Tag: The Allah-Las

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Garage Rock Sounds of Up-and-Coming Californian Act Clean Spill

Comprised of Pat Curren (vocals, guitar), Charlie Fawcett (drums), Cameron Crabtree (guitar) and Geoff Shea (bass), the Santa Monica, CA-based indie rock quintet Clean Spill can take their origins to when Curren met Fawcett when they were ten year olds participating in a local surfing competition. Curren met Crabree while in high school and Shea, was a local barber, who was into the same music as the rest of the band’s members. As Crabtree recalls, “I decided to get a haircut from him and talk to him over the haircut about [playing with us]. If he would have farmed the haircut, we wouldn’t have given him the position. But it was a great haircut, so it worked out.”

Back in 2014 Fawcett leveraged some connections at surf company Hurley to assist the members of the band with studio time to record an album worth of demos that they dubbed Dear, Anger — and interestingly enough, what was initially meant to be a jam session quickly became their first professionally engineered and mixed EP, 2015’s XO, an effort that found the band’s sound and aesthetic centered around surfing and boogie boarding culture; however, as they played more shows, including playing with Kitten and touring France with Betty the Shark, which featured Curren’s half sister, the up-and-coming band discovered themselves, while realizing a desire to push their sound and approach towards the garage rock-inspired sounds of early period The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys, as well as The Growlers and The Allah Las. Simultaneously, the band was picking up lessons and advice from their tour mates abut the gear they needed to make the sound they wanted, as well as the hustle they needed to make a name for themselves. “All these artists were so hard working, knew exactly what it took for sound,” Crabtree explains in press notes. “We didn’t really know much about music gear in general. We’ve played with such a wide variety of bands, we gained such a unique perspective on fans of music, too, in that it was very rewarding to see that people still liked rock music in general.”

After collaborating with a series of different producers, their manager hooked them up with producer Hanni El Khatib. And as the story goes, back in 2016, the members of the band entered Jonny Bell’s Jazzcats Studio with the intention of recording a new single, and were instantly taken by the amount and variety of vintage gear in the studio. Experimenting with gear they never dreamt of using, and guided by El Khatib and Bell. the band began refining and honing the sound that they felt they were mean tot have. “Hanni’s style has a lot of radical, outrageous noise,” Pat Curren says in press notes. “We went a little bit down that way.” Throughout the recording sessions, the band wanted their recorded sound to hew close to their live sound, so they recorded the material live to tape, which gives the material a “you-are-there-in-the-room” immediacy. The end result became their soon-to-be-released EP Nothing’s on My Mind, an effort that features “Rolling,” a song that Curren and Crabtree wrote several years before — with a slightly different, more upbeat arrangement centered around shimmering guitar chords and a propulsive backbeat; but ironically, the song’s emotional center is the heartbreak over the confusing and bitter ending of a romantic relationship. Sonically, the song manages to be anachronistic — it’s indebted to the 60s, the 00s and this decade simultaneously, and in a way that brings Raccoon Fighter and others to mind.

Once they finished the EP, the band began to tour to support it until Shea broke his arm, which slowed down the momentum they had built up and without a record and a tour, they were in a hiatus; however, they decided to take control of their own destiny and they will be self-releasing the EP two years after its completion. “I think this will actually be the start of us hustling,” Crabtree says, noting the band has written multiple albums worth of music in the downtime. “Because we went through all that, we learned so much. Once this comes out we’re going to be on fire. Recording, shows — everything.”

