Another side to Mick Turner

It seems like I've been writing a lot, for the last couple of years, about Mick Turner, who is the guitar player for The Dirty Three (feature interview 9/12 in Blurt) and Venom P. Stinger (review in Dusted from last summer) and now the driving force behind a solo project which is called Mick Turner. (He's a painter, too, but I haven't written anything about that.)

This new album Don't Tell the Driver leans more towards the Dirty Three ethos than Venom -- it's expansively instrumented with brass and reeds and just a little singing, certainly more post-rock than post-punk, and gorgeously sad and spare.

Wait, I just found a paragraph about who's on the record, which is, apparently, an opera. (Like Tosca! or Tannheuser! except not!) This is from Exclaim, whose writer apparently got liner notes, lucky dog.

It's unclear if the narrative is connected throughout the concept LP, but Turner brought in Caroline Kennedy-McCraken (Dead Star, the Plums, Caroline No) and opera singer Oliver Mann to sing on the set. Additionally, bassist Peggy Frew leant a hand to the recordings, while Ian Wadley (Bird Blobs, Minimum Chips), Jeff Wegener (Laughing Clowns) and Kishore Ryan (Kid Sam, Where Were You At Lunch) played drums throughout the LP.

There's no audio yet, because the record's not out until November, but how about some Dirty Three instead?





There will be some shows, too, though mostly west coast and nothing in New England.
11/8/13 Union Pool Brooklyn NY
11/12/13 Rhythm Room Phoenix AZ w/ Bill Callahan
11/13/13 Pappy and Harriets Pioneertown Palace Pioneertown CA w/ Bill Callahan
11/14/13 Japan American Theatre Los Angeles CA w/ Bill Callahan
11/15/13 Soho Restaurant & Music Club Santa Barbara CA w/ Bill Callahan
11/16/13 Great American Music Hall San Francisco CA w/ Bill Callahan
11/17/13 The Chapel San Francisco CA w/ Bill Callahan
11/19/13 Aladdin Theater Portland OR w/ Bill Callahan
11/20/13 Neumo's Seattle WA w/ Bill Callahan
11/21/13 Beachland Ballroom Cleveland OH w/ Mono
11/22/13 Bottom Lounge Chicago IL w/ Mono
11/23/13 The Loving Touch Detroit MI w/ Mono

Kelley Stoltz and Double Exposure

From my review of the new Kelley Stoltz, Double Exposure, up yesterday at Dusted.

"Poor Kelley Stoltz. For seven full-lengths and about 15 years, he has been the ultimate songwriter’s songwriter, a perennial touchstone, godfather and sometime producer for SF’s lo-fi scene who still makes a living tending bar and selling records. He works in an endless cycle of melancholy inspiration, getting so caught up in confecting jewel-like 1960s-psych-garage songs about love and its aftermath that his girlfriends inevitably get steamed and leave, providing yet more material for rueful romanticism. You’d have to feel sorry for the guy if he didn’t, fairly consistently, come up with the prettiest, sweetest, smartest DIY psych on the market."

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an older song, but a good one

Angel Olsen

I went to see two Chicago bands -- Pillars and Tongues does a very interesting, layered, drone-y, electronically rhythmed indie rock with violin, guitar/bass/drums (one guy), synths and a harmonium.


Angel Olsen, who I first heard backing Will Oldham on Wolfroy Comes to Town has a kind extraordinary country folk voice, now shadowy and cool like Joni Mitchell, now vibrating with old time country tremolo, now carving a raw slice out of the air with a sharp, punk-ish yelp. She's an interesting, kind of prickly presence on stage.


I'm going to write about this later, so I don't want to go into a lot of detail, but I enjoyed it.

Pain is beauty...and intensity

Hey look my Chelsea Wolfe interview is up at PopMatters!

No Boxes: An Interview with Chelsea Wolfe
By Jennifer Kelly 1 October 2013

Chelsea Wolfe tells us about pain, beauty, synths, black metal, D.H. Lawrence and why she is really not the same as Zola Jesus at all.

