I listened to Ron Gallo’s Foreground Music on repeat today while hustling around New York City for the various required peregrinations of my own late-stage-capitalism gerbil-wheel (I have a lot of jobs), and I have to say, there are many moments on this album that land extremely close to home in a rough week. Gallo tells the truth about the sorry state of the world, and sometimes a very harsh truth. But he’s not a hypocrite or a megalomaniac; he turns his sharp and poetic critical eye on himself, as well. And somewhere down deep, under the fuzzy guitars and quest for something better, Gallo finds love, and not the saccharine corporate bullshit that pushes spending insane amounts of money on Valentine’s Day, but a love of humanity, and our rare but real potential for beauty. In his own words, “The world is completely fucked, but the universe is inside you.”
However, before you arrive at Gallo’s unique affirmations (that are a perfect blend of hopeless and hopeful for these times), Foreground Music takes you on a tour of the post-modern Western world through Gallo’s ironic and philosophical lens. Society may be dealing out a lot of shit, but Gallo is not taking it lying down. He’s dancing, he’s crooning, he’s pumping out the distorted guitar riffs. He’s telling it like it is, and few are spared. The first ones he brings to the fire of his words are all the toxic men out there. “Entitled Man” rocks out with urgently, and aims its energy to call out sexism in a way that few cis men do or can. Gallo practically growls on the chorus: “Entitled man / Keep your hands down your pants / Entitled man / Keep your thoughts in your head / Just because she’s talking to you / Doesn’t mean you mean anything / To her now.”
The album’s title track is up next and rushes at you with a frenzy of guitar noise balanced with sparkling synth and mellotron fills (masterfully played by Jerry Bernhardt), as Gallo confesses over it all: “I take my life pills one day at a time / My favorite thing to do is lie awake and panic.” I can relate! Can’t we all at this point? The existential dread has built up and exploded over the top of this overstuffed blender of an American Dream, and whether it’s the constant comparison of one’s life to other people’s (that always ends with you coming up short and really unhappy), or Gallo’s hilarious but eerily accurate analysis of how many T-shirts we all have, this song will get your heart racing from anxiety, while also coaxing you to bounce around and laugh out loud.
Other stand-out tracks include “At Least I’m Dancing” (which we previous reviewed here) and “Anything But This,” the album’s penultimate song, where Gallo beg-croons over the gale of guitars: “Anything but this for a little while… I stroll the streets / Everyone I see has just lost it / There’s garbage everywhere / It’s snowing sideways / It was 80 and sunny yesterday.” Yep, sounds like my everyday reality, and I’d love a break, too!
My two favorite songs on Foreground Music, though, are the ones where we see the most of Gallo’s true (and sometimes broken) heart. “Can My Flowers Even Grow Here?” presents some of the album’s most poetic and plaintive lyrics: “Can my flowers even grow here / When the ground is bullshit and the air is smoke…We come from a place where honesty comes off as crazy / And trying to be something real / Feels like constantly running up a wheel.” (Yep, I’m right with you, Ron…see the first paragraph and my mention of my own gerbil wheel…uh huh.)
But the final track, “I Love Someone Buried Deep Inside of You,” the most poignant of the album, puts into words perfectly the terrible but too-frequent experience of losing someone you love to their addictions: “I can’t believe you let it get this far / I can’t believe you don’t have any control / Here I am, there is nothing I can do / I love someone buried deep inside of you.” Chiara D’Anzieri’s gorgeous slide-and-slink bass line really shines on this final song, as well.
Foreground Music hits hard, while also making you smile and shimmy, showing Ron Gallo’s true range as an artist. The album was recorded at REALLY NICE Studio in Philadelphia and Jerry’s Place in Medford, NJ, and everyone in the band participated in the production (including Josh Friedman, who often holds down the tight rhythms on the drums). I strongly suggest you take a listen (or ten) to Foreground Music . Ron Gallo may be the philosopher poet of his generation, and having him in your ears might just get you through all the crap.
Foreground Music is out now via Kill Rock Stars and is available on all major streamers. Ron Gallo will next play NYC on 4/6 at Baby’s All Right.
