Fork Hassle Advance Report, Part 2

 Fork Hassle Advance Report: Part 2


Part two of my meeting with M. Dodds, and his assessment of the bands that are playing at Louisville's Forecastle Festival during a magnificent and scary five or six hour meeting over libations. See here for part one.

Matrimony 

MD: [Reading from the bio, in an incredulous voice] “’It’s said that a great band is like a gang, or perhaps a family,’ I would like to see the notation on that. Who exactly who says that? I have never said that a great band is like a gang. Or perhaps a family. “

BM: “ I’m betting these guys are gonna be pop punk.. though Matrimony’s not a pop punk band name”

MD: “Yeah. Or maybe so?”

[We begin playing one of their tracks]

MD: “Oh shit! There’s a banjo involved. All right, I think I’m good, that’s enough…. I mean am I just insanely out of touch with things? I don’t know what I’m doing, but I wouldn’t do that…”

BM: “Says the guy [whose song] was on Jersey Shore.”

Blue Sky Black Death

these guys are Blue Sky Black Death

BM: “Alright, I’m interested in this next band. Blue Sky Black Death… could be a positive metal band”

MD: “Yeah, could be… something….”

BM: “You know what I think the worst band name is? They played at Phoenix Hill, and they’re from the 90’s… Hed Pe? It’s spelled like this [writes it down]”

MD: “I… don’t know what that means”

BM: “They played rap funk metal. They’re from the 90’s”

[A brief silence, then laughter]

MD: “Of course they do! I’ve gotta go use the latrine.”

[BM begins playing a Blue Sky Black Death track. MD returns]

MD: “Is that Hed Pe?

this is actually Hed Pe, so Dodds can see who they are.

BM: “No, that’s Blue Sky Black Death. It’s weird that on the Forecastle site, on each band’s page they have the latest tweets about the band that have been sent out. It’s right here under the Forecastle Radio”

MD: “That could be to the detriment of many of these bands. [Reading a tweet about Blue Sky Black Death] ‘All I wanna do is chill and bump. Glaciers all DAY!’…I don’t know what that means. “

BM: “I think ‘Glaciers’ is the name of their album.”

MD: “Oh, so it’s not a giant pile of cocaine.”

[More drinks are opened]

MD: “Is this still the same thing?”

BM: “Yeah, it’s Blue Sky Black Death, I put it on while you were in the bathroom”

MD: “This would maybe not be too bad, but I don’t get people who go to festivals to see this kind of music.”

BM: “I think if you did some ecstasy, maybe do some of this with some glo-sticks…”

MD: “I think this all boils down to that I’m just kind of an asshole who has fun by griping about things. I guess I’m just not the target audience. It’s not that I don’t like this style of music, I do, I just…. I guess I would say, if you’re really high, maybe go see these guys. And stand in the sun” 

Old Baby

MD: “I’m trying to pretend like I don’t know who these guys are and just judge them based solely on their band photo. I think I would think this is an all right band photo”

BM: “I like the band photo because it catches Neal in mid-drink”

MD: “It’s always good to see someone in a band photo who’s just not even participating in the photo. They’re just ‘Nah, I’m thirsty, I’m gonna have a drink’”

BM: “Jonathan looks like he’s making a break for it.”

MD: “I like that the description here is just a description of their album that [recently] came out. It’s always very nice to see people not participating in ‘band bios.’ “

[Shortly after this, somehow via a discussion of Twitter user names, the conversation takes a weird turn into 5-10 minutes about how every state in the US and possibly the entire world  is pretty much just full of terrible people and there’s really no place to move that doesn’t seem awful. This concludes with MD saying “every place just sucks. You should just live your life until you die and then you’ll just be dead and you won’t care anymore.”]

BM: “Alright, let’s move on”

MD: “Yeah, you might as well go see Ole’ Baby”

Leagues

MD: “ This band photo is… it’s ‘you look this way, you look this way, and the guy in the hat will look at the camera.’ Oh, but it says they’re infectious. We should probably hear a little moment of it here eh?”

BM: “Which one?”

