Not That Complicated
Morning State Releases Its Strong Debut EP Retreat!!!
originally published October 18, 2006
Joel Stevens lights yet another cigarette and picks up a wounded Epiphone guitar. “I only started playing bass when I joined this band, so I just try to get out what I hear in my head,” says Stevens.
The boys of Morning State have convened in my tiny studio apartment in Charleston, SC. Frontman Russell Ledford looks through my CD collection, occasionally commenting on releases from regional acts that were never heard from again. “Man, I saw these guys back in Athens a few years ago and thought they were amazing. I think they broke up right after this came out,” says Ledford.
Guitarist Dave Williams sits in the corner with his girlfriend Rae, sharing a moment over the cover design of their new Retreat!!! EP. The first shipment just arrived from the factory. “Rae and I shut ourselves up in her apartment for days working on it," says Williams. "We went back and forth with the band until we had something that everyone seemed to groove with. We wanted something loud and different to separate us from the stuff other local bands were coming out with."
The group is in South Carolina to celebrate the EP’s release, and the headlining spot it grabbed at a Charleston festival was granted based solely on the strength of tracks posted on MySpace. The five studio tracks landed the guys prime gigs all over the region recently, including the Paste Rock & Reel Festival in Atlanta and a packed-out Masquerade.
The boys of Morning State - although some members recently lived in Athens, everyone's currently living in Atlanta - shrug off the strong positive response to their debut EP. Their unique design of mathematical rock is possibly pure coincidence (but more than likely not); Williams and Sharenko both logged hours at Georgia Tech and probably dream in quadratics. Williams is the kind of guy who can divide everyone’s share of a dinner bill within seconds. Tracks like “Push the Color Out” and “Spectacular” seem entirely numerical, and Stevens’ bass lines are astutely calculated to mesh with Williams’ and Ledford’s alternating guitar riffs.
On Retreat!!!, Ledford’s voice is near-perfect for the melodic, riff-based backdrop. He sounds like an ultra-romantic Andrew Rieger. Williams is short, fit and energetic - reflected in his quick barrages of difficult lines. He often climbs atop Sharenko’s bass drum during live shows, but still keeps up with Ledford on the many alternating guitar parts - equally as intricate as anything on Bloc Party’s debut. Stevens is the quiet outsider, but he makes it impossible to believe he’s only been playing bass for a short time. Sharenko adds complex, mindfucking beats.
When asked about the possibility of a a record deal, the band clams up. “You look at what’s on MTV, when they actually do play videos, and it’s all prefab. Technology has gotten to where you can make anyone what they want to be,” says Williams.
“This is first and foremost an artistic venture, which means many of the decisions we make will not make the most sense business-wise. Simply put, we want to do what we want, and we won't compromise too much on this,” adds Ledford.
When Ledford discusses music, he usually refers to the successful regional acts he shares bills with. “ I love all the old legendary stuff," he says. "But what I find most influential are those bands on our level or a little above that are extremely impressive without many resources - like The Explorers Club, Sovus Radio and the Modern Skirts.”
Morning State’s focus seems far from that of many other bands on the same level, though. The members have almost completely ignored their own regional buzz, and although this may seem like a cliché comment on any band, it also seems insane after seeing them play, when every move seems so perfectly choreographed. “I'm not so sure we're on top of anything,” says Stevens. “But I think we have a core set of unique songs that people are gravitating towards.”
The Retreat!!! EP title makes perfect sense; Morning State has spent the past year fleeing any kind of admission that the members are actually talented. Prying for some kind of an acknowledgment, I ask Williams about this. He says: “Our focus is on the music, not the other bullshit. We just try to support the scene.”
WHO: Morning State, Holiday, Farewell Flight
WHERE: Tasty World
WHEN: Friday, October 20
HOW MUCH: $5
A Dream In Sound
The Success Of Mute Math's Synthy Sounds Has Surprised Everyone - Band Included
originally published October 18, 2006
A sleek tour bus with oversized tires pulling a covered trailer sits next to the Launchpad, a bar and music venue favored by young, trendy and thirsty kids in Albuquerque, NM. The vehicle is a monstrosity, stretching halfway down a block and, you can imagine, capable of sucking more gas than a Hummer laden with bricks. Inside, a youngish group of guys is milling around, chatting calmly and getting ready to take the stage.
Mute Math, the four-piece band from New Orleans that’s about to play to a small army of fans inside the Launchpad, is clearly excited to be here on the bus. The bandmembers recognize the novelty of the experience, and for good reason: Mutemath, their major label debut on Warner Bros., just hit the stores, and they’re presently in the midst of a tour that’s big enough to justify the luxurious gas guzzler.
