Heartbreaking Bravery

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Tag: Bruce Springsteen

August 14, 2016

Watch This: Vol. 136

The past week saw a lot of great live videos swimming to the shore from the depths of nowhere. There were outstanding featured performances in those clips from Adir L.C., The Curls, Lydia Loveless, Courtney Barnett, Ultimate Painting, Dogbreth, Los Blenders, Kinda Rad Kinda Sad, Summer Twins, Rich Girls, Slingshot Dakota, The Staves, Caveman, Eric Bachmann, Brendan Canning, Lisa Prank, Vetiver, Paridisia, Porches, Mimes of Wine, SALES, Typesetter, and Julien Baker. For the 136th installment of this series, the attention turns to a handful of folk-influenced artists who are either making their mark or reaping what they’ve sown throughout their careers. So, as always, sit back, adjust the settings, take a breath, and Watch This.

1. Margaret Glaspy (OpenAir)

Margaret Glaspy‘s had a deeply impressive 2016. The young songwriter released a breakthrough record, continuously boasts one of the better live shows on the market, and has handled the transition into the public eye with the poised confidence of a seasoned veteran. Here, Glaspy gives Colorado Public Radio’s OpenAir a powerful look at that live show, landing a few knockout punches throughout a rousing four-song performance.

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2. Dusk – (Do the) Bored Recluse + Leaf (Set List)

No band has been written about or praised more by this site than Tenement, who have been the consummate example of what this site was built around supporting. Through that band’s decade-long existence, bandleader Amos Pitsch has been involved in a number of other projects but something about Dusk feels just a little bit different. The band’s comprised of several of the most impressive musical figures in Wisconsin’s relatively isolated Fox Valley area, whose singular visions act in complementary tandem. Beautiful harmonies, a sense of history, and a tenacious commitment help define the band’s identity. All of those traits are on full display for this gorgeous two-song turn-in for Wisconsin Public Radio’s excellent Set List series.

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3. Green Dreams – Don’t Pray For Me (Katie Krulock)

Ever since the release of 2014’s excellent Rich Man, Poor Man, Green Dreams have been relatively quiet. All of that’s about to change as the band preps a new release, which the band provided a tantalizing glimpse at through the form of this live acoustic video. The typically ferocious project reveals their pensive side on the lilting “Don’t Pray For Me”, while still retaining the overwhelming narrative darkness that’s been so prominent in their past releases. Beautifully lensed and delicately performed, the video’s a powerful reminder of Green Dreams’ numerous gifts.

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4. Bernie & the Wolf (DZ Records)

For more than three years, Bernie & the Wolf have quietly been perfecting a mix of influences and forming a sound that’s not too distant from the best of Saddle Creek’s offerings. Open, sprawling, and teeming with distinctly American influences (and history), their songs are immediately warmly familiar and entirely winsome. DZ Records recently capture the band delivering an impassioned set, keying in on “Ethyl”, “Catch Some”, and “Pretty On Me”, three genuine standouts from what promises to be one of the best releases of its given year.

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5. Bon Iver (SPIN)

Typically, these spots are reserved for unheralded artists, independent-leaning moments, and videos where the performers aren’t hundreds of feet away. It takes a lot to overturn any of those qualifications and overturning all of them is essentially unprecedented. Even though Bon Iver’s Eaux Claires live unveiling of the forthcoming record — something I was fortunate enough to attend — was a genuinely Big Moment that will be exhaustively covered by nearly every serious music publication, the way it was introduced felt intrinsically connected to the foundations of this site.

As a person who’s lived the vast majority of life in a small Wisconsin town, watching someone like Justin Vernon selflessly elevate an enitre artistic community has been heartening. Watching him debut an entire album live, in front of a hushed audience of thousands, at a genre-balanced festival he founded in his own small Wisconsin hometown was actively inspiring. While Vernon’s rollout campaign for Bon Iver’s forthcoming 22, A Million was designed to benefit the projects’s chosen slot, it was also an effort to highlight the other artists (like Tenement and Tickle Torture) who were a part of the Eaux Claires festival.

In that methodology, Vernon’s added another heartfelt notch in his continuing efforts to expand Wisconsin’s woefully underrated music community by any means at his disposal. On top of all of that, though, the actual performance of 22, A Million was an unforgettable event that was enhanced by the location (Bon Iver’s music has always been perfectly suited to Wisconsin’s wilderness) and the weather.

Just before the set began, what had been a steady downpour of rain lasting hours had suddenly stopped and night had fully descended. Throughout the set, there was an eerie calm that was punctuated by the noise of crickets that had taken residence in and outside of the festival grounds, creating an ambient wellspring of noise that further enhanced the glitchy electronics that permeate throughout 22, A Million (they became especially evident during the quietest moments, rounding out those songs in an unforgettable fashion).

While all of the main set can be heard and seen below in a video that SPIN livestreamed from the crowd, the encore set (which isn’t part of the video) provided what may have been the most defining moment of the festival.

