Album Review: KATIE PEDERSON, "LOOSE ENDS"

Very early into “Consistency”, the short introductory track on Katie Pederson’s new album LOOSE ENDS, Pederson sings “…I’ve pondered if youth and freedom hold the key to contentedness and joy”. It is a singular and plaintive moment that opens an album full of more exuberance than one would expect based on the opening track. And it is part of the mystery that makes Ms. Pederson such an interesting songwriter. No, it is not a new gimmick – to frame an otherwise enthusiastic sounding pop record with wistful melancholy. But Ms. Pederson is comfortable enough in her young self to allow her still maturing and even younger self to pull her through the memories of what made her. As she explores her not-too-distant past, LOOSE ENDS unfolds like a collage from that past, and Ms. Pederson reflects on it as if it were comprised of Instagrams from her life. There is a significant amount of looking back on this record, and at very specific times and places. LOOSE ENDS is where Katie Pederson has been and what has brought her to this moment. It is at once a response to, and a shaking off of, the ghosts of her HAPPIMESS EP. 

LOOSE ENDS is an album that can be judged as much by its music as by its confessional lyrics. Ms. Pederson handles upper tempos and ballads with equal amounts of care and skill. Her arrangements are cognizant of time but not bound by them, and there are some very intriguing twists and turns in her transitions. And 

while it would be easy to box her in with her contemporaries, her piano and vocal styles are as reminiscent of a young Elton John as they are a present day Sara Bareilles. She is backed expertly throughout the record by bass and drums, and augmented by trumpet and strings. But the songs, if they had to, could stand naked. They are that good. She says that writing songs is like transcribing “a diary…I can get it out and I don’t have to carry it around anymore.” She gets as giddy about writing a sad song as she does a happy one, saying “it’s this weird juxtaposition of feelings where I am so sad and then I write this song and its good and I want to share it…” 

Recurrent themes of wanderlust, the search for an identity, and the re-capture of youth permeate the album to the point of conceptualism, but never once does Ms. Pederson revert to navel-gazing. The songs are compact and taut, crisply recorded and the entire production has a bounce to it that you don’t notice until you too are bouncing. Ms. Pederson, who wrote the music and lyrics, has a knack for pairing contemplative words with arrangements that she paints in shorter strokes, thus creating songs that sound crafted instead of labored. These contrasts are a catalyst to active listening - and your experience is enriched if you pay attention to the songs as the sum of their parts. On “Wildwood”, Ms. Pederson has mounted a metaphorical Schwinn and is pedaling easily through her old Ann Arbor neighborhood. She misses it, but her longing is not expressed as bitterness or resentment. Instead, she begins her reveal of that Instagram collage at a ten-speed’s pace. She sets up the establishing shot in her movie, and then begins to introduce her character. “Who I Want To Be” is the centerpiece of a five-song cycle that opens the record. Although Ms. Pederson says the conjoined narrative was unintentional, there is so much of the album’s first twenty minutes that reveal her motivations, her experiences, and her trip from twenty-two year old Katie to the present day twenty-five year old Ms. Pederson. As those experiences unfurl, she semi-regularly returns to familiar comfort zones to compose herself in the midst of growing chaos. These are the things, we learn, that make “Katie” who she wants to be. On “Different Couches”, Ms. Pederson allows that during her journey to here, she “lost who it was I was trying to become but I am dying to be free.” 

“I wonder what the future holds”, says Pederson. “Youth has a way of keeping you naïve and curious. But the experiences I went through made me grow up a little bit.” She is reflecting on the LOOSE ENDS songs, most of were written between 2 and 3 years ago. LOOSE ENDS is actually the second pass at most of those songs. The first attempt was marred by questionable engineering and corrupted files. This time, Ms. Pederson put herself in the trust of a small team of hand-picked engineers, producers, and musicians that skillfully avoided cloying studio trickery or nods to pop-music contrivance, but also helped re-energize a clutch of songs whose relevance was beginning to fade. “It’s been cool to listen back to these songs and recognize that it’s in the past.” 

When she is asked about the point at which the past meets the present, she checks the very last song on the record. “I Will Sing”, she says represents the conclusion she came to when her coming-of-age journey ended. A mentor told her “whatever you do you have to keep singing…it’s who you are.” Within the song, “Katie” becomes Ms. Pederson. “One of these days I’ll break free from the cage/Blow all the cast iron off and away.” It is in these final moments of LOOSE ENDS that Ms. Pederson begins also to lay the groundwork for what is to come. As the punchier first half of the album gives way to the more ballad-ish second half, Ms. Pederson’s bike ride is coming to an incline, slowing down the pace of the record and bringing her reflective tendencies to the fore. The songs are still strong, and maybe one more up-tempo number near the end would have been a bonus, but also may have interrupted the natural flow of the record and its accidental narrative. Asked whether the pondering she sings about in “Consistency” has paid off, Ms. Pederson says “it has…and it hasn’t. As you get older more questions pop up and they get harder.” 

Sounds like it’s time for another bike ride.

VESERIA'S 5TH ANNIVERSARY

When I first met Veseria, it was quite literally a dark and stormy night.

That was September of 2013, outside of Radio Radio during the usual between-set-mass-exodus smoke break. People huddled together in the shallow doorway sharing American Spirits, singularly hunched to stave off the rain.

I was a shadow on the music scene, posting hardly viewed YouTube videos, trying to drum up audiences for the shows I thought would appeal to Indy’s need for its own musical voice. These two well-dressed guys greeted me at the door and introduced themselves nice-as-you-please.

“Hi, we’re from Veseria. We just released a new single and we were wondering if you’d consider playing it on your radio show.”

What’s extraordinary about their approach was not its forwardness, or their assumption that I was even who they thought I was. It’s that they knew there was a radio show. At that point, the show too was a shadow – a series of infrequent Facebook posts about something that I wasn’t sure would really happen. It’s a testament to their faith in a music scene that some claim doesn’t really exist, that they would be so quick to support a radio show that didn’t actually exist.