If I’m feeling defeated or hopeless, there are few bands that can flip my mood as much as Death Valley Girls can. During the darkest moments of the pandemic, like many of us, I sure could get lost in some despair. But I had the gift of DVG’s 2020 album, Under the Spell of Joy, and like its title suggests, a surge of hope would come with every listen; I’d find myself smiling and finding my inner strength again as I bounced around my apartment. Bonnie Bloomgarden, the band’s lead vocalist and chief songwriter, possesses an infectious positivity that hits you like a laser beam. The group’s unique blend of garage, punk, and psychedelic pop gets you dancing like crazy as a form of mystical healing, and their brand new album, Islands in the Sky, takes the mysterious ecstasy to the next level. The record was recorded, mixed, produced, and engineered by Mark Rains at Station House Studio and is released today on Suicide Squeeze.
Islands in the Sky, more than any of their other albums to date, is intended to be a form of musical self-care, both for the listener and for the band members themselves. Bloomgarden originally came up with the concept of the record while she was bed-ridden with a mysterious illness from November 2020 to March 2021. In a statement she elaborates: “When I was sick, I started to wonder if it would be possible to write a record with messages of love to my future self. This was really the first time that I consciously thought about my own suffering and what future me might need to hear to heal. I struggled so much in my life with mental health, abuse, PTSD, and feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere. And I don’t want anyone—including my future self—to suffer ever again. I realized that if we are all part of one cosmic consciousness, as we [Death Valley Girls] believe, then Islands in the Sky could serve not only as a message of love and acceptance to myself, but also from every self to every self, because we are all one!”
Death Valley Girls live in 2022; check out more here. (photo by Kate Hoos)
The cosmic unity comes glimmering through immediately on the album opener, “California Mountain Shake,” as Bloomgarden confesses her love to a mystical force (or herself) and special guest Gabe Flores’s saxophone swells underneath. The second song, “Magic Powers,” is a synth-and-organ-drenched mid-tempo track featuring lead vocals from bassist Sammy Westervelt (who co-wrote the lyrics with Bloomgarden). On the lyrics Bloomgarden shares “I was walking down the street, and all of the sudden it dawned on me that almost all the things that kids bullied me about, or I got in trouble for in school, or was told would make me never amount to anything, were actually my magic powers! My voice isn’t too high, or funny, it’s how I cast my spells! I’m not a bad student, I love learning, and being a seeker! And I’m not a crazy person with weird ideas, that will never fit into society, I’m a witch, and I have magic powers!” Westervelt also directed the video for the song, which features her jumping over pixelated mushrooms in an enchanted forest, a la a 1980s-style arcade game.
The title track offers the most directly empowering message of the record, with Bloomgarden’s gorgeous voice belting out these affirmations: “You’re in charge of the perception of your life / …you can choose what you need / …no one gets to choose for you what you need to be.” The band rocks along with a go-go dancing intensity that’s playfully captured (with DVG’s typical goth edge) by dancing ghosts in a graveyard disco in the song’s fantastic video (directed by Dylan Mars Greenberg).
The soul-searching continues with “Sunday,” transporting us with what can be described as psychedelic gospel (featuring special guests Gregg Foreman on synth, Wurlitzer, and Hammond Organ and Gabe Flores again on saxophone). It’s a gloomy Sunday to start, with Bloomgarden wailing: “I’m sick of struggling to just be / What will come of me? / What do I need? / I gotta be free / I need a sign.” The sign finally comes in the form of drummer Rikki Styxx picking up the tempo as Larry Schemel’s guitar wakes up and comes to life, and “Sunday” rocks out to its end with Bloomgarden’s lyrics revealing that she always possessed the power within herself to keep going: “I gotta move on / (Keep on moving).”
“What Are the Odds?,” Islands in the Sky’s fifth track (end of side A on the vinyl) offers the most bounce-around-the-room energy while also pondering a seemingly frightening possibility of our existence. “What are the odds that we live in a simulated world,” Bloomgarden’s lyrics ask, “Where nothing is real and I’m a simulated girl?” But the chance of meeting a future simulated self pleases Death Valley Girls more than scaring them, and Schemel’s catchy guitar hook here makes you dance away any terror that might lurk in the idea of coming face to face with your doppelganger. Who knew that discovering that reality is just a simulation could feel this good?
Death Valley Girls live in 2022 (photos by Kate Hoos)
“When I’m Free,” is another stand out track which was originally released on a split 7-inch with Le Butcherettes who’s side had a fantastic cover of the DVG song “The Universe” from Under the Spell of Joy. (“When I’m Free” also received an intoxicating electronica remix last year from the incomparable Peaches.) Island in the Sky’s final track, “It’s All Really Kind of Amazing” (previously released in 2021) sends us off with a final pep-talk serenade from Bloomgarden: “Wake up in the dream / When you believe / You have everything / Everything that you need.” This ultimate “cosmic hymn” features the many all-stars of the musical collective that contributed to Islands of the Sky, including the back-up choir “gang vocals” of special guests Little Ghost, Pickle, and Kelsey Whatever NBD. Additionally, Foremann shines again on this last track with Wurlitzer hooks, Flores brings back his saxophone magic, Mark Rains adds on an extra layer of percussion, and Emily Retsas holds it down on the bass.
