A couple of local favorites that we cover regularly are dropping new discs Friday night, unfortunately not in the same place.
Harrisburg, PA's Abbey at ABC is the scene for one of the best local line-ups south central PA has seen in a very long time. Pure classic wall of sound style '80s pop is what Hershey's The April Skies are all about. Together since something like 1988, this is their 3rd full-length album since 2005 and their first since late 2006. Don't expect all new stuff though. They always break out the favorites and the occasional cover. (Their version of "A Forest" is stellar).
A CD release party by the Skies is great, but adding in the other two bands on the bill makes this an all out raucous throw down. Middle Distance Runner has been getting some national play in a Harley ad and thanks to a loyal reader, they let us know they have been using "Out of Here" in a commercial on KTLA for their evening news. Yeah, its voiced over and just instrumental, but DC is getting play in LA. They just released a new 7" back in March and a new album is on the way. And yeah, they kick ass live.
Also known to give it all they got on stage are Chambersburg's The Shackletons. Can't make it Friday night? Saturday, drop the Skies and add Philly's Drink Up Buttercup for another not to be missed local line-up at The Fire in Philly.
Down in Fredericksburg, VA, The Library is hosting the CD release party for Tereu Tereu and their new disc All That Keeps Us Together. Check out some of their new tracks here. And get there early for fellow Virginians Carlos I'm Pregnant and The Like Whatevers. This show is all ages!
Live in The Burg: The Shackeltons and Papertrigger
I'm a firm believer in the fact that there are no ailments that cannot be cured by seeing a fantastic live show. Friday night, was the latest example of how true that statement can be. I made my way up to Harrisburg, PA to see Papertrigger and The Shackeltons.
Papertrigger was a band that I have heard a good bit of buzz about from our Philly crew. I'd familiarized myself with their debut EP, but had no idea what I could expect from their live show. Well, they were as good as billed, maybe better. They are a band that is hard to categorize and don't really sound like anyone in particular, but that is a good thing. While their recordings are solid, they pale in comparison to their amazing live show. Heavy in percussion, they deliver their unique brand of heartfelt jangly pop with fantastic precision. In a live setting, their musical presence is often jaw dropping and always captivating.
Having seen The Shackeltons before, I pretty much knew what I was in for and they did not dissapoint. They gave a high energy set and Mark Redding seemed to be quite inspired by the large audience and live radio broadcast of their set. The band gave a perfect backdrop to Mark's potent lyrics and spastic stage presence. Like usual, he was all over the place and he seemed more vital than ever. This is a band that has a lot to say and it's amazing to see how their confidence has grown, as their reputation continues to spread.
Joe and I will be heading to Harrisburg, PA Friday night to The Abbey checking out the best thing to come out of Chambersburg probably ever, The Shackeltons and one of my Best of Philly 2007, Papertrigger. They are joined by two other Philly bands, Jotto and Univox.
The big show is at The Fire for the Music fest, but if you can't get in there A.K.A.C.O.D., featuring former members of Morphine, are at The Red and The Black. Imagine the same Morphine you knew and substitute feminine lead vocals.
So I did an interview for the podcast Blog Fresh Radio. My piece was on The Shackeltons and it is on this week's show. You can download it here or on iTunes. DC's Thao with The Get Down Stay Down are also featured on this episode, so it's a good one. It would be better if I didn't have a killer cold and sound awful, but what can you do? Enjoy!
It may be the middle of winter, but there is a pretty solid lineup on shows going down in the region this weekend.
Friday
- Shortstack (CD release)/Junior League/Suns of Guns @ Black Cat - A Sunny Day In Glasgow/Karmella's Game/AVEC/Remote Islands @ Lo-Fi Social Club - Army Of Me/The Dance Party/Exit Clov/Good Night, States @ Rock and Roll Hotel - Olivia Mancini and The Housemates/The Ambitions/Cobra Collective @ 9:30 Club
Editor's Note: This is the first post from our new DC writer, Matt. From time to time, he will be offering his unique perspective on the world of music. Please welcome him to IA.
Everything started off pretty slow on Monday evening. I was looking up at the red rotten ceiling of The Red and The Black, listening to the opening bands stomping around on my head. The bartender and I were watching Mario Van Peebles on the television set in some shiny bespoke number, playing a flamboyant defense attorney on Law and Order. I asked her if she'd ever seen New Jack City and she laughed under her whiskey. Both of us wondered why Mario was holding that baby on the beach and why Nino Brown was eating that banana in the middle of the crack board of director's scene in the penthouse of the Carter.