MD: “Let’s hear ‘Haunted’”

BM: “ They have two ‘Mind Games’”

MD: “You think that’s like the John Lennon song?”

BM: “No way. That would cost them too much money? But then again, maybe these guys are rich.”

MD:  “This guy does have a pretty nice hat”

[“Mind Games” begins to play]

MD: “…no sir.”

BM: “I can tell you what this sounds like to me. I’m a big Billy Joel fan, but I did not like that one album he did with that ‘Walk The River Of Life’ song.”

MD: “You mean ‘Rock The Cradle Of Love?’

BM: “Did I make up that name?”

MD: “I don’t know what you’re doing…”

Johnnyswim

MD: “I kind of like the name actually. If they sound like Weird Al I’ll be totally into this band.”

BM: [reading the description] “’it’s a mix of Lauryn Hill and John Mayer’…”

MD: “Goddamnit… but they are very attractive people?”

[we listen more or less silently to one track, then start another]

MD: [sighing] “This is kind of weird right? Like a little bit?”

BM: “Hahaha, you’re just reaching…”

MD: “I know, I’m trying just to not be a dick. This sounds like ‘WB’ rock to me”

BM: “WB?”

MD: “Yeah, the television station? I don’t have cable.”

To be continued...

Fork Hassle Advance Report, Part 1

Introduction.

The day the Forecastle Festival line-up was officially announced, I half-jokingly suggested that a local music blog should buy me some drinks and then transcribe my opinions on the line-up, opinions that would likely for the most part be based entirely on the names and photos of the bands. This blog called my bluff and took me up on it.

What follows is the first installment of our Forecastle preview, heavily edited into a few of the mostly coherent moments from a sprawling 5-hour conversation.

To be clear, no one should take what I have to say at all seriously. BUT: If you were wondering what an aging maintenance mechanic and problem drinker from Indiana who's been playing/going to kind of weird shows in Louisville for a bunch of years thinks about bands he's never heard of that are playing a festival he's not going to attend, and if you're okay with him having a bunch of beers before saying pretty much the first thing that comes to mind, who am I to withhold that information?
---M. Dodds

More Introduction.

It was a warm sunny Spring day around 2pm when M. Dodds and I met to discuss Forecastle. I was armed with beer and SideKicks, some fucking ungodly pre-mixed college drink made from butterscotch liqueur and cream. From there, other types of bottles were opened, some from the freezer. And we hunkered down to talk music. Specifically, these bands that Forecastle brings to Louisville annually. Both M and I are long-time musicians, and long-time fans and nerds of music, underground, new, old, popular and everything. But, over the years, Forecastle has come to represent some type of watered-down dementia that seems more about a basic fuel for ads and sponsors more than a fest I can immerse in or consider. Yeah, it's good for the city and the region financially and I appreciate that, but I'm a person that gives a shit about the local flavor here, and this festival has become a showcase for what seems like adult contemporary blow cut with all types of baking soda. The local representation is down to something like four acts, over the course of 70+ bands/performers. 

This isn't an all-out attack on the festival. It's great I live in a town that can support something this size, and that, y'know, Flaming Lips and DEVO and The Replacements play here once a year. I think the addition and showcase of more local music on the bill is an important and ignored must, because we live in a city chock full of interesting shit that people who don't hang out bars circling downtown every other night should see, and until they do that, I'll just honestly never give a fuck about this thing. But after somewhere near seven hours of talk over drinks and tangents, this is where we landed. I think, more than anything, I'm just happy we didn't die that night.

I also applaud Dodds for his editing, because we talked A LOT.
--B. Manley

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


thus, we present

Fork Hassle Advance Report: Part 1

Goodbye June

MD: “Alright, let’s see what these guys look like. They look like they’re all the same person maybe? Surely they’re brothers. They have to be brothers right? [I start reading the bio and give up almost immediately, realizing there’s no way I can read all the bios for all these bands] They don’t all have the same last name. What could this band sound like? It’s three guys… and what does it mean that they’re first on the list, ‘cause it’s not alphabetical. They’re probably playing Friday at like 10:10 am.

