2012 Triangle Music Preview

Dive may have only had five favorite local records, but the truth is, 2011 was a great year for music in the Triangle. It brought the heartbreaking harmonies of Mandolin Orange and Mount Moriah; Systems’ dark, twisting metal; the beats and rhymes of Kooley High; Megafaun’s rich freak-folk. The year ended on a high note, but what will 2012 bring? This week, five local bands gave us the low-down on their respective new projects — and from the looks of it, this year is quickly getting off to a pretty sweet start.

2/21/12
Gross Ghost, Brer Rabbit
Brer Rabbit gets its name from the wily, mischievous rabbit from Southern folklore. Gross Ghost frontman Mike Dillon said that he felt a kinship with the cunning character who, like him, had spent a lot of time working his way through the briar patch that life so often is.

This is also the first Gross Ghost release that features a full band, “so newer songs will probably have the whole band’s fingerprints on it, in some form or another,” Dillon said.

Dillon admitted that Gross Ghost often gets pegged as garage rock, but said the band found a bit of a different, more diverse sound on Brer Rabbit — a result of Dillon and bandmate, Tre Acklen.

“I think we used our love of pop music more recently and found a happy medium. Recording at Track & Field, an actual studio, definitely was a big change for our sound as well,” he said.

3/6/12
Bowerbirds, The Clearing
Bowerbirds recorded The Clearing, its third full-length, in a studio owned by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver before returning to Pittsboro to rework the songs again. This record has taken the band longer than either of its other endeavors: nearly a year from start to finish. But to Phil Moore, the band’s singer and guitarist, the labor of love has helped Bowerbirds make a record it’s incredibly proud of.

“It has taken us so long, from the inception of these songs until their release date, and so much thought all along the way, that we have been anticipating the time we can play these songs live for a very long time,” he said.

The band has expanded its instrumentation too, and Moore said the songs on The Clearing “vary from raucously loud to intimately quiet,” reflecting on the trials and tribulations that are a part of life.

3/31/12
Lilac Shadows, EP 1
Lilac Shadows technically started in 2010, but it wasn’t until The Huguenots, another Chapel Hill-based outfit, disbanded this spring that Sam Logan began taking it more seriously. So far, Logan said, Lilac Shadows has shaped up to be “darker, louder and more cerebral,” than The Huguenots, with lyrics that are “darker and more obtuse,” to match.

If you’ve been keeping an ear to the band’s demos on Bandcamp, you’re in for a surprise, too. Logan said that the band has already begun to stray from the sound it created on its original recordings. This came as a result of Annuals’ Zach Oden joining the band on drums. Rather than rework old songs, the group decided to focus on writing new material, which has more of what Logan calls “an ‘80s post-punk, Krautrock vibe.”

The EP will be released digitally and on cassette — perhaps implying that you had better crank your windows down and turn the volume up on these tunes once they come at you this spring.

Release TBA
Horseback, Half Blood
Horseback, the work of Jenks Miller (who you may also know as part of Mount Moriah), has helped lead the charge when it comes to metal music in the Triangle. Though Miller released The Gorgon Tongue: Impale Golden Horn Forbidden Planet last May, all of the material had been released before in another format. This year, listeners will get a brand-new batch of Miller-made metal.

“Half Blood contains Horseback’s darkest and most diverse material yet, with flavors ranging from extreme psychedelic rock and metal, to Krautrock- and folk-influenced melodic repetition, to more abstract sounds from the power electronics, noise and musique concrete traditions,” said Miller.
With that, who could ask for more?

Half Blood doesn’t have a street date yet, but Miller said he hopes to get it out within the next three to four months.

Release TBA
Hammer No More the Fingers, Pink Worm
It took almost two years for Durham’s Hammer No More the Fingers to follow up its 2009 LP Looking For Bruce with last year’s Black Shark. But the Hammer dudes are already back with a five-song EP titled Pink Worm, which the band recorded last summer with The Love Language’s BJ Burton. In May, Pink Worm will finally wriggle its way into fans’ hands.

Duncan Webster, the band’s vocalist and guitarist, said the EP’s songs cover “everything from slow, groovy, bittersweet jams to our most righteously rocking, prog-alicious jams.”
Some of the tunes, like “Falls” and “Kilowave” have roots reaching back to the band’s middle- and high-school days, while others, Webster said, were written just a few days before they were recorded.

As for another Hammer full-length, Webster says it’s already in the works — more than halfway done, even. The band is set to start recording it after it releases Pink Worm, and looks have it ready by fall.