Both “When I’m Free” and album closer “It’s All Really Kind of Amazing” feature Retsas on bass; Sammy Westervelt joined the crew after those two songs were recorded. “It’s All Really Kind of Amazing” also continues the DVG’s commitment to fantastic visual interpretations of their music, with a super-psychedelic video directed by Bradley Hale.
Iggy Pop has described Death Valley Girls as “a gift to the world,” and although that gift is clear in all of their albums, Islands in the Sky demonstrates a new level of spiritual generosity that invites us to dance away our self-loathing. So get itin your ears as soon as possible and feel better! You will shimmy and shake and embrace all that is wonderful about you and all of us. Maybe there is hope for the world afterall…
Islands in the Sky is out now via Suicide Squeeze and is available on all major streamers.
Screaming Females began throwing their annual Garden Party in 2016 at WFMU’s Monty Hall. The two-night affair features some of the best rock/punk/post-punk/indie music that New Jersey (and nearby) has to offer, with the Screamales headlining both nights. The event’s popularity required them to move it down the road to the bigger Jersey City venue, White Eagle Hall, a few years back. (And of course a couple years were lost to the pandemic.) But, this year’s event continued the raucous tradition admirably with Truth Cult, Nina Nastasia, and Armand Hammer on Friday night, followed by Gel, Catbite and Laura Stevenson on Saturday. I was among the enthusiastic revelers the second night this past weekend, and although I traveled from Brooklyn to catch the fun, I definitely got caught up in the Jersey pride vibes.
The NJ hardcore act Gel started out the evening with frenetic intensity, as singer Sami Kaiser growled and bounced all over the stage, the crowd up front moshing away. Gel’s debut album, Only Constant, is coming out on Convulse Records on March 31, and the band will be touring in support of it for the rest of the spring. They certainly started things out right by shaking White Eagle Hall before hitting the road. You can catch them in New York for a pair of shows soon, 4/21 at TV Eye and 4/22 at Saint Vitus.
Philadelphia’s Catbite took the stage next, bringing their super high-energy ska, and the audience shifted from slam-dancing to skanking like crazy. Mid-set, vocalist Brittany Luna demonstrated the band’s signature dance move, which involved making like a pissed off cat scratching toward the ceiling, and suddenly the hall was full of raised “claws.” Catbite too has a busy year of touring ahead and immediately after this show left for an Australian tour. They will then return to the US for some dates (including SXSW), bounce over to Europe, and then come back to the States again where they will head all over the US in the months to come, I’m tired just having typed that! (And yes, they’ll be back in Brooklyn this summer.)
Up third came songstress Laura Stevenson (not originally from New Jersey, but signed to Don Giovanni, so close enough). She quipped that she and new guitarist/bandmate Lily Mastrodimos were going to bring it down a bit, and that they did, with perfect harmonies in a more subdued but beautiful opening. The rest of the band (drummer Samantha Niss and bassist Mike Campbell) quickly joined them on stage after the first verse and chorus, and the rest of the set brought the full range and power of Stevenson’s gorgeous indie folk rock. The audience seemed to appreciate the chance to catch their breath and sway, and Stevenson hypnotized the crowd, demonstrating her prowess as a songwriter and performer.
Laura Stevenson at White Eagle Hall
Last but certainly not least, Screaming Females instantly seized the audience’s attention with “Brass Bell,” the first single from their first album in five years, Desire Pathway. The album was released by Don Giovanni the day of the first show, giving this year’s Garden Party a special celebratory energy.
In addition to showcasing songs from the new release, the Screamales rocked through many older favorites, including “I’ll Make You Sorry,” “Glass House,” and “Black Moon” all from their 2018 double LP All at Once. The adoring crowd went bonkers from the first note, and the crowd-surfing was plentiful, and fittingly, mostly non men. Marissa Paternoster was riveting, as always, shredding through her guitar solos like a woman possessed. Bassist “King Mike” Abbate and drummer Jarrett Dougherty churned out a storm of driving rhythms throughout the set as Paternoster wailed magically above it all like the punk-rock siren she is. The band seemed especially pleased with the audience’s intensity, and Paternoster rewarded the audience by matching their energy with her screams during “Boyfriend” at the end of their set and by letting the fans up front pass around her guitar. (I was elated to strum one of the strings as it drifted by! See below for a video.)
