Shelby Smoak’s “Dancing” is an intimate, heartfelt affair. Whisper-crooned lyrics ride atop a simple, heartbeat bass line; delayed guitars; and scattershot drumming. Two years in the making and three recorded but unreleased versions eventually led to this one. Tracked in Smoak’s Carolina Beach, NC garage and mixed in Adam Smith’s Nashville studio, this final version captures the upbeat and honest delivery Smoak sought for the song. Dedicated to his wife, and the first song written exclusively for her, Smoak turned away from the dark, brooding lyrics of his past to channel something more positive and focused.
EVENT CALENDAR
Friday, August 16, 2024
OUT NOW: Shelby Smoak "Dancing" [Digital Single]
Shelby Smoak’s “Dancing” is an intimate, heartfelt affair. Whisper-crooned lyrics ride atop a simple, heartbeat bass line; delayed guitars; and scattershot drumming. Two years in the making and three recorded but unreleased versions eventually led to this one. Tracked in Smoak’s Carolina Beach, NC garage and mixed in Adam Smith’s Nashville studio, this final version captures the upbeat and honest delivery Smoak sought for the song. Dedicated to his wife, and the first song written exclusively for her, Smoak turned away from the dark, brooding lyrics of his past to channel something more positive and focused.
For fans of Arcade Fire, The Chameleons, The Church, Cola, Echo & The Bunnymen, Film School, Flyying Colours, Interpol, Ist Ist, Joy Division, Lauds, Modern English, The National, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Stray Fossa, Thus Love, U2, and Sharon Van Etten.
"Dancing" by Shelby Smoak is out now on all digital music platforms.
Sunday, August 11, 2024
Tercel - "Holiday"
[Repost from If It's Too Loud; by Ken Sears, July 31, 2024]
If you listened to college radio religiously in the 90's, you're going to adore the latest from Tercel. Hailing from the Cape Fear area of North Carolina, the band's released "Holiday" last week, and it sounds like that song you always played on your radio show but just can't remember who it is by. It has all of the interesting quirk and pure indie rock oddness from a band like Archers of Loaf with the harmony and melody of Apples in Stereo. Tercel even throws in some country and surf guitar somewhat unexpectedly, but delightfully. Hearing a song like "Holiday" is a pure joy.
You can listen to "Holiday" below. The single is out now via Fort Lowell Records. For more on Tercel, check out the band on Instagram.
Friday, August 9, 2024
OUT NOW: Forest Fallows 'Palisades' [Sophomore LP]
Forest Fallows, the bedroom recording project of Mike Barnett and Alex Morton, has teamed up with John McEntire (Stereolab, Tortoise, Modest Mouse) to produce their sophomore album Palisades, a mellow, vintage-esque indie record. Based in Tucson AZ, their sound is a blend of the production and style of the 60's and 70's with the quirks of 90's indie and post rock. Their influences range widely from pop outliers Steely Dan and Gerry Rafferty to underground visionaries Tortoise and Michael Nau.
Palisades, their second LP, is a step forward in production from their first with a cleaner overall sound thanks to improved home recording techniques and the adept mixing of John McEntire. The album is characterized by vocal harmonies lush with spring reverb lacing through a clockwork of acoustic guitars and a closet full of various percussion and noise makers. While stylistically the songs vary from one to the other, Palisades maintains a familiar cohesion, with the last song opening into a vast instrumental piece featuring McEntire on drums. The lyrical content of the album includes reflections on past relationships as in the opening track "Better Each", while other tracks read like colorful dreams and visions, as in "Saturday Rose" and "In Light". As a whole, the album is light and upbeat but not overly sweet.
Forest Fallows is a passion project of two like minds who have lived and worked closely together for more than ten years. Through their constant back and forth of ideas and music they've developed a shared aesthetic. Palisades reflects where their diverse musical tastes have arrived, reaching for something new in the music of the past and the future.
Forest Fallows Palisades is now available everywhere.
Friday, August 2, 2024
Single Review – Holiday by Tercel
[Repost from Janglepophub; by Darrin Lee, July 24, 2024]
Following the success of Tercel’s first Tiny Towns debut single in May 2024, the Wilmington, North Carolina quartet (seen above) has returned with a second Holiday single that pierces your innermost being WITH IT’S JANGLY INTENSITY.
Commencing with a jangled riff that has a Lost Ships or the Radio Field early 90s type of clarity, the first vocal drop consumes the sound with a gloriously manic Garbage meets The Cure off-kilter vocal mania and a musical aesthetic that juxtaposes the jangly indie-rock/post punk aesthetic of RGV and DIIV with the jangle rock/punk edges of The Wends and Ryan Allen and his Extra Arms dynamism.
