interview – mister lies

– featured image courtesy of brian vu –

despite – or perhaps in spite of – a string of well-received releases in the first half of the decade, nick zanca hit the pause button on his mister lies project around the end of 2014. after five years in the wilderness, zanca returns to the moniker this week with a self-titled, self-released album.

mister lies is a fairly brief endeavor; its ten songs clock in at around a half-hour and are best digested all at once, preferably without interruption. anchoring the release is “the commuter,” a track whose titular subject would be the ideal consumer of this body of work: perhaps not someone inbound, about to start their day, but someone outbound, retreating to solitude and stillness.

we caught up with zanca in the weeks leading up to his return to discuss his new album, how his collaborative work with quiet friend has influenced his solo output, and the quest to search for influences outside of the realm of music. check out the transcript, lightly edited for clarity, below.

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it’s been nearly five years since you released the last mister lies album. what caused you to step away from the project, and what led you back?

stepping away was necessary. i was halfway through my freshman year of college when i put out the first EP on bandcamp and at that age insecurities were still deep and blind spots were still wide. i had learned ableton by looking over friends’ shoulders and stumbled upon my sound almost by accident.

the response to that early material was overwhelming. in a matter of weeks, opportunities presented themselves that usually take years for artists to reach – nearly every weekend in the coming semesters were spent flying out to play shows. as excited and grateful as i was, it was as if i had acquired an audience before a sense of self. 

eventually i would drop out of school to tour after my sophomore year, usually with other young producers who had experienced the same kind of rapid rise in that same strange internet microcosm of “chill”-adjacent electronic music. the absurdity of our individual situations and the privilege of sharing music with strangers was a source of solidarity, but the performance anxiety always persisted. i was quietly struggling to embrace being queer and neurodivergent in a scene that thrives on hedonist aesthetics, male gaze imagery and smartphone solipsism. it was often a musical neverland – unless an audience is on your side, it refuses to grow up. there were a lot of personal and professional endings. i rode the wave as far as i could, but i began to feel like i was wearing a mask. it took effort to take it off, deflate the ego and let life happen.

giving myself room to be human was probably a good start – i finished my degree, fell in love, got closer to family – but developing a intense relationship to listening outside the context of product was what got me back on my feet creatively. starting quiet friend and shifting focus to something rooted in a group effort rewired my brain. it was something i didn’t know how to do for a while. i’ve also worked as a music supervisor for hospitality venues for a few years now, and the site-specificity of sound has become something i engage with daily.

shortly after the quiet friend record came out and we were playing shows around new york, i was sifting through old hard drives and was blown away by the amount of sketches i was sitting on. i started there and recorded alone at home with what free time i had on the weekends. at first it felt like putting on an old shirt that no longer fit, but eventually the fabric stretched out, i followed the ideas that came, and a year later i had a record. 

in the interim, you’ve kept busy with quiet friend. how does your compositional approach differ (if at all) when working independently as opposed to collaboratively?

the two ways of working seem to inform and complement each other, especially now that i’ve found a balance of both. in a group context, you’re mostly letting the ideas of others in, and i was really hungry for that at the time. i tend to internalize a lot when working alone, but with others i found what i eventually recognized to be personal strengths to reinforce themselves and echo – thick textures, bricolage, a sense of place. it’s a great way to get your writers block unstuck and i’d recommend it to anyone struggling with a solo practice – you discover what it actually is you bring to the table and then are able to take that home with you and truly utilize it.

this record i made on my own couldn’t have happened without that experience. steven and i are just getting started, but i’m proud of that record we made and the strange extended family we’ve developed in the process of getting the band off the ground. i’m excited for that music to reach more ears. 

this new album has a fair amount of found sounds and electroacoustic elements – it’s very soundscape-y, for lack of a better term. who or what were some touchstones when you were writing these songs?

i have a tendency to get wrapped up in musical influence, and this time around i did my best to avoid relying on that in favor of inspiration pulled from other disciplines. in general though, i think one of the major differences between then and now is that my taste has started to embrace the longform and lean toward slowness and meditative commitment.

clarice lispector’s writing and chantal akerman’s films encourage those who consume them to have patience for a slower and fluid pace, borderline glacial, and the end result is something so human that accentuates the everyday. my record is the durational opposite – it’s over and done in thirty minutes – but it aims to capture the present and recreate the surrounding world in the same way. 

of course, i am easily impacted by what i hear and can’t ignore that. field recordings and found sounds have been an important part of my practice from the beginning, but i think this record is the first time that they are being treated as the central focus – the environments have become the soloists.  luc ferrari, alvin curran and hiroshi yoshimura are all composers in touch with their respective atmospheres and that aspect of their work has had a profound effect on me.

people have always described what i do as “cinematic”. i guess i went into this one with that in mind. 

this album is self-titled; how much of a conscious decision was that?

totally intentional. it feels like the closest thing to pressing the project’s reset button. i see this work as a summation of everything i’ve explored sonically for far, so self-titling simply felt like the move.

listening to mister lies from start to finish in one sitting is optimal, but you’ve decided to share “the commuter” ahead of its release as a preview of things to come. what does that particular song represent to you, and how does it fit into the album overall?

“the commuter” was the first of the batch to feel complete and was also the first indication of the record’s site-specific direction. it’s less of a single and more of an excerpt i was itching to share. of all the tracks on the record, i think it feels the most similar in spirit to the music i made when I was younger, but also works as an introduction to the sonic territory i’ve been interested in occupying lately.

when making records in the past, i would close myself off somewhere and create situations for myself that were unhealthily hermetic – i would let nothing else in but the music. the results produced intense work but the process was not always productive.

this time around, i’ve introduced more balance to my life. anything that i treated as a distraction before – be it the daily routine or the world outside my window – has become a compositional device and fuel for the record. in this case, it’s the introspection and claustrophobia on my way to and from work. 

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mister lies is out this friday, august 2nd. read an essay zanca wrote about his album, alongside a full stream, over at talkhouse.

