Last year, Antony and The Johnsons released their first full-length album since the Mercury Prize-winning, I Am A Bird Now, 4 years earlier.  The Crying Light proved to be another minor-masterpiece, cementing Antony Hegarty‘ group as an important musical force, deserving of our continued attention into the new decade.  It even yielded some surprising success on a commercial level, reaching the number one spot on the Billboard European Top 100.  The album release was definitely worth the wait and, as someone who caught him during the supporting tour, Hegarty‘s abilities as a live performer only continue to increase.  Hopes are reasonably high for their next album, but, this time around, the anticipation isn’t taking nearly as long to quell.  In the following months, an EP, LP, and even an art book are slated to be released by the group.  There’s a lot on the horizon, but, for now, we have our first sample of what’s to come, in the form of a new video.

Prior to The Crying Light hitting the metaphorical shelves, it was preceded by the 5-song EP, Another World.  Along with the lead off single/title track, the EP also featured 4 additional songs that didn’t appear on The Crying Light.  For the upcoming release, Swanlights, Hegarty and crew have opted to adopt that concept yet again.  Today marks the UK and European release date for the 5-song, Thank You For Your Love EP [Rough Trade] with the official North American release coming tomorrow (Aug. 24th) through Secretly Canadian.  As could be expected, the song “Thank You For Your Love“, which appears on this EP, is also the lead off single for Swanlights.  Those familiar with Antony‘s early years, know that he moved to Manhattan in 1990 to study experimental theatre at NYU.  This move resulted in Hegarty‘s formation and involvement with his Blacklips theatre collective, which ultimately spawned a good deal of his early musical material with the Johnsons.  The following video for “Thank You For Your Love” is comprised of super 8 footage from that period of Antony‘s life when he first arrived to the city. (more…)

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There used to be a guy who fancied himself as a “street musician” who would set up across the street from my apartment every night and blare obnoxious guitar riffs through a pocket amp.  He had, what seemed like, no more than a rotating 3-song setlist.  He mostly just played Jimi Hendrix covers, using the muddled distortion and the fact that he was a black man with a guitar in Seattle to his favor.  The drunken frat boys and under-dressed skanks, clopping around like clydesdales ate that shit up.  Then again, they only caught about 12 seconds of it as they wandered by in a drunken stupor.  Try putting that 12 seconds on repeat for hours.  It was a smooth move for the “guitarist” and he marketed himself wisely.  Who’s gonna talk shit to this guy around here?  Nevermind the fact that the one thing that he produced was obnoxious and that he wasn’t actually Hendrix.  This Seattle; that would be sacrilege.

Today I witnessed a video of a man who I actually would have appreciated having perform in my neighborhood.  This footage isn’t devoid of gimmicks [he's a one-man-band playing a Wu-Tang song, for chrissakes] but something about it still holds genuine.  It’s actually pretty awesome and, although this particular footage is of the musician performing a cover, he is much more than a one-note.  In fact, through my research, I’ve discovered that he’s much more than a street performer, or even a musician, but that’s not important for now.  We’ll get back to that more after the video. (more…)

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I started hearing about Harmony Korine‘s new film, Trash Humpers sometime last year.  Slowly more info and video clips would pop up, but my main focus was to find out when I would actually be able to see it.  When that information finally arrived, it was coming from an unlikely source, Drag City records.  Drag City is a record label and, as far as I am aware, this is their first attempt at film distribution.  Aside from that fact, there are actually a few reasons that make the connection between the label and the filmmaker slightly less surprising.  At the end of 2008, Drag City released a collection of Harmony Korine‘s old fanzine work and, earlier that year, they put out the soundtrack to his last film, Mister Lonely, which featured original music by J. Spaceman and the Sun City Girls.  Harmony also has connections to other Drag City artists like Bonnie “Prince” Billy, of whom he has directed a video and even appeared on recordings, while the musician made a cameo in Korine‘s Julien Donkey Boy.  When I found out that Trash Humpers would be screening on June 18th at the NW Film Forum here in Seattle, this was great news because, not only would the director be in attendance, but we have a bit of a connection with Drag City as well.

