Source: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images North America
I thought I’d seen every Portlandia-related video on the internet, but I was wrong.
Watch Fred & Carrie doing an impromptu cover of “Beautiful World” by Devo over at Rolling Stone.
Author: aftertheshow (Page 160 of 192)
Slow Club is a duo from England, and “Giving Up On Love” is one of their best songs:
I saw The Mynabirds at Mercury Lounge last night.
I was impressed with the band’s use of extra percussive instruments to create a fuller sound — stomp boxes, shakers, tambourine, and a trumpet in one hand + sleigh bells in the other.
Highlights: The band played standout song “Numbers Don’t Lie” pretty early in their set, and later Laura played “Fallen Doves” (the “Generals” B-side) solo, for the first time in front of an audience.
“Numbers Don’t Lie”:
Official site: The Mynabirds
Twitter: @themynabirds
I had a great interview with Lexi Valentine, lead singer and guitarist of Toronto band Magneta Lane.
Check out the interview over at Baeble Music or read below!
Magneta Lane is a three-piece rock band from Toronto. I got to speak with Magneta Lane frontwoman Lexi Valentine about the songwriting process, their upcoming EP Witch Rock, and being in a genre of their own. Lexi was super nice and professional. She even apologized for calling at 3:01 — one minute late!
After The Show: Let’s start with your songwriting process. You write the main melody and lyrics. How do you know when a song is done and you’re not going to add anything or change any details?
Lexi Valentine: To be honest, I don’t think that ever happens. Of course, we have a certain timeframe when we’re doing records, but as an artist you’re always looking back at things — maybe I could have done this or changed that. As long as I’m satisfied with the lyrical content and feel the story has been told, I’m satisfied. Lyrics are the most important thing to me out of everything.
It was definitely different on this EP we just did. It was nice to get feedback from people and have fresh ears say maybe you should go back. Having someone there to guide us and say try again and see what you can come up with took those songs to another level. But it’s a lifelong process of feeling like songs are never really finished.
What about composing guitar riffs? How do you come up with them?
It’s funny because I’m self taught, and I’m always pretty honest about saying that I’m not the best guitarist in the world, but I can write a melody. I usually just sit there, pick up the acoustic guitar, and pick whatever chords feel natural, starting with what sounds good to the ear. I never really think too much into it.
Nadia [drummer] helps a lot and she’s really great with writing bass lines that harmonize. She creates something in the background that works and makes the bass more prominent. And French [bassist] is great at picking skills — she’s really fast.
You’ve said that people think you sound too indie for the pop world, but too pop for the indie world. I think it’s good to sound unique and not fit into any rigid sonic category, but have you encountered resistance to your music because of this?
Oh man. You’ll be servicing a song to radio, and they’ll say “I don’t think our demographic will get this.” Some stations say it doesn’t sound mainstream enough, but then it’s too pop sounding for indie. At the end of the day we just write what we like and what we can write.
With the EP that we just finished, we cracked a joke in that in choosing the title for it. Our producers were like “I don’t even know what this is.” Our upcoming EP is called Witch Rock. It’s different and doesn’t really sound like anything. We make our own genre and don’t really fit in anywhere.
Your music videos are pretty interesting, especially “Lady Bones” and “Shatter.” How do you come up with the concepts for the videos?
The three of us have a really dark sense of humor about things. We try to have fun with that in terms of our videos. With the last two videos we’ve done (“Lady Bones” and “Shatter”) we got to be very hands-on. “Lady Bones” is my favorite — Mike Maxxis directed it.
We sat down and talked about ideas like Day of the Dead culture. I love that and want to show it in the video. We wanted something really raw, to show our sense of humor…even the way the video ends is us having fun. We have these ideas and were lucky enough to work with people who help us make them happen.
What was the outcome, short-term and long-term, from the “Girl From Mars” cover on the Microsoft spot?
