At The Drive In is lighting a fire, paving a path, but for what? Their next album? For something more? Is this band being carried by the Zeitgeist on a mission to stir hearts and souls? The last time this band was relevant, George W. Bush held office. Now that Donald Trump begins to navigate his first year of Presidency ATDI magically fall into the perfect crack of space & time delivering their best live performances ever. The now seasoned and reunited band is showing signs of delivering new music that will fuel a soundtrack of pushback against the de-evolution of our systematic governing bodies as well as speak out against societal decay. Maybe it’s nothing, but there was fire in the air at House of Blues Boston as the rock act took the stage with haste and an infectious spirit after a 17 year long wait. The crowd, mostly filled with young professionals teetering between late gen xers and early millennials definitely broke the mold of zombie head bobbing, choosing to let loose with wild abandonment as though the past mundane work week never happened.
Opening act Le Butcherettes were nothing to dismiss, even if you wanted to. The female led punk band demanded attention swarming the stage with fuzzed out guitars, thick poppy drums, electronic melodies and dramatic loud Spanish/English shouting/singing. The music conjures thoughts of demons, sexuality, politics and wrong doing.
To celebrate their 25th anniversary as an organization and the advent of their FM radio station, 97.9, ZUMIX is hosting Boston DJs for ZUMIX at their headquarters this Friday.
The event will feature a silent auction in addition to performances from 20 local DJs as well as other groups from the Boston area. Some of the DJs featured include:
There will be live performances and special guest sets that are yet to be named as well. You can grab tickets for $25 here (or a VIP pass for $40, which includes a private reception prior to the event). All proceeds will benefit ZUMIX and the programs they offer to the youth they serve.
Lambchop has evolved so much as a band that it’s difficult to succinctly describe their 31-year-old career, which might be why many rely on outdated or incomplete descriptors.
“Many in the media also, for some reason, call us an ‘americana/alt. country band.’ I’d argue that was never accurate to begin with. And now, it seems almost laughable,” remarks songwriter and bandleader Kurt Wagner. “It’s like, ‘what does it take to be considered by your present output?”
True, the folky-twang and Del Reeves-style humor that permeated their early releases leant weight to their brazen self-labeling as “Nashville’s most fucked-up country band.” But the band has morphed through their influences, including the 70s R&B and soul exhibited on Nixon and the lush orchestral arrangements of Is a Woman and Mr. M. Their newest release, FLOTUS, expands their sound whilst paring down, a product of the band’s current tastes in contemporary hip hop and electronic acts like Four Tet, Flying Lotus, and Kendrick Lamar.
“Creativity is a restlessness, like being hungry during the day before dinnertime or… like drinking too much coffee and then trying to find a way to ramp it back.”
“I’d been working on writing and thinking about new recordings for a couple of years prior to getting into more electronic methods of working and it was just a natural evolution of my interests in that music and my curiosity about what might occur if I started to incorporate those ideas into what I’d be doing. It was all very primal and new when I first started experimenting.”
FLOTUS is noted for its heavy use of instruments and effects commonly found in electronic music, which also appeared in Wagner’s other music endeavors. A year before FLOTUS, Wagner worked with Lambchop/Hands Off Cuba members Ryan Norris and Scott Martin under the moniker HeCTA. Their debut album, The Diet, certainly pointed Lambchop fans towards the trends of Wagner’s muse.
“Working with HeCTA certainly broadened my horizons about what was out there musically… We pooled our knowledge and let each other bring their ideas together into songs. My only preconception about what we did was that the result had to be ‘of a song’ to some extent. Words mattered in as much as that was what I was bringing to the party and I wanted the music we made to have that connection.”
Above all, Kurt Wagner is a creator. His background stretches beyond his beginnings as a songwriter and to his visual artwork. He is an accomplished painter and studied sculpting in college. “It’s just another medium, and I’m guided by the same voices that lead one to paint or sculpt or write. Each have their charms and challenges. Each draws from the same well in your head.”
