The DC scenes great revitalizing youth in True Womanhood show us some of their old and new material. Check out our interview with Melissa and Thomas earlier in the year.

Sounds like their impending EP release, recorded at Death By Audio in Brooklyn with A Place to Bury Stranger’s sound engineer, will be chock full of new treats.

I found myself more than a bit chagrined while driving down 95 to catch Bat for Lashes (Natasha Khan et al) on Saturday night. Not two weeks earlier had I been informed that Bat for Lashes contacted the promoter for her Baltimore stop at the Ottobar and cancelled. The reason? They were unable to provide speaker power with wattage equivalent to that found in stadium venues.

I have to say, Bat for Lashes used every watt of that power at the 9:30 Club. I felt every joule of energy blasting through every speaker cone in the entire venue. That’s when I realized, detractors who say Khan is aiming for some sort of earthy-crunchy, hippie/hipster fusion demographic have it all wrong. This isn’t easy listening, New Age music. This is all about power and scale. These songs aren’t meant for listening on the bus ride home on medium through ear buds. Every time you put this music on, you should be in an isolation room with no less than 1kW of speaker power, drowning you in a sea of sound. Only then, do you see the forest for the trees.

Khan’s pipes are impressive and glorious live, with clarion power and a mystical, ageless weight. It seems she has the ability to summon her remarkable vocal range from the record to live performance, effortlessly nailing everything from the highs of “Glass” to the lows of “Trophy.”  All this aural bluster was accompanied by a light show that spared no mystique, waxing and waning in front of the surreal backdrop of a wolf howling at the moon.The immediacy of the live show was exponentially raised by Khan’s backing band. In particular, her drummer provided no small amount of rich texture and other-worldly bombast to every song.  The set was well-balanced, featuring an almost even split between material from Fur and Gold (2007) and Two Suns (2009).  Highlights are honestly too difficult to call, as the consistency of her performance was through the roof.  If pressed, I’d have to say “The Wizard,” “Trophy,” and “Horses and I” were all beyond reproach.

I’m not the only one who shares this high an opinion, as she has received that oft sought after vindication by a foundational influence. Bjork herself has leveraged the adjective “amazing” at Bat for Lashes’ live performance.  The only thing I can fault this show after going in with such a bad taste in my mouth, is that it was far too short.  Even including the extra-long encore, this was done in a flash.

Bat for Lashes

When last we saw Karita Mattila, this blond soprano was biting the lips of John the Baptist – after his decapitation. She again gave Richard Strauss a workout with Four Last Songs. The conductor, Andreas Delfs, pitch-hit this gig for Mikko Franck in what was billed as an all-Finn tour de force: Finnish conductor, Finnish composer and Finnish soprano.

When told of the change, we lamented bitterly, because now Finn composer and conductor were out of the picture leaving us only the sun of Karita to light up the hall. We were to hear Helsinki’s own Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Manhattan Trilogy. This exciting composer was hand-picked by Sibelius himself to get a one-year stipend to go to Julliard – a move that paid off. Instead of his symphonic poem of much promise with movements Daydreams, Nightmares, and Dawn, we got Frederick Delius. Read the rest…

Caverns @ Aural States Fest

We’d prepared you for weeks and finally, this past Friday, the loudest bands in DC and Brooklyn combined for a night of earsplittingly beautiful rock and roll: the Caverns Video Release Party featuring A Place to Bury Strangers and True Womanhood.

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Download full video: MOV

The nature of music videos has been evolving just as fast, if not faster, than the nature of albums in the age of broadband and digital media. Now, even the most amateur videographer can pump out a video for a single of his/her band, damning any notions of style or quality to hell in favor for expediency, gimmickry and fast, viral PR.  But for Caverns’ first foray into this realm, things are very different.  Caverns have never been much for following the trends or current moods. Everything they do is meticulously planned, distinctive and shaped by discriminating taste and style, a watertight DIY ethos and a fun-loving outlook.

Now, they lay upon the world their first visual offspring, a music video for “Dance You Son of a Bitch” off their Kittens! EP.

