Members of the psychedelic pop group Pink Floyd. From left to right, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Syd Barrett and Rick Wright. (Photo by Keystone Features/Getty Images)
Start your Christmas wish list now because Pink Floyd is set to release The Early Years 1965-1972 this November – a 27-disc box set covering not only albums like Atom Heart Mother and Ummagumma, but also rare BBC sessions, unreleased studio sessions, remastered singles, unreleased video, and over seven hours alone of unreleased live audio tracks.
They also plan to release a two-disc (and far more affordable) set called The Early Years – Cre/ation. This stuff is gold if you’re a fan of Pink Floyd, classic rock, prog rock, or psychedelic rock.
Keep your mind open.
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Montreal psych-rockers Elephant Stoneare set to drop their latest album, Ship of Fools. You can order a digital download of it for only 8 bucks and a lot of other neat stuff through the PledgeMusic campaign for the record. That digital download, by the way, is an early release, so you’ll get it before most of the general public.
Other fun goodies include the album on CD, cassette, and vinyl, exclusive T-shirts, signed CDs and albums, Indian cooking and sitar lessons with Rishi Dhir, a signed vinyl test pressing of the album, and even the first sitar Dhir owned.
You also get to download four tracks from the album right away – “Manipulator,” “Where I’m Going,” “Andromeda,” and “The Devil’s Shelter” (all of which are excellent) – when you make any purchase.
Keep your mind open.
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7th Level Music: Is this your first time in Fort Wayne?
Jarrett Dougherty (drums): Yeah.
7LM: You’ve got one more gig to go before the end of the tour. How’s it been?
Mike Abbatte (bass): Pretty good.
Marissa Paternoster (vocals, guitar): Smooth.
JD: Yeah, it’s been pretty easy. We did three weeks, and then the two weeks off, and then this is the end of another two weeks after that. We went down to Florida and then back up the coast over the three weeks, so the drives were really easy, and then we just went through Canada for a few days, and then Michigan, Wisconsin, and Chicago, and now we’re here. It’s all been pretty easy.
7LM: If you can get to the Warhol Museum there, it’s amazing.
MP: We got a tour of it the last time we were there from…Andy’s nephew?
7LM: Oh, right on.
JD: Yeah, Donald Warholia.
MA: Warhola.
JD: Warhola.
MP: It was awesome. There was so much stuff to look at, it was overwhelming.
7LM: Weren’t you in Australia earlier this year, or maybe last fall?
JD: We’re going for the first time. It’s at the end of our summer, so it’s the end of their winter.
7LM: You get there in time for the good weather, then.
JD: Yeah, they said it’ll be a little cold when we first get there, but by the end of the trip spring will be kicking in.
7LM: I imagine that’s hard to change your logistics of planning for packing and moving all your gear.
MA: I have not thought about packing.
MP: Yeah, I haven’t thought about it.
MA: This is the first I’m thinking about it.
7LM: Oh, I’m sorry to plant that seed of panic in your head.
JD: Mainly the panic’s been about how long the plane ride is to get there. Marissa doesn’t really like planes, Mike doesn’t like that he has trouble fitting in the seats, and then I just get really bored, but that’s not nearly as bad as compared to what they’re going through…but at the same time I don’t want to be bored.
MA: I’m a giant so I’ll end up sitting like this (turns sideways in the driver’s seat of the van).
MP: And I’m crazy, so I’ll be having a nervous breakdown.
7LM: Have there been any countries where you were surprised to discover how popular you are? Have you ever heard from fans from some place where you never imagined we’d get played there?
MA: Florida.
MP: (laughing) I wish it was another country.
JD: Well, yeah, other than Miami, already for the Australia stuff, it’s pretty amazing. We’ve already been getting all these e-mails from people who are like, “I can’t believe you guys are coming here.” We’ve done a number of tours in Europe, and there we have really good experiences and a lot of the shows are really good, but it’s a lot of promoters who are just good at having people that come out to shows regardless if they know the bands or not because the promoter’s like, “Everybody should show up for this one.” But, already for Australia it seems like there are people who are excited about us getting there. We did a bunch of interviews the other day for Australian things, and people were like, “Oh, yeah, I saw your band at South by Southwest one time. I’ve been waiting for you guys to get here for years.”
