It’s like someone I spoke to recently about seeing A Place to Bury Strangers at Death By Audio — it really is an experience unlike many other moments in modern rock and roll. This is their home, their turf, close to the riverside of Williamsburg. The lackluster sheen of industrial brickwork and abandoned smokestacks jut from this mostly unremarkable side of town. It’s one of the few corners of Williamsburg that gets blurred in the transition from old immigrant status to gentrification. Continue following the train tracks across the bridge and you end up in the Lower East Side where the remnants of punk culture crumble into scenester purgatory. It’s good to know that there is such thing as a world renown band’s own living room becoming the scene of some of the grittiest rock and roll from the hipster bedlam of Brooklyn.

On Tuesday, October 26, the DIY space, Death By Audio, became the share cage — a transformed center for musical aggression that enables its audience to express enthusiasm by means of flailing legs, arms, heads, hair, and other limbs and parts, if available. The band’s performance hinged upon natural disregard to electronics, sometimes limited by the length of a cable. The visual of the room was like watching the insides of a machine, detaching itself from its technological cells and reaching out for its humanity.

An instance: A guitar cable snaps back onto the floor when bass player Dion Lunadon flung himself into the fray of the flesh-grabbing hands of his audience.

An impressive moment: Oliver Ackerman’s usual rage against the instruments, pulling out the strings, detuning his instrument then, out of the ugly beauty of a battered guitar, string hanging like unappealing fish lines, Ackerman began to strum the opening chords of one of the band’s new songs — one of three that APTBS pulled out of their magic hat that night.

Moments like these are special. Anyone who goes, who gets their shit stomped upon, their ribcage elbowed by a sweat-drenched maniac…anyone who arrives, checks their problems at the door, knows what this space proves.

A Place to Bury Strangers will be releasing a new EP on November 22, 2010. Here’s a preview.

He is easily one of the best music writers out there and has given the WD the professional depth its needed and passionate observation that many love. Naturally he was bumped because of the direction our publication is heading and, truly honestly, there’s no one else we would want to fill this position.

In celebration of this act, he composed this week’s playlist while Jenn is away, moving her stuff into her new home.

Part One: ‘This Is All Going… All To Shit’

From the moment I first heard Lightspeed Champion’s debut album, Falling off the Lavender Bridge, it became an instant classic in my personal collection, easily one of my ‘desert island’ picks.  Dev Hynes captures a sense of irony that is both embracing and alienating – something rare and pure.  He is all that is essential in current songwriting, presenting well articulated multi-instrumental arrangements formed around lyrics which immediately immerse you in a story and emotion so vivid, it’s as though you are there with him.

The first time I went to see Lightspeed Champion was in June of 2009, over a year after the release of Lavender Bridge.  Dev had only just recovered from vocal chord surgery the previous winter, and this was to be one of his first appearances in NYC since then.  It had been a full year since his songs had become a part of me, and I needed to finally see him in the flesh.

Alas, the trials of my own flesh had gotten in the way.  During the same months I fell in love with the music of Lightspeed Champion, I had also fallen into the throes of a self-destructive love affair with a boy on the Lower East Side, who lived just around the corner from the Mercury Lounge.  That same week, after months telling myself that I was in it for the aesthetic burn, a disquieting pre-occupation, my Lover on the LES and I had begun our parting talks; our ultimatums.  We either we fuck, or we’re friends.  We either hold hands, or let go.

The night of the Mercury Lounge show, I stopped at my LES Lover’s apartment, smoked some pot, blurred my buzz with a gin & tonic, and wanted to know if I could stay over after the show so I wouldn’t have to take the subway alone late that night.   He was tired, he had to work early, it wasn’t happening. ‘Should have known better than to cave in to such fantasies.’  I headed to the Mercury Lounge, alone.

It cost $12, no ins and outs – you stay, or you go.  It was crowded and narrow, and full of European and Aussie tourists, drinking their way into louder and louder debauchery, professing their love for the glory that is New York City. Ten minutes at the bar, and no juice – the bartender hadn’t even noticed me.  He was busy coyly correcting the English of some sexy Italian or Brazilian – some girl browner and more beautiful and richer and everything I could never be. ‘This is all going to shit…’  I gave up, and made my way into the venue.  It was too loud, I was too alone, my buzz was wearing off and it was all too clear.  I ran out.

