A live radio broadcast from UltrasonicRecording Studios–first transmitted on New York’s WLIR FM–American Poet boasts excellent sound quality, frenetically high-tensile rock accompaniment from his then backing group The Tots, awesomely passionate versions of “Heroin”, “White Light” and “Rock and Roll” and an interview in which Lou Reed talks–with typical verbal economy–about Mick Ronson (“he’s naughty”), David Bowie (“empathy… [audience giggles]… no, not in that way”) and the Velvet Underground’s Doug Yule (“Dead, I hope”). Icy of demeanour, fiery of rock & roll heart, this is the Ziggy-esque leather-and-eyeliner Lou Reed, returning to home soil on the back of his recently released second solo album–the Bowie/Ronson produced (and influenced) Transformer.
This Solo concert of Lou Reed 1972 in New York, titled American Poet became a sought after bootleg ,quite possibly the best Lou Reed (unofficially released) live album of the lot. Unlike the excessive ‘Rock n Roll Animal’ and ‘Take No Prisoners’ ‘American Poet’ strips Lou’s sound down to reveal what lies at the heart of his music. The mixture of Velvet Underground and solo material here reveals Lou to be a first rate songwriter and his crisp and clear vocal style shows him to be a fine vocalist also.
The versions available here are all very strong. I particuarly love Lou’s slowed down version of ‘I’m Waiting For My Man’ and also ‘Berlin’. I’ve never heard ‘Berlin’ sound so good.
It was recorded in 1972 around the time of the release of ‘Transformer’ and was only available in bootleg form up to more recent years.
Shortly after his separation from the VelvetUnderground and immediately after the completion of his second solo album “Transformer”. Contained in the middle of this CD is also a short radio interview with Lou Reed, which doesn’t disturb at all, but fits in very well. Lou Reed is at his best. Obviously he never plays a song twice in the same way, which makes his live albums very interesting. In my opinion each song on this CD is excellent, and I don’t want to highlight any one of them especially.
‘American Poet’ does perhaps lack some of the technical proficiency musically that can be found on Lou’s later live albums but it does reveal the core of his musical talent to a much greater degree.
The day after Christmas, December of 1972: Lou Reed and band (The Tots) in Hempstead, NY, recording live for radio at Ultrasonic Recording Studio. Recorded just a month after the release of Transformer, the set finds LouReed pulling from the new record, riffing on five Velvets tracks and the penultimate “Berlin” – the track that would title his next release six months later.
Tracklist
White Light White Heat
Vicious
I’m Waiting For The Man
Walk It Talk It
Sweet Jane
Heroin
Satellite of Love
Walk On the Wild Side
I’m So Free
Berlin
Rock N Roll
Lou Reed, buoyed & rejuvenated by the response to the urban apocalypse suite of the just released New York album, hits the road…..Chronicling his grotesque & rotten home town ‘Big Apple’, whilst taking no prisoners, offers up wry & fragile hope among the decaying ruins. Does he succeed? Listen & hear……Tracklist includes
01/ Dirty Blvd. 02/ Endless Cycle 03/ Last Great American Whale 04/ Beginning Of A Great Adventure 05/ Busload Of Faith 06/ I Love You, Suzanne 07/ One For My Baby (And One More For The Road) 08/ Doin’ The Things That We Want To 09/ Rock ‘N’ Roll 10/ Video Violence 11/ The Original Wrapper 12/ Sweet Jane
Two things really matter to us—making as much good music as we can, and touring as much as we can. We never want to stop doing this,” says guitarist Rob Romano. This quote exemplifies where the trio are in their young careers as they ready their debut self-titled EP. The New York millennials offer an unapologetic brand of skuzzy rock that hasn’t been heard much since the explosions of garage-rock like the Strokes, the Hives, and pre-fame Kings of Leon. Crunching guitars, simple-yet-intoxicating rhythms, and sing-a-long choruses are a formula these cats will be working for years to come.
“The current axe that I have the most fun with is a Fender Custom Shop Jazzmaster. It has a Novak PAF in the bridge for more output, and a Mastery offset bridge that makes it basically indestructible. I don’t change guitars live so I need something that can handle abuse for an entire set and it does that well thanks to the upgrades.
