#live preview

Photo by Rachel Brennecke

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The Big Freeze, the new album from singer-songwriter Laura Stevenson, combines the size, emotions, and power of her more rambunctious releases like Wheel and Cocksure with a newfound sense of sparseness, directness, and intimacy. She weaves personal experiences--of self-doubt, depression, and dermatillomania--with universal internal struggles, like the yearning for simplicity in an increasingly complex world. Recorded in her childhood home in Long Island during winter, with bits of strings and bass added later, The Big Freeze isn’t just the first Stevenson album to not feature her backing band The Cans, but the first album that feels like a solo statement.

I spoke with Stevenson over the phone late last month--she had just come from therapy and was getting ready to go on tour with the new tunes. (The band consists of Stevenson on guitar, cello, bass, and drums.) Read our conversation below, in which we talk about the inspiration behind different aspects of the record, revealing things about yourself over the internet, and whether she’d rather be aware and powerless or unaware and powerless. Oh, and catch her tonight at the Beat Kitchen and Saturday at Do Division Street Fest!

Since I Left You: Does the title and cover art of The Big Freeze reference the wintertime when which you recorded it?

Laura Stevenson: Sort of...the cover art was taken when I was having press photos done by this photographer Rachel Brennecke--she’s amazing. It was one of the pictures I thought was really interesting. I was toying with the idea of putting myself on the cover of the record, which I had never done before, and I thought, “Okay, let’s try it.” It kind of just happened. The title of the record--it’s about a lot of different things. The big freeze on a celestial level, but also a winter, death of things level. 

SILY: The mood of the record is definitely relatable in the fact that it’s devastating and personal--what you’re going through on the record are sentiments shared by a lot of people. The cover art is relatable in an entirely different way. Fuzzy hats are very warm and welcoming.

LS: It’s super warm and cozy. I thought the colors were really interesting, too. I had never taken a picture where I was looking at the camera in that specific way because I hate having my picture taken. So I just felt like it was really confrontational to myself, too. Usually, I don’t even have my name on the record. Cocksure was the first where my name was on it, which was a big deal to me. Everything else has the artwork without a label.

SILY: What influenced the change in aesthetic of this record? Were you trying to serve the content of the lyrics?

LS: Yeah, and also, I had been playing with different band members. There was a shift in personnel for a little bit. I was also doing a lot of solo touring and writing for just an acoustic record, and because I was so used to it at the time, I was maybe writing without thinking about drums or the grand scale traditional rock band format.

SILY: There are definitely parts that sound huge--you use a lot of vocal overdubs, and on songs like “Big Deep”, your vocals are really upfront. How did you approach the record as a singer?

LS: I love layering vocals. It’s my favorite thing to do because I’m not adept as any instrument as I am at thinking of a thing and making it come out vocally. I really like to make an orchestra of voices. I love doing it on all of my records, but I had to scale it back because there wasn’t room for it in a lot of ways on other records. They were more straightforward pop. This was the perfect medium for me to experiment with that, which is what I love doing the most. I really went for it in terms of layering, like, “Okay, more harmonies, more weird shit!” I got to paint this watercolor picture that was blurry and pretty and I could turn it into whatever I wanted. [Producer/engineer] Joe [Rogers], who I was making the record with, was so on board with it. Every time I wanted to add another track, he didn’t sigh. Sometimes, I feel like me asking for another layer starts to be annoying for some people, but he was so enthusiastic about it. I’d be like, “Let’s do another track,” and he’d say, “Hell ya!” We kind of added as much shit as possible.

SILY: In terms of genre, I heard a lot of country and alt-country influence more than on your other records. Are you a fan of that genre?

LS: For sure. Totally. I like playing with traditional styles but bringing a new life or new ideas into them. I think that’s really interesting. I like alt country and psychedelic, weird, trippy country from the 70′s. People that are doing it now, too. I’m into it.

SILY: Are there individual lines in your songs that stand out to you to where you try to deliver it with a certain chord or type of instrumentation?

LS: There were flourishes that were happening where I was adding pretty strings and then making them go away. The whole end of the first song, “Lay Back, Arms Out”, is supposed to sound like somebody swimming and letting go, and I tried to do that with the instrumentation. Not necessarily chords, but the way things shimmer in and out, I was trying to make it sound like floating. I use the same chords for every song, so that’s my secret. [laughs] I don’t have too many chords, but I used them all for this record. They’re all the ones I know.

SILY: There’s a moment in “Value Inn” where you reveal the title of the song and sing, “And in a Value Inn, I dig at my skin,” on top of a really powerful guitar riff that drives the song into a new level. You’re setting the scene in the first verse, or nobody exactly knows what you’re talking about, and that’s a clarifying moment.

