Kodacrome in Chicago

Kodacrome I saw with Panda Riot and Magic Key at Hideout. They are from Brooklyn,NY. They have an EP coming out 27? March 2012. They got a song available to download for free. The two local bands I've seen often. With them it's the accumulation of many performances, the good and the bad. I see their moments in a greater continuum. When the music is close to you, see it often, and know your local culture. When they come from somewhere else they inevitably draw attention to that great other. I have never been to Brooklyn. Kodarome is a point of attraction that draws me there. If I was living there I suppose, (or fantasize about) the local music pantheon there. Perhaps it would include School Of Seven Bells, Eula, and a whole bunch of bands from Projekt, oh and Slowdance. Brooklyn is well represented. Sorry, that dog took a long walk. Wait, the point of all that is when they are not from here, touring is hard and so you soak up that iconic moment.

So, right, Kodacrome provided that separate unexpected high that would have otherwise been strictly about the familiar. This is about seeing them live after Magic Key and before Panda Riot. Kodacrome actually saw the Hideout audience in it's bulk, and thinned somewhat after. As if most of them saw who they liked. I saw the entire K set. On this night I saw them with my cousin and brother-in-law. It feels nice to enter a place in a group. I so hyped this show to them. I wanted to take them to something real and local. Hideout works, right? So for this night it's significance was felt in its unexpected moments as well as the familiar. Newly placed on my radar was Kodacrome and I took in every moment I can. The following thoughts are to document this once -in-a-long-orbit, moment. In the absence of actually seeing a lot of their gigs I must settle for seeing the documented pics and video I got of one gig. I'm trying to document the unfamiliar. Elissa Pociask plays the synth and sings. She was quite the sight in blue and heels. If you like Golden Filter, Phantogram, Austra and Anika, you already like Kodacrome. It's no stretch for me to imagine a perfect goth night with songs from these bands. We are all about dancing to this stuff. K have a resonant yet unusual take on electronic synth pop. They got muscle that saves them from the frailties of pop....they sound resonant but not tired and predictable. Hmmmm, bullshit, and more fucking pretentious bullshit. I just love this band.

I was sold on them before I found parking. Hearing them live you can almost anticipate how they will sound on CD. The anticipation stems from knowing that they will tweek it, and seeing how. That sets you up for when you hear the download of Modern Man later. Hell, how many ways can I say I like this band a lot. As I played their video for Robbery, I instantly recall recording it. Yay!!! There's a whole lot of wonder to sift through, and anticipate. Kodacrome has made a fan out of me.

Zig

Unicycle Loves You

I'm so late for this train, but better now than never. In deliberately seeking out and listening to the female voice, I sometimes overlook male singers. You see, I built this calcified filter that tunes out the male voice....with notable exceptions. And so noteworthy to me are the ones that get past it, this filter. Before ever seeing them live, I remember a video for Unicycle Loves You where I believe Nicole the bassist sings. I loved her voice, but what endeared me to this band was that she wore a Walking Bicycles shirt in the video. It's a nice curiosity when they wear a band shirt that you have or like a lot.....but I know these guys....and I didn't know they made shirts. The point being that the bands are small enough for this notice to be of some significance, a little more than wearing a Bauhaus shirt at a Siouxsie show. There was always something impacting about ULY that at first has nothing to with the music, and if it were not for these things I would have missed out. A moment stolen from someone cooler. It's great to see them share the Empty Bottle stage with Lightfoils. They performed from their new CD "Failures". Before I forget they were also featured on NPR. These guys can sell me on almost everything. It's often there where I find out about bands. It's the second time they take the train behind me. So I hear the interview and I'm totally sold before buying it. And I will buy it. For now I'm glad for all who steered me in their direction. I took a lot of pictures....mostly of Nicole. What? Anyway, while I chew on the music and search for the most recent pictures here are some from the first time.

Lightfoils

These here are when I first saw them at Darkroom I think at some festival Scary Lady Sarah had.
I would post pictures of the rest of the band but Ms Nicole here is much too pretty.




The Empty Bottle had a Free Monday this 13th February. Unicycle Loves You and Lightfoils both releasing new music on that day. Unicycle I shall write on a separate post. I'm somewhat more familiar with Lightfoils as I have seen them twice before. They are in that oddly woven web of local shoegaze that includes Rosen Association, Panda Riot, architecture, and the now defunct bliss.city.east. I just noticed while researching what other names come up in relation to Lightfoils. It's an active point on the local constellation. But also this pantheon I personally listen to. I've seen around casually. It's important to note how the shoegaze tag holds. Cory who plays bass is way cool. It's also that local thing.

Nationally, if you are into WarPaint (L.A., Echo Park) and School Of Seven Bells (Brooklyn) and cannot get enough, tighten your focus on the Midwest, and Lightfoils is one to discover. I think they will be touring. I was too broke at the time to buy their CD so my impressions will be based on what you can hear on their facebook page, and barely catching the Monday gig. They will be re-releasing the EP on Saint Marie Records. You can still see Lightfoils in the small clubs, and they are going to SXSW. The band is relatively young, since 2010. But individual members are veteran musicians....like Cory. It's just far easier to write about the band when you have the CD but I couldn't wait for that.

It fascinates me to no end that living somewhere else I don't get that immediate direct exposure of this music. ......Oh yes, I was going on about Lightfoils. Off the top of my head the two songs on the facebook page remind me of the Projekt band Mira only with less of that brooding weight. That works well for Mira, and I listen to them a lot but I don't listen to Lightfoils because I need to be pulled out of a meandering fog. The landscape they map is in the clouds.

On that Free Monday they played like it was a weekend. There were so many local musicians in the audience at Empty Bottle it was like a local industry night. My Gold Mask, Walking Bicycles.....the Bottle is a major hub that casually brings in all kinds of local bands, all brilliant. Last Monday night was not a shoegaze theme night, and such named genres do not limit the bands to only play to a narrow audience. Calling Lightfoils shoegaze in no way limits their potential audience. Perhaps because the genre has a naturally occurring wider appeal...at least for me. Subcultures have this way of spicing up the music they claim as their own, a way of telegraphing what music may sound like in the future. They are the ones to hold the fort down while you off following your inconstant fancy. They are....we are the ones who give you that funny look when you put shoegaze and comeback in the same sentence.

Kaspar-Zig

Man Is Man

I went to see Man Is Man at Hideout on a Thursday. The week before Christa's new band played to an noisy Whistler. I love Whistler, but more than a few times it devolves into a hipster cafeteria without the food. I can hear people chatting over the performer. For that night it was just her with autoharp and the cello player. At the Hideout with a crowd more attentive, less chatty there was a full band. It was clear that the mid-porous crowd was there for her. I arrived somewhere in the second or third song. This was supposed to be a record release thing but I do not recall anything at the merch table. Those Birds Will Eat Us is the debut CD. But I could not get it and so my impressions will be sparked by the live show...my memory of it, and the youtube videos she posts up. There are only so many people that can make sad, dark places sound as cool as Man Is Man. Very few have that cathartic payoff sustained. Man Is Man walks as your tour guide through the darker rooms of the mind, the interior castle you refuse to enter. And it's not about glamming up the sadness, to make it worse but the survival of it. Perhaps this is a sentiment that I carry over from her Puerto Muerto days, there is an affinity to the primitive, to what's on the frontier. Music for the lonely campfire, the log cabin. So perhaps it's no wonder that Christa would write about animals. Nick Cave weeps but not for very long and neither does Christa. I think that's because she closes that back door to the feeling of vulnerability. And that's the enduring strength.

Zig