Concert review: LouFest announces 2012 lineup while the Blind Eyes and Morning Teleportation rock, at Plush, Tuesday, April 3

The Blind Eyes. Photo by Ben Mudd.

The Blind Eyes and Morning Teleportation rocked Plush as the artists for this year’s lineup for LouFest rolled across a screen.

In its third year, LouFest is quite possibly the summit of live indie music in St. Louis. Drawing just-left-of-center acts from the past 30 years and showcasing local and national up-and-coming bands, LouFest has become something of a landmark in the Midwest.

Opening with the titular track from 2011′s “With A Bang,” the Blind Eyes brought out feel-good rock with a lightheartedness about it. Fresh from their recent first ever South by Southwest performance at the KDHX-sponsored Twangfest, the Blind Eyes showed why their hometown of St. Louis is so crazed about them.

Their lightly distorted guitars and chug-along bass lines reminded me a bit of good ’90s alternative rock. Other times, I felt a We Are Scientists or the Strokes vibe from their accessible brand of upbeat pop. The band played a currently untitled new song that blasted their harmonies and guitars into the crowd. This being my first time catching the local legends, I found that I was most into how every Blind Eyes song felt like it could be a single. Between the catchy drumming and hummable choruses, the Blind Eyes are a sight (and sound) I’m sure I’ll return to for an awesome live experience once again.

Throughout the night, pictures from LouFest 2011 streamed across a screen while Mark Lewis DJed. His set of ’70s and ’80s punk tunes and the occasional disco number kept the room vibrant in between the festivities of the night.

Announced via a video between bands, the LouFest Lineup thrilled the attendees of the show. Headliners the Flaming Lips will be an awesome sight on a sweaty summer St. Louis night while co headliner Girl Talk will surely turn the fields of Forest Park into a contagious party. Hometown heroes Son Volt alongside veteran noise rockers Dinosaur Jr. and folk-influenced rockers Dr. Dog should make for a killer freakout. Classy synth-pop act Phantogram, garage-heads Hacienda and R&B-influenced hip-hop twosome THEESatisfaction promise to chill out the late August sun. The gently rolling indie rock of Dawes and the quirky pop of semi-locals Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin should appeal to a wide audience, as should Little Barrie, Cotton Mathers, King Tuff and St. Louis bands Sleepy Kitty and the Pernikoff Brothers.

After the announcement, Morning Teleportation of Bowling Green, Ky. roared out some psychedelically-inclined indie rock. With lead vocals delivered with a dizzying pace and an equally speedy outpouring from their instruments, Morning Teleportation jammed well together. A friend mentioned that the band had performed on the David Letterman show a week prior, further piquing my interest in their performance. As their set continued and the sweatiness of the members increased, the band steered out of straight indie rock into dancy-er, guitar-tapping territory.

I was surprised by the technical prowess of Morning Teleportation’s members, but exceptionally psyched to hear how much the band’s keyboards and synthesizers were featured. It was refreshing to hear a keyboard as a lead instrument, giving the funkier half of the set a certain authenticity. Consistently changing time signatures and thrashing heavily during extended outros, Morning Teleportation definitely held up well throughout their fairly-long set.

Posted by | April 4, 2012 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review: An enthralling end to LouFest 2011 at Forest Park, Sunday, August 28

TV on the Radio at LouFest, August 28, 2011

Nate Burrell

St. Louis’ own Old Lights opened the second day of LouFest with class and passion. Their set was mostly attended by old fans and friends with a slow trickle of people coming in during the music.

LouFest, like any music festival, has its fair share of people coming solely for the headliners, but Old Lights had fun on the stage and wrung their tunes out for all they were worth. The southside band has become one of the flagships for the St. Louis music scene’s legitimacy, the city’s capacity to produce professional artists, and for good reason: The band is tight. But sometimes it seemed like the songs were safe emulations of what a more adventurous band could turn into more dangerous rock ‘n’ roll. David Beeman’s rush of noisy upper-neck strumming wasn’t as exciting as his face suggested, nor were the songs as infectious as the band wanted them to be, calling for claps and chants. Still, their music is solid and it was good to see them opening the day.

