The Switchboard Sessions

Mockingbird Wish Me Luck

2012-01-27T18:22:00.005-06:00

It is too easy to underestimate art.

Take a painting by Roy Lichtenstein, which seems to merely amplify what was buried in the back of the newspaper every day, or John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, a story about two uncomplicated characters told in the simplest prose. Though it is easy to sense the weight of each seemingly pedestrian composition, it is easier to ignore this sense and enjoy each based strictly on surface aesthetics. Of course, there isn't an incorrect way to appreciate these or any pieces of art; there is, however, some tragedy every time art goes unrealized.

The same might be said about the Ontario-based band Mockingbird Wish Me Luck, whose rusty brand of rock 'n' roll seems easy to categorize with bands that combine the youthful fury that epitomizes punk-rock with the twang and bucolic balladry that makes folk so accessible. Like Steinbeck's story and Lichtenstein's canvases, there seems to be something beneath the surface of their songs—something more than a mere message, something constructed by the collage of melody and lyrics and the act of their assemblage. On the band's recent contribution to Run For Cover Record's Subscription Singles Series, the band exhibits two tracks—”Living Weakness” and “Ignescent”—whose murky moods and tenebrous melodies suggest such a subtext.

At its core, Mockingbird Wish Me Luck is comprised of bassist Bishop Wierzbicki and guitarist Mike Arnott, who started the band with their friends during their transition into adulthood. “The band started right before everyone started going to college or getting jobs,” Wierzbicki remembers. “It, more or less, kept going as an excuse to really keep in touch. Every three or four months, we'd play a show and practice a handful of times.” The band didn't feel as substantial to Wierzbicki until 2009 when they released Goodbye Debris, a four-song EP later re-released by Dine Alone Records the following year. “After it came out,” he recalls, “I think I knew the band was going to become a real project for me. At least songwriting was.”

With Goodbye Debris, songwriting became a more complex creative process for Wierzbicki, who toils over his words—carefully selecting lyrics that convey a story, arranging and re-arranging them until the story can be felt if not followed. “I always write with a narrative in mind,” he explains, “but I don't make anything too cohesive—like, 'and then this happened, and then this happened.'—mainly because a song is not the best platform for ideas like that. You've got to be quick.”

“Orphans of a Storm”, the most urgent song on Goodbye Debris, seems to best capture Wierzbicki's splintered style of writing. The song opens with pummeling drums and a torrent of grainy, grey chords that tighten and split into tense duel leads before descending into its foggy first verse. With Kyle Krische's floor tom thumping behind them, Wierzbicki and Arnott bark back and forth at each other, scattering images that seem dark and dense: an unwanted rainstorm, a sense of abandonment, bloodied lips, and shades of black. Despite these oblique lyrics, the song's chorus seems sunny, like a crack in the clouds during a summer storm; a twangy guitar lead rises and curls around the gritty growl of both singers, who snarl, “When the fences came down, / we were left to our own devices / I didn't pray for rain but it felt good on my skin.”

“It follows this weird narrative where I say something but the rest of the song doesn't really go with it, so it's like a fractured narrative,” Wierzbicki explains. “But there's a line in there that that goes, 'My sister loaded up my pocket / with my mother's jewelry, / told me not to look so fucking sad / because this is a requiem.' You hear it and you're like, 'What the fuck is he talking about?' But that line tells the whole story.”

The writing process for Wierzbicki is exhausting but rewarding. “It's really hard and daunting,” he admits, “There's so much waste for everything that I end up keeping, and it takes just so fucking long, but pays off in, I guess, a cathartic sense. In the end, when a song's finished, it's because it's something that we're satisfied with. I don't know if it's good, or if people can relate to it or anything. For me, I'm just writing until there's something on the page that feels like a complete thought.”

Like Wierzbicki, Arnott's songwriting is both stylistic and artistic; he perceives his process as similarly visceral, only more visual and less narrative. “I come from a visual background,” he says, “and tend to approach songwriting in a similar way. A lot of times, it's the process of visualizing an idea or the embedded imagery of certain words rather than constructing the components of a story.” These images, Arnott argues, need to be vibrant and evocative and, most importantly, meaningful to him before they can be breathed to his listeners. “I'm a quiet guy,” he adds, “and the things that usually come out onto the paper have to feel significant enough in order for me to want to express them to anyone. I have a hard time thinking of myself as a writer, and, a lot of times, it's a struggle.”

The song “Branches” from the band's 2010 single on Dine Alone exhibits Arnott's images excellently. Against the bright, stretching wall of trebly Telecaster and Rickenbacker chords, his images hang like impressionistic paintings, one next to another, only they express more than the merely visual. “There's a wild beast howling / over the hills tonight,” Arnott gnarls during the first verse, “The smell of foreign air / in familiar light. / And in the broken homes / your arms could never mend / lay the ghost of ages / nestled hard inside your bed. / I was always jealous of / all the time it'd spend.”

The most memorable line of “Branches”, however, paints a visually vivid picture: “And your hair seemed brighter,” Arnott sings, “from a hopeless winter.”

Though Arnott and Wierzbicki's songwriting styles are similar (at least aesthetically) the separate processes combine to contribute something abstract to Mockingbird Wish Me Luck's music. “The amount of time that we've known each other definitely contributes to our ideas and aesthetics being, at the least, compatible,” Arnott states. “The differences, though, are what make it interesting. My process generally involves constructing images from whatever particular ideas or feelings I'm trying to express. Nothing is initially too preconceived and what comes out comes out. I think, for Bishop, it tends to be a lot more calculated, though not straightforward.”

When Jeff Casazza from Run For Cover Records asked the band to contribute something to their monthly Subscription Single Series, Wierzbicki and Arnott used the opportunity to challenge themselves and create something they otherwise wouldn't have. Recorded with Kenny Meehan and Ian Romano, who record bands in their barn under the name “Tapes and Plates”, the seven-inch is somehow slimy and gritty and mesmerizing in its simplicy. “Living Weakness” grunts during its gloomy verses and, during its instrumental intro and outro, steadily and dizzily spins. “Ignescent”, easily the band's darkest song to date, relies on muddy clods of chords and quiet, cavernous vocals to convey its mood.

“Recording in a barn was kind of interesting because it had a lower-fi quality,” Wierzbicki explains. “It was a blast. We got to fuck with a lot of different things and, since we knew it was kind of a limited release, it was cool to push each other in different directions artistically and just let the chips lay.”

This is what makes Mockingbird Wish Me Luck meaningful, and this is the abstract element that simmers beneath the surface of their songs. It's the toil, the trial, the approach that the band takes when stalking a song; it's the process. Like Jackson Pollock, whose splattered canvases were an outcome of some creative operation, Wierzbicki and Arnott write music that is as fascinated with its own method as it is its melody. The outcome, of course, is both unforgettable and fleeting. Their music is so raw and rich—melodic enough to which to hum along, moody enough to sense some difference within when the wax stops spinning—which leaves listeners satisfied with the surface, but suspicious that the might be missing something more, something remarkable.

Which is why it's a shame that art is so easy to underestimate.

Wierzbicki and Arnott recorded these songs from their friend Steve Sloane's house on a cold but snowless mid-winter evening. Sloane played drums on one of the tracks, Arnott played an acoustic guitar, and Wierzbicki played his bass distorted through an amp.

"Ignescent" appears on Mockingbird WIsh Me Luck's 2012 single for Run For Cover Records' Subscription Single Series. "Newborn Life teething" is a Novi Split cover; the song originally appeared on the 2003 album Keep Moving.

Visit the band's Bandcamp page for more music.

To download these tracks, click on the song titles and download them from the player at SoundCloud.com.

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The Promise Ring

2012-01-05T17:07:00.007-06:00

“It came to a point on tour one night—before or after a show in California, I don't remember—when we realized that the cons were outweighing the pros,” Davey von Bohlen says, remembering the break-up of his band the Promise Ring in 2002. “I remember the conversation was very not dramatic. We just kind of decided, 'Oh yeah, let's play our last show tomorrow night and that'll be that.' We all happily decided that this was the time to walk away. And who knows if we ignored that what could have happened, for better or worse—and probably both.”

The reason behind the Promise Ring's break-up seems both simple and excusable: Each of the band's members were developing lives and priorities outside the Promise Ring and, in response wanted to take the band in different directions. “And the band was changing a lot as a collective too,” he continues, “It's hard to [totally overhaul a situation] without everyone being unified on the goal.”

“Wow, that seems sad, daddy,” a small voice comments, the singer's son, and suddenly the conversation warps a universe away from the smokey, bustling backstage at some club in California to the von Bohlen's dinner table in Milwaukee almost ten years later, where the clicks of silverware on plastic plates punctuate the discussion. Von Bohlen chuckles a little at his son's remark, perhaps recognizing the disparity between his reminiscence and present reality, before concluding his thought—that the end of the Promise Ring wasn't really sad, that it ended at the right time for the right reasons in the right way.

Guitarist Jason Genwikow's and drummer Dan Didier started the Promise Ring in 1995 with bassist Scott Beschta after their bands broke up. When these three asked von Bohlen to sing and play guitar for this new project, he agreed, but his role in the Promise Ring during its first month seemed distracted. “It was kind of terrible timing for me,” he remembers. “I had one foot out the door all the time, which caused a lot of trouble.” At the time, von Bohlen considered the Promise Ring secondary to Cap'n Jazz, the Chicago emo band for which he strummed a jangly, jittery guitar. “Cap'n Jazz was starting to go really well, so I didn't want to stop that,” he continues, “but that broke up that summer, so the Promise Ring seemed to solve all of our problems.”

Von Bohlen recgonizes when they wrote the song “Watertown Plank” as the moment when the Promise Ring finally found the sound for which it was looking. “They had maybe two songs when I walked in the door and, past that, we wrote maybe three or four more and had a set list,” he says. “That song was in there as one of the original six or seven songs, and it was definitely the song where I was like, 'This song is not like these others. It's not a punk-rock song. Can we play this for people?'”

“Watertown Plank”, which alternates between a subdued, sticky riff and a chorus consisting of soaring, cloudy chords from which von Bohlen's voice sways, caught the attention of Jade Tree Records, which released a second seven-inch and 30 Degrees Everywhere, the band's first full-length. Though this debut served as an exciting an momentous occasion for the Promise Ring, von Bohlen remembers how eager the band was to immediately evolve. “The first record was just poor execution from start to finish,” he laughs. “I remember, even at the time, we were driving back from the studio and already discussing how to recover from it. Of course, it came from feeling self-important. Everything was either the best or the worst thing in the world. I mean, we were twenty, and that's kind of the experience of being twenty.”

For von Bohlen, the story of the Promise Ring is the story of four bandmates that became musicians, and Nothing Feels Good, the band's second full-length, serves as the initiator of that transformation. “It was kind of a perfect marriage of us starting to evolve into musicians,” he argues, “but there was a enough chaos going onto make it interesting and have a good amount of edge.”

Each track captures the edgy, angular, “un-punk” songwriting from the previous releases, but adds a pop sensibility—an element that, from that point forward, became a priority that both propelled and polarized them. “Why Did We Ever Meet” might capture this duality best. Genwikow's guitar buzzes alongside the murmur of Beschta's bassline and glimmers against von Bohlen's in a manner that's both melodic and obtuse. Didier's drum part is sharp and cuts through these three layers of chord with the clean precision of an X-Acto knife, shifting only during a playful, syncopated bridge in which von Bohlen's “ba bas” and “do dos” replace the previous poetic lines of lyrics.

Nothing Feels Good, according to von Bohlen, captured the band at its best—and its worst. “We were relating to each other in the best way,” he says. “We were clicking on all cylinders, and we were probably the best as a band at that point, even though we weren't the best band at that point. And, at the same point, we were on the verge of killing each other too.” Up to and during the recording process, the band's relationship with Beschta broke down, which ultimately led to him being asked to leave the band before Nothing Feels Good was even released.

Despite this setback, and a particularly terrifying van accident while on tour, the band rebounded with Very Emergency, the Promise Ring's third record and perhaps their roundest and most accessible. The one-two punch of “Happiness Is All the Rage” and “Emergency! Emergency!”, the record's opener and second song respectively, showcases von Bohlen's ability to craft a catchy hook and hang it from a simple, straight clothesline. “I think by the third record,” von Bohlen recalls, “we had gotten really good at that one thing we started to understand that we were good at. So that record has more perfect endings, but suffered from having less edge.

“Most of this happened without any real conscious decision-making,” he continues, “which is probably why our sound really blew up by the fourth record; we couldn't literally look ourselves in the mirror and make another record that sounded like that.”

Of course, this wasn't the only reason why wood/water, the band's fourth full-length and first record away from Jade Tree, ended up sounding so different than the Promise Ring's previous output. Von Bohlen began suffering from headaches, which amplified during the recording of Very Emergency and escalated to a debilitating point. When it was discovered that von Bohlen had a brain tumor, it put the Promise Ring on hold for a while.

“That sort of stopped us enough,” von Bohlen says, “We pretty much had been going a hundred miles an hour from when we were twenty until we were twenty-seven or eight. When I got sick and we had to cancel one tour, and we didn't really plan a tour after it, everybody for the first time in a decade focused on their personal lives. We had never been home long enough to curate relationships with other people. Anything you wanted to do outside of the music was a hobby, and not a hobby that you could spend any sort of time on because, if you did, it just got in the way, and that was not an option.

Though the band members were able to finally develop identities apart from the Promise Ring, their lives became obstacles when trying to put the pieces back together. “We probably made the record at least once, maybe twice, that would have fit nicely between Very Emergency and wood/water,” von Bohlen recalls, “but we didn't release it because we were at home; it was the first time we weren't touring and constantly putting out records. So when wood/water came it, it was a totally natural progression for us.”

Comprised of complex, mesmerizing ballads, wood/water was not a natural progression for many of the Promise Ring's fans. Though the songs exhibited Very Emergency's emphasis on pop, they were missing the crunch, edge, and energy of the band's previous releases. On “Become One Anything One Time”, von Bohlen's voice creaks at the brink of a whisper as acoustic guitars shuffle on either side. Similarly, on “Stop Playing Guitar”, a comparatively active track, Didier's drums are as simple as ever, but slower, setting the foundation (along with a piano's steady heartbeat) for Genwikow's cursive guitar lead as blooms into one of the few distorted chords on the album. Though the record is easily the most beautiful in the Promise Ring's discography, it's somehow the most startling and, shortly after its release, the band broke up.

As von Bohlen continues making music with Didier in Maritime—who released their fourth record, Human Hearts, in the spring of 2011—he's had time to ponder the impact of the Promise Ring. “The band was really polarizing when we were together,” von Bohlen says, “and it's continued—probably exponentially grown in both directions—in the time that we haven't been a band. When people come up to me and say, 'You guys are the biggest band and changed everything!' I assume that they're exaggerating our actual impact, since the only people who talk to us about it are in favor of us. In my mind, it's less than people say it is. But a lot of time has passed, too, so even we forget where it was.”

He will, however, receive a reminder soon. In November of 2011, a Twitter account called ThePromiseRing tweeted, “Hello, again...”, igniting excitement and speculation among fans and the music media alike. Less than a week later, Promise Ring tickets went on sale at two Midwestern venues—Turner Hall in Milwaukee and the Metro in Chicago—and Didier verified with AltPress that the band was releasing a rarities compilation on Dangerbird Records.

Considering the explosive response, announcing the Promise Ring reunion via Twitter seemed like a prudent PR maneuver. “After we started that whole little Twitter thing,” von Bohlen snickers, “Dan and I were talking to somebody who said, 'It seemed so calculated,' and I was like, 'Really?' Because when I think of calculated, I don't think of us.” In truth, the initial tweet, along with the week's worth of micro-blogging that followed, was posted on a playful whim; beyond the two confirmed shows and the rarities record, von Bohlen and his band hadn't yet solidified anything else.

“It's funny,” he says relaxing at his empty dinner table, his two boys having removed themselves from the boring interview to play elsewhere in the house. “[The Promise Ring hasn't] actually been in the same room yet,” he laughs. “We'd like to play some shows throughout the year, but we don't really know how many.” It depends, he says, on what the rest of the Promise Ring wants from this reunion, and what their new lives will allow. Von Bohlen and his bandmates—including Scott Schoenbeck, who recorded bass on Very Emergency and toured in its support—have been rearranging their lives to allow for this reunion, and the timing, at least for von Bohlen, won't get better. “I would like to play with these guys again, but I don't really want to be an old guy playing the songs I wrote forty years ago,” he laughs. “If we're going to do it, I prefer to do it now while we're still relevant and capable musicians.”

If the story of the Promise Ring is the story of four bandmates that became musicians, as von Bohlen says it is, this reunion will write that last chapter—the one in which the members have moved on and learned to live happily ever after. “Hopefully,” he explains, “it will put a back cover on all this.”

Von Bohlen recorded these songs from his home in Milwaukee, WI around dinner time on the first evening of the year. Because his two boys were playing laundry-basketball, he performed the songs in the relative quiet of the bathroom (though one can still hear his boys playing and dog barking occasionally in the background).

"Skips a Beat (Over You)" appears on the Promise Ring's 1999 record titled Very Emergency, and "Bread & Coffee" appears on their 2002 wood/water. "Call Me Home" was recorded as a b-side for Maritime's 2006 We, the Vehicles and appeared on the record's vinyl release. "We Only Have Each Other in the Night" is a cover a song written by Mark Mallman (which whom von Bohlen went to high school); it originally appeared on Mallman's 2000 album I Lost My Life and Lived to Tell About It.

Visit the band's Facebook page for more music.

To download these tracks, click on the song titles and download them from the player at SoundCloud.com.

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The Switchboard Sessions, Volume Two

2011-12-29T12:06:00.005-06:00

Spring was stretching into summer the first time I was able to fully absorb Tin Horn Prayer's Get Busy Dying. I was driving to work past Northern Illinois' hazy, humid cornfields and leaning barns, above which the summer sun had risen hours before. I remember how well the album's gritty, gutsy folk matched the fresh and dilapidated landscape, and I smirked knowing that I would be on the phone doing a Switchboard Session with them within the week.

Singer and guitarist Andy Thomas and I had emailed back and forth a bunch of times to determine a time and a place to record. I had scribbled down several questions about their conception and somewhat contradictory sound. I got to know the songs on Get Busy Dying—the lyrical themes that connected them, the instruments that contributed each's mood, which of the band's three singers sang on which, and so on. It was my twenty-seventh interview for the site, so these preparations were a familiar part of my process and prepared me fairly well.

I wasn't prepared for Thomas' performance, though.

He recorded it while he was waiting for his bandmates Mike Hererra and Scooter James to arrive at his girlfriend's dance studio in Denver, which was the only landline they could secure. Thomas intended it to be on Get Busy Dying but, for whatever reason, it didn't happen and, for some reason, was happy recording it through a phone.

The resonator guitar he strummed sounds gummy over the phone (lacking real resonance, ironically) but makes up for it with thick, chunky sounding chords. As he strummed these in a subdued, syncopated rhythm, Thomas screamed—not the raspy howl that somehow sounds smooth and raw when stretched across an acoustic's strings, but a sincere, core-cramping scream. When he sang, "But I stumble, lord knows I try," his scream implied pain and pure apology, all as his resonator guitar limped eagerly behind him. It freaked me out.

Later, after the interview, Thomas' bandmates each recorded incredible songs (Hererra's was as darkly uplifting as James' was triumphant), but few songs—regardless of whether they were performed in a professional studio or on a Tascam tape recorder—haunt me like Thomas' Switchboard Session does.

If I sound self-indulgent here, I apologize; it's not my intent, nor is it to champion one recording over any other. If anything, the above story is my attempt to make sense of something that still doesn't seem like a logical idea to me. After all, what person would want to record songs over a landline phone, let alone listen to the tracks? Every session I conduct, though, convinces me that this project reveals something special—at least to me. Having initiated thirty-five Switchboard Sessions, I'm still baffled at how recording songs over the phone can capture real, raw emotion so effectively and expel those elements that make music meaningful.

I'm also still in awe at how "right" some musicians sound over a dusty, muffled landline. For some reason, the telephone captures Evan Weiss' dynamic, quiet charm with the same degree of success that it captures Tom Gabel's spitting fury. Likewise, the raw, rustic way in which it captures Greenland is Melting's brand of bluegrass is complimentary, as is the way that it captures the Copyrights' buzzy, sort-of-experimental simplicity. And I'll still argue that the process of recording stripped down songs over the phone is an equalizer, where dizzying post-punk firebomb can become delicate and perfectly placed beside smokey folk song.

Hopefully, all of this comes across on The Switchboard Sessions, Volume Two, which you can download as a compilation below.

Like last year, I'm still not sure if anyone would want to download this, let alone burn it onto a CD and slide it into a printed sleeve, but I've included a PDF with instructions in case anyone is feeling crafty (and let me know if you do; it'll make my day). Also, because of limitations on my SoundCloud account, I'll be removing some tracks from their features; please contact me if you're interested in any tracks that are no longer accessible.

Thanks to anyone who reads, listens, and supports the Switchboard Sessions. I'm not sure why you do. This little project is fulfilling and fun for me, and it has exposed me to music that I'm not sure I'd know about otherwise. Like any blog (or, really, any creative internet undertaking), it's difficult to tell whether (and why) anyone cares. Knowing that at least a couple people do means more to me than you will believe.

Finally, thanks to all the bands and musicians who have recorded with me this year. Each of the bands I feature on this site—new finds or old favorites—are those that, I feel, is making the most meaningful and incredible music. Buy something from them, see them play live, and support them in every way you can.

It's impossible to express what it feels like to talk to the musicians I admire most, let alone listen to them as they play a private performance for me. Every time, it gives me goosebumps; sometimes, it freaks me out.

Download The Switchboard Sessions, Volume Two

1. “Stumble” by Tin Horn Prayer
2. “The Nausea” by Against Me!
3. “Canseco” by Banquets
4. “I Wasn't There” by the Fucking Cops
5. “Seamless Copper” by Dan Webb and the Spiders
6. “Stormy Weather” by the Copyrights
7. “Dark Side of the Super Moon” by Devon Kay and the Solutions
8. “3/4 Eleanor / Passing Days” by Elway
9. “Wicker Chair” by Greenland is Melting
10. “Not Superstitious” by Franz Nicolay
11. “The Frames the Used to Greet Me” by Into It. Over It.
12. “My Drug Buddy” by Great Cynics
13. “Service with a Smile” by How Dare You
14. “Leon” by Larcenist
15. “No Big Deal” by Ninja Gun
16. “Canadian Club” by Restorations
17. “Religion on the Radio” by Polar Bear Club

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Best of 2011

2011-12-21T12:11:00.015-06:00

Any regular readers of the Switchboard Sessions know that, even though I keep myself out of the features I write, they aren't objective, nor are they attempting to be. Inherent in each post is a sense that I adore these musicians and their music. Sure, I try to write features that are journalistic in tone and style, but I am also trying to promote these artists because I feel they deserve it; otherwise, I wouldn't have asked them to participate.

I suppose it's that realization, along with the acceptance that this whole website is self-indulgent, that allows me to post a "Best of 2011" list here. I've never done this before (though Punknews.org posted my "Best of 2010" list last year, which was pretty cool), based on the generally assumption that no one cares about my music taste and, if they did, they could sense it based on which musicians I feature here and what I write about them. This year, though--in true blogger fashion--I thought I'd post mine. Hopefully, you discover someone new from it; 2011 was a particularly awesome year for music, at least for me.

-Dane Erbach

Long Ones...

10. Bomb the Music Industry!

Vacation

Quote Unquote Records and Really Records
What's remarkable about Vacation is how well Jeff Rosenstock and his collective of multi-instrumentalists capture the raw, restless humanity of their previous punk-ska exploits in something more fundamentally accessible and straightforward, despite the fuzz, endless layers, and occasional recklessnes.

9. Great Cynics
Don't Need Much
Kind of Like Records
The breezy, bright demeanor of Don't Need Much, its singalong choruses and heavy strumming, seems to express the exuberance of being a twenty-something; a careful listen, though, reveals that Giles Bidder's lyrics are about boredom, bumming around, biding time, friendships lost, and found love—the realities of young adulthood.

Click here to check out the Switchboard Session with Great Cynics

Press play below to hear "Cider for Breakfast" from Don't Need Much

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://fest10.bandcamp.com/track/great-cynics-cider-for-breakfast"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Great Cynics - Cider for Breakfast by fest10&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

8. Spraynard

Funtitled
Asian Man Records
Pat Graham's guitar seems to scuttle (and, sometimes, recline uncomfortably) across Pat Ware's already antsy bass lines on Funtitled, and their voices seem to shove each other back and forth throughout the record. Somehow, though, the end result is collaborative, constructive, positive, and, above all, playful.

7. Joyce Manor
Joyce Manor
6131 Records
There are times on Joyce Manor's first full-length where the song seems stressed enough to splinter into pieces; the guitars squeal wildly over seemingly stumbling drums, and Barry Johnson's peaking vocals rise from it like smoke signaling its imminent collapse. It stays together, though, carries with it the catchiest melodies, and leaves the listener breathless.

Press play below to hear "Leather Jacket" from Joyce Manor

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://joycemanor.bandcamp.com/track/leather-jacket"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Leather Jacket by Joyce Manor&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

6. Direct Hit!
Domesplitter
Kind of Like Records
Direct Hit!'s Domesplitter accurately captures the disorderly camaraderie of a punk house party. Most of Nick Wood's words, pie-eyed and occasionally apocalyptic, are screamed—by him, by his bandmates, by a literal gang of partygoers—against a gale of distorted guitars and machine gun drumming, creating reckless abandon at its most melodic.

Press play below to hear "They Came For Me" from Domesplitter

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5. Mansions
Dig Up the Dead
Burning House Records
The word “haunted” perhaps describes Dig Up the Dead too well. Indeed, Christopher Brower's voice, which feels both frail and forceful, exists in a soundscape alive with buzzing bass lines, spectral strokes of acoustic guitar, the ghostlike wail of feedback, and drumbeats like footsteps in empty rooms. More so, these melodies stalk their listeners.

Press play below to hear "Close That Door" from Dig Up the Dead

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4. Fucked Up
David Comes to Life
Matador Records
Rarely does something so abrasive, so needlessly noisy, seem so catchy, let alone so profound. David Comes to Life contains some semblance of a storyline, as barked by Damien Abraham, encased in a swirl of jangly guitars and hard hit drums, and these layers of melodies, ideas, ambiance make this record memorable and thought-provoking, if not epic.