Are they from here? Are they gonna kick my ass when they- oh they’re from Indiana! Oh no! I’m gonna go ahead and take what might possibly be an educated shot in the dark here and say that if they’re from Indiana, there’s probably an acoustic guitar that’s gonna come out at some point…they’re from Southern Indiana, so I gotta have some solidarity… no, I don’t. Basically I have nothing constructive or helpful to say about this. “

The Wans 

MD: [reading from the band bio] “’if you like hard hitting rock trios, then you’ll love The Wans.’

What can we say about The Wans? I like that they’re at least laughing in their band photo. These guys at least have the common sense to either crop their photo or hire a band photographer that can draw a line from the bottom left hand corner to the top right hand corner with their heads… that’s what this should say, not ‘if you like hard hitting rock trios,’ cause, you know, you’re leaving out a whole demographic of people who like hard-hitting rock quartets.”

Jill Andrews

MD: “Jill Andrews……. The famous stage performer”

BM:  “Daughter of Julie?”

MD: “Yep. I’m assuming.”

 [we read from the bio that she had a song featured on the television show “Nashville”]

“I think that the mom from Friday Night Lights was also on Nashville. My wife was watching Friday Night Lights for a while, she seemed all right on that. I assume she’s also all right on Nashville? So let’s see, what can I say about Jill Andrews?

[She has a song] on a show which is an ad for Nashville, and it’s got the mom from Friday Night Lights, a show about football players, some of the people I care about the least  on the earth. I mean I don’t dislike them necessarily as a group of people, but…"

Jalin Roze

MD: “I am liking this guy’s picture very much from the start… I would go see this guy based on this photo. This is enough for me. I’m not even going to read any of this, I’m just going to say go see this guy based on this photo.”

BM: “I like how his shirt is…”

MD: “…the same color as the background! It’s amazing!"

The Weeks

 [I decide to start off listening to one of their songs. The track begins with an acoustic guitar playing]

MD: “(Sigh) I don’t hate acoustic guitar, but…”

[The vocals begin]

MD: “Is there a fast forward button?”

Seluah

MD: “ I think I’ve seen these guys… they played at that thing at the Palace? I think I had the flu… I did some stuff for Parlour with the overhead projector… they started playing while I was packing up my stuff, and I thought it was kind of cool, but I was so sick… and I had this wristband that got me into the ‘VIP Lounge’, so I figured I’d just go there and die and maybe someone would find me. But so I go into the VIP lounge, and I was the only person there, but there was this guy watching the door. There’s a curtain, and a guy, I guess he’s supposed to make sure you’re not sniffing cocaine or whatever, or just doing something untoward. There was a giant TV, it’s the biggest TV I’ve ever been able to have control of. I was looking through the channels, and there was a home shopping club for sex toys. So I put that on, but I also had a fever and was feeling awful and was just slumped back in the chair with my eyes barely open, and all of a sudden the guy [who was watching the door]  is asking me ‘are you alright?,’ I didn’t even notice he was there until he was this close to my face, so I was just like ‘YES!’ and tried to change the channel but it was clear that he had already walked in the room and had already poked me to see if I was alive…. And so that’s my recommendation. You should maybe go watch these guys play, but not if you’re watching the home shopping club for sex toys and there’s a guy watching the door.”

Mount Moriah

MD: [Reading from the description in the bio] ”‘Fiercely contemporary’?! Man, come on, how are you gonna be fiercely contemporary? What does that even mean?! Goddamnit. Why would someone even write that? ‘Fiercely contemporary.’ What does that mean? They mix the intensity of waiting for the dentist with the soul crushing expectation of hiring a lawyer."

BM: “Let’s listen to a track”

[We start listening to a track]

MD: “I dunno. They’re not awful… and just to be clear, I don’t wish ill upon them, but I just, I’d rather be home taking a nap than out in the sun in a field listening to this happen.”

To be continued...

Ma Turner, ZOZ

At times we're mottled in a brittle lifing, bound by a daily grindstone that can sink your eyes into dark socket swamps and wear the brain's best parts to useless nubs. Too often, people succumb, see no shoulder, stick to the drill, drained face and drained recognition of the holies surrounding. You just see people crossing the street under hot sun and barely give a fuck enough to think about why the next day might even be real or matter while you wait at the red light. And those people crossing the street; they don't give a fuck, either.