Jumbling Towers completed the local music set for the day on the East stage. Stylistically, the band has a lot going on: Josiah DeBoer’s cringy vocals border on the comedic, while his snappy, sometimes mean guitar work slips out of a void like Robert Fripp on Eno’s stuff. The other members of the band basically set up a dance-pop rhythm that seems generic except for the huge space between the instruments. Maybe this is just a result of playing on an outdoor stage, but it made them sound weirder, harder to put your ear’s finger on, which is almost always a good thing. They lacked some of the upright composure Old Lights had, and it was good to see the goofier side of our city’s music represented.

Then, anyone just arriving or drinking in a lawn chair or thumbing through records at the Euclid Records tent got woken the fuck up by Ume. This three-piece from Austin brings a fat sound united under guitarist/vocalist Lauren Larson’s serrated, live-wire fretwork and her mix of delicate crooning and all-out howl.

She also moved more than the crowd did while playing, stirring up the humidity with kicks and showers of headbangs while wringing the neck of her guitar for muscled-up, nerve-twitch melodies. Bassist Eric Larson threads his fuzzed-out sound through the guitar with perfect balance, at times echoing her flood of 12th fret notes with a single line eight frets lower. Ume’s new drummer, Rachel Fuhrer, hammers out a big, crisp rock sound, her sure and distinct kick and tom work as integral to the band’s sound as John Bonham’s was to Led Zeppelin. Lauren Larson claimed they drove 15 hours overnight to get to LouFest, and I couldn’t have been more grateful to them. They brought some crazy noise to a festival that had too little.

The change from band to band was a little more abrasive on the second day of LouFest, but the need to adjust my ears, mindset and sometimes my emotions on the walk from stage to stage sort of renewed my spirits, opened my expectations of the next act. This was what happened in the transition from Ume to Lost in the Trees. While Ume hammered your heart out of the body’s normal time signature and jolted your muscles, Lost in the Trees was all tingle and shivers on the skin. Trees began with Ari Picker’s almost inaudible fingering and gentle, then soaring delivery of lyrics, and before you realized it, was churning into a kind of acoustic prog-rock.

The musicians pulled off the disorienting, enchanting swish of sounds with incredible control on songs like “All Alone in an Empty House” and the orchestral rush of “Walk Around the Lake.” Most of the songs bristled with the strings section (cellists Drew Anagnost and Leah Gibson; violinist Jenavieve Varga), which took on roles from whipping the song into a spectral waltz, to acting as a kind of counter-verbal sound to Picker’s unexpectedly sweet voice.

And then there was multi-instrumentalist Emma Nadeau, whose voice crept through you like theremin, even as she hammered a floor tom or dotted the keys of a xylophone (she even got a round of applause mid-song for a vocal solo). Unlike some of their stylistic cohorts and contemporaries, Trees sounds put you on edge, create a sense of alarm even as they are beautiful. And their live set at LouFest was no exception: Fheir music made me uneasy in the brightest part of day.

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Posted by | August 29, 2011 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review: LouFest 2011 Day 1 in the sun at Forest Park, Saturday, August 27

Surfer Blood at LouFest, August 27, 2011

Kate McDaniel

It was surreal to roll through Forest Park Saturday morning, past bikers and joggers, the quiet fountains, apartment buildings looming like mountains on either side of the park, and then, the sound of Troubadour Dali’s “Ducks In A Row” coasting out from atop the central field.

What’s weird is that this hasn’t always been happening: a music festival in Forest Park or anywhere in St. Louis. When I saw the two huge stages hunched on the hill, it was like déjà vu.

The air warbled in the heat, and there was still plenty of space when St. Louis’ Troubadour Dali unwound their tight, gaze-into-the-sun concoction of stinging rock ‘n’ roll and psychedelia. (And I apologize to Jon Hardy & the Public for missing their kick-off performance.) Their set was nearly perfect with enough energy and inertia in the music to heave the ball forward, draw the crowd in — something about that shoe-gazey sound makes for a great immersive music, but Dali’s sound is also rough around the edges, trading space for the electrifying, cathartic downstroke.