7LM: That’s fantastic.
JD: Yeah, so that’s pretty exciting already. I feel like the number of people who said they were excited about our band is equal to all the people in Europe who know who we are.
7LM: I was wondering about your songwriting process. Grooves first or lyrics first? Or does it depend on the song?
JD: Always grooves first. Yeah, for sure.
(Marissa and Mike bump fists.)
JD: Occasionally, Marissa will come in with a song that’s pretty formed already, lyrically. For the songs we’re working on coming up, eventually it will be a new album, but we’re just writing the songs right now, Mike brought in a song like that as well. But the vast majority of stuff is us getting together and just playing music together.
7LM: One of the things I love so much about the stuff you guys play is how you’ll sometimes go from a song that’s quiet and just heartbreaking and then you’ll make this right turn and it’s like a punch in the gut and you’re hitting so hard and knocking walls down. I wondered if there were songs on the new record or ones you can think of where you came in thinking, “Okay, this is going to be kind of a mellow heartbreaker,” but then one of you thought, “You know what? This just needs to be like a kick in the junk, or vice versa.”
MA: (laughing) With the new stuff that we’re currently writing, it all has just come together naturally.
MP: Yeah.
MA: There hasn’t been a song where we went into it thinking one thing and then it turned out completely different – that I can think of.
JD: The one I can think of that most dramatically represents that is on Ugly. The song is “Expire.” When Marissa first made a demo of that, it had this very…
MP: (chuckling) It was like a merengue.
JD: Yeah, it had a very arpeggiated Latin acoustic guitar feel, and then it turned into something entirely different by the time we were done.
MP: (laughing) That’s probably a good thing.
MA: I don’t remember that at all. “Hopeless” (from RoseMountain)had a bit more of an Americana vibe to it and then we took that and made it more straight-ahead. We turned it into like a Weezer song.
JD: We had a couple ideas about that one, too, that included thinking about the beginning of Stop Making Sense. David Byrne comes out to do “Psycho Killer” with just the boom box and that idea stuck in my head, that you could do a song in that fashion. So when we were working out “Hopeless,” I was thinking about playing very robotically, like a drum machine. We even tried to drop a drum machine in on that first part of that track to see if it would work, but we couldn’t get one work that mixed with the vibes of the instruments. So we left the drums, but I was trying to play like a drum machine.
7LM: Nice. I know on Chalk Tape you three basically wrote the stuff out on a chalkboard and kind of went with “First thought, best thought,” kind of thing?
JD: Absolutely.
7LM: Did any of that carry over into Rose Mountain at all on any of the tracks?
MP: Chalk Tape was like a vacation away from overthinking things, and then we revisited overthinking everything when we got to Rose Mountain – which is not something we necessarily dislike doing, I think.
MA: Wait, Chalk Tape was before Rose Mountain?
Everyone else: Yeah.
(Laughter fills the van.)
MP: Because Ugly was such a big project and there were so many songs, and we demoed everything five thousand times. We demoed songs at different speeds. We like doing stuff like that.
MA: It’s true.
MP: I mean, I do. It’s fun for me. So Chalk Tape was like a little bit break from that and we threw caution to the wind and just had fun. Demoing stuff is fun for me. With Rose Mountain we definitely were very focused on melodies and songwriting and analyzing our demos and getting rid of things that we were like, “This is extraneous, and that’s unnecessary. It doesn’t benefit the song in any way.”
7LM: What are your favorite misheard lyrics? Do you have any that just crack you up?
MA: We have a couple.
MP: One I can’t say.
7LM: No, you can say it.
JD: About our band?(Looking at Marissa) You like those misheard lyrics about the Fall Out Boy video.
MP: Yeah, it’s just “don-don-don-loora-loora.”
MA: Yeah, it’s like “Ooo-lee-ooo-rah.”
JD: We watch that video a lot because they attempt to animate what they think these nonsense words mean and it’s really, really good.