The song is classic Caverns, a showcase of their signature modus operandi and lays plain their artistic manifesto. The razor-sharp, craggy edges of Hilliard’s scraping guitar riffs open the song with a shower of sonic shrapnel. Taylor’s suave, full-toned piano comes in and sets up fantastic melodic contrast, dripping into your ear like sweet golden aural honey. Hurt’s percussion comes in and ties it all together with a taut and coasting rhythmic bow, feeling almost relaxed if it wasn’t for the heft behind each hit. The spiraling, dueling melodies from guitar and keys build and build into an addictive riff before disintegrating. The video captures all this perfectly: tense and searching (but never ADHD-addled) camera work, alternatingly the smooth and the frenetic, prodigious and tasteful lighting (no surprise considering Caverns earlier live shows with extensive lighting) and was filmed and cut in-house by Taylor, who doubles as mastermind behind D dot Films.

This is a complete 1-2 punch when you consider Caverns has lined up Brooklyn-based wunderkinds A Place To Bury Strangers and fellow District-dwellers True Womanhood to play their video release show this Friday June 5 @ Rock and Roll Hotel.

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MP3: CozyLab – Maladjusted Me featuring Kid A

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MP3: CozyLab – To Be Free

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MP3: CozyLab – Glowy

It seems projects largely consigned to bedrooms or behind closed doors are producing some of the most engaging stuff I’ve been hearing as of late.  Take Virginia/DC-based CozyLab, the main outlet for Bobby Azarian and a rotating collective of (mostly) female vocalists and other collaborators,  CozyLab creates lush, engrossing soundscapes, their churning build and the impeccably dulcet, oft heavy-lidded female vocals openly wear their admiration for the more pastoral and hypnotizing works of Bjork.  It’s nearly impossible to tell that hardcore and metal were parts of Azarian’s musical lineage (only belied by the occassionally more aggro beat here or there); his dance-pop roots are squarely in the spotlight.  CozyLab ply numerous electronic bits into traditional song structures to resemble some kind of meticulously-constructed aural mosaic, easily digested as a whole picture with just your right brain on, yet laden with so many independently evolving textures and layers that things become infinitely more rewarding once your left brain kicks in and you start teasing things apart.

“Vertigo” whips you with its spiraling industrial/dancehall beat and bass line, providing a propulsive undertow anchoring the wispy, slightly off-key vocals and a dizzying array of sounds from both synths and traditional instruments.  A melange that is gloriously dark and addictive.  ”Glowy Glowy” is delicious electronic funk, showing MGMT how it’s truly done.  ”To Be Free” opens with you swimming in the spacious and dreamy, underwater depths of electronic loops, only to be caught in the enchanting wake of more motivating synth lines and loftier vocals that take you on a journey that melts the world away.  ”Maldjusted Me” features some great lyrical turns, and complements it with a major key resolution to the persistent and gloomy minor key groove from its opening.  ”Him” makes an impassioned manifesto for soulful electronica, the down-tempo pulsating and extraterrestrial music backing some startlingly lucid, R&B-inspired vocal work.  This is all just a taste of things to come as Azarian and cohorts solidify their approach, polish off two new tracks and attempt to navigate a live performance arrangement, all future ventures that I will be watching closely.  Hopefully you agree.

June 5: DDot Films and Aural States presents the Caverns Video Release Party w/ A Place To Bury Strangers, True Womanhood @ Rock from Greg Szeto on Vimeo.

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MP3: Teeth Mountain – Ghost Science from Teeth Mountain (2007)

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MP3: Dan Deacon – Padding Ghost from Bromst (2009)

All Photos: the inimitable institution, Josh Sisk (full set here)

Dan Deacon is hitting up Sonar on June 13th, I suggest that you seek out tickets.

Editor’s note: Or you could enter to win tickets from Aural States.  Check back in just a few days.

Out in rural Carroll County where I reside, there’s a powerful stigma behind the idea of Baltimore. It brings up connotations of dimly lit streets, frightening murder-prone men behind every corner, and the Inner Harbor existing as an oasis of “real citydom” in the midst of it all. Needless to say, most of my country-bumpkin peers aren’t very familiar with the town. However, if they just so happened to have been at the 9:30 Club this past Sunday night, I’m sure their minds would have completely eliminated that sinister reputation, replacing it with one of ecstatic joy.

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Photo credit (The Thermals, Point Juncture): Greg Szeto

Photo credit (The Shaky Hands): Shantel Mitchell

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MP3: The Thermals – When I Was Afraid from Now We Can See (2009)

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MP3: The Shaky Hands – Whales Sing from The Shaky Hands (2006)

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MP3: The Shaky Hands – We Are Young from Lunglight (2008)

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MP3: Point Juncture, WA – Sioux Arrow from Heart to Elk (2008)

The modestly-filled Black Cat enjoyed a good-to-great Wednesday night of rock from three Portland exports.   Read the rest…