Crib Notes

Tonight Ani Cordero and husband, former Rock*A*Teens drummer Chris Verene, return to Atlanta in support of Cordero’s latest album, De Donde Eres (Bloodshot Records).

Both Chris and Ani are former Atlanta residence who now reside in Brooklyn. The new album finds the group delving deeper in to the rhythmic intricacies of Latin music while toning down guitar-driven, indie rock elements of the music. The album is sung entirely in Spanish, and is recommended for those who like Nick Drake, Belle and Sebastian, Os Mutantes, Adron and so on.

To give a listen to the album’s first single, “Ruleta Rusa,” click here.

There is also a pretty gorgeous video for “Ruleta Rusa” that can be watched by clicking below.

Cordero, “Ruleta Rusa” from Bloodshot Records on Vimeo.

Atlanta acts, The Holland Dutch and Batata Doce will also be performing. Batata Doce has been touring the east coast recently and has kept a pretty intensive tour blog/journal of their activities posted on Pine Magazine, which you can read here.

$10. 9 p.m.The Earl, 488 Flat Shoals Rd. 404-522-3950. www.badearl.com.

Photo by Cody Ranaldo

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A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to talk with Tod Ashley (A.K.A. Tod A) in preparation for the record release party of Firewater’s new full-length, The Golden Hour, which is taking place at The Earl on Sat., June 14.

Chad Radford: I recently watched the short film about the making of The Golden Hour on Bloodshot Records’s website, and I never realized how much of a politically inspired record this is.

Tod A.: “Hey Clown” never struck you as being in any way political?

I didn’t realize how much it was part of an over-arching theme. This is an album about being expatriating yourself, and all of the songs tie together to address your political woes about the state of George W. Bush’s America. I was looking for some sort of spiritual enlightenment or something like that … I should preface this by saying that in my mind everything you do with Firewater is forever compared to with Cop Shoot Cop. What you were doing in those days was much more bleak, nihilistic, Kafka-esque and very sharp. It’s hard for me to hear Firewater and not carry the Cop Shoot Cop baggage. Overt political statements didn’t ever seem like your thing, and without the film spelling it out for me I wouldn’t have looked for it. Now I don’t see how I missed it. I was looking at it more in terms of a spiritual journey.

The album was motivated by really being sick of participating and paying taxes here and feeling like I was living in a place where the government was not representing me. I also wanted to go to these places and be a sort of one man ambassador and meet these people and say that not all Americans are war mongering idiots. In my own small way kind of reach out and show the other side. It wasn’t a spiritual journey as much as it was just a time to get the hell out of the country.

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