New Music, Emerging from your Local Scene
Although the San Francisco duo Two Gallants are known for their tales of murder and outlaws in the Wild West, Tyson Vogel and Adam Stephens have recently branched off into very different solo projects. I spoke with Tyson and his band members about his new project, the Devotionals, whose first album came out yesterday on Alive Records. Vogel teamed up with violinist Anton Patzner (who has played with Bright Eyes and Judgment Day), cellist Lewis Patzner (Judgment Day), Andrew Maguire (vibraphone player from Honeycomb), and drummer Jeff Blair.
Deli: Does Two Gallants and the Devotionals come from a similar place?
Tyson Vogel: “Personally, I feel as much honesty in each project. It is a very different angle I am taking with the Devotionals though. Otherwise, it would be incorporated into material for Two Gallants. Adam and I kept each other going for so long, but there became a need for personal conservation, it came naturally for us to branch off into solo work. We had been touring for six years nonstop. We were building our music careers, but the other side of our lives was being neglected.”
OK, tree-thuggers and wookies – it’s that time of year again. The time when you gather up all your drugs and dogs, and head North to Mariaville, NY for Camp Bisco, the three-day party/live music festival hosted by former Penn boys The Disco Biscuits. Camp Bisco has really evolved from it’s origins as a little electronic jamband fest in central PA to one of the premier summer concert festivals on the east coast by bringing in such artists as Snoop Dogg, The Roots, Nas, MSTRKRFT, Thievery Corporation, Damian Marley and Shpongle just to name a few. This year looks like it will be carrying on the tradition with a lineup packed with plenty of big bangers like "Wu Massacre" (Method Man, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon), LCD Soundsystem, Ween, Thievery Corporation, Diplo, Major Lazer and Girl Talk, but don’t miss out on sets by Holy Fuck, Caribou, Rusko and Pretty Lights as well as locals Dieselboy, Grimace Federation and Brothers Past. Hopefully the weather will hold up better this year. – H.M. Kauffman
Ugh, this weather is awful! Well, tonight’s opening event for Waterfront Wednesdays, the free Wednesday concert series in Penn Treaty Park brought to you by the New Kensington CDC, is postponed. Check out the flier above to see who will be performing this 2010 season. We’re guessing that things will get shifted. Damn weather, it’s exactly why The Deli hasn’t done any outdoor events yet! – The Deli Staff
Sunday morning started off with a text from my friend reading, “Where is everyone at this festival?” I’m not sure if people were simply too mind-blown by the fully-hyped and beautifully-delivered Bassnectar set from the night before, or if everyone felt similar to the man tripping acid behind me screaming “I have to fucking work tomorrow!” Regardless, Sunday’s crowd was a little sparse compared to the day before, and those of us that were there had a lot of room to fill. Nashville’s DJ John Napier literally started the day off with his semi-engaging 1pm set at the Ocean Stage. Eventually drawing about a dozen people from the shadows of the surrounding hills to dance, Napier did a solid job of keeping the crowd entertained, while the infamous purple blanket man jumped from the closest tree and ran circles around everyone. I feel confident in saying that the crowd would have been much more receptive to DJ Napier had we been in a LED enhanced warehouse, instead of a brightly lit patch of grass on a Sunday afternoon. Still, Napier held his own as he set the mood for Quantum 38 and Sam Gracie to follow.
While waiting for Paper Route to go on, I was able to share a plate of blueberries and a few smiles with Flaming Lip’s front man Wayne Coyne (who is just as mysterious and fascinating when silent, as he is walking over a crowd in a man-sized hamster ball) reminding me of their ever approaching set. Like clockwork, herds of people started filtering in anxiously to get the perfect spot for the Lip’s headlining set. This surge of people also happened to give Paper Route’s 7:30 slot a nice appeal, as the band started serenading us just before sundown. With matching Ray Bans, Andy Smith (vox/guitar) and J.T Daly (vox, keyboards, percussion) really helped give the band an image with their polished looks and voices to match. Paper Route’s sound varied between mellow mixes of Death Cab harmonies atop slower breakdowns, and tight grooves over some pre-recorded beats. Drummer Gavin McDonald proved to be quite the beast and really locked in with bassist Chad Howat to give the crowd something to dance to. Touring with bands like Paramore and Passion Pit, Paper Route has created quite a buzz in the past few years, most recently with their hit “Carousel” off their latest album Absence.
After leaving the festival I found myself delightfully pleased with how well Nashville’s locals stood out amongst other big name groups. Hopefully next year will bring in even more Nashville natives and the word of Forecastle will continue to spread. Regardless, I left the festival with a new obsession with electronica music, and a bitter confusion as to why my All Access pass didn’t continue working in the real world.–Mackenzie Grosser
When your day starts out in a sea of sweaty, glow-stick-enhanced, C-walk attempters, you know the chances of you enjoying yourself are considerably high. When the pulse that’s moving the masses is coming from a Two Fresh set, the odds are even better. Like all great electronica shows, I found myself mesmerized by not only the man in the cardboard box running circles around me, but also the twin brothers delivering the beats. Sherwyn and Kendrick Nicholls are the heart behind the hip-hop and jazz infused trip-hop sound, with the help of live drummer Colby Buckler. Spinning hits off their latest album, Baker’s Dozen, the twins did a pretty damn good job of hyping up the midday crowd for Mimosa. Playing music and making beats since they were freshman in high school, the Nichols brothers have been touring non-stop with names like Pretty Lights, and can be seen at upcoming festivals like Camp Bisco. Their set really proved that two heads are better than one – especially when those two heads are syncing up on some of the hottest beats at Forecastle. Although Mimosa followed with a team of rave-party-girl dancers, equipped with fishnet tights, furry boots, and zippers in places where no one should imagine, Two Fresh remained fresh in our minds as the day continued on.–Mackenzie Grosser
For a tiny little place, Synchronicity Space packs a punch. This writer can’t speak to the venue as a gallery, but for music, it’s the jam. Cuddled up in warehouse-like spareness on one of those perfectly crispy L.A. nights that feel like 8 o’clock forever, four bands and a few in the know blended into each other’s darkness like the black on black on black of the blacked out sky when the city lights burn out. On this night, the lights went dark and the music lit us up.
