Bleep Bleep

SLC punks The Fucktards reunite, get censored.

What do the Fucktards sound like? “Like shit in a Coke bottle,” says drummer Tea Cup Caterpillar (Laser Gold, Fuck the Informer) “Hold it up to your ear and shake it real fast,” adds lead vocalist Kermit the Brown Eye (publisher of The Leviathan).
Apparently, you have to agitate it a little. And that’s what the Fucktards have always done: Agitate. The Salt Lake City band’s last performance, due in part to a ban from Kilby Court and a drummer who “quit at least 12 times,” occurred in 2003 at Todd’s Bar & Grill (now The Cell Block). Six eventful years later, the foursome is back and here to stay—at least for now. Part of the allure of the Fucktards is their off-kilter nature. I once saw a concert at Kilby where Kermit doled out trophies to the audience for very inappropriate reasons. And I heard a rumor about how they stapled trash to their former drummer at one show. He proceeded to fling dried Ramen about as they played, resulting in the Kilby ban. The Fucktards refused to clean up. They don’t give a fuck, thus their name.
Their first reunion show is the SLUG 20th anniversary party and as Kermit explains without apologies, “Hopefully, we’ll just play five songs and take their money. SLUG has no idea what they’re getting into.” The group originally started as a complete joke, snowballing into what Kermit describes as “an even bigger joke that wasn’t ever supposed to happen. And I’d like the snowballing to have a bigger effect.”

New bassist Petey the Spray Wizard (Deadbeats, Pleasure Thieves) brought the idea of a comeback to Kermit who gladly jumped on the ’Tards wagon, albeit a bit skeptically.

“I didn’t know if we’d be able to catch the old magic,” says Kermit.

“And it turned out better,” Tea Cup adds. “Turns out we are all wizards,” Kermit says with a grin. Old fans will remember and new fans will experience the Fucktards classic hits “I Popped Mother Mary’s Cherry,” “Christ Punchers” and a new song, “We’re the Fucktards,” a cover of an old Chipmunks song with, um, different lyrics. Involving your girlfriend. Sorry. Kermit says he’s singing it whether or not the rest of the band is ready.

“It’s starting to dry out and get solid,” the Spray Wizard confirms. At least the music is. This band will never “dry” out— hopefully. As Tea Cup says,“You ask our inspiration? It’s not about bands; it’s drinking. It’s all the inspiration we got: It’s booze.”

Not even grain alcohol can soften the band’s recent cold-blooded old times. Original Fucktards member Beard opens up for the first time anywhere about his recent medical experiences during a routine check-up, “We’re gonna do a prostate exam, but first, let’s look at that penis,” says Beard, “The doctor literally said that. Then he said turn your head and cough and out of the corner of my eye I saw him put on a glove. I really didn’t know what it was. Thirty-one years young, and it had never happened before. I feel violated.”

Hopefully, the Fucktards can conquer this latest violation. Chances are they will. These miscreants say they’re looking forward to making a severe impression on the community. “I think if this is the scene,” Kermit says holding his palm up sideways and then putting his other up a foot away in pistol shape, “then the Fucktards are a gun shooting bullets into it to see how many people we can make mad. We’re the Columbine of the music scene,” he finishes with an all-too jovial smile. You’ve been warned.

Red Bennies

In the Red: New album, same unpredictability from SLC stalwarts the Red Bennies.

It’s been five years since the last album from the Red Bennies, Shake It Off, and some questioned when, if ever, the band was going to do anything new.

But for leader/band constant David Payne, unpredictability is nothing new. The band’s been around, off and on, for 16 years—a span that covers nine albums, four record labels, a rotating who’s who of local musicians filling various roles and a constant presence around the club and bar scene. Despite the seemingly constant changes and occasional breaks in performing, the Red Bennies have managed to become one of the longest-running bands on the local rock scene.

Now the Red Bennies return with another change in the lineup and a yearlong stint in the studio under their belts, recording the new album Glass Hands.