ZOZ is Ma Turner's premiere outing as a soloist (he's also of the bands Warmer Milks, Cross, Salad Influence, The Elephants and many others). He's released a shit ton of solo releases, mind you, most of them digitally. I've reviewed some of his earlier solo recordings here. He released a giant collection of his music called ZOZ COLLECTION which was contained in an artistic twelve-cassette boxed creature. This Sophomore Lounge vinyl LP is a re-working, re-assessing, re-mixing, re-configured packaging of some of those sounds.


The music mustered here represents late night sonic experimentations that can also be included in a Ma Turner spiritual search. Ma has forced himself out from under the grind of the stone, grabbing the remaining meat of his mind and soul, and allowing himself and his art to predominate the blare of the addled, dulling racket that can be American life.

It begins with "Christ in a Garden," an incautious jangled reading reaching for that expanse of peace through chant and mantra, floored by a banged acoustic guitar. From there, the gloves ripped as "Rash Harvest" begins a journey adrift, wherein the mind is adriatic and no longer in control, but instead accepting and filled with the sounds surrounding it.

These are plums immersed in the lack of forethought but instead feeling and perception. Electronics, found noises, low, high, loud, soft, life. Sometimes seamless, sometimes broken transitions bounce between fear and hopelessness and midnight joy, walled by a sway of disjointed, hypnotic soundscapes permeated by breaks in consciousness with a stark banjo that speaks of friendship on a pedestal.

"Rotary" is a preemie reflection into arches, shades and ceremonies that is aided by the crusading trance of repetition found in the words of "For Every Night." "IUGY" is the chaos of real folk set in a David Lynchian tone. Madder. That mysterious background offbeat percussion is madder. Not angry. The other mad.

"Crucifix Cruiser" reminds me of the realizations-through-torment found in Brian Wilson's "Elements Suite," particularly "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow." And as soon as you think you have a grip on this final piece, you are yanked out of Turner's reality and back into yours. So suddenly. So suddenly, in fact, it's refreshing and eye-peeling. Tomorrow is unbarred.

Available on Sophomore Lounge. Recommended.









  

Andy Matter, Pacific Midwest

I think it was winter.

"Look for his car; I never know which house it is unless his car is on the street."

Soon inside, we hovered over Albini's version of Cheap Trick's In Color. We drank, smoked, rolled. On an exercise ball. It's here I heard some of the first rough cuts of Pacific Midwest. Shawn saved my notes and read them back to me:

Bullfrogs.
Tom Hanks in Big.
"Is it like you were milking a cow?"
"You have chosen wisely, son."
Jack journals.
"Don't take the Chalice from the palace."

I don't know what any of that fucking means (except jack journals, which I'll explain in person next time I see you), but I'll try and remain true to my gut drafts and fit them in here.

Andy Matter's kick-drummed himself into being a basic constituent element of the physical reality that is Louisville music. The Touched, Red Light Relay, Health and Happiness Gospel Band, Opposable Thumbs, Mimi Von Schnitzel, Furlong, Adventure, Butter, Legba Bentonia, Whiskey Dick, etc...His hands have been in so many cookie jars, both his crumbs and crud rock are strewn throughout this music scene.

Pacific Midwest has been a labor of love for the multi-instrumentalist/singer-songwriter. It's a potage that stews the experiences, sounds, influences and flat bullfrog weirdnesses Andy has performed and survived into one catchy postcard that culminates into a fun read. Almost like TOM HANKS IN BIG, Andy has moved from the toy store to dancing "Chopsticks" on the giant piano.  (wow...I can't do it anymore. that was painful.)
 
Less of the Stooges-influenced crud rock Andy marauded his drums to in the early 2000s, Pacific Midwest is more of a dissolve into a collage of garage anthems pitted with heart-on-sleeve vocal deliveries in almost storytelling frames. It's a mix of personable observations that builds upon clever lyrical delivery through a voice that hovers between assertiveness just as it might waver into a bettering worriment. Lines from these tunes are as likely to get across someone with ire and frustration as they are to put across something with aspiration and hopes.

