Clicky Clicky's Belated Top Albums of 2016 (Jay Edition)

So yeah: Hi! It's been a couple months, a couple very busy months during which we were, frankly, quite uncertain that our schedule was ever going to permit a meaningful return to the blog. But we hate not closing a loop. And while we continue to harbor doubts about the long-term prospects for what we've been internally calling "the URL version" of Clicky Clicky (as opposed to the Facebook version), we feel it would be unfair to not give our favorite records of 2016 their due, even if we already did a quick list for Facebook. So leaving our wavering commitment to populating the URL with well-considered words aside, let's round up the best the year-gone-by had to offer.

A quick glance down the list reveals some of the usual suspects -- the great KoomDogg himself chides us about our predilection for placing the mighty Johnny Foreigner at number one each year they do a full-length, and any Lubec release tends to rate high -- but also some new names. This is as it should be. Were it not for those new names we'd grow pretty disinterested in following music as closely as we do. How many articles and books can one read about The Doors, Pink Floyd, even The Clash, after all? We suppose the answer to that question is however many we've already read, but more germane to the point is how exhilarating we found the music of the new and new-to-us respectively Strange Passage and Real Numbers, for example, this year. Legends, veterans, and relative veterans such as David Bowie, Lambchop and Hallelujah The Hills all more than acquitted themselves with releases that are still -- STILL -- in heavy rotation at CCHQ (well, perhaps less so now that The XX's new joint is out).

Before we leave you to digest our thoughts on our 10 favorites below, we'd like to note that it was trying year and one in which we valued music more than ever. Our need for peace and relaxation in the face of substantial work stress made things like Spotify's Steve Reich radio station, or custom stations based on Erik Satie's Gymnopédies or the Lilys oeuvre, reliable, comforting ways to experience music. The bigger message, we suppose, and one that we'd like all readers to take to heart as we work through the new American Political Reality, is that music is there for us. It is always there. Cherish it, and it will be everything you need it to be. Now we'll shut up. Here's the best shit from last year. If you want even more detail, we first revealed our 2016 year-end album picks during a December taping of the podcast tour de force Completely Conspicuous, and the three links below will take you to the three episodes featuring my conversation with podcast proprietor Jay Kumar, the aforementioned KoomDogg.

Completely Conspicuous 452 / Completely Conspicuous 453 / Completely Conspicuous 454

01. Johnny Foreigner -- Mono No Aware -- Alcopop!/Lame-O
There is an astonishing amount of detail packed into its briskly paced 35 minutes, yet Mono No Aware succeeds in every direction. There are the blitzkrieging singles and should-be singles that are Johnny Foreigner's stock-in-trade, such as the brilliant rager "If You Can't Be Honest, Be Awesome" and fiery "The X and the O," respectively. Other successes are perhaps more subtle but substantially more exciting. Even 10 years on the band continues to best itself in terms of songcraft, adding progressive flair to a genre which -- let's be honest -- too often gets to coast on the right chords, the correct pedals. The brightly burning centerpiece of the record is the wild, vivid and deconstructed anthem "Our Lifestyles Incandescent," whose verses feature thrilling vocal arrangements structured around the voice of Chicago polymath Nnamdi Ogbonnaya. [full review].



02. Lambchop -- FLOTUS -- Merge
Sublime.



03. Real Numbers -- Wordless Wonder -- Slumberland
The jangle commandos' new C86-indebted collection, Wordless Wonder, is thronged with instant classics touting big melodies, scritchy guitars and maximum pep. Opener "Frank Infatuation" is timeless, and makes for an auspicious start to this high-quality release. The tune is all fuzzy strums, plunky bass, and surfy leads, delivered at a carefree, upbeat tempo, and, sure, there's a formula at work, but when the formula is this fun and well-executed, no ones cares. If you dig "Frank Infatuation" -- and it is undeniable -- make sure to check out this earlier version Real Numbers released as a digital single in 2014. Wordless Wonder's barn-storming "Just So Far Away" is even more potent, hitting hard with a chorus first before blitzkrieging through short verses and right back to the chorus again. The album truly is all killer and no filler. [Hotness blurb]



04. Frankie Cosmos -- Next Thing -- Bayonet Records
Entrancing.



05. Lubec -- Cosmic Debt -- Disposable America
The true surprise of Cosmic Debt is not that it expands Lubec's already expansive view of guitar pop, not its beauty, sophistication or ready appeal, but rather that the whipsmart threesome does so many new things despite the record's smaller scale. [full review]



06. David Bowie -- Blackstar -- Columbia Records
Stunning.



07. Preoccupations -- Preoccupations -- Jagjaguwar
On its new eponymous sophomore set the band takes another unpredictable stylistic swerve, possibly in response to widespread criticism concerning the cultural insensitivity of its previous name. The rebrand provided a renewed opportunity for the foursome to reconsider its practice, and Preoccupations capitalized strongly by injecting Preoccupations with a dash of New Wave exuberance and structure that reveals another shade of the dark and classic post-punk sound it has explored since 2008. [full review]



08. Hallelujah The Hills -- A Band Is Something To Figure Out -- Discrete Pageantry
Given the band passed its 10th birthday late last year, we suppose there's a reasonable expectation Hallelujah The Hills should know what it is doing at this point. But that does not dull the dazzle and delight of the smart and agile A Band Is Something To Figure Out, which song-for-song is the band's best outing to date. Its 11 tunes cast fronter Ryan Walsh's engaging studies of the quirks of our shared reality -- the weird truths in plain sight that we can't or won't see -- within rock frameworks that reliably stretch to accommodate subversive, irreverent impulses. [full review]



09. Strange Passage -- Shine And Scatter EP -- Self-released
Shine And Scatter echoes the melodic, guitar-centered sound of the turn-of-the-'90s UK with surprising competence and confidence. Indeed, the short set's four songs echo The House of Love and the early RIDE EPs, and -- more contemporaneously -- are startlingly reminiscent of the massively underrated and short-lived aughts combo The Boyfriends. While there is a thread of shoegaze shot through Strange Passage's alluring brand of guitar pop, and Boston continues to have a strong share of contemporary 'gaze practitioners, Strange Passage's music still feels somewhat delightfully off-trend. [Hotness blurb]



10. Cold Pumas -- The Hanging Valley -- Faux Discx
File under Post-Punk Pleasures. The set includes nine new tracks; based on two fetching preview tunes, the group remains faithful to its favored motorik rhythms and wistful bummer-pop. Leading preview single "A Change of Course" is strikingly more dense and melodic than what we've come to expect from the band; it takes the two-chord pull formula of earlier tunes such as "Sherry Island" and compacts it to fit a sub-three-minute pop framework that echoes the more shoegazey side of early Deerhunter. It may very well be the best thing the Brighton combo has released (to date). Second single "Fugue States" stretches into a longer runtime, and employs open, ringing chords alongside a rambling, Ian Curtis-styled deadpan that reminds listeners that Cold Pumas know their classic gloomy post-punk inside and out. [Hotness blurb]

Review: Hallelujah The Hills | A Band Is Something To Figure Out

There is a lot to like about bands bashing it out in a reckless manner that screams "oh my god how do we drive this thing!" Indeed, a lot of being an indie rock fan is responding positively to that appeal. But it is also a distinct pleasure to hear and experience a band with such mastery of its chosen aesthetic that it can make its songs leap like circus tigers or change shape as if being marched past funhouse mirrors. Massachusetts indie rock institution Hallelujah The Hills certainly lounges in that latter category: its new record, its fifth, is called A Band Is Something To Figure Out, but it could just as easily be called This Is What It Sounds Like When A Rock Band Has It All Figured Out.