Since then, I have had the pleasure of watching this band flower, sometimes as a witness to private moments and often as an observer of their public celebrations. Veseria has shown me parts of Indianapolis you spend a lifetime searching for, unaware they existed until you stumble across them.



Most importantly, Veseria has made me understand how a town like Indianapolis, for all of our socio-political missteps, is indeed a town where even the most jaded out-of-towner can not only find a purpose but also fulfill that purpose. And for some who had to relocate to meet their life objectives, Veseria provides an umbilical cord to home. One example: Jason Appel, who considers himself Veseria’s biggest fan. And although Appel resides in Atlanta these days, he still considers the Indianapolis quintet to be “my band. They symbolize finding myself.”

The band is marking their fifth anniversary with a mega-music and art show at the Fountain Square Brewing Company on June 19. With a new EP (Songs of War) and their first tour looming, the band is re-visiting not just its history but its place in the current Indianapolis landscape.

“This city runs through our blood and we understand it,” guitarist and vocalist Patrick Roberts says.“It’s a part of us and we’re a part of it.”

Roberts and wife Jen started the band with bassist Corey Lusk and pianist/organist Jake Strakis five years ago at the Roberts' wedding reception.

“She was in her gown, I was in my suit, and we played three songs,” he says.

Flash forward to March 2014 and the band played to a packed Irving Theater to herald the release of their second album Voyager. In between, Veseria has been about moments. And as they open up about the significant points on the timeline, the threads between the band and their city weave into a thick and unbreakable braid.

Lusk recalls a barroom gig at which he first felt “like I was part of something bigger than me, bigger than the band.” For Strakis, it was that Irving gig.

“It was so impressive to see everyone singing along,” he says.

Remembering their final show before a three-month hiatus in December 2013, Patrick recalls the audience response to the new songs.

“It assured me that we were doing the right thing at the right time,” he says. “It was the first time I felt like the city had my back.”

The band doesn’t take that kind of grassroots support lightly, either. Veseria takes part in the annual Great Indy Clean-Up, and they played for free to raise funds to light up Fountain Square’s “You Are Beautiful” sign. It is the band’s almost religious belief in their city which drives much of their music. “She Called Me H**sier,” a non-album single from the Voyager sessions, is an emotional love letter to Indianapolis.

“When they played the ‘This city loves me more than I love myself’ bridge to that song [at the Irving Theater],” Appel says, “I knew Veseria was my band. That resonated with me on another level.”

The members of Veseria view their band's short history in a sort of parallel with Indianapolis’ recent strides to national respectability. Both have gone through upgrades, courted a little controversy, and rebranded themselves for a larger audience. With Voyager, Veseria was no longer a folk-rock band from Hendricks County. They were a louder and more confident rock and roll band with a very clear message.

To the band, Voyager was another in an ongoing string of what Patrick describes as “small goals.” “Our expectations have always been very low,” he says The band agrees that the short term goals keep up the enthusiasm as they prepare for the long game. They hired a manager — Benjamin Cannon from Shine Indy – and initiated a Kickstarter this spring to raise money for their upcoming tour. The regular problems arise: They need a van, they all have full-time jobs, Patrick and Jen have two kids. Their personal realities are not lost in their collective dream.

But their progression has been an organic and natural one, with many small steps forward and few steps back. From dive bars in Brownsburg to the Irving, The Vogue, and the ONC, Veseria’s path mirrors that of many a local band, perhaps a path that leads out of the city to what some perceive as more music and art-friendly towns.

Veseria doesn’t exactly see it that way.

“This city needs people that are gonna fight for it,” Patrick says. “You fight for your family, you stick with the family, and we feel that way about the city. So leaving is not an option.”

Drummer Kyle Perkon cites the small, pocket organizations within the music and arts community as keys to the city’s potential. “They’re supporting each other, the way they go about presenting people that they legitimately care about. If your van breaks down on the way to a gig, I’m coming to get you!”

Lusk agrees: “It’s a small town feel in a big town. It’s our responsibility to take care of each other.


Jen Roberts says that for the short time her and Patrick lived in Bloomington, “it was painful. That distance is what made us realize how much we loved Indianapolis. Coming back, we realized that if we’re going to be part of this community why not make it the best that we can. If that’s what we’re here to do than how do we do that? We want to be a place where artists and our fellow musicians can flourish. We want the good artists to stay here, not to reach a certain plateau and leave.”

One of the band's calling cards is its relentless support of other local musicians. Von Strantz and The Breakes both played their first large scale local gigs on a bill with Veseria.

As Veseria reflects on its latest milestone, they are following their usual process by concentrating on that event, that moment. Songs of War is also very much in that moment.

“It’s what we were compelled to record at this point in the journey. It’s just rock and roll,” Patrick says.

The planned autumn tour will take them to different cities every weekend, another first for the band. Veseria, as a group not just from Indianapolis, but also of Indianapolis – wants to be more than a local band on the road. They want to be ambassadors for the city, and get their out-of-town billmates enthusiastic about coming here to play.

“I love connecting with new people that have at least music in common,” Jen says. “The fact that I can sit down with a new person I’ve never played a show with and they’ve played in A, B, and C city, and talk about my city and the experiences I’ve had here…they get excited about it.”

One of the pleasures of Veseria’s music is its instant likeability. I remember the night my wife first heard them. It was March of 2014, the night of their Voyager release show at the Irving. It was her birthday and we were heading back to Indy after a dinner out of town. I was careful about making too big of a deal about what was going down at the Irving because, after all, it was her birthday. Driving down another desolate Indiana back road, I popped my press copy of Voyager into the CD player. As “Children of Houdini” reached its apex, my wife said “I like this band.” Sensing the opportunity, I asked, “Do you want to love this band?” Then I set the controls for the heart of Irvington.

For another five years and beyond, I hope Veseria continues to stand their ground at that spot where our city and our music meet the rest of the world, at the crossroads, where they’ve always been.


