Shuffle Magazine - Best layouts 2009-2011 by Patrick Willett

The Best Shuffle Magazine Layouts 2009–2011, Issues 6–12 Selections & compilation design by Patrick Willett Magazine designs by Patrick Willett & Taylor Smith

Carolinas’ Independent Music Source

shuffle The Ettes + U.S. Christmas + SLED + Hiss Golden Messenger

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JUAN HUEVOS + HOLY GHOST TENT REVIVAL + TOUBAB KREWE + TEMPERANCE LEAGUE + MOENDA

Israel Darling + American Aquarium + Mount Moriah + Nicolay + GRIDS

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New lineup, new approach: PYRAMID The future of the music industry: ARTISTIC LICENSES

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TIFT MERRITT

DES

Finds Inspiration In Her Roots

DOUBLE NEGATIVE

ARK

Unleash a Middle Age Riot

Aimée Argote Roars Out of the Carolinas

The Love Language

REIGNING MAN Asheville’s Greg Cartwright

have jumped to a major label and recorded with Rick Rubin. Their frenzied fanbase seems to grow exponentially with each sweaty, banjo-busting gig. And with the biggest record of their career finally out, they still rely on what got them here in the first place:

Stu McLamb Steers the Chaos Cycle

BENEATH THE UNDERGROUND

NC’s Free Jazz Scene

No. 6

No. 7

The Bill

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No. 8

Tift Merritt

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JOHN HOWIE, JR. & THE ROSEWOOD BLUFF + MUSEUM MOUTH + WAGES + YOUNG AND IN THE WAY

FELTBATTERY + PINCHE GRINGO + CALCULATOR + HENRY FLYNT

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Issue #8

Issue #7

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THE MOANERS + VEELEE + LAST YEAR’S MEN + SHIT HORSE + BRIAN MCGEE

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Carolinas' Independent Music Source

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Carolinas’ Independent Music Source

MEGAFAUN: From Apprentices to Ambassadors See Part 1 MOOGFEST: Asheville’s Electronicapalooza HOPSCOTCH: A Look Back at the Festival

Experimental folk rockers find mark, run with it

MEGAFAUN

THe PArTInG GIFTS

RISING SUPERCHUNK Totally Shredding!

SU P E R C H U N K

See Part 2

CASSETTES They’re back - WTF?

GREG & COCO, SWINGING IN A TREE… R-O-C-K-I-N-G!

INDIE ICONS AGING LOUDLY

REVIEWS! REVIEWS!

BACK TO THE DIY BLUEPRINT FOR SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS HIP-HOP AND JAZZ DÉTENTE FROM THE BEAST & NNENNA FREELON REGIONAL SCRIBES PICK 2010’S TOP CAROLINAS LPS

No. 9 Side B

No. 9 Side A Table of Contents

No. 10

Hopscotch

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DAN MELCHIOR + FLOATING ACTION + MOUNTAIN GOATS + SONGS OF WATER + WHATEVER BRAINS

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Beast & Nnenna Freelon Lead Review SCOTS Top 25

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PAPER TIGER + HOG + ELONZO + PORNOJUMPSTART + FAN MODINE + BIRDS & ARROWS

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SHUFFLEMAG.COM ISSUE #12 SUMMER 2011

:"3 %803 , 4IPVUT JU 0VU

TORO Y MOI GETS FUNKY Chaz Bundick jazzes up chillwave

Charlotte sextet finds their voice on raucous debut

A VISION OF PARADISE N.C. label reissues David Lee soul gems

+ Editors’ Picks + Concert Calendar + Andrew Weathers/CJ Boyd + Hammer No More the Fingers

@BHAG @BE<4;

Ba FTVe\ÇVX TaW EXWX`cg\ba

AHLEUCHATISTAS

Sonic Relocation for Noiserockers

No. 11

Concert Calendar Obstructions

COMA CINEMA

Fitting In by Standing Out

THE AQUALADS

Riding Another Surf Music Wave

No. 12 Aqualads

20 shuffle six The Bill

Got great pics from a recent show in the Carolinas? Send us your gig photos (we like a good crowd shot, too) along with the name of the band , your name, and the venue and date. If we like what we see, you could wind up in the next issue of Shuffle for all your friends to

12 1. Bill Noonan, Snug Harbor, Bryan Reed 2. Grids, Lunchbox Records, Bryan Reed 3. American Aquarium, Moore Square, Jordan Pepper 4. Polvo, Visulite, Bryan Reed 5. Cory Brannan & Sarah Mann, Local 506, Jordan Pepper 6. Red Collar, Local 506, Jordan Pepper 7. Future Kings of Nowhere, Snug Harbor, Bryan Reed

13 8. Benji Hughes/Django Haskins, Snug Harbor, Kristen Miller 9. Birds of Avalon, New French Bar, BRUMLEY Chianese 10. Prabir & The Substitutes, Snug Harbor, Michael G. Cole 11. Junior Astronomers, Lunchbox Records, Bryan Reed 12. Kings of Leon, Bojangles' Coliseum, Kristen Miller 13. Lost In the Trees, Neighborhood Theatre, Jenny Hanson

gawk at. Send submissions to: readerphotos@shufflemag.com. (By submitting a photo to Shuffle, you warrant that you are the sole owner of that photograph and grant Shuffle the non-exclusive right to use that photograph in print and/or online).

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HOME

SWEET WORLD By JG Mellor Freed from past expectations, Tift Merritt returns to North Carolina to deliver her best work to date

20 ��

�� the world-conquering star she was once forecast to be. But the North Carolina expat has discovered that the world is a lot more inspiring when experienced on your own terms. �Critics are lauding Merritt’s fourth studio fulllength, See You On the Moon, as her best and most mature work yet. Much of that praise centers on Merritt’s return to the Triangle — and her choice of Durham’s Overdub Lane studio — for the recording sessions. And while old saws about home cooking and familiar stomping grounds apply, that’s just one piece of this record’s puzzle, and only one stop along Merritt’s ongoing journey. �“Making a record is always this balance between your home — where you live, musically and in your heart — and also making your world bigger by pushing to new places, literally and figuratively,” Merritt says. �Now more than a decade into her solo career, and having weathered both major label expectations and indifference during her tenure at Universal’s Lost Highway Records, Merritt’s made her world a lot bigger since her days fronting The Carbines and guestsinging on Two Dollar Pistols songs. She recorded her first three records in Los Angeles, now calls New York City home, and for See You on the Moon and 2008’s Another Country found inspiration while sequestered in Paris, sometimes for months at a time. �She’s also proven to be musically restless. Her 2002 debut, Bramble Rose, was her first of two Lost Highway releases and fit snugly with that label’s roots rock roster. The Americana crowd rejoiced at the prospect of another potential Emmylou Harris or Roseanne Cash, but Merritt was hardly done growing as a songwriter. Nor did she want to make the same record over and over. So she moved on to a brassy, Memphis soul-meets-Nashville twang effort with 2004’s Tambourine, backed by luminaries like the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, Gary Louris of the Jayhawks and Maria McKee. �Despite heaps of critical kudos, record sales didn’t match the expectations brought by Tambourine’s Grammy Award nomination. Audience-size remained modest, and Merritt drifted into afterthought-status at Lost Highway. By her own accounts 2005 was a difficult, why-get-out-of-bed year during which she felt more “like a monkey than an artist,” as she later told the Independent Weekly. She even considered quitting the music business, but rebounded in a surprising way: a long-time Francophile, she rented a flat with a piano in Paris and began writing the songs from which Another Country emerged. �Despite some initial interest in the demos, however, Lost Highway dropped Merritt in 2006. Undaunted, she eventually released the record on Bay area-based Fantasy Records, a label once known for its jazz roster but also the home for Creedence Clearwater Revival’s string of late-60s hit records. Another Country charted well, and in retrospect sounds and feels like a debut — or at least a new beginning. �Much of that has to do with the freedom Merritt insisted on — and received — with her new deal. The narratives weren’t trope twang like Bramble Rose, but highly personal portraits and detailrich vignettes instead. The music embraced folk, soul, country