Given the band passed its 10th birthday late last year, we suppose there's a reasonable expectation Hallelujah The Hills should know what it is doing at this point. But that does not dull the dazzle and delight of the smart and agile A Band Is Something To Figure Out, which song-for-song is the band's best outing to date. Its 11 tunes cast fronter Ryan Walsh's engaging studies of the quirks of our shared reality -- the weird truths in plain sight that we can't or won't see -- within rock frameworks that reliably stretch to accommodate subversive, irreverent impulses. Mr. Walsh's literate, carnival barker vocals balloon with substance, and offer occasional winking acknowledgements at the show business of it all. The record opens with the thrumming clarion call of "What Do The People Want," whose chorus bluntly but not unkindly observes "the people don't know what they want" -- in a way, it's more reminder than indictment. The lyrics also include an internal reference to a tune from the quintet's debut long player, a move that usually earns automatic gold stars from Clicky Clicky. "People" is chased by the forthright banger "We Have The Perimeter Surrounded," which spins a yarn about Woody Guthrie relating a dream that foretold the punk movement (a tale bolstered by an apparently falsified FBI file, which apparently drew the attention of federal law enforcement; we don't want to know what parts of the story are and are not real, because it is just too good).

Those numbers are prelude to the even more formidable heart of A Band Is Something To Figure Out, where Hallelujah The Hills gets down to the business of terrific guitar-pop and experimentation. Should-be mega-hit "The Mountain That Wanted More" and the even more mega "The Girl With Electronics Inside" present undeniable hooks. The latter emerges from a brief daydream of piano and launches into verses that alternately drop a line, a neat trick that plays against the song's passionate momentum. Dresden Dolls' best number, "Coin-Operated Boy" (the version from A Is For Accident, imho), once mused on life with an automaton, but Walsh's tune is decidedly more intimate -- the nominal girl is a mystery, the narrator is hopelessly smitten, and the tale feels a lot like real love. The rocker "I'm In The Phone Book, I'm On The Planet, I'm Dying Slowly" compacts mundanity, modernity and mortality into a catchphrase in a manner just as witty and striking as did On Kawara. Later, the beautiful droner "New Phone Who Dis" pushes out at the boundaries of Hallelujah The Hills' admirable songcraft, presenting a pastiche of looped found sounds, wandering piano and droning guitar, over which Walsh hauntingly delivers.

Hallelujah The Hills releases A Band Is Something To Figure Out via its own Discrete Pageantry label tomorrow. The collection is already available for pre-orders in a limited edition of 500 180 gram 12" vinyl LPs via Re-Vinyl Records (never mind the obsolete album title and art), or as a CD or digital download via the band's Bandcamp wigwam. Hallelujah The Hills fêtes A Band Is Something To Figure Out with an album release show at Great Scott in Allston Rock City on Thursday May 12; the bill also includes Swale and Old Hat. Stream the aforementioned "What Do The People Want" and "We Have The Perimeter Surrounded" via the Bandcamp embed below; PopMatters is streaming the entire collection right here. Look for Hallelujah The Hills to be on the road later this year; maybe they'll even be on your road? They'll figure it out.

Hallelujah The Hills: Bandcamp | Facebook | Internerds



Related Coverage:
Hallelujah The Hills Marks 10 Years of Cosmic Americana, Tracks New LP, Shares Rejected Album Titles, Rocks Somerville, Mass. Friday
Today's Hotness: Hallelujah The Hills
Show Us Yours #19: Hallelujah The Hills
Today's Hotness: Hallelujah The Hills
Today's Hotness: Hallelujah The Hills
Rock Over Boston: The Unfolding Synchronistic Improbable
Today's Hotness: Hallelujah The Hills
Today's Hotness: Hallelujah The Hills
Rock Over Boston: Hallelujah The Hills, Capstan Shafts | TT The Bear's Place

Premiere: Civic's Confident, Questioning "Rocking Chair"

[Image: detail of photo by Andre Rober Beriau] Two premieres in one week? Sure, why not. Longtime readers might do a double-take for this one, as we rarely stray from post-punk or more abstract electronic sounds here at Clicky Clicky, and the terrific new track below from Boston's Civic instead fits more comfortably under the descriptor Americana or folk-rock. But IRL you'll find this blog's executive editor tuned to WMBR's Lost Highway Americana and roots show every Saturday morning, so these sounds aren't exactly outside of our wheelhouse, either. Which makes for a long and irrelevant introduction to the very fine new song "Rocking Chair" from Civic. The quartet gradually arranged itself around the songwriting of singer and guitarist Dana Osterling early in 2015 and played its first show with its present line-up -- albeit still under Ms. Osterling's name, as the group had not arrived at the Civic moniker -- at the dearly departed T.T. The Bear's last May. The foursome is gearing up to release a debut EP titled Things With Feathers next month. We are pleased to premiere for you today the heartfelt strummer "Rocking Chair," the fourth track from the six-song set.

The song stages Osterling's voice up front and above picked acoustic and wisps of pedal-steel before marshalling a cracking snare to drive the mid-tempo song through sincere verses and choruses. Within the latter, Osterling muses on the place of the natural and mundane within grander, spiritual schemes. The melody and easy beat are arresting, but so are the little details: how Osterling's vocal vibrato is echoed by a vibratoed guitar flourish in the chorus; the classic sound of slap-back on her vocals; the subtle organ coloring the edges of the mix. Like Kathleen Edwards? Well, then, you're going to like this. Civic self-releases Things With Feathers as a CD, limited-edition cassette and digital download April 8, and the band will play what amounts to a release show with Minneapolis' Little Fevers April 6 at Atwood's Tavern in Cambridge, Mass. Long-time readers may be interested to note that Civic practices in the same building as Clicky Clicky faves Hallelujah The Hills, whose practice space was the subject of our wildly popular Show Us Yours feature back in late 2013. Civic tracked a bonus track for the physical copies of the forthcoming EP live to tape there, and also recorded some overdubs there, so we suppose a small huzzah for Puritan Garage is in order. Stream "Rocking Chair" via the embed below. There will be no pre-orders for Things With Feathers, so click here April 8 to set yourself up.

Civic: Bandcamp | Facebook | Internerds

Today's Hotness: The Fuzz, Gold Muse, Lubec

>> While media reports decry the slow-down of the Chinese economy, the vast nation's production of top-tier indie rock seems to continue unabated. Or at least that's the impression we get based on the output of de facto flagship label Maybe Mars, which has a dynamite 2016 planned. Among the label's first releases of the year is the long-player The Root Of Innocence from indie rock quartet The Fuzz (a/k/a Chinese Fuzz or Fazi). The 11-track set was released Tuesday, and the lead preview track was the dreamy, synth-led treat "0909 II." The song's icy keys and sparkling guitars communicate a love of '80s UK darkwave, perhaps even an affinity for A Flock Of Seagulls. We admittedly know little else about The Fuzz, but comparing two versions of the band's "Control" -- one from a 2014 compilation and the other from the new record -- gives some indication of the band's artistic development. The compilation version (from Maybe Mars' collection The XP Sound Vol. 1) is a big, guitar-driven rocker. But this version that opens The Root Of Innocence is more atmospheric, reverberant and mysterious. The English language Internet tells us The Fuzz hails from Xi'an, capital of the northwestern Chinese province of Shaanxi (thanks Wikipedia!). The Fuzz will tour China in March and April to support the release of The Root Of Innocence, according to Maybe Mars, and the tour aims to visit about 40 cities. The band also intends to record its next record during the tour. If you happen to have the good fortune to be in China this spring, keep an eye out for the band. For the rest of us, streaming The Root Of Innocence will have to tide us over for the time being.

>> Relatively new 'gaze-pop four Gold Muse this week released a second digital single, which is not only notable for its great songs, but also because it shows a promising level of productivity for the Boston supergroup. Considering the easy pace at which certain of Gold Muse's members' other bands have released music, fans have reason to be pleased. As we've reported elsewhere, Gold Muse formed only last year, and is comprised of current or former members of Swirlies, Soccer Mom and Earthquake Party!; it took Soccer Mom about five years to release its only LP, and in about the same amount of time the still-quite-active Earthquake Party! has released but six songs. Gold Muse's rate of output appears Pollardian by comparison! The act's terrific "Kiss The Sun" b/w "Your Floral Crown" digital 1-2 presents a decidedly moodier side of the band, in contrast to its terrific first single. Deb Warfield's vocals and the exercised bass in the verses of "Kiss The Sun" deliciously echo classic Unrest, although the frantic jangle and explosive distortion of Dan Parlin's guitar propel the song somewhere altogether more dynamic. Darker still is the Parlin-sung "Your Floral Crown," which is led by an ominous, ascending synth melody buoyed by parallel bass work from Will Scales. Reverbed guitar sparkles faintly in the mix of the chorus, while a characteristically desperate vocal from Parlin is foregrounded, and the song soars to a dramatic conclusion across the back of some droning guitars and Justin Lally's bashing of the drum kit. It's a very strong single, and Gold Muse thankfully already has plans for a third, which it will begin work on this very weekend at Norwood, Mass.'s storied Hanging Horse studio. Which is not the only thing in Gold Muse's date book for the next 48 hours: indeed, Sunday the band plays night #4 of Magic Magic's current residency at Boston's Great Scott rock club (also on the bill are Boston treasures Hallelujah The Hills and Twin Foxes). Coincidentally, at Hanging Horse Gold Muse will work with hitmaker/engineer Bradford Krieger, who is presently playing in Magic Magic (in addition to his own project). It's all very serendipitous. Get that feeling by streaming "Kiss The Sun" b/w "Your Floral Crown" via the embed below, and click through to purchase the tunes.



