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The Sleater-Kinney Guide to Living Well and Rocking Forever

In the wake of their first record for eight years, current Hilly Eye member and former Titus Andronicus member Amy Klein examines the lasting legacy of Sleater-Kinney in respect to managing creative balance, knowing when to quit and learning to be yourself at all costs. Read it all here.

#sleater-kinney

With the new year firmly settled and as the constant stream of new music floods our senses, Rob Rubsam looks back at what makes us listen in the first place.

I’m from a small town in the Hudson Valley, the kind of Podunk place you pass through without really noticing. Just a stoplight and a block or two of stores and then you’re gone. This time of year it will be bitterly cold, snow blowing in drifts across the roads, and the trees will sway on their thin trunks and where the ice is broken stalks will poke through in the cornfields. For a kid it can feel like the middle of nowhere, all its natural beauty and promise more a barrier to the kinds of things kids like to do. The truth is, even in Upstate New York you’re rarely too far from somewhere, and I would sometimes go to concerts in New York City, though this proved a tricky proposition always, as I had to find under-21 shows, and they couldn’t be on weeknights, and had overall to be agreeable for my parents, who accompanied me in my early teens. Culture always felt like an exertion, and because of this a triumph.

Nowadays, as hipsters flee the city and carry gentrification like a virus up the river to Beacon, Kingston, Hudson, the upper-mid-Hudson Valley can seem like a happening place, ‘up-and-coming’ in the parlance of these new robber barons. There are arts collectives and music festivals, microbreweries and concert promoters. This all mostly happened after I left, first to the west of the state for college, and then out-of-country altogether. Coming back home now I wonder – where did all these people come from? – and sit feeling out-of-place in a bar in the city where I was born.

I started listening to music right when the internet was on the cusp of permanently changing everything, providing not instant access but rather its faint glimpse. My first CDs were stolen from my older sister’s collection, music she not only barely remembers now but can’t even place. We used ancient peer-to-peer programs, not Napster but a forgotten equivalent. I remember for years listening to a cover of Sum 41’s 'The Hell Song', by some unknown band, and always assuming it was the original. This happened more often than you would think because unless a song came on the radio, there was no way to check. Sometimes my friends and I exchanged music but more often we made fun of it, even setting up Geocities-type websites to mock the others’ taste, Queen for them, Thursday for me. I still think I made the right choice.

Because of all this we held with a vise-like grip onto the bands we alone discovered. In some abstract way the act of finding co-mingled the music with our personalities, defining us as much as the act of enjoyment defined it. By this standard the first record I could reasonably consider my own is probably Twin Cinema by The New Pornographers. After seeing a four-star review in my friend’s copy of Blender, I made for the band’s website, listening over and over to the collection of posted tracks ('Use It', 'The Bleeding Heart Show' and the title track, if memory serves me right). It probably went this way for four or five months before I heard the whole album, a gift from my parents on my birthday. I remember distinctly thinking at the time, “I bet I’m the only person in my whole town who knows about this band”, and Twin Cinema was all the more dear to me for that entirely false belief.

As I did in those days when all the music I owned could fit in a small CD book, I listened to Twin Cinema obsessively, memorising every track, testing out my still small voice on walks along my road and in the woods. I pored over the liner notes, trying to figure out whether the strange sounds I heard were from a melodeon or an oboe, having no idea of either but guessing all the same. That the lyrics often read like free-associative gibberish hardly dissuaded me from singing along to them then, or indeed now. And though you can make convincing arguments that Electric Version and Mass Romantic are better, purer versions of the New Pornos, I doubt I’ll ever prefer them. However misguided it may seem, Twin Cinema feels like mine, from a time when something like that was even possible.

Not that it didn’t happen again, or that it still doesn’t. Only this: if all music is part of a conversation, then each song must in some way provide an argument, and serve as a snare for the listener’s ear. Otherwise we just move on to something else. Music really became my own during the time I stopped listening to the radio, not that while growing up there was much choice: local pop station K104.7, WRRV 96.9, 'The New Rock Alternative', Radio Woodstock 100.1, and the handful of country stations my friends and I reflexively mocked were all we had. I always had to seek out music; it was never coming to me. Because of this the joy of settling into music, of actually truly listening to it, was mine and mine alone. As I got older I developed a shell to deflect criticism, spent too much time in online forums perfecting the best and most venomous barbs to hurl at perceived opponents. Too much of music criticism reflects this same impulse, projecting a mix of pained self-consciousness and fuck-you reflexivity. So often it seems we aren’t even listening to the music, and I can’t say I’m all the better for it. Can you?

