Sunday, July 24, 2011

Best of the Based God, Pt. 1

If you are reading this, you probably don’t understand Lil B. Neither do I. If most of these tracks sound like total shit to you (i.e. some guy rapping about bitches on his dick and looking like various celebrities), do not be alarmed.






Thursday, July 21, 2011

Fever Vomit

GIRLS

“Vomit”

* * * * 1/2

BEST IN THE WEST


One of the reasons Girls can change their sound up as freely as they can while still sounding distinctly like the same band album to album is probably because they didn’t really have a “sound” to begin with. Singer Chris Owens stated their aptly named debut album, Album, was an “overflow of expression” that had been pent-up inside him during his years in the rock-disapproving Children of God cult. As a result, “Vomit” sounds unmistakably like a Girls song, but at the same time, it sounds like nothing we’ve heard from them. This six-and-a-half-minute, classic-rock-inspired epic starts out as a tender acoustic ballad before exploding into a harmony-driven chorus and climaxing with an organ solo and a full gospel choir--all to satisfyingly un-ironic effect. Though there’s plenty of grandeur to get lost in on this song, the central focus is Chris Owens’ wounded croon, which traverses the wash of sound like a lonely loser wandering the streets of Shibuya at night.


MONSTRAUSS
“Fever Dream”

* * * 1/2


Imagine Scott Weiland just ate about ten pot brownies coated in Vapo-Rub and you have an idea of Noaa Rienecker, the tongue-wobbling frontman for South Bay “skunge” band Monstrauss. Rienecker’s voice and delivery would be enough to distinguish any song, but in combination with the group’s bizarre combination of reggae riddims and grunge guitars (think about that!), this makes for a truly odd offering. It’s a risky formula that, in other artists’ hands, could lead to some serious cheese. Luckily, Monstrauss have enough idiosyncrasies to render the fusion startlingly effective.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Artist Profile: Romance of Thieves

Photo c. James Fannucci


It would be an understatement to call Nick Martin a perfectionist. During a pre-gig rehearsal in a crowded, dimly lit room at San Francisco’s Lennon Studios, Martin, leader of R&B ensemble Romance of Thieves, is dissatisfied, and he has the horn section squarely in his sights. “You guys don’t have your shit down!” shouts Martin, 16. “Paul’s only been in the band five days, and he knows his shit better than either of you guys!” He gestures towards newly recruited bassist Paul Mallari, who watches while noodling nervously on his bass.


The horn section, comprising brothers Jonah (trumpet) and Aaron (saxophone) Baker-McCann, seems a bit puzzled. They’re not getting things quite right, but neither can figure out what they’re doing wrong, and Martin doesn’t seem inclined to give much in the way of direction. The other band members choose not to intervene. They recognize Martin’s leadership and implicitly understand that he may be the only guy in the room who knows what the horn part is supposed to sound like.

The tension mounts, and within about ten seconds, Martin and Jonah Baker-McCann are in the midst of a shouting match, which mixes with the other band members’ noodling to create an unbearably awkward cacophony. Jonah threatens to quit; Martin ignores his threats. Finally, Jonah packs up his trumpet and walks right out the door.


Slumped against the wall, Martin is clearly frustrated. Within a matter of hours, Romance of Thieves will be competing against seven much older bands in the semi-finals of Gorilla Productions’ Battle of the Bands at the DNA Lounge. The prize, in addition to a hefty cash sum, is the submission of a demo tape to several of the biggest record labels in the world, and as Martin is heart-attack serious about pursuing a full-time career in music, this opportunity could be step one in his plan for world domination. His frustration is today compounded by the fact half the band (including the drummer and the guitarist) still hasn’t arrived for this pre-gig rehearsal, and that the four backing vocalists are still learning their ridiculously complex harmonies at the very last minute.


While Martin stews, Baker-McCann sits outside the studio at the base of a streetlamp, staring down the seedy South of Market alley where Lennon Studios is located. A few band members are already by his side, either sympathizing with his plight or trying to convince him to come back inside the studio and give it another go. “I’m gonna quit,” Baker-McCann mutters. “Actually, I’m gonna go back inside, hit him in the face, and then quit.”


The arrival of the rest of the band seems to calm things down. Martin is clearly pissed at their tardiness, but the full band sets up quickly, and the activity defuses the situation. Martin goes outside and convinces Baker-McCann to return, and the trumpeter picks up his instrument and walks inside with everyone else. Martin’s nerves settle for the moment, and as the rhythm section lays down a groove, he is smiling and clapping his hands, thoroughly enjoying his work.