And while the changes in stylistic approach rendered the boundaries for the group obsolete, the core of Lambchop’s output remains Wagner’s unique songwriting. His lyrical style is impressionistic, with a focus on the mundane that demands both patience and introspection on the part of the listener. It’s easy to imagine him tooling around with songs as one might with a painting or sculpture, slowly manipulating pieces until the come close to conveying what he’s compelled to share.
“For me, creativity is a restlessness,” Wagner explains. “Like being hungry during the day before dinnertime. Or maybe it’s like drinking too much coffee and then trying to find a way to ramp it back.”
Being that Wagner’s wife, Mary Mancini, is the Chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party, the album’s title and the previous presidential election immediately come to mind. But the record isn’t as overtly political as one might imagine.
“Politics is a part of my day-to-day, but in a personal way. It happens at the dinner table or over coffee in the morning. That’s probably true for many people today because it’s become so oppressively omnipresent.”
The title, surprisingly, is an acronym of “For Love Often Turns Us Still” (not First Lady of the United States). But even that sense of stillness is an important thought to keep in mind during these troubling times.
“We turned in the record over a year before its release and it’s now been 5 months after that. The record’s lyrical context goes even further than that. The writing, for the most part, happened in a short, condensed period 2 years ago where I was just looking at my life and world and trying to comment upon it.”
The album’s closer, “The Hustle,” is somewhat emblematic of the album as a whole. The song is an anomaly for those with preconceived notions of Lambchop and their Nashville roots. For starters, it clocks in at nearly 20 minutes. The grooves are limitless in scope and minimal in delivery. But these rich, sliding textures are held together by the latticework of Wagner’s lyrics.
“And I turned my head back to the crowd / You could almost sense their glory / And if you took just a few more steps / You could join them in the Hustle / Do the Hustle”
The music of Lambchop continues to be brave and meditative, turning a spotlight onto the ordinary that we usually take for granted. The only goal seems to be to connect with the musings of a humble few; perhaps a modern, shared fanfare for the common man.
Lambchop play Brighton Music Hall on March 28th, with support from Animal Hospital. Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm. Tickets are available at $18. FLOTUS, and the recently reissued Is a Woman, are out now via Merge Records.
On March 31 at the Lilypad in Cambridge, three sober artists will share their music to honor and celebrate the strength of musicians who embrace sobriety, and speak about their own recovery. This kind of showcase, called Singing Sober: Musicians Sharing Stories of Recovery, is 100% the kind of event the Boston scene needs to support.
Because let’s face it— Drinking and various other intoxicants are commonplace at music-related events. Most find it difficult to even pry the two practices apart. Consequently, it’s the sober-in-recovery artists who don’t receive the support they need.
“My experience over the last twenty years on the road, playing in clubs with booze every night, wore on me.” Melissa Ferrick, who was raised in Ipswich, Mass, said. “My desire to find other sober-in-recovery folks, and those who support us, was met with very little response; we need stronger relationships.”
Ferrick, who has released 17 albums over the last 23 years, headlines Singing Sober. Guitarist/singer-songwriter/New Hampshire native MB Padfield will open alongside local artist Anjimile, who strings raw lyrics along indie-pop melodies.
Hosted by Haley Katrin Studios, EBASS, and Right Turn, this show will provide performers a space to share their personal stories. On-lookers, too, will have the chance to share their experiences of recovery during an open-mic session during the show.
When the majority of shows take place at bars or boozy basements, this one exists to interrupt that. “I am interested in doing anything I can to create community within the art world for people in all aspects of recovery,” said Ferrick. And Singing Sober can help do just that.
March 31, 2017, 7-9pm Lilypad, 1353 Cambridge St., Cambridge MA Tickets ($10) here.
Made up of Dhy Berry on lead vocals/synth/bass, Jaqui Rae Stewart on vocals/synth/piano, and Sean Camargo on vocals/drums, Radclyffe Hall began in Boston as an experiment in analog and digital production. Since then the group has transformed their sound to include rock, funk, and R&B. After making some noise and getting nominated for a couple Boston Music Awards, the group is set to take over Great Scott on April 1st for a night of good grooves.