LS: We were practicing that yesterday, and the space situation we have for the shows I’m going to be playing with, that song in particular is so fucking heavy and so powerful. Especially on that second verse. It’s doomy, gloomy, droney, and heavy. That definitely is a powerful moment lyrically and musically.

SILY: Also the final lines of “Hum”, which seem to me to be a summation of the record: “You are burdened by only your dangerous mind.” What were you going for with that line?

LS: That song is a weird internal conversation between two different people and two different versions of myself. That song is difficult--I was doing [a Reddit] AMA the other day, and people had questions about that song in particular. I had a difficult time articulating what it’s about because it’s so ambiguous in who the conversation is between, at all different points, even for myself. I don’t know if it’s me or the other me that’s saying that line. [laughs] But that song is about compulsive behaviors, addictive behaviors, depression, and feeling sorry for myself, but also the part of me that’s trying to get better. I’m gonna have to think about how to intellectualize it, myself. It was this really natural, beautiful thing, but when people ask me about it, I’m so tongue-tied. It’s a convoluted and confusing series of ideas.

SILY: You reference your experience with dermatillomania a lot on the record and revealed it in an article with Talkhouse. Have others reached out to you who have experienced that?

LS: Yeah, and it’s been really beautiful, and that got me through the initial release of that piece I put out on Talkhouse. I was all freaked out about it, and then people were DMing me and sending mail to the band’s email with their personal experiences. It gave it a little less the feeling of throwing something out into the world. Putting something out that is so weird, because at first you think people want to hear it, and then you think, “Who’s really on the internet who cares?” You’re torn between two feelings about it. But it made it smaller, more personal, and human to have small interactions with people who experience the same thing. It’s not something a lot of people are comfortable revealing--it’s embarrassing. It’s personal and scary, and you don’t want people thinking about you in that way. So having other people be glad you’re not ashamed is nice. You still grapple with shame like everybody does. But overall, it feels manageable, in a way.

SILY: I really like the song “Perfect”--and I was reading the interview you did with Fader--and you talk about you and your friend being blissfully unaware of what was going on in the world--wars, etc.. Do you ever look back and wish you were more aware? Or were you glad you were totally unaware?

LS: I don’t know. It’s so hard. Being aware of things makes you feel powerless in a way, but being unaware is powerlessness itself. Neither way do you feel like you can change anything. You feel like giving up. I think I’d rather know, as much as I can. It’s hard to really know, because people with the information are holding their cards pretty close to the chest, so you never truly know what’s going on in the world, but it’s better to know. I don’t know. That’s a great question. There’s beauty in just existing, but is it really existing if you’re not participating in what’s going on in the world and understanding it?

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

LS: I’m watching some of the new Twilight Zone, which is great. I’m reading this book about codependency that my therapist is making me read. I’m about to start reading A Moveable Feast, which I found at my mom’s house and have never read, and I’m going to Paris so I thought I would. I’m about to listen to my friends Field Mouse, who sent me the first mix of their new record. I’m really excited; they’re such a great band. I got this record from this band called Roar that I’ve started to listen to religiously--Pathetique Aesthetique. It’s a really good record. It came out last year. It’s by this guy Owan Evans, who plays in AJJ.

Gorillaz

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Hip hop all around tonight, in the flesh and not.

Gorillaz & The Internet, United Center

If it seems like Gorillaz disappear for a chunk of time and then come back and release multiple albums, it’s because it’s true. Their 2005 opus Demon Days was followed by two albums in 2010. Last year, they finally released another one, the collaboration-heavy Humanz. Well, they’ve already followed that one up with The Now Now, largely consisting of just the main characters of the virtual band. But while music may be a bit over-saturated with Gorillaz songs right now, despite the two recent records varying quite a bit, the band’s live show is always a spectacle, replete with a massive amount of touring musicians and guest stars to perform songs throughout their discography.

Plus, you get to see an amazing opener. While The Internet and Syd have a spotty live reputation, their new record Hive Mind is very good, and their more uptempo songs should shine. “Roll (Burbank Funk)” and “Mood” are classic Steve Lacy guitar funk, and the syncopated percussive stomp of “Come Over” effectively soundtracks Syd’s ode to companionship. And the Latin percussion and groove of “La Di Da” provides the necessary swagger for a song where Syd hilariously threatens, “I might snatch up your wife.”

