fierce | Heartbreaking Bravery

September 14, 2014

Watch This: Vol. 44

Welcome to a late-night installment of Watch This, the 44th in the weekly series that celebrates the best live performances to surface in the previous week. This time around, there’s a split between full sets, late night performances, and DIY presentations that all include bands that have previously earned themselves features (or extended mentions) on this site. Whether it’s another jaw-dropping full set from White Lung or a revitalized Death From Above 1979 diving headfirst into their single, these are all worth watching. Normally Watch This is posted much earlier on Sunday, so in the spirit of today’s delay, the featured videos get darker in atmosphere as they progress. Day turns to night and Volume 44 gets to lay claim to five great performances. So, sit back, relax, take a drink, ease up, and Watch This.

1. Death From Above 1979 – Trainwreck 1979 (The Late Show with David Letterman)

The Physical World, Death From Above 1979’s long-awaited follow-up to the classic You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine, may have disappointed a few people with absurd expectations. Most of them were hung up on their own projections of what they thought the band should be instead of letting them come out of hibernation to evolve naturally. It’s hard to think that any of them would be disappointed by a performance like this one, which winds up being part of a late surge of memorable talk show performances.

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2. Benny the Jet Rodriguez – Alley Cat (Razorcake)

Is the sound on this the greatest? No. Does it need to be? Same answer. Is this a great take on a great song from a great record? Absolutely. Does the combination of logos, titles, and credits make it difficult to definitively credit? Extremely. How are more people not talking about Benny the Jet Rodriguez and Home. Run? That’s impossible to say- but it needs to change. When should that change start? Right now. Does every city deserve a venue like VLHS? Definitely.

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3. Diarrhea Planet (KEXP)

Diarrhea Planet may have released a very good record the other year that holds up as a standalone piece but their reputation was almost entirely built by virtue of their excitable live shows. This KEXP session goes a long way in confirming any of the uninitiated’s suspicions that they have a penchant for the irreverent and wild- and that’s all that really needs to be said. Just watch the video.

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4. White Lung (unARTigNYC)

This isn’t the first full White Lung set to earn itself a feature on Watch This. Hell, it’s not even the first one that comes courtesy of unARTigNYC. All that said, the band keeps managing to get better, a feat of borderline absurdity considering they’re already one of the better live acts out there today. Easily the best-looking and best-sounding White Lung set to find its way onto Watch This, their recent set at Palisades found them in their fieriest form (especially after a very tense moment towards the start of the set that found vocalist Mish Way pushed to the point of physically accosting and ultimately ejecting an audience member)- absolutely laying waste to a selection of songs that leaned heavily on 2014 standout Deep Fantasy. Even if the whole set was emotionally charged thanks to the severely unfortunate circumstances, it provided a handful of thrilling moments and cemented White Lung’s status as one of today’s most exciting bands.

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5. Nothing (KEXP)

Nothing are notorious for eardrum-obliterating volume levels when they play live, which seems fitting for a band so prone to relentless heaviness. Here, they hold nothing back and give KEXP one of the station’s more memorable sessions- creating an entrancing sprawl that sides towards the heavily atmospheric. Guilty of Everything was a high point of mid-2014 and is well-represented here. Apart from a few fairly awkward interview exchanges (which is probably putting it mildly), the individual song performances are weirdly mesmerizing. All in all, it’s hard to ask for a better way to cap off another great week of documented live music.

June 6, 2014

Green Dreams – Rich Man/Poor Man (Review, Stream)

Let’s start this off by getting unconventional: Green Dreams were the first band to send this site music for review/feature consideration. After being told to keep in touch following that initial exchange, they lived up to their promise of doing so. That led to subsequent coverage of a music video, an incendiary song, and that song’s inclusion on an early best-of playlist. Now, the 7″ that the song “Eye Contact” had been teased from is available for streaming in full- and it sees the band absolutely annihilating their previous high-water mark.