Screaming Females leave this week for an extensive tour of the US, Europe and the UK, but these Jersey heroes know that the Garden State is where their heart is, as this year’s Garden Party more than demonstrated, giving them a perfect send-off. And even though I snuck in from across two rivers, I’m going to make sure that the Garden Party is my annual tradition now too. (If anyone asks, I’ll say I’m from New Brunswick.)
Scroll down for fan shot videos setlist, pics of the show (photos by Ray Rusinak)
Laura Stevenson setlist: Living Room NY, Triangle, Don’t Think About Me, State, Torch Song, A Shine To It, Continental Divide, Wretch, Sky Blue Bad News, Jellyfish
Screaming Females setlist: Brass Bell, Black Moon, Beyond The Void, I’ll Make You Sorry, Wishing Well, It All Means Nothing, So Low, Let Me Into Your Heart, Desert Train, Doom 84, Deeply, Boyfriend Encore: Glass House, Fall Asleep
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have just unleashed their fourth album on the world, Land of Sleeper, via Rocket Recordings. The band, who we’ve described before as “stoner/psych/doom noise kings,” hails from Newcastle upon Tyne in the North of England and haven’t released a full-length record since 2020’s Viscerals (with the exception of 2021’s Off Cuts, a vinyl-only collection of live studio versions of previous releases). This much-anticipated totally new record brings the thunderous madness Pigs x 7 fans have come to crave, while also showing off how the band’s sound continues to evolve. Land of Sleeper deftly demonstrates that this raucous quintet can bring on the doom metal of their early albums just as fiercely as they can blast through some of their more recent stripped-down songs. Not an easy feat to pull off such a diversity of sounds and influences in one album, and that’s what makes Land of Sleeper so satisfying.
“Ultimate Hammer,” the opening track, catapults the listener into a heavy psych dream state, with guitarists Adam Ian Sykes and Sam Grant conjuring up a storm of guitar thunder that threatens to carry you away into the ether. Frontman and vocalist Matt Baty’s lyrics also suggest dreams (or nightmares) and an Icarus-like propulsion toward the sun: “I will admit that I’m frightened by the speed / and turbulence needed to fly around the sun / I keep spinning out / What a time to be alive.” The band shot a very psychedelic video for the song featuring rainbow auras, flashing colored lights, and the glitter of smashed glass flying.
The state of the world over the past three years has also possibly contributed to the themes of existential dread present in some of these songs, although Baty admits that he was quite comfortable diving into the darkness before the pandemic. On the Pigs x 7 Bandcamp page, Baty confesses, “Shouting about themes of existential dread comes very naturally to me, and I think because I’m aware of that, in the past I’ve tried to rein that in a little. [But], there’s definitely moments on this album where I took my gloves off and surrendered to that urge.”
The release into doom feels tangible in “Terror’s Pillow,” where Baty’s full-throated rumblings and groans seem to take on the voice of a monster taking control, as the band thrashes through below, with John Michael Hedley’s relentless bassline and Ewan McKenzie, the band’s original drummer (now back in the fold after a four year hiatus), smashing the kit. Grant, who produced the album in addition to his prowess on guitar, describes the heavier tracks like “Terror’s Pillow” as more of a response to the band’s earlier work instead of a reflection of current events who says their aim was “more as a counterpoint to earlier material, as opposed to any sort of political or social commentary. I still very much see these heavier moments as musically euphoric, and emotionally cut loose or liberating.”
However, the euphoria is still present in Land of Sleeper’s more garage-punk offerings as well, such as the high-energy “Mr. Medicine.” Baty’s lyrics here are joyous and celebratory: “When did I begin / To fall in love again? / That song you sang to me / Made me strong and completely / Fearless.” “Mr. Medicine” also has a hilarious video directed by Wilm Danby that makes glorious fun of various doom metal tropes, with the band rocking out in a sparkling Stonehenge dreamscape, with tiny bats flying down to feast on Baty’s brain (the top of his skull is gone at that point) and a strange monster sent by the moon that rips Baty’s head off. Maybe this is Mr. Medicine? Who knows? Who cares? The song rocks you to your core without taking itself too seriously, and that’s really the beauty of Pigs x 7.