MP: Misheard lyrics from other songs?
7LM: Or from yours.
MP: There’s this one song we have called “Pretty Okay,” and I say, “You make me feel so enlightened,” and our friends in a posthumous band called Full of Fancy thought I said, “You make me feel like Steve Martin,” which I think is a better lyric.
MA: The next line is “A lady found God in her purse,” and another friend of ours said it sounded like “A lady found God in her puss.”
MP: It’s a little risqué.
JD: We didn’t say it! They just thought we said it.
MA: I just said it. It just came out of my mouth.
MP: I think Full of Fancy did that, too. It was always them.
MA: No, it was probably (producer Steve) Albini.
7LM: It wouldn’t surprise me. Are there any bands that have inspired you that you fans might be surprised by?
MA: (no hesitation) Fall Out Boy. We love Fall Out Boy.
MP: (laughing) Yeah, we love Fall Out Boy.
JP: Just the one album, though.
MP: I celebrate two albums.
JD: I mean, collectively, we like the one album.
MP: Yeah, that’s true.
JD: I love a lot of hip hop. I don’t know if people think that’s weird, but it definitely doesn’t seem like it’s attached to Screaming Females. In high school I listened to a lot of world music and jazz and stuff, but I think a lot of that comes out in my playing, and I think people who are familiar with music like Fela Kuti and Gangstarr, could hear that I play drums more like what those artists think of rhythms like instead a punk band.
7LM: Are there any bands you’ve played with on this tour that you think your fans should hear more of?
MP: The first night of tour we played with two of the coolest bands I’d seen in a long time.
MA: Chipped Nails. They were cool as hell.
MP: Chipped Nails from Montreal. It was like their second show ever. They were so good, I wanted them to play forever. They played for, like, ten minutes.
JD: They played this really hypnotically repetitive, slightly funky groovin’ music that was completely atonal and nonsensical, and it was amazing.
MP: They were really good.
7LM: I’m all over that.
MP: They don’t have any Internet presence yet.
MA: They have no music. It was their second show.
JD: Everybody in the crowd, their jaws dropped like, “I don’t know what I’m witnessing.” They were bopping their heads. It was the grooviest show of all time.
MA: We did a couple shows with our friends in this band called Vacation who are really, really good.
JD: Yeah, they’re from Ohio.
7LM: I’ve heard of them somewhere.
JD: Yeah, they’re on Don Giovanni, which is the same label that has been putting out stuff for a long time. They’re from Cincinnati and Columbus and have been playing shows for years and years.
7LM: I go to Columbus a lot, so that’s probably where I heard of them.
JD: Okay, it’s a cool venue there. Our friend, Evan, who plays in Vacation is usually working the door. So, if you ever end up there, you’ll probably meet Evan.
7LM: Finally, I thought this would be fun to ask you – Who are your favorite scream queens?
MA: What?
7LM: Your favorite Hollywood scream queens.
MA: What’s that?
7LM: Horror movie stars. Screaming females, literally.
JD: Jamie Lee Curtis from Halloween is the classic.
7LM: Oh yeah, of course.
MA: I don’t do movies. I can’t sit still that long.
JD: (looking at Marissa) Green Room?
MA: Maeby from Arrested Development? I don’t even know what her name is.
MP: Yeah, me either (Alia Shawkat). I’m not much of a movie buff. I don’t know too much. I like Hellraiser, that’s a movie I enjoy. There’s two female characters in there. I don’t know either of their names. The woman who’s seducing the men and bringing them to the guy’s room so he can reanimate them. She’s cool. I don’t know what her name is (Julia – played by Claire Higgins), but I like her style. She’s ruthless. She doesn’t give a good damn. Yeah, I think that might be my favorite horror movie. I haven’t seen the others, but I do really like the first Hellraiser.
7LM: Once I was at a horror movie convention and saw Doug Bradley, who plays Pinhead, and Robert England, who plays Freddy Krueger having lunch together.
JP: Whoa!
MP: My girlfriend at the time really wanted to get into the franchise, and I think we got up to the third one and I was like, “I can’t watch these, they’re so bad.”
