I hope that Night Spins doesn’t take offense at my opening gambit here cuz they seem like swell guys and also it’s totally meant as a compliment as you’ll soon see but nonetheless it bears pointing out that in the past year the band has come in second place in two, count ‘em two, music competitions…

…the first being a web series called No Cover produced by Hit Parader magazine at The Troubadour in West Hollywood that’s essentially a Pop Idol type show except featuring full on bands playing original music, and the second being Our Wicked Lady’s second annual Winter Madness competition held at the aforementioned Bushwick indie music mecca with a pre-selected “Sweet 16” of local bands going head to head in front of live audiences over the course of several weekends…

…and hey without a doubt placing second in either competition is extremely impressive–not to mention placing second in both of them–seeing as the Winter Madness drew over a hundred applicants and who knows how many bands tried out for No Cover not to mention celebrity judge Alice F*cking Cooper telling Night Spins lead singer/rhythm guitarist Josh Brocki that “you’re a rock star, man…it borders on funny and at the same time I’m believing all of it” after they performed their breakout hit “Knockin’” in the first round but what impresses me even more is who Night Spins ultimately lost to…

 …which in the case of Winter Madness was gonzo skronk-rockers Pons who are the only power trio we know of with two drummers whose overall sound and stage presence is something like Cannibal Corpse after having ingested the members of Sonic Youth (both Kim and Thurston must be pretty gamey) and contracted Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease as a result to the point where I’d bet the avant-noise band would freak out Alice Cooper if they ever appeared on his show and nevermind Gavin Rossdale who would surely be found cowering under the judges’ table…

 
…whereas on the flip side the winners of the No Cover competition, The Native Howl, would be equally unlikely to emerge victorious at OWL Winter Madness tho’ less due to their bluegrass meets thrash conceit (“thrashgrass" is pretty cool if you ask me) but more due to their (with all due respect) banjo-driven Mumford & Sons-meets-Dave-Matthews-on-speed vibes that wouldn’t fly in that setting not to mention the growled Eddie Vedderisms of their vocalist that is if Eddie were auditioning for a nü metal band…

…and once again I must offer my apologize to Night Spins, this time for dwelling on other bands in what’s supposed to be their record review, but at least we’re finally reached the salient point which is that THERE IS NO OTHER BAND IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE THAT COULD POSSIBLY PLACE SECOND IN BOTH OF THESE COMPETITIONS EXCEPT FOR NIGHT SPINS or so I would contend and look, seriously, we’re talking about a Venn diagram overlap of one because what other band could possibly appeal to the almost diametrically opposed musical aesthetics of these two contests which if nothing else speaks to Night Spins’ black swan uniqueness…

 
…in delivering feel good party-rockin’ vibes overlain with new wave angularity (not to mention the angularity of Josh’s hair) and/or blusey hard driving Southern rock swagger and/or Tom-Waits-meets-Iggy-Pop-fronting-Modest-Mouse street-preacher abandon (seriously, see them live) while at times veering into somewhat more menacing territory like on the aforementioned “Knockin’” which should’ve won the 2018 “Every Breath You Take” award for audience-pleasing songs about stalkerish behavior if such an award existed tho’ to be fair it’s more of a tongue-in-cheek, self-effacing song than Sting’s slinky ode to watching every move you make and every cake you bake…

…serving as an extreme example of Night Spin’s overall predilection for potentially discomforting contradictions ("drench the house in gasoline / I promise I won’t be mean") and multiplicity and moral ambiguity which let’s face it are deeply human qualities that must be acknowledged even if they make us uneasy, otherwise we’re all rigid walking pressure-cookers ready to blow at any moment, and along these lines this band of Brooklyn-based Southern transplants (hailing from North Carolina and Texas) has found a way to win over both East and West Coast audiences (and talent show judges) nevermind straddling the tricker divide between Northern vs. Southern which in light of today’s polarized cultural climate makes me think maybe the State Department should fund Night Spin’s next tour as a first step in healing this fractured, fractious nation…

