We’ve officially arrived at the 950th post of Heartbreaking Bravery, which means it’s time to offer up another mixtape of some sort or another. Since the Watch This series has maintained radio silence over the past two and a half weeks it only felt appropriate to turn to the over-abundance of incredible material that’s surfaced in that time frame. The 25 clips included below range from old favorites to promising new faces, single songs to full sessions, and generally cover the range of what the series was created to support: the very best of the live video platform. It’s unlikely that anyone will watch through the entirety of this packet (as it runs for nearly four hours, if viewed uninterrupted) but it’s worth taking the time to both explore and return to all of the performances contained in Ending Another Short Stretch of Static. So, as always, kick back, focus up, adjust the settings, settle in, and Watch This.
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1. Car Seat Headrest – Fill In the Blank (Pitchfork) 2. The Spook School – Gone Home (BreakThruRadio) 3. Meat Wave – Sham King (SideOneDummy) 4. Weaves (3voor12) 5. Ron Gallo (Audiotree) 6. Dusk – Shift Towards Tenderness (This Means War) 7. Izzy True – Which Wish (Bedhead Sessions) 8. Royal Headache – Carolina (Pitchfork) 9. Royal Brat – Avoider + Broken Step (Radio K) 10. Girl Band – Paul (Pitchfork) 11. The Coathangers – Burn Me (Radio K) 12. Japanese Breakfast – Everybody Wants To Love You 13. Free Cake For Every Creature (WKNC) 14. Fear of Men (Audiotree) 15. Majical Cloudz – Silver Car Crash (q on cbc) 16. Jade Imagine – Stay Awake (3RRRFM) 17. Tele Novella – Heavy Balloon (Do512 Austin) 18. Margaret Glaspy (KEXP) 19. Kevin Morby (NPR) 20. PWR BTTM – New Hampshire (WFUV) 21. Wand (KEXP) 22. Declan McKenna – Brazil (The Late Show With Stephen Colbert) 23. Lucy Dacus (NPR) 24. Ólafur Arnalds (ft. Brasstríó Mosfellsdals) – Dalur 25. Julien Baker (Primavera)
2016 is just about at its midway mark and there hasn’t been any live coverage on this site since before the year turned over. There have been a number of extenuating circumstances preventing the live documentation that has been captured this year from being posted (travel, time, other commitments, etc.) but that changes today. Below are ten video packets from ten shows that I was fortunate enough to catch — and shoot — this year.
Normally, as a general rule of thumb, I avoid posting anything from shows I play but am making an exception for the Jungles package because the band’s woefully under-represented in America for their undeniable strength as a live act. A few other packets may be missing an artist or two but what’s below is the vast majority of what I’ve seen over the past six months.
Whether it’s Meat Wave ripping through a crushing new song on a (freakishly sunny) winter day in Chicago, Beach Slang covering The Replacements two times over, or Torres making everyone’s hairs stand on end with an unforgettable one-song encore, these are worth a look and were a privilege to experience. A photo gallery will be coming within the next few days but for now, enjoy the footage.
American Wrestlers, Eternal Summers, Palehound, and Torres.
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Julien Baker and Charly Bliss.
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Muuy Biien, Meat Wave, The Spits, and Black Lips.
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Runners, Beech Creeps, and Heavy Times.
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Jungles.
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Mr. Martin & The Sensitive Guys, BAG-DAD, Haunter, Miserable Friend, and Heavycritters.
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Yoko and the Oh No’s and PWR BTTM.
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Micah Schnabel, Dyke Drama, Potty Mouth, and Beach Slang.
Over the past 100 weeks, this site’s dedicated itself to a variety of pursuits but the defining one seems to be the only recurring series that operates on a regular basis: Watch This. Ever since the first installment, this series has featured the very best live performance captures. Utilizing a wealth of resources that range from band’s personal accounts to radio stations that host high-quality session captures, like KEXP in Seattle or 3voor12 in the Netherlands.
Very rarely has that gaze turned inward, despite producing over 300 live videos in the past four months. With this series now at a landmark number and all of the CMJ reviews accounted for, it seemed appropriate to bypass the outside sources to focus exclusively on the crop of videos that was taken over the past week. Approximately 50 bands, 90 videos, and 100 songs, these clips will be presented in groupings according to which day they were filmed. A few slip out of focus, some start a little late, and some cut off just before their ending, and a few bands are missing due to unfortunate and/or unforeseen circumstance (a dead battery, lighting, and a maxed out sd card were the three most prominent issues) but as a whole, it’s a comprehensive look at the kinds of performances the festival has to offer. So, as always, sit back, relax, ignore any worries, adjust the volume, focus up, and Watch This.