Ultimately, there is very little of the intellect when one purely listens to music. It is the same in a basic sense for most art forms. Back in October I stood in the National Gallery of Ireland looking at Francis Danby’s 'The Opening of the Sixth Seal', a wall-sized oil-on-canvas depiction of the end of days. Gazing up, it felt like the bottom had dropped out of my stomach. 'Sixth Seal' is not even my favorite painting in the gallery (I think I prefer Jusepe de Ribera’s 17th-century portrait of Saint Onuphrius), yet every time I returned to it the dread feeling in some way remained. This is not to discount intellectual or critical study of art, of course, and what a ridiculous suggestion that would be. But if even the most academic, cerebral music is to work on us, our act of listening must be nearly unconscious, a beholding of the entire thing such that it seems almost to belong to us. I cannot make any claim over Danby’s 'Sixth Seal' but my inviolable fear upon viewing it belongs to no one else. Even if a series of invisible hands guided Twin Cinema into mine, implications for free will be damned; in my mind I found it. And when I listen today, there still it remains.

It's that time of the year again. Again.

It's that time of the year again. Inside, we chart our top 30 of the past 12 months. We're sure you'll find something that you'll enjoy! Cheers, The Noted Team

The Grace and Uplift of a Reunited Mineral

Multiple times during Mineral’s Saturday night show at the Bowery Ballroom I felt an almost ineffable and exhilarating rush, this absolute thrill of being at something vital and powerful and alive. It happened during “Gloria”, when the band transitioned into the stunning half-time crunch of the final bars, and again when singer Chris Simpson announced, “How blessed we are” during “SoundslikeSunday”. I got goosebumps and a head-rush when the band closed with “&Serenading” and the whole crowd seemed to sing its final words. I watched these songs come alive in a flash, and the whole thing over with the same seeming quickness. Reunions are not supposed to feel this way.

The prospect that it should feel so ecstatic, indeed the odds of it even happening at all, seemed pretty far off until a website, Facebook page and Twitter account for “Official Mineral” popped up earlier this year. Mineral was one of the more prominent emo bands during a time when that meant it played to maybe 40 people a show instead of 20. Between a harsh first album and elegiac second, the band left a surprisingly robust catalog, plumbing failure and darkness but frequently also grace and power and immitigable joy.

It was the latter of these that came to me time and time again at the Bowery. Since we are now firmly into the winter of the emo revival, something as seemingly impossible as a Mineral reunion is now fact. That it should be so much fun is even more incredible. Many recent bands claim influence through acts like Mineral and Sunny Day Real Estate, supposed pillars of the genre, but owe as much or more to their early-00’s teenage obsessions likeTaking Back Sunday; pop bands who picked one idea and stuck with it to stardom or bust. One of the unexpected realisations of revisiting Mineral’s back-catalog, particularly first album The Power of Failing, is how ebullient it all feels, leaping from idea to idea with an adolescent sense that more-is-more and actually somehow being right. “Five, Eight and Ten”, which opened Saturday’s show, has about three separate bridges, while “July” clatters over a harmonic-filled coda before launching into a double-time punk strut. I listened to it a lot on my drive home from work at night, smiling all the way.

The band brought this tenfold in concert. It played a just-about-perfect setlist, with most of personal-favourite EndSerenading as well as select rarities and the expected ‘hits’ like “Parking Lot”. While many songs called for distortion-pedal explosions, the most powerful ones kept the melodies clean, Simpson bending over his guitar with evident stage fright but also power and purpose, picking out single notes or strumming fiercely. The other members seemed to recognise just how unlikely their situation was and made the most of it, guitarist Scott McCarver messing up his lines on occasion because he was leaping all over the stage, bending notes and pushing his guitar right up to the amp to feed it back.