Big Boi, Chicago Theatre

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Photo by Jamie Wdziekonski

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The former members of The Drones have certainly kept busy! I interviewed Gareth Liddiard of Melbourne rockers Tropical Fuck Storm at the end of last year about their first album, A Laughing Death in Meatspace, a collection of spitfire and stream-of-consciousness blues-punk centering around the sociopolitical ramifications of our obsession with technology. Last month, the band released their second record, Braindrops, which combines comparatively personal lyrics with much more subdued, dark instrumentation. It’s by no means an autobiographical record--the songs about relationships are abstract in theme, and there’s still plenty of sci-fi absurdism--but it’s distinct from Meatspace, a different style of songwriting the band has added to its already wide musical arsenal. Oh, and some of the album’s instrumentation was inspired by and actually taken from their live, mostly improvised soundtrack to the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men, which they’re performing again as part of Brisbane Festival on September 26th at The Tivoli. 

Will the upcoming tour and No Country performance yield yet more new music? Not according to band member Fiona Kitschin, who told me over the phone this week that the band is concentrating on touring for the next year. I spoke to her from “the side of the road” “somewhere in East Texas,” on their way to a show in Austin. After the band’s current headlining tour, they’re back home in Australia and then Europe. For now, read on for Kitschin’s breakdown of the record, and catch them tomorrow night at the Empty Bottle with rockers Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends and local punks Basement Family.

Since I Left You: Last time I talked to Gareth, he mentioned you were already working on the follow-up to A Laughing Death in Meatspace. Lo and behold, Braindrops was just released. Did you always plan to release the albums in such quick succession?

Fiona Kitschin: We just wanted to get more music out there quickly. The first record went really well, so we just wanted to get right into the second one and have more songs. Getting back into the studio was kind of the plan.

SILY: How is Braindrops different than Meatspace? How is it a continuation of it?

FK: I don’t know about sounding different. When we recorded the first one, we did one song at a time. The first single we put out was “Chameleon Paint”, the only song we had. The second song we wrote was “Soft Power”, and then we put that out. We were putting out the only things we had. We hadn’t really played much together when we recorded those. After the album came out, we toured a lot, so by the time the second one came out, we were more of a band. I don’t know how it affected the sound, but I guess it’s much more mellow and sad and fucked up.

SILY: The instrumentation definitely sounds queasy--especially “Desert Sands of Venus”. How did you come up with that song?

FK: [laughs] I think we just played it really drunk. We also did a score for the film No Country For Old Men, and that was about 10 months ago, right before we went in to record Braindrops. Some of the ideas for the score became songs on Braindrops. The music for the scene where he goes to the Desert Sands Hotel, that was “Desert Sands of Venus”, which is literally a field recording of Venus.

SILY: Songs like “Paradise” and “Aspirin” are about relationships, which is something new for this record. Can you talk about the inspiration behind those songs?

FK: Not really, because I didn’t write them! [laughs] It was Gareth who did that...Oh, here he is if you wanna ask him!

SILY: Sure!

[asks Liddiard]

FK: He said because on the first album, all of the songs are political, and on the second album, he wanted to do non-political songs. Love songs.

SILY: There’s still definitely some politics on this album.

FK: Yes, just not classic politics. A love song can be political.

SILY: Around the time I was listening to Braindrops, I was listening to a totally different new album that used sci-fi and conspiracy theories to make a larger point about politics today. There’s that here with “The Legend of Straw Men” and “Maria 63″, though the latter is more in the concrete world. It was a funny coincidence. Artists are doing a lot of it these days.

FK: They are! Every song used to be a fucking love song, didn’t it? We were in The Drones for 18 years, doing the same stuff we’re doing now, but it feels like the world is so fucked up now, people are actually interested in [political music].

SILY: When you go into play, do you like to know the story of the lyrics of the songs? Or do you approach your playing and participation in them separately from what inspired them?

FK: I don’t really like to know. I’m Gareth’s partner, so I leave him to do his thing with the songwriting. I don’t want to go into the details of it really.

SILY: How has your role in the band changed as a player, singer, and harmonizer over the past couple records?

FK: I really enjoy singing a lot more. I’m also the manager and the tour manager and everything on that side of things. That’s my day-to-day job, doing all that shit. It hasn’t really changed. But as far as the playing goes, I enjoy singing more.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the new album’s title?

FK: [laughs] Someone said “rain drops,” and I thought they said, “brain drops.” I thought it sounded cool, so that became the title of the song “Braindrops”. When it came time to picking an album title, we had our whiteboard out, and that was on the list of contenders. It just seemed to be the best in the end.

SILY: Even if you don’t know what it means, it kind of fits the album thematically and instrumentally. It’s got a weird psychedelic feel to it.

FK: Yeah, it’s an exploding brain. It works.

SILY: What about the cover art?

