Hey everyone, welcome to issue #58 of Crow’s Nest. Thanks as always for opening and reading. I had been hoping to get this out last week but life got in the way (had to work a bit last Sunday). Hope you don’t mind, this one is a bit lengthier even by my standards for these to compensate (though I didn’t get to everything I wanted to, alas).
I feel like I should have noted this sooner all things considered, but as Twitter continues its slide into the trash realm, I am on Bluesky @embirdened.bsky.social. If you’re looking for a code, I have a couple to give out, reach out to me and I’ll pass it along.
I can feel myself getting older. Only by the standards of cynical internet teenagers who declare that “It’s over” for you at any sign of being a homebody or not a perfect human being in your mid-20s is 28 old, but hangovers are getting worse, it’s no longer a shock to discover the new people entertaining me are younger than me, I need to plan going out a bit more especially as to whether I actually want to go out or not, my body will fall apart if I don’t maintain it, etc. It happens. There’s definitely things I don’t follow and will not get into, but by no means have I given up or conceded it all to the kids coming up from behind in my 5 years at office job, considering what this newsletter is.
This came into sharp relief at a pair of music festivals I attended on back-to-back weekends last month. Music festivals in general are rough on the body: even if you feel you’re mostly just standing around and hanging out, loud music is a stressor; your regular routines are disrupted; you’re eating worse than usual, and if not, that’s a problem in and of itself; the alcohol and other drug consumption doesn’t positively impact your health; and thousands of other attendees in close proximity and limited sanitation makes fests and the associated travel ripe for spreading disease. That I didn’t catch anything after either weekend, coming after my allergies knocked me on my ass the week before, and despite the conditions I’ll outline, is a minor miracle. I attribute that to my self-developed cocktail of OTC cold medicines I took beforehand, general wariness and my slightly older self not going as hard as I potentially could have, and taking 1 of those immunity juice shots you see at the grocery store daily before heading to the festival grounds.
(Regarding those juice shots, I’m not becoming a woo-woo health person convinced their mix of Vitamins C and D, Zinc, and whatever the heck else they throw in those truly works; however, a weekend+’s worth of them is price-competitive with one alcoholic beverage on festival grounds, and I don’t otherwise have an explanation for getting through in one piece without them. If they’re ineffective, I’ve spent much more on worse. I recommend the pale-blue probiotic Suja Immunity, and Propolis Bee and You ones. The latter is stored at room temp and therefore great for travel.)
The first fest was the local end-of-summer closer Riot Fest. I didn’t go last year as the lineup didn’t appeal strongly enough to me, and I can’t say the issues and my own problems with the fest that I documented last time have gotten better. The festival app did not have a custom schedule builder and did not appear to locally store content like the map, design choices I find utterly baffling considering festivals significantly degrade cell signals, and a build-your-own schedule is standard in literally any other music festival app. Prices were as inflated as ever—$11 for a 1oz pour of Malört is outrageous—and the festival ran out of the 8% variety of its ‘Riot Pop’ seltzer by 3 or 4 PM on Saturday. I reviewed my finances for last month yesterday and am trying not to think too hard about the buzz I got from my drinking relative to the cost. (In my growing maturity I also no longer smuggle clear booze into festivals that still allow in bottled water. My weed vape fits into my wallet’s hidden zipper pocket though.) Of course, the best way to have fun on a budget at a music festival is to not attend, and between my own self-preservationist tendencies and office job paying me well enough, I don’t need to keep too close an eye on my spending.
One thing that’s good about Riot Fest is that it does book many bigger and more prominent artists on the lineup earlier in the day. For many attendees that’s still not enough to stop numerous conflicts, but it does help spread out the schedule and encourage fans to get there early in the day. Around 2 PM on Friday I caught Parliament Funkadelic with George Clinton which, while I wasn’t expecting anything like Maggot Brain live, still left me disappointed a bit in the more DJ party mood of things rather than the heavy funk associated with them. I left partway through to see Yard Act, whose stage presence has really developed since I saw them at Coachella last year and were much more my speed. Their next album is primed to make big waves, for sure. Up next was Kim Gordon who, far be it from me to tell her what to do or criticize her artistic decisions at this point, but No Home Record never stuck with me and the dramatics attempted by having musicians double up on keys/controllers and guitar never lands. Screaming Females’ Marissa Paternoster can shred, and her presence and energy they brought were exactly the sort of cathartic rock experience many attendees and I were there to find.