��: Photo by Jason Frank Rothenberg�� : Photo by Bryan Reed

and even an en Français piano ballad, but eschewed the broad strokes and big names of Tambourine for subtle shadings and familiar bandmates. �Merritt and her long-time band — bassist Jay Brown and drummer Zeke Hutchins, as well as newcomer and ex-Two Dollar Pistols’ guitar ace Scott McCall — toured hard behind Another Country, laying the foundation for the recording of See You On the Moon. Merritt hasn’t closed the circle by holding the sessions on familiar turf, but instead passed by the starting line on her way to making her musical world even bigger. �“Some days I feel so glad that I’m not green anymore,” she says. “I’m always looking forward to putting that to use, and being a better, smarter home for the work that comes my way in the future. But I think it’s all about having my own voice and my own point of view and cultivating that. I think that this record is a good signpost.” �Yet the script for See You On the Moon would have read differently if Merritt had recorded on the West Coast to accommodate her new producer, Portland-based Tucker Martine. That consideration was in the mix, but Martine instead suggested coming East to immerse himself in the band’s territory. That dovetailed with Merritt’s wish to “take this record back to North Carolina” and “build a fort in our backyard.” �Three-and-a-half weeks of 12-hour studio days followed with the band building on Merritt’s demos. But that, too, was just part of the story. Their families might still live in North Carolina, but for Merritt and Hutchins, who’ve been partners for a decade and were married shortly before recording began, the sessions evolved into a more nostalgic homecoming. Time away from Overdub Lane was often spent ferrying Martine around to the band members’ most cherished local haunts, with everything from the local elementary schools they’d attended to preferred bars and hamburger joints on the itinerary. »

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�That became “a part of this record,” Merritt says, as did going to Seattle for overdubs and to Portland for mixing. “It just ended up being up a really, really nice mix of all of us.” �Merritt had also found the right producer for her vision of See You On the Moon. Martine’s eclectic production resume — The Decembrists, Bill Frisell, Sufjan Stevens, Spoon — was certainly a key selling point; so was his knack for getting what McCall characterized as “the best takes out of everyone with a minimum of frustration.” Merritt just wanted the music to reflect narratives that she’d worked hard to make “direct, and free of angst and judgment.” �“I wanted the decisions we made in the studio to be gutsy, bold and elemental, and not watered down by things that didn’t need to be there,” she says. “(Martine) made me so comfortable that I was able to go down in the well to some new places.” �Those new places reflected a more mature songwriter. Unlike Another Country’s intimate studies, which often read like crises of identity (“I’m broken, and I don’t understand what is broken,” she sang), the personal vignettes on See You On the Moon point outward rather than inward, and come off confident. In doing so, they also become more universal. �The country rocker “All The Reasons We Don’t Have to Fight” invites us to commiserate by skipping unnecessary detail for simple truths — who hasn’t looked back and said, “I didn’t mean what I said last night”? Over McCall’s twangy fills and a shuffling pace, Merritt balances the wrought havoc with the bonds that can withstand it. Unspoken, but lurking in the song’s shadows, is the question, “but for how long?” �At the other end of the relationship spectrum, the slinky guitars and Philly Soul strings of disc-opener “Mixtape” blend lust and love into a single entity, while Merritt’s lyrics capture the giddiness of sharing music when it’s still charming and revealing. Merritt doesn’t cheapen the narrative with easy sentiment or weighty pronouncements about undying love, because implicit is the question of what’s happened once the mixtapes stop. �But it’s two ruminations on death that really reflect her growth as a songwriter. Merritt penned the title track about a long-time neighbor, deceased several years now, who took in a blind, deaf,

“I feel like this is the record Tift really gets to be herself on, and she surrounded herself with people that allowed it to happen.” ��

22 �� Photo by Daniel Coston

and three-legged dog who’d been hit by a train, and did it “just because that’s the kind of man he was.” He looked after Merritt over the years, too, and genuine appreciation leavens the sad undertow heard in the funereal pace and Greg Leisz’s winsome pedal steel. The uncluttered arrangement allows a line like “April is a fine time, just thought you’d be around in June” to reverberate with permanence. �Merritt wrote those lyrics long ago, but had to wait years for the right song to come along. “Feel of the World,” on the other hand, was written in one sitting as her grandmother lay dying in Texas and she was in Paris, alone and yearning for family. While waiting for the inevitable phone call, Merritt ran her hand over the wood of her desk and felt the weight of the pen in her hand, and contemplated all the tactile things “that must be so hard to lose,” she says, the memory still choking her up. The songwriting coup was to tell the story from her grandfather’s point of view even though he’d passed away just after Merritt was born, making it a love song from beyond the grave built on stories Merritt was told over the years. �Fittingly, the music here emphasizes texture: McCall’s tasteful guitar fills shadow Merritt’s piano on the verses, pushing toward choruses swollen — with strings, with keys, with harmonies from My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, and with Merritt’s strongest vocals yet — to the emotional breaking point. This is Merritt’s finest moment, and one unobtainable before this record. �“I feel like this is the record Tift really gets to be herself on, and she surrounded herself with people that allowed it to happen,” McCall says in admiration. “I think it’s clearer to her than it has been on past records. It’s a maturity thing.” �If the familiar faces and environs helped, so did adding Paris to that list. Merritt may have had little idea what she’d encounter when she ran away to France the first time, but she knew what the city would provide for inspiration this time and embraced it. She saw it every day in the corner bakeries and the small wine shops, and in the cheese maker who spends his whole morning arranging the cheeses in his window. �“Trying to get his cheese to take over the world is the furthest thing from his mind,” she says. “I love that.” �That’s the hard-earned sentiment of someone who’s had ideas of world domination foisted on her before, and then learned that the world is truly yours only when you let it go. shuf8

MEGAFAUN PAGE �� Publisher Brian�Cullinan Editor�In�Chief John�Schacht Assistant�Editor Bryan�Reed

04�JOHN�HOWIE��JR��&�THE�ROSEWOOD�BLUFF 05 WAGES��YOUNG�AND�IN�THE�WAY 06�SUPER�APE��MUSEUM�MOUTH 07�RETURN�OF�THE�CASSETTE 13�REVIEWS

Design�Gurus Taylor�Smith Patrick�Willett Photo�Editor Enid�Valu Sales Vance�Carlisle James�Wallace Website CJ�Toscano Contributing� Writers Rick�Cornell Corbie�Hill Brian�Howe Jordan�Lawrence

JG�Mellor Topher�Manilla Fred�Mills William�Morris Chris�Parker Ryan�Snyder Jesse�Steichen Chris�Toenes Patrick�Wall Contributing� Photographers Angela�Owens Bryan�Reed Brian�Howe Interns Richard�Finlan Shuffle�Magazine P�O��Box�� Charlotte��N�C�� shufflemag�com �� All�content�� Shuffle�Magazine

��: Photo by Enid Valu �� : Megafaun at Pour House, Raleigh, Hopscotch Festival (Photo by Enid Valu) Shuffle magazine is not responsible for your music tastes, just our own.

ISSUE ��

�� under: Smashing Success. Three days of gigs featured just about every imaginable genre in every conceivable venue, from rail-thin Slim’s with its driveway-high riser to Raleigh’s impressive open public space, City Plaza. The days and nights were like avatar-strolling through the “shuffle” function: Post-rock maestros Tortoise after the riddims-rock of Floating Action? Sure, let’s do it. Some paint-peeling heavy from Pontiak after some free jazz from the Jeb Bishop Trio? Yes, please. �There were Big Draws, of course: A reformed Public Enemy, Canada’s electric Broken Social Scene, L.A. noise-artists No Age and Animal Collective’s sound-manipulator Panda Bear. Locals The Love Language and the Rosebuds shared that big stage, and acquitted themselves just ﬁne. No surprise there, since regional acts provided many of the weekend’s ﬁnest memories. �One of our featured cover artists this issue, Megafaun, transported from venue to venue like Spock, Kirk and Bones: The trio played packed mid-afternoon revivals, hushed evening improv sets, and after-hours jam sessions. At the other end of the spectrum, Red Collar and MapleStave left their day party stage splattered with busted guitar parts and blood; Temperance League nearly did the same during theirs the day before. The sneaky heat generated by Kingsbury Manx’s melodic crescendos worked as a perfect buffer between Bellafea’s molten rhythms and the lustrous pop of Schooner. And so on and so on: “3 days. 10 venues. 120 bands.” �In the end, Hopscotch worked because it treated the locals with the same respect afforded the Big Draws, tacit acknowledgement that a vibrant music scene exists only when you water the roots. In that spirit of regional pride, we asked some artists who played – and writers who observed — to contribute some of their reminiscences. Excerpts follow, and we thank them with the promise of a cold beverage next time we cross paths. —Editor 2��

Seth Kauffman (Floating Action) I breathed a sigh of relief for Southeast culture when I heard it sold out. I like the scene that bands like Megafaun have created there. When I lived there around 2004, trying to get Choosy Beggars going, NOBODY cared about live music... there was no scene...no good bands...and no bands helping each other out. Of course, that changed as soon as I moved away…but…

Brent Bagwell (Black Congo, NC) Hats off! There was beer everywhere....and band after band! It was like a secular paradise. My favorite performance was probably Double Dagger - those cats turned it out at the Berkeley Cafe, absolutely leaving the stage scorched! Maybe even better than the shows at night, though, were the day parties. Notable in my mind was the Friend Island Hometapes Party at the Pour House. Free Pop-Tarts and a crazy lineup. A standout there was Pattern Is Movement, who seem to be playing at some new level of great.