My amp is a Tone King Falcon. It’s a 12-watt combo and it’s the perfect platform for my sound. Its tone is very old school with a modern attack—it has a simple volume and tone setup while being very touch sensitive. The Falcon loves pedals and sounds huge when you throw a mic on it. Having a loud amp doesn’t necessarily guarantee a great tone. Size doesn’t matter—it’s how you use it.
Pedals are a huge part of my rig. Being the only guitar player in Made Violent, I need to have a lot of different sounds to keep the live show interesting. I’ve been using JHS Pedals for overdrive both in the studio and onstage since the band started. The SuperBolt has been the sound of the band since the beginning. I’ve also been messing around with the Your Face by Wren and Cuff—it’s an old-school fuzz with a lot of versatility. I’ve always had the classic Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Nano for spring reverb because I like the idiot-proof single knob. One of my favorite effects is the Caroline Guitar Company Kilobyte delay. It’s set to a quick slapback for a double-track effect and has an infinite repeat soft switch. I’m always looking for something to help the creative process, especially for writing. The right effect can sometimes bring an idea out of thin air. Other pedals I have for additional flavoring would be the EarthQuaker Devices Tone Job and the JHS Emperor.”
PWR BTTM smoothed the rough edges of their debut EP and turned out a polished and powerful debut album, Ugly Cherries, that’s as heavy on the riffs as it is on the message. Ben Hopkins and Liv Bruce switch off instruments and vocals on practically every song, and the whole project has a similarly communal, anything-goes feel.
PWR BTTM is a queer punk band consisting of Ben Hopkins and Liv Bruce. The band was formed at Bard College where Bruce and Hopkins bonded over a mutual interest in bringing elements of performance and drag artistry into DIY culture. While at Bard the duo recorded a demo, Cinderella Beauty Shop, and the Republican National Convention split EP with Jawbreaker Reunion. On these releases, Hopkins plays guitar and sings, and Bruce plays drums. Since then, the two have begun to share vocal/songwriting duties and have also started to trade off instruments.
This development is very much apparent on their forthcoming LP, Ugly Cherries, an album documenting the duo’s experiences with queerness, gender, and adulthood over the course of a year of living in upstate New York. UglyCherries was recorded by Christopher Daly at Salvation Recording Company in New Paltz, NY and mastered by Jamal Ruhe at West West Side Music. The full-length record is slated for a dual release on Miscreant Records and Father/Daughter Records released September 18, 2015.
Typically, we all find out about new music the old-fashioned way Public Access TV, however, entered our lives through the phenomenon called a “concert.” This is what it’s called when a band goes on a stage, in front of an audience, and plays their music on actual instruments. It is invigorating.
Public Access TV opened for current favorites Hinds at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and within the first 10 minutes, they converted us into fans. Their music is timeless rock packed with sing-along choruses, sharp guitars, and plenty of New York energy.
Their debut EP Public Access is out now, and they’ll be dropping their full-length album on Terrible Records next year.
Can you introduce yourself? How did you get started? Where did the name come from?
I’m John and I’m the lead singer of Public Access TV. I picked the name because my friends and I used to always get fucked up and watch NYC Public Access TV late at night and sometimes even call in. The shows were so insane because they seriously let anyone have a TV show and do whatever they want on air. That whole vibe and concept of being an outlet “for the people” and not worrying about what other people are gonna think always stuck with me. Also I think it just sounds cool and different that the usual band names you hear. I wanted it to stand out.
What music are you guys inspired by?
I grew up listening to all my parents old records like The Beatles, Stones, Kinks, all the classic rock stuff. As I hit my teens I got into all the ’70s punk stuff like Buzzcocks, Richard Hell, Television, The Clash. All that stuff. I’m inspired by all of those bands still. Everyone else in the band is on the same page musically. In the van we listen to a lot of Velvet Underground and Bob Dylan.
We first saw you opening up for Hinds. How did that come about? What was the experience like?
