Crib Notes

Who are you?

“Josh” “Tillman”

Describe yourself in three words.

No, thank you.

Who — dead or alive — would you most like to meet?

The person with my sandwich.

Who would you most like to slap in the face?

Whoever invented that stupid “Spin-The-Bottle” game.

What song do you wish you had written?

America’s National Anthem

Crosby, Stills and Nash or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young?

Ugh.

LP, CD or MP3?

Kindle.

If you could start one trend, what would it be?

Thoughtful questions.

If you could end one trend, what would it be?

Slap-bracelets.

With whom would you most like to play a game of spin the bottle?

Don’t you need several people to play that game?

J. Tillman -Though I Have Wronged You

J. Tillman plays the Earl with Pearly Gates and the Meeks Family Sat., Nov. 21. $12. 9 p.m.

(Photo by David Belisle)

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Califone’s show at the Earl tonight has been canceled. Refunds for tickets are available at point of purchase.

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Mon., Oct. 26 Future of the Left, Hawks and Predator. $7. 9 p.m. 529, 529 Flat Shoals Ave. 404-228-6769.

Future of the Left consists of singer/guitarist Andy “Falco” Falkous and drummer Jack Egglestone, both previously of Cardiff band mclusky, alongside singer/bassist Kelson Mathias, formerly of the Ammanford-based group Jarcrew. … The band were signed to Too Pure who had also signed Mclusky, however the umbrella company Beggars Group disbanded Too Pure transferring the band to 4AD; most famous for signing the Pixies in the mid eighties.

Wed., Oct. 28 Lead by saxophone player Julian Julien, Fractale is a Parisian five-piece jazz/electro ensemble that melds traditional jazz and rock ideas with improvisation and a computer-generated bent to arrive at a simple, melodic sound. The music is cinematic in scope, and vastly experimental. $8. 9 p.m. Eyedrum. 404-522-0655.

Wed., Oct 28 Cocktoberfest featuring:  Stolen Hearts, Pillow Talk DJ’s (in bikinis) with Misty Waters and the return of the Star Bar Dating Game. $5. 9 p.m.  Star Bar, 437 Moreland Ave. 404-681-9018.

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For this week’s Vibe feature story I put together what essentially turned out to be a 900 word record review of Om’s latest four-song masterpiece God is Good, which was actually a nice change from the standard 150 words that our reviews usually get.

This long-form dissection of their new album happened en lieu of an actual interview with new drummer Emil Amos and bass player Al Cisneros, but not for any lack of trying. Truth be told Emil and Al did get back with me — after we had to go to press. I know… Om was formed out the ashes of Sleep, who set the standard for stoner metal with the monumental riff fest known as Dopesmoker back in ‘98. There’s a bevy of stoner jokes to made here, but who am I to judge?

Here is abridged version of the Q&A we did online, only minutes before they walked on-stage in Detroit.

Hello Emil. First, how did you come to be a part of Om?
Emil Amos: Om and Grails did a couple tours together where we’d often stay up late after the shows and talk a lot of random music science/philosophy. A couple months later Al called me out of the blue one day while I was at work and explained everything about Chris’ departure. We scheduled a time to record the Sub Pop seven-inch before we’d even played together and gave ourselves a couple days beforehand to put it together. After that he began to fly up to Portland and stay with me periodically while we wrote the record for Drag City.

Did you detect any backlash from Om fans when the line-up changed?

Sure, a little bit… But they didn’t really have any material to go on so part of the backlash was pretty innocent. If a random 10 second video of us improvising on a random night somewhere in Finland appeared on YouTube there were some people that took that as the band’s entire new direction.

Om, Lichens and Six Organs of Admittance play the Earl tonight (Sat., Oct. 17). $12-$14. 9 p.m. 488 Flat Shoals Ave. 404-522-3950.

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“Living in Akron, believe it or not, can be incredibly boring if you don’t have anything to do.” That’s Black Keys’ drummer Patrick Carney on the impetus for his new outfit, Drummer.

Not too long ago, the Keys’ vocalist and guitar man Dan Auerbach departed their Ohio hamlet on a solo tour, leaving Carney at loose ends. And so to stave off boredom he recruited four other drummers from groups that were on hiatus or disbanded, including Teeth of the Hydra, Ghostman & Sandman, Six Parts Seven, and Beaten Awake.

This mad scientist experiment led to Drummer, in which everyone except Greg Boyd (who stuck with sticks) plays something new. Their guitar-and-keyboard-focused debut, Feel Good Together, dropped last month, and it’s more accessible and melodic than Black Keys’ blues/garage-rock infusions. “There wasn’t really all that much thought put into how we would sound,” says Carney, who plays bass in the group. “But we wanted to make something that was relatively poppy indie rock.”