7LM: They get progressively worse.
MP: The first one’s so cool, and the second one was okay, and by the third one I was like, “What’s happening?” But my friend, Mark Bronzino, who plays in this metal band called Iron Reagan, he was like, “Yo, Marissa, Hellraiser 14 is pretty good, you should go see it.” And I was like, “I’m not gonna see it.”
7LM: Well, they’re remaking it.
MP: The first one?
JD: The fourteenth one.
7LM: They probably are.
MP: I don’t know, apparently it’s pretty good.
7LM: Thanks again. Is there anything you want fans to look up, or anything you want to plug?
JD: Screamingfemales.com is the easiest place to find our real tour dates, because now there are tour date aggregators out there all over the Internet that put up tour dates from five years ago. That’s the best place to find information about us, but we’re pretty easy to get in touch with. You can literally e-mail us and one of us will probably answer you.
Dunsmuir are a metal supergroup consisting of Vinny Appice of Black Sabbath (drums), Dave Bone of The Company Band (guitar), Brad Davis of Fu Manchu (bass), and Neil Fallon of Clutch (vocals). That should be all you need to know to buy their self-titled debut, but if not then knowing that the record is a concept album about a group of shipwreck survivors who struggle to stay alive against natural and supernatural forces should seal the deal. Again, what more do you need?
“Hung on the Rocks” begins the story of our doomed crew, and Bone’s guitar work cooks from the opening riff. Fallon sings, “When you’re hung on the rocks, do you stand by your captain or run ashore with the natives?” It seems a fitting lyric for someone frustrated with bumbling workplace management as well as someone freaking out as the ship goes down and “the chaplain is content to dance.”
“Our Only Master” (which, according to Fallon, is science) reminds us why Appice is one of the best metal drummers out there. Davis has a blast keeping up with him and Bone’s licks venture on the edge of stoner metal. The breakdown on it is fantastic. “The Bats (Are Hungry Tonight)” is great chugging metal, with Fallon’s vocals echoing off the back wall and Davis’ bass line charging through it.
“What Manner of Bliss” has some of Davis’ best bass work, and Bone sounds like he’s playing for an audience on the moon. Appice’s beats are simple but heavy. He doesn’t need to put in a lot of fancy fills because he doesn’t need them. He hits heavy and conveys power like the master of his craft that he is. “Deceiver” has our shipwrecked survivors lost in the supernatural as Fallon sings about the secrets of the universe and how such knowledge might be a terrible curse.
The survivors are off the deep end by the time we reach “…and Madness,” which has Bone apparently playing while someone sets his guitar on fire (judging by how hot the riffs are). Only Neil Fallon can sing a song like “Orb of Empire,” with lyrics of royal intrigue, magic, and dark societies. His vocal style is a perfect match to the band’s sledgehammering instrumentation. It’s the best metal song I’ve heard so far this year.
I love how “Church of the Tooth” starts out with slick and heavy stuff that sounds like, yes, Black Sabbath, and then Neil Fallon starts singing about iguanas, tortoises, crabs, and dark things at the bottom of the ocean. The band sinks into the Marianas Trench with a great finish of doom-metal sludge.
The remaining survivors are at the breaking point when we reach “The Gate,” as Fallon sings that his mind is about “to implode.” “Crawling Chaos” has Fallon reaching deep down for guttural vocals about the Old Ones and terrible things best left behind the veil that separates this world from a much darker one. The band plays like they’re trying to hold back or cause a volcanic eruption. I’m not sure which.
Dunsmuir is everything you want in a metal supergroup record. Again, the lineup alone should make you buy it. The two-ton weight heaviness of it is an added bonus.
Keep your mind open.
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Pixies‘ new album, Head Carrier, is due out September 30, 2016. You can pre-order it and a lot of fun extras through their PledgeMusic page for the album. You can order it on CD, LP, or digital download, of course, but why not add a T-shirt, limited posters, and artwork book, too?
