The Casket Girls

 It was a Monday night. Its all fucking smeared together. I have to put events back in the right order. I saw The Casket Girls. They are sisters Phaedra and Elsa Greene and a live drummer, oh and I believe the singer for Stargazer Lillies playing guitar.   Very electronic, fuzzy, hazy and yet clean. They were touring for their second release True Love Kills The Fairy Tale. They played Empty Bottle.....hell I'm lucky if the fog lets me tell what happened from what was awesome. I remember that it was the peak, the climax to a long job, and a long drive. What little pre-concert research I did was all about Stargazer Lillies. None on Casket Girls. So even as I capture images and process the music, I still feel new to them.  They are touring for their second CD. Where was I for the first? They project this cool all knowing that is bored with its omnipotence. They are either too cool or too damn angry, and they cannot be bothered to show you their eyes, so there you go, sunglasses. Alright, I am quite taken with them. I do recall that. They present a compelling show. And I'm overwhelmed with their whole presentation, their stoic sexy robotic dance, the mysterious sunglasses, the sexy...everything. I was in awe of it. Friends behind me, some were not buying it. Fell below their threshold I suppose, and I understand that sentiment. One thing that strikes you as off and the entire presentation comes apart. Perhaps it was the robotic moves and sunglasses that can strike as distancing and alienating instead of exotic, curious. I was into it. I did not bother with analysis, ran from it. Instead the curiosity kept me close. Is it a seething, simmering rage or indifference behind the sunglasses. Not suggesting the girls have actual grudges against the world, or are indifferent to it, off stage. This is about the deliberate image they project and what for me the subtext to it is. I don't recall too many bands that project any image as The Casket Girls do. They just get up on stage, set up and play. Maybe they dress up.....alright, I'm recalling more that do dress up. Most don't dress any differently than the audience. Some of the local bands I notice wear the same clothes.......Alright that is more a testament to how many times I see them.
  So I was really into what Casket Girls performed and how they did it. Wait.....I don't just remember the visual side of the show. The sisters are very catchy songwriters. Some of the songs now are really sinking in. It took some time for me. The sisters sing together in this breathy collective voice. You can clearly hear and almost recite with them what they sing. In part its because of the similar pace that all the songs have. They all are worthy of a dance floor......just not three in a row. So if you bought the music and are going through some fatigue, wait it out. What attracted you to the band is still there. I was introduced to their music in one crash course night. I bought both CDs, including Sleepwalking. To try to take all that music down is like watching Man vs Food. You know you're not enjoying that last bite, and your starting to forget what got you to like it to begin with. I once ate too many Veggie Bite Philly Steak sandwiches......that was more my fault, actually.  You can over-dose on the band and that may spoil the chances of exploring further. Give them some time. The sisters are worth it. It was at first difficult to later find the differences that made the individual songs stand out. That is actually why this blog post took so long.....really. I'm coming back around to loving this band. Individual tracks are starting to stick out again. This includes the title track.
Give It All Away had me in seconds. They all have that something that hooks you immediately. To write about the individual songs..... This is gonna be a long write. Fuck it. I can't help it. Around the first minute of almost every song, a pace is established that never changes. They seem to roughly have the same pace.  This is where the live drummer helps to ground them, and gives them torque.....did I use that last word right?  He was quite enthused. I liked him, he was good and he kept the attention on the girls singing. What he did helped to make the singers look and sound good. The live drumming helps, they are the tractor wheels on the ground that keep they singers from sounding too aloof. Perfect Little Soul got me late as well after that one wave of fatigue faded and left me free to enjoy the discovery of this band all over again.  You know what. Its nice to write a good concluding sentence....right now all I can do is grind this post to a halt.
Zig

Eliza Rickman

.....Where the hell is this place, I can see myself arriving late. I park. Its near Division by where the Puerto Rican flags are. I meander about until I find it. I find a door that leads to the second floor stairs. I can faintly hear a singing voice ascending the stairs with me. I gently open the door to the most intimate, quiet, attentive house crowd. Its Eliza, at long last. Right away its the best place to have her in concert as well as the most rare.

Let me read that back.....the best and most....alright....its not a regular venue you can just look up. Its a bloody house with the familiar feeling Chicago apartment where white people live. An old school latino owned house would have a cross some where as the first thing you see. The more graven images of Mary or the Saints give away Mexican catholics.....anyway.... The apartment felt old like it had history, and typical of Chicago. It felt familiar enough to me. It was easy to picture an immigrant family once living there. I saw lots of vinyl, a record player. The only thing that let me just open this door was this faint angelic voice. The place was awash with red, from the high ceiling to the walls. The living room was with its windows to the street shaded a gentle red.  Perhaps it was the light. Its not showing up like that in the few pictures I could take. It was the second floor. That apartment may actually look nothing as how I describe it. My bloody expressionist memory does fuck with me. It was the middle of her set. She was playing her auto harp....I do recall the toy piano played later. 