I am not sure whether the release of these two singles so close to each other signals a full-length release is coming soon… I can only hope!
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
Friday, July 26, 2024
OUT NOW: Naïm Amor 'Stories' [12inch LP]
Like many musicians worldwide, Naïm Amor was working on the tracks for a new album when Covid hit and sent the recording and live music worlds into hibernation. And also like many, when he emerged he did with a finished record ready to be released into a music-hungry world.
For Stories, his twelfth record since the mid 2000’s, the Parisian born and raised, long time Arizona resident Amor has crafted six instrumentals and three vocal numbers. While Stories may perhaps seem like an offbeat title for a record with several instrumental tracks, it’s also indicates what’s within; it’s raison d’etre is a cinematic approach to music making, one crafted to evoke images and feelings, unlock corners of known and unknown worlds, and yes, to tell stories; with or without the narrative of a human voice. Amor says “I called it Stories because, like a lot of what I do, the tracks have a film soundtrack quality. The album has a unity of tones, instrumentation, arrangements, while each song has a ‘stand alone potential.’ He also says “I want the listener to be traveling through their imagination, I hope they will feel moved by the melodies and the textures, and would get to the end of the album and feel a bit nostalgic that it’s the end, like a really good movie.” Virtually any of the tracks on Stories could, in fact, be soundtrack material.
The songs on Stories all reflect the sophistication and gift for expansive, memorable melodies that Amor has always brought to his work, whether it’s pop, jazz, lounge, as a solo singer/songwriter, rock & roll or even rockabilly. He says “This one incarnates my desire to play with a band in a more rock & roll format.” The opener, “Amorsonic,” glides by with a sweet/salty mix of guitars that are both clean and slightly dissonant. “Abusive Chaos” wraps snaky guitars around a jazz lounge groove; “Freeway Race” has the forward motion befitting its title; and “September Escapade” sounds like it should be played while driving a fast sports car down a winding road in Monaco. “Home” is meditative and lovely, “The Last Dance” drops smoldering guitars over a cocktail lounge groove, while “The Start Over,” and “Tucson Safari” rattle with more heavy guitars. The closer “Santa Rita Park West” sends the listener off on a gently rolling cloud, as the credits roll.
On Stories, Amor is joined by three long-time collaborators from his adopted city of Tucson, AZ: rhythm guitar and string player Ben Nisbet, bass player Thøger Lund and drummer Casey Hadland. It was recorded in one marathon session by the legendary producer/engineer/studio owner Jim Waters at his Waterworks Studio in Tucson. Waters also mixed the album, with some overdubs and string arrangements added on in Amor’s own studio. The sound is clean, warm and immediate, with a live in the studio feel, and lots of room for Amor’s outstanding guitar playing to shine on every track.
Naïm Amor Stories is available now everywhere.
Friday, July 19, 2024
OUT NOW: Tercel "Holiday" [Digital Single]
Hailing from The Cape Fear region of North Carolina, the Tercel sound carries reverence for its homeland. The lyricism of Robin and Savannah Wood pull from the beliefs of climate activism, societal collapse, and the ennui of existence in the modern world. But Tercel is fun. Tercel is joyous. These are heavy words, lightly thrown. Wall-of-noise guitars in alternate tunings, the give-and-take singing between the vocalists, Chris Vinopal’s pedal steel in all its brightness, Taylor Salvetti’s driving drum beats to accent the changes: Tercel knows the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And in this, we are all smothered in the green glow of existence. Go outside. Enjoy the light.
Recorded and produced by Jerry Kee of Duck-Kee Studios in Mebane, North Carolina (Archers of Loaf, Polvo, Superchunk), "Holiday" is the second single to be released by Tercel, and is available now on all digital music platforms.