Maria Albani (Schooner/Organos) Motor Skills at Remedy, strangers pissing, The Flute Flies, free vitamin water, not having to shit in a porta-potty, Juan Juevos’ bare chest, BSS, Schooner playing w/ The War on Drugs, weed with Andrew & Benton, late night hot dogs, bourbon, Dexter Romweber Duo (holy holy shit), hula hoops, sleeping standing up… Jason Kutchma (Red Collar) I saw (curator/organizer) Grayson Currin everywhere, but not in the sense of ‘seeing him everywhere’ having a brew, cajoling, devil-horning bands. Instead, I saw him walking, constantly walking, from venue to venue, making sure everything was going as smoothly as he could. Top notch.

1 Red Collar 2 Kelly Crisp of the Rosebuds 3 Bellafea 4 Public Enemy 5 Panda Bear 6 Broken Social Scene All Hopscotch Photographs by Enid Valu

4 Paul Finn (Kingsbury Manx/Odessa Records) Thursday, I got off work at midnight and had a few missed calls from various members of Shit Horse. Next thing I knew, they were at my house and I was basically kidnapped and brought to Raleigh. Once there we went to the Ruby Red warehouse and NAPS was playing. After that Shit Horse showed their video and then played the most ass-kicking 30 minutes of rock & roll I have seen in some time. I left the show around 4 a.m. with crazy Tom Kingﬁsher who got us lost for an hour because we Chapel Hillians don’t know our way around Raleigh...

Bryan Reed (Assistant Editor, Shuffle) The vast majority of bands I saw seemed to have brought their A-games. But Public Enemy still delivered the festival’s most memorable (musical) spectacle, from the drumline and step dancers that introduced them, to Flavor Flav’s surprising (-ly awesome) drum solo, to the rain-damp crowd pumping ﬁsts to every beat of “Fight The Power” and “911 Is A Joke.” The day before, Black Congo NC saxophonist Brent Bagwell donned a black baseball cap, complementing his blue button-down shirt, and put the cop-like ensemble to work directing traffic on Wilmington Street while downing a PBR outside Slim’s as Harlem played inside. The confused drivers, hilariously, heeded his instructions.

Corbie Hill (Shuffle/Independent Weekly) The Helping Hand Mission Marching Band materialized out of thin air while we were waiting for Public Enemy to start, a drum major with a brilliant gold mace leading dozens of dancers and an amazing drum corps through a few thousand happily surprised music fans. On the other side of the coin, Sleepy Sun played weakly and without emphasis while vocalist Bret Constantino snaked his arms a la Jim fucking Morrison. This Cali band’s wholesale focus on image and spectacle rendered its fantastic tunes unrecognizable and boring.

Patrick Wall (Columbia Free-Times/ Shuffle) Tortoise delivered perhaps the most intense, propulsive and aurally energizing set of the weekend. I thought my head was going to spin off a couple times. (Raekwon’s tribute to Ol’ Dirty Bastard on Friday, too, was touching.) On the other hand, Des Ark’s Saturday Local Time set was a trainwreck, plagued with screeching monitors, false starts and rambling, sleepdeprived self-deprecation. It was too painful to watch after three aborted songs.

Jordan Lawrence (Shuffle/Independent Weekly/Churchkey Records) My favorite moment came in transit. As I hurried away from Friday headliner Panda Bear to catch a set at Berkley Café the Animal Collective singer started “Take Pills.” Echoing through buildings, which enhanced the song’s already entrancing reverb, Panda Bear engulfed Raleigh in good vibrations –Hopscotch’s downtown takeover was complete.

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THE BEAST & NNENNA FREELON BRIDGING JAZZ AND HIP-HOP

BY JORDAN LAWRENCE

10�� & ��

��’� �� that comes with the seal, “hosted by 9th Wonder.” The prolific NC/NY-based producer is well known for the production work — and trademark old-school soul and jazz samples and boom-bap snares — he’s lent to the likes of Little Brother, Jay-Z and Erykah Badu. His cachet carries even more weight in the Carolinas. The Beast, a Durham-based jazz trio-plus-MC, earned the producer’s endorsement on its latest outing, Freedom Suite, and knows the clout that comes with 9th’s name. �“We were told by some local hip-hop musicians, ‘Why don’t you use like a 9th Wonder snare? It’ll really make your head knock,’ ” says Pierce Freelon, The Beast’s rhyming frontman. “ ‘Your stuff, live drums, it’s just not punching trough. It’s just not doing it for me.’ ” �That resistance is to be expected for a band that works in such unconventional ways. Live hip-hop bands might be common in today’s post-Roots landscape, but rap outfits that lay their instrumental foundations in jazz are a much rarer breed. The Beast’s bass lines don’t always follow the beat path — they move with a skittering amble. Those live drums offer more than metronomic pounding; they complicate the rhythmic landscape, making it an invigorating challenge to follow. Little of what The Beast does adheres to rap’s sonic status quo, and neither does its 9th Wonder cameo. �Freedom Suite, which is available for free download at both The Beast’s Bandcamp page and jazz blog Revivalist.okayplayer.com, fades in on a hypnotic, looping jazz instrumental. 9th Wonder takes the mic, and the role of a jazz club owner introducing his guests to the night’s entertainment: “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and welcome to the Freedom Suite,” he says with a rich, suave delivery. “I hope you’re ready for some progressive hip-hop and jazz tonight.” �Credited to The Beast and Nnenna Freelon, Pierce’s Grammynominated jazz-singer mother, Freedom Suite tirelessly inverts the sounds and aesthetics of both hip-hop and jazz to create a vivid musical dialogue between them. The trad-jazz club intro substitutes for a typical, name-dropping mixtape opening, and the music that plays under 9th re-imagines one of his own beats. It’s a compelling tangle of twisted genre tropes, a listener-friendly blueprint for the free-thinking jams that follow. �Intent on keeping The Beast’s name out there after the release of 2009’s full-length debut, Silence Fiction, the band began working toward Freedom Suite early in 2010. Bandmembers were originally drawn to the idea of collaborating with indie rock bands from around the Triangle area, stemming in part from their friendships with acts like Hammer No More the Fingers and Lost in the Trees. The idea shifted when The Beast decided to push its pre-existing jazz-rap aesthetic to new poles. �“We have an MC. We play backbeat stuff. We’re a hip-hop band,” drummer Stephen Coffman says, addressing the outfit’s alignment with the local rap community. “But I think with Silence Fiction, calling that a hip-hop record and saying that we’re a hip-

Illustration by Taylor Williams

hop band, it turns people off. Because you know the hip-hop fans are going to think, ‘Nah,’ because it’s not traditional hip-hop.” �But as the band stewed on its idea, the plan became more ambitious. The project would revolve around the clash of both styles and, in addition to the originally planned cuts, it would include updates of jazz and hip-hop standards. �“There’s never been one person that the media or the public could look to as like the person or entity that has defined what the relationship between jazz and hip-hop is,” says keyboardist Eric Hirsh, summarizing Freedom Suite’s mission. “If anything, maybe it’s just a project that asserts that they’re very complimentary approaches to things.” �After weeks of what Pierce remembers as repeated “phone calls, e-mails and just nagging people,” the band assembled an all-star cast of North Carolina talent to help out — a list that includes Phonte, the crooning voice of the Foreign Exchange, Raleigh rap group Kooley High, rising R&B star YahZarah, and production by Apple Juice Kid, whose résumé already includes full-length re-workings of Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong tracks. But the biggest impact comes from Nnenna Freelon’s contributions. �There’s intimacy between her singing and The Beast’s music that’s clearly influenced by the familial bonds. Her voice, a slowburning and sophisticated timbre capable of bright and blinding flares of raw emotion, provides the drama, while The Beast — via Pierce’s witty adlibs or melodic wrinkles from the band — lightens the mood. On the updated Beast tune “Freedom Part 2,” Nnenna sings the opening lines with the conviction of a revolutionary. (The album’s title echoes the famous 1960 pro-civil rights recording by Abby Lincoln and Max Roach, We Insist! Freedom Suite Now, and shares its name with a 1958 Sonny Rollins LP

“ IF IT ALLOWS PEOPLE TO CONTINUE THE DISCUSSION, THEN (FREEDOM SUITE) IS WHAT IT NEEDS TO BE.”

