“Pink Cloud” is taken from this Portland trio’s
forthcoming sophomore LP, Light Years, which is set for release via XRAY Records on October 28. Over the last 2 years, the band has been collaborating
with various Oregon visual artists to complete an accompanying film for the new
record. The album tracks were split up between the different visual artists,
who then created their own song-length short films to go with them. The
combination of these videos will create a single film, soundtracked by the
album in its entirety. Light Years will be presented as a two-part “visual
album.”
The director of "Pink Cloud" is visual artist Lymay Iwasaki.
WL's new LP will be available digitally and on 12" vinyl. Pre-order the album here.
Check out the gorgeous new dream pop of Oakland,
California's Hazel
English, who first began writing and performing songs in her native
Australia. "Never Going Home" was released as a demo on her Soundcloud page about a year ago and will be the title track of the artist's five-song debut
EP, coming out on 12" vinyl on October 7th, 2016 from Marathon Artists. Hazel's official site offers three options for
pre-ordering the release. Those in the Bay Area will have the opportunity to
catch this
performance on August 25th.
Lazy Legs is the
Chicago-based trio of Laura Wagner (vocals/bass), Michael Tenzer (vocals,
guitar) and Nicholas Piontek (drums). This shoegaze/noisepop group is one of
our favoriteup-and-coming bands of the year – their exceptional debut LP,
VISIONDEATH, will undoubtedly land in the uppermost regions of our Best Records
of 2016 list.
On VISIONDEATH, Lazy Legs crafts a sound that is exquisitely immense
in both volume and creativity. Each song is an intricately constructed pop gem, noise-drenched
and massive. The album’s lush melodies and ethereal vocals weave expertly
through the dense layers of distortion, and the result is a perfectly balanced
sound that is both utterly pop and distinctly experimental.
How and when was the
band formed? We
decided to start messing around with what would become Lazy Legs in the summer
of 2014, in Chicago. At the beginning of 2015, we asked Nick, our drummer, to
start helping us flesh out songs.
Can you tell us what
the band has been working on and what you've got forthcoming in the near future
(any new releases, tour, etc.)? We
recently put out our debut full length album, VISIONDEATH, and are super proud
of how it turned out! Now we are focused on playing live shows around Chicago
this fall. Our first show will be at the end of September. Also, we are
planning on doing a split with Tennessee-based shoegaze band, LACING. No set
date as of yet, but we are excited to combine forces with a band that is so
good at crushing, heavy gaze.
Do you consider your
music to be part of the current shoegaze/dream pop scene, or any scene? We
feel that the idea of music scenes has changed with the advent of the internet.
In the past certain types of sounds were associated with a specific point of
origin (like ‘90s grunge in Seattle), now they are more fluid and ephemeral. We
identify with the global shoegaze community in a general way, but think it’s
ultimately more of an a la carte experience, where you pick up fans and fellow
bands that share similar tendencies within the genre.
Defining one's sound by
genre can be tiresome, but do you feel that the band identifies closely with
any genre? How do you feel about genres in music, in a general sense? We
absolutely embrace that we are predominantly a shoegaze band, but we never shy
away from elements of grunge, noise and noise pop. Bottom line, we love to mix
heavy music with soft vocals. Genres are kind of always a mixed bag. On one
hand, genres can inspire people because they give a name to a particular type
of sound and they offer a commonality among people who like that sound. On the
other hand, obsessing over a genre and its foundational definition can be very
limiting.
What do you think of modern
shoegaze/dream pop/psychedelia artists, any favorites? We
are so lucky to be living in a time with so many talented bands that draw upon
dreamy, fuzzy and noisy sounds. We love Lubec, Jaguwar, Haunter, No Joy,
LACING, Ganser, King Woman, Tamaryn, Paincave, Helen, Ringo Deathstarr, Shell,
Daguerreotype, Sustains, Foxes in Fiction, Elastic Sleep, Future Death, Static
Daydream, Indoor Voices, Pale Dian, Sleep Over, Movie Brain, Grouper, Cruel
Summer, Lunch Ladies, Bloody Knives, Voices from Deep Below, Maria False, White
Poppy, Beach House, Jackal Onassis, Echo Lake, Melody’s Echo Chamber,
Honeyslide, Ocean Hope, Whirr, Pure X, Orchid Mantis, Benoit Pioulard and
many more…
What is the most
important piece of gear for your sound? Any particular guitars/pedals/amps that
you prefer? We
wouldn’t say there is one piece that is most important. Laura uses a Fender
Jazz bass for clearer definition in her basslines while maintaining depth. She
found the Jaguar bass to be too muddy. Michael uses a Fender Jaguar HH guitar,
which has a pair of double humbuckers for that heavy distortion. Michael uses a
Rat 2 and Big Muff in conjunction. The Big Muff for cakey distortion, the Rat 2
for highlighting lead/middle tones.