3. The Copyrights
North Sentinel Island
Red Scare Industries
The four-chord pop-punk found on North Sentinel Island seems so simple on the surface—some songs have only four lines of lyrics; others only ten words' worth—but it's the powerful way those four chords are ordered; the quick, sporadic detours from this order; and a theme that ties so many of the songs together that creates sophistication within simplicity.

Click here to check out the Switchboard Session with the Copyrights

Press play below to hear "Trustees of Modern Chemistry" from North Sentinel Island

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://itsaliverecords.bandcamp.com/track/trustees-of-modern-chemistry"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Trustees Of Modern Chemistry by The Copyrights&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

2. Restorations
Self-Titled
Tiny Engines
Restorations is an anomaly in a scene so desperate to organize. It's what happens when twangy guitars glint against a groaning organ, though; when a bass guitar decides to burst from the behind dense drums; and when a singer like Jon Loudon's husky howl storms in the forefront. Put simply, though, it's rock 'n' roll, it's cavernous and dusty, and it's loud.

Click here to check out the Switchboard Session with Restorations

Press play below to hear "Val d' Or" from Self-Titled

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://tinyengines.bandcamp.com/track/val-d-or"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Val d’ Or by Restorations&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

1. Polar Bear Club
Clash Battle Guilt Pride
Bridge Nine Records
What Polar Bear Club seems to do so expertly on Clash Battle Guilt Pride is cram emotion into each crispy riff, each rich chord, each crack of snare and bristled bass line; when these instruments, each struck with sincere intensity, are matched to Jimmy Stadt's agile growl, the songs ascend past mere music; it becomes an expressive experience for both artist and audience.

Click here to check out the Switchboard Session with Polar Bear Club

Press play below to hear "Killin' It" from Clash Battle Guilt Pride

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://runforcoverrecords.bandcamp.com/track/killin-it"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Killin' It by Polar Bear Club&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Short Ones...

5. forgetters
forgetters
Too Small To Fail
Comprised of four strident, frizzy songs, forgetter's first release doesn't feel punk-rock; it feels familiar (maybe due to Blake Schwarzenbach's bluesy croon) and dark, comprised of complex chords and startling dynamics, despite the straight-forward drumbeats. It's for the better that this is a ferocious rock record, since these weathered musicians get to explore new territory. (Note: Though these four songs were released late last year, they were new to me in 2011).

4. Broadcaster
Joyride
Self-Released

Occasionally, catchy music loses something—its bounce or brilliance—when it's presented through a raw, unpolished recording, but Joyride doesn't seem to suffer from this problem. The drum cracks and pops compliment the grubby, but rich guitars, and Jesse Litwa's modest melodies, which linger long after this ten minute record ends.

Press play below to hear "All Your Friends" from Joyride

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3. Daytrader
Last Days of Rome
Run For Cover Records
The songs on Last Days of Rome stop at every point in between stirring, heavy-stepping ballads to blistering fireballs, and Daytrader achieves with sincere musicianship: drums that jump back and forth between double-time; dark, distorted guitars that know when to rise and recede; and singer Tym B's dynamic vocals, which climb from subdued to vicious in a single verse.

Press play below to hear "Kill My Compass" from Last Days of Rome

2. Devon Kay and the Solutions

Never Punt
Johann's Face Records
It's difficult to describe Devon Kay's voice. It's wild, veers from word to word, and sometimes stumbles into an angry rant, but he always hits his notes, and his melodies emerge as coherent and catchy. The punk-rock he plays on Never Punt is a perfect frame for this recklessness, creating something simultaneously untamed—not sloppy—and perfectly pop.

Click here to check out the Switchboard Session with Devon Kay and the Solutions

Press play below to hear "W.W.B.C.D" from Never Punt

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://devonkayandthesolutions.bandcamp.com/track/w-w-b-c-d"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;W.W.B.C.D. by Devon Kay &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp; the Solutions&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

1. Diamond
Don't Lose Your Cool
Self-Released
An EP as polished and impeccably recorded as Don't Lose Your Cool can seem suspicious, but its growling guitars, simple-but-dramatic drumming, and tireless tambourine provide power and substance; Sam Trapkin's voice is soulful without the melodrama, melodic without the whine, absolutely memorable, and makes Diamond's power pop rival-less.

Press play below to hear "The Feeling" from Don't Lose Your Cool

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Devon Kay and the Solutions

2011-12-03T14:03:00.006-06:00

Midway through Devon Kay's account of recording Never Punt, his band's most recent release, his friend and bassist Matt “Campy” Campasano makes a confession: “I listen to our own record almost daily.”

“You loser!” Kay cackles in response.

“Call me a loser, but I love all of our songs,” Campasano says, his voice vivid with sincerity. “I'm incredibly proud of it.”

Kay is kidding, of course, and could not empathize more with his counterpart's confession. “I guess, in short, it's like this: We write music for us,” he says as Campasano yups behind him. “We write what we'd like to hear on the radio. All the songs are really good to us, and I know that sounds weird.”

So what does it mean that Kay and Campasano love and listen to the music they make? Is it narcissistic? Is it selfish? Is it a sign that they're doing something wrong or right? And is it something about which they should be ashamed, or does it make the six songs on Never Punt that much more meaningful?

It's, perhaps, unsurprising that Devon Kay and the Solutions started with just Kay, who felt unfulfilled with the music he was playing at the time. “I was kind of trying to get away from this emo band I was playing in,” he tells, “and it started with these acoustic folk songs that had a little bit of pop punk in them.”

When he was offered a show as Devon Kay, he accepted, but was uninterested in performing a solo set. “I was like, 'Well, I'm going to need a band. I'm not doing this solo.' So I asked Campy, who I played with in a ska band back in high school and we've been hanging out living together forever.” After he asked a few other friends to hop on board, Kay had his Solutions—a full five (or six) piece folk-punk ensemble that included a viola and, occasionally, keyboards. With this lineup, Kay recorded and released Songs to Sing With, a collection of rock songs that ranged from country-colored acoustic tracks to big, barroom bouncers infused with fiddle and girl/guy harmonies.

“After that record, everything fell apart,” Kay continues, causing Campasano to chuckle uncontrollably at the understood understatement.

This breakdown might have been for the better, however, since Kay's songwriting style evolved into something more explosive, more visceral, less folk, and more punk. “I challenge myself to try and write in different styles,” he explains, “but then it always kind of comes back to the style that I write in, which is—I don't even know—but it has pop-punk laced over it.”

At the recommendation of Marc Ruvolo, who owns the record store Buckets O' Blood across the street from where they live in Chicago, Kay and Campasano brought six new songs to Eric Rasmussen to record at Observatory Studios. These songs stray not only stylistically from the first release; Kay admits that, lyrically, their moods are drastically different as well—indignant, desperate, playfully resentful, and painfully candid.

“The first one was very lovey,” he recalls. “I was all love-struck and wanted to write a love record. On [Never Punt], I've come down from that high. I'm broke. I'm pissed. I'm frustrated with nine-to-five retail. I don't have a college degree and I don't want one anymore. Everything came from frustration.”

This frustration is straight-forward on “W.W.B.C.D” (which stands for “What Would Bruce Campbell Do”), Never Punt's second song. “'What Would Bruce Campbell Do' is about relationships,” Kay explains, “getting cheated on, but having to work through it.” During its chorus, Kay's intense, vivid voice seems to flail as he sings, “She starting screaming 'cause I kept on asking questions / she said, 'I'm not okay, I'm not okay.' / I started yelling at the point of comprehension / screaming, 'I'm not okay, I'm not okay / with you falling in love again.'” Later, during a bridge where Campasano's bass jangles with tension and stress, Kay's vocals seem to spiral suddenly out of control, capturing the emotional mess expressed in its lyrics.

Even on Never Punt's sole innocent song, there's a sense of insidiousness. On “Go California”, Kay's guitar chords are gunked in distortion (though not enough to obscure their colors and character), and the drumbeat drives at a bouncy, bumpy tempo. But, when he sings, “You've been comin' around, making my life just a little more bearable. / I moved the gun from my mouth and now my life is a little less terrible. / 'Cause this life is fast and I don't want to live past you,” something seems off.

“'Go California' is the only gushy love song on there,” Kay explains, “but, even then, it's almost so sugary that it's not sincere, and that was kind of the idea. It's like, 'Everything's totally great all the time!' when, inside, I'm not totally sure I should be smiling.”

The EP's most playful track, “Always Tip Your Therapist”, is also among its most interesting and, in a way, captures the dissonance that makes Kay's songwriting special. It starts with a trotting, tramping piano part and Kay's bold vocals, but becomes denser and delicate during a pre-chorus when an airy ambience begins to slowly cloud in the background. “I got locked in my basement when my family lived in the suburbs,” Kay says, “and they had a piano down there. I didn't have a guitar, so all I did was sit around and play piano, and that's what I came up with.” Suddenly, the song detonates; cymbals shoot off like fireworks, guitars rise and rumble, the bass booms, a snare drum crackles like a lit wick, and the song plows powerfully towards a climactic conclusion.

Despite the song's playfulness and power, it too expresses Kay's frustration about becoming an adult. “'Always Tip Your Therapist' is half about oddly falling in love with your therapist because they're paid to listen to you and they make you feel like, even though you're an awful human being, you're right,” he says. “But the second half is all about the whole theme of the record, which is struggling with what growing up is. Is it getting a real job, or is it becoming okay with yourself? That's what I try to touch on with all of [the songs].”

As a whole, Never Punt is musically wild and occasionally reckless, but its mood is always reflective and real; it succeeds at expressing its anger and aggression by serving it on a platter of pop punk (with sides of snide sarcasm and irreverence). It is, in fact, so successful that Ruvolo (who referred them to Rasmussen and Observatory Studios, remember) decided to release it. “It turns out that he runs a record label called Johann's Face Records,” Kay explains, “He was always fucking really nice to us and, when we came back and played what we recorded, he went, 'Awp, I have to put this out.' So he ended up wasting money on us by putting out Never Punt.”

Part of its success, of course, also lies in the fact that Devon Kay and the Solutions—now a three-piece with Ryan Solava pounding the drums—writes, records, and performs music that they love to listen to, regardless of whatever unspoken rules they are supposed to follow.

Though one would assume that most musicians do the same, Kay would argue that it's not necessarily the norm—that, in fact, its frowned upon. “I remember there was a Aziz Ansari skit where he hung out with Kanye West,” he says. “He comes in and Kanye West is sitting in his chair and listening to his own CD with these giant headphones like that Magnavox commercial where all this stuff is blowing backwards. And [Ansari] went on a tirade about it. And I was like, that's actually kind of fucking cool, to sit there and listen to it and be completely happy with it!”

“Make what you want to hear,” he continues. “If you're unhappy with it, do it better. No one's telling you that you can't.” And, because Kay and Campasano can, they will.

Kay recorded these songs, with Campasano providing backup vocals, on a late autumn evening from the house of their friend Sal, who plays bass in Huff. "Unofficial fourth member" and friend Alex Freeman was there during the interview and performance, and provided backup vocals as well.

"W.W.B.C.D." and "Dark Side of the Super Moon" appears on Devon Kay and the Solutions' 201 EP titled Never Punt. "Sell Out" is a Reel Big Fish cover; the song originally appeared on the 1996 album Turn the Radio Off.

The band recently contributed "W.W.B.C.D." for the Behind Punk Mixtape #7 with a ton of other excellent bands. Please consider purchasing this digital mixtape, as all proceeds will be donated to the direct care and support of animals in Russia.

For more music, visit the band's Bandcamp page.

To download these tracks, click on the song titles and download them from the player at SoundCloud.com.

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Dan Webb and the Spiders

2011-11-09T18:21:00.006-06:00

It seems suspiciously easy to pin down Dan Webb and the Spiders, especially when one limits him or herself to a mere first impression.

For example, by the time “City by the Sea Part II”, the first track on 2011's Much Obliged, finishes its first chorus, the listener will no longer find the fuzzy, grumbling guitars jarring, and the beat's thick, dull thump will start to sound more like the snare drum that is producing it. Dan Webb's tenor will seem reckless and rowdy and, since it sounds like it is being squeezed through a bullhorn, really loud. Based on this initial listen, the empty “indie” designation will come easily to the listener's mind—maybe “garage rock,” or some similar genre that interests itself in sounding unkempt—but it will likely cause the listener to stop and ponder.

It's only on the second listen—or the sixth—that the acoustic guitar shambling in the background emerges. And it's on that listen that a subtle piano, which wasn't apparent before, paints the background of each chorus with colorful and complex chords. What seemed smoggy the first time sounds more refined; each distorted guitar is, indeed, dirty, but to differing and interesting degrees, and some even seem clean. Webb's voice, which feels more focused and ferocious with each later listen, is suddenly partnered with Dan Wallace's playful and forceful harmonies, which didn't seem so before.

Suddenly, indie's ambiguous connotations seem unacceptable; suddenly, garage rock's implicit simplicity seems demeaning.

All this makes Dan Webb and the Spiders a band that's difficult for listeners, and Webb, to define. “We are a rock band,” he says, “but that has a really terrible connotation. It's a tricky question. I just direct people to [the music] and say, 'You tell me,' but I know that's a cop-out.” Webb also proposes that they play punk-rock, but is statement is peppered with a similar sense of uncertainty. “That's who we play with mostly, and the circle we operate in,” he explains, “but [my fiance] Hilary [Fiorito] would tell you that we are not a punk band. I don't know. It's the world we come from, so it's hard to understand ourselves in a different context than the one we've grown up in.”

Webb started the Spiders without a style or even an outcome in mind. Instead, he saw it as an outlet to write and record his own music. “I was playing drums in another band and had written a bunch of songs on the side,” he explains. “That's what the first, self-titled record is. I tracked everything by myself and brought it to my friends who all play in other bands that are in the Boston area.” Webb asked them to learn the parts he had written for each song to perform a one-off record release show. “I said, 'Hey, would you guys come together and learn these songs with me? We'll play one show, release this album, and that'll be that.' But it was a lot of fun and people seemed to like it, so we booked another show, and it became a real band.”

These first performances were so fun that, following the release of this self-titled record, Webb decided to bring some new songs to his new bandmates, requesting that, this time, they take part in the recording process. Because of the stylistic contributions of the Spiders, Webb says that the resulting record, 2010's Oh Sure, feels like a significant step forward for the band. “With Oh Sure, we were making a record as a band instead of just learning the songs,” Webb says. “Having Matt Kenney play the drum parts definitely helped it. He plays very differently than I do. It was a lot more high energy and faster; I feel like it's much more of a live record. The first record was more mid-tempo, a little bit stagnant, just all the same thing, but the second one's really got a lot more life to it.”

The release of Oh Sure provided Dan Webb and the Spiders some opportunities they hadn't previously pursued, including their first tour, which took the band to Germany. Likewise, after seeing a review of the record in a magazine, German-based Gunner Records expressed interest in putting out the band's next release. With this renewed purpose and sudden, unprecedented support, Webb and his Spiders sat down to arrange and record Much Obliged.

Maybe Much Obliged's blown-out, explosive sound can be attributed to the setting in which it was recorded (the STARLAB rehearsal space and venue in Somerville, MA that they share with other brother and sister bands) and the way in which it was put to the proverbial tape (live, or at least the principal instruments) but these choices and this outcome was intentional. “It was definitely an aesthetic choice,” Webb recalls. “We wanted do try to sound like we're really loud, and capture a small-studio sort of sound. It is a little bit practical in this case, but I do love how it sounds; even if the circumstances were different, I'd still probably want to work there.”

“There's also something special about writing or rehearsing songs, and then being able to turn around and record them for an actual album in the same comfortable place,” Wallace, the band's bassist, adds. “The songs come out that much better.”

Despite its dinginess and dampness, despite its basement sensibility, a song like “Brothers” captures this comfort. Though Webb's guitar grunts and gurgles beside Chris Amaral's crispier chords and Wallace's low, warbling bass, their simple interplay creates a sound that's solid and simple, not convoluted. “I'd like to tell you that it's okay,” Webb growls during the chorus with an army of harmonies behind him, and a melody emerges from the mud. “Flyover Country” is similarly accessible. Droning, dive-bombing guitars cruise across Kinney's burnt out drumbeat during the song's verses, and they dogfight during its instrumental bridge, but the song never spirals out of control, never explodes into noisy catastrophe.

Webb's warm melodies and thoughtful lyrics also seem to add to this comfort. “In 'Flyover Country', the chorus is pretty clearly talking about where I'm from in Ohio, and what that means, and the preconceived notions about that,” Webb explains. “Then, the verses are random, little bits of imagery that don't really connect to that idea at all, but I think they all sound good together. The feeling I get when I hear them is consistent even if the meaning is a little different. It's very abstract in a way; they're just little assemblages of couplets.”

Of course, after a second (or sixth) careful listen to “Flyover Country” reveals that sneaky acoustic scratching away in the background behind the grumbling electric guitars, and it become clear that these songs are also assemblages, hodge-podged pieces of dissimilar sounds—shiny and dirty, dull and sharp, old and corroded and new and crisp.

And then, when one takes a second step back, it also becomes clear that Dan Webb and the Spiders itself is an assemblage of sorts—a project comprised of members of other bands, sure, but friends willing to not only execute Webb's melodies, but contribute to them.

It's why Dan Webb and his Spiders seem so suspiciously easy to pin down: Despite the melodic simplicity (and the sludge that drips from these melodies), there's a sophistication that the listener may not immediately perceive, created by pieces that fit so seamlessly together that it's surprising (and, later, exciting) to finally identify it as the assemblage that it is. Much Obliged is proof that the most seemingly simple and predictable art can be, sometimes, the most complex and impressive.

Webb and Wallace recorded these songs on one of the last days of autumn from the box office of the infamous Middle East Nightclub in Cambridge, MA. During the interview, a sound check taking place downstairs obscured some of the conversation.

"Seamless Copper" and "28 Years" appears on Band's 2011 record titled Much Obliged. "Bad Day for Breaking Up" is a Dopamines cover; the song was originally recorded for the band's 2008 self-titled album, but was never released.

Visit the band's Bandcamp page for more music.

To download these tracks, click on the song titles and download them from the player at SoundCloud.com.

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Banquets

2011-10-02T10:46:00.008-05:00

“I have a buddy who can be very critical about everything music related,” says Travis Omilian. “He tweeted the other day, saying that I might have written the punkest lyrics of the year when I wrote, 'I've pissed in your garden / Now nothing's gonna grow.' I was like, 'Alright, cool!'”

And then he laughs, not only at the fact that his friend made such an amusing assessment, but also at the lyrics themselves. See, Omilian, the guitarist and vocalist for Banquets, has never considered himself the sort of songwriter who would sing so bluntly about what's on his mind. “I've always had this thing since I've started writing lyrics where I'd dance around a subject,” he admits. Things are different on Top Button, Bottom Shelf, the New Jersey-based band's first full-length, though; on these songs, he decided to be more direct, to sing about what was bothering him, and to not blanket it with ambiguity.

The result is a fiery and fierce punk-rock record, one that sort of surprised Omilian, especially when he realized where this new lyrical philosophy took him. “I joked with Will [Putney], the dude who produced it with us, after listening to some of the lyrics,” he says. “I was like, 'Wow, I've never said “piss” and “shit” so much.' I'm kind of happy with that.”

Despite this newfound directness, Omilian's lyrics are poetic and match the mood of the music. “Forever Bender”, for example (the one with the aforementioned garden pissing), thunders and roars with ragged guitar chords—the sort that, though dipped in distortion, feel full and warm like the air seconds before a storm breaks. The song's torrential tempo during its chorus batters down on Omilian's voice as it pierces through the downpour; his words feel as agitated as the song. “You'll run away endlessly / Eat your words, ignore all the shame / We could be 'never were,' 'never speak,'” he sings before a wall of “woahs” provides a shelter of sorts from this storm.

Other songs, like “Sometimes A Wolf”, may not include unruly images, but express a message that is personal and important to Omilian. As Chris Larsen's bass thumps in the background behind Pete Murphy's throbbing toms, Omilian sings, “We tried to keep it light / We tried to cut it off / There's no amount of hell avoiding / something that we both want,” as his guitar jangles in the background. Suddenly, Dave Frenson's guitar slides into the song while Omilian continues, “So we ran with it, never went for air / We were innocent, but we knew that there was something there.” The song continues to swell—chords become thicker and climb across each other as Murphy hops onto his ride cymbal—before erupting into its final, climatic chorus.

“Sometimes A Wolf” was a statement that Omilian needed to make. “It was a big deal when my girlfriend and I got together,” he explains. “Other people had a problem with [our relationship], so I was like, 'this is what it is.' I just put it on the table.” He snickers at this statement before concluding, “When you're thirty, nothing matters as long as you're happy.”

Top Button, Bottom Shelf, which was released by Black Numbers at the end of the summer in 2011, serves as an musical step forward for Omilian, and in more ways than his direct lyrical delivery.

After leaving the band Let Me Run in 2009, he wondered whether or not playing punk-rock would continue to be part of his life. “I came home and I was pretty much like, 'I'm done with music for a while. I don't need to do it anymore,'” Omilian explains. “I decided, though, that, if something came up, I'd jam here and there.” Something did come up, though, when Frenson asked Omilian to join him in Jersey City with Larsen and Murphy. “I went up there and had a blast, so we decided to do it a little more permanent—not full time, just get together and play every week.”

From this foundation, Banquets built themselves into a recognized and respected punk-rock band with relative speed and ease, considering that they aren't able to tour full-time. Part of this has to do with the resources available to them. “Dave does a label called Black Numbers with a kid that I went to high school with named Phil [Battiato],” Omilian says, “so we went and recorded the first six songs that we wrote and put four on a seven-inch.”

The resulting record, titled This is Our Concern, Dude, is as catchy as it is coarse and attracted the attention of Punknews.Org, which put the EP on its “Top Ten of 2010” list. It also caught the ear of a fledgling label from Germany called Coffeebreath and Heartache. “Toby [from Coffeebreath and Heartache] is a kid I met through my time in Let Me Run and asked if he could put out the six songs we that we had recorded on a twelve-inch record with one side hand-screened.” Less than a year after their formation, the band was asked to play The Fest, the annual punk-rock pilgrimage in Gainesville, Florida—a sign that, at least in the realm of punk-rock, they had acquired some credibility.

In many ways, then, Top Button, Bottom Shelf is a representation of how much Banquets has come into its own—both as a band in a complex and convoluted music industry, and as a set of songwriters. And Omilian's more direct lyrics is only one way in which he's matured; in these lyrics, he tells the story of his own emergence as an individual, about finally finding and being comfortable with who he is. The record's first and second songs—”377” and “Just Me and My Canseco Rookie Card”—may demonstrate this theme most deliberately. “Those are about me moving to Jersey City and Dave and I living there the first year,” Omilian explains. “It's about how I took that step in my life to get to who I am now.”

And that's the best part: Though it looks like Omilian is satisfied with his life and his lyrics, he's still pushing his songwriting in more direct, more pensive, and more personal directions; in other words, he's pushing himself to be a better songwriter. And, though it seems like Banquets have found themselves and their sound as musicians, they haven't stopped searching. And, though it appears that they have grown significantly is less than two years, they're still growing.

And, though it seems like Top Button, Bottom Shelf is evidence enough that the band has built something interesting and significant, this push, this search, this growth—this is the evidence that Banquets has created (and will continue to create) interesting, significant art.

Omilian recorded these songs from his parents' house in New Jersey on a September evening a couple of days before the band opened for Samiam and Walter Schreifels at Asbury Lanes. Frenson was hoping to join Omilian during the session, but complications involving jobs and rides got in the way.

"Just Me and My Canseco Rookie Card" and "Sound of Money" both appear on Band's 2011 record titled Top Button, Bottom Shelf.

Visit the band's website for more music, or visit the band's Punknews.Org profile to steam Top Button, Bottom Shelf in its entirety.

To download these tracks, click on the song titles and download them from the player at SoundCloud.com.

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Polar Bear Club

2011-09-11T11:38:00.005-05:00

Earlier this year, after a string of tours supporting bigger bands on bigger stages, Jimmy Stadt and his band Polar Bear Club returned to play some smaller shows on smaller stages. “I can't remember if it was a headlining show or not,” Stadt says, “but I remember feeling really strange at the first club show back because I was doing things as a front man that only work on the bigger stages—stupid things, like 'everybody put your hands in the air'-type things, crowd participation things like that, where you're trying to get people who have never heard your band to participate in some way.

“I had been doing it at this one spot in a song, and it was so engraved in me to do it,” he continues, stopping only to snicker at himself. “So when we got to that point at the small club show, I started to say it—not as weird as 'put your hands up,' but something like that—and I stopped mid-sentence. I didn't even finish what I was saying! I was like, 'No, that doesn't happen here.'

“And I was just like, 'Yeah, I get it now. It's different,'” he concludes. “I was playing to my peers whereas, on those support tours, I was playing to potential listeners. It took a while to learn that.”

This is the sort of story that can only be told by a band like Polar Bear Club—one that, after paying their dues for so long, might be finally feeling the fruits of their frustrations. But, as the band readies itself to release its third full-length, Clash Battle Guilt Pride on Bridge Nine Records, Stadt wonders whether or not these fruits, which seem to be sprouting in surprising places, are the ones for which they've been waiting. “I was thinking about this today as I was looking through the newest Alternative Press where our album review was,” he explains. “I was reading it to see what they said when I stopped to think, 'Man, that's my face in this magazine on the shelf in this store that I've been coming to my whole life.' It's very strange and weird and cool. Someone from the outside might see that and think, 'Woah, Jimmy Stadt, he must be doing well.'”

Despite these promising signs, something inside Stadt doubts that they've turned this proverbial corner; to him, it seems that they're still paying dues. After all, Polar Bear Club spent most of 2010 and 2011 in supporting slots on the AP, Take Action, and Warped Tours. Stadt is still waiting to determine where his band stands, and whether or not it matters. “I think we're right on the cusp of seeing if we're still paying our dues,” he admits, “but I say that loosely because, even the bands we've been supporting—bands like Bayside that can play the House of Blues-level—even those bands feel like they're paying their dues. I wonder if I'm just always going to feel that way, and if it's just about the next thing, the next step.”

Stadt and the rest of Polar Bear Club address some of these doubts on Clash Battle Guilt Pride. “A lot of the songs on the record have to do with ambition,” he explains. “I have all these dreams about this band, but what if they don't happen? I've never really thought about that, about the other side of the coin.”

“Pawner” captures this ambition (and its counterpart uncertainty) with subdued intensity. Crisp, steely chords, struck and held for whole measures, make up most of this song's melody. The other half is comprised of Stadt's coarse wail. “I've to take my grab at something great,” he repeats between verses, his voice hopping from chord to ringing chord in intensities ranging from real to raw and fierce. From this uneasy silence, the song builds suddenly into something that plods powerfully, forcefully; groaning, agitated guitar riffs bounce around Emmett Menke's simple, pummeling drum part and Stadt's growl. The song seems to build until its final chord, from which the rest of the record rises.

