Tag: Philadelphia PA

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Deserta Shares Slow-Burning and Woozy “Where Did You Go?”

Singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Matthew Doty has had a lengthy 20+ year career as a musician: He co-founded Philadelphia-based post-rock outfit Saxon Shore with Father John Misty’s Josh Tillman, and the act went out to release four full-length albums — 2002’s Be a Bright Blue, 2003’s Four Months of Darkness, 2005’s The Exquisite Death of Saxon Shore and 2009’s It Doesn’t Matter — before splitting up.

Doty went on to form the Los Angeles-based (via Grand Rapids, MI) synth-pop outfit Midnight Faces with Philip Stancil. During their run, Midnight Faces released three albums –2013’s Fornication, 2014’s The Fire Is Gone and 2016’s Heavenly Bodies — to critical acclaim from the likes of Spin Magazine, The AV Club, Consequence, Vice and a lengthy list of others.

Doty stepped out into the limelight as a solo artist with his solo recording project Deserta back in 2020. Doty’s sophomore Deserta album, Every Moment, Everything You Need is slated for a February 25, 2022 digital and CD release and a June 10, 2022 vinyl release through Felte Records. Mixed by David Fridmann and engineered by Chris Coady, Every Moment, Everything You Need features guest spots by James McAliser, who has worked with Taylor Swift, Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, The National, Big Red Machine and a list of others and vocals from Mice Parade‘s Caroline Lufkin on a track.

Every Moment, Everything You Need‘s latest single “Where Did You Go” is slow-burning and woozy bit of shoegaze with A Storm in Heaven-like textures: swirling reverb and feedback-drenched layers of guitar, glistening synths, forceful boom bap with ethereally cooed vocals buried deep into the mix, but aching to burst free from their confinement. And at its core, the song seems to evoke a yearning for someone and a moment that just can’t possibly happen again.

“‘Where Did You Go’ marks the third time Caroline [Lufkin] and I have worked together,” Deserta’s Matthew Doty says in press notes. ‘Going back to 2008, Oliver Chapoy (who, also appears on the new Deserta album) and I contributed a remix for her album, Murmurs. The following year, Caroline sang on Saxon Shore’s “This Place” (also produced/mixed by Dave Fridmann). We kept in touch over the years, always trying to connect on something new, but life happens and timing is often hard to get right. With the unpredictability of the last year, I think it was comforting to finally reconnect with some of my favorite collaborators, even from a distance.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstays Palm Ghosts Releases a Brooding yet Dance Floor Friendly Bop

Led by singer/songwriter, producer and Ice Queen Records founder Joseph Lekkas, the Nashville-based indie rock act Palm Ghosts can trace its origins to when Lekkas resided in Philadelphia. After spending a number of years playing in local bands like Grammar Debate! and Hilliard, Lekkas took a lengthy hiatus from writing, recording and performing music to book shows and festivals in and around the Philadelphia area. Lekkas initially started Palm Ghosts as a solo recording project — and as a creative outlet to cope with an incapacitating bout of depression and anxiety. 

During a long prototypically Northeastern winter, he recorded a batch of introspective songs that at the time, he dubbed “sun-damaged American music” that would eventually become the project’s full-length debut. After a short tour in 2013 to support the album, Lekkas packed up his belongings and relocated to Nashville, enticed by the city’s growing indie rock scene. Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past handful of years, you may recall that Palm Ghosts’ third album, 2018’s Architecture was a change in sonic direction for the project with Lekkas writing material influenced by the sounds of the 80s — in particular, Cocteau Twins, Peter Gabriel, Dead Can Dance, New Order,  The Cure, and others. 

Much like countless other acts across the world, Lekkas and his bandmates spent much of forced downtime of the pandemic, being as busy as humanly possible: The members of the JOVM mainstay act wrote a ton of new material. The past year or so of isolation of lockdowns and quarantines, socioeconomic and financial uncertainty and protests and demonstrations helped to fuel an immediacy to the material the band had been busily writing. 

Earlier this year, the Nashville-based outfit released their fourth album Lifeboat Candidate, a fittingly dark, dystopian effort full of confusion, fear and dread, informed by the events and circumstances of last year. And while the world feels little changed since last year, the JOVM mainstay’s fifth album Lost Frequency is a much different album. Initially scheduled for release last year, Lifeboat Candidate harkens to the before, when things seemed normal — or at least less uneasy, less desperate. After a difficult 18 months of pandemic, 700,000+ deaths in the US alone, financial despair, political uncertainty and more, having some respite, some sort of escape is what most of u s feel what we urgently need. And in a very loose sense, Lost Frequency feels almost celebratory — and perhaps a bit more nostalgic, than its immediate predecessor. But the material lyrically brings confrontation to the forefront, reminding the listener that at this juncture, nothing is normal, that normalcy and the desire to return to it is destructive.

