Will Sheff / Okkervil River
– WITH mmeadows- ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYWILL SHEFF / OKKERVIL RIVER After nine critically acclaimed albums, after twenty bandmates, after countless bars and clubs and theaters and festivals, after two full decades, Will Sheff is letting Okkervil River drift out to sea with Nothing Special, a rich and cinematic collection that marks the acclaimed indie songwriter’s first release under his own name. Written through a period of painful loss and deep transformation and recorded with a mix of old friends and new collaborators (including singer/songwriter Christian Lee Hutson, Dawes drummer Griffin Goldsmith, and Death Cab For Cutie pianist Zac Rae), the record represents more than just a change in name; it’s an act of liberation and self-determination, an emotionally raw reckoning with grief, identity, and hope that blurs the lines between fiction and autobiography, surrealism and humor, stoicism and a deepening spirituality. Formed in Austin, TX, Okkervil River embraced both frenetic rock and cerebral complexity as bandmates came and went over its twenty year run, but the group’s north star always remained firmly fixed in Sheff’s emotional vocals and striking lyrics, which could turn even the most seemingly mundane observations into profound philosophical revelations. NPR hailed the New Hampshire native’s “dazzling” way with words, while Pitchfork declared him “one of indie rock’s most ambitious thinkers,” and The New York Times raved that he “writes like a novelist.” With Nothing Special, Sheff begins his next and most compelling chapter yet.mmeadowsFor musicians Kristin Slipp and Cole Kamen-Green, mmeadows is a means of survival, an outlet to anchor themselves from the currents of life. Fluid and rhythmic, organic and electronic, their singular alt-pop songcraft is the synthesis of complementary talents, mutual trust, and years of partnership. Each brings a distinct background to the sound: Slipp is a current member of Dirty Projectors, with writing and performance credits on their 2020 release 5 EPs. She grew up in Maine, devoting herself to the choir and a true New England-kind of work ethic which has since flourished in New York City’s music community. Kamen-Green has worked with Beyonce, writing and performing horns on Beyonce and Four, as well as projects with Diana Ross, Harry Styles, Laurie Anderson, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Taylor Swift. He came up as a ‘90s kid in lower Manhattan, immersed in the cultures of hip-hop, dance music, and jazz (his uncle is the avant-garde drummer Joey Baron). All the varying hues oftheir influences now filter into Light Moves Around You, the duo’s full-length debut, a dynamic and deeply-honed collection of pop songs that silence chaos and celebrate the tender acts of making space and taking care.
Deserta
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYDESERTAFor Matthew Doty, Deserta has always been about exploring a sonic universe that allows him to express a kaleidoscope of emotions, without having to say much at all. Through a patchwork of reverb-tinged textures – drone guitars, lingering synths and driving percussion – the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist weaves together stories of care, frustration and catharsis that ultimately stretch to a gentle resolve. On new album Every Moment, Everything You Need, Doty chronicles the kind of year we all fear, full of uncertainty, tension and sustained pressure, and transforms it into a celebration of perseverance. It’s an essential reminder that we have the power to shape the stories we tell. The LP was mixed by Dave Fridmann (Tame Impala, Mogwai, Interpol), with Beach House and Slowdive producer Chris Coady engineering and co-producing. Cor de LuxCOR DE LUX grew out of the music scene of North Carolina’s Outer Banks in 2018. The band found each other over a by chance conversation about a love of music between its two founding members (guitarist Tim Lusk, and guitarist and vocalist, Dawn Moraga) while Moraga waited for a phone repair in Tim’s shop. This turned out to be the catalyst for their band’s formation, with John Bliven quickly added on bass and Thomas McNeely stepping in for founding member and drummer Dana Quinn in early 2022. Their music (a mixture of post-punk, goth-tinged pop and shoegaze) has earned the tongue-in-cheek nickname ‘Shoe-Gazi’ by friends.
NOIR BIZARRE featuring The Veldt, Dead Leaf Echo, Knives and Daggers and more!
