WRBB’s Craig Short caught up with singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Joseph LeMay, who performs as SONTALK. His music, a blend of delicate dissonance, distorted slide guitar transmissions, sequenced beats, vinyl samples and warm electronics, has culminated in the debut album 

Joseph LeMay, the singer and songwriter behind SONTALK, has always loved the art of simple song craft. The power of words and melody are central to his songwriting. But on his latest record, 

, the first under his new moniker, LeMay breaks new sonic ground, applying his folk and Americana wisdom to an expansive world of synths, drum machines, and unorthodox production. I sat down with him to discuss his new direction, and how he stays true to his songwriting roots even in this exciting new format.

What prompted the move from recording music under your given name to recording as SONTALK?

So, when I started making this record that turned into 

, I didn’t set out to start a new project, but we did want to make something new. And to be honest, I wasn’t hating on the Americana or folk genres. But there are elements of it that can be a bit trapping. Like if there’s not a steel guitar, or you’re not wearing a denim jacket and a cool Stetson white cowboy hat… I don’t want to make it out like that’s all there is to it, but all that said, I did have a desire to move outside of that genre. And we just went a lot further than we thought! So towards the last day of recording, I had this epiphany on the way to the studio like, “okay, the reason that this doesn’t sound like a Joseph LeMay record is because it isn’t.” And so then we had to go about creating the new vehicle for the music to live in.

Wow. So with that change, did you find that your creative process was evolving a lot? It wasn’t just sitting in a trailer this time?

Well, yes and no. Because I intended to make another Joseph LeMay record when we first started, a lot of these songs started in the same way that my previous records started. I still just write alone in my writing room. But it has evolved, in that now the possibilities are bigger. I think a bit more about sounds while I’m writing. I might write on electric guitar with a really inspiring guitar tone or use drum loops or synthesizers. That can be really freeing, and more exciting than only telling a narrative story with chords on a guitar and lyrics and melody.

There’s definitely a lot of interesting production elements going on in this current record. Do you find yourself collaborating with people more to get that tone?

Yeah absolutely. This record was an incredibly collaborative process. Previously I’d just worked with my friends and people that played with me live, so I had to overcome the fear of working with new people for that. But I think it ended up being a good thing, because it was a clean slate for everyone. Nobody had to break any old molds, so to speak.

Did you find yourself giving up more creative control?

Correct. I gave up a ton of creative control on this, and it was a lot more satisfying than if I had created this simply out of my own mind. It had this harmonious way of coming into being was pretty awesome to get to be a part of.

So, thematically it seems like a lot of the music you write is a way of figuring yourself out and expressing things that you wouldn’t be able to express in other ways. Do you find that music works for you as a tool of communication?

It’s just easier to say hard things about yourself or a place that you’re from when you put it to song. We also know that it’s easier to hear those things when it’s to a song. I don’t necessarily find myself saying “I need to get some stuff off my chest. I’m going to I’m going to write a song about this.” It’s a subconscious outflow. A lot of times, I don’t realize how much I’ve been dealing with a certain thing until it comes out as lyrics or a chord progression. So it is cathartic, but it’s not a scheduled therapy session.

Have you been able to express yourself in new ways with the new direction your project is taking?

In my previous stuff I had a tendency to want to resolve things in life. My last record was primarily a love song album, so it’s nice to get a little bit more realistic. There’s not always a happy ending immediately, and especially not at the end of a four minute song. And live, [the music] is even more rowdy than than the record, so I get to get out some of that some of that aggression, and sing a bit louder and play harder.

Now that you’ve forged this new territory, where do you see yourself going in the future? Are there any more things you’d want to try?

I like this project because it allows me to write songs the way that I like to, which is somewhat traditional. I think somewhere inside I’ll always want to check off the boxes of a Nashville songwriter. I like stories, I like fun wordplay. And so I can write traditional folk songs or a classic piano ballad, and then put it through this SONTALK filter and get the excitement of experimenting with sounds. And that’s a lot of fun to do.

Q&A with SONTALK

Quelle Chris has had a lot of labels thrown at him over the course of his prolific career: “oddball,” “alternative,” “woke,” “quirky,” etc… I won’t resort to such name-calling, but that’s because I have no idea what label I’d put on his music anyway. Quelle (pronounced “L.A.”) just does what comes naturally to him, and that’s generally nothing like what the rest of the world is doing. So instead of using more specific genre tags, I’ll say this: Quelle Chris is a spitfire MC with a whole lot to say, and he’s rapping in a time when saying nothing is not just irresponsible but dangerous.

, Chris takes on the concept of power, posturing, and the abuses that people inflict on each other with false notions of superiority. “If God made the law, we should follow it,” he intones sarcastically on “It’s The Law,” then reduces that statement to a mockery with “just like God made this dick, you can swallow it.” Everyone wants a platform to stand on, Chris suggests, a step stool to make themselves taller than the rest of the world.

Different characters zip in and out of the narrative. John the Baptist appears on “Wild Minks,” ghostwriting scripture for money, clout, and the promise of sacrifice. A smarmy businessman rambles on about his Panamanian tailor and the size of his mother’s pearls with patronizing, self-important glee. Chris himself searches for approval and admiration. “Just put me on a box of Wheaties!” he pleads, begging for the validation he’s earned just for trying his best every day.

The specter of gun violence floats over the proceedings. Weapons take many meanings on 

, from staples of survival to cruel and callous reminders of power. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn’t lose,” Chris spells out with disparate vocal samples, quoting one of our president’s most despicable moments. When heard after the album’s title track, a defeated snapshot of gun violence’s omnipresence in America (“coming to a city near you,” Chris warns us), the words are more insensitive than ever. Likewise, an ostensibly hopeful song called “Straight Shot” takes on a much darker tone when it comes immediately after a spoken word elegy to the victims of mass shootings.

Chris’ flow is remarkable. His words come out in a shaggy, rapid-fire slew of ideas, unloaded from his mind in short, blunt phrases that he drops as heavily as sacks of flour. His delivery is anything but precise. Even the catchiest hooks on 

 swerve across tempo lines with impunity, and at times his words come out in an impenetrable gabble, packed so full of wordplay and cryptic references that only a devoted fan with a lyric sheet could begin to tease them apart.