1. CMJ: Day 2
To make things just a touch easier, each of these introductory segments will simply be a very brief recap including a link to the respective day’s official review and the list of artists that appear in the video. Having spent the first official day of CMJ preparing for the rest of the week, the timeline’s off by a day but had this been the first official day, the festival would have kicked off with a band. Splitting time between The Cake Shop and Santos Party House, I managed to get videos of performances from the following artists: Worriers, Hooton Tennis Club, Car Seat Headrest, Seratones, Nico Yaryan, Yung, Shopping, Protomartyr, Downtown Boys, Perfect Pussy, and Dilly Dally. The official review of the day’s events can be found here.
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2. CMJ: Day 3
Things kept moving along quickly on the second day, which included a long stretch at an early show over at Rough Trade before taking a brief pause to organize that show’s footage and prepare for the late show at Aviv. Between the two venues, the lineup was characteristically stacked and led to videos of performances from Shopping, Ezra Furman, Georgia, John Grant, What Moon Things, Mumblr, Meat Wave, Painted Zeros, Turn To Crime, and Yvette. The official review of the day’s shows can be found here.
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3. CMJ: Day 4
The festival’s exhausting nature started to creeping in on the third consecutive day of showgoing, though the deliriousness will always be worth the effort in the case of celebrating things like Exploding In Sound (who themselves were celebrating their fourth anniversary), Big Ups (who were celebrating their fifth year as a band), and Double Double Whammy. Once again splitting time between two venues– Palisades and The Silent Barn– I managed to get footage of performances from Leapling, Swings, Mal Devisa (backed by Swings), Dirty Dishes, Kal Marks, Washer, Stove, Palm, Greys, The Spirit of the Beehive, Big Ups, Palehound, Downies, Eskimeaux, and LVL UP. The official review of those events can be read here.
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4. CMJ: Day 5
Easily the most exhausting of the five day stretch, the fifth official day of the festival found me completely ignoring food in favor of sprinting a mile to catch one of my favorite acts four times over. While a fraction of the day was spent running to and from an official CMJ showcase and the AdHoc Carwash (which was detached from the festival completely but boasted one of the week’s strongest lineups), the effort proved to be worthwhile, as a large collection of bands delivered knockout sets and everything culminated in a triumphant moment for one of my closest friends. In all the back-and-forth, I was still able to manage to capture performances from the following artists: Protomartyr, Potty Mouth, Pity Sex, Dilly Dally, LVL UP, Porches., Perfect Pussy, Meat Wave, Mothers, and Cloud Castle Lake. The review of that day of relative mania can be read here.
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5. CMJ: Day 6
Despite the festival’s posted end date being the October 17, this collaborative showcase a day later between Father/Daughter and Miscreant was still billed as a part of the festival and felt like an appropriate epilogue; a summation of what’d come before and a fitting end-cap for a very strong run. Confined to just one venue, the sleep deprivation caused me to miss the first trio of acts (and quietly curse myself out for doing so in the process) but still show up in time for the final 10. On the final day of reckoning, I captured videos of performances from the following artists: i tried to run away when i was 6, Downies, Romp, Comfy, Vagabon, fern mayo, Bethlehem Steel, Diet Cig, Sports, and PWR BTTM. The official review of the festival’s final event can be read here.
While the vast majority of the week’s best songs found a home in the preceding posts, one of them deserved its own headline: Meat Wave’s “Cosmic Zoo”. For years now, Meat Wave have been a staple of my own personal listening habits. I was thrilled when they were the band that became the driving force behind Heartbreaking Bravery’s first showcase and their self-titled remains the only tape I’ve managed to wear thin (you can only listen to “Panopticon” so many times before it starts warping). Before diving too much further, though, a quick detour to cover the best full streams of the week-so-far seems warranted. Between inspired records from Lithuania, Sharkmuffin, and Wimps, it’s been a good week (not to mention just about everything streaming over at NPR’s First Listen). Now that we’ve got that out of the way, back to “Cosmic Zoo”.
Following the releases of “Erased“, “Sham King“, “NRA“, and “Delusion Moon“, “Cosmic Zoo” becomes the fifth preview of the band’s upcoming sophomore effort Delusion Moon (which comes on the heels of this year’s outstanding BrotherEP). Appropriately, the song’s the fifth on Delusion Moon and has a lot of sway over Delusion Moon‘s building momentum. In the context of the record, it rockets that momentum to stratospheric heights. As a standalone single, it immediately conjures up a startling amount of energy and- over the course of a blistering three minutes- focuses that energy into a series of repeated blows, each hitting their mark with a startling ferocity. Whether it’s the riff that cuts everything to ribbons approximately 1/3rd of the way into the song (one of my favorite moments of music this year), the staccato outro, or the increasingly intense rhythm work of Joe Gac and Ryan Wizniak, it’s an unavoidable show of force.
