Vinyl Tap Spring 2019

Spring 2019

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Foreword:

Vinyl Tap is back, and this time it’s back for good.

After a few years of inconsistent publishing and some semesters of hiatus, this issue marks a year since the magazine’s resurgence, and we’ve been busy. In that time our staff has almost tripled, we’ve put out two issues, and we’ve had our first change in regime (Thanks, Eric!). 2018 also marked 100 years of women at William & Mary. White women, that is. We felt it fitting to expand upon this, and seek out those too often overlooked and unheard in this edition. Many of the features within explore the musical, artistic, and cultural products of underrepresented communities. And, of course, it wouldn’t be Vinyl Tap without a campus band feature, would it?

Working with this team, from our design guys, to our incredible and freshly increased art staff, to all of our writers was a dream. They have poured a lot of love into the making of this magazine, along with many hours spent within the confines of Reeder Media Center. We hope you enjoy the end-result, and if not, don’t worry. Vinyl Tap’s got a long future ahead.

- Tori McCaffrey Editor-in-Chief

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Tori McCaffrey

Stacia Phalen

David Lefkowitz

Caroline Gates

Josie Adolf

Jack Stewart

Corey Bridges

Laura Reitze

Collin Ginsburg

Emily Morrow

Emma Shahin

Mary Hannah Grier 5

WCWM Presents: Mitski 8 Even Mitski drinks Sadler Coffee!

What’s the Deal With the Female Bassist? 14 Start Listening to Your Videogames 18 Sarah Baldwin implores you to listen as you play

A Conversation with Talk to Plants 26 Won’t You Sing for Me? 38

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A Different Perspective 11 Alijah Webb discusses her work in art curation

The 21st Century Women’s Guitar Revolution 16

GorpoPap & Escapism (?) 19 Collin Ginsburg interviews Gorpopap

Big (

Inclusive) Bands 36

Album Reviews 39 Our staff sings the praises & bemoans the shortcomings of some of Spring’s most notable releases

The Dandy Warhols 40 Julia Jacklin 42 Weezer 43 Townes Van Zandt 44 Lady Lamb 45 7

wcwm presents

MITSKI Words & Art by Stacia Phalen

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The first time I heard Mitski play was in her Tiny Desk Concert on the NPR Music YouTube channel. I was watching video after video of suggested artists as a means of procrastinating my freshman year. Hers stood out. I remember watching her scream into the pickup of her guitar at the end of Class of ‘13 and just looping that part of the video over and over again. I fell in love with her sound, her songwriting, and the sense of humor that pervades her twitter. I saw her play a couple of times, always having openers I either loved already or who blew me away. That was how I found out about Japanese Breakfast and Jay Som and how I saw Mal Devisa play live.

Every time I saw her, I hoped she would play Class of ‘13, the song that hooked me from the start and got me through my freshman year—but she never did. And then this year, my last year of college after a number of jumps, and starts, and stops I landed at William & Mary, and WCWM landed a Mitski gig. And Mitski played Class of ‘13. And she screamed into her pickup.

People started lining up outside of the Commonwealth Auditorium in the Sadler Center well before doors opened. The Radio Directors who had organized the show had been there since noon.

The doors opened at seven for a seven thirty start of the opener, Angelica Garcia, an LA-born Richmond local signed to Warner Bros. Records. She is a one-woman band, looping and layering her own voice into tracks ranging from haunting to danceable with a mix of classic ranchero tracks sprinkled throughout. Her sound is a rich new imagining of Americana music—and one that rings true to the current times. She turns her voice into a symphony, filling the room, at times lulling you so deeply into the tones of her voice, that her lyrics cutting through the soundscape snap you back. Her lyrics weave tales of displacement, grounding, and a personal mythology blending folklore and family heritage. It is incredible to watch as she builds her tracks, layer by layer before the audience, only picking up an instrument once through the whole performance. I think everyone was surprised by her, it seemed like a simple set up. Just one woman on a stage, but she stands there alone in white go-go boots and creates a band for herself. And it is triumphant.

As Garcia’s set ended and she began to break

down her equipment, my friend sitting next to me whispered, “Mitski has some big shoes to fill.”

But of course, she did.

Mitski walked out on stage with a brilliant blue acoustic guitar and a Sadler to-go cup, much to the delight of the student body. Whispers about Mitski also drinking out of Sadler compostable cups filled the room, it seems all anyone could do to suppress a “one of us” chant. And then she began to play, the first notes of Francis Forever cast-

My friend sitting next to me whispered, “Mitski has some big shoes to fill.” But of course, she did. ing an excited silence over the sold-out crowd.

She played an intimate and spare acoustic set mixing her best-known hits with deeper cuts from her three most recent records, Bury Me at Makeout Creek, Puberty 2, and Be the Cowboy. Her most recent, Be the Cowboy sat at the top of a number of prestigious “Best of the Year” lists from Pitchfork to NPR Music and landed a track on almost every Vinyl Tap staff member’s most played songs of 2018.

Between songs, Mitski cracked jokes, talked about breaking her carefully crafted anonymity in her year at George Mason University to sing “I Will Always Love You” at a talent show, and gave a heartfelt message of encouragement, that anyone can play music--regardless of their talent or knowledge. She took the stage with a guitar, an instrument she isn’t trained to play, tuned it like a bass, and played her heart out. Though the show was seated, and a solo, acoustic performance at that, it was hard to resist dancing.

Mitski’s music is infectious in its anger, its joy, or its sorrow. She told the crowd before she began to play “Your Best American Girl,” that now was the time to karaoke--and while not many did, those who sang along did so with the joy and the anger that song deserves. And it was met with an uproar of applause.

Mitski closed her set with Class of 2013, off her 2013 release Retired from Sad, New Career in Business recorded in her senior year of college.

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It had a question mark next to it on her setlist as if it almost did not make the cut until it happened.

If it hadn’t, “My Body is Made of Crushed Little Stars,” a snarling sub-two-minute track to scream along to, would have been her closer and I don’t think anyone would have been disappointed.

Class of 2013 was recorded with her voice and piano, a simple track, yet a touching one. Strings swell up in the mix for just a moment as a raspiness comes over her voice as she sings, “Mom, would you wash my back?/This once, and then we can forget/And I’ll leave what I’m chasing/ For the other girls to pursue.” She replicates that subtle swell of the strings in a solo performance by singing into the pickup of her guitar. The strings resonate sympathetically with her voice and create this incredible sound that is neither really amplification or instrumentation, but that surrounds her voice and shakes it ever so slightly to give it the quality of something wounded seeking comfort. She sings about the unsureness of the world in that place after graduation, and I think most of the room could feel that feeling staring them down.

And with that, the show ended. The last note played out, Mitski thanked the crowd, gathered her guitar and pedals, and walked off stage to an uproar of applause.

She sings about the unsureness of the world in that place after graduation, and I think most of the room could feel that feeling staring them down.

Angelica Garcia’s Medicine for Birds is out on Warner Bros. Records now, and she has a second record on the way.

Mitski’s Be the Cowboy is out now on Dead Oceans.

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An Alternative Perspective: Alijah Webb’s Work in Curation

Words by Emily Morrow & Emma Shahin Photos by Stacia Phalen

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We sat down with Alijah Webb on a rainy Friday afternoon in the radio station of William and Mary to talk about her recent curatorial works. She is a Junior at the College, double majoring in Art History and Anthropology. Currently, she is working on several curatorial projects both in Williamsburg and Roanoke, VA. Her interests include increased visibility of under-represented demographics in the art communities specific to the location of the shows she has a hand in. This is what she had to say:

What is the name of your upcoming installation?

So the name is actually in flux right now, it’s like a working title. It’s Still Lifes, Dream Analysis, and the Black Woman’s Gaze but we are considering shortening it, and just figuring out what we want to do Awesome. How did you pick this idea that you are deciding on still?

So since I am an independent curator who’s very much just starting, I don’t have a lot of say in the projects I get involved in because it is just sort of like me begging to be involved. But I think I have been very lucky in that I have been able to curate exhibitions I really care about. The first one I curated was called Phosphine: Pushing for a More Inclusive Roanoke and it was at studio center and gallery in Roanoke, and I was very particular in the artists that I chose to be included because its like a small southern city, so the art scene is mostly dominated by old white dudes and so I was like “Hmm… let’s fix this”. The exhibition that I am curating now I got involved with because it’s actually a show that my best friend was putting together already but no one was curating it. She was actually working with the gallery independently, and I was like “Oh, well I can just noodle my way in here.” And so I think I am very lucky to have been in the right place at the right time and able to be like “I want to get in on this!”

Do you have any personal connection to this theme?

I think that definitely the personal connection is more with the artist, but it’s something that resonates with me. I think that one of the most important things is that Céline [the artist, Céline Aziza Kaldas Anderson] and I are doing with this exhibition is that we’re trying to get the community involved because, again, Roanoke’s art scene is very white and old. There are lots of old men, so we’re trying to make it more inclusive and bring more people of color into art spaces.

We have an open mic aspect, and then we’re also asking different black female poets to come and read at the event. We’re really just trying to make way, and that, I think, is the most personal connection I have. Its through curating and making space.

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Cool, so it’s kind of like paving a path for the future?

Yeah, yeah.

Awesome. Are there any core emotions you would associate with this theme? How are these portrayed through the art?

I think that something that Céline and I talked about a lot is creating an experience of sort of, I don’t want to say discomfort, but I can’t think of a better word.

She’s really passionate about having installations of the objects in the still life being featured in different places in the gallery, and so she wants to have, like, curlers hanging from the walls and other things everywhere to engage with the dream analysis part, which is cool. I guess if there were key words, I think they would definitely be identity and what it means to live in the intersection of being black and being a woman in a rural city. I think that those are the core ideas of the theme, if not the core emotions.

So when it comes art, would you say that there are some motifs or some techniques that she uses in several of her pieces that allude to the same idea?

I think that what she does that’s my favorite thing is when she collages her own image into the paintings because it makes them so much more intimate and so much more personal. I think that the most common motif throughout all of the pieces is obviously the still life, but I think that the way that she interprets still life makes it innovative and different and really engaging with the audience. That’s probably the most striking theme throughout all of the works; how personal they are.

Yeah, that sounds cool. Are you guys… so this is happening at the Muscarelle right?