I was soaking up a few beers, quietly, and Mark Redding, frontman for the five-piece The Shackeltons, was at the other end, under a Greek fisherman's cap, talking to his producer. I figured I would pay him no mind, let things unravel how they were supposed to be. There was a marathon on TNT and I was in no hurry. The bartender and I talked about scars and anabolic steroids, taking shots of Powers whiskey. We also talked about people who have been hit by cars, some worse than others, and we made sympathetic faces, although we both knew nothing about it personally.
I rode my bike across town to see these fellas, but I knew it would be worth it. I was sent a copy of their CD in advance and I've been pedaling around the pretty marble and the squat decaying brick, listening.
The name, as it goes, comes from some craggy bastard named Earnest with gunmetal blue eyes. He took a ship called Endurance down to the polar ice shelves in 1914, where there weren't any dead archdukes named Franz Ferdinand or any buzzing shells or trench mortars to turn his hard mug into hamburger.
His ship was crunched up, in the ice, and he led all the little braves across the floes. After all that, with a weak ticker, he begged for service at the front, in France. He didn't get it. His knees started to quiver under a few heart attacks, so he sat under warm sunlight and recorded his thoughts.
These were all things I learned, in time. Right then, I was still sitting there, watching Mario lose his case to Sam Waterson, who had a cheaper suit on. The city of New York was happy, because a killer was behind bars. I was happy too, because I had more beers than I was charged for. Then the guitars upstairs sounded familiar, so I paid and sauntered up.
These bad daddies were green looking under the light, like Dead Boys. Redding had a red neckerchief around his neck, half Basque separatist, half Stiv Bators. The other dude had that tight-jawed strumming like Cheetah and I wondered where the hell I was.
Then the fuse blew and I knew where I was. I was seeing a rock and fucking roll show.
Redding started talking, to fill up the dark empty space whistling between spaced-out kids making limp poses on the peeling paint. He wasn't sure what to do about it, and besides, he couldn't find his hat. He scratched his head, looking for his hat. They, whoever they were, had the breakers flipped, easy, lickedy-split, and the band chopped into the next song. The lights blanched them with a metallic, pallbearer's complexion, making the sweat on their bodies look cold and unreal, dug up out of the earth, twitching and screeching like the starving undead. The sound that came out was hard and hot, like bullets. I stood in the back and kept my mouth shut. Or, rather, open. In fascination.
The snappy people bopped around fashionably on a Monday night, happy to be there, just to be there, but as the band continued playing, they started to pay attention. A girl in a long striped tunic knocked me out. She sat, perched like some exotic pet, and drank her drink in elegance that mocked a secret tragic joke. I laughed. Guitars cut us all to ribbons and drums punched the air out of our lungs. I knew she understood all of it, without getting too excited, and beside her, we watched the rest of the crowd claw and scramble to catch roses that Redding was tossing into the darkness. The kids fell upon them, caught them like they were running with a scissors. These roses had thorns along the stem.
The corner of Redding's mouth drooped. Not a sneer. It wasn't contempt. But imagine a killer that learns to sing first, capable, in violent fits, of extraordinary acts, that maybe he don't even know he's doing, until hours or days after. The Wild Boys behind him were like flames licking an altar that worshiped a god you had to meet face to face to understand.
They're some real young dudes, fish-flopping around under the dry light. You have to see them to know. I was leaning with my elbows on the bar wondering if they die like this every night. The drummer was shirtless, bashing his kit like he mainlined a nerve agent. The mic-stand was kicked into the crowd. Redding pulled his hair out, dragging himself up on his tip-toes. The sound around him lashed and twisted his body. One of the guitarists, wearing a Marine Corps Gunnery Seargent's parade jacket, stood with his thin legs spread far apart, shaking his guitar, like an angry kid shaking a piggy bank. He had us covered, like Cody Jarrett. After the lights went up, the kids and the girls went up, and the oily old dudes writing their stories went up, I went up.
The band members were busily tearing down the equipment, because they were driving back to PA for their CD release party the following day. I talked to Redding for a few minutes. I don't remember what about, really, but we talked for a while. After that, I peeled off and went downstairs to get my coat and hat. I took one more shot of whiskey with the bartender and I rode home, happy I hadn't spent the evening inside drinking a sour rosso, listening to my old records and wishing I had a place to go.
Wow, I don't know what to say about the quality of this week's list of music. I would say it's amazing, but I don't think that encapsulates the staggering amount of great music ready to travel to your ears. I think you will just have to listen to it to try and understand how good this batch really is.