That was a really fun experience. It was really different than what we were doing at the time. We got to go to LA. That commercial was actually used more internally as a Microsoft video. It was really cool that we got to do it. The sad part is that the song was never made available for purchase on MP3. We always get emails from people asking where to buy it. It’s just too bad that we don’t have the song to share with people.
But we invited people into our world and what we do who never would get to hear. There was so much work that went into the shoot — the set, the actors. It was cool.
I know you’ve done guest vocals for bands like Tokyo Police Club. In the future, do you see yourself writing for other artists or producing other bands?
It’s definitely something that I want to get into. It’s just a matter of finding the time. People approach me and ask can you sing on this song? It’s so much fun — I get to do it on the side for fun. Now it’s time to get back on the grind with ML [Magneta Lane]. For me, I definitely have to do one thing at a time. I can’t spread myself too far around because I get really focused on what I’m doing. We need to give birth to this EP first, then I can think about the future.
Next year, it’ll be 10 years as a band.
Oh my God, that’s scary [laughs].
What’s your headspace at this point in your career, and what can you share about the upcoming EP Witch Rock?
It’s been quite a ride. We were super young when we first started. The three of us have grown into very responsible, hardworking women. It’s great that we share that.
We’ve been reassessing and cleaning up shop the last three years, getting out of things that didnt necessarily work for us. With all those downs and times to reflect you really start to appreciate what youre doing.
Weve become smarter people, harder workers…we dont expect people to do things for us. Im really happy about that — music is our first love, but its even greater when you learn the business side too.
We’re really excited to start fresh and push forward with new minds and new hearts. I think with the music we’ve done to date, the character lyrics-wise is almost uplifting, about celebrating your inner villain. That’s kind of the way we’re facing the world — we want to move forward. We love to do this and no one’s forcing us to do it. Hopefully people will see that in the new music. We’re still who we are — we’re just smarter and older.
Wussy is a great band I just discovered over at Nyc Taper.
Wussy’s 3 best songs are “Maglite,” “Pizza King,” and “Motorcycle” —
“Maglite”:
“Pizza King”:
“Motorcycle”:
I spoke to Claire of Hope For Agoldensummer, a three-piece band led by sisters Claire and Page Campbell from Athens, Georgia.
After The Show: Starting mid-September, you’ll not only open for Patterson Hood but you’ll also sit in with his band during their sets. How are you preparing for that?
Claire Campbell: I actually just texted Patterson yesterday because we haven’t had any rehearsals since last time we played a show together, so as of now we haven’t started preparing yet. What happens is we have marathon rehearsals at Drive-By Truckers practice space. Sometime after dinner we’ll rehearse, rehearse, rehearse until we can rehearse no more.
With his sets, there is no set list – he just works off a giant list of songs we know, so we have a huge catalogue of songs that have to be ready at all times for whatever he decides he wants to play. The other thing about Patterson is that he doesn’t always call out songs, so sometimes he’ll just start a song and we’ll have to figure out which song it is in the first few bars. I’ll be playing banjo and realize I have to quickly change instruments!
When you’re playing shows in the south or in cities in the northeast, have you noticed differences in how audiences react to your music?
At first it seems like more of a novelty thing to people who aren’t from the south or from the southeast. But we win them over with our terrible jokes and stage banter. I feel like we get a pretty good reception across the board. Some places take longer to warm up.
What was your experience using Indiegogo to fund your fourth album, and why did you choose it over KickStarter?
We chose Indiegogo because we had a rather lofty financial goal of what we wanted to raise. If you don’t meet your goal with Kickstarter, you lose everything. In our case, the album was mostly in the can when we started fundraising. We were raising to cover the material cost of making the physical album and then to hire a publicist for the album – those things are the expensive things, and why we wanted to pre-sell it and do the fundraising campaign.
Even if we didn’t meet our goal we’d still get to keep the money we raised on IndieGoGo. The album was going to come out regardless of how much money we raised.
You play with some really interesting, unusual instruments like banjo, singing saw, and even a cheese grater. What’s your favorite and/or most unusual instrument you play?