The Breeders playing Last Splash was up next, and I need to discuss it and Riot Fest in general more. Nothing against the Deal sisters, but the album never clicked for me when I tried getting into it during the 20 year anniversary 10 years ago, when they also toured the album (then at Pitchfork). There’s the shock of any album that means a lot to you reaching a milestone anniversary like that, and the realization of you getting old(er) as well. Riot Fest in particular leverages this nostalgia circuit bait to get fans in the door, and while I can understand the logic, it sucks when you consider the kind of reality many of those people live in, culturally past their prime, attempting to rekindle the emotions of their youth and their longing for that time. I don’t want to say it’s pathetic, necessarily, but the implications of that are concerning considering how many attendees make going to RF a personality trait. It’s fine to engage with nostalgia every once in a while, but on the level Riot Fest cultivates, it speaks to me of stunted development and lack of personal growth in those years in between, mercenarily repackaged at a high price point to those who now have discretionary income that they didn’t when they were longer. Maybe it will be a bit different for me when I’m older, but for now, I’m too young for that kinda shit.
I’ll add also that album playthroughs in general aren’t a good live experience. A good show from an experienced band involves curating their material—new, old, the big ones, the solid ones, that one from a few albums back that was never a single but became a fan favorite, etc.—into a new narrative and/or new forms that unites into a good experience. A standard album, especially the ones highlighted at Riot Fest, tend to be frontloaded to hook in prospective fans for the sale, with the back halves losing momentum at the point where a live act should be picking up steam or powering through. Non-album playthroughs also allow the weaker material, the stuff that hasn’t aged well, the interstitial pieces that make sense on a record but not live, to be quietly ignored. There’s also the issue of liking the band but being lukewarm on the record, as I overheard multiple people say about Braid doing Frame and Canvas. It’s not good to be through your best material 20 minutes into your set and know exactly what’s coming next!
So yeah, the Breeders were fine for what it was but I’ve felt no urge to get more into them. I’ve noted before that Turnstile aren’t my thing, as hardcore’s reliance on energy over songs doesn’t click for me. I can respect how big they’ve gotten and all that, but their performance came across more like a boyband then the type of music I gravitate towards. Foo Fighters closed on Friday, and while I don’t mean to diss Dave Grohl especially after the tragedies he’s endured, his endless posturing as the last rock star and rock is the greatest thing around rang hollow when trafficking in those archetypes and trying to verbally prove them instead of demonstrating them. As I noted for much of the weekend, it wasn’t for me, and my brother and I left early to try to beat the crowds to public transit back home. (Always an issue nowadays, CTA staff managed the Pink Line crowds well which helped.)
Saturday got off to a good start with a one-two punch of supergroup Plosivs followed by Warpaint. I consider the latter especially underrated, and their set was heavy on cuts from The Fool, making for an understatedly hypnotic moment at the fest I really enjoyed. Afterwards at 2 PM, I went over to see Bowling For Soup. Comedic music, especially when you already know the jokes by heart, can be difficult to pull off, but the guys self-awaredly hammed it up as a peculiar mid-day inclusion. Would I have paid money to see them do the Phineas and Ferb theme song elsewhere? No. Would I have stayed longer than the 20 minutes or so I did if they played longer than a half hour? Probably not. No regrets though. In addition to having more notable acts early in the day, it also speaks to the breadth of what the festival considers punk and can get the same people to see in a day. For someone who can be very tunnel-visioned about my likes and interests, it’s good to see expansive programming that can bring many people together, even for only a half hour.
More conventionally hewing to punk were the rising British group High Vis, who had an energetic and pit-hungry crowd. Viagra Boys are not my thing, being a little too dirtbag immature for my taste. I somehow missed them up until the schedule dropped a couple weeks beforehand, but I found time for the Steve Ignorant Band doing Crass material, which was also great. I’ve noted before that I’m sympathetic to anarchism philosophically, though I’m not convinced the world can address issues like climate change through a weakening of the nation-state. Still a good sound in my book though.
Up next for me were Death Grips. If you’ve heard me talk about them before, you know I will bring up that I was at that Lollapalooza aftershow where they didn’t show up and the fans trashed the setup afterwards. A decade later, I’m still not sure what to make of that incident, and it’s probably too late to pitch the No Love Deep Web 33 1/3 I felt the experience might make for a better sell. Finally seeing them now from the middle-back of a festival crowd, I didn’t really feel much. They brought it, pretty much exactly what you’ve seen before, but it just didn’t do much for me. I had brunch with a friend in Philly who’d also seen them on this tour, and she and I have had similar experiences with them: a huge love in high school, finding their noise, energy, and cryptic expressions engrossing, but over time the infatuation wore off as what they brought to the table was absorbed by the mainstream, and us getting busy and no longer having the time and passion to dedicate to them. That energy and intensity wasn’t palpable from where I stood and where I’m at now in my life, and it didn’t really connect with me. It came across like detractors have long noted: unfocused noise whose constituent parts don’t add up. My friend and I agreed that it was good to finally catch them, and we also agreed that we’ve moved on from them.