Originally published in NUVO

VON STRANTZ

To borrow a line from Joni Mitchell, I am staring a hole in my scrambled eggs.

Sitting in a diner on the far west side of Indianapolis, I am transfixed. And I don’t want to move. Any shift in the air, any change to my personal-space bubble, would be a distraction, and I don’t want to miss anything.

I’m listening to “Troubled Souls”, the new single from the Northern Indiana collective Von Strantz, and I am trying to imagine a world in which all musicians or those who call themselves musicians infuse their art with a tenth of the emotion that Jess Strantz and her vagabond band have put into this big sky of a four minute song.

The song begins innocently enough; a simple acoustic phrase gives way to the first verse, bathed in a thick vocal harmony. “We’ve entered in as troubled souls/we come and go unnoticed”. It’s the sound of a band waking up at their next destination and venturing out into unchartered territory, brave and crazy and rolling its rhythm across a vast prairie that seems to be theirs for the taking. It’s impossible to listen to “Troubled Souls” only once. It’s the anti-thesis to almost everything that’s wrong with music right now.

“Troubled Souls” leads off Narrative: Chapter 1, the first of three planned EPs the band will release in the coming year, with chapters 2 and 3 coming in summer and fall respectively.

Jess Strantz is on the horn from Mishawaka. “We’re hoping that people will figure out what we’re trying to do”, she says when I ask her about the intentional or accidental thematic linkages between the Narratives EPs. “There are multiple stories that intertwine with each other. I wish we could record the whole blasted thing in one sitting but I’m glad we’re taking time to put it out because it will take on more shape”. It is fitting that Strantz is approaching the Narrative project this way. Much like the band’s live performances, the audience’s interpretation of their music will be unique to the individual listener. Von Strantz’s music is a variable and the depth of its meaning all depends on your baseline.

One thing that is universal about Von Strantz is that they get their audience’s attention before they even start playing. At their Indianapolis gigs, where they’ve shared bills with bands like Veseria and Coup D’eTat, Von Strantz’ violins, cello and upright bass got people talking about them instead of the usual between-set banter. And once they start their set, and Jess’ voice breaks the ice, everyone – even the smoking-patio dwellers – stops what they’re doing.

“I am in love with that woman’s voice…Dear Lord”, says Veseria’s Jen Roberts. It’s a sentiment that gets repeated throughout our little music community quite often. When you see them, musician or not, you want to know when they’ll be back. Everyone knows Von Strantz and thinks of them as one of ours, not some out of town band that plays here occasionally. They are on that short list of bands we wish we could adopt.

It’s hard to mark a point of reference for this band. You can easily hear geographic and cultural influences, but when someone asks “who do they sound like”, you’re stumped. They don’t sound like anyone, they sound more like…a place.

Jess Strantz’s place started in Houston, Texas. Her dad’s job saw him taking positions all over the country, and the family went with him. Her mom home-schooled and eventually she found herself in the South Bend area. It was there that Von Strantz came together and still calls it home base. During a “dry season” in which she was recovering from an injury, Jess started writing songs that tilted away from the piano-based pop-rock she had been doing. “I wanted to write music that would sound good all by itself, but also with multiple arrangements. The music just lends itself to whatever set-up we have.”

“We played our first gig in 2012. It was me with a string quartet and it went really well.” With the acceptance of the local music community quickly under their belt, they put out an EP in January 2013. Featuring cinematic style meditations like “Death…Or So You Think” and “1793”, the VON STRANTZ EP about as far from the typical freshman release as a band could hope to get. Already sounding like a band that knows its way around the stage and the studio, they “inherited a few more musicians…and from February (2013) until now we’ve been playing as many shows as possible”

Narrative Chapter 1 and its sister EPs were recorded as a seven piece. The goal is always to perform in that configuration, “but sometimes it’s a 6 piece, a 5 piece, a 4 piece….”.

The new material is a testament to the group’s road tan. The songs sound of a larger space. “Troubled Souls” and “Nothing Good In Me” come across as a new form of spiritual, and would have people testifying in a stifling rock club or a desert-blown tent revival. There is more of a stomp to the new songs, a slightly rockier vibe. But it doesn’t undermine the gentle beauty of the songs. There is some intricate electric guitar, mixed with prominent and lilting phrases from the string section. Strantz’s voice beckons and soars, delivering lyrics that convey both a curiosity and an understanding. It’s a complex world, and Strantz’s lyrics ask questions about what we might be if that complexity was stripped away, and life was simpler.

Strantz says the songs are the result of a communal effort. “We meet in my home, an old school building in the middle of nowhere,” she says with a laugh. “A lot of time they bring their influences with them and everybody is so different. Josiah (Gaut, guitar) loves progressive rock and metal, Nick (Leatherman, bass) likes Motown and surf rock, and the string section….I am not even on their level…its another world. Kelsey (Arntzen, violin) loves alternative rock and metal, Kristen (McDonald, violin) and Isiah (Brock, cello)– a lot of the music they tell me about I don’t know anything about. Alyssa (Neece, violin) loves modern contemporary classical arrangements.”

The classical elements seem to suit the bands overall charter. “Me and Nick and Josiah are the ‘rock and roll’ half of the band, and the string players are used to working together and want to make a piece of music sound as beautiful as possible together. So it’s a perfect marriage where both aspects of the band are looking to make our music sound as beautiful as possible and that’s why it works.”

To put Von Strantz into any kind of bucket right now would be stifling to the listener. The dividends are greater if you listen to this band with a mind as open as their music. It’s deep, yes, but also very likeable. You don’t find yourself singing along right away, but eventually. This is music that has to seep, like a fine tea, into your soul. Before you know it, you’ve disengaged from the regular distractions and the even the ones that nag you at the periphery…and your lost in Von Strantz. And you don’t want to be found.

And, your eggs are cold.

