Coby Linder and bassist Alex Kent by replying to someone's comment on a Facebook post. In April, the band released their first new material since Oliver Appropriate, the maximally stream-of-consciousness rant "Psyche!". The song sees Bemis laying out those same struggles for everyone to bear witness to, blaming himself for his personal, marital, and familial problems atop a bevy of references to the band's older material, Titanic, and Riot Fest itself. "By Riot Fest '24, I'll be coughing up corks if you supply the Malörk," he sings, a line that's instantly iconic and bound to be infamous for its satiric misspelling of Chicago's shot of choice. In August, the band followed it up with "Are You (In) There?", which also establishes itself within our emo universe, with mentions of Sunny Day Real Estate and mewithoutYou, but a more personal ode to Bemis' wife and the love they have for each other despite his past actions and shortcomings. And just this morning, Say Anything annouced ...Is Committed (Dine Alone), their new record, along with a single entitled "Carrie & Lowell & Cody (Pendent)", Bemis placing his "mommy issues" in conversation with those of indie folk luminary Sufjan Stevens. The song is musically heavier and more complex and full-throated, while also containing gorgeous choral harmonies from Bemis' wife, Sherri Dupree-Bemis.

At one point, the future of the band was a mystery to everyone, Bemis included. But with some newfound perspectives, the musical and personal influence of new band member Brian Warren of Weatherbox, and therapy, it seemed from just the short conversation I had with Bemis and Kent that they're in a good place, ready to embrace their new chapter. Read my interview below, conducted last month before I knew about their new album, edited for length and clarity. Catch the band three nights next week at The Regent Theater in LA and at When We Were Young in Las Vegas next weekend.

Photo courtesy of Say Anything

Since I Left You: How does it feel to be back?

Max Bemis: It feels great. I don't think I would have decided to write the songs again if I didn't aspire to how this feels now, which is very different than our experience as little kids being in a punk band, which was very intense and an experience I wouldn't trade for anything. But this is comfortable, and it feels like having the best job ever, in the words of Piebald. It could have been a stress fest, anxious, or bad, but the only reason I wanted to write again was to reach for this thing that we never got to settle into, being dads approaching 40. The bands we looked up to were doing it at that age and still making inventive music but still seeming to chill and not base their entire personas and aspirations around being in a band. I think I appreciate it more now that I'm not trying to be "a guy in a band" as hard as I was.

Alex Kent: Something we've been talking about since getting back up and running was the transition from utilizing it as an escape versus a form of healing. Because we've been through so much traumatic shit in our lives, most of the time Max and I talk, we talk about therapy. It's fucking weird going from 18 years old on a tour bus to having that self-awareness and reflection.

MB: I didn't need it like that for many years because our entire life cycle was keyed in to being on tour. I wasn't living a normal person life. I'm not saying I ever have really or ever will--I wrote comic books for five years. That's still weird. We're still weirdo guys. Having a family, coming out of that kind of circus, I feel more like my 14-year-old self who needed this music for that reason.

SILY: The new songs have a self-aware quality.

MB: More than ever.

SILY: How do you include the self-awareness in a set at a festival or concert, where you're literally referring to other songs you're playing in the setlist?

MB: We refer to Riot Fest itself!

SILY: And Malörk [sic]

MB: And Malörk. It's incredibly self-referential and ironic, but because the band started that way, it's come full circle and is no longer ironic at the same time. There's still a lot of exaggeration and bullshit, but it's closer to me saying actual things that are happening. As you age, everyone's life becomes a circus, more surreal. The world has been very surreal, with COVID and Trump. You kind of have to say your inner experience now. It's an emotional, crazy, surreal thing anyway. It's not like before, when I said, "I have to think about my ex-girlfriend, but I'm thinking about my wife, and what the fuck is this about?" Now, this is about being at Riot Fest. And I am at Riot Fest.

SILY: There is a song about your wife, though.

MB: Yes. Also quite literal. So many emotions are certainly exaggerated, but the sincerity isn't. The love for my wife is very real. But even there, if you're in any successful relationship, it goes through the most intense rebirths and reformations, and you're adjusting to each other, especially after having kids. It's more potent to me to say what's happening or what my emotions are than do what we did on In Defense of the Genre, where I was literally forcing drama into my life on a regular basis. Now, I have no room. I'm tired. I have children to look after. The drama just happens from kids, life, everything. It's real and heartfelt, but a seasoned emotion and not so adolescent. I still love those songs, and I relate to them, but they all speak to a certain side of me I can't live out anymore.

SILY: Do the new songs more than ever exemplify the idea that the more personal you are, the more universal the songs can be?

MB: Yeah. But probably by being a little too hyper-specific. That's why I fell in love with this kind of music. Saves The Day got me into wanting to be in a band. What wowed me was when he was talking about the names of the other band members in song, like, "Ted's drooling on his sleeve." He's just saying he's in this New Jersey bar and he misses his girlfriend. He's not cloaking anything. Our thing has been a kind of parody of that, but now I don't have to stretch anything for it to be a parody.

Photo by Ben Trivett

SILY: What do you think Brian Warren brings to the table on the new songs?

AK: I've known Brian since we were 9 years old. Our very first band, we were in together.

MB: I wouldn't know about Weatherbox if it wasn't for Alex.

AK: He brings this calming energy. Humble is a weird word to describe him.

MB: It's accurate.

AK: Weatherbox is fucking amazing.

MB: He has more impostor syndrome than even me.

AK: He can play everything, and he writes cool shit.

MB: He's a virtuoso. The cool thing about Brian is that there's always been a connection between our bands. It's similar to me playing music with [Chris] Conley [in Two Tongues] back in the day. It's surreal, but it makes so much sense that you don't have to think about where he fits into the sonic picture or personality picture because we're friends.

AK: It's very cool how much sense it makes.

SILY: Has your relationship changed to your old songs?

MB: I like them more. Over the break from the band, I would listen to Say Anything, with my kids or in my car, alone. The way I severed it was so intentional. I wasn't saying, "The band was over." I was saying, "We're probably going to get back together, but I have to sever this incarnation." I was listening to [old Say Anything songs] and thinking, "I like Alex's bass part. I like the production. I even like my voice." It was like listening to another band, because of the space. I've grown to like them. I definitely know people in bands that are not what they listen to, but Say Anything has always been a conglomeration of the type of thing we listen to. If I'm going to listen to The Get Up Kids, I might as well listen to Say Anything.

SILY: Moving forward, are you trying to continue to be more intentional, or do what feels best?

