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We’ve all had those nights. The ones where you happen upon a kindred spirit at the bar or house party or cousin’s bar mitzvah and sneak away, talking until the sun rises, sharing your deepest thoughts and coming to profound realizations about yourself and your life with a person you barely knew half a day before. They seem beautiful and powerful when they occur, and may even culminate with a kiss or more, but as the dew descends and the twinkles subside, what lingers most is the sour film of un-brushed teeth and the ornery throb of your hungover brain.
In the best cases, your new friend catches a plane or hits the road—gifting you with “what-could-have-been” fantasies to fuel future bouts of romantic self-indulgence. In others, you might have to see this person again, and learn how to reconcile the reality of your relationship with that night’s dizzying high of self-disclosure.
The latter, it seems, is the card dealt to New York band The Dig in their song “I Already Forgot Everything You Said.” Spurred by a snub from his former night partner, the song’s protagonist (vocalist Emile Mosseri) details the powerful insights that he helped her reach while emphasizing the lack of significance her words held for him: “When you think of all the things that I said to you, they wouldn’t cut to the bone if they weren’t true/ But I already forgot everything you said.”
Set to a lackadaisical 1950s beat with irony-soaked ‘oohs’ echoing from the background, the song is calculated in its indifference. Though it sounds sweet enough on the surface, it leaves its listeners with an aftertaste of passive-aggressive bitterness along the lines of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” This biting tone crystalizes towards the end of the song, when the hero’s lady friend returns to him after her preferred companion “changed his mind.” This time, Mosseri’s character snubs her, and the path of rejection comes full circle.
While the connections established on magical nights may only last a few hours, a catchy single of comeuppance endures forever. Find “I Already Forgot Everything You Said” on The Dig’s sophomore album Midnight Flowers, out next week, and be sure to check out their residency at the Silverlake Lounge starting on July 4 — because what’s more American than a bit of retribution?
UK singer Jessie Ware put out a cover of Bobby Caldwell’s 1978 hit “What You Won’t Do For Love” that takes away some of that quiet storm shuffle for a drippier, slippier confessional at the mercy of a devotional love. With a more minimal approach that rids the tune of horns to dictate the emotion in the songwriting, Ware’s I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter vocals carry what would be an easy walk in the R&B park into an interesting listen that’s restrained in all the right places but open-hearted enough to work even with its bare electronic context.
“Definitely the thumbtacks,” Gauntlet Hair’s lanky, wisecracking drummer Craig Nice answers without hesitation. His confident answer is met with decided skepticism from band mate Andy.
“I don’t know, they might not ever come out.”
“Andy, you could cut off your lower lip,” Craig offers, “you could get some great vocals like that. You’d just need a thick moustache to comb down over it.”
I’m sitting with Denver based noise rock duo, now trio, Gauntlet Hair outside of a Silverlake coffee house where dark blend is referred to as Onyx. We’re across the street from the Satellite, where in a couple hours Gauntlet Hair is set to perform one of the last dates on their current tour. This is the ideal scenario to weigh the merits of the age-old question, “would you rather swallow a handful of thumb tacks or cut off your lower lip with a pair of rusty scissors?” They grasp the essential crisis evident in this particularly gruesome scenario: you’re fucked either way. It’s a complete catch-22. Either you swallow the thumbtacks and rip up your intestines or ruin the aesthetically pleasing construction of your face and acquire tetanus in the process. No, the only reasonable response is to accept the inevitability of unpleasantries to come and get a good laugh in.
This dilemma bears striking resemblance to the conundrum faced by a legion of bands in our dear digital world. You can either stay true to your unique sound and face a long haul through a wasteland of shitty gigs and relative obscurity, or retool into a commercially accessible band and become a Grammy-packaged darling and embrace a lifetime of undesired compromise and artistic blue balls. It’s gonna suck either way, so you might as well enjoy the process.
All things considered, Gauntlet Hair seem to be enjoying themselves. Their blend of reverb-strung guitars, chortling vocal wail and chunky electric drum kit rhythms sounds like a disaffected Dick Dale. It’s slick, driving surf rock for a generation that’s taken their alienation from the glassy wave faces of Oahu to the white water pipeline of Internet surfing. It is an amazing soundtrack for riding the wild wedge of digital culture.
Their noisy outsider stance champions the goofy possibilities of the Internet age. There’s a subtle leisure in the ease with which they fuck with people. They are musical trolls. If you expected another indie band that takes themselves too seriously and tries to tell the world exactly what they are and why you should like them, you’re in for a rude surprise. Gauntlet Hair throws it out there with little or no explanation and lets the listener make sense of it.