FK: That was done by a Canadian artist called Joe Becker. He did the last record, but Gaz had just found him online, got in contact with him, and asked him if we could use that painting. This one, we asked him to do a specific piece of art. We gave him the themes of the album, and this is what he put together. We also used his artwork for our 7-inch series [released before Meatspace]. There were lots of hard dicks on those covers, so we asked specifically for no dicks on this one. But if you look closely, he snuck in a little cell phone with a dick pic.

SILY: I’m sure the online censors haven’t caught it yet.

FK: No, it’s quite small.

SILY: How have you adapted these new songs to the live stage? Is it the same approach you took with the first record?

FK: They always come out heavier on stage. We like to do things loud and aggressive. We explode a lot more on stage than we do on the album. We’re not doing all the songs--we’re not doing “Aspirin” or “Maria 63″, at least not yet.

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

FK: We’ve just been listening to the podcast Root Of Evil. It’s about the family of the [Black Dahlia murder] main suspect, Dr. George Hodel. It’s funny in a fucked up, sick way. We’ve just been getting in the van and listening to some depressing, fucked up shit right now.

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Context isn’t everything, but it can often shape the mood of a record. Such is the case with Close To Home, the new one from Nashville-based Americana artist Chuck Mead. Recorded in the legendary Sam Phillips Recording studio in Memphis and produced by Matt Ross-Spang, Close To Home is a record of true stories and legends, featuring with some Memphis stalwarts, exemplary of the loose expansiveness of the Home of the Blues as opposed to the concision of Music City, laden with Mead’s quintessential sense of humor and just enough sincerity to evade corniness. 

On Close To Home, there are songs of devotion that tackle both moods: For instance, “My Baby’s Holding It Down”, Mead’s sweet tribute to his wife who looks after his home when he’s on tour, is a non-traditional juxtaposition with a song like “Daddy Worked The Pole”. That one’s about a man who got a job hanging telephone wire so his wife wouldn’t have to work the kind of pole that normally comes to mind--until she started stripping so he didn’t have to work. “Billy Doesn’t Know He’s Bad” and “There’s Love Where I Come From” occupy two sides of the same coin, the former an exasperated look at a sociopathic outlaw and the latter an ode to inclusiveness, both songs in it for the good guys. The distorted country rock of “Big Bear in the Sky” references Native American lore; the title track tackles the eerie prescience of songs on the radio. But as serious as Mead gets, he’s also having loads of fun, with the bayou grooves of “Shake”, barroom piano of “Tap Into Your Misery”, and reggae blues of “I’m Not The Man For The Job”. Perhaps the most ramshackle is the old-school hillbilly burner “Better Than I Was (When I Wasn’t So Good)”, which ends with a snippet of the recording of the song itself. “Did that sound drunk enough?” asks bassist Mark Andrew Miller with an appropriate drawl.

I spoke to Mead over the phone last week about Close To Home, and my main takeaway was that his personality was reminiscent of the album itself. Friendly, engaged, unafraid to tell me when I was wrong about the record, and possessing of a penchant for quotes, quotables, and non-sequitir, Mead was a delight to talk to. He’s coming to City Winery on Thursday for The Cosmic Honky-Tonk Revue, a co-headlining tour with Jim Lauderdale and Jason Ringenberg, all backed by his band, the Grassy Knoll Boys. Read the interview below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: What about Close to Home is unique to you as compared to your previous records?

Chuck Mead: The lion’s share of what I record is in Nashville, so going to Memphis to do it is a departure. To put yourself in a different place--and there were a couple of songs we had been playing for a little while that took on a different dimension just because of where we were and the studio we were in, the Sam Phillips Recording studio he built in 1962 when he left Sun [Records]  and had enough money to do what he wanted to do. My buddy Matt Ross-Spang is a great producer and is the manager for the place now doing a lot of great work. Just tapping into the spirit of Sam Phillips, where anything can happen.

SILY: The title of the record is taken from the idea of songs that “hit close to home.” Were you playing with the idea that home is not as much a concrete place as it is a feeling?

CM: Yeah, I guess you could say that. You’re always close to home. Home is where the heart is...on the bus! Sorry, that’s a Frank Zappa quote. But it’s true, nonetheless. I think you hit on something. But that particular song [the title track] is about how some weird song on the radio explains exactly what you’re going through. How does that happen? Man. That thing you said last week that came true. It makes it seems like there’s some order in the universe when probably there’s not. It seems like it happens a lot. I don’t want to get too spacey or hippie-dippie about it.

SILY: You mentioned working with Matt. How did the record have a different instrumental vibe than your previous ones?