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
La Cerca 'Western Tour' July - August 2024
- Sat July 20 - Denver CO - Skylark Lounge
- Sun July 21 - Moab UT - 86 House
- Mon July 22 - Reno NV - Lo Bar Social
- Wed July 24 - Pacifica CA - Winter’s Tavern
- Thu July 25 - Oakland CA - Golden Bull
- Fri July 26 - Eureka CA - Siren Song
- Sat July 27 - Seattle WA - Central Saloon
- Sun July 28 - Olympia WA - Three Magnets, 3pm
- Sun July 28 - Portland OR - The Twilight
- Wed July 31 - Sacramento CA - Cafe Colonial
- Thu August 1 - Nevada City CA - The Fern
- Fri August 2 - Carson City NV - Tap Shack
- Sat August 3 - Tucson AZ - Wooden Tooth Downtown
Friday, July 12, 2024
OUT NOW: Forest Fallows "In Light" [Digital Single]
The fourth and final single "In Light" from Forest Fallow's sophomore album Palisades is available now on all digital music platforms. Enjoy! —— For fans of Animal Collective, Ariel Pink, Atlas Sound, The American Analog Set, Beach Boys, Broadcast, Mac DeMarco, Destroyer, Drugdealer, Ducktails, Esquivel, Goth Babe, Richard Hawley, JPW, Lauds, The Ocean Blue, Peel Dream Magazine, The Radio Dept., Radiohead, Real Estate, The Sea & Cake, Stereolab, Sugar Candy Mountain, The Sundays, Kurt Vile, Yo La Tengo, Wild Nothing, and Woods.
Friday, July 5, 2024
Naïm Amor: September Escapade
[Repost from Here Comes the Flood; by Hans Werksman, July 1, 2024]
French guitarist and violinist Naïm Amor has the final single from his forthcoming new album Stories. September Escapade is like a slowly unfolding flower, showing off its colours one by one to create an aural spectacle that needs to revisited time and again to fully appreciate all the intricacies. It has a late 60s Nouvelle Vague soundtrack vibe, spiced up with a bit of noise, a dash of post-rock and Tex Mex.
Stories will be released on vinyl by Fort Lowell Records (vinyl, digital). The album is available for pre-order here. Release date: July 26th.
Wednesday, July 3, 2024
ALBUM: Blab School-Blab School
[Repost from Small Albums; June 26, 2024]
North Carolina's Blab School has one of the coolest band names in the world, and a sound to go along with it. There's a music descriptor trope that I hate, and that is the concept of "windows down on a summer day" sound. Blab School is 100% the antithesis of this sound and mindset. Play, "I Hate the Summer" and feel the bad vibes rise.
Blab School works in a certainty of heaviness without a tipping point. It stays on the shores of oceans full of red-eyed creatures and furious fangs, but who gets bit? And who just gets startled?
From the start, the darkness in the chord changes and the sickness in Ryan Seagrist's snarling delivery of lyrics, there's no room for a window to even be cracked. The smoke is staying inside. Elizabeth Killian shares lead vocal duties with a carelessness like screaming into a broken mirror and already having an answer you don't want to have to hear anyways.
The tumbling guitar lead of "Scrolls," or the absolute punishing of "Never Enough" keep a continual dirge of days that can't be differentiated from night. It's just all bleak and sounds amazing.
All the way through to the closer with the most appropriate title of this bummer-fest "(Don't Forget To) Give Up," Blab School leads in like a storm cloud and multiplies through the album into a crushing galaxy.
It's music to listen to when the sun devours space or vice versa.
Tuesday, July 2, 2024
Female Gaze | Interview | New Album, ‘Tender Futures’
[Repost from It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine; Klemen Breznikar, June 24, 2024]
Female Gaze releases sweet and swirling indie-rock with ‘Tender Futures.’
Finding patience in agony is like trying to dig a tunnel in the desert sand by hand. While it is almost certainly an unfathomable task, what else can you do to bide your time and preoccupy your mind? When life puts you in impossible situations, make possible decisions; keep going until you get to where you need to go. Nelene DeGuzman was forced into one such impossible situation, so she made a possible decision: Make music about it.
‘Tender Futures,’ the newest album from seasoned songwriters Female Gaze, comes from a place of increased and constant suffering, the dreadful sort that distorts the temporal and obfuscates your reality, so the soundscapes reflect this loss of space. Nelene DeGuzman (vox, guitars, piano), Kevin Conklin (bass, backing vox on ‘Severance’), and Nicky David Cobham-Morgese (percussion) combine their strengths to present just over a half hour of psychedelic shoegaze desert rock. DeGuzman has persevered through chronic health issues for most of her life thus far, but it was the most recent year where things turned overwhelming while awaiting a crucial surgery. During this prolonged difficulty, DeGuzman put pen to paper and came away with five new songs encapsulating this trying time. Thus, it’s a bit of a loose concept record, one in which you can start it from any point and loop through it just as effectively as if you started at track one and listened through. As the days and nights blurred together in real life, so too do the tracks on this record.
