Tag: Phil Manley

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Magic Trick is the recording project of singer/songwriter Tim Cohen, featuring a rotating cast of collaborators and friends. And if you’ve been frequenting this site for some time, you might recall that I wrote about two singles of Cohen and Company’s third full-length album River of Souls, an effort that at points reminded me quite a bit of Flowers-era Echo and the Bunnymen. Cohen’s fourth Magic Trick album Other Man’s Blues reportedly found the renowned singer/songwriter at a crossroads as it was written and recorded during a year that was split between two completely different lives and world — part of the year with his partner and their newborn daughter, the second part was as a touring musician, touring with Magic Trick and the Fresh & Onlys, and the week he spent recording Other Man’s Blues at Phil Manley‘s Lucky Cat Studios in San Francisco.

As the story goes, Cohen arrived at the studio with a color-coded composition book of songs he had been writing while bouncing to and fro, and the book would have to suffice in lieu of rehearsal time with the 13 musicians — including James Kim (drums),  Beach House‘s James Barone, The Aislers Set’s Alicia Van Heuval and Paul Garcia splitting time on bass, Once and Future Band‘s and Danny James‘ Joel Robinow on keys, The Cairo Gang and The Muggers‘ Emmett Kelly (guitar), backing vocals from Van Heuval, Noelle Cahill and Anna Hillburg, who also plays trumpet, as well as San Francisco-based musicians Dylan, Edrich, Tom Heyman, and Marc Capelle. And although some may think that with such a large roster of musicians, that the sessions were the product of grandiose ambition; but actually, the sessions were the result of an open door policy at the studio in which, friends would stop by, hang out, drink tequila, bullshit and jam together, creating a loose, freewheeling, improvised affair in which the songs were shaped by the session players — and the material reportedly manages to shift from baroque pop, post-punk, R&B, jam rock paired with Tim’s lyrics about family, himself, his experiences and thoughts about being a father and a musician, about life and its perpetual changes.

The album’s latest single “First Thought” is a shuffling and twangy country blues that sounds as though it could have been released sometime between 1972-1975 while gently nodding at psych rock and gospel with an extended jam band coda featuring an impressive guitar solo. And what makes the song impressive is the fact that Cohen and Company manage to make the song feel both completely improvised, as though a bunch of friends were jamming late night over whiskey, tequila and weed, while the song possess a careful attention to craft. Lyrically, the song deals with self-doubt, uncertainty and acceptance but with a wry, mischievous wit, revealing that Cohen is an unheralded songwriter.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

With the release of “Apertures” through 1-2-3-4 Go! Records, a self-titled EP through Cut The Cord That . . . Records and the “Escapement” 7 inch, along with what’s been described as a “head-turning” live show, San Francisco, CA-based post-punk quartet Synthetic ID — comprised of Nic Lang, Jake Dudley, and siblings Will and Paul Lucich — have developed a rapidly growing local and national profile, which caught the attention of Jim Dwyer, frontman of Thee Oh Sees and label head of Castle Face Records, who invited the band to play at Castle Face Records’ SF Holiday benefit show a few years ago. And as the story goes, the members of the band managed to keep in touch with Dwyer after his relocation to Los Angeles.

The San Francisco, CA post-punk quartet’s full-length debut Impulses  is slated for an April 22 release through Castle Face. Produced by Phil Manley, best known for his work with Trans Am and Life Coach, the album was recorded during one day at EL Studio and as you’ll hear from the album’s first single “Ciphers,” the material possesses the tense, urgency of the desperate and obsessively neurotic. Sonically, the band pairs slashing and angular guitar chords, propulsive four-on-the-floor-like drumming and a and throbbing bass line with the song’s minimalist shouted lyrics. In some way, sonically speaking the song sounds as though it draws from The Stooges, Gang of Four, Wire and  A Frames and others — in particular, I think of Gang of Four’s “Not Great Men,” and “At Home He’s A Tourist,” Wire’s “Three Girl Rhumba” and “Dot Dash,” The Stooges’ “1969” and “I Wanna Be Your Dog”  A Frames “nobot” and others. And much like those songs sonically and lyrically speaking, “Ciphers”captures and evokes a deeply post-modern sensation — that feeling that you’re somehow absolutely incapable of changing a ridiculous and dangerous repetitive cycle of emotions, thoughts and actions that you can only dimly comprehend; worse yet that you inexplicably feel drawn to compulsive thinking and actions and repetitive thoughts — to the point of obsession. It gives the song an unbridled, unresolved and desperate frustration that’s palpable and lingering.