Elephant 6 is everywhere

The late, great, sprawling psych movement known as Elephant Six may have made its biggest splash in the mid-1990s, but its imprint is everywhere lately...in the day-glo garage scene of the Bay Area (see Sonny Smith's great new comp I Need You, which I am not supposed to talk about until after Thanksgiving), in the still unwinding, long-awaited tour of Neutral Milk Hotel, in the surviving, still working bands like Elf Power and in one other called Rickolus, whose Troubadour: Roads is giving me a serious, very welcome whiff of In an Aeroplane Over the Sea. Let's take them one at a time.

Polyvinyl has very particularly asked reviewers not to cover I Need You Bad for a couple of weeks, but it's pretty great...with tracks from Sonny himself, Magic Trick (that's Tim Cohen from Fresh & Onlys), and Warm Soda (who had a really wonderful, way-under-appreciated LP out on Castleface last spring, and, god knows I tried, but no one would let me cover it). The very best track, to my ears, is "Dreams" by Jessica Pratt, which is not available (yet?) on soundcloud or youtube, but here she is singing "Hollywood" from her debut album, which will maybe give you an idea.



And, oh, Neutral Milk Hotel, for a decade, Jeff Magnum wouldn't tour, now you can't stop him with a stick. Here are dates through February 2014:

November 12, 2013

w/ M. Ward, and Superchunk
The Tivoli
Brisbane, Australia
tickets >
November 14, 2013

w/ M. Ward, and Superchunk
Enmore Theatre
Sydney, Australia
tickets >
November 15, 2013

w/ Superchunk, and M. Ward
The Forum
Melbourne, Australia
November 16, 2013

w/ Superchunk, and M. Ward
The Forum
Melbourne, Australia
tickets >
November 20, 2013

Dunedin, New Zealand
Sammy's
On Sale at Cosmic
tickets >
November 22, 2013

Wellington, New Zealand
James Cabaret
On Sale at RPM and Slowboat
tickets >
November 23, 2013

Auckland, New Zealand
The Kings Arms Tavern
On Sale at Real Groovy
tickets >
November 24, 2013

Auckland, New Zealand
The Kings Arms Tavern
On Sale at Real Groovy
tickets >
NOVEMBER 28, 2013

Taipei, Taiwan
Legacy
tickets >
NOVEMBER 30, 2013

Tokyo, Japan
Hostess Club Weekender
Yebisu Garden Hall
tickets >
January 13, 2014

Ithaca, NY
The State Theatre
On Sale October 25
January 14, 2014

Jersey City, NJ
Loew's Theatre
tickets >
JANUARY 16, 2014

Orpheum Theatre
Boston, MA
tickets >
JANUARY 17, 2014

Orpheum Theatre
Boston, MA
tickets >
JANUARY 18, 2014

Olympia de Montreal
Montreal, QC
tickets >
JANUARY 19, 2014

Kool Haus
Toronto, ON
tickets >
JANUARY 20, 2014

Kool Haus
Toronto, ON
tickets >
JANUARY 22, 2014

The Capitol Theatre
Port Chester, NY
tickets >
January 23, 2014

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Brooklyn, NY
tickets >
JANUARY 24, 2014

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Brooklyn, NY
tickets >
JANUARY 25, 2014

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Brooklyn, NY
tickets >
JANUARY 27, 2014