Death Grips also ended 10 minutes before their hour-long set time ended. As did seemingly every other act after them on Saturday. Of course things starting late or dragging out puts stress on an already hectic schedule, but it is disappointing to end prematurely when you know there’s more material they could do. Ben Gibbard’s joint 20th anniversary tour for Death Cab For Cutie’s Transatlanticism and The Postal Service’s Give Up headlined, and both sets ended with the record. (The Breeders tacked on a few non-Last Splash cuts at the end of theirs.) I’ve never gotten into DCFC so I went to get food then. Between the two, I caught part of Queens of the Stone Age which also didn’t connect with me, even when they played the one song of theirs I really like (‘If I Had a Tail’). My brother and I and also a significant chunk of the fest went off to a side stage across the park to see the start of Insane Clown Posse, because they’re there, so why not? Unfortunately they were late to the stage and we crossed back before a novelty became a liability cutting into The Postal Service.
Having been at the last two first Postal Service reunion shows in 2013—yes I have a poster, and yeah you get the sense that Riot Fest considered 2023 to be 2013 2—I liked those better because they weren’t billed as album playthroughs. You can’t accuse The Postal Service of having a bloated discography, but you can arrange it (including the offcuts) into something worthy of a headlining set, I saw that happen a decade ago! So we heard the hits while using the restroom and finding a spot, and they decided not to end with an encore performance of ‘Such Great Heights’, which was disappointing.
Getting back was a mess: aside from the general Pink Line situation, downtown got closed to traffic due to revelry from Mexican Independence Day celebrations, and the Douglass Park area was also congested even more so by that. I got frazzled and plotted an alternate route to my Godspeed You! Black Emperor aftershow, which I would’ve easily gotten to on time if I stuck with the Pink Line. It was a weird mix of frustration and concern there throughout the evening, for sure, though I still caught about an hour and a half of the Canadian anarchists that night.
It rained fairly heavily overnight, prompting a 3-hour delay to the festival opening. Those are never fun especially when you plan your whole day around going. The last minute lineup finalization—which didn’t rearrange much, just kinda started at the scheduled 2 PM point now—prompted a semi-existential question in me: do I scramble to get there for Ride? I couldn’t find it in me to say yes knowing my allergies could come back any time and the added strain might tip over my general health.
I got there a bit later for Dresden Dolls, at my brother’s recommendation. The grounds were muddy in spots—you definitely needed to watch your step—but manageable, a concern but not day-defining. The band was not my thing, again—as a covers-heavy duo (with guest appearances), my mind settled on ‘theater kid prog’ to describe them, to the extent that prog isn’t already dominated by theater kids—but they were solid, and their inclusion really helped to embody the expansiveness of what punk can be and who participates. Managing to do ‘War Pigs’ using only piano, drums and vocals is an impressive feat as far as I’m concerned. Looking them up after to get a bit more context, I learned the pianist is Amanda Palmer. Huh. By the time I first started getting into music, she was considered a punching bag whose self-centered, quirky white girl type was more obnoxious than endearing or tolerable relative to her talent level. Said talent is undeniable based on that set, and while her style does not conform to what the tastemaker crowd would analyze fairly, I feel she’s due for a critical re-evaluation when the Dresden Dolls’ forthcoming album is out.
I caught a song or two from The Mars Volta, who didn’t grip me and I’m not too familiar with, before crossing the park to catch Godspeed You! Black Emperor for the second time that weekend. (I bought the aftershow ticket before the schedule was released in anticipation of a strong conflict.) An hour and 45 minute show in a >1,000 person venue is different than a 45-minute festival set, for sure, but the intensity of both sets matched one another. I was definitely banging my head to every thundering downbeat. And the festival set was not a condensed version of the longer one—’BBF3’ closed the aftershow, which did not include ‘The Sad Mafioso’ like at Riot Fest.