…but hey OK enough of my pontificatin’ cuz Nights Spins released a brand new record JUST TODAY called Woohoo, an EP of material recorded over the course of a weekend at a barn upstate, and I’m sure you all wanna hear more about their new music so let’s get right to it especially seeing as we solicited comments from Night Spins themselves–about whom it behooves us to tell you includes not only Josh (obviously) but also lead guitarist/co-vocalist Manquillan Minniefee who’s no slouch in the high energy/angular hair department himself, alongside a crack rhythm section made up of Andrew Jernigan (drums) and Jesse Starr (bass) both of whom do some vocalizing as well…

******************************

From the electronic press kit: This is the band’s first self-produced group of recordings. With Jesse Starr(bass/vocals) at the helm, the band’s craft takes on new technical prowess as well. Having converted a barn in upstate NY into a recording studio, they were able to produce, record and mix the record that they envisioned. Mastering was then done by their old friend Joe Lambert…”Woohoo” celebrates our joys, triumphs, sorrows, and fears alike, all a part of our dance through life.

From personal correspondence: We really wanted to capture a moment that reflected us in a natural state of play; just the four of us performing in a room. No layered guitars or unnatural components, [an] un-pretty with a 5 o’clock-shadow kinda vibe. We found a big reverberant room in a barn, set up shop, and pressed record. The process of turning a barn into a recording studio over 2 days, spending the next two tracking everything we had been working on, and then spending a month mixing it, has been one of the most rewarding experiences in this journey.

On the EP’s three tracks:

WOOHOO – The song was formed in the first weeks of the pandemic when we retreated to a barn in upstate New York. Its theme rallies behind false pretense, “pretending it’s a holiday all through the storm, singing Woohoo!” which for us was justifiably the best way to appreciate our circumstances given that the world was devolving around us. It is a celebration of the shit show that is life.

The Deli says: Get ready for earworm city as the song opens with a “woo-hooing” battle cry that recurs throughout and if you’re gonna “spend [your] time playing make believe” one can only hope it’s in a make believe as happy as this one sounds even if there’s an underlying note of melancholy hidden underneath. Still, it’s the most joyous song to come out of COVID-19 that we know of.

CEREAL – touches on the frustrations of failure and deals with them through tongue-in-cheek creative dark fantasies that are fortunately never actualized.

The Deli says: A nice vibey mid-tempo rocker sung by lead guitarist Manquillan Minniefee that opens with the lines, “I got a left foot / I got a right foot / I got a hacksaw / to punish you real good” (now we’re talkin!) thus inverting the happy wish-fulfillment land of “Woohoo” into murderous fantasies that’s never come to fruition seeing as our protagonist is “just an insincere cereal [serial] killer” which ends up sounding like a personal failing and if you don’t pay attention to the lyrics and but only to the throbbing guitar and tension-filled, lusty tone of voice this sounds like a song of seduction (“we’re gonna go at in all night / in the back of the toolshed”) which I guess is the whole point.

BIG BLACK BOOK – having compounded fears and anxiety eventually reaches a breaking point, and that’s a good thing. Destructive release, but release nonetheless. The embrace of your dark side is an embrace of a part of you, and connecting with yourself leads to a deeper understanding and ultimate acceptance.

The Deli says: I remember this one from OWL’s Winter Madness and it was a standout even upon first hearing—a ranging beast of tension and release  (dig those heavy AF triplet guitar chords) where “sleepless nights full of bad habits” eventually turn one’s mind inside-out (like the seduction of “Cereal” fulfilled) and here you really feel the mental wavelength created by the pandemics’s extended bouts of isolation and inward focus, alternately enticing and terrifying, where “all my dark wisdom’s seeping in” thanks to “open[ing] up the big black book” and finding your “own white rabbit” and while the latter image may suggest chemical adventures there’s something even more primal and elemental about this song imho as driven home by Josh’s frenzied vocalizing…