She ended her set with accordion. She covered Johnny Cash. No lie, it hits real hard, her cover. I'm so lucky she don't speak or sing in spanish. Them songs would make me cry. She's just a language barrier away from doing that. I say that because her songs cut deep......I mean, I mean....I imagine so. Its not just her writing and singing from the heart. Its reflecting one's own as well. Her arsenal of instruments seem just right to disarm you and make you ponder.
    I always seem to catch her in places that are a shift away and within the familiar.  If Borges had a labyrinth I know it has rooms in Pilsen, entire fucking blocks. What I'm saying is that you can never really know a place. Its always in a state of reveal. Something you missed. And so its revealed in layers. Its in this way I get to see an Eliza Rickman show. The Lab has rooms in Pilsen. We have stories there to hold on to. The first show I saw her in, they had this theater all set up for her and it seemed to even match her costume.....yeah this ambitious place, the entrance was in the back, by the alley, near 18th and Halsted. Forgot the name. I believe Eliza was touring for the EP Gild The Lily. It was an iconic performance for me. A deep listen to her lyrics are impacting. You catch yourself in a moment of self reflection even as....hmm you get into her music. Her official videos always take me back to that near forgotten theater venue.  I don't know what happened to it. I've never been back. Feels like it disappeared in all but in my own expressionist memory. It seemed like an old space, small and holding on to its relevance. The bloody labyrinth.
  The venues I've seen Eliza play hit like an urban Twin Peaks visual dream-like experience because I never seem to return to them, or nothing is left but what I remember.  Like the  house show near Division  where she toured for the LP O' You Sinners. Things happen that makes you glad you made it to that specific show. And the ones you miss, hurt long term. I don't always see her in regular venues. Almost every time where she plays they got that one chance to be that iconic place that Eliza played. And so it was with this second floor apartment. They pretty much play just like her videos for Start with Goodbye, Stop with Hello. Oh and that video is the best. The song, another horse drawn trot into the clouds with a careful descent down white stairs. Damn....all this said and I'm barely staring on the LP Sinners. Sorry for taking the long way. Its a compulsion to document these things. There are a number of them that I can recall since the EP, that I can finally play out.
   White Words is the coolest and a good break from the painful and the sweet. Its among those I've been waiting for since I first heard it.  She loops her voice. Its contemporary, yet not out of place with her sister tracks. Its brilliant how she rewrote Over Cold Shoulders. In the EP its minimal, haunting like an an old fashioned doll left on the porch of an abandoned house. Its just her voice and the toy piano. In the LP with more instruments it reminds me of Tish Hinajosa Tex-Mex or the folkloric Lila Downs. Yeah this may come of as a lazy way of describing her music, and name dropping. Its deeper than that. I want to put these artists in the context of a constellation. I tether them together so that all may rise, should only one be remembered.  Damn it I went off the intended trail again. Fucking hell....I was going on about Cold Shoulders....it reminds me of the old Mexican music I recall since I was a kid. The song just invokes for me that ideal rural background to stroll past el jardin. Gentle, horse-drawn music of the old frontier. This is my immediate impression of that track. Her music for me always reminds me of periods past.  Coming Up Roses she plays with accordion. This one for me has the open-veins, old world earnestness of Los Panchos.....sad and romantic.....huh? I know its a bloody stretch but fucking follow it anyway. Look them up. I've just noted four tracks but really....its all brilliant.And its not all sweetness and vulnerability. Even those songs have their shadows. Costumes. Its not for nothing that us fans think of her as a Disney princess. Only this is one that lives in the kingdom of this world of ours a struggling, traveling artist.
Zig