The production is equally dense, but similarly brilliant. Chris has a long history of beatmaking, producing the bulk of his own material and forging a totally unique style, full of surprising samples and drum loops that have been digitally chewed up and spat back out like gum. His years of practice combine to make 

 his hardest hitting album yet. On “Obamacare” he creates a bristling forest of pianos, chimes, and furious drum loops, providing the perfect backdrop to shout “I’m tryna burn this bitch down / I ain’t tryna break it!” as he plays the agent of chaos. The drifting jazz piano on closer “Wyrm,” meanwhile, mirrors the spiraling of Chris’ thoughts as he ponders his own legacy. “Will I be one of the greatest that’s never listed on pages next to B.I.G?” For all the work Quelle Chris puts in to empower himself, will he ever know if it’s been worth it? Lovers, mass shooters, and drug fiends alike ask the same question throughout 

Quelle Chris unloads a rapid-fire slew of ideas on ‘Guns’

There’s a moment in “If Ever” that makes me lose track of geography. It happens right around the point when Carolyn Flaherty begins to wail wordlessly, while nimble drum brushwork clatters in the background like distant machinery. In that moment I forget where I am. I should be lost somewhere in a dark wood in the dead of winter, with deer hiding in the shadows and strange whispering noises filtering in from all sides. I’m not, of course, but that’s just the magic of Carol, a star among Boston’s many rising talents.

, is a magnificent piece of musical scene building. Familiar forms are reduced to skeletal suggestions. Delicate fingerpicked guitar figures float in space, prickly as bare tree limbs, and synth patches flutter around your head like snowflakes. The piercing call of Carol’s voice beckons you deeper into the trees. In a richly textured set of slow-churning folk songs, she poetically dissects her confusion, wonder, and fear in the face of change.

Transitions inform many of the lyrics on 

. “Clock” details the end of an unsustainable love, where needs and wants compete with each other. “Blood and Breastmilk” uses spoken word poetry to detail the everyday humiliation of living in an arbitrary system indifferent to our struggles. And though it’s hard to choose a highlight from only five songs, “Lives There Too” hits the hardest. “If there’s a child who lives in the best parts of you,” Carol cries, like a beacon of affirmation after a long night, “there’ll be a woman who lives there too.”

Though her songwriting and instrumental prowess shine brightly on 

, Carol’s greatest asset is her voice. It brings to mind the neo-folk warbling of Mothers or Sarah Louise with its dark intonation and sharp breaks between registers, but to reduce her voice to the sum of its parts misses the point. There’s a magnetism to Carol’s singing that lies beyond the technical. It commands attention, even in the softest moments. When seen live it’s impossible to focus on anything else. “Are you ready to receive my love?” she asks on “Castle,” and though the question comes from a place of uncertainty, there’s an intensity to it that borders on terrifying. Whether we’re ready or not, Carol is here. With any luck, she’ll be here to stay.

On ‘Softest Destroyer,’ Boston-based Carol makes a strong debut

Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?

The gloomy, soot-blackened disposition of 

Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? 

stands in sharp contrast to Deerhunter’s previous effort, 2015’s 

The question we should really ask is “why hasn’t Deerhunter ever released a bad album?” Every vital, exciting indie band eventually runs out of steam and starts relying on expensive producers to make them interesting again (spoiler alert: this technique almost never works). After 18 years and eight albums, Bradford Cox and his band have earned the right to slack off a little. They, however, have other ideas, and I mean that in the most literal way: they just keep coming up with new concepts, rants, and sonic worlds to explore. 

 treads compelling new ground, but still delivers delicious psychedelic noise-pop jams in a way that only Deerhunter can.

Sonically, the record is magnificent. Buzzsaw synths, woozy guitars, and prissy harpsichords coalesce around the gritty, distorted propulsion of Moses Archuleta’s drumming. Bradford Cox, like always, moves the heartstrings with his voice, his drowsy tenor oozing drama and popping with highly articulated consonants that ring like bolts in a bucket. Particular credit should be given to Cate LeBon’s expert production. Even as countless sounds and textures swoop in and out of the music with reckless abandon, the mix remains crisp, clear, and punchy. It’s a far cry from some of the band’s earlier delay-drenched dreamscapes.

Death, fear, and nostalgia rear their ugly heads throughout the album. These are all familiar themes in Bradford Cox’s freaky gothic lyricism, but he employs them with newfound resignation. The world is crumbling, he says. People work their lives away for some great cause, only to die and fade away having changed nothing at all. “Death in Midsummer,” the album’s lead single, shares the plight of long-forgotten workers toiling in the hills and factories until they wither away. “They were in debt to themselves,” Cox laments, “and what? is it paid off now?” Even in the midst of a thrilling musical crescendo, the words hang heavy over the proceedings.

. Where that record reveled in self-acceptance, marveling at the power of change and renewal in the wake of Bradford Cox’s recovery from a car accident, 

 presents a sour, bastardized version of that same wisdom, a resignation to the flow more than a surrender to it. Far from giving up though, Deerhunter seem revitalized, flourishing in the fertile creative soil that such dark emotions tend to produce. The musical settings on the album are some of the most upbeat and forward-thinking the band has ever produced, showing off their diverse musical skill set and managing, through it all, to be a whole lot of fun.

“What Happens to People?” and “No One’s Sleeping” vie for the title of best song on the album with catchy melodies and jaw-dropping arrangements, but surprises abound beyond the obvious hits. The instrumental “Greenpoint Gothic” packs a lot of thrills into two minutes, while “Tarnung,” the only songwriting contribution on the album from guitarist Lockett Pundt, combines choral vocals with hazy saxophones and a looping marimba figure to great effect.

I, however, am a sucker for a good closing track, and “Nocturne” delivers on that front. Cox’s vocals, set against a slow, painfully creeping harpsichord figure, cut in and out at random like a bad phone connection. Spooky descriptors of moldy basements and dark country roads bleed out into space and then cut out entirely, and the band glides away on a heavenly instrumental jam buoyed by delicate pizzicato strings and an insistent drumbeat. Off they go, delivered from this grey crumbling world to the next great frontier, where I’m sure they’ll find ample inspiration for their next album. Until then, there’s plenty to appreciate in this grim, creepy and positively delectable set of songs.

Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?:

Deerhunter shines through the gloom on ‘Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?’

Félicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma

I think my least favorite part of writing about music is quoting lyrics. I don’t want to quote too many (why not just listen to the album?) and I don’t want to ignore the words completely (your approval of me as a competent listener keeps me awake at night). So I strike a balance: identify the best zingers, quote a few deep tracks so it looks like I actually listened to the thing, convince myself I missed the best lyric by not listening hard enough, and then start the whole nasty process over. Which is a long way of saying that this album is great because the only non-French language lyrics I can discern are “no” and “absolutely.” Try and annotate that, 

Jokes aside: what an enveloping piece of work this is, even without many words! 

 is the second collaborative effort by two ambient-leaning musicians who are alike in mindset but not in technique. French musician Félicia Atkinson creates and layers together sounds of great intensity, gluing bell tones, field recordings, and spoken word poetry together in unpredictable shapes. It’s the sonic equivalent of an asteroid field– what will come barreling toward you next? American musician Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, on the other hand, sculpts sound in great, crashing, pillowy waves; it’s more My Bloody Valentine than Steve Reich. Listen to ‘Love’s Refrain’ the next time you’re running through a sunlit field and you’ll get where this guy’s coming from. Together, these two are an ambient dream team, pure and simple. Fractured sound art meets, and is tempered by, patient, slow moving drones. One stimulates and the other soothes.

 is centered around drones, and explores some of the different ways that a simple held tone can be interpreted. ‘And The Flowers Have Time For Me’ opens the album with a plain synth chord, kept flat and nearly unchanging throughout the piece’s almost 6 minute runtime. Around it billows an ever-shifting landscape of crackling static, chiming piano chords, creaking doors, and the sounds of what might be a bus station. It would be disorienting if not for those stubborn synth notes droning throughout, acting as a common thread to tie the other scattered elements into some sort of narrative. The Drone: a source of stability.

Next is ‘Her Eyelids Say.’ When I came to the end of track one, the drone had started to become grating. “It’s over now,” I thought. “That was the stick, but this next one will be the carrot.” Silly me. That’s not how art works. The second song opens with an almost identical drone, but this one is more dissonant. Bugs twitter and buzz around it– or do they? It becomes less and less clear whether that sound is a cicada or a cold electronic emulation of one, whether that’s a bee or the dying gurgles of a dialup modem. My thoughts turned to the other images a drone evokes– a stuck MIDI note, a flat-lining heart monitor, or someone dead at a keyboard with his forehead pressing the keys down for one long, disturbing swan song. The Drone: an omen of stagnation.

When the drone eventually shifted about seven minutes in, I felt that I’d earned it, like a wildlife photographer who waits hours for the bear to pass by or the bird to swoop in for a kill. The second piece is taxing. It’s interesting, yes, but not exactly pleasant. Luckily, the last two are more gentle. ‘Indefatigable Purple’ starts with another dissonant and unyielding cluster chord, but builds up layer upon layer of sound over it. Static, harp notes, and indistinct voices blossom and expand in lovely, patient arcs until the drone is almost forgotten among the ripples it has created. The Drone: an instigator.

Last is ‘All Night I Carpenter,’ a lengthy (nearly 18 minutes) summation of all that has come before it. A series of thick, slow bass notes stretch across the song, but they become secondary to the chimes, tweets, and close-mic’d poetry bubbling up and simmering throughout. And at the very end, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma allows himself a few minutes of the flowery-smog-cloud-shoegaze he so enjoys making, and then it’s over.

I don’t quite know what I’m meant to make of all of this, but that’s ambient music for you. I do know that it’s often a beautiful album, and that the climax of ‘Indefatigable Purple’ is a jam. But something else has kept me coming back to these songs, and that’s the other side of them that isn’t beautiful, that’s willfully difficult and tests patience and ears alike. Listen, these are the kinds of people who use words like “indefatigable” and list magnetic tape as an instrument on their songs– of course the stuff they make is challenging and academic. Kind of like spicy food, it’s not meant to be completely pleasant. But also like spicy food, it’s usually worth it.

Félicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma release full-length ‘Limpid As The Solitudes’

Animal Collective can pretty much do whatever the hell they want at this point. They have a string of phenomenal and innovative releases behind them. They were one of most interesting band of the aughts by far, and all this rich history gives them a baseline level of credibility for any work they put out. “New AnCo” is guaranteed to have, if not always-universal praise, at least a whole lot of attention. What will the band do next with this supreme convenience? Seclude themselves in a 

 with dinosaurs projected on the wall for a month and record the results? Go to South America and 

 in the rainforest? Done and done, with surprisingly great results. So if they choose to, say, record lead singer Avey Tare moaning faintly over a bunch of bleep-bloop frequency-modulated synths and aimless watery ambience, and then sync that to an hour long video of trippy and sometimes weirdly sexual shots of fluorescent coral polyps – well, by golly, I’m still going to listen to it.

, the new audiovisual experience from Animal Collective and 

, a duo of filmographers and activists who create beautiful showcases of life on a coral reef. This record is unusual for a few reasons, chief among them being that it does not include founding member Panda Bear, who has been on every AnCo release before this one. It does, however, feature a comparatively rare appearance by Deakin, the ever-mysterious guitarist who’s only on about 20% of the band’s discography. Animal Collective, it’s said, is just that- a collective, a rotating cast of artists who are technically allowed to make music without Panda Bear if they want to. I just didn’t think they would, ya know? And I don’t know if they should have.

The function of this music, first and foremost, is to soundtrack the video. And when you combine the two, it really is pretty cool. Each song accompanies a close-up study of a new type of life on the reef, be it a polyp, worm, or sea slug stuffing its tentacles into an unsettling anus-mouth and licking them clean. The music isn’t demanding; it’s formless, full of dense electronic textures that chug along creepily, busily, but harmlessly. It’s a continuous rippling reef of sounds, one song fading into the next with little to distinguish it from the others. Avey Tare sings on most of the tracks, but he seems to focus more on being present than being understood. He delivers his words with a tuneless, rambling affect, an eerie moaning that sounds kind of like Arthur Russell if he was standing on a street corner and shouting about the end of the world. This music isn’t great for active listening, but all told, it’s hypnotic when combined with the alien undulations of the coral, so it does its job. The audiovisual experience is quite lovely, and the whole point of it was to show the beauty of an ecosystem that will soon disappear forever as the oceans warm and acidify. As an environmental effort, I salute the work.

