Driving around Brooklyn with Fever Ray’s most recent album, Radical Romantics, at full volume transforms the frustration at double-parked cars and traffic into a sensual experience. But navigating the crowds at their sold-out show at Terminal 5 this past Wednesday was a bit more aggressively sensual than I might’ve wanted…a lot of packed-in bodies, most of them nearly a foot taller than me (I’m way fucking short). A path would open toward the stage and I would try to shimmy through, sometimes successfully, trying to remember that during the isolation of the pandemic I longed for sweaty clubs stuffed full of revelers. The crowd pressing in around me, too, was for the most part joyously queer and having a great fucking time. So hey, I took a deep breath and swayed with the multitudes, as the hypnotizing spectacle of Fever Ray (aka Karin Dreijer of The Knife) washed over us all.
But before Fever Ray, the hilarious, outrageous, trashy and wildly over the top performer Christeene—who describes herself as a “drag terrorist” and who we also declared a “DIY nightmare fashionista” at her album release show few months ago (read our coverage)—lovingly pummeled the gathering audience with her signature mix of flirtatious insults (“it’s a lunar eclipse for all you astrology shitheads” being a particular highlight), high-energy synth-punk-drag-fabulosity, and graphic lyrics about “shoving shit up your ass.” Her synth player glittered in a jacket of green sequins and spangles; her sax player sported a wild pair of shades while dancing all over; and Christeene worked it in a layered and tattered leotard/bodysuit number that she progressively removed bits of as the set wore on. All three of them looked fantastic and shook Terminal 5 with a delicious who-gives-a-fuck energy, and before her last song, she gave the audience one final irreverent shout out: “All you fuckin’ shitheads showed the fuck up tonight, thank you!” leaving with the parting “Good luck getting home you shitbags!”
Christeene at Terminal 5 (photo by Kate Hoos)
Fever Ray’s set began with the flames of an old-timey gaslight streetlamp flickering on stage. On platforms upstage, their percussionist and synth player vamped on the opening section of “What They Call Us” as two backing vocalists slinked out, taking their positions at microphones on either side of the stage. Finally, Fever Ray materialized in the haze and walked calmly toward the audience, beginning to sing. The packed-in crowd undulated, all eyes on the spectacle of the performers. This was my first time seeing Fever Ray live, and the experience is as mesmerizing visually as it is musically. All of the musicians’ outfits were works of art in themselves. The percussionist wore a crown of spikes. The synth player was topped with a giant cloud-like headdress covered in tiny lights. All three vocalists were decked out in different style suits, Fever Ray in white, a satin tie knotted at their throat. But it was their face and eyes that were most riveting, their skull-like make-up emphasizing the haunting energy of their smiling stare.
Fever Ray at Terminal 5 (photo by Kate Hoos)
The lengthy set included most of the songs from Radical Romantics, with “Shiver” being a real highlight of the night, as the three vocalists leaned on each other, becoming like one body, a three-headed sex caterpillar. They closed the night with “Coconut” (from their 2009 self-titled album) as an encore, after a quick costume change, with all three singers reappearing in black hooded capes. After triumphant bows to the ecstatic audience, they left the stage and the gaslight flickered out, and I was pushed out into the night satisfied, but looking forward to the next time. Fever Ray is headed to the West Coast and then back to Europe for the rest of the tour, so I’ll have to content myself with having Radical Romantics on repeat in the Brooklyn traffic until they return.
Scroll down for setlist, pics of the show (photos by Kate Hoos)
Setlist: What They Call Us, New Utensils, When I Grow Up, Mustn’t Hurry, Triangle Walks, To the Moon and Back, Shiver, Kandy, Even It Out, An Itch, I’m Not Done, Carbon Dioxide, Now’s the Only Time I Know, Tapping Fingers, If I Had a Heart, Coconut
As I walked up to Baby’s All Right this past Thursday evening, Ron Gallo was laughing with friends outside, which made me smile. It made sense that he would be chilling with people he likes near the door of the venue of his sold-out show instead of hiding out somewhere in the back waiting for his big entrance. Gallo’s most recent release, Foreground Music (read our review), clearly shows his poetic lyrical talents with a heavy-hitting mix of sharp social critique and intimate honesty paired with a nuanced musical sensibility ranging from raucous post-punk to moving guitar ballads. The people lining up to get into the Baby’s back room were buzzing with excitement, and Gallo and company more than lived up to anyone’s expectations.