Ringo Deathstarr

It was a Sunday 2 March at Beat Kitchen. Ringo Deathstarr headlining a show that included Panda Riot. The LP is Gods Dream. I believe I saw them in Chicago one other time at the now defunct Darkroom. Nothing about them is slow, there is no meandering in their music. In the shoegaze kingdom they are among the fastest runners on land. If you already like Asobi Seksu.....well perhaps you already know of Ringo Deathstarr. When they relax their gate and enjoy the scenery Convertible is their sound. I do not know for sure if they played that. I'm looking up the songs after the concert, looking for something to recall. Urban wonder.......You're driving and explaining to your newly arrived visiting relatives. Urban wonder, and this is me showing it, driving you around, 'cause I know where I am, and I want you to like it, the sophistication with just a little grit from the functional underside. Let it be said that this is a fresh impression independent of whatever Convertible actually says. And I can actually apply this to other songs as well. I made it to half of RD's set. That's something, and by the end of it I was right in front.  They have this way of sounding relaxed but still alert. Heads may indeed be in the clouds but they have a firm grip on the road they travel and pass on the left. Aloof sounding yet still alert and capable of focused action. Rapidly this memory of actually seeing them fades into images that I reconstruct while listening to the songs on youtube. Hmmm, but what isn't a reconstruction. Let's see. Ah! I arrived in the middle of the set, late enough to be let in for free. Shit....It was Philly Peroxide that told me they were about 4 songs in. So not really boo fucking hoo late. But I was in the back and it was a gradual process to work my way to the front. And later I bought the Panda Riot shirt. They finally have fucking shirts! And there is a next chance to see them. So now I get the bloody Ringo Deathstarr shirt. So I came back with stuff that says it wasn't just a mental smearing together images of Ms Alex .....mostly Alex and......Eliot and Daniel. I'll try and get the vinyl later. I have a CD from them, Colour Trip already but not yet a shirt. The song Gods Dream I presume they played it, the concert memory does not specify but one, Bong Load. Its about smoking weed with your friends I think. Anyway, the title song .............Alex sings. She sounds dreamy and aloof as the rolling storm rages behind her. Wait she's playing bass, so its really on her to brew the storm. It makes you just wanna put on the bloody shirt. I must confess the real impression comes from listening to a recording. For reasons that I cannot articulate, I must mark the difference. One is a direct must be there experience, and the other is a recording. I'm grateful for having both, the technology to record and everything. They've been to Chicago more times than I've caught them. I could not get the LP after buying the shirt. The coolness that comes from seeing them again comes from retouching the older iconic memory. They played Darkroom with such intensity and were so cool with me after wards at the merch table. So now you get the shirt....so what if it's black. That's not the bloody point. Now I know that I really like them. Its no accident that I am there. What does fade is what got me to see them at Darkroom to begin with. When in doubt....Ah yes. This road begins with Scary Lady Sarah.  Thank you!
Zig

  

Sleepy Kitty at Township

So I went to see Sleepy Kitty at Township.  They are based out of St. Louis and Chicago. They were here to promote their latest  Projection Room. This is who I took a close friend to see with me on a Free Monday at Empty Bottle. It was a surprise visit from him, it was a good feeling to bring someone to the Bottle. And really not just anyone. We are close for many years but now he has settled in California. Sleepy Kitty is not a band he would normally seek out, know of. And so here we have a real convergence of moments here. This was just when I started to really like Infinity City, be familiar with it....the LP before. Now is the best time for me to sell this band Sleepy Kitty and here dropped from the sky is an oldest of friends.  Let's go....where? The fucking Empty Bottle. He really did not expect to be watching Paige and her guitar....on a Monday. It's now Saturday at Township and this memory that took a whole paragraph to construct in text circles around more than once in my head. I almost did not buy the new release, but I walked too close to the merch table, and there is Ms Paige. Well, at least I had the money for it. My intention was to see them and then go to see Marci, DJ at Dragon Lady Lounge. The pictures I post will be of Sleepy Kitty, but they will remind me of the journey of that entire night. It went extremely well for me, a rare and wonderful, unexpected time. I heard the music on the way back home. This is me preserving a series of moments and impressions in these few images. And now I got songs that are exploding on top of me in singular impressions. Goddard Protagonist Inflection starts out sweet, hopeful innocent and floating, and then turns mean, heavy and blusey. Like she can shoot you like Han Solo gets Greedo, and that kind of walk, or gate that hints of western movies. Paige lays this powerful storm with her guitar. The great thing is that you have at least two segments in which you really get to really admire the guitar playing.  Imagine Miranda Sex Garden if they were American.  They leaned and ultimately went Mediaeval. The duo of Sleepy Kitty have a western lean and just as epically iconic. And its scattered all over the CD. I'm glad this one is six minutes long. In the middle it starts off sweet again only to finally give to that power blues guitar. Its an absolute intoxication hearing them guitars. I am not the first to put this Kitty in the same sentence as Blondie. But absent in Kitty is Blondie's disco, too rugged a western landscape. This whole bloody paragraph is just for one song but these are general impressions that are also in other songs. Paige's voice is clear, easy to understand, refreshing, the iconic familiar, shadows and all. It feels like a nice step away from the exotic, because familiar means less distant. And they write about anything, like what goes on in Batman: The Ride. I can follow along the lyrics. They have a capacity to write a song about anything.
Zig