Afterwards and after getting some food, I joined my brother to take in The Cure’s set. Another band I first caught headlining Lollapalooza in 2013—yes, really, it was only a decade ago that Lolla booked significant numbers of acclaimed acts that drew so-called serious music fans in big numbers—I’ve never gotten too into their music (and I realize how bad that sounds). So I have nothing much to say about that other than it was a pleasant enough time hanging with someone I truly appreciate. Sometimes things aren’t what you expect them to be, and it’s still fine.
A housekeeping note: I was hoping I’d be able to write up my experiences at Making Time as well for this issue—I have a point I very much want to make contrasting the two fests—but I really want to get this issue out the door, it’s approaching the end of my time I can devote to writing and I’m crossing the 4,500 word mark for the issue and my planning with this sentence. I’ll see if I have it in me to get to that next time, my apologies.
This record has been most heavily on repeat for the past month. I should’ve included it in my last issue but was crunched for time and had trouble distinguishing it from the others. Canadian post-punk, the sound draws a bit on the jangle and overall hookiness that defined late 2000s indie rock. A good sense of propulsion, riffs, wearing heavy things lightly, the existential angst of young adulthood and economic pressures. You’ve probably heard a bunch like this before, and yet it still has an inviting, lingering power to it.
Honest Jon’s Records dropped off this 4-way split record with zero context on Bandcamp, but the names involved—Holy Tongue is Al Wootton and Valentina Magalatti—are enough to make it a priority. Beatrice Dillon (and the HJ site) notes all works are collaborations with mbalax drummers from Senegal recorded in early 2020—it seems Shackleton was also a part of this trip considering the context for last year’s The Majestic Yes—and the results are wildly psychedelic from some of Britain’s best percussion-heavy producers. It’s Lamin Fofana and LABOUR’s contributions, whom I’m least familiar with, that are the highlights, the two going absolutely berserk with their compositions. Don’t let the bland name fool you.
Chile seems to punch above its weight in the techno realm, or perhaps I’m not aware enough of producers outside Western hotspots to be surprised Villalobos, Cristian Vogel and more originate from there. Föllakzoid are a band proper though and identify more with krautrock than dance, as the part of their set I caught at Le Guess Who? 8 years ago made clear, and remain an outlier as they stick to Sacred Bones as their label. Further going deeper, icy, and stripped down and minimal than their earlier records, if you don’t hear it in this record, you’re not listening deeply enough.
The "sounds like" or "FFO:" comparison in a lot of music writing can be a helpful reference, but it's also limiting in prescribing what a band's sound is, their influences, what they're going for, if they achieve that etc. That being said, if you can describe this band, Frisian trio The Homesick and their self-titled record, or find coverage to the same effect, that does not reference them, please let me know.
So, yeah, upon reflection it is weird that, for how diverse and ranging and generally influential Animal Collective is considered, there are so few acts even among their contemporaries among their late 2000s 'peak' that sound like them. Most of those bands are effectively moribund, and the economic and media conditions are unlikely to nurture others of a similar generational talent. This makes it more impressive that not only does the instrumentation here sound like a synthesis of a lot of AC's sounds since Merriweather Post Pavilion, but also that the singers' interplay is a near dead ringer for the Avey Tare/Panda Bear dynamic. If I still had any enthusiasm for looking for leaks, and found this posted as Isn't It Now? before that released, I'd believe it was in fact that record.
And speaking of Isn’t It Now?, the new record from Animal Collective is worth your time. I need to spend a little more time with it when not high, but as it’s from the same sessions as Time Skiffs, at worst it’s a solid companion piece to that one. Panda Bear’s drumming in particular is a highlight throughout, as is ‘Genie’s Open’, which starts in a Broadcast-ian realm before breaking into something resembling krautrock. I can’t say they’ve done stuff like that before much.
I like this record a bit more than my inclusions above but, structurally, those had to go there. Speaking of dead ringers for my favorite acts, the new record from Valencia’s Melenas sounds a lot like if Stereolab embraced synth pop instead of lounge music following their earlier records. I find it hard to hear Oihana’s voice as something other than Laetitia Sadier’s with a lisp. There’s a lot to chew on with this record, and ‘Bang’ is surely a top 10 song of the year for me if I tracked that stuff.
For as much as I tried to take in from my trip to Japan this summer, there was only so much I could do, see, hear etc. It’s hard to get comprehensive about a nation of 120+ million with millennia of culture in 2 weeks. To that end, the Bandcamp Daily feed noted this record compiled by intrepid French (?) crate diggers of the works of saxophonist Jiro Inagaki and his Soul Media band. I felt it had a very blues-y sound or at least form, which I don’t hear that much of nowadays, while listening to it. Worth your while if you’re interested, for sure.
