Archive for the ‘Father John Misty’ Category

Noiseweek: Record Store Day, David Bowie, El Ten Eleven, Weedeater and more

Friday, April 17th, 2015

The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.

NEWS

Tangled Thoughts of Leaving’s Yield to Despair comes out today. You can stream and buy it on Bandcamp and see them play The Bakery one last time before its closure to launch the record. Expect this album to be rank highly on all of our best-of lists this year, and expect this show to be gargantuan.

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The BBC is reporting that David Bowie is working on new material for a musical stage adaptation of The Man Who Fell To Earth, the 1976 sci-fi film about an alcoholic alien in which Bowie had a starring role. Though Bowie is not slated to appear on stage, he’s said to be closely involved in the production, which is set to debut in New York in December.

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High on Fire have announced the title and release date for their 7th LP: it will be called Luminiferous and it will be released on June 23. The announcement was accompanied by the following mini-treatise from riffer-in-chief Matt Pike:

“We’re doing our part to expose The Elite and the fingers they have in religion, media, governments and financial world downfall and their relationship to all of our extraterrestrial connections in the race to control this world. Wake up, it’s happening. All while we stare at a socially engineered lie we think of as normalcy. Unless we wake from the dream, there will come true doom.”

READ

A Pressing Business: tQ Goes Inside A Czech Vinyl Plant | The Quietus

“Since much of digital music technology is helmed by a crop of multi-billion dollar companies, with millennial branding and self-styled demi-gods for CEOs, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the marketing strategies and modes of consumption for a medium like vinyl are concerns for a comparatively sluggish underground; a physical product that’s barely changed for generations, yet discussed on panels, in clubs, in record shops, on loop. The companies who supply them, too, must be similarly small-time affairs. But the year-on-year growth of the market recently has been remarkable. The Official Chart Co. noted that 2014 was the first year since 1996 in which sales in the UK reached the one million mark and, according to Nielsen Music, sales in the US alone increased 52% on the year previous to hit an impressive 9.2 million in 2014. And just this past week, the Official Chart Co. also launched the weekly Official Vinyl Albums Chart and Official Vinyl Singles Chart, for the first time in the company’s history.”

Meredith Graves: Pussy Power | Dazed Digital

“That people who have been hurt and people who have been marginalized deserve to be heard. That’s really the first and most striking similarity that comes to mind. In my perfect world, the prevailing ideology would be ‘do what you can to make the world better, to make your life better.’ I have now been in many countries where young kids have come up and said they were inspired by me because I came forward as someone who survived abuse and has suffered from mental illness. You can survive the cultural conditions that have fought to suppress you. I have lived through a horribly abusive relationship. I have struggled my entire life with extreme depression and mood disorders. And now, after a year of traveling the world and talking to people about it, I’m here in a place where I can facilitate the survival of others. Survival is an option, and once you can get to the point where you are above water, if and when you’re feeling up for it, you can reach your hand back and pull someone else up.”

Are You Even Real? Identity and Music in the Digital Age | Pitchfork

“This February, Father John Misty released I Love You, Honeybear, a pretty folk album that doubles as an exposé of our generation’s subconscious. Critics have zoned in on “Bored in the USA”, a mournful white-guy ballad accompanied by laugh track—an apt and self-justifying touch. But the lyrical crux within the album is “Holy Shit”. The song grandly reels off a chain of personal and political ruptures—revolutions, holocausts, incest dreams, original sin—which all emphasize the album’s driving concept: the unbearable heaviness of Josh Tillman’s love for his wife. After he’s tried on many rock-star guises—the chauvinist, the lothario, the “changed man”—it’s in “Holy Shit” that Tillman’s shape-shifting character crystallizes. Honeybear doesn’t just fuck with authenticity; it shows how, when our everyday frames of reference disorient us, our identity fractures, and we grasp for a toehold in the familiar.”

LISTEN

HEADS. — HEADS.