People are already buzzing about the first single, “Um Chagga Lagga,” (which is great punk-fuzz) and how one song on the album is about the band’s former bass player, Kim Deal, sung by their new bass player, Paz Lenchantin.
Don’t miss out on fun stuff offered by a band who can do whatever they want whenever they want it.
Keep your mind open.
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I’d wanted to see Wolfmotherlive for many years, but their U.S. dates were few and far between for me. A friend of mine had seen them on their first tour and described their live show as “orgasmic.”
Lo and behold, I was in Chicago on the same weekend they were playing at the Double Door. I managed to score a ticket and get there in time to meet my friend and catch the last half of the opening set from The Living Statues – a local pop-punk band with hints of Buzzcocks, Beatles, and the Killers. They had a lot of hometown fans there and put on a good show.
The Living Statues
The place was packed by the time Wolfmother took the stage. We got a nice spot along the bar and near the stage right corner. Wolfmother came out gunning by playing “Dimension” right away. The crowd was singing and jamming within seconds. They followed up with “New Moon Rising” and then the first single off their new record, Victorious, “Gypsy Caravan.”
Wolfmother start strong with “Dimension.”
The crowd was bonkers by the time they reached “Apple Tree,” “California Queen,” “Victorious,” and “White Unicorn.”
Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother
They ended with the lead track off Victorious – “The Love that You Give” and then “Mind’s Eye,” both songs calling for compassion and looking past the illusions we create. The encore was “The Joker and the Thief,” which sent everyone over the edge into stoner / psych-rock madness.
Wolfmother flattening walls during “The Joker and the Thief.”
It was well worth the wait. My friend sent me a text message two days later that read, “I’m still high on Wolfmother.” I too had been humming the songs for two days. I’m sure the rest of the crowd was still buzzing, because Wolfmother shook the rafters.
The Blind Owls (Joshua De Leon – guitar, Jesse De Los Santos – guitar, Carlos Garcia – bass, Dylan Romel – drums) return from the sunny beaches of Corpus Christi with their second full-length album All Day and Night just in time for the second half of summer. It’s full of catchy power pop hooks, rockabilly beats, and dashes of punk.
The title track opens the record, and it has everything the Blind Owls do so well – a slick bass line, good vocal harmonies, jangly rock guitars, and clockwork drumming. I like the way “Good Time” starts with a crunchy little guitar riff that becomes a fun rockabilly song with a rough edge. “Sweet Baby” reveals the band’s love of Jerry Lee Lewis, as evidenced by the pounded piano, bonkers guitar work, handclaps, and frantic vocals. It’s a barnburner.
“Nobody Else” has a great walking bass line from Garcia that you might miss if you’re too busy tapping your toes to Romel’s beats, so be sure to listen for it. “Home” is really a blues tune hidden in a bop song about a cheating girlfriend. “Better” has a bit of a Bob Dylan flair, if Bob Dylan were a bit more light-hearted when singing about love.
“Out of My Mind” drops the album into full-blown psychedelic material, which is a great switch from the power-pop. The Blind Owls switch gears on us just when we think we’ve figured out their game. “Fever” keeps up the psych-rock somewhat as it keeps a nice balance between psychedelia and 60’s garage rock. The track also makes me wonder if Dylan Romel is actually a robot, because his snare work seems to obey Asimov’s laws.
“Good to Me” is sharp bop-rock that will get you moving. “Searching For” is a fast, sweet love song, as is “If They Say.” “The Way” is another song about how great the singer’s girl is, and it has a nice early Kinks sound to it that hardly anyone is attempting anymore. “Mystery Man” is full of great rock swagger (and the organ in it is a nice touch). The closer is “Doctor,” which is a cool garage rock song that melds Buzzcocks with Black Angels.
It’s a fine record, especially if you like early 1960’s garage rock (and why wouldn’t you?). Get on the Blind Owls bandwagon. They’re going places, and you should join the trip before everyone else eventually will.
Keep your mind open.
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Kaiser Chiefs are offering their upcoming album, Stay Together, for pre-order on PledgeMusic. They’re also offering some nice merchandise for additional prices. The perks range from a CD and digital download to a big bundle of stuff including a T-shirt, signed lithograph of the album cover, and and a double-LP.