Want lyrics? Too fucking bad, you can’t have them. Want a promo shot of the band? Here, enjoy this glamour shot of Craig posed like Burt Reynolds, with Andy wrapping him in a tender embrace.
The coup de grace of Gauntlet Hair’s nonchalant mentality is their video for “Top Bunk.” Cut together by Neighborhood Watch, the nearly five minutes of unabating, absurd pleasure is an assortment of clips from Arnold Schwarzenegger films.
The disturbing narrative is homage to the band’s penchant for collecting VHS copies of Arnold films, with Commando playing a particularly important role in the band’s obsession. The 1985 action film is a highly sought after commodity for them. They’ve made a habit of spending their tour downtime combing thrift stores and flea markets for copies of it. Because Arnold fandom is a labor of love.
The video is worth a thousand memes. Lighthearted and joyous, the action-packed montage takes a decided turn towards the brutal. It’s a fitting emblem for a band whose sound treads a fine line between melody and pounding noise.
“It gets dark,” says Andy.
Craig is quick with, “yeah, but you love it don’t you?”
Yes we do. The video’s transformation from bucolic clips of Arnold playing with his daughter to a Kuato-ridden litany of explosions and cracking skulls strikes an eerie chord with the odd dynamic of the band’s music. The slinky feel-good guitars and teased out vocal moan of the album hit an occasional dark minor chord or heavy feedback lick that belies a live sound that is more metal than indie. With the edition of bass player Matt Daniels, the band’s live show is an unusual blend of ironic banter, pleasant guitar riffs and a punishing low-end grind. It’s hipster-approved heavy metal.
Colorful shapes and space emerge ironically from a wall of background wash. Striking the fine line between melodic nuance and pounding presence requires skill that is not without cost- when you put heavy and unusual into the world you get heavy and unusual back.
Case in point—Missouri.
“I think Missouri scarred me for life,” Andy says as he stares wide eyed into the black abyss of his coffee.
“Completely fucked up,” Craig chimes in.
After a show last year in Columbia, Missouri, a nice looking woman offered Gauntlet Hair a place to crash for the night. Shit got weird, quick. The house was a drug crash pad twenty minutes outside of town, which in Missouri is a long-ass ways. The band awoke early in the morning to the woman’s roommates beating the shit out of each other.
“One guy threw the other down the stairs,” says Craig, “and there was this four year old kid who couldn’t speak yet just running around screaming.”
Sinister and yet, delightfully colorful.
Gauntlet Hair embraces these macabre dimensions of life in music. It comes with the territory. Maybe this is why they can laugh about cutting their singer’s lip off with a pair of rusty scissors or a gruesome night in a Missouri speed den or their worst gig ever.
“St. Malo was probably the worst show we’ve ever played,” Craig says with an ambivalent half-smile, half-grimace.
“We left some of our stuff there we were so eager to get out,” Andy chimes in, “some guy handed me a USB stick with the entire show on it and I just threw it out. I didn’t even want it. Fuck.”
Despite the plethora of weird and traumatizing moments that have haunted the band, their live set has evolved into a precision machine of electro rock curled with an irreverent delight. During their opening band’s set at the Satellite, Craig Nice is in the back of the room swinging his arms in a gangly dance that envelops anyone within reach. In a few minutes, they’ll go on stage as Berlin’s (playing May 26 at the House of Blues btw) classic 80s love ballad “Take My Breath Away” pumps through the house speakers.
This is the sort of band that’s fun as hell to watch. Nothing is sacred, everything is funny. This is the sort of band that records an album in their guitar player’s grandmother’s basement. This is exactly what they did. While Andy’s grandma was on vacation, the band took over her Chicago basement in an unpredictable collision of post-punk noise rock experimentation and Andy’s childhood.
“It was eerie. This is the place I used to turn off the lights and play ghost with my cousins,” says Andy.
Nostalgia aside, the space facilitated a studio caliber sonic album. One wonders if Grandma could have suspected when her beloved Andy wanted to play guitar in the basement that this would be the product.
“I consciously tried to keep it from her,” he says.
Craig laughs, “I keep thinking about her listening to the first few seconds of the album.”
Whether or not the first notes of “Keep Time” took a year off Granny’s life, or if the new LP will be recorded in her studio is uncertain. Gauntlet Hair is gigging through the last dates on their current American tour—likely their last sojourn out of current home base Denver until a new album is ready.
