BY JAMIE CARR

While taking naps in my closest female friends’ beds, play-fighting with them in Manhattan’s parks, and romping together on subway platforms are as familiar to me as breathing, there was something both inspiring and frustrating about watching such scenes in Noah Baumbach’s latest film: Frances Ha.

On one hand, Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, who plays the title character, deliver a story that still goes largely unsung: a complex female character in a story about female friendship. But the film also begs the question about why such “love stories” between female friends are so rare at the box-office.  How can women understand and celebrate the complexities of our relationships with each other when films give them such little attention and continue to fail the Bechdel Test (1. If the movie has more than two females in it 2. Who talk to each other 3. About something other than men). Even Lena Dunham’s Girls is deeply rooted in women’s relationships to their male counter-parts. Is the only way for a woman to transcend Hollywood’s formulaic narratives to co-write with a male director, or date him, or in the case of Gerwig, do both?

Frances, deemed “undatable,” runs, clomps, and stumbles her way around the city— and her mid 20-something life. She’s the D list to a Black Swan alternative, well read but also inarticulate, beautiful but is told she has an older face and looks in mirrors too much. She’s neither the sleeping beauty nor the villain, neither completely autonomous nor completely dependent. In short, she’s complex. The film follows Frances from an apartment with her best friend Sophie in Brooklyn through a series of new addresses, each marked on the screen in supertitles. With each new change, we get a heavier glimpse of Frances; we meet a new set of roommates, routines, and landscape, all the while secretly hoping she finds a more permanent landing spot.

“Tell me the story of us,” Frances says to Sophie (Mickey Sumner), while lying in bed together towards the beginning of the film. The request was one I’ve privately asked my own girlfriends, but unfamiliar as used between two female friends on the big screen. Isn’t this the part where they recount the stories of their boyfriends instead? Shouldn’t Francis be asking this of a lover? The line, the stark bedroom, the way Sophie asks Frances to take off her socks in bed, felt true to the intimacy of female friendships.

Furthermore, Sam Levy’s black and white cinematography, an homage to the yelling scene from A Streetcar Named Desire, and the apt soundtrack featuring Georges Delerue, Britta Phillips, and David Bowie dramatize the female love-story, albeit it in New Wave fashion. One can’t help but see a re-contextualized Breathless when Gerwig and Sumner take “sips” of each other cigarettes in their apartment window. One can’t help but hear “Stella” when Frances yells for Sophie outside a dormitory at their old university.

Fances’ confusion over how to make her life work (financially, personally, and in her friendship with Sophie), her displacement at family Christmas, and her desire for adventure are universal. The film should resonate with anyone who like Frances, “loves things that appear as mistakes,” anyone brave enough to admit that he or she is still figuring things out. Over post-movie beers with fellow twenty-something, artist women who are both in love with their friends and watching them depart into their own lives, whether to Tokyo like Sophie or the metaphorical version, it became clear that Frances’ story is all of our stories— the human condition in the face of the unknown.

Lighter, softer, and less brutal than Baumbach’s family dramas The Squid and The Whale and Margot at the Wedding, Frances Ha is probably most similar to Kicking and Screaming, which also deals with post-college life. Though Frances Ha feels like a more mature version, in which the post-grads from Kicking find themselves five years older in the big city and without direct access to their parents’ bank accounts. And of course, Frances Ha sees the return of Greta Gerwig, who starred in Baumbach’s Greenberg.

The number of movies like Frances Ha remain sparse, as is the language surrounding female friendship (Urban Dictionary says the female equivalent of “bromance” is “homance.” Ask your friends for alternatives, then challenge yourself to find one  that doesn’t include a dismembered body part). I find hope in the mini-series. Both HBO and Showtime seem to give more on-screen time than feature length films to women and their relationships with each other. In shows like Game of Thrones, Nurse Jackie, and yes, Girls, we get a stronger, heartier glimpse at women. That’s not to say they don’t over-sexualize, marginalize, and at times, victimize women (not to mention the majority of these characters all share a similar shade of white). But at least they attempt to broaden the scope of women on the screen. I can only hope that the rest of the film industry opens up to the possibility of womance.