Each of the four tracks on Rich Man/Poor Man feature the band playing with a renewed sense of vigor, a tighter focus, and indulging their heavier hardcore tendencies. With pinpoint precision, the band bludgeons the unwitting into submission by virtue of the high-impact punishment they unleash here. From the opening duo of songs that gives this 7″ its name, the level of confidence on display is almost staggering- but that confidence is earned in full. “Rich Man” sets the bar high with a furious hybrid of sludge, hardcore, and post-punk. Guitarist and vocalist Jesse Amesmith has never been in finer form, spitting each new lyric out with an astonishing sense of purpose. Equally impressive is the furious rhythm section interplay between drummer Trevor Amesmith and bassist Ben Kruger- something that comes into even sharper focus during the explosive final minute of “Poor Man”.

While the only essential additional thing to be said about Rich Man/Poor Man‘s excellent closing track is that it provides a great end cap to an extraordinary release, it’s probably worth noting that it’s still among the best songs to have been released this year. Even with that being the case, it’s certainly possible that one of the small handful of songs to top it is “Country Mouse”, the one that immediately precedes it. More than any other song on Rich Man/Poor Man “Country Mouse” radiates Green Dreams’ newly sharpened fierceness. Blasts of noise-punk that threaten to verge into the realm of total chaos and tear the song into multiple shreds keep intruding in on the verse while the chorus sounds like it’s fighting to hold itself together. Shards of feedback lash out at the high-intensity guitarwork and the whole thing winds up being an absolutely essential listen (a major tip of the hat is also due to Shaun Sutkus, who worked his usual recording room magic to help give this a subtle, extra kick).

All suspicions of this 7″ being a must-own have been confirmed. What will easily stand as one of 2014’s best at the end of the year is now available for purchase through Cherish Records or Green Dreams’ bandcamp. Don’t miss out on this. Grab a copy while they’re still available.

Listen to Rich Man/Poor Man below and pick it up by following the hyperlink above.

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June 6, 2014

Greys – Use Your Delusion (Music Video)

Quite a bit of kind digital ink has already been spilled on Greys (hell, quite a bit’s already been spilled on this very song) and they keep providing reasons for more to get added to the already overflowing pile. In the previous review for “Use Your Delusion” (which can be clicked on via the hyperlink directly preceding this sentence) there was a bold claim or two claiming the song was “all adrenaline rush and pent-up frustration [that] channels the best of both post-punk and classic hardcore.” Nothing’s changed. All that’s happened is that the band’s released another Amanda Fotes-helmed video toying with the idea of linearity that winds up providing an extra punch to the given statements.

As a video “Use Your Delusion” features the band playing the song to an empty room and then letting most of the magic happen in post-production. Very rarely travelling at regular speed, the video is instead presented at a brisk sped-up pace or in captivating slow-motion. There’s a brief recess from the action where the band all reveal yo-yo’s but for the most part, it’s just them crashing headlong into one of the year’s best songs- at constantly shifting speeds. It’s a jarring bit of modernism that feels both slightly antagonistic and entirely appropriate, landing the band yet another compelling bit of media and pushing expectations for what they’re capable of even higher.

Watch “Use Your Delusion” below and join the rest of the world in salivating over the promise of the band’s upcoming debut, If Anything.

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May 16, 2014

Naomi Punk – Television Man (Stream)

There are a few labels that get a lot of love around these parts- Burger, Exploding in Sound, Don Giovanni, and Old Flame Records all have a pretty strong foothold by continuing to operate with the kinds of bands who make music that caters to exactly what this site was built to celebrate. Captured Tracks can officially be added to that list. The label’s the home of the band that’s earned the most features here as well as a tantalizing spread of others (Mac DeMarco, Craft Spells, Medicine, etc.) and has been on an impressive run lately. Enter: Naomi Punk. A band built on weirdly frenetic post-punk tension and the kind of instrumental interplay that would make Spoon proud, they’re bound to be one of the year’s bigger discoveries. Yesterday they revealed a lot of details about their home-recorded sophomore effort, Television Man, and offered up the title track for streaming. “Television Man” is a jaunty run through a maze of stop-start rhythms and twisted riffs that somehow manage to subtly recall various miniature aspects of the 90’s underground punk scenes while sounding distinctly modern. It’s one hell of an introduction to the record (which is due out August 5th) and will likely have a lot of people salivating while begging for more.

Listen to “Television Man” below and give in to its relentlessness.

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