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYCome catch The Veldt along with label mates Deadleaf Echo, Knives and Daggers (and more!) on their maiden Pop Up Shoegaze Psych out. The mini get together will be a showcase that will be traveling to Raleigh for the final night of the Noir bizarre festival Sept 8th and 9th. The Veldt hailing from Raleigh N.C. is a band that reached our audience in 2017 with the single I like the Way You Talk as a letter of introduction, becoming regulars in this space in the following years, with songs like Black and Blue or the Oak City Session of 2019, returning in this 2023 with a promo that is not so new if we consider that it is part of Illuminated 1989, an album produced by Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins, which must have been his debut album, plus Capital Records decided to can this material to record the Marigolds Produced by Lincoln Fong of the band Moose, plus time and experience gained from working with the likes of TV On The Radio, Mos Def, Lady Miss Kier (Deee-Lite), ARKane and toured or played with Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Pixies, Throwing Muses, Echo & The Bunnymen, Cocteau Twins, Manic Street Preachers, Phantogram, Modern English, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Oasis, Chuck D, Living Color and Schooly D, allow twins Daniel Chavis and Danny Chavis to reclaim this material, which will be available next fall in vinyl, CD, cassette and digital formats, while this first excerpt is already circulating on digital platforms such as Apple Music , Spotify and Bandcamp , as well as on 12” vinyl. DEAD LEAF ECHOKNIVES AND DAGGERSLEISURE McCORKLEANDRE LASALLE FREQUENCIES
Ty Segall Solo Acoustic
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYTY SEGALL The man in the tree has a guitar, he’s gonna sing. But the sun shining through the branches— are those rays yellow or hazy gray? What day is today? When are you not going to feel this way again? “Hello, Hi”: welcome in to a new room to play the styles and feels that lie under Ty Segall’s fingers, easing fresh air into acoustic space with an assortment of love songs flowering in righteous unconsciousness. Plaintive and wistful, but unafraid. Like rain washing away yesterday, “Hello, Hi” pushes open the door, inviting the new to pass through all the old shades and degrees of hot and cold. Dark paths turn off abruptly into absurd darkness, then wind back through the broken rocks, ecstatic again. Absurdity again. It happens everyday. “Hello, Hi” is expansively rendered by Ty, mostly by himself, at home. The isolation suits the songs: you’re only ever as “at home” as you are with yourself in the mirror. Ty’s acoustic and electric guitars and vocal harmonies layer self upon self, forming a spiny backbone for the album. Textures at once gentle and dissonant root the songs as they make their move: melodic arcs convulsing in doubt and bliss and rage. Busting out of the endless gridlock into open space, these spirits pass on through. “Hello, Hi”’s flickering awakening to this trip: the opening three tracks’ train of sweet and salty reflections, before the abrupt crunch of the title track electrifies the senses. Good morning’s turned to good mourning in nothing flat, but there’s still a way up from the doldrums, to try again. Why can’t it be just as simple as “Hello, Hi”? What to do with yourself when love triggers loathing? How many more times do you have to go back there again? Pulling at the scratchy wool threads of an old sweater favored for warmth, comfort, protection, rejection, denial, blindness etc, Ty Segall dives from a clear, open sky, down through the marine layer and the shimmering waves of all the years. Radiating from the same mind fields as Goodbye Bread and Sleeper, mixed with shard edges of contrast and contradiction from things like Freedom’s Goblin, Manipulator, and First Taste, “Hello, Hi” is Ty’s most relaxed and complete production to date, an ebb-and flow fusion of words and music offering abstraction and acceptance as it wrestles itself through a fucked-up time. Your life and what you make of it — throughout “Hello, Hi,” Ty Segall charts a passage through its enduring tangles honestly, with clarity and confusion. CHARLES MOOTHART Charles Moothart is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter. He is best known for his collaborations with the garage rock musicians Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin. Moothart is the drummer for Segall’s current backing band, The Freedom Band. He was previously the guitarist for Segall’s backing band, the Ty Segall Band, and is the guitarist and vocalist in the pair’s hard rock project, Fuzz. Additionally, he is a member of Segall’s collaborative project with Ex-Cult’s Chris Shaw, GØGGS.
