live: Real Estate/Woods at Cameo Gallery

"What Can I Do?"
(photo: ryan muir, via real estate's myspace)

A couple of notes and observations on last evening's Mexican Summer/InSound showcase at Cameo Gallery, featuring Golden Triangle, Real Estate and Woods.

1. Golden Triangle slay. I am dissappointed in myself for neglecting them due to the inclusion of 'Golden' in their name. I apologize.
2. I've said this before, but Real Estate keep getting better. I think the NJ comrades may have played everything in their repertoire, including a new instrumental (new to me, at least). Real Estate ended with Grateful Dead-esque segue from "Green River" into "Suburban Beverage." I'm going to name this pairing the "Green Beverage."
   
3. Matt Mondanile's playing is getting a bit out of hand. His licks are so languid its as if his axe cuts songs out of lazy days. Like he's a widdler shaping a stump into a Mickey Mouse mailbox.
4. Woods are harnessing some otherwordly power and channeling it through god knows what, just as solar panels harness the strength of the sun. Spacial jams, Mississippi auto-mechanic freakouts, whispered relics. I have strange feeling Woods may be aliens.
5. Said Aliens have also released a live bootleg LP dubbed Acoustic Family Creeps, a collection of acoustic tracks recorded in the woods in France. The one-sided affair includes "Rain On," "Twisted Tongue," "To Clean," and "The Hold." After one spin, I can highly rec'd getting your hands on one of these gems.

Both Real Estate and Woods have new releases out on Britain's Half Machine Records. Real Estate's UK version of the "Fake Blues" 7" includes the rocking suburban trip "Green River," while the b-side Woods "To Clean" 7" is an acoustic version of "Rain On" recorded live on the radio. Peep both b-sides below. Buy 'em here.

Woods- Rain on Radio
Real Estate-Green River

mp3: Beach Fossils "Vacation", "Daydream"

"Leave The City Behind"
Waking up all foggy on a hazy morning with peanut butter on my breath, espresso penetrating my nasal passage, and Beach Fossils "Vacation" radiating through my ear drums felt like a moment of semi-cosmic clarity. My senses were a buzz, yet, despite the undeniable strength of Stumptown's Hairbender, I still felt like I was drifting through Maya Lin's Wave Field at Storm King, the landscape undulating like an ancient oscillating synthesizer– a rippled world. Beach Fossils, a dreamy bliss pop act from Brooklyn, whose associations with Woodsist, Captured Tracks and Underwater People's places him as part of the neo-Urban sylvan-beach psyche community (Woods, Ganglians, Real Estate, Ducktails), is the sound of escaping into a sun washed Polaroid from Rockaway Beach– the Atlantic to your east, Queens to the west. Beach Fossils have a number of upcoming shows in NYC, including one, appropriately, this Sunday at Fort Tilden in Rockaway Beach. That show, aka Todd P's annual Unamplified BBQ, also features Kurt Vile, Phosphorescent, Shilpa Ray, Real Estate (& Ducktails), Teengirl Fantasy, and, literally, like a hundred more bands. Oh yeah, and it's free. So yeah, you should probably get there if you can. If you can't make it Sunday, do your best to catch Beach Fossils with Real Estate and San Francisco's Girls at the Monster Island Basement on Friday June 26th, which is sure to be one for the ages.

Beach Fossils- Vacation
Beach Fossils- Daydream

live: WAVVES at Primavera Sound

"I Won't Make It To 25"
(photos: craig loschmann)
By now you've probably heard a bevy of remarks about Wavves show on the Pitchfork Stage at Primavera Sound. As one who was at the show, up close, and was really enjoying myself, I was sort of shocked to hear about the supposed "meltdown", et all. I may have gotten to the stage right after the awkward sound check/ intro, so maybe I missed the bizarre tone that was set, but I actually thought that Nathan Williams put on the best show I've seen him play so far, which include an early day show at a bar on 110th St and a party in a smokey warehouse in Greenpoint. Photographer Craig Loschmann, who hadn't seen nor heard Wavves before, actually thought it was one of the funnest, best sets of the festival. Maybe we completely missed something, but isn't this exactly what a Wavves show is supposed to be like– drug fueled, failing, teetering on the edge of insanity, a breakdown, barely, if at all, holding it together, and sort of letting it all unravel over the course of, I don't know, say, twenty minutes. After all, it's what makes it a Wavves show. Skate dick punk snarl, too many drugs, a bandmate stuck in the "WTF?!", a crowd who, seemingly, was having equal fun cheering and jeering, and a prominent, often pretentious music magazine using their built-up hype to drive hits– sorta sounds like a weak version of some Rolling Stone exploited Guns N' Roses tour doc. Whatever it was, I think its safe to say that I now like Wavves about 100x more than I did before, which is rather significant considering I wasn't all too excited to hear/see him play after the Top Shop show at the Shank.