Recently RH released their latest sensual single “Run Run Run.” Although she’s got a solid crew behind her, Berry is proud to say that this is the second single that she wrote, produced, and recorded on her own. It’s definitely a progression from their last full-legnth album but still maintains the consistent synth-pop vibe that is Radclyffe Hall. Check out their latest single along with what’s sure to be an amazing show at Great Scott on April Fools’ Day.
Radclyffe Hall, Photocomfort, and RAINE
April 1, 2017
Great Scott
1222 Commonwealth Ave.
Allston, MA 02134
Doors 9pm | $8 | 21+
Back in 2003, Pants Yell formed in the local Boston art school scene. During the seven years that they were together, the group graced the local scene with intelligent indie pop tunes. After putting out their fourth record, Received Pronunciation, on Slumberland, the made the mutual decision to disband on good terms.
There’s good news for any Pants Yell fans yearning for the simpler days of the mid-aughts: the band has announced that they will regroup for special benefit show on Sunday, March 26th with current Slumberland rockers Bent Shapes. The proceeds from the benefit will help Boston Children’s Hospital and the Boston Marathon.
Photo courtesy of Pants Yell
The show is going to be at Atwood’s Tavern in Cambridge, near Inman Square. The all ages show has a $20 cover and starts at 2PM. Advance tickets are no longer available online, but will be available at the door. . What better way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon than listening to cool jams for a good cause? If you’re curious to more of what the bands sound like, check out Pants Yell on Soundcloud and Bent Shapes on Bandcamp; you can also read more about both acts on Slumberland’s website.
If you got tickets to Saturday night’s Laura Steveson gig at the Middle East, f*ck you. Do you know how many people are hittin’ up the event page to post, nay, plead for those things? How many people have desperately typed out “hmu!!!!!!” and launched the message into the abyss that is the Facebook Event Discussion Page™?
Goddess bless these tortured souls.
But just so the rest of us can all know/forever dwell on the Sick Gig we’re about to miss out on, let’s go over what’s up with Saturday night’s bill.
Local boyband, Me in Capris will kick things off with their indie/pop/rock sound, a healthy dose of whiney vocals (in a good way!). Together, the four piece make what, on the surface, appears to be no-frills, solid rock music. But then, a closer listen reveals a folky/roots/americana sound. Sometimes it’s dreamy, sometimes it’s more like pop-punk. Just expect a multifaceted performance from these dudes.
Next, if you’re not familiar with Adult Mom, idk how to help you. ‘Bedroom pop’ is a way too limiting descriptor. So is ‘indie pop’ or ‘slacker rock.’ In actuality, Adult Mom is a band that can’t be contained. Vocalist/guitartist Stephanie Knipe writes songs that translate as the (queer) thoughts that everyone’s thinking but won’t (can’t?) say out loud. They have a way of spilling out with a tenderness and aggressiveness that’s always honest and empowering. The band, who hails from Purchase, NY, just put out a new single called “Full Screen,” and honestly you’re #blessed if they play other stuff from their upcoming record, called Soft Spots.
And finally, there’s Laura Stevenson, who Boston audiences will see perform at peak stokedness this Saturday. “I’ve done a ton of solo touring this past year which is both rewarding and great, but I can’t wait to play with the band in these shows coming up,” she said. “We always have such a good time playing in Boston– that was where I had my first legitimately good show and it has been nothing but positive and beautiful experiences ever since.”
Summed up, her music is simultaneously poppy and f*cking depressing; it’s bubblegum hooks next to self-deprecating lyrics. But it’s not at all a bummer. Her sound is a constant build up of both music and emotions. And she always ends with a bang.
Check out AP’s interview with Stevenson back in 2015 when her most recent album, Cocksure, came out. And listen to Stevenson’s signature happiness and sadness juxtaposed below.
He writes poetry and has recently taken interest in Japanese ambient music. A lullaby his mother once sang for him is embedded in the song “St. Germain” off his debut solo album Saturday Night. He says it’s the work’s most personal point. With the stage presence of a Bowie-like post-punk ghost in concert, he wags a finger to his own beat– or that of his full band Ought, as if to say, “You don’t know all of me yet.”