Taken on their own merits, though, the songs are pretty disappointing for Animal Collective. I want to say that Panda Bear being away was 

’s downfall somehow, but in reality I have no idea what difference it made- this album was always going to be a drifty, ambient dribble, so I can’t fault any particular member for it being nondescript. I just feel a bit cheated knowing that I was promised new AnCo, and was then delivered a shapeless mass that the band could probably have dashed out in a single living room jam session. The closest parallel in the band’s discography is probably 2003’s 

 (which, fun fact, pretty much was recorded in a living room). That album was deeply textural, largely ambient, and very divisive – was it revolutionary or just noisy garbage? But at least that record had distinct songs and some replay value beyond creeping your friends out with footage of a sea slug. It wasn’t always pleasant to listen to, but that’s what made it interesting. 

, by comparison, is pretty unobjectionable, which means it’s not a bad album by any stretch. But it’s not great either.

Animal Collective disappoints with audiovisual experience ‘Tangerine Reef’

Everyone’s heard everyday, garden-variety distortion. It’s the stuff that changes an electric guitar’s tone from prissy twanging to a badass hunk of rock n’ roll fury. Yeah, you know the stuff. But there’s more. There’s a special kind of degradation you get when you turn the dial up even further, a point where you start to lose control of when your guitar hums and when it screams. It’s a tremulous, barely contained sort of energy, like pumping too much air into a balloon and waiting for it to pop. It’s this sort of tone that Jim James swims in on his latest solo album 

, a piece of work that is, shall we say, uniformly distorted (haha). James applies a generous amount of crunch to every instrument he can get his hands on. Even his voice, which is normally cloaked in reverb, takes on a spooky, pinched tone from the fuzz. The resultant album is hard-hitting and compulsively listenable, but not for the reasons you’d expect.

Jim James, longtime frontman of My Morning Jacket, has always had a sound that is slightly left-of-center, but often only slightly. When MMJ started out, their label tried to brand them as alt-country, which sort of fit. There was a straightforward, meat-and-potatoes earnestness to them, but their presentation was never that simple. They recorded their music in an empty grain silo, and it gave their albums a cavernous, lonely quality that set them apart from the masses. On 

, Jim James pulls the same trick. These songs are, for the most part, straightforward rock and roll, hardly adventurous material. But the production makes them more than that. Several songs here could be pretty boring if they weren’t distorted all to hell. But, somehow, it all works out.

Beginning with ‘Just A Fool’ and ‘You Get To Rome,’ the record gets off to a safe start. These are fun songs, with plenty of squealing guitar riffs and “shalala” backup singing to keep things catchy, but they’re generic. This is music made for the sole purpose of rocking out and doing it hard, and not thinking too hard about it either. It feels tossed off, but in a way that’s carefree instead of half-assed. “Let’s rock!” James yelps halfway through ‘You Get To Rome,’ and then accepts his own invitation with abandon. He even breaks down laughing a few times throughout the album. It’s escapist, and the lyrics give some indication of what he’s escaping from: “Going through the motions with the mic in my hand,” “thinking about the ones who did just what they always said / Trying to find the strength it takes to become one of them.” Seems like he just wants to have fun, and who can blame him?

There are some pleasant surprises. ‘Out Of Time’ starts out in standard swaggering fashion, and then, on a dime, collapses into a dissonant, leering groove. ‘Throwback,’ fittingly, conjures the grandiosity of earlier My Morning Jacket material to great effect. It’s in things like those that you really have to love James’ voice, rough and untrained though it may be. It ain’t what the choirmaster ordered, but it’s a special kind of spectacular when the man opens up and howls like nobody’s listening. Other standouts include James’ ragged moans on closer ‘Too Good To Be True,’ a spacious ballad with a wounded heart.

So what is Jim James trying to accomplish at this point in his career? “I’m either behind the times or ahead of the times,” he groans, and it really is hard to tell which one’s true. He veers from powerful hair-metal riffing on ‘No Use Waiting’ to what could very well be a Fleetwood Mac cover on ‘No Secrets,’ touching on vintage influences, but squeezing them all through a brutally distorted filter. There’s something beautifully paradoxical about this kind of “lo-fi” music. It’s a style that can only exist now, when we’ve reached the peaks of clarity and high fidelity and decided in the end that they weren’t enough fun. You could call it regressive, but 

 doesn’t sound vintage. James consistently complicates his relationship with the past on this record, including in the lyrics. “There was a time when I said yes to everything,” he reminisces at one point, but then cautions “I said yes too many times,” shaking off his baggage without quite forgetting it. These contradictions make 

 a worthwhile listen, and more interesting than it quite deserves to be. It reaches for the past, paying homage to it, but not really trying to emulate it. Times have changed, and sometimes that’s ok.

Jim James releases full-length ‘Uniform Distortion’

 to have some real talk with Mauno after their set at NxNU. Read on for their thoughts on hot dogs, Chad VanGaalen, the DIY scene in Halifax, and much more…

Craig: So I’ve heard that you’re named after someone’s grandfather? What’s the scoop there? Who was grandpa Mauno?

Eliza: Grandpa Mauno was my dad’s dad. We originally chose the name because we liked how it sounded and how the letters looked. We were sort of spitballing words and naturally I said my grandfather’s name.

E: Yeah, there’s probably some psychological Freudian stuff happening there. But then it took on another meaning because my dad’s grandpa was really musical, and my dad was really musical, but my grandpa Mauno wasn’t musical at all. So we’re reclaiming the lost musicality of my lineage.

C: I also saw that you guys toured Europe with Chad VanGaalen. Sounds exciting!

Nick: Yeah we met up with him and went on tour for about two and a half weeks. And it turns out he’s a really, really sweet human being.

E: We were all a little scared but then they were just super friendly and humble.

C: Well, he does have all those body-horror lyrics going on.

Adam: He’s got body-horror everything *laughs*. His whole way of making conversation is pretty terrifying. It’s full force all the time.

C: Well this actually brings me into my next question. I was listening to your music earlier and then I got some suggestions coming up, but none of them sounded that similar. The only common thread was that they were all Canadian. Is that a common thing, with people just lumping all Canadian bands together? Is there anything unifying them?