“You know you can’t come back,” the doorman said.

“This place fucking sucks.”

My Lover of the LES left town for a summer holiday in the mountains in Sussex County, NJ.  We didn’t speak for a month.  I didn’t see Lightspeed Champion, but I had lived the stuff of one of Dev’s songs.

Part Two: “In your head, did you work out the route to conquer all of your fear?”

Over a year has passed. My now ex-Lover on the LES and I have attempted something resembling a friendship. Our meetings have been soaked in a welling of un-dissolved sentiments; our conversations stuttered through knotted throats.  Much like my missed connection with Lightspeed Champion, there remains something unrequited.

My relationship with Dev’s music exists in a more definitive space, mostly between my ears, and perhaps also along the New Jersey Turnpike as I speed south in my Zipcar towards Philadelphia, where Lightspeed Champion is scheduled to open for We Are Scientists.  They’re playing closer to home in Brooklyn in two nights as well, but I’ve been asked to write about a band that’s playing at Pianos at the same time.  I can’t change or control what went on with my ex-Lover on The LES, but I can get to Philly in less than two hours; I can manifest my own resolve.

I arrive at Johnny Brenda’s in Philly, get my wrist stamped, and there’s Dev, the Lightspeed Champion himself, less than twenty feet away from me, at the merch table.  I beeline to the restroom, and breathe. This isn’t just about being a fan.  It’s about what music, and what Lightspeed Champion, has done for me.  All that I can’t solve for myself, my favorite artists have sorted it out in the form of song.  Lightspeed Champion articulates things I never knew how to say, and at times things that I never knew I felt.

I introduced myself to Dev.  I told him everything – the break-up, drunken tourists, my drive from Hoboken to Philly, how I wanted to transform this breakdown into a breakthrough.  It was happening.  He would be on stage in less than an hour, finally!  But wait…

In my frantic quest to see Lightspeed Champion, it never occurred to me that he might suck.  This is a rare instance, but it does happen.  I wait in line for a show, or pay extra for tickets on the web, or travel a long distance, or all of these things combined, and either the band sucks, or the audience is lame, or both.  Could it be that after all this, Dev would let me down?

No, not quite.  It took me a little while burn through the fog my fandom before I was finally able to assess what Dev was doing.  Whereas his studio recordings are suited for a full band and ensemble, with some brass and classical strings, Dev showed up with only an electric guitar, his Mac book, and a voice that showed a full range of soul, croon, and rock. He played each song with a refreshing flow, often veering off into his own feeling of how it should sound, while maintaining its basic framework.  For some songs, including ‘There’s Nothing Underwater’, Dev sought the help of his Mac book for full instrumentals, while he sung into the mike with his hands tucked in his pockets.  At times it seemed as though he were karaoke-ing himself; as he paced the stage, rocking out, he could just as easily be alone in his bedroom. Yet he brought an undeniable sincerity, showing that his thrift in playing without a band really allowed him to find the best way to draw you in.  I still would have liked to see him with a back up band or ensemble of some kind.

I drove home at 3:00AM, after getting carried away with some friends from High School in West Philly.  At 7:00AM the next morning I woke up and got ready to go to work without a wink of sleep in my eye, ready to take on the day.  While I had spent countless sleepless nights and groggy days pining over my ex-Lover on the LES, spending most of the night driving down to Philly and back to watch Dev perform didn’t faze me.  A year ago I had lived the stuff of Dev’s songs, and although my resolve with my ex-Lover on the LES may remain on some elusive distant plane, I can at least say I fulfilled my quest to see Lightspeed Champion.

All pictures were taken at L Magazine’s Northside Festival in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

MEN featuring JD Samson of Le Tigre @ Knitting Factory, The Brought Low @ The Trash Bar, bathroom of Death by Audio, and other miscellanea.

Hawk and Dove, La Strada

Truth & Salvage Co.