CM: We never had someone coming into play like during this one. Don Herron who used to be in BR549 played some fiddle. Critter Fuqua from Old Crow Medicine Show came in and played accordion. It was still very Nashville-centric, but because we were in Memphis, we got Rick Steff to play the keyboards. John Paul Keith came in and played guitar. It lent more of a local flavor to it. It led to a slightly different vibe, which is great. Doing the same thing every time would be pretty boring, don’t you think?

SILY: And the album within itself has a nice variation--speaking of which, how did you decide upon the sequencing?

CM: You know, I don’t know. I just went through different sequences the songs were in, and it just seemed to flow the best the way it came out. It’s not like we were trying to tell a long story or anything. The songs seem to go together even though there’s a lot of different kind of things on it, and I guess that’s just because it’s us.

SILY: I want to ask you about a few specific tracks. First up: Is “Big Bear in the Sky” literally about stargazing?

CM: Well, no, it’s about that particular constellation. Many different cultures have a legend that they put a bear up there in the constellation. This particular story is an Indian legend from up in Canada. Originally, the song was for the Bear Family label out of Germany. [Founder Richard Wieze] asked me to write a bear song for their 40th anniversary.

SILY: I like the juxtaposition in the track “My Baby’s Holding It Down” between “holding it down” and “holding me down.” What’s the difference to you?

CM: Well, she never holds me down. She’s holding it down because I’m not there. But she’s not holding me down at all--though she could probably kick my ass. People who travel a lot, the people at home have to take care of stuff. And when you’re home, you have to take over, because they’re holding it down the rest of the time. She’s also probably holding down her anger. [laughs] But not really. People suck it up and they get through life. That’s just kind of what that song’s about. She doesn’t need me around. I guess I’m kind of nice to have around sometimes.

SILY: It’s about your wife, presumably?

CM: Yeah. I wrote it with my friend Paul Cebar, who also travels a lot and has been married about as long as I have. But you can write only so intimate a song. It’s general. It’s a tribute to significant others who hold it down a lot.

SILY: In the song “Better Than I Was (When I Wasn’t So Good)”, at the end, when you say, “Did that sound drunk enough at the end?”--

CM: That was Mark Andrew Miller who said that. [laughs, then imitates] “Did that sound drunk enough?”

SILY: Was that the type of thing you simply left in because it was so funny?

CM: Well, yeah. When we got the rough mix of it back, and that was in there, we thought, “Well, that’s gotta stay.”

SILY: Let’s talk about “Billy Doesn’t Know He’s Bad”. In so much of traditional music, you have murder ballads where the murderer has a clear intention and a lot of agency, and here, it’s a song where you have a lot of empathy for this murderous outlaw who doesn’t know why he’s doing the things he’s doing.

CM: No, I don’t have a lot of empathy. It’s a comment on sociopathic people. They think everybody thinks exactly like them, but they don’t care. They don’t know they’re being bad. They don’t know they’re assholes. I’m not excusing anything. Billy was an asshole. He lit up his neighbor’s house for no reason! It was a comment on someone like Jesse James or Billy The Kid who were kind of glorified for the way they lived their lives. Jesse James robbed and killed people. He’s a sociopath. You try to be understanding of it. When I wrote that song--Logan Ledger and I wrote that song--it seemed like it needed something. Mark Miller said, “Hey man, I think I have a good bridge for that.” So he comes up with that middle part that takes it to a whole new level of people trying to understand the way they are, nature, and nurture. It really ties it all together. I was really happy to have that happen. It’s kind of different. Those songs aren’t usually about that. It’s usually about a guy who kills his girlfriend because she’s pregnant or something.

SILY: Do you think the instrumentation of that song was an intentional contrast to how you’re viewing the character and subject matter?

CM: No, that was just kind of the way it came out. We went through it a bunch of times. I guess Rick added a Mellotron on that song to make it more dramatic, which helped out the bridge. In that sense, I guess you’re right. But it was one of those things that evolved in the studio. When we were originally working it out, it was just us four. That’s the thing that can happen in Memphis that doesn’t always happen here in Nashville, though that’s less true as time goes on. A lot of people own their own studios and cut their records so they can take as much time as they want. I don’t have that luxury. Usually, you just go into a studio and bang it out because everybody’s so damn good. In Memphis, you like to kick it around a little bit. That’s why we were able to chase that one around the room a little while.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the cover art of the record?

CM: I’ve been working with Jim Herrington for a long time. He’s my best friend. He’s done all of my solo records. He did the first couple of BR549 records, too. He’s photographed tons of great people over the years, and he and I have this consistency of getting something slightly noir that doesn’t look like your average album cover. Probably one of my favorite things someone said--there was a review of the record where the guy didn’t know anything about country or Americana but was drawn to the record because he thought it looked like Bryan Ferry. He liked the record, and he said, “It’s the most curious record you’ll hear all year.” For him, I guess. I don’t seem so curious. But it’s a tribute to the mysteriousness of Jim Herrington’s photo.

