Austin

Interview with Michelle Joy of Cannons

Posted on:

 Michelle Joy of Cannons (April 11, 2022)

Interview by: Lee Ackerley

 

It’s been a pretty wild run through pandemic. Your band seemed to go through a metamorphosis that transformed your life completely!

 

It’s felt really crazy, yeah, because before the pandemic and everything, our biggest show was probably 200 people or something, and we also didn’t have the hip fire for you yet. So it was a little crazy once everything started opening back up to be thrown into, Lollapalooza was our first show. So it’s thousands of people. And then we’ve been on this crazy festival run. We played so many festivals. I can’t even keep up with how many festivals we’ve played, and then first big opening tour and then headline tour. So we have been on this Cannon’s mission that has been so exciting and so much fun, but a lot to take in, I think.

 

How do you prepare for your first headlining tour?

 

Yeah. So it’s all been like a learning process because it’s all super new to all of us. But we definitely did learn a lot on that opening floor and learn things that happened super helpful. Even just spending the time every single night to figure out what we like in our ears, because in ears are a new thing for me that I’ve had to get used to, which now I’m used to, I love it. I can perform a lot better since I’ve become comfortable with things like in ears, knowing how to schedule my day so I have like energy to do these. It’s 75 minute, eight minute sets at 10:00 PM or whatever. It’s been just been trying to get this routine going where I eat healthy on tour. I haven’t been able to exercise much of this tour, but I feel like I’m exercising every single night. So I have my routine and we’ve got our awesome tour bus this time, which makes it a lot easier. Because before we were driving in a band and it was hard.

 

 I know that you were a runner in college and you’ve mentioned that’s your first passion. Has that complimented what you’re doing with Cannons in some way?. How is running part of your life now?

 

 So that’s interesting you asked me that, because our last show, or was it two nights ago in Houston, brought me back to this whole, the part of myself that I’ve been separated from for a while, because growing up, my dad was a professional track coach and his dream was for me to be in the Olympics and he trained Olympians and one of them actually lived with us when I was in high school and I trained with him and he was kind of like my brother, but he’s two gold medals, three bronze medals. So he came to his first concert ever, which was our show in Houston. He’s never been to a concert.

 

And I haven’t seen him in 10 years since my dad passed away. So it was such a really cool moment because I felt like for the first time I felt my dad was in the room since, yeah. He was kind of his dad too or whatever, but it’s been really cool because tour has been able to bring all these different parts of myself from the past and stuff together just by visiting all these different cities. I’ve been able to meet people that I would’ve never been able to meet in my family or my past, but yeah, they’re running. I was even talking to him about it and it’s really helping me be able to do these sets and sing and dance and do this every single night almost.

 

You’re very active on stage. It definitely seems like you’d need stamina to do that every night.

 

Yeah. Because I heard that people gain a bunch of weight on tour and just eat crappy food and all this stuff. But I feel like I keep getting more in shape because I’m dancing, I’m on this. I usually only want to eat salads and pretty healthy stuff because I don’t want to feel sluggish. When I’m at the show it is like a race that I’m running. I want to do a good job and I want everyone to have a good time. So I keep my energy on point and pace myself with my day. And that’s kind of something that I definitely learned to do, being an athlete because I also ran for in college for Florida state. And my whole childhood with everything was just like athletics.

 

At Florida state you have talked about like there’s a club there that you’d see new bands and that kind of opened your world, you up. Was that college experience your first entry point into music?

 

Yeah. Kind of. So I’d say two entry points is in high school, my high school had their own radio station and I took radio for a class, even though it was a whole radio station that broadcasted in South Florida, we got to program the music and take home the CDs and everything so I could listen to whatever. And so that exposed me to a lot of music that I would’ve never been exposed to if I wasn’t part of radio.

 

Yes. And then in college, Florida state had club down under and all the shows were free, and they were right next to my dorm area, and in the evenings, I just always go and sit in the back couch usually and just check out new bands. And it was really fun for me because it just, yeah, that just opened up my musical expanse or something. I just found a lot of cool bands that I would’ve never been exposed to before and we had a cool, a really awesome booking agent for that venue that is still my friend till this day and now she books a lot of bands in Los Angeles that are pretty neat and…

 

Yeah. So she had really good taste and it’s close me down into lot of cool bands and is working with, I’m not sure what you would call, the genre.

