Lomelda

MPORTANT: For the Lomelda concert, we will require proof of a full course of COVID-19 vaccination for entry. In addition, masks will be required to be worn properly at all times while inside the venue except when drinking.All patrons must have a completed COVID-19 vaccination card, with their final dose at least fourteen days prior to the event. Your physical card or a photo of the card will be acceptable forms of proof. Lomelda is Hannah Read’s musical project. In swampy, sweaty, Silsbee, TX, she first formed the band with her high school best friends. Throughout the next decade, Lomelda mad a habit out of stretching to fit new friendships and shrinking down to solo strummings. Four albums and a never-the-same live show chronicle these shifts in shape and sound.Lomelda’s fifth, upcoming album is called Hannah. The album stretches and shrinks into many of Lomelda’s different forms, from expansive “Wonder” and rock band “Reach” to meandering “Stranger Sat By Me” and finger picking “It’s Infinite”. Through this range of moods, Hannah sings stories of strangers, suns, dogs, moms, brothers, favorite bands, “oh god!”s and big shots as well as herself, by name. She rejoices and reviles her god-given name and then flips it around to name herself Hannah once again. It is an album of confession and transformation made ultimately singable.Hannah was produced by Hannah and her brother Tommy Read at his studio in Silsbee, TX. Over the span of a year and some change, it was recorded three different times before Hannah called it complete. In this, its final 14 song shape, Hannah will be released on September 4, 2020, by Double Double Whammy.Links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Bikini Kill

Bikini Kill is a feminist punk band that was based in Olympia, WA and Washington, DC, forming in 1990 and breaking up in 1997. Kathleen Hanna sang, Tobi Vail played drums, Billy Karren (a.k.a. Billy Boredom) played guitar and Kathi Wilcox played bass. Sometimes they switched instruments. Bikini Kill is credited with instigating the Riot Grrrl movement in the early 90’s via their political lyrics, zines and confrontational live show. The band started touring in June 1991. In addition to touring the US several times, they also toured Europe, Australia and Japan. Bikini Kill recorded and released a demo tape, two EP’s, two LP’s and three singles. Their demo tape was self-released,while their first two records came out as a full length CD/Tape and their singles were posthumously collected on CD. Bikini Kill believed that if all girls started bands the world would change. They actively encouraged women and girls to start bands as a means of cultural resistance. Bikini Kill was inspired by seeing Babes in Toyland play live and attempted to incite female participation and build feminist community via the punk scene. They used touring as a way to create an underground network between girls who played music, put on shows and made fanzines. This independent media making and informal network created a forum for multiple female voices to be heard. Ticket delivery will be delayed to arrive one week before the show. This is to prevent scalpers, resellers, and other forms of ticket fraud. Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Bandcamp | Spotify

Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Godspeed You! Black Emperor began with Efrim Menuck, Mauro Pezzente and Mike Moya in Montréal in the early 90s, playing a handful of shows and recording a self-released cassette as a trio before beginning to transform the group into a large band. Recruiting numerous Montreal musicians through 1995-1996, GYBE mounted sense-rattling wall-of-sound performances, featuring as many as 14 musicians and several 16mm film projectors, eventually self-recording their debut vinyl-only version of F#A#∞, released on Constellation in late summer 1997. The band’s Hotel2Tango warehouse space in Montréal’s Mile-End district was a central hive of DIY activity, with band rehearsal rooms, silkscreen and wood shops, and weekend shows that took place under the radar.The group settled into a permanent nine-member line-up by late 1998, with Aidan Girt and Bruce Cawdron on drums, Thierry Amar and Mauro on basses, Efrim, Dave Bryant and Roger Tellier-Craig on guitars, and Norsola Johnson and Sophie Trudeau on cello and violin respectively. The band toured and recorded continuously from 1998-2002 and gained a reputation for mesmerising live shows marked by orchestral dynamics, epic rock power and clunky, beautiful film loops. Following hundreds of concerts and the release of four records – F#A#∞ (1997), Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada EP (1999), and the double albums Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven (2000) and Yanqui U.X.O. (2002), GYBE went on hiatus in 2003.Various GYBE offshoots continued with their own momentum through the 2000s, most notably The Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band (including Efrim, Sophie and Thierry), Hrsta (led by Moya), Fly Pan Am (featuring Roger), Esmerine (co-founded by Bruce), 1-Speed Bike (Aidan’s solo punk-techno project) and Set Fire To Flames (led by Dave, and including Bruce, Moya, Roger and Sophie).Godspeed returned to live performance in December 2010, when the band was invited to curate and perform at All Tomorrow’s Parties in the UK. This was followed by renewed and extensive international touring. October 2012 saw the release of ‘ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND!, their first recorded work in a decade, to near-unanimous critical acclaim, including a 9.3 rating and Best New Music at Pitchfork and the appearance on countless year-end lists. The similarly praised ‘Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress’ followed in March 2015; this album marked the group’s first personnel change in many years, with Tim Herzog replacing Bruce on drums. Links: Website | Facebook | YouTube | Spotify