>> It's been a while since we've heard from dream-pop heroes Lubec, but the brilliant Portland, Ore.-based trio return at long last next week with an EP it has been teasing since last summer. Dubbed Concentration and featuring pop hits "Late Bloomer" and "Many Worlds" ahead of the title track, the initial plan was for a vinyl and cassette release (as we wrote here in July), but plans on the former fell through. The music, of course, was very much worth the wait: the three songs on Concentration continue Lubec's winning ways, all sparkling guitars and massive melodies and the dueling vocals of guitarist Eddie Charlton and keyboardist Caroline Jackson. "Late Bloomer" in particular feels like a milestone for the band, with Ms. Jackson's vocals in particular literally and figuratively echoing the classic Slumberland sound, and Mr. Charlton's splashes of guitar and expansive, reverbed picking leading the songs through effervescent verses and arresting choruses to a deliciously jammy final minute marked by deftly arranged dynamics where big strums and explosive drums from kit-minder Matt Dressen trade off. Touchy Feely releases Concentration in a limited edition of 100 cassettes on Feb. 5. Lubec plays a release show for the cassette that very evening at Portland hot-spot The Know with support from Post Moves and Seattle's Versing, and full deets for that show are right here. Lubec plans a return to the studio in March to begin recording an LP with producer Dylan Wall that will be the follow-up to the band's titanic album The Thrall [review], which was among our favorite albums of 2014. We're hopeful Lubec will get out for another east coast jaunt this summer; keep hope alive by streaming the terrific "Late Bloomer" and "Many Worlds" via the embed below, and click here to grab your copy of the tape before copies are gone.

Hallelujah The Hills Marks 10 Years of Cosmic Americana, Tracks New LP, Shares Rejected Album Titles, Rocks Somerville, Mass. Friday

Boston indie rock institution Hallelujah The Hills this month marks its 10th anniversary, no small feat given our society's fractured attention spans and the constant threat of... what's that bullshit called, where the world is supposed... oh right, Rapture. The Rapture, it could kill us all or something, but laughing in the face of non-laughing things resides among the panoply of charms at work in the music of Hallelujah The Hills. The band is four albums and change into a luminous, Chevy Chase-marred, government-surveilled career, and indeed just finished tracking a fifth -- tentatively titled Deluxer Mandatory and slated for release in spring 2016 -- in upstate New York last week. Deluxer Mandatory rolls off the tongue nicely, yes? Sounds a bit like a mid-century sedan model with deep, chrome ashtrays, no? But is it an improvement upon the five rejected album titles that Clicky Clicky can exclusively reveal to you via the video embedded above? Did you just watch that? Did you expect to see that much fur?

Anyhoo, it's gratifying that in this topsy-turvy world things can proceed business-as-usual, but it is important to stop and refl... nah, that's bullshit, too. It's important to play rock shows, dammit, and that is what the band is doing this Friday night at Cuisine En Locale in Somerville, Mass., where the quintet will be joined by Adam Schatz's influential grow-fi outfit Landlady and Eternals. Hit this link for the most complete information one can find about the show without jumping in a TARDIS. Below are a couple embeds of some hot HtH tunes, not our top serious faves, as Bandcamp sometimes is a fickle beast, but each one is certainly very worthy of the HtH name. Dig them. Deluxer Mandatory is available now for pre-order as an LP, CD or digital download right here, where you can also view the 12-song track list and gaze upon the pre-order premiums on offer (note that the raffle mentioned at that link is now over, but you may still pre-order the hell out of the record). And just because we love it, have you seen this video for one of Adam Schatz's other projects, The Shoe-Ins? So, to review: album coming; pre-order album; watch short video clip; attend rock show. You can do this. We can help. Call today to find out how.

Hallelujah The Hills: Bandcamp | Facebook | Internerds





Previous Coverage:
Today's Hotness: Hallelujah The Hills
Show Us Yours #19: Hallelujah The Hills
Today's Hotness: Hallelujah The Hills
Today's Hotness: Hallelujah The Hills
Today's Hotness: Hallelujah The Hills
Rock Over Boston: The Unfolding Synchronistic Improbable
Today's Hotness: Hallelujah The Hills
Rock Over Boston: Hallelujah The Hills, Capstan Shafts | TT's

Show Us Yours 22: Coaches

While this blog's executive editor's ability to see shows has been heavily curtailed this year, our operatives are still out in clubs and passing back word of (figuratively) the good, the bad and the queen on the regular. When things come up more than once, it certainly gets our attention, and so the second time someone pinged us to say "you really need to see this band Coaches," we decided to check in with fronter and guitarist Brady Custis to see what the Boston noise-gaze quartet has cooking, and where it does that cooking, in the context of our long-running Show Us Yours series of practice space-centric profiles. Coaches bowed with the crushing shoegaze face-scraper "AmIsAreWasWere" early in the summer, but the massive tune and its more nuanced instrumental b-side are all we've heard thus far. Mr. Custis, the act's chief songwriter, tells us the band works slowly, deliberately, and as inspiration strikes. They do so in a beery space with ill-suited decorations and nifty freight elevators over in Charlestown. From there, Coaches is working on an EP at the moment, although there's no timetable for release just yet. Read on for yet more detail about where Coaches makes the rock, how they make the rock, a show at Charlie's Kitchen next week and a planned Toys For Tots benefit that you will be hearing more about late in the year. We're grateful to Custis for his time and thoughtful answers, and certainly recommend that you press play on that Bandcamp embed below before you start reading our interview.

Clicky Clicky Music Blog: So why do you use this practice space?

Brady Custis: Like most bands around Boston, we just kind of stumbled upon this space [out] of necessity. You can't really exist as a loud band these days in the city without [a space] unless you're extremely lucky with neighbors and whatnot. After asking around, this [place in Charlestown] was the cheapest one we heard of. My girlfriend's co-worker at the time actually already had the space and was looking for another band to help split the cost, so we moved in.

CCMB: Is there an idiosyncrasy or quirk to the space that has affected the sound of one of your songs, or even the overall sound of Coaches?

BC: Consciously, the space affects the bands sound ... in that it's a bit alienating in there, sometimes in an endearing way. The space just has absolutely nothing to do with us. We were the last band to move in and there's all this hippy shit on the walls and beer bottles and trash everywhere. We're not about to clean up someone else's trash [Stay strong, comrades! -- Ed.], so it just sits there getting kicked around for the most part. To that degree, it makes playing in there pretty funny and helps us not take ourselves too seriously. We can be making all this dark brooding noise and look up and see some overly-trippy tapestry and it just makes us roll our eyes and brings us back into reality.

Subconsciously, I don't know if its the weather or what, but I think the place has these days where it sounds great and days where it sounds terrible. If it sounds terrible one day it could make a really cool idea sound bad and we'll scrap it because we're completely unaware of how the space is affecting our decisions. Alternatively, it can make a decent idea sound incredible just because the harmonics all blend together well for that part in that room and that room only and we could end up keeping something sub-par for a little while.

CCMB: You walk into your space. What's the first thing you smell?

BC: Spilled beer and body odor. I'm sure we contribute to that at least in part, but we like to blame it on whoever was in there before us just as a nice band bonding exercise before we all get down to business. I hope the band that comes in after us blames us just the same.