In conclusion: …and overall however brief in duration it’s quite a journey from the joyous escapism of “Woohoo” to the so-good-they’re-bad habits of "Big Black Book" and one thing I like about this EP is it doesn’t sound like was written by self-regarding “winners” but instead by underdogs and strivers and second-place finishers so there you have it and if the journey’s too short for you I’m sure Night Spins wouldn’t mind me telling you there’s a physical edition of Woohoo available on CD (see the band’s Bandcamp natch) including not only the 3 new tracks but also the standalone singles released since their 2018 debut LP which means if you get both CDs then presto you own every Night Spins song ever released plus two exclusive live performances from Rockwood Music Hall in 2022 so go buy all the things and then say to yourself “winner winner chicken dinner”. (Jason Lee)

—–> LISTEN TO WAKE OF MODERN LIFE HERE <—–

 Dear Banshee don’t want you to know the origin of their name—in fact it’s a running joke inside the band to assiduously avoid doing so even tho’ they often get asked to—and hey I don’t blame them…

…seeing as the Bay Area collective make music that’s been described as “haunting, hypnotizing, mesmerizing, lush, moody, introspective, and dreamlike” which are all words used in a single recent review of “Rehoboam” and not wrongly either, the lead-off single to the band’s sophomore album Wake of Modern Life (check out the video above directed by bDwS made entirely with recycled/repurposed materials which we’ll soon see is a fitting visual correlate to this record) and there’s no better way to undercut the “haunting” quality of something than by trying to logically explain it which is basically what happens at the end of every M. Night Shyamalan movie and every episode of Scooby Doo…

…but imagine if every episode of Scooby Doo ended not with unmasking the villain of the week (e.g., a booty-seeking “ghost pirate” revealed to be the leader of an international smuggling ring) but instead with Scooby, Shaggy and the whole Mystery Machine gang getting sucked into an existential vortex of pure light and energy like the ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey and then you’d have something much closer to Wake of Modern Life which was released one week ago today…

The dark days are here again
Mother, we are survivors
We’re in this together — “White Lies”

……an album that’s equal parts introspective and otherworldly, but at the same it feels very much of its time and place as in 2023: A Dystopian Odyssey (does the titular “wake” refer to a slipstream or a funeral or an awakening? who knows!) and here’s another advantage of bands being unwilling to over-explain their work and that’s the freedom it gives critics and other commentators to rely on pure, rampant speculation which regular readers of this column must know is something of a hobby…

…and so when it comes to the band’s name I’m gonna go ahead and speculate that Dear Banshee was chosen as their moniker as a reference to’ “Dear Prudence” as covered by Siouxsie and the Banshees seeing as the Beatles’ cover serves as a fitting encapsulation of the Dear Banshee’s lush, ornate Baroque pop wedded to introspective lyrics overlain with a layer of gothy, black mascara laced darkness with more than a tinge of psychedelia thrown in for good measure and ahhhh there’s a good San Fran connection…

…tho’ I certainly don’t mean to give the impression that Dear Banshee are taciturn or withholding cuz to the contrary the band’s two co-lead-singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalists James Lucas and Chelsea Wilde are warm and engaging in conversation and were more than willing to talk on the phone for nearly an hour and share some interesting tidbits about the album and some of its specific tracks such as opener “One Last Sign” which quite effectively sets the overall tenor for Wake of Modern Life…

In the wake of modern life / reflections are all I see
A copy of a copy / turn around
Is it one last breath or one last sigh? — “One Last Sigh”

…and when I suggest that Wake of Modern Life is very much a “headphone album” given its exquisite production and sonic detail, interweaving a rich array of timbres and textures, James gamely co-signs the idea going on to describe the record as “bedroom rave” which even if he made this up right on the spot it totally makes sense to me as applied to someone who’s spanned styles and formats from punk rock to jazz (fact: James’ father used to play clarinet in a jazz ensemble and contributes one and the same to “Greed”) to bedroom alt-pop to an entire phase spent as a drum ’n’ bass DJ…