* * *


Romance of Thieves has existed in multiple incarnations under Martin’s leadership, and it’s best described as a sort of unofficial supergroup of young Bay Area talent. Numerous Romance members in the studio that day are part of other groups. Bassist Mallari plays with psych-rockers Analog Days; keyboardist Jake Barrett regularly performs with Handshake; and second keyboardist Manny Berry is a member of Souled Out. Not present today are rapper EaSWay, an established artist with his backing band, and guitarist Julian Diamond, who has performed with high-profile cover band Have You Seen My Toothbrush?


Martin’s story bears some similarity to the classic soul-singer genesis tale, albeit updated for an Anglo denizen of the Internet age. He began singing in the Grace Cathedral Men & Boys’ Choir at age nine while simultaneously taking saxophone and piano lessons. He later studied jazz and funk before settling on R&B/soul music as his main genre. In 2008, he joined a trio called Akustiq, which later added more members and changed its name to The St. Valentinez. Meanwhile, his solo recordings as Romance of Thieves, in particular the single “Far Away,” attracted the notice of blogs such as youthradio.org as well as this one. Martin left the St. Valentinez earlier this year to focus on Romance of Thieves, and the two bands are fierce rivals, often competing against one another in battles of the bands. They won’t go head-to-head tonight (the Valentinez had to cancel their scheduled performance due to lack of personnel), but Martin aims to win and score some bragging rights.


Romance of Thieves sold more advance tickets than any of the competing bands and will thus appear last. They are also the youngest of the eight bands competing, though many of the members are experienced performers with as many gigs under their belt as the adults on tonight’s bill. The other competitors are lounge-poppers Sugar Water Purple; nu-metallers Vent; screamo outfit Lambs Become Lions; hard rockers Kings & Crooks; rock n’ soul act Tunestone; guitar-rapper duo Day/Four; and industrial-noise group Flesh Weapon.


* * *


After a bit of confusion concerning who was riding in whose car (understandable as there were only three cars for seventeen people, including myself and two friends of the band), I was able to snag a ride to the DNA Lounge with drummer LJ Alexander. The show started at 5:30, and the audience at that hour was small -- somewhere between 40 and 50. (The chief benefit of selling all those advance tickets, and getting to perform near the end of the competition, is that the crowd swells throughout the evening.) As being on the deserted floor was a bit awkward, I watched the bands from the balcony. The Romance members invited me to walk the neighborhood with them during some of the earlier bands’ sets. They needed to keep moving to settle their nerves, and I was eager for the chance to catch their group dynamic offstage. For some reason, we all ended up at a nearby Bed, Bath & Beyond, where conversation turned to the myriad possibilities of owning a water carbonator, and everyone took turns sticking their fingers through a Dyson bladeless fan. I spent most of the walk talking to keyboard-player Barrett, who regaled me with tales of his pal who, under the influence of salvia, became temporarily convinced he was a fencepost. “He was just standing there next to a fence and was like, ‘I can’t move!’ We were like, ‘Why not?’ and he was like, ‘Because I’m made of wood, man!’”


We returned to the venue in time to catch two bands before Romance of Thieves was scheduled to take the stage. Soon, it was time to set up, and things did not proceed smoothly. The band took nearly a half-hour to set up and get the volume levels right, and when they finally began playing, the vocals overpowered everything else, requiring still more adjustments. But in spite of the unprofessional start, the band’s performance was electrifying. They began with a high-energy cover of the Flo Rida/David Guetta collaboration “Club Can’t Handle Me,” which found Martin crooning like Marc Bolan at his raunchiest and rapper De’Andre Wright spitting machine-gun rhymes into the mic. They followed up with several originals: the funky “Changes,” on which Martin got out a saxophone and played a solo while sitting on the edge of the stage; the R&B rave-ups “Throw Your Hands Up” and “Tonight;” and somewhat ill-advised mash-up of their excellent single “Luv’n It” with the disturbingly similar McDonald’s jingle. The grand finale came in the form of the cannon-fire “Superhuman,” co-written with the St. Valentinez’ Will Randolph, in which Martin referenced virtually every song in the Katy Perry oeuvre while Wright rapped faster and faster (much of it freestyled) until the final chorus. It was a short set in light of the time it had taken them to set up, but it was effective and certainly the most musically satisfying among the bands I’d heard that night.