The overall feeling was one of exaltation, for the religious themes of Simpson’s lyrics, yes, but also the power of a crowded room, brought together by a band many – yours included - were born too late to ever really know but whose music bridges those barriers of time. I have felt it before, but rarely so keenly or with such strength. This is the community music lifers tend to exalt, almost ad hoc in its composition and yet bound together so firmly by the four Texans onstage. It strikes me now as like plainsong, the early Christian church music so simple and unisonous anyone could join in the hymns and transcend the human world. Musicians strive their whole lives for just this ephemeral connection, and for an hour and a half on Saturday night, Mineral had it. So, for that matter, did we.

Since then I’ve listened to recordings of the show, and most remarkable is how different Simpson sounds than he used to, his voice deepening, widening. I don’t remember it that way at all; the band was so loud, and I so close to the stage, I couldn’t really hear him. I got the thrust of it but maybe not the thing itself. That’s okay, because the only concerts I’ve ever heard with perfect clarity were at Carnegie Hall, and they weren’t even close to rock music. I am reminded of how Peter Matthiessen describes his brush with enlightenment in The Snow Leopard, a brief feeling you only get the gist of but even in that small amount is precious. In the days afterward things stand out with such clarity to me, as if I have been suddenly refocused. Such, I suppose, is grace. Original Post: http://notedmusic.co.uk/features/the-grace-and-uplift-of-a-reunited-mineral.html

#mineral #emo

From insignificant acorns sprout staggering oak trees, and it's one of nature's many spectacular feats that so much biological information can be stored in that tiny little object, gradually able to develop into these mighty, all-seeing, century-spanning behemoths. Imagine that process, though, sped up considerably. Imagine if you plopped an acorn into a small hole in the soil, patted over the dirt and gave it a light sprinkle of water, and just seconds later strong limbs of bark burst forth, a canopy of golden-green leaves elevating you to see what a hundred-year-old oak sees. Lizard King emanates such grandness, with all the foliage of a vast saga condensed into a seed, ready and waiting to rupture once lent its own sunlight and water – the eager ears of an intrepid music explorer.

Read the full review

#the august #post-rock #indie #radiohead #album review

By very definition, the shoegazing genre is that of the introvert; the art of carefully placing a word between trenches of distortion whilst letting the guitars do the emotional lifting. So, when A Sunny Day in Glasgow juxtapose that against a soaring dream-poppy vocal exuberance, we’re really hearing all the hallmarks of a band facing one hell of an identity crisis. Yet somehow – for a band that spans continents – everything on Sea When Absent is on the same page, and the result is a bevy of hard-hitting stories that embraces these differences and excels on both sides of the coin.

Read the full review

#sunny day in glasgow #shoegaze #post-punk #dream-pop

As the eyes of the world dart across the various nations facing turmoil, largely unnoticed lies the bubbling undercurrent of musical and creative growth, converting the tribulations of societal upheaval into blimps of expression. Leading the pack is the diesel-edged "drone 'n' roll" of Mechanimal , stirring the dreary-eyed of Athens from their nests and propping them up on supports made of deep electronic rumbles. We asked Giannis Papaioannou to tell us about five tracks that provide similar support for the group on their travels.

Read the full list

#mechanimal #greece #brian eno #roedelius #boards of canada #Laika #thomas leer & robert rental #music

If Minot had been given an ultimatum – to construct as hefty an instrumental album as is humanly possible or be unceremoniously fed to the hounds – I would not be surprised to learn that they'd since gained control of their captors (and emancipated the hounds). Equal / Opposite is a menacing display of juxtaposition , daunting by way of its might but with the tension alleviated by the bounce in its step. The infiltration of sound is made resolute by its sturdiness, as though every note played and every drum struck is needing to permeate feet-thick concrete walls, yet there's a fun and frantic quality that seeks to downplay the opposing terrors like a presentation-giver imagining his glaring peers stripped down to their whities.

Read the full review

#minot #golden antenna records #post-rock #post-metal #album review #experimenal

Picture of Vinyl.

I think this frank discussion with James Joys & Peter Devlin on Irish religious doctrine, the haunting power that geography dictates to music and everything else from Sun Ra to human weakness is the finest, and perhaps most important, piece we've ever published.

