Bringing the music home
At some local shows, there’s no beer for sale. There’s no stage. There are no intricate lights or extravagant sound systems.
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At some local shows, there’s no beer for sale. There’s no stage. There are no intricate lights or extravagant sound systems.
The Love Language is no stranger to buzz. Since the band’s self-titled debut emerged in 2009, it’s been a constant presence. With the release party for Libraries, the band’s first release on Merge Records, just days away, Diversions Editor Linnie Greene met with three Love Language members — Stu McLamb, Missy Thangs and BJ Burton — to talk about time, the future and why musicians love silence.
The Love Language’s follow-up to its self-titled debut was not recorded in a storage space, dining room or basement. Bid adieu to the lo-fi crackle of the band’s first release — in its wake, The Love Language shines.
With a new album Nothing Shows, set to release July 13 via Daytrotter, Keegan DeWitt, who shares family with fellow Nashville outfit Roman Candle, is a busy man.
In the first few measures of “Wildwood,” the titular track off of Chatham County Line’s most recent album, Dave Wilson declares, “Don’t mistake me for a wild wood /A place to run and hide/… I’m not a place to hang your head/Run away from yourself.”
After maple syrup and hockey, The New Pornographers are one of Canada’s most exciting exports. With the recent release of Together, the band’s fifth album, the ensemble is hitting the road.
At first glance, it’s easy to mistake TRKfest with an average festival.
There are a few words in the English language that have the power to change your life. For local musician Shayne Miel, frontman of The Future Kings of Nowhere, cancer is one of those words.In November of 2009, Miel was diagnosed with Stage IV Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a cancer in which tumors develop from certain white blood cells. In April of this year, the news got worse — Miel found out that the cancer had spread to his brain.But between the numerous doctors’ visits, hospital stays and gloomy statistics, there’s a silver lining. It comes in the form of “This Machine Kills Cancer,” the name of a blog on which Shayne and his wife Rebekah share their daily struggles.
If the West Side Story soundtrack could time travel to the ’80s, it might sound something like Before Today. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti merges the building, atmospheric sound of cinema music and the synthesized aesthetic of Flock of Seagulls, coasting on the same sunny, mellow sounds that propelled pop pioneers.
Ocho is cowboy music. Not in the conventional sense — on Luego’s latest, you’ll find no honky-tonk odes to dead dogs or mistresses gone astray. Instead, Patrick Phelan and company translate Western loneliness through a pop medium, infusing sunny harmonies and charming melodies with a tangible sense of unrest.
Over the course of 14 years and five albums, The New Pornographers has rooted itself at the intersection between accessibility and edginess.In a genre that the band has called its own through several albums, there’s little new territory, but where past releases have kicked at the dirt, Together plows through the intersection of lo-fi grit and shiny studio pop with a high-powered tiller, delving deeper with a set of intricate, astonishing pop songs.The biggest change on Together that contrasts The New Pornographers’ past work is the density and complexity of the songs.
Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is a pop musician in the least conventional sense of the word. Fusing noisy, thrashing guitars with a voice fit for a chamber choir, Clark’s aesthetic isn’t easily imitated. The critical darling talked to Assistant Diversions Editor Linnie Greene about pop culture, growing up in Dallas and everything in between on the eve of her show tonight at Memorial Hall.Diversions: You’ve done several collaborations. Do you ever find it difficult to jell your own style with someone else’s?Annie Clark: What I’ve found in the collaborations that I’ve done is just that you feel a lot less pressure and a lot less ego involved in collaboration. You kind of just get excited about the prospect that the collaboration will be whatever it is. So like combining your DNA with someone else’s, the baby will be whatever it will be. You don’t have tons of control, but you put your best foot forward. The point of it is to do something that isn’t exactly what you would’ve thought to do.Dive: Your first record was named after an episode of “Arrested Development.” Do you feel like pop culture plays a major role in your work?AC: Well, I feel like in press and with the Marry Me record being named after “Arrested Development,” I maybe talk a little too much about “Arrested Development.”I’ve been so pop culture entrenched since I was a kid. I mean, I’m a kid from the ’80s. I swear I’m not making excuses for low-brow TV, but there’s a show called the “Millionaire Matchmaker.” And I started watching it and I developed like a whole lot of sympathy and empathy for this woman.I happened upon it by accident, on a plane, and then I sought it out. I think her politics are really screwy, really pre-Betty Friedan, the feminist politics are really nut-bars. Dive: How did you come up with the name St. Vincent? Why did you adopt an alias?AC: Well, St. Vincent’s a family name. It’s the name of my great-great-grandfather. I wanted to choose a stage name