In the song's initial melodic emptiness, Stadt explains, there's no where for its message to hide, which is part of the reason why “Pawner” encapsulates Clash Battle Guilt Pride. “That song brings to the forefront all the subtleties of the rest of the album,” he says, “and sort of shows you what the whole album is about. Everything else has those themes and motifs sewn into them, whereas, in 'Pawner', it's all right there for you. It's really one of the most different songs we've done.”

If Clash Battle Guilt Pride is a record that weighs the risks of ambition and questions the band's status in a dubious music industry, it's also one that displays a band pushing its sound in courageous but consistent directions. “Killin' It”, which rises from “Pawner”'s dust, is about as heavy and hard-hitting as Polar Bear Club gets. Throughout it, Chris Browne's guitar grunts alongside Erik “Goose” Henning's bellowing bass as Nate Morris' snarling leads add a depth to this din; these instruments stalk and pounce in time together like animals hunting in a pack. Still, the song's focus remains melodic, reinforced by the “woahs” that float in and out of each chorus.

For Stadt, “Killin' It” suggests that, perhaps, Polar Bear Club has taken that next step, at least musically. “It was the first song we wrote for the record, and had been written for quite a while,” he shares. “I think that song had such a new energy for us. It was really driving, and heavy, but not heavy, and sort of groovy. We were just really into that song, and it helped us write the whole rest of the record.”

Still, it's difficult for Stadt to tell where his band stands in the grand scheme of this dusty industry. Is Polar Bear Club a big band or a small band, and does it matter?

As Polar Bear Club prepares for its first headlining tour in support of Clash Battle Guilt Pride, Stadt is desperate to resist any assumptions about what its success might mean—or what might happen if this record doesn't sell as well—and in what direction they may move as a result. “No two bands have the same trajectory,” he says, “so I don't want to say that, 'If this tour or record doesn't “work out,” then we're done.' People still like our music and it's not stale to them yet. We're still doing new things and getting new listeners. I think as long as we're doing that, we'll always be a band.” Maybe that's the criteria for assessing a band's standing; maybe this means that Polar Bear Club has “made it”.

This may explain Stadt's discomfort and confusion—why it felt strange to play to an audience that already appreciated Polar Bear Club, or to see himself in a magazine. For him, it doesn't feel like his band is doing anything different than they were last year, or the year before.

But maybe, if success is acquired with integrity and talent, that's how success is supposed to feel.

Stadt recorded these songs at his parents' house in Rochester, NY on one of the first days of the autumn. After bringing the phone to the garage, he decided his mom's piano room, where she gives piano lessons, would be best. The next day, Stadt and Polar Bear Club were set to start their headlining tour in support of Clash Battle Guilt Pride.

"Religion on the Radio" appears on Polar Bear Club's 2011 record titled Clash Battle Guilt Pride. "Building" is a Embrace cover; the song originally appeared on the band's 1987 self-titled record.

This is the second session that Stadt recorded for the Switchboard Sessions. Read and listen to the first session here.

Visit the band's Facebook page for more music.

To download these tracks, click on the song titles and download them from the player at SoundCloud.com.

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Into It. Over It.

2011-09-02T17:27:00.010-05:00

Singer and guitarist Evan Weiss seems to be an exceptionally organized thinker.

This is particularly apparent in the manner with which he structures his songwriting. On 52 Songs, for example, Weiss set out to write record a single song every week for an entire year. “Basically,” he explains, “I figured I'd start on my birthday, and do my entire twenty-third year, so I booked studio time every Wednesday night from the week of my birthday until the following year.” Each week, he posted the new song online for free. Naming this new project Into It. Over It. (a reference to a line of lyrics and the experiment's instantaneous turnaround), he released fifty-two songs as a double CD in the summer of 2009 with help from No Sleep Records.

Despite these self-imposed deadlines, which Weiss admits he occasionally came very close to crossing, he succeeded with this experiment and cites his urge to organize as a secret to his sucess. “I think if I didn't have that structure, I wouldn't get anything done,” he admits.

Burnt out by this songwriting streak, Weiss toured with Damiera for a year before he returned again to Into It. Over It. When he did, though, his organizational nature continued to dictate the way in which he wrote and, for his next batch of songs, Weiss decided to link his songs together lyrically. “Damiera had spent eight weeks on tour,” he explains. “We did all of the United States, and I had a bunch of stories about a bunch of different places that I was telling to a lot of my friends. I realized that I was telling these stories so much that I should just write songs about them.” Naming them after the towns in which these stories were set, he suddenly had a collection of tunes with a thoughtful thematic consistency.

These songs, which were written and recorded across a two-year span, appeared on splits alongside bands like CSTVT, Everyone Everywhere, Such Gold, Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate), and others before being collected by Top Shelf Records and released as Twelve Towns. Like the locations that inspired them, each of these songs has a distinct character and sound—from the angular and agitated “Washington, DC”, on which Weiss belts, “We will stand your ground if you don't really know how,” to the acoustic “Cambridge, MA”, a song that sparkles delicately even as a percussive cadence pounds in its forefront.

It's probably the meticulous manner in which 52 Weeks and Twelve Towns were organized that prompted Weiss to write and record Proper without the previous restrictions.

The result is a record that feels whole; these twelve songs, rather than being tied together conceptually, are musically one. More importantly, their moods match. “Where Your Nights Often End” bounces soulfully. Driven by the click of drummer Nick Wakim's rim taps and a rubber band bass-line, Weiss' delicately distorted guitar slips into the background, becoming less a melody and more its echo. When Weiss sings, “You play the part of the thoughtless romantic / and your busy rotation of what goes wrong, / but I can't make the lines out to carry us along,” it becomes clear that this song, despite its bounce, is both sunny and somber.

Then there's “Connecticut Steps”, a stirring song with a soft, throbbing beat. On it, the quiet, incessant drone of feedback hangs like a haze above the song's quietly growling guitars and Weiss' lyrics, which describe the emotional moment that he learned that his friend Mitch Dubey was dead. “Mitch was a friend of ours who ran shows in Connecticut,” Weiss says. “We were playing in Brooklyn and we needed a place to stay in Connecticut where the next show was. Our friend Greg put us in touch with Mitch, but we had never spoke to him or before.

“We ended up getting to his house at like 4 AM,” he continues. “He was totally accommodating from the second we met him. He even hung out with us and talked to us before we he went to bed, even though had to be at work at 9 AM the next day. When he finished work the next day, he came home and made coffee and food for us, and went out with us to go to the record store, and made sure we had dinner, and did the show really well. Ever since then, whenever I was going through Connecticut, we'd always hang out.

“You know when people say, 'So and so is the best dude'?” he adds. “Mitch really was the best dude.”

Weiss was in Baton Rouge, LA when he received the text from Dubey's roommate. He later learned that Dubey had been murdered, shot in his home by an armed gunman in front of his roommates after trying to reason peacefully with the intruder. “It was just a bad day,” Weiss remembers. “I couldn't really relate to anybody about what had just happened or talk about it, or grieve with anybody. It was a really helpless situation—really, really rough.”

Despite its sad subject matter, “Connecticut Steps” is steeped in a strange sense of optimism and hope. The song sounds like a sunrise, not a sunset, and captures the conflicted mood that permeates throughout Proper.

To say there isn't some thematic thread in Proper is an incomplete assessment, though. “It's pretty much about the past year living in Chicago and all of the changes in my life,” Weiss explains. “I started seeing someone new, and moved into a new apartment. It's all very personal, and takes place in and around my home.” Weiss' home, in fact, serves the role of both a musical and visual muse; photographer Ryan Russell shot vivid black and white photographs of the aforementioned apartment for the album's artwork to encapsulate the personal nature of Proper.

The way in which Weiss organizes his songwriting is only part of the story, though. The music that Weiss composes—which is somehow hard and soft, catchy and complex, emotional and logical—speaks for itself. Though meaningful music is the outcome of his exceptionally organized thinking, Weiss would be the first to tell you that it helps him as a solo singer-songwriter. “With that comes a need to be organized,” he explains. “There's a lot going on and a lot to do.”

And when you've written and recorded ninety-some songs since 2007, there's certainly a lot to do.

Weiss recorded these tracks on one of the last evenings of the summer from his parents' kitchen in Philadelphia, PA. He performed the songs on his mother's guitar. Weiss took a picture of this makeshift studio (click on the thumbnail).

The day prior, he drove twelve hours from Chicago to Philadelphia, where is final destination was at Bookspace to see Everyone Everywhere, the Clippers, and Band Name perform. The day after, Weiss left for his European tour with Koji.

"The Frames That Used to Greet Me" appears on Into It. Over It.'s 2011 record titled Proper. "Augusta, GA" appears on Into It. Over It.'s 2011 record titled Twelve Towns, but originally appeared on a 2010 split with Everyone Everywhere. "Bustin' (Makes Me Feel Good)" is a Iron Chic cover; the song originally appeared on the 2010 album Not Like This; a live version of this cover is performed by Weiss on Top Shelf Records' Fuck Off All Nerds compilation.

Please consider purchasing Fuck Off All Nerds: A Benefit Compilation in Memory of Mitch Dubey from Top Shelf Records. The record features live tracks from Into It. Over It. as well as Algernon Cadwallader, Hostage Calm, the Book Slave, Slingshot Dakota, Jettison, Snowing, and My Heart to Joy (from the band's farewell show). All proceeds will benefit the Dubey family.

Visit the Weiss' Facebook page for more music.

To download these tracks, click on the song titles and download them from the player at SoundCloud.com.

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The Copyrights

2011-08-17T18:51:00.005-05:00

It takes exactly ninety-six seconds for North Sentinel Island, the fourth full-length by the Carbondale-based band the Copyrights, to reveal itself as a pop-punk record.

It's at that ninety-sixth second that “Trustees of Modern Chemistry”, the record's raging opening track, has completed its first verse-chorus cycle, one in which Luck McNeill's rock-solid and straight drums stampede beneath distorted guitars strummed in steady, four-chord clusters. And it's up to this ninety-sixth second that bassist Adam Fletcher's voice has hovered above this blast of hooves and growls, bolstered by the shouts of his bandmates; “How can we make this right,” he sang, “When we're fucked beyond belief tonight?” When the song stops at second ninety-six to take its first breath, North Sentinel Island has already exhibited all of the conventions of modern, Ramones-inspired pop-punk—the sort easily shelved beside bands like Teenage Bottlerocket, Off With Their Heads, or Screeching Weasel.

Still, there's something in the way the guitars veer suddenly and in dangerous directions, or in the suspicious simplicity of its lyrics, which seem less literal than in other pop-punk songs—something that hints that there is more to the Copyrights than their genre suggests. Maybe they're pushing this punk-rock tradition; maybe they're mixing it up somehow.

“Yeah, like we're mixing it up by, you know, playing the same three chords,” Fletcher laughs sarcastically, “and playing the second verse the same as the first. But that's the thing when you give yourself a certain amount of creative boundaries. By being a pop-punk band, we're in a two-minute-song box, and it's got to have loud guitars, and it's got to have a catchy chorus. These are all elements necessary to our song-writing. Whenever we try to flip things around a little bit, though we try to do something a little bit experimental, we never lose that straight-forward songwriting.”

It seems strange (maybe paradoxical) to use the word “experimental” to describe a pop-punk band, but something surfaces on the record's fifth song that's impossible to ignore. In this pushy, punchy song titled “Expatriate Blues”, Fletcher and his bandmates sing, “I'm not homesick, I'm sick of home” before the track retreats into an acoustic outro. And though the next track, “Bow Down”, begins with a sampled description of the isolated, romanticized civilization after which the record is titled, it's “Worn Out Passport”, the proceeding song, that seems to seek it a hiding place.

“Restless Head”, meanwhile, laments the woes of living in a small town when one's ambitions are begging him to do something bigger. “Sleep Better” echoes these same sentiments; amid a bed of “Woahs” and the grumbling guitars of Jeff Funburg and Brett Hunter, the Copyrights shout the song's sole lyrics: “You always sleep better when you don't have any dreams.” Considering this thematic thread—one loosely related to traveling (or at least leaving home) to pursue one's passions—it seems obvious that North Sentinel Island has some sort of conceptual side.

“There ended up being a couple of reoccurring things on the record, maybe because of the time and place where I was writing songs,” says McNeill, who wrote both the album's songs and lyrics. “Traveling and a sense of adventure were kind of a big thing on this record in relation to having a stable—I guess you can say boring—regular life. I sort of tie travel into not growing up and to being in a band.”

“I think a lot of bands in our genre of underground pop-punk stuff or whatnot don't usually attempt to do a record that's a concept record or even with a running theme throughout the record,” Fletcher admits. “It's usually just a collection of their songs. But it's also kind of interesting that people who have heard the record have automatically caught onto that theme.”

This notion, that an “experimental” pop-punk band has made some sort of concept record, probably makes the Copyrights a contradiction, but it also makes North Sentinel Island one of the most thought-provoking punk-rock records of the year. Sure, the Copyrights have placed themselves in a box, as Fletcher says, but they seem to be kicking at its corners and stretching out its sides in an attempt to see how far they can push pop-punk—an admittedly limited genre—without altering its essence.

It may take ninety-six seconds for North Sentinel Island to reveal itself as a pop-punk record, but in a mere thirty-four minutes, the amount of time it takes for this it to play through completely, the Copyrights seem to have set a new standard for pop-punk and written one of the most interesting simple albums in independent music.

The band recorded "Hard-Wired" in Fletcher's basement during a summer afternoon. While McNeill played a drumset made of a crash cymbal and snare, Funburg and Hunter played electric guitars. Fletcher played a bass through a guitar amp with an effects pedal. Following this recording, the landline phone broke down, and the band had to record "Stormy Weather" a week later without McNeill, who was out of town.

These sessions are the first "electric" Switchboard Sessions; almost all of the instruments were not only electric instruments (instead of acoustic), but played through amps.

"Hard-Wired" appears on the Copyrights 2011 record titled North Sentinel Island. "Stormy Weather" is a Kepi Ghoulie cover; the song originally appeared on the 2009 album American Gothic.

Visit the band's Bandcamp page for more music.

To download these tracks, click on the song titles and download them from the player at SoundCloud.com.

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Larcenist

2011-08-04T15:48:00.005-05:00

In 2010, when Larcenist lost one of their songwriters, guitarist Brandon Mastrangelo and the rest of his Boston-based band took some time to re-consider their musical course.

Sure, Mastrangelo and pianist Jonathan Schoek had also been writing songs for Larcenist since the band started, so the loss of this third songwriter didn't disable them. It did, however, disorient them. “Initially, for us, it was hard because it really put things on hold,” Mastrangelo explains. “We needed to decide what we were going to sound like, if it was going to change, and how we were going to move forward. We were a little stagnant for about three or four months and didn't quite know what the next step would be.”

When Mastrangelo, Schoek, and drummer Jonathan Tompkins—the core trio that started Larcenist in 2007—decided to try writing music together again, neither the writing process nor the songs themselves were dramatically different from what they had been before; the vision that these three musicians had for the songs, though, had evolved significantly. “What came out of that were a bunch of stripped down songs,” Mastrangelo says. Unlike Larcenist's self-titled, self-released first full-length—on which the band's folk skeleton is wrapped with firm, full rock 'n' roll muscles; wheezes with country's dusty lungs; and throbs with the impassioned pulse of a punk-rock heart—the band intended to keep the bones of these songs bare.

“The acoustic stuff just worked out really well,” Mastrangelo adds. “Initially, we were going to do this once and pick back up our electric instruments and keep rocking, but we just fell in love with it and just got into the sound. We all decided this is how we wanted to continue to move forward and not try to change up anything again.”

Invigorated by this new vision, Larcenist made some immediate changes before recording these songs. First, bassist Steve Terry abandoned his StingRay for a stand-up bass, an instrument with which he had no previous experience, and taught himself to play. Next, Tompkins decided to downgrade his drums to a simpler set-up. “When we were playing originally, he was playing a really large, six-piece kit,” Mastrangelo explains. “For this record, he basically took a sixteen-inch floor tom and flipped it on its side to turn it into a bass drum. He also plays a snare and a washboard, and he has one little crash cymbal attached to the kick drum, and that's all he's using. He stripped it down and really had to stretch himself to learn how to play a little differently.”

Among the most dramatic additions to Larcenist was Valentin Splett, a Swiss violinist who had been in Boston for six months before he answered the band's Craiglist ad. “We were looking for another string player to fill out this EP and had no intention of making him or her a full time member of the band or anything,” Mastrangelo tells. “We just wanted someone to track these songs, but weren't really having much luck until we came across Val, and it instantly worked.” Splett, who has played violin since he was five and moved to Boston to perform in the symphony, had never previously performed with a rock band. “He's a phenomenal guy,” Mastrangelo continues, “and has quickly become a close friend.”

With this stripped down instrumentation and these additional strings, Larcenist recorded We Become the Hunted, a five song EP that effectively executes their new primitive vision on several levels, including the way in which the record was recorded: live and in a single day. As a result the instruments on a song like “Ocean City, Swallowing” feel as if they've melted together. Splett's violin weaves between the pickets of Schoek's piano, dodges the daubs of Tompkin's tambourine, and swirls around the swishes of brushes swiping against a snare drum; rarely does it emerge for some sort of solo or lead. Mastrangelo's acoustic guitar and Terry's deep, doleful bass act as the song's breath, keeping the beat almost unnoticeably.

Though this same simplicity appears as a lyrical theme throughout We Become the Hunted, it's at its most powerful and present on the EP's opener “Leon”, a song about Mastrangelo's father. “Never been much for fast talking or shiny things / Working on the land and the steel got me where I am today,” Mastrangelo sings, the second verse continuing to shuffle behind him, when his lyrics reveal the speaker's core conflict, “And now I'm raising a family that's caught up in finer things / What's going to happen when I'm not around to fix your kitchen sink / Or hunt to fill the freezer full of meat?”

“It's a song that I think I've been trying to write for a long time,” Mastrangelo admits. “I speak through my father's voice about raising kids that didn't quite appreciate some of the values that he was trying to instill on us at the time—myself and two sisters. Personally, I didn't take much interest in swinging a hammer or going hunting. I look back, though, and I really feel like I missed out on opportunities to be taught a lot of important skills and traits.”

In many ways, We Become the Hunted is an exercise in (and exhibition of) addition by subtraction. Musically, it's a demonstration that power doesn't always come from distortion pedals and Triple Rectifiers; lyrically, it's a plead to appreciate the simplicity of family, friends, youth, and love. Maybe more importantly, though, this EP is proof of the power of searching for and finding one's voice, of taking a risk and following what feels right, regardless of whether it seems sudden or strange or uncertain.

For Larcenist, following what feels right may not mean writing stripped-down songs as much as it means writing songs with friends. “The best thing is that we're all buddies,” Mastrangelo says. “I really feel like we'll be that group of guys where, if a lot of ears don't perk up, we'll still keep writing music in some way, shape, or form.” It just so happens that the former makes the latter more likely, and maybe more fun.

Mastrangelo sent an email initiating this Switchboard Session in February, and faithfully followed up in the summer to nail down a date when there were more dates available. He recorded these songs using the conference phone in the office at which he works on a Sunday afternoon in the summer.

"Leon" appears on Larcenist's 2011 record titled We Become the Hunted. At the time of it's recording, Mastrangelo's second song had yet to be titled and was not intended for any specific release; he does cite a song from Drive By Trucker's most recent album as influential to the song. "Oh My Sweet Carolina" is a Ryan Adams cover; the song originally appeared on the 2000 album Heartbreaker.

Visit the band's Tumblr blog for more music.

To download these tracks, click on the song titles and download them from the player at SoundCloud.com.

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Great Cynics

2011-07-11T12:57:00.005-05:00

When Giles Bidder dubbed his solo project Cynics, it seemed like a perfect fit.

The project itself seemed to emerge suddenly and out of necessity, since some of Bidder's bandmates were preparing to attend college. “It sounds lame talking about it now,” he remembers, “but we had a bit of a band conversation. Half of us wanted to tour for a year or so, just to see how things would happen, and the other half was like, 'This is bullshit. We're never going to do anything with this. This is just fucking stupid punk music,' or whatever. I think I called one of the guys a fucking cynic, and thought in my head at one point, Hey, that would be a pretty cool band name.”

So, Bidder began writing pop-punk songs by himself on his acoustic—wild, lively songs that, though poetic and introspective, might make an entire living room of tipsy listeners shout along despite not knowing the words—and started reaching out to the right people. His earnest, honest songs and personality earned him some lucky opportunities to open for local bands like Apologies, I Have None and tagalong with whatever tour passed through. “If it's just you and an acoustic guitar,” Bidder explains, “it's quite easy to jump on bills.”

These successes, however modest, made the Cynics moniker that much more powerful and demonstrated that Bidder could push past the skepticism, past the pessimism, and fulfill his passion for playing music. “That's the reason I started writing songs under the name Cynics,” he states. “I didn't necessarily know if I was going be writing solo for the rest of this project or whether I'd be in a band, but the name's about when you start a band or start writing a novel—if you're doing anything creative—there's always going to be someone putting you down. It comes down to blocking those from your head, doing what you fucking want to do, and having fun with it.”

This is why, when Bidder received a cease and desist order from Pittsburgh band the Cynics, it was little disappointing.

He was ready to release his first full-length Don't Need Much through Kind of Like Records and Household Name Records when he received the threatening email. Though the jackets and booklets for the records had already been printed, Bidder—with his new bandmates Bob Barrett and Iona Cairns—were more worried about being sued than losing the name that represented their philosophy and challenged naysayers. “At first it was a bummer,” Bidder says, “but Iona, Bob and I got over it pretty quickly.”

“I have this theory that it's the band that makes the name,” he continues. “I mean, when was the last time you saw a band's name and thought, Shit, I'm going to have to check them out because that is a fucking awesome name!? I can only think of two bands ever whose names really stuck out for me before I'd heard anything: The Weakerthans and Calvinball. We're now called Great Cynics and apart from a ball-ache with the LP jackets, it wasn't a big deal.”

The story of Don't Need Much consists of more than the band's name change, though, and begins with Bidder's decision to add drums to his stripped-down acoustic sound.

Following his first tour or two, Bidder recorded and released Stones I've Thrown; this four song EP, consisting of three originals and a cover of Paint It Black's “Memorial Day”, captures the spirit expressed when Bidder gets behind his acoustic guitar. The record's strength is in its simple, bare-bones approach—as each song is almost literally limited to a voice, a guitar, and a handful of handheld percussion instruments (a restless tambourine, the wispy shadow of a shaker, et cetera)—but Bidder wanted his debut to feel fuller, and he wanted Great Cynics to feel less like a project and more like a band.

Bidder didn't know Barrett too well when he tapped him to play drums for Don't Need Much. He had seen Barrett play in bands since he was fifteen, but wasn't sure he'd agree to record a full-length record, let alone become a full-time band member. “He seemed like a nice guy,” Bidder said, “so I gave him a text saying, 'I'm going to do an album with Peter Miles'—this producer that a lot of my friends' bands have recorded with—and he said he was up for it.”

Don't Need Much was recorded quickly and simply, with Bidder and Barrett respectively recording electric guitar and drums live in the same room (which is the reason why the snare on Barrett's drum buzzes belligerently in the background during the intros to songs like “All the Time Every Time”, “Stones I've Thrown”, the opener “Home Measures”, and others—a small detail that makes Don't Need Much seem raw and real, and makes Bidder beam with pride). Bidder added a track of acoustic to some songs, scoring each with its subtle strokes, and producer Miles added bass and Hammond organ. “He learned and recorded the bass for all the songs in about two hours,” Bidder laughs. The entire tracking process took two days total. “I don't get it,” Bidder continues. “Maybe it's because I haven't ever experienced being in a band that does everything perfectly, but I don't understand how a band goes in for two weeks to record an album. We just had fun with it.”

Somehow, despite its added instrumentation, Don't Need Much sounds as simple and sincere as Stones I've Thrown, and it's because Bidder recorded it with the same minimalistic mindset. “Moorhen”, the song that concludes side A, for example, features Bidder with just his Epiphone Broadway, a guitar that grunts and snorts and whinnies with life; attempting to tame this animal as it bucks, Bidder's voice rises and ducks, roars and dims along with its every move. Like its counterpart “My Quiet Lunch Breaks”, which closes side B and also displays Bidder by himself (strumming an acoustic, though, instead of an electric), “Moorhen” is dynamic and dramatic, making it one of Don't Need Much's most powerful songs.

The minimalistic mindset is applied to all ten of the record's tracks, though, and not merely those two solo songs. “Stones I've Thrown”, which was written right after Bidder recorded the initial EP, is a slower song with those same snorting, grunting guitar chords strung between swaying beats. With an airy Hammond hanging above him, Bidder sings about the simple pleasures of friendship. “Everyone has a person in their life that they'll always be walking home with at 2 AM from a party wasted,” Bidder explains about the song's lyrics, “that guy who looks after you when you're passed out, someone you grew up with.”

Bidder would say that the songs that came easiest to him, the ones that he had to think about the least, are, in fact, his favorite tracks. “Like 'Stones I've Thrown', for example,” he explains, “and 'Dave & Angela', which was just a thing where I was hanging around my guitar and that little riff kind of sounded cool to me, so I played it a hundred times and it made a song. As a guitar player, when you play something and it sounds pleasing, you get that sort of buzz. I think I just go off that.”

But that's not to say that Don't Need Much, as a album, is dumbed down, or that Great Cynics is an unsophisticated band. Instead, it makes Don't Need Much a natural, real record, an honest and sincere attempt at making music that feels neither forced nor phony, and that's what Bidder was going for. “I wanted to record an album that sounded human,” he says. “Even doing the vocals, I did the songs one off the other. As soon as I got an alright take for the first song, I'd go to the second song. If I did that in one, Pete wouldn't even stop playing the track; he'd just go to the next one. You can hear me breathing, and you can probably hear me say like, 'fuck!' or 'shit!', and that makes it human.”

In a strange way, it's for the better that Bidder changed the band's name to Great Cynics. After all, they are a band now and no longer some ambitious London boy's solo project; the term “great” does imply some sort of growth. And nothing has really changed about what Bidder is doing; his songs are still simple, still performed with irrepressible passion, and still the sort that can light a room of listeners on fire.

Like it's name, Bidder's band has just become a little, well, bigger.

