Author: Erie

Categories
New Album Review

Album Review: “Valentine” by Snail Mail

"Valentine" album cover
"Valentine" by Snail Mail album cover

When I heard that Snail Mail was releasing a new album, I was taken right back to when I first heard their previous album, “Lush”. That album was one of the defining musical moments of my time in high school, and I’ve been anticipating the project that would eventually become “Valentine” ever since. Now this came out among several disappointing releases for me, but I’m happy to say that “Valentine” did not disappoint.

It starts off with a bang, both the title track and “Ben Franklin” are singles for a reason, and both play heavily to the band’s strengths. Lindsey Jordan’s compelling lyrics have been the face of the Snail Mail brand since its inception, and the way “Valentine” takes what on the surface seems to be a straightforward love song and weaves in themes of jealousy and transience while maintaining an overall fun and driving tone. Pacing is something this album does very well; an album like this where there isn’t that much instrumental variety can often drag but Snail Mail comes at this type of slow, synthy indie rock/pop at all different angles to make it work. The strength of the instrumentals acted almost wavelike across the tracklist, with songs like “Madonna” and “Glory” coming in to balance out slower songs like “c. Et Al.” and keep the album chugging along.

It’s been over three years since the last Snail Mail album dropped, and Jordan had been 19 when debut album “Lush” was released. This means that between albums cycles a lot has gone on in her life and the perspective the songwriting takes has now changed from someone who is just getting started with adult life to someone who would have graduated college if they weren’t busy being a super famous singer. And with the change in perspective comes a change in tone, and in doing so it loses one of my favorite elements of “Lush” when I first heard it. This was such an earnest album, with a bright tone making the songs really come to life and a lot of shouted choruses that made even ruminations on lost love sound fun and upbeat at times, and the album balanced these clashing styles perfectly. For me in high school this was a winning combination that really made “Lush” stand apart from its peers and it’s something “Valentine” has largely eschewed, this is a more weary album. “Automate” features Jordan talking about a rocky relationship, but it feels like a longer meditation delivered with a sigh, the very concept reducing love to machine-like motions.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Wanting an artist to never evolve and always to sound like their debut is creatively stifling for them, this is just to say that as a listener you might need to alter what you think a Snail Mail album should sound like in 2021. And if you’re able to do that, you’ll find an album that’s perhaps less immediate, but with just as much substance and heart.

-Erie

Categories
New Album Review

“New Shapes” by Charli XCX Track Review

"New Shapes" Track Review

Charli XCX has had a very interesting career trajectory. She first really came into public consciousness on the hook of an Icona Pop song and stayed in the mainstream radio friendly sphere for some time, crafting hits like “Boom Clap” that are still her most popular songs to this day. But for a solid five years now she’s almost been a brand ambassador for hyperpop, the experimental candy coated shock to the system that has seen a massive rise in popularity recently. For me, her music was a gateway into this world, and her last two albums, 2019’s “Charli” and “how i’m feeling now”, a meditation on the pandemic that was equal parts reflective and cathartic, were each my favorite albums of their respective years.

On Thursday, November 4, she kicked off the rollout of her upcoming album, “CRASH”, set to release in March of 2022 and with an accompanying tour. “New Shapes” is the second single off this project, and already it’s clear that the album will be a shift in style from her previous work. “Good Ones”, the first single, was an 80s-inspired pop rumination on lost love accompanied by an aesthetic straight out of that decade, down to her permed hair on the washed out album cover. I thoroughly enjoyed this song and have listened to it a lot since its release, but in a lot of ways it felt like a step back from the highs of “how i’m feeling now”, less adventurous both sonically and lyrically.

Which finally brings me to “New Shapes”. Part of the reason I took this long to talk about the actual three and a half minutes of music was because the context is very important to its appreciation. There are a lot of elements I really like. Charli’s vocal performance is great, and the minimal instrumental really sits back and puts her center stage. I love the quiet but still very present synths occasionally punctuating the track and adding some nice flair. Christine and the Queens, who are Charli XCX feature royalty thanks to her amazing work on “Gone”, are here and put in a great verse to keep the song chugging along.