SILY: How are you adapting these new songs to the stage?

CM: Just goin’ out there and playin’ ‘em. [laughs] We’ve been playin’ ‘em over in Europe. Just bangin’ it out. We really did it pretty much live right there in the studio. More than a few songs, that was the vocal I was singing while we were cutting. Of course, we did overdubs where necessary, but there’s a certain liveness you want [in order] to capture the spirit of what’s going down. But when you start playing them after a while they do take on a certain dimension?

SILY: Extending a part or jamming.

CM: We don’t do too much of that. Sometimes, we’ll cut loose. We’re not a jam band to play a song for 30 minutes, although there’s nothing wrong with that. But I like to hit it, get it, and quit it.

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

CM: I’m reading a Lightning Hopkins biography right now. That guy recorded a lot of songs. [laughs] He’s one of my favorites though. I just finished this novel called Country Dark that was pretty damn good, about people up in Kentucky. Listening--I’ve mostly been listening to a lot of Jim Lauderdale and Jason Ringenberg. Gettin’ ready for the tour. We all have records out. Of course I like Margo Price’s record.

Album score: 7.1/10

BY JORDAN MAINZER

For 20 years, Denver’s Dressy Bessy have been crafting a unique mix of power pop and indie rock that sounds as sharp as it does sweet (with a fuzzed out live reputation to boot). On their latest album, Fast Faster Disaster, they mostly retain their aesthetic but are less angry at the asinine, more thankful for the relationships both present and gone that give them comfort. 

On the surface, the buzzsaw riffs of opener “It’s Not That Hard”, slinky bass of “I’ve Fallen in Love”, and slide guitar atmospherics of “Fearless” might make you think Disaster is a typical Dressy Bessy album. Beneath that, however, lies some of the band’s most emotional material to date. The B-52′s-esque “Tiny Lil Robots” and burner “Sweet Medicine” are inspired by lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Tammy Ealom’s relationship with her daughter. The anthemic “Cheer Up Teardrop” embraces the imperfections of life (“I arrive / I’m alive / I’m fine”) and those who persevere in spite of them (“Chin up punk rock girl!” Ealom sings.) 

And then there are the tributes. The excellent, melancholy acoustic strummer “Mon Cheri” sways along like a faster version of Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You”. Referencing the death of Dressy Bessy’s original bass player Rob Greene in January 2018, Ealom recognizes, “This shit goes on without rhyme or reason.” Closer “What Do I Get?” is a faithful Buzzcocks cover that in context acts as an appropriate nod to the legend of Pete Shelley. The penultimate “The Real McCoy” was written in the wake of Ealom learning that The Minus 5′s Scott McCaughey suffered from a stroke. She was following the news from afar, and you sense that Ealom felt distant, unknowing of what would happen. “There wasn’t anything I write that he would not defend,” she sings, perhaps assuming the worst has already happened. “Power up and play us something / Tower up, we’ll all be listening,” she wishes, repeated over a wailing guitar solo; that the track is filled with guest appearances from so many of his musician friends makes the reference to “us” all the more concrete. Thankfully, McCaughey survived and is back and at it (The Minus 5 opened for Yo La Tengo at Temperance Beer Co. just this last Sunday), but “The Real McCoy” is an effective snapshot of a moment of uncertainty reminiscent of something we’ve all been through. It’s one of the best Dressy Bessy songs to date on a record that truly stands out in their two-decade catalog.

Fast Faster Disaster by Dressy Bessy

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Nashville singer-songwriter Caroline Spence is proud of the fact that she writes about relationships, the crux of everything in life. The times when she’s tried not to, she ends up doing so, which she totally embraces on her third and best record Mint Condition. With many of the same collaborators she played with on previous records, like singer-songwriter Erin Rae, guitarist Kris Donegan, and multi-instrumentalist/producer Dan Knobler, Spence made a record that at heart is a complex, self-aware look inwards and outwards that tackle the subtleties of being a woman going through something. “Sometimes a woman stands alone / ‘Cause they’ll turn her joy into sorrow / And she knows her grief is her own,” she sings on standout “Sometimes a Woman Is an Island”. 