Last week we previewed the second track from Berlin noise rock trio HEADS.’ blistering debut and now Heart of the Rat Records are streaming the EP is streaming in full. It’s a lethal dose of concentrated, unapologetic and frankly ugly pigfuck with hints of Shellac, The Jesus Lizard, Young Widows et al. And it’s bottom-heavy, too; the record hits its stride in the bubbling tension of Black River and Foam before climaxing with the understated and disturbing The Voynich Manuscript. Difficult listening, as it should be.

Weedeater — Claw of the Sloth

North Carolina’s weed metal innovators return with this expectedly filthy cut from their forthcoming, where “Dixie” Dave Collins sounds like he’s singing through a throat tube or gargling cough syrup as he growls over some of the trio’s muddiest riffage to date. The album is called Goliathan and it’s out on May 19 through Seasons of Mist.

WATCH

Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld — The Rest of Us

Director Dan Huiting looms like a voyeur as his camera tilts, tracks and intrudes in this new clip from the forthcoming Stetson/Neufeld collaboration out through Constellation Records at the end of the month. Rarely do music videos match the mood of their companion sounds so well, let alone when the subject matter is so abstract. Repeat viewings recommended.

A Place to Bury Strangers — Now It’s Over (Live on KEXP)

The Loudest Band in New York are also The Most Well-Lit Band on Tour, bringing a collection of strobes and disco-balls to their in-studio appearance for a Seattle radio station. Oliver Ackermann is pretty much a robot when his voice is filtered through that many vocal processors, and the trio chose the most claustrophobic cut from their Transfixiation for a their decidedly claustrophobic performance.

El Ten Eleven — Nova Scotia

The latest video from post-rock’s most pragmatic duo is playful and serene like much of their back catalogue, juxtaposing live footage with sun-washed scene of a pair of kids frolicking and raising hell. The cut comes from the For Emily EP from early last year. Now can someone please bring these guys to Australia?

Live Review: Father John Misty At Perth Festival

Monday, February 18th, 2013

j_tilman_belisle_63_0Sunday 17th February, 2013 at Chevron Festoval Gardens, Perth. Review by Benjamin Arnold. Atmospherically, the Chevron Festival Gardens were an absolute delight. Fairy lights and art installations created a lazy dream like vibe and as FATHER JOHN MISTY front man, […]

Live Review: Father John Misty

Sunday, February 17th, 2013

Photo: Amber Bateup

There’s hella notes, all sprawled around about my Father John Misty experience, so I’ll just get right down to it. We hit up the International Beer Shop in Leederville beforehand, as this is my first Friday off from my other, less florid-prose related job, and by golly, I wanted to drink with some class, all kinds of German wheat beer (actually two kinds) and a bunch of other crap. Carey and Nic were hanging around, scrapping and spilling, sharing a game of cricket before we lost the one good tennis ball, and I cooked some simple yet effective pasta for the whole house, baked pumpkin and all. Amber prepped her camera gear, this gig is for her. We left a little late as it turns out, but on our way there we talked about our expectations if we had any, and the immortal line was coined: Father John Misty is the Phil Collins of Fleet Foxes. Besides the obvious comparison of ex-drummer cum solo guy, there’s a snakier linage that twists and turns through this: both of them left popular, faux-complex acts to make some of the best soundtracks to serial killers this side of the 80s (I’m pretty sure the next Bret Easton Ellis novel is going to be about some pasty overfed overwell white suit killing a guy with blasting Fear Fun through their earphones). Actually, the most direct thing to say would be Josh Tillman makes nice music.

