ALTER.NATiON #28
Control Top, Perry Farrell, Ty Segall, White Denim, Sebadoh, Garcia Peoples, Joshua Redman Quartet, Sarah Tandy, Facs, Ela Orleans, Christelle Bofale, Billie Eilish
weekly favtraX
30-03-2019
weekly favtraX
30-03-2019
“Everything looks like a commercial/ It’s a brand to be controversial!” is Carter’s rallying cry on the album’s rampaging title track. From there she traces the oblivious steps toward fascism: “First step is to give up your attention/ Next step is to give up your intention/ Then one day you’re locked up for dissension/ It was all built into the invention.” Paired with surging pogo bass, an intense 4/4 backbeat, and a flurry of violent guitar stabs, it’ll raise your pulse...
Perry Farrell - Pirate Punk Politician
...Considering that the latest Jane’s Addiction album was released in 2011, and Farrell has not released solo material since 2001, “Pirate Punk Politician” should be a return to form. It’s more Porno For Pyros with its spiraling riffs and almost experimental nature, but if the title was any indication, this song is bizarre from start to finish. While a fast tempo, scratchy guitar and thrusting bass line are present, weirdly melodic synths cut in during the second verse. This only creates uneasy tension that’s alleviated by the sheer ruckus of the chorus...
California-based garage rock revivalist known for his prolific discography and his accurate recreations of '60s lo-fi.
Ty Segall - Cherry Red from Deforming Lobes
...2019's Deforming Lobes was recorded during two January 2018 shows in Los Angeles, and the song list curiously omits any tunes from Freedom's Goblin. What it does deliver is Segall and his band laying into their music as if their lives depended on it. Deforming Lobes documents a tight, heavyweight rock & roll band turning up the amps and wailing hard for the fans, and if it doesn't have a subtle bone in its body, it proves beyond a doubt that Segall and his bandmates are still committed to the sweaty, passionate glory of The Rock Show. On Deforming Lobes, Segall is backed by the Freedom Band, the same core of musicians who helped him make Freedom's Goblin, and they sound like a force to be reckoned with. Emmett Kelly is a great guitar foil for Segall, matching and complementing the noisy majesty of Segall's soloing, Ben Boye's fuzzy keyboards lend force and color to the arrangements, and bassist Mikal Cronin and drummer Charles Moothart hit with the impact of a runaway cement truck...
Freewheeling indie rock combo from Austin, Texas whose exuberant, hard-hitting sound has charted in the U.S. and U.K.
White Denim - Reversed Mirror from Side Effects
Though they are from Austin, and started out as a punk power trio, much of White Denim's ninth studio album, 2019's Side Effects, sounds like it could have been recorded by a psychedelic rock band in Los Angeles in 1969. That fuzz-tone, reverb, and echo-pedal sound is pretty much the aesthetic bandleaders James Petralli (vocals, guitars) and Steve Terebecki (bass) have been aiming for since at least 2011's D. While the lineup has gone through changes over the years (there are even at least three different drummers credited here), White Denim have remained remarkably consistent...
The quintessential lo-fi band of the '90s, centered around the neurotic observational genius of depressive-obsessive Lou Barlow.
At the top of the month, Sebadoh announced their first new album in six years, Act Surprised, which sees Lou Barlow reconnecting with Jason Loewenstein and Bob D’Amico after a move back to Northampton, MA... This one builds on their panicked energy. “The incessant bombardment of the senses with media and advertising can lead to a kind of self-defensive paralysis,” the band’s Loewenstein said about the song in a press release. “I am completely stunned at this point.”
New Jersey band who took notes from a canon of classic psychedelic searchers to develop their jammy, cosmic rock sound.
