Tag: #wyeoak

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One For the Road: A Flock of Bright Snocaps

In the spirit of the coming holidays and their bountiful generosity, I wanted to sneak in one more post before I shut things down to prepare my big annual review, so have a couple more morsels to share before the turkey hits the table. They’re a pair of side projects and an album of extras from artists who’ve been here before, the first coming from the beloved Ms Katie (aka Waxahatchee) who this time is taking a break from her torrent hot streak as a country chanteuse to dig a little deeper into her past.

Her recent outings in the aforementioned realm have found her pairing with folks like pal and occasional touring mate Jess Williamson (which resulted in the solid one off album as Plains that landed at #8 on my year end list three years ago), as well as guitarist and critics’ heartthrob  MJ Lenderman. (He played on her last album, the excellent Tiger’s Blood that landed at #2 last year.) She keeps part of the latter intact for this go round, again enlisting the aid of Lenderman, as well as producer/instrumentalist Brad Cook (he helmed her last few albums). Rather than rely on them to help flesh out her southern fried feelings this time, though, she opts to go back to her more raucous indie roots and tap an ally from aaaaaaaall the way back in the beginning, both of her musical life and her regular one — her twin sister.

Before she became a beloved solo artist, pouring out her heartache and pain over an acoustic guitar, Ms Katie played with her sister Allison in a series of  noisier, brasher bands, the Ackleys and P.S. Eliot. The twins released a trio of albums and a handful of EPs in those guises and they very much form the sonic and spiritual center of this latest affair.  Adopting the moniker Snocaps this time the sisters dive back into being a guitar band without an iota of hesitation (or rust), giving us an album that feels like a find from the early 90s and acts like Tracy Bonham, Poe, and Liz Phair. Similar to what she did in Plains Ms Katie trades off singing lead with each sister taking a turn at the wheel here, and as occurred there I tilt towards the ones where Ms Katie’s front and center. 

No matter how good the other tunes are (and they are all relatively solid here) they just don’t shine as much as the ones where that amazing voice is in the forefront.  (It’s a bit like putting a peacock next to a starling — the former is invariably going to overshadow its neighbor, no matter how crafty, sharp, and lovely it is.)  Songs like “Angel Wings” and “Wasteland” would have fit in nicely on Ms Katie’s last two albums, while “Doom” and “You in Rehab” could easily have come from earlier ones. For her part the Allison-helmed “Avalanche” and “Brand New City” are jangly, hooky winners and the lead single “Coast” is pretty catchy as well. Despite relying more heavily on the poppier energy of their previous bands, the rare occasions where they slow down hit almost as hard, as on the understated “I Don’t Want To” and the smoldering “Hide,” which feature scarcely more than the sisters’ hushed duets.  The latter and “Cherry Hard Candy” are two of my current faves, with the latter shimmering like a shard of glass in the sun. Check em both out here:

Joining the Crutchfields in the side project shuffle is Baltimore’s Jenn Wasner, the former frontwoman of the ethereal Wye Oak.  I was a big fan of that band’s early albums and how they married their muddy, moody noise to Wasner’s unique voice (I’ve described it as “a delicate, throaty thing that draws you towards its warmth like a siren through thick fog” before),  but its recent outings had leaned a little too heavily into the synthier side of things so I’d left them to their own devices a decade or so ago. That act has been largely dormant since 2018 (their sixth studio album The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs came out that year), but Wasner has kept herself busy in that span, joining Justin Vernon and recording with Bon Iver while also releasing a pair of solo albums as Flock of Dimes. She just released her third as the latter last month, The Life You Save, and it’s got some winning tunes that are worthy of a listen.

Walking the line between the delicate sensuousness of Beth Orton and the husky domination of Annie Lenox, Wasner’s voice toggles between those inspirations and delivers a number of lovely songs in their vein.  Tracks like “Instead of Calling,” “Long After Midnight,” and “Close to Home” channel the former, while “Keep Me In the Dark” and “Defeat” represent the latter. (With ones like “Theo” splitting the difference and sprinkling in elements of both.) There’s even glimmers of her old band in tracks like “Not Yet Free,” “Pride,” and “The Enemy,” the latter of which grabbed a #FridayFreshness crown over at our sister site on the ‘Gram. It starts to drag a little towards the back of the album, but overall it presents a pretty heady mixture, one certain to intoxicate and swoon. Two of my current faves are the aforementioned “Free,” which showcases the power and pull of Wasner’s voice with minimal accompaniment, while the opening “Afraid” sports a similarly spartan setup, but manages to make it feel luxuriant and extravagant in the process. Give both of em a listen here:

