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

Walking Bicycles

A lot of baggage I bestowed on this band that perhaps have nothing to do with the music itself yet still influential on the imprint. There is an influence that has more to do with how I arrange furniture in the head. Pre-Recession was when I was re-discovering the local scene and Empty Bottle. Going to England for the familiar but expensive Whitby Gothic Weekend was now impossible. Fresh from discovering Queen Adreena abroad. I was craving for what I can discover locally....what a novelty. Fresh from the wonder of walking past a threshold I see Walking Bicycles. I saw them three times and every performance was at Empty Bottle. Seeing them was not easy. Each time felt like I stole a much treasured moment from The Man. Or there was something off about when these great performances presented themselves, like on a Free Monday, or a Saturday. How often are Mondays awesome! There was always an obstacle to overcome that made seeing Walking Bicycles so prohibitive and irresistible an accomplishment, almost missed and so iconic to me. The second time was the hardest. The third was for the CD release of GO? in December 2008. They have been around I think since 2004 and here I am barely aware of them in 2007. So even if their music have nothing to do with the then incoming bursting of the great bubble, it felt like they saw it coming. Welcome To The Future was the great announcement. Exactly the dark and bouncy post-punk I needed after knowing Katie Jane Garside abroad. Jocelyn the lead singer was so damn cool off-stage as well. We both know Scary Lady Sarah. That was funny to me. Sarah already knew of them well before my own discovery. Sarah 9.5 out of 10 will know of the music before I do. I would run into Jocelyn at the Bottle on some occasions, and always so cool. I was always afraid she would not remember me. You don't want to just drop from the celling and expect to be recognized....well you do. It's just awkward when it does not work. Now they are recording their 4th album and they got a facebook page. So the band still lives, and I'm very happy about that. Welcome back y'all, to me you never really left. This last picture is one outside the Bottle with the bass player.

Panda Riot,Magic Key at Hideout

This is from Hideout.
These here are of Rebecca Scott of Panda Riot. Some are of when they played Hideout this last time. I got so many pictures of these two bands accumulated. I just decided to first post these older pictures as well.

This is Magic Key I think during one of their previous names.

You go see what's familiar in part because the performers change and evolve faster than their output suggests. Believing that each performance is a unique moment that deserves to be remembered, is not just a metaphor. Magic Key was briefly called Aleks/Eva and before that Aleks And The Drummer. I love this band for two reasons, what is on the only CD they got out (May A Lightning Bolt Caress) and for what they perform live that they have yet to put on CD...at least as far as I notice when I take a peak at the merch table. Familiar and mysterious as your interior castle are songs I cannot name but anticipate. Dark and urgent as her recorded work, this two person drama now feels like a full on Ibsen play with more consequential players, and storylines. Sometimes its a whole band, sometimes its Aleks alone with her keyboard representing MK. She's always surprising you and I like that about her. What's on CD is in amber, distant but still tethered to her current evolving work that you can only see live. These things, these moments are noteworthy to the process of knowing their work. I see these things through this fog.

Panda Riot I see a lot as well. They are originally from Philly. Rebecca Scott sings lead as well as play keyboard and guitar. They evolve well within the shoegaze continuum, recently taking paths with darkening clouds. Normally they brighten the day with wonder. Their pace rarely more than a jog in the park. But you don't feel it wear on you, instead you are bombarded by this sense of wonder but of familiar things, little things. Not strictly superficial novelty. And they sell it well. Seriously, wake up on a Monday morning and play Plateau on your way to work. I think old goths of the horse-driven 90's will like this. I include myself among this lot. On this Thursday night I saw them with my cousin and brother-in-law. It's nice to see them go darker on their latest soon to be released work. She Dares All Things is their first CD and I remember it since...2007? Far And Near was released I believe in 2009. It's a 6 song EP.

Fielded

Lindsey Powell as Fielded played Chicago ...... on some infernally cold Saturday to a packed and warm Crown Tap Bar on the north side. Lindsey is tiny and so it was best to be in front. I arrived well ahead of her set. There was even enough time for her to go to the bathroom. A lot of what I get from this band for the moment I can only get live.....and preserved on youtube I only recently discovered. In one of the videos she waves around a light-saber in the garage, and sings while cradling a dog in her arms. A veil of snow settles on them both. Cute, right?
Anyway, Terrorgeist is the vinyl release that I still have not bought yet. So all my impressions have a built in distance. But each performance leaves it's own stamp. Some are memorable for the novelty of where, like the one at some DIY venue in the dangerous south-side....Well yeah, near 26th st. It counts. It was cool, you can smoke everywhere and can just chill on both roofs.....anyway I'm veering off. I think she's going to move to L. A., bummer.
Ms Lindsey is in all kinds of projects that are great and each with a separate depth of mystery. I find her fascinating the more I research her. She is in Ga'an, Festival as well as Fielded, and is well traveled with them all. These are all very different animals from each other and Fielded is but one side to Lindsey Powell. This is perhaps the fifth time I see her in some capacity. I see her now so I can remember her shows in other iconic moments like at this old factory-turned venue on the south-side. Her primary instrument is her voice that she loops together into a chorus, and tweeks to sound deeper. Sometimes Lindsey uses two mics. Not this time. It's not just about what your voice is doing at the present moment but what else you can make it do at the same time. There is a lot that she demands of herself in this capacity.

The voice is another flexible instrument. Her music if ambient....when ambient, is also tense and suspenseful, and apparent when you see her sweat, outstretched hand and closed eyes. This is not something that is delivered casually. So how can this be of interest to goth culture? Well, she's weird and dark, and you can dance to her music. Do you remember how it felt to hear Zola Jesus the first time? Minimally electronic and organic. Her dark choral chants are trance inducing, and she takes her time in doing them. This is music that is not intended for the short attention-span. Yeah, she has her pagan chanting down. I think this is an easy sell to a goth crowd. It's the kind of weirdness we like to dance to. For those that like Zola Jesus, go see Fielded. At the very least you will find better parking I remember once reading about Fielded. They described her music as gospel. I can see that in this passionate delivery. She takes her time in assembling her songs, for this crowd that's OK. They seemed attentive. Her songs that I recall most easily "White Death" and "Another Time". But there is a lot that she plays that I'm familiar with but cannot name. . Lindsey adjusts and tweaks her instruments as she finds that moment when she can just close her eyes and be taken by her performance. Finally, this post is done.

Early January

Magic Key when they performed outdoors near Logan Square.
These are of Rebecca Scott the lead singer of Panda Riot.

This Thursday 5th January I'm aiming to see Magic Key play Hideout with Panda Riot. They seem to be at different ends of this faerie world I put them, individual relationships with it. They play a lot. I've seen them both at Empty Bottle and Whistler. They evolve faster than their CD output suggests. Recording costs money. So it's important to see them live. The organic machinery that can keep them going is still going to be the people that see them. P R is mid-tempo dream pop expresses sentiments one can only be felt in relaxed moments. You're gonna stop to take a breath to say you're happy just to exist. So their relaxed but do not just drift. They are the kind of shoegaze we dance to at Latebar. They play a lot locally. They just signed to a new small local label XD Records. Magic Key is dark, and serious as a heart attack dramatic. Keyboard driven dark and colorful and just as worthy of a goth-themed dance floor. They seem to have this heavy serious authority normally expected in classical music. Perhaps it may sound like I'm too much hyping this up, but it's rare to have something that normally just plays in your head suddenly share a real stage.