There were a few elements, though, that drag the song down. The chorus is both too long and somewhat weak for the climax it’s built to be, the concept of loving “in new shapes” is a bit vague and the song could generally use a more clear direction. And while I love Caroline Polacheck’s music (and her amazing set at Hopscotch earlier this year), her feature on the third verse here was just not it. It wasn’t entirely her fault, the instrumental just completely recedes into the background, but her lines were just very awkward and it lacked the sharp edges of recent work like the absolute bop that was “Bunny is a Rider”.

And that’s my biggest frustration with this song. On its own merits it’s fine, good even, but as a Charli XCX song with big name features? It just doesn’t reach the standard her last few albums have forged through their inventive production and just by being a unique voice in a very crowded field. I’ll never forget listening to “claws” for the first time and being blown away by the energy on that track, but I don’t know if I’ll be revisiting “New Shapes” next week, much less next year. I’m still very excited to hear the full album, but it’s a different kind of excitement then I had going into her last few releases, more of how I anticipate a Marvel movie than an Oscar contender. Oh I’ll have fun with it, and take away some memories, but if “New Shapes” is an indication of the direction of the project, I won’t be blown away, and that’s something I had been getting used to from her music.

-Erie

Categories
New Album Review

Album Review: “Queens of the Summer Hotel” by Aimee Mann

Queens of the Summer Hotel album cover
Album cover of"Queens of the Summer Hotel" by Aimee Mann

As fellow WKNC DJ Snapdragon remarked recently, the weather is no longer cute. It’s getting pretty wintery here in the Triangle, but if you’re looking for an album to hit that sweet cozy spot and make it feel like fall for forty minutes, “Queens of the Summer Hotel” is a sleeper pick.

It achieves this cozy aura by managing to capture the feel of an old record perfectly. This goes beyond the vintage-style album cover or the pianos and strings that are straight out of a 1950s living room, but in the subject matter as well. “Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath” shows a snapshot of the titular pair walking “together down the primrose path” and slowly peels the layers away to detail their downfall. A certain Vermeer painting anchors the experiences of the characters in “At the Frick Museum”, while “You Could Have Been a Roosevelt” reminisces on legions of women who are entering a world that doesn’t treat them as an equal, equating it to being born in the wrong US political dynasty. These references act like a familiar blanket for the listener, while the subject matter isn’t always pleasant there is a sense of belonging that keeps you hooked.

When trying to capture a particular time period or style, it’s important to not get lost in the aesthetic and make a piece of art that can stand on its own, and “Queens” never loses sight of this. These settings are a backdrop for universal concepts of complicated romance and how life becomes very different as you grow up, all from an explicit focus on feminism and gender roles in a wider society. It doesn’t pull its punches with social critiques either. “Give Me Fifteen” is an unsettling narrative about a doctor who threatens women with “electroshock”, a stand-in for a broken system that grinds away at mental health and creates a cure that is often worse than the disease. Make no mistake, this is not a happy album, and if unflinching ruminations on mental illness is something that you don’t think you can handle, steer clear. But the way this all comes together creates a curiously warm tone that remains reflective, the quintessential fall vibe.

My first experience with Aimee Mann’s music was seeing her in a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” episode where she made a cameo as part of a vampire band and played one of her songs, “Pavlov’s Bell”. It’s been several decades now since that episode came out, but something that struck me when I listened to “Queens of the Summer Hotel” was how much of what made her music from that era work is present here, even in this less-guitar based form. Her commanding vocal presence and ability to take listeners on a journey haven’t wavered, and if you’re a fan of Aimee Mann’s earlier work, definitely give this one a shot.

-Erie

Categories
Blog Miscellaneous

Soundtrack Comparison: “Blade Runner” and “Palm Springs”

"Blade Runner" and "Palm Springs"
"Blade Runner" and "Palm Springs" soundtracks

I recently watched “Blade Runner” and “Palm Springs” back to back. These are two movies that, while both technically being sci-fi, are very different in tone and worldbuilding. And when viewed so close together, it becomes a lot easier to compare elements of the two, such as their soundtracks. 

For all the flying cars and flashing button panels of “Blade Runner”, the world depicted is not an optimistic version of the future. Characters are lashed with rain the moment they step outside into a grimy world of corporate overlords and murderous androids, and all of this is evoked in the soundtrack. Composer Vangelis was playing with synthesizers before it was cool and from the get-go his mark was made on the movie. “Opening Titles”, the iconic theme, hits with the intensity of a heavy guitar solo but with a futuristic bent that never veers into cheesiness, instead ringing out over the bustling streets and feeling if not triumphant, at least pioneering.