Jamie Carr is a graduate student at Portland State University, where she studies fiction writing. Her writing has appeared in The Portland Review, The Lettered Olive, and elsewhere. Like Sophie, she is firmly against socks in bed.

The legendary composer Philip Glass makes music that’s so minimalist and repetitive that it has inspired a joke:

Knock Knock. Who’s there? Knock Knock. Who’s there? Knock Knock. Who’s there? Knock Knock. Who’s there? Knock Knock. Who’s there? Knock Knock. Who’s there? Knock Knock. Who’s there? Philip Glass. Knock Knock…

On Sunday at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, the 70-year-old Glass brought his signature stripped down sound to Brooklyn, joined by an eclectic mix of younger artists who have followed in his footsteps. Billed as “Philip Glass and Friends,” the show seemed more like a love fest geared to introduce Glass to new audiences and introduce Glass fans to the next generation.

In one of the most captivating performances, Tim Fain played Glass’s Partita for Solo Violin, a haunting piece filled with repetitive arpeggios, double stops, and glissandos. Another highlight was when Bryce Dessner (of The National) said that, to honor Glass’s penchant for “saying so much with so little,” he would improvise a guitar solo without touching the strings. With that, Dessner flipped over his guitar on its head, banged the headstock on the floor, swooped the instrument to generate feedback, stomped on effects pedals, and tapped and slapped the back of the instrument. Before doing his version of Hendrix at Woodstock, Dessner did a subdued version of Jimmy Page in The Song Remains the Same, coaxing drones from his guitar with a violin bow. In related news, The National’s new album Trouble Will Find Me dropped today (May 21) and the band is touring all summer.

The concert was a variety show, opened and closed by Glass at the piano, with brief sets with barely a pause between acts. The three-song set by Brooklyn/Jersey band Real Estate ended with an instrumental jam that sounded like Glass’s preceding piano etudes, if only by juxtaposition. Fain joined composer Nico Muhly ‘for the piano duet “Drones with Violins,” which was true to its title, as was “Drones with Viola” featuring Dessner and Nadia Sirota. For the last song of the night, all the musicians joined Glass for a rendition of  “The Chase” (a.k.a. La Poursuite) from his opera Orphee, a festive, almost psychedelic wall of sound. Atypical for the venue, but perhaps as a concession to the attentiveness the music demanded, the audience was seated.

Philip Glass and Friends (5/19/13)

The show was the closing night of Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge  –a weeklong festival dedicated to the writer Henry Miller— and a fundraiser for the Miller Memorial Library in California, which, unlike most libraries, has hosted more than 100 indie rock shows from Animal Collective to the xx. The night began with a short film about Miller, who fled his Brooklyn roots, first to Paris, and later to California. Along with footage of Miller writing, biking, and playing the piano,the film excerpted Miller’s negatitive assessment of the city from Tropic of Cancer in supertitles: “New York is cold, glittering, malign. The buildings dominate. There is a sort of atomic frenzy to the activity going on; the more furious the pace, the more diminished the spirit.” While experts  argued that Miller’s relationship to the city was more ambivalent, it was still ironic for a Brooklyn crowd to celebrate a native son who didn’t share their borough love. After the film, the MC read a passage by Miller on the power of music, after which his presence disappeared for the evening.

Judging from their banter, the younger performers were honored to perform with Glass, whose oevre includes operas, symphonies, chamber music, concerti, solo works, and music for theater, dance, film, and television, and more than 90 recordings. During his three-song solo acoustic set, Norweigian singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche joked about his presence on the bill: “What am I doing here? I’m going to play my little ditties…before I leave you with more sophisticated stylings.”  His comment –and an anecdote about doing soundcheck with Glass in the room— made explicit what the audience knew about the show: one master, many disciples.