Bidder recorded these songs from the two bedroom flat that he and his brother share in East London in the early spring. He performed the songs with his Epiphone Broadway instead of an acoustic guitar. At the point that these songs were recorded, the issue with the Cynics name had not yet emerged, nor had Bidder performed live with Barrett and Cairns as a full band.

"Twenty Five" appears on both Great Cynics' 2011 full-length Don't Need Much and the 2011 teaser Dave & Angela EP. "My Quiet Lunch Break" is the closing track from Don't Need Much. "My Drug Buddy" is a Lemonheads cover; the song originally appeared on the 1992 record It's a Shame About Ray.

Visit the band's Tumblr blog for more music.

To download these tracks, click on the song titles and download them from the player at SoundCloud.com.

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Tin Horn Prayer

2011-06-23T13:33:00.004-05:00

Despite its dreary, macabre mood, one can't help but detect a hint of lightheartedness in Get Busy Dying, the first full-length from Tin Horn Prayer.

Take “Crime Scene Cleanup Team”, the record's second song. Ignited and initially driven by the dirty, metallic stutter of Andy Thomas' resonator guitar, the song suddenly inflates halfway through its first chorus with a menagerie of instruments—the stomp of a trap set and squirt of tambourine; the restless beat of a bass guitar, seemingly eager to escape the song's simple structure, and the trebly drone of an electric guitar; a banjo's percussive plunks; an acoustic's confident shuffle and the harsh wheeze of a harmonica—and swaggers along a standard (though somewhat slanted) blues progression. The result is noisy, almost mechanical, but catchy in its own cacophony.

It's levity, though, comes in the form of Thomas' lyrics, which are belted above the stutters and stomps and squirts and drones and plunks and shuffle and wheezes of his bandmates. “Crime scene cleanup team,” he shouts during the chorus, “I'm sorry for the mess I'm gonna make / I know it might seem drastic, but there's only so much shit a man can take.”

Of course, suicide isn't a laughing matter, but the thought of apologizing to the team sent to clean up the aftermath, though dark, is absurd and smirk-worthy. The absurdity is stressed further during the first verse, where Thomas and his bandmates bark, “The first thing that you'll notice as you wander down the hall / is that red Picasso painting that I painted on the wall,” but complicated a little bit by the line that follows: “Tell those bastards at the bank that they one too many goddamn calls.”

In fact, “Crime Scene Cleanup Team” also contains of moments that don't seem funny at all, like when the speaker asks his listeners to, “Tell my mother that I loved her, tell daddy that I tried, / tell my sister that I'm sorry, to be brave, and not to cry.” Though the humor isn't diluted by this sobriety, it makes the song a shade darker by comparison.

“When I wrote 'Crime Scene Cleanup Team', which is obviously pretty macabre but set to this pretty upbeat tempo, I remember telling people that it reminded me of old nursery rhymes,” Thomas says. “It's like reading about 'ashes to ashes, they all fall down,' to your kid and they're jumping around like it's funny, but it's really about the plague. That was my intent with that song, to trick people into hearing this lament about me blowing my brains out.

“But musically, and we try to prove this when we play live, this is supposed to be fun music,” he continues, “music you can get really drunk and dance around to. Despite it's lyrical content and miserable undertones, it's still fun as shit to play. We see people all the time up front and singing along, and that's really important to us.

“What we're trying to get across,” Thomas concludes, “is that, if there's really bad things going on, you can push them aside and still have a good time and party.”

In this way, “Crime Scene Cleanup Team” effectively represents Get Busy Dying, an album that—from side to side, song to song, verse to chorus, line to line, and even verb to verb—treads the thin line between dark humor and true darkness. “The subject matter is from a darker, creepier place,” Thomas explains. “We named the record Get Busy Dying because, after we looked at all the songs that were written, we were like, dude, every song mentions death. Consciously, we weren't thinking about writing songs about shooting oneself or being the devil but, for some reason, that's what we decided to write about when we were in this band.”

Tin Horn Prayer—and, consequentially, this creepiness—started when singer Mike Herrera, who was on tour with the post-hardcore band the Blackout Pact five years ago, met musician Dan Beachy at a party in Florida. “He was a fucking incredible guitar player,” Herrera remembers, “so we started talking about doing a project.” When Herrera was able take a couple of weeks off of touring, he visited Beachy on his West Virginia farm and spent two weeks writing and recording music with him.

When he returned to Denver, the five songs that Herrera wrote went on the back-burner until his friend Eric Epling, formerly of Throwaway Sunshine, was able to help him fine-tune them. Later Thomas, who had just finished his run with Only Thunder, started adding to the songs and contributing his own. “Ironically, he had talked to me at first about playing drums in it,” Thomas says. “I kind of convinced him that he didn't need a drummer at the time and to keep it as stripped down as possible, which is funny now that we have a full band.”

Little by little, Tin Horn Prayer began to bloom as a band. “We ended up getting a bass drum to keep the rhythm,” Thomas explains. “I would stomp on it while we were playing. From there, Mikey started experimenting with a lot of different kinds of instruments. He switched from guitar to banjo and mandolin and, all of a sudden, started playing harmonica. Then, we stumbled upon an old accordion that we thought would be cool to use.” Ethan Steenson was tapped to play bass for the band and a drummer was added to maintain the beat above what was becoming a louder and denser sound. The final addition of Scooter James, formerly of Pinhead Circus, cemented Tin Horn Prayer's six-person lineup. “We all worshipped him for the longest time,” Thomas explains. “Scooter added this whole different element, with his leads and things like that.”

Considering that it's a collection of songs written by three separate songwriters, it's startling how consistent Get Busy Dying is as a record. Whether it's Herrera's anxious and throbbing “Fighting Sleep”, James' deceptively rousing “Crowbait”, or Thomas' “Wretch”, a pleading and desperate song addressed to God, the overarching themes of Get Busy Dying are exhaustion with one's current existence and redemption for despicable deeds done. “We know there's a lot of songs referring to God, or whoever,” Thomas explains, “but it's a lamenting tone where the speaker is kind of admitting his mistakes and hoping someone will help him with that.”

“Our buddy Jim runs this cool venue out here called the Three Kings Tavern,” Herrera continues in an attempt to explain the darkness of Tin Horn Prayer's lyrics. “We were having the same sort of conversation, and he said, 'It makes sense. When you're young, you're mad at the world and you make this angry music, but you get older and you realize you're more pissed off at yourself than anything.'”

“Which really funny,” James says, “because, if you hang out with us for five minutes, you'll realize we're the goofiest bunch of bastards.”

“We're not really miserable,” Thomas explains.

“It's more drunk regret than misery,” Herrera adds, and his bandmates giggle in agreement.

They become stone serious, though, when the song “Memory” is mentioned. It's a song is set to a slow, aimless tempo stirred by Dan Gilbert's vast, voluminous drums. Above this beat, an accordion's chords hover alongside a guitar that meanders like a lost, lonely ghost and Herrera's hoarse voice, which sounds weak, like it's wasting away. Even during the song's chorus and conclusion—where it builds, becomes faster and stirring and strong—it still feels exhausted and desperate and defeated.

“It's a little personal,” Herrera says about “Memory” as nervous laughter flickers from his friends behind him. “It's just one of those songs. That was one of the original songs that I wrote on the farm in West Virginia, living there for two weeks with no TV, sitting in the woods, getting wasted every night. It was kind of a rough point. Two years previous to that were probably the drunkest years of my life.

“Like I said,” he concludes sharply, “a lot of drunk regret—something I needed to get off my chest.” And suddenly, it's questionable whether the “drunk regret” comment before was dark humor or true darkness.

Get Busy Dying is quietly contradictory in this way, and it's as intentional as it is interesting. How a collection of songs can be so thematically dismal (absurdly so in some) and so musically engaging (so danceable, so singable) seems strange and a little suspicious, since many musicians only pen such songs in satire, or ironically, or as parody—or poorly. But, of course, the band's honesty is the very reason why Tin Horn Prayer succeeds. A song like “Crime Scene Cleanup Team” can be absurd and sad because it isn't trying to be either, just as a song like “Memory” can be inspiring or depressing.

It's why six gentlemen brandishing banjos and accordions, acoustic and resonator guitars, mandolins and harmonicas can be considered punk-rock without a second thought; it's also why the same six people can perform rowdy, visceral versions of folk standards—like “Louis Collins”, first recorded by bluesman Mississippi John Hurt in 1928, and an eighteenth century English spiritual like “Wayfaring Stranger”—to praise and applause.

“We played 'Louis Collins' at a show up in Vail,” Thomas states. “We opened for Trampled by Turtles, who has a more traditional bluegrass following. A lot of the people were stoked that we played that song.”

“Yeah, that was actually kind of a big thing for us,” Herrera adds. “We hadn't been playing shows that long when we played that one. And we thought we were bastardizing the genre. There were a few people who came up and said, 'The fact that you guys played that means that you get it. You understand this older music and you can make it your own.'”

It's the difference between novelty and innovation, and the reason why Tin Horn Prayer will never be considered a mere musical knick-knack.

Thomas, James, and Herrera recorded these tracks during a summer evening from the Highlands Dance Studio in Denver, CO. The session was pushed back an hour or so because Thomas' girlfriend, a dancer, was performing at a festival; she allowed the band to use the landline at her studio.

"1939", performed by James and Herrera, appears on Tin Horn Prayer's 2010 record Get Busy Dying. "Dear Friends", performed by Herrera, is a song that, though previously recorded, doesn't appear on a formal Tin Horn Prayer release; the studio recording is available on their Bandcamp page. At the time of its recording for the Switchboard Sessions, "Stumble", performed by Thomas, had not been previously recorded or planned for any formal release, though it was initially intended to appear on Get Busy Dying.

Visit the band's Bandcamp page for more music.

To download these tracks, click on the song titles and download them from the player at SoundCloud.com.

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How Dare You

2011-06-08T13:27:00.006-05:00

On the occasion that the stars stumble into some sort of alignment and the four dudes in Orlando, FL's How Dare You are offered an opportunity to tour and perform with one another every night to audiences across the country—the assumed minimal aspirations of most musicians—guitarist and singer Elliot Meyer would have to carefully consider the offer.

“I think you might get a different answer from some of the other guys,” he explains, “but, for me, it's hard to answer that. Obviously, if everything falls into place and we could make it work, it's something to at least consider. But it's hard for me to see that happening.”

It's not that the band isn't capable of achieving such a level of success. In fact, the band's second full-length The King, The Clown and the Colonel could be one of the best punk-rock albums of the year. Released on Anchorless Records, it includes ten anthemic, sing-along songs, each of which sounds the way an old bottle cap looks: sharp and shiny, but with a little rust around the edges. Considering their knack for crafting songs that balance bristle with brilliance, if its members were willing to sacrifice their comfort and financial stability, How Dare You could easily become one of those lucky bands that “make it”—or at least make enough money to keep recording records and continue touring.

But How Dare You isn't as interested in “making it” or making these sorts of sacrifices. They are happy playing a handful of shows each year, trekking out of town for the occasional festival or weekend tour, and releasing records as they are able. This may make them a bit unconventional as rock 'n' roll goes, but Meyer sees more pros about being in a part-time punk-rock band than cons. “When you're out on the road, if you're touring,” he explains, “[money] doesn't just come to you. You don't know if you're going to get screwed at the show, or if anyone's even going to show up, or if you're going to get paid. Anything can happen.”

Stability is important to Meyer, a father of two who places his family as a priority above his band and manages his brother's bar full-time to provide for them. “It's not as glamorous as it sounds,” he laughs. “I know everyone thinks it's great to be a bartender and work at a bar. It kind of sucks, but it pays the bills. People are always going to want to get drunk.” Still, he prefers bar-tending to playing punk-rock, at least when it comes to the stability it provides “Granted, I don't have the best job in the world, and I don't really like it,” he concedes, “but at least I don't have to worry about eating, or providing for my family.”

How Dare You's purpose as a band, then, isn't to provide any semblance of stability for its members; Meyer and his bandmates have accepted that. Instead, the band's existence serves a separate, yet unsurprising purpose.

A single listen to The King, The Clown and the Colonel establishes that purpose instantly. The record starts with a guitar lead that rolls like a tumbleweed into the foreground; it's met by a deep, tom-driven drum part punctuated by the splash and spray of cymbals, and long, growled chords before falling into a fiery, instrumental intro that sets the tone for the rest of the record. Despite its buoyant melody and momentum, the lyrics of “Hardship”, this opening song, seem pessimistic. Meyer, with bandmate Justin Goldman, sings, “Hey, you've got your head in your hands / Beat down and unrested,” a line reflected in the album's bleak artwork by illustrator Keith Rosson. Suddenly, the song lunges into its more optimistic and uplifting chorus; Goldman and Meyer switch off as they sing, “Here's to a start of better ways / to a paradise inside us all, the perfect place / We want what's ours, prepared to fight / No weapons for this hardship life.”

Before “Hardship” concludes or even climaxes, it breaks down into a tense, slowly swelling bridge propelled by both Zach Swain's percussive kick drum and Seth Dufalla's chunky bass; guitars twinkle and whine and Meyer's muddied voice wanders behind it all. “It's not like a history lesson,” Meyer says of his words in this section, “but I started with the beginning of settlers moving to the West and having to deal with all the hardships that come along with life, and also the hardships people are dealing with now, and trying to incorporate and equate the two.”

“Hardship” isn't a song about being down and out; it's a song about doing something about it.

It's a theme that's reflected directly and indirectly throughout the rest of the record. Even “Cold Shoulders”, the song immediately following “Hardship”, describes two girls left alone to sleep in a car because “Mommy's a drunk, daddy's a renegade” and the heat in their house has been shut off. In the second verse, listeners hear the effect of this scenario: these two girls become as shallow and self-centered as their own parents. As the song scrambles through its conclusion, seconds before the screeches to a halt, Goldman suggests, “We've got to look out outside / We've got to think about someone besides ourselves.” Though it's maybe more allegoric, “Cold Shoulders” speaks similarly about doing something to better one's situation, in this case by asking its audience to consider the consequences one's actions has on others.

“Service With a Smile” speaks more directly about being down and out. Fast and fuming, this third track seethes musically—Swain's drumbeat charges like rabid doberman, and the guitars it chases growl and grunt as aggressively—and lyrically, as Meyer barks about the customers and coworkers that infuriate him at work. “Anxious all the time, but I try to do what's right,” he explains but, as the song starts to smolder, he shouts, “To tell the truth I hope you choke on it / But to your face its just service with a smile / Oh what I'd give to see you lose your breath and turning red / But you're still here and all I can do is tell you to go fuck yourself.”

What's absent from “Service With a Smile”, though, is that tint of optimism, that “take the reigns” moment engrained into so many of the songs on The King, The Clown and the Colonel. It takes a while to realize, though, that How Dare You is the “something” that Meyer is doing about the conflict presented on this track.

Because he works at an uncomfortable, somewhat unsatisfying job, Meyer uses his music as a means of expression and escape. It's ultimately the purpose of How Dare You. “I don't like to complain,” Meyer says, “but, when you've had a bad day and you feel like you just got the shit kicked out of you, music works as an outlet.” Though someone might argue that this makes their music come across as “whiny,” the effect feels far more genuine; it's a real response to real life. How Dare You's music is also uplifting and empowering, though, since it suggests that, regardless of whatever frustrating situation one finds him or herself in, there's a way to escape if one does something about it.

Of course, Meyer says that How Dare You's music isn't intentionally existential, that this thematic thread isn't something that he and his bandmates planned out when they sat down to write The King, the Clown and the Colonel, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that Meyer and How Dare You continue to make the decisions that are best for them and to make meaningful music that responds to the real world around them whether or not the stars ever actually align.

Meyer recorded these tracks on an evening late in the spring from the phone line used to run credit cards at the bar at which he works, since it was the only landline to which he had access.

"Service With a Smile" appears on How Dare You's 2011 record titled The King, The Clown and the Colonel. "Shield Your Eyes" is a Jawbreaker cover; the song originally appeared on the 1991 album Bivouac.

Visit the band's Facebook page for more music.

Sorry, but these songs were taken down due to space constraints. Please download The Switchboard Sessions, Volume Two for a track from this and other sessions recorded in 2011. If you're desperate for a copy of these tracks, please see the "About the Switchboard Sessions" page for info on how to contact the author.

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The Fucking Cops

2011-05-15T12:39:00.023-05:00

Though Jon Rybicki, singer and guitarist for the Fucking Cops, stands behind his band's name, he worries whether or not it could cause listeners to overlook his art. “I'm not sure how the name came about,” he explains, “but I've always kind of regretted it. I had the same exact problem with [my previous band] Vietnam Werewolf. Some people love it, and some people think it's totally stupid, but people definitely remember it."

Fuck You Up With Some Truth, the band's second EP, the Fucking Cops perform exactly the sort of searing, staggering pop-punk that one might expect to hear from a band with such a startling, seemingly defiant title—a visceral, raw, teetering stack of sound reminiscent of punk-rock's infancy. The Fucking Cops are more than their moniker suggests, though—more than even their punk-rock aesthetic insinuates—but it may take more than a single listen to tease out.

The story of the Fucking Cops begins with the end of Vietnam Werewolf, a band in which Rybicki performed alongside drummer Andy Merrill. “We did one tour and our van got stolen with all of our equipment in it on the last day,” he remembers. The band disintegrated shortly thereafter, leaving Rybicki and Merrill wondering whether (and how) to proceed. “A year went by, and Andy and I really wanted to play the same music,” Rybicki continues, “but we didn't want to start Vietnam Werewolf again with new people. I had songs written—kind of for Vietnam Werewolf, but also because I write even if I don't have a band—and we decided to start working on the songs together.”

They developed these songs without deciding if this project would blossom into an actual band or if they would even find other band members. After only two practices, though, Rybicki and Merrill were offered an opportunity to push this project towards some sort of formalization. “My friend Paul, who runs this place called Now That's Class, asked Vietnam Werewolf to play this show with Off With Their Heads,” Rybicki says. “I told Paul, 'Vietnam Werewolf can't play. We're not a band anymore. But we're going to come up with a new band and play that show.'” In a month's time, Rybicki and Merrill had found a guitarist and bassist, taught them the songs, and fulfilled his promise by opening for Off With Their Heads.

This spur-of-the-moment maiden performance inspired Rybicki and Merrill to approach their band, and especially its lineup, differently than they did with previous projects. “We had this idea with the Fucking Cops that it would be me and Andy and whoever,” Rybicki explains, “and, for the first three shows, that's how it was. We didn't have a set lineup."

Slowly, though, a lineup did start to solidify; bassist Shannon Sullivan and guitarist Josh Durocher-Jones began to perform regularly alongside the Fucking Cops' core members. “Shannon played the first Fucking Cops show,” Rybicki explains, “and it has been so long since we've played with someone else because he's an amazing bass player and an amazing singer. It's the same thing with Josh, who played guitar on both records.” Both Sullivan and Durocher-Jones are unable to tour with the Fucking Cops, at least for now. “Shannon has a full-time job that's difficult to get out of,” Rybicki continues, “and Josh has a lot of other things going on too. He's in this stoner-metal band called Howl that's on Relapse, and he just started to do that full-time."

Though both members will likely return to the lineup as their availability increases, it's frustrating for Rybicki to lose talented musicians like Sullivan and Durocher-Jones, even if it's only for one tour. At the same time, though, it's liberating to be able to rotate musicians in and out without having to worry about hurt feelings or breaking up the band, and he hopes it will help set expectations for his audience. “I remember when I was in high school, I really liked Bright Eyes,” Rybicki explains, “and Bright Eyes was always Conor Oberst and whoever. There'd be lots of tours with the same drummer and same guitarist, but no one was going to see Bright Eyes and expect it would necessarily be the same lineup. I think that's a very good thing because it can help a band have longevity and maybe a more concrete vision.

Despite their impermanent positions, Sullivan and Durocher-Jones were seminal in the construction of the Fucking Cops. Both contributed to You Have the Right to Shut the Fuck Up, the band's debut EP, and Fuck You Up With Some Truth, their most recent EP. Released by Kind of Like Records, Bermuda Mohawk Productions, and Big Purple Records, the band's own label, Fuck You Up With Some Truth contains six songs that express the same raw, unrefined spirit captured on the previous EP, but feel more cohesive and consistent. This is likely due, at least in part, to the record's opening track “Gloria” and complementing closer “Gloria Pt. II”. With its bright guitars, fizzing like a bottle full of beer, and frantic, frenetic tempo, “Gloria” tells the story of a man who comes home to find his safe emptied and his girlfriend gone. Matching the protagonist's pain, Rybicki wails, “Now that she left me / I feel broken and empty / I have nothing anymore / I'm getting smashed outside the liquor store.”

“I had started working on a script that had this film noir storyline,” Rybicki explains, “but we never made the movie. I've always wanted to write a song from someone else's perspective, but I've never known how to do it.” Rybicki took this risk by turning his script into the song “Gloria” and was encouraged by the outcome. “I knew right away that I wanted to come back to it, but I didn't necessarily know I was going to write another song for that record, but that's what 'Gloria Pt. II' became.”

With a slower and more sinister musical mood than its counterpart, “Gloria Pt. II” continues the story of this character, who, within the first few seconds of the song, notices a cigarette in his ashtray that isn't his. With the dull buzz of guitars and droning bass draped across Merrill's plodding, apprehensive drumbeat, Rybicki's lyrics inform his listeners that, “Gloria doesn't smoke.” One by one, voices drop into the background, dangle and sway as the song and story climbs towards its tense conclusion, where Rybicki's hero learns that Gloria may not have left him—that “Shawn from the south side smokes that kind of cigarette” and that she may have been abducted.

Rybicki admits, though, that using lyrics to tell a story is somewhat limiting. “I feel like my idea of the story doesn't completely come through in the lyrics,” he says. “If there were pictures to go along with it, I feel like people would get a little more of an idea of what was going on.” Rybicki asked Cleveland artist John G to create a comic to accompany these tracks, which will be included with the physical release of Fuck You Up With Some Truth. The result is dark, dirty, and cold, capturing effectively the conflict and menacing mood of both “Glorias”.

In addition to this fictional narrative, Fuck You Up With Some Truth features songs of a nonfictional nature. “Sweating or Freezing”—the EP's measured and contemplative second track—reflects on a theme that Rybicki addresses several times on the record: the struggles of being in a band on the road. The song's first line, “Forgetting what it feels like / To not be in motion,” was inspired by an eighteen-hour drive that Rybicki spent with his band Sun God on their way back from South-By-Southwest. “When I got back, I started to write the song, but I didn't have that much done,” Rybicki explains. “I was hanging out with Ian [Graham] of Cheap Girls in Lansing and he asked me if I had anything I was working on. I showed him basically that line with the chords I had in mind, and he was like, 'Let's write this song.'” Graham helped Rybicki develop the song further so, when it came time to record it, Rybicki asked Graham to record vocals alongside him.

The song, like the album as a whole, is, aesthetically, chaotic. Rybicki's guitar growls lazily and Durocher-Jones' leads entangle themselves wildly around the ends of lines. Vocals, including Graham's croon on “Sweating or Freezing”, climb on each other like third grade boys at recess. The moods are occasionally cacophonous and catchy, sometimes all at once. In essence, it sounds exactly how a record called Fuck You Up With Some Truth by a band called the Fucking Cops should sound.

But Rybicki doesn't worry about this in the same way that he worries about his band's name. He understands that the occasional chaos is part of the art that his band is presenting—not perfectly performed or produced music, but raw conflict and frustration. The Fucking Cops present these moods and ideas through fictional and nonfictional narratives as well as visual art, which is why they have called upon John G (and other artists, including Lauren Denitzio of The Measure [SA] and Jason Lubrano of Iron Chic) to contribute art for songs on Fuck You Up With Some Truth.

To Rybicki, it's the mood and ideas that his band presents through their music that makes it punk-rock, not the music itself. “This might be true for more than just punk-rock,” Rybicki argues, “but expressing something, whether it be a noise or a feeling, is definitely more important than musical perfection and playing something intricate or demonstrating talent.”

It's what makes the Fucking Cops an effective punk-rock band and what makes Fuck You Up With Some Truth meaningful art.

Rybicki recorded these tracks with Sullivan on an evening in the early spring. Because it was the only landline available, they recorded them at the funeral home owned by Rybicki's family near Columbus, OH.

"Gloria Pt. II" appears on the Fucking Cops' 2011 EP Fuck You Up With Some Truth. "I Wasn't There" is a Fucking Cops song that, at the time of its recording, is not intended for any release. "J.A.R." and "You Gave Your Love to Me Softly" are by Green Day and Weezer respectively; both songs originally appear on the soundtrack to the motion picture Angus.

Visit the band's Bandcamp page for more music.

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Elway

2011-04-28T15:50:00.006-05:00

Tim Browne can't quite comprehend the appeal of Elway, the band for which he sings and strums a gummy guitar.

His self-effacing tendencies surface suddenly as he reminisces about preparing to enter Atlas Studios in Chicago, IL to record Delusions, the band's first full-length as Elway. “I can remember in the weeks that led up to us recording there,” Browne explains, “I was incredibly nervous. We've never really put a whole lot into recording, and we've never really been in a proper studio. And [producer Matt Allison] is a guy who records the Alkaline Trio, and the Lawrence Arms, and Less Than Jake. I knew, as soon as we walked in there, he would sense that we are imposters. He would know that we are a bunch of half-assed amateurs—which, I really want to emphasize, we are.”

It's difficult to determine if such statements are moments of modesty, or sincere expressions of uncertainty, or a little bit of both. Whatever the case, though, Browne seems surprised at his own band's success, especially considering it's humble beginning.

Having moved to Fort Collins to attend college, Browne went from playing punk shows with his friends to having no one with which to play music. “For the first year,” he explains, “I just wrote songs and played them acoustic in my tiny-ass apartment.” When he met drummer Garrett Carr and bass player Joe Henderer, he decided to form 10-4 Eleanor. “I had a whole lot of songs saved up from not being in a band for a whole year. Those songs that I wrote, particularly over the summer of 2007, would become our first EP and LP that we released on Death to False Hope.”

After stumbling upon the donation-based, online label almost by accident, Browne reached out to Scotty Sandwich, Death to False Hope's founder and frontispiece, about helping 10-4 Eleanor expand its audience. Sandwich agreed to post the six-song EP Words Cannot Express How Much Fuck This Band for free download on his site and, shortly thereafter, ...Too Bad, the band's first full-length.

“We were really set on Death to False Hope,” Browne explains. “They kind of opened a lot of doors for us. I can't possibly express more gratitude for what Scotty did. Even though Death to False Hope is not really a record label, he does a lot for the bands on his label.”