Starting from track one, ‘ghosts,’ we get a little taste of the meditative energy to come – whispery, willowy vocals and patient guitar passages with field recordings gently placed in the mix, effectively incorporating that sense of lost time as sunshine and moonlight coalesce. The following and longest track, ‘broadcast,’ ebbs and flows with Cobham-Morgese’s pounding percussion, driving the band wherever they want to wander. Conklin’s steady bass is a stalwart foundation for the ideas to incorporate, introducing budding branches on which DeGuzman’s effects-drenched guitars can roost. The title track embodies the idea well – futures that are tender, at mercy of the tides of life, as dissonance and harmony cascade throughout the extended jam. Track four ‘in the mezzanine’ serves as another pensive exercise for the weary of heart and soul before we reach the gentle closer ‘severance,’ my personal favorite, which feels almost triumphant before the chaotic end loops us right back around to the intro birdsong – another languid day gone by.
The journey you will take listening to this new Female Gaze release comes just in time for the approach of summer in the northern hemisphere. Its sun-battered melodies and murky rhythmic depths compliment one another like a classic summer cycle, hoping to provide relief from the heat and a compassionate blanket in the cold. Enjoy the art during these trying times, and embrace those impossible situations with possible decisions.
How did the name “Female Gaze” come about? What does it mean in relation to your art?
Nelene: The name first popped into my mind during a transitional period in my life. I was on a solo tour in 2019 which turned out to be a really transformative and meditative experience for me. In its literal sense, it is the inversion of the film concept of the male gaze. Donning the moniker felt like I was giving myself permission to be unapologetic in my identity as an artist. I was giving myself the liberty to just exist in these artistic spaces and not have to explain or justify my perspective or presence.
How long have you folks been together as a band now? What do you feel your strengths are when you work as a unit?
Nelene; Kevin (our bassist and also my husband) and I have been playing music together for over a decade, initially in our previous project, The Rifle. Nicky joined in 2020 just before we released our last LP as The Rifle. As Female Gaze, the three of us have been together since 2021. I feel like we have a natural rhythm together as a three piece and can groove in our own little language which allows us to be really improvisational live which I find really freeing. I love being surprised by things that arise naturally in the moment when we’re playing together.
For DeGuzman, what has helped you press on in defiance of your personal health struggles? How do you find the motivation to create and continue when faced with such difficulties?
Nelene: When I’m not feeling well, the only thing that seems to get me through is to put blinders on and just focus on translating pain or whatever is going on into art. Creating is how I understand myself and my experiences and sometimes when things have been bad, I won’t really understand how bad they were until I’ve expressed those experiences back to myself via something I’ve created if that makes sense.
If you could collaborate and/or perform with any current musician/group, who would it be?
Nicky: Witch!
Kevin: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard!
Nelene: Mitski!
If you had to start over from scratch without any of your instruments or gear (minus a computer), what would you buy first?
Nicky: a synthesizer!
Kevin: a Hofner Beatle Bass!
Nelene: hmmmm maybe a sweet petite lil parlor guitar.
Saturday, June 29, 2024
Friday, June 28, 2024
OUT NOW: Naïm Amor "September Escapade" [Digital Single]
The fourth and final single "September Escapade" from Naïm Amor's twelfth studio album Stories is out today on all digital music platforms. For fans of The Black Keys, Black Midi, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Nels Cline, Edwyn Collins, The Cramps, The Fleshtones, Richard Hawley, King Krule, La Luz, Los Straightjackets, Man or Astro-man?, JD McPherson, Messer Chups, The Meteors, Roy Orbison, The Shadows, Shannon & The Clams, The Sonics, The Surfrajettes, Surprise Chef, Tijuana Panthers,The Tremolo Beer Gut, Whatitdo Archive Group, Jack White, and Link Wray.
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
New album: Blab School || Blab School
[Repost from Add to Wantlist; by Niek, June 12, 2024]
North Carolina quartet Blab School are a Craigslist success story. Veteran drummer Dave Cantwell (Analogue, Cold Sides, and In the Year of the Pig) put up an ad on the site and ended up forming a kind of supergroup that includes Ryan Seagrist (Discount, The Kitchen), Lizzie Killian (Glowing Stars, Teens in Trouble), and Fikri Yucel (Veronique Diabolique).
Their self-titled debut LP is out now on Fort Lowell Records. If you spun a carbon copy of this record, you’d find it rooted in the ’80s and ’90s alternative rock, new wave, and post-punk scenes. The diverse backgrounds of the musicians shine through in the variety of sounds Blab School explores. They practice a kind of DIY democracy where every member’s ideas get equal play, yet their collective sound remains as tight as a drum, striking with the impact of a single, unified vision. Bands like The Wipers, Superchunk, and Jawbreaker come to mind, but there are also echoes of Killing Joke.
Blab School is a noisy and dynamic record where nostalgic vibes and fresh energy go hand in hand. Don’t miss out!