CCMB: You only have a small number of songs out in the wild for public consumption presently. Is songwriting something that happens quickly for the band, or is the process time-consuming, even laborious? Assuming writing is happening, are you stockpiling tunes for an LP yet, or do you have your eye on some shorter releases in the nearer term before making the leap to making an album?

BC: I go through periods of heavy songwriting followed by heavy down time. Because of that, we end up arranging way too many songs at once and it gets really hectic. When we're smart we take one song and rip it to shreds finding every good possibility and go from there. That way we can have a decent-sounding song by the end of the day. When we do it wrong, it can take weeks to find something we like. Working for so long on one thing only makes it harder to be happy with the way it turns out because you feel so far removed from it after a while.

We have plenty of songs just dying to be heard and it's honestly kind of hard keeping them tucked away. But I've been of the opinion recently that in the modern world an album is something you release when people are ready to listen. We have a lot to say, but it's just not worth it to throw these songs out there and have it be ignored. For that reason I think EPs and singles are where we're headed until we have a large enough audience or a label, or whatever convinces us it's worth it to release an LP. Regardless, I'm having fun reading short stories as a way to better understand the intricacies of what makes a compelling EP. Four songs is pretty much the most anyone wants to hear from a band they aren't being told to like anyway.

CCMB: We know you have the show coming up on the 20th at Charlie's Kitchen in Cambridge, Mass. Beyond that, what do the next six months look like for Coaches?

BC: An EP is in the works, hopefully coming out in the next couple months if we can find some way to actually get it printed. Beyond that, I'm in the process of organizing a benefit show in December called Noise for Toys. The basic premise is instead of paying ten at the door everyone brings a toy worth at least $10. After the gig I'll take them to what seems to be the most reputable and locally oriented toys for tots campaign in the city and drop off everyone's donations.

Coaches' next live date is next Monday at Charlie's Kitchen in Cambridge, Mass., supporting a bill toplined by psych-rock giants Guillermo Sexo and also featuring Peachpit. The show is notable as being the last to feature long-time Guillermo Sexo drummer Ryan Connelly on drums. Mr. Connelly is leaving to focus on other things, we are told; he also drums for cosmic Americana superlatives Hallelujah The Hills and seems to keep quite busy otherwise. Despite Connelly's departure, the Guillermo Sexo juggernaut shows no sign of slowing, and promises a new single, video and even a full-length in 2015 are all in the offing. But we digress...

Coaches: Bandcamp | Facebook | Internerds



Previous Show Us Yours episodes:
Shapes And Sizes | Dirty On Purpose | Relay | Mobius Band | Frightened Rabbit | Assembly Now | Meneguar | Okay Paddy | Charmparticles | Calories | Sun Airway | It Hugs Back | Lubec | A Giant Dog | Bent Shapes | Krill | Golden Gurls | Earthquake Party! | Hallelujah The Hills | Seeds Of Doubt | The Cherry Wave

Today's Hotness: Hallelujah The Hills, Luke Kirkland

>> Hallelujah The Hills' new record Have You Ever Done Something Evil? commences as a fully involved house fire, with snare drum barking from behind a curtain of dense electric guitars in time to the declamations of fronter and band mastermind Ryan Walsh; the proverbial roof of the opener, "We Are What We Say We Are," caves after about 100 seconds, as Mr. Walsh pleads his case directly, but quietly, into the camera lens, a thumb and forefinger at the lip of the lens and his other hand pressed reassuringly against the shoulder of a shaken camera operator. The song eventually burns itself out, but its euphoric rush and poignant ebb color the entirety the the five-piece's new record like a new red t-shirt in a load of whites. "We Are What We Say We Are" is an auspicious beginning to the Boston quintet's new and fourth collection, which the act released last week on its own Discrete Pageantry imprint. For months the set was going by the working title Do You Have Romantic Courage?, as we reported here in October, and that title survives, attached to another tune found within the cracking collection. The album highlight may actually be the more subdued ballad "MCMLIV (Continuity Error)," which is illuminated by Walsh's gently delivered, honest vocals and electrified by controlled crescendoes from the players. Like that song, Have You Ever Done Something Evil? isn't flashy, there's no gimcrackery here. Instead we have a showcase of exemplary songcraft -- the stuff that actually puts air in the bellows of a band built to last -- and vibrant performances. And while there was a laundry list of concerns for Walsh and band to grapple with over the last year or two (quitting a long-held job to focus solely on writing and recording; potentially voice-altering surgery; possible -- but unrealized -- pitfalls with crowdfunding; whether the band had good stuff left in the tank after releasing career-defining singles; and errrm... we dunno... extreme-energy cosmic rays?), Have You Ever Done Something Evil? delivers uniformly terrific results. Hallelujah The Hills is presently at the front end of a short west coast tour, and will play a hometown release show May 30 at Great Scott in Boston. The event also features sets from Tallahassee and Thick Wild, and starts late but apparently promptly at 10PM; there are full details right here. While you ponder that and other possible futures, stream the entirety of Have You Ever Done Something Evil? via the embed below, and click through the purchase on compact disc or as a digital download. We interviewed Walsh here last October for Show Us Yours #19.



>> The memory grows dim -- and we've determined over the years that quite a few of our memories aren't even real -- but nonetheless we're fairly certain that the first act we saw on the non-stage at the late, lamented Union Square rock club Radio was the Boston quartet Marconi. And while we didn't ever direct our full critical attention at the band, we did make this brief aside here two years ago: "Placing one's finger on the precise source of the quintet's appeal is tricky, but we think a lot of it can be chalked up to singer Luke Kirkland's crooked smile as he languidly looses lyrics from amid the band's engaging indie rock constructions." We've learned recently that Marconi has gone the way of the dodo bird (there are two splendid final recordings here and here), and that Mr. Kirkland has undertaken some solo work that promises to explore markedly more electronic textures. He is releasing the new music under his own name, and our first taste of same is the meditative pop mirage "My Southern Guides." Our immediate and somewhat odd reaction is that the patient and vivid song plots a middle ground between LCD Sound System's "I Can't Change" and Level 42's "Something About You." "My Southern Guides" is both lighter and more fluid than either of those touchstones, but Kirkland's ambition is no less grand. The song steadily swells, from a beat and vocal to an arrangement lush and distinctly retro-modern -- something like a bygone, Jetson-ian vision of a future that never came to be (perhaps that is what made us think of Level 42?). "My Southern Guides" is part of a planned collection of tunes Kirkland calls Jet Black Eggs (another song title); he does not intend to release these new songs as an album, but he does consider them a series. We recommend you watch this space for more new music, and stream "My Southern Guides" via the embed below.

Premiere: Emerald Comets | Emerald Comets EP

Only last week we made a sidelong reference to how remarkably prolific a songwriter is Reuben Bettsak, who Clicky Clicky readers know well as a guitarist and singer in Boston psych-pop quintet Guillermo Sexo, as well as a member of nu-New Romantic collective Future Carnivores. Reflecting upon that assessment now, we realize it wasn't the first time we've noted it in these electronic pages; indeed, we said as much in our review of Guillermo Sexo's best-of-2013 long-player Dark Spring. We also mentioned in that review the steady stream of solo demos Mr. Bettsak posts online, and we are pleased to bring you certain select fruits of his solo endeavors. Today marks the release of a self-titled EP from Emerald Comets, the name Bettsak has bestowed upon his solo work (or at least this solo work). The name, incidentally, comes from this totally raging Guillermo Sexo song that was used as part of last year's Allston Pudding One Fund benefit comp.