Scott: There’s definitely not one sound. That does happen, and I don’t really know why. There’s so many fewer people in Canada, but I feel like you can’t walk down the road without bumping into three guitar players. It’s pretty wide ranging. I guess we are just lumped together because we all look the same and sound the same. *laughs*

C: How would you describe the scene in Halifax? It’s not really a place I know much about.

E: I think like any place you’ve got pockets of different genres. But I always found it had a pretty strong DIY scene.

A: And there’s a really great art school there, so every year there’s a new group of artistic young people that populate the city. I think that plays into the DIY thing. There are all these people that moved to Halifax to make things. And there’s not a whole lot to do there, so you end up making even more things.

N: It’s really good too because – well, it’s 12 hours from Montréal, so other than Fredericton, which you can get a show in, there’s really not any place to play for a touring band. If you’re going out there, it’s a commitment and most people just don’t make that commitment. So there’s a vacuum of music [around Halifax]. Unless you’re making it, it doesn’t exist. But if you want to make it, you can.

C: So would you say that you guys have that DIY mindset going?

N: We did at first! We did absolutely everything ourselves. And then it became too much. We were realizing we couldn’t make all the art as well as we possibly could. We used to do everything, like the album artwork and poster artwork and show booking and… you just can’t do it all.

A: You’re not even making music anymore at that point.

C: Well, speaking of making music, were any of those songs you played in the set new? I didn’t recognize a few of them.

N: Yeah, some of them were new! They’ll be on the next record that we’re recording in October. And we’re actually going to record with Chad VanGaalen. He’s got a studio in his back yard and we’re going to go out there for a little while.

C: Oh, that’s awesome! Are you going to get some ambient recordings from there? I was just reading about how you put samples like that in the latest record [2017’s 

N: Yeah, well with that, we recorded it, and at first it sounded like it was made in a vacuum. So we were like, “what’s missing?” And we realized it was being made in absence of context, so we sort of reintroduced the context. Which is just the sounds of Halifax.

C: Is it important to you to have thematic consistence like that for your albums?

N: It kind of just came about. The theme just defined itself out of necessity.

C: So I’ve got a bit of an odd question. I’m interested to hear your take on it, though. Is a hot dog a sandwich, yes or no?

S: I would say just generally no. Just an instinct. Gut feeling.

S: Because of the bun! A sandwich has to be open. And a hot dog is closed off on the bottom.

C: So what would you say about like, a pita pocket?

N: It’s a hot dog. It’s its own thing; it’s its own category.

E: It’s in the sandwich family, like a pogo stick or a burrito.

S: It’s not in the sandwich family; it’s in the hot dog family.

A: Think about a pita or a souvlaki or something.

A: It’s like a U-shaped thing with chicken all in the pocket. It’s a pocket.

N: Alright, so there’s all these outliers, but there’s a general umbrella of food.

S: What’s the general consensus? Are people out there thinking hot dogs are sandwiches? Because I’m about to knock this microphone over if that’s the case.

C: There are people out there who think that, yes… my question is: when is it going to be useful for you to refer to a hot dog as a sandwich? No one’s going to know what you mean.

C: I’m on your side, I was just making sure who I can and cannot trust.

N: Well, I’m happy to have passed through your vetting process.

C: You’re already here, so there’s only so much I can do now.

back room and do the real interview. *laughs*

Want to hear the full interview? Give it a listen below and make sure to keep up with Mauno on their 

[mixcloud https://www.mixcloud.com/wrbb/mauno-interview/ width=800% height=120 hide_cover=1]

Mauno Exclusive Interview and Photos @ NxNU

NxNU, WRBB’s annual Spring Concert, is this Friday, April 13th! Take a minute to get introduced to Mauno, and we’ll see you at the show.

Mauno is going to be the next big thing, at least if I have anything to say about it. The Canadian indie rock band hailing from the sleepy hamlet of Halifax has slowly been making a name for itself over the last few years, releasing two albums, touring Europe with Chad VanGaalen, playing SXSW, and making some of the most inventive, surprising, and quite honestly illuminating music that you’ll hear all year.

There are precious few glimmers of information on this band scattered around the Internet, but from what I’ve gathered, the four members of Mauno sound like really interesting people. Backstories include breakdancing, competitive baseball, and a resolutely un-musical grandfather after whom the band is named. Somehow these people combined into the incredibly talented band we see today, and I want to be their friends so badly. Hopefully someday we’ll see them on Conan and get to know their deepest secrets on live television. But for now, I’ll take what information I can get.

Let’s talk music, though. Mauno traffics in a unique and riveting brand of intricate, stop-start indie rock. Each song is like small, carefully considered clockwork device. The parts are precise, the instruments working perfectly in tandem, but the overall effect is never quite what you expect. Verse-chorus song structures? They’ve never heard of ‘em. They write naturally flowing cascades of ideas, rendered in crunchy guitar tones and thumping drums. Singers Nick Everett and Eliza Niemi are also founts of unpredictability. They flip between sultry, indistinct murmurs and clear, poignantly meaningful nuggets of poetry with ease. The best part is, it never seems to get old. They keep the curveballs coming at just the right frequency, dwelling on each riff just long enough to satiate you before sweeping you off to the next adventure. This is not to say that their music isn’t catchy as well. They can get a melody stuck in your head just by repeating it once or twice, and nothing more.

Brevity is perhaps their most potent weapon. So far, after two albums, they have a released a total of three songs that are longer than three minutes. And it works. The ideas behind their music are equally compelling. Their debut, Rough Master, explored the limitations of a physical medium like tape and how simply finding a way to store sound alters it in remarkable ways. Even if it doesn’t necessarily come through clearly in the songs themselves, it’s an interesting concept, and you can tell that Nick Everett is always thinking about new ways to make his music remarkable. Their latest record, Tuning, uses samples and recordings of Mauno’s physical surroundings to give the music a sense of place and belonging. Whether that’s the beeping of a cash register or the toll of a bell in Germany, little philosophical touches like those make Mauno’s music more than just a collection of songs. These fine young Canadians are pushing boundaries, making music that is somehow deeply comforting and infinitely surprising all at once.