PATIO SHOW: Sylmar
– ALL AGES- LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVEDSYLMAR Sylmar is an indie-rock stoner jazz quintet taking the rock genre to the meat grinder. Through contagious hooks and crafty crescendos, Sylmar songwriting conflicts with cutting rhythms that counter and combine, drive and float, easy to digest but difficult to harness – all the while charming audiences with their increasingly popular feverish live performances. In response to Sylmar’s sophomore LP “Glass Ladders”, City Beat journalist, Brian Baker wrote “With a soulful Vampire-Weekend-meets-Radiohead sound, Sylmar’s new “Glass Ladders” is their best album to date.
PATIO SHOW: Day & Dream
– ALL AGES- LIMITED PATIO SEATING (FIRST COME FIRST SERVED) DAY & DREAMSelf described star gazers and forest dwellers, Day & Dream creates music that sounds like your favorite warm fuzzy blanket. Long time artists, musicians & singer/songwriters, Peter Frizzante & Abby Amaya, initially met in NYC, but didn’t start their indie-rock dreampop shoegaze band until they moved to Asheville, North Carolina. Abby’s roots are in California 60s coastal pop, while Peter’s is post-punk, indie-rock. Working together, the now husband-wife team showcase their admiration for sun-soaked sonic landscapes, lo-fi lounge, neopsychedelia, jangly guitars, jazz tones, and melodic pop structures. Reverb soaked and layered with soft whispery vocals, the result is an energetic and memorable reverie. Peter, the morning person, and Abby, the night owl — their band name is a nod to their opposite sleep schedules.The pair is often writing music or lyrics at home in between work and daily chores, finding inspiration in the human condition & the pain and joy of life. The band has played with many different local drummers (Jake Cavinder, Matt Hendler, Mike Fasano) and bass players (Marcos Waldheim, Erik Jan, Lowell Hobbs, Matt Tobia, Daniel Hyman). Their first single, “Nocturnal Creatures” was recorded at El Rancho Morbido Studios(Black Mountain, NC) & debuted in July 2018. This was soon followed by their first full length album, “With Every Breath You Die” in February 2019, recorded at Standard Electric Studios with Damon Moon & mastered by Greg Hendler in Atlanta. They went back to the studio in Julyof 2019 to record a handful of tracks at Echo Mountain Studios (Asheville, NC). The singles were engineered by Kenny Harrington & mastered by Jason NeSmith of Chase Park Transduction (Athens, GA) & Geoff Pesche of world renowned Abbey Road Studios (London).After canceling most shows booked for the last two years, the band has stayed busy indoors with numerous live streams & shooting music videos. They’ve had singles featured on several compilations: Green Witch Records (NYC), Sunday Records (Chicago), Stereoactive Media(Austin/Brooklyn), Shoegaze Pilipinas (Philippines), Holy Crap Records (Black Mountain, NC), Editoris (Panama), OIM Records (Oakland, CA), Bummer Recordings (Chattanooga, TN), and Shiny Happy Records (Indonesia). They’ve also been featured, reviewed, and Interviewed oncountless radio shows, playlists, news outlets & blogs, including Indie & Folk Radio, European Indie Music Network, God Is in the TV, Luna Magazine Collective, Indie Cronique, Destroy/Exist, Business Mirror, ABS-CBN, Abduction Radiation, Ausfarhrt, Pitch & Prose, Look at MyRecords, Pretty Decent Music, Luna Collective, We Love Lo-Fi Music, Simon Saxon, Indie Italia, Melodic Mag, MCCFunk, Impose Magazine, ORYL, WNC Original Music, DKFM, Drowned in a Sea of Sound, Lizzie Romain, Aylou, Holy Crap Records, DE Music, LeviathanFM, Mountain Xpress, Last Day Deaf, Al Son of Marketing, Diggin Radio Show, Visioner, & more.In 2021, they signed with Lilystars Records (ADA, Warner Music Group), owned by Clementine Castro (Oranges & Lemons, The Camerawalls).