MB: Both. I know that's cliché to say, and it does and doesn't make sense. I find that intentional is my default, and before, I would second-guess myself constantly. Now, I allow myself to make mistakes, and I let other people give me advice that before were such cerebral trips. There was a lot that weighed on me. If the lyrics are super intentional and literal, I'm just going to do it. If I feel awkward in a photo shoot like right now, I'm just going to be awkward in the photo shoot. That is, of course, my safe and happy place in life.

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The first great album of the year came out five days into it, belying the post-New Year haze and bitter cold, walloping us into paying attention. Letter to Self, the debut LP from Dublin post-punk quartet SPRINTS, out via City Slang, is a tremendously assured collection of songs that the band describes as "to-the-bone" personal. They're led by singer-songwriter Karla Chubb, whose taut shouts, full-throated yells, and pained but deliberate lyrics match the utter tenseness of the compositions. She sings about her life, and topics ranging from depression and ADHD to sexuality and Catholicism, but without the overt autobiography that can plague even the most well-intentioned writers. Her singing sonically traverses the sinews of Colm O'Reilly's lead guitar riffs and bassist Sam McCann and drummer Jack Callan's brawny rhythm section. Each song is its own journey, and when they end, it feels like you've been holding your breath the whole time.

Though SPRINTS showed promise with their early material, they sound like a complete band with their debut. Working with Gilla Band's Daniel Fox in the studio helped them embrace the charged intensity that makes their live shows so thrilling. Letter to Self begins with "Ticking", the song that's been at the start of their live setlists, on which foreboding guitar, a double-tapped snare, and Chubb's chants build to a false explosion before the full beat truly drops. (Moments like this make it clear that the majority of the band are horror and sci-fi fans, but not necessarily obsessed with jump scares.) "Heavy" builds up similarly, with twangy guitar squalls and trilling drum fills, as Chubb asks pointed questions like, "Do you ever feel like the room is heavy?" before melismatic belting, lamenting that she's "watching the world go round the window beside me." Elsewhere, they combine the frankness of Fontaines D.C. with the cascades of Midwest emo ("Shaking Their Hands") and delve into swirling soundscapes ("Can't Get Enough of It"). As for Chubb, she knows when to scream; at her most full-throated, like on "Shadow Of A Doubt", she's a dead ringer for Courtney Love.

As much as SPRINTS' instrumentation purveys the spirit of their songs, Chubb is a deft lyricist, writing clever rhymes and cutting barbs alike. On "Cathedral", she chides the heartlessness of the Irish Catholic church when it comes to their views on queer folks like her: "He's singing from a hymn sheet, I'm singing for the others / They say I've gone cold while I'm sat drowning in the gutter." "Adore Adore Adore" bemoans the sexist double standards of the music industry, wherein anybody but a straight cisgender male is subject to only love or hate. "Am I everything you wish you had?" Chubb asks, "Or am I everything you detest?" Perhaps best is the album's closer, the title track, where Chubb honors her own ability to conquer trauma, generational and otherwise. "I can shake the leaves of hereditary," she sings, pronouncing the final word "he-re-di-tree" in a cheeky bit of wordplay, continuing, "I don't have to take the path that was carved out in front of me." On Letter to Self, Chubb and SPRINTS in general toss off a world of fear and shame in favor of self-love and acceptance.

SPRINTS plays Schubas on Tuesday night. Back in January, I spoke with Callan about Letter to Self, playing live, horror, and film scores. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity, and know the Irish band is excited to be in Chicago mere days after our raucous St. Patrick's Day celebration.

Since I Left You: One of the things I love about Letter to Self is that the instrumentation and the song structures engage the themes just as much as the lyrics do. Can you talk about creating a mood between words and instruments?

Jack Callan: That boils down to the songwriting process. It usually starts with Karla. It could be one riff on guitar or start with lyrics or melody. A lot of the time, and especially with the two opening tracks on the album, "Ticking" and "Heavy", from the get-go, we talked about building a literal feeling of anxiety. That's probably the case for most of the songs. We're trying to match the emotions of the music. The intensity of the song dictates the dynamics. It's quite natural: We all know each other so well.

SILY: As the drummer, specifically, you're at the forefront of toying with our expectations, especially on a song like "Ticking". You think it's going to explode into a rousing moment, but it pulls back. It eventually explodes, but there's a push-pull throughout.

JC: Yeah, absolutely, particularly with "Ticking". It's probably one of the oldest songs written on the album. We probably wrote it at the same time as the songs on our second EP. It didn't really sit well with those [songs], but we always knew we were going to come back to it. When we started properly planning for [Letter to Self], we knew it was going to be the opening track because it has such a slow build. You think it's going to kick in, but it doesn't. Live, we start sets with that, and it sets the tone nicely and builds the anxiety.

SILY: One of the most powerful things about Karla's lyrics is that she asks questions. "Do you ever feel like the room is heavy?" You don't know who she's talking to, but as a listener, it almost feels like she's talking to you. How do you feel about that confrontation when playing live?

JC: I think it's incredibly effective. The way Karla writes is very personal and vulnerable, but in a way it's not so specific you know exactly the circumstance what she's talking about.

SILY: The album title Letter to Self reminds me of a diary. It's a cliché album descriptor when writers say that a personal album is "like reading someone's diary," but this one truly is. If I were to pick up somebody's diary without knowing them, it wouldn't make total sense. I might be able to relate to vague feelings, but I wouldn't know the specifics they refer to. Do you think the record achieves an ideal level of abstraction?

JC: Absolutely. A lot of it was about dealing with those emotions or experiences. Since we've started out as a band, Karla's become more comfortable being vulnerable and open in her songwriting. Our first EP had some personal things, and our second EP was about the self and everyday life, but this is more to-the-bone personal. I think that felt very natural to Karla. There's an honesty to it. She's writing about her own experiences and how she feels about them.

SILY: How is playing the songs live from an emotional standpoint? Do you find yourselves in a similar headspace to when you recorded them, or do you let loose?

JC: I think the recording process, especially for Karla, was more taxing emotionally. Before recording, we rehearsed songs a bunch, and we messed around with demos for a while, but because the lyrics are so personal, putting down the tracks in the studio, that's when it hits you that the songs are going to go out into the world and everyone will listen to them. When you're in the studio, and there's no live audience, just us and Daniel Fox, our producer, it just feels a lot closer. By the time you get to the live set, the music isn't just ours anymore. People will interpret it any way they want. The live shows take on a life of their own, as well. It's more about the band at that point. The live shows have a lot of energy, a lot of fun. On stage, we've never really taken ourselves too seriously. We have a bit of a laugh, even when the subject matter is heavy.