While riveting, the evening was not without its hitches. Fain had some feedback issues with his violin. Glass seemed to muff some notes in his etude, though in fairness that might have been part of the composition. And other elder statesman,  Van Dyke Parks, was supposed to perform, but cancelled at the eleventh hour due to a hand injury. As a tribute, Lerche played a stripped down swing version of “Orange Crate Art,” the title track from Parks’ 1995 album with Brian Wilson, with whom he famously collaborated on The Beach Boys’ album Smile. And if anything, the concert was too short: less than two hours of music, including only one encore despite the standing ovation.

Looking ahead, Glass has a busy summer calendar, with performances of his work in the United States and Europe, including the UK premiere of The Perfect American, about the last years of Walt Disney. And right now,  across the river from Williamsburg, is a revival of Glass Pieces at the New York City Ballet, where it premiered 30 years ago. Knock knock. Who’s there? It’s still Philip Glass.

Keith Meatto is Editor in Chief of Frontier Psychiatrist. He recently reviewed the new Vampire Weekend album for FP and wrote an essay on The Great Gatsby for Guernica. He tries to be a minimalist with words.

BY JOHN NICOSIA

In Sidney Pollock’s 1975 political thriller, Three Days of the Condor, a former AT&T lineman (Robert Redford), breaks into a Bell System building in Manhattan and calls the CIA.  Just as the agency thinks it has traced the call, a new location pops up, then another, then another.  “He’s tying twenty phones together!”  The Condor has exploited his knowledge of the phone system to turn the tables on his employer.

In his new book, Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell, Phil Lapsley introduces us to “phone phreaks” — hackers who learned, through trial and error, how to do things like tie twenty phones together, use toy whistles to make long distance calls, build little boxes to activate pay phones and relays, and even break into the supposedly secure Department of Defense telephone network –all for fun, profit, and occasionally subversion..

As the book recounts, the Bell System was a state-sanctioned monopoly of the telephone networks.  AT&T, part of the Bell System, ran all the long distance lines. By the 1950s, one could place a call from New York City to Los Angeles without the intervention of a single human operator. Incredibly, the system was mechanical: rather than computers or transistors, Tones of different frequencies triggered electromechanical relays which could route a call from a phone in Queens to one in Burbank, and even more incredibly note the length of the call and billed the appropriate customer.  But the system was completely open – anyone who could figure out and replicate the tones could make calls to anywhere. Beginning in the 1950s kids, some of them blind, did just that.

Lapsley introduces us to a fascinating assortment of characters for whom the Bell System was unexplored frontier: Joe Engressia, John “Captain Crunch” Draper, and believe it or not, future Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (who wrote the book’s introduction).  They all began independently, but slowly they began to find each other and trade information and ideas.  For a brief period of time, they would all meet “on-line” as it were, on a conference call network upon which they stumbled.

Engressia was a blind kind who was fascinated by the phone from a young age.  He soon learned that he had perfect pitch and started duplicating the tones that operated the phone network by whistling. Draper’s phreaking handle came from the infamous toy whistle found in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal in the 1960s which, he figured out, perfectly replicated the 2600 Hz tone that opened Bell System switches.  Draper’s exploits with the telephone system eventually landed him in hot water with the FBI and the Department of Defense.  Wozniak and Jobs first technology project was the construction of “blue boxes” which could be used to make toll free calls.  Before them, blue boxes were analog devices comprised of tone generators and resistors and capacitors. Wozniak’s version was y digital; electronic circuits generated perfect tones every time. “I swear,” Wozniak tells Lapsey, “To this day, I have never designed a circuit I was prouder of.”  As a sign of his pride, Woz’s blue box also came with a lifetime guarantee – which is pretty ballsy considering that owning one was illegal.

Exploding the Phone is an informative and fascinating history of the phone system, something that most of us take for granted. Today, we rely on cell towers, smart phones are ubiquitous, and even a three-year-old can can call someone in Ulan Bator, so we may forget there was once a physical phone system that required lines, switches, frequencies and, sometime people, for it to work properly.