The four-song collection is a more stripped-down affair, and it rests more firmly on acoustic guitar than much of Guillermo Sexo's work. Not that this is in anyway stereotypical coffeehouse singer-songwriter crap. Far from it: the floating vibe, psychedelic imagery and tight arrangements fans are familiar with are all here on the opening cut, "Bronze Feathers." And Mr. Bettsak is not swinging in the breeze by his lonesome here: along for the ride are associate Ryan Lee Crosby on second guitar and backing vocals; Guillermo Sexo/Hallelujah The Hills drummer Ryan Connelly; and Future Carnivores' Bo Barringer on bass guitar. Emerald Comets was recorded at the home of Mr. Crosby on his eight-track machine, and it is the second track, the EP highlight "Ghost Slides," where we first start to get a distinctly different flavor from this combo, as the tune touts a folksy bounce and, by way of percussion, a clattering tambourine to serve as rhythmic parameters. The song is terrifically catchy and light. The ensuing cut "Suitcase Of Ashes" is looser, moodier and more dense, and nods affirmatively toward the mystical English folk influences that crop up now and again in Guillermo Sexo's work. The tune nicely sets up the closer "Arctic Matchsticks," which is perhaps the most conventionally rocking of those on Emerald Comets, as it is driven by cracking snare hits, layered with acoustic and electric guitars, briskly paced and compactly structured.

If there is a revelation here, it is that Emerald Comets is yet further evidence of the very giving muse that sparks Bettsak's creativity. While it necessarily has to take a backseat to continuing to play shows to support the release of Dark Spring with Guillermo Sexo, Bettsak intends to play more shows under the Emerald Comets banner, potentially with the lineup that recorded this first EP. He also aims to record additional EPs and seek out additional collaborators. But for now let's let the guy catch his breath for a second; go download Emerald Comets for free via the embed below. Emerald Comets: Bandcamp

Clicky Clicky Music Blog's Top Songs Of 2013

So, songs. Songs out of context, for the most part, if you adhere to the belief that the album is, to bastardize The Bard, the thing. And though we cling to the primacy of the album as an Art Form -- admittedly probably out of a nostalgia for the linear listening of our youth -- we can't ignore our fixation with the song. Which, now that we think about it, is sort of a life-long pursuit. Countless are the hours we've spent across more than three decades BUTNOTFOURYETSHUTUP picking the hits, either by making mix tapes (dicatphonin' The Beatles LPs off the record player, tapin' off the radio, yo) or sequencing DJ sets, and of course there's this here blog. Clicky Clicky's entire premise is picking the hits, at least as we hear them, and under cover of this overlong and unnecessary paragraph we bring you our favorite 10 songs released in the calendar year 2013. Now sounds all, but as we think about the selections below it occurs to us that we like many of these "now sounds" for some wispy connection they give us to things we've loved in (or about) the past. The rush of adolescent infatuation as portrayed by Veronica Falls' "Teenage," the boundless psychedelic reach of Guillermo Sexo's guitar-heavy head piece "Meow Metal," and everything in between -- each one connects strongly with us, and we hope you will consider these songs, and perhaps find a favorite among them you've not encountered previously. Our albums list will follow later this week. Thanks for reading Clicky Clicky in 2013; you're all stars.

1. Veronica Falls -- "Teenage" -- Waiting For Something To Happen

Sing now, muse, of the innocence, mystery, freedom and longing of adolescence, and the safe little bubble that it all transpires within. From behind a coy fringe of hair Veronica Falls' Roxanne Clifford earnestly delivers the lyrics to "Teenage" -- which charm us more and more with each listen -- and memorably harmonizes with co-fronter and guitarist James Hoare. With its indelible melodies, big guitars, noodly leads and a simple, steady rhythm, "Teenage" is quintessential indie rock, a timeless single, and our favorite song of the year. Buy Waiting For Something To Happen from the consistently amazing Slumberland Records right here.

"...driving late at night, I'll let you listen to the music you like..."



2. Radiator Hospital -- "Our Song" -- Something Wild

We suppose this is the flip-side of the coin vis a vis the idealized teenage love story conveyed in our selection above. But damn it if it doesn't have pep and charm, despite its vivid recounting of a relationship coming apart. Folks looking for some representation of the crucial West Philly scene in this year's list (you know, Swearin', Waxahatchee) will have to just accept that we listened to the Radiator Hospital record more [we reviewed it here], as great as Surfing Strange and Cerulean Salt are. Some of that has to do with timing, of course: as stated in years past, our year-end lists are heavily weighted toward aggregate play counts for current-year releases. So, albums that come out earlier in the year are rewarded if they've got staying power, which we think counter-balances a temptation to be totally high on the latest thing at the end of the year, to the detriment of the early releases. But discussion of that hokum obscures just how memorable and accomplished Something Wild and, in particular, "Our Song" are. Go ahead, try to listen to it just once. Buy Something Wild right here.

"...sometimes I hear you crying alone in the shower, and I don't make a sound..."



3. Krill -- "Theme From Krill" -- Lucky Leaves

As we've said in prior years, a lot of the entries on our year-end songs list get there because they are songs that we couldn't stop singing to ourself while doing all manner of mundane things, changing diapers, walking dogs, retrieving the car after a long day in the office. And while there are probably very few Krill fans in the high-rise office building that contains the door upon the back of which we hang our coat each morning, we heard more than a few folks from "the scene" singing "Krill, Krill, Krill forever" to themselves this year. It's a bizarre -- and bizarrely catchy -- anthem about the division of the self, the thinking behind which fronter Jonah Furman has explained here and elsewhere. We'd say something here about the difficulty and rarity of catching that sort of musical lightning in a bottle, but most Clicky Clicky readers have already heard the new Krill single, which is strong evidence that the band's facility for writing hooks around engaging ideas and concepts thrives. But the one in "Theme From Krill" will likely not be forgotten any time soon. Stream it below, and buy Lucky Leaves right here.

"...and I got sick of him, and he got sick of me..."



4. Speedy Ortiz -- "No Below" -- Major Arcana

We pegged this loping waltz, which ended up being the second single from Major Arcana, as a favorite during our very first listen to the pre-release promotional copy of Speedy's brilliant full-length debut (which debut has sparked the quartet's meteoric rise into the national consciousness, tours with The Breeders, Los Campesinos!, Stephen Malkmus and the like). "No Below" is not as gnarly and confident as "Tiger Tank," not as unhinged and exciting as the final chaotic moments of the album closer "MKVI." Instead, it's got a lot of patience. And a lot of space that leaves room for fronter Sadie Dupuis' vocal -- so small in that first verse, with the slightest vibrato to her elongated vowels -- to draw you into her confidence and then bore right into your soul. It's a(n apparently) confessional, outsider ballad. The final minute bursts open with several bars of big guitars and then a few more quiet lines from Dupuis before the song winks shut. Perfect song-writing, memorializing some little moments, dynamiting others. Buy Major Arcana from Carpark right here.

"...spent the summer on crutches, and everybody teased..."



5. My Bloody Valentine -- "She Found Now" -- mbv

The opening moments of this tune are tattooed on the minds of the long-suffering and totally amazed My Bloody Valentine fans, a vast international horde that early this year shared in a too-rare Internet-age communal experience: the shock and awe of the surprise release in February of the London act's 22-years-in-the-making sequel to its legendary Loveless LP. After clawing and scratching our way onto a web site crumbling under the fan demand, the first of the spoils was the beautiful "She Found Now." The tune whispers reassurance to us as the soft fuzz of the bass wraps listeners in a warm embrace, chiming guitars arcing, bending and layering. One of the larger tragedies for young people is the realization that people we love inevitably change; whatever the reason ultimately was, My Bloody Valentine didn't evolve in any sort of jarring manner, delivering a sublime set of recordings, "She Found Now" included. Buy the record from the band right here.

"...you could be the one..."



6. Fleeting Joys -- "Kiss A Girl In Black" -- digital single

For the last seven years the one shoegaze act that consistently filled that My Bloody Valentine-shaped hole in our heart was Fleeting Joys. And as none of us knew at the onset of 2013 that MBV was preparing its surprise release, we were relieved when Fleeting Joys issued this new single in the first week of January. The intoxicating "Kiss A Girl In Black," all buzz-saw, bending guitars and murmured vocals, raised our hopes for yet more music from FJ with the indication at Bandcamp that it was taken from the band's forthcoming third long-player. Just about a year later we are still waiting (sound familiar) for that third LP, but that wait has been tempered by dozens upon dozens of listens to the stunning "Kiss A Girl In Black," which is embedded for streaming below. Click through the purchase the track.

"...suicide...believing..."