The best thing about a show in a gallery is not only the merging of multiple forms of art but the willingness of the bands to get loose, to make the space theirs for the night, to be more than themselves, to be the art, to be the medium. One F (from San Francisco), War Tapes, Jesus Makes The Shotgun Sound, and VoicesVoices (all LA based) brought us out and made us pay with some tortured exploration and some torrential force and some traditional rock and roll and some transformative lyrical imagery. We hustled free Colt 45 and we listened to it all happening. Sometimes it all happens and you can’t say why but you feel the rolling underneath you and the earth wells up and someone great is born.
The clear standout of the night, hands down, was JMTSS. So raw, so loud, so scientific, these boys do not mess around. Not even a little bit. This is math rock and this is pathos. A fan tells us that we need this music and until we hear it we didn’t know we needed it. Then she says, "But once you have it, you can’t let it go." JMTSS make you need them. With their understated off-stage presence and their tight (as in cool, not ill-fitting) black suits and their intense scrutiny of every last element, this band goes all Mars Volta and all The Dear Hunter with a maniacal speed and precision. In a hyphenated word, they are mind-blowing. Maybe the stars aligned or maybe the other three just weren’t at their best, but JMTSS owned it, claimed it, ate it up and spit it out. Friday was yours, Jesus Makes the Shotgun Sound.
-Angel Baker
Check out our review of DAMNANT QUOD NON INTELLIGUNT EP coming in the print issue of The Deli Magazine at the end of this month.
Nashville local band, Awake! Awake!, delivered a unique sound to a mixed crowd at Third and Lindsley Friday night, flooding the airwaves with intense melodies, high-energy riffs and melodic background noises. They followed an 8-piece indie folk band, which set the bar pretty high for the following acts. Awake! Awake! prepared to take the stage, strategically placing household lamps hooked up to kill switches, enabling the band to turn the lights off and on during the set, along with bright blue Christmas lights. Awake! Awake!’s set lacked fluid transition with a few sound issues, but the band, like most of its members, is fairly young. Despite technical difficulties, Awake! Awake! delivered big sound to the audience, particularly with new songs “Distance” and “Daylight,” both of which are on the album “Bittersweet Horizon,” released early July. The band’s unique sound makes them difficult to compare with others. Small similarities can be made, such as the fullness of Paper Route or the high resonance from the guitars used by a lot of postmodern rock bands. Yet Awake! Awake! mixes their ideas and influences and twists them to produce a sound that is hard to pinpoint. The lead guitarist produced a variety of sounds with his pedals to keep the audience listening, and the bassist moved about the stage wildly, which was matched by the drummer. Instrumentally, the band sounded great, but the lead singer, who sounded confident when the tempo was slower and the sound of the band was lower, needed to open up his voice so he could be heard over the band. The band’s talent is still evident despite a few riffs in the show, and their distinctive sound warrants a listen. Check out their MySpace for some free downloads of songs worth a listen off their new album.–EJ Hirsch
Joyful Noise announced this morning that they will be releasing a 10-album Cassette Box Set (w/ Digital) from Joan of Arc on September 14th. The box set includes Portable Model Of (1997, Jade Tree), How Memory Works (1998, Jade Tree), Live in Chicago, 1999 (1999, Jade Tree), The Gap (2000, Jade Tree), So Much Staying Alive and Lovelessness (2003, Jade Tree), In Rape Fantasy and Terror Sex We Trust (2003, Perishable Records), Joan of Arc, Dick Cheney, Mark Twain (2004, Polyvinyl), Eventually, All at Once (2006, Record Label), Boo! Human (2008, Polyvinyl), and Flowers (2009, Polyvinyl). As a teaser the label is giving away a 10 track digital sampler which you can download here.
This is the bands entire catalog and the collection will be housed in a custom-built wooden box, elaborately screen-printed, hand-numbered and limited to 100 copies. You can preorder your boxset for $49 today. The Chicago show to celebrate the release will held on August 21st at Ronny’s.
Saturday brings us the 10th Annual Siren Music Festival at Coney Island. One of the highlights (if not the best) of the free summer concerts in New York, it starts at 1:00 pm and goes for the next 8 hours. Among the featured bands this time around are some of the metro areas finest up and comers. Topping that group is the now veteran Pains Of Being Pure At Heart (in the top picture). Still riding the two year wave of critical acclaim and mass popularity, we can’t wait to hear a new song or two in their set. "Everything Is Happening Now," perhaps? The Screaming Females will be showcasing songs from their impending fourth album release, “Castle Talk”; we are looking forward to admire gifted guitarist Marissa shredding and sweating on stage – she is bound to be the focus of this dynamic act’s set.
Cymbals Eat Guitars (2nd pic) have an appealing sound that incorporates, at times, frantic guitar strumming, impassioned vocals, a variety of blended keyboards – moving from quiet passages to all out blustery jams – all within the same song. They have no apparent inhibitions about incorporating alternately noisy and/or atmospheric passages within their mostly traditional song structures. Earl Greyhound blend the sprawling song structures (and chops) of prog rockers with a Dead-head hippie mentality, producing something unique and entertaining. All of the above are must see shows. – Dave Cromwell