As the book reveals, the phone phreaks were, the precursors of today’s hackers. Making free long distance calls didn’t really motivate them because, as many of them said, they didn’t know anyone to call.  They were more like explorers, guys who wanted to find out how things worked.  How they found each other is one of the most fascinating parts of the story, especially since today we all take instantaneous communication for granted.  Why did the phreakers ring the President of Mexico’s personal phone in the middle of the night?  Because they could.  Of course, none of them knew a word of Spanish.

Four Tet – Rounds (Domino Records)

BY PETER LILLIS

Ten years ago, Four Tet released Rounds, his third full-length, and his most focused work. Four Tet—UK’s Keiran Hebden—composed an affirming masterwork of mood, rhythm and repetition using only disparate, seemingly unrelated samples, culled from just about anywhere you can imagine, and beyond. Throughout Rounds, Hebden carefully stacks loose, manipulated jazz rhythms atop soft swells of organs, synths, piano, guitars, vocals, etc. Although sample-based artists are not scarce, Four Tet expanded the possibilities of the genre with Rounds and set an impossibly high standard that remains untouched.

Apparently raised in a jazz household, Hebden’s work has an unexpected yet elemental feel, dreamlike; created in the mind, defined by memories. Rounds’ opener “Hands” begins with a rapidly beating heart. As the song progresses, pieces of sound are illuminated, exposing an elaborate pattern with thousands of immeasurable threads of melody and rhythm. And we’re off. What follows is a perfectly crafted, mind-expanding work that exudes significance and commands reflection.

A certain psychiatrist once told me of “ideas of reference,” the act of naming an innocuous coincidence significant. Based on my limited knowledge that doesn’t extend far beyond Wikipedia, ideas (or delusions) of reference is a criterion for determining psychotic illnesses, and are less of a mythic phenomenon than I dreamed. Nonetheless, recognizing (or creating) patterns and threads through memories and experiences remains an interesting process. There exists an undeniable link between creation and memories, and another between repetition and emotional response. By making the disparate feel significant, Four Tet’s Rounds functions in a similar way.

I started college a year and a half after the release of Rounds; I wouldn’t hear the piece until another four passed. A good friend, whom I met the first week of Freshman year, was highly interested in the number 314. He claimed that the three-digit sequence would appear to him frequently, more so than other three-digit sequences. It’s not hard to notice, there are plenty of 314s (the area code for St. Louis, the length in feet of the right field line at Yankee Stadium, π, etc.), easy to see when looking. Eventually, I too started noticing the digits. My memories drew me to dwell these numbers and their frequent occurrence. The imagined phenomenon amused me at least, spurred reflection at best.

On Rounds, Hebden’s sample-based compositions allude to an immense depth, but a created one that exists only when the pieces fall together just so. His compositions take on greater significance as they compound upon each other. What once was an unintelligible shuffle of glass bottles or a stuttering glitch, becomes harmony or melody when placed alongside a disparate counterpart, and looped.

It’s true, rhythm is ubiquitous. However, the well-documented relationship between humans and organized beats remains largely unexplained. On Rounds, Four Tet satisfies our desire for inexplicable sequences of rhythm and melody, while keeping the mystery of the phenomenon intact.

Round and round we go.

The Haxan Cloak’s Excavation

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Death kindly stopped for Emily Dickinson, but hasn’t been so polite to The Haxan Cloak’s Bobby Krlic. Though in fairness, Krlic’s music doesn’t offer the kindest portrayal of Death.

Within the first two minutes of The Haxan Cloak’s incredible new album Excavation, Krlic (who kind of looks like Sam Beam’s evil twin) pays tribute to some of the most invigorating and simply creepiest musical ideas of the past half-decade, from the leeching strings of Jonny Greenwood’s soundtracks for There Will Be Blood and The Master to Death Grips’ heavy, overwhelming bass. Krlic then takes off from there and doesn’t look back, providing his own entry in the canon of disturbingly dark, yet somehow beautiful electronic music. If someone like Burial represents the calm before the storm, The Haxan Cloak represents, as many music writers have already correctly stated, the result of the storm: the afterlife. And it’s not a pretty picture. Just look at that fucking album cover.

