Molly Nilsson

 There is a lot to work backwards from 20/20. I wanted to take home what I saw her play, what I saw her dance to. The bubble I live in, the Bauhaus black tinted glasses has me thinking how goth and casual dark she is.  While stumbling through a YouTube hole after hearing Lebanon Hanover, enter Molly Nilsson with I Hope You Die.  She has a cold casual delivery in her voice. There's a sincerity to it.  It's Vulcan, romantic, dark electronic dance.  The lyrics of that track are sweet, believable and clever.  I'm the hooligan of your heart...that's fucking funny.
 
  She is one of those discoveries that end up playing Empty Bottle soon after learning of them.  So remote in the beginning. Far enough away that, I don't have to think about the money I gotta save to see her yet. Next video after Zanias....1995. Then Ugly Girl. Part of what gets my interest in a song is how urgent does it feel. Urgency can be felt regardless of pace. With Molly Nilsson pace is mostly mid-tempo casual, with some uptempo surprises like Mountain Time.  The video for it was fascinating in that it could have been any Quinceniera ranging from close relatives and spiraling out from there. It felt authentic, right down to the faces of the attendees. She could have used all the pretty people from the novellas, but you can't tell those mother fuckers from a common American sitcom. So the video for it was nice, it felt like into she sneaked into a real moment....she would really stick out like a radio active gringa in the quince. She would silence everyone into respect if she can dance to cumbia, old school mambo or anything from Hector Lavoe.....wow. That thread just took off on me.
  Just as I was comfortable with her mid-tempo pace, she jets forward with Mountain Time and from The Travels Dear Life. I notice all music she has out already, going as far back as 2010. Eventually my interests steers me towards other bands. Ms Molly has a great catalogue of music to OD on, I gotta take my time on her. So I did not hardcore research into 20/20 going into this concert.
  This Wednesday I was finally able to go. The universe was bringing her again. Can't turn that down.  I was half wanting a few of the same goth crowd as with Be Forest the night before. I mean she is fucking goth candy.  The Be Forest show had an identifiable half goth/shoegaze crowd. This Molly Nilsson had what appeared to be a normal cool Empty Bottle crowd. It did not matter either way. I like to paint a picture when writing down this moment, and the audience is a tremendous tell on all levels. You miss that and that is a blind spot in the moment...well if you give a shit.
  Three shows in a row does ....seem to ask the question what festival are you celebrating in your German Expressionist fevered mind. Ellis on Monday, Be Forest on Tuesday, Molly Nilsson on Wednesday. What the fuck! So back to this....she was fun to watch. Ms Molly was dancing. These pictures suggest a cold indifferent dancer, but she was smiling. I wanted to take home what she had this enthusiasm for.

One person that was impressive enough that I took home his CD Choose Life was Apostille. Weirdly resonant electronic one-man act. This was truly a surprise. I was into it. And then Ms Molly played. The crowd was heavy for her and seemed to know her music, and would react to certain songs and that fed back to her.  Her enthusiasm slightly more unguarded. This was my first show of Ms Molly.  I knew she came to Empty Bottle before and I just assumed most of the audience were music snobs that have seen her before, and I'm just starting in this school in the middle of the semester out of nowhere with braces that can barely hold back these horse teeth. It feels differently when you know you are seeing an artist well into the middle of their performing life, catching their tour.  You are seeing a polished, seasoned artist.  It's like starting Star Wars from Empire....well, alright, not the right metaphor. 20/20 is the latest and her work and her back catalogue goes back as far as 2010.  I need to take my time with her music, but I am glad I went and took something home. I took more pictures than this, I am saving them to post with thoughts on 20/20.

Zig

Esben And The Witch/No Dog,The Jungle

     When you count the years by how old your nieces are then or who had an accident that year, that's  when events start taking on the weight of those years, that's when time feels long.  2011 feels like a long time when I first saw them.  I would see them again at Empy Bottle for their next album Wash the Sins Not Only the Face. Their music is stirring.  Lights the fire in the blood. It helped in holding myself together, and stronger. Have you seen the video for Marching Song? Its fucking rage inducing! Rachel Davies is a troubadour that induces you into steeling yourself for the fight. Both those shows were so intense and I barely had enough for their CDs.  Time passes. I don't see them a third time. I don't know if they toured Chicago again but I did not see them.  The music I got from them take on roots.....Despair, Yellow Wood, Deathwaltz.  Different fucking roller coasters, all of them.  When I look them up again it was two songs that hooked me all over again, The Jungle, and No Dog. While Marching Song simmers and burns to it's climax, No Dog rages from the very beginning. When it slows down, only then calmly at first but that calm is brief and a spark in a cloud of kindling leads to a full blown guitar, bass and drum rage and it is fabulous! And they can hold you by a tense thread when they slow down. I overindulged and bought from them online on white fucking vinyl Live At Roadburn.