It was also an acid test for the way the day would sound through the speakers, because Dali had one of the most balanced sounds of the day — their through-the-cracks harmonies and tremolo and Drew Bailey’s fresh, rolling percussion. While most people showed up later in the day for the headlining acts, Troubadour Dali’s set stuck with me through the rest of the day, palimpsestic as a good dream.

After their set, singer and guitarist Ben Hinn directed the crowd over to the east stage to see Sleepy Sun, whom he described as “freakin’ awesome.” LouFest already had kind of an all-ages feel about it: plenty of 8-year-old kids milling around, infants on their parents shoulders, a monotonous, hip sea of sunglassed 20-somethings shoulder to shoulder with men and women who’d smoked weed at Monterey Pop or who at least had read the headlines about Altamont. It’s another reason that Dali’s set was important and relevant, their set like a tribute to the era and the events inseparable from that psychedelic sound.

Sleepy Sun offered more of the same, but with a little more blues at stake, a little more fire in their bellies. Led by singer Ben Constantino (a great frontman for a great band, some perfect conflation of Country Joe and all the members of Canned Heat transplanted into modern day San Francisco, and here playing for us), the band ripped and roared through the sometimes brooding, always noisy guts of their songs. Their set ended just short of 3 p.m., and the crowd was steadily growing in volume and responsiveness. LouFest was 2 for 2, but no one was ready for what came next.

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Posted by | August 28, 2011 | Concerts | Comment 

Tips for LouFesters

Nate Burrell

With LouFest coming up this weekend I thought I’d offer a few tips for two days of all-day music. I’m no expert on this stuff, but a very happy veteran of a dozen or so multi-day festivals.

This probably isn’t anything revelatory, no moments where Bugs Bunny might shout, “Eureka!” These are just reminders so you can make it from first chord to the final cymbal crash in good shape.
 
Water. The weather is tracking right now to be sunny with temps in the mid to high 80s so you probably won’t need massive amounts of H20, but bear it in mind. This is St. Louis, after all, so that could change. You can bring up to a 1 liter bottle of water in — take advantage. If you’re drinking water flavored with hops and barley, don’t be that guy face down on the ground being ill-treated for YouTube. That has nothing to do with hydration; just don’t be that person.

Sunscreen. If you are only going to be there late afternoon on, sunburn probably isn’t a big worry. But if you’re in for the whole thing, bring a tube with you. Otherwise, a normally comfortable shirt will feel like that chair of needles Han Solo was tortured in halfway through “Empire.” You might want to wear a hat for extra solar protection.
 
Clothing. If you stay for any length of time you’re probably gonna get dirty. Balance your fashion desires with how easy it will be to clean your (and maybe other people’s) sweat, sunscreen and everything else off of it.

Ear plugs. That much music could make your ears ring like crazy. Maybe I’m showing some age.

Shoes. You’ll be on your feet a lot, and other people might be on your feet too so I recommend skipping open-toe footwear.
 
I hope that helps. If you see a well-hydrated guy, covered in SPF900, wearing orange ear plugs and sportin’ some dope head gear say hi.

Posted by | August 26, 2011 | Concerts | Comment 

LouFest preview interview: Josiah DeBoer and Louis Wall of Jumbling Towers

Jumbling Towers

facebook.com/jumblingtowers

Veteran St. Louis band Jumbling Towers stands out in the field of modern indie music with an eccentric brand of pop — a dynamic collision of electronics, guitar hooks, startling vocals and beats.

I recently chatted with vocalist/guitarist/lyricist Josiah DeBoer and drummer/programmer Louis Wall about their latest EP “Ramifications of an Exciting Spouse” (mixed by Justin Gerrish, who has also recorded and mixed Vampire Weekend’s “Contra”), their view on music in St. Louis and what it’s like to have two hometowns.

Matt Stuttler: You’ve garnered descriptors such as “eerie” and “off-kilter,” which usually aren’t synonymous with pop music. Do you feel that you’ve taken pop into a darker, more eccentric direction? Or do you feel that pop can incorporate dark tones?