Like the 10-4 Eleanor's first EP, ...Too Bad sounds unrefined—greasy and almost ugly. Browne's howl competes with two sludgy, grunting guitars. Unlike his colorful snare, Carr's cymbals don't sparkle; instead, they clang with the grace of a shattering glass and are dampened by the muddy trails made by Henderer's traipsing bass. “The recording quality was a little bit better than the first one, but still pretty fucking awful,” Browne snickers, succumbing again to his self-depreciating tenendcies. “But these twelve songs set the tone the kind of band that we were becoming.” He's right; despite the ragged recording, the band executed ...Too Bad with precision and, more importantly, sincerity, displaying a musical identity maybe more advanced than their resources could capture.

Following the release of ...Too Bad, 10-4 Eleanor began moving in a more serious direction, starting with the addition Brian Van Proyen, Browne's old friend from Colorado Springs, on guitar. In support of the record, the band spent over a hundred days on tour and played the Fest in Gainesville, FL twice, which awarded them a wider, excited audience—“As much of a following as a band without a decent recording could have,” Browne adds.

Things changed for 10-4 Eleanor in an instant, though, when Browne and Van Proyen came across Brendan Kelly, singer and bassist for the Lawrence Arms, at Surfside 7—“Really the only halfway-decent dive bar in town,” Brown clarifies. “I eventually struck up a conversation with him. He wanted to try and play a show at Surfside while he was in town, but it all fell through. I was really drunk and was like, 'Yeah, we'll set you up a show before you leave!'” Quickly, they coordinated a DIY show for Kelly at the Hammer Time Tool Cooperative, a warehouse that Carr runs, and arranged 10-4 Eleanor to open. “He watched us and was really impressed,” Browne remembers, “and he decided that he wanted us to do a record with Red Scare.” The prospect of signing with Red Scare Industries excited Brown, not only because the label released physical records (something that Death to False Hope just didn't do), but also because the company's founder Toby Jeg pressed several records that had been applauded by the punk-rock community.

The offer, though, forced Browne and his bandmates to reconsider the seriousness that 10-4 Eleanor has so far exhibited. In an attempt to reinvent themselves as a more serious band, 10-4 Eleanor decided to rename itself Elway. “Not that Elway is a super serious name,” Browne explains. “We were never super-thrilled with the name 10-4 Eleanor. It just was something that we thought didn't sound terrible. So, we changed it is just to clean the slate, to start fresh, and Elway seemed to fit.” To Browne, the name “Elway” seems to express a certain sense of humor; attaching the name of a “legendary” Colorado quarterback to his punk-rock band amused him, so it stuck. “We're not super-interested in sports,” he continues, “so I think Elway is a better name because it's characteristic of our personalities, which is snarky and kind of sarcastic.”

Newly christened as Elway, Browne began making arrangements with Jeg to record the album that would reveal a reinvented band. “When I was talking to Toby, he asked where we wanted to record it,” he tells. “The first words that came out of my mouth were, 'I want to record at Atlas in Chicago with Matt Allison.' Toby just went, 'Woah, woah, woah!' Because Matt has got a incredible reputation; with that incredible reputation obviously comes an incredible financial obligation.”

But Jeg was able to arrange recording time with Allison at Atlas, which was a dream-come-true for Browne; the realization that this particular dream may come true, though, terrified Browne, who had his worries about working with the producer the recorded some of the most important punk-rock records of the past ten years. “You think of famous recording engineers and immediately you think of pony-tails, and way too many rings,” he says, “but [Allison] was just a super-down-to-earth guy who loves Busch Light a lot and has a great ear. Before we even got into the studio with him, my fears about him revealing our incompetence to the world were put to rest.”

Working with Allison brought out the best in Elway, and Delusions, the record with which they left Chicago, displays a band that has not only found itself, but has finally captured that sound faithfully. A track like “Passing Days” features the same sludgy, grunting guitars that dirtied up 10-4 Eleanor's songs, but contain crisper, clearer rhythmic elements. Carr's cadences are as straight and tense as they have ever been, but cut through the grime left behind Brown and Van Proyen's guitars; alongside Henderer's denser, brighter bass, the song hops with infectious pep, especially during the song's repeated intros.

Browne's voice, though still raw, is more refined and natural. As “Passing Days” approaches its pinnacle, he sings, “There I go, digging graves for every single pretty girl / Pretty soon, there'll be no more earth to move / And I'll be filling holes with the longing in my soul / and it's not one of those things I tend to lose,” and introduces one of the main themes on the record: the loss of and longing for a romantic relationship. “We decided to call the record Delusions because the record is about the way that people intentionally and unintentionally distract themselves from what is real and true,” Browne explains. “Romantic longing and loss is one of those ways and has always been a big theme in our music because I tend to write songs about various relationships I'm in. I write what I know and that's something I regretfully know a lot about.”

Another way that people delude themselves, according to Browne, is through religion, though these songs, including the opener “3/4 Eleanor” and “San Mateo”, are less personal. “'San Mateo' is about my friend Matt who had a card in his wallet that was given to him upon completing of his confirmation in the Catholic church,” he explains. “He kept it in his wallet for years and years after he was confirmed. We were talking at a bonfire in my backyard about how he felt so guilty carrying it on him even though he had absolutely had no belief in God whatsoever anymore, and that he only really did it to appease his parents, so he threw the card in the fire. It felt really significant for me to be there for that moment, even though it was a frivolous action.”

“Basically, when I write about religion,” Browne clarifies, “I want to talk about the ways that it inhibits people from being able to experience all that is great about life.”

Perhaps the most important theme on Delusions is how Browne and his bandmates redeem themselves from the suffering inspired by these distractions. “Song for Eric Solomon to Sing”—indeed a shout out to the O Pioneers!!! singer and screenprinter—begins with a delicate, though seemingly combustible lead that tip-toes across plucked, piano-like strings and a steady, caffeinated drumbeat before suddenly pouncing into a quick-paced chase. During this gallop, Browne growls about how America's sick music industry causes independent musicians to compete with one another. Still, “Song for Eric Solomon to Sing” is about the liberty that performing music allows—the release and redemption that forty-five minutes onstage can afford. Somehow, the song succeeds at celebrating the power of music and condemning of its politics

To Browne, music—and especially punk-rock—is something sacred. “Of all the music that I've ever heard, and all the shows that I've ever seen, I only ever feel like I belong to something bigger when I'm at a punk-rock show,” he says. “I can still remember listening to Bad Religion records, and listening to Rancid and NOFX records back in the day. I remember thinking that there's a frustration that was worded in just a perfect way that I could identify with it. It's like a visceral, sort of aggressive way of expressing any emotion. I think that punk-rock can express so many different emotions, and yet still sound so raw and aggressive.”

I can't really explain it,” he concludes, “but it's definitely something rooted in the core of me now.”

This might be part of the reason why Browne, even though he seems so proud of Delusions, is so self-depreciating. It's a defense mechanism, a means for dealing with the possibility that he is on the other end of that “something bigger.” In this new position, Browne will be initiating that electric connection between musician and listener rather than merely receiving it.

Maybe Browne's modesty is merely a desperate attempt not to appear self-important and over-state his art. Or maybe he worries that Elway isn't worthy of this consequential role; maybe he wonders whether a band like his should be placed on the same pedestal as the ones that inspired him.

Soon enough, though, Browne and his band will discover exactly what makes punk-rock so powerful—that modest musicians with self-effacing tendencies are those that make the most meaningful impact on their listeners.

Browne recorded these tracks on a spring evening from Fort Collins. After a substantial interview, Browne waited for Van Proyen to return from work so he could use his bandmate's landline.

"3/4 Eleanor" and "Passing Days" appear as the first two songs on Elway's 2011 record titled Delusions. "Hard To Be" is a David Bazan cover; the song originally appeared on the 2009 album Curse Your Branches.

Visit the band's Facebook page for more music.

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Ninja Gun

2011-04-01T13:25:00.007-05:00

From where Johnathan Coody sits at his parents' house in Brooks County, Georgia, he can see cows chewing cud in a field right in front of him.

The setting in which he speaks may seem inconsequential, but it isn't. In fact, the rural South has made up much of not only Coody's identity, but also the identity of his band Ninja Gun in ways that are both surprising and unsurprising. Roman Nose, the band's first formal release since 2008's Restless Rubes, is both a musical and lyrical reflection of this influence—especially the band's Southern pride.

Coody would argue, though, that his music is also a reaction to being raised in the South, and to a culture with which he is occasionally in conflict. “I'm excited for people to hear Roman Nose just because that type of music isn't supposed to exist in the context that we operate,” he explains, referring to Ninja Gun's punk-rock roots and left-leaning politics in such a “red” area of the United States. “We don't want to be preaching to the choir. If you have something to say, and you're trying to be direct with it in a song, there's not a lot of room for metaphor because you want people to understand what you're talking about. If we just wanted to bash out some punk songs and scream those lyrics, it wouldn't be as accessible to the people that we want to hear it.”

The people that he wants to hear his music is made up of the people around him in Southern Georgia, Coody clarifies. “Punk-rock has the aesthetic of an urban thing,” he explains, “but I think the South is the front-line of punk-rock these days. I mean, look at how it votes.” Here, he chuckles a little, but it's clear by his comments that Coody sees Ninja Gun's music as a means through which he can communicate and educate the people around him—not in a pretentious way, but in a manner that he hopes empower sthe people he has lived with his whole life. “It's not bashing the South,” he adds. “It's saying, 'Hey people, step it up here and take control of your lives,' which, sometimes, is a hard pill to swallow. If I've got the be the guy who stands out in a certain area because I don't adhere to the local mentality, then so be it.”

“Hot Rain”, the second song from Roman Nose, is one such where Ninja Gun encourages it's audience to take control of its life. Beginning with an acoustic guitar that reverberates against the walls of the song like it's an amphitheater, Coody sings in his curly Southern croon, “Oh, you children of the heat just keep yourselves a-moving / Dig the dirt beneath your feet and turn it into something / Purified and free / Believe what you believe.” Slowly, the throb of drummer Jeffrey Haineault's toms builds the song into a soaring chorus—the sort layered with both scalding electric and quiet acoustic chords; the sort steered by the soft, solid thrum of Jacob Sparks' bassline; the sort that releases a subtle steam of harmonized “ohs” which, along with Thad Megow's guitar solo, fills up the once-open space of the song and adds a modest sense of drama to its climactic conclusion.

If “Hot Rain” is a musically and lyrically passionate track, it's because the issue that inspired the song is personal to Coody. “I was born in '78 and I'm kind of the last generation of post-farm kids,” he says. “I grew up on a hog farm chasing hogs through shit. My grandfather, and great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather have all been farmers and my brother and I were the first in the line to not do that—partially because that's not what we were born to do, and partially because those options were taken away from us via deregulation.

“In the early-90s,” he continues, “big corporations like Sunniland and Smithfield came in and bought up these small packing houses that were independently owned and drove the price of number one hogs down so much that it was costing farmers more to feed them than what they made at sale. That pretty much ran every small family operation out of business, and that's the same model that's been implemented in every industry over the past thirty years since Reagan. Nobody works for themselves anymore; everybody has to work for someone else, and there's no future in that.”

Though the band's music doesn't evoke images what a casual listener might immediately associate with punk-rock, Coody argues that this sort of political-mindedness is, in part, what gives Ninja Gun some of its punk-rock credibility. “We've always been part of our local punk scene because that's what we've always enjoyed,” he says. “I guess you could say that punk-rock, in it's root form, is the Ramones—it's loud and it's abrasive—but to put it in that box is to do it an injustice. To me, if the things that are coming out are real and pure, that's punk-rock.”

It's perhaps that reason why Coody calls, “That's Not What I Heard”, Roman Nose's first track, the most punk-rock song he's ever written. Musically, the song features the same bright, warm acoustic guitar strokes featured on “Hot Rain,” but backed with a clean electric that shimmers like sunlight on serene ocean waves, the pitter-patter of bongos, and sunny swish of tambourine. Sung with careful, close harmonies, the song sounds like it could have been written by the Beach Boys or an early incarnation of the Beatles. Lyrically, though, Coody describes the woes of a cursed economy and the impact felt by lower- and middle-class Americans. In the second verse, he sings, “Workers wonderin' why they're coming to take away their homes / The jobless kids who can't get rid of all them student loans / And meanwhile momma slowly dies of some unknown disease / Conditions pre-existing somehow don't sound right to me.”

“I don't want to be a political band,” Coody explains. “I don't want to write punk songs. I get more pleasure out of writing a pop song where I can be as abstract as I want to be. But, like I said earlier, if you want to write about something that people understand—if you care about what you're talking about, if you want to convey an idea, if you have that burning desire to communicate with an audience—then it has to be more direct.”

Though Coody feels a need to communicate with his audience, and he knows who he hopes will hear (and connect with) his music, he doesn't see his music as for Southerners by Southerners. “Anytime you get involved with who's going to hear your stuff, it's detrimental to your art,” Coody says. “You can never aim what you're doing anywhere because it puts up a fence around what you're doing.” Likewise, there's nothing intentional about the Ninja Gun's Southern aesthetic. “We don't try to be Southern. I've spent thirty-two years in this town. Anything we do is going to have that element to it because it's who we are. If we write a noise freak-out song, people are going to say, 'Oh, it's a country noise freak-out song.' If what I've lived my whole life isn't country, I don't fucking know what is.”

Simply put, what Ninja Gun writes and records and performs is a natural extension of themselves. “Luckily,” Coody explains, “what I get off on—what we play and write—if probably palatable to a wider audience. But that's not by design; it's a happy accident.”

It's clear that Coody the musician has been influenced by being raised in the rural South, and that his music is a reflection of and response to that upbringing. But expressing this Southern pride isn't enough. What makes music-making meaningful to Coody is contributing to Southern culture, adding to the significance that the South offers others. “I know when we play here at home,” he says, “I see these dirt road kids—kids who grew up the same way I did, kids who are going into the military because that's their only option—at our shows wearing everyday South Georgia clothes. I have a lot in common with these kids. And, when they come up to me and say, 'Man, I relate to that,' it's like the most powerful thing I can hear and it means a lot to me.”

“I was trying to think today why I write songs,” he continues, “and I think it's to try to relate.” And though that relationship doesn't have to be strictly Southern, these songs, coming from someone who also grew up chasing hogs through shit, exhibits a different sort of significance, communicates a different sort of idea. “That communication,” Coody concludes, “is reassurance that you're not fucking crazy if you live here.”

Coody recorded these from his parents' house in Brooks County, GA on a spring afternoon in March. He admitted that his voice was a little shot because Ninja Gun just finished band practice.

"Roman Nose" appears on Ninja Gun's 2011 EP Roman Nose. At the time of their recording with the Switchboard Sessions, neither "No Big Deal" nor "Dish Pit" have been planned for any formal release. "No Big Deal" is one of four songs Ninja Gun had recently written.

"Dish Pit" is part of a five-song concept record that, according to Coody, may or may not see the light of day. He explained that the record is about the "plight of shitty kitchen workers, people who play in bands and ride around in vans," but need to make a living to finance their passion to play music; these five songs chronicle the five different shifts at a restaurant and are meant to be played on the hour each hour.

Visit the band's website for more music.

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Restorations

2011-03-14T18:13:00.009-05:00

Apparently, Restorations plays music for “grown-up punks”—at least that's what everyone seems to be saying—but the band isn't sure what that means. When the question is presented to them, the band giggles together before guitarist Dave Klyman grumbles, “Aw man, do you want to field this one? Because I don't even know.”

Singer and guitarist Jon Loudon jumps in and attempts to explain. “It's funny because [our music] ended up resonating with a lot of old bar dudes, old punks, dudes that work in restaurants now who are like, 'Aw, shit! This is my stuff!'” he says before being interrupted by his laughing bandmates. “It's really flattering because we've been very lucky to be lumped in with a lot of much older people playing much better music.”

All modesty aside, it's easy to see why an older audience might appreciate Restorations and their Self-Titled record, released by Tiny Engines in the spring of 2011. There's something intangibly but undeniably mature—wise, even—about their music, though the band has only existed for a couple of years. Maybe it's their music, which is (somehow) simultaneously folky and fuzzy, hazy with sound the droning organs, with delay and swirling cymbals; in it, it's likely that listeners who have lived through more than one decade of music recognize something adventurous and difficult to define, something experimental without trying to be, something that reminds them of a time when music didn't need to fit so neatly into some sub-genre.

Restorations rose from the ashes of Jena Berlin, the band in which Loudon and Klyman performed side-by-side. “Largely, [Restorations] happened because Jena Berlin had a van that completely exploded,” Klyman says. “We still wanted to play music, but we couldn't do it in the capacity we did before.”

“Basically, it sort of came out of necessity,” Loudon adds. “Dave and I got real stir crazy not touring. It was, what, four months that we weren't a band? So, we were like, 'Oh, hell, we'll just jam,' and kind of ended up doing better than the band we had just put down.”

In an attempt to distance themselves from Jena Berlin's brand of agitated, angular post-hardcore, Klyman and Loudon decided to write songs in a style more simple and stripped-down. “Originally, we wanted to do music that was a lot quieter and a little more folky,” Loudon says. “I think the Weakerthans was the reference point we were going for, but that sort of spun wildly out of control.”

“That would be my fault,” say bassist Mike Drelling with a snicker. “I play a distorted bass and ruined that idea.” Drelling was originally tapped to play bass for Jena Berlin just before the band collapsed, and decided to stay with Klyman and Loudon to form Restorations.

“Most of [our songs are] written basic and plain,” Loudon continues, “and we just turn up the amps when we're at practice. After a while, it sort of became this arms race with everyone in the band getting bigger and louder.”

It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: What happens when a folk band turns up their amps really, really loud?

In their first year as Restorations, Loudon, Klyman, Drelling, and Jena Berlin drummer Jeff Meyers approached this question with two records: a 2009 seven-inch on Evil Weevil featuring tracks “Of Tress” and “Frankford”, and Strange Behavior, a four song EP released by Paper + Plastick in 2010. Both releases feature songs that rumble and sparkle at the same time. B-side “Frankford”, for example, showcases Drelling's bass—a sound so distorted, it resembles the incomprehensible buzz of an insect beneath the bird-like warble of Loudon's guitar (Klyman's trills somewhere else in the air). “Documents”, a seven and a half-minute hymn from Strange Behavior, is guided by Loudon's raspy howl. Halfway through, the song begins to build into a bright, echoey blossom of twinkling guitars and a sharp, shuffling drumbeat. Though these tracks seem noisy and inordinate and disorienting at times, Restorations' songs never lose their melody and musicality.

During this era of their songwriting, though, the band felt like they were still searching for their sound. “When we were a band with Jeff coming off of Jena Berlin, not really knowing what to do with this band, we basically made a full-length with the songs,” Loudon explains. “The seven-inch songs were recorded at the same time, same session as the EP—mixed by different people, put out by different people.”

When Meyers left Restorations, they asked their friend Carlin Brown to take over. Later, they added Ben Pierce to play keys and an occasional guitar. “I told him to buy an organ,” Drelling recalls. “I said, 'We need an organ player. If you buy one, you can be in the band.' A week later, he texted Jon to tell him that he bought an organ, so Ben joined the band.” With Brown and Pierce adding to both the songwriting process and their tapestry of sound, Restorations was ready to move away from their previous releases.

The band had an “ah-ha!” moment after writing “Broken Vacuum”, a song that begins with Drelling's throbbing, throaty bassline, slowly oscillating beneath a glimmering guitar that appears and disappears like a playful ghost. After several seconds, the song springs into a mid-tempo tumble, rolls steadily, spun by Loudon's hoarse lines, before dropping into a half-time chorus, where an organ and guitars ring with the resounding chime of church bells. “I think 'Broken Vacuum' was pretty big for all of us because, when we finished writing that song, all of us stood back and were like, 'Oh, shit, that's the song! We need a record full of this,'” Klyman remembers. “I don't know about the rest of the guys but, every time we play that song, I just smile, like, 'This song fucking rocks!' Awesome!”

Loudon agrees. “We were dicking around for a long time, trying to find what we wanted to sound like,” he says. “When that song came around, it was like, yeah, we finally got it.”

“That was like the new beginning for the band sonically,” Drelling concludes, “which is awesome because we love that song.”

“Broken Vacuum” led Restorations to other songs that complimented its musical and emotional mood, including “Nonlocality”, a spectral track that shuffles slowly and sullenly, and the uptempo, upbeat “Neighborhood Song”, which Loudon describes as “a suck it up song, you know? The sonic output to me sounds like walking down York Street or something, getting dirty stares from everybody but, at the same time, enjoying where you're at.”

With songs written and a label interested in releasing (and, more importantly, paying for) Restorations' first full-length, the band became busier than ever, preparing to enter the studio and finish before the label's proposed deadline. “We got really busy between March and August of last year,” Loudon recalls. “It was kind of crazy times. We were practicing three times a week and doing long, crazy, exhausting sessions to get everything together.” Just before the band was set to enter the studio, it became clearer and clearer that the label, who had promised to send a check to the studio prior to recording, was giving them the run around. “The studio hadn't gotten the money,” Loudon says, “so we called them and said, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' and Dave and I basically paid for the whole thing ourselves.”

“That was part of the reason why we realized we really needed to buckle down and finish writing and recording the record,” Klyman adds. “All of the sudden, the budget was our budget. Time was already booked and we're not rich, so we needed to get in there and bang things out or we all had to pay extra, and none of us could afford that.”

Label-less, Restorations found support and solidarity in their old friend Chuck Daley; his label Tiny Engines has released records by bands that revive (or at least reference) the sort of emo that tip-toed just beneath the mainstream in the mid-'90s. “Chuck is someone we've known for years, even before he had two kids and a dog,” Klyman explains. “He's always been great friends and, every time we rolled through his town, he'd give us a place to stay. I've read all his books and eaten all his food and stuff like that. So, when he was like, 'Hey, the hell with it, Tiny Engines will just put out your record,' we were like, 'Aw, thanks!'”

“He's a great punk-rock older brother,” Loudon adds and laughs.

It's here, after the presentation of Restorations' story—their rise from Jena Berlin, their search for a sound of their own, their decision to fund their record independently and leave one label for another—that the band's connection to “grown-up punk” becomes clearer. There's a maturity, a “been there” mentality that pushes Restorations' music away from the mundane; it's the same mature mentality that helps the band make decisions with their best interest (and ability, and reality) in mind. If there's one thing this story suggests, it's that Restorations is not naïve.

Perhaps they play music that pleases grown-up punks, but it also seems that the five gentlemen that perform as Restorations are the grown-up punks—the twenty- and thirty-somethings that pollute bars and scuzzy clubs across the country; those repressed souls that populate conference rooms and classrooms and cubicles, work nine-to-five to fund their modest lives and, if possible, the passions that provide its meaning, the passions they must reserve for their evenings and weekends. This is a generation perplexed by adulthood, who were told that their dreams would be delivered if they fought for them, but find themselves still fighting for their dreams. Like the members of Restorations, some of these people were raised on punk-rock, but stretched toward the other styles and sounds associated with it as they got older; like Restorations and their music, these people somehow still express their punk-rock roots in everything they do as adults, even if they've evolved since this starting point.

If Restorations plays music for grown-up punks, it's because they're what happens when punks grow up.

Loudon and Klyman, on acoustic guitars; Pierce on a Silvertone electric reed organ; and Drelling on "jingle-shaker thing" recorded these tracks on a Saturday afternoon in the early spring. The band performed in Philadelphia, PA at the offices of Sire Press, a printshop and design firm operated by the band's friend.

"Nonlocality" and "Canadian Club" appear on Restorations' 2011 Self-Titled record.

Visit the band's Bandcamp page for more music.

Greenland is Melting

2011-02-20T14:20:00.019-06:00

Though Karl Seltzer picks a banjo in his band Greenland is Melting, he hesitates to call it bluegrass.

It's not because his band doesn't play bluegrass, though. Seltzer bobs and sways on stage beside Will Dueease, who plucks at a stand-up bass, and Shaun Pereira, who strums an acoustic; considering this, Greenland is Melting's lineup is as traditional as it gets, especially when fiddle player Jon Gaunt joins them on tour. And their 2010 release, Our Hearts are Gold, Our Grass is Blue, exhibits songs that amble to Dueease's bass-driven pulse, shuffle to the rhythm of Pereira's swinging guitar strokes, and feature three-part harmonies that slide around together with practiced precision. To both the trained and untrained ear, Greenland is Melting plays bluegrass music.

But, still, Seltzer balks. It's not because of the band's sound or instrumentation; instead, it's the weight of the term “bluegrass” that he worries about—the connotations the term carries, the history and tradition, the context in which this music is typically presented. Because Seltzer and his bandmates do not come from and do not perform in this context, he worries how bluegrass his band can really be.

“I always hate saying that [we're a bluegrass band] to people,” he says, “especially when we're talking to people who actually listen to bluegrass music. They'll [be] like, 'Do you know this banjo player?' and I'm like, uh... It happened in Wilmington the other night. This guy asked me if I listened to this one particular banjo player and I was like, 'No, I don't,' and he was like, 'Are you serious? You're a banjo player and you haven't heard of this guy?' And I was like...'Sorry!'”

Greenland is Melting is a band whose members weren't born and bred on bluegrass; the band didn't even have roots music in mind when it began three years ago. “When the band got started,” Pereira says, “it was more of like an indie kind of sound. There was a lot of electric guitar, electric bass, drums. It was a little more atmospheric at times, and kind of Wilco in a way.” The band's sound shifted, though, after Seltzer bought a banjo and they began to feel the influence of another band. “We all got into Avett Brothers and started writing Avett Brothers-y songs,” Pereira continues. “And then, after the drummer left, it just seemed right to make that the permanent situation for us.”

Perhaps it's because of this sudden shift at their inception that they feel uncomfortable in their bluegrass shoes; it may also be the reason why the band sees itself as more of an amalgamation of genres. “The way we classify ourselves usually when people ask is, like, bluegrass-folk-punk,” Seltzer explains. “We say bluegrass instrumentation, folk-style songwriting—usually storytelling or experience-based—and then we try to do a punk-energy aspect to it.”

Of course, it's that “punk” side of Greenland is Melting that seems to complicate things, at least superficially. Though forms of country and folk have found a home in punk-rock in the past five years, it doesn't seem like the scene would stretch so far to accept a style as traditional as bluegrass. Nonetheless, Greenland is Melting finds itself not only embedded in a scene known better for its slimy, distorted guitars; barked, bitter vocals; and execration to convention, but embraced by it. For example, Paper + Plastick, a record label arguably at the forefront of punk-rock, released Our Hearts are Gold; also, the band recently performed at a handful of festivals frequented by the subculture's assorted audience—including the Fest in Florida and, more recently, Death to False Hope Fest in North Carolina.