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interview – ryan pollie

– featured image courtesy of dominic ferris –

ryan pollie’s brisk, twenty-five minute new self-titled album is bookended by a pair of choral tracks, brief exercises that retain a remarkably cleansing effect. in the past year or so, pollie relinquished his nom de guerre of los angeles police department, battled cancer, and wrote many of the songs that would wind up on this record, but not necessarily in that order; he received his diagnosis after much of the album was complete, putting those songs – and their existential themes of mortality – into a slightly more immediate context.

under his own name, ryan pollie is much more clear-eyed in his approach to songwriting. the hazy ennui that dotted his output as los angeles police department – a perfect analog to one’s mid-twenties – has disappeared, bucolic slide guitars, straight-ahead acoustic strumming, and detuned piano chords reigning supreme.

breezy though its contents may be, ryan pollie’s aural affect is at times belied by its namesake’s lyrical tone; the plaintive refrain of “my god’s insane” on “aim slow” might serve as a mantra for the entire album, an attempt to explain the inexplicable. “only child” finds pollie addressing his diagnosis and its accompanying uncertainty head-on, while “raincoat” is a brief, heartbreaking ode to a relationship’s end.

the nostalgia of pollie’s earlier work as los angeles police department has throughlines in cuts like “leaving california” and “eyes of vermont,” both awash in images of childhood and home. taken in as a whole, this ten-song collection serves as a potent snapshot of pollie’s current existence, its delivery done in a timeless fashion.

we recently caught up with pollie via e-mail to discuss 1970s singer-songwriters, the fruits of collaboration, and his lingering affinity for new england. check out the transcript, lightly edited for clarity, below.

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this is your first album under your own name after a handful as los angeles police department. was there anything in particular that led to you shedding that moniker?

totally. the past few years i’ve been getting heavy into singer-songwriters from the early 1970s. whether american, english, irish, japanese – most of the artists i fell for were making music so personal that the subject matter and the tone was so closely linked to the writer. like graham nash or jackson nrowne both writing really personal break-up albums (both about joni mitchell) – there was just no separation between the songs and the songwriter.

i came to kind of an existential moment where it felt like by shedding a “band name,” i was able to dig a little deeper with what i had to say and how i wanted to represent myself with my art. once i made the decision, it really provided a new space for me to grow as an artist, i think. 

you wrote most of this album, which tends to grapple with mortality and the general essence of being, before receiving a cancer diagnosis. did you subsequently find yourself ascribing new meaning to those completed songs, or a new perspective on the contents and scope of the album? 

i think that’s really perceptive of you to ask, maybe just because that’s absolutely what happened. i had written and recorded most of the material before i knew that i was sick, and the lyrical themes you are describing, that i was already exploring, became even more meaningful to me.

songwriting seems to have this magical prophetic nature sometimes. not always. but for this record, and this has happened to me in the past, i was writing songs about facing death, getting sick, ending a specific relationship – all things that just kind of flowed through me without knowing that they would be around the corner in my life.

the collaborations across this album feel especially significant, given the intimate circumstances surrounding its final stages of creation. can you speak a bit to any part or parts of the collaborative process you found particularly meaningful?

community was a huge part of the album process for me, and a really important part of my life through all stages of making the record.

i feel really proud of where i’m at as far as my relationship with my own work. i not only feel so lucky to have amazing friends and family supporting me in general, but i was able to collaborate with all of my friends in bringing the songs to life. i would reach out to all of my friends who play music, asking them to contribute on different days when i was writing and recording different songs, and they all were so graceful in that they really gave 100% of themselves to my art.

i can hear the personalities of all my friends all over the record, as if i’m spending time with them, as if they’re in the room with me. it’s nice to know that i’ll have that feeling when i play the record for the rest of my life.

i also mixed the record with one of my best friends while i was going through chemo: brian rosemeyer. he would be in a room with me, as i was pale and bald and sick – i looked like nosferatu. and he would not only give such caring attention to each track, but he was also a huge emotional support for me through that whole experience of getting cancer. i could tell he was emotionally invested in the story i was weaving together, and it really shows, i think, in his work. it was the best get well soon gift, looking back on it now. 

your childhood home is on the east coast, but you seem pretty geographically and musically preoccupied with california. do any parts of life in new england – and its accompanying experiences – seep into your songwriting?

very much so. i wrote “eyes of vermont” in vermont – while listening to a lot of will fox demos. being among the trees, at the lake – it’s so inspiring to me visually and just gives me such a different feeling than california does. it was nice bringing that energy back.

i wrote “leaving california” – originally called “leaving california for vermont” – right after that trip as well. that song is about going home, the fear and anxieties of los angeles and the comfort of the green mountains. 

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ryan pollie is out now via anti-.

interview – barrie

– featured image courtesy of the alexa viscius –

after releasing a handful of sharp one-off singles last year, the brooklyn quintet barrie has their sights set on 2019. the band is slated to release their debut full-length, happy to be here, later this spring and recently shared “clovers,” the album’s lead single, an encapsulation of the harmonically-rich collaborative nature barrie’s music tacks towards.

we recently caught up with four of the five members of barrie via e-mail to talk collaborative creative direction, the significance of “clovers” as a lead single, and how individual members’ experiences have shaped happy to be here. check out the transcript, which has been lightly edited for clarity, below.