“I think we’ve had a sufficiently resonant and exciting sound to entertain a crowd at the bar,” Payne says, reflecting on the reception they’ve received over the years. “We’ve experienced some popularity, but have also had a sufficiently dissonant and ugly sound to keep any really significant popularity at bay.”

For the past few years, the band members’ rigid work schedules left little time for practice and gigs. Combine that with Payne’s schedule—he has newborn twins and a job running the Rock ’n’ Roll Academy—and it was nearly impossible for the Red Bennies to function in any traditional way.

In 2009, as the band started to record new material, Payne lost two members when Scott Selfridge and Terrance Warburton decided to move on.

“Scott actually quit the group the day I brought my computer to practice, but as a matter of personal honor, he agreed to quickly track all the songs before leaving,” Payne recalls. “It left me the perfect opportunity to capture what I’ve always wanted to—real emotion.”

With his morale quickly declining, Payne latched on to a new goal of creating a “dream album,” one focused on the band’s musical fluency rather than simply grinding out new songs. Getting contributors to agree to a schedule that included two-hour rehearsals on just a couple of songs at a time—with one or two takes recorded—Payne was able to piece together the new album out of those efforts over the course of two months.

The result, Payne says, is the most honest and personal album he’s ever made.

“I wanted the album to sound mundane, small, frustrated, futile,” Payne says. “That’s how we all felt, particularly at that moment. But those have also been the undertones of the group throughout our whole career. And, I imagine, any group.”

Glass Hands, making its way into music shops this month, is a culmination of old and new songs. It holds a fine mixture of material dating back to 2007 that gained popularity on MySpace, and newer works formed in-studio during 2009. The overall feels more like a methodical groove, purposely designed to both jar the senses and comfort you after. Hard-kicking tracks like “The Sun Is Coming Up” get you stomping on the floor. It’s immediately followed by “Cool Down,” with a steady bass and slow-dance tones that beg for the lights to dim and someone to get close to. The band explores new territory in “Comfort At Home,” with bellowing vocals and bouncy riffs, and the title track that creeps in with cello chords, only to kick into a rooted blues-rock number.

If there were a single word to define this album, it would simply be: Pure. Every snap of the snare, pluck of the strings and wail of the lyrics is pure rock, with no gimmicks or audio tricks—something you rarely get from a band these days.

As for playing live, Dan Thomas has stuck around on drums and the duo picked up Tommy Nguyen (Future of the Ghost, Tolchock Trio) to fill the bassist role, as he was the most fluent player they knew.

As for what kind of audience the Red Bennies expect to find with their new music, that’s as unpredictable as the band’s path so far. Payne isn’t getting his hopes up, based on what he’s seen lately in local clubs.
“The scene sucks shit for someone my age,” Payne says. “If the music had any merit, people would listen instead of converse. And if it doesn’t have any merit, it deserves to be talked over.” 