Playing a selection of songs that wildly varied from their original versions, the band pulled out a fairly faithful rendition of “Creature Fear” that culminated in an apocalyptic wall of noise outro section. In the lead-up to those breathtaking final moments, a blisteringly intense lightning storm had erupted behind a heavy cloud, providing an unexpected assist that felt entirely in tune with the weekend’s joyous collaborative efforts. In that moment, the audience, the band, the city of Eau Claire, and Wisconsin itself became part of a unified moment that transcended easy category, leaving an indelible mark on Eau Claires, on Eaux Claires, and on everyone who took a moment to take in their surroundings.

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April 28, 2014

Perfect Pussy – Candy’s Room (Stream)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Heartbreaking Bravery has been experiencing some technical difficulties that are currently in the process of being resolved. All apologies for the recent lack of content, expect it to be made up  for as soon as possible.

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When Heartbreaking Bravery was formed, I did it with a manifest that I promised myself I’d do my best to adhere to. There have been a few occasions here and there where, for the presumed benefit of the piece, I’d subvert that initial set of rules. The subversion of a very particular set hit its apex when it became clear that, at least for a while, the band I would be tracking most closely was Perfect Pussy. I allowed myself the indulgence of using self-identifiers because I thought it was the most appropriate response to the band’s music; open, unfiltered, unflinchingly honest, earnest, enthusiastic, sincere, and devoid of pretense. That approach has (obviously) been kept but now I’m allowing myself a subversion of a different rule; this is going to be the first piece to be done exclusively on a cover song.

Before this goes any further, it’s worth pointing out that despite the headline above (and one that will undoubtedly appear in several more publications following the Rookie premiere that took place earlier today) that Perfect Pussy wasn’t the band responsible for this cover. Yes, Meredith Graves is at the center of the chaos unfurling around her, Shaun Sutkus was on board for production, mixing, and mastering duties, and Garrett Koloski provided some live drumming for this- but both Ray McAndrew and Greg Ambler were absent from this recording completely and both guitar duty and synth arrangement was handled by Friendless Bummer‘s Sam Sodomsky. It exists in the same wheelhouse as Perfect Pussy and will sound similar to anyone familiar with their work but, unless Graves has changer her mind since our brief discussion about this, it’s a one-off project with no real name; Perfect Pussy is just being used as an acceptable placeholder.

With that surprisingly large amount of exposition out of the way, let’s move onto why I’m even writing this to begin with: the cover. It’s a wide-eyed and startlingly explosive take on Bruce Springsteen’s “Candy Room”, a sorely underrated gem from Darkness on the Edge of Town. Besides being blindingly unexpected and volatile for the majority of its runtime, it boasts a lush and delicate intro piece that sees Graves reciting the lines “when I come knocking, she smiles pretty, she knows I wanna be Candy’s boy”, furthering a process of dispensing harmful gender roles in music, which hasn’t been a prominent part of the cultural landscape discussion in far too long. Less than twenty seconds in and there’s already a reminder that music, at it’s core, is a utopia where equality can be freely expressed and flourish, even readily achieved, when any background context is stripped away. While I certainly don’t think the intent of this version of “Candy’s Room” was that all-consuming, it still serves as an excellent example of that level of freedom.

After the gently intoned opening lines, the song explodes outwards, sending vicious shards of audio every which way. Again, Graves seizes the opportunity to position herself in the center, only this time instead of impassioned pleading, there’s an almost disorienting tranquility- and instead of screaming, she sings like a gentle army of the sweetest birds. Many will make the mistake of instantly assuming she’s been autotuned, as the multitracked vocals here do sound a little too perfectly arranged. In reality, Graves improvised the seven-part harmonies that adeptly define and characterize this cover- after a surgery to removed a few impacted wisdom teeth, no less. Make no mistake, though, Graves’ improbably cheerful and melodic vocal delivery contrasts with what’s happening around her as much as it possibly can; this is noise-punk at its most experimental and owes a greater debt to classic Japanese video games more than anything else. Sodomsky’s guitar work manages to be as simplistic as it is torrential (and the same can be said for his synth arrangements) while Koloski and Sutkus ably command their impressive control over what should be an insurmountable level of insanity.

In a move that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to those who heard Say Yes to Love, after the trio (which again, isn’t technically Perfect Pussy) navigates their way through the technicolor dream sequence that is the traditional bulk of their cover, they spend most of the final two minutes experimenting with manipulating feedback and decaying loops. It’s another jarring outro from a group of creatively restless and refreshingly fearless people who are intent on keeping everyone guessing as to what’s coming next. By the time everything’s been drowned out by the piercing epilogue (which features audio berthed from a pedal that operates on the basis of light-sensitivity), it can be chalked up as another impressive mark in the continuously-expanding win column for Graves, Koloski, and Sutkus while also being one hell of a profile-booster for Sodomsky.

Listen to “Candy’s Room” over at the inimitably great Rookie (which also contains an accompanying interview) and be warned: don’t leave this one on repeat. Each time it plays itself through, it gets that much harder to take off- it’s the most difficult-to-untangle web of audio hypnotics I’ve experienced in a very long time.

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