Josiah DeBoer: That was never intentional. So, those were descriptors given us. Then at that point, we were probably slightly conscious of it and were like, “That’s cool. Yeah, this is eerie. This is dark.” I think they definitely can coexist. I don’t know if it’s the reverb combined with minor progressions with a little bit of noise in there. I assume that’s what gets the descriptor.

Jumbling Towers has a really unique vocal style. It strikes me as if you have a British accent when you sing.

JD: It was nothing intentional, again. I always wanted vocals to sound interesting. When you start a band, the thing that usually sucks the most is the vocalist. You have to find your sound. I’d rather have something interesting than something technically sound, and that’s just kind of what morphed. I guess if you can have enunciation influences, which I assume is possible, things have a better edge or flow better with our music with a little more definition. I think if I had any American drawl in words, I don’t think it would be beneficial to [our sound]. I don’t know if it’s proper singing enunciation, or if it’s more English, maybe David Bowie had something to do with that.

How long have you been playing together?

JD: Jumbling Towers started actually in Columbia [Mo.], in ’05. We just played live then. It’s been six years. Louis joined in ’08.

Louis Wall: So three years for me.

Jumbling Towers delves into some interesting genre-bending sounds. How do you find the balance between electronics/synths versus the traditional guitar/bass/drums setup?

LW: I don’t really think it’s something we consciously try to balance. I think it’s just whatever we have at the moment ends up getting used.

JD: Right now, everything’s written in the studio so we kind of record as we go. Usually it’s just a matter of what feels the most interesting at the time. That’s where Louis is doing a lot more program beat stuff.

LW: I think there’s a lot of emphasis on ethics sometimes when you’re creating music, but once you step out of that, you might as well go as far out of that as you want to go. If you’re going to be a band, it’s kind of a contractual thing with your listeners. If you create two albums that are just made with a real drum kit, a guitar and a vocal, then the third album you are pretty much telling your listeners that’s what they should expect. Once you kind of break that set of new ground rules, then you might as well just step away as far as you can.

On your newest release “Ramifications of an Exciting Spouse,” the theme of fame and the destructive pursuit of stardom show up in several of the tracks, especially the title track. What’s influenced you to deal with these issues?

JD: I think I was just looking for something a little more interesting to write about after the “Kanetown” sessions, which were about a fictitious place. I just wanted something kind of relevant. It really wasn’t over-thought, it was just kind of like “this is mildly interesting.” I also garden for a lot of super-wealthy people. I just see some things. They’re all great people by the way. I love them dearly. (Laughs)

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Posted by | August 25, 2011 | Interviews, Local, Music | Comment 

LouFest preview interview: David Beeman of Old Lights

Old Lights - David Beeman

Nate Burrell

David Beeman, of St. Louis band Old Lights, likes pop hits and the fact that his band’s name is not rooted in meaning.

The Southern California native and current St. Louisan sat down with me in his Cherokee District production studio, Native Sound, to talk about Old Light’s evolution, his songwriting process and why he and his bandmates are happy to fill the current record production void in St. Louis.

Erin Chapman: Can you tell me about the origin of your band name?

David Beeman: Kristin [Dennis], who is in the band Née, likes to go on these Wikipedia trails, and basically we needed a band name and she just found it. It’s not necessarily rooted in anything. We just liked the way it sounded. Nobody in the band had anything to do with [selecting the name]. Hey Kristin, were you in the band at the time you picked our name?

Kristin Dennis: You told me that you would buy me dinner at Mangia if I gave you my band name.

David Beeman: Oh yeah, it was her band name that she found, and I told her that I would buy her dinner at Mangia if I could have it. I like that it doesn’t carry any meaning because it’s just better that way. I wouldn’t want our band name to have anything to do with who we are or what we sound like. As long as it’s not awkward, that’s all I care about.

What’s the history of the band?

I wrote songs for years on my own, basement recording type stuff. Probably six or seven years before I ever started an actual band, I recorded and played all of the instruments myself. I always wanted to start a band with my songs, I just never tried. I would show my friends all of my music, my recordings, and when my songs were cool enough people [would] want to play with me. So that was how the first version of Old Lights started.