That tour was amazing. We met them in London a year ago and just hit it off. We instantly felt like old friends. We would see them at places like SXSW or in Spain throughout the year and would always hang out and party. So when they asked us to support them on a full US tour we were beyond psyched. It was really the most fun we have ever had on tour. It felt like summer camp or something. We would stay at the same hotels, ride in each others vans, party every night. I love them all and miss being on tour with them.
My favorite night was probably San Diego. We all got to stay at this amazing house together and just raged. The next day we were all hungover together and watched that terrible movie Anaconda and went to the beach.
Is life on the road exhausting?
Even when things are stressful or there is a long drive or anything we always have a good time. I get to travel the world playing music with my best friends, so I try to always appreciate it and remind myself of how lucky I am. There are definitely some terrible hangovers though.
What do you think about the state of rock music and guitar bands in 2015? Seems like with pop, electronic, and hip-hop, there’s a lot of interesting new stuff happening in other genres, but we haven’t seen a lot of emerging rock bands pop up and catch on.
I think people in rock just follow such a dead model. Releasing an EP or single and then rushing out an album immediately is just so boring. People don’t really consume music like that anymore and every genre except rock has realized that. We’ve release a few singles so far and an EP, and we’ve been asked a lot where our debut album is… which drives me crazy. I want to put out an album as soon as possible, but I want it to be perfect and I want to have as many people listening as possible for when it comes out. The debut album is what you have to build towards.
I also think most of rock has just gotten stale where its either extremely pretentious or it’s extremely ironic and sounds like shitty ’90s pop-punk. It seems like there isn’t much of a middle ground anymore for just great rock and roll bands. I don’t think we really fit into what’s going on right now.
How important is NYC to your sound?
I moved to NYC when I was 17 with our bassist Max. I dropped out of high school and was coming from a small town in Tennessee with a population less than 3,000. Since I was a kid I always dreamed of living in New York City because of all the movies I loved like Taxi Driver and also all the bands I loved were from there. It just seemed so romantic. One day I just said fuck it and got on a Chinatown bus to NYC for $40. It’s extremely important to the music we make because the city has an energy that you just can’t escape. The city makes me go fucking crazy sometimes and I feel like I have to get out, but no matter what it always gives me inspiration to write. It’s home.
Do you guys feel like part of a scene?
We definitely aren’t part of any scene. We all live in Manhattan and that is pretty rare these days for bands. I don’t really know of another young band that does. Brooklyn is definitely where it’s at with venues and bands and I think it’s all great and cool what’s happening… we just aren’t part of that scene. The band and I really only hang out with each other, we all live on the same street, we all go out together every night to the bars. We really live in our own world and try avoid any noise around us.
What’s your goal with music? If you got offered a major label deal, would you want it?
Our only goal is to make great music and be proud of it. Really nothing else matters to us at all. It’s amazing that we get to do this. It’s also really important to us to work with people who we like and believe in this band as much as we do. I think as long as we keep making music we believe and would want to listen to if we weren’t in the band, we will be OK.
What are you working on now?
We’ve got a bunch more singles ready to go for the rest of the year and early next year, and were gonna be announcing more tours and festivals and all that good stuff soon. We also recently recorded our debut album so that will be coming out in 2016. Working on details for that now.
Anything else you guys want us to know about you?
We really want to get a sponsorship from Winston Cigarettes. If anyone has a connection, please hit us up.
Emily Sprague has been performing under the Florist moniker for a bit now, but the project’s broadly intimate ambitions are solidified on Holdly, the 5-song collection of sun-speckled folk that serves as a precursor to their debut LP due out next year. But what an introduction it is, full of brightly-realized and wrenching music that’s as innately appealing as it is emotionally devastating. Emily is part of the Epoch Collective.
What I love about the Epoch Collective from New York is the way central players in one band become the backbone of another. So where Felix Walworth is the center of Told Slant, he’s simply the pulse of Florist and where Oliver Kalb may play fiercely in Toad Slant or his own band Bellows, he’s more backdrop and scenic in Florist. Florist is where Emily Sprague moves from backup guitarist to central poet and singer. These songs are sweet confessional tone paintings. A lovely contrast to the volume of the week.
Eskimeaux: Gabrielle Smith and the rest of the above mentioned Epoch Collective of N.Y. artists have made the record I’ve listened to more than any other this year. O.K. will surely be in my year end top five.It was magic to have an impromptu, audience-led singalong to the words of “I Admit, I’m Scared.” Cathartic and loving.