The presentation of “Palm Springs” is in sharp contrast to this. Where the rainclouds of “Blade Runner” felt like a weight on that movie’s shoulders, there is barely a cloud in the California sky, with bright and warm colors that contribute to the movie’s generally upbeat atmosphere. The soundtrack mirrors this with a playful backing that glides over the unfolding scenes. The track playing during the movie’s climax (whose title I won’t give away because it’s kind of a spoiler) was the high point: a subtle melody  not so much propelling the action along as matching it step for step.

These are distinctly different experiences, but there’s a reason I’m comparing them here. Both stay with the listener long after the credits roll with sneaky but very present earworms present. Being soundtracks, they rely heavily on repeated motifs and even tracks being used multiple times to create a narrative just through music and to call back to earlier scenes. “Blade Runner” uses these thematic threads to turn up the tension as the titular android hunter closes in on his targets. “Palm Springs” does this in a similar fashion, but as this is a romantic-comedy first and foremost, it races alongside the plot towards the inevitable conclusion without ever feeling formulaic.

A soundtrack is maybe a movie’s most underrated asset. When a soundtrack really hits, you often won’t consciously notice it because of how interwoven it is with the events onscreen. “Blade Runner” and “Palm Springs” both use music to skillfully walk the line between letting the plot play out without interruption and enhancing the emotions the audience takes away from the movie. The dark dystopia of 2019 Los Angeles and the sunny, maybe even too sunny, titular desert come to life with strings and synthesizers and without the works of Vangelis and Cornbread Compton, these amazing movies wouldn’t be the same.

-Erie

Categories
Classic Album Review

Classic Album Review: “Pool” by Porches

"Pool" by Porches Album Cover
"Pool" by Porches album cover

There is a lot of music dedicated to the concept of transience and that resonates due to its exploration of the moment slipping away. And as the saying goes, life imitates art. There’s something poetic about a band who introspectively details attempts to capture the moment doing the same thing artistically. Here that band is Porches, and that moment is Feb. 5, 2016, the release date of their masterpiece “Pool”.

I want to start off by saying that Porches have been and remain a very solid band and I’ve enjoyed their albums released since that day. It’s just that “Pool” was lightning in a bottle and from “The House” onward, there seems to be an effort to recapture what made that album so special.

“Pool” was Porches second studio album and it marked a major departure from the style of the first. 2013’s “Slow Dance in the Cosmos” is a fun indie rock record with light, jangling guitars and lyrics drenched in liminality. In hindsight the sonic departure Porches would take was a logical evolution of “Cosmos”, but hindsight is of course 20/20. In the three years that passed between it and “Pool”, lead singer and bandleader Aaron Maine would record the album out of his apartment and reshaped Porches from a rock band to a synthy electronic outfit. The result was an album that was at once polished to a sheen and beautifully flawed.

The instrumentals are the star of the show here. Every track glistens like the surface of the titular pool. The synths on “Glow” add a distinctive bounce, turning a meditative track that could have dragged a little into a breezy experience that gets in and out while leaving a lot for the listener to chew on. Pacing is a huge focus, other than a slightly awkward 30-second outro on “Be Apart” there’s not an ounce of fat on this album. The structure of the songs never get in their own way; choruses aren’t distinct entities but instead bleed out of the verses they follow. The aforementioned “Be Apart” might be my favorite song on the album and the way the instrumentals melt around “cause I want to be apart” along with the way the “I” is drawn out across for syllables has imprinted this chorus into my memory in a way few have.

There are a lot of unlikely lyrics that somehow work perfectly with their surroundings. Over a shimmering synth line and skeletal drums Aaron Maine turns “Hi there, Franklin underwater” from a Frankie Cosmos reference into a triumphant nexus for relationship swan song “Underwater”. Porches detractors have called Maine’s vocal deliveries “flat” and complain that they drag down the music but I couldn’t disagree more. His voice is so distinctive and the way it blends with the instrumentals on this album evokes a swimmer bobbing up and down through waves.