As much emotion is worn on truth, so are influences. The melodic rock of Guided By Voices, The Replacements, even Sugar, posture themselves into tunes that create golden choruses. This has the drive of a bombastic rattled rock that can morph into the pleasures of a bouncy jangle pop and back again in a snap. The vocals can waver and shake like Eric Bachmann or Doug Martsch. Check out the first video from the record, "Carbonation," a barnburner brandishing a nailed slap-backed riff:






Carbonation - Andy Matter & Ten Wet Dollars .m4v from Andy Matter on Vimeo.
(directed by Shawn Price)




Pacific Midwest is loaded with these types of hooks: "Nova No Va," "Alive for Days," "Final War," "Tonight and Every Night," and the track list goes on. And more aces from heartful sleeves are pulled with bandmates from other L'ville bands guesting throughout the album, including J Glenn (Mimi Von Schnitzel), Bob Dixon (Health & Happiness), Eric Suplee and Bill Montgomery (Opposable Thumbs), Jaye Wood (Red Light Relay) and Benn Lally and Jason Walker (New Bravado/Ten Wet Dollars).

Fuck it, let's all just put this album on and go swimming at the quarry. Good beginning to summer.

PS: Is it like you were milking a cow? See: jack journals.

Andy Matter's record release show for the cassette + download Pacific Midwest on Gubbey Records will be Saturday, May 17 at Modern Cult Records. Also on the bill are The Teeth and Tag Team Guys.

New Bravado, Sol Similar

Chained to a crownwork of droll, lulling proles humming a repetitive low. A misunderstood hoof through the boredoms of a grey pod day. Stick this in the tape player. Play and blossom. Succumb to all these things that are cured in heat with hugs of distortion.

It is this. This New Bravado. This new cassette single. All and that. Sucked into the menage of instrumentation of this "Sol Similar." A slow drool of softly drifting vocals and camouflaged in strums and skies and drips from the reverb.

New Bravado returns to us from atop a golden star making golden showers of golden acid on our brown, dirty heads. Blueing and blacking, this band has appreciated further time travels, backpassing Sabbath and instead bounding into the heavy psych and power fuzz of the 60s, whence came Eden's Children, Banchee, Lincoln Street Exit.

Play and suddenly it's summer, 1971, a dirt yard, sweating out moonshine, dosing, and starting anew. Staring at the sun for years, until finally realizing it's the sun's reflection off the hodgepodge chrome from your front yard van, yawning with you, a magic arrow of Abaris abating your mind into a numb blur.

Then it's night, and the shift is unnoticeable, and you don't know how, and it all happens again with the Moon, and soon friends have stopped by, and the panning chants begin in the abracadabra of the dark, warm, narcotic Kentucky night.

"Sol Similar" and "Long Head Blues" are about the groove drowning in an analphabetic swamp of words and riffs. Ben Lally's voice retires further and downward into a retreat of reverb. Lower. Fading into soft echoes. Adam Copelin's bass leads everyone into a rabbit hole of misty strums lined on scriptured mirrors and near whispers, until the chords become heavy firefly trails.

This is about the clock and its banishment. And downstrokes onto Big Things like God and Zeus and Love. New Bravado just broke open some real shit and is passing it out, mad hatter style.

This band became one of my favorites in Louisville with the release of their debut full-length Unconscious Afternoon in 2013. The new "Sol Similar" cassingle shows the band has only upped its style and presence. Looking forward to more, hopefully in the near future.



New Bravado will celebrate the release of "Sol Similar" on Gubbey Records with a show at Modern Cult Records on Saturday, April 19, and will be joined by Opposable Thumbs.

Sweatermeat, Bad Boobs, Eviction Records

Sweatermeat just got tight.

Sort of.

I'm not sure how many releases there are of Sweatermeat records, or Sweatermeat-related recordings,  on the local Eviction Records label. I find them in odd places. On the bus. Under garbage cans. Once, the vocalist/bassist for the band, Yoko Molotov, walked up to me and silently handed me a stack of about 10 CDs and without saying a word, turned and walked away. A man next to me leaned over and whispered, "that seemed very mysterious."