Continue Reading “Black Keys’ drummer enlists four other drummers to form Drummer”

(Photo by Tim Fitzwater)

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I went to the Wavves show at the Earl and all I got was this crappy iPhone pic

Despite Nathan Williams’ insistence on the phone a couple of weeks back that drummer Zach Hill would not be playing with Wavves when they came through Atlanta, Hill was most definitely holding the sticks last night. The Hella drummer who once broke his hand beating his kit at Echo Lounge several years back still hits with helicopter speed and precision — which makes an unexpectedly brilliant counterpoint to Williams’ loose strumming and ooohhh wwwooo wwwooos.

No, there was no drama at the show, as all parties involved in the Black Lips scuffle from last weekend give off the appearance of having moved on; everyone aside from the meat heads in the audience who pissed and moaned about it after the show.

Precautions had been taken to prevent any sort of incident nonetheless. There was a cop stationed in the parking lot keeping watch over Wavves’ van, and the bartender looked a bit sheepish while pouring bottles of beer into plastic cups saying, “Sorry, but I’m not allowed to serve out any glass bottles tonight because they’re afraid somebody might throw one at one of the bands …”

Really …

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Port O’Brien recently explained the concept behind their latest video for the song “My Will Is Good,” saying:

“The song is very rhythmic and packs some punch. Timbaland inspired us. We wanted a video that could match visually the rhythm in the song,” frontman Van Pierszalowski tells Spinner. “We took the idea of double dutch to [director] Raul Fernandez, and what he created was beyond our expectations. The intensity of the girls — and the one brave boy — in the video match the meaning and intensity behind the song.”

The San Francisco pop tarts are on the road in support of their third album, Threadbare. The record tussles between moods of quietly haunting and more endearing, uptempo indie rock anthems.

Port O’Brien plays the Earl with Seawolf and Sara Lov. Fri., Oct. 23. $10. 9 p.m. 488 Flat Shoals Road. 404-522-3950.

Also on Fri., Oct. 23 at 6 p.m. Port o’Brien will play a free in-store performance at Criminal Records.

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JARED SWILLEY OF BLACK LIPS

In case you’ve missed the excitement, Buddyhead.com has a pretty entertaining run-down of the ridiculous brawl that came to a head this weekend between Wavves’ manager and Jared Swilley of the Black Lips.

The whole situation is just plain annoying, not to mention Swilley’s comments in the interview reinforce some pretty gnarly, negative stereotypes about southerners. In the interview with Buddyhead, Swilley admits to approaching Nathan Williams of Wavves (whom he has publicly dissed) at Daddy’s Bar in New York and saying, “You’re that faggot from Wavves and I don’t like you!” — sounds like fighting words to me.

Swilley also issued the following warning to Williams: “He’s coming to Atlanta October 3rd [4th] and we’re gonna get ugly on him. We’re gonna destroy their van, we’re gonna destroy their faces, we’re gonna get crazy on em’. Nasty style.”

NATHAN WILLIAMS OF WAVVES

If I were Williams, I would take heed. Truth be told, the Black Lips are like a gang. If you mess with one of them, you mess with all of them, and Atlanta is their turf. Then again, it sounds like the Wavves crew rolls the same way. Looks like Oct. 4 is going to be a legendary night when Wavves plays the Earl.

(Top photo by Chad Radford)
(Bottom photo courtesy Wavves)

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By name the Pains of Being Pure at Heart present something of a Morrissey-like dilemma. If you can suspend your gag reflex long enough to give Higher Than the Stars‘ title track, or the aggressive distortion of “103” a fair shake, each song teems with gorgeously slurred shoegazer pop dreaminess. Whereas last year’s self-titled breakthrough impressed with sun-bleached, no-nonsense arrangements, here “Falling Over” and the soulless St. Etienne remix of the title track rediscover the cheesy dance floor politic that, in retrospect, infects much of the EP. Historically speaking, obsessive remixing rang a death knell for many of the Pains’ influences, and the problem with revisionist history is that it overlooks the mistakes made by those who came before. (Slumberland)

3 out of 5 stars

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, the Depreciation Guild and Cymbals Eat Guitars. $12. 8:30 p.m. Mon., Sept. 28. The Earl. 404-522-3950.

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TWILIGHT DRONE: The Intelligence goes back to the future.

Fake Surfers, the fourth album from Seattle’s junk-punk, noise-pop foursome the Intelligence, begins like the opening scene from The Godfather.