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there’s a bit of ambiguity as to whether barrie is a band or a solo project, which i think is by design. how do you approach integrating your own creative direction with the input and contributions of the other band members?

barrie: we’re figuring it out as we go. everyone in the band is a talented writer and producer in their own right, and has other outlets outside the band. the best way i can think to describe it is we’re running my songs through the filter of this really interesting group of people who have experiences and talents that i don’t. sometimes that plays out through the music (and very much in the live production), and sometimes it’s in ways beyond music, like in the aesthetics or big picture decisions, or who we collaborate with.

although the band now operates out of new york city, each member originally hails from a different part of the globe. can you speak to any individual experiences, musical or otherwise, that were particularly valuable and/or informative to the band as a whole while making this record?

dom: that is a heck of a question. i would say a great thing we did was to play the first set of songs together many times, as for the first few months we were maybe listening to barrie’s demos remotely and coming together was more about meeting and getting a feel for each other. i think that allowed us to imagine what we could each bring to the table.

spurge: almost all of us are on the other side of twenty-five, so we’ve each had our own experiences, in and outside of the music industry, before coming together to start this project. that’s allowed us to have a patience and self-awareness about our band growth and group dynamic that i don’t think is common for new bands. for example, i’ve worked and interned at a few music studios in new york. that experience has taught me about the prevalence of ego in the creative process, sometimes more so than the actual music making. so, we all make sure to always be empathetic and communicative to each other with this in mind.

noah: yeah, everyone in the band is a bit of an old soul type/has been around it all for a while so longevity and sustainability is something that is a constant consideration, both logistically, musically, and emotionally. we want/plan to be around for a long time and make decisions accordingly.

“clovers” is the lead single from happy to be here, and i’m particularly struck by how the synthesizers in its second half juxtapose the piano in its first, how it encapsulates your aesthetic well while leaving other avenues open for exploration. is there anything in particular you’d like to share about the track, its origins, and/or its significance to you collectively as an ensemble?

barrie: i’m happy this is the lead single because it’s one of the songs that was most shaped by others in the band. i made the demo in boston with the original piano and synth sounds, and it was the first song spurge and noah and i worked on together when i moved to new york. spurge and noah added textures and beefed up the synth sounds, and then once we were in studio, noah beefed and polished them even more.

lol, gross.

it captures the “fucked up classic” aesthetic that we’re after. and of course, like most of the songs on the album, dom’s drumming on it, and that takes it to another level.

dom: “clovers” for me is a great indication of how we wanted to push the record beyond basic “pop songwriter” territory – a lot of that is down to (co-producer) jake aron giving a lot of space while keeping control of what was at the core of each track. the middle eight is mega hard to play though, scary.

polish that beef brisket!

noah: one of the major guiding principles behind this project is timelessness. we wanted to fill the record with a ton of easter eggs so there’d be something new to discover with each listen and listeners can consume it on whatever level they prefer. in this song, we mostly achieved that through running the MIDI that barrie had written into a bunch of analog synths, and playing with filters and stuff in real-time to introduce some human variation and create some happy accidents.

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happy to be here is out may 3rd via winspear. pre-order the album here.

2018 in review

as 2018 draws to a close, we’ve decided to do something we haven’t done in a couple of years: publish a year-end list on the dimestore.  folks who follow our twitter feed may recall seeing our favorite albums of years past tweeted out in a threaded form, often accompanied by requisite links to our previous coverage or words from other publications that really resonated. 

this list will be very similar, with a paragraph or two of year-end reflection running alongside links to purchase the album, select media, and previous coverage.  like its twitter predecessors, our review of 2018 will run without numerical ranking, instead presented in alphabetical order.  by no means authoritative, this list features ten albums that have made a lasting impact in our small corner of existence over the past year.  we hope you find something new to embrace.

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hovvdy – cranberry

the austin duo hovvdy joined the ranks of double double whammy for their second full-length, their warm, lived-in nostalgic turns slotting nicely into the label’s aesthetic.  cranberry finds hovvdy using a familiar palette as a foundation for cautious forays into tangential sonic realms; the gorgeous lilt of  the stand-out cut “truck” is punctuated by wisps of pedal steel, an affective presentation of reflective recollection.

cranberry review || dimestore saints
texas forever: a breakdown of cranberry with hovvdy || portals

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juliana daugherty – light

the charlottesville-based daughtery turned in her exquisite debut full-length amidst the dark cloud that hung over her city, its titular light a beacon guiding wayward travelers out of the deepest recesses of their minds.  light is ten tracks of melancholia with glimmers of hope and clarity, the perfect album to escape inside of with a pair of headphones on a solitary afternoon.

light review || dimestore saints
juliana daugherty’s new album light invites you to break apart softly, quietly, beautifully || into the void

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kacey musgraves – golden hour

the seemingly-endless critical acclaim heaped on kacey musgraves throughout 2018 was entirely deserved; golden hour is a timeless collection of songs that is easily poised to be one of this decade’s most enduring artifacts.  throughout thirteen tracks, musgraves invites the world to peer through her kaleidoscopic lens of cool, cosmic country, folding synthesizers into the expanses of pedal steel vistas while her lead vocal floats effortlessly in the foreground.

a top-ten list of musical moments from golden hour could easily be litigated for a substantial amount of time, but a handful are indisputable: the snappy drum fill before each chorus in “lonely weekend”; the vocoder harmonies in the second half of the second verse in “butterflies”; the entire seventy-eight seconds of “mother.”  it’s an album so outwardly joyful and pristine yet inwardly so nuanced and pensive that each repeated listen returns impressive dividends to its recipient, with myriad aural ecosystems just waiting to be discovered. 

kacey musgraves is a wild thing || stereogum
kacey musgraves knows love makes the world go round || the fader

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mr twin sister – salt

salt is one of those rare new albums that feels like stumbling upon a long-lost hidden gem upon first listen.  mr twin sister spent four years away from the cyclical drone of the music industry, hunkering down to create a lush composite of electronic pop and jazz that functions as the perfect lounge music for the raging inferno of late capitalism that has been 2018.

salt review || dimestore saints
salt review || northern transmissions

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noname – room 25

the southside chicago rapper noname took the fruits of her 2016 mixtape telefone and let them marinate for a couple of years. the result is room 25, a vibrant debut album that accentuates fatimah walker’s independent streak while honing her singular, spoken word-influenced aesthetic. this outing is a bit more visceral and less conversational than its predecessor, a poised and confident collection of songs from an indispensable voice.

here comes noname || the fader
room 25 review || pitchfork

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pat moon – romantic era

kate davis returned for her sophomore spectral outing as pat moon this past summer, escaping into a slightly different headspace that yielded the ten tracks populating romantic era. a cavernous, intensely intimate project, romantic era resonates as haunting whispers from a parallel dimension, a respite from the cacophony of our everyday existence.