Murder by Death

Indie-rockers dance with darkness

  Murder by Death

Posted // August 9,2012 - A battle against hordes of the undead, a dead-end coal-mine shaft, a small town’s showdown with the devil, an act of desperate revenge—these are all images conjured by Western-tinged indie-rock band  Murder by Death’s brooding, whiskey-soaked tunes. And the five-piece’s upcoming album, Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon—their debut on Bloodshot Records and sixth full-length album, to be released Sept. 25—is yet another example of Murder by Death’s knack for rich storytelling and ability to greet darkness as if it’s an old friend.
Murder by Death was formed in 2001 in Bloomington, Ind., and gained a cult-like fan following through a committed DIY work ethic, endless touring and talented musicianship—combining Adam Turla’s rich baritone vocals and rugged guitar work; Sarah Balliet’s beautiful, liquid cello melodies; drummer Dagan Thogerson and bassist Matt Armstrong’s strong rhythm section; and the multi-instrumental flavors mixed in by new recruit Scott Brackett (formerly of Okkervil River and Shearwater).
Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon will, without a doubt, satisfy fans’ thirst for dusty, pitch-black Americana tunes.
“The title evoked a lot of what the album did musically,” Turla says. “There are some really very desolate-sounding tracks on this [album], and it’s very brutal and brooding. So we thought it worked.”
With a name like Murder by Death, dark subject matter comes with the territory. “I think we’ve always just responded to darkness, and that’s what brought us all together as writers—our sort of interest in the morose side of things,” Turla says. “That’s just been our common thread.” And although Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon isn’t a long-form narrative like some of the band’s past albums (Who Will Survive, & What Will Be Left of Them?, especially), that signature Murder by Death storytelling and sense of place is still present.
“There’s this darkness lurking [on Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon], and I think that came from … some things going on in our little town in Indiana that last summer when we were writing,” Turla says. “A couple of girls went missing, and that really took over the whole town. And everyone was very concerned about it, and it was just sort of a tragedy in places that seem peaceful and reserved. There’s sort of this dark-underbelly feeling [on the album], even though there are a few tracks that we tried to create that were more upbeat. We wanted to sound upbeat but have really dark content.”
Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon was written in 2011 in a southern Indiana basement and recorded with producer John Congleton (Explosions in the Sky, St. Vincent, Black Mountain) in Dallas, and Murder by Death delighted in the fact they were free to take their time in crafting the melodies.
“It was fun to write because we’d never given ourselves the amount of time to develop the ideas,” Turla says. “Back in the day, we made so little money from the band that we were just on the road all year. And we were just playing shows all the time. So it was a luxury for us to focus on what was a really fun part of being in a band—the creative element.”
Murder by Death has released one new single, “I Came Around,” in anticipation of the new album. It’s an accordion-laced tune about a funeral that perfectly captures the album’s aesthetic of an upbeat sound tempered with gloomy subject matter, which Turla describes as “one of the best [songs] we’ve ever written.” Other tracks include “Hard World”—“It’s just a really weird song, under the guise of an upbeat rocker but there’s a lot going on under the surface,” he says—and “My Hill”—“I can’t get it out of my head. It’s just mandolin and vocals. It’s got such a feeling to it.”