The recently released video follows a young, extremely Californian couple that features the band’s frontman in a series of flashbacks — first when they’re adorable and through a series of bitter fighting, with footage of the band performing the song in a prototypical Californian background split the band brooding and goofing off throughout, creating a fitting balance between the heartache and breezy vibes within the song. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Currently comprised of the band’s founding duo Julian Ducatenzeiler (vocals, guitar) and Tony Malacara (bass), along with newest members  Shane Stotsenberg (guitar), Cameron Gartung (drums) and Ignacio Gonzalez (organs), the Los Angeles-based garage rock/psych rock act Mystic Braves can trace their origins to when Ducantenzeiler and Malacara formed the band in San Diego in 2011. Since then the band has gone through a series of lineup changes but their current lineup was solidified in 2013 when Ducantenzeiler and Malacara relocated to Los Angeles, where they recruited Stotsenberg and Gartung. As a quartet featuring Ducatenzeiler, Malacara, Stotsenberg and Gartung, the band had begun writing material and touring while searching for a full-time organist  when they found Gonzalez.

Mystic Braves’ fourth album, The Great Unknown is slated for an August 17, 2018 release through Lolipop Records, and the soon-to-be released album found the band recruiting Kyle Mullarky, who has worked with The Growlers and The Allah-Las. The band spent a week at Mullarky’s Topanga Canyon, CA studio exploring new sounds and approaches and cutting demos, and as the band’s Julian Ducatenzelier says in press notes, “We just wanted to work with him to help shape the songs creatively, but he ended up being so great to work with that we just stuck with him.”

After recording somewhere between 30-40 demos at Mullarky’s studio, the band returned to their hometown, holing up in Lolipop Records‘ new office/studio/living quarters in the Boyle Heights section to record the final versions of the songs that would comprise The Great Escape. “We spent three days a week at Lolipop for about a month and a half, all living together, writing, recording, grilling, drinking too much tequila and coffee,” Ducatenzelier recalls. “We decided to get a little experimental—some of the songs came out sort of country and some were super funky, almost like James Brown.”

Sonically, the material channels The Seeds, The Zombies, The Kinks and others — but while earnestly maintaining a unique sense of individuality, which Ducatenzelier attributes to the album’s deeply personal nature. “A lot of this record comes from a breakup,” he explains. “It deals with the end of past relationships, with knowing that things should end, and figuring out how to cope with the loss.”

The album’s latest single “Under Control” is a shimmering bit of lysergic-tinged bubblegum pop centered around some timeless rock ‘n’ roll tropes: the inevitable end of a romantic relationship, the desperate attempt to move forward as time passes by, the acknowledgement that many things in life are unresolved and unfulfilled — and of life’s fleeting nature. Of course, the song naturally has the band balancing between a swaggering and hook-laden arrangement reminiscent of The Castaways “Liar Liar” with an earnest and familiar heartache.

The members of Mystic Braves are currently touring across Europe to support their new album, which they’ll follow up with al lengthy US tour throughout the fall that includes a September 15, 2018 stop at Rough Trade. Check out the tour dates below.

 

Tour Dates 
August 6 – Molotow – Hamburg, Germany
August 7 – Bestpol – Dresden, Germany
August 9 – Paradiso – Amsterdam, Netherlands
August 10 – Borderline – London, UK
August 11 – Bodega – Nottingham, UK
August 12 – Buddha Blood – Brighton, UK
August 17 – Teragram Ballroom – Los Angeles, CA
August 18 – Velvet Jones – Santa Barbara, CA
August 22 – Casbah – San Diego, CA
August 23 – Wayfarer – Costa Mesa, CA
August 25 – Pappy & Harriets – Pioneertown, CA
August 29 – Harlow’s – Sacramento, CA
August 31 – The Chapel – San Francisco, CA
September 1 – The Loving Cup – Reno, NV
September 7 – High Noon Saloon – Madison, WI
September 8 – The Empty Bottle – Chicago, IL
September 13 – BSP – Kingston, NY
September 15 – Rough Trade – Brooklyn, NY
September 17 – Cafe Nine – New Haven, CT
September 21 – Johnny Brenda’s – Philadelphia, PA
September 22 – DC9 – Washington D.C.
September 26 – White Oak Music Hall – Houston, TX
September 27 – Dada Dallas – Dallas, TX
September 28 – Mohawk – Austin, TX
September 29 – Paper Tiger – San Antonio, TX
September 30 – Ethos Live – Laredo, TX
October 3 – Lowbrow Palace – El Paso, TX
October 4 – Cans – Tucson, AZ
October 5 – Taos Mesa Brewing – Taos, NM
October 6 – Hi Dive – Denver, CO
October 7 – Surfside 7 – Fort Collins, CO
October 9 – Urban Lounge – Salt Lake City, UT
October 10 – Neurolux – Boise, ID
October 12 – Mississippi Studios – Portland, OR
October 13 – Astoria – Vancouver, Canada
October 14 – Sunset Tavern – Seattle, WA
Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Classic Soul Sounds and Visuals of Nick Waterhouse’s “It’s Time”