“spiraling” premiere || dimestore saints
entering the romantic era with pat moon || week in pop

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r beny – saudade

austin cairns has recorded ambient music under the moniker r beny for the past few years, filtering the central tenets of 1990s slow-core through a prism of analog and modular synthesizers.  his excellent full-length saudade, released in february by the belgian tape label dauw, is a glimmering snapshot of a relatively young synthesist hitting his stride. (cairns’ other 2018 release, october’s eistla, is also commendable.)

any penchant for melody may get buried in a medium that favors deteriorating and evolving soundscapes, but carins’ melodic intuition is the glue that holds saudade together, from the stately, brassy declarations that announce “streams of light” to the hesitant ascent of “burl.”  a mixture of percolating motifs and blurry synth pads makes saudade the ideal aural companion for crisp morning walks, hazy summer evenings, and nearly any other solitary venture in between.

duologue: a conversation with r beny || stationary travels

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sun june – years

sun june shares some commonalities with another austin outfit on this list, all the more reason to keep a steadfast ear to the ground for music coming out of that particular city.  on years, the band’s debut full-length for keeled scales, laura colwell and company offer up ten spare tracks that synthesize 1960s pop, early-2000s r&b, and country ornamentations, colwell’s electric piano and the telecaster’s more mellow spectrum teaming up with a tasteful rhythm section for slow-burning standouts like “johnson city” and the muted gleam of opening number “discotheque.”

years review || dimestore saints
a road (opening): on sun june’s years LP || gold flake paint

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tierra whack – whack world

maybe whack world is an album, or maybe it’s, as its creator describes it, a “visual and auditory project.”  while its classification is debatable, the fact that tierra whack offered up something that frustrated a playlist-oriented, algorithmic streaming economy while simultaneously capitalizing on the limitations of instagram videos makes whack world decidedly a product of its time.

and what a product it is.  watching the fifteen-minute project in its audio/visual form is obviously the intended method of consumption; whack’s world is a vibrant one that toggles between playful pastiche and snippets of sincerity, a dichotomy reinforced by the characters whack portrays in each vignette.  an exercise in limitation and unabashed originality, whack world is one of 2018’s truly unique releases.

tierra whack can’t be pinned down || stereogum
tierra whack is building her own world || the fader

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video age – pop therapy

a quintessential album of the summer, video age’s pop therapy picks up right where the new orleans duo’s 2016 living alone leaves off, putting synths that previously sat in the background squarely at the center of their balmy new wave exercises.  the production across pop therapy is top-notch, with each song carving out its own little niche as ross farbe and ray micarelli steer their sophomore vessel towards its therapeutic destination.

pop therapy review || dimestore saints
comfort without a catch || the new orleans advocate

interview – majetic

– featured image courtesy of chris cox –

justin majetich shed his full band and the last letter of his surname in pursuit of his newest album.  club dread features a streamlined palette and a renewed ambition, becoming a vessel to explore the fractured intricacies of life through a dissonant, electronic lens.

after the acerbic, audio-visual one-two punch of “horseback” and “bloodbrunch,” majetic returns today with “tender ums,” the album’s reflective penultimate cut, its subterranean pulses and acoustic piano motif swirling together towards something bigger, more grandiose.  in its final moments, “tender ums” reaches that summit, all of its components coalescing into a perfect representation of majetic’s raw, soulful interior so often shrouded in stabs of angular synths.

we recently touched base with majetic via e-mail for an intimate glimpse inside the creation of club dread, its transcontinental roots, and the sequential significance of its third and newest single.  check out the transcript, along with the premiere of “tender ums,” below.

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club dread is club adjacent.  is this a headspace you’ve occupied for some time or one you specifically found yourself in while writing the songs on this record?

when i moved to new york city in 2015, i suddenly had access to a whole range of underground parties — stuff i’d dreamt of in the midwest but that didn’t really exist for me there.  i’d caught traces of it from friends in detroit, but overall, it was totally new and exciting.  i moved to new york for a musical community i’d expected to find in the live venues, but i guess it was on the dance floor that i first felt a sense of belonging in this city.

so yes, for a while my headspace was club-adjacent – preoccupied with its magic, saturated with the music.  by the time i was writing club dread in 2017, i wasn’t going out as much, but i was absolutely referencing that headspace as i wrote.  i was dipping back into those experiences and re-imagining them for the album world.  i still catch a party now and then and have some really great friends who i met through that community.

both oakland and queens factor into your biography – disparate locations geographically, but perhaps ones with some things in common musically.  are you drawn more to the contrasts or the constants of these two cities?  how did working on the album far from where it was initially conceived affect its direction and outcome?

place heavily informs the work i make.  not only does it shape the album’s atmosphere but it is also personified in the work, almost as a character.  NYC was the place-character in my last record, LUV IN THE RUINS, and i wanted something different this time around.  i was spending a lot of time in oakland with my brother and sister, and naturally, it followed to set the record there.

there’s such a complex spirit to the bay area.  so much tension between the awe-inspiring natural beauty and the extreme human disparity, the promise of progress and the dystopian realities…  all the while, there’s this catastrophic fault-line brooding underfoot and the pacific chewing at the coast, violent and massive, an insatiable conduit of dread.  incorporating the bay as a setting seemed like a powerful way to illustrate both the ecstasy and grief the characters of club dread experience in and around a club stricken with tragedy.

that being said — and i realize i haven’t directly addressed your question — there are traces of NYC in the album.  a lot of the experiences i’m filtering into the record took place here, and it’s where i was living when i wrote most of the lyrics.  still, i don’t think being back in NYC for a bulk of the writing process hindered my ability to access my sense of the bay in any significant way.  i’d taken extensive notes, and honestly, i think place can sometimes be better comprehended from a distance.  or at least, better comprehended for the purpose of art-making – the finite, fallible substance of memory naturally lending a tint of mythology to the thing remembered.