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Rosy Overdrive’s Top 40 Albums of 2024 So Far
[Repost from Rosy Overdrive; June 17, 2024]
Female Gaze – Tender Futures
Release date: May 17th
Record label: Fort Lowell/Totally Real
Genre: Psychedelic rock, art rock, desert rock, post-rock, jazz rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
After retiring the name of their old band, The Rifle, Tucson’s Nelene DeGuzman and Kevin Conklin formed Female Gaze with Nicky David Cobham-Morgese, and the former garage rockers undergo a remarkable transformation on Tender Futures, their debut album under the name. Stretching five songs across thirty-two minutes, Tender Futures is an expansive, vast record, with the band embodying the American southwest more than any of their projects ever have before. Inspired in part by DeGuzman’s chronic health issues that had left her in a “painful limbo”, Tender Futures explores the desert using empty space and towering nothingness as its language, intentionally evoking haziness and disorientation through psychedelia, post-rock, and even a bit of jazz-rock. (Read more)
Saturday, June 22, 2024
BMN Exclusive Premiere: Tercel "Tiny Towns" - Your New Fav Indie Rock from NC
[Repost from Blood Makes Noise; May 9, 2024]
Melodic up-beat despair, sparking nostalgia for things you’ve never known. Tercel’s debut single release “Tiny Towns” is a symphony of escape and acceptance, a tune you’ll surely hear in your wildest dreams.
Both Robin and Savannah Wood's vocals bring the sound of wind through wheat grass, sweet like honey suckle and you can taste a subtle southern root just the same. Poetic lyrics keep the water in your eyes, instead opting for a heavy longing in your chest that hurts just right. Picture the wrought iron fences, striped shirt lawn jockeys, wrap around porches piled high with broken parlor pianos, diaper changing tables waiting for another generation, loud calls for another beer to the kitchen, that’s the America Sound I found in Chris Vinopal’s guitar. Riffs I’d swear I’ve always known found in this song, reaching through my memories and making them dance. Soft drums from Taylor Salvetti tap out a metaphor of life's passing. As the snare cracks the dawn of rising intensity there’s a feeling that this moment might last, only for a slow fall to take us back down to the soft rhythm that brought us in.
Tercel has the glow of a summer tan, of lightning bugs, of the final days on the coast before vacation's over. Music to dance to, to make you feel life between your fingers and toes as you roll around in Bermuda grass, to repeat quietly, without realizing, as you make eggs in the morning. The soundtrack of being alive.
“Tiny Towns” is being released by Fort Lowell Records on Tuesday, May 14th as a digital single that will be available on all music platforms worldwide. The track is Tercel’s official debut release, although there is one earlier Bandcamp-only release Tercel made available last year titled Grow Light – The Stowe Tapes. Today, Blood Makes Noise is excited to provide you with the World Premiere of “Tiny Towns” in advance of the release.
Monday, June 17, 2024
Blab School – Blab School | Album Review
[Repost from Swim Into the Sound; by Brad Walker, June 10, 2024]
When you grow up in the orbit of an older brother, especially an older brother who could be considered “cool,” there is a sort of unapproachable quality to the bands he listens to… Or at least I think that’s how it is; I don't actually have any older siblings, cool or otherwise.
This is a long walk, but go with me.
I was twelve years old in the year 2000, so all the cool older brothers in my orbit were into bands like AFI, Deftones, Green Day, Bad Religion, Nirvana, Tool, Nine Inch Nails, etc., etc. Being one step removed from these bands may have actually made them seem even more unapproachable and cooler to me. There was something about the scorching disaffection and pseudo-masculine rage of this era of music that I found dangerously alluring at the time. It felt like I was getting into these bands at my own risk, which was part of the appeal.
Blab School’s self-titled debut album reminds me of this era of rock music, not necessarily in tone and sound, but in pure, intimidating coolness.
So, how does one talk about a band whose defining characteristic is that they sound cool? They say comparison is the thief of joy, but this is a band that wears its influences on its sleeve. In addition to my projecting the likes of Deftones, AFI, and Tool onto Blab School, it’s easy to hear the bands they’ve been openly inspired by. In their bio on the Fort Lowell Records website, they namecheck the Wipers, Talking Heads, Joy Division, and Killing Joke as their sonic and philosophical progenitors. More contemporaneously, it wouldn’t be out of the question to see them sharing a bill with bands like Flasher or Protomartyr. This is a record that is steeped in nostalgia, but you’re going to have to adjust your idea of whose past lives we are talking about when we use the word “nostalgia,” this isn’t The Strokes or The Black Keys.