7. Karl Marks -- "Out In The Deep" -- Life Is Murder

Karl Shane's acoustic performance of this number at Great Scott in July at the Major Arcana record release show was riveting. The song, a spare and gothic lament, is mournful yet electrifying. And when Mr. Shane goes for those desperate final lines after fomenting a storm of grungy guitar and exploding drums, the hair stands up on the back of our neck, every time. In his review, our scribe Dillon Riley highlighted the fact that there is a fair amount of humor to be found in the LP this song arrived on, but we don't hear any of that on "Out In The Deep." Gripping and dramatic, the song is the closer on Kal Marks' 2013 collection Life Is Murder; buy it right here.

"...and I will fall from a great height..."



8. Hallelujah The Hills -- "Honey, Don't It All Seem So Phony" -- Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Trash Can

Historically, we think we can all agree that new material worked up to make an odds 'n' sods compilation more attractive to the music consumer often tends to be nice but not completely remarkable. Remember that relatively recent 'Mats song "Message To The Boys?" It's good, right? But it probably is the last thing to come to mind when you think of The Replacements. Well, by way of contrast, this Hallelujah The Hills track, which made its first appearance on just such a compilation released in May, is a three-alarm fire of what fronter Ryan Walsh calls "chord-based cosmic Americana." Lines of smart lyrics levied rapid-fire over top strident strummery, "Honey, Don't It All Seem So Phony" wins with its witty recitation of failures, foibles and, sort of hidden right there in plain sight, some true unvarnished sentiment. Mr. Walsh takes the song out with a soaring call to arms, but at that point he doesn't have to sell hard: he had us from the first line. Buy Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Trash Can right here.

"...I saw you breaking down in a magazine, and I never told a soul what it meant to me, now I'm on a mission fueled by LSD, trying to break these patterns..."



9. Slowdim -- "Up Stream" -- Slowdim

Another tune with a hook that just won't leave us. We probably could have mastered a foreign language if we had otherwise used the time we spent this year just singing to ourselves the line from the pre-chorus of "Up Stream," "it's OK if you can't remember." The song is a big, bright rocker with great vocal harmonies and clever composition, showcasing what many around these parts know well: Slowdim fronter Paul Sentz is a crazy talented songwritin' mofo. "Up Stream" opened the band's self-titled full-length debut, which was released in March. Buy Slowdim right here.

"... it's ok if you can't remember your name..."



10. Guillermo Sexo -- "Meow Metal" -- Dark Spring

Our year-end list this year has leaned hard toward songs with hooks versus songs with an intense vibe. Well, here's your intense vibe. An other-worldly, epic prog-influenced rocker, a headphones-required exploration of the places that only the veteran Boston-based psych-pop juggernaut Guillermo Sexo can take you. We've never taken steps to confirm or deny that this tune is just about living with a spooky cat, probably because we're afraid knowing one way or the other might somehow diminish the beautiful mystery painted here with Reuben Bettsak's 10 million guitars and singer/keyboardist/birthday girl Noell Dorsey's entrancing vocals. Despite being more than seven minutes in length, "Meow Metal" is not the longest tune on Dark Spring, but it is perhaps the best at capturing the zeitgeist of what Guillermo Sexo was about in 2013. Dark Spring was released by Midriff in September; buy it right here.

"...I saw you first, I have no idea what you see..."

We're Trapped Inside The Song Where The Nights Are So Long: Clicky Clicky Speaks To Krill's Jonah Furman About Deep Shit Like Divisions Of The Self And The Beast Within

[Images by Jonah Furman and Noah Furman] Time And Relative Dimension In Space is a mouthful of words, which is why it is almost always acronymed, but it has some bearing here, so please indulge the introductory tangent. It's a fictional thing from a teevee series and series of books, the TARDIS is, and on the outside it appears to be a large phone booth (it's not a proper phone booth, but most of our readers are American, so let's just go with "phone booth"). The important thing to know for now is that while this time-traveling, spaceship thingo appears to be the size of a phone booth on the outside, it is (as a result of unspecified extraterrestrial magic/technology) impossibly larger on the inside. Which is a lot like the music of Krill, the Boston-based post-punk trio whose music angularly jangles and thumps while the fronter, the titular Jonah Furman whose name you see above, sings about bugs and fear and loathing and psychological mutineering and negating the self and Dostoevsky -- the harder you listen, the bigger (and deeper) it all gets. Which is, coincidentally, a lot like what we experienced when we cobbled the interview together.

Cards on the table: this was conceived as a bit of a perfunctory exercise. We're friends with the fine people at The Ash Gray Proclamation blog, who are hosting a benefit show this Saturday for Toys For Tots down in Plymouth, MA. So we thought, hey, let's see if we can help promote the cause by running a timely feature with one of the bands. Synergy! Shake your groove thing! Having vibrated heavily to Krill's 2013 LP Lucky Leaves [review here], the choice of who we wanted to interview was easy. However, the incredibly forthright and thoughtful responses below from Mr. Furman -- who is quick to emphasize he is but one of three dudes who comprise Krill, and that Krill is not "his" band -- exceeded our expectations for the feature many times over, and it became clear very quickly that this interview was going to outsize the convenient excuse upon which it was premised. Indeed, the exchange below prompts that jarring realization that, at least for Furman, the music of Krill is not as much about self-expression as it is a framework used to explore big ideas about philosophy and life. The ideas Furman spit-balls in response to our clumsy interrogation are so large and pure they potentially seep into everything, their ontological protoplasm sliming and absorbing by (our own excited) extrapolation things as far-flung as Bad Brains' I Against I and Silver Jews' Starlight Walker, not to mention works by David Foster Wallace and Dostoevsky, and on and on and on. The ideas extend, we are told infra, to Krill's forthcoming EP, Steve Hears Pile In Malden And Bursts Into Tears, which was formally announced today over at the Gum de Stereo. We're grateful to Jonah for the generous gift of his time and the focus and attention he brought to our exchange. As we mentioned supra, Krill performs this Saturday at the New World Cafe in Plymouth, MA as part of For All Good Kids, The Ash Gray Proclamation's Toys For Tots benefit show that also features Hallelujah The Hills, Guillermo Sexo and a special opening set from The Hush Now's Noel Kelly. The show will rage and all the details are right here. Now, on to the interview with Krill's Jonah Furman.

Clicky Clicky: 2013 was probably something of a mindfuck for Krill. Early in the year the band was confronted with the prospect of Lucky leaving, the band's future was uncertain, you lived in a mansion and then you didn't live in a mansion. Now, at the other end of the year, the LP is out to not-insignificant acclaim and you are signed to Exploding In Sound and presumably you are not homeless. If Present Day Jonah could pull some sort of tesseract move right now and go back in time to talk to Endless Winter 2013 Jonah, would you tell yourself "everything is going to work out?" Would that have been the most important thing for the band to know?

Jonah Furman: man, knuckle deep on the first one, good. yeah well hm, let's see. the whole story of krill's history is so tangled as to be boring and i always have trouble answering the q of "when did the band start?" but september/october 2012 was definitely our first tour and the first time that krill was our main thing. i was broke as hell and depressed and my girlfriend had just moved to siberia and i started reading a lot of dostoevsky that december, and listening to [Fat History Month's] fucking despair and thinking about will, commitment, suffering, weakness, and krill. i was constantly talking about breaking up the band and that was months before luke got into grad school. 'theme from krill' was [a] half painful cynical thing about the band breaking up, the twisted bug in me that tends to self-destruction, and then it was beautifully reinforced by 'lucky leaving,' which he announced in february. the other half i guess is the hopeful side, saying 'tho it's over this moment will be tattooed in time forever' and alluding to how we did sort of create a whole universe of meaning for ourselves, thus the self-reference (which i could go on and on about). anyhow i'm not really answering your question am i. what happened? so luke said he was splitting & at first we were thinking that'd mean a 'hiatus' but aaron and i didn't want to do that so we decided either we'd break up or we'd find a new drummer and then ian came along and moved out to boston and the engine churned on. without getting too personal about stuff, life is surprisingly, shockingly the same between November 2013 and November 2012 ~~ living in the Whitehaus (a different sort of mansion) with no heat (same as last winter) with USD $11 in my bank account, feelin sorry for myself like a chump. More blogs have written about the band and we play more and better shows now, and, yeah, like i said, the engine churns. So it's not like we're livin it up by any means, but yeah, I guess the external validation has helped a bit? How do I not sound like a whiner? But also what I wanted to say (god this answer is too long) is that the suffering and the is-krill-gonna-break-up thing was crucial to the whole thing, and for a while (to our detriment, in trying to get labels to release it) we called LL a concept album about our band breaking up. & truth be told, the next thing, Steve Hears Pile etc...., is also about breaking up ~~ so who knows? Good thing i can't teserract, i'd fuck it all up.