—Nnenna Freelon

which speaks more to a sense of musical freedom.) But Nnenna’s visceral impact is tempered by Pierce’s lighthearted, pop-culture nod-cum-advisory to “Eat, pray, love/ Freedom.” The undulating bass lines in Apple Juice’s remix add sensual sway, letting the song’s pro-environmentalist, pro-humanist agenda go down with the ease of a slow dance. It’s another example of the record’s generation gap-bridging charm. �“Parents are always kind of turning up their noses and not really listening to the cultural impulse,” Nnenna says. “My son has really done a lot to educate me on the culture of hip-hop that I don’t think I would have had if I hadn’t had his leadership. Duke Ellington said something that I think is so to the point. He said, ‘There are only two kinds of music: Good and the other kind.’ I’m really feeling that. There’s no genre that’s inherently good or bad. ‡

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The Beast & Nnenna Freelon (cont’d)

It requires listening. Really listening to what any artist is saying.” �That’s the discourse Freedom Suite aims for, particularly when The Beast (and company) invert still more expectations when reinterpreting the songs of others — one of jazz’s greatest traditions. “Umi Says” transforms Mos Def’s reverb-laden original into one of the more straightforward jazz pieces on the record, with Nnenna crooning the lyrics as Pierce echoes her, recalling Mos Def’s spoken-word delivery. And “Skylark” renders a jazz canon standard into a glossy piece of modern R&B that warps Nnenna’s performance with aggressive vocal effects. �That approach impressed the other collaborators, too. “They’re taking songs that I love and that inspire us, and ﬂipping them to another interpretation to inspire others,” says YahZarah. “I want to be a part of things that do that for people.” �But on Freedom Suite, subverting musical expectations isn’t enough. Pierce, a hip-hop scholar at North Carolina Central University who operates the insightful blog, Blackademics, ﬁlls space between songs with interviews with respected musicians

“ GOOD ART (IS) JUST ABOUT CHANNELING YOUR LIFE EXPERIENCES THROUGH WHATEVER MEDIUM IS AT YOUR DISPOSAL.” —Pierce Freelon

and thinkers from the worlds of jazz and hip-hop. So instead of the typical rap skits, sound bites from the likes of saxophonist Branford Marsalis, jazz legend Herbie Hancock and The Roots’ ?uestlove litter the record with academic insight. �These interviews don’t shy from the prejudices between the worlds of jazz and hip-hop. In the outro to “Freedom Part 2,” Marsalis references his famous trumpeter brother Wynton, who called hip-hop “another form of minstrelsy.” The Beast follows this with “Let Go,” a critique of the bling-obsessed and misogynistic side of rap that doesn’t toss out the hip-hop baby with the gangsta rap water. “People think hip-hop got to be a certain way. People think jazz got to be a certain way. It’s just music,” Pierce laughs during the instrumental break. �“This is a conversation that we got into a lot,” Pierce says of his band, “so it was easy to say, ‘let’s take this conversation and weave it into and throughout the music.’ It’s just another reﬂection of our journey as musicians and artists. It just happens to play out in dialogue with these icons of the genre. I think art, really good art, is just about channeling your life experiences through whatever medium is at your disposal. We deﬁnitely do that musically, and we saw an avenue to do that as far as the discussions.” �Like the seamless integration of these interviews, the guest spots on Freedom Suite don’t suggest marquee-only cachet. They’re here because this is a dialogue with many voices. In this way, the record becomes much like the metaphorical “Freedom Suite” that 9th Wonder bid us welcome to in the beginning. It’s a place where artists not only play music skirting the borders of two often clashing genres and cultures, but also where they can speak their piece about the divide freely and openly. That’s a lot to be accomplished by any album. And giving the music away for free means anyone can listen, and continue the dialogue beyond the record’s duration. �“If it allows people to continue the discussion, then it is what it needs to be,” Nnenna says. “Because the freedom to talk about these things, to work them out, to maybe not come to a total resolution, but put it out there — that’s what’s up. That’s what’s good. Everywhere where doors are closed and we can’t talk because we’re just too different, it maybe lights a little candle to be like, ‘you know what, let’s talk about it.’ I think that’s a good thing.” shuf10

12�� & ��

Photo by Bryan Reed

Reviews Listen to This

Jar-e Blood of the Summer ��

have no qualms using “smooth” as a pejorative. I want music that excites and inspires, not that casts lovely, benign hues of pretty, polite and boring beige across my brain. This just makes Blood of the Summer the more confounding. It’s smooth, yeah, and my brain keeps telling me I should hate it. And in some cases that crotchety old brain of mine is right. The already succinct record is mostly top-heavy with the reggae-lilt of “One

By One” and the organ-rock of “Amends” claiming most of the energy for the A-side. And “Witch Doctor” might be a murky shot at psych-pop that falls unfortunately into OffBroadway B-sides — and gets worse as singer Jon Reid tries to emote like Justin Vernon through the bridge. But it’s not smooth like my stool after a bowl of bran ﬂakes. It’s a different kind of smooth like one might describe a good blended whisky: ﬂavorful, rich, relaxing. Even

as it walks a narrow path between adult-contemporary snooze-rock and abstract, emotionally distant indie, it remains outside the range of either. The band’s ﬁgurehead, Reid, leads with an assured falsetto that occasionally trails off into Jim James reverb-land — and shows the same affinity My Morning Jacket has displayed for syrupy, seductive soul. The chiming, slow-jam guitars, warm brass and keyboard accents, and Reid’s nimble

32��

Jon Reid illustration by Taylor Williams

falsetto, would seem to paint the band too squarely as square, though. One wonders if it’s Reid, or the studio assists from Floating Action’s Seth Kauffman and Toubab Krewe’s Drew Heller, that lend the record its dusty grooves swing, its earthy funk, and its dubby resonance. “Cuckold” might suffer for the moment Reid croons “When all that you do/Means nothing when I’m inside you” — which sticks out like a gym-shorts boner — but the song more

than redeems itself with New Orleans brass, Mississippi slide guitar and Motown horns. So even with its ﬂaws, there’s something seductive about Blood of the Summer. I might not want it to stick around in the morning, but that won’t keep me from enjoying it for a while. —W.T. Wilson

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��, ��, �� ’� �� — it was the chicken’s. �Um, well… so maybe I am the one to blame. See, I’d taken a young friend of mine to his ﬁrst Southern Culture On the Skids show, back in July in Asheville. Good sound, solid crowd, fun vibes — just what you want from a SCOTS show. �Oh, and the Kentucky Fried. Didn’t tell my friend about that. Figured the surprise would leave a lasting impression. Boy, did it ever. I jockeyed us down front into position just in time for the band’s culinary anthem “8 Piece Box” in which they invite some of the more willing and eager females onstage to dance and gyrate while helping themselves to a few cartons of the Colonel’s ﬁnest, which has been a standard item on their touring rider (“no chicken, no show,” it advises) for years. �Now if you know anything about SCOTS, you know how the deal inevitably plays out: those wings and drumsticks are