Blab School doesn’t have a narrative arc; that’s not the kind of band they are. In fact, the record is a pretty lean affair, clocking in at just over in just over twenty minutes. Blab School is not trying to tell a story with this record, but that is not to say that they aren’t trying to convey a feeling, and that feeling is chilly disaffection. This fire-and-ice combination of unattainable coolness and simmering rage puts them in a lineage with every band they have likened to by both me and the band themselves. It’s also a proven method for creating compelling music.
This can be heard from the jump with the first two tracks: “Small Simple Ways” and "Scrolls." The former sounds like it would fit beautifully alongside The Smashing Pumpkins on the Batman & Robin soundtrack, and I mean that in the best way possible. The latter is a particular favorite of the band, as it is the first song they wrote post-lockdown, which seems appropriate for a song about doomscrolling (“can’t seem to stop, I’m clicking on buttons, just staring at nothing, back to the top… scroll down, scroll down”). This feeling of dissatisfaction with modern society is on display throughout the record, from “Quit Yr Job” (particularly poignant to me as I write this article while on the clock at a job I’m getting laid off from at the end of the month), to “Never Enough” (we all hate capitalism in this house), to the closing track, “(Don’t Forget to) Give Up” (try the refreshing taste of nihilism today).
But one of the most fascinating tracks on the record is “I Hate the Summer.” On this penultimate track, the band sings, “I hate the summer, I pray for rain. I hate the sunlight, mimosas, and champagne. I hate the beach and all the sand it brings. I hate the blue skies; I hate most hot-weather things.” They’ve got that summertime sadness! Now I’m from Ohio and Blab School is from North Carolina, so we experience very different summers, but I have always found folks that detest the sun and revelry of summertime a little… dorky? But you see, that’s what makes this song so important! In the context of the record, it might be the most important song of all. I’ve gone on and on about how impenetrably cool this band is for this entire article, and we get to the second-to-last song on the album, and it’s just someone whinging about how they’re too hot? It’s brilliant! It makes them human! It invites other dorky folks who get cranky when the weather gets above 72° to be like, “Yeah! They get it!” before bringing it back around to the realm of the unfathomable and the unflappable to wrap things up with “(Don’t Forget to) Give Up.”
Ultimately, there’s something to be said here about the anachronistic idea of “coolness.” What does it even mean to be “cool” in 2024 when the internet has rendered each and every one of us “cringe”? That may be overstating it, but at the very least, social media has revealed that most of us are relatively ordinary in our day-to-day lives... or maybe it’s just leveled the playing field. You can see pictures of Blab School all together as a band on their Instagram, and they look very normal despite the fact that they have made a profoundly cool record. They just look like me and my friends, and I appreciate them more for it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you can see that as a testament to everyone’s humanity. Just as your friends’ cool older brothers eventually become regular accountants, bitcoin miners, and managers at Chipotle, cool rock musicians are regular people, too. The coolness is part of the performance.
Saturday, June 15, 2024
Wilmington is a vinyl town: How spinning records impacts the culture of the Port City
James Tritten + RizzyBeats at The Underfront Co.; photo by Ken Blevins |
[Repost from StarNews; by John Staton, June 10, 2024]
In April, during the annual celebration of music and capitalism that is Record Store Day, James Tritten waited in line for three hours at Yellow Dog Discs on South College Road to buy a special release on vinyl from the British electronic band Ladytron.
Arguably, Tritten wasn't even the most dedicated vinyl fan out there. At least 100 people were in line ahead of him when he showed up that April morning, he said, including a half-dozen people who had camped outside the store overnight to secure their places in line.
At the Modern Legend record and lifestyle shop downtown, recent renovations allowed owner Catherine Hawksworth to double the amount of vinyl she carries. She said that this year's Record Store Day, when many artists drop exclusive releases available only at independent record shops, was the best one for sales since she opened Modern Legend eight years ago.
"I've seen a massive increase in young people buying vinyl," Hawksworth said as a gaggle of twentysomethings browsed the stacks nearby, adding that vinyl records account for more than half of her overall sales. "Then again, my first customer today was a 70-year-old man who bought The Eagles and Steely Dan."
Tritten, who owns Wilmington's vinyl-centric Fort Lowell Records with his wife, the singer Tracy Shedd — they pull from their massive record collection to DJ every Tuesday evening at the Satellite Bar & Lounge on Greenfield Street, and every Wednesday night at The Sandspur restaurant and bar in Carolina Beach — said it recently occurred to him that Wilmington punches well above its weight when it comes to buying, selling, playing and celebrating vinyl.
