Double Virgo’s album cover for “Foolish Narratives,”
Bar Italia began by accident. The members were all living in one building in Peckham, England in 2019. Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton lived downstairs in a single shared apartment, making music as Double Virgo. Meanwhile, Nina Cristante lived upstairs, teaching pilates.
The name Double Virgo is self-referential, as Fehmi and Fenton share the same star sign. Their sound is rhythmic, emotive and dark.
Bar Italia formed later on, first signing to Dean Blunt’s music label Word Music before recently switching over to Matador Records to release their new project “The Twits.”
I was lucky enough to see Bar Italia play at Motorco Music Hall last March. Fehmi, Fenton and Cristante seemed to revel in their mysterious presence. They came on stage thirty minutes past nine p.m., played for strictly 50 minutes without pause and then left abruptly with a briefly whispered thank you to the crowd, only stopping to pass the set list off to a person standing near the front of the stage.
Summer semester has started, which means less DJs and more music from the automation playing. Which means it is now as good a time as any to talk about the music that plays on it and is new and good! Here’s albums that got put on the rotation recently that you can hear in the Afterhours block on WKNC right now.
Raucous riot grrrls Babe Haven are dropping their latest album “Nuisance” at Motorco June 28th, and it’s sure to be real rager.
Performing with iconic garage punks BANGZZ and Destructo Disk, Babe Haven isn’t just debuting their newest album, but kicking off a raffle in support of Girls Rock NC.
The band will also offer limited edition posters designed by vocalist Lillie Della Penna and give out trophies for particularly interactive showgoers.
For fans of the Triangle punk scene, this is far from an opportunity to pass up.
“Nuisance”
“Nuisance” comes after Babe Haven’s 2023 LP “Uppercut.” Consistently high-energy, irreverent and infused with 90s-era grunge, “Uppercut” is a classic from beginning to end.
Babe Haven has offered us a taste of what to expect from “Nuisance” with the release of singles “Die (and Rot)” and “Blind Yourself.”
As far as songs go, “Die (and Rot)” is classically Babe Haven: barbed wire and sugar candy and a couple dog barks à la Brian Garris.
Della Penna really pushes herself hard with this one, and I can only imagine the absolute (beautiful) chaos her performance would bring to a crowd. I, for one, cannot wait to throw elbows to this.
Cover for “Uppercut” by Babe Haven
Conversely, “Blind Yourself” takes a minute to warm up, starting with an almost post-punk slant before grunge-infused vocals shift the genre to edgy alternative rock. The song is a real hip-swayer for most of its duration before reaching a hardcore climax in the song’s final thirty seconds.
If these two singles are anything to go on, “Nuisance” will be an absolutely riotous release.
BANGZZ and Destructo Disk
Supporting Babe Haven are two other iconic punk bands, BANGZZ and Destructo Disk.
Durham-based duo BANGZZ consistently channel “feral grunge punk catharis” with their unflinchingly fast and loud tracks. You can catch a special WKNC interview with them here.
Cover for “You Took My Body Long Ago and Now I am Taking it Back” by BANGZZ
Destructo Disk, hailing from Winchester, Virginia, have garnered acclaim for their witty and irreverent lyricism with iconic songs like “The Power of Christ Expels You” and “Goth Queen (Reign Supreme).”
Cover for “Punk Rock Die” by Destructo Disk
The band’s insistence on failing to take themselves — or the punk scene — seriously makes them a self-aware (and simply better) version of the infamous Negative XP.
Final Thoughts
There’s no better way to finish off Pride Month than a good punk show. And there’s no better punk show than one where you have 1) An excuse to be as extra as possible and 2) A chance to catch some of the most iconic bands in the southeast in action.
A look at “Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert.”
By 1966, Bob Dylan and his apostolic audience were at odds and that tension boiled to a head during one pivotal set at Manchester Free Trade Hall, not the misbilled Royal Albert Hall.
In 2022, Cat Power brought Dylan’s words back home, this time in the right venue.
Power, the notorious alternative folk songstress of ’90s acclaim, while known for being obtuse and inaccessible, feels remarkably accessible in this recording.
Released in 2023, as far as cover albums go – which she is no stranger to – this one is almost painfully straightforward.
Equal parts faithful reconstruction and self-aware reimagining of Dylan’s last supper, the album playfully tugs at the frayed edges of folk’s second death knell – Farcically, Dylan had already “killed” folk alongside Mike Bloomfield the year before at the 1965 Manchester Folk Festival.
Following the set song by song right down to the acoustic/electric split half-way through, Power effortlessly waltzes between her own delicate, ghost-like phrasing and Dylan’s nasally-spoken slide.
But as a listener, I’m not entirely sure what keeps Powers back from the precipice of empty pantomime she teeters on.
If anything, “Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert” feels reverential to the point of becoming defanged.
Whether it be the mix or the crowd, there’s a heavy silence that hangs over both the acoustic and electric portions of the album, miles away from Dylan’s caustic bite and his audience’s simmering discontent.
Warning: This Clip Contains Explicit Content.
Bob Dylan’s 1966 “Judas” Incident from YouTube.
It’s a beautiful album and a wonderful showcase of both Power’s vocal stylings and Dylan’s lyricism but it feels empty above all else.
The moment is too self-aware, too self-referential.
Her audience sits in rapt attention, intimately acquainted with each dip and turn of the score, even attempting to recreate the “Judas” moment…only for it to be on the wrong song.
It’s Power’s response to the Judas heckle that says everything about the auspices this project was conceived under; “No, Jesus,” she responded dryly before launching into a haunted rendition of “Ballad of a Thin Man.”
We all know what that moment meant for the future of music, for the folk messiah to betray the movement he helmed…it changed everything – and that is the albatross that hangs around Power’s neck throughout the set.
Because we know now what that concert meant and what he means to music, we can’t possibly recreate it in earnest – it’s holy, now…it’s larger than us.
But it shouldn’t have been.
“Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert” is a wonderfully accessible foray into Bob Dylan’s discography and the stylings of Cat Power. But beyond a well mixed, well arranged reproduction, Power doesn’t bring anything new or fresh into the conversation.
A good cover album, which, technically this is, should expand upon the material or revive the energy that captured audiences originally – and from where I stand, Power dropped the ball on both.