Shabazz Palaces

Ishmael Butler: All questions, no answers

Posted // September 6,2012 - “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass,” wrote Anton Chekhov.
Although removed by more than 100 years, Ishmael Butler (aka Palaceer Lazaro) epitomizes the Russian existential writer’s show-don’t-tell style—the essence of this quote—and his disregard for traditional story structure. Chekhov also believed that what is obligatory of an artist is not to provide answers, but to properly pose questions.
In this vein, Butler, the rhyming half of Seattle’s Shabazz Palaces, pushes the boundaries of storytelling in hip-hop. First, there was the band members’ anonymity—virtually unheard of within a genre of celebrity names—during the first two EP releases, allowing merit alone to gain notoriety without relying on the successes of Butler’s previous group, Digable Planets.
Butler also offers mysterious, semi-cryptic titles, like “An Echo From the Hosts That Profess Infinitum” and “Endeavors for Never (The Last Time We Spoke You Said You Were not Here. I Saw You Though.)” from the critically acclaimed 2011 release Black Up.
Each song shows its own “glint of light on broken glass” in a smattering of vignettes written seemingly as stream of consciousness. Butler would argue that these several-lines-long scenes sewn together are the most realistic approach to penning a narrative.
“A film or book is a nonrealistic view of life,” says Butler, who then describes a fictional scenario of a couple cyclically falling in and out of love. “It seems abstract [as it’s happening]. You can pick out those parts and then, later, put it in line [for a story]. But that’s not the way life goes; it’s not the way you hear, think, feel.
“I’m trying to reflect what’s happening to me and the world more realistically than sitting down and filtering out a linear story,” says Butler, whose songs, rich in imagery, allow open interpretation, much like a work of non-narrative contemporary film art. It poses questions and gives nary an answer. For example, “Are you ... Can you ... Were you? (Felt)” muses on the illusion of time, the problem with materialism, the adoption of television over literature, the struggles of African-Americans and so on.
Also within that song are clues to Butler’s writing processes: “Aw, dude/ The spicier the food/ When you chew, fuck their rules/ It’s a feeling.” Furthermore, as he speaks via phone from his home, the way he describes his creative process isn’t dissimilar to how a medium would describe how they channel a deity from another realm.
“When I’m making music, I don’t feel like I’m doing something, as much as I feel like something is happening to me,” Butler says.
The environment has to be perfect—the lights dimmed, the proper tools put in place and Butler relaxed and calm. And then “it” just comes. He has difficulty (or maybe it’s reluctance) describing the process further, but gives the allusion of it being meditative—hypnotic even.
Butler doesn’t think too much—about the lyrics or the industrial, minimalistic beats that he produces with Tendai “Baba” Maraire. “I don’t necessarily like all the sounds or the rhymes [that come out], but I believe in them,” he says. “[It’s like] you’re spiraling up or down or to the side. But when your instincts come, that’s where it’s at.”
Yet it’s not all from a higher power; there is responsibility on his end, be it culling sources of inspiration or habitually jotting down lyrical sketches. He cites Harlem Renaissance poets—like Nikki Giovanni, Alain LeRoy Locke, James Baldwin and, especially, The Last Poets—as shaping his worldview and opening his eyes to wordplay and the power of language. These were tradition-challenging writers whose fresh and clever approach was derived from their urban environment. Butler is doing just that now. His work is not derivative of these cats, just informed.
“Everything is born of something else,” Butler says. On his phone, there are roughly 2,500 recorded notes—phrases, sketches, rhymes—but he rarely goes back to them as a direct source material. “Everything that I record or think about or write down or whatever, even if you never see it again, it all leads to a song in one way or another.”
The whole process is magical, he says. “What’s happening is some divine stuff. You’re channeling and you feel like you’re plugged up into something. It’s hard to describe or chronicle. I’m not able to do it. I’m always amazed when cats can do that ... maybe when I’m older [I will be able to].”
It’s admirable to deal in the currency of mystery, though. After all, “It’s a feeling.”
Even if Butler could describe his creative process, he probably wouldn’t—that’s not his ethos. He shows glints of light on the broken glass of his fractured storytelling, and the listerner can extrapolate meaning. Butler’s job isn’t to provide answers, it’s to ask questions.

Atmosphere's Slug

Why he loves Prince & the "M" word

 Atmosphere

Posted // September 13,2012 - In 1997, at the tail end of the East Coast/West Coast rap rivalry that consumed the mid-’90s, a little-known Minnesota crew named Atmosphere released their first album, a word-of-mouth effort titled Overcast!. While everyone was focused on New York City and Los Angeles, the Midwest hip-hop scene was gaining momentum, and one of the heaviest hitters of this new independent movement was Atmosphere ’s emcee, Sean Daley, better known as Slug.
Since then, Atmosphere (Daley and producer Anthony Davis, aka Ant) has grown from a duo of angry kids writing songs about women and substance abuse to chilled-out family men who headline shows with Depeche Mode. Hip-hop, since its birth in the early ’80s, has been predominantly aimed at the youth, and rap fans love to argue that getting old means getting soft. But the genre is still relatively young, and in the past decade, fans have just started to get a glimpse as to which artists are staying relevant and which ones aren’t.
In April 2011, Atmosphere released their seventh studio album, The Family Sign. A melodic departure from their sample-based gritty rap, the album has been criticized and labeled as Atmosphere’s “mature album.” But don’t say the word “mature” around Daley.
“We aren’t supposed to say the ‘M’ word about ourselves,” says Daley during a recent phone interview. “You [the interviewer] can say it, but we can’t. I feel like cats that say that sound pretentious: ‘This is my mature record.’ Man, fuck all that. Just play your old-cat rap for old people.”
But Daley’s audience is as diverse as his catalog. “I’ll play for audiences now and I’ll look out and I’ll see people in their late 30s and people that are 16. That’s cool. It’s great I get to be one of those guys,” Daley says. Then he takes a long pause and lets out a sigh. “It’s official—we’ve become the Eagles of independent rap.”
One of the reasons The Family Sign is being dubbed a mature album is because, musically, it’s one of the least rap-like efforts from Atmosphere. For the first time in their long discography, the group abandoned sampling and brought on keyboardist Erick Anderson and guitarist Nate Collis to help produce the album. In past interviews, Daley has claimed that The Family Sign is his most Prince-like album. Clarification was necessary: “Prince would do things that you weren’t supposed to do with a synth on a pop record,” Daley says. “In that sense, I felt a little bit of that in this record. On ‘Ain’t Nobody,’ there’s this weird, urban country thing going on. We were doing stuff that you’re not supposed to do in rap.”
At the age of 39, Daley claims he isn’t dumbing down or streamlining his music, he’s just over trying to prove himself. “If you listen to the old Atmosphere stuff like Overcast!, especially the writing, I’m writing for other rappers,” Daley says. “At some point, I realized I’ve outgrown that. I don’t care what other rappers think of me anymore. So I’m not gonna write for them, either. I wanna rap about whatever comes to mind.”
Part of this growing process included shedding a longtime fictional character who appeared on many of Atmosphere’s tracks, Lucy Ford (which is a play on words for “Lucifer”). “When it started, [Lucy] was about my relationship with alcohol,” Daley says. “But really, she’s a bucket that contains anything that I was co-dependent on. Even writing songs about Lucy became one those things in the bucket. So that’s when I stopped. I didn’t want to be that dude that was drinking, chasing ass and getting onstage and rapping. I was like, ‘This is my life?’
“I can’t present a world that is tiny,” Daley continues. “I’m lucky enough to see a bigger world.”