The opening track slowly pans across hazy tones while a haunted, sci-fi traipse carries as much of the album’s punch as the songs themselves. There’s no telling if the same languid pace will dominate the record, or if it will suddenly burst into a cacophony of crunching, art-rock kerang. But the tension soon breaks as a wall of ecstatic guitars take hold in “Tower.”

“I have always loved that Peter Gunn guitar sound — a little reverb and something super simple played on one string,” says the group’s vocalist and founding member, Lars Finberg, as he mills over a list of antiquated science-fiction fodder from Devo to Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that has shaped his palette.

Continue reading “The Intelligence gets lost in space”

“Debt & ESP” mp3

(Photo courtesy 230 Publicity)

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In the secret history of American punk and hardcore, the Effigies played a key role in leading Chicago’s strain of the energetic and reactionary sounds that defined disaffection in the Reagan era. The group’s 2007 CD, Reside – its first in 21 years – is a return to the lashing chops that made them such a formidable band in the early ’80s. With this one-off show, they’re playing at The Earl on Fri., Sept. 11 the group will show that the razor-sharp songwriting and political righteousness that gave the Effigies so much power in the early days of punk rock on American soil, still rings loud and clear.

Chad Radford:  I never thought of the Effigies, or the Chicago hardcore sound of the ’80s as having much in common with “Hardcore” (with a capital H), like bands from Boston or D.C.
John Kezdy:  If I were to describe what the Chicago sound was, with bands like us and Naked Raygun — we tried to write real songs but they had the punk energy. Our influences were a lot different from hardcore and I cringe whenever anyone calls us a hardcore band.

You don’t like being called a hardcore band?
It’s not that I don’t like it, but I think it’s an error. This may come as a surprise to you, but a lot of the hardcore crowd is kind of bigoted and has a very strict definition for what passes as hardcore.  If you don’t meet it you’re not hardcore. When our last album, Reside came out in 2007 we saw all of these hardcore blogs out there that hated it, and that’s as it should be because we’re not a hardcore band. I don’t mind if people call us a punk band because that’s what we’ve always been. I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but the lineage of the Effigies has always been more along the lines of the Sex Pistols, the Stranglers, the Ruts and that kind of stuff, as opposed to thrash metal or heavy metal which is what a lot of hardcore bands are. People forget that the term hardcore was actually a pejorative.

The Effigies play The Earl on Fri., Sept. 11 with Customers and Poison Arrows. $10. 9 p.m. , 488 Flat Shoals Ave. 404-522-3950.

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Lead by former Neutral Milk Hotel drummer Jeremy Barnes, A Hawk & A Hacksaw explores various enclaves of Eastern European and American folk music with an accordion and something of a surreal bent. The group is touring in support of their latest release, Délivrance (Leaf). Jeffrey Butzer and Damon & Naomi open.

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

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“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.”

- Sun Tzu, the Art of War

In every war there comes a time to call a truce, and when the members of Attractive Eighties Women declared war on me after giving their latest CD, The Ancient Cry of the Tyrannosaur, a measly 1 out of 5 stars, it was time to meet face-to-face on a battlefield of their choosing. Guitarist Christie Brinkley and frontman Phoebe Cates chose Octane Coffee. In the past I have described AEW as being equal parts Lenny Bruce impious humor-made-local, and the power-trash jams of the Replacements circa ‘83, but the first part isn’t quite right. These guys are more like Andy Kaufman meets the Mats at the dog end of a three-day amphetamine-fueled performance art bender. They don’t mind speaking their minds about their disdain for rock critics, communists and worst of all pandas.

Chad Radford:  Thank you for meeting me today.

Christie Brinkley: Thank you. I brought you this statue of a King-Fu Master out of respect for what you do, and for meeting us here today. It’s a gift from us as a gesture of respect for you meeting us. But I also cut of his left hand as a warning and to remind you of our disapproval of the album review that you wrote of our new record.

Phoebe Cates: We do that for critics who give us bad reviews. We even wrote a song about the coward Jeff Clark, but it’s not a nice song. You made the right decision to come and speak with us today. I looked at your review of our new record online and it had 17 comments. The only other thing that had any comments was something about Dallas Austin, and he only had two comments. That’s a pretty accurate percentage of how much more popular we are than Dallas Austin, which if you do the math it works out to about 13,000% more popular. So as you see we are a band that gets people talking and that gets people excited.

Chad Radford:  I heard your song about Jeff Clark …

PC:  You mean “the coward Jeff Clark” of Stomp & Stammer?

CR: What did he do to you?

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Asobi Seksu will be passing through town to play a show at the the Earl on Thurs., Sept. 24. Sealions open.