Eviction Records houses a variety of performers who act as a family, contributing to each others' work in a huge collaborative incestuous effort to create no matter what. It reminds me of the Free Sound family in the late 90s in Lexington, or the CD-R releases of Logos here in the Louisville circa 2005. Lo-fi experimentations created cheaply and released into the world. Releases from these bands, such as Pajama, Sweatermeat, Niles Kane, Harpy, or the huge collaboration concepts like Pot Brownies on Christmas , are as punk as it gets. Photocopied black and white covers on home recordings ranging from loose narrative punk garage to trashy formless jams to conversations cut-up and mixed back on themselves to straight unrecognizable high-decibel shrieking noise, all most-often honed in-the-red. In a way, this is some of the most important shit being made in Louisville.

Because, at some point, fuck pretense and just make something.

That often lacks in the bigger levels of players in a city's music scene. Carefully crafted jam sessions exist, sure, but they are often regulated only certain players and that can breed gates of stagnancy and snobbishness. It's a nice fresh freak air to hear someone make something (many things) without a whiff of pompousness. Not saying I don't love the Big Rock, cause I do. But these folks do these albums with an energy and a genuine love for experimenting with sound, as well as a friendliness, a sense of humor and a fuck you to convention.

That being said, Sweatermeat's latest CD/cassette Bad Boobs looks awesome and sounds awesome, and the band has upped the notch on their previous records. The trio's usual minestrone plash of lo-fi volumes puked against a brick wall are suddenly roped into a slightly more controlled and dare I say honed and direct effort, and it works, because it comes the closest to capturing what they sound like live. This is all energy without a care of self-importance.

"Surf Dick" is Yoko singing in full brattiness armed to the minx with one the best cooked bass guitar tones I've ever heard. "My Name Is Bo" (with Bo Borders) is backporch storytelling rear-ended by a bad ass fuzzed-out surfy instrumental. "Boy Got a Turd" is simple, funky, and has a desperate need to convey that a boy has a turd on his back."Party All Night" is actually as fun as it sounds. And "Saturday Morning" is a collection of cartoon theme songs ("Heathcliff," "Duck Tales," others) mashed into Neutral Milk Hotel's "Oh Comely" for a catchy, creepy effect.

Sweatermeat trapses through Bad Boobs, acting as its own Minerva of artistic sloppiness, full of people you can tell are as much bandmates as party-friends. Few bands seem to exhibit this dangerous attitude of not-giving-a-shit if they're in the cool crowd and just making some goddamn tunes. I see it with Rude Weirdo and The FuckMunkys, and a couple others; it's refreshing. Sometimes having a sense of humor can create some of the most brilliant, fearless and connective music.

Sweatermeat: the higher they get, the better they sound...to themselves, and me.

Sweatermeat's record release show is Saturday, April 26 at Mag Bar with The Awkwardnauts, Friktion and KP and Me.

Blood Planet, Ducks Never Say "Die"

The birds are coming back. Grass is growing through asphalt cracks. Sidewalks are filled with shitcore again, and it's a beautiful thing. Ducks so mighty, are these.

Everything in-the-redder than everything else.

Plod with Blood Planet into destruction. Distortion remigration into blown speakers, feedback whales, smashed snares. This latest EP shows that this band is not quieting down, but only distorting more. Theirs is a clang for survival, a clawing at sound, ripping it apart, pulling the body through fuckery that is loud, obnoxious and almost sinful.

The bass, or guitar, or whatever it is, on "Wolf the Dentist" sounds like a rusty chainsaw losing its teeth, grinding on a stone boulder, brandished by skinny madman on a tear-bender in the backwoods of Satanland. And while the Sabbathy plod of "Wolf" is as mighty as an Iommi riff, it's micturated for sewer pleasures. "ORION" is just as mighty for its neck-breaking tempo and piercing feedbacks. The vocals sound like they were recorded in mikes in the middle of a battle of fires and shivs.

No question this is one of my favorite bands in Louisville.

Go to the bandcamp. Here's the stream. Throw away your ears.