Fuzz

One only knows one. Two is balanced therefore stagnant. III both active and reactive. Charles Moothart, Ty Segall and Chad Ubovich are FUZZ. FUZZ is three. And III has returned. Songs for all, and music for one. III was recorded and mixed at United Recording under the sonic lordship of Steve Albini. Keeping the focus on the live sounds of the band, the use of overdubs and studio tricks were kept to a minimum. Albini’s mastery in capturing sound gave FUZZ the ability to focus entirely on the playing while knowing the natural sounds would land. It takes the essential ingredients of “guitar based music” and “rock and roll power trio” and puts them right out on the chopping block. It was a much more honest approach for FUZZ — three humans getting primitive, staying primitive. The goal was never to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it’s just about seeing how long you can hold on before you’re thrown off. Album opener “Returning” serves as a sort of mission statement for the album. It’s an auditory meditation on the power of one and the different perspectives of one, whether it is the singular person looking inward, or a group of people coming together as a single unit. Not only is it an echo of the return of FUZZ, but also a broader return to form – raw and empowered through vulnerability. “Nothing People” and “Spit” served as a launching point into the new sphere that would become III. They were written around the same time, and felt like they opened two different doorways — familiar in some ways and new in others. “Time Collapse,” a rogue cut from the days of FUZZ’s II, landed soundly on the scorched surface of side A to round things out. “Mirror” opens up the B side and the collective consciousness. Mirroring the call to arms of “Returning,” the song asks the listener to link arms with the band, march to the same drum of love, and create a space of equality among the freaks. The pummeling rhythm demands the request to crush the mirror that feeds you lies. In the end, it’s a ballad for the unique, twisted, and natural self that should be exalted before any falsehood. Links: Website | Facebook

Jack Symes

On his sprawling new record, Tompkins Park, Jack Symes makes his case as one of folk music’s most compelling new artists. Born during a road trip out to his new home in Brooklyn and his unmoored first months there, the 12-songs confront the question, “Are you on your own or are you all alone?”. It’s less tethered to Earth than his previous excursions, instead drifting skyward, buoyed by wide-reaching arrangements and dense washes of reverb that curl off his voice like thick plumes of smoke.Inspired by uncertainty and crystallized in isolation, Jack Symes sophomore album is a testament to spending time with yourself and making peace with the parts of you that have been neglected. Written while uprooting his life, and recorded in the blurry ebb of life under a pandemic, the deeply personal songs are at once wholly universal.Links: Website | Instagram | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube

The Airborne Toxic Event

Built to Spill

New Built to Spill lineup features Melanie Radford and Teresa Esguerra. Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter

Andy Shauf

This show is co-presented by WUNC Music.Few artists are storytellers as deft and disarmingly observational as Andy Shauf. The Toronto-based, Saskatchewan-raised musician’s songs unfold like short fiction: they’re densely layered with colorful characters and a rich emotional depth. On his new album The Neon Skyline (out January 24 via ANTI-), he sets a familiar scene of inviting a friend for beers on the opening title track: “I said, ‘Come to the Skyline, I’ll be washing my sins away.’ He just laughed, said ‘I’ll be late, you know how I can be.'” The LP’s 11 interconnected tracks follow a simple plot: the narrator goes to his neighborhood dive, finds out his ex is back in town, and she eventually shows up. While its overarching narrative is riveting, the real thrill of the album comes from how Shauf finds the humanity and humor in a typical night out and the ashes of a past relationship. His last full-length 2016’s The Party was an impressive collection of ornate and affecting songs that followed different attendees of a house party. Shauf’s attention-to-detail in his writing evoked Randy Newman and his unorthodox, flowing lyrical phrasing recalled Joni Mitchell. Though that album was his breakthrough, his undeniable songwriting talent has been long evident. Raised in Bienfait, Saskatchewan, he cut his teeth in the nearby Regina music community. His 2012 LP The Bearer of Bad News documented his already-formed musical ambition and showcased Shauf’s burgeoning voice as a narrative songwriter with songs like “Hometown Hero,” “Wendell Walker,” and “My Dear Helen” feeling like standalone, self-contained worlds. In 2018, his band Foxwarren, formed over 10 years ago with childhood friends, released a self-titled album where Pitchfork recognized how “Shauf has diligently refined his storytelling during the last decade.” The Party earned a spot on the Polaris Music Prize 2016 shortlist and launched Shauf to an appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden as well as glowing accolades from NPR, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and more. “That LP was a concept record and it really made me want to do a better album. I wanted to have a more cohesive story,” says Shauf. Where the concept of The Party revealed itself midway through the writing process, he knew the story he wanted to tell on The Neon Skyline from the start. “I kept coming back to the same situation of one guy going to a bar, which was basically exactly what I was doing at the time. These songs are fictional but it’s not too far off from where my life was,” Shauf explains. For The Neon Skyline, Shauf chose to start each composition on guitar instead of his usual piano. He says, “I wanted to be able to sit down and play each song with just a guitar without having to rely on some sort of a clever arrangement to make it whole.” The resulting album finds its immediacy in simplicity. While the arrangements on folksy “The Moon” are unfussy and song-centered like the best Gordon Lightfoot offerings, his drive to experiment is still obvious. This is especially so on the unmoored relationship autopsy “Thirteen Hours,” which boasts an arrangement that’s both jazzy and adventurous. Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Spotify

Genre: Miscellaneous