26 SCOTS ��

Photos by Ron Keith

soon airborne. Me, I learned to duck a long time ago, as have the band members — guitarist Rick Miller, bassist Mary Huff and drummer Dave Hartman, plus recent recruit Tim Barnes on second guitar — who understand how, as Miller puts it, “the velocity at which that chicken leaves the stage is multiplied when it gets returned.” My friend, he wasn’t so lucky: SMACK. Middle of the forehead. I am not making this up. �But I’m happy to report that after being momentarily stunned, probably more psychologically than literally, and after the quick application of a handy moist towelette (okay, it was actually my handkerchief, just work with me here), my friend emerged from the incident unscathed. And, judging by his purchases at the record store the next day, a new convert to the SCOTS cause… ƌɆƌɆƌ “That was a good show!” recalls Miller, talking on the phone about a month later. “We played a bunch of new songs and had

a really good time. Sometimes we don’t do it [the fried chicken], really depends on the crowd. But with festivals we usually do because it’s always fun for the audience." �One supposes for some audience members, more than others. Anyway, the occasion of our conversation is the upcoming release of Southern Culture On The Skids’ new album The Kudzu Ranch, for which they have established their own label, Kudzu Records (motto: “sounds that grow on you”), following years of recording for labels as disparate as Yep Roc, DGC/Geffen, TVT, Estrus and Safe House. In a very real sense, it brings things full-circle for SCOTS; after forming in 1983, within a couple of years the band, then a quartet (Miller is the only remaining original member), had self-released an EP and a full-length via the Lloyd Street imprint, named after the studio where they were recorded. Fast-forward to the recent past: Miller completes construction on his own recording studio, located just northwest of Chapel Hill, in Mebane, which he christens Kudzu Ranch Recorders. Hence the album title’s origin. �For Miller, moving everything in-house only makes good business sense, particularly now, with the music biz in tatters and all the old rules out the window. It’s also part of a consistent philosophy for SCOTS, for which Miller has tried to maintain “realistic goals” all along and notsub-scribe to the major labels’ plantation-system mentality. �“This really started back with the Geffen deal [in 1995],” he explains. “We took the advance money and went out and bought an eight-track half-inch Tascam. We thought ‘man, this is kinda the way to go.’ And we’ve always kind of done it ourselves, managed ourselves. Then the whole thing became us building the studio, and once we had all the means of production, we really didn’t need any advance money. And when we didn’t need advance money, we started questioning whether we really needed a label. We just thought we should try doing it ourselves. The numbers just keep going down and down and down anyway. So if instead of 25,000 records and making pennies on a dollar, if you could sell five to ten thousand records and make five bucks a record, well, you’re making the same amount of money or more. �“What we’re hoping, with our own label, is that we will start to see a bigger cut of merchandise and record sales. Because being on a record label — even on a big one like Geffen — you just could not depend on that money. You wouldn’t get it for months, maybe not even for years because of accounting practices. I even remember how Geffen would take us off tour to go do these radio shows; some radio guy says, ‘Oh, I might play “Camel Walk”…’ or something. So they’d fly us from Minnesota to Texas, while we’d have to pay our roadie guy to drive the gear out to Seattle where we’d hook up with him again but we’d miss all our shows on the way. I go, ‘Okay, but if you take us off tour you’re gonna have to reimburse us for the money we lose.’ " �The Kudzu Ranch is the followup to 2007’s all-covers record Countrypolitan Favorites (Yep Roc). It was recorded at a leisurely pace over the course of a couple of years, yielding a 12-song set

of classic SCOTS, ranging from shitkicking garage (“Bone Dry Dirt”), swinging dance numbers (the Huff-warbled “Highlife”) and T.Rex/Gary Glitter glam-slam (“It’s The Music That Makes Me”) to several of Miller’s signature instrumentals including the sproingy-twangy “Slinky Springs Milt,” which Miller says was inspired by listening to the frantic mating noises of frogs during the springtime, and the moody, contemplative “Jack’s Tune,” dedicated to his young son. Per SCOTS tradition there are also some choice covers: Neil Young’s “Are You Ready For the Country,” and a psych/surf instrumental interpolation of Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” and Pink Floyd’s “Lucifer Sam.” (Of the latter’s genesis, Miller says it came about almost randomly one day while listening to Nirvana and suddenly realizing that the guitar riffs of the two songs were nearly identical, with only a few notes different. “When we play [the medley] live,” he adds, “sometimes it goes right over people’s heads, but there will always be three or four faces that light up at the Nirvana song. But then of course we lose those folks with the Pink Floyd part!”) �In addition to setting up the label to release new music, Miller is also finally getting around to taking a hard look at the band’s extensive archives, starting with a remastered reissue of their long-out-of-print 1991 album Too Much Pork For Just One Fork, originally released by Chapel Hill indie Moist. “With that, we’ve had the rights for years,” says Miller. “We bought them when Moist went out of business back in the mid ‘90s. But you’re always looking to the next thing, you know? It never occurred to me to spend much time looking backwards until recently. But I think just the way the music business has gone, the Internet — and also getting the rights back to other things, you do start thinking about reissuing them.” �To that end, also on the horizon is the first-ever official CD release of the self-titled first SCOTS LP paired with the debut EP (something some enterprising bootleggers did in the late ‘90s when copies of the original vinyl were going for hundreds of dollars on eBay), and possibly a box set of rarities and archival recordings, a prospect that should make longtime fans salivate with anticipation. Yours truly has cassettes containing hours of unreleased demos from back in the day, and Miller confirms those are likely targets for release, along with material culled from the various eras and incarnations of SCOTS. “Like a lot of bands that have been around as long as us, we’re digging up all kinds of stuff. And not only that, after five, seven, 10 years, the rights to a lot of your stuff reverts back to the band. That has happened now with the Geffen stuff; it’s happened with the TVT stuff. So we can rerecord any of that, or actually use some of the versions that were on there.” �As the interview winds down, I pose Miller one last question, something I’m fond of asking musicians: A guys walks into a graveyard 20, 50 years from now and sees a tombstone with the words “Here lies Southern Culture On The Skids…” What does the rest of the epitaph read? �Miller, not missing a beat, replies firmly, “No chicken, no show.” shuf10 ��.��27

3NO

� �� , Winter ﬁnds us music critics trotting out our Best Of yearend lists for music fans to hate on, simultaneously assuring you that this year’s crop was certainly better/worse than the previous year’s godawful/ brilliant output. The records, though, should speak for themselves. �And among our voters — 15 Shuffle contributors and select guests (see below) — they did. More than 150 (!) separate Carolinas-based recordings were nominated. They were as varied as the two states’ terrain and people, from hardcore and harsh electronica to old-time music and modern Americana, from skewed indie rock and hip-hop to good old-fashioned power pop and a gaggle of styles in between. Even accounting for the weight of exposure, the cream rose quickly. So, here for your delectation are Shuffle’s Top 25 recordings of 2010.

The Electorate: Editor in Chief John Schacht, Assistant Editor Bryan Reed, regular contributors Fred Mills (also Blurt’s esteemed Managing Editor), Rick Cornell, Jordan Lawrence, Corbie Hill, Chris Parker, Topher Manilla, Ryan Snyder, William Morris, Jesse Steichen, Chris Toenes, and friends Courtney Devores of The Charlotte Observer, Jeff Hahne of Creative Loaﬁng, and David Stringer of SceneSC.com.

3GD !DRS ,TRHB Southern Culture On

The Skids The Kudzu Ranch (Kudzu Ranch) More songs about rural buildings and food, plus a so-unlikely-it-wasinevitable mashup of Nirvana and Pink Floyd, sleekly and sexily selfproduced.

Shit Horse

They Shit Horses, Don’t They? (Odessa) Despite the band’s penchant for secrecy, this eight-song tape bursts with confounding, bluesdriven psych-garage nuggets too great to go unnoticed.

Overmountain Men

Glorious Day (Ramseur) Avett Brothers bassist Bob Crawford lamented David Childers’ semiretirement, so he formed the band to showcase the songwriter’s hasn’tmissed-a-beat rootsmusic chops.

Tender Fruit

Flotsam & Krill (selfreleased) Mostly written four years ago during the relationship that resulted in Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago, Christy Smith’s debut ﬁlls in the story with beautifully cathartic indie folk.

The Houston Brothers

The Archer (Chocolate Lab) Charlotte’s brothers Faircloth return to their compelling two-piece conﬁguration and turn out a reinvigorated set of luminous and wistful pop tunes.