To Pereira, the perceived gap between bluegrass and punk-rock isn't difficult to bridge. “Bluegrass is very much a folk, outsider art kind of genre,” he says. “People that play bluegrass and listen to bluegrass are definitely not in the mainstream, especially nowadays. I think it's really funny that we are a subculture of this subculture; we're folk art for folk art.” Pereira also sees a more obvious element that ties Greenland is Melting to punk-rock: “It's road life, honestly. Punk bands have notoriously just been traveling groups of guys that can go from city to city and play shows. Bluegrass traditions are pretty much the same way. I think in that core, they're the same.”

In fact, Pereira would argue that the band's bluegrass instrumentation is part of the reason why they succeed on the road. Compared to other bands, who have to haul guitars, drums, amps, cabs, cables, and other hardware in trailers behind a van that fits their four- or five-piece lineup, Greenland is Melting only needs to carry with them their comparatively compact stringed instruments in their conversion van. “That honestly has lent to our ability to survive,” Pereira says. “If we weren't in this kind of instrumentation, if we didn't have a bluegrass style right now, I don't know if we'd be able to continue.”

“I don't understand how some of these punk bands are able to survive,” Seltzer adds. “We're good friends with Blacklist Royals. They have so much fucking equipment, really nice equipment, and they're driving around in this fifteen passenger van with this huge trailer lugging an ungodly amount of equipment. I can't imagine how much gas they eat up and how they're able to do it. It blows my mind, actually.”

The band agrees, though, that their most important connection to punk-rock is the performance. “When it comes down to the energy and style of showmanship,” Pereira concludes, “I think that's where they really blend well.”

Seltzer may hate to classify his band as bluegrass and may question its credence in the culture of mountain music, but he knows that mixing bluegrass instrumentation with folk story-telling and punk-rock principles—that not sticking strictly to tradition and convention—is really, in fact, an asset. Being a subculture of a subculture has given Greenland is Melting an opportunity to define their own identify and carve a cranny for themselves in a scene they appreciate and understand. It's a decision that has benefited them as a band. “If we had all come up straight bluegrass,” Dueease suggests, “we'd probably be in the bluegrass circuit playing straight, traditional tunes they way they used to be played.”

Since their 2010 release, though, the band has been interested in revisiting the traditional and conventional. At the end of the year, Greenland is Melting released a three-song EP titled Folk Songs from Florida: Volume One for free. On it, the band explores four traditional bluegrass songs, including one written by Manfred Mann as a rock 'n' roll song in the late Sixties and brought to bluegrass by Bill Emerson and his band the Country Gentlemen. Since then, “Fox on the Run” has been a bluegrass standard.

For their version, Greenland is Melting slows the song down to a lively wander. Seltzer's banjo cartwheels and Pereira whisks the strings of his acoustic during each chorus while, in the background, Gaunt's fiddle hangs in the air like a cobweb. The song slows further during the verse, where Dueease's bass tiptoes to halftime halfnotes before picking back up to it's previous pace, all as a two-part vocal harmony continues to tell a story of unlucky love. Something seems smoother about “Fox on the Run” and the other tracks on Folk Songs from Florida compared to the band's previous recording, possibly because the band recorded not only the instruments live (as they had with Our Hearts Are Gold), but also their vocals.

“It's kind of funny that we're actually going back,” Dueease says. “We did our own thing for our first album, Our Hearts are Gold, and we just now did Folk Songs of Florida. We [didn't] know those until after we recorded our first bluegrass-ish record. Now we're looking back and seeing what inspiration we can take from the masters.”

But this, again, is where Greenland is Melting resembles more a modern punk-rock band than a traditional bluegrass three-piece. It comes from their appreciation of the past, but their desire to reinterpret it as their own—to remake the conventional in an unconventional manner.

It's why Seltzer, Pereira, and Dueease struggle to call their band bluegrass; they know in their hearts that they've been playing punk-rock all along.

Seltzer, Pereira, and Dueease recorded these songs from a friend's house in Durham, NC the afternoon following their set at Death to False Hope Fest. All three members of the band performed the songs and participated in the interview. With them was Jeff from Rocket Fuel, who is buddies with the band and invited them to perform at a backyard barbecue of his a few months before.

"The Kitchen Song" appears on Greenland is Melting's 2010 record Our Hearts are Gold, Our Grass is Blue. "Wicker Chair" is a cover by Kings of Leon and originally appear on the band's 2003 EP Holy Roller Novocaine.

Visit the band's website for more music, including free downloads of Our Hearts are Gold, Our Grass is Blue and Folk Songs from Florida: Volume One.

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Against Me!

2011-02-02T20:36:00.016-06:00

Despite what some perceive, and what others desperately want to believe, Tom Gabel just doesn't come across as an asshole.

Sure, Gabel has had his share belligerent incidents, like when he was arrested in 2007 for smashing someone's face into a countertop in a Tallahassee coffee shop. It's incidents like this that cause the media and many listeners to draw conclusions about Gabel—that he's an asshole, or at least a little too defensive about his art—but maybe Gabel has a right to be defensive. More than any modern rock band, it seems, Against Me! polarizes their listeners, who seem to either believe whole-heartedly in the band or bash them.

It's at least partially because Against Me! began as Gabel's folk-punk solo project; then seventeen, Gabel screeched about Anarchism and scratched angrily at his acoustic guitar in whatever bookstore or laundromat that he landed at that day to whomever would listen. Twelve years later, Against Me! has released a pair of polished, carefully constructed records on a major label (not including several full-lengths and seven-inches on several indie labels) and toured the arenas of the world, performing more muscular, more mature versions of the music Gabel penned as an adolescent to thousands of people.

“I have been playing under the name 'Against Me!' for thirteen years,” Gabel explains, “and it's something I've had to continually reassess at different points in my life—if it's still relevant and what it means to me to be doing this right now—because the reasons that I was doing it when I was seventeen years old are certainly not the reasons that I'm doing it now that I'm thirty. It's like, life changes, you know? I've grown.”

Indeed, Gabel's growth has been dramatic; it, along with the perceived differences between his values then and now, has frustrated some fans and caused the critical conversation about the band to be focused more on how Against Me!'s recent releases stack up against their rawer, earlier albums and about whether or not they have “sold out.” In effect, the stories told on White Crosses and decisions made about its musical direction are often overlooked—or, worse, only considered superficially before the assessment of “awful” is made—which is bound to frustrate Gabel.

But, speaking over the phone from the band's practice space, Gabel doesn't sound frustrated. Instead, he sounds excited, eager to talk about the songs on White Crosses and to tell their stories, but begins with the story of what inspired the record. “After we got done touring for [2007's] New Wave,” he starts, “we had an unspecified amount of time off. Everyone went and sorted their lives out for a second and, during that time, my wife and I moved to St. Augustine, Florida. Really, I think living in St. Augustine shaped the writing of the record. In a way, it made me like living in Florida again. I kind of found a little place that could call my own.”

One of the first images of St. Augustine to inspire Gabel was the Prince of Peace Votive Church, a Catholic church down the street from his home. “It has a huge lawn and, in the church lawn facing toward the ocean, there's a really big fucking cross,” he says. “In front of the big cross, they usually put up 4,000 tiny, white crosses a foot high off the ground. They call it the 'Cemetery of the Innocents,' with one cross to represent every abortion that happens in America, and it's a totally fucking big eyesore.”

This sight inspired “White Crosses”, which would become both the opening and title track of Against Me!'s 2010 record. Driven a heavy, bounding beat and guitarist James Bowman's triumphant lead, Gabel's verses are stuffed with images of St. Augustine—street kids with yellow teeth and tangled hair accepting spare change in a conch shell, blonde ponytails bouncing behind jogging college girls, the dirty looks cast by suspicious tourists; cannons being shot from historic sites. It's during the song's chorus, though, that, complimented by Bowman's brighter harmony, Gabel's coarse voice cries, “White crosses on the church lawn / I want to smash them all”. Here, Gabel's lyrics confront what he perceives as the church's unpleasant and sickening spectacle. But implied in these lines is also an awareness of and willingness to confront his own reaction. “It's an ugly response to the original ugly act of putting up those crosses,” Gabel states.

“White Crosses” seems to capture Against Me!'s ability to balance the personal and the political; it also captures the conflict that arises when these two themes sometimes intertwine, which is why Gabel was so inspired by it. “I'm always the type of writer where it takes one song to focus of the rest of the record, thus it becomes the title track,” he says. “That was the song that kind of shaped the other songs on the record.”

Other songs on White Crosses were inspired less by St. Augustine, though, and more by events that took place during the band's break, including “Because of the Shame”. “I wrote that song for a friend of mine who was murdered while the record was being written,” Gabel explains. “She was someone I used to hang out with a lot. We both worked at the same bar and would usually close up the bar at night and hang out afterwards—have some drinks or whatever, blow off steam.”

For a few reasons—because he was touring, because she moved elsewhere—Gabel fell out of touch with his friend, which made the news of her murder even more difficult. “It was a fucking horrible situation,” Gabel goes on. “I used to have a tattoo on the back of my leg for this girl, but I had it covered up maybe about a year before. Her mom came up to me at the funeral and was like, 'Hey, I want to know if you still have that tattoo on the back of your leg.' I felt horrible, just fucking horrible, having to say I covered it up. And then, afterwards, she asked me, standing there fucking five feet away from her body, 'Hey, did you write that song about her?'”

Before she died, Gabel's friend assumed that the song “Thrash Unreal” from New Wave had been written about her. The song's lyrics paint an unappealing picture of a woman partying maybe more than she should. During the chorus, Gabel growls, “No mother ever dreams that her daughter's going to grow up to be a junkie / No mother ever dreams that her daughter's going to grow up to sleep alone.”

“I didn't write the song about her,” Gabel explains. “The song's a fictional song, a composite about a lot of people, but I thought I had to say yes, that it was the answer she wanted. I wanted to say whatever would be the least painful for her. She made me promise on the spot to write a song to make up for it.”

“Because of the Shame” became that song. After a short, impassioned piano interlude, a wall of “woahs” rise from a furious hurricane of acoustic chords; the dusty twang of electric guitars; the rhythmic thump of Andrew Seward's bass; bright, metallic bells and tambourine; a subtle, groaning organ; all propelled by that same stirring piano and a straight, driving drumbeat. This particular hurricane, though, has received both critical praise and complaints for sounding derivative. “It's a song that's definitely got a heavy Bruce Springsteen influence,” Gabel admits. “Springsteen was my friend's favorite band; her dad was wearing a Springsteen shirt as he talked at her funeral. I wanted to capture a Springsteen vibe, I guess, in tribute to him and to her.

“When I realized just how heavily Bruce influenced this song,” he continues, “I asked him. We had exchanged emails before, so I was like, “Hey man, I wrote this song and it's really closely influenced by “No Surrender”. I just want to make sure you're cool with that.' I told him the story behind it, and he gave me his blessing on it.”

Other songs on White Crosses have similar stories behind them. “High Pressure Low” was written while Gabel drove solo for six days from St. Augustine to Los Angeles, where he would meet the band and record the album. “I just lost myself in the wilds of middle-America and ended up on the other end with that song,” he explains. “It's kind of trying to capture a spirit of schizophrenia and depravity in America and feeling like there's no hope or future, but still striving against that in a weird way.”

The record's first single and second song, “I Was a Teenage Anarchist”, feels like Gabel's fierce farewell to the ideologies of his adolescence, but it didn't start that way. ”At first, I was just attracted to the sensationalism of the phrase, 'I was a teenage Anarchist,'” he states. “But, with all the things happening in my life—like having a kid—this song became a weird point of closure in a lot of ways.”

Though these stories are, in some way, embedded in their songs, they seem to have become buried beneath the discussion of Against Me!'s move towards major labels and the mainstream. Recently, though, the news that the band is moving from the mainstream has distracted fans. At the end of 2010, Against Me! announced that Sire Records, a subsidiary of the Warner Music Group and their major label since 2006, decided not to renew the band's contract. Though any band's move to or from a major label may seem newsworthy, Gabel seems to disagree. “The relationship ended,” he says in the same calm, friendly demeanor that he's maintained through the entire conversation. “I don't know what else there is to it.”

There is, of course, more to it, but not much. “I'm sure that it had to do with the fact that sales weren't where they wanted it to be,” Gabel admits. “When we first signed, they were like, 'We're definitely going to do two records with you and, after that, we can assess where we are and move forward.' But they've been firing a bunch of employees in general and not renewing contracts and dropping a bunch of bands.” That's not to say that others, including some publications, didn't interpret it differently. “Everyone blew it up,” he laughs, “saying that 'Tom Gabel slammed Sire'. Looking back on that, I regret that it was portrayed the way it was.”

But, by now, Gabel is used to it. He's faced the fact that some critics and listeners will be more concerned with the band's decisions than their music, and that some might draw conclusions about their music based on the record's context, not content. This doesn't make him happy—in fact, it's been his downfall on more than one occasion—but Gabel refuses to let it affect how he writes songs, which is why Against Me!'s music has become more meaningful—perhaps less “punk-rock,” but more conflicted, more complex, more personal, and more powerful.

As for his outbursts, Gabel would argue that, while they're regrettable, they're nothing more than ugly responses to ugly acts. “Fuck man, I have bad days too,” he says, snickering at himself. “Talking about the Tallahassee incident, it's like, someone got in my fucking face. Someone was a big, fucking asshole to me and I fucking lost it.”

Maybe this makes Gabel an asshole, or maybe it makes him human.

Gabel recorded theses songs on a winter evening from the Against Me!'s practice space in Gainesville, FL (which the band shares with label Sabot Productions) just before practice began; Against Me! would, three days later, leave to embark on their month-long tour with Cheap Girls and Fences.

"High Pressure Low" appears on Against Me's 2010 record titled White Crosses. "The Nausea" is a song written by Gabel that, prior to its recording for the Switchboard Sessions, had not been recorded or intended for any release.

Visit the band's website for more music

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Franz Nicolay

2011-01-21T18:11:00.058-06:00

Above all, Franz Nicolay is an Artist.

Certainly he's a musician, well known for his work with the boisterous, cabaret-punk collective World/Inferno Friendship Society; his curly mustache and fedora also became a familiar fixture beside Craig Finn and the frat-rock storytellers in the Hold Steady until he left the band abruptly in 2010. A respected session player, Nicolay has contributed accordion tracks to records by a range of artists, from Evelyn Evelyn (the siamese twin sideshow performed by Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley) to politi-punks the Star Fucking Hipsters and, recently, British troubadour Frank Turner; he even pounded the piano for Against Me! during their recent summer tour.

There are other projects, too—Anti-Social Music, for example, a cooperative of composers and chamber musicians, and the eclectic gypsy-klezmer consort Guignol—and his prolificacy only promotes the notion that Nicolay is making more than music—it's cross-cultural, and mixed-media, and convention-bending. In fact, the songs on Luck and Courage, his second full-length, feel specifically narrative in nature, like a short story set to music. This might be because Nicolay's approach to songwriting is more literary than most musicians', with characters and conflicts and themes threaded beneath the surface of each song.

The concept behind Luck and Courage came to Nicolay in a manner fitting an Artist. “This is the worst kind of cliché,” he begins, “but I had this dream in which I wrote this song named 'Felix and Adelita'. It was one of those rare occasions where I dragged myself out of bed and wrote the whole damn thing down.

“There's three ways that can go,” he continues. “You have a dream where you've written a great story or song and you roll over and say, 'Eh, I'll probably remember that' and, of course, it's gone. Or, if you actually have a notepad by your bed, you roll over and scrawl something down and, when you wake up, it's some illegible, stoned epiphany—like, 'Blue is Blue'—and you're like, 'Aw man, that wasn't good at all.' But this one was basically the song as it ended up as the first track on the record.”

Nicolay, curious about where his subconscious guided him, Googled the names “Felix” and “Adelita” and was intrigued by what he found. “'Felix' turned out the be Latin for 'luck,'” he tells, “and 'Adelita,' in Mexico, is this mystic icon of courage; she's a woman warrior. So I was like, 'Luck and Courage...that sounds like an album title!'”

Though he had already written some of what would become Luck and Courage, Nicolay was inspired by the ideas revealed during this dream. Featured in the lyrics of “Felix and Adelita”, for example, is a conflict between the safety of domesticity and the freedom of living a life untethered; Nicolay saw this as a theme that could tie some of his other songs together.

There's a another theme, what Nicolay calls a meta-narrative, that connects the songs on this release. “There's a sense in love affairs where you sort of create your own little country,” he explains. “Kurt Vonnegut calls it the 'nation of two.' It has its own language and its own customs and its own geography and history. And when that starts to go bad, it can feel like this country's coming apart, like there's something rotten at the heart of this society.”

Both themes appear in “Felix and Adelita”, which leads off Luck and Courage. Nicolay's candid, crisp voice introduces his characters within the song's first few syllables as an organ hums behind him. By the time his banjo enters, sparkling at the start of each line, it's easy to sense this crumbling “nation of two”. As song softly proceeds, driven by the steady shuffling of brushes on a snare drum, Nicolay sings, “But when you leave again leave something of you with them / Tie your fishing lines to the fence posts and do your best to reel them in / The candle flickers, you measure morals by unsturdy things / tear leaves off of the sycamore, and pin down the butterfly's wings,” and the tug towards stability against the pull of independence seems apparent.

The record closes with the title track, which seems to both parallel and oppose the opener. Propelled by a popping banjo and the bright kicks of a piano, the history between Felix and Adelita seems further revealed; unlike the chorus on “Felix and Adelita”, though, which rings with reeling in and pinning down, “Luck and Courage” seems more about casting away. Especially considering the bridge—where the snare drum stirs the song into a sudden and frantic frenzy, where these two doves are described oceans apart, where the banjo seems to spin like a pinwheel, where Nicolay concludes with the line, “and her absence at the altar”—one might imagine Felix and Adelita's little country divided at the end.

When Nicolay contemplates the “nation of two” and considers the struggles sparked when an enclosed culture starts to crumble, he isn't relying strictly on his experience in romantic relationships. “Every band is its own culture as well,” he explains. “It has its own inside jokes, it has its own ways that people adjust to being around each other for long periods of time in strenuous circumstances. With some bands, I've been a part of it as that develops; being in a band that's been around for five or ten years or longer, you're inventing from the ground up both a family and a small business, and everybody sort of figures out their own way of doing that. With other bands, though, I sort of parachute in like an anthropologist onto a Pacific island.”

It's been easier for Nicolay to drop into some bands than others. Despite his tenure with the band, he found it difficult to fit in with the Hold Steady even though he complimented them musically. “My touring background was with World/Inferno,” he says. “I was from punk and from that kind of world. When I joined the Hold Steady, it was like, these are some guys that are into sports and Budweiser and Led Zeppelin, which was the kind of mindset that I hadn't run into in the New York punk world. It wasn't the same world, culturally.”

Like Adelita (or Felix, depending on one's interpretation of his songs), Nicolay found freedom by fleeing his permanent spot in the Hold Steady, by abandoning what was holding him back. And, though he continues to contribute his accordion to records that may require its wheeze, becoming a solo Artist has allowed him to truly stretch—to set his short stories to music, to thread his songs with meaningful and thoughtful themes, to pull characters from his subconscious and let them lead him. Because he set his own course, Luck and Courage is a record like no other; it's folky without suffering from simplicity, punk-rock without the aggression or anger, catchy without coming off as cliché, experimental without pretension. It's cross-cultural ,and mixed-media, and convention-bending, and more than mere music.

It's Art, but only because Franz Nicolay is an Artist.

Nicolay took time off from engineering a record for Pearl and the Beard with Dan Brennan at Soundtrack Recording Studios in New York to record these songs a few days after Christmas. Brennan was able to patch a condenser microphone into the studio's landline phone so Nicolay performed these songs in the studio's sound booth, wearing headphones and a banjo, instead of directly into the telephone.

"This Is Not a Pipe" appears on Nicolay's 2010 record titled Luck and Courage. "Not Superstitious" is a Leatherface cover; the song originally appeared on the 1991 album Mush.

Visit the Nicolay's website for more music.

Sorry, but these songs were taken down due to space constraints. Please download The Switchboard Sessions, Volume Two for a track from this and other sessions recorded in 2011. If you're desperate for a copy of these tracks, please see the "About the Switchboard Sessions" page for info on how to contact the author.

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The Sainte Catherines

2011-01-05T19:38:00.009-06:00

It may be difficult to tell, but Hugo Mudie is ready to settle down—sort of.

Consider his particularly striking appearance—his two-toned and tangled hair, the stretchers in his ears and thick frames on his face, his occasional shirtlessness and constant sleevelessness—or that his band the Sainte Catherines released Fire Works, their fifth full-length album, in the fall; this doesn’t describe someone who fits society’s definition of “adulthood.” It’s true: Mudie isn’t quite ready to retreat into this conventional and colorless existence any more than the Sainte Catherines are ready to quit touring. Despite this, Mudie and his band mates are on a course that seems a bit more mature than before.

It might be because two-thirds of the Sainte Catherines had children in the same year, including Mudie, guitarists Frederic Jacques and Louis Valiquette, and former drummer Rich Bouthiller. “We wanted to do that right,” Mudie explains. “We didn’t want to be on the road in the first year of having a new child. That’s not very intelligent.” In addition, many of the band’s members pursued new professions and/or continued to tour with Yesterday’s Ring, the punk-country project that contained many members of the Sainte Catherines. These priorities limited the band’s ability to perform, let alone record and release a new record.

It’s likely, then, that these priorities also inspired Fire Works, at least partially. Released by Anchorless Records in the fall of 2010, the record is the epitome of grown-up punk-rock.

Fire Works is the band’s first album in of new material in four years and feels somehow warmer—or fuller, or sophisticated—than 2006’s Dancing for Decadence, a record that’s not as much fast as it is ferocious, where songs gallop with the aggressive rage of raiding horsemen, swinging swords and setting fires; Mudie’s scratchy, melodic snarl rises from each distorted riff and dangling lead like he’s commanding this militia.

This fury is missing on Fire Works, replaced by heartier chords and steadier, simpler drums. “We wanted to do something less aggressive, a bit more melodic, a bit more sing-able, maybe,” Mudie says, explaining this perceived shift. “When we started, we wanted to be more of a mid-tempo punk band like Jawbreaker and Leatherface and all that, so we kind of went back to that.”

To those who were introduced to the band through Dancing for Decadence, though, the Sainte Catherine’s most recent record may feel like a departure and—despite the up-tempo pace of the record, its distorted guitars, and the return of Mudie’s coarse vocals—considerably less “punk-rock.” But Mudie isn’t interested in that old argument. “I know a lot of people that would say that the Sainte Catherines are not a punk band, but it’s not really important to me,” he says. “I don’t think the style of music you play affects it that much anyway. It depends on how you respect the history, how you grew up on it, and how you’re involved in it.”

It’s also depends, Mudie argues, on age. “When I was seventeen or eighteen,” he says, “if a band would sign to a major label, I would be like, ‘Fuck, they’re not punk anymore.’ Now I know that it has nothing to do with that.”

Punk or not, there’s something else stylistically different about Fire Works, something less tangible that several critics have sensed. Perhaps it’s the sporatic presence of gooey slide guitars, of a clean-plucked acoustic and a harmonica’s bright chords; perhaps it’s the trebly guitar tone, or the rhythm with which these Telecasters shuffle, but there’s a clear country influence on the band’s most recent record. “A lot of people say that, but we don’t understand it,” Mudie admits. “We’re kind of happy about it because we like country a lot, but it was never our intention to put any kind of country influence in the Sainte Catherines. I think it’s funny because, in a lot reviews, people have said, ‘It seems like they’ve spent too much time in Yesterday’s Ring.’”

These elements—Mudie’s evolved perception of “punk” and the Sainte Catherine’s more melodic, folk-influenced musical approach—may be one reason why Fire Works feels like a musically “grown-up” punk-rock record. Mudie’s lyrics seem to reinforce this aura as well. “Chub-E & Hank III / Vimont Stories Part II” is one song in which Mudie’s lyrics lament the stresses associated with the unconventional lifestyle (and look) of a musician. “If only I could get minimum wage,” he sings while “woahs” hang in the air above him, “I’d play your town and I’d sing your name / But I can’t afford the price of fame / - You’ve got tattoos on your hands…”

The same goes for “The Great Somewhere Else”, which begins like slow, lonely walk home after a long night; here, Mudie sings in metaphor—the ocean is the open road calling him to begin yet another odyssey—before the song tumbles into its faster first chorus (which echoes the record’s second track). When the song slows back down, Mudie muses on what he will miss while on the road. “I’ll be back on the boat,” he sings, “but I’ll be counting the days and the dogs are all dead but the fire still works / I thought I needed more, but I was doing okay / […] I spent my whole life in the Great Somewhere Else”.

“A lot of the lyrics before used to be about other people,” Mudie explains, “like ‘You live like this and I don’t like it,’ or ‘You live like that and it’s not the way you should,’ but I don’t think the anger is there anymore; I used to be a lot angrier at people and everything, but now I’m happy. For this record, we decided to look at ourselves and what we do—what’s good about it and what’s not. I think that’s why it seems a bit more personal.”

This introspection is just another sign that Mudie is settling down. Here, it’s important to clarify that “settling down” means finding what one is looking for; it means feeling satisfied—finally—with what one has become.

A cynical listener might say that the Sainte Catherines have softened, that they’ve stepped away from punk-rock and politics and finger-pointing. This sentiment seems misguided, though, since Fire Works exhibits a settled, satisfied group of guys that has decided and developed itself into exactly what it wants to become: a mid-tempo, country-toasted punk-rock band with introspective and personal lyrics.

Settling down, though, doesn’t mean stopping mid-stride. Despite the occasionally conflicted lyrics on Fire Works, Mudie describes what he’ll miss most when the band breaks up on the song “I’ll Miss the Boys”. “I won’t miss stressing out,” he sings, “Talking to bands I don’t know / Not even the goddamn music / But I know I’ll miss the boys.”

“At some point,” he explains, “I realized what I really like about being in a band and touring is not necessarily the part where you play music, or the part where you see new things or the places you visit, but mostly the part where you hang out with your friends around the world and have a bunch of inside jokes and a stories to tell. The song is about, when the band is going to end, what I’m going to miss the most is the boys in the band.”

Maybe it’s not so difficult to tell, then, that Mudie and the Sainte Catherines have finally settled down.

Singer Hugo Mudie and guitarist Marc-Andre Beaudet recorded these songs in the late fall at the Café Culturel La Chasse-Galerie in Lavaltrie, Quebec. Being that the band was on tour, these songs (along with the interview) were recorded using the venue's landline phone in the relatively short amount of time before their set started.

