Chloe Day

These have been sitting in my memory cards for a long time.   This is Chloe Day.  She performed at The Elbo Room 26 December 2007, I think.  A Wednesday, and at the time a normal night off .  But a day after Christmas is not a normal night, and I wanted to find something noteworthy for it.  I looked at the Reader to see how I can make it so.  I saw this pretty name "Chloe Day", and off I went.  The worst that can happen is that I don't like it and I go to Neo sooner than 1 am.  Some people that start a band choose a name,  even if that band has only one person.  But not Ms Chloe Day.  She just went on her own name and that's it.  And so that was intriguing to me.  I had my digital camera to record the event, and so off I went to pursue this night.  Some performances you have to go after yourself, research them on your own.   
There seemed to be less than 20 people or so, an intimate night, nice if the concert is good.  A slow night if I don't like it.  The band that opened before her did not suggest what was to come.  I did not like them.  The crowd trimmed to the lucky few.  I killed time skimming articles in the reader, the posters set up for Chloe suggested a larger turn out was expected.  One had an interview with her.  Before the end of the night I pulled two posters down for her to sign.  When the concert is good, you wanna remember it, frame it, display it.  You buy the CDs, the shirt...etc.  On she went.   She is this pretty blonde with long hair, she wore this grey glittery disco dress, with matching grey tie, and black fingerless gloves.   I noticed her a good half-hour before her show.  Chloe was easily the prettiest girl in the room...I guess by default that says something about the rest of the room.
   There is really no style of music that she does not own with each song.  I could say that if you like Portishead, you will treasure Ms Chloe Day.  She has her dark trip hop down with songs like "Dirty Little Secret", "Catnip", "Spoon", "Hands", all of these are on the CD Pixie Runway.  At first one is struck by how dance friendly these songs are and soon after the lyrics.  The words are projected so clearly and sweetly by her girly voice.  "Dirty Little Secret", gives a voice to that skeleton in your closet....the one you can't hide from yourself, but try to anyway.

If you were raised Catholic, this song will fuck with you.  I don't care if you are Lutheran now.

Secrets, once personified, can use the language of what is closest to you to fuck with you.    "I've seen the sin inside you/ Sat on the cross you bare", Chloe says this with the weight of 12 years of Catholic school.   I like "Catnip" 'cause it's the guy who in the end is taking the bait and is this close to being murdered, even as he thinks he is the killer.  The girl already has figured him out, has his money, and is about to take him out.  It's like the mouse took the cheese, then placed the trap in your morning paper.   Then there are the folk/electronic songs like those from Katie Jane Garside.   Yeah, and like Katie Jane, the songs are just so dense with thought provoking stuff.  Chloe, I think still writes stuff that is more resonant than mysterious.  Katie Jane is thought provoking because she is mysterious.   Either way when one tries to dissect a song or an artist through a song, you are actually dissecting your own thoughts.  The mirror reveals yourself always.  The artist just put the mirror in front of you.  I also keep that in mind when I go on about bands and music.   I shall write more on her later.  This post has sat as a draft long enough.

Hellblinki

So there seems to be a whole explosion of bands that have this eastern dark cabaret thing to them.  Projekt alone has a bunch.  There's Revue Noir, Katznjammer Kaberett, Jill Tracy.   These bands are still a hand full in a pool that includes Gogol Bordello, World Inferno Friendship Society, Dresden Dolls...  I can just go on.  I may be the only one to string this constellation together, but fuck it.  I need to present the following band in it's approximate place among peers. 

   Hellblinki Sextet seem to intimately know the folk music of many countries and weave them seamlessly into the darkened, familiar, Other.  Indeed, listening to Hellblinki is better traveling than Samantha Brown on the Travel Channel, and Rick Steves on PBS.  Seriously, Sam shut the fuck up, and let me listen to "Bella Ciao" .  It's like your walking around with Sam and you turn a corner in some cobblestone street and you see these guys playin'.  When I hear that song I feel like a traveler not a tourist.  I see bon fires, and colorful costumes.  Can you believe that on itunes they describe them as alt. country, americana.  I'm not debating those, in fact they have their dark americana down, and after hearing them you see all that's left out.  I do notice that Hellblinki perhaps because they are American and I believe from the South.  , .  Did you not see the make up on Ms Valerie?  They wear German expressionism as a costume.  This makes them such a thing to watch.  