Narratives Chapter 1 and the Von Strantz EP are both available via bandcamp (vonstrantz.bandcamp.com) and are highly recommended.

Support independent music live and local.

Originally published by DoitIndy

Album Review: VESERIA, "VOYAGER" (2/6/2014)

“It’s been a long time since I’ve written. My shovel was buried in the snow and I had to dig it out.”

By the end of this album, you’re gonna know their name.

When Music Notes last spoke to Veseria’s Patrick Roberts, he was tracking his vocals for the band’s then in-the-works second album. Usually at that point in the recording process, bands have already rehearsed their self-aggrandizing bullshit. They say things like “this is the best album we’ve ever made”, “everything we’ve ever done has built up to this” and “it’s one for the fans”. Anything to get people excited about a project they already know ain’t that spectacular, and that they are most likely already bored with.

“We can’t wait for people to hear this record.” That’s what Patrick Roberts said when I asked him about the band’s approaching collective sigh over completing the album. It was about as sincere a statement as one could hear. They’d spent most of 2013 writing and recording VOYAGER, workshopping the songs live, giving people small appetizers of what was to come. They released a single last fall called “Reach A Little Further”, a pleasing and hummable rock-folk number of instant likeability that was leaps and bounds from what they had done before. But based on that song, nobody could have predicted what they were about to do.

VOYAGER is a towering achievement. It is a mature and confident record of well-crafted and near-perfectly executed songs. It shows a band in full bloom and with a keen self-awareness. Ten minutes into it and you know why they couldn’t wait for you to hear it. It’s a magnificent and very complete album of monumental beauty. There are moments of teetering emotional depth that would tear your heart out if they weren’t leveled by the band’s penchant for subtle whimsy. Musically, VOYAGER is a two-act play split between Veseria’s love for punked-up folk and its mastery of plaintive road songs. “It’s a marriage of the two”, says Patrick now. Indeed, as the album progresses, it becomes impossible to divorce the band’s two personalities from each other. And as they start to meld at the middle of the album, Veseria’s rockier stomp and its “more sensitive side” reveal more than just another young band in touch with itself. It’s not a masterpiece, although you can be sure that’s coming. VOYAGER is an important signpost. The point at which the band found its voice, opened up its mouth, and roared.

For all of its youthful exuberance, VOYAGER is not a celebratory record. It is, at its heart, a treatise on Veseria’s generation. A generation who’s mainstream spokespersons have earned accolades for social media whining about their sense of entitlement and their dismay with a socio-economic system they only think they understand. Patrick Roberts, who wrote ten of VOYAGER’s thirteen songs, chooses to examine and expose his sometimes misunderstood generation, laying it’s foibles bare so that us oldsters can finally understand them. VOYAGER’s first proper track “Children of Houdini” wastes no time putting down some hard truths about Veseria’s “brothers and sisters”:

“For we are lost and we are frightened/Yet we claim to be enlightened alone in unending space”

With its pounding relentless rhythm, “Houdini” is also a call to arms, and to witness the dark magic we have created in which people burst into the light in an instant and fade to black just as swiftly:

“So light up the stages, come all ages/
We’re going to show you something you haven’t seen before/And won’t ever see again”

It is a perfect opener, for both the album and Veseria’s upcoming gigs. This song could light up the biggest arenas, with it’s exploding choruses thrust forward by drummer David Bailey’s snare drum flams, and lead singer Jen Roberts’ bewitching vocals – the song invites you in, embraces you, and then fires you out of a cannon into the rest of the album.

On “The Dastardly”, Jen Roberts gives Patrick’s (yes they are husband and wife) lyrics an after-hours torch song recitation. Jen Roberts doesn’t make a habit of purring or cooing. She is in an elite and unique class of twenty-something female lead singers in that she sings like a woman, not a girl. In her hands, lines like “my blood is made of whiskey and my bones were built to shake” and “by the end of this song you’re gonna know my name” are slithery tendrils crawling through your skin. And as “The Dastardly” evolves into a foot-stomping Sunday gospel breakdown (handled expertly by pianist Jake Strakis and bassist Corey Lusk) its main theme “I think we’re being lied to” becomes a sermon very few will have trouble relating to.

Jen Roberts takes some serious chances on “F=MA (All Your Forces)”, a dizzying and chaotic rush powered by “bottles of confidence“. She barely has time to breathe on this song, with it’s frantic pace and machine-gun vocals, it’s like a modern day “Shattered” in a Bret Easton Ellis novel – one of those blurred and wobbly memories of parties past. The band rocks at its hardest on “F=MA”. Bailey is breaking sticks, Patrick Roberts is going for fretboard noise, and the song has the kind of big hard rock ending that you wish would go on for a few more minutes…or hours.

On her self-penned songs, Jen Roberts plays it even less safe than she does on her husband’s songs. “I just can’t enough of you/My heart aches for your touch”, she sings on “Under The Influence”. Her ability to take a remarkably simple sentiment and make it sound like she was the first to think of it is at the heart of her ability as a singer. She twists lines like that around you throughout the record in swirls of blue smoke and chipped nails.

As the record reaches into it’s second, rootsier half, Patrick Robert’s again opens up his generations veins, but with lyrics that are at once universal and deeply insular. “Seminary Song II”, “Seminary Song III” and “Hendricks County” form a suite of personal contemplations that are instantly relatable, backed by versions of Americana that too have sewn their way into our musical bloodstream. On “Hendricks County”, “people send me letters as if I’m on the run/Sometimes I think I am.” These songs build from the earthen baselines of the psyche and ask questions about what we have built on top. Are we accepting untruths because they have become societal mantras? Are the honest and righteous forever banished to the wastelands? Can we at least agree that our experiences with love, heartbreak, joy and suffering can bind us? It’s heady stuff for a little indie band from the Midwest. I remember similar muso head-scratching about other “little bands” from Athens and Montreal.