"Better Like This" appears on the Sainte Catherines' 2010 record titled Fire Works. "Come Pick Me Up" is a Ryan Adams cover; the song originally appeared on the 2000 album Heartbreaker.

Sorry, but these songs were taken down due to space constraints. Please download The Switchboard Sessions, Volume One for a track from this and other sessions recorded in 2010. If you're desperate for a copy of these tracks, please see the "About the Switchboard Sessions"page for info on how to contact the author.

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The Switchboard Sessions, Volume One

2010-12-26T18:28:00.015-06:00

It's difficult to describe how it felt to wake up at six in the morning on December 12th, 2010, a Saturday, to hear a member of my favorite band play a private concert just for me.

I watched the sun rise over my silent and icy neighborhood in my pajamas from my office in the front of my house, my thumb over the reciever of my phone, and listened to Jimmy Stadt of Polar Bear Club as he strummed an acoustic guitar sang the Jimmy Eat World's "Lucky Denver Mint"; he had just finished "Drifting Thing", one of the most dynamic and moving songs from their 2009 record Chasing Hamburg, and now was playing a classic song by one of my other favorite bands.

I was frozen in both excitement and fear during this and the previous performance; I had never recorded a real musician before, and I doubt very many people have used telephones to do so. Still, the thought that I was the only person in the world hearing this performance, though intimidating, was equally mesmerizing. This is where the Switchboard Sessions started.

I had been itching to begin a music blog since the spring of 2007 when I saw an article in the Chicago Tribune about Eric Mueller's Can You See the Sunset from the Southside. After visiting his site and immersing myself in the culture of music blogs for an afternoon, I was eager to be a part of it. That summer, I started a project called The Music Store Memoirs with a group of friends, but it was difficult to maintain and ultimately flopped.

At the same time, I continued interviewing bands for small music magazines and websites. I would spend weeks researching and going back and forth with publicists; if an interview was arranged, I would then spend hours writing up a feature that captured our conversation. For whatever reason, many of these went unprinted and unposted, and I am still not sure why. When they were, they were regularly torn apart by editors (for length, content, objectivity, reasonable reasons like that) or commenters (for, literally, no coherent reasons, which made me never want to write again). I was somewhat unfulfilled with this music writing thing; it was occupying a lot of time (since I'm an obsessive writer) and did not reward me with anything besides rights-protected copies of records that wouldn't play in my computer or car's CD player.

This is where I revisited the idea of blogging. With a blog, I could set my word count, write according to my availability, interview bands I found interesting, and ensure that what I write is actually posted. I needed a reason for people to visit my blog, though--something that set me apart from what was already out there. The thought of recording bands over the phone sounded really interesting, but I wondered who would want to hear crummy recordings of a band's music. I decided, though, that it wouldn't matter if no one took interest so long as it was an outlet for me; admittedly, the rationale behind the Switchboard Sessions is entirely selfish, but whatever.

When I started to think about which artists I wanted to interview, I wasn't sure where to start, but I knew I wanted to aim high. That said, I'm not sure how I convinced Polar Bear Club to be my first participant. Their publicist hooked me up with the interview, but didn't seem interested in asking them if they would be willing to perform some songs into the phone. When I asked Stadt during our interview, though, he seemed really interested. After our early morning recording, I realized that this could work, that recording musicians over the phone could be really cool for me even if no one else was interested.

I suppose the strangest part of all of this is that people did seem interested. In the past year, I've found some support from quite a few websites, blogs, podcasts, labels, publicists, and regular readers. If you are one of these people, holy shit, thank you for supporting this project. It's weird to say, but it's nice having you as virtual internet friends (and I hope we can become real life friends one day).

I also am overwhelmed by how many incredible musicians I was able to talk to this year. Every musician or band that I included in this project is one in which I truly believe. Though some of them are bands of which I have been a fan for a long time, many others were introduced to me this year for the first time or struck me suddenly, as if they had emerged from no where. These musicians have moved me and are contributing to music in some truly meaningful ways.

When I started the Switchboard Sessions, my intent is to humanize musicians, to tell their stories and reveal them to be regular people who are risking and sacrificing so much to follow their heart. My intent is to also capture what makes music meaningful--not the polish or production, but the actual notes, melodies, harmonies, and lyrics. By stripping away the recording quality, the songwriting quality emerges. I'm not sure if this purpose has been realized or not. I hope it has.

I also have discovered that the telephone serves as a sort of equalizer. Polar Bear Club's heaviest moments are humbled, and Laura Stevenson's delicate choruses are given weight when recorded over a landline; Direct Hit!'s intensity is contained, as are Empire! Empire!'s expansive atmospheres. Though these bands play different styles of music--with different moods and influences and instruments--their stripped down versions verify that they all are, really, in the same place musically.

Enough rambling and reflection, though. Because I'm only alloted a certain amount of storage space, I had to take down some of songs from my SoundCloud profile so I can make room for more Switchboard Sessions. Because I still want to make these songs available, I've decided to put together a collection called The Switchboard Sessions, Volume One. It will contain the music from each band that I've recorded in 2010 (though, unfortunately, not every song that they recorded with me).

Because, unlike most modern music lovers, I'm desperate for tangible music (especially CDs that I can play in my car), I've included artwork for a cardboard sleeve. If you are a little lame (like I am), you can print out this PDF, cut carefully along the lines, fold and glue the thing together, and safely house a burned version of this collection within it. I know; how DIY, right?

Again, I wonder who would want to listen to crummy recordings in compilation form. Honestly, I doubt anyone would, but that's not the reason I'm putting it together. I'm proud of this project, and I want to put it on display. You'll notice that, even though most of the songs were recorded using the same equipment on my end, each song sounds different. I love that each track has character and hope you do too.

I am embarrassed by how much I have written here. Sorry. Thanks for supporting me and I hope that the Switchboard Sessions will have more to offer you in 2011.

Download The Switchboard Sessions, Volume One

1. “Better Like This” by The Sainte Catherines
2. “An Island’s Point of View” by Jeff Rowe
3. “fld ovr” by Everyone Everywhere
4. “Tonight is Alive” by Broadway Calls
5. “Werewolf Shame” by Direct Hit!
6. “Goody Goody Gumdrops” by Dr. Frank
7. “Foster Brothers” by Captain, We’re Sinking
8. “Nevermore” by Kid, You’ll Move Mountains
9. “Lucky” by Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate)
10. “I Was a Teenage Poltergeist” by Mixtapes
11. “Holy Ghost!” by Laura Stevenson and the Cans
12. “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” by Murder by Death
13. “All of Life is Coming Home” by My Heart to Joy
14. “Until We Surrender” by Heartsounds
15. “Mexico” by Samiam
16. “Clean Sheets” by Smoke or Fire
17. “In the Flicker” by Sundowner
18. “Lucky Denver Mint” by Polar Bear Club

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Mixtapes and Direct Hit!

2010-12-01T15:46:00.007-06:00

On December 1st, 2009, Mixtapes was not a band.

Singer and guitarist Ryan Rockwell had already started writing songs with Maura Weaver, his musical counterpart; they may have even written an entire record’s worth of material. Still, it’s important to emphasize that Mixtapes was nothing more than a project—two friends informally strumming out songs on acoustic guitars—and not a band.

“We had a lot of acoustic songs written, but we weren’t really sure what we were going to do with them,” Rockwell explains with Weaver giggling behind him. “My friend’s band was on tour and had a few days off, so they were staying with me for a few days. Their drummer heard us practice and really liked the songs, so he said he wanted to come down play drums on them, and we decided to record an album.”

Mixtapes ran through their songs the night before entering the studio and, for the first time, Rockwell and Weaver heard their songs at full volume with drums and distorted guitars. “We were so surprised by how they sounded,” Weaver adds. “It sounded completely different from what we thought it would.”

The resulting record, a ten-song full-length called Maps released in February of 2010, would thrust project into existence as a legitimate musical group. Less than a year later, with a full lineup that includes Kamal Hiresh on drums and Josh Condon on bass, the band has also found the time to record and release two EPs titled Thought About Growing Up and A Short Collection of Short Songs. And, of course, they also released a four-song split with Direct Hit!, a band whose story is unsurprisingly similar.

By December 1st, 2009, Direct Hit! had just solidified their line-up.

It took singer and guitarist Nick Woods a year or two to do so. The band began as a side project while he was working at a call center in Madison, WI. “In between calls,” he explains, “I started writing little thirty-second hooks to keep my mind off of the crappiness of the job.” These hooks turned into pop-punk songs, which Woods put to tape in 2008 just for fun. “It actually turned out way better than I thought it was going to,” he says. “I thought it was going to be some piddly little thing that I did on the side.”

Direct Hit! continued inconsistently—even after Wood’s other band, the Box Social, broke up—until Woods met drummer Danny Walkowiak. When the duo added bassist Robbie Schroder towards the end of 2009, Woods found what felt like a full lineup. “That’s when I started feeling comfortable telling people I was in a band,” he laughs. Direct Hit! would later add Mike Esser on guitar and keyboardist Alex Hill, a decision that helped them turn each song into a trademark wall of sound.

Both Direct Hit! and Mixtapes have more in common than their recent and rapid inceptions. Both bands were approached by Scotty Sandwich, owner of Death to False Hope Records, to release their records on his digital, donation-based label. Woods, who had worked tirelessly to self-release his first three EPs, was contacted by Sandwich just after the release of #4. “I told him that we already released it,” Woods explains, “and he said, ‘No no no, we’re basically doing the same thing that you guys are, and that’s just putting these rad tunes on the internet for free.’”

Woods, who was still skeptical, wanted to check out his website to see what other bands were on there—“To make sure that it wasn’t just a bunch of Juggalos and nu-metal bands,” he says with a snicker—but was surprised to see consistent collection of interesting, punk-influenced artists. “I sent him a note right back saying, ‘If you put our name next to all the rest of those groups, that’d be fucking incredible,” he says.

Death to False Hope released Direct Hit! #4 (and, a few months later, #5). Despite being a donation-based label (where many records are downloaded without donation), Woods was elated at the attention Death to False Hope brought the band. “All of the sudden,” he says, “the record started showing up on websites and people I had never met before were sending me notes saying how much they liked it.”

One such individual was Rockwell; Death to False Hope released Mixtapes’ Maps around the same time as #4 and Rockwell wanted to reach out to Woods right away. “We listen to Direct Hit! when we’re in our van,” he explains. “One day, Maura came to band practice and I was like, ‘I burned you this CD. This band is awesome.’ Those guys really like us and we really like them.”

Another listener that liked Direct Hit!’s Death to False Hope debut turned out to be Lisa Garelick, who was forming her fledgling label Kind of Like Records. “Lisa said she had been listening to Direct Hit! basically since #3 came out,” Woods recalls, “and asked if we wanted to put out a seven-inch record. And I said, ‘Fuck yeah!’ I had never put out a record before on vinyl, so I was really excited about that.

“And she said, ‘Yeah, it’s going to be a split with this band called Mixtapes,’” he continues, “and that’s when I really hit the roof. I was really, really excited about being on a release with those guys.”

Garelick’s idea seemed simple: Each band would provide their own original songs, plus a cover of the other band’s original. The idea itself has been done before but, as Rockwell argues, “I think the way we did it hasn’t been done as much. The way we did it, we hadn’t heard each other’s songs. Nick sent us a version of him playing ‘Werewolf Shame’ in his bedroom acoustically. There was no guitar solo, no drums, no bass.” Rockwell and Weaver altered the tempo of Woods’ original, as well as the key, the structure, and (subtly) the style of the song. Likewise, Rockwell and Weaver recorded “I Was a Teenage Poltergeist” on acoustic guitars using a cheap mic and sent this rough demo to Direct Hit! for them to reinterpret. “If you heard the versions we sent each other,” Rockwell says, “you’d be amazed when you heard the final seven-inch.”

Because each song was developed independently from one another, both versions of both songs are nearly unrecognizable from the other. “Werewolf Shame”, Direct Hit!’s intense contribution, kicks off the record’s first side. A strange combination of control and overpowering passion, the song is driven by a furnace of chords. Hot and harsh, the guitars seem to radiate through the song, complimented by the groan of Hill’s organ, as Schroder’s bass meanders behind this barrier of sound. Woods’ heartfelt howls don’t detract from the catchiness of his song, especially as he screams, “They left me on the highway / stepped on the gas drove away.”

“I had this hook in my head, the whole thing about ‘they left me on the highway,’” Woods says. “I got picked on a lot when I was in school when I was a kid. I couldn’t write a song about getting picked on because that’s a total downer. I thought, ‘What is the most flamboyant way that I could write a song about being picked on?’ So I wrote a song about growing up as a fucking werewolf and being picked on for it, and how a person can be this freak to everyone else, but that there are qualities to everybody that makes them powerful and interesting and worthwhile.”

There’s something somber about Woods’ werewolf story, but Mixtapes’ swifter interpretation of “Werewolf Shame” is uplifting; the guitars seem more optimistic and lively, like Woods’ character isn’t a tragic hero but a bitter lycanthrope ready to tear his antagonist’s face apart. Whether we feel sorry for this werewolf or are anticipating his aggression, it’s interesting that both songs seem to tell different stories.

Side B opens with “I Was a Teenage Poltergeist”, Mixtapes’ bouncy and bold contribution. Rockwell and Weaver’s back-and-forth vocals, a signature of their sound, seem to reach in desperation from behind the growl of guitars, beneath the spastic explosion of Hiresh’s drums, before coming together during the chorus. The song’s attack, though, is tame—keen, even, and clean—compared to Direct Hit!’s version, which is thicker, straighter, slightly slower, and closes side A. Woods’ singing isn’t as crisp as Rockwell and Weaver’s, but his shouts give the song an ardent power. “I like how energetic their version is,” Rockwell says.

“It’s like a million people yelling at one time,” Weaver adds.

“Yeah,” Rockwell continues, “we do kind of delicate harmonies and quieter songs, but they just rock. Like it’s upbeat and Nick’s screaming his head off. It’s awesome.”

It’s records like these that make these two pop-punk bands (and their innovative record labels) noteworthy, and why it shouldn’t be a surprise that on December 1st, 2010—less than one year after these bands established themselves as something serious, something more than just another bunch of ambitious musicians—Mixtapes and Direct Hit! are bands about which people are talking.

But, at least for Rockwell and Weaver, the speed at which Mixtapes has made a name for itself is sort of scary. “It’s crazy that this all happened so fast,” Weaver says.

“I feel like there’s pressure,” Rockwell adds. “It doesn’t affect the way we write songs, obviously. It’s just weird, I guess.” But, at the same time, the experience has been exhilarating for Rockwell and Weaver. “I definitely think that we have some sort of buzz out there,” Rockwell concludes. “We’re obviously more thankful about it than we are stressed and worried. It’s the coolest thing ever that anybody would want to hear any song that we sit and write in my bedroom. I wouldn’t replace it for the world."

It does make one wonder, though, how much bigger both bands will be on December 1st, 2011.

Rockwell and Weaver met on an autumn evening to record their songs and conduct their interview. For some reason, though, the phone in Rockwell's home that they used to record their tracks garbled their songs too much. On the date that the two planned on rerecording, Rockwell called to say that Weaver got stuck at work and, the next day, the band began a short tour on their way to the Fest; Mixtapes was unable to rerecord until a week after their return. During the most recent recording, while Weaver prepared for recording, Rockwell spoke of his gun collection and hiding McDonald's plush dolls in locations where Weaver would find them and scream in terror.

Woods' session was conducted a couple days later from the landline phone at his girlfriend's grandparents' house. Though there were fewer technological hiccups, it wasn't without its delightful oddities; friends Nick Berg and Shane Olivo, who also records all of Direct Hit!'s releases, can be heard grunting (or something) in time with the bridge of "Werewolf Shame".

"I Was A Teenage Poltergeist" and "Werewolf Shame" both appear on Mixtapes and Direct Hit!'s 2010 split. "Soundtrack 2 My Life" is a Kid Cudi cover; the song originally appeared on his 2009 record Man on the Moon: The End of Day. "Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)" is a Robert Palmer cover; the song originally appeared on his 1978 album Secrets.

Visit Death to False Hope Records to download Mixtapes' Maps and Thought About Growing Up and Direct Hit!'s #4 and #5. Please donate to both bands if you enjoy their music. Also, please visit Kind Of Like Records' web store to purchase Mixtapes' split with Direct Hit!

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Laura Stevenson and the Cans

2010-11-16T17:29:00.008-06:00

It’s difficult to tell by listening to Laura Stevenson sing, or hearing her strum an old Telecaster’s six strings, that she’s new to this whole music-making thing.

Maybe “new” is the wrong word. After all, Stevenson released A Record on Quote/Unquote Records in 2008 with her band the Cans; their follow-up seven-inch Holy Ghost! was released on Mandible Records last year. Still, there’s something in the way she describes her place in the band, on stage, on tour, and in the scene that makes her seem like the new girl at a new school—not completely uncomfortable, curious and silently excited, but endlessly unsure if she’s in the right place.

“Not to be like boo-hoo, but I’ve never really felt like I’ve belonged to anything,” explains Stevenson, who is staying at her mom’s house for a week while she waits for the band’s next tour to begin. “Even now, I feel really self-conscious playing music; I feel like I’m not one of the cool people.”

Stevenson’s self-consciousness might come from entering Brooklyn’s established indie scene before she really knew what it meant to be in a band; though she may not have been completely prepared, rock and roll, it seems, may have swooped in at just the right moment. “I was kind of going through some dark times,” Stevenson says. “I was just really depressed and not leaving my house. I had a TCBY that was around the corner from me, but I would drive there in my car and come back home; that’s the only place I would go.”

It was around that time that Stevenson’s friend Jeff Rosenstock was starting a new musical project. “I don’t know if Jeff was aware of how awful my life was,” she says, “but he invited me to be a member of this new thing he was starting because he knew I played the keyboard and I could sing.” Though it started as Rosenstock’s small, solo experiment, Bomb the Music Industry! (as it came to be called) has since become an explosive punk-ska collective known as much for their reckless and relentless live sets as they are their digital, donation-based albums. “It was great,” she says. “It was the perfect thing to happen in my life at that time. Being in Bomb the Music Industry! definitely pulled me out of whatever I was going through.”

While she discovered what it was like to write, record, perform, and tour with an army of musicians behind her, Stevenson started to experiment with her own songwriting. Some of the songs, many of which would become the backbone of A Record, were a response to the “dark times” through which she was navigating. “They were the product of this really bad relationship I was in,” she says. “I got my heart-broken.” Others were more of a reflection of these dark times. Two of the songs are about tragic instances when children were killed. “‘Baby Bones’ is about this massacre that took place in El Mozote, El Salvador,” she explains, “and ‘Landslide Song’ is a song about a landslide, obviously, that happened in the 1960s in Aberfan, Wales. These two stories had a big impact on me”

But not all of the songs on A Record are somber and bleak. “A Shine to It” begins with two guitars emerging gently and slowly from silence; one, an acoustic, is plucked with quiet confidence while the other, a fuzzy electric, buzzes behind it. Stevenson’s softened voice bounces on this bubbling guitar part as she sings about selling her blood and posing nude for an artist. These lines seem bleak—like a black contradiction to the song’s tranquil spark—until the chorus, that is, where she offers the money she makes to someone she loves. “I thought that you might like this,” she sings with a sincere sort of innocence, “because it’s got a shine to it. / I know you like shiny things so I will try to buy it up for you.”

“A Shine to It” was inspired by Cans bassist Mike Campbell (who encouraged Stevenson to record a collection of her songs) and the only one that wasn’t inspired by heartbreak. Now that Stevenson has some distance on her "dark times," some of the songs on A Record feel almost foreign to her. “It definitely feels like a little time capsule,” Stevenson explains, “because it’s a part of my life that I don’t even really think about any more because things are so different now.”

These dark and deeply personal songs may be part of the reason why it’s difficult for Stevenson to feel comfortable as the front-woman in her band and why she feels so self-conscious on stage. “They’re all very personal songs,” Stevenson explains. “Talking about it the way I sing about it makes me feel weird. Between songs when we’re playing live—I get a lot of shit for this from my band mates because they want to play a normal set—I’ll say, ‘Okay, this next one’s this song and it’s about something!’ And I have this weird, goofy thing that I do out of nervousness, and they hate it.

“I’m trying not to say anything between songs now,” she continues. “This is the new thing we’re trying: write a setlist, stick to it (which is hard), and don’t say anything in between songs. We did it once, and it was good. People reacted positively and my band mates weren’t upset with me.”

That doesn’t stop Stevenson from using among the most personal stories as her music’s muse. On “Holy Ghost!”—the title track for the Cans’ most recent seven-inch and one of her most dynamic, meaningful tracks—she picks softly at her acoustic, lets the strings ring and slide into silence. Stevenson’s voice sounds afraid, alone, like she’s lost at sea—even with the wind of a string section blowing at her back during the second verse; even while she wails above the drone of a dingy guitar during song’s final chorus; even with the steady engine of the rhythm section keeping the song on course.

“‘Holy Ghost!’ is, I think, the most important song that I’ve written,” Stevenson explains. “It’s about my dad, who was going through this really terrible time and I thought I was going to lose him. I wasn’t sure. He was really, really sad. He lived on this houseboat by himself; he didn’t have heat and it was the wintertime.”

“Oh dear lord,” she sings, exhausted and in “Holy Ghost!”, “I can feel your claws upon me, / scratching sweetly / in the middle of the night. / My father is so tired / I can feel your weight upon him. / Crushing gently, sweetly, nightly / from his house upon the sea. / Make it all right.”

“It’s like this prayer, sort of,” she giggles suddenly, nervously, as if she’s trying to surface from the seriousness of this story. “I don’t really follow religion because I’m a doubter, but this was kind of a last resort kind of thing. He’s doing okay now.”

Though it may make her self-conscious, or nervous, or feel like she doesn’t belong, it’s the personal nature of Stevenson’s music that makes it so stirring. It’s the reason why Stevenson was encouraged by Rosenstock—and later her band mates in the Cans, including Campbell—to step outside of her comfort zone and play the music she was meant to make.

And, though it may feel uncomfortable or feel foreign for her to be homeless when she’s not on the road, crashing on her parents’ couch between tours, a nomad with limited possessions—“I just went up into my mom’s attic to see what I had packed up there,” she snickers. “I forgot that I had some sweaters and a winter coat.”—something inside Stevenson endlessly reminds her that she is, indeed, in the right place.

After weeks of missed connections, limited windows of availability, and general illness, Stevenson was finally able to record these songs at her mom's house in New York on an autumn evening just before she took her band down to the Fest 9 in Gainesville, FL. The songs were performed so dynamically and tenderly that some parts of the song fall beneath the hum of the landline.

"Holy Ghost!" is the title track on Laura Stevenson and the Cans' 2009 seven-inch. "Juanita" is a Flying Burrito Brothers cover; the song originally appeared on their 1969 record The Gilded Palace of Sin.

Visit the Cans' Tumblr blog for more music, or their online store to purchase or download songs from each of their records.

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Samiam

2010-10-30T14:00:00.003-05:00

“Well, you know, we aren’t really a real band or anything,” Sergie Loobkoff says. “We just go on tours for vacations, like we’re going to Europe and stuff.”

This is sort of a strange way to initiate an interview, especially since Loobkoff is the lead guitarist of Samiam, the Bay Area band whose hands have helped sculpt the sound of modern punk-rock since the late-80s. It’s even stranger considering that No Idea Records recently released Orphan Works, a collection of live and rare cuts recorded during Samiam’s “hey-day” on Atlantic Records.

“I sort of get in trouble for being too self-effacing by the guys in my band,” says Loobkoff, “and I also get in trouble for saying that. But I’m really adamant about being honest about how I feel about it.”

But, buried beneath Loobkoff’s modest pessimism, there’s a truth that’s so obvious that it’s almost easy to overlook—that Samiam isn’t the same band that they were when Clumsy and their single “Capsized” stumbled into the mainstream in 1994. In order to understand the band that Samiam has become, though, it’s important to understand their trajectory—their rise and fall, but especially where they landed.

It makes sense that Samiam released their first three full-lengths on New Red Archives; both the band and label were fledglings based in the East Bay that had deep roots in the scene around San Francisco. Despite this, the label had a hard time supporting the band’s ballooning popularity. “It was more like being on your cousin’s record label,” Loobkoff laughs. “Not to knock him, but he didn’t have any resources whatsoever. He got the records made and on the shelf, sort of, and didn’t do anything remotely like marketing whatsoever; he put one ad in Maximum Rocknroll and that’s it.” Samiam made up for its label’s limitations by touring both the States and abroad about twelve times, which likely led to Atlantic Records' interest in 1994.

The shift from a small, local label to Atlantic startled Loobkoff and his bandmates. “It was like night and day,” he remembers, describing flights across the country to make music videos, to open for platinum artists for one night, to record live on the radio. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars were being floated through our little band.”

Along with being afforded extra time to write and record their songs, Atlantic asked Samiam to pick a producer for their first release on the label. Immediately, Loobkoff, along with singer Jason Beebout and guitarist James Brogan, thought of Lou Giordano. “At the time, we were all completely in love the Sugar record Copper Blue that he had just done,” Loobkoff explains. “We wanted our record to sound like that.” Samiam requested that Giordano record their debut, but were doubtful. “We were like, ‘Nah, they probably won’t be able to get Lou Giordano,’ but they did.”

Clumsy, the resulting record, was a proud moment for Loobkoff and Samiam. “In a lot of ways,” he admits, “it was kind of dream come true to be able to make something we were proud of. And we were pretty confident that what we made was going to be heard by people.”

But Clumsy didn’t sell as well as Atlantic had hoped and, when the label initially listened to You Are Freaking Me Out, the band’s follow-up, they passed, opting to license it to Ignition, another label under the WEA umbrella.

You Are Freaking Me Out featured the same sleek Samiam found on Clumsy, though the record feels lighter, or more spirited maybe; some songs, like “If You Say So”, whine and whirr, foreshadowing the sonic path Samiam would follow ten years later; others, like “Full On” and “My Convenience”, display the chunky energy and edge that had defined Samiam for a decade prior.

Nonetheless, Atlantic decided to cut the cord after two albums. Apparently, Samiam wasn’t the lucrative punk-rock band for which they were praying. Both records have been out of print and largely unavailable since.

Fast forward to 2009 during the punk-rock pilgrimage The Fest in Gainesville, FL where Loobkoff was approached by Var Thelin, owner of No Idea Records, about the possibility of re-releasing Clumsy and You Are Freaking Me Out on his independent label. Since Samiam doesn’t own the rights to these records—since, in fact, the rights were sold to Rhino Records, who is said to be currently considering re-releasing them under the label Rhino Classics—the project is still a work in progress.