Want to learn more about Mauno? Check out their 

 and make sure to get to the gig this Friday, April 13th at 7pm in Afterhours. (NU only)

Meet the NxNU Lineup: Mauno

The more I think about the title of this album, the more I love it. It’s not 

. No, there’s just a riot going on. Somewhere else, probably. Is it good, is it bad? Will we ever know? We never said anything about being part of it. You can’t prove anything. Are we being detained?

 is just about the least riotous thing Yo La Tengo has ever released. The band has a small history of violent-sounding album titles (1993’s 

I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass

), but those older examples lived up to their names a little more accurately. Now in 2018, one of the most legitimately upsetting and potentially revolutionary years in recent history, we have been gifted this placid, sleepy-eyed, tropical haze of an album that is quite honestly exactly what I needed right now. The album title definitely jarred me a bit at first; it just didn’t fit with what I was hearing: where was the riot? But that’s just the point. Let the riot go on outside! We’re going to have a lovely time somewhere else for a while.

Every track on this album is an escape or a sidestep of some kind. ‘Polynesia #1’ is a breezy tune about… going to Polynesia, which vocalist Georgia Hubley proceeds to rhyme with “leisure,” if that tells you anything more about the tone of this record. There’s a lot of unconcerned uncertainty here (‘She May, She Might’), and a nice dose of throwing up your hands and just not bothering anymore (‘What Chance Have I Got’). There’s even a jaunty little elevator music track, which I am requesting in my will to be the theme music for the upcoming sitcom about my life. 

 is sad and defeated, but it finds a way to stay sunny, as if willfully ignorant of all the messed-up shit going on outside.

Musically, we find ourselves in prime Yo La Tengo territory, an odd confluence of indie rock, shoegaze, and drone music. You’ve got your fuzzy, verbed out guitars, your off-kilter keyboards and delicious bass riffs, and plenty of latin-esque percussion keeping the whole machine running smoothly. But this time, it’s been toned down to a whisper. It’s not like their music was particularly overstated before – I’m not sure singer Ira Kaplan’s voice has ever risen above a murmur – but this time the arrangements are dreamy and spare throughout. The guitars don’t get too distorted, and the tempos are restrained, stately even. There are no less than 15 minutes of ambient instrumentals smack dab in the middle of the album, and they’re all gorgeous. This is music to listen to in a hammock. If you’ll pardon an overwrought music-journalist metaphor, each song on 

 is a like a little ocean, stretching out before you in ways that are, if not surprising, then at least dazzling in their degrees of gentle, sparkling variation.

The trio has always excelled at whipping up a great groove and then just rolling with it. The first few seconds of any given YLT song are seldom very different from the last, and instead of piling on new ideas, they pick a really good one and just let it slowly unfurl. Take my personal favorite track as an example: ‘For You Too’ is probably the fastest and grimiest track on the album, which isn’t saying a lot. Propelled by a shuffling motorik drumbeat and powerful fuzzy bass, it ambles along at about half the volume you would expect, content to drift through a sublime chord progression with a minimum of fury and a maximum of chill. Closer “Here You Are” is probably the best way to encapsulate all that’s been said about this record so far. It’s long, it’s repetitive, it’s dreamy, quiet, melodic, richly textured. Most of all, it’s grounding; here you are, indeed, and panicking about that fact isn’t going to change it. Take a quiet moment for yourself, already. You can’t be rioting 

Yo La Tengo releases full-length ‘There’s a Riot Going On’

Cleaner is not always better. Sometimes stubble looks good on people. Sometimes you need a little bacteria to make cheese (which we can generally agree is a great invention). And who wants to listen to the clean version of a rap album? This nugget of wisdom also applies to Ride, who, along with My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and others, were some of the first to explore the wonderful world of shoegaze. For those of you who don’t know, shoegaze was a branch of rock that emerged in the late 80s and early 90s, fusing delicious sugary pop melodies with a WHOLE lotta reverb and guitar fuzz. It was named shoegaze because the bands who played it live would get so lost in the drones and the fuzz that they would just stand there and gaze at their – wait for it – shoes.

, Ride’s second offering since they reunited in 2014. It’s a brief, sub-20 minute EP, a collection of songs that didn’t make it into their 2017 full length. Much like that album, 

 is a nice distillation of the modern Ride. For context on what “the modern Ride” means, consider this: Ride is a band that has spent the last 20 years or so watching itself become legendary. While they’ve been on hiatus the last two decades, they’ve essentially been canonized, achieving god status in the shoegaze pantheon. How on earth do you make a successful comeback in the 21st century with that kind of hype? Honestly, I don’t think they thought about it too hard.

Much like the old one, the modern Ride doesn’t aspire to be a whole lot more than loud and pretty. 

 succeeds on both of those counts. “Pulsar” in particular is a sumptuous piece of work. It’s got spacey synth pads, grinding guitars, and driving drums all whipped up into a dense, glossy froth of well-produced dream pop. It’s great to listen to. But it’s also sort of… clean. Yeah, I’m finally looping back to that introduction. Everything on 

 is right where it needs to be. It’s got all the right elements in the right places: carefree psychedelic lyrics delivered in a charming, boyish tenor, droning guitars, and machinelike rhythms executed with absolute precision. Nothing is accidental. Everything is neat and nice and a little boring. It’s so well polished that it doesn’t sound real, and I don’t hear much of that messy, youthful vitality that made their early output so cosmic. Going back to my introduction again: if 90’s Ride was cheese, then 2018 Ride is… I don’t know, a Kraft Single?

 is lackluster, too. Aside from “Pulsar,” the EP consists entirely of mid-tempo slow burners that should be energetic, but end up sounding tired. They’re not bad songs, but something about their execution is off-putting, like the band had a little too much cough syrup in the studio. “Keep It Surreal,” for one, would be pretty sick if it was about 20 BPM faster, and “Cold Water People” would sound better if the vocals and over-processed drums weren’t so stagnant and zombie-like.

