This week we had the privilege of interviewing New Orleans hip hop artist Slangston Hughes. Slangston has a style all his own that is reminiscent of 90’s backpack rap, but backed up by live instruments rather than the 808 kicks we’re used to in rap. This Thursday into Saturday night, Slangston Hughes will be performing at three different Triangle area venues for what he considers a “mini tour” to help bridge the gap between NC’s “pure hip hop community,” and his own in NOLA. He’s a major supporter of the material our local artists in the Triangle are putting out, and has worked with many of them on tours and collaborations.
Few hip hop acts since The Roots have had the audacity to attempt live instruments as part of their brand, but Slangston fearlessly goes in with lyricism and showmanship. The key to his success isn’t from traveling with a band, but recruiting talent from the cities he performs in to give his songs a local flair to wherever he is on stage. This is a unique approach to making music in a genre that usually puts a heavy emphasis on representation of an artist’s specific hometown sound.
Slangston Hughes will be performing this Thursday night at Pinhook in Durham (doors at 9pm), Friday night at Proof Five Points in Raleigh (doors at 9pm) with Eternal the MC for his “Age of Eternal” album release party, and a free show at Schoolkids Records on Saturday (starts at 6pm). Check out WKNC’s podcast to hear the full interview with this artist who is sure to put on a great show alongside our city’s strongest MCs.
Phain interviewed The Color Exchange last Thursday before they played at Tir Na Nog Irish Pub for Local Band Local Beer. The Interview includes the songs “Sparks,” “Oxygen,” “Beacon,” and “ Answer”. If you like what you hear, check out The Color Exchange at their Bandcamp.
Arriving a few minutes before doors, there was a line of people waiting to enter Cat’s Cradle for Sunday night’s rock n’ roll show featuring Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Alex G, and Birds of Avalon. The line featured a diverse group of individuals, some presumably there to see Alex G based on their Teen Suicide shirts (a band who would be considered a peer to Alex G), but this was a sparse population as many were most likely there to see the headliner Unknown Mortal Orchestra. I have to admit, I’d never heard of the Raleigh psych rock band Birds of Avalon before the show.
Opening, they came out with 2 drummers and a guitarist playing with a 12-string guitar. The band played a continuous set without breaks between songs. They played a brand of psych-rock that sounds reminiscent of the 1970’s, filled with many harmonies and ample opportunities to jam out. Amidst one of their songs, the keyboard player used aluminum foil as an instrument, to my disbelief.
Up next was Alex G, the reason I was at this show. I was quite interested in seeing the contrast between Alex G (an artist known for his sparse lo-fi, bedroom pop-esque music) and the wall of sound that was Birds of Avalon.
Alex G came out with a full band and a new haircut. He started by engaging the audience in amusing stage banter, telling us he was going to play “original songs” and such, between each set. He played a collection of songs from his discography, but most came from DSU, his most recent release. The highlight of the set was during a DSU cut “Icehead” where at the climax of the song, he diverged from the recording and yelled into the microphone to a shocked and excited audience.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra took the stage and finished the night with one of the most upbeat sets I have ever seen.
It was filled with happy dancing from start to finish, a definite change from the punk shows I’m used to where I’m constantly watching out for fists coming my direction. I wasn’t very familiar with their material besides their first album featuring the delightful “Ffunny Ffriends,” which they played to the great joy of the audience. The set featured a jammy drum solo at one point that the audience ate up, as well as a T-Rex puppet during the encore. It was an eclectic evening of bands that all put on one great rock n’ roll show.
1. GIRLPOOL – Before The World Was Big – Wichita 2. ESKIMEAUX – O.K. – Double Double Whammy 3. UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA – Multi-Love – Jagjaguwar 4. HOP ALONG – Painted Shut – Saddle Creek 5. JOANNA GRUESOME – Peanut Butter – Slumberland 6. MEWITHOUTYOU – Pale Horses – Run For Cover 7. ELVIS DEPRESSEDLY – New Alhambra – Run For Cover 8. THEE OH SEES – Mutilator Defeated At Last – Castle Face 9. METZ – II – Sub Pop 10. SPEEDY ORTIZ – Foil Deer – Carpark 11. TURNOVER – Peripheral Vision – Run For Cover 12. SURFER BLOOD – 1000 Palms – Joyful Noise 13. ETERNAL SUMMERS – Gold And Stone – Kanine 14. HOT CHIP – Why Make Sense? – Domino 15. MY MORNING JACKET – The Waterfall – Capitol 16. NO JOY – More Faithful – Mexican Summer 17. VAADAT CHARIGIM – Sinking As A Stone – Burger 18. PINS – Wild Nights – Bella Union 19. TORRES – Sprinter – Partisan 20. J. FERNANDEZ – Many Levels Of Laughter – Joyful Noise 21. HEARTLESS BASTARDS – Restless Ones – Partisan 22. CAYUCAS – Dancing At The Blue Lagoon – Secretly Canadian 23. SHARON VAN ETTEN – I Don’t Want To Let You Down [EP] – Jagjaguwar 24. MIKAL CRONIN – MCIII – Merge 25. NICK DIAMONDS – City Of Quartz – Manque 26. CEREMONY – The L-Shaped Man – Matador 27. TORO Y MOI – What For? – Carpark 28. MITSKI – Bury Me At Makeout Creek – Don Giovanni 29. CHASTITY BELT – Time To Go Home – Hardly Art 30. WAXAHATCHEE – Ivy Tripp – Merge
Phian interviewed The New Schematics on June 11th before they played at Tir Na Nog Irish Pub for Local Band Local Beer. The interview starts with The New Schematics song “Born without Borders” and includes live performances of “Midnight” and “87 Buick.” If you like what you hear check out The New Schematics at their website.
