Posts Tagged ‘Tony Molina’

TONY MOLINA – ” Kill The Lights “

Posted: August 28, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Tony Molina’s, writes classic, accessible pop melodies, and drops them into fun-size songs often clocking in under the minute mark (almost always under two minutes), he also kicks around in local hardcore bands in the West Bay part of the San Francisco Bay Area and isn’t it weird that he does both maybe?.

West Bay native Tony Molina has been following a fascinating trajectory on his recent string of releases. Early entries like the “6 Songs EP” and “Dissed And Dismissed” LP combined the best bits of Weezer/Teenage Fanclub-style power-pop with Tony’s smart, touching songs, shredding guitar pyrotechnics and ironclad DIY HC roots. 2016’s “Confront The Truth” EP flipped the script in a big way, leaving the guitar crunch behind in favor of mostly acoustic arrangements that owe as much to “Horizontal”-era Bee Gees and the Fanclub’s mellower moments as they do to Georges Harrison and Martin. It’s a masterful record, packing more melodic flair and emotional truth into 11 minutes than most bands manage in an hour.

Now Tony is back with his brilliant, long-awaited album “Kill The Lights.” The ten songs on “Kill The Lights” continue in his evolution towards stripping the songs back to reveal each one’s emotional and melodic core. But where “Confront The Truth” was mostly acoustic, “Kill The Lights” adds back some full band arrangements to brilliant effect. Album opener “Nothing I Can Say” is a lovely 12-string pop tune that would sit snugly in The Byrds’ songbook – it’s that good. “Wrong Town” is gentle and subtly wrenching, recalling prime Elliott Smith in its simple truth. “Afraid To Go Outside” expands on some of the pastoral early Bee Gees/Kaleidoscope/Tomorrow flavor revealed on “Confront,” aided by some great organ lines. “Now That She’s Gone” features some gorgeous guitar finger-picking, while “Jasper’s Theme” is a rootsy mid-tempo groover that leans towards Gram-era Byrds.

Everywhere on “Kill The Lights” we hear Tony synthesizing his influences with great skill and intention; these classic folk and pop styles are being employed in the service of stellar songs and universal lyrical truths rather than just as aesthetic filigree. This is why beautiful, elegant songs like “When She Leaves” and “Before You Go” aren’t really so far from Molina’s punk roots — they reflect a dedication to craft combined with an intense commitment to self-expression that transcends simplistic genre boundaries. The sonic palette may be shifting, but the tunes are all Tony and we should all be grateful

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Molina’s latest, Kill the Lights, is a cool step forward from his prior work, by the way, largely stripping back the loud guitars of his earlier solo releases in favor of ornate, almost chamber-pop-style arrangements. This isn’t an entirely new move—Molina’s old band Ovens wasn’t afraid of acoustic guitars and mellower arrangements—but he seems to enter the zone this time with more confidence than ever.

Meanwhile, he’s already at work on the next one, and he’s also probably starting another hardcore band as I write this (one of those bands, Healer, just also released a split 7″ with Dank Goblins on the Warthog Speak label this year). If you haven’t kept up with Molina over the last few years, though, don’t worry: Any music writer will be happy to pithily inform you that it won’t take long to get up to speed.

VARIOUS ARTISTS – ” Psychedelic and Indie Rock “

Posted: August 28, 2018 in MUSIC
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Wub-Fur is an internet radio station. Sadly, on 15th May 2016 we retired our live Shoutcast stream after 17 years online. Fortunately, both new and classic Wub-Fur mixes are free to stream on demand 24/7 right here on the Wub-Blog and on our radio home page at radio.wub-fur.us.

19 cool and breezy contemporary pop psych tunes by 18 of 2018’s hottest acts … Including Mystic Braves, Allah-Las, Tony Molina, Dungen & Woods, Cloud, Send Medicine, The Love-Birds, Doug Tuttle, and ten more of your independent popular psychedelic rock favorites.

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Running Time: 1 hour, 4 seconds

TRACKLIST

  1. Under Control (3:17) — Mystic Braves | Los Angeles
  2. Soul Doctors (2:24) — Dragon Rapide | Clermont Ferrand, France
  3. Terra Ignota (3:23) — Allah-Las | Los Angeles †
  4. Smith & 9th (3:27) — The Essex Green | Brooklyn
  5. Love or Solution (3:20) — The Coral | Merseyside, UK
  6. A Message from Your Heart (3:01) — Doug Tuttle | Boston ‡
  7. Nothing I Can Say (1:10) — Tony Molina | California
  8. He’s Back (2:46) — The Valderamas | Rennes, France
  9. Hit My Head (2:47) — The Love-Birds | San Francisco
  10. All The Things That Happen To Me (3:45) — The Molochs | California
  11. Kieff Richards (3:02) — Kieff | Leiden, Netherlands
  12. The Sweet Lie (3:17) — Garcia Peoples | Rutherford, NJ
  13. Just for the Taste (3:47) — Dungen & Woods | Stockholm / Brooklyn
  14. Look Inside Your Mind/Losin’ Touch (2:25) — Tony Molina | California
  15. The Magician (3:51) — The Babe Rainbow | Byron Bay, Australia
  16. Happer’s Laugh (3:32) — Cloud | Los Angeles
  17. Corduroy (3:41) — Send Medicine | Los Angeles
  18. Backseat Driver (3:12) — White Denim | Austin
  19. How Psychedelic of You (3:59) — Kelley Stoltz | San Francisco