Please read it.

----- "The denial, and the will to ignorance is probably the most extraordinary aspect about Ireland. But it’s hardly ignored, it’s actively suppressed. Lately you’ve had dead babies in a septic tank in Galway, which only forms part of a much larger scandal of systematic abuse and oppression by powerful institutions who’ve imbued themselves with an unquestioned moral power over swathes of vulnerable people they were meant to be sheltering. Abuse by paedophile priests, and the cover-up by bishops, most of whom who are still working in the church is another huge scandal that never seemed to reach any kind of remotely acceptable resolution. The creeps have ecclesiastically shuffled back to the cold recesses of their churches presumably with some personal assurances from God that all will be well after a few fucking hail Marys. But by ‘God’ we might mean the less-than-celestial Irish government and rather earthly Vatican regime. It’s such a mind-boggling model of corruption that implicates politics, journalism, culture, religion and their institutions, and it’s allowed one a glimpse of a particular kind of dreadful awesomeness where the last decade has seemed like one long nauseating moment where so much collusion over so many years suddenly came to light. And it’s blinding, hard to comprehend in terms of scale, and you think of the millions of people who feel a genuine, meaningful devotion to that religion, and how that may have shaken their faith, betrayed their trust, and maybe how it’s strengthened it." Read the full interview

#james joys #james joyce #ireland #electronic #geography #sun ra #peter devlin #finnegans wake #drone #ambient #music journalism

In the 16-odd years since Braid invigorated a generation of jaded teenagers with ‘Frame and Canvas’, an LP which regularly creeps-in alongside American Football and EndSerenading on many a ‘pioneering emo records’ Tumblr list, a lot has changed. Main-man Bob Nanna successfully discovered his real birth parents for starters; a union that revealed a rich musical lineage (referenced at the start of the bouncing ‘Light Crisis’), the kind of life-affirming event that you’d love to be able to write about if you’re 20 and trying to write a classic between a day job and a panic attack. To that end, Braid aren’t trying to sound like they’re still in 1993 anymore – these are dudes with mortgages and kids, writing music because it makes sense to them. It’s a grown-up album from grown-ups but addressed to everyone, whether you’re a well-versed veteran of the ‘90s sleeping-on-floors movement or a kid organising DIY basement shows after school. No Coast, in many respects, is the wise old owl. ‘I’ll tell you how it ends’, says secondary vocalist & guitarist Chris Broach dryly on the glorious ‘End End Hollows’.

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#braid #emo #no coast #topshelf records #indie

throatruinerrecords

"Losing Ground," the new track by As We Draw.

Tigers Jaw’s Charmer opens with the single most album-defining chorus of the year: “It’s a cruel world, but it’s cool”. Sure, it’s an ambiguous statement where the word choice lends itself far beyond face value so that it can fit into a plethora of situations, but it still instills the very essence of where Tigers Jaw currently find themselves. The album is presented as a collective ‘whatever’ in the face of upheaval, handled in the way that so many like-minded 20-somethings have ‘whatever’d’ before them. They play chill, keeping the world at arms length so it won’t penetrate, consume, and discard. It’s keeping it all in perspective so the minor distractions don't keep your eyes away from an endgame.

Read it in full Write for us

#tigers jaw #charmer #emo #indie #alternative #rock

We want music writers!

Noted started as a team of two. We've had various contributors helping us out, but ultimately, we're just not able to tackle as much as we'd like.

If you fancy yourself a great writer who keeps a tab on all the freshest music, have a look at this link and see if you might be interested in writing for us.

http://notedmusic.co.uk/news/writing-for-noted.html

It'd be great to hear from you x

#album review #music journalism #reviews #music review

The songs are as laid back as deck chairs, and they sway like slow-motion revellers bathed in the dwindling heat of a setting sun – but should you allow yourself to become lulled and write this off as a nonchalant frolic, you risk being claimed by the dark waves that approach once that sun has dipped below the horizon.

Come on in and read the rest of our Sandy's review. Nice to have ya.

#sandy's #fourth dementia #surf #pop #newmusic #indie