What is your process
for recording your music? What gear and/or software do you use? What would you
recommend for others? It’s
a bit of a fragmented process where we’ll come up with a chord progression on
guitar or a bassline, add in some tentative drums and then proceed to sit on
the song for several days and sometimes weeks. During the course of this time,
vocal melodies start to be shaped autonomously. Then, we bring all the elements
back together and refine it all as best we can.
For
recording, we use a Line 6 UX2 interface (which comes with a lot of handy
guitar and bass effects) and an old version of Sonar. Nick sends us his drum
performances separately (he lives in New York). That’s about it – we like to
keep it simple.
When it comes to label
releases versus DIY/Bandcamp and the like, what is your stance, if any? I
(Michael) feel like the music “industry” is so democratized and fragmented
these days that the historical idea of being signed to a major (or even major
indie) label and the tangible benefits that would follow are just that, a
historical idea. These days, you can blow up and become an internet sensation
from a clunky lo-fi bedroom recording and, on the other side of things, you
could pump thousands of dollars into equipment, production, promotion and
touring but still wallow in obscurity forever. Personally, I love that. It’s a
real equalizer that keeps everyone humble in spite of themselves.
I
tend to lean towards Bandcamp/DIY because you get the purest and most direct
expression from the artist. But there are benefits to micro labels, too. Since
there is just a gargantuan amount of music flooding the internet every day,
it’s good to have micro labels filter through it and curate releases that speak
mostly to their niche audience.
Do you prefer vinyl,
CD, cassette tape or mp3 format when listening to music? Do you have any strong
feelings toward any of them? We
enjoy cassettes because the sound naturally bends due to the format, giving it
a unique intimacy. Vinyl has a nice warmth to it as well. As for CDs and MP3s,
we are ambivalent. Of course, it’s hard not to appreciate the convenience of
MP3s.
What artists (musicians
or otherwise) have most influenced your work? My
Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Whirr, Ringo Deathstarr, No
Joy.
What is your philosophy
(on life), if any, that you live by? Dogs!
One of our happiest recent discoveries is Oakland,
California’s Sugar Candy Mountain. This, the project's latest video, is for "Windows”, a track from the quartet’s recently
released and fully enchanting third full-length, 666. Fans of Broadcast,
Stereolab, Melody’s Echo Chamber, The Soundcarriers, and The Free Design, take
note. Or, as the project’s Facebook page elucidates, “If Brian Wilson had
dropped acid on the beach in Brazil”—and who’s to say he didn’t—“and decided to
record an album with Os Mutantes and The Flaming Lips, it would sound like
this.” The second album, 2013’s Mystic Hits, is also highly recommended. We
haven’t yet heard their self-titled debut, but on the strength of the other
two long-players we’re eagerly awaiting the cassette’s arrival in the mail. For proof that
this band totally brings it live, look here.
"We wanted whoever was listening to just submit, like to a tractor beam, and melt down into a pool of nothing."
Our interview with Portland, Oregon’s colossally
talented Tender Age is taken from a lengthy (and delightful) phone conversation
with three of the band’s five members. Guitarist/vocalist/songwriter
Tauna Leonardo, guitarist/vocalist/songwriter
Elaina Tardif, and bassist Bryan Robertson participated. The band also
includes guitarist Christopher Klarer and drummer Nick Ferrucci.
We posted Part 1 of the interview just as the project’s
debut EP Disappear Here hit the streets. We became acquainted—and enamored—with
this outstanding release, which we decided to review in depth separately, while
we were editing Part 2 of the interview. Naturally, we started to think of
questions about Disappear Here that we hadn’t originally included. So, the next
part of this post consists of an additional email discussion about the backstory
to the EP in which Tauna answered our questions with Elaina contributing as well. Part 2 of the original interview follows that, picking up
where Part 1 left off.
Tender Age is presently on a tour including Midwest and East Coast locations. We posted the dates here.
"Crush" is taken from this Chicago trio's recently released debut LP, VISIONDEATH. This charming video features numerous canines in the throes of some serious beach fun – because doggo summers matter too! Enjoy. If you haven't checked out VISIONDEATH yet, do so. Right now!
We found out about the new video for “The Traveller” from Fuzzy Logic. The song appears on Thank Your Lucky Stars, the most recent full-length
from Baltimore dream pop duo Beach House.
We published Part One of our interview with Portland,
Oregon quintet Tender Age
just as their EP Disappear Here was released digitally and on cassette. Since
then I’ve had the opportunity to immerse myself the cassette edition. I found
myself playing it twice a day or so for four or five weeks running, sometimes
waking up with hooks or stray bits of sound echoing insistently in my mind, pressing
me to play the tape again. I quite simply love the EP, which consists of
gleefully, painfully torqued and deconstructed songs whose thoroughly appealing
pop core nonetheless shiningly asserts itself amidst all the noise, distortion,
and mercilessly wrenched arrangements. Given all the noise Tender Age has loaded
into their pop, it’s remarkable that the pop is preserved. The band has struck
a remarkable balance between pop savvy and inspired destructiveness.
