Tag: Hole

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Interestingly, over the past couple of years, I’ve written about Madison, WI-based punk act The Hussy here and there, and as you may recall the band formed back in 2008 as a duo featuring by Bobby Hussy (guitar, vocals) and Heather Hussy (drums, vocals) — with both members contributing vocals. The duo quickly developed a reputation for a trashy and scuzzy take on punk and for a chaotic live show that wound up with the duo playing shows alongside a who’s who list of indie rock and punk — including Mudhoney, Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, Twin Peaks, Reigning Sound,Spectrum, Black Bananas, Black Lips, King Khan & BBQ, White Fence, The Faint, Tenement and countless others. All of that helped the band gain a cult-like following across the Midwestern underground scene.

Between 2009 and 2015, the band went through one of their most prolific periods of their history, in which they released material through 20 different labels and in countless different formats. During that same period, the duo also went through a relentless touring schedule across US and the European Union, including an appearance at Gonerfest after the release of their beloved sophomore album 2012’s Weed Seizure. Additionally, they also pulled double duty as the opening and backing band for NOBUNNY through tours of the US, Australia, and New Zealand.

Since touring with NOBUNNY, the band’s founding duo have split time between The Hussy and a series of other creative pursuits. Bobby Hussy has continued to tour off and on with NOBUNNY as a touring bassist. His other projects include playing in Fire Heads with Tyler Fassnacht, who recently joined The Hussy to help further flesh out their live sound — and synth wave post-punk act Cave Curse, who released a full-length in 2017. Heather Hussy is also a member of Proud Parents, an act that released their full-length debut through  Dirtnap Records last year.

At the end of last year, the members of the newly constituted trio began tracking their forthcoming full-length album Looming, the follow-up to 2015’s Galore. Galore saw the band moving into a more focused direction with their songwriting, and it included material with more complex arrangements paired with a mid-fi production. And while the album reflected an evolution in their sound and approach, they managed to retain the infectious pop-leaning hooks that won them cult-favorite status. Interestingly, the album which is slated for a September 27, 2019 release, finds the band going in a much darker thematic direction, as the material touches upon death and sudden loss, divorce, addiction and our  current horrifying, infuriating, and depressing sociopolitical moment.

Last month, I wrote about album single “Coast.” Beginning with a deceptive and upbeat intro featuring plinking and chiming guitars, the song quickly turned into a scuzzy power-chord ripper with an infectiously anthemic hook. “Sorry,” Looming‘s latest single is a decidedly 90s alt rock-inspired fuzz pop anthem featuring ironic lyrics, fluttering blasts of flute, layers of distortion pedaled guitars and thunderous drumming. Sonically speaking, “Sorry” will likely bring to mind a series of 120 Minutes-era MTV titans, like Hole, Veruca Salt, The Breeders and others with a similar gritty and bilious quality.

The members of The Hussy will be embarking on a lengthy tour during the fall. Check out the tour dates below.

 

Tour Dates
09/13 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
09/14 – Madison, WI @ Mickey’s Tavern
09/19 – Chicago, IL @ Reed’s
09/20 – Springfield, IL @ Dumb Records
09/21 – Fayetteville, AR @ Backspace w/ The Wirms
09/22 – Dalls, TX @ Ruins in Deep Ellum
09/23 – Austin, TX @ Hotel Vegas w/ Xetas
09/24 – New Orleans, LA @ Circle Bar w/ Thelma and the Sleaze
09/25- Hattiesburg, MS @ The Looney Bin
09/26 – Memphis, TN @ Hi-Tone – Gonerfest 16!
10/11 – Madison, WI @ Crystal Corner Bar – Turkeyfest 10 w/ Vacation
10/12 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall w/ Oh Sees & Prettiest Eyes
10/13 – Detroit, MI @ Outer Limits
10/14 – Cleveland, OH @ Little Rose Tavern
10/15 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Rock Room
10/16 – Washington, D.C. @ Slash/Run w/ Natural Velvet
10/17 – Philadelphia, PA @ Century
10/18 – New York City
10/19 – Stamford, CT @ Boy’s Club w/ Jacques Le Coque
10/20 – New Haven, CT @ Three Sheets w/ Jacques Le Coque
10/21 – Boston, MA @ The Greek w/ G Gordon Gritty
10/22 – Providence, NJ @ News Cafe
10/23 – Salem, MA @ Front Street Coffee House
10/24 – Montreal, Quebec – Canada @ Quai des brumes
10/25 – Buffalo, NY
10/26 – Cincinnati, OH @ MOTR
Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Death Valley Girls Release a Hallucinatory and Menacing Visual for “Dream Cleaver”