As VOYAGER veers towards closure, the band hits the barroom stage with a mighty wallop in Jake Strakis’ “In The End” – a joyous Jerry Lee piano romp complete with tinkling glasses and closing time raucousness – because even a band that is questioning the stability of the human condition needs to let off some steam once in a while. And if there is a better way to close an album of VOYAGER’s ambition than “Maybe I’m Deaf Maybe I’m Blind” please clue me in. For the first time, a VOYAGER protagonist seems conciously distant – reluctant even to participate in the game of human interaction. Jen Roberts is back at the piano bar, its late, and the cigarettes and the whiskey have taken their toll. She uses that. She practically chokes forcing it to work for her. By the end, as the band erupts around her, she has knocked all the raw emotion of this song to the ground and she is throttling it, banging its head against the hardwood in an attempt to extricate herself from it. But it’s futile because emotion is an inescapable part of being human. She’s part of it. Veseria is part of it. And VOYAGER makes us all part of it.

VOYAGER will be different things to a lot of people. It will be an album people turn to in hours of need and times of joy. It will be quoted by lovers in boozy late-night texts. It will be a source of anthems at gatherings for the disenfranchised. It will also be an album people gleefully share with their friends, at first chastising them for having not heard it, and then in hushed tones telling them “I can’t wait for you to hear this record.”

VOYAGER is released on March 1. Check Veseria’s Facebook book page for info on the albums official unveiling.

Spring Hopes Eternal

Luckily, VOYAGER is an early entry in a busy musical springtime for Indianapolis. I got a chance to hear the split-collaborative single from Minute Details and Square Social Circle and as impossible as its seems, that combination actually works. These two very different bands have recorded three songs, one of which is a big favorite of mine (MD’s live staple “I Am A Monster”). SSC’s contribution “Blood and Treasure” is a serious piece of country-rock. It’s a fun collaboration, and its no throw-away. The single sees its official release on March 28. There is so much more music coming down the road. In the studio right now readying spring/summer releases, Phunkbot, Coup D’etat, Audiodacity, Smoke Ring, Bizarre Noir, Verdant Vera, Minute Details, Dead Birds Adore Us, James Kramer (with Ryan Koch), Dead Ringers. Remember to “like” your favorite bands on Facebook, and that will lead you to all the bands they like, and that will lead you to treasures of which you could not possibly imagine.

Rest in peace, Daniel Jaffke.

Rest in peace, Paul Ash.

CAPTAIN IVORY

It’s always somewhat gratifying to hear about a young band heading into what is always the most exciting phase of any group’s early years. “This Friday we’re hitting the studio, we’re hoping to have something out by Christmas”, reports Robbie Bolog – guitarist of Detroit band Captain Ivory. “We’re pretty excited.”

Based on the band’s two available singles and a floor-shaking performance at Indy’s Radio Radio back in August, the prospect of a full Captain Ivory album is pretty exciting. With individual influences like AC/DC, Elton John, Miles Davis and The Clash, Captain Ivory arrived at its collective bar-room blues stomp quite organically. “Both me and (lead vocalist) Jayson (Traver) had a pretty strong blues and classic rock background. Justin (Leiter, drums) is a little more punk-rock influences but he gelled with us on those influences.”

So, it started, like so many soon-to-be great bands started, with the blues. They even dress like “blues-guys.” But they defy the “if it walks like a duck” adage by incorporating both classic and modern rock into their sound, and steer clear of the white-boy blues stereotypes. “There’s some Radiohead in there, some Zeppelin, some White Stripes,” says Bolog, “we’re all over the place.”

Together only fourteen months, Captain Ivory has spent a majority of that time cutting its road teeth. Fifty shows in and they’ve moved beyond “driving four cars to a show, we finally have a van and a trailer.” And they have more than enough material for the album they are about to start recording.

The band’s current points of reference should be serious contenders for inclusion. “False Remedy” is a slithering blues with a radio-filtered vocal and a Steve Zwilling organ line that recalls those great old Animals singles. There is a two-part dissonant harmony guitar solo near the end of the song that would make bass player Alex Patten’s hero Miles Davis stand at attention.  “Six Minutes to Midnight” is a 70’s boogie workout punctuated by a Bolog slide-guitar seminar and an enticing gospel finish. Jayson Traver’s vocals call to mind Robert Plant, but don’t feel like an attempted imitation. Justin Leiter’s drums and Patten’s bass are out front, a blues-jazz boot of fusion that kicks every measure forward. The songs are peppered with riffs that in less learned hands would be punishing frat-house cocktails, but served by Captain Ivory they go down like the smoothest whiskey.

Captain Ivory, especially at this stage in their development, finds itself facing the challenge of so many of their Mid-western contemporaries. “This is what we’re going to do for a living, and everybody’s on board for that”, says Bolog. But in their home-base of Detroit "...it can sometimes be difficult to find bands we gel with well musically, (and) we play a lot elsewhere”.

This week, “elsewhere” equates to Indianapolis. Captain Ivory will be on the bill Friday November 1 at Radio Radio with Hero Jr. and The Hawkeyes. Doors at 8, $10 in advance/12 at the door.

R.I.P and F.U.

“It’s about to get real”, Cheetah Chrome (Jan. 2013)

I was probably nine or ten years old the first time I heard “Walk on the Wild Side”. It was the mid-70s. I had two teen-aged brothers and we lived in New York City, so there was always a radio tuned to WNEW, 102.7 on the FM dial. I remember it being a summer weekday morning. I was free of school and too young to have a job. We lived on Coney Island, steps from the Atlantic Ocean and the famous Boardwalk. Even from the high-rise windows of our apartment it felt like you could reach out and touch the hot sand. You certainly could taste the salt water in the air. I didn’t yet understand the graphic sexual language of the “Walk on the Wild Side”, so I honed in on its music. It’s stand-up bass line synched with the rhythm of the early morning tide, their short waves rising and crashing to the shore.  Those bone-chilling violins were like the Atlantic wind whistling through the girders of the Cyclone roller coaster. The gyrating “doo-do-doos” of the Thunderthighs, well, it would still be a few years before I could analogize those. “Walk…” was among the first rock and roll songs to stick in my head for the long run. A few years later, mired deeply in a predictable KISS fixation, I never pretended that they lived in anything but a world of sexual fantasy. But “Walk on the Wild Side”, that was a piece of New York City street reality. That was the New York I wanted to observe as I got older. It didn’t sound romantic or enticing but it sounded so….real.  And kids need reality because this is a fucked up and cruel world that sometimes seems to be aligned against them in unimaginable ways.