On this album is an important qualifier because, like I said earlier, this really was a high water mark for Porches’ output. Something was missing from later albums that really made this one soar, and while they were still standout tracks like “Find Me” and “Back3School”, these stood out because of how they felt like “Pool” castoffs rather than a genuine advancement of the band’s sound. I think there has been some improvement here; 2021’s “All Day Gentle Hold!” was my favorite album of theirs since 2016 and I snapped up tickets to their April 15 show at Cat’s Cradle as soon as they dropped. But “Pool” was one of my favorite albums of the last decade, such a weird and wonderful collection of songs, that anything short of that feels like Porches aren’t reaching their true potential, and are instead stuck looking in the rearview mirror. Here’s hoping they can find the way forward again and deliver a masterpiece for the 2020s like they did for the 2010s.

-Erie

Categories
Blog New Album Review

Album Review: “-io” by Circuit des Yeux

"-io" album cover
Album cover of "-io" by Circuit des Yeux

I didn’t have a traditional music upbringing. I barely knew what music was before sophomore year of high school barring some Soundgarden tracks I heard on YouTube. This meant that I skipped the slowly learning about the most famous artists and went from essentially nothing to experimental rap. While I could do a whole blog about what this has done to my music taste, something I notably missed out on was listening to any classical music growing up, and it’s only recently that I’ve been getting into that. And for anyone who wants a new album that brings the spirit of classical music with modern sensibilities for the discerning JPEGMAFIA fan, “-io” is the album for you.

Circuit des Yeux’s prior work exemplifies an appreciation of the old ways. Their only concert of 2021 will be playing at an opera house with a 16-piece orchestra and their last project was an original score for the 1923 silent film “Salomé”.

Structurally this is a departure from a typical verse-chorus set of builds and releases. Songs don’t come together in bursts, rather they start strong and finish even stronger, with a steady buildup of layering melodies. Oh there are both verses and choruses, but the songs don’t unfold around them, rather the lines are used as instruments, to evoke pure emotion with each word being delivered with its own passionate focus. “Zero is a hero” doesn’t sound inspiring, menacing and spiritually rousing when it’s in a lyric sheet, but when roared on album highlight “Vanishing” it’s downright iconic.

Haley Fohr, the mastermind behind Circuit des Yeux, has the perfect voice to anchor what otherwise could be a runaway train of furious strings and horns. Her 4-octave vocal range commands the listener to pay attention through the gale, able to draw you in alongside a single high note or descend into madness alongside forward marching drums and swirling strings. Moments of barely controlled aggression on songs like “Neutron Star” pair with the soft meditation of a “Sculpting the Exodus”, and the end of one song and the beginning of another often feel like arbitrary points; necessary divisions to turn one long saga into album form.

I need to get into more music like this. I’m not going to pretend I understand all of the themes Fohr is working with on this album, or that I’ll understand on the 100th listen. But the fun of experimental music is that you don’t really have to. If there’s one thing this album does it’s to take listeners on a wild ride, and I’m perfectly happy to sit back, prepare for anything and feel like just by listening to “-io” I’m furthering my education.

-Erie

Categories
Concert Review Festival Coverage Local Music

Manifest Review: A Loud Festival That Shines in the Quiet Moments

Charly perfoming at Manifest
Charly performing at Manifest on 10/16/21 - photo by Erie Mitchell

I think it was partway through Sister Brother’s set, a ski mask-wearing punk duo with anti-capitalist vocal samples and attacking guitars when I realized just how good of a weekend this would be. For reference, Sister Brother was the third set I went to.

Manifest did not pull punches. This was an event that threw punk and metal bands at you and you had to hold on and enjoy the ride. I spent most of my time in the Local 506, the main venue of the three, and the intimate size combined with the sheer ferocity of the instrumentals meant I had to pull out earplugs at a concert for the first time ever. 

Bands blurred together, but saying that sounds bad, like things were getting stale. When I say blurred, I mean that one band perfectly picked up the energy level from the previous group while adding their own spin on the rebellious under (and over) tones. Of course there were individual highlights. BANGZZ lived up to its name by getting the whole crowd headbanging and kicking off the night with interludes talking about the importance of taking up space and respecting others. Pie Face Girls described themselves as a “comedy troupe first, band second”, and their stage banter was as hilarious as their songs were captivating, with groovy instrumentals and repeated vocals that wormed their way into the brain and didn’t leave in a hurry. And Sand Pact came from left field with an experimental electronic set paired with performative dance that brought a bit of the club with them.