CC: In "Theme From Krill" we learned there is a bug inside the narrator. Lucky Leaves was initially sold as a USB lodged in a cheeseball. And the forthcoming EP is about two dudes who are apparently inside a Pile song, at least in a manner of speaking. All of which makes me think of the Silver Jews song "New Orleans," where in the coda Mssrs. Malkmus and Berman chant "we're trapped inside the song" over and over. That would be a great song for Krill to cover, incidentally. But it also makes me think about how Krill likes to think about things that are in other things, sometimes hiding, sometimes revealing. So far this is a pretty terrible question, right?

JF: this question rules. actually asking about like 'what are your songs about?' which is pretty crucial for a band that writes songs that mostly are about stuff. i don't know that Silver Jews song, I'm gonna listen to it now.

OK i got distracted and wasted 30 minutes on the internet. where were we. ah, yeah. that's a great question. i mean, maybe it's not a great question but it's talking about actual interests and yeah i'd say krill lyrics are deeply concerned with stuff 'in' other stuff, mostly split versus whole selves, being torn or being unified, which just today i was thinking about how maybe that'll be the next krill full-length theoretical scaffolding -- r.d. laing's 'the divided self', f.m. dostoevsky's raskolnikov, d.f. wallace's lane dean jr., drew beckmore's 'everything unseen'. i could go on and on but maybe won't. i'll talk krill theories all day long though, helps me figure out what they actually are. incidentally you got me back on one of my favorite songs, silkworm's 'couldn't you wait.'

CC: Before we jump topics, what else can you tell me about Steve Hears Pile In Malden And Bursts Into Tears? We know it's an EP, we roughly know the larger concept at work, and we know it will be released on vinyl and digital. Did anything surprise you about the EP, after you had recorded it and were able to sit back and listen to it straight through?

JF: i can tell you lots of things about the EP, way more than you'd care to hear. first to answer your q: i'm sick of the fuckin thing by now and can't really stand to listen to it anymore after mixing, mastering, all that. it's to some extent an artifact, being Luke's Final Act before he left the band. i don't think it's all that cohesive as a 'concept album' and there are 1 or 2 tracks that didn't make the cut that would've fleshed out the concept but basically... I ripped the title from this weird academic exegetical essay called "Dostoevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts Into Tears" by F. Laszlo Foldenyi (sp.?) that basically talks about how Hegel said history doesn't happen in Siberia and how Dost likely encountered that bit of Hegel while he himself was in fact in Siberia and the idea is that Malden is Siberia to Allston's Germany and Steve and Mouth are these two kids who live together in Malden and want to form a band and be friends with Pile but are so deeply in their own way and so outside of the 'scene' and 'conversation.' I mean it goes quite a bit deeper than that, and more tangled, in that the character's names and basic positions are ripped from a Pile song, "Steve's Mouth," in which there's this great line: "Steve woke up sitting on his own head, sobbing, couldn't breathe. He had a dream that Mouth died because Steve had to eat." -- which, yeah, again is about self-destruction, divisions of the self, your Mouth separating and being treated as a whole full entity... I don't know, the idea was that Steve is this infinite outwardness, wanting to form this band and go on tour with Pile but feels crushed by the external world, like he can't possibly match up, and Mouth is this infinite negativity, wanting to kill himself or leave boston or basically just abandon all dreams. which, you know, are two factors krill dealt with and deals with a lot... i don't know. it's not really a cohesive thing, like i said, but it's sort of about krill, pile, dostoevsky, boston, and depression, in five disjointed tracks.

[Here comes the worst segue you will ever read in an interview published in this or any publication in the post-Gutenberg-era -- Ed.]

CC: So you're playing this Toys For Tots benefit show Saturday. Can you remember as a kid having an obsession with a particular toy? In your experience, with regards to toys or otherwise, have you ever gotten something you wanted badly, and then realized that wanting it was actually more satisfying than having it?

JF: used to play a lot of magic cards as a kid. one time i bought a pack and told my parents, after the fact, that i didn't really want it and they asked why i bought it and i made up an excuse about how maybe one of the cards could be valuable and i could sell it and then my dad sort of tore me a new one about how gambling works and i remember him taking out a pair of dice and showing me what an idiot i was. what you say about wanting is more resonant, of course, and maybe a shitty thing for me to talk about as a person who comes from a privileged suburban background, the mechanics of wanting, but yeah, makes me think about DFW's thing about how there is no reciprocal feeling of success to match the aching desire of fame, addiction, achievement, progression, ascent. but fuck, jay, probably not cool to tell the tots the toys will solve nothing, that the beast is yourself and you cannot be sated, right?

CC: Clicky Clicky can magically turn you into Oprah. If we did, in fact, turn you into Oprah, and you were able to give a single gift, any gift at all, to an entire studio audience of deserving kids in need, what would you pick for them?

JF: funny how quickly, when ian asked me the other day what i want for hannukah, i blurted "$5k" and how deeply that resonated with all three of us. capitalism (or current dearth of capital to my name) has maybe temporarily sullied my capacity for appreciating/remembering the wonders of the gift economy but i really do think that's one of the Ways Out of the dilemma of the split, self-negating self. fuck am i talking about. crayons & paper should be enough.

CC: I'm intrigued by your speculation, or at least optimistic positation, which is surely not a real word, that the gift economy, or the wonders thereof, is a potential solution to the split, self-negating self. Because I think this is important. Do you think the solution for peace in the house of the divided self is... kindness? altruism? Or, I guess to stay more true to the line of your response, having the capacity to appreciate/recognize kindness or altruism?

JF: At the end of college i was working on this thesis that i abandoned, sort of about a lot of things, many threads of which have surfaced in krill stuff over the past couple years. I guess the idea, most broadly, was an investigation (but more navel gazing) into the move from ends to means, or "the eclipse of ends" (which is how I saw it put in a book just yesterday (this stuff still, as you can see, deeply occupies me)). so it was this elaborate thing about how economic/cultural/ethical/communicative translations have fucked up our relationship to any sense of value, and the next step would be to see maybe how one could maybe traverse these occluded paths to value w/o being naive or regressive. Or maybe by being naive/regressive, not sure, I'm still totally fuzzy on it. But the cheesy and simplest example i came up with is how currency translates objects into a commensurable value (exchange-value), overpowering the sense of the object as the thing that it is -- a chair = $ instead of a thing to sit on, yknow? All this stuff is hamfisted and overly academic, and part of my whole problem with the thesis itself was that what I'm interested in is mostly the human experience of these shifts (if they're even valid at all) rather than their intellectual history. Anyhow, through some twists and turns, largely centered on the totemic figure of David Foster Wallace (but other stuff in moral philosophy and elsewhere) i got hooked on the now-a-little-played-out idea that if you have a system of means that swallows all, the only way to destroy or overcome that system (w/o being naive or regressive) would be to turn it against itself; thus people talking confusingly about dfw 'ironizing irony' (& the other example that comes to mind is this metaethics thing that would take slightly longer to explain) and also, in my opinion, ideas about self-hate, self-incrimination, knowing-you-are-fucked, because your only tool against your fucked self is your fucked self, the self having eclipsed all other things.

Ultimately, tho, I'd say that dfw (and levinas and Dostoevsky and other important people i feel namedroppy for bringing up) resorts to something that maybe is naive or regressive but somehow i don't think it quite is ---- because it still is the form of self-negation, just reformulated, turned inside out, into other-affirmation, through love, god, 'the other,' communitarianism. i guess maybe the next thing, for me, would be that once you've revived this loving muscle and can flex it a bit, maybe maybe there is some place in the deep distance where the golden rule can be flipped, once you've already loved yr neighbor as yourself (and get over the embarrassment of typing that) you can turn it around and love yourself as your neighbor. So: eventually the split self becomes a way to come back to a liveable self-love (or at least non-self-hatred).