Like Phil Collins. Anyway, the gardens were packed like sardines, the cool Friday evening bringing out the freaks, the geeks, the groomed and the shaggy, all together as one, all enjoying moderately priced beer and food as one entity. The second mistake: we ordered two pints at once, not wanting to move anywhere from the main deal once it began and hey, false advertising! Apologies go out to Ruby Boots for missing their set, turns out I’m as unprofessional as they come (or the fact the website stated the whole thing starts at 9.30, no mention that the support act were on an hour and a bit beforehand), so yeah, I guess this is my last assignment huh? The crowd was full and receptive as the beard and his backing band strolled out on stage, launching into first cut ‘Funtimes in Babylon’, while I was reclining on one of those nice red couches in the bleachers, the boys snagging one after some couple decided that they’d rather stay in and watch a Ben Affleck flick instead. It was obvious the man and group were in a good mood, as he joked and bantered in an understated professional way. This guy knows how to work a crowd, crooning and swooning like Jim Morrison before the meat pie, writhing like a sexy snake.

Photo: Amber Bateup

Like Phil Collins. Also, I’d like to add briefly here that although the night had cooled and a gentle breeze soothed my soul, Carey was again sweating like a coffee bean. After each song, Tillman would mutter some nonsense, one quip being some about ‘the most beautiful girl they’ve ever, seen, barfing in the dirt.’ I guess that is apt imagery for the kinds of sounds that were being produced on stage: lovely harmonies, nice guitar lines, songs with a sense of humour and whimsy, soaked in vomit. The sound as always was lovely and was on the right side of quiet and the light show was closer to Lady Gaga than the solo red light that featured at Godspeed; that is a good thing. The whole wry look at LA life and show business reminded me of Warren Zevon, if his songs were sung by the lighter, more poncy Jackson Browne, kind of like adult contemporary for the mid-twenties sort of thing. This isn’t a slight at all: if you’re inclined to travel through all the shit I’ve shat on this website, you’ll find that I made a half-convincing case for the fact that everybody needs at least one ‘70s adult contemp-singer songwriter in their lives, and Tillman has the right mix of Buckingham and Nicks and light drugs to connect with people, make lasting work that will forever remind of the times where you stumbled in some mud and talked about a Kafka novel to a Dutch stranger. The moves though were all classic rock, kicks and shines and pumps and he fucking knew: ‘this one’s free’, he says, unaware that these moves probably come as part of his performance fee. It was like he has a complete sense of awareness about the state of folk music and ‘folk’ music in the twenty-first century, and played it up with brutal effectiveness.

Photo: Amber Bateup

Like Phil Collins. As the hour neared the end of his allocated time, Tillman’s swigs of wine drew quicker and deeper, lead troubles signaling not the end but of this quote: ‘let’s fuck this pig!’ Not to boil it down to just one swear or anything, but that line is pretty much the reason why I had such a great time. Other little tidbits and ramblings: the slide playing throughout, but especially near the end of the set was great, Tillman summed up Perth in a heartbeat with some quip I can’t properly remember, the beer worked like heaps good, and the turn towards the encore signaled the only unprofessional moment of the set, that of a distorted microphone, ‘someone’s gotta help me dig’ and hell, you would’ve gotten the help of the entire crowd buddy because you were owning this shit, real. Of course, there was a forced encore, as expected I suppose, with an apparently new song called ‘Tears of the Eagle’ for as it turns out, Tillman has a keen sense of Western Australian pride, and also, sports. The second encore was kind of a rewrite of every single blues song ever written, fitting seeing as it seemed he was on a Doors trip.

Like Phil Collins. And it was the end, the lights came up, the crowd kicked its feet into almost first gear and the shuffle towards the bar began, and you know, in case it wasn’t readily apparent in this stream of self-conscious hogwash, I had a great time. Even though I originally thought Fear Fun was unremarkable, it seems to have connected with a whole bunch of people that I know, for reasons that weren’t readily apparent until I saw the songs in this context. It really was a good time, and this time spent with this charismatic troubadour was worthwhile. The sound was right, the band were tight, the company was good and the night was still young, forever pleading to continue. I guess you’d say this is an unreserved recommendation to say that the next time Father John Misty is in town, you better pay some respects and catch the sermon.

Like Phil Collins.