Oh, this is… the Muscarelle is a class. That’s a class exhibition. I can talk about that, too?

Yes please do!

That one is for, it’s like an art history course that’s called the curatorial project, and so its 17 students and we are all supposed to be curators. So we are broken up into four teams. It’s like the orange team, the purple team, the green team, and the blue team.

We’re following the guidelines of the COLL300 theme which is ceremony, and so, within that we came up with our own subthemes. So one group’s is ceremonial repetition, and the other group is looking at colors and like what they mean, and there is another group that is looking at like cycles as in like death and endings as beginnings, and my group is looking at how smaller, internal domestic ceremonies can be considered in a bigger context. We’re looking at religion in the home, what it means to exist in the domestic setting. We have two mother and child etchings by Picasso and a mother and child, like a photograph of a mother breastfeeding by Andy Warhol which is cool.

It’s like dream analysis and still life so she like inverts the idea of what a still life has to be, and then like super imposes her own image onto still life scenes.

That’s awesome. So the other project you are working on, where is that one taking place?

So the other one is in Roanoke, Virginia at the Leminol Station Gallery.

And that’s coming out this summer?

Yeah! It should be fun! June 7th!

Cool! So for each of the projects you are working on, do you have any favorite pieces?

Um, so, I feel like it is hard to talk about them without showing them. But the artist, Céline, has all these incredible pieces she has been working on. She is a senior at Swarthmore. It’s like dream analysis and still life so she like inverts the idea of what a still life has to be, and then like super imposes her own image onto still life scenes. It’s very cool, I don’t know if I can describe it or give it justice. She hasn’t named them yet, so its hard to refer to them.

What has been the biggest challenge for you working on this exhibition?

I think that the hardest part is that both Céline and I are in school and so it’s difficult to find time to really think about the show that we are putting together.

The hardest part has definitely been finding the best way to communicate while giving each other space to focus on other things while not losing focus on our larger goal.

This is more of a general question, but would you say that a good piece of art and a good song impact their audience in the same way?

So, I think that it’s all about the intent of the artist, and so I think that some music, just like art, is meant to make the viewer feel happy and chill. If you look at a landscape, you’re like “oh, nice, beautiful,” but if you look at Keith Haring or Basquiat, you’re like “oof, wow, social commentary,” which is the same as if you’re listening to a politically-charged artist.

Like Childish Gambino maybe?

Yeah exactly; like if you’re listening to “This is America,” it’s the same thing. I think that it depends on the artist’s intent and what the person consuming the art and music wants to get out of it.

Yeah, it’s cool to think about music and art being paired because, together, they provide both the auditory and visual aspects of expression.

Yeah.

I’m interested; if you were to come up with a song to represent the collection, what are a few songs you would add?

Ooh okay, that’s a cool question. I think that F.U.B.U

by Solange Knowles is probably a good song to encapsulate what this exhibition is wanting to impart.

But that’s pretty cool, you guys are getting like brand new, really cutting edge stuff.

Yeah, I’m really excited!

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Words by Hallie Feinman Art by Laura Reitze

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In January I went to the Panic! concert with my partner. We sat in the nosebleeds, and could only see the apron. We had a clear view of Brendon Urie from above, but occasionally the musicians would walk out and create a visually striking formation. In the opening number “(Fuck a) Silver Lining,” Brendon, his bassist, and his guitarist went into a triangle formation. When the bassist walked onto the apron, I saw the man in front of us scoff, turning to his girlfriend: “Of course it’s a female bassist.”

What the hell does that mean?

I was not aware of “the female bassist” before, but since it’s been brought to my attention I’ve been obsessed. While scrolling through my Insta feed, it hit me like a truck: Reductress Headline “How To Play Bass So Well You Become A Female Bassist.” Boom. Twice in one week, I was hit, I just had to find out what was going on.

I know bassists. I know females. I know females who play the bass. But the “female bassist” is something more--there is a je ne c’est quoi factor to the mythic “female bassist.” The same factor manic pixie dream girls possess. But what it is I cannot say.

When you search “female bassist” in the Google Search Engine, you are met with listicles upon listicles of “the _____ best Female Bassists.” If you click the top result, the opening paragraph of the article confesses the author’s love of the female bassist. “There is nothing sexier than a female on the bass.” The author then cites the “hotness” factor as part of his consideration. Scrolling down, you cannot even get past the first entry before being hit with a poll asking “Do you find female bassists sexy?” 95% said yes.

Almost all of the other articles I found read similarly. Plenty of articles focused on the bassist’s visuals, whether that be in the way they dress or the “bass face” they make--some focusing on the “o” face a little too much (a cheap entendre, perhaps?) These gals are defined, not by their own musical achievements, but who they play with-for the most part, male musicians. Sometimes the opening paragraph says something about how female bassists are some of the best bassists around, regular or otherwise. If they’re so good, why are they being labeled with this “other” misnomer? Why not just “a bassist?”

Maybe I’m jaded. After all, this issue should be celebrating the achievements of female musicians, including the bassists! But something about “Of course it’s a female bassist” rubs me the wrong way. Maybe I’m focusing on the wrong aspects.

Maybe I read 2009 Phoenix News’ “Why Do Hot Chicks Always Play Bass and Why Do I Love Them So Much.”

“There is a je ne c’est quoi factor to the mythic “female bassist.” The same factor manic pixie dream girls possess. But what it is I cannot say.”

This Op-Ed ties up all the things wrong with “the female bassist” in a neat little bow. Using context clues, one quickly figures out the article is written by a 40-year-old man obsessing over someone at least 15 years his junior. To the author, female bassists are sexy, kinky even--watching a woman play the bass has the same effect as watching a woman ride a Harley or shoot a gun. Being a female bassist isn’t about being a woman and playing the bass--it’s about the sex factor.

The female bassist is simultaneously defined by how “different” she is from other girls, but also only acknowledged in context of her womanhood. Not a woman. A female. Calling her a “woman” acknowledges the fact she’s a person, and not someone’s sexual fantasy.

So when I think back to that concert and the disgruntled patron so pissed off at hiring a “female bassist,” he is looking at her as someone pandering to please the audience. She is improving the band’s aesthetics--the aesthetics of being hot. It doesn’t matter that she was hired over the hundreds of other musicians she outplayed or the years of training that got her a job playing for an international tour.

To them, she is just a female bassist. Who cares how well she plays?

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The 21st Century Women’s Guitar Revolution Words by Corey Bridges Art by Mia Mifsud For more than half a century, the electric guitar has been one of the most iconic and commonly utilized instruments in popular music across the globe. However, it is also an instrument notorious for being disproportionately male-dominated in its player base. When the average person thinks of a guitar player in their heads, they normally just think of a thin white man with long hair playing the same boring scales that have been played millions of times over. For so long, the idea of who could be a guitar player has been so limited that it seemed hopeless for the instrument to see any meaningful evolution or stylistic variety that would keep people interested in hearing it in popular music. That’s why a recent Fender study that found that 50% of new guitar buyers are women and girls is catching the attention of music fans and industry professionals alike.

In reaction to this survey, music writers and fans have been scrambling to investigate the cause for this recent surge in guitar buying by women and girls. Some have theorized that this is the direct result of the ‘Taylor Swift Effect’ which is self-explanatory, but is best summarized as more girls are picking up guitar because of the success that Taylor Swift has had over the past decade. While this theory may have some merit, it stands on the assumption that a great variety of women coming from different backgrounds with often contrasting musical tastes are only starting to play because of a single pop star who hasn’t really played much guitar over the past few years. This new 50% number is likely a lot more complicated and better attributed to a larger cultural shift that has been decades in the making.

First, girls are not inherently less interested in playing guitar than boys. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a legendary singer and electric guitar pioneer whose career spanned throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Her style would inspire the likes of later rock and roll legends like Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Johnny Cash. However, all four of these musicians are remembered for their accomplishments with greater appreciation than that of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She was extremely successful during her career and pioneered techniques that would decades later be popularized by men. She was finally inducted posthumously into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, a lot later than many of the names that would use her 16

style to become iconic figures in the history of the electric guitar.

Much of the reason why women and girls were so underrepresented in the guitar playing community is because of a culture of superiority and gatekeeping built up by male guitar players over the decades. An important factor mentioned in the Fender study was that a large portion of the guitar purchases made by women were through online avenues rather than traditional in store purchases. Anyone who has ever been to a guitar center can probably guess why new players would be more in favor of shopping through a website as opposed to a store. From the cranked up and distorted amps, the sense of self-righteousness, the appearance of being a boys only club, the environment of music stores like guitar center doesn’t foster an atmosphere conducive to getting new players to start playing. Women especially, who have had trouble being taken seriously as musicians for so long, are the biggest victims of this hyper masculine guitar culture. Online stores have just given women and girls a more comfortable place to pursue the guitar on their own terms.

The decline in guitar-driven music’s popularity in mainstream spheres has also opened up opportunities for women to flourish and further bring their own perspective to the instrument. Some of the best and most creative guitar players in contemporary music happen to be women. Critically acclaimed artists like St. Vincent, Snail Mail, Lucy Dacus, and Mitski have all dominated the traditionally male-centric indie scene. Young players like Yvette Young of Covet, Melanie Faye of viral internet fame, and 2018 Young Guitarist of the Year finalist Abigail Zachko are all great examples of guitar players with virtuosic talent and are leading the way in dispelling the myth that women are inherently less capable of playing the guitar than men.

A lot has been said by people in the music industry about how the guitar is becoming ‘less cool’ or is falling out of favor in the popular music landscape. Maybe this is because it’s become outdated in a soundscape that’s increasingly becoming more digital. Maybe it’s because the genres where the guitar has historically flourished have been overtaken by others with more appeal to a younger audience. Or maybe the evolution of the guitar has been stunted because the men who have held the reigns on the creative development of the instrument for so long have refused to let go of old habits. Whatever the case may be, it should be exciting to see what the current and future generation of women do with the guitar and its place in popular music.

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Start Listening to Your Videogames

Words by Sarah Baldwin

Who had more listens in the closing months of 2018: Ariana Grande or Hideki Sakamoto? One has sold nearly one million copies. The other has sold over 10 million copies just two months after its release, breaking world records for their genre.