SILY: Have the live versions instrumentally or structurally taken on a new life? Do you extend things or change things up at all?

JC: A little bit. Not as much with some of the album tracks yet, because we haven't been playing them as long. It's usually something that happens naturally. Some of the songs from the EPs we play differently. "Literary Mind" was recorded again for the album. It's is way faster than the original recording. We recorded it and started playing it live. How it is on the album is closer to how it is live.

SILY: Do you have a favorite of the Letter to Self songs to play live?

JC: Probably "Cathedral". The start of that song is a bit scary, but the chorus is proper all-out headbanging. We've played it a little bit live, but not for that long.

SILY: I can imagine that's a cathartic song for you to play live. You're just pounding along.

JC: Yeah. Loud and fast.

SILY: What's the story of the cover art?

JC: It was a still taken from the music video for "Adore, Adore, Adore". During the video, there's a scene where Karla has been abducted and wrapped up in gauze. If you look closely, you may notice the thick eyebrows and mustache: I'm one of the abductors. There's a plastic bowl with water in it her head was being dunked into. The photo was taken from underneath.

SILY: Something not everyone would realize just listening to the album is how much all of you--except for Sam--love horror films and sci-fi.

JC: It was definitely a big inspiration for the videos in particular. It was thematically linked to the "Adore, Adore, Adore" video, but also just a bit creepy and weird.

SILY: Over the past 10 years or so, there's been a resurgence of artful horror films that aren't just genre pieces, that deal with a lot of the same themes on this record. They use an aesthetic to explore themes that might be traditionally explored in different genres. Do you have some favorite contemporary horror films?

JC: I'm definitely a big fan of Hereditary and Midsommar. They were a reference point, slightly thematically, and aesthetically as well. Slightly creepy but not slasher horror. Stuff that's unsettling. Especially with the music. It's not jump scares, just that slight feeling of, "I don't feel right about this."

SILY: Have you ever thought about trying film scoring?

JC: I would absolutely love that. I saw the original Suspiria not that long ago that Goblin did the score to. It's super weird. The film's amazing, but the score is incredible as well. When I saw it, I thought, "I could totally see us doing something like this." It would be a lot of fun.

SILY: I know Letter to Self just came out, but are you the type of band constantly coming up with new songs? Or do you have to sit down and dedicate time to it?

JC: There's constantly new stuff knocking around. There are already demos for what could be album 2. Even from [Letter to Self], there are plenty of demos that couldn't make it in the end. You do eventually need to find time to sit down all together and work on stuff. It's increasingly difficult as we're on the road so much, but we need to block in weeks throughout the year so we have time to do it.

SILY: Is there anything you've been listening to, watching, or reading lately that's caught your attention?

JC: I just finished Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood. The last book I read was Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, which came out 20-30 years before Dracula. It's similar, with vampires, but there's a lesbian love element to it. It's really good, only 150 pages. A lot of people reckon Bram Stoker stole a lot of his ideas for Dracula from it. There's a lot of what we now think of as vampire lore in it from what we [attribute to] Bram Stoker. There's a castle in vague Eastern Europe [in Carmilla], so he definitely lifted some ideas from it.

I went to see Spy Kids in the cinema last week. That was a lot of fun. I don't know why they were showing it, but it was a favorite of mine as a kid. I'm going to see Poor Things tomorrow.

Photo by Amy Grace

BY JORDAN MAINZER

When you’re listening to Avey Tare solo or even his work with Animal Collective, you’re waiting for that moment: a scream, a jittery melody, chaotic percussion that pans throughout the speakers like ping-pong balls. His latest album, 7s (Domino), has almost none of that. A subdued, reflective affair, 7s was born out of a desire to collaborate. In 2020, Animal Collective had just finished making Time Skiffs remotely, and Dave Portner wanted to channel his creative energy into in-person collaboration. Of course, during the early stages of the pandemic, the inability to (wisely) be in the same room as many others disrupted just about every facet of life, let alone every line of work. Portner, ironically situated in the musical mecca of Asheville, where he’d have a murderer’s row of collaborative choices any other time, felt depressed, and a bit lost. Luckily, he did have Adam McDaniel and Drop of Sun.

Unlike on his past records, Portner went into 7s with very little ideas of how his songs, casually written during 2020, would take shape. During the first week of 2021, he and McDaniel spent three days with achievable goals--a guitar part here, percussion there--and emerged happy even if they only got half done what they set out to do. It’s these initial sketches that inform the aesthetic and ultimate vibe of 7s. The first song Portner had for it was the 9-and-a-half-minute centerpiece “Hey Bog”, originally written to play on his 2019 tour for Cows on Hourglass Pond. Ambient and rubbery, it’s easy to get lost in before strumming and thumping percussion enter, his ethereal, yet outwardly emotive singing combining with the instrumentation to make a sort of New Age acid house. The rest of the songs were sculpted around “Hey Bog”, from the trilling tribute to essential workers and good deeds, “Invisible Darlings”, to the ever-anxious shuffle “Sweeper’s Grin”. Though Portner’s words are devotional and grateful, they’re also extremely uncertain. On “The Musical”, he converses with himself, questioning how he came to be as a musician. The woozy closer “Cloud Stop Rest Start” seems to be one of many moments where he questions humanity’s motives, referring to the impersonal nature of COVID data and inherent, yet unavoidable selfishness of living during a pandemic. “Oh American stranger, is it always like this? Losing things to spikes and the ups and downs?” he sings. 

Those ups and downs, albeit of a different type, have continued ever since for Portner. Of course, live music would return about a year and a half later thanks to an unprecedented, life-saving vaccine, but the still volatile nature of COVID would mean Animal Collective had to cancel their EU/UK tour as recently as last October. Time Skiffs and 7s were released last year and this February to critical acclaim, and Portner still finds time to work with McDaniel. “We’ll...just get together and make something and record,” he told me over the phone from his home last month. “He’s always down.” Portner knows that there will be trials and tribulations, but just like his and Animal Collective’s approach to playing live, it seems as though he’s starting to look at everything--studio albums, careers, life, and everything in between--with a sense of wondrous improvisation and honesty, no matter how messy.

Read my conversation with Portner below, edited for length and clarity. Catch Avey Tare at Sleeping Village tomorrow night. Lipsticism, the solo project of local musician and producer Alana Schachtel, opens.

Since I Left You: Animal Collective finished Time Skiffs remotely, and it led to a creative streak for you at a time when people were working by themselves. What specifically for you led to this period of being prolific?