as for the the contrasts and/or constants between oakland and NYC, i mostly think about the former.  to me, they’re sort of inverse of one another: one vast, one claustrophobic; one idealistic, one realistic; one circuitous, one direct.  these sort of things require a more nuanced explanation, but that’s the jist.  as for musical contrasts, i feel like there’s a lot more concern with coolness and cleverness in NYC versus a lot of play and theater in the bay.  but if i’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that any scene is mostly what you make of it.

much of your album is centered around an electronic soundscape, but “tender ums,” which we’re premiering today, counts an acoustic piano among its focal points.  can you speak to the genesis of this track and how it fits into club dread overall?

i was visiting my parents in ohio, where my dad pastors a church.  after service, everyone will head to the fellowship hall and catch up over snacks.  on this given sunday, i slipped back into the sanctuary to play the piano while i waited for my parents to wrap up. that’s where i wrote the theme that plays during the song’s first interlude and also lends shape to the vocal melody.  it felt like something you could loop endlessly.  it was soft and small but carried an emotional weight.  i’m actually just realizing it now, but this sanctuary setting in which the song began is preserved in the “airport chapel” of the song’s opening verse.

anyway, i tucked those four measures away for a few weeks, and then one day tried growing them into a song, along with a phrase i’d pulled from my notes: “the body wasn’t made for this sort of placelessness.”  thirty-six hours later, i had “tender ums,” which is a speed unheard of for me.  it just flowed with uncharacteristic ease.  it was the last song i wrote for club dread, and it felt like recompense for an otherwise meticulous process.

though it’s the penultimate track, i see “tender ums” as the album’s final chapter.  the actual closer, “club dread,” looks back over the record in a way, encompassing the events, characters, and themes – a spiritual conclusion.  but “tender ums” sees the speaker at the chronological end, as they make their departure from the bay (airplane imagery a bookend with similar imagery in the first lines of album-opener “chewing tabs”).

it’s perhaps the record’s most vulnerable moment, but still i find a quiet triumph in the song.  take the line, “waking to a kinder sadness….”  those who’ve experienced grief subside might relate to a moment when one first feels the heaviness shift.  it’s the tiniest movement but, nevertheless, a notion of a world beyond grief.  you understand that life can recover, even if you don’t understand how.  that’s the moment from which the song is sung, and i believe it’s a crucial expression of hope in an album frequently given to despair.

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club dread arrives november 2nd via winspear.  take a listen to its third single, “tender ums,” out now on spotify and premiering below on the dimestore.

video age – pop therapy

– featured image courtesy of sarah wagner –

staying on top of every new release is hard.  staying on top of every new release is even harder when your blog uses language that suggests multiple people are cogs in the machine, but really you’re just flailing helplessly by yourself, trying not to drown in a heavily-saturated inbox.  “fashionably late” is a remedy, an intermittent feature designed to showcase particularly special albums or EPs that evaded us (there i go again) during their structured press cycle.  next up is the sophomore full-length from video age.

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A song of the summer is among the last bastions of the monoculture, something still largely dictated by radio play and its overall utility.  an album of the summer is a bit more fickle.  the latter isn’t as ubiquitous, in turn exponentially more subjective, and the date of its arrival a bit less indicative of its endurance.  pop therapy, the sophomore full-length from the new orleans duo video age, makes a strong case for contention as this year’s go-to album of the summer, its eleven tracks an instant portal to FM synth-laden, compressed guitar-driven sonic nostalgia.

on their 2016 debut, living alone, bandmates ross farbe and ray micarelli turned in a guitar-pop masterclass coyly disguised as a deep dive into 1980s synthesis.  its successor sheds any semblance of a veneer and puts its synths squarely in the foreground, with lush pads, aqueous bass lines, and brassy squelching leads all converging as an aural thesis for an incredibly timeless new wave exercise.

opening number “lover surreal” is a no-holds-barred take on this approach, a legion of yamahas cresting towards the crystalline cadences of the chorus, but the synth’s reign is often more subtle, machiavellian even: “days to remember” masquerades as the most immediate callback to living alone, only to be disrupted by a buoyant synth motif that instantly shifts the track’s tenor, while the gorgeous, understated fantasy “paris to the moon” is underscored by pulsing chord progressions and the soft detuned wanderings of sustained notes.

admittedly, it’s rather easy to get lost in the glassy production and utmost care that farbe and micarelli put into the arrangements across pop therapy.  if the first listen is defined by the album’s immediate accessibility and awareness of what constitutes a memorable hook, then subsequent passes through can easily be dedicated to nuance, either by exploring each timbre in isolation or examining how they function in concert, often shifting fluidly from melodic to counter-melodic to rhythmic duties.  pop music is, for better or for worse, often defined by the applicability of its lyrics, however; video age don’t disappoint in this realm, either, turning in a booklet that demonstrates their understanding of a simple refrain’s impact alongside an introspective depth.

dealing in the wistful and the nostalgic is all but expected of a band with such a sonic palette, but farbe drills beneath surface level observations across pop therapy.  “hold on (i was wrong),” a mid-tempo number with the split personality of a dance track and a ballad, hones in on the minutiae of a concession; the fantastically-meta “echo chamber” makes references to its digital namesake while emulating the recording structure, the couplet “in my catacomb / slap-back telling me i’m not alone” solidifying its place as a studio engineer’s anthem; the gait and brassy synth swells of “scenic highway” converge on a portrait of a contemplative scenic drive.

as its title implies, pop therapy finds video age exploring the genre’s propensity for healing.  indeed, its title track contains their most direct and compelling mantra: “pop therapy / it’s easy.”  in an interview with the new orleans advocate, farbe pushes back on the cynicism attached to the concept of pop therapy, saying “it’s actually positive. i’m quoting ray here, but the ’80s music we listen to has a really victorious, heartwarming, enthusiastic feeling to it.  and it’s just these specific chord progressions a lot of times.  so ray said, ‘it’s easy! you can make yourself feel better by playing these chords.'”  with nearly two dozen songs under their belt to back up that proclamation, it appears that video age may be onto something.