14�� 25��

Carolina Chocolate

Drops Genuine Negro Jig (Nonesuch) A pop cover (“Hit ’Em Up Style”) and a haunting original (“Kissin’ and Cussin’ ”) reveal new possibilities for the oldtime resurrectionists.

Wild Wild Geese

Sorry, Earth (Odessa) Vintage 90s indie guitar rock a la Built to Spill, Dinosaur Jr., et al., delivered fresh and fecund without a trace of cloying nostalgia.

Last Year’s Men

Sunny Down Snuff (Churchkey) The succinct, ultracaffeinated garage rock offered here is both a conﬁdent, retro-leaning joyride and one of the year’s ﬁnest debuts.

Sin Ropas

Holy Broken (Shrug) More infernal blues, haunted hill music and narco-rock from this under-appreciated Marshall duo, constructed with a quiver of homemade gew-gaws.

Wesley Wolfe

Storage (self-released) Turning life's lemons into delightfully tart alt-rock lemonade, Wolfe's second LP is a gourmet brew of hooky, cynical 90s-style indie rock.

Various Artists

Gastonia Gallop: Cotton Mill Songs & Hillbilly Blues 1927-1931 (Old Hat) Unearthed recordings from until-now anonymous musicians delivering truly authentic sincerity, cathartic humor and timeless ‘work sucks’ sing-alongs.

The Beast & Nnenna

Freelon Freedom Suite (selfreleased) The goal was to explore the borders of jazz and hip-hop. The result is playful, academic, enjoyable and enlightening. Mission accomplished.

Double Negative

Daydreamnation (Sorry State) Best living hardcore band? Probably. Daydreamnation’s a white-hot, sputtering grease ﬁre of unrelenting, distinctly artful hardcore fury.

The Parting Gifts

Strychnine Dandelion (In The Red) Greg Cartwright and Coco Hames have some serious chemistry on this welcome and carefree fusion of rockabilly, soul, country and blues-rock.

Chatham County Line

Wildwood (Yep Roc) Continuing to push their sound beyond bluegrass instrumentation (hello, drums!), and deeper into folk and pop, proves rewarding for the roots veterans.

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Toro Y Moi — Causers of This (Carpark) Indeed, Toro Y Moi’s breakout LP brims with a sense of longing, built upon murky, psychedelic haze, and heat-stroked endlesssummer pacing. But calling it chillwave isn’t entirely accurate. Chaz Bundick doesn’t hide his songs in synthetic smears, and his clear infatuation with dance music and R&B drives this effort beyond mere fad-piece.

Grids — Kansas (Made In Kansas) Charlotte noiselords’ second LP of 2010 is also their ﬁnest musical moment, boasting bold, weighty production from Harvey Milk’s Kyle Spence. But more than the enhanced depthof-sound captured on this platter, Grids assembles a serving of hardcore-fueled noise rock that never neglects hooks or structure in the name of squall.

In The Year Of The Pig — Jamón (Holidays For Quince) Five songs. Sixty minutes. You do the math. There’s nothing small or quiet or polite about In The Year Of The Pig, but the monumental music they’ve captured here — a massive construction of Kraut-rock deliberation, doom-metal pacing and heft, and noise-rock energy — carves deep grooves and upwelling momentum for an unforgettable ride. The result drives bodies and minds in equal measure

Stephen Warwick — Talking Machine (self-released) Each of the 10 songs on this dreamily arranged gem sound like they’re ﬂoating in the amber of shifting musical eras. Charlotte native Warwick and his Secondhand Stories players tap into dust bowl balladry, carnival music, 60s Dylan, late-90s Elliot Smith and judicious electronica elements, among others, blending them together so organically that all eras unite under one timeless banner: Solid songwriting.

Foreign Exchange — Authenticity (Foreign Exchange Music) With typically deft production from Dutch-born/Wilmingtonbased Nicolay, and Phonte continuing to croon instead of rap, the duo transitions further into sophisticated R&B on its third record. Via shifting, skittering beats both organic and processed, warm synth textures and Phonte’s liquid-smooth vocals, Authenticity doesn’t just transcend the genre’s tropes, it creates its own beautiful language by incorporating electronica and even twang.

‡

&TDRS +HRSR

��CAITLIN CARY ��(The Small Ponds/Tres Chicas/Whiskeytown) ƌɊJon Lindsay, Escape From Plaza-Midwood ƌɊThe Dirty Little Heaters, Champions of Imperfection ƌɊThe Tomahawks, Cut Loose ƌɊThe Old Ceremony, Tender Age ƌɊFilthybird, Songs for Other People

��ROB DAVIS ��(GRIDS) ��7" ƌɊPissed Jeans - "Sam Kinison Woman” b/w “L Word" ƌɊThe Shitty Limits - "Last Orders” b/w “Selling Point" ƌɊHarlem - "LSD Saves” b/w “Mood Rings" ƌɊNaked Gods / Invisible Hand - split ƌɊUnnatural Helpers "Sunshine/Pretty Girls" ��LP ƌɊThe Men - Immaculada ƌɊPollution - Smut ƌɊDouble Negative Daydreamnation ƌɊGun Outﬁt - Possession Sound ƌɊMasshysteri - Masshysteri

‡ ��.��15

&TDRS +HRSR (Cont’d)

��GRAHAM HIGH* ��(Museum Mouth) ƌɊCaribou, Swim ƌɊTitus Andronicus, The Monitor ƌɊThe Measure, Notes ƌɊLos Campesinos!, Romance is Boring ƌɊThe Arcade Fire, The Suburbs *with help from Karl Kuehn, also of Museum Mouth

��W. HEYWARD SIMS ��(Death Becomes Even The Maiden) ƌɊSleigh Bells, Treats ƌɊRatatat, LP 4 ƌɊLCD Soundsystem, This Is Happening ƌɊCrystal Castles, Crystal Castles ƌɊHoly Fuck, Latin

Hiss Golden Messenger - Root Work: Live WFMU 2009 (Heaven & Earth Magic) The daydream folk songs Hiss Golden Messenger captured in this mostly-live recording offer laid-back riddim, soft psychedelics and avant-jazz ﬂourishes that never overwhelm the gentle currents of the music. There’s a distinct feeling of the outdoors in the band’s warm-breeze momentum and inﬁnitely, if subtly, textured arrangements.

Superchunk - Majesty Shredding (Merge) Hiatus, schmiatus. Sounding nearly as energized as they did during their early 90s heyday, Mac McCaughan and crew tear through the ﬁrst ‘chunk record in nearly a decade like piss-andvinegar 40-is-the-new-20-somethings. But add a frisson of wellaged angst to these urgent rails against Father Time — 40 may not be what it used to be, but it’s still heading in the wrong direction.

Black Congo NC - Live In Miami 1984 (FrequeNC) BCNC exists as an interstate entity these days, but prior to this year their woodshed recordings embodied the joyous, multi-culti blender mix of the ensemble’s music (just like the title hints at their humorous streak): Afrobeats and benga guitar, ﬁeld recording loops and jazz sax skronk, rock crescendos and ambient stretches, and portable narratives that suit any musical setting.

The Love Language - Libraries (Merge) Unlike the disheveled party crasher-songs lurching through Stu McLamb’s lush but lo-ﬁ debut, Libraries’ soulful ballads and romance rockers are gussied up with swooning strings and resplendent layers of guitars, keys and percussion, transforming them into the seductive tools of a practiced song-Casanova. We gratefully succumb, and though everybody winds up heartwrecked, song-salve like this makes the ache worthwhile.