Nick Waterhouse is a Santa Ana, CA-born, San Francisco, CA-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, who first took up gutiar when turned 12. And as teenager, he found himself increasingly interested in more obscure and ecletic Americana and blues outside of the pop and contemporary rock his peers were listening to; in fact, he’s cited Bert Berns, Mose Allison, John Lee Hooker and Van Morrison among his earliest musical influences. However, Waterhouse’s musical career started in earnest when he was a member of an Orange County-based band Intelligista, an act that was compared to The Animals and High Numbers-era The Who. After the band split up, Waterhouse went on to attend San Francisco State University — and while studying, he continued pursuing music with very little luck.

As he was purising a music career, Waterhouse was simultaneously getting more involved in San Francisco’s DJ scene; in fact, he had quickly become a fixture at tthe all-vinyl Rooky Ricardo’s Record Shop eventually taking up a job with the store. Publicly, the San Francsico-based singer/songwriter and guitairst has cited that his time working under the store’s owner, Richard Vivian was deeply influential, as it put the then-aspriing musician i touch with the city’s soul club scene — while developing a friendship with The Allah-Las’ Matthew Corriea.

His debut 7 inch “Some Place”/”That Place” was recorded at the Distillery Studio in Southern California with backing band billed as the Turn-Keys, featuring The Fabulous Souls’ Ira Raibon on saxophone. The single was hand-pressed with letterpress printed labels, and because of the single’s overall response and its rairty, collectors have snapped it up. And on the strength of that single, Waterhouse was able to assemble his own backing band The Tarots and a trio of backing vocalists The Naturelles, with whom he played shows with Ty Segall, The Strange Boys, White Fence and The Allah-las. And in between touring across North America and Europe, the California-based singer/songwriter produced The Allah-Las 2012 debut effort. He then followed taht up with the release of his first two singles as a frontman and bandleader.

Waterhouse’s third full-length effort, Never Twice was released earlier this year thorugh Innovative Leisure Records and the album finds him collaborating once again with producer Michael McHugh, who has worked with Black Lips, Ty Segall, and The Allah-Las. As the story goes, McHugh was Nick’s first producer — and as Waterhouse was about to record the material that would comprise Never Twice, Waterhouse enlisted McHugh to recrate and capture the sound of Nick’s youth while in bands in Huntington Beach.

After McHugh was on board, Waterhouse being calling his favorite musicians to join him — Bob Kenmotsu, who contributed his flute; Ralph Carney, who has played with Tom Waits and Elvis Costello contributed sax; Will Blades, a protege of Dr. Lonnie Smith, contributed organs; a highly-accomplished batch of horn planers, bassists and guitarists join in; and Leon Bridges contributed vocals on the album’s lead single “Katchi.” The album’s latest single “It’s Time” will further cement Waterhouse’s burgeoning reptuation for crafting old school, jazzy soul with an incredibly uncanny period specificity — in this case, sounding as though it were released in the mid 1950s/early 1960s, thanks to a careful attnetion to craft while adding his name to a growing list of contemporary artists, who specailzie in the classic soul sound.

Directed and edited by Laura-Lynn Petrick, the video shot on what apears to be old Super 8 Film, and follows Waterhouse as she wanders around New York and features live footage of the Californian and his backing band playing live sets — and with the grainy, old-timey footage, it adds to the song’s old school aesthetic.