Gallo and his band instantly got the crowd bouncing with “Please Yourself” (from his 2017 album, Heavy Meta), and then kept the energy high with a series of songs off of the new album including “Entitled Man,” the title track, “At Least I’m Dancing,” and “Yucca Valley Marshalls.” Gallo possesses a delightfully quirky stage presence and his songs are simultaneously rocking and wise. The audience bopped about cathartically as he crooned the difficult truths of post-post-modern life, like in the chorus of “Foreground Music”: “I take my life pills one day at a time / My favorite thing to do is lie awake and panic.” And what makes panic go away like dancing? A question asked and answered in the catchy “At Least I’m Dancing” because the world may be going to hell in a hand basket but at least we can try to keep it moving as we burn. You know Ron Gallo understands this, and his band understands this (that’s Josh Friedman on drums, Chiara D’Anzieri on bass, and Jerry Bernhardt on guitar).
My favorite moment of the night, though, brought the energy to a more somber place with the beautiful “I Love Someone Buried Deep Inside of You,” Foreground Music’s most melancholy track about being in love with someone who’s struggling with addiction. But Gallo and company left on a more raucous note, and finishing off the set with “Put the Kids to Bed” and “Kill Medicine Man” (again from Heavy Meta). Gallo and D’Anzieri flew across the stage knocking over microphone stands and anything else they could get their hands on, channeling the destructive energy of their punk rock forebears. The fans went nuts as they should have, and the only big regret was that Baby’s had to end the night early to get things started for their late night DJ party. But so it goes with the hustle and churn of venues trying to survive in NYC, and Mr. Gallo joked about the time pressure to rush off the stage with both sarcasm and good spirit, true to form.
The evening was opened by John Roseboro and STUY. Foreground Music is out now on Kill Rock Stars. Ron Gallo and his band will be touring the US and Europe into September.
Scroll down for pics of the show (photos by Ray Rusinak)
Warm Blanket,the extraordinary fourth album from the Los Angeles-based group Worriers, found the project’s singer and central songwriter, Lauren Denitzio, having an epiphany. They realized, after years of recording and touring with an underground/punk aesthetic, that Worriers isn’t really a band; it’s a solo project. Thus, Warm Blanket possesses the heady discovery of an artist’s first album, but with a decade’s worth of aesthetic experience and wisdom behind it. The resulting record gives us a Worriers with a sparser sonic landscape (often only guitar or synth/keys, drums, and Denitzio’s beautiful voice and poetic lyrics).
Denitzio recorded and mixed all of Warm Blanket at their home, with Atom Willard (Against Me!, PLOSIVS, Social Distortion) providing drums remotely. The songs are brief in length, and constantly leave the listener wanting more. Denitzio plunges deep into memory here at times, looking for their roots as a musician, and recalling their early experiences with love and heartbreak, those bittersweet early journeys of the heart that never leave a person. But the album also offers some cutting ironic critique of the absurdity of trying to survive in late-stage capitalism, the struggles of which are perhaps what inspired them to ponder their past here.
“Doomscrolling,” the first track, immediately demonstrates Denitzio’s unique ability to write infectious pop songs about encroaching doom, as the lyrics spell out anxiety about various things in the world that are falling apart. In the chorus, they confess, “I keep my fingers crossed that it all collapses later.” But even as this collapse seems inevitable, their songwriting is pop perfection, so you might be standing at the edge of the end of the world, but you’ll be dancing with Worriers on the precipice.
“Prepared to Forget,” Warm Blanket’s melancholic second song, turns Denitizio’s focus from the horrors of the present to loves and losses of the past. The song finds them sorting through the disappointment and heartbreak of watching an old friend make the same self-harming mistakes over and over. The album continues on this more intimate memory trip for the next few songs, with the eponymous third track really putting the beauty of Denitzio’s voice front and center, building to one of the more rocking choruses on the release, where they shows off their guitar skills as well.
The fourth song, “Power Pop Mixtape,” one of the most fully upbeat tracks of the record, glimmers with the flirtations of youth in the 90s, when making someone a mixtape was a sweet gesture of admiration or seduction. The bridge of the song features Denitzio’s vocals suddenly processed differently, and the effect is of a voice traveling through time. The following track, “Creep,” begins with lyrics about “the tape you made me,” connecting the two songs directly. The sparseness of the instrumentation goes further on “Creep,” as well, with no drums, only guitar and Denitzio’s plaintive singing: “You don’t think you’re a creep, but you know that they do.” The pronouns of that chorus shift every time, just as our perceptions of ourselves and each other shift over time. It’s amazing how much feeling is packed into each of these brief songs. “Creep” clocks in at just over two minutes, but there is so much going on emotionally!