Webster Hall
New York, NY
tickets >
JANUARY 28, 2014

Webster Hall
New York, NY
tickets >
JANUARY 29, 2014

Tower Theatre
Upper Darby, PA
tickets >
JANUARY 30, 2014

Union Transfer
Philadelphia, PA
JANUARY 31, 2014

DAR Constitution Hall
Washington, DC
tickets >
FEBRUARY 1, 2014

Cat's Cradle
Carrboro, NC

FEBRUARY 2, 2014

Cat's Cradle
Carrboro, NC
FEBRUARY 4, 2014

Ryman Auditorium
Nashville, TN
tickets >
FEBRUARY 5, 2014

The Pageant
St. Louis, MO
tickets >
FEBRUARY 6, 2014

The Riviera Theatre
Chicago, IL
tickets >
FEBRUARY 7, 2014

The Riviera Theatre
Chicago, IL
tickets >
FEBRUARY 8, 2014

Orpheum Theater
Madison, WI
tickets >
FEBRUARY 10, 2014

First Avenue
Minneapolis, MN
tickets >
FEBRUARY 11, 2014

First Avenue
Minneapolis, MN
tickets >
FEBRUARY 13, 2014

Uptown Theatre
Kansas City, MO
tickets >
FEBRUARY 14, 2014

Cain's Ballroom
Tulsa, OK
tickets >
FEBRUARY 15, 2014

Majestic Theatre
Dallas, TX
tickets >
FEBRUARY 17, 2014

ACL Live at the Moody Theater
Austin, TX
tickets >
FEBRUARY 18, 2014

ACL Live at the Moody Theater
Austin, TX
tickets >
FEBRUARY 19, 2014

Warehouse Live
Houston, TX
tickets >
FEBRUARY 20, 2014

Elf Power started just about the same time as Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control. The main differnce is that they're still going. I reviewed their latest Sunlight on the Moon a couple of days ago at Blurt. I said:

Sunlight on the Moon is Elf Power’s 12th full-length, and while it still sounds exuberantly, defiantly amateur (in the best, “for the love of it” sense), the band has clearly gotten better at what it does. These fuzz-toned, delicately arranged melodies curve in a gratifying ways around bizarrely evocative imagery. They are well-constructed, tightly knit songs that fizz with eccentricity and bubble with subconscious impulses. “Even in the dreamworld, you will not comply with my commands,” sings Andrew Rieger on the mesmeric “Strange Designs”, and you do get a sense of dreams that permeate the music, infiltrate it, co-opt it, and refuse to cede to the real world.

And finally, for those who really long for MORE Neutral Milk Hotel, or at least something that sounds like it. time to check out Rickolus. The album's called Troubador: Roads...and I like it a lot.

All left turns: my Sonny Smith interview

Wow, that was quick. My Sonny Smith interview is up now at PopMatters.

All Left Turns: An Interview with Sonny and the Sunsets

By Jennifer Kelly 23 July 2013

“People are always asking, ‘When did you decide to write a country record?’ Or ‘When did you decide to write a new wave record?’” says Sonny Smith, the San Francisco-based songwriter, monologue-ist, and father of 100 imaginary bands. “That sounds really bland, you know? Like you’re just picking a genre on a map, or like you’re pinning the tail on the donkey.


“There’s always a misconception that we think of this stuff way beforehand, like a director who decides to make a Western,” he says. “I think you don’t know what you’re doing for a while, maybe until it’s about halfway made and then you see it. It reveals itself for what it is.”

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Sonny Smith's Antenna to the Afterworld

I really like Sonny Smith...a songwriter, visual artist and conceptual creative type whose defining achievement might be the 100 Records Project in which he invented out of whole cloth the bands, sounds, songs, art and liner notes to 100 singles, then took the whole thing on a gallery tour. It's an impressive thing, but more so because the songs were so good.

Antenna to the Afterworld is not a 100 Records offshoot but it shares that project's unbridled creativity, offhand craft and sci-fi goofiness. It's not as country as Longtime Companion either...a plus in my book.

You can stream it here:

Opossum

I had a couple of reviews that ran last week while I was away, so I might as well start catching up with this one, Opossum's Electric Hawaii, a lo-fi pop kind of project from New Zealand.

Opossom
Electric Hawaii
(Fire)

There's a ramshackle trippiness to Opossom's home-recorded, noise-blurred, psychedelia. Borrowing from the Black Moth Super Rainbow playbook, singer/songwriter Kody Nielson pulls bright surges of primary-colored melody out of trebly, rackety, percussion-pocked production.


Opossom is the second indie pop phenomenon to emerge from New Zealand's troublegum noise rockers the Mint Chicks. Nielson, the main instigator, also plays drums in his brother's new outfit, Unknown Mortal Orchestra. This mostly solo endeavor is far dreamier, less aggressively propulsive than Mint Chicks, filtering Beach Boys harmonies and sidewinding Brian Jonestown guitar lines through a gritty, messy lens.