"It's such a small community, but so rich in the arts," he said, likening Wilmington's affinity for vinyl to its status as a hotspot for such diverse yet cool activities as skateboarding and stand-up comedy.
"People are very interested in vinyl records. All of the venues are supportive of having vinyl DJs," Tritten said. "There's more DJs being booked in Wilmington right now than I've ever seen in the six years we've been here.
"It's a beautiful thing," he added. "I'm here for it all day long."
The explosion of interest in vinyl has had an impact on Wilmington's arts and cultural scene. The outdated stereotype of a vinyl collector is an older guy playing records at home alone, but these days, vinyl is often a highly social activity.
In addition to a half-dozen or more local record stores where vinyl is the main attraction, including School Kids Records on Kerr Avenue and Record Bar on Oleander Drive, area breweries including Flytrap and Mad Mole have "vinyl nights" where patrons can bring in their records to play. A dozen or more DJs with names like Bo Fader, Infinite Spins and Rob Starr spin vinyl records around town, and Wilmington label Fort Lowell is getting the music of local bands on vinyl.
Wilmington even has a vinyl-themed hangout in the Ibis bar and coffee shop on Princess Street in the Soda Pop District, where area DJs hold court in a beautifully designed booth four nights a week.
"I think it's at sort of a peak in my lifetime, definitely in the life of my business," said Matt Keen, owner of Gravity Records on Castle Street, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. "Around 2012 or 2013, I saw a huge shift from CDs to records, and it's stayed that way."
It's not just a local phenomenon, of course. In 2022, vinyl became the most popular physical format for recorded music for the first time since 1987. According to the online data-gathering platform Statista, vinyl accounted for 40% of all album sales in 2023.
The popularity of vinyl has accelerated since the pandemic, record store owners say.
"'I sold them all a few years ago and now I'm buying them all back.' I hear that one at least once a week," said Wilmington DJ and hip-hop artist RizzyBeats, who also works at Gravity Records. The shop's clientele ranges from "10-year-olds whose grandparents are buying records for them" to the grandparents themselves.
"People who buy music in a physical form, that just shows how much they love it," he said.
In early May, RizzyBeats and Tritten teamed up for a special event that packed the house at downtown lounge UnderFront. Part of the Let's Dance series, which has Tritten spinning danceable tracks at different venues around town, the UnderFront show had an '80s theme.
"Rizzy had a very specific vision, "Tritten said. "His perspective of it was, he knows that my roots are in post-punk and new wave, and his roots are in R&B and hip-hop. And his vision was, well, let's bring these two worlds of '80s music together."
The resulting evening was "magical," Tritten said.
'It just sounds better'
The argument for vinyl among music heads has always been the sound quality.
Tritten said he's had people come up to him while he's DJing to comment about songs they might have only heard digitally before. "I've had numerous people tell me, 'It just sounds better,'" he said. "When I recognize a song as a real hot track, I'll go as far as to find that song on a 12-inch vinyl record cut at 45 RPM because it will hit harder than anything else will hit. You can't hit harder than a 12-inch cut at 45."
Safe to say that Tim Jarman, who owns Cargo District record and book store The Fuzzy Needle, concurs.
"The sound quality, it's impossible to beat, especially if you've got a good hi-fi set-up," Jarman said.
He opened The Fuzzy Needle in early 2021, just in time to catch a post-pandemic vinyl wave that has yet to abate. Jarman also spreads his love of vinyl at the Ibis, where he coordinates the DJs who spin there Wednesday through Saturday. (The Ibis used to be affiliated with Gravity Records, but that's no longer the case.)
"Wilmington isn't really thought of as a music town," Jarman said, but given the Port City's vinyl obsession, not to mention its emerging status as a concert hub, that view might need to be reassessed. "Wilmington must love music. Maybe even more than other so-called music towns."
With Wilmington lacking a dedicated mid-size concert venue, Jarman said, perhaps that's driving more people to seek out "authentic" musical experiences on vinyl.
Robin Wood, who plays in the Wilmington punk band Tercel and works at Fuzzy Needle, said that, for some people, vinyl and other forms of physical media are reactions to the increasing digitalization of society.
"We're drowning in this sea of digital overload," Wood said. "Vinyl is an antidote to that."
When she DJs at Satellite on Tuesdays, Tracy Shedd said it's all about "being spontaneous. There's something about having a record on, and only having a split-second to change it."
She can play to the vibe of the room in the moment, or play to her own vibe and hope that others pick up on it.
"The human touch. You absolutely can't replicate it," Tritten said. "And that's (why) Tuesday nights worked out at Satellite so well. Tracy gets compliments all the time, 'I just love what you're choosing to select.' It's just, you're reading the vibe in the room. That's just something an algorithm literally can't do."