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interview – tomberlin

– featured image courtesy of philip cosores – 

When sarah beth tomberlin released at weddings last year, the weight and poignancy of her songs were immediately palpable.  each of the album’s seven original tracks is quietly devastating in its own right, but the entire project has a symbiotic relationship with catharsis; listening to at weddings in full, without distraction or interruption, yields a profoundly cleansing experience.

after its initial release and acclaim, the omaha-based saddle creek records picked up at weddings for a reissue, with three additional tracks in tow.  “a video game,” “i’m not scared,” and “seventeen” all arrive in succession, bolstering the album’s second act with tomberlin’s signature confessionals delivered over sparse arrangements.  “i’m not scared” is particularly resonant, the directness of its refrain at once deeply personal and widely applicable to a larger audience.  that strain of altruism crops up again and again throughout at weddings, its myriad personal reckonings conveyed with the rare ease that makes its consumption so medicinal, therapeutic.

we were very fortunate to recently connect with the louisville-based songwriter via e-mail to chat about at weddings, the lingering effects of childhood, and the enduring influence of hymns.  our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity; check out the transcript below.

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your family moved several times when you were very young, a transience that finds an analog in your music and lyrics.  much of at weddings seems rooted in adolescence, but does your early childhood have any lingering effect over your songwriting?

i’m not sure.  i think childhood shows itself in glimmers as we get older.  it comes out in different ways in different people with various histories.  my childhood was full of changes, but also full of a lot of sameness.  you find things to hold fast to during these changes.

i was always a kid who was outside as much as possible.  i was bad at sitting still.  i had to be out doing something, and maybe this comes from living in desolate places: the desire to make your surroundings interesting.  exploring your environment is a large part of songwriting, at least for me.  that same sense of wonder i hope i continue to carry that with me in my writing.

you’ve cited “tornado” as the bellwether of at weddings.  do any of the subsequent songs written particularly stand out in terms of personal significance, a memorable origin, or overall construction?

have i?  haha, maybe it’s in my bio somewhere, which i did not write.

when i initially wrote “i’m not scared” i didn’t think it was very good.  looking back now, i am really proud of that song and it is one that people want to talk about the most.  that song has brought up lots of good conversations so i am thankful i didn’t toss it in the garbage.  ha.

bright eyes and dashboard confessional were among the first CDs that you purchased.  are there any other artists you listened to at that formative age that have left a lasting impression on your life, not necessarily just within your capacity as a songwriter?

hm, i was late to music that really influenced me.  i still am learning and wanting all the recommendations.  i love listening to old and new.

i also feel like i’ve been asked this a good bit and try to condense the answer, so i’ll leave some other influences here: the carpenters, andy hull of manchester orchestra, cass mccombs, laura marling, neil young, and arcade fire.

the saddle creek release of at weddings contains three new songs that were written after the album originally came out last year.  how do these tracks fit with the rest of the album thematically and in terms of sequencing?

“i’m not scared” i actually wrote a month after i got back from recording the first six songs, which was august of 2016.  “a video game” i wrote that winter.  so those songs were really written in a similar space and time in my life where i think it could have fit earlier, i just didn’t have recording equipment around to place it with the already completed album.

i wrote “seventeen” last summer.  initially i was reluctant to put these songs on at weddings, because i thought the record was cohesive as it was, but listening through with where they are placed on the record they really fit so perfectly.  i think, if anything, it added even more depth to the record.  i’m really happy i decided to add them.

the phrase “my fifth of a century” feels like a mantra of sorts for this album.  do you find the first twenty years of your life to be a period that’s come to a conclusion, or are you still sorting through the vestiges of those experiences?

all but one of the songs on the record i wrote in my bedroom at my parent’s house.  since then, i’ve moved out and to another state.  i work in a different environment so the work has changed.  i’m not in school, and my community is not the same.  so yes, i do think there is somewhat of a conclusion there.

your music has been described as having a hymnal quality, and it certainly has a cleansing effect.  what components of sacred music continue to resonate with you, even as you gravitate towards a more secular existence?

i don’t think i’m gravitating towards a more “secular existence,” ha.  i am not sure what that means.  but yes, i am still influenced by the hymns and spiritual songs that i heard everyday.  i think hymns are some of the most beautiful songs, old hymns especially.

my dad actually gave me a book of anne steele’s hymns a few years ago and i wrote music to a song called “dear refuge of my weary soul”.  her life was severely difficult and she found peace through writing.  that particular hymn is just kind of her talking to god, questioning back and forth.  i really like when hymn writers question aloud, so maybe that is something i’ve taken from that kind of music.

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at weddings arrives tomorrow via saddle creek.

interview – hush hush records

– featured image courtesy of the artist – 

Frequent patrons of this space already know that the dimestore has been enamored with the seattle-based label hush hush records since last summer.  the label’s aesthetic is fluid with seemingly endless permutations; a loose nocturnal regulation has yielded ambient projects, glitchy electronic experiments, and pristine dream-pop albums among other releases.

on friday, hush hush will release HH100, a centennial of sorts that highlights and celebrates its growth over the past six years.  the compilation features fourteen brand-new tracks that are all collaborations between hush hush artists past, present, and future, a compelling distillation of the label’s “night bus” ethos.

we recently touched base with the label’s founder, alex ruder, to chat about the history of hush hush, its hundredth release, and how ruder’s work at the iconic radio station KEXP informs his approach to the label.  streaming alongside the interview is the premiere of “wait too long,” the captivating collaboration between vivian fantasy and quiett that serves at the compilation’s penultimate track.  click the play button and digest the interview below.