“When I’m writing solo, I often write occurring around something a little bit more ineffable than the sometimes hyper-direct stuff that happens in Ought,” said Darcy in our phone call with on the road. The interview took a similar shape. Discussing Darcy’s solo tunes led to discussing Darcy’s inner process. In fact, his goal with Saturday Night was to merge music and man into the same thing.
Allston Pudding: The sound of your solo stuff isn’t any less full than Ought, but the lyrics are much more clear. Has it been a smooth transition for you?
Tim Darcy: Yeah. I think of the two singles, especially “Tall Glass of Water,” are probably the closest things to something in the Ought world, but I’m excited for people to explore the rest of the record. There’s a lot of different sound worlds and different textures that are definitely way more outside the palate that Ought has spawned from.
It wasn’t really a question of it being hard or that sort of thing. It was more just a great period of getting to be more exploratory with my voice and songwriting. I’ve been writing solo songs since I was 16 in varying palates but pretty much in the vein of lyrical songwriting. So, when getting serious with Ought, it was really only a matter of time until I dipped back into this world just because it’s been in my musical architecture for so long.
The impetus for making the record was the opportunity came up to record with some friends in Toronto, and that led to access to a studio after hours. It was during the same time Ought was working on Sun Coming Down, so there was bit of initial culture shock of switching that abruptly, but it was really helpful being in a different city and being with a group of people who are really concretely dedicated to this project in particular. We made it over about a six-month period as I went back and forth between Montreal and Toronto, and there was no time constraint, per se, because there was no end goal at first. I mean, as soon as we started tracking stuff it sounded so good we thought, “Okay, let’s keep going,” and then at a certain point we then thought, “Well, we’re near a tipping point. We almost have an album here.”
AP: Can you tell me about some of those songs you wrote at the age of 16? What kind of songwriter were you back then?
TD: Yeah… again, it’s funny looking back on some of that stuff, and it’s pretty similar to certain songs on my record. There are certain things that come through. Like, when I first started writing songs, I’d almost exclusively play in alternate tuning. This has come back to bite me, but I’m the type of person who just couldn’t do a bar chord, so I was immediately like, “Okay, I’m gonna look up a different way to do this. So, I’ll do open-G tuning, and I’m just gonna write songs in that.”
It’s just a progression of that, but there are some songs like “St. Germain.” It’s the oldest track on the album, and it felt still relevant and that it could be given new life by re-recording. When I’m thinking about what a debut would be for me, I tried to pick some songs from that crop that still felt relevant while also pairing them with newer jams I had written like “Joan” and that sort of thing.
Photo by Shawn Brackbill
AP: Cool. So, in general, what are you writing about on this album?
TD: It’s all over the place. I mean, when I’m writing solo, I often write occurring around something a little bit more ineffable than the sometimes hyper-direct stuff that happens in Ought. But also, it changes. Obviously, there are some tracks on the album that are written about very specific instances, like “You Felt Comfort.” It’s a song about being there for friends who are going through depression and that sort of thing. Whereas, other jams like “St. Germain” are more about almost a moment.
AP: That album’s called Saturday Night, so what’s your preferred Saturday night?
TD: It depends, especially now. With touring, I’m traveling so much it seems like the day of the week loses its relevance a little bit. If I’m coming back from somewhere and it’s Saturday, I could just curl up in a chair pretty much and watch “Nashville.”
AP: Nashville? The show with that same actress from “Friday Night Lights”?
TD: Yes, exactly. Big fan. Big fan.
AP: I forgot to ask before that, what is the inspiration for the album title?
TD: It really came from the track “Saturday Night,” which was a poem I had written called “Saturday Night,” and then I had written sort of an addendum to it. I went back and looked at it, and I thought, “This doesn’t really feel like it actually is part of that song,” but it felt like something that I needed to express in a different way. And that is one the jams that came together completely in the studio, sort of like a pastiche. So, in that way it felt like it really exemplified some of the magic that came out of the sessions, but at the same time, it feels like a turning point in the record for me, kind of the B-1 where things start to get thematically a little deeper. Once it got in my head, I couldn’t quite move away from it even when I tried and, to me, that’s usually a sign that it must be so.