Disappear Here builds on the girl-group-inflected dream pop
of the band’s 2014 “Anything”/”Mirrors”
7-inch and the classic shoegaze of last fall’s “Get
High”/”Always” 7-inch by additionally embracing a big wallop of Nineties
noise-rock chaos. It's a fizzing, vertiginous blend that couldn’t be a better
match for my own musical enthusiasms.
Sonic transitions of various kinds bridge the tracks so
that each side of the cassette plays as a continuous stream of sound. Speech,
most of it appropriated,is a prominent
component ofof the overall mixture.
Threads of spoken word and snippets of prattle from film or broadcast media are
woven into the background or come to the fore quite frequently. What’s
surprising is how well this plays. At first I guessed that such a generous
helping of this kind of material might start to wear thin with repeated
listening. Rather, over time, the various strands of speech in the EP—at least
for me—refresh themselves by seeming to yield different texts and new
resonances. This morphing and deepening of meaning is enabled by the fact that
the selections, while often playful and sardonic, also evoke inexhaustible
themes like tragic loss and the deeper nature of the self. Even in protracted
heavy rotation, Disappear Here continually reveals new facets and fresh
pleasures.
The first side consists of three originals. We premiered
the opening track, “Lowers”, in February here,
and you can watch the brand-new video for it, put together by Tender Age guitarist Christopher Klarer, below. The title of the second
track, “Delirium”, speaks rather well for itself. Side A’s closer, “No,” might
be my favorite of the three originals. It’s a fractured waltz of disappointment
and disaffection—Elaina Tardiff sings “Oh, I’m underwhelmed/The future should have
been so much brighter and more fair/Oh, these days I walk around//Looking for
my face in the window/Of this market price/apartment complex”—that offers a
pleasing melody to sing along with over the sonic carnage. As much as the sonic
vocabulary is one of contorted guitar screeches, bursts of tortured noise, and
dark hazes of sound, the band still delivers on pop essentials like memorable
lyrics, catchy choruses and melodious earworms.
Side B consists of three covers. The first is a stretched-out
torquing of Bobby Darin’s originally snappy 1959 mega-hit “Dream Lover” (see Darin
perform it live on TV here).
Tender Age sets the song’s wistful romantic aspirations among twisted guitars
and eerie background vocals. Next up is “I Love How You
Love Me”, first released by the Paris Sisters as a 1961 single that gave seminal
girl-group producer Phil Spector one of his earliest production hits. Tender
Age gives the tenderly sentimental lyrics a somber, almost dirge-like dual
recitation (the original also features a recited portion) by Tauna Leonardo and
Elaina amongst spacey noises and washes of sonic abrasion until, as the track immolates
itself, a slowed-down sample offers a taste of the original’s melody and
arrangement.
As the embers die out, a lovely Enoesque ambient loop
emerges. We may easily be expecting an ending to the EP any second here, but after
more than two minutes of soft ambient unspooling comes a sixth, unlisted and
unidentified track that doesn’t show up in the EP’s digital version. Out of
respect for the mysteriousness around its appearance on the tape, I won’t
identify this third cover. I will say that the song first appeared twenty years
ago with an utterly Spectoresque girl group sound, and that on several levels
its presence here deftly wraps together the Sixties and Nineties influences
that Disappear Here celebrates and bends to its own purposes. And somehow, the basic charm of all three of the songs covered is still in evidence despite the frenzy of contortion and ironic ‘tude to which they’ve
been subjected—no small achievement.
Tender Age is presently on tour. In the coming days and weeks
they’ll be hitting seventeen Midwest and East Coast locations, followed by a
homecoming show in Portland on September first. We posted the dates here.
In conjunction with the tour, Sinis
Recordings is releasing a very limited 12-inch vinyl edition of Disappear
Here. It’s on clear vinyl and all the covers are screen printed by hand. Only a
few copies of the 12-inch will be available at each tour stop; the same goes
for a very limited cassette split with Portland allies Toxic Slime.
For those unable to make it to any of the tour dates, a very
small number of the 12-inch discs will be made available on a first-come,
first-serve basis this Friday, August 5th, at noon Pacific time. You’ll
be able to buy it through this Sinis
Recordings Bandcamp page, where the cassette and digital editions of
Disappear Here are for sale on an ongoing basis.
Watch this space for Part 2 of our interview with Tender
Age in the coming days. —Dan
"Sputnik" is taken from this Finnish group's forthcoming EP, Gentle Slopes, which is set for release on September 9th via Soliti. The band's debut EP, Full Blossom, came out last year to rave reviews, and we expect Gentle Slopes to continue in that dreamy vein.
Texas-based stonergaze trio True Widow are back with a new single and have announced a forthcoming LP, AVVOLGERE, which is set for release on September 23rd via Relapse Records. This will be the band's fourth full-length LP and, if the single is any indication, it's going to be top-shelf. Pre-order the album here.
Last week, after playing a free festival, Portland musician Cat Hoch was the victim of an unfortunate theft. The back window of her car was smashed in and her guitar + all of her pedals were stolen. Please help support this amazing artist by either donating or sharing the link to the donation page.