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hush hush began back in 2012 with kid smpl’s skylight.  what sustained you in the early days of cultivating the label, and has that driving force changed at all over the past six years?

when i launched the label, i honestly didn’t have any big-picture or long-term goals, the main thing was just to work with joey butler (aka kid smpl) to help present his debut album.  but a major motivation to cultivate the label beyond that release in those early years was bearing witness to the relative success of skylight.  it wasn’t necessarily the most successful release financially, but there was some nice momentum around it.  kid smpl was accepted into the red bull music academy just after the announcement of the album and months prior to its eventual release, his live shows were consistently memorable affairs and each performance showcased his quickly growing sonic evolution, and positive press coverage about the album all made it feel like the time and energy we collectively put into the album was a worthwhile effort.

during this early period of the label, i was also hosting a monthly hush hush DJ night in seattle, and those monthly events kept a complimentary aspect of the label moving forward and allowed the label to connect with more artists, as each monthly DJ night featured a special guest DJ to showcase their own “night bus” soundtrack.  thanks to the support we received for skylight, both local artists and non-local artists began reaching out with demos to consider for release on hush hush, and hearing exciting demos from new, unknown, or overlooked artists and wanting to help them share their sounds continues to be the driving force behind the label.  it’s still based in that desire to share quality sounds from artists that i feel deserve a bit more of a spotlight.

the hush hush catalogue feels like a curated playlist on an album-sized scale, if that clumsy analogy makes any sense: each release is complimentary to its predecessors but explores a fresh facet of the label’s aesthetic.  does your experience in radio at all inform how you sequence releases and approach hush hush as a whole?

aside from wishfully trying to align releases with a season that makes the most sense (ie: darker ambient/drone releases in winter, brighter sounds in summer), i’m not trying to be too intentional with the sequence of releases, but i’m super focused on the sequencing of songs on each release and frequently geek out when taking a collection of songs and figuring out the best sequence to paint the most captivating picture possible.

my experience in radio definitely comes into play in these situations.  with every radio show i put together, i try to play and transition songs in an order that feels natural and smooth, but also sneaks in challenging segues and allows the narrative to grow and expand with each new song, and that’s how i view each hush hush release.  i’ve never released a stand-alone single on hush hush; i’ve always been focused on fleshed-out EPs, mini-albums, or full-length albums, as i’m still a huge fan of LPs and EPs that showcase a clear vision from the artist.

HH100 is, as the name suggests, your 100th release.  congratulations!  it’s also a pretty unique release: fourteen brand-new tracks, all collaborations between artists that have called hush hush home at some point.  what gave you the initial idea for this kind of project?

thank you!  i thought it’d be a fun challenge to coordinate another hush hush compilation for the 100th release.  i’ve done a couple bandcamp-only compilations in the past, more as a thank-you to fans, featuring new unreleased songs from hush hush family and friends (presents vol. 1) or a combination of new unreleased songs as well as select songs from the past year’s catalog (presents vol. 2).

but this was the first time trying to do an “official” compilation, and i thought it’d be exciting to tap into the generous collaborative spirit that so many hush hush artists possess and try to do something unique for the compilation: pairing up artists, sometimes from different sides of the planet, to bounce ideas off each other and see what they could come up with.  i’ve always been amazed at the talent of the artists that have released music on hush hush, yet i was admittedly a bit shocked to hear how strong and seamless the collaborative tracks turned out, especially from two artists that had most likely never communicated with each other before.

were there any collaborative pairings that took you by surprise, or any memorable anecdotes about the various processes that made their way back to you?

honestly, i don’t think any of the collaborative pairings came as a “surprise” to me.  although their styles may vary widely, i feel there’s a common thread to every hush hush release and each artist tapped into that shared vibe for their track.

i was thrilled that cock & swan and TZECHAR were able to collaborate on a new track; they’ve both been strong admirers of each other’s work for years now.  they’ve previously remixed each other’s tracks, but to have them work together on something new felt really special.

hanssen and secret school teaming up on a track is another collaboration that has led to some wonderful results.  both of them live in seattle and are big fans of each other’s work.  working together on “felt” was quite pivotal, as it’s not only a stunning track that shows them creatively pushing each other, but it also planted the seed for them to continue to work together on new tracks, so there may likely be a bigger collaborative release from them down the road.

– vivian fantasy (bee cardoso) –

today we’re premiering “wait too long,” the collaboration between vivian fantasy and quiett.  can you share the label’s history with these two artists?  how did this particular collaboration come to be?

yeah, i was stoked when vivian fantasy and quiett decided to work on a track together.  each of them bring a cool “live band” feel to their songs.

vivian fantasy is richmond, virginia-based musician danny bozella. he had been self-releasing music on bandcamp, but then last year he came across hush hush via asking/bearing, an album by seattle-based artist olive jun (aka lushloss) who previously lived in richmond, so danny was familiar with her music and was excited to see her music released on a label.  he reached out to me with a handful of demo tracks that turned into the dreamy psych-pop EP deep. honey. that came out late last year on hush hush.

quiett is actually a duo comprised of sam leffers and kevin hake.  sam reached out to me in early 2017 with some demos he had done with kevin as well as manchester, UK DJ/producer two tail, and i was immediately impressed with the set.  i ended up releasing their fountains EP during the summer last year.  both vivian fantasy and quiett create such magnetic, romantic, gauzy sounds, it was exciting to hear their styles mesh together so smoothly on “wait too long.”

what does the future hold in store for hush hush?

the future is still driven by the initial motivation to do what i can to work with new/underground artists, help share their music in the way that feels both good for the artist and the label, and be able to foster a family/community through it all.  there’s still lots of releases in queue, so the future holds many more hush hush sounds that will continue to explore the genre-less yet distinctive vibe that originally birthed the label.