I don't have a pick for this week, I have five. Luckily they are all different types of music, so I don't feel bad about not being picky enough. First we have our favorite Afro-pop group, Vampire Weekend. I'm sure many of you have heard at least half the album already and the rest of the album is just as good and really compliments itself from beginning to end. The next two releases are local area bands The Shackeltons and Jukebox the Ghost. Joe posted an interview with the Shackeltons and the album lives up to everything said about it there. Jukebox has never failed to disappoint and with this release, we finally have an epic full length to listen to over and over again. We also have an interview with them for you to check out.
The final two picks should be better known bands to everyone. Up first, The Helio Sequence have released their forth studio album and get better and better with every release. The eloquence and beauty of this release surpasses any of their others. The band stretches their collective creative talents to produce something everyone will find immensely pleasing to the ears.
Finally, we have a new disc from The Mars Volta. Classified as progressive rock, psychedelic rock and experimental rock by many, I would like to add "tastefully loud" and pure rock pleasure. This album is not for anyone who cannot stand noise coming at them in the form of 5 to 9 musical instruments all at the same. However, for those of you who can muster the eardrum exploding (in my opinion, it has to be higher than regular volume to get the full effect) music infusion, you are getting a real treat. The band was recently in Baltimore and should be back in the area later in the year.
Other Notable Releases: In addition to those five, there are several other releases worth mentioning this week. These picks include the excellent new disc from DC's own, Thao and The Get Down Stay Down.
Last fall, I had the pleasure to meet The Shackeltons from Chambersburg, PA. They were some of the most sincere people that I have ever met in this business and their live show was so mind blowing, that I named them best live act of the year. Their self-titled debut drops on Loveless Records on Tuesday. They will be supporting it with some regional touring, including a stop at DC's The Red and The Black tonight. If you get the chance to check them out, I highly recommend doing it.
In anticipation of the release and touring, I sat down with guitarist Dan Schuchman. Our interview is below, followed by a live video (just watch it and tell me that you aren't intrigued), an mp3 and their regional dates.
IA: You are named after Sir Earnest Shackleton, the Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer. Where did that come from?
Before we were The Shackeltons, we were a different band really... different sound, different name. Our sound started changing and we thought that we should just change the name. None of us really liked the old name anyway. Mark read a book about Sir Ernest Shackleton and how his ship became stuck in the ice, how they had to row 800 miles in the Arctic winter and hike over mountains to get back to civilization. Surprisingly, all of the men made it. Even though they didn't successful explore the Arctic, all of the men made it back alive. It was an uplifting story to the people in their time and we wanted to do that, but with our music. We want to do something uplifting and give people something to believe in.
IA: Why the misspelling?
A small mistake was made on Mark's part. He got the domain name registered and realized later that it was misspelled. The joke is that The Beatles spelled their name wrong, so we don’t feel so bad. It’s now our own name. The Shackeltons from Chambersburg who honor Sir Shackleton from Ireland.
IA: Your debut on Loveless Records comes out on Tuesday. How did that partnership come about?
A few years ago, Mark was enjoying listening to Ambulance LTD at our local coffee shop and he decided to give their management a call. He never thought they would call back. Surprisingly enough, they called back and said they thought what they were hearing was "brilliance". They then asked for us to send our music to their NYC office and helped us get noticed in New York a bit and they get our foot in the door at KEXP, America's finest indie radio station. KEXP loved us so much, that they had us perform live on air during CMJ06. They loved our performance and someone from Loveless saw us. It's funny because there was a band on Domino Records that performed after us. Mark was talking to their label rep and said "If you sign us, we'll make you rich." Someone from Loveless heard this and ran to Mark saying that they wanted to meet with the band immediately.
IA: Where was the CD recorded and who produced it?
We recorded at Beer Wine Fish in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles. Sam Jones produced it, while Tom Biller co-produced and engineered it. Sam Jones is a great photographer and he directed I'm Trying To Break Your Heart, the big Wilco documentary. Tom has worked with Jon Brion on many lovely movie soundtracks, Punch Drunk Love, I Heart Huckabees, Eternal Sunshine, Magnolia... and he's worked with artists such as Sean Lennon, Silversun Pickups, and Karen O
IA: One of the first things that you said to me when we met last summer was "see us live first and then I'll give you a CD." It's obvious that you pride yourselves on your live show. How much of a challenge was it to translate that raw energy to a studio recording?
Not so difficult really, Sam and Tom really knew how to get great moments out of us.
IA: In this era of over produced bands that are surrounded with an almost circus like atmosphere, you are a bit of a throwback. You are a loud and powerful band, yet you seem to have a simple, clean and minimalist approach to recording. What made you decide to do that?
