News Archives - Page 17 of 18

Trump Inspires Reagan-Era Punk Band to Finally Release Its First Album

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Feb 022017

Punk duo Blowtorch has been around for thirty years, but never released an album. They’ve just been too busy. First they ended the Cold War, then they took down Bush and his cronies, and most recently they got Obama elected. That’s if you believe them at least. They tell the band’s story in a fantastic poem:

While sipping tea in ancient Thebes Blowtorch was conceived.
Blowtorch came to be during Reagan’s revolution-of-the-rich presidency.
From Nectar’s and Burlington’s 242 MAIN to Gotham’s CBGB’S Blowtorch blazed.
Blowtorch brought an end to the Cold War, called it a day. Continue reading »

Ghost Weapons Takes on Tragedy with Post-Punk Passion

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Jan 272017

Post-punk music has a long history of addressing sorrow – after all, two of the most iconic songs of the genre are titled “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and “Boys Don’t Cry.” On his new two-song EP Two Tragedies In The Key of F, Vermont songwriter Gary Peters aka. Ghost Weapons continues the tradition. But rather than addressing the malaise of the human condition broadly, he uses the loud, anthemic music to help deal with personal tragedies far closer to home.

The first song, “Auroras,” addresses his father’s recent death after a battle with multiple sclerosis. He calls it “a song to help the healing, and a remembrance of a good man whom I had a difficult relationship with.” In an email, he elaborates on the song’s most provocative line: “What if science has it wrong?”

“This is sort of my constant struggle with the scientific and the spiritual,” Peters says, “wanting to believe in something, yet not subscribing to any religion and having a strong background in science (I studied geology in college). The line is really me asking, what if there is some sort of afterlife/energy where we all end up? After having regrets about missing out on so many good years with my Dad…just sort of holding onto a flickering hope that our paths will cross again in some way.” Continue reading »

Phish’s Favorite West African String Master Leads Barika on Two Horn-Fueled New Songs

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Jan 242017

In addition to playing percussion in Phish bassist’s Mike Gordon’s band and until recently in Rubblebucket, Craig Myers leads a world-music ensemble dubbed Barika, a name taken from an Arabic word that in West Africa is used for giving praise and thanks. A master of the West African string instrument the n’goni, which he studied in Mali, Myers blends danceable African rhythms with a powerful horn section. Bold and catchy, this is “world music” that avoids the lite-reggae cliches the genre is often saddled with.

The band just announced their third album When The Time Comes, and, judging by the two songs they’ve released thus far, it could be their best yet. The songs show world music as it should be, focusing on a particular region while not being so tied to tradition that they can’t bring in music from other places. “Banni” is a chanted invocation with American soul horns that sounds like the Dap-Kings in the Middle East, while “Gotta Be Another Way” brings a little bit of Italy into Africa by channeling Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti westerns. Continue reading »

Reinventing the Lost Art of Gregorian Chant Through Electronic Music

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Jan 232017

Many musicians aspire to blend the old and the new, but few do so as dramatically as Alexander Vitzthum. What he considers the “old” on his upcoming album is not ’60s soul or ’50s beach-pop. He went centuries further back, to the monks’ vocal tradition of Gregorian Chant. And for the “new” side of the equation, he used the latest in electronics: vocoders, samples, computer effects.

It makes for a wild and surprising combination, hearing Gregorian chanting sounding like if Aphex Twin joined a monastery. Vitzthum has released one song so far in what he calls The Electric Requiem, his version of the traditional “Requiem Aeternam (Introit),” and promises more to come.

“I had this concept of mixing the classical music I studied in school with the electronic music that I’ve come to love since graduating,” he tells us. “These two things haven’t been blended before as far as I know, and so I wanted to push the idea further with this piece – the idea of combining the oldest western music we have with the newest. It’s set up as a call-and-response between the solo voice (cantus firmus) and the vocoder ensemble with some musical ideas interspersed. I sampled myself singing the traditional hymn tones, then added the vocoder and effects.” Continue reading »

A Beautiful Soul Cover of “This Land Is Your Land” To Get Us Through a Dark Inauguration Day

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Jan 202017

On a day that is scary for many people, we thought we’d post one of the more uplifting and hopeful pieces of music to come out of Vermont last year. It’s a gorgeous cover of “This Land Is Your Land” featuring a host of local musicians. Though originally recorded to support the state’s own Bernie Sanders, as Donald Trump prepares to get sworn in, the song stands above its original context as a plea for understanding and tolerance. It’s also a whole lot better than Bernie’s own foray into local music.

Soul singer Kat Wright, who recorded one of our favorite albums last year, sings lead on the bold gospel-soul arrangement. Backing Wright are (deep breath): singers Dwight & Nicole, Francesca Blanchard, Marie Claire Johnson, Smooth Antics’ Stephanie Lynn Heaghney, and Waylon Speed’s Kelly Ravin plus Wright’s Indomitable Soul Band (Bob Wagner on guitar, Josh Weinstein on bass, Ezra Oklan on drums, and Shane Hardiman on keys) with guitarists Lowell Thompson and Brett Hughes.

