The Two-sided Mind of a Single-minded DJ
The semi-circular stairs descending to the doorway of Atlanta’s Drunken Unicorn should be groaning, they bear the weight of so many. People squish through the open portal and past the bouncers, a bottleneck of 18-and-up partygoers all bright-eyed and just a little bit manic, eager to be inside where the mob ebbs and flows like waves and the air thickens with body heat...[Read more]
I bought this record today (Your Anchor by Lackthereof), and I really like it. I didn't look at the track listing before I popped it in, though, so when this song (the album's final track) came on, I nearly wet myself.
Hometown: Raleigh, N.C.
Fun Fact: Guitarist/vocalist Phil Moore and multi-instrumentalist Beth Tacular have spent the last year building an eco-friendly house all by themselves to replace their AirStream trailer.
Why They’re Worth Watching: Moore, Tacular and multi-instrumentalist Mark Paulson create truly organic folk songs, full of haunting melodies and honest lyrics without layers of production.
For Fans Of: Phosphorescent, The Avett Brothers, The Mountain Goats, Bon Iver
They’re traveling troubadours of the inner workings of the heart and head, these men in their stage suits wielding banjos with the force of weapons. They communicate all the gray areas and intricacies thereof through simple sonic textures; bluegrass strings join keys, kick drums, sweet crooning and guttural screams. Multi-instrumentalists Seth and Scott Avett, bassist Bob Crawford and cellist Joe Kwon traverse the country, ministering to ever-growing audiences from their book of unabashed balladry, hollerin’ all the way. They are rough around the edges of a center so baldly honest that even their ample facial hair begins to seem unlikely.
If theirs is a formula not many have used before, The Avett Brothers are testing it well now, gradually accumulating legions of loyal fans and releasing five full-length studio records in as many years. As the band prepared to depart Ann Arbor, Mich. for Grand Rapids in May, Paste caught up with Scott to talk about creative consistency, time spent on the road and achieving the unexpected. They’re in the midst of yet another of their incessant tours, hopping from venue to venue, from one frantic crowd to the next.
This particular journey leads the group to a discographical destination as well as a physical one. On July 22, the Avetts will release The Second Gleam via longtime label Ramseur Records. It’s the aptly-named sequel to their only previous EP, 2006’s The Gleam, and it’s a pit stop on the road to their next full-length record, which they’ve slated to record later this year with a release in 2009.
Paste: The Second Gleam comes out in July. Can you tell me a little bit about the writing and recording process of it and what your listeners can expect?
Scott Avett: Well, the basis of the thing is in the beginning. The first Gleam that we made kind of sprung from the recording of “Famous Flower of Manhattan” from Four Thieves [Gone], where we were going to make the recording and we knew it had to be a one-take sort of thing. We knew it had to be Seth and I just sitting down, two chairs, two guitars, two microphones, and it had to be done all at once. We would just go in and every day we would just try it once or twice, or at least until we got warm, which might take two or three times. And if it didn’t happen, you’d say “Okay, let’s just try again tomorrow. It’s just got to be right.” And we did that for six or seven days until we got it, and we really enjoyed the process of the quiet and calm feeling of it. So we said, you pick three songs, I’ll pick three that I’ve been writing on my own, and let’s just make a record and we’ll base it on this theme of this song that was called “Sanguine.” It was speaking of “the gleam,” meaning the outer skirts of light of what we do as a primary operation. Not the leftovers, but the outer skirts of the light of it. So it had a good theme to it and it felt good to record. So we did the first one. And on the second one, we started recording it last April and sat on it, and thought it over and added songs, and then after we just completed a number of demos, into the 30 realm, we added two or three more songs to it, edited down some and added newer songs. It sticks somewhat to the theme and to the order of quietness and calmness and just Seth and I basically partnering in the recording and the writing. The songs aren’t quite as individually written as the first one was. There’s input from each other more so on this one than there was on the first. [Read more...]
(Image from the band's MySpace)
It's the tale of an album's survival through a label's collapse, and all the good that followed thereafter. Read about it here.
The diminutive Jeffrey stood on his stool so he could be eye-to eye with his bassist.
At this point there were a few individual, unrelated and inappropriately drunk people dancing feverishly in the audience. One of them, a short, boundary-less girl kept on violating our personal bubbles, offering my roommate drinks and taking the cigarette out of her friend's hand to smoke it without his permission. Weird thing #2. It wasn't even that late. This one guy toward the front was jerking around to the music with so much determination it seemed his limbs might detach themselves from his body.
Adam Renshaw kills me when he plays drums. His mouth almost never closes, but he doesn't look ridiculous so much as....fucking ecstatic. It's incredible to watch. Shannon Mulvaney kicks around as he plays his bass lines, the ones that never stop moving, his fingers blurring in front of my eyes. (On the band's MySpace page, Shannon's job description is "bass, theatrics, flawless tap dancing." Yes.)
During this set, however, the weirdness kept right on going. Two or three newcomers to the crowd had obviously been elsewhere "having fun," and one of them proceeded to walk right to the front of the stage and vomit all over the floor and in her own hair, which she kept flinging around. It was disgusting. Weird thing #4. She wouldn't even consent to leave the crowd when her friend tried to pull her out. We relocated. Then, apparently there was a fistfight at the back of the crowd. More alcohol, I imagine. Weird thing #5. We decided to quit while we were ahead and vacated the premises. You woulda done the same.
This picture's not of Wolf Parade. It's an ad for a Wolf Parade t-shirt. I just think it's hilarious.