Dave Portner: When I have time around the house or time off from touring, I try to write songs. It’s a big part of my day, my time in the studio, my work. During the transition from 2020 to 2021 in particular, I was getting more and more depressed about being cut off from collaborating musically with people. It’s such a big part of my life. We had planned to record Time Skiffs together in the studio, and that couldn’t happen. [It] isn’t a bad thing in terms of process, but quarantine and 2020 and the pandemic, having me shut in so much and not able to do anything beyond going outside of my studio, led to a lot of cabin fever. I was craving musical collaboration with somebody.

It worked out that Adam McDaniel, my friend, had this studio called Drop of Sun. We just decided to be really relaxed about it. I had a lot of time around the house, so I started writing these songs. [We blocked] off three days at the beginning of January [2021], because I had to get out of my house and into another musical environment. At that time, Drop of Sun was one nice studio room in his basement, and the whole Drop of Sun team was working on building this new studio, which was done by the time we started the mixing stage. But even starting in his basement, it was nice and crucial to be able to bounce ideas off somebody. I didn’t have a huge game plan, just basic structures of songs I wanted to start working on and see where they would go.

SILY: After this time period of less collaboration or remote collaboration, it seems like the journey from the demos to the finished product was pretty seamless. It that true, or were there bumps in the road?

DP: No, it felt really good. We started with three days, and when they ended, we wished we had more time. We had to do other things here and there. Allowing myself to step away from things and go in every day with a goal of, [for instance, “ finish] this guitar part” or a few ideas I wanted to accomplish, [felt] really good. We started wanting to do more and more. 

At the beginning, I didn’t know what 7s was. It was just me recording some songs. As we got towards the end, I was still working on “Invisible Darlings” and wanted to get that in the fold. I had “Hey Bog” already, which I wrote in 2019 when I had solo shows and wanted to put new songs into the set. I wanted to record that one for a while. Since I knew it would be a centerpiece, or at least on the record, it was a matter of fitting other songs around it. I think that’s why 7s feels like it has one foot in the past and one foot in the present and future. I wanted everything to feel cohesive and not too random; it was just a matter of building it from the bottom up in Drop of Sun. That’s not usually how I do my solo records. Typically, I’m planning them beforehand when I’m off from Animal Collective, and I know what I want to do. This one was created as we went, even though the songs were kind of written.

SILY: Do you think the casual vibe of the recording made its way into the quality of the songs? “Hey Bog” and “Sweeper’s Grin” are relaxed, reflective, melancholy songs. In other words, did the anomaly in process allow the songs to breathe more?

DP: Definitely. Having a lot of time at home to work on stuff and play them, it was a very introspective time. There were melancholy thoughts that went along with that, and there were happy thoughts, joyous thoughts, anger. Music and making and recording music is often a very cathartic process, especially when I’m doing stuff at my home studio. I’m working through a lot. The same is the case with 7s. I [was] working through the emotions when recording and doing the vocal parts. Some of the vocal parts were written and created as I was recording them. It’s really relaxed working with Adam, because we’re good friends, and at the time, there was nobody else around, so we set our own limits and time and let it feel good. “The Musical” and “Invisible Darlings” had a couple different versions we tried, and having the time to not feel rushed about it helped them because we took the time to really find the place for them.

SILY: This all reminds me of when you sing on “Sweeper’s Grin”, “Happy to be carefree / Do tell.” 

DP: It’s kind of a cynical question. Some interpret that as me saying I’m happy to be carefree, but it’s really somebody else saying they’re happy to be carefree, and I’m like, “Oh, really? Do tell.” What’s there to be happy about? The world is crumbling. That’s not my typical worldview or outlook on life, but it comes into my mind sometimes. That side is there, so I want it to be there.

SILY: Is that also why you decided to end the record with “Cloud Stop Rest Start”, a bit more of an uneasy track?

DP: For sure. I also didn’t see that song going anywhere else.

SILY: On “The Musical”, you sing, “I wonder, how is it explained that a person comes into the field of making sound and putting it together.” Was that something you were wondering especially when making 7s? Is that a question you get asked a lot?

DP: I feel like I’ve [lately] been a lot more interested in conversational songwriting. That’s me starting to mess around with that, which isn’t something I’ve done before. I haven’t been so personal about my process of making music and my place in music. Asheville is a musical place. I’m around a lot of musicians, and there’s a lot of history of music with Appalachia, people doing all kinds of stuff. Being in this environment, I have friends that play music for the joy of making music, and they’re not so interested in a record contract. 

There are a lot of people in the music industry frustrated or trying to figure it out for themselves. It’s been a transitional period, which I was feeling at the time. I had a lot of thoughts about Animal Collective and 2020 and the pandemic. It was a big shift for us. This wasn’t an attempt to answer those questions, just saying what’s on my mind.

SILY: Last October, Animal Collective cancelled their European tour. It seemed like a reality check for people not in the music industry, to see this very successful band unable to tour for financial reasons. Do you still sort of feel like you’re in that transitional phase?

DP: There were a lot of factors that went into cancelling that tour. In some ways, the band is always in a transitional phase because there are so many things we want to do alone and together. It gets complicated to map out. There’s a need these days to really map out your future in the music industry, and probably in a lot of other fields of work and life. People need to plan far in advance, which is difficult for us, being so spread apart. There’s a lot of complicated things that go into setting up a tour and getting together to practice. There were a lot more hurdles, the fact that COVID was still peaking pretty hard during the tour, and having gone through cancelling shows because two of the band members got COVID, myself being one of them. The risks were just too high. It wasn’t fully because we were in transition, but beyond that, the music industry is in transition. Musicians need to get on the same plane and same field and work together a bit more. I think we can work through the transition to make tours happen and not have these kind of worries, and make everyone who wants to tour able to tour. There are so many musicians and bands out there that want to tour, and because we’re such a name already and people know us, it’s fairly easy for us to get shows. I feel like stepping back and letting newer musicians [step up] is the right thing to do, to let people have their chance. It’s tough these days.

SILY: Do you think something like the Union of Musicians & Allied Workers is a step in achieving more equitable touring?

DP: I think so. There’s a certain state of being and frame of mind. A lot of musicians have different goals. For some, it’s not all about making money. There are many different reasons to do it. That kind of thing is helpful, but I don’t think you’re going to get everybody on the same page. It’s a little bit more than just getting everybody in the same union.

SILY: You just mentioned that you feel like other industries are also in flux, which reminds me to ask: On “Invisible Darlings”, are you singing about essential workers during the pandemic?