The answer? Sakamoto wins with 12.6 million units sold, but it’s not for an album. He wrote the theme song for Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, the hit video game for the Nintendo Switch. Like most theme songs, it centers on a catchy melody that is instantly recognizable– walk into a room with any of the game’s millions of owners and they’ll know what you’re singing. Perhaps it didn’t have as many listens as one of Ariana’s pop songs–and we’ll never know if it did–but the fact is, people are still shelling out money for video games and the music that comes with them. This type of exchange is very rare in a world where streaming has become the main method of media consumption. Game music finds itself in a weird place– not highly acclaimed enough to be deemed “art music” (music that is composed with higher, intentional levels of thought), nor is it considered to be popular music.

If you’ve played any video game in your life, you understand that melody is pivotal part of the game. From the very beginning with Pacman to the modern Smash Brothers game, the music in a video game helps to convey the human experience of new worlds and imagination that attracts gamers in the first place. Like in the study of classical or so called “art music,” dialing up the intensity while listening to SSBU’s main theme exposes some unique features. There’s a Seinfeld-onspeed bassline that punches along with the brass’ main melody. There’s a lofty section where the bass drops out and you can hear some of the higher tones that are otherwise lost in the density of the music. It’s not just an 8-bit ditty that comes from the speakers of your GameBoy (no hate to Mario, though)– there is deeper intention behind the track, one which mimics that of classical music and cinematic scores.

And this is just one game. There are plenty more original video game soundtracks, and beyond that, even more genres of music in gaming. Much like the music world itself, gaming music boasts an overwhelmingly vast and rich variety of sonic pleasures. There’s the whimsical pop of the Katamari series, the minimalist electronic ambient of Minecraft, the epic and pensive orchestral songs of the Elder Scrolls, the rapid techno beats of Castle Crashers, the bouncy 8-bit originals of Nintendo, and the lamenting folk tunes of Braid, to name a few of my personal favorites.

Much like classical music, there’s also a caring community built around the genre. It hasn’t reached the level of scholars or academic study yet, but there’s an entire internet faction that publishes this music on YouTube for those who want to hear it. This is important because like classical music in the days of yore, 18

video game theme scores are otherwise incredibly inaccessible. There are a few recent bursts of light in the darkness: Skyrim, Minecraft, and Katamari Damacy all have records that are at least available for purchase, if not streamable on Spotify or Apple Music. But the most popular games oftentimes have soundtracks that you can only hear by actually playing the game. Streaming or buying music, you won’t find soundtracks for the Sims, Wii Sports, Pokémon or Mario games.

If you’ve played any video game in your life, you understand that melody is pivotal part of the game.

Despite its similarities, gaming music bears one stark difference from classical music: its recognition. Video game scores are taken for granted and not acknowledged as its own artform separate from the game.

Without it, the players’ virtual worlds would be an emotionless, sensation-deprived computer wasteland.

The music of games is an essential element, and when isolated from it, create similar nostalgic, emotional and thought-provoking reactions to its classical counterparts. Sometimes the tunes even have a bouncing rhythm and attention-grabbing melody like many pop songs, so they hold up on that front too.

If you grew up gaming like I did, it’s heartbreaking to realize that the sounds of your childhood are trapped in their games forever, or that they could get wiped from the internet at any moment due to copyright infringement. If my words here have had any impact, I hope after reading this, you will go on YouTube, look up the soundtrack of your favorite video game, and give it a listen. These are masterpieces meant to accompany and embody a whole new level of imagination in the fictional worlds of games. And they’re so underappreciated.

At its core, gaming music is art music. As a category of sound, it grabs musical elements from all ends of the genre spectrum and creates new worlds. Why do film scores get their own sections at the Grammys and Oscars, but videogames receive no such honor?

Popular musicians, like Willie Nelson and his exclusive track for Red Dead Redemption 2, are starting to get on board with the significance of gaming. With the rising popularity of streaming and video game competitions, I believe this music will soon get its long overdue renaissance.

) ? ( m s i p a c s E GorpoPap & rgurg inusb GinGsb ollin ColClin by by os ot os h P ot h & P w & ie ds rv or te In W

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One sunny day on the roof of the Stairwells house, I sat down with GorpoPap (Cameron Small) to chat about the project. Knowing her initially as the producer and drummer for my own project Gnu Reunion, I was curious to investigate her solo ventures: those strange electric sounds that keep coming down Philadelphia. I found that behind the sounds, there were diverse genre influences, a critical engagement with gender identity, meticulous production, and, of course, a deep understanding of groove.

Quick background: What is GorpoPap? What’s the idea behind the project? And what’s behind the name?

Cam: The name is actually pretty nonsense. How you ever played Quiplash or Jackbox games on your phone? It’s basically Apples to Apples, but you write your own answers to these questions.

My name for the nicknames was always GorpoPap. I just came up with it and it doesn’t have a whole lot of meaning. It’s pretty alien sounding and I guess my music is pretty alien sounding. So it’s that kind of vibe. I was listening to a lot of Sun Ra at the time and I was into the idea of a weird name. And that was in the summer of 2017.

Me: The same summer you, Sam, and I were working on the Gnu Reunion album.

Cam: Yep, and I was working initially with ProTools and it was going okay, but then I got Ableton and it slowly came together. I started listening to more House music and I got really into making that kind of hybrid stuff.

So it’s always been electronic? Sound-wise and compositionally?

I guess some songs started on guitar, but pretty early it was drum machine and synth-based music.

When was the first gig under that moniker?

April 2018, a while after, because at first I didn’t think I was going to perform these songs, because I didn’t really know how I would.

Had you done any solo stuff before this?

I was always just a drummer. And I messed around on guitar. But I was never really able to write with the guitar, only a few songs I really liked. It was always supposed to be electronic, and a solo thing. But writing songs in Ableton, I was never thinking about performing them as I was writing them, so it was daunting. But then, I was like it would be fun to try to perform them live, so I figured it out.

So when it’s live you use a laptop and a sampler?

So the laptop does a lot of the backing track stuff, and it’s mostly me singing over that. Then I got the sampler there to add effects. And I got a whole bunch of pedals and a mixer so I can do a lot with my voice. Delay, feedback, ect.

Do you have it where you can trigger a new section of the song?

No, I mainly use the DJ controller so I can fade between songs, it’s mainly stems I sing over. But I’m moving toward more analog outside-of-thebox type things. I’m trying to jam more with it. At the end of the day, I just want the synth sounds and the flow of the set to be as good as possible.

Also, it’s better if I feel free to engage with the audience during the set, rather than having my head in all my gear.

Yeah, that’s a inherent difficulty in electronic music, the audience engagement aspect and the human aspect.

Yeah, I’m not very good at talking to the audience between songs, but I try to focus on the eye contact and being more myself up there.

Your latest release is GorpoPap: a lush, danceable album, but not devoid of intimacy and angst. Why a self-titled release at this point? Do you feel ‘Gorpopap’ the project has reached a level of actualization since the last release?

For me, the last EP was really an exploration of songwriting. I’ve been trying to write songs since the 11th grade and wasn’t very good at it. But once I started using Ableton, I could really use it as an easel and map things out. Adding different

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parts and working with it over time. It gave me a new way to write. With this new album, I polished what I was doing before.

So you’d say this album is both an improvement in technique and in songwriting.

Yeah, and I think my singing has gotten better.

I still like the songs from Escapism, but the new album is just a better product. As I was making this new stuff, I was molding in my head what the Gorpopap sound was.

So much of your music is danceable, or at least contains an Animal Collective-like emphasis on heavier percussion, which for one, is an obvious reflection of your drumming background ...what draws you to this kind of music?

Definitely being a drummer, and doing drumline, you get a sense of all the different rhythms going on at once, how it’s all one thing but you think about it separately. So I’ve really applied that kind of thinking to how I use drum machines.

I think also hearing rhythms like that really moves your body, and it makes me really want to move, and not necessarily dance in a structured way.

When I listen to techno, you kinda move your body and sway with the rhythm. It’s just a very fun experience.

I’m trying to use that engagement to then bring people to listen to the words I’m saying and to really connect emotionally with it. A lot of my music now is definitely centered towards a live kind of thing. I think live music is a great way to differentiate yourself, but today anyone can upload something to soundcloud, but not everyone can put on a really stunning show. And that’s really what I shoot for.

It’s especially hard with electronic music, there are so many people out there basically doing karaoke.

My sets can definitely be like that sometimes, but I try to make it more of an expression tool of me being able to go up there and really let loose and release some good or bad feelings I’m having at the time.

Dance music is really intertwined with the idea of escapism, you were obviously were getting at that with your last release. That’s obviously not the title of this newest release, so how does dance factor into this new album’s concept? Is it still about escapism?

I think so. A lot of my music is about me being emotional, this new album deals a lot with relationships I’ve had. I dated three people last year.

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A lot of it is about my gender and coming to terms with who I am. And I think the dancing is a way to not feel like I’m here and I can close my eyes and just move and feel like I’m somewhere else. And to not think about all the things going on my life. And go to a party to just have fun and let loose. It’s a way to feel okay with being out of place. Just feeling weird and being okay with that.

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man may get confused. Or to make people think about their own place in this world. We communicate a lot by what we wear. I’ve been thinking about it a lot more as I’ve come out as trans and I’m trying to think about how I want people to perceive me and how I want others to think about me. I think most people don’t think about how others want to see them as much and I think once you start it becomes kind of tasking, but also kind of freeing.

Related to the identity aspect, You use a lot of masks and non-conforming clothing in your visuals and performances. Can you speak about presentation and how this may relate to issues of gender?

Related to this, as a queer artist, how has it been performing and navigating the Philly’s various scenes? I know you’ve had to deal with a lot of bad emo venues.