A good EP should leave you craving a full-length album, and that’s exactly what Ron Gallo’s RG3 EP does. It’s only three tracks, but they are all scorching rockers that portend great things to come from this psych-fuzz wunderkind.
“Young Lady, You’re Scaring Me” starts off like a forgotten Byrds classic but then bursts with a great bass groove by Joe Bisirri and Gallo’s tripped-out rock guitar as he sings about wanting to move in with a lady and her twelve cats, but he’s not sure the crazy sex is worth all the other stuff that comes with it. He rips into a brief solo immediately after name-dropping the Kensington Strangler. That alone should let you know he means business.
“Put the Kids to Bed” is a psychedelic “let’s get it on” song with a little bit of a surf feel to it in the chorus as Gallo sings about crazy sex some more and feeling the panic of a long-term relationship that’s growing cold.
“Kill the Medicine Man” is a neat mix of psychedelia, horror movie film score, and blues fuzz. Gallo’s reverbed vocals go for broke and are nicely backed with some lady chanters and his killer rhythm section (with Dylan Sevey on drums). The song seems to be a plea for us to cut through dogma and see what’s right in front of us. It’s over far too soon.
The EP is over far too soon, really. It’s just ten minutes, but it’s a glorious ten minutes. Mr. Gallo, I look forward to what you have in store for us.
Recorded at Chicago’s Hideout January 30-31, 2014, Live at the Hideout is essential for any fan of Screaming Females, rock, or quality live recordings. Steve Albini did a great job capturing the fury and power of a live Screaming Females show, and the band (“King” Mike Abbate – bass, Jarrett Dougherty – drums, Marissa Paternoster – guitar and vocals) played not only for the lucky Hideout crowd, but also apparently for everyone on the international space station to hear.
“Leave It All Up to Me” gets the album off to a fine start, showcasing Paternoster’s now-trademark shredding. “Foul Mouth” temporarily downshifts the show, with Abbate’s bass groove planting deep roots before he and his band mates take off like a nitro-burning funny car from the starting line. The band takes that nitro and uses it to almost burn the Hideout stage to the ground on “Buried in the Nude” – which is a blistering punk rock screamfest.
“Extinction” keeps the punk pumping, with Paternoster’s vocals evoking Poly Styrene. “A New Kid” has one of her best solos on the record. It moves back and forth between metal, psychedelia, grunge, and even a bit of shoegaze. “Lights Out” is one of the best metal tunes you’ve heard in a long while, and Paternoster’s solo might make you hang up your guitar.
“Sheep,” a gut punch of a song about a cheating lover, hits even harder live. “It All Means Nothing” is one of their biggest hits, and one of their best live tracks. Paternoster sizzles throughout it and Dougherty’s pulsing beat is a great foundation. His wicked beats continue on “Starve the Beat,” which has some of Paternoster’s most masterful guitar work and Dougherty and Abbate’s best clicking rhythms.
“Little Anne” is a strangely hypnotic short song that’s almost an introduction to “Pretty Okay,” which brings out Buzzcocks-like frenetic energy from the whole band. “Baby Jesus” reminds me of a spinning dynamo. It’s fiery energy that seems barely contained and could overwhelm you at any moment. Paternoster’s solo rises into psychedelic realms halfway through it and then tears into something you’d hear in a crazy anime film about starship pilots fighting Cthulu on the edge of a black hole.
The album ends with “Boyfriend,” in which the band not only topples over the edge from metal into punk rock madness, but also pulls the whole Hideout audience and anyone listening to this record with them. Paternoster screams to the rafters, Dougherty thumps on his kit harder than Chuck Norris beating up thugs in Good Guys WearBlack, and Abbate pounds on his bass with a drumstick at one point. I don’t know what will convince you that this band is a force of nature if this song doesn’t.
It’s a great live record, not only for the song selection but also for catching the power of a Screaming Females performance. If you can’t see them live, at least pick up this record. It will only make you want to see them live more or see them live again again, but that’s a good thing.