The world is rife with possibilities for them. Compelling and a bit enigmatic, the band’s formula is simple yet shockingly dynamic: slog through the shit, have a good time or at least try to forget the weird stuff, kick in skulls with a bruising punk influenced rock sound and caress with a brilliant palette of melodic colors.
Kill it guys. Or, in terms you might prefer: Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T-800 from Terminator 2 lowers his robotic form into a vat of white hot liquid metal. As his body disappears beneath the magma like liquid, one hand remains unsubmerged. The fingers fold into a hearty thumbs up as the arm slips into oblivion.
Daughn Gibson released two new songs this morning from an upcoming 7” off the heels of his recent debut All Hell. The country antihero exhibits more of a sweetness among the ominous chord progression at the heart of his new releases. The melodies bend as if through the looking glass, telling the story of a man on a binge with the sudden, inverted head rush of peering down the side of an impossibly tall building. In the place between action and consequence, fractured masculinity brought about by a drug-laced introspection swirl together in unison, light and dark, posing its questions through deliberate contradiction of crooner tradition. Grab the tracks out June 5 on Dull Knife, but stream away below.
Blacksmif, aka Yemi is a young producer hailing from London. His recent release on Synchronicity was crafted with finesse and affection without resorting to well known tropes or obtuse programming. Hereâs what he had to say for himself a few months ago on the current state of his scene, reaching out to wider audiences and war.
On the Blake explosionâ¦
When I first heard about James Blake, I was like. You know what, thereâs no reason for me to make music any more. Someone like this exists and thatâs the same way I feel about Kahn (Punch Drunk records).
On establishing himselfâ¦
I never really thought of doing music really, was just at university DJing a bit until it spiralled out of control into something tangible over the last few years. When I eventually finished uni in 2009 I kept going at the production side. Throwing Snow, a guy who makes bass 2-steppy house, that whole mesh of genres got a hold of my tunes and I thought, actually these arenât half bad. Since then Iâve just been seeing how far I can go with it⦠and enjoying it as well. And you know I really enjoy it, rather than the guitar stuff I used to do in Leeds. Sort of Damien Rice, Jack Johnson which is a major change from what Iâm making now. I used to be big into drum and bass a few years ago, that was what I was initially working on.
“I mean you donât need to call yourself a fucking purist or some other weird accolade to be righteous above everyone else!”
On the âBassâ sceneâ¦
Dubstep has obviously changed from what we knew it as, with those deep subs and sparse percussive rhythms. There is a mass of software available for anyone to start to make tunes and at the same time people are listening to this stuff more on soundcloud rather than that sort of underground community of people going to those FWDs and Subdubs. All of those big sub frequencies that we were addicted to; we donât get so much because producers are targeting listeners on their crappy laptop speakers. There putting more harsh mids and highs in there, and I guess thatâs where the whole âbrostepâ (air quotations) thing sparked off. Possibly to the detriment of the âpuristâ (more air quotations) as they like to call themselves, which I think is a bit stupid. I mean you donât need to call yourself a fucking purist or some other weird accolade to be righteous above everyone else!
You know the other thing is you get all these people making crazy different kinds of music, I mean I hate the titles âpost-dubstepâ but with all those things combined and all the new genres emerging you can just get a bit lost. And I suppose if you canât even define what it is yourself that youâre making, because it is still in its foetal stage that scene of genres, you can get lost so its tit for tat so thereâs a lot of wicked stuff coming out but thereâs a lot of people out there that just make the same crap.
And Iâm saying that as an addict to soundcloud, constantly on it, thereâs so much stuff that I think, it is a crying shame that Joe Bloggs from Carlisle has 15 sick tunes but no one else seems to hear. Thereâs a lot of stuff that Iâve found that I hope will make it into the wider public.
On influences from university in Leedsâ¦
Leeds was big for its house parties, my mates were living there and I was booking the DJs and David Kennedy (Pearson Sound) came round and asked if he could jump on, and there were just so many people who wanted to dj I had to be like âIâm sorry mate weâve got enough peopleâ, and now look at him!
Thereâs a lot of stuff in the scene, which I just donât really follow because it seems to be falling into that same trap that a lot of genres fall into where everyone latches onto one sound and do it. Thereâs a lot of stuff that doesnât do that but it might be a reflection on how good it is or how the industry works I donât know. I heard that there were some people clamping down in the broken beat scene at one point too, just saying that it would never amount to nothing. I donât know, it must just be how industry or markets work. Who knows, I failed economics anyway.