Black Veil Brides

The kids might be all right

 Black Veil Brides

“My ribs are slowly healing,” says Andy Biersack aka Andy Six, frontguy of Black Veil Brides. It sounds like lame emo lyrics, but it’s actually the upshot of an arena-worthy stunt. Biersack busted three babybacks when he attempted to leap from one pillar to another while performing at an L.A. Hot Topic.

No, really.

You may be thinking what I thought when my daughter—a recovering Disneyphile and on-and-off Belieber (where’d I go wrong, Jeebus?)—started yapping about these guys. She’s in junior high, just learning about scenes and “scene hair” and other dreck. She used the word “emo” like it meant something good and started asking to wear eyeliner. On her cheeks.

Once more, I looked skyward and asked why.

My head imploded when I saw an early video of BVB’s “Knives and Pens.” Clad in all white with matching black scene hair and eyeliner, a whining Biersack and his then-bandmates were the picture of emo blecch. And the song title conjured images of cutting and bad prose. Then the kid mentioned some BVB fans were cutters.

“But no, Dad. Andy Six—he doesn’t spell it with two Xs because that’d be too much like Nikki Sixx—is really smart, and he doesn’t support cutting and …”

It wasn’t that specific plea that got me to give Black Veil Brides a fair shake. It just seemed like if there were ever a time to give the kid a break and try to like her music, this would be better than that unctuous Canadian d-bag, Trainwreck Miley or the Jonas Twats. So I asked BVB’s rep for the CD.

Title? We Stitch These Wounds. “So far, so good,” I thought, as Black Veil Brides ramped up their Kiss-Crue-Maiden attack. But before long, another criticism cropped up: I’ve heard this before. Not from the influences, but from another erstwhile emo band, a petulant and shrill wannabe Guns-Maiden child called Avenged Sevenfold.

In the interest of fatherly investigation, I let BVB play and was rewarded with fist-pumping choruses and guitar solos—those once-endangered but resurgent sexy beasts. For the most part, Biersack had ditched the yuck-sensitive singing from the early version of “Knives and Pens.” He growled more now, stopping just short of histrionic-housewife shrieks and Cookie-Cookie-Cookie-starts-with-C barks. My fingers drummed on the steering wheel; I grooved and wondered if this were a new guilty or legitimate pleasure.