DP: I am, yeah. I’m trying to sing about anybody that would go unnoticed in your regular day. It could be an essential worker. There are people in the music industry that do a lot for a band that take a lot of crap, too, or are overlooked when they make the night go as smoothly as the music does. It’s also about people that do simple, good deeds, like holding the door open for someone else or pick up a fallen bag of groceries.

SILY: Is the album title simply a reference to the number of songs on the album?

DP: It is, but 7 is an important number for me. I wanted to have that energy be part of the record once it seemed like 7 songs is the way to go. I usually run with stuff like that on my solo records and Animal Collective records. 

SILY: What’s the story behind the cover art?

DP: I’m really into collage and trying to take my own visual art in different directions. It’s some sort of landscape, for me, the psychological landscape of the record. You could call it dreamlike, and I’ve referred to it as surreal, even though that’s pretty vague. I’m influenced by the surrealists and [André] Breton’s work.

SILY: Do you think the music on this record is equally influenced by surreal visual artists?

DP: I’m very influenced by visual mediums, film, art that I see that affects me. During the writing and recording of Time Skiffs, I had been reading a lot of surrealist essays, diving deep into the short stories and essays of surrealist writers.

SILY: During recording, do you ever have images projected or displayed to inspire you?

DP: I do. We’ve done that with Animal Collective since Feels. Projections, visual accompaniments. In my own studio, maybe not when recording, but when writing or jamming, I’ll put something from my computer on and let it play. Old cartoons--I was in a real Rocky and Bullwinkle phase. He-Man. Any 50′s/60′s abstract avant-garde stuff. It’s all over the place for me.

SILY: How are you adapting these tracks to a live show as compared to how you’ve adapted past material?

DP: I’m trying to keep the set pretty diverse. I’m playing from all my records. In terms of playing live, I’m never trying to recreate the record. That’s not very interesting to me. A live experience, as a performer, and I hope for the audience, too, should be something different. If you want to listen to the record, you can stay home and listen to the record. There are strengths to [7s], though, that I can’t look past. [I want to keep] pretty true to the vibe of the record. It’s just gonna be me on stage, using sequencers and playing guitar, mostly. I’ll do some acoustic songs. I want it to also feel organic and like a live experience. It’s a balance between finding the strength of the record and feeling like I’m making something as I go.

SILY: What else is next for you and the band?

DP: We’re finishing up a new Animal Collective record. We hope we can put it out this year, but that will depend on our label. I’m finishing the artwork now.

SILY: How did you find the experience scoring The Inspection? Would you do it again in the future?

DP: Definitely. That’s something else we’re trying to wade into more and more and get deep into, being able to do scores and have a reputation  as musicians who would like to do that. The Inspection was a positive step in that direction. It got some good attention. It was tough work. It was a challenge to step out of our Animal Collective comfort zone, which is how doing scores is gonna be. It’s a driving factor in our creative communications: We look for challenges, for things outside of ourselves to instigate a change for us. Having a cool film to score is just what we need in that regard. It’s an added creative outlet for us. [We made] a long format video, ODDSAC, with our friend Danny Perez. We’ve always loved psychedelic, horror, and sci-fi films, which is why The Inspection, [a drama based on a true story,] was [even more of] a challenge.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

DP: Right now, I’m reading a collection of short stories called Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki. I’m a big sci-fi fan. Music-wise, it’s all over the place. I’ve been listening to a lot of stuff from my vinyl collection, a lot of older stuff, since I’ve been working on artwork and [that’s] where my turntable is. I listen to a lot of jazz, Chico Hamilton, Eric Dolphy, Sun Ra. When I’m making visual art, I listen to less cohesive, more improvised stuff to get in that zone. I like the record that Eric Copeland and Josh Diamond made last year, Riders on the Storm. Good electronic grooves. I like a record called Felicita by Anadol. It’s a little more out-there, [an] experimental record. A lot of the bands that I have opening for me on tour, Paradot and Anastasia Coope, have music they’ve just put out or [that’s] coming out that I’ve been listening to a lot. That’s why they’re opening up for me.

Bob Vylan

BY JORDAN MAINZER

This year’s Riot Fest offers a lot in the way of postponements from previous years, whether Nine Inch Nails’ headlining set 1 year in the making or My Chemical Romance’s triumphant return to the stage 2 years late. But there are plenty of great bands to check out before the sun sets. I’ve highlighted 4 bands worth showing up early for and 1 that will make you want to stick around. Oh, and even if you’re not going, you can buy some or all of each band’s music on Bandcamp.

FRIDAY

Boston Manor, 1:30 PM, Radicals Stage

Next month via SharpTone Records, British rock band Boston Manor will follow up their breakout record Glue and last year’s Desperate Times, Desperate Pleasures EP with Datura, their biggest but bleakest album yet. Recorded with Hundred Reasons guitarist, vocalist, and producer Larry Hibbitt, Datura reflects the time-warped days of the pandemic, nights filled with drinking too much and mornings filled with the repercussions of the nights. Lead singer Henry Cox immediately rattles off a series of stark observations on the alien opener “Datura (Dusk)”: “There’s a fire in the cark park / I see it smoldering / Heard my neighbor kill his own dog for going in the bins.” The music of Datura mirrors a similar pervasive sense of dread, harsh noise enveloping the otherwise dreamy guitars of closer “Inertia” and synth bounce of “Crocus”. The rest of the band--lead guitarist Mike Cunniff, rhythm guitarist Ash Wilson, bassist Dan Cunniff, and drummer Jordan Pugh--provide storming instrumentation alongside the pulsating electronics of “Floodlights on the Square” and synth glitches of instrumental “Shelter From The Rain”. 

Live, Boston Manor should play at least a couple of the singles from Datura, such as the reflective “Foxglove” and the dramatic “Passenger”, while also taking the Glue victory lap they weren’t able to experience at the height of the pandemic.

Bob Vylan, 4:15 PM, Rebel Stage

The liner notes on the deluxe version of Bob Vylan’s debut album We Live Here start with the words, “Recorded in 2019, mastered in 2020 and relevant today!” You could follow the same formula for all songs from the UK punk rap duo. Even the song that begins with an order to kill the now late queen may be updated on their current tour to use King Charles’ name instead. Bob Vylan’s music lives in constant urgency. Their second album, the phenomenal Bob Vylan Presents the Price of Life (Ghost Theatre), begins with a sample of a speech from Guyanese historian and activist Walter Rodney: “People in their day-to-day lives will know what it means to be living in a state of economic crisis.” Considering the ever-present ills of colonialism, an unprecedented cost of living and housing crisis, and even some food banks closing on Monday for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, Bob Vylan speak from their own experiences and on behalf of others. With a combination of driving guitars, propulsive beats, shouted choruses, and limber flow, the duo target everything from the surveillance state (“Phone Tap”) and big pharma (“Drug War”) to the blissfully ignorant (“Turn Off The Radio”) and fake progressives (“Bait the Bear”). “They say I’m violent,” laughs Bobby Vylan, before declaring, “The whole country’s fucking violent.” Fighting fire with fire out of survival, they’ll bring the riot to Riot Fest in true spirit rather than just aesthetic.