But she finds time to embrace the imperfections and the grief. Catchy ripper “Who’s Gonna Make My Mistakes” revolves around the mantra, “Who’s gonna make my mistakes if I don’t,” cementing years where others might condescendingly call you “young and dumb” as an essential part of herself. She expects the same “be yourself” attitude towards others, too: On the wonderful acoustic strummer “Sit Here and Love Me”, Spence sings from the point of view of someone in a relationship suffering depression and anxiety telling her partner, “I don’t need you to solve any problem at all / I just need you to sit here and love me.” The album’s instrumentally and aesthetically gorgeous, washes of slide guitar, Wurlitzer, and strings pervading many of the songs. But nothing’s as beautiful in all ways than the concluding title track, which features none other than Emmylou Harris in harmony with Spence, two women of different ages, both in “mint condition.”

Spence brings Mint Condition to Schubas tonight with her band, including guitarist Charlie Whitten, bassist Luke Preston, and drummer Logan Todd. (Spence is on acoustic and electric guitar). Opening for her are singer-songwriter Jordie Lane and his partner Clare Reynolds. She spoke to me just a couple days ago over the phone about the new record, her songwriting process, being influenced by Dan Savage, her latest favorite records, and how in the hell she got Emmylou Harris to sing on one of her songs. 

Since I Left You: Mint Condition was finished last January. Does it album still feel new to you?

CS: Yeah, it does, actually. Being on the road the last couple days and playing the songs with the band is kind of bringing them to life for me in a new way. You write them on your own and sing them in your living room and the studio and work their arrangements, but it’s another thing to be inside them every night. They feel newer to me since we’ve tracked them.

SILY: Tell me about the process behind “Song About a City”, the song you co-wrote with Ashley Ray, when you felt like you needed another writer.

CS: Ashley and I have written songs together, and the “Song About A City” was an idea I’ve had for a while. I had the chorus melody and an idea of where I wanted the lines to hit, but I got stuck in wanting it to be a certain type of song and my own patterns of how was executing it. I felt like I trusted Ashley’s voice and asked her what she saw. As soon as she brought her perspective, the idea opened itself back up. It became the song I wanted it to be. That’s the beauty of co-writing. You end up with something that feels like it belongs to you in some way, but it never feel like it comes from just you.

SILY: I love that song because you talk about how you want to write about a place but end up writing about people...but in effect, you did write a song about some places.

CS: [laughs] But they’re also about people. Every record I’ve put out, people are like, “It’s a relationship record!” like it’s some sort of cop out. To me, everything is a relationship record. Every song is about a person. It’s not just a song about a city.

SILY: “Who’s Gonna Make My Mistakes” seemed to me self-aware and self-critical but also an anthem for people who makes mistakes.

CS: [laughs] That one feels like an anthem to sing every night. Nobody’s more critical of me than me, so it’s nice to have those words come out of my mouth every night. Everything I did today was the process of becoming myself.

SILY: “Sit Here and Love Me” is very touching--a really fine sentiment. How have fans reacted to that song?

CS: Actually, that one, just this week, I’ve gotten three different messages on social media. It’s been so, so meaningful. There was one guy whose teenage daughter was going through a little depression, and obviously, as a parent, you want to fix everything for your child, and he said, “It made me want to shift my gears. I just listened to her instead of wanting to tell her everything.” It’s always the person who wants to do the fixing saying, “I never thought about just taking a back seat and helping the person who needs help.” It’s really hard to do that! It’s hard not to take care of everyone around you when sometimes the best way to take care is just to be there.

SILY: You were listening to Dan Savage’s podcast when you made “Til You Find One”. Have you reached out to him?

CS: No! I should do that. I forget what his quote is, but it’s something like, “Every relationship fails until it does it.” The relationship you’re worried about could end, but it also couldn’t. There’s peace in that.

SILY: Do you read his “Savage Love” column?

CS: I used to read it a lot more. He’s so funny, and I’ve listened to his podcasts a lot on the road and his audio book. I just think he’s so witty and clever and down to earth. He definitely demystifies so much of what it means to be a person, and I always love writers like that.

SILY: I may be wrong, but it seems to me to be rare that a title track is last on an album like it is on Mint Condition. Why did you place it there?

CS: At the time we were sequencing, we hadn’t named the record. But it didn’t fit anywhere else. I didn’t know what could follow it because it wraps everything else up in a little kind of bow. All this kind of chaos and questions and worry that are in the other songs--that song sort of lets it all go and puts the thing that matters most up front, which is loving someone else. It felt like the answer to a lot of the questions.

SILY: What does the concept of “mint condition” mean to you?

CS: I found it to be an apt title because even thinking about “Who’s Gonna Make My Mistakes”, when you’re in that part of your life where you’re messing up and trying to figure your stuff out, and falling flat on your face, you’re just as much in mint condition in that moment as you are when you’re looking back on your life with the person you’ve been with for 50 years. Whatever point in you’re life you’re at when you’re figuring your stuff out, you’re exactly how you’re supposed to be. To me, that was what that phrase means to me.

