Chad VanGaalen – Soft Airplane

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Artist: Chad VanGaalen
Album: Soft Airplane
File Under: Indie Rock
Recommended if You Like: Neil Young, Beck
Featured Track: Willow Tree

I once heard Chad VanGaalen described as the schizophrenic son of Neil Young. And that completely made sense to me.  The comparisons to Neil Young are obvious artistically and personally. Both are famously recluse and seem to favor the self-sufficiency of being a one-man band with a penchant for delicate, wavering vocals and a homemade aesthetic.  

It’s here that the similarities end, however.  As Chad is a much darker character. His lyrics are renown for being morbid and macabre. He seems fascinated by his own death, as the lyrics on ‘Willow Tree’ attest:  “You can take my body / put it in a boat / light it on fire / send it out to sea.” Or the notion of his neighbor eating his dog in his own basement on ‘Cries of the Dead’.

I know, it sounds ridiculously depressing, but you really don’t need to have a morbid fascination to appreciate this album.  There’s a stark beauty in the basement-recorded ‘Soft Airplane’ (as well as a nice cover of The Shins ‘City of Electric Light’). And while it’s true that the basement can be a dark and scary place at times, it can also be filled with wonder and surprise.

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Trendspotting: SF Bands You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of – Part 2

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Deerhoof

Not to be confused with Deerhunter, which I used to do early on, Deerhoof definitely falls into that category of local ‘experimental’ bands. Like most bands in this genre, I usually have one of two reactions – 1) the band is being weird for the sake of being weird or 2) I’m intrigued by the tension created by the music’s unexpected shifts and dissonance. Deerhoof falls into the latter category for me.Listen to ‘Offend Maggie’:

Dreamdate

I don’t know much about Oakland-based girl band, Dreamdate, other than their tunes are short, catchy and make me feel good.  And at the end of the day, isn’t that all that matters?  Listen for yourself and see.

Listen to ‘Why Don’t You Make Me’:

 

 

Film School

San Francisco-based Film School is just the kind of psych/garage rock, newgaze sound I like.  Listening to them is like a game of ‘Name that Tune’ or early 90s musical influence – The Jesus and Mary Chain… My Bloody Valentine… New Order.  Whatever the case, it all sounds good to me.  Even better live.

Listen to ‘Two Kinds’:

 

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Brett Dennen – Hope for the Hopeless

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Brett Dennen’s third album, ‘Hope for the Hopeless‘, is due out October 21 and will be followed by a 11 city mini tour, San Francisco included.  The mini-tour is a return to the smaller venues Brett began playing just five years ago. Dennen and his full band are preparing a larger headlining tour for early 2009. 

Take a listen to the track, ‘Make You Crazy’ featuring Femi Kuti and be sure to catch him at one of these stops.


November 3             Portland, OR             Doug Fir

November 5             Seattle, WA            Triple Door
November 6             San Francisco, CA            The Independent
November 7            Los Angeles, CA            Hotel Café

November 8            Los Angeles, CA            Hotel Café

November 10            Denver, CO            Walnut Room

November 11            Austin, TX            The Continental Club

November 13            Chicago, IL            Schubas

November 14            Annapolis, MD            Ramshead Onstage

November 15            Philadelphia, PA            Tin Angel

November 16            Boston, MA            Passim
November 18            New York, NY            Canal Room

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Brightblack Morning Light (BBML) – Motion to Rejoin

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Artist: Brightblack Morning Light
Album: Motion to Rejoin
File Under: Freak Folk
Recommended if You Like: Devendra Banhardt, Joanna Newsom, Spiritualized
Featured Track: Oppressions Each

Brightblack Morning Light is headphone heaven mood music to me.  It’s trippy, hypnotic and spellbinding. ‘Motion to Rejoin’ is the third album they recorded from a secluded adobe in New Mexico.  And the tempo of the album seems to be indicative of the speed at which BBML’s world moves – slooooooow.

Check out this excerpt from BBML’s artist statement for insight into this eccentric duo:

Previous to this recording, while BBML toured Europe, singer Naybob Shineywater sang each show with an arrowhead in his mouth. Why? To let his own sung words & breathe touch this stone before european ears could hear them. 

“I was not singing for war, but to engage the spirit of the maker of the arrowhead itself, to offer up Peace, that his warrior effort find a new respect, and to help my own warrior spirit sing in Peace,” reveals Naybob.

After returning from the european tour, a chance to move in to an adobe on a secluded enchanted mesa came to Naybob. With only 4 solar panels, it matched his desire to live in a meager way while making the 2nd BBML LP. “Motion To Rejoin” is anti nuclear and coal, but also aligned with the phases of the sun. “With only 4 solar panels you are entirley dependent upon how much the sun is shining,” informs Naybob.