Madison Cunningham
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYMADISON CUNNINGHAM Two-time Grammy nominated artist Madison Cunningham is set to release her highly anticipated new album, Revealer, September 9 on Verve Forecast. The Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter-guitarist recently received her second Grammy nomination for Wednesday (Extended Edition) in the “Best Folk Album” category, previously having her debut album Who Are You Now nominated for “Best Americana Album” in 2020. Cunningham is fresh off the heels of a successful 2021, having opened for Harry Styles at his sold-out Madison Square Garden shows, toured with the likes of Andrew Bird, Bahamas and My Morning Jacket, and joined the touring band for “Live from Here.” She performed on “The Late Late Show with James Corden” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” (alongside Courtney Marie Andrews) and penned an original song “Broken Harvest” for the NPR “Morning Edition” Song Project. Her forthcoming album Revealer finds Cunningham working once again with longtime producer and collaborator Tyler Chester, as well as Mike Elizondo (Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, Mastodon) and Tucker Martine (Neko Case, Sufjan Stevens). The album is full of confessions, intimations, and hard truths — a self-portrait of a young artist who is full of doubt and uncertainty, yet bursting with exciting ideas about music and life. “There’s a sense of conflict about revealing anything about yourself; not just what to reveal, but whether you should reveal anything at all,” Cunningham explains. “This record is a product of me trying to find myself and my interests again. I felt like somewhere along the way I had lost the big picture of my own life.” BENDIGO FLETCHERHailing from Louisville, Kentucky, Bendigo Fletcher are a band that blend the organic sound of folk music with a melodic sense that owes more to indie rock, making music that’s dreamlike and firmly grounded at the same time.
Tredici Bacci
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYTREDICI BACCINew York-based large ensembleTredici Bacci was formed by composer Simon Hanes as a vehicle to bring his unique musical vision to the stage, and to seduce the ears and minds of audiences around the country. The instrumentation of vocals, string quartet, horns, accordion and rhythm section is specifically designed to capture the musical qualities of Hanes’ initial inspiration – the music of Italian films from the 1960s-70s. From giallo to spaghetti-western, Morricone to Rota to Cipriani, Hanes has made it his duty to absorb it all, and allow it to inform his original, very personal compositions.Since its impetus, Tredici Bacci has performed in bars, galleries, warehouses, and concert halls, leaving a trail of Campari bottles, confetti, and whipped cream in their wake. Each performance is a celebration – the audience revels as the band deftly performs technically demanding and cinematic music.SHAMSongs of Shane Justice McCord expanded in collaboration with Mikey Powers, other friends & magnetic tape.YES SELMA
The Minks + Future Crib + The Medium
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYTHE MINKS The Minks are Nashville’s “psychedelic-blues” band, heavy on the rock and roll. We’re talking low-down, all the way, purse-lipped, eyes-shut, head-whirling kind of groove. In 2015, on a search for creative community, Nikki Barber started the band based on the idea that “if you don’t create, you’ll combust”. Just like a rock and roll circus, you never know what you’re going to get, but you know it’ll be good. The band’s palpable sound has roots in every music fan’s top ten—from Lou to Patti to Creedence to Hank – but blends them into something totally original and current. Mixed with raw, jangly instrumentation and soulful saccharine vocals, it’s as much a throwback as it is an answer to the often overlooked underbelly of Nashville’s rock and roll scene. Look for them, on tour forever, spreading the gospel of letting your hair down and having a good time. The Minks are here. Let’s boogie. FUTURE CRIB A five-piece band of creatives based in Nashville, TN, Future Crib delivers dynamic performances that bounce between poppy make-you-wanna-dance tunes and experimental yet engaging tracks that prod at life’s shared realities. There’s a clear preference for good songs and exciting sounds over genre bounds and expectations, and this is evident on their upcoming album, Full Time Smile, set for release in September 2021. Over all, Future Crib creates music for everyone, inviting all to a fun, welcoming show where you can feel free to get down.THE MEDIUM Shane Perry, who plays guitar, sings, and writes songs for the Nashville rock band The Medium, says the group’s new album, For Horses, “is about leaving home.” As such, the record moves deftly among in-between spaces: between vintage sounds and modern