When I was first wearing that mask, it wasn’t my idea. My friend Raana takes a lot of pictures of people wearing masks, she’s the one who took the picture for both of my album covers. When you put on the mask, your identity is hidden and you can let loose. And it lets you pose more and get more into the photos. So for me, it was a way to not have people know who’s behind the mask, who’s singing these songs. You don’t know their gender. I wanted to be androgynous. Also, I really like wearing dresses now, partially because I feel more comfortable in those situations, but I also like to dress up and feel a little extra and maybe just different and eye catching. To make people think I look extraordinary. Particularly with the dresses, people who think I’m a

Rock music in general is a pretty dominating force in most cities I’ve been to except LA and NYC. But I have this nice tight-knit group of trans performers here in Philly. And we’ve been performing together recently, and it’s fun because with them, we’re very down and supportive of each other. Maybe there’s not many people in that basement but we all have a good time and I think the problem now is we don’t have any way to go further than we are. Getting venue spots, in particular. I was asked to play gigs, and I was asked whether I wanted to open for indie rock acts or hip hop acts. And I’m like “I feel like both wouldn’t really like my music.” So it’s tough, there’s not a lot of space for it. Philly is a very well accepting city, very liberal and lots of

queer events all over. I definitely notice it when I come back to Northern Virginia, and go to District Taco and feel everyone staring at me. I’m like “Wow, I haven’t felt like this in a while.” It’s definitely tough. If I was a regular rock band, I could go on the Philly DIY, and everyday there are people who need a rock band to fill a spot at the Pharmacy or wherever. Of course, there’s the token “electronic nights” at various venues... every three or four months. And I push hard to get on those, but there’s only so many spots…

It sounds like you are making a scene for yourself, at least.

Yes definitely. My friend Aidan makes music as Chava and her music is similar to mine but a bit more bubblegum pop-influenced. It’s really fun to be able to play with these other people who I think are into it. With each show I play, I have more people who come up to me and say it was really cool. It’s just hard to get a platform and bigger names and publications to spread the music.

I’m more interested in being a producer than an engineer at this point.

It is also fun to be an engineer for session where you’ve got killer musicians. You hit play and they’re ripping. Your job is to make them sound as good as possible, as opposed to fixing all their mistakes.

Who are some artists that really excite you right now?

Jaquan Andrews! *Haha* My three biggest inspirations in general are Animal Collective, Bjork, and LA Vampires. All their music is very electronic and different from what you might think electronic might be. Using dance aesthetics but then using it to make pop. That’s just GorpoPap in a nutshell. As for new artists, Deli Girls, which is some industrial sounding no wave music. Also Black MIDI, they’re just my favorite rock band right now, really making me excited about rock music again.

And you’re seeing Avey Tare tomorrow?

Another tough thing is that the production company called R5 which does all the cool shows, they got Black MIDI and John Maus, Guerilla Toss. But they really focus on the bigger acts outside of the city and don’t really work with locals. They would work on getting openers but the problem is a lot of these acts have people touring with them who are opening.

I’ve seen you as both an artist (as GorpoPap), and a technician (as my producer, as a student, as a intern in LA). How do you balance these two roles?

To be honest, I’m pretty bad at it. If I could, I’d spend most of my time making my own music. I do really like engineering. I really like producing too. This last term I did this cool project where I worked with this guy Slokey who I’m actually playing drums with for this performance. It was fun working with him to fully flesh out these songs and kind of write them fully. I don’t know, I guess for me, I’m not great at balancing it, but I try to do as much as I can in every direction. I’m trying to mix more stuff. I wanna work with more specific solo artists and give them a cooler sound.

Yeah! I’m really excited about that, I’m gonna give him a tape and be like “Hey man…”

What’s next for GorpoPap? More shows. I’m really just trying to play as much as possible. Spread the music I have out now. I think I have good base of music right now, enough for more fans. And keep making new music. There’s a lot of directions I could in, I’ve been messing around with acoustic guitars. Maybe do a short, 20-minute album of weird acoustic music. I’m also working more outside my computer and being more jammy with my music and less structured.

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A Conversation With Talk to Plants Words by Caroline Gates & Tori McCaffrey Photos by Iris Wu

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Talk to Plants comprises Samir Talaware, Collin Ginsburg, Ben Chase, Ben Fox, and Sam Wiles, all graduating this year. They invited us to their house, offering us vegan stir fry and thai tea. The lighting was so strangely good.

Hear drumming in the background; it’s the sound of a stick and hand hitting a chair and pot(?).

Ben Fox: We would like to be quoted that we are official sponsors of MSG. Caroline: Let’s go around and say full names and instruments.

Sam: So, I’m Samuel Walters Wiles; Walters comes from my mom’s maiden name. I play keyboard. I tickle the ivories. And guitar in one featured track.

Ben C: My name is Benjamin Chase and in this circle I’m known as Chen. I play guitar and I sing. And I do some trippy production stuff.

Ben F: I am Ben Fox. In this circle, I am referred to as Fen because it gets confusing when there are multiple Bens.

I play acoustic guitar and I sing and I’m in an acapella group, so when we record I do lots of layered vocal harmonies as well. I’m in the Stairwells, if you wanna drop that name.

Caroline: I’ll drop it, don’t you worry.

Collin: My name is Collin...Ginsburg.

Ben F: Didn’t know whether you were gonna drop that last name in there or not.

[Collective laugh] Collin: I play bass in the group. I mean, I compose sometimes on piano and guitar, but I play bass, mainly.

S: And I am Samir Sudhir Tawalare. And I play the drums, and various percussive implements; sometimes it’s cajon and shaker, sometimes it’s a drum set. I yell a lot when we play live and sometimes on the recordings.

Caroline: Have y’all all been together since freshman year?

Collective: Yeah.

Caroline: So what got you together?

Ben F: So, the Free Beer Musicians Collective was a weekly gathering of musicians where we would descend upon 203 Nelson Avenue at 5 pm -- it was called the Brewery -- pretty much every Friday with our instruments, and Aaron Stapel and his lovely crew of followers and cronies would make stew for us and we would drink beer and play music and just hang out all night. And that’s what we did every weekend pretty much.

Samir: I never once went to Free Beer.

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find the most talented, awesome people that he jammed with at Free Beer and bring them back to Monroe and we would just jam. And he would sequentially -- he brought Fen and then Collin and then Sam. And it was like, “Oh, wow! There’s a whole world out there!”

Ben F: It started out where it was just acoustic guitars with cajon, and then we had a bassist, and then we found a miraculous keyboard player.

Ben C: I will add to Samir’s thing, that he does joyous screams and shouts.

Sam: Well, he mentioned shouts, just left out the “joyous.”

Caroline: When you’re putting together the song what are inspirations that y’all tend to draw from?

Sam: I don’t know if we want to print that.

[Collective laughs] Caroline: You don’t have to!

Sam: Life experiences, sometimes, they’re not always about something in particular...a lot of them become sort of free-form-Samir: --esoteric-Sam: --stream of consciousness Sam: I think there’s one song we have, “Up For Nothing,” that we approached the lyric-writing content with just the words, “space opera,” and that’s my only recollection.

Ben F: There’s one lyrical section in there, and it’s about aimlessly floating through space in the event that humans left the earth and were trying to colonize other planets, but then their warp drive failed them or something like that.

And it’s just like, “Oh shit, what do we do?” That exact moment.

Caroline: You guys met freshman year, via various means, so when did you guys sit down and say, “Yeah, wow, this?

Talk to Plants!”

Ben C: So we started playing music together and that happened at the very beginning. And then -- Samir I don’t know if you know when our first Lodge 1 show was -- but I heard about signing up for Homebrews and so we did it and that was our first show. So it is just the act of signing up for something that makes you realize you have to be a “thing,” at which point we became Talk to Plants.

Samir: That was really Chen, who signed up. If you go to any Homebrew and see the groups who play the show they all put down some name, and so I think that’s just kind of what it was at that moment. Chen just put us down as Talk to Plants, but it stuck.

Ben F: It really stuck! It just happened to be a really cool name out of nowhere.

Ben F: Samir doesn’t like Free Beer!

Sam: I just feel like that’s a really interesting reversal of roles where it’s more a name that we grew into.

Samir: No, no, I was just very nervous as a Freshman. So, basically, I stayed nice and comfy and cozy in Swem and Monroe and Chen was the envoy that would go out and

Samir: I never really thought about that before: how that might have shaped our sound or at least our perceptions of our sound.

[Collective “mmm!”]

Samir: There was a moment! I think I was kinda jaded.

I played music in high school and stuff, and I came into school very hesitant to throw out the “let’s jam” thing because you really end up on different playing fields with people. I think I was nervous with Chen; I didn’t know what level he was at. And so that “lets jam” sometimes...you never know. I remember with Chen, one of the first things he played for me was actually “Religion,” which is the last song on our first album and so from the beginning original material was there! And that crazy for me, that was when I knew, sort of like, “Holy shit!” This is a generative kind of thing that will grow and expand, not even just the sound but in terms of the people we all met, in terms of these five people. I mean, I had no connection to these five people, except Chen, until their networks brought them together and us together.

Caroline: How have you guys progressed as a group since your joining together, but also how have you progressed as individuals -- beyond and including music?

Ben F: Our song writing style has definitely progressed, [it] has definitely become more cooperative, in terms of instrumentals and lyrics as we’ve matured as a band. Yes. Ben C: I think more generally, our music and what music we are creating over time has become more progressive, more...open to a broader range of influences, colors, sounds, and production processes, so that’s been cool.

Ben F: He’s also gotten a lot more guitar pedals as the years have gone on so he can create increasingly trippy soundscapes.

Samir: I do think that we’ve developed individually as well, in the sense that -- I think we’ve all taken paths throughout our lives, musically, [and] especially in college it just gets accelerated because you’re exposed to a lot more. If it’s fortunate in the sense that you get to explore it with four other people who are really driven and into it, you really do go down different paths and discover more. For example, I think Collin’s song writing has opened up so much -- like, at the beginning, I didn’t even know he wrote songs and now he’s written some of my favorite songs to play.

Collin: I didn’t even play in a band -- this is my first band.

I picked up bass again after senior year of high school.

Samir: You see everyone’s development reflected in the music. And it’s been particularly interesting because we’ve been playing songs that we’ve been playing since the very beginning and those have also grown with our own individual growths. So, it’s been cool to see how those songs and the ways we play them live have transformed in the two years since they’ve been written.

Ben F: In addition to that, generally being exposed to lots of different music within the community. We have gone to the Meridian a lot, and the four of us (excluding Samir) are on Meridian staff as well, Chen and I have done events management and events booking for a while so we got to communicate with other bands and really, like, hear a lot of varied music. And then also, at least for me, being in an 29

acapella group and getting all of that -- that constant vocal practice and improvement has been really helpful because it’s hard to sing for an hour straight in a set unless it’s really tuned. I’ve gotten a lot better since freshman year with all that constant practice.