Earlier this year, I wrote about album single “Bloodlight,” a hook-driven synth pop number centered around tweeter and woofer thumping beats, shimmering guitars, atmospheric synths and a hypnotic motorik groove that sonically seems indebted to the likes of Peter Gabriel and Depeche Mode — while being a seething indictment on humanity and its treatment of Mother Earth. Album single “The Painful Truth” is another dance floor friendly single.

Featuring a throbbing and arpeggiated bass synth, shimmering melodic synths and a motorik groove paired with Lekkas’ unusually icy delivery, “The Painful Truth” brings A Flock of Seagulls to mind. But despite its upbeat sound, the song lyrically and thematically is much darker, much more bleak.

“‘The Painful Truth’ is an 80s inspired dance track with a thrumming, arpeggiated bass line and a simple, bright lead line. In contrast to its sound, the song’s lyrical content lives in a much darker and less optimistic place,” Palm Ghosts Joseph Lekkas explains. “Focusing on the flooding, wildfires and intolerable heat indexes we’ve grown accustomed to, ‘The Painful Truth is a mirror into a bleak future.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Palm Ghosts Returns with a Politically Charged, Dance Floor Friendly Bop

Led by singer/songwriter, producer and Ice Queen Records founder Joseph Lekkas, the Nashville-based indie rock act Palm Ghosts can trace its origins to when Lekkas resided in Philadelphia.

After spending a number of years playing in local bands like Grammar Debate! and Hilliard, Lekkas took a lengthy hiatus from writing, recording and performing music to book shows and festivals in and around the Philadelphia area. Lekkas initially started Palm Ghosts as a solo recording project — and as a creative outlet to cope with an incapacitating bout of depression and anxiety.

During a long prototypically Northeastern winter, he recorded a batch of introspective songs that at the time, he dubbed “sun-damaged American music” that would eventually become the project’s full-length debut. After a short tour in 2013 to support the album, Lekkas packed up his belongings and relocated to Nashville, enticed by the city’s growing indie rock scene. 

Palm Ghosts’ third album, 2018’s Architecture was a change in sonic direction for the project with Lekkas writing material influenced by the sounds of the 80s — in particular, Cocteau Twins, Peter Gabriel, Dead Can Dance, New Order,  The Cure, and others.

Much like countless acts across the world, Lekkas and his bandmates spent much of the lockdown being busy: The isolation of the lockdowns, plus socioeconomic and financial turmoil, protests and demonstrations fueled an immediacy and energy in the songs that Lekkas and company had been writing at the time.

If you’ve been frequenting this site over the past year, you might recall that the band released their fourth album Lifeboat Candidate earlier this year. The album was a fittingly dark and dystopian effort, full of confusion, fear and dread, fueled by isolation, frustration, unrest and uncertainty. And while the world feels little changed since last year, the band’s fifth album Lost Frequency is a very different album.

Initially meant for release last year, the album hearkens back to the before, when things were somewhat normal — or at least seemingly less uneasy, which is what most of us are desperately clamoring for, after endless death and fear for the better part of a year. In a loose sense, Lost Frequency feels almost celebratory — and perhaps a bit more nostalgic, than its immediate predecessor. But the material lyrically brings confrontation to the forefront, reminding the listener that at this juncture, normalcy is devastating.

 Lost Frequency‘s first single “Bloodlight” continues a run of hook-driven material indebted to The Cure, Cocteau Twins, Peter Gabriel, Depeche Mode and the like with the song being centered around tweeter and woofer thumping beats, shimmering guitars, hypnotic, motorik grooves, atmospheric synths and an enormous hook. And while dance floor friendly, the song lyrically is a seething indictment of humanity and its treatment of Mother Earth.

“‘Bloodlight,’ the album opener, is a dark dance track that compares the  climate crisis to a crime scene,.” Palm Ghosts’ Joseph Leekas explains in press notes. “Luminol is a chemical commonly used in  forensics for the detection of blood stains. Nothing vanishes without a trace  and particles of blood adhere to surfaces for years.  

“The same applies to what humans have done to the earth. The damage will remain long after we are gone.”  

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of their Jeff Berner-produced full-length debut, last year’s Unmask Whoever, the rising experimental/krautrockff act Activity, which is split between New York and Philadelphia — Grooms‘ Travis Johnson (vocals, sampler) and Steve Levine (drums), Field Mouse‘s Zoe Browne (bass) and Russian Baths‘ Jess Rees (guitar) — received attention across the blogosphere for an eerily minimalist and uneasy sound that saw the band pair modern production, electronic instrumentation and organic instrumentation. Thematically, the album’s material touched upon paranoia, exposed character flaws and the broader capacity for growth when an uneasy truth is laid bare.

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I managed to write about there of the album’s released singles:

Sadly, Unmask Whoever was released within the first full week of pandemic-related lockdowns and as a result, the band wasn’t able to support their effort with a proper tour. But after a lengthy delay, the members of Activity will be embarking on a North American tour, which begins October 6, 2020 at Mercury Lounge. Tour dates are below — as always.

