Zanias/ Into The All

  Cold Wave seems to be on goth's foggy grey border.   Its hard to find sometimes. The GPS often fucks up and leads me well into Industrial country and I gotta ask for directions.  The Hideout audience when hosting Zanias, Fee Lion, and Visceral Anatomy did not look all that different from Burlington the night after for Cruz de Navajas.  These labels are elusive as magnetic north. Goth is like a shot gun blast that scares the wildlife away like the tiniest whisper of a camera click taking your soul instead of your picture.  Y'all need to relax. Sometimes you use such a term as a way to not use the g word. So we define around it.  I'm comfortable calling Alison Lewis/ Zanias  cold wave.   Dark, electronic and detached, longing for homes that are far far away......Australia, Berlin, Malaysia specifically.  Just pondering the miles between those names is intimidating.  Even during my travels to Whitby Gothic Weekend, the worry for home was a potent wire not to cross. The pigeons would remind me of the pet dove I left behind.  There is an awareness of the distance and a longing for human contact.  The first time seeing her in the first band Linea Aspera I can remember feeling so remote from the music of this artist, feeling like I'm seeing a star as close as this telescope....ehm...YouTube video can get me. There was so much work this artist put out.  Since Linea Aspera all her projects were each bands I would listen to separately forever, and still so remote.  The relationship with the music started with wonder, and built into it is this vast distance that you are aware. This is someone I may never see live.
  Let me go to this specific Tuesday night at Danny's in Wicker Park. I go with Marci. I believe Grun Wasser played that night. There was a long line to get in, but eventually we did. After the front room, all the back rooms seem intimate. Your natural inclination is to follow the hallway until the end. There are rooms on each side of the hallway, its almost like a private home and some eccentric fuck  has this party at his place. Anyway, so we go all the way to where the hallway leads and the very last end was everyone I saw the Friday before at Hideout.  Zanias, Fee Lion, Visceral Anatomy. That train that was so far over the horizon that I was longing for it.... I forgot that I was standing right in the middle of the tracks. I was suddenly the third grader in the teachers lounge....I was awestruck by a fucking bullet train.  This is so Frank Lloyd wrong!  This is either so fucking far and away that you want to see it, or a fly in their soup/windshield, depending on which metaphor.  My own social awkwardness kicked in.  I was wearing my newly bought Zanias shirt that I got from her  previous tour. I did not want her to see me with it and think I wanted undue attention. This twisted shyness just fucking grips you like its Carrie's mom screaming "They are all gonna laugh at you!" The music suddenly is so close, like I'm a fly doin' the backstroke in their soup.  I was just feeling that way, and was looking for a graceful quick exit before I feel too awkward. But you know, its nice to see her stay longer in Chicago.
  If you are already a fan of her, then  Aletheia and Idoru.... you just become a fan of her and everything that lead up to those songs. Its like stumbling into Unity Temple after walking out of a gas station designed by the same guy.  You recognized what little that you got to know was the tip to this beautiful ice berg palace.  So this will sweep up the first time fan as well. I see beautifully the delicate intangible tether that leads from Linea Aspera to the newest Into The All. What does it mean to mention Frank Llloyd Wright and his fucking filling station? It means even that was a palace. It means nothing was small or insignificant. Everything he built was grand, big or small.  I can see the consistent continuum with Zanias. I am into it all. So I treasure my small collection of her work like a collector of ancient and rare books.  Alison Lewis has been busy since at least 2011 with Linea Aspera. Dark, sleek and cold. She credits Dead Can Dance, Coil as a major influences, observing closely how  Lisa Gerrard sings. I think having produced her music within a span of less than and within a decade it can define that decade. It can be what we are nostalgic for in 20 or 30 years, and it can be what inspires another girl studying science to be a musician.
Zig    

Anika/ Exploded View

    Gritty urban, noir with roots in Bristol trip hop.  In 2010 Anika a dark spot within dark hmm adjacent music released her self-titled LP of mostly covers. I saw her play Empty Bottle the fall of 2011.  This artist was originally a political journalist and poet who spent her time between Bristol England, and Berlin.  Hmm, Bristol....home of trip hop, Massive Attack....Portishead.  Its making sense. Bristol is the right breeding ground. The right climate, soil, etc. I saw her at Empty Bottle three times. Her covers are so unrecognizable to me. Really turns things into hers. Roughly its as if Portishead covered the music with Anika's deep otherworldly voice. She did work with members from that band for this LP, so that is not a surprise. I really thought Masters Of War was hers and not Bob Dylan's.  In The City by Chromatics originally, gets the Anika muscle car custom makeover you did not know it needed.  All y'all  who like  Suicide Commando's BTK I just caught dancing to He Hit Me.  That's Anika's cover from 2013 single. And don't make me bust out the R Kelly karaoke bar footage. Yeah....more of y'all than I thought....how embarrassing.  Another noteworthy cover Sadness Hides The Sun originally from Greta Ann. Is this one bleak. The original brings with it the outdoor scent and chill of a scary campfire story.  Ms Anika channels her inner Ian Curtis to adapt it's darkness to an urban space. You dance to this with the same abandon as a Joy Division track. I was so close to assuming it was not a cover.
  Music that is formulaic does not ever hit the spot it intends. Anika for me is not, even when she performs covers. She has a recognizable signature that she imposes and also creates with her own original tracks. The bass is fat, aggressive and hits your urge to dance like its a gag reflex. It's sleek urban noir that makes you want to move, and its amazing that she is not....taken by her own music. This I say about her work with Exploded View as well. It feels like a natural extension. I took home two releases under Sacred Bones Records when she played Empty Bottle November 2018, the latest Obey(2018) and the self-titled debut recorded in 2015.  For these projects she went all the way to Mexico City. It amazes me the international path this artist with her music has forged. I mean fucking wow girl!  Noteworthy for me are Disco Glove, No More Parties In The Attic, Orlando...let the others from the debut sink slowly, they are worth it. Dark Stains, and Letting Go Of Childhood Dreams on Obey are excellent as well.     
  She is very stoic when performing, fascinating.......she stands there like a vulcan Saul Goodman announcing bingo numbers.  Its not a complaint. How she performs makes her so mysterious. And just as this part of her image begins to solidify, the substance of this image shifts. Her eyes widen...tiny movements that express so much.  Then she gets off stage, walks around the audience as she performs!  These visuals spark and sustain the moment for the audience.  I think she even performed some of her poetry, with her music playing behind her. It seemed that way.  She did this the last two visits to Chicago. Spellbinding and unexpected.
      We have packed dog years of crazy since 2011. And let's not talk about what hit the fan since 2016. We know. That makes that first performance, a different...even a slightly more innocent world away. The other two gigs I went to see Anika was within these last 6 months.  In November 2018 she came with her fellow bandmates of Exploded View.  And she came back by herself January 2019. Iconic shows for me, concert therapy. How else are you going to fight the sadness that hides the sun than by dancing to a fucking song about it.
Zig