  The Jungle is over 13 minutes long.  It was a fucking wonder I listened at all. Normally, I'll give up 13 minutes easy if it's Nooran Sisters, or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, sure.....yes I actually do listen to them. So, even as you are capable of a long listen, do you even want to. Will your attention trail off in 3 minutes with 10 more to go? They retain a a razor sharp tension at all times like a trapeze wire. It keeps you in the moment hanging on to her words. I was hooked on The Jungle and then I read the lyrics....wow a second time!
  It has a beginning, middle and final boss....just like in the fucking video games. It's like an overture in classical music for me. It has that kind of storied impact. It has that structure for me. Overtures tell you what's to come, like dramatic trailers.  It reaches a peak and the descent downwards is fast and that has pulses and steps in this descending sprint. It's like you're in a car with no brakes going downhill. This is why this song can hold your attention for all that time.  There are pulses of speed within the ascending first and descending second hmm movement.  Dividing this into two parts, the jungle is both ravaged pristine innocent wilderness and merciless, living, collective eating machine that just about eats you alive until the savage in you fights and chops a way out.  There are many levels to see this. In the beginning I could not  help but to see this as a metaphorical colonizer chopping a path through this sweet innocent forest....."....cleave I will split the tender stems of virgin trees"....then the jungle starts fighting back nearly devouring the one in the jungle....that person fights and chops it's way out!  So the jungle in this song is ravaged yes but not without it's teeth. And only when the jungle within the girl fighting back, roaring back, does she get out.  The jungle can be a metaphor for the world in general....and not the New World.  Any way....The Jungle....wow what a fucking awesome track! All 13 minutes!

  So just like that, I am a fan all over again.  Some of their song are long, but give them that time and you will come out feeling empowered, perhaps.
Zig

Be Forest /Lightfoils

  Hearing some of these tracks truly bring tears to my eyes they are so fucking beautiful.....I'll be ok.  This show was a fucking mission. I bought my ticket early. A lot was riding on this show.  Hmm, I can say that about every show I see. But Lightfoils was on this one! Be Forest is from Italy.  Earthbeat was released in 2014 and that is what sold me to them. They played Empty Bottle where they played Airwaves. The sound was clean. The memory is distant enough for it to be enshrined by my German Expressionist archivist mind. It was my first time seeing HIDE as well. It was an interesting bill.
 I was so happy to see Lightfoils support the Chicago end of this 2019 Be Forest tour.  They got a new LP, Chambers.  This Time Is Up comes out confident and sunny with an urgent pace. The drummer John with a fire lit under him, that means everyone is feeling it. It wakes everyone up like it's their first Red Bull ever! I like how the drums brings that illusion of stumbling downhill in a drug infused stupor.  The guitars too, have this twang to them that further sells it. Then right in the middle, a wave of chill hits from around the corner.  It washes over as you walk it off. Summer Nights starts off without a care in the world, then picks up. It was a real blessed thrill to see these two bands in the same night.
  I arrived on time to catch some of the opening act I think they were called Blue Unit and they were great as well. I was riding a good feeling that took the edge of the shyness away.  I said hi  to a combination of goth and shoegaze friends. It was friends from two scenes... What is the difference? Hmm, goth friends and I dress in black deliberately, nearly fucking always. In the shoegaze scene, music did not take on a fashion to distinguish itself.  So as I drifted about I genuinely saw friends from different ends of a continuum. Vantablack on one end and fade into come-as-you-is on the other. I feel like I must paint a detailed....baroque....well. I wanna remember this for who observed it with me. This show was before a moment anticipated from afar now in past tense. I want to remember more of this than Coleridge did Kubla Khan. The memory not being a dream is grounded in fact. It happened, I was there with other friends. Details fade, smeared over time. So let us make this dye darker still. Philly I think was the DJ for the night. Yeah I remember him playing Walking Bicycles in between the bands. He played from them their newest song.

 By now, I have already heard songs from Chambers. Its comfort music at this point, but its not taking their presence for granted. The familiarity needs to sustain itself and so I go see them even if I have seen them already. With Be Forest it was the one show, the CD, then YouTube videos. The....familiarity is met differently. The biggest difference being with Be Forest it may only be this one other time to see them....actually see them. Italy seems to be a long fucking way after all. I've been all over Earthbeat and I'm barely listening to more of the first LP Cold beyond Florence. Perhaps it was laziness, but I did not look up Knocturne before going to Empty Bottle. Tech just spoiled us so fucking much that we can dismiss it.  I could have YouTubed it.....but I could not be bothered. So whatever was going to hit me, it was going to be a deer in the headlights type. I just trusted that it was going to be the best. And fucking hell was it ever.
  Bengala has the crisp deep rolling drums with the bass and spacey guitar. Costanza's chill breathy voice calmly telling us ....mercy and decline, that is all we will find. That is bleak.  The whole album is full of these phrases that hit you with the impact of stepping into a mine field. Gemini compresses into a few minutes the dramatic atmosphere of Wuthering Heights into a rolling avalanche.  Atto I an instrumental seems to me to have whispers of the songs to come.  It's sweetened darkness with a pensive beginning.  For me its a tell that the drums are going to be raw, or at least different when the drummer is standing.  I am not coming from this Kubla Khan without souvenirs, the intangible and fucking merch. The better for me to remember. I can't believe I almost did not buy the shirt. It's a medium that actually I like how it fits....wow.  There has got to be a reason I am willing to hold onto relics that take up space, wear it even. The music is cool, bouncy aggressive and still thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Zig