I’m not into hero worship. My dad was my only hero. But I have been inspired and enlightened by many authors, artists, and musicians. So when Lou Reed passed away this weekend, quietly and with dignity, I briefly reflected on that moment almost four decades ago when I first heard his voice.  And then I was reminded by the other voice I heard come out of the radio that day. That voice inspired me in other ways. It sparked my interest in radio. I would hear that voice over the years, interviewing some of the most brilliant musicians of my generation and introducing the songs that would become part of the soundtrack of our lives.  It was the voice that told me John Lennon was dead. And this weekend, he died as well. But his death, sadly, is merely a symbolic one – and most undignified. And his entire legacy is now but a mere footnote to his long-held dark secret. 

I’m not into hero worship because heroes can let you down. I’ll always have “Walk on the Wild Side”.  And thank goodness for that, because adults need reality, too. 

Originally published by DoitIndy

GOLIATHON: FUTURE HEROES OF PROG

I am sitting at a table in the storeroom of a machine shop that, for the lateness of the hour, is suspiciously and fully operational. Beyond the storeroom door, lathes are spinning, torches are welding, sparks are flying. If this weren’t Weeping Elvis, you’d be excused for assuming that I am about to be tortured by a drug cartel.

But this is a rehearsal space, carved out of a mountain of ancient desktop computers and electrical components, and I am here to meet Goliathon – an unsigned Indianapolis quintet that has just released one of the best albums of the year. Goliathon exists in a very specific and difficult “now.” A now in which the conventional Sirius XMU wisdom dictates that all music is made on laptops and iPads in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. But this group of twenty-something life-long friends are challenging that wisdom with power, volume and a collective love for vintage gear and classic prog.

Pretend It’s Not Happening, the band’s second album, comes from a specific rock and roll moment: when guitars ruled the world (Goliathon has three); when drums and bass were physical instruments that people actually played; when vocals tore at the throat; when bands played together. “No one wanted to record the band live,” says manager Sherry Cole. Eventually, they found a sympathetic producer in Ryan Koch, who recorded Pretend… in his converted horse barn known as The Arkbarn. And it doesn’t take much of a listen to opening track “Diogenes,” to decipher this band’s lineage. From the Buck Dharma-style opening figure that yields to some major Alex-and-Geddy-style riffage, you’re more than a minute into a mini-overture before vocalist Chris Probasco finally escorts you into Goliathon’s world:

“I’m eating my hair up here/It’s in my mouth and my throat
/I might be looking you square in the eyes/But I think I might choke”

Yes, this is prog. A new type of accelerated, intense, emotional prog. For the next 36 minutes, Probasco and his bandmates, guitarists Christian Wren and Derek Kendall, bassist/keyboardist Colby Holmes and drummer Matthew Allan Fields, grab you by the collar and weave you at high speed through a frenzied and chaotic open air bazaar of progressive hard rock. There is a riotous element to much of their music. At specific moments in songs like “White Frozen Wasteland” or “Make Tracks” — when they are in full roar — it feels like they have turned on each other…like they are pummeling each other. Wren says that the chaos is an unexpected by-product of a compositional formula, one that marries well-rehearsed interplay to an improvisational spirit. Indeed, the three guitars are in a kind of independent lock-step at times, while the bass and drums – those wonderfully organic bass and drums – tether them, so even if they were to leave the atmosphere they would still be bound together.

Things are difficult for this band. They are a progressive-hard rock band in a city that barely recognizes either genre. What’s more, they have arrived at a time when the new creation and distribution models have reached a nadir, and the prospect of “making it” seems to be right back where it was 30 years ago. Which means that Goliathon — despite the accomplishment of this album that is wise beyond its years — is mostly on their own. And their struggle is indicative of how things haven’t changed much in this increasingly crowded market. As recently as a few years ago, the Internet was seen as the hammer that broke down the walls to previously unreachable fan bases. Now, the sad reality is as it’s always been – dynamic and exciting young bands like Goliathon are getting lost in the static created by “Gangnam Style.” But, the group sticks to a loose plan for their immediate and long term future. Colby Holmes recalls seeing Baroness on three successive tours as they climbed up the bill each time. Probasco cites Porcupine Tree, a legendary band with a small but sustainable following as another business role model. It’s not about living in a mansion, says Probasco, it’s about achieving “recognition and acknowledgement.”

With that also comes the challenge of how they are perceived. Early on, “we were wrapped up with metal bands,” says Fields. Probasco then recalls their very first write-up in which the reviewer altogether dismissed the metal tag. So, there is a concern that the band could again get cloistered into a genre that doesn’t fit them. A mention of the “p” word gets immediate nods all around, albeit with a humble disclaimer. “Cinematic Rock” is the term they all agree on. But their overt influences – Rush, Opeth, King Crimson, to name a few – are openly revealed.