“It just hit us yesterday, how long we’ve been touring,” says Paul Meany, singer and keytarist (that’s right, keytarist) for the synthy alt-rock group. “You put together a band, put together shows, put out an EP or whatever, but it’s amazing how much of a process it is that actually plays out.”
Granted, some bands experience even more rigors, only to have their dreams never play out the way Mute Math’s has. But Meany’s point is valid: labels and agents have been courting him since he was 15 years old, back when he was part of a rap trio called Trey Mob.
“We were two white guys and a Hispanic guy,” Meany recalls, now 15 years on. “We did our rap dressed in flannel and Doc Marten boots… very inspired by Vanilla Ice and 'In Living Color'.” The story goes that an A&R guy approached Meany after a talent show, made some promises, but never followed through on them.
Years of more almost-successes followed, including a stint with contemporary Christian art-rock group Earthsuit. That outfit, which included current Mute Math bassist Roy Mitchell, played a futuristic gumbo of musical styles that eventually landed the group a record deal with Sparrow Records.
The band ended up nearly broke as a result. Earthsuit released one very Jesus-heavy album, 2000’s Kaleidoscope Superior, which gained the band some exposure (one song was even featured on the MTV/WWE show "Tough Enough"), yet when sales didn’t live up to Sparrow’s expectations, the band found itself label-less and in debt. Earthsuit eventually broke up.
Meany, keytar in hand, remained undeterred. He and Mitchell, who had since moved to Miami to attend law school, founded Mute Math with Missourians Greg Hill (guitar) and Darrin King (drums). It would be a decidedly more mainstream venture, lacking the Jesus references that pigeonholed Earthsuit.
Although Mute Math was ready to drop the Christian association, its label Warner Bros. was not. Warner signed Mute Math to subsidiary Word Records and began marketing the group as a Christian rock group. That was in 2004. This didn’t bode well with Meany, who - although still a God-fearing guy - was honing a more secular sound and trying to reach broader audiences. Tension grew, and the band wound up suing Warner Bros., much to the chagrin of its Christian fanbase.
Tonight in Albuquerque, however, none of that seems to matter much. The band’s full-length album was eventually released by Warner Bros., and Mute Math got the tour bus. The show, mostly filled with kids in their teens and early 20s, is by all accounts a success. The band grinds through a long set (and an encore) of Police-influenced syncopated grooves and a smidgen of ’90s-era arena rock, heavy on the synths and layered rhythms (drummer King is often accompanied by a drum machine).
At the middle of the storm is Meany, the just-woke-up-haired, bombastic singer whose presence is electrifying and unavoidable. With every measure, the guy seems to amp up the band’s and the audience’s energy, bringing each song to a crescendo until everyone in the room is part of one swaying, sing-alonging mass.
The effect is kind of analogous to what Meany deems the band’s most prominent quality: the ability to create something out of nothing.
“The bands who are successful don’t put any limitations on themselves,” he says, as if to reference Mute Math’s past troubles with Warner Bros. and the “Christian act” tag. Touring isn’t enough, he says; neither is making a record or putting songs online (the band, unsurprisingly, has mercilessly worked MySpace.com to its advantage).
“You gotta go balls-out," he says. "You gotta do everything. You gotta somehow just make music, and create a whirlwind and hopefully become enough of a blip on someone’s radar, and maybe someone’ll check it out.”
And, if you have something to show for yourself, maybe you’ll get the tour bus, too.
WHO: Mute Math, The Whigs, Jonezetta
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Tuesday, October 24
HOW MUCH: $10 (advance), $12 (doors)
Bucking Tradition
Eager To Blur Musical Distinctions, Hank III Wrangles With The Industry And Releases Straight to Hell
originally published October 18, 2006
As Hank Williams III says, he must be doing something right to have the kind of success he enjoys as one of country's more maverick artists. Over the course of a seven-year recording career, he has gained a strong enough following to fill club after club on an extensive touring schedule - all while thumbing his nose at musical boundaries, battling with his record company and receiving little in the way of promotional support on his latest release, Straight to Hell.
Nashville has been no different says the 33-year-old son of country star Hank Williams Jr. and the grandson of the late Hank Williams. “I’ve definitely got a bad name around this town,” he says. “But I can go out there and tour 200 dates out of the year just in the U.S. and have a pretty damn good following. Even without the help, even on this new record, like there was no single release, there was no big push… We even made Curb Records, they changed their name to Bruc Records, they were so nervous about it.”
Actually it’s not at all clear just how badly Curb wants to work with Williams these days in the first place; the new album arrived after some three years of court actions between Williams and his label.
“As my lawyer said, I signed one of the worst deals in history,” says Williams. “Now we’ve been fighting and getting back everything they took from me, trying to work on a new level. [The disputes were about] getting back my publishing, my writing, getting 100 percent control of the record the way I want it, not the way some guy on Music Row wants it. And the artwork! If I turn in a side project, I don’t want somebody to sit on it for five years.”