Along with the tour announcement, the JOVM mainstays released a new single, the eerily spectral and expansive “Text the Dead.” Centered around Travis Johnson’s achingly plaintive vocals, layers of percussive, almost polyrhythmic beats, mutilated samples, and atmospheric synths, the new single swoons from the weight of despair and inconsolable loss — with the tacit understanding that ghosts do linger, and that grief often comes in waves.

“My mom passed away in February. We had 24 days from when we found out she was sick with pancreatic cancer until she died. I still can’t process it honestly,” Activity’s Travis Johnson explains in press notes. “I remember her telling me over the phone, when I was losing it, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.’ I knew how awful the diagnosis was but I didn’t want to tell her and I really tried to cling to her telling me that. Throughout the day, still, I’ll catch myself thinking ‘I should tell mom about this or that’ or ‘I wonder how my mom is doing’ and get out my phone to call or text or email her before I realize that I can’t talk to her, and that I can’t talk to her about how I can’t talk to her. Knocks the wind out of me and makes me feel insane every time. That’s a picture of her when she was probably about my age on the cover. It was built on samples I’d put together and really mutilated a long time ago and forgotten about. I was going through old stuff and found it and started singing the verse melody. Then we all added our parts and subtracted others, etc. It’s not a very ‘live’ song but we all came together on it still.”

Tour:
10.06 New York NY @ Mercury Lounge
10.08 Boston MA @ Cafe 939
10.09 Philadelphia PA @ Ortlieb’s
10.10 Toronto ON @ Drake
10.11 Cleveland OH @ Mahall’s
10.12 Chicago IL @ Schubas
10.13 Minneapolis MN @ 7th St Entry
10.15 Milwaukee WI @ Cactus Club
10.19 Atlanta GA @ Masquerade
10.20 Carrboro NC @ Backroom Cat’s Cradle
10.21 Richmond VA @ The Camel
10.23 Lancaster PA @ Tigh Mary
10.24 Washington DC @ Pie Shop

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Philly’s Great Time Releases a Slickly Produced Banger

With the release of their self-produced, full-length debut, 2018’s Great Album, Philadelphia-based indie trio Great Time — vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jill Ryan, Zack Hartmann (bass, synths) and Donnie Spackman (drums, synths) exploded into the local and national scenes: The album caught the attention of WXPN’s Bruce Warren with several album tracks receiving regular rotation. The album also received attention from NPR, Earmilk and Paste Magazine.

The band also quickly developed a reputation as a must-see live act, playing prominent local venues like World Cafe Live, TLA and Underground Arts before being asked to join nationally touring act Caroline Rose on her East Coast and Midwest tour dates. The Philadelphia-based trio began last year by being the house band for Winnfred Coombe’s The Violet Hour, which featured Saturday Night Live cast members Alex Moffat and Melissa Villaseñor and guests Kristin Chenoweth and Gina Gershon. And just before the pandemic, the members of Great Time were set to open for Lawrence.

Much like countless bands and artists across the globe, the pandemic threw a monkey wrench into their touring plans; however, the Philadelphia trio have managed to remain busy writing, recording and self-producing new material, including the Sounds Like ________EP series. “The idea behind this Sounds Like series of EPs is simple: We want to make what we want to make. We’re inspired by tons of different styles and sounds, and we feel most genuine when we’re creating music without any limitations or boundaries,” Great Time’s Jill Ryan explains in press notes. “The title is a response to the critiques we received on our first album.  Critics have suggested that we should pick a lane or a genre, and Sounds Like is our way of defying that while staying true to ourselves.”

Released yesterday, the second EP of the series, Sounds Like ______ [Vol. 2] further establishes Great Time’s genre-defying sound and approach with the EP’s material sonically focusing on the electro pop element of their overall sound. Thematically, the EP touches upon the frustrations of being a musician/artist, self-doubt, anxiety, obsessive thoughts — and the urge to keep creating despite all of that.

Sounds Like ______ [Vol. 2]’s latest single, “80z Slo Jam” is a sleek and slickly produced song centered around jagged synth arpeggios, tweeter and woofer rattling beats, chiming keys and Ryan’s sultry delivery paired with an infectious, club friendly hook. The song’s title strikes me as being rather ironic: First it ain’t exactly a slow jam. And secondly, the track sonically — to my ears, at least — is a mix of Nu Shooz-era synth pop and Lenses-era Soft Metals. Regardless of all of that, the track a finely crafted banger that captures day job frustration and ennui, longing and desire for more than working for the weekend.

The recently released video is a slick fever dream that follows the members of Great Time as bored and dissatisfied office drones with big dreams of escaping the rat race and making it.

With shows and tours actually being things again, the band will kick off at regional fall tour on September 18 with a set at WXPN’s Xponential Fest before a run of shows in their hometown, NYC, Boston and Vermont. More on that to come, I hope! Additionally, Great Time’s Jill Ryan will sit in on saxophone for Japanese Breakfast’s sold out, five night run at Union Transfer, which started yesterday and ends on August 11. She’ll also join Cassandra Jenkins and St. Vincent for several October dates including Pitchfork Festival and St. Vincent’s highly-anticipated October 12 stop at Radio City Music Hall.