Whether you’ve heard of any of those names or not, this is a beautiful, moving cover of Woody Guthrie’s timeless song. And today we just might need it more than ever. Continue reading »

New Orleans Meets the Southwest on Horn-Flecked Americana Album from Stuart Ross and the Temp Agency

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Jan 192017

On certain songs on Stuart Ross and the Temp Agency’s debut album Wandering In The Wild, you’d swear the band hailed from New Orleans’ second-line tradition. On other tracks, the Tex-Mex horn spurts might make you wonder if they hail from further west, sending lonesome signals from the borderlands. Well, they are in fact from a border, but it’s the one between Vermont and New Hampshire.

Though they’re closer to Canada than most of their influences, their sound pulls from musical traditions across the map. Wandering In The Wild is “Americana” in its broadest sense. It draws not just from the alt-country sphere that genre tag is often a synonym for, but from blues (“Devil’s Stomping Ground”), mariachi (the instrumental “Wandering in the Wild”), and big-band jazz (“Spiders”). Sprawling and ambitious, it’s one of the best debut albums we’ve heard in a while. Continue reading »

Exploring the Lo-Fi Sprawl of Mysterious Bandcamp Artist mouselion

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Jan 172017

The other day, I stumbled upon a new two-song EP by an artist I’d never heard of: mouselion. The name turns out to be an apt moniker, as his lo-fi rock songs creep in like a mouse but tend to build to lion’s roars. Quiet dirges explode into a storm of feedback, while loud rockers can abruptly collapse into barely-there whispers. Like Kurt Vile or even Bonnie “Prince” Billy, mouselion contains multitudes.

mouselion is also outrageously prolific, releasing four albums and three EPs in 2016 alone. And judging by how long it took him to drop 2017’s first EP (ten days), this year could be equally productive. It’s lot of music for someone who appears to have no online presence beyond an anonymous Bandcamp page. Continue reading »

Producer Chance McNiff Channels Aphex Twin on Mesmerizing New EP

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Jan 122017

In a blog post last year on reclusive electronic producer Chance McNiff, Vermont alt-weekly Seven Days wrote, “McNiff has been slightly dormant in putting out his creative production — [latest release] Sequoiahedron was released in 2013. Maybe if we clap our hands and believe, he’ll magically produce new tracks for us to ponder.” Well, it must have worked because a few days ago McNiff quietly dropped a new EP on Bandcamp. Titled Thoughts Count, the album is spare and haunting, channeling at times the ambient sides of Aphex Twin or Nicolas Jaar. Continue reading »

The Dream of the ’90s Is Alive in Apartment 3, Your New Favorite Lo-Fi Slacker Band

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Jan 102017

Apartment 3’s stated influences are a mix of beloved ’90s indie-rock bands (Pavement, Pixies) and current artists that also model themselves after said beloved ’90s indie-rock bands (Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall). So you know where these guys are coming from. But though their lineage is straightforward, this Vermont quartet beautifully executes the lo-fi crunch of their forefathers. The ten tracks on their self-titled debut album, just released on indie label Section Sign Records (which also released one of 2016’s best albums, Violet Ultraviolet’s Pop City), are blissfully fuzzed-out garage rock perfect for headbanging through clouds of weed smoke.

“Slacker” was the semi-derogatory label given this music in the ’90s – and the band itself embraces the term – but the washed-out vibes can’t hide serious songwriting. Beneath the haze, the catchy gems bring in beachy “woo-ooo” backing vocals and wonderfully whacked-out guitar solos, showing that slacker needn’t mean half-assed. Recorded in a bedroom recording studio (in, we assume, some building’s apartment #3), Apartment 3 is a great new addition to a laid-back-punk genre that never quite hit the mainstream but never went out of style either. Listen to the album below. Continue reading »

The Beach Boys in Vermont: 1881 Brings Sunny Pop Vibes on Killer New EP

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Jan 052017

During the past couple years, everyone from Courtney Barnett to Miguel has gained their first fans by releasing a series of killer EPs before dropping a proper album. The Vermont sextet 1881 are following the same route, in the past year debuting with EPs Lights and Camera. Their latest comes titled – you guessed it – Action. Now that they’ve run out of words in that phrase, hopefully that means a full-length is up next.

1881 describes themselves as “retro pop rock” and you’ll definitely hear ’60s pop influences on Action: one part Zombies, two parts Beach Boys. But the retro tag doesn’t totally do them justice. Rather than just an exercise in blinders nostalgia, the band draws from contemporaries as well. “Everyday Weekend” channels the riotous party hollers of Low Cut Connie and “Mass Murderer” channels the psych-pop harmonies of Jacco Gardner (though, admittedly, both Connie and Gardner are plenty retro as well).

The tightness of frontman Rob Slater’s songwriting truly elevates them above kitsch. The tight and incredibly catchy tracks on EP #3 range from Fountains of Wayne-style power pop (“Not Quite As Good”) to slightly Byrds-y country ballads (“8 Long Years”). “Retro” sounds antiquated. This sort of music is timeless. Continue reading »