What’s remarkable about Excavation is that it works as a cohesive, front to back listen as well as a collection of mini suites. “Miste” creates a beat out of what at first sounds like a broken Andy Stott song, one whose background vocals eventually give way to an array of disturbing noises, namely a warped bass that makes it sound like you’re about to get run over by a lawnmower. Throughout Excavation, individual songs segue brilliantly into the next but work just as well individually: “Excavation (Part 2)” is a William Basinski-like piece of minimalism that segues seamlessly into “Mara“, even though the latter track employs a completely different style, one similar to Greenwood’s.

Meanwhile, the standout tracks on Excavation are both “Mirror Reflecting” songs and stunning closer “The Drop“. Part one of “Mirror Reflecting” essentially sounds like the hypothetical product of a Michael Gira drone project. Part two, however, is the closest thing to a dance track The Haxan Cloak has ever done. The now signature deep bass, a pounding drum beat, and eventually, glitchy electronics first create a song that’s beat-driven, then combine into an ambient collection of noise, and eventually return to the beat. Danceable? Well, if you get your kicks imaging yourself dancing in a club that exists in a Sweden a billion times darker than that in any Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movie, “The Mirror Reflecting (Part 2)” will be your summer jam of the year. Overall, if Excavation is the base sonic manifestation of death, then “The Mirror Reflecting (Part 2)” is the moment when the doctors get a pulse back, only to dash hopes as the body, soul, and spirit sink back into oblivion. And, just to fuck with you, the beat in the following track, “Dieu” contains synths that sound an awful lot like hospital beeps. Has someone, whether some anonymous character that exists in the album’s universe, Krlic, or whoever come back to life yet again? To tell you the truth, you don’t really care anymore; at this point, you’re just begging for mercy.

Indeed, somewhat mercifully, it feels as if all of Excavation is leading to brilliant, beautiful, and surprisingly pacifying thirteen-minute album closer “The Drop”. While “The Drop” contains The Haxan Cloak’s quintessential bass and uneasy strings, Chromatics-like synths give it a remarkable sonic depth. It takes its time over thirteen minutes, but think of these minutes as a short therapy session. With some new modes of thought, maybe the afterlife isn’t so terrible after all.

Jordan Mainzer is a Chicago-based staff writer at FP, recent graduate of Brown University, and the editor of art, architecture, and design blog DRA. He’s a professional hypochondriac.

BY KEITH MEATTO

Vampires have surpassed their pop culture saturation point, thanks in part to the HBO series True Blood and the Twilight series of books and blockbuster movies. Literary types can enjoy Karen Russell’s latest short story collection Vampires in the Lemon Grove while couch potatoes can watch a new commercial where suburban vampire becomes “morning people” so they can eat fruity breakfast bars. Even The New York Times web site has a page devoted to News About Vampires. Add to that list an seemingly endless spate of books, television shows, and movies, including: The Vampire Diaries, Vampire Awakenings, The Vampire Affair, The Vampire Coalition, The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter, The Vampire’s Witch Saga, Vampire Bites, Vampire for Hire, The Vampire from Hell, The Vampire Wardens, The Vampire Coalition, and Vampire for Christmas. And all this 15 years after Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire. Had he not been cremated, Bram Stoker might be turning in his grave.

Still, the young bloods in Vampire Weekend refuse to die. Their third album, released yesterday (May 14), expands upon the band’s signature indie rock meets Graceland sound, meticulous songwriting and arrangements, clever wordplay, and satirical reverence for New York’s One Percent. While instantly recognizable, Modern Vampires of the City is the band’s most eclectic album to date, with a fusion of genres and lyrics that reflect not only on pop culture, but matters of religion and spirituality, life and death.

