Pink Frost | Heartbreaking Bravery

May 26, 2017

Cool American – Maui’s (Stream)

It’s been about a week since the last non-premiere post has been published. In that time, incredible new songs from Yowler, Lee Bains III + The Glory Fires, The Districts, STRFKR, Van Dale, Wieuca, Basement Revolver, Katie Ellen, Shit Girlfriend, Pink Frost, Downtown Boys, Art School Jocks, Two Inch Astronaut, David Nance, and Esper Scout have all found their way out into the world. Cool American‘s “Maui’s”, the last track to tease Infinite Hiatus, also found release in that time.

“Maui’s” continues the project’s penchant for bittersweet basement pop driven as much by the innate charisma of Nathan Tucker — the mastermind behind Cool American — as it is by its dynamic composition. Swinging from lo-fi aesthetics to the kind of explosive, powerpop-leaning burst that should make Good Cheer a revered name, “Maui’s” finds exhilarating life in harnessing the unexpected. It’s another in an increasingly long line of triumphant moments for Cool American and it deserves to be played as loudly and as frequently as possible.

Listen to “Maui’s” below and pre-order Infinite Hiatus here.

July 30, 2015

Heat – This Life (Music Video)

This summer, Thursday’s have offered up a glut of outstanding material vying for coverage and today’s field was no different. Since there are nearly two dozen titles to touch on, they’ll be listed by virtue of artist and the represented format before moving onto the featured item. As usual, the single streams category proved to have the most productive release slate and included great new tracks from Hazel English, Sleepy, Infinity Girl, The Chills, Dark Palms, Wavves, Night Flowers, Willis Earl Beal, Blank Realms, and Air Waves. Music videos found some entertaining life via clips from Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Pet Cemetery, Kalle Mattson, Pink Frost, The Atom Age, and Pearl Charles. Topping everything off was a strong group of full releases that included releases from Worriers, Nice Legs, Fox Academy, Fog Lake, Suis La Lune, and Two White Cranes.

A lot of those band names are new to the site and Heat, who have today’s feature spot, are yet another new addition. Still riding high on the surge of last year’s excellent- and overlooked- Rooms EP, the band are now offering up a stark black-and-white clip for the release’s lead-off track. Using a minimalist approach to the visuals, director Jimmi Francoeur takes a few cues from some of Anton Corbijn’s formative work to create a sleek, engaging performance-sync clip. A room setup that’s clever in both construction and lighting lends an air of sophistication to the visually striking clip, while still allowing the bulk of the emphasis to fall on “This Life” itself, a punk-indebted powerpop number that cribs influences from a variety of other genres and sculpts it into something that manages to be both familiar and refreshing. In short: it’s a knockout from a band that deserves more attention than they’ve received.

Watch “This Life” below and pick up Rooms here.

1 Comment

December 14, 2014

2014: A Pictorial Review, Pt. 2

One thing that this site has strived to maintain is its own visual aesthetic. While it’d be impossible to find a photo in the archives for every given band that headlines a post, an original photo will be posted anytime the opportunity presents itself. Upgrading cameras halfway through the year provided a bevvy of new opportunities and the subsequent implementation of a more photo-centric presence. That’s not by mistake. Photography (especially event photography) has always been an important crux of multimedia journalism. It can be a way to implicitly (or explicitly) convey some of the more minute details of a singular moment to a reader- or it can simply act as an intriguing supplement. Those were just a few of reasons that went into the decision behind a headfirst dive into photography investment (on both a personal and public level) and factored into why one camera or another was brought along to every show this site covered in the past year. Now, with 2015 just around the corner, seemed like as good a time as any to showcase a few photographs from the past 12 months that stood out as personal favorites. Since there are a few too many to go up all at once, they’ll be posted at random as part of installments that will run from now to the start of January. Most of these shots have been published on the site before (or on The Media), though there are a few that will be appearing for the first time. Enjoy!

2 Comments

July 28, 2014

Deafheaven at Bottom Lounge – 7/18/14 (Review, Photos)

Last weekend Chicago’s Union Park hosted one of the Midwest’s stacked festivals of the year and various venues around the area hosted official after party shows. By weekend’s end, around 20 sets were taken in between the official showcases and one of the day 1 after shows. The latter of which featured the first sets I was able to see throughout the weekend (shortly after arriving at The Bottom Lounge- who were putting on the after show, Perfect Pussy’s Meredith Graves stole me off for drinks at the festival grounds and we were able to hear Beck float through an impressive-sounding set in the background). After running back to the Bottom Lounge there was a short amount of time and the night’s first act, Pink Frost, had their set off and running. The Chicago-based quartet have been a fixture of the local scene for years and now, with the release of Traitors becoming increasingly imminent (it’s due out in September), they’re operating at a higher level than ever. Mixing shoegaze, psych, and punk elements into something impressive and towering on record, they’re even more formidable as a live act. All of the years they’ve spent playing together has resulted in an extraordinarily tight dynamic where each tiny detail is woven into an arresting sonic tapestry full of complementary threads. Their allotted time may have been understandably brief but it wound up feeling like one of the more complete sets of the year.

Perfect Pussy were next to take the stage and, despite sounding near-perfect in the soundcheck, wound up running into some apparent mixing problems. Not that it mattered, though. The band’s made a habit out of turning even the worst situations into something unforgettable. So, while Shaun Sutkus’ synths were pushed so far up that they were overwhelming just about everything else, the band played with their trademark fervor. That passion for performing is one of the biggest reasons this band’s celebrated so frequently here and, to her credit, Graves gave the absolutely packed crowd her all, even while being more inaudible than usual- to the point of leaving some of her blood on the floor (and earning several scratches on her hands). All thing considered, it stood as another display of breathtaking fierceness from a band that refuses to quit, no matter the circumstance.

Deafheaven were the headliners for the evening and their set leaned heavily on the monumental Sunbather, one of the only records to draw as much criticism from genre elitists as Perfect Pussy’s Say Yes to Love, making comfortable bedfellows out of an otherwise curiously unusual pairing. They didn’t waste their time- or position- as headliners, they filled their set with as much material as possible. At least one new song was played that seemed to advance the transition Sunbather represented for them. Vocalist George Clarke, clad in all black, commanded attention with ease, frequently going in and out of the crowd- occasionally crowdsurfing in a corpse-like position (and it’s worth noting that every move felt organic rather than rehearsed). “Dream House” was one of several assured high points by virtue of being a moment that featured atmospheric crescendos hitting a note near the euphoric. By the time they were loading their equipment off-stage, they’d given the audience just about everything they could, bringing the first night in Chicago to a successful close.

Photographs of the evening can be seen below.