In St. Louis it was friends of mine who liked my music enough to invest their time. People fell in and out as I was taking it more seriously. Beth [Bombara] was the first drummer in the band. No one else who was in the original lineup is in the band now. Just typical stuff: People losing interest, me losing interest, people not getting along. There’s been so many people in the band who are not in the band now. I guess the best way to say it is that it got to a point where the songs were interesting enough to the right people that now it’s a real band. Not me and a bunch of hired players. Everybody contributes creativity and plays on the record and has an equal voice. To me we sound like a rock ‘n’ roll band now. I feel as though I’ve built something, some kind of structure myself.

How does the songwriting process work for you?

For the “Like Strangers” EP, I had a bunch of songs in various states. From really noisy stuff to completed songs that I thought had most of the parts, even the lead guitar lines, piano stuff, harmony. I brought it to the band. It was a fairly normal process. They would tell me what they liked and didn’t like. They told me what they thought could be better. That’s how it worked. It was all the way from bare bones, forming structure together to other songs that were more whole.

Music before lyrics?

No. Hand in hand. For the last EP, it was sit down at piano, guitar, synthesizer and just sing a melody and sing words with those first few chords. It’s days and months of this. A specific lyric with a specific melody over specific chords that happens in about 30 seconds, and if that works then I will keep writing the song. That’s the way it works for me. It’s fairly spontaneous in the beginning because it’s a random singing of whatever, and playing whatever, and if it really sticks in my mind and I like it, if it’s pretty or catchy, then I’ll write a song — and that will be the center of the song. I’ve never been able to write lyrics before music. There are some songs where the music has come first, but it’s really difficult for me to write lyrics and the melody over a piece of music that exists, I feel like I’m doing Karaoke or something. It just feels awkward. So for me it’s always been that a song happens at the exact same time that the piece of music is happening and being made, at the exact same time as the initial lyrics are being written.

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Posted by | August 24, 2011 | Interviews, Local, Music | Comment 

LouFest preview interview: Jenavieve Varga of Lost in the Trees

Lost in the Trees

facebook.com/lostinthetrees

I recently had the chance to talk with violinist Jenavieve Varga of Lost in the Trees about what it takes to make the band’s big, complex sound happen onstage and how it’s possible to reconcile a love of chamber music with an affection for rock ‘n’ roll and platform heels.

Matt Sorrell: On record, Lost in the Trees’ music is so layered and complex. What’s it like to experience your live show?

Jenavieve Varga: I feel like the record and the live show are really different. The live experience is bigger than the record. It feels like we’re projecting a wall of sound. You hear all of the different parts of the record, but it’s very nicely orchestrated. When you listen to the record, there’s some deep, dark stuff, but the shows are actually a lot of fun.

We’re very excited to be on stage every night, and we have really fun costumes and props, puppets and things. It gets to be a unique experience every night. And we have a very diverse audience — sometimes we get fraternity guys in the front row singing along, then we’ll have grandparents and children and hipsters. It’s a very wide demographic. Coming from a classical background, you hit this point where no one is coming to your concerts. Symphonies are suffering right now. With Lost in the Trees we really get to bring that to the masses, we’re making it more accessible, and that’s one of my favorite things about this band. Ari [Picker, writer/vocals] is putting in all of these great, almost quartet pieces, with strings and brass. It’s like rock ‘n’ roll classical music.

I know the classical music I enjoy most always has a theatrical element to it.

Absolutely! It’s funny when you think about classical music the way we perceive it now, in a stuffy auditorium and everybody’s quiet. If you look back into the history of classical music, a lot of it was so controversial. I mean, look at Stravinsky. People were rioting over that! It doesn’t have to be this quiet, etiquette-filled, snobbish thing. It’s about rock ‘n’ roll.

How did you get involved with the band?

I joined the band a little later on. Ari and I both went to music school at Berklee up in Boston, but we didn’t know each other. It was a rainy day and someone told me, “You have to check out this band.” I kept running into this same guy that day and he kept telling me this. So I said, “OK, OK, I’ll listen to them.” I remember skipping class that day and sitting in the park just listening to them and falling in love with the music immediately and wanting to play it. Sometimes it’s different, listening to something and playing something, but I wanted to play it and perform it and give it life.