Harmony Korine is an individual that I’ve been interested in interviewing for quite some time and I had hoped that this might finally be an opportunity to make that happen.  Unfortunately, two issues got in the way of making this a reality.  The first was that I didn’t want to request an interview through our connection at the label until we had already had the last interview with Drag City artist, Baby Dee posted.  Once that was handled, I sent my last-minute request at the worst possible time.  Our contact was traveling out of town, as well as working tirelessly to promote the project, so we were dealing with auto reply emails and missed connections.  We got an encouraging email stating that there was a possibility that the  interview could definitely go down, but never a confirmation that it definitely would.  Thanks to a nearly 1/2 hour Q&A and a flip cam, however, I was able to discover some interesting information and am now able to share the footage with all of you pleasant bastards. (more…)

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When KIDS was released in 1995, there was a lot of “controversy” behind it’s explicit content involving teens, drugs, and violence.  I remember all of the hype clearly; I was 16 at the time.  The film’s writer, Harmony Korine was 22, however, he was only about 19 when he wrote it [wikipedia claims "18" Korine has guessed "20"].  I watched KIDS and thought that it was a solid film, but it didn’t change my fucking life like the nightly news had claimed that it would.  Then again, I think that any lack of shock value for me may actually be a testament to the reality that had been infused within it.  While KIDS jump started the careers of first time actors like Rosario Dawson and Chloe Sevigney, Korine didn’t quite live up to the “promise” that many had expected for him.  That’s not to say that he didn’t continue to produce amazing pieces of work or to move forward in his career, it’s just that he never seemed harnessed into the limitations and ideas that had been placed on him by others.  One way to put it would be that the “promise” that the golden boy had placed on him wasn’t a promise that he had actually ever “made” himself.  In ways, his story is Pecker-esque and, as quickly as upper class socialites might take in a troubled youth for their own self-righteous ego boost, they will toss his ass out and turn their backs on him once he lives up to his inherent nature by intentionally smashing their Fabergé eggs, getting their daughters drunk, and stealing their cars. (more…)

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DR. DOG

Sasquatch Music Festival

{Bigfoot Stage}

The Gorge Amphitheatre

May 31, 2010

Some people like reading novels and some people simply enjoy pop-up and picture books.  I know that when it comes to reviews and coverage, we generally lean much more towards the written word, but you may have noticed that we often come away with quite a bit of photographic documentation, as well.  We generally pick through and use the shots that we like the most for the reviews and, depending on the particular event, we may have a large selection to choose from or we may not.  With all of the great music provided at this year’s Sasquatch Music Festival, it created a situation where we had individual sets that yielded more shots than others.  One particular band that I had the pleasure of photographing was Philadelphia‘s Dr. Dog.  (more…)

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Last weekend marked the 9th annual Sasquatch Music Festival at the Gorge Amphitheater in George, Wa.  The lineup was pretty impressive this year and included MGMT, The XX, LCD Soundsystem, Nurses and even Pavement.  Closing out the festivities was a performance by one of our favorite bands of all-time, WEEN.  I was there all weekend so that I could report on everything that went down and regurgitate it back for you assholes, but I am still putting everything together, going through photos, and simply recovering.  You may have noticed that we don’t typically just post updates here and there.  It’s much more important for us to process everything and provide something that is more adequately thought out.  Hopefully it’s something that will actually provide the reader with new information and, if we’re really lucky, something that can even moderately stand the test of time.  With a situation like this year’s Sasquatch, however, there’s a lot to deal with, so I’m going to do things a little differently.  I’m covering the entire 3-Day event all by myself, including photography, reviews, editing, etc, and so there’s a lot for me to organize.  The reviews will be posted soon but, seeing as I have a ton of images and only a handful of them will be used in those reviews, I wanted to drop some photos from the WEEN set right here and right now.  These aren’t all of the photos even obtained at the WEEN show, but it’s a lot of them (24 to be exact).  This is a little update for everyone, while I process everything else, because I’m assuming that a lot of you probably still don’t know about our Flickr account.  More images will be popping up on that account as we process them, so keep your eye on there if you want to see more.  For now, please enjoy the images of Gene and Dean provided below.

Thanks (more…)

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