Of all the pedal to the metal guitars and screaming vocals this weekend, the most memorable act I saw was Raleigh “conjurer of sound” Spookstina. Their set consisted of the artist crouching over their decks and playing a continuous wall of distorted sound for over half an hour, punctuated by a couple minutes of vocals and some plucking of guitar strings and, most notably, the rattling of chains. Some of the rattling was recorded, but a lot of it came from them picking up and dropping chains that were on the small triangular stage in the corner of the room. This crescendoed into one of the most surreal experiences of my life: Spookstina picked up what they later told us was a sewer ladder, walked into the audience, and started hitting it with a chain to a beat that apparently only they could hear. 

What really made that work was how close the audience was to the action, and that was a major part of the experience. Artists were just hanging out in the bar after the show and were happy to be interviewed by a college radio station. Indie folk band Honey Magpie didn’t have any merch at the merch table; my friend and I got t-shirts by talking to them after their set and paying the lead singer on Venmo. It was adaptable too. There were plans for an outdoor day party with an art market on nearby Graham Street, but when rain started coming down, they just moved everything inside the Local 506 and kept the fun going. There weren’t many people there during the day, but those who showed up between 1 and 7 p.m. got to experience some great sets. I didn’t expect to hear much country music at Manifest, but Charly out of Lumberton NC surprised me with an emotionally resonant and personal hour of music.

But Manifest, in structure at least, was still a music festival like any other, and this means that its greatest strength is in allowing for the creation of certain moments, pockets of infinite joy, where you stop and realize just how much fun you’re having. The alley in front of The Nightlight, maybe the most underrated venue of the weekend, is perfect for squealing with your friends about how insane a set was, and the distance between venues allowed festival goers to slow down and really sit with the experience they just had. History dictates that, barring another global pandemic, Manifest will return to Chapel Hill next fall, and I’m already counting the days.

Categories
Blog Miscellaneous Music Education

The Power of the Playlist

Spotify homepage
Spotify's curated recommendations - screenshot by Erie Mitchell

I’ve been doing some spring cleaning this October, and have been reorganizing the way I listen to my Apple Music library. And it hit me that the way I, and most people my age, organize songs into a genre or mood based playlist that we can carry around in our pockets would not have been possible 15 years ago. Playlists as not just a way of listening but as an art form are so ubiquitous now that they’re just a fact of life, a noun that we all use. Both Google search trends and mentions of the word in books actually peaked in the late 2000s to early 2010s, right around the time Spotify was really entering the public consciousness. So despite the fact that we’re using playlists more than ever, we think about the fact that we use them less, you just throw one together without considering what the alternative might be.

This massive trend has completely reshaped how the music industry presents itself to the listener, with a varying degree of subtlety. The biggest albums of the year now see a 20+ song tracklist as a bare minimum, with more songs meaning a guaranteed increase in streams regardless of the average quality of the record. Even with records that stay around my personal sweet spot of 10-15 songs, I find myself listening through once, seeing which songs really stand  out to me, and then extracting those to a playlist whose theme fits the music of that artist, something I explored as well in my review of latest album by TORRES.

This approach to listening to music has its pros and cons. For one, I don’t really get a chance to have an album and all of its quirks really grow on me unless it’s already an album I really liked being revisited and becoming an album I love. “Suck It And See” from Arctic Monkeys is an album that transcended the way I’ll often leave the album behind; it went from being a cover I would see when the few songs I had from it played off my Arctic Monkeys playlist to being one of my favorites of the last decade. But the reason I went back and got to connect with the album is because Arctic Monkeys have been my favorite artist since sophomore year of high school, and I can only imagine how many albums that, had I been willing to give them another chance, would have become an integral part of my memories the way my favorite albums have.

On the flip side, I find playlists make for a more consistent listening experience on a day to day basis, especially when I just want to get something done and music isn’t my main focus at the time. Very few albums have zero filler, but all those hours spent perfectly sculpting a playlist late at night pay off when you’re doing homework and don’t need to switch through five windows to find the music player to skip a mediocre track. Your personal playlist is ideally nothing but battle-tested songs that will always come through. There’s a level of artistry involved too; building smaller playlists and carefully choosing which songs make the cut lets me engage with music in a way I wouldn’t be able to otherwise.