Truth & Salvage Co.
Truth & Salvage Co
Silver Force/ Megaforce

Duke Ellington, the legendary jazzman and composer was once quoted as saying that “there are two kinds of music. Good music and the other kind.” Sure, it’s a hilarious and insightful quote from someone who in many ways espouses something we should all follow:  a healthy distrust of categorization and a love of music that should make us think, that should make us feel something very profound and honest. In an ideal world that would be fantastic for music lovers and even some critics. However, it does seem to be a general human trend to name, to categorize in order to put some degree of order in a chaotic world. In terms of music, literature, art or hell anything else, it also makes it easy – even for those who may be a bit lazy – to compare a certain piece of music to another piece of music, for example. There’s an innate part of us that somehow is attracted to genre and its conventions, and I believe that just like a piece of music, a favorite artist or beloved album, we make powerful associations towards genres. When it comes to country and southern rock, in my mind I can’t shake several different images and thoughts. I think of sitting in the tiny Cooperstown Diner on Cooperstown, NY’s Main Street with George Strait playing from the kitchen as my girlfriend and I somehow got into a conversation with two local farmers. I can see the morning fog gently lifting in an orange grove, just outside of tiny Orangeburg, SC. I somehow think of the farm towns of north central New York – towns like Broome, Herkimer, Ilion, Mohawk, Richfield Springs, Schuyler Lake, Jordanville, Fly Creek and other dots on the map hipsters wouldn’t dare go. And interestingly enough, after a couple of listens to Truth & Salvage Company’s debut record, I found myself thinking of all of those places with a renewed vigor.

Granted, on their first record, Truth & Salvage Company’s songs are primarily rooted around some common country music clichés – trucks, drinking, carrying on and being up to no good, the open road, finding good women, finding bad women, love having redemptive power and the like. Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and others all have songs with these themes coming up repeatedly throughout their work. But where Nelson and Cash may have occasionally displayed a worldly weariness, this album is much more rollicking and raucous. This album probably one of the most fun albums I’ve heard so far this year, and it stems from the fact that it sounds much like 6 close friends jamming out on a Saturday afternoon. It’s a sort of shaggy and loose feel similar to the Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson “VH1 Storytellers” sessions where there’s tons of jokes and ribbing throughout, and I think that’s where Truth & Salvage Co. gets it charm from. “Hail Hail,” the opening track has probably the most playfully debauched chorus on the album which just describes a bunch of guys smoking weed and drinking beer all night. “Old Piano,” has by the album’s most compelling lines that somehow manage to be a bit clichéd but profoundly earnest. This song reminds me the most of “Dissident” on Pearl Jam’s classic Vs. “Call Back” displays a sense of harmony similar to early Crosby, Stills and Nash. While a song such as “See Her,” is extremely reminiscent of the guitar work of the Allman Brothers. All of this should be no real surprise as the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson is listed as one of the record’s producers.

Sonically, Truth & Salvage Co. won’t blow you like T. Bone Burnett’s ridiculously amazing The True-False Identity or the North Mississippi All Stars’ Electric Blue Watermelon: Chopped and Screwed EP – two albums with psychedelic, avant garde tendencies and guitar pyrotechnics. As a debut, Truth & Salvage Company’s effort may not be an instantly classic album, but the band shows a shaggy charm and fun-living spirit that should make a live show a helluva lot of fun, and in turn that should win the hearts of jaded audiophiles who may be looking for a good time.

Release Date: 5/25/10

Song List

1.    Hail Hail
2.    Call Back
3.    Welcome to L.A.
4.    Heart Like a Wheel
5.    See Her
6.    Old Piano
7.    101
8.    Jump the Ship
9.    She Really Does it for Me
10.  Rise Up
11.  Brothers, Sons and Daughters
12.  Pure Mountain Angel

Beyond Race Magazine is an amazing music publication and online magazine. They are in danger of shutting down and we’re not going to let that happen!!

We’re playing a benefit show in their support on June 1st @ Mercury Lounge. There are going to be a lot of local artists involved supporting the cause including Seasick Mama, Plastic Photography and more to be announced!

Seasick Mama has designed a special limited edition t-shirt in support of the cause! It’s only $28.00 in all size, with free f*ckin’ shipping!!!!

The show is going to be very exciting and the artists are all creating beautiful art for you all – All you gotta do is come!

- Plastic Photography will be giving away 5 large prints of his work
- SeaSick Mama is designing a special T- Shirt that will be on sale at the show and her website. All proceeds will be donated to BRM.
and more…

RSVP here.
Buy Tickets here.