The last one I wanted to share was the latest from Omaha’s Conor Oberst, otherwise known as Bright Eyes. He and his bandmates Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott last appeared on last year’s list, landing at #13 with their 11th studio album Five Dice, All Threes. That was a relatively dark, occasionally worrisome affair as it reflected Oberst’s seemingly shaky headspace at the time. (Albeit with the customary solid craftsmanship and winning melodies.) This one is a slightly sunnier affair, serving us an EP full of extras from those sessions. It inverts the tradition the band used to abide where they’d put out an EP of outtakes before the official album came out, but for whatever reason they’re doing it in reverse this time. (The world is somewhat upside down, I guess…)

The band says the songs “didn’t fit into the puzzle” of the last album and while that’s clearly true for tunes like “1st World Blues” with its strangely buoyant reggae sound and references to the mall, others like “Shakespeare in a Nutshell” and “Sharp Cutting Wings (Song to a Poet)” are every bit as bleary and bleak as the ones that made the cut. The country-flecked “Cairns (When Your Heart Belongs to Everyone)” and “Victory City” could also arguably have found a home there, along with the pair of partnerings with Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra, “Dyslexic Palindrome” and the title track. Perhaps the band was worried the latter might’ve been too similar to the album’s collaboration with Cat Power or just one too many accomplices for an album that already included tags with the National’s Matt Berninger and the So So Glos’ Alex Orange Drink. Either way they’re mostly solid tunes, with my current faves being the aforementioned “Wings” and title track. Segarra brings a stateliness to the latter that works well, while the former is a gutshot cover of Lucinda Williams that’ll bring you to your knees once Leslie Stevens comes in. Give both tunes a spin here:

That’s all for now — I’ll see you in a few weeks for everyone’s favorite tradition, Sunshine’s massive annual look back and year in review! Until then, my friends…

–BS

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Got (Woodstock) ’99 Problems — Postcards from the Edge

Finally recovered from the America-inspired bender I went on for the 4th, celebrating my freedoms and global superiority to the max — just in time to do it again for the Olympics! Before I go back down the rabbit hole, though, had a few items worth sharing to serve as an alternative to the anthem for the forthcoming fortnight. First, had a chance to watch the new HBO documentary on Woodstock 99 last night, the aptly named Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage, and like the festival it portrays, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Things it gets right — there were a lot of bros. A LOT of bros. I believe a study conducted afterward by the prestigious Boston School of Zoology & Migratory Travel determined that 87% of the world’s bro population was present at the festival that weekend, making it the third largest gathering of a single species last century. And they were mostly white. And gropey. And they really enjoyed the more aggressive, harder bands that headlined each night. (The Offspring and Korn the first, Limp Bizkit, Rage, and Metallica the second.)

As someone who was there I can verify these things are all true — also, my GOD was it hot. And dirty. As I was watching I started to get flashbacks and my skin started crawling as I have never been so consistently hot, filthy, and uncomfortable as I was that weekend.  The 100 degree temperatures, the miles and miles of concrete you walked on between stages and sets, the lack of shade or ability to cool down at night. You were camping out in tents or your car, remember — if you could recall where the hell yours was, that is — as the surroundings continued to radiate the day’s heat and you tried to sleep while covered in sweat and grime from the day’s activities.

Add in the soupy morass of piss and shit you had to wade thru as you tried to refill your water and/or rinse some of the grime off you meant you had a lot of people who basically baked for three days straight, stewing in their own juices (if not throwing in loads of mind-altering booze and chemicals on top of that to really perfect the recipe). I remember the promoters turning hoses on the crowd to try and cool them down during the day, but when you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people that only goes so far (and lasts so long).

By the time the weekend was done I had definitely gotten heat stroke — the sun was so incessant (and my attempts to hide from it so ineffective) that my head had swelled about an inch in size. (I discovered this fact when I got back to my buddy’s house and sneezed after that first amazing shower, at which point I felt my entire scalp slide forward like it was riding on a slip and slide — which essentially it was, as my head had started stockpiling whatever moisture it could find up top in an attempt to protect my brain. The picture I took upon realizing this shows my forehead jutting out like Frankenstein, which I found simultaneously hilarious and horrifying.)

So all of that was true and made for a pretty uncomfortable concert-going experience. It was hot, it was dirty, and there were a ton of white bros roaming around. (Also true, there were a TON of topless women — I had forgotten about the tents doing the skin art, but that led to an endless array of women walking around with paint shirts on. I honestly saw more breasts that weekend than I think I have in the subsequent 20 years combined.)