Land of Sleeper also boasts some exciting (and surprising) guest artists that help Pigs x 7 explore new musical realms. Folk singer Cath Tyler is featured on the album’s final track, the Sabbath-esque “Ball Lightning” melding with Baty for a kind of doom-folk duet. Bonnacons of Doom vocalist Kate Smith weaves ominous chanting through “The Weatherman,” the album’s longest (and slowest) track. She adds an eerie feeling to the quiet haunting dirge in between the massively heavy moments of the song which also features a choir that includes Richard Dawson and Sally Pilkington from the wonky-pop duo Bulbils. Baty shares about the lyrics “This one presented an opportunity for me to do something completely unbridled. I wanted to surrender to the weight of the song, so the lyrics came about in much the same way I imagine a frenzied artist might throw paint at a canvas. I just wanted the lyrics to present an uncontrollable energy.”
The wait for Land of Sleeper was long (and understandable), but this exciting new album from Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs shows that they have many other musical dreams and nightmares to hurl at us. In support of the album, the band will soon kick off a huge tour that will see them wind through North America, the UK, and Europe. The tour lands here in NYC on March 11th at St. Vitus and you can be we’ll have more soon about the live show. In the meantime, get Land of Sleeper in your ears and let the somnambulant frenzy begin.
Land of Sleeper is out now via Rocket Recordings and available on all major streaming platforms.
I’ve had PAWS, the third full-length recording by Beat Awfuls, on repeat all week. The album’s lo-fi power-pop makes me want to jump up and down one minute and burst into tears the next. Or more accurately, all the feelings are swirling together pretty damn cathartically as I lose myself in these nine songs on each listen. The pain of Dave Vicini’s lyrics is filtered through infectious jangly hooks, until dancing while weeping seems like a perfectly reasonable response to being alive. From the band: “PAWS is an acronym for ‘Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome,’ an affliction of the after-effects of substance misuse. While the title may pinpoint Vicini’s location during the recording process, it doesn’t bind him; this album isn’t a slow, dour reflection on drug addiction and abuse; it’s an earth-clawing grasp to regain ground.”
The album’s opening track, “Interstate Skeletons,” provides a perfect example of Beat Awful’s fuzzy pop poignance. Vicini provides both lead and backing vocals in tight harmonies on the song, singing: “I never knew what it costed / I only knew what it cost us / Feeling technicolor fade / As I bury it away like skeletons.” The mid-tempo bounces cheerfully underneath, with unexpected synths amidst the guitar hooks (skillfully played by Russell Lacy on lead guitar). The good feelings of the music itself sit in ironic tension with the emotional heaviness of the lyrics, and that enticing irony continues throughout PAWS.
“Punks on the Dance Floor,” once again, offers a hazy, invitingly danceable groove (with Kelly Queener really shining on this track on bass, and Tommy Allen plinking out a simple but catchy hook on keys). But the lyrics reveal the roiling destruction that’s threatening underneath the buzzed effervescence of the instruments: “I will turn into a twister / and blow apart our lovely life,” Vicini laments. Even as the song’s narrator bounces up and down in his Docs, “like punks on the dance floor,” deep down he knows he’s in trouble. The song ends abruptly with these words: “Lava lips always spill secrets / As warm low key wind whispers quietly / ‘I really need some help please.’”
Other standout tracks include the lovesick plea of “Espree Baby” and the high-energy “Ego Death Kult,” which points to the hypocrisy of all the shit-talkers out there, be they politicians or the guy sitting next to you at the bar. But my favorite song on PAWS is “Forever Lonely,” the most directly melancholic of the album. Kelly Queener provides gorgeous vocal harmonies to Vicini, with both of them pining away in the verses: “Gone / Forever lonely / I can’t give up / I can’t find a reason / to let you go.” But the chorus breaks through the sadness, with the drums picking up the mood (wonderfully played by Allison Apperson), and suddenly the guitars turn toward a major key for a moment and “Forever Lonely” becomes just a pure declaration of love for a breath.
Dave Vicini started Beat Awfuls in 2005 as a 4-track bedroom recording project while living in Boston. They are now based in Richmond, VA (after a few years in Lexington, KY), and recorded PAWS in Richmond and Mechanicsville, VA (produced and engineered by Vicini, except for “Forever Lonely,” produced and engineered by Russell Lacy). I sincerely hope that Beat Awfuls will be touring to NYC soon to promote PAWS. I’m excited to join the “punks on the dance floor” while quietly dying a little inside. It’s the human condition after all. Beat Awfuls, you have a new fan in Brooklyn! Come visit!
PAWS is out 2/10 via Cocoa Beach Tapes/Youth Kulture.