SILY: How did you get Emmylou Harris to sing on it?

CS: We asked her! [laughs] It was really amazing. At first, she said she wasn’t taking any other gigs and was really busy, and a day later, she said, “I feel bad. Send me the song.” So she heard it and said she would do it. She was so gracious with her time. It was truly a dream come true for me.

SILY: You said when writing it you wanted to write a song good enough for Emmylou Harris to sing. And then she did.

CS: She was in my head when I was writing that song. The fact that she was there and thought the song was good, I was like, “What the hell?” I wish I could go back in time and tell the girl writing that song on her bedroom floor that’s what happened. 

SILY: What are some of your other favorite songs to play from the record?

CS: They’ve all been fun. It’s the first time I’ve played a lot of these out. I’m really enjoying playing anything from the new record, and it’s been fun to pick and choose ones from the last record that fit in with the new songs. I’m into the set we’ve drafted for this tour.

SILY: You’re a big Patty Griffin fan. Do you like her new record?

CS: Yeah! I saw her play at the Ryman. It was really wonderful.

SILY: What else have you been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention.

CS: I’ve been super into the Better Oblivion Community Center record. I saw them play in Nasvhille and it was so great. I loved Bright Eyes in high school, and I love Phoebe [Bridgers’] record. I’ve been really into that.

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Wrestling, goth music; it was only time before The Mountain Goats made a record touching on something with equal levels of nerd devotion. In League with Dragons, album number 17 from John Darnielle and company, takes its inspiration from tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, rock operas, and noir literature. As usual, the band went all in: It doesn’t matter whether or not Darnielle has always been a fan of these subjects--the band announced the record from Wizards of the Coast headquarters anyway. Yet, like other MG records, Darnielle doesn’t fetishize. Instead, he uses the subject at hand to make a larger point about why we enjoy certain cultural phenomena.

I like to play games because it sometimes gives me a sense of control over a finite universe, in obvious contrast to our everyday lives. There’s some of that in In League, but for the most part, Darnielle draws parallels between fantasy and reality. “It never hurts to give thanks to the local gods,” he sings on lead single “Younger”, simultaneously referencing a D&D strategy and sarcastically chiding sucking up to the powerful in society. “Look to the West / Look to the man bearing the Sicilian crest,” he sings on the charging Spandau Ballet-inspired “Sicilian Crest”, lamenting the rise of anarcho capitalism and fascism. 

More importantly, though, Darnielle pays tribute to his own personal wizards. The record starts with “Done Bleeding”, which references his time spent in a hospital as a psychiatric nurse and calls back to his stints in hospitals and jails due to his own drug addiction. Darnielle aspires, then, to be like his heroes Ozzy Osbourne and Doc Gooden, who excelled in spite of their drug problems. In a lower vocal register, Darnielle deadpans on the R.E.M.-like, jangly “Passaic 1975″: “Sometimes, I wake up coughing up blood / Tonight, Indianapolis / Tomorrow, the flood,” in awe of Ozzy’s survival of Black Sabbath’s tour schedule. “Doc Gooden” is especially moving, starting with the titular baseball player’s so-called “comeback,” when he threw a no-hitter after a year-long MLB suspension due to his drug use. Remarkably, he interpolates LL Cool J: “Don’t call it a comeback / I’ve been here for years,” Darnielle declares as Gooden, fighting against the idea that you are who you are only in the public eye. Before “Doc Gooden”, Darnielle was singing, “It’s so hard to be yourself,” on the title track, and after, on “Going Invisible 2″, he sings of how destruction of the preconceptions surrounding you is another way of remaking yourself, rendering “Gooden” the emotional climax of the album.

Produced by none other than Owen Pallett, Dragons also continues the band’s streak of aesthetic changes from album to album. Goths was the first MG album to contain no guitars. Dragons is certainly guitar-heavy, whether college rock strumming, pedal steel from Dan Dugmore on the title track, rollicking country picking on “Waylon Jennings Live!”, or a ripping solo from Thom Gill on “Cadaver Sniffing Dog”. But it’s both a logical return and branch off of Goths, with vocalist Robert Bailey providing choral vocal arrangements and singing like he did so emotively on Goths songs such as “Wear Black”. The instrumental and production choices work in tandem with Darnielle’s stories: They all exist in the same Mountain Goats universe, but they embrace the fact that our interpretations, whether of board games, baseball, or life, are, in fact, ever-expanding and infinite.

In League with Dragons by The Mountain Goats