While force alone would have made “Cosmic Zoo” a must-listen, it’s also headier than it initially seems. Tying into a structure that guitarist/vocalist Chris Sutter designed, it’s part of an overarching narrative that touches on motion sickness and the lunar cycles. Adding a venomous bite to what feels, increasingly, like deeply personal lyrical territory, “Cosmic Zoo” takes on the feel of a meteor, hurtling towards earth, hell-bent on destruction. Like Delusion Moon itself, “Cosmic Zoo” is a snarling tour de force that demonstrates the overwhelming bulk of Meat Wave’s strongest qualities. Brash, unavoidable, and just about perfect, it’s the kind of adrenaline jolt that’s strong enough to keep any week humming along.
Listen to “Cosmic Zoo” below and pre-order Delusion Moon from SideOneDummy ahead of its September 18 release date here. Underneath the embed, revisit a large portion of their set from our showcase.
Now that the site’s all caught up on songs, it only seemed natural to overhaul the music videos as well. Here, the formatting will be slightly different than it has in the past for this format, with 35 excellent clips being linked beneath the main feature, Meat Wave’s slasher-indebted short that accompanies the bruising “Sham King” off their tremendous EP from this year, Brother. Before going any further, it’s worth noting that Meat Wave is one of the few bands that will always have a special place carved out in reference to this site, having played the first-ever Heartbreaking Bravery Presentsto help this place celebrate its first anniversary (several months after they were featured as part of the site’s On the Up series). Their self-titled record is still one of the best things to have come out of this decade, so any time the band does anything of note, it’s probably a safe bet it’ll secure a feature spot here. Which leads us back to the focus of this piece: “Sham King”.
In the Andrew Robert Morrison-directed clip for “Sham King”, a lot of things are at stake. Most notably, the bands lives. A grim reaper figure, complete with a scythe atop a bicycle, mercilessly stalks the power trio through dead, snow-capped streets. During the opening chase, Morrison (who also edited the video) injects the clip with a serious sense of dissonance with furiously paced loop-back smash cuts, lending the affair an added sense of disquiet. Before long, death zeroes in on guitarist/vocalist Chris Sutter, who leads the masked figure on a chase through an abandoned warehouse. Vantage points switch and become a narrative function as the viewer’s occasionally allowed to take on the first-person viewpoint from behind the killer’s mask, effectively rocketing up the video’s sense of tension. When one side emerges victorious, a solo is mimed in front of a towering wall of various amps before giving way to the video’s final shot- which ranks among one of my favorite images from the year.
Watch the madness of “Sham King” unfold below and pick up the Brother EP here. Beneath the clip, watch 35 other great videos from the past few weeks. Expect regular coverage to resume throughout this new week and going into the future.
Just as the start of this week’s been kind for great music videos, it’s also granted looks and streams at (and of) several upcoming records. NPR’s First Listen series, as reliable as ever, is currently streaming Mr. Gnome’s subtly frenzied The Heart Of A Dark Star, Crying allowed Noisey to let everyone in on the magic that is Get Olde/Second Wind, Stereogum landed the streaming rights to Exit Verse’s brilliantly contained self-titled record, and PIZZA TIME released their latest hard-charging punk free-for-all- 2 KEWL 4 LIFE– as an actual free-for-all via their bandcamp. Every one of those four records is worth a look but the title that should warrant the most excitement is Meat Wave‘s just-announced Brother EP.
After Meat Wave, the band’s post-punk tour-de-force first effort, was released the band started taking apart audiences with their incendiary live shows. One of those shows was captured firsthand via this site when the band played the first Heartbreaking Bravery Presents, which was announced in conjunction with coverage of their frenetic “Brother” video. It hadn’t been announced at the time but the video was to tease the band’s upcoming Brother EP, which was supplied with additional details today. Most notable is the presence of new songs, their first since their instant-classic debut, and the streaming of “Sham King”, which is as fierce of a song as they’ve ever written.
Right from the onset, Meat Wave seem hell-bent on pummeling the listener into elated submission with a vicious riff punctuated by snare blasts and supported by being doubled by the bass. Guitarist and vocalist Chris Sutter sounds particularly inspired on “Sham King”, showcasing a higher register and his characteristically venomous delivery. A simple but piercingly effective solo in the song’s final act ensures that this band’s somehow continuously building momentum (a feat that seemed impossible in the wake of their blistering debut) and- finally- people are starting to take notice. With Meat Wave behind them and the new songs on Brother ahead it’s going to be incredibly easy to make the case for Meat Wave being one of the best bands in the Midwest. All high velocity and high impact, this is music that’s set to destroy anyone not smart enough to willfully surrender.
Listen to “Sham King” below and pre-order the Brother EP from Meat Wave’s bandcamp.
Heartbreaking Bravery 