��AMI WORTHEN �(Mad Tea Party) ƌɊJar-e, Blood of the Summer ƌɊSonny & the Sunsets, Tomorrow is Alright ƌɊThe Parting Gifts, Strychnine Dandelion ƌɊPaleface, One Big Party ƌɊToubab Krewe, TK2

16�� 25��

Megafaun Heretofore (Hometapes)

��, ��’� �� , but we are not alone; Heretofore earned Top 10 spots in nine of our voter’s lists. Written in a week and recorded during a brief break in their increasingly busy and far-ranging bookings, the Triangle trio both sharpened their focus and expanded their sonic purview with this 34-minute mini-LP. Concise country rock (“Volunteers”) and breezy folk pop singalongs (“Carolina Days”) serve as straightahead foils to the digital alchemy adorning the insistent title cut riff, the free-form skronk flurries of “Eagles,” and the improvisational centerpiece “Comprovisation for Connor Pass.” One element too often overlooked in all the superlatives for their genre-bending sound are the trio’s fine lyrics, blending the concrete and ethereal into striking images like this “Bonnie’s Song” stanza: "Set it on fire/ let it float away/ everything burns the same/ so take your time/ (the ocean breaks and bends/ the ashes all ascend)”. So, yeah, the complete package. But what Megafaun does here transcends the band’s sonic playground; by honoring its adventurous instincts, Megafaun has proven that Carolinas’ roots music can keep absorbing rare or new elements, and continue expanding its seminal legacy.

".-"$13 " +$-# 1

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Lucinda Williams at The Orange Peel Murs at Local 506 Southern Culture On The Skids with Mad

Hammer No More The Fingers album

Tea Party at Grey Eagle Polvo at Kings Barcade Steve Reich & Kronos Quartet at Page Auditorium The Adicts at Tremont Music Hall Overmountain Men at Snug Harbor Town Mountain CD release party at Grey Eagle Agalloch with Worm Ouroboros at Kings Barcade DeVotchKa at The Orange Peel Trentemøller at The Orange Peel Moon Duo at Kings Barcade Wild Flag with Grass Widow at Grey Eagle The Funeral Pyre with The Secret and Young And In The Way at The Milestone Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings at Music Farm Årabrot with Wizard Riﬂe at Kings Barcade The Fleshtones at Snug Harbor Weedeater with Zoroaster at Ground Zero Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour at Kings Barcade The Fleshtones at Local 506 Jessica Lea Mayﬁeld with Daniel Martin Moore at Grey Eagle Sebadoh at Cat’s Cradle J Roddy Walston and the Business at Kings Barcade The Cave Singers with Lia Ices at Kings Barcade Mike Watt + The Missingmen at Local 506 Tombs with Wormrot at The Milestone The Cave Singers with Lia Ices at Grey Eagle

4 Calendar ��

release party at Motorco The Pains of Being Pure At Heart at Cat’s Cradle The Black Angels at Grey Eagle Silber Records 15-Year Anniversary Showcase at Nightlight Eugene Chadbourne with Tatsuya Nakatani at Nightlight Explosions in the Sky with the Octopus Project at Amos’ Southend Warpaint with PVT at Kings Barcade Bare Wires at Nightlight Destroyer with The War on Drugs and Surf City at Grey Eagle Black Lips with Vivian Girls at Cat’s Cradle Destroyer with The War On Drugs at Cat’s Cradle The Mountain Goats with Megafaun at Cat’s Cradle Mount Kimbie at Grey Eagle The Skull Defects + Daniel Higgs (of Lungﬁsh) with In The Year Of The Pig at Nightlight The Avett Brothers at Bojangles’ Coliseum J Masics with Kurt Vile & The Violators at Grey Eagle Rotting Christ at Volume 11 Tavern The Mountain Goats with Megafaun at Grey Eagle J Masics with Kurt Vile & The Violators at Cat’s Cradle Rotting Christ at Tremont Music Hall Wanda Jackson at Local 506 The Greenhornes with Pinche Gringo at Kings Barcade Taj Mahal Trio at The Orange Peel Old 97s with Teddy Thompson at Visulite Theater Mount Moriah album release party at Cat’s Cradle

Toro Y Moi at Local 506 Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting

Paraiso UFO at Local 506

Hunx & His Punx with Shannon & The

Clams at The Milestone

Hunx & His Punx with Shannon & The

Clams at Duke Coffeehouse

British Sea Power with A Classic Education

at Cat’s Cradle

Yacht at Cat’s Cradle LAKE at Duke Coffeehouse The Fresh & Onlys with Crocodiles at

Kings Barcade

Iron & Wine with the Low Anthem at Amos’

Southend

Peter Bjorn & John at Cat’s Cradle

, 8

Pinback at Cat’s Cradle Interpol with School of Seven Bells at The

Interpol with School of Seven Bells at Cat’s

Young Widows, My Disco, and Yardwork at

Sleigh Bells with CSS at the Orange Peel The Twilight Singers with Margo & the

Fillmore Cradle

The Milestone

Nuclear So and So’s at Cat’s Cradle

Coliseum, Gods & Queens, Young and

in the Way and Pig Mountain at The Milestone Ted Leo (solo) with Pujol at Local 506 The Flaming Lips at The Fillmore Gruff Rhys with NIWL at Local 506

Greg Cartwright of Reigning Sound at Shuffle Issue #10 party at Visulite Theater, Charlotte. Photo by Patrick Willett

INSTRUCTIVE OBSTRUCTIONS

Andrew Weathers learns about his own music in working with CJ Boyd

By Brian Howe

� �� 2000�, �� auteur Lars von Trier approached his hero, Jørgen Leth, with a daunting proposition. Leth would remake his own 1967 short “The Perfect Human” five times, obeying von Trier’s increasingly diabolical rules, which were designed to pull Leth out of his comfort zone and cause him to make a “bad film.” The result was The Five Obstructions, which blended scenes of von Trier and Leth discussing the obstructions with the products of Leth’s efforts. The experiment built toward an epiphany on von Trier’s part, not Leth’s, who remained unchanged. The Devil tempted God and learned his lesson. �In 2010, the itinerant experimental bass player CJ Boyd started a new cassette/download series called Over My Obstructions, where two musicians who know each others’ work intimately make a split album where they give each other five rules. The first number in the series, This Voice Saying These Words, came out late last year, with Boyd squaring off against the Greensborobased electro-acoustic composer Andrew Weathers. Released as a split by Boyd’s Obsolete Media Objects and Weathers’ Full Spectrum Records, the concept doesn’t dilute the music — as in the case of von Trier and Leth, the artist remains himself. �“CJ tends to mull things over for a long time,” Weathers recently told Shuffle at Caffé Driade in Chapel Hill. “I met him right at the beginning of the Forever Tour in 2008.” (The Forever Tour involves Boyd living on the road in his converted

24 Obstructions ��

ambulance.) “We played together in Ohio, when he was on his way to Denver to get his ‘jambulance’ converted to veggie oil.” After that, Boyd often came through Greensboro, where Weathers is now in his ﬁnal semester of the Music Composition program at UNC-G. Boyd often saw Weathers perform at his house. “He saw me do some things decently and struggle with others,” Weathers said, “and I think he felt like he had a good grasp of how I make music.” He invited Weathers to begin the Over My Obstructions series with him. �To give someone “obstructions” is essentially to call out what you perceive as their clichés. Did it sting? “It was like, ‘Oh man, that’s hard!’” Weathers assented. “I don’t want to make a record that’s only one-quarter guitar; I play guitar! But another part of you realizes that maybe you are dependent on that thing you do.” �Weathers barred Boyd from using ostinato, because much of his music is loop-based. He tends to make long pieces, so he couldn’t make anything over ﬁve minutes. His upright bass had to be played arco, i.e. bowed, two-thirds of the time, because Boyd often plays pizzicato. One track had to use no musical instruments, and one had to be atonal. “I don’t know how I feel about he got around that,” Weathers mused. “He has a minute with a drum beat and a spoken vocal sample” — atonal, certainly, but more in line with the letter of the law than the spirit. At any rate, Boyd’s side is immediately striking, evoking a more corporeal Arthur Russell. �Weathers, whose music relies heavily on processed guitars,

Illustration by Taylor Williams

got around the guitar restriction by playing more mandolin and banjo; the latter an instrument he’d only picked up recently. He conjures a vast variety of timbres, from synths that sound like woodwinds to a bowed banjo that sounds like a hurdy-gurdy. He had to cover a song he strongly dislikes, which explains the Moldy Peaches-sounding version of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” that opens the record so incongruously. A cover of Allison Krauss’ “I Go Down to the River to Pray” was mistaken by one reviewer for the hated track, but Weathers loves that one. He has interesting and decisive tastes—surprisingly, he dislikes Philip Glass, ﬁnding him “overwrought and romantic.” �Weathers was required to make one long piece of music, because he tends to “separate things more,” and he had to employ