Ben C: Samir, how many Homebrews have you played?

What’s the number?

Samir: Oh, just getting to play with other -- with singer songwriters, with solo musicians…

Ben C: What’s the number?

[Collective laugh] Samir: I think it’s 26.

Ben C: Ok, so Samir has played 26 Homebrews-Collin: Is that including us?

Samir: Yes, that’s including Talk to Plants.

Ben C: So in talking about this whole “personal development” thing, just imagine in that time that Samir has spent quickly and adaptively meeting with somebody, learning a song in like five minutes, and like, “alright, let’s go up there and do it and have an awesome time.”

Samir: Yeah, it’s been very good for musical dexterity, and I think it’s just improved my improvising skills and my listening skills. And again, its transferrable, so then when we all get together it changes the way I hear and listen and all that.

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Caroline: So, when I think campus band, in my head I usually think of, “Oh, this is a singular band they practice in and of themselves, and go out in and of themselves.”

But, like, do you -- what you guys just described as you are all in your own little communities that you sometimes share, you interact on so many different levels creatively with those other people and then it comes back and makes TTP. Do you think that is more reflective of what a campus band actually is?

Collin: I think absolutely, yeah. I think it depends on our time period because we were more insular at times…

Sam: Something we’ve talked about before -- and i don’t know if this is necessarily unique to William & Mary -- is that there’s not really much sense of competition among campus bands, it’s always been very cooperative and collaborative. It feels -- at least from my perception -- that we all support one another, which is just really nice. And I think that helps everyone grow and take advantage of the spaces we have to offer and the resources. And it’s also just so much fun to play with musicians on campus whether they’re bands that have been around for awhile or a single person trying to play an open mic.

Samir: I like the idea of not having a singular vision or definition of something, so like when we think campus band -- not necessarily thinking of one thing and allowing it to be open to totally different permutations or combinations or however it finds itself. I think there are very concrete ways that we are a campus band -- the drums are recorded in Swem media center music studios in the basement; we met

here, all of that. But then also: we play on campus, we put our stickers up, we have friends on campus that support us, and then we’re all college aged as well. So I think there’s layers to the definition where if you ask any campus band they’re gonna have different ways of interacting with that.

Tori: Where’s your guys favorite place you’ve performed and why?

Ben F: So this campus has a pretty rich history of campus bands, you’ve got Car Seat Headrest, Gold Connections, lots of bands popping up out of the Meridian, but what I’ve been told is that when we first started in Freshman year, and started playing out more there weren’t as many bands that were super active, and so just the presence of a campus band that was playing a lot made other people more interested in and willing to start their own music. So now we’ve gone through a series -- over the years there have been so many more campus bands that have popped up, we have a really vibrant music scene still. Not to say that Talk to Plants necessarily did that, but the drive to make music as individual groups definitely becomes more prominent when there are groups already doing it.

Samir: Oh man, I knew somebody was gonna say it.

Samir: It feels like that fresh energy. We were playing with the Pyramidians, Say Your Name -- these older bands.

I think it really was -- they were playing shows, playing great music, and then to see a group of freshmen come in playing great shows -- I think it really was mirrored inspiration. We saw these bands doing it at the Meridian, house shows, whatever, got to open for them. And then I think it was really cool for them to see like, “Oh shit, yeah that’s freshmen and sophomores going at it. The music scene is alive here.” So it was really cool to share shows with them where we all kinda fed off of one another.

Caroline: If you were a plant, what plant would you be?

Sam: I think I would be...a ficus.

Tori: That’s a hardy plant.

Ben F: Industrial hemp, like the kind of hemp that you use to make rope and clothes and stuff. That stuff is crazy, it will grow so quickly and you can make anything out of it.

I don’t know if that is necessarily me, but I would love to be that versatile.

Caroline: Solid answer.

Samir: I’ll stick with tiger lily. I love tiger lillies, they’re so beautiful and they grow in my front yard sometimes. I love when they come out.

Ben C: I have always been drawn to the naturally occurring bonsai tree, that’s on a cliff or top of a mountain...and many years of weather have fucked it up but it’s still kind of like resilient and warped but still cool for what it is.

Ben F: The whole process is crazy, you’re just like strangling a plant so it becomes mature while not growing Collin: I’d be a stalk of wheat.

Tori: Aren’t you gluten free?

Ben F: No, I’m gluten free.

Collin: I love bread, it feeds the country.

[Collective “oooh, woooow”] Sam: Whytestone Ben F: The Whytestone Creative Outcrop, and where was it? In College Park, Maryland.

Collin: I wouldn’t say that’s my favorite...

Ben F: Answer for yourself!

Ben F: It’s totally crazy, we’re on our spring tour in our sophomore year, we drive up to this place and immediately we are greeted with, like, flamethrowers and just people doing various pyrotechnic things outside.

Collin: It was a total neo-hippie commune Ben C: it was a five story barn that’s like converted into essentially a commune, on the wall is the tenets of burning man and they were like...super by that. All the people who lived there were wearing red berets and FUR coats.

Caroline: What time of year is this?

Collective: This is during spring, March.

Ben C: So that was pretty interesting and weird. There was a dog too.

Collin: The place we played it was like a basement room, wasn’t it all carpeted?

Ben C: It was mattresses, blankets, couches, neon lights.

Ben F: Like an opium den...very low light and like smoke and incense and just...people doing lots of weird drugs.

The guys who went on before us were named Mikey Mayo and Plead the Filth. They were a satirical rap duo from Philadelphia.

Ben C: If I remember, one or two of them together went by the name of Xan Man & the Incredible Plug….so that’s a long tangent off of that question. But nothing is as home-y as playing the Meridian that’s like super super felt and i think that every time we’ve played the matoaka amphitheater that’s felt like really really special and it has meant a lot to us each time we’re there Samir: Yeah we got to play WCWM Fest twice and that’s been really nice.

Collin: Chasefest, it’s always good.

Ben F: Chasefest is the creative project of Ben Chase and Blake Ruby and Tyler Drager they’re all friends from high school and it’s a music festival put on every year Samir: In Ben’s backyard!

Ben C: It’s homey, it’s community, and essentially all the bands who play are people you have personal connections with Samir: Like, the community aspect of being a campus band also in that sense extends, and Chen brought a lot of that because of that community that he came in with, of really talented musicians, but they have become our friends too in this really beautiful way where like Chen has kind of shared their friendship with all of us and y’know Blake is mixing our album right now. And it’s...there’s a trust, 31

reliance, mutual...like we’re here for you, and it feels really nice. For me, one of my favorite venues….we played New Jersey on the spring break tour sophomore year and we played the Meat Locker, which is this awesome place in Montclair and it’s pretty famous. So we played that venue and one of my math teachers and tennis coaches came out [Mr Awas] one of my best friends in the world, Matt Beer came out and my parents came out. Now that night, it was like a Wednesday night show and there were maybe six other people at this show Samir: but just the fact of getting to play in my state with a group of people who I had never met prior to 2015 and then getting to share that with some people who really mean a lot to me was divine.

Ben C: Just to interrupt, to make an important clarification.

This place, the Meat Locker, actually used to be a meat locker. Um, and I just wanted that to be clear.

Ben F: It’s basically converted into a subterranean metal cave.

Collin: And each meat locker is a practice room.

Samir: Like they still have the sealing freezer doors.

Ben F: All the walls are covered in black paint and then stickers. All the bands stickers you could ever imagine are in there. It didn’t feel necessarily dirty. [laughs all around] Ben F: It didn’t like smell that bad or anything compared to some basements, it didn’t have like grime or anything, I mean...it probably gets bad in the summer. But it had this very strange aura of like lots of things died here...you could feel that. But that also was probably intentional with the aesthetic of the place...like there are meat hooks and stuff.

manifest what we have heard in our heads when we have been playing these songs Ben C: So in a lot of ways it feels really wholesome for us to all be about to graduate [from] our undergraduate experience whatever and be able to like release this package that is super intertwined with our experience while we’ve been here and while we’ve been like together living in the same houses and apartments and things like that.

Samir: It’s especially interesting because drums have been recorded for this album for a year. We recorded the drums in December of 2017, so our junior end of fall semester, during finals and it’s significant that Fen Chen and Sam all went abroad last spring. So there was a really long period of time where we did no work on this album. The drums were done and recorded, we kept the files on our drive, and then they were in Tanzania, Fen was in St. Andrews, Sam was in Chile. Collin and I were here and we were experimenting together, playing a bunch of stuff, just jamming bass and drums. And that changed our way of communicating musically...just kind of our ideas and then we all came back and people were at all different levels of re-entering Williamsburg society and it was really like we had to re-familiarize ourselves with one another again.

It was alienating at times and it was “Oh my god I missed this person and I feel really far away from them,” but also it’s really revealing and nice because I feel a lot closer to them after this experience. So it felt really nice to revisit this album once we had become acquainted again and gotten back into the swing of things where we’re able to approach this album with a really refined set of eyes and ears and souls and allowed that to then speak through in the ways that we’ve taken the album since the drums have been recorded.

Ben C: that was wonderful. I love ya.

Samir: I love you too

Caroline: So since y’all brought it up...album?

Ben F: We just released a single.

Caroline: Yeah, I liked it! I’m not just saying that because I’m in front of you, I actually liked it

Samir: This is the question!

Collin: Yeah, it’s an iphone photo.

Ben F: So we know that Samir will be here next year, because he’s pursuing his fifth year masters of education.

Um, because he’s a badass. And, Sam is probably going to be here next year.

Tori: Really?!

Samir: At least working at William & Mary I think.

Samir: Not even the new iPhone, I think it was the iPhone 6s he took that on.

Ben F: Not like completely, solidified yet. I will be living and working in Richmond for a year.

Ben F: So we don’t have a set release date for the album yet, we’re still mixing it...still communicating with the aforementioned Blake Ruby, who is also incredibly talented musician you should totally check out his music because he is awesome. From us you can expect an album somewhere down the line and potentially another single at some point.

Collin: Someone give me a job.