Phian interviewed Kurtzweil on June 11th before they played at Tir Na Nog Irish Pub for Local Band Local Beer. The interview includes the Kurtzweil songs “Not a Game,” “Lay Down,” and “No One is Watching.” If you like what you hear check out Kurtzweil at their Bandcamp.
6/26: End of Love (featuring Jody Stephens of Big Star) / Gasoline Stove @ Local 506
6/26: The Delta Saints / Season & Snare / Magpie Feast @ Kings
Tune into WKNC 88.1 FM this week and when the DJ asks for it, call the request lines at 919-515-0881 or 919-515-2400 for your chance to win tickets to these shows! Good luck!
These reviews can also be seen in the latest issue of The Technician.
BOBBY CAPRI – REMOTE VIEWING
Hip-Hop / Rap / Pop / R&B
Charles Morse, WKNC underground hiphop/urban music director
Bobby Capri’s second EP of 2015, “Remote Viewing,” is an entertaining romp through boom bap nostalgia. The Richmond, Virginia rapper has made a lane for himself with his “street-bred white boy” story, backed by fundamental beats and a no-frills flow. However, there isn’t anything very original about this piece of work to make it more than a one-listen novelty. Nineties-esque rap music will probably never die in the underground, but in order to make it sound good, a high level of lyrical ability is needed. Capri does not have that, and a guest appearance from underground rap’s current boss, Freddie Gibbs, couldn’t even make him sound better. In the beginning of the song “Room Full of Strangers,” Bobby says, “I was never mediocre; greatness was immediate.” This is a bold-faced lie. “Remote Viewing” is good for mindless listening as background music, but don’t look for any profound insights from the Richmond rapper.
Recommended Tracks: “Make Moves” featuring Freddie Gibbs, “God,” “Gucci Loafers,” and “Never Fall Short” featuring Michael Christmas
Sounds like: Machine Gun Kelly, Action Bronson
MEWITHOUTYOU – PALE HORSES
Indie / Experimental
Nathan Forbes, WKNC assistant daytime music director
There’s a lyric in a song that goes, “Now it’s just Rival Schools and mewithoutYou on our car rides.” The song is one of my favorites from the band The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die. That line kindled a spark of interest in me to dig further into mewithoutYou’s catalog. Since then, I’ve found certain songs by the band really worth clinging to. Similarly to TWIABP, mewithoutYou is a band that I find difficult to categorize. In the band’s earliest days they were making music that was far closer to hardcore punk and screamo than indie rock. Slowly, they became more and more experimental, adding elements of spoken word and post-hardcore. They maintained that punk energy on their most renowned albums Catch for Us the Foxes and Brother, Sister, but on their 2009 album, It’s All Crazy!, mewithoutYou became far more folksy. Only recently has the band returned to the post-hardcore style that they are known for and that has influenced the likes of La Dispute and Brand New.
Their newest album, Pale Horses, dropped just this week, and it’s a conceptual labyrinth. It actually reminds me of Brand New’s highly acclaimed album, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. However, if the albums are akin, I would describe Pale Horses as a more mature older brother. Both albums have themes of religion and death, and they even have a similar post-hardcore/indie rock sound. The wordiness of mewithoutYou on Pale Horses is much more complicated though and may be a turnoff for some. The lyrics are loaded with references to classic literature and the Book of Revelation. Reading through the lyric booklet that comes with the album is like reading a James Joyce novel with its stream of conscious writing style and wealth of obscure references. Annotations within the lyric booklet might have been beneficial! However, if you really feel the need to look into the lyrics more, then rock.genius.com is a good place for that. In fact, this album’s lyrics are so dense that many lines in the booklet were appended from the actual recordings.
One of my favorite tracks from the album is “Red Cow,” and non-coincidentally, it is one of the most hard-hitting songs on the album. It’s a blood-boiler that reminds me a lot of their album Catch for Us the Foxes, specifically the inspiring first track from that album, “Torches Together.” “Blue Hen” is another energetic cut from Pale Horses about death’s approach and features a chorus that’s especially memorable.
The album closes with “Rainbow Signs,” a song that evokes images of nuclear war and massive armies. It reaches for the apocalyptic bleakness one might find in a Godspeed You! Black Emperor song. In the lyrics, Aaron Weiss connects personal catastrophe with the downfall that’s predicted to occur in the Bible through the seven seals of Armageddon. The song starts off subtly, but around the halfway point there’s a sudden burst, and a guitar riff comes in that just sounds mean. Then, the heaviness cuts out, and the song and the album end on a personal note for Weiss.
Although Pale Horses may never reach the musical heights of Catch for Us the Foxes or Brother, Sister, the album shows that mewithoutYou is a band still capable of creating lively music, albeit by the use of a slightly outdated formula. Above all, Pale Horses shows that the band is still progressing and exploring new territory, especially through their mystical and imaginative lyrics that extend from their songs like poems.
1. BRAIDS – Deep In The Iris – Arbutus 2. BEN WASH – Snob Rock – King’s Head 3. PURITY RING – Another Eternity – 4AD 4. FRITZ KALKBRENNER – Ways Over Water – BMG-Suol 5. FORT ROMEAU – Insides – Ghostly 6. BEARDYMAN – Distractions – Tummy Touch 7. E1SBAR – Super Fantasy – Polar Vortex 8. SONOMAD – Sonomad – Prismtone 9. VESSELS – Dilate – Bias 10. KODAK TO GRAPH – IAMANTHEM Remix [EP] – Family Artists