A five-year holding pattern is nearly what happened with Straight to Hell. Williams’ previous release Lovesick, Broke & Driftin’ came out in 2002. But if things had gone according to Williams’ plans, he would have had an album called Thrown Out of the Bar out by 2003. Instead, the various legal battles intervened, and Thrown Out of the Bar went into limbo as Williams pursued better contract terms and continued his busy touring schedule, both as a solo artist and as a member of Superjoint Ritual, the now-defunct metal band fronted by former Pantera singer Philip Anselmo.
Finally, when a settlement was reached with Curb Records, Williams turned his thoughts to Straight to Hell, and used nearly all of the songs that were to appear on Thrown Out of the Bar for the new album - recording them in an East Nashville house using a Korg D-1600 portable digital recorder he had purchased for the princely sum of $400 a couple of years back.
The music certainly suggests that Williams was wise not to set aside the songs from that 2003 project. Like Lovesick, Broke & Driftin’ and Williams’ 1999 debut, Risin’ Outlaw, Straight to Hell is a kicking, hard-twanging country album steeped more in traditional country than the crossover sounds that typify mainstream country today.
Songs like “Thrown Out of the Bar,” “Smoke & Wine” and the title song are frisky tracks that kick up plenty of sawdust, while Williams also shows a taste for eerie spaghetti western balladry (“Country Heroes”), rolling and shuffling country (“D Ray White”) and cowpoke country (the funny cover of Randy Howard's “My Drinkin’ Problem”). The solid songwriting that Williams shows throughout the album, meanwhile, is a good indication he inherited some of the talent shown by his legendary grandfather.
Williams has been playing much of his new material on tour for some time. But the uninitiated who see him on tour for the first time can expect to get far more than just a country show. In fact, at a Hank III concert, one actually experiences three artists in one, played out over a show that often barrels along close to the three-hour mark.
The first hour is devoted to the country material from his albums. But then Williams puts on his rock-and-roll shows for a brief set of harder-hitting country he calls "hillbilly rock." Then for the final hour and a half, a whole other side of Williams comes out as he joins his screaming extreme metal band Assjack for an all-out set of sound, fury and mayhem.
Assjack’s music has been documented on a series of bootleg CDs released by Williams. But one of the results of his legal tussle with Curb is that the label has committed to releasing the first official studio album by Assjack.
“Even though two of them are recorded and sitting there, I probably can’t use them for legal reasons or whatever,” Williams said. “But we’ll re-record one more time and there will be an Assjack release.” And if history is any indication, it'll probably push more boundaries in fine Hank III tradition.
WHO: Hank III, Psyopus
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Friday, October 20
HOW MUCH: $12
Welcome to Wonderland
With The New Album The Optimist's Club, Casper & The Cookies Cultivate Pop's Essence
originally published October 18, 2006
Have you heard of this thing, www.Googlism.com? It's like Google, except instead of serving you up helpful things like websites relating to what you're searching for, it just gives you a snippet of a sentence that starts with the topic of choice. I don't really understand it, but I stuck the term "pop music" into its search field, and here's what it puked up:
- pop music is fun for all
- pop music is all the same
- pop music is like brownies
- pop music is sooo last century
- pop music is really the only music that is
- pop music is the best music in japan
- pop music is awesome
- pop music is very fantastic
- pop music is definitely nothing new
- pop music is utterly unpredictable
- pop music is about passion and the power to touch the lives of its listeners
- pop music is easy
Sounds about right. Let's roll with it!
Pop Music Is Sooo Last Century
The story of Casper & the Cookies goes back a decade, and doesn't even start in Athens. In 1996, Atlanta natives Jason NeSmith and Kay Stanton met as bandmates in a project called Feyerabend; NeSmith posits the theory that their esoteric handle was why "nobody ever came to see us." Fair enough.
Stanton, a graduate from Berry College with an interest in neo Dada, was the band's bassist, and NeSmith was the drummer. All the while, NeSmith was plying studio engineering - the trade he'd learned at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston - under the name Casper Fandango, dropping one-off cassettes with various fabricated backing bands that were, in reality, NeSmith getting his one-man band thing on. As part of a fledgling performance art community around Atlanta, NeSmith and Stanton often performed alongside one another in a variety of incarnations. NeSmith dabbled in found sound and generally just dabbled; Stanton painted and, on one occasion, set herself on fire.
If you think there's a "flames of passion" segue coming up, you're wrong, but the two soon started seeing each other, and inaugurated their relationship with a visit to New York that would figure into their shared musical future more than they could've expected.