What the documentary gets wrong is when it tries to portray the festival as this overtly aggro/aggressive/racist/misogynistic thing that was doomed to devolve the way it did. Yes, there were a lot of hard rock acts on the bill — but there were also ones like Counting Crows, Dave Matthews, Brian Setzer, Bruce Hornsby, Elvis Costello, and Rusted Root, which are about as far to the opposite side of the spectrum as you can get. Yes, the lineup was skewed more towards more white male-led rockers — but there were also bands like The Roots, Ice Cube, Wyclef, and George Clinton, in addition to the iconic performance by DMX and the three females (Alanis, Jewel, and Sheryl Crow) noted in the documentary. (And as at all festivals they were butting right up against each other — the two acts that preceded the Chili Peppers on that closing night were Creed and Jewel, which has to be among the more bananas transitions in styles and fan bases you’re ever going to see.)

Yes, there was a an uncomfortable amount of groping of women crowdsurfers (and turns out full-on assaults, which was not apparent to us at the time) and a whoooole lotta white people shown saying the N-word in response to DMX’s exhortations — but portraying it as some liberating release of pent-up racism and rapiness isn’t fair or accurate.  All of which makes it sound like I’m defending the festival or saying what happened was acceptable (or enjoyable) — I would no sooner go to this again than I would condone the actions of the idiots who torched the place, looted things, and/or assaulted the female concertgoers. I just don’t think you can say those things were destined to happen and/or caused by some broader societal tolerance of misogyny and racism. (For every asshole/idiot who acted unacceptably there were an equal number if not hundreds more who did not, which diminishes the argument for predestination and inevitability.)

Avoidable? Potentially. Something to be held accountable for? Absolutely. (Although 20 years on this is something the promoters still seemed largely unable to do — in their telling this was a Fred Durst (and maybe MTV) problem vs anything they could have done better.)

So while I wouldn’t do it again, I don’t regret going either.  I remember some fantastic performances — DMX’s in particular stands out (a point validated by rewatching his set after his sudden passing recently). I remember the vast carpet of humanity undulating like a wave during Limp Bizkit’s set — the first time I’d ever seen that happen. (And still probably the largest — it went on FOREVER, just like waves in the actual ocean, which you can get glimpses of in the documentary.) I remember that Saturday bloc of Bizkit, Rage, and Metallica being a pretty epic close to a pretty decent day. (I had forgotten about the plywood surfers until I watched this, but there were LOADS of em out during that stretch, which is another memory.) I remember driving out while the Chili Peppers were playing, as the bonfires started to multiply and things really started to disintegrate. And I remember being hot, dirty, and wanting to shower really, really bad. That, and Frankenstein forehead and nearly boiling my brain.

All in all a fun trip down memory lane! (Eye roll) Worth a watch, though, if only to appreciate how far we’ve come at our festivals since then. (The occasional Fyre Fests notwithstanding…)

We’ll close with a couple new tracks that caught my ear the past couple weeks — first up comes the latest from Woods, whose deluxe release of last year’s Strange to Explain (which landed at #13 on last year’s best of list) came out Friday. It sports five new tracks including this one, “Nickels and Dimes” — give it a listen here:

Next comes the latest from the poppier side of some Norwegian death metalers, Beachheads, who released the single “Jupiter” recently. It’s a bright, catchy little tune — no word on if it’s part of an upcoming release or not, but am glad to have it either way.  See what you think here:

Up third is the rolling celebration for the Indiana label Secretly Canadian’s 25 anniversary, which has spawned some solid singles where their acts offer deep cuts and/or special covers to help raise funds to combat homelessness in their hometown of Bloomington. It’s a good cause that’s yielded some good tunes, including Jim James’ recent cover of Steve Miller, “Seasons.” This early one from Jason Molina’s first Songs:Ohia album is the one that’s gotten stuck in my head, though — a solid tune from someone gone too soon. Check out “Gauley Bridge” here:

Someone else looking back is Pile frontman Rick Maguire who decided to spend part of his pandemic revisiting old songs and demos of the band, recreating and re-envisioning them for a solo album, the upcoming Songs Known Together, Alone. One of those tracks was the first thing he recorded for the band, the demo “Build a Fire,” which he delivers this time as a lovely piano ballad. Really interested in how the rest of the album turns out — in the meantime give this one a ride:

We’ll close with one last band deciding to dive into the archives, Wye Oak, whose album Civilian turned 10 this year. As part of that re-release the band went back to a couple outtakes and demos from those sessions and unearthed this one, the excellent “Electricity.” It would have sounded perfect alongside existing album tracks, harnessing the power and urgency of the band in this era — still my favorite of their many incarnations.  See what you think here:

That’s it for now — until next time, amici…
–BS