Are there any particular types of venues you prefer to play?

What really showcases us best are theaters. Theaters lend themselves well to the drama of it, the feeling of seeing an entire production, not just going to see a band. We’ve played some pretty funny places, though. We played a biker bar one night.

You probably need to have a decent amount of room, too, since you have seven people up on stage.

You’d laugh if I showed you pictures of some of the stages we’ve squeezed on to! When we opened for Neko Case this winter, all of a sudden we got to spread out, but we’d still stand close together because we’d never had that much space. The string players, we were still kind of on top of each other. I’d whack one of them almost every night with my bow.

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Posted by | August 24, 2011 | Interviews, Music | Comment 

LouFest preview interview: Ben Hinn of Troubadour Dali

Troubadour Dali

facebook.com/troubadourdali

It took awhile for Ben Hinn of Troubadour Dali and I to get together. Our first appointment fell through, and Hinn mistakenly showed up a day early for the second. When we were finally able to meet over coffee, Ben and I had a good, long conversation.

We talked about everything from the maturation required to record Troubadour Dali’s latest album (this year’s “Let’s Make It Right”) to why previously popular buzzwords like reverb, lo-fi and fuzzy don’t necessarily apply to them anymore. Towards the end of the interview, drummer Drew Bailey showed up and joined in.

Erin Frank: I actually requested Troubadour Dali for this interview because I saw you guys at the Lucas School House a few years ago and really enjoyed it.

Ben Hinn: Wow, that must have been like, 2007?

It was a while go. I really liked it, and my editor and I agreed that it was such a cool venue and it was a shame that it closed down.

I loved that place. It’s a shame. I wonder if anyone’s doing anything with it. They were starting to turn that church next door to a bigger venue, but I don’t think anything came of it. … I loved that place, I always had a good time there. I’m trying to remember the sound guy’s name. He was really nice and works around town still.

I read that you guys had a residency at Off Broadway for a while.

We did. That was 2010. They’re like our family, they’ve done so much for us. Steve [Pohlman, owner of Off Broadway] is the Man. We did a residency there, and I think we were talking about doing another one, maybe in winter. I’m not sure exactly. If it’s like last year, we’ll showcase a couple bands each time. … It was a great time. It was basically a glorified band practice for us, so it really helped us develop playing in front of people with improvising, and throwing stuff out there and there are a lot of people who came to the shows and could see things develop. It was a good experience.

What are the other venues that you’ve played or have seen bands play that are your favorites?

Off Broadway is definitely the place I prefer. I love the Duck Room, it’s a great venue to play. Cicero’s is actually a really fun stage. We kind of started off playing there, so I have a soft spot for it. And the Firebird, we’ve played a lot of fun shows there. They’ve hooked us up with a lot of shows playing for touring acts like A Place to Bury Strangers, Darker My Love, the Entrance Band. And now Mike [Cracchiolo] is booking Cicero’s as well. We played there about a month ago with the Strange Boys.

I love the Strange Boys. I started listening to them a few years ago and told people that it was sort of psychotic, like listening to the midget from “Twin Peaks” over this awesome ’50s guitar riff.

(Laughs) Yeah, yeah.

Your last record (self-titled) came out in 2009, and your most recent record (“Let’s Make It Right”) came out this year. I’d read on your blog that this new record was relatively easy to assemble because you had so much material just sitting around.

Yeah, there were a lot of factors that contributed to it being easier. The band itself was in a better state. Like all of us learned a lot in the six years we’ve been together, and the lineup has rotated so many times, so it’s finally kind of settled into a comfortable [place]. … It just feels better, and we’re having more fun, just playing better. And everyone has kind of delved into recording at home studios, so we were able to be more focused on what we needed to do. But as far as the songs, a few of them have been around for a while and we had the chance to play them out. All the bass and drums were basically recorded together, and most of the guitars were kind of overdubbed.

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Posted by | August 22, 2011 | Interviews, Local, Music | Comment 

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