Tom really had some great insight. He thought this should be a classic sounding album...a live feel almost. Sam just wanted raw, intense realism. I think a lot of bands today hide behind their effects, their Macs, their big amps, their cool boots, and their tight jeans.
IA: How does your writing process go? Is a song built around a lyrical idea or are the lyrics added after the fact?
Lyrics are added afterwards. Mostly a song will start with a melodic idea, a piece of something and we build on that. Everyone writes their own parts, someone might say try this or what if you do that, but ultimately every band member writes his part. Mark usually has a sack of lyrics that he just pulls stuff out of. Other times he'll just speak freely, saying, singing whatever comes to mind... and he'll remember what lines stick. Our writing process is an achievement within itself, I think. Most bands would kill to write like we write.
IA: Mark's lyrics are very open to interpretation. However, there is definitely an underlying theme of finding hope and beauty through all of heartache and pain. That theme also seems to define the band. How did that come about?
It's again with the story of Shackleton: hope through the heartache and pain.
IA: When you play a show, you don army jackets, cover the stage in flowers and drape the amps in Christmas lights. It really adds to the overall package and creates an atmosphere that exists before you ever play a note. How did that start?
Flowers started with our first show. We donned army jackets and put flowers on the stage to give us a distinct aesthetic. The feeling of war, love, funerals, first kisses. The lights, we used those because every place we played around Chambersburg would have bright florescent lights that had no mood and created nothing special. We wanted to give people something different.
IA: You are a very professional, very business-minded band, which is pretty rare these days. Do you feel that coming from the hard working, little town of Chambersburg, PA helped instill those instincts into you?
No, it's just that we see other bands' pretentiousness in selling merch, cds. We're poor, we have no money and no daddy's credit card. We want to eat. Someone better be buying a CD or t-shirt, so we can get a damn sandwich. We are concerned about our and other's futures, so we have to be concerned about the business. We don't have a fall back plan. This band is it.
IA: Your sound is very diverse, yet totally refreshing. You can hear influences ranging from Radiohead to Rage Against the Machine to Fugazi to Joy Division. There is even an element of soul singers like Otis Redding and Al Green sprinkled in. Who really influenced you?
All of those bands. We love music, all music. I should say we love all music that has been created by real musicians, real people struggling, real people dreaming. We'll listen to Captain Beefheart, Buzzcocks, Busta Rhymes, Can, Magma, Yes, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Johnny Cash, Otis Redding, Four Tops, The Clash, Ramones, Oxes, Arab on Radar, Talking Heads, Pixies, and so much more. Every note they play inspires us. We never hold one band above another or strive to sound like one band. If we feel like a song does, we scrap it and move on.
IA: Did you intend to mesh all of those sounds into something new or did it just happen that way?
It just happens when you have 5 guys who listen to so many different styles of music.
IA: There is a sense of urgency about you. You make it obvious that you know what you want to do and then you execute it with precision. You lay it all on the line and leave everything on stage. That must be exhausting. What do you do to get ready for a show and recover from it that allows you to continue doing that night after night?
Mark sleeps a lot. He's definitely the one that displays the most energy and gets the most bumps and bruises. Mark is actually quite concerned to how he will keep the intensity. He pretty much gives everything he's got each show.
IA: Mark is all over the place on stage. He marches around, dances, jumps, falls backward, slides around on his back… I know that he must get his fair share of cuts and bruises. What are some of the most painful memories?
The most painful is when he chopped most of his head/hair off with a ceiling fan, while jumping around at a show. There was definitely blood.
IA: Now that the CD is finally releasing, what are your touring plans?
Tour smart. Go everywhere and anywhere we can, as much as we can with what little money we have. We have about enough to pay for our gas.
IA: Is a follow up CD a topic of discussion amongst the band or is that quite a way off?
We need to give this CD as much attention as possible right now, but we have so much material that we could write one new album and an EP today, if we wanted to.
IA: Thanks for taking the time to do this. Congratulations on the CD and best of luck with this week's shows. I'll hopefully see you next weekend.
Thanks Joe, we really appreciate it. Thanks for believing in us.
Since I am heading down to DC this weekend for the Jukebox the Ghost CD release show, I'll let you in on what is going on around the City of Brotherly Love.
Friday night, a huge local show is at Northstar featuring the not-so-psychedlic psychedelic rock of The Cobbs and one of my picks for the best of Philly 2007, Papertrigger. They are joined by Jotto and The Greyhounds. This is one of the best line-ups of local bands you will ever see. Go check this out!
Finally, on Sunday, head over to the World Cafe for some food, then stick around for Chambersburg's The Shackeltons. I hear their show is worth the price of admission. They are joined by Skeletonbreath and Arizona.
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