 

What would you call Cannons genre of music?

 

I don’t know.

 

Intimate dream pop lounge?

 

Yeah. I don’t know.

 

Lounge disco?

 

We’ve gotten lots of different names for it.

 

I’m sure it’s aggravating and some of them are just ridiculous.

 

Well the guys, I guess the guys don’t like when they hear future boogie, at least, I don’t know. Charles Ryan says that, yeah, he doesn’t like the word boogie. I don’t know. But people like to mix it in there.

 

Technology has been integral to Cannons journey; Craigslist brought you together, Soundcloud  validated your early tracks and Netflix broadcasted your music to a wide audience. But it sounds like it all unfolded organically?

 

Yeah. It’s been an interesting journey too, because even the first couple songs I worked on with the guys, we never even met up, we just emailed back and forth and wrote music without meeting up, which is why working during the pandemic and when everything shut down, a lot of artists were worried about not being able to go to studios and not being able to meet up with all their songwriters or whatever. But it didn’t phase us at all because we continued to do things. I mean, a lot of the time now, we meet up, we used to live in the same apartment complex for a while too. But at least during that time when nobody was seeing each other, we were still writing songs and songs that are on this album.

 

 

If Cannons did a side project featuring a different music genre, what could you see all three of you playing?

 

With all three of us? I don’t know. There’s so many different avenues that we all allow each other to explore, but it always comes back to sounding like Cannons, in some way. I don’t know if that makes sense, for example, things like “Purple song”. I feel like that sounds nothing like the other songs on the album, but I’m like, my dad was from Trinidad and my uncle, he’s the music director for the biggest steel drum orchestra in the world. So I was like, I need at least some kind Island bug, steel drum here. So then Paul’s like, right, let me think about it. And then came up with that really awesome production for that.

 

And it works on the album. Yeah. I mean it blends right in. And you wrote fire for you out of a breakup is ruthless specifically landing on a person in your life or.

 

Well, not for me specifically. So with ruthless, I’m not sure how much you should tell you. I don’t like when people that are close to me, my friends or family are not treated well by others. So that song came from someone close to me.

Starting a relationship with someone that was total, not a good person and me kind of being upset about it, them getting hurt and putting myself in their shoes and feeling like there was no other way to express that anger than just being like, fuck you. Because when you’re off and you’re dealing with people in those situations, that’s just what you’re saying. Yeah.

 

I know Harry Styles, had heard some of it, and you guys covered him on the latest covers album. Has anybody else reached out specifically that you found important or inspiring?

 

Tiesto reached out. He was a huge fan of Fire. So he ended up remixing that.  That wasn’t like a label being like, we’re going to go pay Tiesto a bunch of money to do this. He reached out, he was like, I want to remix this song.

Yeah. There’s a lot of people that have reached out to us on Instagram and DM us.

Oh yeah. Cat Power. I love cat power. She loves Cannons. Then there’s bands that like the guys listen to that I haven’t really listened to too much of, but grew up listening to that have reached out. Who is the lead singer of AFI? Loves Cannons and have been DMing, I haven’t listened to POD, but I remember Paul’s been DMing with him and he came to our show.

NYC

Deli Premiere: Lizzie Donohue’s “Virgin Suicide” is an early contender for Song of the Summer

Posted on:

photo by Yoshiki Murata

Eagle-eyed readers may remember how last June there was a Deli column re: the unofficially designated Official Song of the Summer™ (even if it was observed to be a “hackneyed premise” at the time, but hey we’re not above a little hackery) and thus you may be wondering why The Deli has yet to nominate any entries for Summer Song of 2022™ because summer officially starts in only four days and what are ya gonna listen to come 6/21 without our sage advice?

Ok, since you asked nicely (!) we’ll get you started because there’s a song that just came out today that happens to check off a good number of the requisite summer song boxes and that’s “Virgin Suicide” by Lizzie Donohue. 