AP: For a lot of solo artists this isn’t a real question, but was there a decision made in just going by your name as a solo artist, especially coming from the broadly spoken band name of Ought?
TD: Yeah, it wasn’t taken for granted. I did think about it, but once the record was finished, it felt pretty clear that that’s what should happen. I’ve played under pseudonyms before. I did that for the first six years that I was my making music.
Part of my intention behind this album was to lay myself out there a little bit, even with the album art. Having a photo of myself on the cover just worked because it is a personal document in a lot of ways. It’s an intense thing to do to attach something directly to your name. This is now “Tim Darcy’s music.” It’s not like… a flying hand. Wait, why isn’t my band named that? Don’t print that. Well, whatever. Print that. That’s fine. Flying Hand. That was not in the running. I just came up with that now.
But yeah… I think at the same time, playing under your name forces the matter a little bit. I think it forces a certain level of commitment and confidence toward what you’re doing because it’s so attached to your person, and a lot of my heroes and artists I really love just were who they genuinely were or who played under a name that became their definition.
AP: Since you call this a personal document, what’s the most personal moment on this album? Any specific lyric, song or even note?
TD: Well, the moment that’s jumping to mind right now is also in “St. Germain.” The final verse and refrain that happens there, that was a kind of nursery rhyme my mom taught me when I was a kid. She’d sing it when I’d have a scary dream or something like that. It just has a lot of resonance for me, almost like an incantation. It conveys for me that powerful feeling of ridding yourself from a personal demon.
It’s: “Covered in the violent flames / Saint Germain, I forgot you name / Covered in the violent flames / Saint Germain, I rid myself of pain.” The first line shows there’s another figure in this song that the speaker is kind of letting go of, and the second line is the feeling I’m really trying to convey.
We’re excited to premiere Rah Zen’s first single, “Tree of Life,” from his upcoming project entitled Midnight Satori dropping April 23rd. Rah had this to say about the first track,
“In the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, Satori, a Japanese word meaning sudden awakening, is similar to the Hebrew word Chokmah, which is Divine wisdom, the flash of revelation, inspiration and divine insight that can radically change your world in an instant. The Tree of Life as a whole is an ancient tool for depicting the Creation of the universe on every level. It is an unrestricted framework for understanding human ascension. Each branch represents a part of ourselves that must be cultivated in order to reach our highest self and oneness with God.”
Take a trip into your own ethereal being and get transfixed on Rah’s supplementary videos produced by Metasonik along with “Tree of Life” on soundcloud. Stay tuned for Midnight Satori later this spring!
Future Teens are greater than the sum of their punchlines, but they owe the band’s existence to their jokes. Formed solely for the sake of a boozy Fourth-of-July party gag back in 2014, the then-duo of Daniel Radin and Gabe Goodman never planned on taking their act beyond a single two-song set. But after the joke turned out to have legs—a few half-serious demos later, Future Teens started sounding like a real band—the pair released their first EP, Still Afraid of Allston. (Naturally, their format of choice was the floppy disk, self-proclaimed “dumb merch.”) The five tracks riffed on the perils of casual dating and the seemingly endless cool of Silver Linings Playbook-era Jennifer Lawrence. By all appearances, the band wasn’t taking itself too seriously.
But much like any good gag, Future Teens’ charm lies in the elements that you didn’t see coming. Almost three years after that first performance, the band has doubled in size and is about to release a second EP, Bored and Alone, with plans for a full-length album soon to follow. The full lineup comes from a broad array of musical backgrounds: Vocalist and founder Daniel Radin splits his time with local folk band The Novel Ideas, but first learned the ins and outs of bandhood as a member of Columbia-signed electropop act Magic Man. His new bandmates, vocalist/guitarist Amy Hoffman, guitarist Nick Cortezi, and drummer Dylan Vadakin, bring a mix of Berklee professionalism and local indie roots to the group. (Goodman left the band in 2016 to pursue other projects.)