A bit after this record was officially released, I saw that it was (finally) streaming in full on Bandcamp. Readers of Crow’s Nest and those who otherwise follow psychedelic/noise rock are no doubt aware of the release campaign for Les Rallies Dénudés. What’s most surprising about this recording, taken from a comeback concert in 1993, is the high fidelity of it. Somewhat removed from the lo-fi bootleg muck of their previously circulated material, this release contains some utterly beautiful material (and yes, skin-peeling guitar noise that also rules). Perhaps the quintessential LRD release at this point now?
Opening with the riff from ‘Ether’ is certainly a bold move from any band, but Portland’s Collate manage to pull it off. Not as funky or full sounding as Gang of Four, you’ve got the guitar-bass-drums sound with a sharp/bouncy/minimal lo-fi mix with that kind of spacious, undead no wave sound I really enjoy. You can probably guess the rest of it from that but it’s nevertheless worth some spins on your end.
And now it’s time for the dance music set.
The last time Call Super project graced these pages, I noted I wasn’t sure what to make of their recent singles. Turns out they were the lead tracks for this album that’s also the center of a multimedia project ‘Tell Me I Didn’t Choose This’ they’re unfurling over the next few months. Details within the link. The music itself is more on the jazzy abstract side of the producer’s works, opening with their self-invented ‘eharp’, ethereal vocals from the previously featured tracks from Julia Holter, Eden Samara and others, and plenty of saxophone supplied by their father. If I frequently feel like I’m bluffing about what I include here, I have been busy as of late just trying to keep on top of what I want to prioritize so I don’t have much more to say here. If I make it to smartbar next weekend to see them I’m not sure how much might be included from this.
Despite Britain being the most-covered country for techno aside from maybe Germany, press for the scenes outside its major cultural centers can be scant, as evidenced by me knowing nothing about the Birmingham party House of God. This compilation highlights 30 years of material from the party series, and after 1 full listen, I’m in. The sound is defined by heavy-hitting bass and kick drums with screwball, squiggly synth lines on top—love it. Plenty of big names—Regis, Surgeon, Neil Landstrumm—and unknowns to me across the 24 tracks. Profits go to charity as well so you can feel better about your sins.
When not being cheeky and dropping ‘Highway To Hell’ as-is during one of their sets, Optimo remain heads-down crate-diggers highlighting left-of-center microgenre selections that tickle their fancy. So much so that fans of the label requested more ‘dark disco’ from them, leading them to assemble this compilation. They’ve got a massive back catalog on the label of this kind of material, so consider it an entry point if you’re intrigued. I think the Ian Hicks cut within is my favorite.
A fast-paced, high energy pair of tracks from Pittsburgh’s Davis Galvin. A more hypersonic, experimental take on footwork and other fast-tempo dance styles that have been prominent as of late.
The Knife were a formative influence on my taste, Silent Shout being one of the records that got me into dance music. The respective solo works of the Dreijer siblings as Fever Ray and Oni Ayhun (or other aliases Olof uses) don’t do as much for me, though the former is not fully targeted at me for sure. Avalon Emerson’s remix of Carbon Dioxide puts it into a but more typical format and adds an ecstatic edge that I like, and Oni Ayhun’s OAR EPs from the late 2000s went live on Bandcamp recently. Gonna be basic and say OAR003 is (probably) my favorite of those. Always worth the spin though.
96 Back is constantly putting out new music, much of it solid, and this 2-tracker on Local Action continues label head Finn’s cheeky side marrying cheesy turn-of-the-millenium sounds currently in vogue with a slippery house groove and solid production underpinnings. It’s too well-done to be a groan of an edit.
I don’t have a good handle on describing Logic1000’s sound, but every time I spin something from her, I find myself putting it on repeat more times than I expect. The looped vocals, droning keys and shuffling percussion are quite sticky, reminiscent of lo-fi house and early Yaeji, and the overall mood in the daylight too nice to not linger for a bit. What else can I say? This one has … grown on me.
Every time I get an email for yet another Shall Not Fade release, I question whether following them is worth it. Then I listen to something like this 2-tracker from NANCY Live that they put out and, what the hell, what’s another couple dozen unread emails from them? There’s no garage-y shuffle that’s a hallmark of the label to these, just a pair of high energy techno cuts great for some late-night dance floor catharsis.
Ok kids, that’s it for issue #58 of Crow’s Nest. We’ll see if I keep my promises on part 2 of my September festivalling, and if not surely you think I’m batting at least 1 for 18 on the music selections? Until next time.