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THE FAB DOCUMENTARY "Anvil! The Story of Anvil" shined a celluloid spotlight on this Canadian metal band, which had been toiling in obscurity for 30 years. The movie was praised to no end, and the group's proto-speed-metal sound was given props by the likes of Slayer and Slash.
That Anvil is now touring with an all-female Metallica-tribute band might make it seem like the group's good fortune has come to an end — and yet it's just goofy enough to make sense, especially if you've seen the "Anvil!" film. The band's only mainstays, guitarist-singer Steve "Lips" Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner, are nothing if not funny — sometimes on purpose, though more often than not because of their lack of self-awareness. The duo is earnest almost to a fault, and you can almost hear them exclaim, "Hell, yeah!" when told they would be touring with Misstallica. (The tour hits 9:30 Club on March 20.)
The album "This Is Thirteen," which Anvil was recording during the documentary, was rereleased by VH1 last September, though in recent interviews the group has said it has 20 songs written for its next CD. But since Anvil is booked to tour through September, the band isn't sure when it will get to record the new tunes.
It's a problem Anvil has been dying to have since it began jamming in a Toronto garage in 1978.
After jump, a revisitation of our May 2009 interview with Lips Kudlow on the eve of the D.C. premiere of "Anvil! The Story of Anvil."
WHEN SOMEONE COMPLAINS a music style is dead, it's more a comment on how that person engages with the genre rather than an impartial diagnosis. Said person likely just stopped caring about hearing bands that sound like, say, The Velvet Underground, even though it was once thrilling to listen to groups in that psychedelic-garage-rock lineage.
But like the blues or folk, garage rock is eternal, and music doesn't need to be "new" to be "good." A scene can be recharged simply through an influx of fresh listeners not yet saturated by a particular sound.
So, while there's nothing new about the two young bands playing Quarry House on March 23, each breathes enough poisonous snarl into the garage-rock genre that you'll want to huff their fumes in this Silver Spring basement bar.
Norway's Pirate Love is named after the Johnny Thunders jam, and the group evokes The Cramps filtered through Jesus and Mary Chain. England's Thee Vicars is a similarly crunchy quartet that sounds like early Who mixed with late-'70s British punk.
Because no matter their age — or yours — gutbucket chord changes, smashmouth rhythms and unhinged ferocity just don't get old.
Listen to Pirate Love and Thee Vicars after the jump.
» The Quarry House Tavern, 8401 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring, Md.; Tue, March 23, 8 p.m.; 301-587-8350 (Silver Spring)
Continue Reading "Forever Young: Pirate Love & Thee Vicars Mine New Nuggets" »
WHEN A FEW bands rise up from a region and garner acclaim, the media trend is to declare a trend. But most of these "trends" are the simple result of the media hive mind focusing on a handful of groups from an area it hasn't paid attention to in a while. So, while I can't say, "There must be something in the single malts" to explain the wave of good music emanating from Scotland, I can't help but slap on my tartan kilt and toast some bands from my grandmother's land.
Two of Scotland's leading lights have new music out today: Frightened Rabbit's third album, "The Winter of Mixed Drinks," and We Were Promised Jetpacks' "The Last Place You'll Look" EP. Both groups write yearning, dynamic, nervy guitar-rock songs, and their singers' accents are pronounced. Other Scottish bands who fit this general description include The Twilight Sad, My Latest Novel, Broken Records, Glasvegas and There Will Be Fireworks. And while none play folk music, you can hear the lamentations of Scottish traditionals in their emotional epics.
There are many examples of these haunting sonic thistles — beautiful flowers girded by piercing prickles — after the jump, though I'm not quite ready to pen a rock 'n' roll Declaration of Arbroath.
LLOYD COLE HAS had to reinvent himself many times.
As leader of the '80s smart-pop band the Commotions, which had three hit albums in the U.K. and cult status in the U.S., Cole had a willfully quirky singing style.
In the 1990s, Marc Bolan and Leonard Cohen were often the solo Cole's musical touchstones, mixing power-pop and ballads to go with a smoother croon — and a series of record-label snafus that led to several albums being lost in the shuffle.
But in the 2000s, Cole performed his biggest reinvention: DIY artist.
EVEN THOUGH I have a million LPs, a bazillion CDs and enough MP3s to open my own version of iTunes, lately I've fallen down the Internet radio rabbit hole. Sometimes I just don't like to make decisions when my brain is in a winter fog, and staring at a wall of discs or files on a hard drive can lock me up. Besides, it's nice to let someone else play selector.
Befitting the season, I keep looping into moody mixes hosted by Fluid-radio.co.uk, which specializes in "experimental frequencies": dark ambient, modern classical and avant-electronica. The station's sepia-toned sounds, curated by top-notch underground musicians, provide the perfect elegiac soundtracks for these cold short days and oppressive grey skies.