Goliathon knows they’re good, but they are cautiously realistic about it. Even when prodded about how Pretend It’s Not Happening betrays how confident they might be in secret, Christian Wren offers that “as soon as you think you’re good enough, you’re done.” Probasco completes the statement, “Everybody hits plateaus…none of us want to plateau.” Whatever brashness this band has earned, they save it for the stage and the recording studio. Where so many albums have their moments, Pretend… is a 37-minute moment. It’s a rich tapestry of scenes where classic 70s rock meets its progressive predilections head-on. There is no sprawling 17-minute track (they already did that on their first album). It’s mostly four-to-six-minute mini-epics that you wish wouldn’t end. And when they do end, you can’t believe how much has happened in such a short time. And its not all rocket-propelled flights of prog. While the chops are on full display in the break-neck gymnastics of “Frozen White Wasteland” and “Riot In Cairo” – on other songs the band allows their more complex guitar inter-twinning’s to evolve into balls-out, riff-driven rock assaults punctuated by Wren’s multi-influenced guitar solos and Probasco’s sax. Derek Kendall brings a Marr-Frusciante punctuation to the mix, giving the guitars a very pronounced third dimension. Fields and Holmes push the other three through the roof and into space — their influences proudly bubbling in a thick stew of ever-shifting rhythms, galloping bass and playful keyboards. On the album’s gentler tracks, Goliathon reveals some closer-to-home aspirations in the funereal closer “Sing” and the Zeppy blues workout “One Way In One Way Out.” 

Within all of that, Probasco’s vocals — born of an affection for James Brown — shine through the prism of the great hard-rock vocalists. He rises above, but never overpowers. His delivery is so sincerely urgent you want to reach out your hand, but at the same time you want to see if he can wriggle himself free. He says his lyrics come from an open mind, not so much a dark and brooding one. Lyrics like “Claw at the pipe/Claw at the gutter” from “Make Tracks” or “Let the needle grind me into long black shiny slivers” from “Frozen White Wasteland” speak to a societal dysfunction that Probasco doesn’t believe to be his own. He admits that the lyrics take on different meanings even to him.

One particularly telling lyric from “Jettison” — “I’m on the torn and ragged edge of some black and bitter feelings/But things are coming ’round” — reveals an optimism shared by the entire band about their future, despite their current situation and some recent setbacks. At the moment, all of Goliathon have day jobs. Pretend Its Not Happening was partially funded via a Kickstarter campaign. They came back from their self-booked and self-financed tour completely broke. They have amassed some great stories about sleeping in vans, lack of funds at a toll booth and an acrimonious split with a founding member. “He took the band’s money, but we took the songs,” says Holmes.

And those songs… There’s a moment near the end of “Howl,” the album’s most dizzying song, where the band is in full scream as if being dangled over a jagged and boiling precipice. Probasco, barely above the controlled madness, screams “Is this what you need?”

Yes. It is.

Pretend It’s Not Happening is available now via CD Baby, ITunes and Spotify.


Originally published by WEEPING ELVIS

KISS’s “Destroyer (Resurrected)” … and Revisited

I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear that an album has been “remixed” – I am reminded of that old line about re-fried beans, which essentially points out that the beans weren’t fried correctly the first time. Such is the nature of the lumbering music business that “remixed” albums have become a cottage industry. I liked it better when they were “remastering” everything because at least you knew what you were getting – some enhanced bottom end and a louder overall signal.

But this remixing business is a crapshoot. It’s a little dodgy to expect that a producer or engineer, or even the band, would remember what they wanted the album to sound like had they been paying attention to the mixing desk instead of the standard recording studio distractions. I mean, does Bowie wake up every five years and say, “Wow, Iman, I just realized that Ziggy sounds like shit…I better get Ken Scott on the phone…again.” Of course he doesn’t. But you can count on a re-issue of “Ziggy” every five years all the same. The fact is that very few people ever really complain about how those old albums sound. And at the end of the day, the only people who go out of their way to praise the new versions are record company accountants and PR people.

So it should not be any great shock that Universal has elected to release a remixed version of KISS’s landmark 1976 album Destroyer.

For my generation, who in 1976 and 77 were just about getting ready to pop out those first pit-hairs, Destroyer and its follow-up, Rock And Roll Over, were our emancipations from our brothers’ record collections. And those albums rescued us from crap like the Bay City Rollers. And in the pre-punk days of 1976, KISS weren’t just freaks in make-up singing “Rock And Roll All Nite.” They were forging massive alter egos to compliment their massive actual egos. Destroyerwas the introduction to this superhero KISS, the lunchbox KISS, the Phantom of the Park KISS (editors note: it was a made-for-TV movie starring the band). For those of us who were just learning the ropes, that album told us everything we needed to know. It narrates, in subtle-as-Godzilla terms, exactly where the artists and their fans stood; a million miles apart socially, and claustrophobically close emotionally, with dysfunction to spare. Destroyer, for anyone still denying it, is an epic concept album with a clear narrative. I always thought that the only improvement they could make on it was to have the guy in “Detroit Rock City” head-on collide with the rock-stars limousine from “Do You Love Me.” That would have been a wonderfully tragic ending.

The progenitors of Destroyer, however, thought that any improvements should be of the sonic variety. So now we have Destroyer (Resurrected). Album producer Bob Ezrin (Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd) has taken his 63-year-old ears back to tapes he made when he was 27, with a goal towards putting yet another Koi pond in Gene Simmons’s east-bedroom shoe closet. I know that sounds cynical. But when was the last time you listened to Destroyer and thought there was something wrong with the way it was mixed? Nevermind, here’s your chance to buy it again for the first time.

Packaging wise, it’s a bare bones release – one bonus track (“Sweet Pain” with Ace Frehley’s original solo) and no ephemera. Considering they could have released a ginormous boxed set, you have to respect Universal for keeping this one simple and affordable. The album cover art has been changed to the originally submitted “brown cover,” which the label thought was too violent. This version makes Ace Frehley look even more effeminate than he did on the familiar “blue” cover, if that’s even possible.