Go back and listen to Ride when they released 

, a shoegaze masterpiece that remains their best album by far. It was filthy as all hell. It was a 10-ton hornet’s nest of distorted guitars being battered against the rocks by a 20-ton drum kit that was in turn being strangled by about 4 different layers of glorious vocal harmonies, delivered in the most charming and unabashedly British way you can imagine. And it all came together into one glorious, oversaturated whole. It was the sound of a band pushing the tape to its absolute limits: how much volume and noise can a physical medium store? I feel bad for ragging on a band for “how good they used to be.” Might as well take their new stuff on its own merits, right? But in this case, it’s hard to ignore just how exhilarating 

 was (and still is), and how dull a song like “Catch You Dreaming” sounds in comparison. Bummer.

Ride releases EP ‘Tomorrow’s Shore’

Yes, I admit it: I used to listen to jam bands. In fact, they were pretty much all I listened to. My condition became pretty serious. Any song under 20 minutes was a disappointment. I craved longer and longer jams, bigger and wilder improvisations. If your band didn’t tour with at least 6 different keyboards, I simply was not interested. Eventually it became too much. I quit cold turkey. I had to. And it’s a decision I’ve regretted every step of the way.

So, when Papadosio came to Boston on February 16th and 17th, I happily suffered a relapse and got myself a ticket to see them play The Sinclair with Aqueous (I only caught the second night, but it was more than enough). Oh, it was a wonderful experience. Aqueous, whom I wasn’t familiar with, blew me away with how talented and fun they were onstage. They played a long, fluid, and seamless set of groove rock bangers, extending each song into a delicious instrumental playground of soloing and what seemed to be mind reading. That last part is what I love about jam bands: they can pull fully formed grooves out of thin air. The guitarist would improvise some four-note motif, then play it again. And then again. And suddenly the rest off the band would catch on, subtly shifting their parts to complement the new arrival, inevitably morphing that one idea into a completely new piece of music that would culminate in a roaring musical climax, making the audience scream, cheer, and dance like nobody was watching. Aqueous has a simple setup; it was just bass, drums, guitar, and the occasional keyboard, but it was enough to drive the audience wild and make some drunk guy in front of me whip his beer can around and spray everybody with foam. (This was after he thought the guy next to me was Shaun White. I’m pretty sure Shaun was at the Olympics, dude.)

So that was great. But Papadosio was greater. They’re one of the most technologically literate jam bands I’ve ever seen. The sheer number of knobs and buttons up on that stage was staggering. One member played 3 different keyboards (sometimes at the same time), and another had a guitar, a sampler, and a modular synthesizer that he worked by himself. I honestly never figured out what one member was playing; there was a keyboard of some kind that he played occasionally, but there were a lot of bizarre sounds coming from his general direction whose methods of production elude me still. All of these devices, of course, were not just for show. Papadosio calls its brand of music “space rock,” and I couldn’t think of a better descriptor if I tried. It’s a mixture of electronic beats, funky guitars, delicate piano playing, and straight up sci-fi weirdness that also manages to be supremely danceable.

The lighting rig was sublime as well. There were five cloth frames hanging at the back of the stage, one behind each member, upon which some very psychedelic moving images were projected. I remember having an epiphany halfway through the show about the way the images were moving: Every time an individual frame would pulsate or go wild with color, 

it was in response to what the person in front of it was playing

. Gaaaaahhhh. It made the whole question of who’s-playing-what a lot easier to answer, and it also looked great.

At the end of a long chain of interconnected jams whose beginnings and ends were unclear, I stumbled out of the venue thinking about how hard it was going to be to top that concert experience. Also how much I miss jam bands. I’ve got a lot of 40-minute songs to catch up on…

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Papadosio @ The Sinclair

WRBB’s Craig Short recently had a chance to chat with Anthony Thogmartin of the band Papadosio, who played two dates in Boston at The Sinclair. We managed to get a closer look at all the work that goes into their ferocious live sets and intricate albums.

Craig Short: It’s great to be talking to you! So to start off, I’ll just ask: how has the tour with Aqueous been going so far? Any highlights or lowlights?

Anthony Thogmartin: Yeah, the tour’s been great! Aqueous is an incredible band, they’re really talented. The nights have been packed out and people are really jazzed. It’s great!

CS: Way cool! So as a band that’s sort of perpetually on the road – I mean I’ve been looking at your tour history and it’s crazy, there are just so many dates – how do you keep things fresh while you’re on the road? Do you ever get tired of being on tour and need to re-spice things?

AT: I mean tour can be… yeah, tour can be potentially work from time to time, but whatever part of it that 

 work kind of leaves once you get on the stage and everyone’s having that present-moment experience together. And it makes the entire thing worth it. We definitely do tour a lot, and there are aspects of touring where, you know, I’d rather be doing other things than just sitting on a moving vehicle *laughs*. But it really is great when everything’s just lining up and everybody’s just having a great time, and you really feeling like you’re making a difference in people’s lives.

CS: For sure. And when the music comes to life it definitely 

. So in terms of that, your music is really improv heavy, and that’s so interesting to listen to because it’s so unpredictable. You never what’s going to happen, it could be something totally cosmic or just something else entirely. So do you ever have a jam or an improv that just falls on its face? Do you have ways to save it if that starts happening?

AT: That’s the beauty of it. If it does fall on its face, then you can just scramble it up and make something else out of it. For the most part, we have a talkback system which is essentially these pedals and microphones that are off to the side, and we can call out all kinds of things like “let’s slow it down, let’s speed it up, let’s change the key!” So really the whole situation where the bottom drops out doesn’t necessarily happen anymore. It’s more just, are we doing something that’s fresh? Is it new? Does it feel nuanced? Is it taking the song in a new direction? I think the experience people have had with improvisation started in jazz, but for the most part with jazz, you had fewer musicians onstage. And now that there’s five of us, having more musicians onstage, it requires a specific amount of patience, listening, control, all kinds of stuff, which the talkback system that we use really helps us out in accomplishing.

CS: I guess that’s better than just shooting each other meaningful looks and hoping it works out.

CS: So as a band with a definite live focus, you still make some great studio recordings. Do you have a different approach that you take with that?

AT: I think the difference with studio stuff is that we’ll write music and lay it out in its structure before we play it with actual instruments, so you can hear the placement of a lot of the nuts and bolts that make the song. And then we’ll go into the studio and lay the actual tracks we want to keep over the top of those other “scratch tracks.” We create a mockup of what it’s going to be, and then create a more done-up, pretty version of it, in the same way that potentially an architect would make a small model of something larger. We’ve never really deviated from that process, and it’s worked out for us. We really enjoy it that way.