Ezra Koenig’s sweet, earnest, and clear tenor voice still anchors the album, but he now experiments with spoken-word raps, rockabilly croons, and hard rock growls and yelps. Studio effects double-track, distort, and pitch-correct his voice, moves more common in Top 40, hip-hop, and dance music than indie rock. These production choices are clearly stylistic: Koenig doesn’t need gimmicks to sound good or Auto-Tune to sing in key,

Meanwhile, Koenig’s trebly guitar riffs – a staple of prior records –have disappeared, leaving space for pulsing chords and Rostam Batmanglij’s layers of piano, harpsichord, organ, synthesizers, and string arrangements. The minimalist rhythm section of Chris Baio on bass and on drums preserves the band’s signature syncopated “Upper West Side Soweto” sound and adds aspects of rock, punk, and reggae. With the notable exception of Animal Collective and their frequent forays into complex time signatures, few indie bands employ such rhythmic variety.

Perhaps because the band members are nearing 30, the lyrics on Modern Vampire suggest a new maturity; as one song puts it: “The wisdom teeth are out.” On a grander scale, Koenig seems to be searching for God while doubting the possibility of faith. The most overtly religious song is “Ya Hey!””which refers to Zion and Babylon and on which Koenig sings: ”Oh God/The faithless don’t love you/The zealots half don’t love you.”  The song alludes to the biblical episode in which Moses sees a burning bush in the desert and speaks with his God, who calls himself Yahweh, or “I Am That I Am,” a phrase quoted in the song. Apparently, Ya Hey is Yahweh. Somebody call Harold Bloom.

Spiritual matters and religious diction recur throughout the album.  On the upbeat single “Unbelievers,” Koenig doubts his faith, yet wants “a little grace” and wonders “who’s going to say a little grace for me?” The Afro-beat “Everlasting Arms” mentions singing Hallelujah, could be addressed to either a human or a divine being, and finds Koenig wondering “Could I be made to serve a master?” On “Finger Back” he sings “the road to hell is wide” and mentions the Jewish and Muslim sacred site The Dome of the Rock, just as Contra’s “Horchata” mentioned the holy Israel site Masada. The album ends with “Young Lion,” a truncated piano ballad with a church organ, and one sentence repeated like a prayer. Amen.

For all their worldliness and worldly success, Vampire Weekend is still a local band at heart. In April, they played a live-streamed concert directed by Steve Buschemi for the closing night of the Tribeca Film Festival. On record, their lyrics speak for and to New Yorkers, both natives and transplants.  The slow-jam, pseudo-rap, Lewis Carroll meets Bob Dylan “Step” name checks “Astor” (Place) in the East Village near Cooper Union and St. Mark’s Place, a clichéd symbol of youthful rebellion where NYU and Cooper Union students, punks, poseurs have flocked for the last 40 years.  A mock-serious soulful breakdown refers to a falafel shop on 103d Street and Broadway, blocks from where the band formed as students at Columbia University, where English major Koenig presumably learned the phrase “richer than Croesus” and read “The Way of All Flesh,” Samuel Butler’s 19^th century novel. “Hudson” refers to the explorer and the river that separates New York and Koenig’s native New Jersey; the song also name checks Sutton Place, a wealthy enclave on the East River between that separates Manhattan from Brooklyn and Queens, and a “99 year lease,” the Holy Grail of New York real estate. A nod to the commuter suburbs of Westchester County refers to “Holy days/In Tarrytown and Rye.” Having grown up in the former town, I empathize with the subsequent rhyme: “I don’t want to live here/But I don’t want to die.”  Similarly, their eponymous first album included “Mansard Roof,” a common architectural feature in Manhattan, “M79” a paean to the cross-town bus that links the Upper East and Upper West Side via Central Park, and “A-Punk,” whose heroine rents an apartment in Washington Heights, which is 60 blocks north of Columbia.

Skeptics might have pegged Vampire Weekend’s quirky debut as ephemeral buzz, with its preppy allusions to Cape Cod, Egyptian cotton shirts, and oxford commas, the optional penultimate piece of punctuation in a list of three or more items. Their sophomore album Contra suggested the band had more staying power. Now with their third stellar, yet distinct, album in five years, these modern urban vampires are starting to seem immortal. As  the new album’s first song meta-advises: “Listen/Don’t Wait.”