 

So this is Ms Valerie from Hellblinki Sextet.  This is the band that played some time after I:scintilla.  As I took these pictures with Valerie, I had no idea what was going to hit me.  Just before they went on I bought two of their CDs.  Who wouldn't be curious, with all the make up and on top of that Valerie plays accordion.  This is Uni and Her Ukulele all over again.  You buy the music on blind faith because you are betting against the odds that you will like this.  And I do.  I had this nice conversation with Valerie.  Talked about where they are from, World Inferno Friendship Society....she knows them.  I wish now that I had also bought a shirt.  If you are into Gogol Bordello, Devotchka, Dresden Dolls,  this band is required reading.  Hellblinki Sextet are familiar enough to them yet still are their own animal.  

I:Scintilla at Darkroom

So these last few are from Sunday 14 December, at Darkroom on Chicago Ave....in Chicago, as well as some from Brauerhouse in Hillside 28 October of 2007.  

This was I:scintilla's first performance since coming back from touring with Cruxshadowes and Ayria.  I've seen them perform many times now, and what keeps me going when you know every song already is how different each new performance is.  And indeed I did feel the difference.  Perhaps it's out of necessity.  You have to find that fresh performance within, and make it new before the audience.  And yet this is a home crowd you are playing for.  To some degree, it's just us, no pressure.  I like it when a band plays a lot locally.  It speaks volumes about how they regard their home crowd.  It shows that the home crowd is loved and appreciated.
And seeing the same faces that saw the same performance you did again and again is nice too.  It says a lot about the stability of the local scene.  Yet there are those isolated events when you can count the ones who went in one hand.  Like when I:scintilla played Brauerhouse in Hillside, Il, on October 2007.  I never heard of the town before that performance.  I enjoyed the journey of discovering this place.  Wolf rd, is one of those streets that makes you want to buy a house there.  The trees canopy the streets enough to block out the sun.  The houses are all different from each other, not at all like the McMansions  that are too big to sell.  

  Juxtaposing the familiar with the unfamiliar makes for a wonderful night.  To some degree that happened here as well. Chris Connelly was supposed to headline this night, and unfortunately he got sick.  It was a night that was getting colder by the hour.  There was supposed to be a separate event after starting at 10.  The Hellblinki Sextet was that event, but it got combined with the I:scintilla night.    
I did not intend to go see them since Sunday was a work night for me.  But see them I did and I am happier for it.  

 

Alla,

This is Ms Lupe Martinez, lead singer for this massive local band Alla.  The name is pronounced "ayyah".  It's Spanish for "out there".  These pictures are from the second time seeing them.   I was driving one day listening to public radio.  They were interviewing Alla, and they played something on air.  I loved it.  The music would have caught me on it's own, but I recall enjoying this interview with Alla.  The name just stuck to my head.  I felt a kinship with them because they seemed acutely aware of being on the border of many worlds.  I saw based on what I like in music how his band can have an audience with those that like their goth black and their shoegaze psychedelic.  And Every single bastard that goes to see La Lupita, Maldita, Caifanes, Arterciopelados, should love this band.  Where the fuck are all of you?  Are you going to wait until someone else validates this band before you?  

   A midwestern city makes for a very different type of Latino.  Jorge and Angel and Lupe are all Mexican-American, and are all from Chicago.  Jorge Ledezma, the lead song writer and guitarist for the band I believe was the one being interviewed.  Jorge referenced all kinds of bands that I have never heard of, influences I could not write down, 'cause I was driving.  It gives the final product that he has this depth that you only get if you listen to this interview.  Now I got all these bands I want to look up.  Public Radio has sold me on all kinds of music.   If say you like shoegaze, but are currently getting burned out.  Step out of that comfort zone and get into this local band Alla.  You know how psychedelic Broadcast can sound.  Didn't I already translate what Alla means?    They will be playing Subterranean next Thursday at 8pm I think.  
Their CD is titled "Es Tiempo", meaning "It's Time".  I will write more on them but this post has been a draft for a while now.  I will write more on them since their music has been playing in my head long before their CD was available.  And now it's out.  

Kaspar-Zig

Walking Bicycles 1st December

 This was a free performance at the Empty Bottle.  The Walking Bicycles performed at their CD release party, for "?Go?"....or is it" Go!".  I'll be listening to this music for some time.  It grew on me while I wasn't looking.  Some songs seem fit for framing the memories of this past year.  I don't have the lyrics to better explore that CD.  I shall better articulate the thoughts on that one later, for the moment all I can say is that I'm glad, so glad to have it and to have the performance of it down.