Eskimeaux is the recording project of songwriter and producer Gabrielle Smith. Smith started using the moniker in 2007, releasing experimental and noise albums through 2010, and developing the sound over the years into the realm of more structured songwriting (2011’s Two Mountains), EDM (2012’s Eskimeaux), and more recently, as evident in her new album, O.K., beat-driven and poetic bedroom pop. Eskimeaux is a founding member of The Epoch, a Brooklyn-based songwriting and art collective.
Second Skin · Shana Falana, released2015 Team Love Records , Experimental dream-pop band emerging from New York’s vast shoegaze scene. Combining live-looping of reverb-drenched vocals and guitar , Shana Falana is an American shoegazing band from Brooklyn, New York, currently based in Kingston, New York. They are currently signed to Team Love Records. The band consists of musicians Shana Falana and Michael Amari, who has been writing and recording songs for nearly two decades, and the easy confidence of a veteran comes through, even if this is technically her debut record. “I would have two or three bands at one time,” she admits, and they ranged from “a sludge rock band, a Bulgarian women’s choir, and a pretty, dreamy organ and guitar duo.” On this record, she’s combining all of those influences and adding one more: The addition of Mike Amari to her life as both a percussionist and a boyfriend fans Lightning Fire into a roaring, crackling blaze. There’s hints of new wave here as well, which can probably be credited to producer Dan Goodwin (Devo). On “Know UR Mine” Falana assumes various robotic vocal effects to chuckle through power plays, but during ’80s-leaning power ballad “Shine Thru” her voice is closer to Dido, or even Enya, in tissue-paper delicacy. This is an album that pivots on a resistance to any sort of central tenet, constantly moving forward, shedding skin as it goes
The Prettiots’ songs are winsome and clever, but most of all they’re honest and funny. Goodness knows pop music needs some clever fun.
The three women in The Prettiots — Kay Kasparhauser on ukulele and lead vocals, Rachel Trachtenburg from the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players on drums, and bassist Lulu Prat — share their love of everything from Law & Order to old-school girl groups like the Shangri-Las. Their song “Stabler,” performed here, is based on Kasparhauser’s infatuation with the Law & Order character Elliot Stabler.
“Boys (I Dated In High School)” is the Prettiots tune that first charmed me, thanks mainly to the perfect portrait its brainy rhymes paint:
Martin, that was your name,
I met you on the 1 train
You were super duper duper hot
On the 1 train
You said you were a painter
Mostly you were a waiter
A stoner and a skater
So I had to say later,
These are the boys that I dated in high school
I thought they were so nice
And I thought they were so cool
These are the boys that I dated in high school
They weren’t very nice
And they weren’t very cool
It’s the sort of music you’ll either adore or abhor; it’s hard to be neutral and you’ll know it quickly. For me, their appearance at the Tiny Desk totally made my day.
Rough Trade’s latest signingThe Prettiots have posted their new single “Suicide Hotline” online. “Suicide Hotline” is the follow-up to the NYC trio’s debut single “Boys, I Dated In High School”, both of which are taken from their upcoming debut LP (full details coming soon).
Like many Prettiots songs, couches stunning barbs of insight between sweet, fun harmonies and playful ukelele strums. In this case, singer Kay Kasparhauser says the lyrics describe a time in her life when her “friends and also therapist were a little worried.” They’re macabre, invoking both Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf in darkly humorous fashion. But they’re also lucid and contain a notable amount of perspective, which should go far in quelling the concern of friends and counselors alike.
“My head’s not in the oven / But I can’t get off the floor,” sings Kasparhauser in her no-frills, relatable deadpan. A song about so heavy a subject isn’t for everyone, but its willingness to approach the darkness with a light heart is commendable at least and empowering at best. For many, The Prettiots’ specific brand of snarky sincerity (or sincere snark?) will be exactly what the psychiatrist ordered.
The Prettiots launch a month long residency at Elvis’s Guesthouse in New York tonight, and will be playing their first UK & Europe shows this Autumn.
The Fat Angel Sings 