'The record is just cooler'
Vinyl's popularity hasn't escaped the notice of chain stores like Target, Barnes & Noble and even Walmart, all of which carry vinyl records now and sometimes partner with artists for exclusive releases, like Walmart did with Taylor Swift.
"That kind of hurts us" at the local record store level, Rizzy said.
Tritten literally winced when asked about people buying vinyl at big box stores.
"Support your local record shops," he said.
Jarman said that while he doesn't love that big box stores carry vinyl, "For some people," especially younger music fans, "it might be a gateway. Once they come to a real record store, they won't buy records at Target anymore. It's just not a cool experience."
And it's not like you can just find everything online instead. Rizzy said it's a common fallacy that everything's on streaming now.
"It's not at all. Especially when you get into certain genres," he said. "I find stuff all the time that's not on streaming. It's not even on YouTube, or maybe it's just on one streaming service."
Another popular misconception, perhaps driven by vinyl's newfound popularity, is that vinyl "is kind of like a gold mine," Rizzy said. "Like, 'There's money in these records!' In reality, there isn't. We'll get people coming in trying to sell us a record that they said is going for $200 on Ebay, when we'd only sell it for like $5."
Most shops stock non-vinyl products to make ends meet. Modern Legend sells clothing and gift items as well as new vinyl. Fuzzy sells used and collectible books along with new and used vinyl, and just added the Folkstone Slow Bar coffee shop in its space. In addition to a huge vinyl selection, Gravity Records offers the only turntable repair service in town.
"Definitely for a town this size, there's no shortage of people selling records," Gravity owner Matt Keen said. "I'm talking to you right now staring at a turntable and trying to figure how to fix it, because nobody else is doing it."
Margins are slim, Keen added, and "the pie is only so big. It's still a niche market. It gets hard to survive on those slivers."
Certainly, the record store business has long been a labor of love to some extent. But when it comes to "supporting both businesses and artists," Jarman said, "buying vinyl is the best way to do both of those."
Thursday, June 13, 2024
Pressing Concerns: Blab School
[Repost from Rosy Overdrive; June 6, 2024]
Blab School – Blab School
Release date: June 6th
Record label: Fort Lowell/Clearly
Genre: Punk rock, post-punk, noise rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Small Simple Ways
Blab School are a new band formed by four longtime North Carolina indie rockers in guitarist/vocalists Ryan Seagrist (Discount, The Kitchen) and Lizzie Killian (Glowing Stars, Teens in Trouble), drummer Dave Cantwell (Analogue, Cold Sides, In the Year of the Pig), and bassist Fikri Yucel (Veronique Diabolique). The band formed via a Craigslist ad in Durham, but Cantwell has since moved to Carolina Beach–however, rather than slowing things down, Blab School remain quite active, and their drummer’s relocation even led to their self-titled debut album coming out via Cantwell’s new neighbors, Wilmington’s Fort Lowell Records (Kicking Bird, Common Thread, James Sardone). Blab School’s members come from all sorts of musical backgrounds, but the eight-song Blab School (recorded in Yucel’s living room by Nick Petersen) has a meaty, tough, unified sound that straddles the line between “punk” and “post-punk”. Underground rock movements like Dischord-ish limber post-hardcore/post-punk and Albini-recorded noise rock/punk come to mind in places, while in others Blab School sounds straight out of the early 1980s.
Blab School kicks off in overdrive via the pounding, almost-emo punk rock of “Small Simple Ways” that reminds me a little bit of classic Jawbreaker, but the quartet then swerve into “Scrolls”, a dark, guitar-forward post-punk tune in the vein of Killing Joke or early Siouxsie & The Banshees. At twenty-two minutes, Blab School is a record with absolutely no room for excess or embellishment–the band sound driven and laser-focused for its entire length. Whether that’s the retro, almost garage-y punk of “Quit Yr Job”, the massive slab of alt-rock of “Never Enough”, or the Kill Rock Stars-y emotional spikiness of “Will I Ever?”, Blab School remains captivating into the middle of the record, and they even explore a bit of new territory towards the album’s end. The four-minute “Rhizome” and its hammering, wall-of-sound punk rock and final song “(Don’t Forget to) Give Up”, which incorporates a bit of Touch & Go noise-punk ugliness, are two of Blab School’s heaviest moments, both of which help the record start circling the drain as it begins to sign off. Judging by their opening statement, Blab School are the best kind of “new veteran band”–one that draws from the wealth of music its members have made in the past, but all in the service of a unified, coherent sound. (Bandcamp link)
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