Samir: Thank you! Collin did the album art, took the photograph

Ben C: But it’ll be more or less around the time that we graduate and I think to speak a little bit about the meaning of the album, not its actual thematic meaning but what it means to us, is essentially -- we’ve been like creating and working on and playing songs for at least two plus years now...and it has been a long process of trying to like fully 32

Tori: so, what I have written down is “plans for future, arrow, how do you feel about that?”

Ben F: I’m gonna give Collin a job and he’s gonna live and work in Richmond as well. And what are you doing?

Ben C: Um, I kind of had a plan for a little while to move to Nashville. It gives me more internal conflict in recent weeks and months as the rest of the gang has kind of solidified their intent to be local...not necessarily intent but all their own personal plans line up in that way. So that’s something I have to navigate. Regardless of how anything ends up happening, between each and every one of us in all the different ways that there are connections there will be endless future collaborations, there will be shows that

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still happen, there will be things still created, and — Ben F: So, like, Ben’s band from highschool Red Couch they’re integral to ChaseFest every year. Ben plays with Talk To Plants, here, while he’s at school but when he goes back there’s a Red Couch set always at Chasefest. So I envision..I mean, eventually, probably life is going to pull us in different directions. Um, but we’ll always have that moment of ChaseFest & be like “Oh yeah, we’ll come back and play a TTP set,” because like we said we’ve been playing these same songs for a really long time. We’ve been working on these for a really long while so I will never forget how to play these songs, and I don’t think any of us will either. So it’ll just be fifteen years down the road we just pop back up and play through our set once and it’s good, we’re good to go onstage.

Ben C: I think generally though, I for sure wanna do music for the rest of my life and I want to somehow get employment through it whether that’s personal or in something else. It is in some ways restrictive geographically but there are powers of the internet and there are powers of the waves and phases we go through in our lives. I know Samir wants to play music for the rest of his life and wants to play drums for a long time so I know Collin feels pretty similarly I’m sure.

Collin: I hate bass.

Ben C: I don’t know if Ben does, and the way I imagine it is there could totally be a moment where we all take off like a month and we’re all like let’s go to this place and just fucking write an album and I could imagine it where 34

Collin writes a whole album by himself and has everything recorded and he’s like “Samir, will you come record drums for this album?”

Samir: I don’t think it ever has to stop. I think I’ve found myself probably until now thinking of things as pretty mutually exclusive, either we’re gonna stay together or we’re not, and I think I guess we’re lucky where it doesn’t necessarily have to be a marriage proposal between the five of us right now. And, in the same way that people change jobs or people choose to move, we can always choose to reconvene for however long or short it may be. And we can do that more than once, and that’s always an option.

That’s so cool. I like having my options open like that, and I would never close my doors on any of these people. It’s just cool and exciting. It’s cool that we all do have passions in addition to what we do in TTP where we can find fulfilment in our lives if we are not playing in TTP but I still do think we would all love to play. I personally, if I could make a life out of this, yeah, I would do that in a heartbeat. It’s kind of exciting in that sense as well. But, like who knows?

Caroline: So you guys said earlier that when you guys were first playing, as freshmen, as sophomores. You saw those older bands and there was this beautiful energy where you were the fresh sort of inspiration and they could feed off that and you could feed off them Samir: Because they were inspirations to us too.

Caroline: Yes, because they were inspirations too! How do you feel now that you are seniors, looking at the music scene here.

Samir: Aaron Stapel, the brewery, any of those people, Noor Sullivan. These people that were older than us and inspired us in so many ways.

Samir: It’s siiick.

Ben F: “The Meridian” in huge, bold letters, like, “Go to the meridian.” Swem.

Ben C: I mean I think generally we all get fucking excited when we see, and fill in words for me, but people like Ruth, Boysville, Passenger Pigeon, Jacob Daum does really sick electronic music. Everything!

Samir: I also think the people running it, and seeing like all of the freshmen or sophomores who run radio [WCWM], Meridian they’re all these arts organizations are in such good hands. Such a vibrant and engaged and welcoming group and I don’t know. I just feel like bands have a really fertile soil to grow in now. It’s so cool because I think this community has really grown. It feels cool to be the leaving members of it because it’s like “Alright sick. these are people that I guess we have impacted in some way and they’ve impacted us in many ways.” It’s very heartening and encouraging just to look at where the arts organizations are gonna be left in the hands of.

Ben F: DFAS when I was a senior in highschool about to come here, I remember seeing the Stairwells perform and being like, if I’m ever gonna join any kind of acapella group then I’d probably join that one, and then didn’t first semester because I didn’t want to and joined second semester! I remember that moment as “Oh those guys look like they’re having a lot of fun,” and also this year TTP is performing so I can only hope that some senior in highschool is gonna come and see like wow there are real bands on this campus! I can come here and do this and be inspired in that way.

Collin: Reeder Media Center.

Ben F: I mean, we both work there so shameful plug, but honestly.

Samir: Our professors, because so many of them has been super supportive. All of the teachers and instructors we’ve had in our lives, outside of college. It’s just a longterm process and it really is just thanks to be given, to everyone! Anyone who’s ever come to a TTP show, anyone who’s ever taken a chance booking us at a venue and being like yeah we’ll let this band come and play even if it’s to fucking ten people. You’re letting people live a dream and there’s something super amazing in that. So anybody who has ever bought merch, liked something on soundcloud, sent us a comment, it means more than anybody could ever know.

Talk To Plants will be embarking on a post-grad tour this summer, hitting the East Coast & a little Midwest - check out their newest singles on Spotify - “Sudden Memory” & “Insight”

Caroline: Do you guys have anything you need to say at the end, any promo you need to do other than what we’ve stated?

Ben C: Like, I mean there’s the personal thing of yeah we’ve got an album coming in May. Aside from all that, I think it’s pretty huge to all of us to like give thank yous generally and specifically to like.

Collin: Sadler Center.

Ben C: This fucking entire community. Fucking Meridian has been huge, radio [wcwm] has been so fucking awesome over the years.

Collin: Student Assembly.

Ben F: All that funding we got from SA. Samir: All of our families, every one of our families.

Ben F: Samir’s cats.

Samir: My cats.

Ben C: Water.

Ben F: Yeah, we’re thankful for water.

Samir: I think also the community of people that have come into our lives over the last few years, close friends, people we’ve lived with y’know...it’s crazy.

Ben C: Nutritional yeast, tofu.

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Big ( Inclusive) Bands Words & Art by Josie Adolf I entered the jazz scene as a shy, five-foot-two freshman in high school playing the upright bass, which I had just learned. Plainly, it had about two feet of height and width on me. I was nervous to play in a competitive setting-- the focus on improvisation and the prestigious “section leader” positions in the big band led to a surprisingly cutthroat environment for a high school jazz band mostly made up of freshmen. Though in concept the band was competitive, I was met with great respect within the jazz community, especially from the other boys my age and the male director.

More than half of the students in our band, which eventually became one of the top jazz groups in the state, were girls. Our best player by a landslide was a painfully shy female pianist, all three bassists were women, the drummer was a girl, and we boasted a completely female trombone section. Sure, the saxophones were mostly boys, but the baritone sax player was a girl, younger than the rest of the section, who completely dominated the boys with her talent and strong personality.

My first few years in the band were a dream. People appreciated me for how I played, and the group was made up of many of my friends. This ended with my first culture shock when I saw a profession36

al big band live. We had done a lot of listening to other bands to get a sense of what we should sound like, but we had never heard a big band live until we saw the Portland Jazz Orchestra, towards the end of my freshman year. We loaded up the buses and made the trek to the big city to see the band.

When the group entered the stage, I had to double check what I was seeing-- there was not a single woman onstage. Though the lack of women was surprising, I moved past it, thinking it was maybe just an all-male big band. Over the next couple of years, that optimism was crushed. We started to see professional groups on a regular basis, and at most, each group had just one woman out of over twenty musicians. All the featured artists at state festivals were male. Each band director that came to visit and clinic with us was male. The only women in any group were always the singers, never instrumentalists. I was genuinely baffled; if every school band I had seen was at least 50/50 boys to girls and often led by girls, what had happened between point A and point B that had eliminated almost all female jazz musicians?

Over the years, I have come up with a few theories about what causes the startling lack of women in professional jazz roles. For a while, I thought it might be due to the practicality of pursuing a more lucrative and promising career. Women often have, to be frank, more pressing things to do than devote their life to music. While men are encouraged to pursue their dreams, it is seen as less fiscally responsible for women to give up money for the arts. It is also difficult to maintain interpersonal relationships and continue with a jazz career, since so much time is spent on the road and between gigs. On my more optimistic days, I thought that maybe it wasn’t systematic oppression but just practical choices that led less women to actively follow their dream of a jazz career.

After doing some research, the more compelling reasons are not quite as nice as those above. To explain this theory, it’s important to draw a clear comparison between the way we treat girls in school and in the real world. Many music teachers actively recruit girls to jazz bands to try to encourage more women to pursue music. My director sat me down during my freshman year and said to me, “By your senior year, you are going to be a kickass female bassist, and it will be awesome.” I loved my experience in my high school jazz band, specifically because I was taught to respect myself as a musician, and others were taught to respect me as well. This is in part because music teachers are often some of the most progressive people-- many of them teach because they genuinely want all of their students to succeed. There are also many levels of examination in school music programs. Groups are evaluated for musicianship, and directors are held accountable to administrators, parents, and other students if there is any hint of discrimination.

In the professional jazz community, none of these measures of accountability exist. Bands are controlled by their directors, and it is difficult for anyone to gather any means of defying the wishes of the director without filing an official discrimination suit. Since the work environment is atypical and does not involve administrators or an HR department, the process of determining gender-based discrimination becomes significantly cloudier.

Double standards are commonplace in the modern working environment. It is not out of the ordinary for women to be vilified for taking a leadership role, showing ambition, or even just refusing to back down from an argument. This sentiment, it seems, has permeated the jazz community, and due to the lack of checks and balances on the (often discriminatory) power of almost exclusively male jazz directors, the result of this systematic inequality in the way we treat musicians is a staggering lack of female representation within the genre.

This is a bleak outlook, so it’s critical not to dismiss the effect of women who have broken through the barrier. While it’s easy to remember the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, there are also some extremely influential female instrumentalists who have had an effect on the trajectory of jazz in the long term. Mary Lou Williams, a prominent composer and pianist from the mid 20th Century, composed for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and mentored Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie. She had an immense impact on the style of jazz and its incorporation of soulful elements.

