Lightfoils

I was in the middle of I-55 when it hit me this Lightfoils show was at Empty Bottle and not Subt's. That made the trip shorter and for relatively easy parking. I park right next to the church. My slow healing sprained ankle allows me this Walking Dead limp that I think creeps people out. I make it in time to see Highest Order. It has to be noted here to go see them again. Since 2010 Lightfoils is active in maintaining their place in the Chicago Dream pop/Shoegaze pantheon, and within that Cory plays bass for them....Lightfoils and Panda Riot.  Its actually amazing how so few people are spread about so many bands. One person can count as two bands. I briefly paused to see the Lightfoils shirt by the merch table, dark grey....a welcome and doable change from the usual black. Not quite a stretch for me I know. The band was kind enough to just give me the shirt. I am humbled and eternally grateful. That was after the show. This was my first time seeing the new voice of Jane Zabeth.
  
  Its great to see the band continue. I get my stamp and ask if they started and they were next. Awesome! Its noteworthy to see Cory's Panda Riot bandmates on my way to see who it was that I can hear on the way in, Highest Order. Oh and Corey the drummer from Moritat. He has another project coming as well.
  Suddenly there was this pocket of time that allowed me these unexpected impressions and a cool chat with Cory's girlfriend outside for a cigarette smoke. We went on about e-cigarettes and how totally inadequate they are, diet fucking dog shit.  As we talked a  girl fresh out of her taxi was about ready to hand her money to us to let her in the wrong door. Clearly it was her first time there, but good for her because she still made it on time. So we go inside. Cory as always is so cool with me and I feel at ease among his Lightfoils bandmates as a result. As a pre-sold believer I am not short on reasons to like this band. Perhaps I should go on with it from here since up to this point it was about how I got here and not the bloody music.
  Hearing Jane made a fan out of me all over again. Breezy, fast-playing and still casual as a stroll on a beach. Obviously sweet but with muscle-car balls like in The Italian Job. There is just enough turbulence and strength for Jane to sound right and to make people move. If people are moving its because they are listening, as indeed occurred that Thursday night at Empty Bottle. I noticed about 5 or so. I would have been among them if not for this bloody sprained ankle. For their set I noticed a good concentration of medium-light audience in the front. Urgent /turbulent music over calm-soothing-angelic female voice sound uncommon again.   Notice the bass on Into Deep Sea, for me its the beginning of what makes this song so dance worthy for Sarah and Philly's shoegaze night, or Late Bar. Indeed this trait easily spans all songs on the self-titled EP released on Saint Marie records.They did play a new song that is leaning more aggressive.  However you are hooked, there is more to enjoy from there.  I'm on Facebook and I notice the posts of performers I'm fortunate enough to be friends with. Many live too far away for me to see their gigs. I'm glad to see them active in keeping their music alive. I still feel the sting of not seeing them play. So what I catch feels like something I almost missed, and ever more happy I am for catching it.
Zig

Distant Cities

Here's another post that I started long ago and far away and never finished. Hell I barely actually started. Its about when I saw Distant Cities at a Free Monday at Empty Bottle. I never stopped thinking about them since seeing them. They are playing again Monday 11 November at Whistler. And so my post on seeing them are well past due. I was hooked ever since Look Away, the first track of Walk Away. I will soon take a closer listen to the lyrics because they sound so stark in contrast to dance-worthy sweetness. Words like "homicidal feelings" really stick out like that one song from Goodfellas. Olivia is going on while Tommy snaps and takes out a made guy. So lets see what do we recall. Olivia's voice was nice and clear, fine almost operatic. Their sound seems minimally produced, basic, 80's nostalgic. Sounding like how we want to remember things while also sounding new and not retreaded or formulaic. There are so many individual things that will be memorable the first time, from how they sounded to Olivia's glasses. Its not a stretch to say that I take you to see them the first time you will go see them on your own the second, if you live around Chicago. I marvel and cheer on the greatness of acts when they perform in tiny places like Whistler. I could not believe my good fortune for seeing their entire set. I've missed others since and I feel the sting of it and so I write this to remind myself not to miss them again. I'll have far more to articulate when I see them this time. I need a refresh of the source material.
Zig

Walking Bicycles at Hideout

Walking Bicycles I see after missing some significant shows. So this one was a fucking mission. .....and I made it to at least half their set at Hideout. Unfortunately I missed completely the previous Unicycle Loves You set but so goes this rough first world existence. Cory missed the whole thing but at least he got to hang out with them after wards, my distracted wanderings lead me away and then I missed them......Yeah, that Cory.
  It was brief, but hell that was my fault.   These few performances I see in a larger context. I go to refresh the picture. I go see them.......for the same as with Laura Meyer and well, everyone. The picture moves but something you find there identifies with you. Its nice to see them somewhere else besides Empty Bottle. It feels like another place is nurturing a spark that to me is already raging flames. So what was the crowd like? I got to the front easily enough. It was a porous yet not a light crowd, a good weave-around. I parked...far and as I got closer to Hideout I could hear the band playing already and it was like feeling the sand of the hourglass through your fingers. I hauled ass. Here's my ID, let me in. What they perform live and shall record is a departure from roads paved but not taken. They are in the darker end of the continuum. Its no bullshit how they got there. Julius went to prison. In my mind thats in the landscape of the world contained in their music. When I say "urban, decay, dark, I include a prison town. I don't do so for frivolous entertainment. Its to recognize a significance in the narrative. Its not of course the sole influence, this is me acknowledging it in their narrative as something they have successfully survived and is behind them.  So I find that inspiring. Oh and on top of that I like the music too..... I almost forgot. Oh and it gets a little better....they are friends. So forgive the fucking bias, and where the fuck was I?...... Now they are wiser as well as hardened. Got that.....Oh, that's right back to the music.......It seems that every instrument gets that space to separately shape the sound. Walking Bicycles are ensemble players writing your urban decay Glengarry Glen Ross soundtrack. Yes I did read the play. How much Mamet have you read, eh? Fucking hell where was I......The bass is aggressive like Alec Baldwin telling it to you and I like how the lead guitar seems to answer this back with this finesse. So no one instrument dominates, they all sound that way. Don't make me stretch this references further.What I mean with urban decay is not just the superficial outer coat of grayness. Their specific familiarity is deeper, into the monstrous, but I think I covered that in a previous paragraph.  Between the two guitars having it out to a frenzied beat from Deric the drummer....(yes that Drummer) form patterns that capture attention for Jocelyn to take over in just the right time. You get all these separate layers of sound, bouncy and rough in that way you would want post-punk to be.  Its not clean, sleek. Its messy in acknowledging the shadows. You are going to drive through more pot holes and step into more pools of shallow water. Its about what you do after wards, the now-what after the peak starting from the bottom of where you fell. This is all fucking subjective of course, me going on about the band trying to impose a meaning to the music. Its all in trying to get people to listen to it, may I assure.  I thought it would be an easy sell to one with a PJ Harvey shirt in the closet. Jocelyn's slight husk to her voice gives her a kind of authority. This near-future post-recession, urban-decay, post-Siouxsie, post-punk image is something I saw in them since forever. Its been there since 2004 and I was made aware of it in mid 2007. All you other posts need to form a line and take a number. Wait until you are called. The picture moves and it evolves and will do so further since I'm going on about this without reading lyrics to all their new stuff. Before understanding words, the sound instinctively resonates from a darker.....wiser place. Fucking hell, I think I covered that too...multiple times.
Zig.