More





In other news, I'm going down to the Flywheel tonight to see Magic Trick (Tim Cohen from Fresh & Onlys) and Sonny and the Sunsets, and also to interview Cohen about the new Fresh & Onlys. I'm not sure I'm covering the show, per se, since I'll miss some of it while talking to Tim, but I might have more to say about that tomorrow.

We went to Brattleboro yesterday to see New England Youth Theater's version of Titus Andronicus, which was quite good, especially Tamora and Aaron the Moore. You might remember that my son Sean did this play earlier in the summer (he was Titus) at St. Pauls. Weirdly his usual theater was also doing it, so it was interesting to get another take on it. I liked Sean's Titus a little better -- he was quite a bit rawer and madder and, also though this may seem paradoxical, more varied and modulated in his performance. The play, though, was much better, and of course, I'm biased about Sean, so might be wrong. We also saw some friends from NYC who were up for a music festival at Bennington, VT, so that was a really fun day.

Kind of sad about the summer being over, aren't you?

Sonny and the Sunsets

Hey, I'm in a little town called Medina, Ohio, somewhere between Cleveland and Columbus...I drove 600 miles yesterday and didn't speak to a single person all day (well, after I left, I had quite an extended conversation with Bill before taking off) until I got to the hotel.

And still, somehow, life goes on without me.

Dusted is running my Sonny and the Sunsets review today:

Sonny and the Sunsets
Longtime Companion
(Polyvinyl)

Sonny Smith is, in a way, the songwriter with a thousand masks. He’s been a playwright and performance artist as long as he’s been a singer. One of his earliest recordings was called One Act Plays, which was exactly what it sounds like — a series of short dramas set to music. His 100 Records project created full-blown singles for 100 imaginary bands, art and all. Smith and half of San Francisco’s psychedelic garage scene acted out his musical scenarios — as Nuggets guitar-chimers, Latin garagistes and, in one case, a lost and lonely Johnny Cash-style country crooner – on 2011’s compilation Hit After Hit. The “I” in Sonny Smith’s songs is almost never the “I” in Sonny Smith’s life, and he extends this concept well beyond lyrical content, to matters of style, genre and musical arrangement.

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I'm going to drive to Indianapolis today, with a possible stop in Columbus for lunch and a look at Ohio State (they must have record stores, right, even a football school?).

Sonny & the Sunsets

It seems like it was just a day or two ago that I was marvelling at Sonny Smith's 100 Records project, in which the Bay Area artist invented 100 garage bands and furnished each with a single, including art work. Well, he's got another album called Hit After Hit out now on Fat Possum, which is more conventional (no made up bands) but just as good. I reviewed it for today's Blurt.

“Smith has a knack for tossing off beautifully constructed songs with a casual shrug, and shrouding striking melodies with a shambling, rumpled finish. If you envision a very well-made tweed jacket from, say, 1963, that has been tossed and tumbled and left in the dust, you can get a pretty good idea of the combination of excellence and dishevelment.”

More

You can stream the whole album here.

Or download an mp3 of “I Wanna Do It” from Brooklyn Vegan

Sonny Smith makes up a crapload of bands

This is an interesting project from Sonny and the Sunsets’ Sonny Smith…like there aren’t enough garage bands around, he’s invented 100 new ones. I reviewed 100 Record for Blurt and said:

For his 100 Records collection, Smith invented a hundred bands, each with its own name and aesthetic. Then he wrote them each a two-sided single, recorded these songs, occasionally with help from other Bay Area rockers, and created art for them. In a project that is part conceptual art, part San Francisco garage smackdown, he curated a collection of 200 songs and boxed them into a five-volume vinyl collection. This single disc CD compilation collects the cream of Smith's 100 records, ten songs in ten styles with Sonny and the Sunsets compadre Kelley Stoltz on drums, and guest shots from Ty Segall, the Fresh & Only's Tim Cohen, Skygreen Leopards' Donovan Quinn and the Sandwitches Heidi Alexander.

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Here’s Sonny at the record launch party/gallery exhibition sponsored by KQED