   My first experience of  "Welcome to the Future", perfectly framed for me the uncertain fog of times to come with no job security, foreclosures, credit default swaps, failing banks, failing automakers....then again I do hear too much fucking NPR.  It must be said that this is not in the text of the song but just what drifts into my head as I hear the song.  Yet when I read the words to "....Future" they place one in this backdrop of urban decay.  And then my sprockets it is time to dance!  

  You can easily dance to this in Nocturna. Transition this after anything from Siouxsie's "Tinderbox", and before Joy Division's "Shadow Play".  They will keep on dancing.  But for the moment lets forget the iconic bands and put Walking Bicycles next to some contemporaries.  Who are they?  Black Ice from California, Ipso Facto and The Violets from England....at least to me.  Before bands like VNV Nation, Covenant,  one way to make goths dance faster (besides industrial) was with something with a lot of bass like Joy Division or death rock sounding.  Please forgive me this constant referencing to dancing in goth clubs.  Dancing is a most direct way of engaging the music.  

  The first two Walking Bicycles CDs caught on with me almost immediately.  Urban decay is all over "Disconnected".   It is the common backdrop.  In the world of "Disconnected" grass grows through pavement, swing sets sit by worn tires, the back yard fridge doubles as a coffin.  They basically described the south Chicago of my childhood.  It's like I'm back in Calumet Park with their rusting metal playground.  Everything that is urban is in decay.  The trees here are of concrete....and Indiana is just over the border.  It could also be me connecting all these dots together, but in many of the songs I get some background to suggest a graying old urban world.   
In "Desperate", the urban decay is everywhere including people, too insincere to even smile.  Hope barely holds by a tether.   And you don't want to be who they are talking about in "So Far", with shattered dreams and hair thinning .  Human defeat slumping in a lazy chair.   I don't write about all the depressing stuff to turn people off.   I want to turn people on to the catharsis.  Goths do get catharsis.  That's why we dance to "Love Will Tear Us Apart", as I believe you will appreciate this band Walking Bicycles.  I haven't even started on "Go".  Later, this post took me long enough.

Kaspar-Zig

The Long Blondes play Chicago

I've had these bright blue pictures of The Long Blondes singer for some time now. This is Ms Katie Jackson, the lead singer.  She was so fucking pale and sky blue, it was like starring straight into the sun.  I almost don't believe her to be a brunette.   They performed here at the Logan Square Auditorium, on a Saturday.  It was a nice long leisurely Saturday, I forgot when exactly.  Watching this band was the main thing, but it was not the only thing.  I spent the late afternoon with some fellow goth friends on Chicago's southside.  We ate vegan burgers on a barbeque.  When you know you have the day off, you wanna take full advantage.  You want the day to be long.  And so these pictures of just one person, represent to me the whole of what I did that day and night.  These pictures represent more than just Katie Jackson of the Long Blondes.  I recall the frustrating drive to the venue.  I was running late and I missed the first band Bang Bang, (an awesome Chicago band).  When you are late or at least you believe you are, you can't even enjoy the drive to your destination.  Logan Square Auditorium looks like it once was a school or something.  It just feels like it once served a different purpose, but a good building is a good building.  

  I always have the intent of uploading pictures and so forth and here are some.  The Long Blondes are from Sheffield England.  I hope I spelled the city right.  They came here touring for their second album "Couples".  They came to my attention because they are on a label that has a connection to Queen Adreena, Rough Trade.  The Long Blondes have drawn comparisons to Blondie which I must say is spot on.  The punk and the disco elements are there.  It's the disco that makes the punk or post-punk dance-worthy.  It's the post-punk that gives the disco it's rough edges.  Damn, I think I can say that about a lot of bands that I listen to, but you know what that is an equation that works and The Long Blondes do it well enough to evoke memories of other bands and yet they retain their own identity.  And you know what.  If one is fond of this band, then I believe I can convince you about others.  The Long Blondes can be this gateway drug if you will, that can lead your attention towards locals Bang Bang, and The Dials.  

"Erin O'Connor" has that punk/disco balance right.  It starts off rough, dark and fast.  It's one of the songs I was waiting to hear from them.  This is one of the songs that convinced me to buy it (when I knew I shouldn't, Damn you Reckless Records).   "Here Comes The Serious Bit" did not convince me on it's own, but I grow ever fonder of it as time passes.  I needed that visual stamp that the concert provided and they played it.   I believe it was the first song they sang.  Katie Jackson was lovely in her sky blue outfit.  There were other songs that she sang that I guess were on the previous CD.    