Hope to see you there!
xx
H&C

Hank & Cupcakes
Beyond Race Magazine
Seasick Mama
Plastic Photography

Metric

Last Sunday night, popular NYC music venue, Terminal 5, was filled with “Stadium Love” as the indie, electro-rock band, Metric took center stage and gave the island of Manhattan one rockin’ good show. I’ve been a fan of the band for maybe a little under two years now and had heard rumors of their outstanding live performances- needless to say, this awesome foursome (comprised of lead vocalist, Emilie Haines, Joules Scott Key on drums, guitarist, James Shaw and bassist, Joshua Winstead) did not disappoint!

Brooklyn-based experimental group, Bear in Heaven, opened up the night but was met with passive acceptance by the crowd. Though their ambient music might have perhaps held its own in a better acoustic setting than Terminal can provide often times, it still seemed overall a bit of an odd pairing for the show at hand. There seemed to be a disconnect and the crowd seemed to grow anxious as it waited for the evening’s headliners.

After a short intermission, the lights finally came and the crowd roared as Metric tore through the space like a spontaneous bolt of lightning, with lead singer Haines at the forefront (a true commanding presence and force to be reckoned with all on her own). It was from that moment forward that the audience was completely mesmerized. If there is one thing to be said for the band and their performance as a whole, it’s that they share a perfectly balanced charisma onstage and seem to have truly mastered the art of playing off each other in an effortless harmony. Haines especially excels at this – there was rarely a moment where she wasn’t bouncing rhythmically around the stage, her raspy, cooing voice as flawless and crystal clear as on the bands’ records, perhaps with a tad more honest grit and silkiness to boot.

Decked out in a silver sequined mini skirt and a crisp white tee that draped elegantly over her lithe figure, she let her haunting voice (which is possible even more angelic live) cut through the crowd’s heart, hook, line and sinker. A true performer, she came to life onstage and lyrics that were lost on me in previous listen’s before, suddenly rang true with a whole new meaning under her visual performance and guidance.

The Band played a wide range of songs from their various hit albums (Grow up and Blow Away, Live it Out, Fantasies, etc.) and the audience certainly knew they’re favorites. Popular songs of the night were Gimme Sympathy, Dead Disco, Gold Girls Gun and of course, one of their most mainstream overnight hits, Help, I’m Alive (I swear, I’ve heard from more than one woman claiming that this is their anthem, and honestly, how can you blame them? It’s catchy as all Hell!). Each song sounded vividly organic and unrehearsed and I was particularly impressed with their final selection of the evening – a heartfelt, stripped-down acoustic rendition of “Combat Baby” that turned the audience to jelly.

This was one of those rare shows that reminded the viewer that there are still those energetic powerhouse bands out there that still know how to deliver the goods, and if Metric keeps it up, the goods are just going get better.

Set List:

1. Twilight Galaxy
2. Satellite Mind
3. Front Row
4. Help I’m Alive
5. Empty
6. Collect Call
7. Gold Guns Girls
8. Gimme Sympathy
9. Sick Muse
10. Dead Disco
11. Stadium Love

Encore:

12. Monster Hospital
13. Combat Baby (Acoustic)

Josh Mease

Describing his music as “dreamy/catchy/poppy,” the 28 year old Houston-born and Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter, Josh Mease first got into music as a child. “I wanted to play drums when I was 9 or 10 but my parents thought it would be better for their sanity if I tried guitar instead,” Mease says while reflecting on his first forays into music. Mease had also tried taking piano lessons but quickly discovered that he wasn’t into it as much. “I ended up really taking to the guitar and just kept practicing.  I went to a performing arts high school, where I studied jazz.  I eventually came up to the New School to continue studying jazz, but I lost interest about halfway through.  I decided I liked writing songs and singing them more, so I just stuck with that,” he continued. He met his bandmate Alan Hampton back in Houston and they both came to New York around the same time. Alan knew Bill Campbell through some a series of random gigs they used to play together and Alan introduced Bill to Mease. Josh met Frank Locrasto (keyboards) while they were both studying at New School. Each member of Mease’s backing band plays with him live and on the record. “They’ve been playing with me live for a while now,” Mease said of his backing band.