mp3: Ganglians "The Void"

"Moon Shadow Running Through Your Head"

An eye catcher in the Woodsist store window, Ganglians self titled 12" plays like a product of its album art. Here's my fictional account of the happenings:

Recorded in the dankest, darkest outcove of a Southwestern desert abode, a secret splinter group of renegade shaman's induldge in some ayahuasca, grab a few broken instruments (remnants from former settlers, long since gone after the great cliff massacre of 2009) and take a stab at pop music. The ayahuasca rolls like a venomous twister, swaying thoughts between horrifying and magical, and generating enough electricity to bring cave-paintings to life. "The Void" is the aftermath; hazy and beat-up, introspective and drained, its psycho-active balladry encompasses a thousand trips, here and fro, and a longing for the next.

(removed)

live: Kurt Vile tomorrow @ Silent Barn

"Bigger Than A Humpback Whale"
(photo by c89)
By now there shouldn't be much need to talk up Kurt Vile from Philly, but I'll do it anyway, as he's back in Brooklyn this weekend for another show with Gary War at the Silent Barn. (Ok, technically it's Queens, but whatever.) At this point its obvious to anyone paying attention that Vile's got some Ryan Adams strength prolific-ness in his blood, as if songs ooze out of him, all sludgy and hypnotic, in some preternatural way. Considering all the mediocre, highly conceptual indie rock and breakneck fuzz, it's scary that Vile is able to consistently deliver such seemingly carefree records, blending the American bar folk of Tom Petty with the mesmerizing noize of Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. While God Is Saying This To You and Constant Hitmaker have been garnering most of the buzz, his Kurt Vile & the Violator's release, The Hunchback EP, is as good, if not better than his folk leanings, proving that Vile really knows how to let loose. If Constant Hitmaker is the sound of a Sunday drive through a canyon, then The Hunchback is that same drive on PCP while being chased by amphetamine fueled Hells Angels and Cops looking to bust some heads; paranoid, intoxicating full-throttle stoner rock of the finest sort. Only question is when will Vile roundup the Violator's and take them on the road.

Kurt Vile & the Violators- The Hunchback

cover: Woods "Military Madness"

"Creeps Over Me"

With their vibrant kitchen-sink folk drawing as much from Laurel Canyon as it does from the phosphorescent hue and broken glass strewn back-alleys of industrial Brooklyn, it makes total sense that Woods would cover Graham Nash's political ballad "Military Madness." Sure, the Bush regime is out of office and a new day has risen in the country, albeit one filled with cancerous headlines, ass-backward economic plans and a penchant for multi-national wars, however, Woods cover of Songs for Beginner's opening cut is a supreme example of a band channeling the past in the present, and in turn, transforming what could be a long, lost relic from an underrated Graham Nash solo record into a poignant tune for lost souls searching for purity and truth amidst muckrackers, ponzi-schemers and other greedy mongers of industry. While the lyrical content is fairly obvious, what lurks in Woods' cover is a slinky, almost hypnotizing looseness that spirals and engulfs the blissful jam like a cyclone, sucking up everything in its path, shaking the shit out of it and dropping it back down to earth, a bit battered and bruised but better for the trip.

Be sure to pick up Woods latest release Songs of Shame and while you're at it snag Woods Family Creeps and that Captured Tracks 7". You'll be happy you did.

Woods- Military Madness (Graham Nash cover)

we saw: Real Estate @ Glasslands

"Carry Me Back To Sweet Jersey"
Sequestering the hallucinogenic power of a Grateful Dead "Space Jam" into a tightly knit pop structure, Real Estate meandered through a set of stoney, lackadaisical and utterly refreshing lo-fi pop last night. Playing to a small crowd at Glasslands, their short set, which included a few power outages and soon-to-be bored kid anthems "Suburban Beverage" and "Fake Blues", felt more like a Thursday night at the local teen center than an evening at a performance art space in industrial Williamsburg. Fittingly, the band exuded a sort-of carefree teenage attitude, no qualms or pretensions to their sound, simply four guys who really like playing music together, as if they were still just bored kids practicing in basements and smoking weed from apples and Coke cans behind the shed when Mom left to drop little brother off at soccer practice. With the uncanny ability to sum up the anxieties of suburban life in a three minute pop ditty ("I don't want to live at home"), something tells me we are going to be hearing ALOT from the Real Estate camp in the coming months. Oh, and any band that projects clips from the animated Hobbit behind them is A-OK with me. Real Estate will be back in Brooklyn on Saturday for a show at Dead Herring.

Real Estate- Suburban Dogs