SATURDAY

Alexisonfire, 4:30 PM, Radicals Stage

They reunited 7 years ago, but it wasn’t until this June that Canadian post-hardcore greats Alexisonfire actually released a new record, their first in 13 years. Otherness (Dine Alone) strikes a delicate balance between remaining faithful to what makes the band tick while exploring new genres and styles, like the 8-minute folk, psychedelia, prog metal closer “World Stops Turning”. While they might not whip that one out during their hour-long Riot Fest set, Alexisonfire should churn through Otherness highlights like “Sweet Dreams of Otherness” and the surprisingly soft “Sans Soleil”. Of course, they’ll play classics from albums like Crisis and Old Crows / Young Cardinals, but the Otherness songs should fit in nicely in a live set.

Read our review of Otherness.

SUNDAY

Zola Jesus, 2:50 PM, Riot Stage

On Zola Jesus’ 6th album ARKHON (Sacred Bones), Nika Roza Danilova bares all. The record was born out of a state of vulnerability--heartbreak, change, writer’s block--with Danilova reaching out to collaborators earlier than ever in the creative process, including producer Randall Dunn and percussionist Matt Chamberlain. The result is the most outwardly expressive Zola Jesus album to date. On “The Fall” and “Desire”, Danilova straight up belts, dynamically over a shuffling groove on the former and raw-like over acoustic piano on the latter. “Lick my wounds like you can taste them,” she asks of a partner on “Desire”, making them tangibly consider the end of a relationship. Importantly, though the record is immensely personal, a product of intense alienation, Danilova finds common ground with the listener, finding subtle, clever ways to express the universality of her themes. She sings around syncopated samples of a Slovenian folk choir on “Lost”, the voices individually disjointed but unified in spirit. Her vocals intertwine with Louise Woodward’s chamber accompaniment on the cinematic and thrilling “Dead and Gone”, and with sinewy synths and cascading drums on “Into the Wild”. Ultimately, she speaks for all of us, wondering “How can love be misguided when your heart learns to beat?” ARKHON is forever truthful and empathetic.

Though Zola Jesus is somewhat embedded within the dark wave or industrial realms, her set should be a comparatively experimental outlier within Riot Fest, a can’t-miss at the festival for those looking for something different.

Photo by David Black

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 7:10 PM, Roots Stage

Photo by Denise Siegel-Phillips

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Singer-songwriter Grant-Lee Phillips was one of many artists who released an album during the pandemic that ended up being prescient. No, it’s not an obvious foreshadowing. His 10th studio album wasn’t titled anything having to do with masks or distancing or viruses. But the idea of his daughter screaming, “Come on lightning, show us your stuff” and the words resonating with Phillips enough to name an album after it is strangely consistent with that increased rediscovery of “the small things” many of us experienced over a time where we needed to stay separate from other people. It’s the immediate surroundings of nature that grounded Phillips when, after being forced to promote Lightning, Show Us Your Stuff via livestream only, he decided to give up dreams of touring any time soon and sit and write new material. Used to writing on the road with what he calls “a proper balance of stimulation and boredom,” Phillips opted for daily drives to the Tennessee countryside with his family to generate that previously missing sense of motion. They also gave him solace in the face of what was happening globally--a pandemic--and nationally, the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election and the January 6th, 2021 Insurrection.

Phillips slowly got used to writing from home and ended up churning out the songs that would eventually make up his 11th studio album All That You Can Dream, released last month via Yep Roc. Obviously, at the time of writing, the events of January 6th were top of mind and ended up inspiring songs like “Rats in a Barrel” and “Peace Is a Delicate Thing”. On the latter, Phillips compares peace to “snow on the ground,” as if the very concept that we take for granted is seasonal, dependent on who’s in power at the time. The general horrors of the Trump administration and its role as the beginning of the end rather than a blip inspire “Cut to the Ending” and “My Eyes Have Seen”, the latter specifically referring to the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. The overall trauma of the past few years manifested in “Cannot Trust The Ground”, whose title refers to the modes of thought of someone who has lived through earthquakes but makes the case that our collective societal turmoil is somewhat of a quake itself. Phillips also wrote songs for the people he spent most of his time with--himself and his family--in the form of “You Can’t Hide” and “Remember This”, the latter dedicated to his teenage daughter.

Once he had the songs written, Phillips reached out to many of his usual collaborators--drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Jennifer Condos, keyboardist Jamie Edwards, pedal steel guitarist Eric Heywood, and cellist Richard Dodd--to add more sonic elements to the songs. (Phillips produced, recorded, engineered, and mixed the record at his Nashville home.) The pump organ of “Peace Is a Delicate Thing” gives it a nostalgic quality, as if Phillips is nostalgic for a bygone era where the entirety of American society wasn’t constantly under threat of violence. The subtle drum rumbles below the gentle acoustic guitar picking on “Cannot Trust the Ground” perfectly mirror the song’s sentiment. But as usual, the basis of the songs are as solo arrangements on acoustic guitar, and that’s why now, when Phillips is able to finally tour again, he’s still playing solo. “It’s something I’m at ease with,” he told me over the phone last month. “I can go to musical places--emotional places--on my own. That’s kind of where this material is formed. The moment conception takes place on a couch at home, or changing my strings in a hotel room in a foreign country. To carry that straight through to the final performance makes sense when you think about it.”

Phillips plays Friday night at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: The songs on All That You Can Dream are born out of such a specific time and place, written in somewhat of an isolation. Is it sort of weird to play them to an audience?

Grant-Lee Phillips: No, I wouldn’t say so. I feel like this is a situation where we’ve had a lot of shared experiences, be it isolation or anxiety. All of these things that have driven us inward back into our homes and minds. Even beyond language [barriers], there’s a great deal of shared experience. And it’s not as though we’re out of the woods. I’d love to believe we were. But I think the residue and trauma of what we went through is something we’ll be working through for some time, as well as the reality that we live in a time where we could see another rise of variants or you name it. It’s an unsettling era we’re existing in.

SILY: You’re used to turning back songs that have layers and elements into the solo performance they were born out of. But were there any unique challenges in doing that with this particular batch of songs?