because it allowed me more creative flexibility to do whatever and have St. Vincent be any incarnation of me, plus any number of musicians and sort of any lineup, so that’s the reason. I just think psychically, it was a way to create more creative space.Dive: I saw your satirical clip on Pitchfork.tv where you’re performing in a fake bookstore called “Women and Women First.” Why do you think so many women in particular relate to your music?AC: I think I’ve just gotten a little bit of distance from the Actor record. I think a lot of it deals with repression in many forms, and I’m from the South. I’m from Texas, and there’s tremendous pressure on women to always be agreeable — oftentimes at the expense of our own feelings, our own dignity or whatever. I think there’s pressure on women to be polite and to be agreeable, sometimes to our own detriment. And I think the Actor record kind of deals a lot with that.Dive: When did you start writing music? AC: I’ve been playing music since I was about — I started playing guitar when I was 12 and piano a little bit before that. My honest-to-God earliest influences were like, I wanted to be Donald Fagen or Eddie Vedder when I was ten. That’s what music meant to me, like Steely Dan and Pearl Jam. From like 10 to 12 or 13.Dive: Were most girls your age into ’90s rock, as opposed to pop, or did it set you apart?AC: I think that different things are commodified at different times. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, you have all this pop music, like Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation and En Vogue starting to talk about social issues like AIDS and racism and gay rights, and all these things are sort of percolating. So you have this pop music that’s really informed by that. Where was I going with this? And, oh, but so then of course you have Riot Grrrl happening. You have grunge, this ’90s aesthetic starting to take hold. And then you get a sort of out-of-touch boardroom commodification of that with everybody from 1993 to 1999 trying to sing like Eddie Vedder or Nirvana, this kind of commodified Spice Girls version of feminism or whatever. It seems like an awkward boardroom commodification. Like, “The kids are listening to this; let’s try and capitalize on that for awhile.”Dive: Have you ever spent any time in Chapel Hill? Are you looking forward to playing here?AC: I’ve spent a lot of time in Chapel Hill. Daniel Hart, my violinist and good friend, lived in Chapel Hill for like six years. We used to do little tours around the East Coast in his minivan. Weaver Street Market’s great! I’ve spent a lot of time in Chapel Hill. I’m less familiar with Raleigh and Durham, but I like it. I like it very much. Carrburrito’s, that’s what’s up — it’s super good.Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu.
Biographically, Kristian Matsson probably has little in common with Bob Dylan. There’s his nationality — Swedish — whereas the American troubadour chronicled the changing times of the mid-century United States. Also, Matsson arrived on the scene as The Tallest Man on Earth a good 40 years after the icon to which he’s often compared.But then there’s the sound of his gravelly voice, honed to a wail that slices through decades and reminds his listener of the timelessness of a man and a guitar.It’s this timelessness that makes The Wild Hunt so powerful. Recalling both ’60s folk heroes and modern pop, Matsson plucks and picks his way to musical transcendence, enveloping a contemporary audience in ageless wanderlust.
On Tuesday night, The Never proved that pop is more than just the vintage T-shirts and lyrical puns in which it is manifested.With its captivating hour-and- a-half set, the Chapel Hill outfit made clear that beneath a sugary exterior, pop music can encapsulate everything from heartbreak to newfound love.From the opening song, “The Littlest Things,” a track featured on last year’s local Hear Here compilation, the three-part harmonies of Noah Smith and Joah and Jonny Tunnell were as pristine as The Beach Boys.
As you celebrate our hottest season of the year — and the subsequent end of all things academic — it’s only appropriate to revel with the perfect summer soundtrack. Enter Dive’s picks for the best upcoming releases, a mix of everything from honky-tonk Americana to mellifluous hip-hop.April 20Caribou, Swim (Merge)Swim is an appropriate title for Caribou’s upcoming release. Dan Snaith’s electronic music inspires the effortless, floating feeling of being underwater. Whatever the reasoning behind the title, it should capture the liquid feeling of a backstroke in the middle of a hot day in July.
Todd Snider is the kind of music veteran that knows the ins and outs of the industry. From bluesy alt-country to baseball acid trips, Snider’s music and inspiration cover a lot of territory.Assistant Diversions Editor Linnie Greene chatted with the musician about all things music, be it touring, fads or man’s best friend.Diversions: A lot of your songs tell stories. Are any of these based on real events?Todd Snider: Almost all of them. There are a few that aren’t, but almost every one of them will be at least about someone I know or something that happened to me. Or sometimes it’s just something that happened that’s just an inspiration to me. Sometimes I’ll just sing about people. But yeah, most of them are true.Dive: You broke onto the music scene in the ’90s with “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues.” What inspired you to write that song?