“Pollen in the Air” concludes the intense and nostalgic tone of the middle of the album with a synth-drenched, slowly building power ballad, and the first truly driving bass line of the record. The song feels like being sun-drunk in summer and in love for the first time. With “Murder Ballad,” Warm Blanket effortlessly shifts in tone and theme, and for me, the shift was also temporal, from memory back to the flawed struggles of the present day. “Murder Ballad” features only piano and drums, and Denitzio’s haunting voice and words of desperation: “It’s not a problem unless you say something…so I killed him instead, with a baseball bat under my bed.” The potential for violence appears again in “Never Quite Kicks In,” a fantastic chillwave track describing the possibility of frustrated office workers crawling over their desks and throwing printers out windows. But the toxic positivity always reigns, and that rage never quite kicks in…maybe making it even more dangerous?
Warm Blanket concludes with the hesitant optimism of “Provisional Hope” and the slow build of “You Don’t Need Me,” and upon arriving at the end of the album, I immediately started over from the beginning. Whether it’s frustration with the present state of things or an urge toward sweet nostalgia that motivates you, turn out the lights, turn on Warm Blanket at top volume, and abandon yourself to the beauty of Denitzio’s new chapter of Worriers.
The genre-defying creative force that is Deerhoof released their 19th LP, Miracle-Level, last Friday, and the eleven tracks on this transcendent record more than live up to its name. Next year, Deerhoof will celebrate thirty years together as a band, after forming in San Francisco in 1994, and although the line-up has shifted over the years, the present personnel are beyond formidable, including Satomi Matsuzaki on vocals and bass, Greg Saunier on drums, and guitarists Ed Rodriguez and John Dieterich. This album also marks two first for the band—the first time that they have released a record entirely in Matsuzaki’s native language, Japanese, and it is also the first album Deerhoof has ever fully captured in its entirety in a recording studio, bringing in producer Mike Bridavsky to help shape a unique and timely musical manifesto at his studio, Russian Recording. Miracle-Level finds Deerhoof looking the grim reality of the present-day doomscroll firmly in the eye and shaking it into oblivion with an effervescent beam of complex sonic hope.
The album begins with “Sit Me Down, Let Me Tell You A Story,” and Matsuzaki’s vocals certainly do begin to weave a compelling narrative that’s intriguing even if you don’t speak Japanese. It’s clear from the dynamic cadences of her vocal delivery and the fluctuations of the music from the band that we are embarking on a story journey, and the tale will take us to unexpected places. The second track, “My Lovely Cat!” delivers surprise stops on the trip, with electro-crazy guitar sounds, pouncing and slinking around just like a lovely cat, yes! (In a funny twist, Bridavsky was also the owner of the late great internet sensation/superstar cat, Lil Bub. And while this song wasn’t written specifically for her, it is dedicated to her memory.)
Brivadsky describes the unique guitar sonic magic as:
“this seemingly overcomplicated setup, which turned out to be the defining sound of the record, involv(ing) John and Ed playing semi-hollow body guitars in an isolated room, with each guitar split into three separate signals: one through their pedals into an amplifier; one from dedicated microphone pointed at the guitar, run into a second amplifier, and one that summed both of the guitars’ direct outputs into a fifth, highly distorted amplifier that combined both guitar signals.”
Whatever the technical experiments were that occurred to discover the unique aural universe of Miracle-Level, I’m in complete approval. The special guitar effects relax during the third song, “The Poignant Melody,” where Matsuzaki’s vocals float with a nuanced ethereal energy. “Everybody, Marvel,” the album’s fourth track, delivers a more rocking 90s-esque vibe, with fuzzier guitars and a more traditional song structure. (The vocals also start jumping octaves in a way that’s ridiculously catchy in what might be called the “chorus” in the second half of the song.)
“Miracle-Level,” the release’s sixth and eponymous song, starts out as essentially a slow-jam, Deerhoof-style, with the vocals floating over a sparse electronic piano. A double-clap feel drum-line kicks in underneath as the melody ascends, and even though I don’t understand the specific words Matsuzaki sings, I can feel that she’s reaching toward some kind of miracle that might save us all. Could it be? It’s right at her fingertips. This song shimmers.
The album continues to mesmerize with the infectious groove and storm of guitars on “And the Moon Laughs,” moving into “The Little Maker,” which offers the record’s most hypnotizing bass lines; there’s lots of great bass lines to choose from along the way too, but “Maker” definitely presents my fave.
Deerhoof (photo by Mike Bridavsky)
“Phase-Out All Remaining Non-Miracles by 2028” and “Momentary Art of Soul!” deliver the most prog-rock experiences of the record, where after the slinky “non-miracles” are phased out, one’s art of the soul takes on a fever pitch of Philip Glass-inspired frenetic energy. Matsuzaki’s voice rides the wave of the instrumental fluctuations on “Soul,” the penultimate, and longest, song on the album, clocking in at just over five minutes (still quite short by prog rock terms).