“He saw me do some things decently and struggle with others,” Weathers said, “and I think he felt like he had a good grasp of how I make music.” —Andrew Weathers some fugal elements, which presented the biggest challenge for a composer who relies so heavily on long tones. “You have to do transpositions in a fugue,” he explained, “and that sound doesn’t work for me because my music is all about stasis. I tried to counter that by having a synth drone under the fugal elements in the banjo, to keep them in the same place.” �But the obstruction that was most productive for Weathers was

having to base a part directly off a recording of someone else’s work. He had traditionally been averse to covers and samples, but had been opening up to them in recent years. He put a transducer on the headstock of an openly tuned guitar so that recorded sound could be played through it, and transformed D.O.A.’s cover of “Folsom Prison Blues” into a highly Weathers-esque ringing. “I think that’s where I really succeed in following the rules without making it boring,” he said. An album of punk “covers” for his new transducer-guitar technique is forthcoming from Blondena Music. Weathers’ style here, which blends folk elements with electronic drones, is a far cry from his old sound. His early music as Pacific Before Tiger, made in his late teens when he was just beginning to study music in Greensboro, focused on pure tone to an uncompromising degree. It was the ambient musician Belong that initially weaned him off rock, leading him to discover key Minimalist influences like Steve Reich, John Cage, and Morton Feldman, whose music he is currently arranging for guitar. “Belong sounded like one big chord to me,” he said, “and so I wouldn’t allow myself anything more than that.” �But Weathers also likes pop music, and has developed a keen interest in folk in recent years. “A lot of guys at school,” he said, “won’t blend what they like with what they make. They love Dave Matthews but sound like Mozart.” Weathers is learning to let pop and folk elements into his “grave austerity,” a process that this collaboration has sped along. A forthcoming record by the Andrew Weathers Ensemble, We’re Not Cautious, features mutated pop songs. “It’s really about trying to synthesize everything that comes through me now,” Weathers said. “I used to filter my music heavily — ‘I like all this stuff, but these two things, I want you to know that I like.’ Now, I want everything.” shuf11

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Charlotteʼs long-running surf rock heroes return with another big set of vintage originals

BY JOHN SCHACHT

�� , �� has surf rock. Now in their 15th year, Charlotte’s Aqualads were inspired by the first wave, a tad too young for the second, rode in with the third, and may stand on the crest of a fourth with their latest, and best, recording Treasures. �The original surf music grew out of raw-edged 50s rock and rockabilly, riding innovations pioneered by guitar-maker Leo Fender as well as the nation’s early-60s infatuation with all things Southern California. The British Invasion returned it to cult status in short order, as mop-tops were easier to procure than surf for kids in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. The music stayed underground until a brief resurgence constituted the second wave in the early 80s. �And then came Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction in 1994. The film featured Dick Dale and His Del-Tones’ snarling classic “Miserlou” in the soundtrack’s starring role, as well as a handful of other tracks from surf progenitors The Lively Ones, The Centurions, The Revels and The Tornadoes. All those first wavers helped spark the third wave, one that embraced bands as diverse as the wrestler-masked mystery men of Los Straitjackets, the space-age surf of Man or Astro-Man?, and the vintage sounds of the Aqualads. �Shortly after the third wave caught traction, two future Aqualads — bassist Jimmy King and guitarist Jeremy DeHart — first met haggling over old school surf LPs at a Charlotte vinyl show. “Jimmy asked me if I was going to buy them,” 24��

Photo by Wiley Stewart

DeHart laughs, “but I had to go to an ATM for money and then wound up getting lunch. By the time I got back, he’d bought them out from under me.” �DeHart went to see King and an early incarnation of his surf band play that same night — he also brought blank tapes to record the LPs he’d missed out on. King told him they weren’t any good, just sessions-musicians knock-offs typical of the era when labels tried to capitalize on the music’s national profile. But DeHart’s web-designing skills led to another meeting at King’s crib and an informal jam session a few months later. By the end of the day King had asked DeHart to join the band as its bassist. �King formed the Aqualads almost by accident. He’d recently moved back to Charlotte in 1996 from Arizona where he’d played in a rockabilly band, and was trying to put something similar together here. But King couldn’t find any good singers, and he and his bandmates — playing under the name the Big Swinging Hammers at first — began writing and playing instrumentals. �A series of lineup changes and instrument-switches followed while the Aqualads released their first three records, 1999’s Hot Box, 2000’s Revenge and 2004’s Surf! Surf! Surf! The current four-piece — King (now on bass), guitarists DeHart and Walsh, and drummer Darrell Ussery — has been together since 2007, and Treasures reflects the band’s tight interplay as never before. �Recorded at the Kudzu Ranch studio of Southern Culture on the Skids’ Rick Miller (no stranger to surf guitar licks himself), the 11 cuts hit most of vintage surf music’s

“ There are a lot of really good bands in each different wave, but we always come back to the ﬁrst stuff.” —JEREMY DEHART

touchstones: Single-note hot-rod flurries (“Snake Eyes”), Spaghetti Western dramatics (“El Borracho”), sinister big wave-noir (“Washout”), middle Eastern exotica (“Whirling Dervish”) and islands-sunset ballads (“Crystal Cove”). �What distinguishes the Aqualads from most of their era’s peers is a concerted effort to remain true to the darker, staccato-andreverb sound of Dale and the other first first wavers. Many of the Aqualads’ contemporaries wound up drifting into other trends or incorporating other genres — a practice that goes back to first wave acts like The Bel-Airs and The Ventures, who, for instance, converted popular songs or TV themes to the surf sound. �“There are a lot of really good bands in each different wave, but we always come back to the first stuff,” DeHart says of the “cleansounding guitars and amplifiers” that characterize the early sound. “The music really came from high school kids in Orange County going out surfing and then coming home and plugging in and trying to recreate that whole feeling.” �Treasures may be notable for its wide range of songs within the genre, but the knock on surf music has always been that it’s a limited sound-palette. DeHart cites The Lively Ones as an example of the “one dimension, one facet” sound. But that, he says, can be misleading, especially when you consider that that was the rap against bands like the Ramones, too. “There’s so much depth in the amount of recordings they have, but they really have one single angle that they’re shooting for,” he says. �King admits to being “sick of playing” standards like “Walk, Don’t Run” or “Pipeline,” but concedes that sometimes they have to because that’s their market. Likewise, DeHart says playing “Wipeout” and the other classics can get “pretty dreadfully boring.” That’s one reason King actually prefers the Aqualads to

be an opener rather than top billing — “Graduating to being a headliner was somewhat difficult because it does get a little bit monotonous,” he says. “I’d rather just play short, fast sets.” �The straightforward nature of the music shouldn’t fool anybody into thinking it’s easy. Like the sport that birthed the music, it’s nowhere near as easy as it looks. It may not require Yngwie Malmsteen chops, DeHart says (it also doesn’t suck to listen to), but melody-based instrumental music presents its own difficulties. Carrying a lyrical line on guitar is rarely done in bands with singers, so precision is essential no matter how fast-paced the tempo — “If you don’t, there’s nothing going on,” DeHart says. The two-guitar line-up — the Aqualads did a stint as a three-guitar line-up for a while — allows for shared melody lines. �“I like the interplay back and forth,” DeHart says. “The more complicated that is, the more enjoyable I ﬁnd it. There are a lot of songs where one guy carries the entire top line, the other plays rhythm, and it all boils down to the dynamics of your attack for the entire band backing that person up. There have been times when I’ve been out there trying to play the lead and feeling like, ‘C’mon guys, I need some help here, I’m out here all by myself.’ But that’s what practice is for, I guess.” �Whatever they’re doing, it’s been working solidly for 15 years and shows no signs of abating. The song “Dangerous Curves” from Surf! Surf! Surf! was featured in nine-time world champion surfer Kelly Slater’s recent IMAX ﬁlm, Ultimate Wave Tahiti, and the Aqualads remain poised at the forefront of another surf music swell. At a summer-themed, multi-band bill two summers ago, the band tore through a 30-minute set — Walsh and DeHart trading licks and lightning-speed runs while King and Ussery pummeled the tempo — that left the uninitiated younger crowd singing their praises afterward. In today’s retro-everything world, that could just be the fourth wave looming on the horizon. �“Everything goes in waves, no pun intended, but right now we’re as popular as we’ve ever been,” King says. shuf12 ��.��25