 

But how is this song "summery" exactly you may ask? (good question!) For one thing, it opens with a sprightly drum beat, and sprightly drum beats have been associated with summer since at least the Summer of 1969. And then the bass guitar plays the notes one-by-one of a major triad, and major triads have been associated with summer since at least the Summer of 1963. And then, still just a few seconds in, the intro culminates with a spirited shriek, and shrieking has been associated with summer since at least the Summer of 1964.

So right from the start “Virgin Suicide” sets a beach blanket “let’s twist at the beach” vibe musically, but the opening stanza tells another story: “Oh sweet baby / you’re doubling down and going ‘round / I can’t take this roller coaster ride / little virgin suicide” and as Lizzie herself put it to us, “Sonically I love a song with dark lyrics and catchy, happy, dance-y music” which actually fits perfectly with the longstanding summer tradition of mixing the flavours—both the light and the dark, the sun and the shade—during the longest days of the years.

RIP Julee Cruise…

Case in point re: mixing the flavours: the book and the movie The Virgin Suicides which both in their own ways mix a sweet-as-apple-pie-hazy-lazy-languorously-sensual vibe with the tragedy of, well, virgins committing suicide—a book which Lizzie had self-reportedly been obsessed with since the age of 13 which is an important number symbolically in the book so isn’t that interesting? Also interesting is that none other than The Criterion Collection is putting out a deluxe edition of the movie on home video later this summer so hey I smell a cross-promotional tie-in opportunity for Miss Lizzie here just sayin’.



Clearly, neither the book nor the movie would work at all if they were set in the dead of winter, or any other season besides summer really, so isn’t that interesting too, but not nearly as interesting as drunk kids getting their kicks in the bathroom and your tongue getting so numb that you’ll talk to anyone to paraphrase from the lyrics. And to quote again from Ms. Donohue: “For me the story represents the fetisization and dehumanization of young girls—particularly sad young girls” and if someone doesn’t start a band called Sad Young Girls after reading this I shall be terribly disappointed. 

And would you like to know some backstory re: the creation of “Virgin Suicide”? Sure you would! Again, straight from the source: “I recorded the guitar and vocals in my bedroom. I really wanted that DIY Julien Casablancas tube-effect vocal sound. The bass and drums were done over at The Creamery in Brooklyn (shoutout to Quinn [McCarthy] who engineered) with Dylan Kelly and Jensen Meeker who played on the track.”

And finally, for this critic what really takes the cake (by the way Lizzie describes “Virgin Suicide” as being the musical equivalent of vanilla cake flavored ice cream but not equivalent to an (inevitably stale) ice cream cake) is the sweet vocal harmonies that come in near the song’s conclusion which is overall the song’s most summery quality in this writer’s humble opinion, and also adds extra oomph to the song’s concluding sentiment: “I don’t wanna die a little virgin suicide / and it might be rad / I just don’t think my mom and dad / would like to find me like that.” (Jason Lee)

Chicago

Dendrons “Wait in Line”

Posted on:

Dendrons have released the second single, "Wait in Line", from their forthcoming album, 5​-​3​-​8, which is due out on August 26th via Innovative Leisure.

The single is accompanied by the Óscar Raña and Cynthia Alfonso of Rapapawn Studio animated video below.

Photo by daniel.

Chicago

Phil Yates & The Affiliates “A Thin Thread”

Posted on:

Phil Yates & The Affiliates are preparing to release their fourth studio album, A Thin Thread, via Futureman Records on July 15th. You can currently stream the album’s first two singles, "Green Eyes" and "Smithereens", below.

This album is marks the first from Phil and crew with the newly formed Chicago line-up which includes Richard Bandini (electric guitars, background vocals, percussion), Jay Lyon (bass, keyboards, electric guitars, background vocals), and Bill Urban (drums, percussion).

You can catch Phil Yates & The Affiliates at Tone Deaf Records on August 7th.