CS: Do you find that songs tend to show up live first or do you record them and then start playing them at shows?

AT: Things will go in [that first] order sometimes, it’s not as common though. A lot of the new music that we write is formulated out of like, “oh, I liked that riff,” but other than that we rarely ever take a jam and then say “hey this is going to be a song.” We have recorded some live things, but because we release our live stuff – all of it is available out there, every single night – it’s kind of nice to break it up by writing music outside of that environment.

CS: Do you have a favorite venue you’ve ever played?

AT: I mean, I think Red Rocks is pretty great.

AT: As long as it has a good sound system we’re pretty happy.

CS: That’s true. It’s hard to argue with Red Rocks though. So to wrap up, do you have any messages for the folks back home reading this?

AT: Yeah, they can look for a new record coming out pretty soon. We’ve got a lot of new recordings we’re working on. The next span of 6 weeks is going to be essentially tracking and mixing. It’s close to being completed. I don’t have an exact date, but we’re really excited about it. It’s been a year or two since we put anything out there.

I’ll be looking out! Thank you for stopping by!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

You can find out more information about Papadosio 

Q&A with Papadosio

On paper, it all seems so promising: an electro-psych-pop-whatever band, once nominated for a Mercury prize, loaded up with quirky tendencies and returning after three years with the most hit-packed, pop-oriented record of their career. And on the first listen, that hit-packed record (also known as 

) seems pretty interesting. You get the sense that there’s something exotic in here that you can’t quite place. Some sort of Mediterranean, Greco-Roman grandeur. Maybe it’s the evocative song titles like “Sundials” or “Marble Skies” or “Fountains.” Maybe it’s just the alluringly foreign “dj” sound in the band’s name. Or their penchant for swirly, colorful album art. Maybe, just maybe, it’s the actual music that’s so compelling.

Upon closer inspection, though, it’s definitely not the actual music. Django Django’s latest record is remarkable in just how utterly bland the entire confection is, try as they might to liven things up with wonky synths, samples, and danceable rhythms. It’s a Greek temple shrouded in a boring haze of overproduction. It’s a rave for people who really just need a nap. It’s a nice try.

Django Django have always tried to sell themselves on quirk. Sure, there’s some quirk in this album. Is that a snare in “Surface to Air” or a sample of someone coughing? Is “Sundials” really in 7/8 time? Check out those weird vocal effects at the beginning of “In Your Beat.” How fun! Ultimately, though, it’s not enough. They clearly want to sound wild, wooly, and unhinged. There are attempts at polyrhythmic African drumming and four-on-the-floor dance breakdowns, epic synth rave-ups and low-key psychedelic grooves. All of these things are unconvincing at best, as if the band members are simply going through the motions as pleasantly and unobtrusively as possible. What should be dynamic is washed out and uninspired, and elements that should probably be pushed into the background are loud and grating. Pretty much every song is smothered by an unbearable droning arrangement and enough reverb to drown a horse. It’s the drones that get me the most- there are a lot of deeply boring sounds oozing their way across the face of 

, and quite frankly it gets exhausting by about the fourth track.

Take singer Vincent Neff’s voice: it’s an exercise in monotony, devoid of any sort of expression, vibrato, or interesting characteristics besides sounding kinda nice. This voice, with all the emotional range of a sine tone, could probably be used in some interesting way by some other band. The songwriting minds behind Django Django, however, have decided to play to Neff’s remarkable strengths, which include sounding really calm and droning on the same note for ten seconds at a stretch with no discernible fluctuation in tone. As a result, the chorus of “In Your Beat” is practically unlistenable. What should be a thrilling musical peak is reduced to a bunch of synths and drums and stuff buckling under the weight of one long, drawn out, robotic, uninteresting line: “Could you be / Dancing with me?” I’d rather not, thanks.

“In Your Beat” is also the lead single, presumably because it sounds danceable and the kids go for that kind of thing nowadays. Fortunately, it’s an outlier. Most of the other tracks on 

 are more psychedelic and less of a faux-EDM nightmare than “In Your Beat” and its equally dead-behind-the-eyes counterpart “Tic Tac Toe” (which, funnily enough, is the second single). I actually enjoyed a few tracks on this album. “Further” has a buoyant, catchy drum beat and an interesting melody in the chorus. An interesting melody shouldn’t be a rare treat to look forward to, but I suppose I’ll take what I can get. “Sundials” is probably my favorite track, built on an odd-metered piano riff and a surprising chord progression that slowly builds in intensity, adding in layers of female vocals and a clarinet (which is actually pretty cool) before bleeding into a spacey outro.

The rest of the album is fine. It’s forgettable, too. I won’t spend much time on the lyrics, as they’re mainly a patchwork of half-baked psychedelic images and generic phrases like “watching the world turn endlessly.” Supposedly, the albums’s overarching theme is “just this idea of things constantly turning and moving on… and you’re just kind of part of it.” I too have gotten high and stared at my hands, and I don’t really need Django Django to do it for me.

In retrospect, the band’s worst enemy on this album is the production and not the songwriting. I mentioned it once before, but man oh man did the mixing engineer need to cool it on the reverb. The whole record is so echo-y that it sounds like it’s being played out of the mouth of a cave. Nothing really 

. The drums are softened and sterilized, and the vocals lose any character they had to begin with. They wilt like soggy fries soaked in too much ketchup. Maybe it was the band’s choice, and I guess I have to respect that they were going for a specific vibe. I just didn’t like it.

 is fine. There are some nice moments and some annoying moments, and plenty of very mediocre moments in between, and, overall, I don’t regret listening to it. I won’t be coming back to it again either, but that’s just my opinion. You might as well give it a listen and decide for yourself.

Django Django releases full-length ‘Marble Skies’

Will Wiesenfeld seems to be doing a lot better nowadays. The bar for “doing better,” of course, was not set very high: For those unfamiliar with Wiesenfeld’s work as Baths, his last album, 

, could best be described as crushing-ultradark-canyon-of-despair-wave, if you really felt a need to classify the genre. It was a beautiful album that I enjoyed thoroughly, but it’s also good to see that Wiesenfeld is no longer writing lines like “Lodged in the rectal wall of agony / Hell is our only home.” The language in his newest project, 