GLP: Not especially. I have a different relationship to them. It’s like bringing them up as children, as seedlings of ideas or sketches. There are so many points in time where they could have gone a different way that only I’m privy to. The listener knows the composition as a layered, sonic experience, but it doesn’t really throw me to play a song like “All That You Can Dream” even though the album version is based in the piano and the production I apply to the arrangement. I guess I’m always kind of aware of that. Even with Grant Lee Buffalo, we had to be aware of who we were on an album and who we were on stage. In hindsight, I’ve come to realize the distinction wasn’t so different. You can go back and get it right on a record, I guess, but sometimes, you would chase your tail trying to find what would happen spontaneously when you stepped on a stage and plugged in. All of these musicians are chasing after that perfect way to get the song and the track.

SILY: There are a few songs here about Jan 6, 2021. You talk about history and our ideas and awareness (or lack thereof) of history repeating itself. On “Rats in a Barrel”, you sing, “I’m done with mercy / I’m all tapped out.” Do you find you have empathy fatigue for certain groups of people that participated in such activities?

GLP: I have to think about that. My feeling is that there are lots of people who have, for their own reasons, believed in things that were untrue and not to their benefit. The values of those who thought they were doing the patriotic thing of that day. I don’t have an omnipotent view of everyone who was there and who played a role in that. I think we’re only beginning to get a sense of those at the core and the planning and who would gain the most from retaining power. That is yet to be revealed, which is a very frustrating place to be for a lot of us in this country. The feeling that justice is delayed if absent for those who should be held accountable. Meanwhile, down here on the ground, where all of us live and do our work, justice comes quite rapidly, for the person with a broken taillight or outdated registration. Some of that frustration is the kind of thing that actually fuels such resentment, but where does that resentment go? It festers, and tragically, that very resentment--which is real and grounded in reality at times--is used to wrangle the mob against their own interests and certainly against the interests of a democratic society, a country that should be lifting one another up. But I’m very concerned. I lose a lot of sleep over it.

SILY: I was struck on “Cut To The Ending” when you sing, “History is told by an old man / Who survived the wars / Little talk of spineless enablers / Ones who held the door.” Why do you think we tend to forget the enablers of bad history?

GLP: Oh, gosh. There’s a point in time where the generations that experienced the atrocity no longer walk the earth. We live in a time where it’s almost criminal to impart or teach history, in [worlds] of strongmen and despots. You can see the way a society turns to a person who seems to have all the answers and like a steamroller plows over everyone who comes in their way and challenges their power. There was a story that I read how in the shadow of Mussolini, [Italy] looked towards him as a symbol of strength and masculinity, and many young men carried a picture of him in their pocket. Whether they did literally or not, that was the image of who a person they [thought they] should be. Might was always right. When it came to Hitler, the tragic mantra was always, “We can control him. We can use this guy and the numbers he has behind him and the impetus to exploit him.” What a tragic mantra. Those who hold the door and hang on to their little slipper of power, they too will come to realize they made decisions that weren’t in their best interest in the long term. That’s what that song is about. “Cut To The Ending” as if we’re watching another horror film where we know what’s gonna happen. You know what’s gonna happen when you mix certain chemicals.

SILY: When you sing, “A fool won’t listen to reason / Till he’s gone too far,” I thought of all the stories of unvaccinated folks in the hospital, previously adamant about not getting vaccinated, dying from COVID and begging nurses to give them the shot and the nurses saying, “Sorry, I can’t give it to you.” 

GLP: The thought that there are so many who might have survived this period, the first, second, third waves of this pandemic had it not become so tribal: That’s beyond tragic. I’m not one to leap into every opportunity to get a vaccination. I’m not an anti-vaxxer, but even the flu shot, I think, “What is it? Do I have to get it?” I understand apprehension, especially when it comes to a situation they’re not used to. But the Trump administration did us no favors in how it was dealt with. I feel like the health officials were very slow to act. On one hand, it’s a miracle we have been able to develop vaccines, but we were told by officials, “Don’t wear a mask.” We were condescended to in that fashion. Though she defends her position, [former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator] Dr. [Deborah] Birx was quick to pat Trump on the back about his head for details and not her own head as he blathered onward about bleach and lightbulbs and whatever else he was on about. I think that was a real low moment. I think people died because of it. What can you say? I don’t judge people who make those decisions--I have compassion for anyone who is being ripped off or hoodwinked. I feel like there’s been a lot of that.

SILY: On “My Eyes Have Seen”, you talk about the horrors of WWII and the border during the Trump administration. But I can’t help but think that the irony of that song is there’s still so much our eyes haven’t seen.

GLP: That’s true. That’s a good observation. My inspiration was pretty firmly planted in the border crisis. I hadn’t thought of the other implications you hit upon. But I think you can most certainly see parallels anywhere where people are targeted and become refugees of their own country, as is the case in Ukraine, or wherever. But the things that we don’t see is such a good point. We lived through the war in Iraq, and so much of that was really hidden from us as well. You don’t want to even entertain those thoughts--you want to believe the government is doing the right thing and that, “We’re the good guys.” But it hasn’t always been the case.

SILY: This record’s certainly not all political. A few tracks are strictly personal to you. Take the sentiment of “You Can Hide”, for instance, “You can’t hide no more than the sun or moon can hide.” Is that an oddly comforting message to yourself, or more of a warning?

GLP: That is very much a song to myself. I share it hoping it will strike a chord for someone else. But there is sort of a double meaning. We can’t hide from all of the things we’ve previously discussed. That is the world we live in. But we can’t hide from our nature to find joy and to laugh and be communal, [either]. All of these impulses to protect ourselves to be on guard against threat, but to socialize and pull together is in us, too. Sometimes, those very beautiful human impulses are exploited. The desire to respond as a group and marshal such power when we truly need to. That song is about those things, and also about trying to pull myself out of my dark place. It’s easy to go there and not want to come out.

SILY: You have a song for your daughter on here where you reference disagreements. You talk a lot politically about not thinking the same way as someone else, but the way you talk about it with your daughter, it’s more loving. How do you balance these different perspectives?