“Wedding, March, Flower,” concludes Miracle-Level with a contemplative almost-ballad, where drummer Greg Saunier and Matsuzaki switch places; she plays the drums and he sings lead. About the writing process for this final song, Saunier shared:
“I was flirting with my partner Sophie and sent her a video of me humming and playing the piano. Deerhoof was starting to get songs together for our next record. No one had suggested we needed any tender piano ballads, but Sophie convinced me to show it to my bandmates anyway. I was so touched when they were into it. The real kicker came when Satomi wrote lyrics. They were in Japanese, so when we first rehearsed it, I wasn’t even sure what I was singing. But Satomi had written a love song about a wedding. Satomi and I ended our marriage over 10 years ago, and it hasn’t always been easy for any of us to keep the band going. Our songs have always been one way that we all process our feelings with each other. Co-writing and performing ‘Wedding March Flower’ with her was really intense.”
Miracle-Level is full of such beautiful, strange, and imaginative intensity. After almost thirty years of such inspiring creative collaboration, Deerhoof seem like they have a lot to teach the rest of us. If you’re not already among the indoctrinated (or even if you are), then start listening to Miracle-Level exhaustively. It might show you a better way.
Miracle-Level is out now via Joyful Noise and available on Bandcamp and all major streamers. Deerhoof is currently on tour in support of the album.
San Francisco’s Acid King just released Beyond Vision, their first full-length release since 2015’s Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere. If their Bandcamp pre-sales were any indication, the band’s heavy churn of stoner/doom metal has been sorely missed by many fans. Beyond Vision takes the listener on a time-defying escapade that fluctuates between head-banging and floating down through pulses of color and light. This album encapsulates a very good trip: you touch the stars without hurtling into depths of despair and it never gets so speedy that your teeth grind. It takes you to space, but the ride is smooth, even if your limbs suddenly feel like they’re weighted with hundreds of pounds of glowing galaxy goo. Time is bending and you’re lit from within. It feels good…just go with it.
The seven tracks on the album run together, meant to be listened to straight through, like one profoundly pulsing forty-three minute song. In a statement, guitarist and vocalist Lori S. explained the new turn in Acid King’s music:
“The band was never really that psychedelic, but this is definitely more trippy because we’ve got keyboards and synthesizers. That’s something we’ve never had before on Acid King records. The songs really have no beginning or end—they all just flow into each other. It’s meant to be listened to as one piece. The whole point was to have the listener feel like they’re on a journey. If you put headphones on, it’ll take you to whatever places you’d like to go to.”
The instrumental Krautrock-esque opening song, “One Light Second Away,” launches you into the spacey drift and throb immediately, with foreboding synth sounds rising throughout. Lori S.’s smoky vocals don’t start to blend into the mix until about three and half minutes into the second track, “Mind’s Eye,” when the vibe of Beyond Vision really grabs you, like walking really stoned into a smoky club (back when there were smoky clubs) to find a room full of sweaty bodies slow-motion moshing. Do we call this chill-thrashing? Stoner thrashing? Unison would-be violence that is slowed way the fuck down to a place where the urge to be violent isn’t violent anymore…that is the vibe of “Mind’s Eye” and really, the entirety of Beyond Vision.
The third song, “90 Seconds,” begins with metallic banging, like we’re trapped in an off-galaxy mine of some kind, as the lyrics give way to the anxiety of leaving your home world: “Transmissions from the sky / Is someone left behind / Or is it just a sign?”
“90 seconds” burns away into (or is swallowed by the fourth track, “Electro Magnetic,” where judging from the electronic flurry of sound at the beginning, the off-world mine has exploded and is now floating in space in chunks, as a repeated guitar hook spins out through the cosmos toward anyone who might be listening.
And many of us are listening. We’re listening with eyes wide (or squeezed shut) as the album shifts into light speed with its last three songs, “Destination Psych,” “Beyond Vision,” and “Color Trails.” But light speed here, again, doesn’t move too fast, you just know you’re shooting forward quicker than you ever have, and time is reinvented in how you feel the giant guitars, stretching synth lines, and locked-in bass and drums in your blood, in your beating heart. You’re flying with Lori S., Jason Landrian (guitar and synths), Bryce Shelton (bass and synths), and Jason Willer (drums). If you need a visual manifestation beyond what’s happening in your own head while you listen, check out the video for “Beyond Vision,” which conjures both 60s lava lamp acid culture and 80s arcade-style games like Galaga:
Engineered and mixed by Billy Anderson, with fantastic cover art by Peder Bergstrand, and released by Blues Funeral Recordings, Beyond Vision launches a new era for Acid King. They’ve been rocking hard and heavy since the nineties, but this most recent album shows their sonic adventures are far from over.
Beyond Vision is out now and available on Bandcamp and all major streamers.