“Bands are controlled by their directors, and it is difficult for anyone to gather any means of defying the wishes of the director without filing an tend not to focus official discrimination suit.” onWesuccessful female jazz

While surveys have established the reasons why it is easy to discriminate in a professional jazz setting, none of this addresses the main problem: why do we, as a population, feel the need to restrict female access to the jazz community? One answer is that jazz is a competitive style of music, and our double standards about women’s ability to act assertively influence the way we see them as musicians. Several elements of the big band style of music involve competition between musicians. The improvisation style of trading fours, in which musicians swap four measures back and forth and build on each other’s musical motifs, inspires both players to play higher and more aggressively. This is one of many cutthroat stylistic jazz practices, and while women perform just as well in those situations, audiences often don’t want to see women in threatening roles.

musicians because they are so few and far between. Recognizing them, however, may help the jazz community correct its internal distaste for talented and ambitious women. There is no comprehensive set of ways to destroy gender based discrimination within jazz. If we look at the difference between jazz in schools and professional jazz, however, it is noticeable that the professional setting lacks a celebration of successful women. Schools do a great job of celebrating up and coming musicians and teaching others to respect them, but we stop this celebration as soon as musicians are no longer “young and cute”. By learning about and praising Mary Lou Williams and others who followed in her footsteps, we can begin a cycle of applauding ambitious female jazz musicians, rather than tearing them down for daring to enter a community that will do anything it can to crush that ambition.

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Won’t You Sing for Me? Words by Mary Hannah Grier

The folk music scene, as with nearly all other asmovement, respectively. Giddens’ more recent projpects of the current music industry, is certainly not ects have further expanded the narratives of people perfect when it comes to adequately representing, of color within the traditional folk genre and adjapromoting, and encouraging artists that are not cishet cent areas of music and history. This past February, men. Within traditional folk circles, representation of she founded and co-produced the group Our Native women and femmes has been steadily growing in the Daughters, who released an album titled Songs of past several decades Our Native Daughters since the initial folk “While women have always played a role that continued a focus resurgence of the 60s on exploring the impacts in traditional folk...many of the women in and 70s. As a subset of slavery, racism, and of the folk genre, it the songs themselves adhere to sexist misogyny by way of the has historically lacked folk tradition. tropes or stereotypes, or are used as plot the wider array of The duo Anna Robperspectives and exdevices to motivate men.” erts-Gevalt and Elizaperiences that are enbeth LaPrelle (‘09), who compassed by protest music and the like. Traditionperform as Anna & Elizabeth, are another group al folk still has a ways to go, but each passing year exploring a crucial, oft-neglected part of traditional brings more artists with diverse backgrounds onto the folk: the archives based around little-known women scene, who in turn bring new interpretations on music interviewed by musicologists during the 50s and 60s. that is otherwise very, very old.

Much of the current repertoire within traditional folk I feel particularly lucky to have entered the tradiis based around more well known singers, or the coltional music scene at a time where there are so many lections of established musicologists like Alan Lomax wonderful women in folk music. While women have and Cecil Sharp. Anna & Elizabeth focus instead on always played a role in traditional folk - primarily smaller music collections and women who had been as keepers of ballads in several different traditions previously overlooked, like Texas Gladden, Lela Todd, many of the women in the songs themselves adhere and Hildreth Brown. They bring both new material to sexist tropes or stereoand new musical interpretations of ballads and tunes types, or are used as plot to the folk scene, adding an experimental flair and videvices to motivate men. sual representations of ballads through crankies right Too often, the viewpoint alongside their recordings that are more typical of and the focus of song coltraditional folk. Their most recent album, The Invisilectors and singers alike ble Comes to Us, merges traditional recordings with also centers on that of spoken word narratives and elements of experimental white immigrants. music, with the tracks highlighting songs that are not often recorded or have not been recorded recently.

The most recent wave of women in folk bring a Rhiannon Giddens, Anna & Elizabeth, Our Nawhole new array of intertive Daughters, Rising Appalachia, Kaia Kater, Jupretations to older ballads and the people who collie Fowlis, and so many more. These artists, among lected them, whether through subverting the ballads, many others, are exploring areas of folk music that changing the perspective in them, or creating new have long been neglected or ignored by mainstream ones entirely. Rhiannon Giddens is one such artist. traditional folk musicians. In doing so, they are not On her 2017 album Freedom Highway, she brings to only helping to expand the existing folk repertoire, light the experiences of enslaved Africans, members but are challenging the current narrative that is mostly of the 20th century civil rights movement, and the male and mostly white, and saving histories of people current Black Lives Matter movement through familiar and their everyday lives that would otherwise be lost. ballad formats, weaving a history through song that On a larger scale, folk has a rich history of being would otherwise be lost. “Julie” and “At the Purchasthe “people’s music”, featuring voices that aren’t ofer’s Option” reflect and expand upon narratives of ten heard in the “hit parade” of popular songs. May enslaved Africans, while “Birmingham Sunday” and it continue to be so, and may it continue to grow in “Get It Right the First Time” chronicle the 1963 Birdiversity and interpretations with every passing year. mingham church bombing and the Black Lives Matter 38

January

The Dandy Warhols, Why You So Crazy

February Julia Jacklin, Crushing

March

Weezer, The Black Album Townes Van Zandt, Sky Blue

April

Lady Lamb, Even in the Tremor 39

The Dandy Warhols Why You So Crazy Dine Alone/January 25 Rather than doing an album review and telling you to listen to an album that you would probably already listen to, I decided to take the opposite approach and tell you not to listen to an album that probably isn’t on anyone’s radar. The tenth studio album by the Portland, Oregon band is significantly different from their classic, rough, tongue-in-cheek sound that was heard on earlier, mainstream hits like Bohemian Like You. It is completely in the psychedelic, techno realm of ex-rockers making experimental music (think Jack White’s Boarding House Reach, but worse). This album is clearly not made for any kind of mainstream consumption. It’s almost deliberately trying to be edgy and “out there” but instead, turning out weird, like a 14 year-old wearing a “defend pop punk” t-shirt to the first day of high school. To credit it, there is a diverse range of sound, from the bluesy throwback on “Highlife”, to the techno rhythms of “Terraform”, into the almost country sound on “Motor City Steel”. Here are a couple significant tracks that I took away from several painful listens. I suffer for my art.

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Highlife is genuinely enjoyable, mostly because it’s significantly different from the rest of the refuse on this album. A female vocalist and a retro-sounding song about a woman who has been dumped and is determined to make the best of her life after this relationship, living the “highlife” until she dies. Disregarding the clichés in the tune and lyrics, it might be the best song on the album.

Small town girls is like if a bot listened to the first three years of The Beach Boys, with cars, girls, and all, and tried to write a song of its own, but failed miserably.

Significant tracks:

Be Alright is, honestly, alright, and somewhat reminiscent of the sound on their earlier songs (Bohemian Like You era). This and Highlife conclude the stretch of decent songs on this album.

Terraform is the first real track (Fred n Ginger is more of an intro) on the album and gets the album off to a lackluster start. It has the same techno riff almost the entire time. It’s kind of catchy at first, and then just gets super repetitive. This song, and the album as a whole, tries to be experimental and use a lot of techno influences, but doesn’t do it well. The lack of differentiation and stale ideas doom this track, as they do with many others on this album.

Next Thing I Know is barely a song. It’s almost entirely some techno electronic beats with some occasional breathy vocals thrown on top. I don’t understand the thought process to include tracks like Next Thing I Know, Forever, and Ondine, seeing as the latter is a six minute piano piece with random experimental sound effects thrown in to no thematic coherence. I guess the theme is being mediocre, and in that case, these fit right in.

Small town girls is like if a bot listened to the first three years of The Beach Boys, with cars, girls, and all, and tried to write a song of its own, but failed miserably. The extremely repetitive, dry chorus consists of Courtney Taylor-Taylor deadpanning the words “small town girls” over and over. This is simply one of the worst songs on the album, with terrible lyrics such as: “You don’t have to rush around in a small town You can drive real slow ‘Cause when you go out in a small town You never have far to go” These are in between the title being repeated over and over. This is the kind of song that a fictional band in a TV show for elementary school children would sing. It’s almost insulting being the listener.

Motor City Steel haunts me. I won’t lie. It’s just so bad, but yet also kind of catchy at the same time. I’ve shown several of my friends, who groan every time I mention it as a joke, but then can’t help but get part of the chorus stuck in their heads. My reaction went from cringing to ironic enjoyment quickly, but the chorus still gets stuck in my head. This dilemma over how good the song is is further complicated by the fact that it’s the

most popular song off the album on Spotify. If there’s any track you should listen to, it’s Motor City Steel. Get a good laugh out of the almost-as-bad-as-“Small Town Girls” lyrics and the electro-country tune.

Overall, this is possibly the most boring experimental music I’ve ever listened to. Boring is the one thing experimental can’t be. Or any music, but especially experimental. You can literally do anything with experimental music, hence experimental. This album is like if Ween was boring, unambitious, and simply put, bad. I suppose that’s what one should expect from a band nearly 20 years past their prime. Saying this band is washed up is an insult to washed up debris on the beach. At least there’s some mystery with debris, and you can ask “Hey, what is that thing?” With this album, the only thing I was asking is whether the next track was going to be somehow worse than the last.

- Peter Fargasso

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Julia Jacklin Crushing Polyvinyl/February 22 On Julia Jacklin’s second second studio album, the Australian singer-songwriter is reclaiming what she has lost. The entire album revolves around Jacklin’s attempt to get over a long term relationship, and the ebbs and flows inherent in such a process are evident. The album finds strength in not only this, but Jacklin’s intensely personal songwriting. The album opens with “Body,” a slow and rhythmic song that tells the story of the end of the relationship that the album centers around. Both the beat of the drum and the rhythm and melody of the guitar do not change through the song, creating a hypnotizing sound. Towards the end of the song, Jacklin describes a photograph that her ex-lover possesses, one of her nude on a bed. Jacklin asks, “Do you still have that photograph?/Would you use it to hurt me?”