Brett Harris grew up on the gospel of British pop, and now he’s preaching to the Triangle choir. This week he releases his debut LP Man of Few Words.With a release party at the Nightlight on Friday, the Durham musician sat down with Assistant Diversions Editor Linnie Greene to talk tape recorders, the South and the wisdom of Lennon and McCartney.Diversions: How and when did you become a songwriter?Brett Harris: I got kind of a late start, I guess, because I used to sit down with the guitar or the piano, and things would come to mind. But either my attention span was too short or something would come up, and I’d get called away or distracted from what I was doing. And I’d just forget what I was working on. So once my wife and I were visiting her parents, and we found, in an old closet, her brother’s old tape recorder. It’s one of those where you hit the play and record at the same time and use the old cassettes, and it’s painted in like these amazing early ’90s DayGlo colors. I think it was custom done. And so we thought, “This could be fun. This could actually be really helpful.” So we brought it home.Dive: How did that method of recording affect your music?BH: I think it taught me to have discipline. And it also taught me to be willing to commit to an idea. I think the Beatles, (John) Lennon and (Paul) McCartney, used to have this tenet that they held each other to that they would write, and if they couldn’t remember it the next day, it wasn’t worth pursuing. I don’t really follow that. Sometimes I’ll surprise myself with what I’ve done, and a lot of those ideas are songs that have ended up on this new album, and things like that, but a lot of the times, you know, it helps me to learn how to be more economical in my writing, to move past ideas that aren’t going to turn into anything.Dive: You mentioned the Beatles. Where do you find artistic inspiration?BH: I am very much inspired by the music of the ‘60s, the early ‘60s especially. They were the British Invasion groups. And a lot of that’s because it’s fantastic music, but growing up my family didn’t have a lot of music in the house. Nobody else played an instrument, except my mom, who sight read, and played piano out of a hymnal, you know. I think it’s kind of that Southern institution of sorts. There really wasn’t a lot of music at home, except she did have her old Beatles records, and she would play those and pick those out on the radio, and we’d get to hear them. But a lot of just classic pop music is where I got my start. It kind of branched out from there. I’m inspired and influenced by anything that’s good. The fun part is having that journey of finding out what it is that you like, finding out who your influences are. Just discovering new music, both new and current stuff and stuff that’s super old.Dive: What was the recording process like for your new album? Did you integrate the tape recorder at all?BH: We didn’t do the tape recorder for the record. We tried on one track, it was this old loop I had made, and that got banished properly, but maybe that’ll surface one of these days. I had done a couple of EPs before, and I did them in a studio where it was a great environment. Loved working there. But at the same time I felt a lot of pressure on myself to get things done quickly. Because, you know, time is money in a studio. So it was a great experience, and I was happy with the result. But I was looking for something that would afford me the opportunity to be a little more experimental — maybe not so much in a sonic attempt but just in the way I approached each song — and gave each song its due diligence. Working at Arbor Ridge with Jeff Crawford really afforded me that opportunity. We were able to co-produce the record, and it was the first time also that I had someone to collaborate with in the confines of the studio. Plus, it’s just a really great, laid-back environment. You know, it was the type of music that you make with a dog laying on the living room floor.Dive: What were you listening to as you made the album?BH: Oh gosh. Wow, at the time I was really listening to a lot of George Harrison records, a lot of Harry Nilsson, which I love — a lot of different stuff, actually. I was influenced a lot by what I saw going on vocally, and sort of this really interesting move that’s a return to pop music, which makes me really happy because it’s some of my favorite stuff. I love a good rock ‘n’ roll song, and I love soul music, too. I listened to a lot of soul music. I don’t know if this record has much soul music to it. There are a couple of tracks that might. But yeah, I think my influences were kind of all over the place going into this because I had such a long time and was just constantly going and finding new records or finding old records, and just trying to absorb as much as I can.Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu.
If Wilco’s show on Saturday night revealed anything about the well-established, much-revered band, it’s that there are plenty of people willing to bow down at the altar of Jeff Tweedy.It was new-age church meets tent revival as elaborate lighting gave way to the crowd’s ecstatic shouts, and when the band left the stage after two-and-a-half hours, it was clear that the Durham Performing Arts Center had been moved by Wilco’s rock ‘n’ roll gospel.The juxtaposition of rowdy rock and religious experience was manifested in the intricate lighting. Rods of light that resembled candelabras lined the stage, flashing and fading to the band’s varying tempos.
Broken Bells’ self-titled debut is one protracted science experiment. Like the unexpected product of two dissimilar ingredients — namely James Mercer, singer and guitarist for The Shins, and producer Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse — the result of this collaboration contains only vague traces of the artists’ former musical identities.And in Broken Bells’ laboratory, the combined product of these two heavyweights proves a revelatory concoction.From the first track, Broken Bells asserts its ability to craft a crescendo. “The High Road” rides a pulsing tempo, buoyed by the effortless cool of cymbals and snare drums. Like the majority of the album, the song builds gradually until it reaches a convulsive peak, a collision of Mercer’s fevered vocals and increasingly epic instrumentation.
At the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, music lovers cruise the streets of the Lonestar town to watch bands from all over. This year, a group of Triangle musicians and record labels aim to gain some notoriety amid all the musical mayhem deep in the heart of Texas.