GLP: As a teenager, you’re trying to establish your independence. That’s that tug of war. It was nice to spend time off the road with my daughter, helping her with her homework, brushing up on the things I didn’t pay attention to the first time around. That’s one of the lyrics in that song: “We don’t always think the same / Not a crime to disagree.” And that is true, especially in that context. We have to find ourselves and make our own mistakes and come to our own conclusions, perform our own experiments. She’s preoccupied with traipsing through the woods and setting traps for lizards, and I’m the one saying, “Watch out for ticks!” That’s a different context than the political disagreements we [all] have. In the arena of social media, it’s difficult to have the kinds of conversations that would produce meaningful understanding. It’s kind of like Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots on Twitter, trying to get the last word in. You just follow the people that seem fairly balanced and insightful. There’s plenty to disagree with. I open up Twitter in the morning, and it’s like sticking my head in a furnace. The fire singes my eyebrows off, and I begin another day.

SILY: These songs were written a couple years ago. What else is next for you? Are you currently working on anything?

GLP: Someone from [Yep Roc] brought it to my attention that it was 20 months ago that I released my last record. These days, the thing that takes the longest is the packaging and manufacturing, especially vinyl. In the case of this record, that took many, many months. We finished it 9 months in advance to get everything lined up. I’ve been a prolific writer. I began writing this album a few months after the last one came out. I worked on it through the winter and spring, and by early summer, I handed it into the record company. We began figuring out how long it would take. It was a long time. So at this point, I anticipate more touring. Hopefully I’ll be back in Europe in December, possibly on the West Coast in the fall. I have some intriguing concerts in the coming year in France and the UK. I think in some ways I’m at the point where I want to savor touring and performing and playing all the songs I’ve recorded lately.

SILY: Is there anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

GLP: I’ve been really taken with Angel Olsen. I’ve got a couple different biographies to read. I’m also reading a [Geoffrey R. Stone’s] Sex and the Constitution, which is about sexuality and how it was dealt with going back to the Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Middle Ages, and the influence of Saint Augustine onward. How we got to this point in time where Supreme Court judges cite witch-burning jurors from 300 years ago to make the judgements of the day. [laughs] Good light reading.

BY JORDAN MAINZER

On his sophomore album Bronco (Columbia), Orville Peck is ready to show who he is, as unrestrained as the titular bucker. If on Pony, he was, as contributor Lauren Lederman wrote when the album made our top albums of 2019, “a masked queer cowboy with a secret identity,” on Bronco, he’s more open, both about his past and about his feelings. While he hasn’t revealed his name, he’s arguably shared much more. For one, his upbringing: though he lived in Canada for a while, he’s actually from South Africa, and Bronco is littered with references to cities and mountain ranges in his native country just as much as to classic country singers on a first name basis. More notably, he’s been keen to share the real-life heartbreak and depression he suffered during COVID that inspired the album. “Buddy, we got major blues / Another suitcase in your hand / I hope you brought your walkin’ shoes / ‘Cause it’s quite a ways from what I understand,” he croons with classic country wordplay on opener “Daytona Sand”, his voice exaggerated and theatrical but undeniable. The song’s about a real-life cowboy he knew who was from Mississippi but grew up in Daytona, and Peck finds a kinship in him, somewhat lost, away from home, feeling lonely as hell.

Where “Daytona Sand” also contextualizes the rest of the album is in its stylistic variance. Bronco covers everything from glam country to bluegrass, and the opener, propelled by thumping, rolling drums and a harmonic acoustic guitar line, actually sounds like something from an Arcade Fire album or Ants From Up There. “Kalahari Down”, which sees Peck reflecting on his first crush, was written for Pony but didn’t fit, according to him: It was too big. As is the title track, an epic, stadium-sized electric guitar-laden gallop. On the flip side, Noam Pikelny (of The Punch Brothers) adds banjo to acoustic folk tunes “Iris Rose” and “Hexie Mountains”, Luke Schneider an expansive lap steel to “The Curse of the Blackened Eye”. That song is especially impressive in its multitudes, Peck’s falsetto in the chorus reminiscent of Chris Isaak, the backing band delving into country exotica while he admits to suicidal ideation after abusive relationships. It’s a fitting sonic mirror to his ever-altering emotions.

Still, despite his ambitions, Peck is most effective when he goes back to what he’s always done: imbuing the traditional country ethos with sensitivity and vulnerability. “Baby, don’t deny what your poor heart needs,” he sings on “C’mon Baby, Cry”, a Tobias Jesso Jr. co-write that displays Jesso’s trademark emotive songwriting stamp. “Outta Time” is also a surefire highlight, chock full of strummed acoustic guitar, lonesome, yet clever wordplay, and buoyant guitar solos. “Headed for the back, I meet a girl who’s tryna shoot the breeze / She tells me she don’t like Elvis / I say, ‘I want a little less conversation, please,’” he sings with a wink and nod.

On the penultimate track “City of Gold”, an acoustic sway where Peck looks back on where he’s from, he sings, “I’m told that Jozi [Johannesburg] is doing just fine.” From there, it sounds like he’s ready to move forward--from his past, from his depression, from COVID, from the toxic relationships he refers to when he sings earlier on the album, “I love when it rains but I hate getting wet.” Bronco seems like the beginning of that transition, an album where he shows all the tricks he’s learned, not quite yet ready to hone in on his craft.

Photo by David E. Jackson

BY JORDAN MAINZER

On their 9th studio album Verminous (Metal Blade), The Black Dahlia Murder continue to do what they do best, show off their versatility in performance and metal subgenre. Produced by their guitarist/backup vocalist Brandon Ellis, it was released just after COVID hit last year, and tonight, they play their first tour date since the pandemic at Concord Music Hall in Chicago. The album’s title track opens with--what else--Alan Cassidy’s blast beats as Ellis and guitarist Brian Eschbach add choppy riffs and cascading solos, Trevor Strnad’s alternating icy screams and guttural growls guiding the song along. Overall, they combine technical tempo changes with the fast-paced bombast of old school British metal. The galloping guitars and drums on “Removal of the Oaken Stake” recall Iron Maiden (on the day a new IM album comes out!), while a song like “Child of Night” sports drums and Max Lavelle’s bass so quick it’s almost pure noise. And where vocal chants follow the same pattern as the guitars, as on “Sunless Empire”, there’s still roam for soaring solos. The penultimate track is a 40-second acoustic interlude, gorgeous picking combined with sounds of dripping water and squeaking rodents before the band launches into closer “Dawn of Rats”. It’s the most different song on the record, but it exemplifies the band’s ability to seamlessly combine the beautiful with the ugly.

Minneapolis prog metal band After the Burial, San Diego County deathcore band Carnifex (who we’re fans of and are, too, releasing a great new album today, Graveside Confessions via Nuclear Blast), Pennsylvania technical death metal band Rivers of Nihil, and Rochester death metal band Undeath open. Remember to bring your vax cards (or negative COVID tests; if you could have gotten the shot but didn’t, you suck) and masks!