Playlists have also become a way of discovering music that’s very interesting to think about. Discover Weekly on Spotify is a lot of people’s go to for finding new songs they would probably like, but all streaming services have pre-made playlists that fit specific moods to draw from as well. Finding new music has less of a barrier in front of it than ever before, a new song is no longer an individual financial investment, like buying a record or downloading an individual iTunes track. On the contrary, if you’re paying for Spotify Premium, you want to get the most out of your monthly subscription and listen to as much as possible.

Being able to look at a homepage of a streaming service and seeing an algorithmically curated “for you” section in some ways lets individual listeners have more power over how they listen to music, but in other ways little has changed from when record companies started to dominate the industry. Algorithmically generated is key here, platforms can get you listening to a lot of music in a very narrow breadth within a wider genre or subgenre without ever having to leave one’s auditory comfort zone. Also many of those genre playlists on Spotify have their slots bought and paid for by record companies to promote their new material anyways, making music discovery in some ways no more organic than in the past, just with a new coat of paint.

Pros and cons aside, playlists aren’t going anywhere. Spotify has more than 30 million new listeners worldwide since 2020 and it’s not alone in this wider industry trend. As someone who grew up in the streaming era, I’ve never known life without them and I’m always looking for the next song to really tie the whole playlist together. I just have to make sure I know why my listening habits are the way they are, and to never listen to an album on shuffle.

-Erie

Categories
Music Education

Soundtrack to a Revolution: My Pick for the Perfect Protest Song

Protest in Raleigh
Women’s March for Abortion Rights in Raleigh – photo by Erie Mitchell

Going to the women’s march for abortion rights in Raleigh recently was a big moment for me because was my first protest since the pandemic started, but during it my thoughts briefly wandered to something else. During a quiet moment between speakers I noticed they were playing “Scoop” by Lil Nas X. Now this is a great song, and it got the crowd going, but it got me wondering if we could do better.

There are songs (some of which were already mentioned) that instantly come to mind when you think of a protest: “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar was the rallying cry against police brutality, Gil Scott Heron created a phrase as relevant today as in 1971 with “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”, and Rage Against the Machine built an entire career around punchy, stick-it-to-the-man anthems like “Killing in the Name”. All of these are classics that have inspired millions and work because of their purposeful simplicity and universality as well as their strong musical fundamentals , but I feel like the best protest song is something that isn’t known for being played on the picket line. The best listen of a song is the first one, and I know I would be just a little more fired up if it was an unexpected song.

This brings me back to “Scoop”. Again, it’s a great song and has the energy level that aligns with a massive demonstration, but lyrically it’s about fame, sex, and looking really good; all fine things to make a song about of course, but maybe not one challenging Texas abortion law. Scoop is worth discussing here because of one important aspect: the context. Lil Nas X has become such a counterculture icon that he’s shifted culture itself, conversely every song and video he releases is accompanied by, let’s say discourse, on Twitter. Everything about him is rebellious, and this is the kind of artist I would want my dream protest song to be by.

Which brings me to what my dream protest song actually is: “Generational Synthetic” by Beach Fossils. From a strictly musical perspective (I think it’s important for a protest song to be a good song in its own right) it’s a great song that starts with a killer groove and doesn’t stop that groove, and it’s just low-fi enough to blend with the chanting of a crowd and have the voices not feel completely distinct. Thematically it deals with coming into one’s own and growing along the way with clever turns of phrase, “all your working inspiration // systematic exploration” is heady without sounding pretentious. And the chorus strips all of that away to create a universality that, like Kendrick’s anthem “Alright”, lets it be extracted from the song and become a rallying cry for the voiceless all on its own. 

Lo-fi indie pop band Beach Fossils aren’t exactly an artist that screams protest, but there are some important notes I thought made this selection work. Their most recent album and interviews from lead singer Dustin Payseur about their upcoming project have shown a genre bending willingness and a specific focus on jazz that lends itself to going against the grain, and their videos especially draw from countercultural iconography with depictions of skateboarding and graffiti. One of the founding members left to become a Buddhist monk, so these aren’t a group of people who are sellouts. And the fact that this just feels like a weird choice is an asset because it doesn’t at all feel cliche.