6 July 2007 Attrition/HIgh Blue Star

This is Ms Laurie Reade from High Blue Star and Attrition.  Watching her perform is almost like watching an actor in a play, for me that is how I would begin to describe it.  When she goes into performance mode it's as if she goes into character.  That character then goes mental on stage like in her High Blue Star performance.  Expressions storm through Laurie like she's enjoying an exorcism, or fighting one off.  Her eyes role up and her arms flail about.  The id encounters no speed bump.  In the absence of a scripted scene where one needs a story to explain the state of a character, we have Laurie ranting about.  Oh, and she has the voice of an opera star.  It's far more than just a live concert.  It's experimental industrial theatre.  Ms Laurie puts a visual stamp on the music you will eventually hear in your car, or getting baked at your cousin's apartment.  A lot of the theatre comes from Laurie's performance, and the range of emotion and character that she displays.  A young opera star performing a role, and Iggy Pop in a single performer.  But it's also the experimental sounding music, it was atmospheric at times but it was always something to dance to.  And so you only get a real High Blue Star experience live.  On CD it is but one part.    

  When she is singing for Attrition it's this brooding intense, thinly veiled energy.  Different performances, different characters.  I remember seeing Attrition before Laurie joined.  And it's a totally different thing now.  Laurie here continues  her operatic expressions, not just the voice.  And she combines all that with a kind of robotic dancing.  

   It made me think about the differences in the bands that she plays in.   You know how Johnny Depp just totally owns every performance he does, yet every person he plays so vastly different, save for a few quirks in them that only he can flesh out.  It's the same for me with Ms Laurie.   In High Blue Star mode, she was bouncing all over the place.  It was hard to get a good shot of her.  It just occurred to me that I have not even mentioned the music.  I like it when industrial bands play all their instruments live like a regular rock band.  I saw a guitarist, (could have been a bass player that I saw instead).  There were other musicians on stage with her.  Calling High Blue Star industrial is just a beginning.  It struck me as more willfully mysterious than say I:Scintilla (who I saw perform for the first time after them).  

I have a lot of pictures and video stored up in memory cards, stuff that needs to be said, thoughts that need to be expressed that were contained in those cards.  Perhaps all that is said her in this blog is a chemistry of state of mind when present in these events, what happened , my subjectivity.  

Zig

Walking Bicycles this December

Ok, this is just to remind...perhaps just myself that Wallking Bicycles are playing the Empty Bottle this Monday 1st December.  For those of you that have seen British post-punk bands like The Violets, and Ipso Facto on YouTube and long to see those bands live put away your passport 'cause we have an answer for them here in Chicago.  I bet they won't even bitch about being compared to Siouxsie and The Banshees like The Violets do.  Go see them.

Kaspar-Zig

Asobi Seksu

  It's not a deliberate thing going to the Empty Bottle like every other week.  Last year I probably went like once.  A lot of bands I like happen to gravitate to there, now.  The venue is small, well Ronnie's on California (I think) is far smaller.  The 'Bottle  just knows what resonates.  On this Wednesday night in October Asobi Seksu played.  Post Honeymoon opened and damn I just went blank as to who the middle band was.   I liked all of them but my resources were limited to one thing.  The name Asobi Seksu I believe means "playful sex" in Japanese.  This is a  loud shoegaze  muscle car  driving down 26th street in Little Village.   

 Yuki the singer  drives it with urgency, like she's late for work.  One can dance to them like the Cocteau Twins.  Yet their blood pulses faster than that iconic band.  I say it like that because the songs are kind of fast for shoegazer.  Yuki's voice sometimes delicate and soft, seems to be on the edge of being consumed by the bass,  and fuzzy guitar, but no, these are dogs that she trained like Cesar Milan. Yuki can be soft and whispery in one moment and in the next she soars above the guitar and bass.  Every song has something to hook you with.  Sometimes it's the bass....for me it's often the bass, sometimes it's her voice.  Listen to "Thursday" on the Citrus CD.  Yuki's voice is at a calm pace in stark contrast to the faster chaos of bass and guitar, yet is never consumed.   The pace of most of the songs is relatively fast.  Yuki just calmly rides the storm.  With some shoegaze, one can get lost in the clouds.  The uninitiated just lose interest, they get lost in the fog.  AS never get that way.  Each song forms it's individual relationship with the listener.  "Strings" has this extra kick in the middle.  This segment just changes the pace and gives you another reason to like the song.  It almost feels like it's a different song but it totally fits.   As we compare Asobi Seksu to bands like Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, and so forth, it is my belief that we will be comparing future acts to this band here.  In the future I believe they will be called icons.  I just hit a wall.  Perhaps I will write more on them when my wit is easier to find.

Kaspar Zig