“One of the things I used to really love about black metal, actually, is that kind of white noise. A lot of it has got this white noise to it that I find really comforting. Even if the song is really heavy, there’s a really peaceful white noise,” says Chelsea Wolfe, the LA-based songwriter whose dark, challenging work has ranged from metal to noise to goth to acoustic chamber folk over four albums, and currently includes elements of electro-pop. She made her mark, early on with a Burzum cover; she has, more recently, interpreted the work of Nick Cave. (She is one of the few contemporary artists to be represented on Mark Lanegan’s all-covers Imitations; he sings her song “Flatlands”, from the unplugged Unknown Rooms.)

If it all sounds a bit intense, well, it is. Wolfe’s latest album, Pain Is Beauty, plumbs the dangerous, obsessional side of love, seeing the urge to connect as a primal natural one, like animals migrating thousands of miles to nesting grounds. And there’s her other connection to heavy music, she adds. “A lot of death metal artists are really inspired by nature and use that as fuel to write music. That was actually something that inspired me a lot for this album, the beauty of nature, contrasted with the ugliness of nature.”

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On the edge of the pit looking down


And slightly softer but still intense

Two ways to wake up in the morning

Gorgeous morning today, went to the Y just to change, then out for a run, still a little foggy both weather-wise and alert-ness wise, and I came screamingly, joltingly into focus with music from the Body.

Here's the tag line from their Thrill Jockey page:

“There’s heaviness. There’s brutality. Then there’s The Body.” – Metal Sucks

Oh yeah, and in case you didn't get the biblical overtones in the band name, the current album is called Christs, Redeemers...plural, that will really bother some people, won't it?

It's remarkable that just two guys -- Chip King and Lee Buford -- make all this racket, or maybe not, considering they're from Rhode Island and have to compete with all that Lightning Bolt legacy.

Anyway, it's awesome and epic and only metal in the loosest possible sense...but I can't really recommend it for your iPod clock radio. Here's a bit:




Now it's later and I'm done running and have had some coffee, so naturally I am listening to something far gentler, far softer and more welcoming...something, in fact, that might be perfect for easing into a morning run, except for the danger of nodding away and veering off the sidewalk. It's an EP called Eternality by an LA-based film composer and electronic guy named Cuscino...lovely cool, rhythmic, faintly unsettling textures of electronics and voices.



Let's see what else...I am terrified that my paying job is just going to stop dead again, as it has half a dozen times since the global meltdown when the Republicans do something insane. (Let's tie the CR to mandatory baptism, full immersion, too, fuck that sprinkling shit.) Who cares about the country or the global economy when you get the chance to stick it to Obama once more, right?

Also I'm interviewing Zachary Cale this evening, not prepped at all. after I thrash around pointlessly trying to get some work this morning, I'm going to start working on that.

And finally, I am going to see Angel Olsen and Pillars and Tongues tomorrow and will be writing it up for Blurt.

Taste the sun

I ran ten miles today, not just without pain, but also one of those light-footed, bouncy "Is that eigth miles already?" runs. Which I attribute entirely to Bardo Pond and their ability to bend infinity back on itself and make it seem like no time at all. New album Peace On Venus out October 28th on Fire Records.

I Get Chills

The Chills wrote "Pink Frost" one of the best songs ever, and "I Love My Leather Jacket" one of the best fashion statements ever, and "Heavenly Pop Hit" which, in a better, fairer world, would actually be one. They are the radiant, pop-jangling magicians of the NZ pop triad (Clean, Bats, Chills), and they have a new live album out called Somewhere Beautiful. It's got all three of those songs I just mentioned and 17 others, a triple LP if you buy the vinyl, and it could not possibly be more fun. If you have all the Chills' proper albums (and I have a bunch of them), it's still worth listening to, even if just to hear them rough things up.

The Chills released a single "Molten Gold" this year, their first new material since 2004.


Here's a kind of minidocumentary about Somewhere Beautiful


Martin Phillips just does a little taste of "Pink Frost" in the above, which hardly seems right. Here's the whole thing. Isn't it wonderful?