This is a tremendously disturbing thought, but one that seems to represent much of what is important to Jacklin throughout the song and the album. This scenario takes away Jacklin’s autonomy over her body, and earlier in the song Jacklin says she is “Heading to the city to get [her] body back,” implying that autonomy and appreciation for her body are things that she must find again.

One of the singles from the album is “Pressure to Party,” easily the fastest paced and poppiest song on the record. Its joyous tempo and tune create a subtle sense of irony in contrast with the lyrical content exploring the pressure to start dating again after a failed relationship, with Jacklin hoping she will be able to “love again soon.” Jacklin does seem to think that the act of returning to dating is a sort of victory in the process, at one point describing herself as “Out on the dance floor with my body back,” but she later admits that it feels false at the time, saying of her ex, “I don’t want anyone to ever take your place.” The album 42

slows down with “Don’t Know How to Keep Loving You,” a song about feeling powerless while falling out of love. Jacklin feels guilty, and the connection again returns to her body when she says, “you know my body and I know yours,” implying that this sort of intimate knowledge does not feel right in the context of a now loveless relationship.

The song “When The Family Flies In” is placed in the middle of the album, and describes a time when Jacklin was struggling with her breakup badly enough for a family member to visit. Getting over a relationship, according to Jacklin, is not linear but is instead filled with peaks and valleys. The song is just echoey piano and Jacklin’s voice, which gives it a haunting and hollow sound. The final track on the album, “Comfort,” again explores Jacklin’s guilt while falling out of love and after the breakup. It’s just Jacklin and an acoustic guitar, again playing the same few notes for most of the song. Jacklin is bemoaning the fact that she is unable to comfort her ex, saying, “You can’t be the one to hold him when you were the one/Who left.” Here, Jacklin seems to be convincing herself that her ex will be alright in the end, and in the end it feels like she does believe it.

At the end of the first song on the album, “Body,” Jacklin repeats the same two lines: “I guess it’s just my life/And it’s just my body.” This is Jacklin’s emotional mantra throughout the album, as she wrestles with the idea of ownership of self. It is her body to love and hate and give, and it is her life to live.

- Jack Stewart

Weezer The Black Album Atlantic/March 1 After the successful and critically acclaimed releases of Everything Will Be Alright In The End (2014) and the White Album (2016), many believed that Weezer were finally back on track after a slew of questionable releases over the previous decade. Many fans, including myself, would even argue that the White Album fits comfortably as one of the band’s best albums along with their classics the Blue Album and Pinkerton. That’s why Rivers Cuomo’s announcement of the Black Album that would be the follow up and sonic contrast to the White Album’s Beach-Boys inspired sound was so exciting to both fans and critics alike.

The Black Album experienced delays to its release mainly because of the surprise releases of Pacific Daydream in late 2017 and the Teal Album earlier in 2019. Pacific Daydream came together during the development of the Black Album and was released to mixed reviews. The Teal Album, on the other hand, came together largely because of the success of the band’s cover of Africa by Toto and consisted of Weezerfied covers of hits from the 80s and 90s. I ignored Pacific Daydream upon its release and didn’t mind the idea of the Teal Album as much as others seemed to. However, I probably should’ve seen what was coming after the band’s unironic embrace of what was pretty much a glorified Twitter meme.

The Black Album, like most of Weezer’s other colorthemed albums, consists of ten tracks and was produced

by TV on the Radio guitarist, Dave Sitek. The first four tracks on the album were all released as singles and vary wildly in topics, style, and overall song quality. It all starts with ‘Can’t Knock the Hustle,’ which is another attempt for Rivers to showcase his ability as a rapper, but comes off as clunky because of cringy lyrics like “I’m an ugly motherfucker, but I work hella harder.” The only things that really save this song from being a total mess are the groovy

instrumentals and the catchy chorus. This is pretty much the story for the first half of the album – a collection of songs that are produced just well enough to make a mediocre song sound bearable. The same, however, cannot be said for the remainder of the album.

I probably should’ve seen what was coming after the band’s unironic embrace of what was pretty much a glorified Twitter meme.

The overall quality of the Black Album takes a severe nosedive after ‘Living in L.A’ which is eerily symbolic for how Weezer’s career has gone over the past two decades.

I can’t think of a band that has been more committed to needless self-sabotage over such a long period of time.

Anytime Weezer seems to have dug themselves out of a stretch of mediocrity, they will almost certainly find a way to erase any sort of progress they might’ve made.

There’s absolutely nothing memorable in the slightest about the second half of the Black Album and the overall blandness just makes listening a chore. It doesn’t help that the album closer, ‘California Snow,’ sounds like Rivers Cuomo attempting to parody a blend of overproduced pop and trap rap. This was especially disappointing because Weezer has had a history of having some of my all-time favorite album finales, but ‘California Snow,’ like much of the rest of the Black Album, is better left forgotten in what has become the wildly inconsistent discography of Weezer.

- Corey Bridges 43

Townes Van Zandt Sky Blue Fat Possum/March 7 Some writers just get it. For whatever reason, they can take the same words as all the rest of us, and put them together in ways nobody else ever could. The parts are all the same, but the end result is something entirely different. It’s like buying an Ikea table and building Michelangelo’s David. It’s absolutely infuriating for the rest of us, but I digress.

psychedelic fantasy-folk sea shanty, now feels like a sort of Tolkienesque campfire tale, more spooky story than song. Of all of these, however, “Pancho and Lefty” in particular is transformed from a rollicking cowboy song – complete with brass and bongos – into a quiet little murder ballad with more than a few questions hiding below the surface.

Since the late 60s, Townes Van Zandt has stood as one of the foremost of these plain-speech poets. Though many of his songs are simple and sparsely worded, something in the order of his words creates a whole that means so much more than the sum of its parts.

Townes died in 1997, but on March 7, 2019 (his 75th birthday), Fat Possum Records released Sky Blue, a new collection of rough tracks recorded in his friend’s home studio some time in 1973.

Townes Van Zandt has always been a writer praised for his candor. His pretension-less lyrics have always cut fast and deep, a reality sometimes masked by the schmaltzy production of the late 60s and early 70s (compare the original recording of “Tecumseh Valley” from For the Sake of the Song to the acoustic version from Our Mother the Mountain and you’ll see what I mean). This album, recorded alone and stripped of shmaltz, serves as a reminder of Van Zandt’s gift.

Townes would have been 75 in March, but this year we were the ones who got a present.

A motley combination of covers, old tracks, and previously unheard originals, the 11 less-than-studio quality recordings strip away everything but the bare bones of the songs and put the skeletons of full display.

“All I Need”, the previously unreleased opening track, sets the tone for the rest of the album, comprised entirely of one guitar, one voice, and the warm hiss of tape humming in the background. A beautifully anxious song of 15 lines, “All I Need” is the sound of a man just trying to get some rest.

Elsewhere on the album, new light is shed on classic Van Zandt songs, now stripped down and left to stand alone. “Rex’s Blues” sounds fragile, like a deathbed letter set to a six-string soundtrack. “Silver Ships of Andilar,” originally released as a sort of proto44

- David Lefkowitz

Lady Lamb Even in the Tremor Tugboat Records/April 5 Brunswick born and Brooklyn based, Lady Lamb’s newest album “Even In The Tremor” is easily her cleanest and most approachable work to date. Lady Lamb’s real name is Aly Spaltro, and she got her start in music playing and recording in the basement of the video store she worked at in Brunswick, Maine. Ripely Pine, her hour long debut album, features ambitious song structures and undeniable talent, but in the hour it is easy to get lost in the chaotic agony and darkness of the record. Even In The Tremor, released in April of 2019, is in no way less complex or interesting than previous Lady Lamb albums. Spaltro still seems happy to rely on similar imagery that she did in her first record, with lines concerning the bodily and sometimes the grotesque, like the line “Now I leave you by the gate, where the Scandinavian sky/Is a slab of pink meat, and when you let go of me” from the song “Prayer of Love”.

complex metaphors. The lyricism on the newest album is more immediate and more personal than almost all of Spaltro’s prior work. On the opening song of the album “Little Flaws” Spaltro admits to a temper tantrum that is too specific to not be true, singing “When I missed six pitches in the batting cage/I threw my bat in a fit of rage.” On much of the album, like “Little Flaws” Spaltro seems to be working through her own faults and shortcomings. On “Even In The Tremor”, the first single of the album’s cycle, Spaltro considers her own anxiety and how easily it can get in the way of her life, saying both “The past will kill the present/ If I let it” and “The future kills the present/If I let it.”

Spaltro, like many of us, is trying to remind herself of the importance of living in the moment. On “Even In The Tremor”, Spaltro admits how much trouble she has with this, but she makes the vital realization that her life is ultimately within her control.

Sonically, the album presents a marked shift from Spaltro’s earlier work, sounding significantly less hectic and more produced. Even In The Tremor employs the most electronic influences of any Lady Lamb project to date, and this contributes to the accessible sound of the album. “Deep Love”, the final single released before the album, consists of a poppy folk melody and nostalgic lyrics about Spaltro’s family that make it a genuinely unique Lady Lamb track, a departure from her usual brooding. The lyrics of Even In The Tremor also presents a new style of lyrics and themes in comparison to Lady Lamb’s former albums. While Spaltro’s writing was always intensely personal, her lyrics were often clouded behind intense imagery and

On the song “Strange Maneuvers”, Spaltro continues honestly writing about her own shortcomings, saying “I can’t stop replaying my mistakes/Over and over and over”. The chorus, however, provides a refreshing defiance, as Spaltro manically repeats “I don’t wanna be afraid of myself anymore.” Despite Spaltro’s flaws, there is a redemption that comes with the public flagellation of past mistakes. On Even In The Tremor, Spaltro seems acutely aware that honesty is the only way past our own flaws.

- Jack Stewart

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Haiku Reviews PUP Morbid Stuff Morbid Stuff is as dark as it is triumphant, anthemic shrugging.

- Stacia

Vampire Weekend Father of the Bride (so far) It’s alright, I guess.

Interesting move, but it sounds like “Touch of Gray.”

- David

Radiator Hospital “Weird Little Idea” Usually they Sound less clean and more emo But I’m here for it.

- Jack

Molly Tuttle Take the Journey Great singer/player.

Modern country production Kind of stifles it.

- David

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