Labor Day Monday

This was a Scary Lady Sarah event held at The Abbey Pub. It was to be bliss.city.east's last performance in Chicago before moving to Atlanta, and also the second time I see Renee-Louise Carafice. For me a convergence of moments that will never repeat. This fed the urgency to go see them. My first time seeing bliss.city, the lead singer was barely visibly pregnant, I remember this shirt with an ultra-sound picture of a baby in the womb giving the middle finger. The coolest pregnant shirt. Alright, now the music. It's fairly aggressive shoe gaze, and they don't hide from wanting to make you dance. I did when I was not taking pictures. I 've been using this shoegaze crayon a lot, still it's just a crayon, and I do eventually use the others, like black. I suppose shoegaze is a way that I hold on to the goth and....back to bliss.city.east They can sound more giddy than School of Seven Bells, and casual like Panda Riot. They have their faster, harder songs. Perry B.C.E's guitarist goes off, keeps your short attention span from wandering. There were a lot of guitars on that stage but they haze of them don't go off on tangents. Juno would not call this "noise". Bliss.City.East, I will miss them, and I hope the band prospers in their new home of Atlanta.....is that right?

So I've wanted to see Ms Renee' -Louise again ever since Beat Kitchen, about a year ago. I was quite impressed with her then but she had no CD's with her so I don't remember what I liked about her, only that I really did. She's from New Zealand and now she lives here, in Chicago. Her music.....It's just how her myspace page describes her. She's folk, glam, experimental, she owns all these notes. The folk part for me makes everything feel closer, the experimental less remote. Her other-worldly voice captures attention like an elder telling you a story in a camp fire straight out of magical realism. OK, so she's not remotely related to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But there is this other-worldly thing to her that still feels familiar enough to this world. Like a Vulcan raised by Manchester punks, urban/folk, not mediaeval folk. She seems to know this urban world you live in better than you, in ways you're glad you don't. I listen to the cd "Tells You To Fight", and putting a side for a moment what she says in her songs. I like how she says it. The voice makes whatever meaning I get out of the songs compelling enough. It's the wonder of the how, before the meaning settles, before words settle into meaning, they are instruments that leave you with wonder, I was sold..... and then she named a song after Emily Dickenson.

Literate and street wise. That song, "To Run", I've been listening to it a lot. There is a video on it, and some explanation about the song, yeah, Wuthering Heights fucked with me too. That was a significant novel for me.... Reading about the origins about the song makes me appreciate the artist more, she's described here as "dark-folk pop songstress...Carafice sings with an alarming openness about desperation, love, loss, homelessness and longing, all the while maintaining a sense of glorious hope at the end of the road". I had to quote it direct. I could not say it any better.

Anyway, I ran to The Abbey and made it on time, it was Renee Louise first. She was probably on her second song, and she had a full band this time, her vulcan-punk hair under this aviator hat, only for a moment. The intangible reasons I liked this artist to begin with came back. It's like you're enjoying the memory of the first performance, as well as the one before you, and now I have the CD to take home.