Finally: the judging. The judge, a polite-looking lady who seemed to struggle a bit while introducing groups with names like “Flesh Weapon,” supervised the process of ranking the bands based on the volume of audience applause when their names were called. Sugar Water Purple and Vent received virtually no applause, not necessarily because they sucked but because they had gone on stage early and nearly all their fans had left already. Lambs Become Lions’ name was met with boisterous hooting from their followers. (No surprise -- metal fans are loud.) I was somewhat on edge, seeing as Martin would all but blow up the venue with TNT if Romance didn’t win. But when the yelling and stomping subsided, Day/Four and Romance of Thieves were tied for first and advanced to the next round. The winning bands danced around like maniacs and exchanged hugs (in Romance’s case) and bro-fists (in Day/Four’s case) with their friends and fans.


For all of his disagreements with his band, Martin is extremely happy to be working with his current crew. “I love each and every one of them, and it makes me so happy to perform with them,” he says. “I was thinking about getting some other people to perform in the [upcoming] finals, but I love these guys too much.” However, he was not entirely satisfied with his personal performance. “I had tonsillitis, so I was hurting and cracked the high note,” he said. “I struggle every day with how my voice sounds.”


Martin knows it takes a lot of work, forward thinking, and luck to break out of the crowd in the pop universe. “I already started working on the finals setlist before the round one battle even began,” he says. But Martin is thinking a lot further ahead than that. He’s gunning for a successful career in the music world and is focusing just as much on promoting himself as he is on perfecting his art. He says, “Other people say, ‘Don't do pop! It's boring and lacks musicality. At best, you're going to be another one-hit wonder and no one will know who you are after 5 minutes in the spotlight.’” Martin aims to prove them wrong. “I’ll say, ‘No, screw that. I’m going to play the game, and I’m going to play it well, better than anyone has ever played it.’ That’s why we’ll win in September.” If he doesn’t, it won’t be for lack of ambition and vision. “I want this. It's my dream, and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get to where I want to be.”

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Artist Profile: Miles Atkins of Eyes Like Oceans


It’s 2:30 in Dolores Park and Miles Atkins is waiting for me by the tennis courts. The fifteen-year-old Eyes Like Oceans mastermind is sipping on a Slurpee, facing away from the mass of sunbathing hippies strewn across the park. This dark figure, sitting erect with a blank expression on his face, is an odd sight among the masses of shiny, smiling thirtysomethings lying on their jackets and blankets. A pair of earbuds lead from his head to his pocket, snaking and winding across a T-shirt emblazoned with the band name THE WONDER YEARS and the caption: “I’m not a self-help book, I’m just a fucked up kid.”

Atkins, 15, has been connected to the Bay Area music scene since he was eleven or twelve, when he saw a “friend of a friend” of his parents’ perform at the Complex. That friend of a friend, as it turned out, was Henry Rosenthal, a.k.a. Hank Rank, of seminal West Coast punk band Crime (and father of Lou Lou and George from Lou Lou & the Guitarfish). Atkins socialized with the acts who had performed along with Rosenthal and rapidly began to make connections on the music scene, befriending numerous well-known musicians.

Atkins truly established his presence as a an omnipresent figure on the Bay Area music scene in 2010, when he started the Raindrop Residence music blog with Loni Lonzo. Raindrop Residence chiefly served as a source of updates about shows and new releases by bands, and it was active mainly during the second half of 2010. It was heavily promoted by many of the bands it featured, many of whom were highly successful or became so during the time Raindrop Residence reported on them. The blog developed a good-sized following until Atkins and Lonzo parted ways in early 2011. While Lonzo focused on her photography, Atkins began to focus more on the Secret Show, a music project he began in November 2010 with producer Izzy Cordova after attending the Paul Green School of Rock music program.

“I didn’t want to play other people’s music anymore,” Atkins says between sips of his neon-red Slurpee. Indeed, Atkins has somewhat of a bias against cover songs, and though he has covered songs himself live, he does not see the merit in doing a direct cover. “If I cover a song, I’ll make it my own,” he says. “I’ll cover a song that would have a different meaning coming from a fifteen-year-old artist rather than a much older artist.”

This sentiment is part of Atkins’ musical philosophy. He has always been attracted to music that sounds like it comes directly from the singer’s psyche and sounds like it was actually made by a human being with human emotions. What exactly this means is a bit sketchy, but Atkins gives examples such as Weezer’s Pinkerton, Saves The Day’s Stay What You Are, and Say Anything... Is A Real Boy. “It’s a terrible record,” he acknowledges regarding Pinkerton. “The instruments aren’t in tune, and Rivers Cuomo is singing off-key for most of it. When I first heard it, I thought, ‘This is terrible! What is this shit?’ But I listened to it again a few years later and thought, ‘This is such an honest and emotional record.’”