Oh, how we enjoyed doing this interview. There are a number of other questions we'd like to put to Jonah (1. there is an underlying presumption here that a divided self is necessarily a bad thing, and a thing that needs to be remedied -- what if it is the natural state of being? Is there a way that it can not be a negative? 2.) Where does religious faith fall in the mechanics of remedying the divided self -- which, again, we are not sure is something that necessarily is unnatural and needs to be remedied? Is using religious faith "naive" or "regressive?"). But we'll save those for another day. Steve Hears Pile In Malden And Bursts Into Tears has five songs and will be released by Exploding In Sound as a vinyl 10" and digital download Feb. 18; you can pre-order the short stack (as well as a couple rad t-shirt designs) via Krill's Bandcamp dojo right here. The blazing, punky title track was loosed to the wilds of the Internerds today as a preview, and for now you can hear it over at that big web site. Krill has a number of other confirmed shows on the horizon beyond Saturday's engagement at The New World Tavern in Plymouth, which of course you should go to, because we said so. For example, the trio is also part of Allston Pudding/EIS's cataclysmic New Year's Eve bill in Boston over at Pizzeria Regina in Allston, which also features Grass Is Green, Kal Marks and Two Inch Astronaut.

Show Us Yours #19: Hallelujah The Hills

As we struggled to come up with a clever lede for this piece, we were continually haunted by the thought that Ryan Walsh would not be struggling to come up with clever lede for this piece. Mr. Walsh, the leader of Boston indie rock greats Hallelujah The Hills, is both smarter than your average bear and -- probably by a wider margin -- smarter than your average songwriter, and he writes, among other things, songs about writing songs that are not, you know, really just songs about writing songs. He writes ridiculously good lines, like "I saw you breaking down in a magazine / And I never told a soul what it meant to me / Now I’m on a mission fueled by LSD / Trying to break these patterns." And along these lines Walsh and Hallelujah The Hills have reliably turned out compelling and vital "chord based cosmic Americana" since 2005. The current big news is the band intends to record and then issue next year (May 20, to be exact) a fourth long-playing collection, which carries the title Do You Have Romantic Courage? HtH, as they are wont to be abbreviated, launched a crowd-sourcing effort to fund the record yesterday and has already raised 37.28% of their modest goal as of press time. There's even album art to look at already. We were looking for an excuse to speak with Walsh for this piece, Number 19 in our series of looks into the practice spaces of notable indie rock bands, and this news seemed like a dandy hook, so here we are. In our short interview below you'll encounter references to a prominent and liked politician (surprising) and urine (surprisingly common in these pieces), and there is also a link to a video clip of an unusual window opening and closing. We think that's a good summary of the absurd magic of Hallelujah The Hills. We'd like to specifically call your attention to Walsh's tidy reduction of the conundrum confronting the present-day music industry: "Is Spotify more convenient than Kickstarters are annoying?" Will that question end up being this generation's "Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Truth?" Perhaps. We think Walsh would argue that there aren't as many definitive answers as there are curious questions. So settle in and read on. Think about supporting the band's Kickstarter, the promotional video for which literally made us laugh out loud. If you wanna try before you buy, there are links to music below the interview, and HtH is playing on a tremendous bill with Clicky Clicky faves Soccer Mom Oct. 10 a week from tomorrow. So much to do, you'd best start doing.

Clicky Clicky Music Blog: So why do you use this practice space?

Ryan Walsh: We wanted a place where rehearsal and recording sessions would not be interrupted by other bands. In a place like The Sound Museum this is a constant problem. We found a place called Puritan Garage which is mostly auto repair shops and us.

I did my time in The Sound Museum. If your readers don't know, The Sound Museum is like an abandoned office/warehouse unit turned into one rehearsal room stacked on top of the other. It's run down and filthy. There was a guy who lived in tiny room next to us. He was in his 40s and he was living in a closet-sized room in the Sound Museum. No kitchen, no shower. I don't know how or why he did it. He would listen to conservative talk radio all day and night long. He hated all of the musicians. Understandably. Imagine if you lived somewhere where at any moment a full band could start blasting at full volume? Even late night at night when you're trying to sleep? I'm surprised he didn't murder some drummer one night. Sometimes when he went to the bathroom (which was a minute walk down some hallways from his door and our room) I would try and psyche myself up to take a peak in his room and see his set up. I never did though. I wonder if he's still there.

CC: Is there an idiosyncrasy or quirk of the space that has affected one of your songs, or even your overall sound?

RW: The quirk of the space is the location and the layout. It's hard to imagine what on earth this room was ever used for besides throwing a band in there. We're on a raised loft level of the space (the other bands are downstairs). There's a drawbridge-style giant window you can open by pulling on this rope-and-pulley system. And then, outside, even though cars rarely drive by, there is a lot of foot traffic. It's part of some short cut between a bus stop and the train, I think. People stop to talk to us. We once got roped into a security guard telling us ghost stories for 30 minutes. Deval Patrick's campaign headquarters is nearby. He came out once while we were taking a break outside and told us, "You've got a real nice sound."

CC: You walk into your space. What's the first thing that you smell?

RW: Well, we just got a brand-new rug on the 2nd floor because the toilet ruptured this summer and the entire floor was soaked in urine. It was hard to take for a few weeks. Now it's all brand new and we're finding it invigorating. But, still, it probably smells like musty cig butts in there, in general.

CC: You officially announced Tuesday you're working on your fourth album, which presently carries the title Do You Have Romantic Courage? I know you've been in bands before HtH, notably The Stairs, which recently had a reunion. But even so, I'm wondering if you personally anticipate this new record -- or I guess emotionally approach it -- differently than a first record. You know, presumably you got all the pressing heart-break and fuck-you songs out of you on the first record, right? What's left?

RW: Well, I've always tried to write songs that went somewhere unexpected beyond the heart-break and the personal FU topics. But after years of doing that, then the love songs become the exotic novelty, ya know? I think I just try and write about characters who are searching for something: sometimes it's redemption, or revenge, or enlightenment, or purpose, or clarity, or the pattern in the noise... but sure, sometimes they're searching for love -- just like all of us.

On the last record (No One Knows What Happens Next) I tried to be very direct and very relatable, which maybe isn't the case on the first two albums. On this one I want to marry the abstract instincts of the early albums with the direct, cohesive approach the last batch of new songs took on. If the song is about someone who's detached from reality, for example, I at least want him or her to be able to explain that to the listener.

CC: You'll be crowd-sourcing a portion of the funding you'll need to make the new record. Were you or any of the guys in the band wary of going that road? My advice to bands considering it is that it is fine as long as the value proposition is clear to the backers, and the promises made are delivered. After all, this is America -- there's nothing more American than people being able to do with their money whatever it is that they want to do. Still, I think once you say "Kickstarter" these days, people's eyes glaze over. Do you feel like you need to work hard -- and maybe harder than you should -- to make the prospect exciting for people?

RW: I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Is Spotify more convenient than Kickstarters are annoying?" Because, although that's a gross simplification, that's basically what listeners need to ask themselves. That's the decision we're all faced with here. If you choose the super convenient listening platforms with the low payouts to artists, cool, that's awesome -- but if you're a fair person, you have to accept that bands will maybe need to resort to the crowd-sourcing method of paying for studios, mixing and mastering. And, look, if failed crowd-sourcing attempts is what breaks up some bands, oh well. It's a risk on both ends. I'm completely aware of crowd-sourcing fatigue -- we're doing a couple things to try and combat that but I'll keep that under wraps for now. Anyway, another answer to that questions is: it's a pre-order of our new album that comes out in May. If enough people pre-order we can record in a studio and make it pretty spectacular!

Hallelujah The Hills: Internerds | Bandcamp | Facebook





Previous Show Us Yours episodes:
Shapes And Sizes | Dirty On Purpose | Relay | Mobius Band | Frightened Rabbit | Assembly Now | Meneguar | Okay Paddy | Charmparticles | Calories | Sun Airway | It Hugs Back | Lubec | A Giant Dog | Bent Shapes | Krill | Golden Gurls | Earthquake Party!