My favorite is just the guitar; it’s the most fun. That’s what I write most of my songs on. I don’t tour with it, but I have a tiny old nylon string guitar from Vietnam and that’s what I mainly just sit at home & play – it’s effortless.
The weirdest thing I play is the singing saw. It’s a beautiful sound, in small amounts…it can definitely be overused. I can get tired of hearing it sometimes. We try to use it very sparingly, whenever we do use it. I don’t release a lot of raging singing saw solos in our folk songs. For Page, her current favorite weird thing is probably an Echoplex tape machine. We don’t tour with it and rarely use it.
I love the line “Mr. Bloom / I’ve made some room / in my mind / for thoughts of you.” Do you want to discuss the meaning and evolution of the song “Daniel Bloom”?
It’s kind of a long story. Daniel Bloom is a really good friend of mine who lives in Athens. When I first moved to Athens in ‘98, he was the first or second person I met. I was studying religion and he was studying philosophy so we had a lot to talk about. We had been talking about bugs…I said you can eat cockroaches – they would be protein & safe to eat, but it turns out after research that you can’t eat them because they carry terrible diseases. We made a bet that whoever was wrong had to write a song about the other person & perform it in public. The song slowly evolved to involve what I had written about him for that bet, but also parts of a love letter from someone else.
Hopefully that song will have a music video to go along with it – our plan is to do a motorcycling music video where I drive and Page stands on the foot peg mouthing the words to the song. We’d then have different members of a motorcycle gang chase us…we’ll see what happens.
What aspects of the business of music do you like and not like?
I don’t like hardly any aspects of it. I’ve been in it for so long that I’ve gotten really weary of it. I don’t really like booking shows anymore, and I don’t really like publicizing my shows. We hired a publicist for this album and tour, but I honestly feel like we could have probably pulled most of it off ourselves & gotten the same results, for the most part.
I got sort of disenchanted with the whole rat race and competition, and my ideas and priorities changed as far as how much time I wanted to devote to music & how much time I wanted to devote to all the other things in my life. At this point, I try to keep my nose out of the business of music as much as possible, and it’s probably to the detriment of our band.
Page is a graphic designer now & I’m a doula – we have other passions that have come to the surface. They haven’t overtaken music at all but are definitely of equal importance as music.
You’ve said that music isn’t how you make money; it’s how you spend money. That’s such a powerful, succinct statement about the current state of music and the struggle of the majority of bands.
Yes. For most people it’s an expensive hobby…I hate to say the word hobby, but is money the determining factor? Probably not. Our band breaks even, although we have massive amounts of credit card debt after the last tour. Except if you started actually figuring in the man and woman hours, we definitely would be in the red. None of us are pulling remotely a fair wage from being in this band, but we love it & we do get fulfillment from the other ways we make a living, so I think that’s okay.
I am happy where we are, for sure, right now. I’m not unsatisfied & I don’t look back at decisions we’ve made & have massive amounts of regret. I feel like we are successful whether or not we earn our living from music. I waver back and forth – on the business of music. I know it’s frustrating for everybody. This town [Athens] is great for being a musician because people are used to hiring people who go on tour, but most people here are not making a living wage.
You do great covers like “Time After Time” and even an Aaliyah song. Are there any covers people can expect on your upcoming tour?
Well actually I was just thinking of pitching some Elvis songs to Page. We do a lot of old R&B from Georgia like James Brown and Little Richard, but I was thinking like an Elvis song maybe…and Chuck Berry. Then there’s this really weird song about “why would you wanna break up.” Do you know that song?
No…
It has really strange timing – the rhythm is weird and the chorus is amazing – sorry I don’t know who it’s by. Patterson’s band is going to be our backup band so we’re trying to keep things simple, and we’ll probably be playing the exact same set every night because we’ll have to teach people our songs. I have pieces of songs but nothing new. We might do a new song of Page’s. But Page is insanely prolific, which is good when I have writer’s block.
*Thank you Hope For Agoldensummer — catch the band on tour — list of shows here