Pop Music Is Awesome
While still in Atlanta, our heroes continued to play with friends in a typically incestuous pop scene in acts such as Orange Hat and Aromatic, and although their band naming skills remained staunchly, almost boldly uninspired, the two still plotted towards a new group with an equal emphasis on art and pop. "I write pop songs and Kay sort of writes pop songs," says NeSmith, "but they're more from the art-punk angle, and we include these allusions to art [as well as] anti-art."
In 1999, following the rich tradition of maverick drummers such as Phil Collins, Don Henley and presumably homeboy from the Romantics, NeSmith decided it was time to stake his claim as a frontman. With Kenny Howes, Christo Harris and Ben Spraker, NeSmith and Stanton succeeded in fleshing out Casper & the Cookies to full-band status.
Fast forward through a move to Athens, plenty of line-up changes, the 2004 debut album Oh! and a wedding, and we find the group at its strongest and most varied stage yet. The current line-up consists of gregarious born-rocker Jim Hicks on (mostly) guitar and a dual drum-throne residency based on availability and timing; Davy Gibbs (Tracer Matula) and Joe Rowe (The Glands) keep the beat with equally youthful fervor.
Pop Music Is Utterly Unpredictable
Last month, the the Cookies' sophomore LP The Optimist's Club was released on Athens pop label Happy Happy Birthday to Me. Recorded in NeSmith's own Bel*Air Studio, the album features a wide-ranging palette, as well as a somewhat mystifying album cover: a photo of a darkened motel outside of Atlanta with a neon sign reading "YES." NeSmith enlightens us to the significance: "There is a famous piece that Yoko [Ono] did," he says, "where - I don't remember what it's called - but there's a ladder in the middle of the art gallery, and there's a painting at the top of the ladder, and there's a magnifying glass hanging from the frame of the painting. So you climb up this ladder and you see there's some little, tiny writing in the corner of the painting and you take the magnifying glass and it says: 'YES.'"
As it turns out, it was this very piece, titled "Ceiling Painting," that intrigued John Lennon enough to want to meet Yoko Ono. Tying in an astute historical perspective on art and pop music and the places where they intersect is certainly where The Optimist's Club becomes more than a catchy record.
The band's songs, at their most exuberant, employ that overwhelmed kind of elastic wanderlust that XTC displayed at its giddiest. The Optimist's Club is centered upon a batch songs in its middle eight, known to some as "the New York suite." Culling samples from a dictaphone carried by NeSmith throughout his fateful trip to New York with Stanton, the songs discuss falling in love in the city alongside the sounds of street preachers, public sound sculptures and traffic.
The couple was mildly tentative about releasing so many tunes speaking so frankly about their relationship. "I was very nervous for the first few months while we were waiting for it to be officially out," says Stanton, "because it does feel like we're naked in a way."
The Cookies stretch out considerably on The Optimist's Club, invoking sonics ranging from barbershop quartet harmonies to musique concrète. "Barking in the Garden of Ill Repute" is a "Laugh-In" style rave-up that the band posted online as an untitled composition, encouraging fans to submit suggestions for the song's name. A 24-page comic book illustrated by Stanton works as a companion to "the New York suite" and is available at all Cookies shows.
In addition, the group has put out a collection of previously unreleased material from the Optimist's sessions - as well as other goofball oddities - titled Overly Optimistic. Not content to rest on its laurels, the band has also contributed to several recent pop compilations (including one called Yay for Cuteness, which may or may not come with its own insulin shot) and has a split release with the Apples in Stereo side project Marbles on the horizon.
Pop Music Is The Best Music In Japan
Following a tour of Japan in 2005, Casper & the Cookies have maintained a surprisingly high profile on the touring circuit. They have toured heavily with British troubadour/ BBC correspondent Keith John Adams, backing him up as - what else? - Keith & the Biscuits. While traversing the states this past September, the group found itself in the midst of a drunken bar fight that they insist ended with Stanton coming to NeSmith's defense and promptly putting the aggressor in a headlock and exclaiming, "Not my man!"
The seemingly endless travels have paid off, as evidenced by their increasingly bonkers live show. Past performances have included oddball covers ("Mother" by Danzig, anyone?), bizarre, shiny costumes and NeSmith's mom, synchronized to the beat of a song, splitting green beans into a metal bowl.
"It was our attempt at some flux art," says NeSmith. Asked if his mother had equally high-minded aspirations during her performance, he admits, "I don't know if she has any knowledge of that kind of art, but she went along with it. I think my dad thought it was incredibly silly." Adds Stanton, "In a good way!"
Following a tour up to New York City for the CMJ New Music Festival with its HHBTM compatriots, the group plans on heading back into the studio to create more pop magic. Indeed, pop music is many things, and few local acts illustrate that more clearly than Casper & the Cookies. You don't need Googlism to know that.
WHO: Casper & the Cookies, Decibully
WHERE: Caledonia Lounge
WHEN: Saturday, October 21
HOW MUCH: $5
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