The music Atkins wrote for the Secret Show project reflects this sentiment, as do the songs he is currently writing for Eyes Like Oceans. Almost every song is based on an actual event in Atkins’ life (“except I shift it to make it sound like nothing’s my fault,” Atkins jokes). As a result of Atkins’ tell-all attitude, his music is often pegged as “emo,” a tag he neither rejects nor propagates. “It’s sort of a blessing and a curse,” he says. “Most of the bands I like are considered ‘emo,” but at the same time there are a lot of people who won’t listen to my music just because people call it emo.”

Emo or not, Atkins has developed a considerable following, mainly in San Jose, based on his music and often uncomfortable live shows. Secret Show performances were often harrowing--barely moving or stopping to drink water, Atkins would gaze viciously at the crowd and ensure every word was pressed into the audience members’ brains. His often disturbing lyrics caused the Secret Show to be banned from a number of venues in the Bay Area. “People say my music is disrespectful towards women,” he says. “It’s actually just disrespectful towards certain women, but people think if I talk about one woman in a negative way, I’m insulting all women.”

The first Eyes Like Oceans EP, June, will be released later this month. Atkins is also in talks with Kylle Reece of Wake Up, Dolly about a potential collaboration. “It’s going to be called ‘Eight Bitches In A Bitch Boat,’” Atkins says, apparently quite serious. “It’s not going to help much with the misconception that I hate women, though.”

Friday, July 15, 2011

Ghost & the City, Rented Heroes, Line Squire

GHOST & THE CITY

Sazerac

* * * 1/2


A Sazerac is a drink, traditionally associated with New Orleans, that contains absinthe and is known as one of the first cocktails. It’s a much better reference point for Ghost & the City’s music than the contingent with which the band is associated, which is composed primarily of perpetually smiling, dancing bands such as Picture Atlantic and Man in Space. Though Sazerac isn’t quite as bleak as the group’s self-titled 2009 debut, it’s still a gloomy half-hour of dark, almost operatic jazz-rock. The band is strongest when wallowing in the fog, but the album’s best song, “Drift On,” is an almost uplifting boy-girl duet. A high point is the grisly instrumental “All These Chandeliers,” which conjures images of lamplit streets, dancing skeletons, and, yes, chandeliers.


RENTED HEROES
“Drop D”

* * *


Speaking of boy-girl duets, San Francisco duo/couple Rented Heroes have served up a nice dollop of chemistry with their new song “Drop D.” Cindy Labota and Izzy Cordova have never sung together on recordings before, but their first time shows a highly effective pairing. The two don’t so much duet as have a conversation in unison, musing to each other over a loping, flanged guitar riff. Though they don’t have much good to say about each other on this particular song, they sound a lot closer than they perhaps realize.


LINE SQUIRE

Rolls Hack

* 1/2


Following last year’s excellent Urbanites EP, bizarro noise-rock crew Line Squire have released an EP of guitar instrumentals. There’s not much to catch the listener’s attention here, but “Bows (Garage Version)” is an interesting psychedelic jam that deserves a listen.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Best Bay Area Albums & Singles of 2011 So Far

1. tUnE-yArDs - W H O K I L L
2. Lil B - I'm Gay
3. Hunx and his Punx - Too Young To Be In Love
4. Rin Tin Tiger - Rin Tin Tiger EP
5. Sonny & the Sunsets - Hit After Hit
6. Andrew Campbell - This Is What The City Will Sound Like When All The People Are Gone
7. Thee Oh Sees - Castlemania
8. Jeremy Lyon - Take It Back EP
9. The Fresh & Onlys - Secret Walls EP
10. Adam Balbo - Refried Nostalgia

1. tUnE-yArDs - "Bizness"
2. Andrew Campbell - "You Can Count On It"
3. Romance of Thieves & EaSWay - "Closer"
4. Eyes Like Oceans - "For What It's Worth"
5. Sam C. Rocker - "Untitled (Inspired By True Events)"
6. Tumbleweed Wanderers - "Someday You'll Understand"
7. Fever Charm - "Youth"
8. Handshake - "Lemon"
9. AB & the Sea - "In The Sunshine"
10. Kreayshawn - "Gucci Gucci"