ones, humor and sincerity, old stomping grounds and whatever lies down the road. “I’m having trouble adjusting to the world,” singer-bassist and songwriter Sam Silva admits on “Same Boat,” a woozy cut that encapsulates the band’s knack for channeling classic pop and psych-rock. “Nightmares, daydreams — what does it mean?” The Medium’s first album, 2019’s Get It While It’s Hot, was bright and breezy and showed how well the band — Perry, Silva, guitarist-vocalist Michael Brudi and percussionist Jared Hicks — knew their way around a pop song. For Horses is recognizably the work of the same band, but one that’s now more confident, more ambitious, and more comfortable in the studio (Jake Davis, who produced Get It While It’s Hot, returns here). Opening track “Don’t Stay Out” wastes no time signaling the shift, as a dazzling four-part a capella verse gives way to a piano-rock tune punctuated by filigrees of saxophone. Midway through the album, “Let’s Get Together” and “Space Force” form a sort of two-song suite, mirroring each others’ lyrics while showcasing the band’s stylistic breadth: lo-fi southern soul and a serrated, Motown-inspired rave-up.
SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYSPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE Ever since SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE released their self-titled debut in 2014, they’ve developed a reputation for being your favorite band’s favorite band. Theirs is the music of immersion, of confrontation, the kind that makes a listener stop and wonder, “How are they even doing that?” And as the years wear on, that sense of bafflement has made room for SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE to quietly but steadily ascend, with their most recent album, 2018’s Hypnic Jerks, leaving them poised on the precipice of wider recognition. On April 9th, 2021 SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE released their fourth album and Saddle Creek debut, ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH. The album signals new chapters for the band on multiple fronts, being the first to feature their new three-piece lineup, as well as the first to be entirely self-recorded and produced. Guitarist/vocalist Zack Schwartz and bassist/vocalist Rivka Ravede are now joined by new member Corey Wichlin, a multi-instrumentalist who relocated from Chicago to the band’s home territory of Philadelphia last year. In the spring of 2020, the trio began to write their new album at a distance by emailing files back and forth. “The process of making this album was basically the exact opposite of our experience creating Hypnic Jerks,” Schwartz explains. “We had to record that in seven days, because that was the studio time we had, whereas ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH was made over the course of three, four months.” An abundance of time wasn’t the only difference. Recording remotely offered the band an incentive to experiment with new possibilities for their sound, resulting in an album that is unlike any SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE has released before. Once the band finished recording and mixing the album digitally, they mastered it to tape, lending the collection a textured, dimensional quality. “We knew we wanted to use some new instrumental elements on this album,” Wichlin says. “We’re not going fully electronic,” Schwartz adds, “But guitar, bass, drums just get kind of monotonous.” If there’s a song on ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH that best encapsulates what SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE is all about, it’s “THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN’T DO,” a track that illuminates the growth that this band has undergone since their foundation to now. The song wrestles between the sublime and the monstrous as Ravede’s feather-light vocals are overtaken by Schwartz’s strained howl, underscored by shattering live drums that recall the band’s scrappy origins. “This song draws on some of the sonic aesthetic of SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE’s old records and aligns those sounds with the electronic instrumentation we’ve been exploring,” Wichlin says. ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH isn’t a metamorphosis, it’s simply the newest iteration of a longstanding project. “There’s a line in the Bee Gees documentary that I think applies to us. I’ll paraphrase: ‘We may not have always connected, but we always stuck around,’” Ravede says. Schwartz jumps in, “SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE: we’re still here.”TOMBSTONE POETRYTombstone Poetry hails from Asheville, NC – playing tunes that are sometimes shoegaze, sometimes noise rock, and sometimes folk. With influences ranging from Townes Van Zandt to Pavement, the 5-piece presents an eclectic set filled with “tear-in-my beer” anthems and noise rock chaos.