Perhaps the most important aspect, though, is the scale of the lyricism. It’s not too long and wordy, which I think would get in a song’s way here, but also comes with a certain melancholic spirit, with a Payseur tapping into a weight of depicting an entire generation’s trials and tribulations that captures the essence of what a protest is in just a few lines.

This is just my personal pick of course, and there’s too much music out there to have a definitive answer. Mine might change tomorrow, but for now, “Generational Synthetic” is what I’m queuing up when I head to the next rally.

-Erie

Categories
Concert Preview Festival Coverage Local Music

Preview: Chapel Hill’s Manifest Aims to Break Barriers

Promotional poster for Manifest 5
Promotional Poster for Manifest 5 in Chapel Hill from October 15-16, 2021

In my training class to become a WKNC DJ, among the many pieces of advice our then station general manager gave us was to “not just play music made by four white guys”. This was met by laughs, but that line stuck with me because of how relevant it still is. When I was a daytime DJ I tried to have sets with a strong female representation, but four or so guys still made up most of the songs aired from 10 to 11 p.m. on Thursdays. And that doesn’t even take into account the “white” part of that; many genres such as modern indie rock are overrepresented by white artists and artists of color will often have their work labeled as R&B even when that label doesn’t fit the music, which can box in both exposure and creative freedom.

Enter Manifest. This is a festival that, according to the website, is “focused on dismantling patriarchy, misogyny, and white supremacy” with a diverse lineup that draws from a wide variety of races, sexualities and gender identities. Now dismantling vast social hierarchies is a lofty goal, but they’ve definitely got the lineup down. This is a festival that has seen acts like Skylar Gudasz and Hopscotch 2021 attendee Sarah Shook, and this year the acts range from Basura who make minute-and-a-half long death metal bangers to trans experimental artist KHX05 who brings a nervy and rebellious energy to her mixtapes and remix EPs. 

Manifest bills itself as mostly a punk festival, and there are a number of punk bands making an appearance. Gown is a hardcore metallic punk band that has seven members, three of whom play the cello, while Fortezza is an doom punk band out of Asheville whose long guitar solos and verses screamed over a lone drumbeat create a chaotic and apocalyptic feel to fit their hand-drawn album covers. The artists have a distinctly local flavor too. Of the 28 acts coming to Chapel Hill this weekend, 21 are from the Triangle area, and five of them won’t have to leave their hometown to make it there. 

This is the fifth iteration of Manifest, and it’s the fifth time in these exact three venues. The festival is mostly based around Local 506, a bar and club that, when not hosting live acts, is known for having themed dance parties such as the 80s-style one that I went to this summer. This is where tickets and wristbands are picked up and where WKNC is running the merch table. When not at the Local 506, festivalgoers can head to two other locations, one of which is The Cave. This is another bar/club hybrid, iconic in Chapel Hill for its alley location and will often host rock and punk rock bands. 

Now despite having essentially grown up in downtown Chapel Hill, I’ll admit I had to look up the last venue, Rosemary Street’s The Nightlight. It’s the only one of the venues not located on Franklin Street, and its website is at time of writing a single page detailing its closures due to COVID and in the spirit of Manifest, a link to a mutual aid fund. All of these are within a quarter mile walk of each other so it should be easy to go between any of the simultaneous shows being played.

Continuity is a major theme here, and not just in the venues. Manifest 5 marks the fourth appearance of Raleigh’s Fruit Snack at the aforementioned festival, a band whose members work at multiple venues in the Triangle and whose themes of anti-capitalism, openness about sex and dislike of the police fit right in with Manifest’s mission statement. It also features a ukulele player. Meanwhile, punk act Pie Face Girls has attended every single iteration since the festival began in 2016. This in combination with its many local sponsors including Orange County Arts Commission, Chapel Hill’s own Midway Market and this radio station gives this festival a strong feeling of community that puts those goals of social change front and center.

I’m personally quite excited to cover Manifest. While I won’t be able to see every artist (The Cave being 21+ is unfortunate but understandable) there are a lot of acts I really want to see and blog about, and a lot of artists I had never heard of before and really want to get to know as part of my ongoing efforts to further connect with the local music scene here. After all, homegrown music with a message is the new punk rock. And the old one too.

-Erie