While waiting for these records, though, No Idea decided to release Orphan Works. These eighteen raw, revealing tracks—recorded during the mid- to late-90s in locations ranging from radio stations to Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong’s basement—demonstrate the sonic depth of Samiam even at their most stripped down. “The whole Orphan Works idea,” Loobkoff explains, “was to put something out that was related to these two records, to that time period, just as something to keep the name Samaim vaguely on the back of people’s brains so that, when we do re-release those two records, that people might actually think of picking them up.”

Despite this history, despite No Idea's interest and recent release, it’s after Atlantic sent them on their way that Samiam started to stop being a band.

The band released Astray in 2000 on Hopeless Records. More mature than Clumsy, more dynamic than You Are Freaking Me Out, Astray shows a denser Samiam. Songs like “Mexico” and “Birdbath” are driven by the same bellowing, grubby guitars for which Loobkoff and Brogan made Samiam famous. Other songs, namely “Curbside”, are hushed and delicate; on these tracks, Loobkoff’s leads—which usually wiggle and weave through the thick swamp of distortion—are plucked in clean, careful chords; Beebout’s characteristic wail is reduced to a whisper (and, sometimes, a literal whimper); and Sean Kennerly’s bass lines sigh as heavy breaths beneath these melodies.

But the majority of Astray’s songs alternate between big, murky blankets of chords and muted moments of timid tension—“How Long”, “Why Do We”, and opener “Sunshine” being among the most prominent examples—making this record a real demonstration of Samiam’s dynamic strength. “Sometimes I do get kind of nostalgic and listen to my own music, as lame as that sounds,” Loobkoff says, “and, I’d say of all our records, I’d probably put on Astray because it’s probably the most solid of them all.”

But when the band finished touring for Astray, Brogan left the band. Samiam slowed down not only because a creative element went missing, as Brogan had been with the band since their inception, but also because he had helped Loobkoff with the additional duties that comes with the business of being in a band. Though Loobkoff continued to book tours, the momentum faded for other members, who relocated across the country and reprioritized.

“When James quit, I kind of felt like we did break up,” Loobkoff admits. “From the beginning of our band until the end of 2000, we were pretty clueless, but we were a real band in the respect that we all lived in the same city and rehearsed regularly—and took rehearsal really seriously—and toured almost constantly. But we don’t live in the same city anymore and we don’t practice on a regular basis. We’re not on tour very frequently compared to the ‘90s, compared to a regular band who’s working hard.”

And, for these reasons, Samiam no longer feels like a real band for Loobkoff.

They’ve toured several times since their “break-up,” though, including seven trips overseas. And then, there’s Whatever’s Got You Down, released by Hopeless Records in 2006. Samiam’s most recent full-length feels like a band at its most raw and most real. Drenched withfeedback and fuzz, Beebout’s haunting howls drown beneath a sea of sound, stirred up by the smack of drummer Johnny Cruz’s snare; by the splashes of his hi-hat and cymbals; by guitars that growl and screech and scream; creating a concrete of noise that’s simultaneously messy and melodic.

If this living, breathing band seems to contradict Loobkoff’s assessment of Samiam, it doesn't. Samiam isn’t dead; it’s different. Sure, it’s no longer the band that toured non-stop for ten years, that toiled to write and record a record every two to three years, that remained in a relative obscurity despite its successes, and that made a profound impact despite its limited popularity. Musically, they’re louder and quieter, faster and slower, rawer, messier, more passionate, and more powerful.

It’s still, however, a vehicle for Loobkoff and his band mates to express themselves and to see the world. “We never played a last show,” Loobkoff explains, “and we never said, ‘we broke up,’ or anything like that. So, in that respect, when we’re Samiam, we’re Samiam, and when we’re not Samiam, Samiam doesn’t exist.”

This is the only place where Loobkoff is wrong in his assessment. Samiam, of course, still exists if only in the influence that Loobkoff underplays in his discussion. Samiam is one of those rare bands that has remained in the collective consciousness of anyone who has come across them—maybe because they’ve been aesthetically consistent despite line-up changes, label changes, location changes, et cetera; maybe because, considering this consistency, their music has evolved, become more impressive, more mature; maybe because of where they’ve been in the realm of music and where they may be going.

However Loobkoff sees Samiam doesn’t matter. Whether Samiam is a “real band”, not a band, or simply a musical project at this point, it’s alive—or at least undead.

A couple of days after the interview, Loobkoff met up with the rest of the band in Brooklyn so they could prepare for their tour in Europe, as well as a few preceding dates in the States. Despite the best efforts of everyone in the band, it became difficult for them to find a time to record over the phone. Instead, Loobkoff, Beebout, and Kennerly recorded for songs using GarageBand; these tracks were re-recorded over a phone so they fit the vibe of the Switchboard Sessions' mission.

"Mexico" appears on Samiam's 2000 record titled Astray; "When We're Together" appears on Samiam's 2006 record titled Whatever's Got You Down. "Game of Pricks" and "Search and Destroy" are covers. The former originally appeared on Guided by Voices' 1995 record titled Alien Lanes. The latter originally appeared on the Stooges' 1973 record titled Raw Power, which Samiam re-recorded in 1999 as a single for Burning Heart Records; this same version also appears on their 2010 collection of live and rare tracks titled Orphan Works.

Visit the band's MySpace for more music.

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Jeff Rowe

2010-08-30T16:47:00.009-05:00

Maybe it’s safe to assume that most artists think more with their hearts than with their heads.

Take musicians: Here are individuals who take their talents on the road with no promise of a place to sleep, money for fuel or food or emergencies, or even a sense of safety. They bring with them their instruments and each other; too often, they return with (and to) less than what they left with. It takes a certain sort of person to set out on this sort of “irrational” adventure, let alone live for it—one who places passion above a stable place in conventional society.

This is where Jeff Rowe might differ from most musicians. Sure the singer/songwriter is passionate; sure his solo debut, dubbed Barstool Conversations, is as emotional and personal as an acoustic self-portrait should be. It’s just that Rowe has been in those bands before, the ones piloted by passionate hearts, and he’s ready to learn from (rather than repeat) his mistakes.

Rowe started his musical career in BoxingWater. “We were kind of a melodic hardcore band,” he explains, “Real political, real young, and we were real idealistic also. We were like best friends, all from the north shore of Massachusetts, and used the music as a vehicle to see the country. We never got the point where we were sustaining ourselves by playing music, but we tried. We toured and played really crappy shows across the country, but through those tours, met the most amazing people.”

One such amazing person was Joe McMahon, whose band Smoke or Fire became buddies with BoxingWater. “They had met Tim Barry [formerly of Avail] on a whim,” Rowe says. “He told them, ‘Ya’ll should move down to Richmond. It’s cheap down here and you guys can live off of music.’ We were just floored at the fact that they had met Tim Barry because we were all Avail fans; they’re like a defining band for me. Then, a month goes by and Joe’s like, ‘I think I’m going to take Tim’s advice; I think we should go down to Richmond.’"

BoxingWater followed Smoke or Fire down to Richmond, but Rowe felt homesick almost immediately. “I’m a real Northeastern person and started missing stuff that winds up getting lost in the mix when you live somewhere else, like sarcasm,” he laughs. The rest of his band mates remained in Richmond (and would later become Landmines), but Rowe moved back to Massachusetts and started writing songs with his best friend Bert. Though the project started as a mere musical outlet for two bandless band members, it eventually evolved into the acoustic duo known as Tomorrow the Gallows.

That was my first foray into playing acoustic music,” Rowe explains. “We did the same thing we did in BoxingWater on an acoustic level: we released a record and went on tour.”

Except Tomorrow the Gallows found much more success than BoxingWater. “With Tomorrow the Gallows,” Rowe says, “we were a little bit safer. We weren’t trying to tour the country. We wanted to play in the Northeast and rally the troops, so to speak, and it worked out. Once we had a base of people who would come out to see us play, we just started spreading out. We were a little older and our experience of being in punk-rock bands prior to that made us a little more adept.”

When Bert decided to move back to his hometown (to potentially takeover his father’s business rebuilding old barns), Rowe found himself bandless once again, but this didn’t stop him from playing shows. One night, he found himself at a club in Boston called the Abbey Lounge. “It was a dive bar to the max,” he snickers. “There weren’t very many people there, and the people that were there didn’t really seem to care, but that didn’t seem to affect what I was doing.” Strumming and shouting, sweating beneath the stage lights, something clicked in Rowe that night that inspired him to pursue his solo act more seriously.

“You would think it would happen when people were listening and being encouraging,” he continues. “I think it was the lack of encouragement, the turned backs of the people at the bar that made me think, ‘I’m just going to sing a little louder…’”

In a sense, this was the start of Jeff Rowe the singer/songwriter—the solo artist—and the start of Barstool Conversations. But Rowe didn’t dive at this idea without considering his previous experiences on the road—both the places he has been and the people he has come across along the way. It’s these previous experiences that prepared. “I think of all the traveling from back in the day,” he explains, “and all the folks that we met, and some of my friends that are in bands—they do pretty well and are well known. Seeing their ups and downs in a non-objective manner, I think that stuff prepared me for this.”

To record his record, Rowe hoped to balance cost with competence, and considered Lance Koehler at Minimum Wage in Richmond, VA to be the best for the job. BoxingWater recorded with Koehler, as did Rowe’s principal influence Tim Barry and his former band mates Landmines. “It was a good excuse to visit friends,” Rowe says, “and the studio is actually cheap compared to most studios. So Minimum Wage—it’s a truism.”

Rowe also contacted some of his friends to fill in his songs with piano and other instruments, including Joe McMahon. “He’s really opinionated in an honest way,” Rowe admits. “I kind of wanted him to look over my shoulder a little bit.” Rowe hadn’t planned on asking McMahon to do back-ups—“I hadn’t really planned-out back ups,” he says with a snicker—but his best friend found himself jumping in on track after track. “He was like, ‘I kind of hear this harmony on that song while you were recording it,’” Rowe tells, “so I asked him, ‘Do you just want to try to do that harmony?’ and he was like, ‘Yep.’ And it was like that for the whole recording process.

“Even on a couple of songs that have drums,” Rowe continues, “Lance, who was in the engineer’s booth, was like, ‘Uh, do you think I can play drums on this?’ So he’d go down and play drums.” Besides the piano, which was planned out a bit before hand, and Rowe’s singing and strumming, all of the instrumentation was constructed and recorded in the moment.

Barstool Conversations may have been recorded spontaneously, but the record itself sounds careful and developed, though raw and real. More than anything, though, the record sounds intimate—not in a weak way, or in an invasive one; instead, his songs seem inviting and inspire a sense of solidarity, as if Rowe’s successes and woes, his happiness and heartaches are also the listener’s.

“An Island’s Point of View”, for example, is confident and peppy and possibly the simplest song on the record. Above the scratch of his acoustic, Rowe roars about his struggles, but peppers it with a sense of accomplishment. “I’m from a long line of forgetfulness,” he sings, “I’m from a long line of people doing time / I’ve got a long fight ahead of me / I’ve got a long fight, but I know my balance will withstand.”

In contrast, “Dead Authors” is a stormy ballad, but darkly beautiful. Rowe’s guitar is strummed with the subtle delicacy and rhythm of raindrops on a roof as piano chords boom with the resonance and power of thunder. “Mama’s gonna lose the home where we grew up, and it breaks my heart,” he sings. “Daddy’s not around. Hell, he never was worth the salt anyways / I’m a man right now and, if I’m not, I’ll never be / It keeps me up at night / wondering / the anger.”

“The song on the record that really stands out for me is ‘Dead Authors’,” Rowe admits. “I think it’s because it’s real definitive of what I was going through. It was about my mom, my dad, my home.” These songs are about the highs and lows of life; they’re merely told through Rowe’s perspective and experiences.

High or low, though, there’s a reoccurring theme to Rowe’s music. “In a sense,” he says, “it’s about how you can take a lot of punches but you can still stand. That stuff plays an epic role in my life, and it weighs heavily on me, but I’m doing what I want to do. My parents lost their home, but they’re still standing too.”

It’s fallacious, perhaps, to assume that all artists sacrifice common sense for passion; it’s possible that they aren’t even ends of the same spectrum. Still, it’s an interesting lens through which to view Rowe and his Barstool Conversations because, after the relative “failures” of BoxingWater and Tomorrow the Gallows, Rowe is still standing, still strumming, still shouting out his heart. Except he’s applying the lessons he’s learned from his previous experiences, from every night spent on a stranger’s floor, from every friend he’s met and will never see again, from every stolen slice of pizza, from every empty gas tank and every trashed transmission and every icy interstate—from every “irrational” adventure an artist has on the road.

It begs the question: Is Rowe thinking with his heart or with his head? Or Both? And which one is better than the other?

Claiming that there aren't very many landlines left in Boston, Rowe recorded these songs in the kitchen of one of his friends on a sunny late summer evening about two weeks before the release of his debut record.

"An Island Point Of View" appears on Rowe's 2010 record titled Barstool Conversations. "Bikeage" is a Descendents cover; the song originally appeared on the 1982 album Milo Goes to College.

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Sundowner

2010-08-09T08:20:00.005-05:00

When Chris McCaughan talks about the album he’s about to release, he speaks in the excited, anxious cadence of someone who’s presenting his art to the world for the first time.

This is odd considering that his band The Lawrence Arms recently celebrated their tenth year together. “The Lawrence Arms have really been my defining experience in music,” McCaughan admits. “I’m thirty-three now and I’ve been in The Lawrence Arms for over ten years—that’s a third of my life. Playing those songs with those guys over the years really has been one of the greatest experiences I’ve had in regards to music.”

The record that McCaughan is excited to reveal, though, doesn’t involve the energetic, emotional pop-punk of The Lawrence Arms. Instead, he will release We Chase the Waves as Sundowner, his sort-of-solo acoustic side project. And, though it’s Sundowner’s second release, it stands apart from everything he has recorded in the past, which is likely the source of his ebullient butterflies.

The story of We Chase the Waves begins overseas when McCaughan took an offer to tour Europe by train with Mike Park, owner of Asian Man Records, in support of Four One Five Two, his debut as Sundowner. Since Park put out The Lawrence Arms’ first four releases, he has established himself as a respected solo musician and maintained a friendship with McCaughan for more than ten years.

“It was a really unique experience for me,” McCaughan remembers. “I had done a lot of touring, but it had always been in-the-van, band-style touring, so this was really different. We walked to clubs from the train.”

McCaughan had just concluded a more traditional tour with The Lawrence Arms, so hopping trains in England and playing solo on these strange stages made him feel like a man in transition and began wondering about his next move. Inspired, he started writing songs that reflected these feelings. “I can’t remember what the first song I wrote might have been,” he says, “but it was either the ‘Jewel of the Midwest’ song or ‘Mouth of the Tiger’; both were about figuring out how to move forward.”

These songs, though, felt different than what McCaughan recorded previously as Sundowner and with The Lawrence Arms. When he released Four One Five Two, some critics crowed that it was merely a collection of what could be acoustic Lawrence Arms songs (or were, considering that “My Boatless Booze Cruise” and “1,000 Resolutions” are on Lawrence Arms records). Whether or not this is a complaint, McCaughan began to consider how close his solo material should be to what he’s written with his band. “There’s a thread that ties Sundowner and The Lawrence Arms together that can’t be cut,” McCaughan explains. “I’m very, very proud of being in The Lawrence Arms and of all the things we’ve done. The intent was never to somehow distance myself from them, but only to continue to make a path for myself, to challenge myself.”

McCaughan’s efforts to challenge himself, however, did distance Sundowner from both The Lawrence Arms, if only subtly; they also distance his second record from his first. One way in which McCaughan began to challenge himself was in how he perceived the writing process. “My process for We Chase the Waves involved this big roll of butcher paper,” he explains. “I’d tape the paper to the wall, get a few ideas on a pad, and then start writing lyrics on the wall with my guitar in hand; I’d go back and forth until I had something. I was going for a physical element to the writing and it went really well.”

He also started considering how Sundowner should sound. “I found myself thinking more about the acoustic form,” McCaughan admits. “I think it’s because I played solo a lot and realized that it’s different than playing in a band, it’s different than playing loud music. I was forced to reckon with certain things that I didn’t think about when I was playing a rock show. It helped me understand how I wanted to present the songs.

“That was a really good basis for me to start to think about things I didn’t think about on the first record,” he continues. “I didn’t think about those as acoustic songs.”

When McCaughan collected a comfortable amount of material, he contacted Hennessy, The Lawrence Arms’ drummer who had engineered Four One Five Two at Atlas Studios in Chicago. McCaughan was counting on Hennessy to help him turn his skeletal ideas into fully realized songs, as he had with the previous release, but considered another route for recording the follow-up.

“When I was talking to Neil about making this record,” he says, “I was like, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t go into a studio and block off two weeks. Maybe we need more time. Maybe if we recorded it at home, it would sound more natural.’ Since it’s an acoustic record, we wanted it to sound like two guys hanging out really playing these songs.”

The freedom to record at a comfortable pace became a blessing within a curse; when We Chase the Waves took eight months to complete, McCaughan found meaning in this freedom and flexibility, and began to perceive the process as both the means and the ends. “As we were doing it,” McCaughan explains, “I found that I cared less and less about getting it out. I was actually kind of sad when we finished it because there was no more work left to do.”

McCaughan and Hennessy fall short in one regard: We Chase the Waves doesn’t sound like two dudes strumming guitars on a front porch. Instead, he record is moody and atmospheric, far more than Four One Five Two. Thunder rumbles in the background behind “The Flicker”, the record’s first track. McCaughan strums slowly, letting his strings ring and fade before his tenor climbs slowly from the silence. As the song builds—as his hand strums with quicker, heavier strokes—the mood remains bleak and slumberous.

“What Beadie Said” closes the album. “It’s about a conversation that I had with my girlfriend about a scene from The Wire,” McCaughan explains. And, though the song describes the loneliness of his life and his hypothetical funeral, the tone is almost opposite to the one present in “The Flicker”; his chords are bright and step at a slow, but hopeful pace.

“If I had to pick one most important song,” McCaughan says, “It’d have to be the last one, ‘What Beadie Said’, because I think it’s the one I feel the closest to personally and the one I feel is the best one. It speaks to a lot of the things I feel like I was trying to convey on the record. The first song, ‘In the Flicker’, is really important because it’s the most airy and least dense. It’s the song that, while I was writing the record, felt like I was doing something different, like I was taking a risk. I think that’s what we’re trying to do as ‘artists;’ we’re trying to make ourselves take risks.”

And maybe that’s why he seems to itch with such happy apprehension. At this point in his career as a musician, McCaughan has released ten full-length records (by this writer’s count) and We Chase the Waves may be the biggest risk he’s taken; he’s stepping outside of the realm of punk-rock, plucking his strings instead of merely strumming them, and feeling that intestine-wrenching rush that comes with consciously doing something different.

Still, McCaughan isn’t sure if Sundowner has settled where he wants it to be yet. “I’d like to make another Sundowner record at some point,” he says, “and I feel like I’m trying to figure it out along the way each time—how to make it new for me and exciting for listeners. I’m trying to challenge myself and write things that are harder for me to write, to follow what my instincts are as a person who likes to write things.”

Self-improvement—almost pathetic in its simplicity as a philosophy—seems to be the risky reason why McCaughan is both nervous and excited about the release We Chase the Waves; it also seems to be his secret about how to keep this old game exciting.

McCaughan recorded these songs on a sunny afternoon in his mother's kitchen in Chicago, since he doesn't have a landline at home. When asked to what cover he would be playing, McCaughan was caught off guard and didn't know what to play, so he opted to perform a song by his other band The Lawrence Arms.

"The Flicker" appears on Sundowner's 2010 record titled We Chase the Waves. "The Slowest Drink At The Saddest Bar On The Snowiest Day In The Greatest City" is a Lawrence Arms song and originally appeared on the 2009 album Buttsweat and Tears.

Visit the Sundowner's MySpace for more music and McCaughan's website for more info.

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Kid, You'll Move Mountains

2010-07-15T10:15:00.008-05:00

Most music lovers know how it feels to stand in a humid venue, sandwiched between other sticky, singing patrons, exhausted yet energized by some bandas they expose their souls explosively in song. Many want their voices as hoarse and their fingers as sore as those performers, aspire to stand on a stage and, some day, eyes stinging with sweat, stand beside these musicians that they admire.

This is where Jim Hanke was—one person in a living swarm of sweating, screaming people—when he saw Troubled Hubble play for the first time.

It was at the Globe East in Milwaukee almost ten years ago. A local label called Latest Flame was putting on a showcase and Hanke was there to see his friend’s band perform. He wasn’t quite prepared for Toubled Hubble’s angular energy—their wandering melodies and mettle—when they took the stage.

“I had heard of these guys, saw posters in Milwaukee,” Hanke remembers, “but I don’t think I had ever heard their music or anything. I couldn’t believe the energy that I was seeing. I saw these four guys bash out thirty minutes, playing as crazy as if they were playing punk-rock.”

After the set, Hanke approached the band members and began a conversation with them. “I’ve always been that guy, since I was thirteen years old,” he explains with a smile. “They struck me as the most humble guys in that scene. For a band to go up there and be that confident, then come off stage and be like, ‘Oh, shucks,’ was strange. I hadn’t seen anything like that before.”

That night would become, in a strange way, the beginning of Kid, You’ll Move Mountains, the band that Hanke would start with brothers Nate and Andrew Lanthrum, Troubled Hubble’s drummer and bass player, when the Chicago band collapsed in 2005. Though he became fast friends with all four members of Troubled Hubble, but kept in closest touch with the Lanthrums. “I kept talking with Andrew and Nate,” Hanke explains. “Sooner or later, ‘Hey, why don’t you come down and visit’ became, ‘Hey, why don’t you bring your guitar’ or, ‘Hey, why don’t we bang around in the basement.’ All the sudden, it spun into, ‘Maybe we should start a band.'

“And that was really cool,” he continues, “because that Globe East show was not a fluke. These guys, whether they were playing for twenty or two-hundred people, put on intense shows, and I just admired that so much. Getting to play in a band with two of these guys was like, wow.”

When Nate’s girlfriend Nina expressed interest in applying her prowess as a classically-trained pianist and singer, the whole band was on board, especially Hanke, who was excited about the thought of splitting vocal duties for the first time. After that, friend Corey Wills offered his guitar work; the Lanthrums and Hanke knew Wills as the frontman of Inspector Owl, a band from the scene that they had played with previously, and knew that his presence would add an expressive and experimental layer to their sound.

Since this onset, though, Kid, You’ll Move Mountains has been determined to approach music differently than they did in previous projects. The band set out to strike a balance between approachable and experimental, catchy and uncanny, and is ultimately concerned with creating layered, atmospheric songs. “We try to find a happy medium between all that,” Hanke says. “That’s what the band is all about. There’s a part of us that wants to be experimental and see how things go. There’s another part of us that really wants to play a good indie pop song and just put in a little monkey wrench every once in a while.”

It’s likely that this ambition is why Loomings, the band’s first full-length, took two years to record and release. Bunkered down in the Nate and Andrew’s parent’s basement where Troubled Hubble’s old recording equipment could be put to use, Kid, You’ll Move Mountains took their songs and toyed with them, adding second drum parts, fourth and fifth harmonies, sounds spiral and swell and cut out completely.

“Make It Sing”, for example, feels muffled and dizzying at first; snare hits hop from ear to ear and Hanke’s voices (there’s two, one that almost whispers and another that rises violently from the first like an exorcized spirit) seem to tip toe on a dotted line of guitars. When the song finally ignites after the second verse, it breaks apart and the voice of an old man emerges between the pieces. “It’s Nate and Andrew’s uncle,” Hanke says, “who had recorded his thoughts that he had on life. Andrew got an idea and was like, ‘Not to get super deep or anything, but what if we inter-spliced him in the song?’”

Loomings is full of moments like these; though the melodies are the focus of each track, an atmosphere exists around them that’s hard to ignore. The record’s second track, “Volts” seems to capture this best. On the surface, the song seems simple. Wills’ guitar drips with so much delay and chorus and reverb that notes blend into impressionistic blurs and bob behind the song’s stalking beat. As with all of the band’s brand of complex power-pop, Nina’s piano seems to drive the song instead of merely punctuate it; between her lines of lyrics, which are sung in an effortless alto, Hanke’s voice rises in soulful swells before retreating back beneath the song’s surface.

From there, though, things get strange. As the song slips into its dark outro, guitars growl beneath Nina’s bubbling piano. Wills’ guitar wiggles and waves, and sometimes shoots out of the song like a bottle rocket. Nate’s drums cut in and out explosively, sometimes distorted and dusty, sometimes landing on the backbeat like it’s a bad ankle. As it comes to a close, multiple Ninas drift through the song; some float ethereally in background almost in silence while others rise boldly in the forefront, but all harmonize with one another.

“That was a song specifically where, when we first wrote it, we had an ending,” he continues. “It ended with me and Nina harmonizing for one last time. Then we started recording it and thought, what if we tooled with it? This song has a solid groove, but what it just completely broke down? What if there were seventeen different Ninas singing it? We had been playing these songs for so long, we wanted to find different ways to interpret them for the record—not change them, but to experiment.”

By the time Loomings was ready to be pressed, Hanke and the rest of Kid, You’ll Move Mountains had spent two years tilling these nine songs, cultivating them until they were something about which all five could feel confident. “I don’t understand how people could put out a product that they’re not proud of,” he confesses. “A year later, there definitely are things that I’d change, but I’m glad it sounds the way it does. I might change it, but I don’t know if it would make a better record.”

With a new set of songs ready to record, it’s kind of remarkable to consider Hanke’s ten-year ascent from fan to friend to bandmate—from staring wide-eyed, grinning and gaping at Troubled Hubble’s set from Globe East’s congested confines to performing alongside same guys, now his brothers, and two others that have become his family.

But Hanke doesn’t take that for granted. If anything, he’s still that awe-struck fan who is well aware that he’s living the dream of music lovers everywhere. “I’m in a band with four other people who are amazing musicians and I get to be a part of that,” he says, suddenly reminded of what it’s like to play with musicians that he admires. “Jesus, I feel like I’m riding the coattails of everybody else. I think I’m playing with people who are so confident that it spreads. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Though Hanke originally spoke to the Switchboard Sessions during an interview in April, it took he and Nina Lanthrum three months to arrange their schedules so that they could record these tracks together. The wait was worth it; "gorgeous" is probably the best way to describe how these songs were written and performed.

"No Applause" appears on Kid, You'll Move Moutains' 2009 record titled Loomings. "Nevermore" is a Queen cover; the song originally appeared on the 1974 album Queen II.

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