On warâ¦
Hmmm, I was going to say my favourite war was that of underground music against the mainstream but thatâs a bollocks answer! Iâd have to say the War on Terror as itâs made me see how much a fucked up country the US is and the UK to a certain extent in how we run things. That and well, I donât know any other wars.
Blacksmif’s latest single will be released on May 21st. It is rather good if we do say so ourselves.
The opener of DARKSIDE’s wonderful EP got a video this week that looks like what your weird friends think they’re doing when they go out to the desert. It follows three apocalyptic monks on a quest to find things that shine in a way that works well with Nicolas Jaar’s eerily propellant and open “A1” - watch the video below.
Yeasayer put out a new song from what is the presumed follow-up to 2010’s Odd Blood this week. “Henrietta” starts out with those familiar vocals in reggae adornment (Ras Trent!) before it shape-shifts into the ethereal refrain “Oh, Henrietta/ We can live on forever” that ends on the smoother, more meditative side of their psych-pop tendencies. Check it out below.
The Walkmen released a non-album track as the b-side to first single “Heaven” this week, and it’s gorgeous. Leithauser’s vocals move at a leisurely pace through inherited memories towards that damn build in the final minute that renders the last arc of the song completely afloat. The album is out May 29 on Fat Possum.
There is something about a Tallest Man On Earth morning. His first release from his upcoming There’s No Leaving Now is a welcome return, like seeing an old friend after a particularly neglectful time to ground you back in place.
Kristian Matsson captures the idea of constant movement like a sprawling green field that’s growing and blowing, that no matter how indulgent you’re feeling with how singular your life is, you have to always remember that everything around you is still moving just the same. It’s this sort of big-picture wisdom that grounds much of his wandering songwriting (“When the leaving is hard but you go now/ And you feel what you drag across the floor”) that knows the bittersweet feeling of moving on when it’s time to go, especially when there are still some reasons to stay.
I have trouble always staying on the lyrics, which are suggestive and intimate, without getting lost in the melody’s pockets that reflect and bounce. But his songs are not so much about hanging onto every word as just paying attention to mood before lines like “sometimes noise in just your mind” dart through. There’s a palpable sense of feeling to his songs, of smell and touch, and it’s the way they just sit there with you as long as you want that becomes a real comfort. His vocal wail with a bit of old-fashioned innocence and a whine that’s become distinct from his oft-compared Dylan influence contrasts in stride with his bright, flowing melodies that go on forever in either direction.
If you’re sensitive to weather, be careful with this one - it might give you spring fever. There’s No Leaving Now is out June 12, which is subjectively shaping up to be The Best Month Ever.
For most females (and some males) of a certain age, the Disney Princess represents a deeply ingrained notion of ideal femininity. As little girls, we spent countless hours recreating her scenarios in our imaginations: swimming in sexy little shell bras and mutely wooing a foxy prince, escaping the confines of our enormous Arabian palace to mingle amongst violent hand-chopping common folk — only to be saved by a charming, fez-sporting street rat; taming ferocious and hairy (but ultimately gentle) man-beasts…the Everywoman list goes on. Like it or not, we internalized these stories as scripts for our own lives, and at least partially constructed our ideas of future relationships based on Disney’s fantastical depictions of love.
So what’s a girl to do when the reality of romance falls short of the sparkling, magical affairs she was primed to expect? Set that disillusionment to some scuzzy synth beats, obviously. British duo Bluebell does just that in “Cinderella,” a bright, catchy single whose lyrics simultaneously mock and mourn the loss of the fairytale ideal all over a sweeping, highly-danceable pop arrangement.
The song opens with vocalist Annabel Jones questioning the discrepancies between high expectations and the truth of her situation: “Is this love what I understand it to be,” Jones croons meekly over producer Charlie Westropp’s repetitive, jarring piano chords. The beat drops soon after and escalates with ominous electronic timbres into the admission that “this is no Walt Disney/ I’m no Cinderella, I’m just a girl.” The song features a perfect blend of pretty and ugly, soft and hard—marrying the delusional sweetness of fantasy with a grittier reality, but not so gritty that you can’t get down to it.
Though Jones insists she’s “just a girl,” if the rest of Bluebell’s tracks are as fun as this one, she just might be in
the running for a happily ever after. Look for the release June 11 alongside “Normal Heights” on Killing Moon.