Oh yeah.  Pass the peace pipe, Naybob, and sign me up for your Cafe du Nord shows October 14 and 15.

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My Bloody Eardrums

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I saw My Bloody Valentine at the Concourse in San Francisco last night.  What an experience.  It was insane.  It was LOUD! The loudest show I’ve ever been to.  So loud I felt physically assaulted by the sound waves.  So loud that after jamming my wax ear plugs deeper and deeper into my ear all night I pulled out a little replica of my cochlea.  So loud that the only way to communicate with the friends standing right next to me was via text message.   And even then we had to use an array of hand signals for ‘look at phone’ because our bodies were buzzing so violently from the sound waves we couldn’t feel our phones vibrate.

It was so loud that I went into a panic-induced sweat for the first half of the 20 minute assault of feedback, noise and distortion during the song ‘You Made Me Realise’.  I hesitate to use the word song here.  Perhaps musical composition or social experiment would be more fitting.  It was interesting to look around and see how people dealt with it.  Some clutched their ears in horror, others looked ecstatic and peaceful.  I did notice much of the crowed seemed to have their heads bowed.  I guess these were the ‘shoegazers’.

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Accounting for Taste: Music and Your Personality

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“Michaela was a strong, confident woman who loved mainstream contemporary pop. Her boyfriend was a fan of electronic dance music. When the two had been together for a few months, they decided to take a road trip to Philadelphia so he could meet her parents. The problem was that Michaela’s boyfriend was driving—and thus controlling the radio. “I hated his taste in music,” she recalls. “It was weird and rattled my nerves.” Meanwhile, he was bored by her favorite music. Each felt their artistic choices were superior—and both were convinced of the rightness of their own opinion. They couldn’t agree, and soon they were in a terrible fight. They never did make it to Philadelphia—and their relationship didn’t last much longer, either.”

Thus begins a very interesting article I read this weekend in Psychology Today entitled, “Accounting for Taste” that describes how our interests in books, music and art goes to the core of who we are.   Sounds familiar doesn’t it?  Who hasn’t judged someone based upon the music they keep.  I know I have.  A friend of mine recently broke up with a girl he was dating citing her dislike of Radiohead as one of the reasons. (And can you really blame him?)

The article goes on to describe how the choices we make about music, art and books are based upon a desire to carve out identities for ourselves and articulate the stories of our lives. We look for those stories in others as well.  The author goes on to identify a few key categories that we tend to fall into:

  • The Taste Maker
  • The Thrill Seeker
  • The Self Medicator

I’m a cross between Taste Maker and Self Medicator. What are you?  Read the entire Psychology Today article here.

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Trendspotting: SF Bands You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of – Part 1

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I first really started diving into the San Francisco music scene at SXSW this year, thanks to The Bay Bridged and their efforts in organizing the fantastic SXSW Bay Area Takeover event.  Interesting isn’t it?  There is so much great music in our own backyard and I had to go to Austin to discover it.  It was at that point I decided to start playing in my own sandbox.  And I haven’t looked back since.  The only downside to this strategy is that it becomes harder and harder to rope my music friends into coming to shows with me.  “You want me to see who?  Never heard of them.”

The following series of posts – SF Bands You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of – is a culmination of this research and discovery since March of this year.  There’s a lot of good music coming out of our town – putting San Francisco squarely on the map as a vital music city.  And you should know about it.  Keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list of all the Bay Area bands around.  Just my favorites. In alphabetical order, of course.

60 Watt Kid

One of the things I’ve discovered in my local band research is that there appears to be some momentum in specific genres – like psyche rock and experimental. 60 Watt Kid encompasses a bit of both to me. Their self-titled debut is chaotic, bizarre and intriguing all at the same time.  

Listen to: ‘Cobblestone Sunglasses’

Citay

It’s 1970 in San Francisco and the hippies are back. Or perhaps they never left.  Listening to the flower power psych rock of Citay will certainly transport you back in time with the influences of some of the greats sprinkled all over the place – from Led Zepplin to Jerry Garcia.  It feels good.

Listen to: ‘Little Kingdom’

Cousin Chris

Cousin Chris (aka Chris Schreiber), is a veritable one man band who released his solo effort Moon Paper in July. The album was recorded at John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone Studios. The album is beautiful, with a folky-blues sound and vocals that remind me of Neil Young at times. There’s a good interview with Chris on Stranger Dance.

Listen to: ‘Head Down’

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Beach House – Used to Be

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Beach House is streaming a new track, ‘Used to Be‘, from their forthcoming 7″ single (here we go with the Indie artists and 7″ vinyl again) to be released on October 21.  I love their etherial, haunting, lovelorn music and their latest album Devotion is a late night favorite on my headphones.  The duo is set to play The Swedish American Music Hall this Sunday, September 28.  How cool is that?

Stream ‘Used to Be‘.

Listen to ‘Gila‘:

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