…going on to explain that in contrast to their more guitar-heavy first album “I always wanted to start an album with just electronic stuff” which makes sense given his penchant for artists spanning the spectrum from Aphex Twin’s twisty, oft-ambient “intelligent dance music” to the glitchy electro-industrial “thrash-hop” of Death Grips and indeed “One Last Sigh” reminds me of a Xerox machine spitting out “copies of a copy” in a cut-and-paste collage of diverse influences until the ink cartridge explodes that is and smudges then all together into a blurry Rorschach test… 

…which isn’t the worst metaphor for how Wake of Modern Life was assembled, or for “One Last Sign” in particular with its herky-jerky drum programming sounding like it was dubbed from a 20th-generation cassette (Dear Banshee are self admitted gearheads and may or may not have purchased digital instruments from music stores, ripped all the sounds, then returned them) soon joined by a squelchy melody formed from fragments of guitar played by Chelsea, later cut up and fed through various filters by James in a recycling/repurposing process (Chelsea: “The first time I heard the track I didn’t know what to expect. I’d done bits and pieces of guitar work but hadn’t heard it all put together”)…

…with vocal lines traded back and forth between the two, then sung in harmony, then stacked layer-upon-layer into ambient washes of sound—a technique suggested by Chelsea and largely borrowed from her own musical project Minor Birds (FFO: Marissa Nadler, Chelsea Wolfe) and it’s worth noting here that Chelsea is a relatively new addition to Dear Banshee and that she’s got a penchant for the doomier side of the musical spectrum (e.g., Idles, All Them Witches) not to mention being formally training in classical piano from early childhood which brings a literal Baroque influence into play (James: “She’ll look at me and make a little smirk when she’s playing Bach or something”) and oh yeah you may have noticed both of them are skilled multi-instrumentalists…

…so you never know who’s playing guitar vs. piano vs. some other instrument on this record (not to mention how fluidly their voices mesh together at times) all woven into the fabric of a song like “One Last Sigh” which ultimately builds up and then unravels into a tangled heap of burbling keyboard arpeggios (can’t help but think of Grandaddy’s Sophtware Slump here) and massed voices and strings (Karina Garrett plays viola on the track and contributes string parts across the album) and who knows what else into a glitched-out-sonic-vortex-wall-of-sound which is pretty fitting for a song that appears to be about the very process of unravelling itself…

Quiet and still inside / phantoms are my only friends
Maybe we’ll all go out again / empty streets seem so calm
Uneasy thoughts slide down the walls — “Phantoms (So Much Time)”

…on an album that’s very much a product of the COVID-19 pandemic and attendant unravelling both thematically (C: “I feel like a lot of these lyrics are reflective or what we were dealing with the pandemic. We both got Covid during rehearsals. We spent two years recording. It really took a toll on us.”) and structurally (J: “We worked on the album in two phases. The first was working on the songs in live band rehearsals, getting the spines of the songs down, the vocal melodies especially. The second phase was composing on computers and piecing songs together that way. Chelsea and I figured out entire segments of songs as we were recording them”)…

…a creative process that, however painstaking, appears to suit the duo well now that ever since peak pandemic has come to revolve around the central axis of James and Chelsea especially given the fairly regular turnover among the other three members of the band—James clearly knows many proficient Bay Area players—who come and go depending upon availability and the vagaries of life as a musician overall…

…with James describing his working method as fairly meticulous (J: “It’s kind of like a science experience but if you didn’t go school for science”) while Chelsea is more inclined to “rolling with the punches” and “go with the flow” and improvise where needed (C: “99 percent of what I love about music is playing live. I knock things out in one take cuz I hate the studio”) resulting in a multi-layered, existential vortex whose sonics range from the sweeping piano-based indie rock balladry of “White Lies” culminating in a yearning string-laden coda to the neo-psychedelic of “In the Moment” with its airy Mellotron and twinkling guitar and warm synth tones so go check it out, yo… (Jason Lee)