Over the past handful of years, I’ve written quite a bit about the Los Angeles-based garage rock/psych rock/proto metal act Death Valley Girls, and as you may recall the act which is currently comprised of founding duo Larry Schemel (guitar) and Bonnie Bloomgarden (vocals, guitar) and a rotating cast of collaborators that includes Alana Amram (bass), Laura Harris (drums), Shannon Lay, members of The Make Up, The Shivas and Moaning, as well as The Flytraps Laura Kelsey can trace their origins to when they were formed by Schemel, Bloomgarden, Rachel Orosco (bass) and Hole‘s Patty Schemel (drums). 

Although they’ve gone through a series of lineup changes, the band’s sound and overall aesthetic throughout their recorded output has largely been influenced by The Manson Family and B movie theatrics while thematically their work has touched upon the occult. Last year’s Darkness Rains may arguably be among the most menacing and darkest of their growing catalog. The band has been busy touring over the past year or so since the release of their third album, but they’ve managed to set some time aside to write and record — with their latest single “Dream Cleaver,” being the first batch of new material from the act this year. 

Interestingly, the hook-driven new single finds the band’s sound subtly moving to a New Wave-like sound along the lines of The Psychedelic Furs and Echo and the Bunnymen, as you’ll hear brief blasts of bluesy saxophone floating over jangling guitars, gorgeous girls group-like harmonies paired with a motorik-like groove. And while possessing a newfound sheen, the manages to retain the menace and unease of their previously released material. 

Directed by Casey Rup, the recently released video for “Dream Cleaver” is a nightmarish and anxiety-including hallucination that follows three murderous witches as they search for materials for a neon-colored and bubbling potion. 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

OBJECT AS SUBJECT is a Los Angeles, CA-based art punk band initially formed as a solo project by Tucson, AZ-born, Los Angeles-based, classically trained violinist, turned punk rocker Paris Hurley (vocals, drums, dance, composition) responding to the rampant sexism and misogyny she experienced while on the road with Balkan punk/metal act Kultur Shock. Hurley is among a handful of incredibly accomplished musicians I’ve written about throughout the years — at 16 she made her Carnegie Hall debut; and shortly after relocating to Seattle in 2003, she found her way into formative decade long collaborations with acclaimed composer and arranged Jherek Bischoff and experimental dance theater collective Degenerative Art Ensemble.

After an 8 year stint with Kultur Shock, Hurley relocated to Los Angeles, where she began assembling OBJECT AS SUBJECT’S current lineup, which includes Emilia “Pony Sweat” Richeson (dance, drums, vocals), Sorority‘s Gina Young (bass, vocals), Tales Between Our Legs’ Megan Fowler-Hurst (dance, drums, vocals) and Hole‘s Patty Schemel (drums).  The band works collaboratively under Hurley’s direction, flushing out hyper-specific, detailed songwriting with the personality of each performer.

The Los Angeles-based art punk act’s full-length debut PERMISSION is slated for a release this Friday through Lost Future Records, and the album’s latest single “Pom Pom Moves” is a furious, blistering, feminist anthem that’s full of righteous outrage and indignation — and while being completely of the sociopolitical moment, the song which is influenced by Hurley’s experiences on the road was written several years before the #metoo and #timesup movements. As Hurley explains:

“I wrote this song in my late 20’s. It came out as a single flood of words written down one day in the tour van with Kultur Shock, before Trump even running for office was part of our collective reality, something like 7 years into an 8 year stint of spending months at a time on the road in Europe, completely inundated by sexism + misogyny. From dudes acting as if I were about to touch an open flame anytime I got near a piece of gear, “No, no, no, no! Don’t touch that! I’ll get it! I’ve got it! It’s not safe for you. Let me show you how it’s done,” to guys grabbing my body and handling me like property in attempts to take photos with me as I walked through a venue, to endless marriage proposals from complete strangers, to hyper-sexualized comments about me and my performances that ignored my role in the band as a fucking fierce musician, to the seething glares of hatred from men at the market, to the unrelenting assumption that I must be the girlfriend of the men I was traveling with, to not feeling safe walking by myself after shows, to inescapably boring and incessant talk about pussy – either getting some, having gotten some, or about how if you didn’t drink enough alcohol or lift heavy shit by yourself, you were one – I was surrounded.