TONY MOLINA – ” Kill The Lights “

Posted: July 31, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Tony Molina, Master of Short Songs, Explains Why Melody Is King

Tony Molina has mastered the axiom of leaving ’em wanting more. This West Bay Area singer/songwriter cut his teeth playing hardcore punk, recording bite-sized noise-pop blasts with the band The Ovens, before going solo with 2014’s Dissed and Dismissed, This 12-track album of pitch-perfect that lasts less than 12 minutes. Kill the Lights is almost as short: 10 tracks in under 15 minutes. The longest song is actually two in one, “Look Inside Your Mind/Losin’ Touch,” which features a woozy psych-pop melody, a delicately plucked interlude and a bluesy solo within it’s two and a half minutes. What’s interesting and impressive about Molina’s songs is that they rarely feel unfinished or even hurried. The guy usually packs a verse and a chorus, maybe a guitar solo and/or some fingerpicking, and he paces it all perfectly across 26 or 57 or 91 seconds. He is seemingly unbound by verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus conventions, and yet his mini-masterpieces always feel complete.

Molina has been following a fascinating trajectory on his recent string of releases. Early entries like the “6 Songs EP” of Weezer/Teenage Fanclub-style power-pop with Tony’s smart, touching songs, shredding guitar pyrotechnics and ironclad DIY HC roots. 2016’s “Confront The Truth” EP flipped the script in a big way, leaving the guitar crunch behind in favor of mostly acoustic arrangements that owe as much to “Horizontal”-era Bee Gees and the Fanclub’s mellower moments as they do to Georges Harrison and Martin. It’s a masterful record, packing more melodic flair and emotional truth into 11 minutes than most bands manage in an hour.

This long-awaited album “Kill The Lights.” continue in his evolution towards stripping the songs back to reveal each one’s emotional and melodic core. But where “Confront The Truth” was mostly acoustic, “Kill The Lights” adds back some full band arrangements to brilliant effect. Album opener “Nothing I Can Say” is a lovely 12-string pop tune that would sit snugly in The Byrds’ songbook – it’s that good. “Wrong Town” is gentle and subtly wrenching, recalling prime Elliott Smith in its simple truth. “Afraid To Go Outside” expands on some of the pastoral early Bee Gees/Kaleidoscope/Tomorrow flavor revealed on “Confront,” aided by some great organ lines. “Now That She’s Gone” features some gorgeous guitar finger-picking, while “Jasper’s Theme” is a rootsy mid-tempo groover that leans towards Gram-era Byrds.

http://

Everywhere on “Kill The Lights” we hear Tony showing his influences with great skill and intention; these classic folk and pop styles are being employed in the service of stellar songs and universal lyrical truths rather than just as aesthetic filigree. This is why beautiful, elegant songs like “When She Leaves” and “Before You Go” aren’t really so far from Molina’s past punk roots, they reflect a dedication to craft combined with an intense commitment to self-expression that transcends simplistic genre boundaries. The sonic palette may be shifting, but the tunes are all Tony and we should all be grateful for that.

http://

TONY MOLINA – ” Confront The Truth “

Posted: December 22, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , ,
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Tony Molina speaks a plain truth rarely considered by modern musicians. He’s not going to waste your time pontificating on sentimentality when he knows that the very sentiments that power his music will stay with you long after the songs end. The West Bay guitarist’s background in hardcore, metal, and punk., The songs are like some Lennon-McCartney or George Harrison inventing a mode of sincere, world-beating pop expression and concentrating it into a span of seconds. That’s what’s happening here — a resourcefulness that is typically at odds with the kind of guitar mastery you’ll hear within.

You could fit the contents of Tony’s previous releases on Slumberland and Matador onto one side of a 90-minute cassette and still have room left over for the eight offerings on “Confront the Truth,” but would you want it any other way? When Tony sings about “trying to move on but I just don’t know how,” no extension of the time it takes for him to bring that feeling across is going to solve the problem at hand. You’re immediately thrust into the orbit of these songs.

The eight offerings on “Confront the Truth” notch a significant advancement in his style and approach. Almost completely absent from these new songs are the overloaded guitar crunch replaced by gentle acoustic balladry, tasteful Mellotron and piano backing, the kind of musicianship that often takes a lifetime to master. The sadness of this music has precedents in pop’s past, Tony found in those influences that shaped his experience; years upon years of focus and isolation in developing his guitar skills to speak to these truths.

The record’s coda, a highlight reel of Thin Lizzy’s “Banshee,” indicates that the Tony you knew is still in there, but the game has changed, and the rules are entirely his own. Tony Molina is in complete control of his own destiny, and we should all care about where he’s going.

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