Perhaps the difference between Mease and his influences is how he went about the writing of the Wilderness album. “For Wilderness,” Mease explains, “the writing and recording were done in two separate stages. Aside from making up parts, there wasn’t really any writing on the fly as I had the songs and arrangements kind of mapped out beforehand.” Most of the basic tracks – including drums and bass – were done in Echolab Studios in Texas with Matt Pence as the session’s engineer. The rest of the record was finished at a friend’s small studio in Connecticut and in Mease’s bedroom closet in Brooklyn. “This was mainly due to budget constraints,” he says. “Trying to record in a closet in the middle of Brooklyn is no easy task but I think it turned out well.”

Currently, Mease is touring in support of his new release and I recently caught his live act down at the Mercury Lounge a few weeks ago and Mease showed a playful sense of humor in his stage banter and adds not just a sense of levity and joy to the material while displaying an inherent love of what he’s doing. Admittedly, he says that during the tours he’s been on that he has a “special place in his heart for the south and southwest. I also love California. I haven’t played my stuff abroad yet so that answer my change soon.” Catch Josh on tour across the country as he’s a unique and captivating experience.

Josh is playing a show at rockwood music hall, 196 allen street (between east houston and stanton streets) on august 27th at 11:30. there’s no cover but there is a drink minimum.

Lymbyc Systym

Lymbyc Systym, consisting of brothers Mike and Jared Bell can trace their professional and musical history to some of their earliest musical memories. Like countless musicians of all stripes, Mike Bell recalls growing up in a Phoenix-area household where music was almost always playing on the stereo – and it would generally be Paul Simon, the Beatles and other legendary recording artists. But it wasn’t until the late 80s-early 90s when hip hop had its amazing heyday as the popularity of the genre grew exponentially that both Bell brothers had an insatiable urge to create music in some way. At the time, being heavily influenced by Vanilla Ice both Mike and Jared started their first band, a hip hop group of sorts with a beaten up and destroyed toy drum set and guitar, and a Casio keyboard. With this rather inauspicious start, both brothers started experimenting with the sounds and ideas which would later become actual songs as they started playing real instruments and developed a greater understanding of music. However, that sense of playful and childlike experimentation has remained in their music, even as both brothers grew up, started playing real instruments and began performing earnestly.

Mike Bell

Originally, the band started off with a number of names that both brothers couldn’t completely agree on. As Mike Bell recalls it, he was taking a psychology course in a Phoenix area-based community college and he came across the term limbic system in a psychology textbook. “The term refers to the emotional center of the brain,” Bell mentioned. For Bell, limbic system – or lymbyc systym – was perfectly fitting for the type of music him and his brother had been working on, as he describes their music as it appeals to the primal and emotional center of one’s being while also simultaneously appealing to one’s intellect. Although both Mike and Jared Bell can claim Pink Floyd and 60s jazz, along the lines of John Coltrane and others, as they have fairly identical tastes in music, Mike Bell can also easily describe Lymbyc Sysytm as having some sonic similarity to a band such as Sigur Ros.

Currently, both members of the band are in different parts of the country with Mike, a former NYU student back in Phoenix, after a brief stint in Austin while Jared, recently moved to New York about a year ago and has found a home in Park Slope, Brooklyn. We recently caught up with Mike Bell over the phone somewhere on Interstate 95 between North Carolina and Washington DC, as Bell has been on a lengthy tour performing with several of his label mates such as Crystal Castles before he catches up with his brother and starts Lymbyc Systym’s tour. As he readily admits, he’s spent “3 days home since April.” And the non-stop touring continued as Lymbyc System began a tour that continued this past weekend in Brooklyn’s Union Hall playing alongside Cush and Wires Under Tension. In fact, for both of the Bells, Union Hall has quickly become a home away from home because the setting is so comfortable.

Jared Bell

In addition to their tour, Lymbyc Systym is working on a new album. Bell describes their newest effort as being very different. Whereas Carved by Glaciers was their “first experiment with electronic manipulation and production,” he feels that the new album will have much more focus in their compositions – all of which have become an “evolution of their sound.” Both Bells learned and improved their guitar playing and they have incorporated several other musicians to play horns, drums, strings and guitars which should add a great complexity to their sound, Look for them on tour in a city near you and look for their new record when it drops in the fall!