Garcia Peoples - High Noon Violence from Natural Facts
Arriving a scant eight months after their debut, Natural Facts already presents a distinct evolution in Garcia Peoples' exploratory guitar rock. With a name that references the late Jerry Garcia, the New Jersey combo honored -- to a certain degree -- the immutable jam band spirit of their forebears on 2018's sunny Cosmic Cash, which introduced audiences not already in the know to the crafty twin-guitar stylings of Tom Malach and Danny Arakaki. Rather than retreading the tired tropes so diligently trotted out each summer by countless noodling festival bands, Garcia Peoples filtered their more obvious influences (Grateful Dead, NRBQ, Little Feat, Phish) through a contemporary indie rock aesthetic that celebrated the present over the past. They accomplish this to an even greater extent on their 2019 follow-up, Natural Facts... The earthy, Dead-like harmonies of standout "High Noon Violence" are paired with a snaky riff that could have come straight from Television's Marquee Moon.
An adventurous, highly lauded jazz tenor saxophonist who initially rose to prominence after winning the 1991 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition.
Joshua Redman Quartet - Stagger Bear from Come What May
The band at the core of saxophonist Joshua Redman's warmly engaging 2019 album, Come What May, has played together in various configurations for almost twenty years. Featured are pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Reuben Rogers, and drummer Gregory Hutchinson... "Stagger Bear" with its bluesy piano brings to mind the cabaret swagger of Bob Fosse.
“The music developed gradually through many years playing on London’s underground music scene, and immersing myself in the myriad musical languages surrounding me. In the album I’m seeking to find a continuum between the jazz music which I grew up listening to, and the multi-faceted, genre-melting sounds of present day London”, she says.
...Tandy makes her solo debut here, with a concise (six tracks, 34 minutes) album featuring Sheila Maurice Grey of Neríja and Kokoroko on trumpet, Binker Golding of Binker & Moses on saxophone, Mutale Chashi of Kokoroko on bass, and Femi Koleoso of Ezra Collective (and a fellow member of Camilla George’s band) on drums. The music lays hard bop-inspired horn interplay over shuffling, soulful rhythms, occasionally settling down for an introspective ballad. On the album’s second half, Tandy switches from acoustic to electric piano. The closing “Snake In The Grass” is a thick funk groove with Tandy laying down dense organ as Grey takes a fierce, barbed solo.
Dark, propulsive post-punk trio formed from the ashes of Chicago's Disappears.
...we get FACS – a Chicago based post-punk band in the same vein as Disappears. Their 2018 debut album Negative Houses was well-received, and they’ve returned with its proper follow-up Lifelike almost exactly a year later... Despite the influences, they aren’t as derivative like Preoccupations, a good band for sure, but one that continuously struggles with the direction they want to go. FACS lean more experimental, there are so little pop attributes on Lifelike...
Dreamy, sample-based experimental indie pop with ghostly echoes of '50s and '60s pop.
Ela Orleans - In the Night from Movies for Ears
Christelle Bofale has a voice that could move mountains, that could change the tides. But the music that the Austin-based artist makes isn’t necessarily interested in such drastic overtures. It moves slow and circular, content to unfold incrementally... It glides along, guided by watery guitars and a pitter-patter of drums that sound like rain on a windowpane. It shifts from sunshine to twilight and back again. Bofale’s voice lilts into the backdrop, twisting up in it like a spell. It’s impressionistic and warm but steadfastly firm. She sings about figments of imagination and fears that glow and tightroping acrobats. It conjures up a world that feels at once peaceful and strained, at ease but at odds
Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter who blends ethereal indie electro-pop with dark thematic tones.
Billie Eilish - bad guy from When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
On her big-league debut, Billie Eilish makes a bold entrance into the mainstream, leaving the fringes behind to embrace her role as an anti-pop star for the disaffected Gen Z masses. With a youthful, hybrid blend that incorporates elements of indie electronic, pop, and hip-hop (assisted by brother Finneas O'Connell), When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? captures the late-2010s zeitgeist by throwing conventional boundaries to the wind and fully committing to its genre-blurring self. Like Lorde's devilish little sister, Eilish delivers her confessional lyrics in hushed bursts of breath, at times dirge-like in their sedateness and otherwise intensely threatening in their creepiness.
Control Top, Perry Farrell, Ty Segall, White Denim, Sebadoh, Garcia Peoples, Joshua Redman Quartet, Sarah Tandy, Facs, Ela Orleans, Christelle Bofale, Billie Eilish
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