The experiment worked. The kid and I had something to talk about. I gave credit where due, so she allowed me my critiques, actually listened to them. She rebutted and I reciprocated. It’s nice.

So do I love Black Veil Brides? Nah. But it’s good to see a band like them, founded by Biersack while in his teens, and grown, almost completely grassroots, into a major-label act that has legs. The band’s new album, Set the World On Fire, stretches further away from contrived derivation into legitimacy, showing the potential to keep monolithic, leather-clad, cake-faced rock stars alive for those of us who still find fun in them. And they have balls—Biersack finished that Hot Topic show, something like seven more songs, with his shattered ribs. Even if they retain some whine and cheese.

“Our music,” Biersack said on the phone, “is about hope and loving yourself. We have no interest in being a revival band. I mean, there are so many years of hard-rock music and so many different kinds of bands and different kinds of music—you sort of miss if you don’t show your influences. So, if anything, we try to put them in the melting pot, and whatever comes out is whatever Black Veil Brides is.”

The Bouncing Souls

Still punk after all these (25) years

 The Bouncing Souls

Posted // July 19,2012 -   The Bouncing Souls have seen pretty much everything that the music industry has to offer—both good and bad. In their new song, “Comet,” they look back to the beginning of their career, noticing: “We’re no longer asking why, as we start to realize/ Change, it’s just a part of life.”
Just as the five members have progressed and regressed over their nearly 25 years, so has their sound. For their ninth studio album, also called Comet, they’ve gone back to the spirit of their first few albums, such as The Good, the Bad & the Argyle or Maniacal Laughter—no filler, no crap, just simple blood-and-guts punk rock.
“This time we [went] back really old school [with writing these songs]—just us in a room, in a short amount of time,” says lead singer Greg Attonito. “[Comet] was just so simple, and we really put energy into it and didn’t overthink it.”
The album consists of 10 songs backed by a tour that distinguishes itself from The Bouncing Souls’ previous shows and tours; however, Attonito won’t say how the tour in support of Comet is different, wanting to create a surprise.
Comet’s tracks range from the fast-paced, defiant “Baptized” to the bittersweet, reflective “Ship in a Bottle.” While songs like “Ship in a Bottle” and “Comet” show a growth in The Bouncing Souls’ music, other songs like “We Love Fun” and “Coin Toss Girl” reveal that they can still be the same immature boys from New Brunswick. Yet each song seems to be a dichotomous blend of nostalgia for the past and excitement for the future.
There is the same energy of their early-career tracks but with more awareness. “It has [the same] spirit, but we can’t take away the experiences we’ve had in the last 20 years,” Attonito says. “But we’re more aware of the energy: It’s an urgent energy.”
The Bouncing Souls have run the gauntlet of experiences open to rock stars. They started out as a DIY band from New Jersey and risen to the status of punk-rock gods. Now in their 40s, the members of The Bouncing Souls have not only seen but also experienced a good chunk of punk-rock history, witnessing it morph and change with the times. Nowadays, when a young band wants to promote their music, they upload it onto a number of Web-based streaming services. It was very different for The Bouncing Souls back in the day. “We used to get on our skateboards and grab our 7-inches and promote that way. Now we look back and see how archaic it all seems,” Attonito says.
Comparing what punk was then to what it is now, Attonito has a hard time describing how he feels about it. “It’s hard to take myself out of the picture and how I felt when I was young because [punk rock] wasn’t well-known. It was underground,” he says. “Now, it’s kind of opposite ’cause more people are aware of music in general and it’s easier to get [music] through the Internet.”
Attonito and company look back at where they’ve come from, but their most valuable lesson hasn’t been what they’ve learned—it’s been how to forget. “We’ve learned a lot about music and more about [life] experiences. We’ve seen the world. I think a lot of it is good and valuable,” Attonito says. “But now we’re learning to forget about what we’ve learned. I think we did that on Comet. I think we pretty much achieved that.
“When you get to the root of [punk rock], it’s about the spirit of it, and that never changes,” he says. “You see it in the younger kids and you see it in the older bands, that indescribable punk-rock spirit.”