Perhaps I shouldn't wallow in melancholy beauty and instead listen to more classic reggae to stir my serotonin. But generally I prefer to play music that reinforces what I'm feeling rather than hope a song can lift me up. Besides, the 20 extra pounds of cold-weather protection I'm sporting means it would have to be a really strong tune to heave my heft.
Want to hear the Fluid Radio mixes I've favored? Six are after the jump.
Continue Reading "Seasonal Effective Mix Order: Fluid Radio" »
WHEN THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES perform two concerts on Feb. 18 — acoustic at House of Sweden, then an electric set at Black Cat — listeners will hear a fantastic rock group whose latest album, "Communion," combines Oasis-like melody without the moronity.
What won't be apparent in the veteran band's smart combination of psychedelia and folk rock, however, is the deep influence of D.C.'s early punk-rock scene.
Bearded-bear vocalist Ebbot Lundberg said that in the early 1980s he and his friends would rush to a local record store in Gothenburg, Sweden, whenever they knew Dischord Records releases were arriving.
"Maybe there were five copies coming to Gothenburg, and we would have a competition to see who could get there first. It was really hard to get anything, so we were totally, insanely mad about having ... everything that came out. We had the Oi thing from England first, and then we discovered Dischord — and the "Let Them Eat Jellybeans" [compilation on Alternative Tentacles].
"I kind of stopped buying stuff in '85, maybe, from Dischord; I discovered The Stooges and stuff like that," Lundberg continued, though he answered "absolutely" when asked if he'd like to see Dischord co-founder Ian MacKaye at T.S.O.O.L.'s D.C. concerts.
Lundberg's tastes changed in the mid-'80s because, he said, "I was in a very strange period. A shit period, actually. Everything was just so bad — I call it the 'Live Aid' period — I just wondered what happened to music. So we had to form Union Carbide Productions."
Continue Reading "Salad Days: The Soundtrack of Our Lives" »
WHILE I POWERED through shoveling by listening to Motorhead, the music that soundtracked most of Snowmageddon 2.0 came from the 12k label.
Run by all-around artist Taylor Deupree, whose work encompasses sound sculpting, graphic design and photography, 12k specializes in minimalist electronic music that often beats with an acoustic heart. There's also a D.C. connection with the New York-based 12k: In 2000, Deupree teamed with the District's own internationally known microsound guru Richard Chartier to form the LINE sublabel, which focuses on installation works and digital minimalism.
Updated Feb. 8, 1 p.m., via Sonic Circuits, the promoter for the concert: "Sorry folks, due to the current travel conditions & limited metro service tonight's show has been canceled. We'll try to reschedule Mountains in the near future."
IT STARTS WITH a low, quiet drone. Soon, a gentle guitar arpeggio starts to sing, followed by a whoosh of synths and the most subtle percussive ticks tip-toeing through the tulips of sound.
A flowery mood has been set, a deep sonic meditation has started and ... then a guy yells, "Dude, gimme another PBR."
And just like that the ambiance is bulldozed, and the momentary attention paid to the band on stage is quickly diverted to texting, babbling and the arhythmic clicking of beer bottles.
These are just some of the issues that musicians playing ambient/instrumental/experimental music face on a nightly basis, especially when playing rock clubs instead of, say, art galleries, where decorum demands a certain amount of respectful silence.
New York City's Mountains and Stockholm, Sweden's Tape are going through the ups and downs of presenting their wordless soundscapes in live settings with a short American tour that stops at Bossa in D.C. on Feb. 8.
But even though the two bands share similar musical roots, the way they attack concerts is entirely different.
Continue Reading "Noisy Ambiance: Mountains & Tape at Bossa in D.C." »
SINCE "ALTERNATIVE" MEANS "mainstream" and "indie" means nothing, we feel comfortable using the heading "Pop" to describe the stellar slate of sound hitting D.C. this spring.
Death metal, hair metal, black metal; London teens, hip-hop mainstays, African legends, cool electronica, blazing guitar rock, Scottish indie rockers holding foil balloons — if you least expect it, expect it.
I DIDN'T WATCH the Grammys, and I unfollowed anybody live tweeting it. Because though I like some of the artists up for awards, I didn't care if they won — and truly didn't need to read grown-ups complaining about who should have won in this childish contest.Whining about how bad the Grammys was/is/will always be is just a whole lotta noise — whereas you could have visited District of Noise to hear actual noise and all sorts of other live recordings from our small-but-thriving experimental-music scene, covering free jazz, psychedelia, modern classical and avant electronics.
The highest-profile event from this underground world is the annual Sonic Circuits festival, whose organizers also produce concerts throughout the year; their next features ambient groups Mountains (New York City) and Tape (Sweden) playing Feb. 8 at Bossa in Adams Morgan. But there are house shows and small-venue gigs going on all the time.
So, next year, instead of sitting home and complaining about what commercial slop the Grammys "have become," visit Districtofnoise.org and DC-soniccircuits.org to discover music and concerts by artists who don't care what you think about awards shows, either. Some video clips from the DoN archives below:
Addison Road