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HH100 arrives august 3rd on bandcamp and later this month on cassette.  you can pre-order the compilation now.

interview – cam maclean

– featured image courtesy of  sarah o’driscoll – 

Cam maclean’s music evokes a sense of timelessness.  the montreal songwriter – perhaps best-known for his work in vesuvio solo – began constructing his solo debut full-length back in 2015; the end result is wait for love, an eight-song collection of breezy, folk-inflected soft pop gems interested in parsing how heady topics like heartache and masculinity collide and intertwine.

from early, synth-driven cuts like “where i go” and “new jerusalem” to the piano-oriented title track and evocative ballad “light cast,” maclean has already provided a broad primer to the textures he explores across wait for love, his singular falsetto and angular guitar motifs threaded throughout.  with the album’s arrival just a day away, we caught up with maclean via e-mail to discuss its creation; check out the transcript, lightly edited for clarity, below.

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how did this new batch of tunes come about?  did you have a conscious plan to create a body of work separate from vesuvio solo, or did it occur a bit more organically?

i’ve always written songs on my own, and had been planning to do my own record for a long time.  vesuvio solo is (ironically, i suppose) very much a duo – the songs are co-written by both (co-frontman) thom and i.  i do work really well in partnerships in general, though, and in the making of my own record wait for love, working with producer adam wilcox was invaluable.

we started working together on some of the songs in 2015, and a lot of them went through many different arrangements.  the song “where i go,” for instance, was originally done in a major key – adam encouraged me to play it in minor.  “light cast” is another song that ended up dramatically different than it started – it was originally written as a slow acoustic ballad, sung in a much lower register.

wait for love explores a sonic territory that’s familiar to you, but you cite a larger range of influences.  what new artists in particular did you find yourself gravitating towards while working on this release?

i can’t say that i was directly influenced by any newer artists when it came to writing or producing any of these songs.  in fact, perhaps the album i listened to the most while i was making these songs was carole king’s tapestry!

i am, however, of course inspired by a lot of newer artists.  jessica pratt is someone whose music i’m consistently interested in, for instance.  my record does explore similar sonic territory as vesuvio solo, yes, but the songs on wait for love have a confessional quality that makes them quite different from vesuvio solo, i think.

can you speak to any obstacles you faced while recording a solo project that you hadn’t encountered previously?  perhaps there were unforeseen benefits as well?

i worked on the album in a very piecemeal fashion over the course of two years or so.  this was both frustrating (because of course it’s nice to get something done quickly), and also a gift because it did allow the songs to grow and become shaped more organically without force.  the biggest obstacle was trying to complete the album and focus on it while still being active with vesuvio solo and several other projects.

this album has many of the lush qualities that could be associated with the singer-songwriters of yesteryear.  is there a specific decade you find yourself especially endeared to, touchstones that will always inform your work in some way?

the 1970s is probably the decade that produced my favorite records more than any other.  court and spark by joni mitchell, for instance, is a record i always come back to.  other favorites include judee sill’s self-titled debut, paris 1919 by john cale, and paul simon’s debut solo record.

“jacob always” has some memorable imagery that slots in nicely with the album’s overarching themes.  is there a set of circumstances that inspired the track that you’d be comfortable sharing?

jacob as well as the “fortune teller” in the song are fictitious, but the themes in the song are ones i wanted to consciously explore.  i suppose many have driven good love away at one point or another, but of course i’ve known so many men in particular who’ve done this again and again and thought they “weren’t to blame” for the damage they caused.

do you see any more solo work in your future after wait for love winds down?

yes, definitely.  i’ve already begun recording a few new songs for my next solo record.

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wait for love arrives tomorrow via atelier ciseaux records; stream it in full a bit early, courtesy of popmatters.

danielle fricke – body

– featured images courtesy of sophie harris-taylor –

“album of the fortnight” is an occasional feature that digs into a recent release of note. the articles will run roughly during the middle and at the end of each month, always on a friday; the album or body of work in question will have been released at some point during that two-week span.  this column focuses on art that resonates deeply, on pieces that necessitate more than just a knee-jerk reaction.  next up: the new extended play from danielle fricke.

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Danielle fricke has been hibernating for the better part of three years.  the london, ontario, musician released her hypnotic full-length, moon, at the tail-end of 2015, its dozen tracks blurring the lines between glacial ambience and plaintive singer-songwriter stylings while precluding the lengthy silence that would follow.

last week, fricke quietly released BODY, a six-song collection of new material that functions as a cursory addendum to its predecessor with plenty of wonderful nuances to unpack.  the extended play’s front half is a familiar palette, its slowly-evolving soundscapes providing the foundation for fricke’s haunting vocal exercises.  “intro” is a sustained prelude, its twilight field recordings melding into intimate, ambient chamber music.  the strings’ hesitation becomes more pronounced as the track reaches its conclusion, anticipating the blizzard of white noise that blankets “everything,” fricke’s voice finally emerging from the fray and embarking on a tenuous expedition with a small group of synthesizers in tow.

at the approximate center of BODY lies “enough,” a quintessential danielle fricke offering that is also the extended play’s lone moment of sustained clarity.  nearly seven minutes long, “enough” finds fricke’s voice unobstructed as she makes her plea against a backdrop of guitar arpeggios, a pairing that was her hallmark across moon.  squalls of distortion percolate to the surface in the song’s final minutes, aiding fricke in her farewell as she journeys on to the collection’s last three tracks.

“cold, blue, even” and “SRGNG” are such marked sonic departures for fricke, each in their own singular way.  the former is through-composed, picking up on the vestiges of “enough” and enduring two minutes of subterranean synth quakes before discovering a piano chord progression replete with wordless vocal motifs; the latter is a glitchy choral exercise, pitch-shifted vocal loops stuttering and restarting while low reeds pulse in the background.  taken together with the extended play’s brief coda, the final ten minutes of BODY go a long way to cement fricke’s experimental bona fides and to reward active listeners with layer upon layer of nuance.

just six songs in length, devotees of fricke’s signature brand of hushed, exploratory world-building would be remiss to hope that BODY is anything but a stop-gap, and that more music is on the way.  in the meantime, stream the extended play in its entirety – preferably with headphones – below.

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