NYC

Parlor Walls just hits different on Belly Up EP

Posted on:

photo by Michelle LoBianco

There’s a self-described “creative salad” take-out joint where I go to grab lunch sometimes when I’m working my day gig in midtown Manhattan (yes “The Deli” has a desk jockey job…so much for 24 hour rock ‘n’ roll hedonism!) and when I visited the other day and ordered my go-to order with spicy shredded chicken, warm grains, black beans, cotija cheese, avocado, scallions, tortilla chips, and marinated kale topped off with a drizzle of Mexican Goddess dressing I informed the “salad artisan” that while their menu is solid overall, this particular menu item is my fave and he sagely offered, “yeah, it just hits different” and I thought “wow, what an apt phrase for that certain je ne sais quoi that sets certain things apart in some difficult-to-articulate but undeniable manner whether it’s a salad or a sandwich or a song.” 

 
And so when I listen to the band Parlor Walls they remind me of this salad because their music just hits different in a way that’s hard to pin down—at once dread-inducing and ravishing—with pungent flavor notes like musically-marinated kale with cotija cheese and scallions as heard on their most recent EP Belly Up—an evocative title phrase that can mean either the act of sidling up to something appealing (“let’s belly up to the bar and enjoy a cold brewski”) or being in a state where one is hopelessly ruined or defeated (“my stock portfolio went belly up after the pork belly future market collapsed”) and it’s a paradoxical dynamic that’s perfectly apt for the band.

Belly Up opens up with a tune called “In Knots” (shot off, limb for limb / just another day when / belly up, belly up / eyes are peeking, through your hands / it is in knots, it is in knots) that sounds like a sweater or a mental state or a lifetime of accumulated inhibitions just about to unravel but somehow remaining precariously intact for the durations of three minutes at least, a song that opens (and closes) with a few seconds of mellifluous vocal harmonies before launching into a buzzy sub-bass drone backed by tribal tom-toms and the sound of a smoke alarm with low batteries overlaid with thick gelatinous guitar chords smeared across the song’s surfaces.

So maybe you see what I mean by just hitting differently but if you don’t just keep listening. The next track “Work!” combines an undulating melody line with woozy, seasick textures and the titular exclamation to create an upside-down rewrite of “Whistle While You Work” updated for the neoliberal workplace while “The Lock” is chill-out music for paranoiacs and “Hour After Hour” is the perfect dance soundtrack for those same paranoiacs after ingesting a decent dose of electrolytes and vitamin C and who knows what else. Which are all just my own subjective song interpretations of course because Parlor Walls are likely to hit everyone a little differently you see… (Jason Lee)

For fans of: Guerilla Toss, Spirit of the Beehive, Portishead’s Third

Parlor Walls are: Alyse Lamb: vox, guitar; Chris Mulligan: drums, samples; Andy Kinsey: bass, synth

Belly Up recorded at Marcata Studios & The Brick Theater; engineered and mixed by Kevin McMahon & Ernie Indradat

Upcoming live appearances: 6/23 Our Wicked Lady rooftop show
Live score for Nitehawk Cinema "First Nasty Women Feminist Shorts"
 

Chicago

Meat Wave “Ridiculous Car”

Posted on:

DIY Punk trio Meat Wave are back with the second single, "Ridiculous Car", from their forthcoming album which is due out this Fall via Swami Records.

The new single and accompanying lyric video are a proper salute to, as the band puts it, "bros who zoom down the expressway weaving through traffic like they’re playing ‘Grand Theft Auto’".

Meat Wave will be performing as part of Logan Square Arts Festival which takes place June 24th through 26th.

Photo Credit: Patrick Houdek

Chicago

The Neighborhood Threat “Razorblade”

Posted on:

Garage Rock group The Neighborhood Threat have released a new single called "Razorblade". This is the first new music from the group since their 2021 live EP, "Live at E.S.S.".

This is the work of Kevin Murphy (Vocal), Derek Schlax (Rhythm Guitar), Quinn Pokora (Lead Guitar), Alec Montoya (Bass Guitar), and Dave Catanese (Drums).

You can catch The Neighborhood Threat at Reggie’s Music Joint on June 18th with Scarlet Demore and Wine Lips.

Chicago

Geek’d “Astræthesia”

Posted on:

Geek’d has released a new single called "Astræthesia".

This is the hazy dream pop of Christian Moreno, and this is his second single of 2022 following up February’s "Trippy Dippy". For this new single he is joined by Rebecca Gaspelin (Vocals and Synth) and Vince Ippolito (Guitar).