As Radin explains, those experiences help the group put its goals in perspective. “[Magic Man] played these huge shows, Terminal 5, House of Blues, shows at places I never dreamed of playing. But it sort of made me realize that, as great a time as I had hanging out with my friends and touring, pursuing my own music, my own creative music, was really important to me. So now I’m not going to say I don’t want to play ‘big’ band music ever again, but now I feel like, okay, I did that. If I just get to pursue my own music on a smaller scale, that’s great to me.”
Tongue-in-cheek writing is still the project’s hallmark, but that humor belies the focused ethic of a band with a honed direction and newfound energy. Though the foursome thinks of itself as a “summer rock” band above all, the bummer rock isn’t far behind, and the fusion of the two is helping the group find its way in Boston’s emo scene. Future Teens’ sound is about as far from the Manic-Panicked, mid-aughts associations as it gets, but it’s right at home in the genre’s more mature (though equally lovelorn) local revival. “It’s tight-knit and can be fun. Boston pretends to be a big city, but it makes for the emo scene to be pretty small and friendly,” says Hoffman.
While Bored and Alone might not seem like the most upbeat listen by name alone, it strikes a careful balance between playful lyricism and sincere emoting. In the span of five songs, the EP conjures the perfect vibes for every variety of romantic limbo, from the post-breakup Tinder bender (“In Love or Whatever”) to finding romance in a drunken fling (“Literally Falling for You”). While Hoffman jokes that it’s “five songs of ‘it’s complicated,” Radin explains that he put the track listing together with a bit more storytelling in mind.
“It’s a little bit chronological. The only one that I didn’t write from my own vantage point was ‘Literally Falling for You,’ which I wrote for a friend who met this dude at a party. They had this good rapport, but she was too drunk, so she fell off the porch and hit her head… I sort of reimagined the situation as if she hit her head, looked up, and was like, ‘Oh my god, this is the guy’ and fell in love,” he says.
That comfort in writing songs from another’s perspective became doubly useful with Hoffman’s addition as a second vocalist. “Kissing Chemistry”, another Bored and Alone track, was written by Radin, but brings Hoffman’s vocals to the forefront for the first time. Jumping into an already-developed sound could prove a challenge for some, but she found the transition natural.
“I really liked Daniel’s songwriting and the arrangements that the guys already had, and there was a lot of room for me to add as a guitarist. And then the couple of songs that I sing on, I had leeway to pop in with my own ideas. That was really cool,” said Hoffman. When it came to filling those gaps, she found inspiration in the ways that the band’s sound differed from her own past projects. “A lot of what I was writing prior to Future Teens was a little heavier, thematically heavier. It’s been fun to channel that ‘summer rock,’ we’re-all-addicted-to-seltzer kind of vibe.”
But in spite of appearances, it’s title track “Bored and Alone” that’s the most uplifting of the bunch, bolstered by an anti-FOMO chorus for non-minglers everywhere: “God, I am bored and alone/ It’s better than you think to stay at home/ No fear of missing out on somewhere you don’t wanna go.”
Coming from another band, those words might’ve been wrought with sarcasm, but the sincerity in Radin’s voice brings a heartening, epiphanic twist to the end of the EP. “I think I’d never, for Future Teens, written a song about being single, which sounds kind of weird to say aloud now,” he says. “But a lot of songs you write about, I guess, getting broken up with, or starting to date someone, or being in a difficult relationship, or being in a good relationship… It was supposed to be lighthearted. It’s such a depressing title that I thought it would be funny to write a non-depressing song. I always think of it as sort of an anthem for introverts.”
Start with a joke at a party, end up with a just-stay-home anthem—Future Teens seem bound for a path that’s paved with charming irony. The band doesn’t mind; they’re all happy to be making “complicated” music. “I think it’s really funny, but can still be really sad,” says Hoffman. “That’s a really nice juxtaposition that makes it fun.”
Catch Future Teens and tomorrow night at Great Scott for the Bored and Alone release show, along with opener Dear Leap. The 21+ show starts at 10 PM, and tickets are available here.
“Working with HeCTA certainly broadened my horizons about what was out there musically… We pooled our knowledge and let each other bring their ideas together into songs. My only preconception about what we did was that the result had to be ‘of a song’ to some extent. Words mattered in as much as that was what I was bringing to the party and I wanted the music we made to have that connection.” 