Now stripped-down top a duo, the NYC-based Asobi Seksu is touring in support of their latest release Hush. With this most recent offering vocalist/keyboardist Yuki Chikudate and guitarist/vocalist James Hanna distance themselves from the playful merger of Japanese Pop tones and layers of slurred, lo-fi noise of their past to take on an icy and exacting synth-laden sound.

Today (Tues., Aug. 25 ) the group is releasing a limited edition (1,000 only), four-song 10-inch/digital download via Polyvinyl that features two unreleased tracks recorded during the Hush sessions. Follow the link to hear a slightly reworked version of the 10-inch’s lead song “Transparence” via Stereogum. Cleverly enough the record is on clear vinyl and also features a remix of “Transparence” by Brooklyn’s Big A Little A (Aa).

$10 (adv). $12 (door). 8:30 p.m. Tues., Sept. 24. The Earl, 488 Flat Shoals Rd. 404-522-3950.

Click below to watch the video for “Me & Mary from Asobi Seksu’s Hush.

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Who are you?
Chris Ware

Describe yourself in three words.
Reserved, musician, homebody.

Who — dead or alive — would you most like to meet?
Eric Dolphy.

Who would you most like to slap in the face?
Everybody at the Greenbriar Kroger, mostly the customers.

What song do you wish you had written?
String Quartet No. 8 by Dmitri Shostakovich.

Elvis Costello or Elvis Presley?
uhhh…Costello.  Not a fan of people named Elvis in general.

LP, CD or MP3?
LP at home, mp3 in the car.

If you could start one trend, what would it be?
I prefer to quietly infiltrate from the inside.  You’ll know when it happens and it’s gonna be huge.

If you could end one trend, what would it be?
’80s & ’90s worship.

With whom would you most like to play a game of spin the bottle?
The man who invented the Ampeg V4.  He certainly deserves a kiss.

“Kill What You Can” mp3

Thy Mighty Contract, the Sunglasses and Vegan Coke play the Earl tomorrow night (Tues., Aug. 12). $7. 8:30 p.m. 488 Flat Shoals Road. 404-522-3950.

(Photo courtesy Thy Mighty Contract)

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Thy Mighty Contract, the Sunglasses and Vegan Coke play the Earl tomorrow night (Tues., Aug. 12). $7. 8:30 p.m. 488 Flat Shoals Road. 404-522-3950.

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The Earl announced today that the seminal late ‘70/early ’80s Los Angeles hardcore band Fear will be playing on Mon., Aug. 10. Bloodhook opens.

From Steve Huey’s bio for allmusic.com

Along with Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, Fear helped define the sound and style of L.A. hardcore. Although they actually formed during the first wave of punk back in 1977, Fear didn’t release an album until five years later, by which time they’d honed a blistering, thrashy attack that, for all its fury, was surprisingly tight and sometimes even intricate. Which is to say that, musically, the band wasn’t as crude as frontman Lee Ving’s outrageous, humorously offensive lyrics, which were geared to piss off anyone within earshot, particularly women and homosexuals; his vulgarity was equalled only by his sincere love of beer. Continue reading.

$12. 8:30 p.m. The Earl. 488 Flat Shoals Road. 404-522-3950.

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Note: Show info for the Davila 666 show is stated improperly in the “Air Loaf” audio. The show takes place Sat., Aug. 1, at the Earl, as written below.

CL’s Chanté LaGon and Chad Radford chat about Davila 666, a band that some people call Puerto Rico’s answer to the Black Lips. Davila 666 plays the Earl this Sat., Aug. 1.

Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.

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Chad Radford:  There’s a singular sense of humor to what you do. I have seen the Torche T-shirts that look like the old skin head, staraight edge shirts that say “not so straight” next to the picture of the shaven-headed hardcore guy who looks like he’s about to swallow the microphone. That’s hilarious.
Steve Brooks:  We’re genius…

That’s a pretty macho scene. Have those shirts come back to bite you?
No, not at all. I don’t think that people really got the joke when we first made the shirts, but people started to get it once we stopped taking them on tour with us. People at the merch table started saying where’s your  not so straight shirt, those things are hilarious!’

It’s cleverly disguised like a real straight edge T-shirt. If you’re not paying attention you think it’s just another dumb ass Strife T-shirt, or something like that.

Yep. The Harvey Milk shirts on this tour are hilarious, too. There’s one with the Wicked Witch taking a dump on a toilet, eating a hamburger and reading the paper, and the headlines says ‘the Mc Rib is back.’ I thought that one was pretty awesome. There’s another one that and then there’s another one with a bunch of ticks doing beer bongs.

Torche “Healer” mp3

Harvey Milk and Torche play the Earl on Fri., July 31. $12 (adv.) $15 (dos). 9 p.m. 488 Flat Shoals Road. 404-522-3950.

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