Sonically, Resurrected wins big when the source material has something to prove. At the time, the first three tracks comprised some of the most challenging music the band had attempted. The cultural moment encapsulated in that 13 minutes would soon explode into a global phenomenon that made those guys “living-off-interest” wealthy and gave millions of kids a band they could trust right into middle age. And if it all ended with that last piece of noise at the abrupt ending of “God Of Thunder,” I highly doubt that many of the second stoner generation would have noticed. That’s the power of those three songs. And that power is now re-focused with an improved stereo spread. Ezrin holds back the big reveal until the drums come in on “Detroit Rock City,” which now comes barreling down at you headlights ablaze. Paul Stanley is driving and you’re in the passenger seat, air-guitaring the riff and bracing for impact. I’ll admit it’s an exhilarating ride. But towards the end, it becomes evident that the remix isn’t really adding anything at the elemental level, it’s all re-balancing and EQ done with a paint roller. And about halfway through “King Of The Night Time World…” you realize that’s all you’re getting.

The revelations to come were better off unrevealed. Ezrin may have overdone the drums a bit – they are overly compressed and the high-hat practically devours a few verses. In some places, the kick drum still sounds like the one at the merry-go-round. But the vocals are right up front and the guitars have presence to burn. On the harder tracks, the guitars have a live-in-the-studio feel. The backup vocals by Ezrin’s kids are a bit louder on “God of Thunder,” which changes the overall effect. It used to sound like they were trailing the demon through the wasteland, perhaps as his minions. Now it sounds like little kids mocking Gene Simmons. Again, there’s no a-ha moment, and the remix starts to feel perfunctory. This is a big bummer because Destroyer, like so many classic records which we apparently now must re-evaluate, is not without its problems in the content department. As we all know, something terrible happens after “God Of Thunder,” and it’s called “Great Expectations.” If the former is this band’s “I Am The Walrus” then the latter is its “Mr. Moonlight.” It would be a year before Bat Out of Hell would validate the inclusion of shmaltz like “Great Expecations” on an otherwise solid hard rock album like Destroyer. Also, Simmons ain’t Meat Loaf. He can’t sing. And the vocal arrangement of this track isn’t exactly “Rock and Roll All Night.” There are subtleties and lilts that a singer of Simmons’s incredibly limited ability shouldn’t go near. Furthermore, if Simmons even has a key, this song is a parsec away from it. But when Simmons croaked his way through it out of my brother’s Fisher speakers back in late ’76, the songs’ production quality and poor execution took a back seat to what the song was actually about.

This is where the remix fails to improve on the original. Instead, it unearths the crap as it polishes the turd. Destroyer’s increased musicality and Ezrin’s re-mix put KISS’s limited abilities on display much like the blow-off in a sideshow; you’ve paid the extra nickel to see something exotic and shrouded in mystery – and when they pull back the curtain it’s just a pig fetus in a jar – well preserved, but nothing special.

Thankfully, Resurrected doesn’t toy with Destroyer’s emotional heart, which has always been laid bare on the album’s second half. The first three songs on side two are all about setting the world on fire, driving you insane and shouting it out loud. Ezrin wisely didn’t overly futz with the mix here, so those sentiments remain intact. But the upgrade makes them sound like they were recorded in 1984 instead of 1976, which gives the impression that these songs were written much later on the KISS timeline. So “Flaming Youth” and “Shout It Out Loud” come off sounding like show-tunes written by a Broadway hack — their angst insincere in the hired hands of someone completely disconnected from the subject matter. And that reduces them to kitschy paeans to the KISS moment, and makes them seem contrived when you need them to be genuine.

But at least the guitars are in the room now — and “Flaming Youth’s” 7/8 break, which always sounded out of place, now seems like a moment of prog-rock awakening from a band that lived in 4/4. The harmony-stacked guitar intro to “Shout It Out Loud” borders on lush, and Simmons’ bass gets a Pro-Tools nudge that makes you remember that it’s actually a THREE-part harmony. “Sweet Pain” is still harmless filler – a naive S&M song with a gospel breakdown. The alternate version at the end of the program offers Ace Frehley’s rejected guitar solo, which is no less pedestrian than the Dick Wagner solo they used on the original. Resurrected again defeats its purpose by shedding light on how KISS was now becoming a “thing” – on how the focus was on the commodity and its marketability.

If nothing else, Ressurected exposes why they never went down the Destroyer path again. In the end, the lunchboxes won out and we got “Tomorrow and Tonight.” And you can make a case that it all started when Ace Frehley’s solos started getting cut.

If the communal, long-haired party anthems on Destroyer were KISS hocking some early spit into punk’s wind, then “Beth” was the loogie heard ‘round the world. Ezrin ran roughshod over the KISS mythology with an over-the-top string arrangement your grandmother would love. Nobody in the band even plays on it. But get this; “Beth” sounds gorgeous, and not at all out of place. It feels like the album actually builds up to “Beth.” Ezrin, obviously protective of his masterstroke, does finally manage to make the experiment pay off – the orchestra has gone from embarrassing to enveloping. Wagner’s acoustic guitar is felt throughout the mix and gently rises up at the end. Peter Criss’s performance is the best vocal on the album – you have to wonder why this guy didn’t sing “Great Expectations.” (That was a trick question. NOBODY should sing “Great Expectations.”)

Closer “Do You Love Me” does little to dispel the feeling that the entire second half of Destroyerwas some lame attempt at rock theater. It ends the album on a note of such narcissism it makes you wish for my aforementioned alternate ending. At least it would have been symbolic, because the KISS that everyone knew up to that point was about to be smeared across the pavement by a speeding tractor-trailer full of KISS merch.

Destroyer was a divisive record for KISS. It won and lost them fans, both for obvious reasons. It gave them their biggest hit single in their most uncharacteristic song. It sowed the seeds for Ace Frehley’s increasing dispensability. It also signaled a sea-change in the band’s musical charter. Their next two albums were Eddie Kramer-produced carbon copies of each other – and both were devoid of ambition. They were cookie-cutter crotch-rock and served mostly as the backing music to KISS’s quest for global domination through touring and merchandising. They are not culturally significant and produced one moderate hit single.

They’re also much beloved, sound like shit and are in dire need of remixing. There, someone complained.

Destroyer (Resurrected) is available now as an iTunes download. A physical release is scheduled for August 21.

Originally published by WEEPING ELVIS, 13 Aug 2013.