One night after a show in Belgium, a guy asked to see my ‘pom pom moves.’ He felt entitled to his own private show, emboldened by the presence of a group of laughing friends surrounding me, miming the movements he wanted me to do in the air above his head, hips swinging. I think what he really wanted was to see my armpit hair up close. There was that guy at the outdoor festival in Croatia who chanted, ‘Show us your boobs,’ on repeat as I took the stage, the guy in the front row of that show in Serbia who stuck his camera up my skirt while I was on stage performing, oh and the Bosnian border patrol officer who looked through my entire suitcase thing by thing, handling my underwear and vibrator while we were locked in a room together with his gun.

Pom Pom Moves is the telling of these stories – my stories – and the transformation from fear + shame to power that came with owning + voicing them.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Now if you had been frequenting this site over the last few months of 2016, you’d recall that with the release of “Help Yourself” and several other singles the Welsh-born, London-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Sarah Howells, best known as Bryde quickly exploded into both the British and international scene as she received praise from Nylon, The Line of Best Fit and Earmilk and airplay from BBC Radio 6, BBC Radio Wales, Radio X and Huw Stephens’ BBC Radio 1 show for a sound that’s been compared to the likes of Jeff Buckley, Sharon Van Etten, Ben Howard and London Grammar while thematically focusing on complex, ambivalent and hopelessly entangled relationships.

Howells’ previous single and her JOVM debut,  “Wouldn’t That Make You Feel Good” was a boozy and woozy dirge in which the Welsh-born, London-based singer/songwriter and guitarist’s aching vocals are paired with bluesy yet shoegazer-leaning power chords reminiscent of  PJ Harvey, in a song that built up into a cathartic and explosive bridge before gently fading out.  Howells’ latest single “Less” continues her successful collaboration with producer Bill Ryder-Jones and it’s a viscerally forceful 90s alt rock-leaning track featuring an alternating quiet, loud, quiet song structure with an anthemic and cathartic hook. And while still channeling PJ Harvey, the song also manages to nod at Liz Phair, Hole and others, complete with an unflinching honesty and vulnerability.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Just a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about  Atlanta-based trio  and JOVM mainstay The Coathangers. In the the decade since their formation, the band has released four full-length albums and have gone on a number of North American and European tours, which have cemented their reputation for writing incredibly catchy songs — and for unruly live shows. Back in 2014, during the recording sessions for Suck My Shirt, the band went through a lineup change as Candice Jones left the band, making the band a trio comprised of Julia Kugel (vocals and guitar), Meredith Franco (bass), and Stephanie Luke (drums). Naturally, as a result of the lineup change, the newly-constituted trio’s fourth full-length effort, Suck My Shirt revealed a refined songwriting approach in which the album’s material still retained the raw, seemingly spontaneously simplicity and fury that has won them national and international attention — but with streamlined, more direct arrangements that made the material feel more urgent.

“Make It Right,” the first single off the band’s soon-to-be released fifth full-length album Nosebleed Weekend continued in the same lines of their previous effort as it possessed a similar primal simplicity — in other words although it nodded at garage rock and surfer rock, there was an underlying sneering, “we don’t give a fuck” attitude. The album’s latest single and album title track “Nosebleed Weekend” pairs their signature sneering “zero fucks given” attitude with an anthemic hook that you can imagine a room full of sweaty concertgoers lustily yelling along with upraised fist and in a way that’s reminiscent of 90s alt rock.  In particular, I’m reminded of L7, Hole and Bikini Kill but angrier and seemingly fueled on whiskey.

 

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Go Out on a Tinder Date with Sharkmuffin in Williamsburg — Or Don’t Be This Tinder-fella

Currently comprised of founding members Tarra Thiessen (guitar, vocals) and Natalie Kirch (bass, vocals), along with Sharif Mekway (drums), the Brooklyn-based trio Sharkmuffin can trace their origins to when founding duo Thiessen and Kirch met […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Sharkmuffin’s Latest Single “Mondays” Meshes Punk Rock Attitude With Glam Rock Sound

Currently comprised of founding members Tarra Thiessen (guitar, vocals) and Natalie Kirch (bass, vocals), along with Sharif Mekway (drums), the Brooklyn-based trio Sharkmuffin can trace their origins to when founding duo Thiessen and Kirch met […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Rachel Gagliardi and Nicole Synder, the duo of Slutever recently located from Philadelphia to Los Angeles and much like countless others, they moved out west with the hopes of being famous. “Smother,” the […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

I caught the Brooklyn-based trio Sharkmuffin during a hot summer night at Fort Useless, and was impressive by their energy – at one point, their lead vocalist was standing on her amplifier and wandering around […]