Keith Meatto is Editor in Chief of Frontier Psychiatrist. His essay “Seven Ways of Looking at The Great Gatsby” appeared today in Guernica. Gate crashing the Vampire Weekend show in Central Park with Leo Lopez in June 2008 is still one of the highlights of his adult life. 

BY TIM MYERS

One of the more exasperating trends in popular culture today is the sudden rise in derisive articles on the “Millennial Generation” (See the most recent Time cover story “The Me Me Me Generation” and the Business Insider rebuttals). They’re pompous, contrived, ill-informed, and littered with backhanded compliments (“Millennial are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents. Why they will save us all!”) and fall neatly into the long-standing tradition of bitter old folks dismissing entire generations. A common denominator in many of these think pieces is over-wrought analysis of online dating, decrying the trend as evident of the death of romance. Fueled by righteous indignation, it seemed only right that I offer my own analysis on the topic, fully recognizing the hypocrisy of making my own over-wrought generalizations. Though as a Millennial myself, I feel I have at least earned a free pass.

In spite of its increasing popularity, online dating is still stigmatized. I imagine this is for a multitude of reasons. For one thing, we still remember the pre-internet era, a childhood filled with frequent warnings of stranger danger unencumbered by technology. This shared past imbues every tagged Facebook post (e.g. “Tim Myers is at Wendy’s eating a Baconator and a Doritos Locos taco AT THE SAME DAMN TIME #YOLO”) with a certain degree of cognitive dissonance. Plus the internet is a nonsensical and sometimes terrifying place (my appreciation of “Ryan Gosling Won’t Eat His Cereal” may have given me an identity crisis) and thus probably not the most comforting place to turn for romance.

It doesn’t help that the platforms themselves seem complicit in the shaming. One of the first match questions I got on OkCupid was “are you more horny or more lonely?” That is enough to put one on the defensive right away (actually I am a well-adjusted 25 year old. And my mom says I am handsome). The users seem complicit in the shame as well. Under the category of “most embarrassing,” approximately 75% of OkCupid users disclose it’s the fact that they are on the site at all (note: these statistics are bullshit).

Viewed through this lens, it is not surprising that people are not seeking long-term committed relationships through the site. People don’t want to have to admit to their grandchildren that they met their grandmother through a dating site. Is that how you want to be remembered? Why not?

The Millennial generation puts a lot of stock in tastes, which forms the basis of most connections through the site. This is in spite of the fact that whether a person likes Pavement is not much of an indicator of a person’s character (read the comment section on the YouTube video of your favorite song and tell me I am wrong). One night surfing profiles I came across one of a couple whose “About Me” section described that they were looking for a threesome. However, they also went on to list their favorite music, movies and foods. That is kind of weird unless they have somehow found a way to incorporate Coldplay, Fight Club, and chimichangas into their sexual routine (Threesome partner wanted: must agree that Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is entirely underrated).

This emphasis on favorite music/movies/television is emblematic of our fractured identities. Millennials define themselves as much by their favorite bits of pop culture as their own personal accomplishments or character traits. With it comes a lot of pressure to be well versed in the classics (I, for one, judge anybody who has an unkind word for John Woo’s Face/Off) as well as new releases (at which point I must thank Frontier Psychiatrist for making me seem the least bit more attractive to the opposite sex). This has spurred me to consume media at an accelerated and possibly unhealthy rate, not always because I want to, but almost out of a sense of obligation. (Note: This completely excludes the category of OkCupid users that are on the site entirely just to send out mass messages of “DTF?” or “You have nice bobs [sic]”.)

Maybe there is some truth that online dating is a reflection of a narcissistic generation, not dating to find love with someone else, but more out of love of self. But online dating is as much of a reflection of self-doubt as it is vanity, whose participants at some level still believe in the connectivity of the internet but recognize that in many ways we are all over-connected. The internet has put the world at our fingertips. That can be a little too much to handle. Don’t you agree, Time Inc.?

Tim Myers is a Comedian in Columbus, Ohio. You may remember him from such FP articles as: “How YouTube is Subverting Rap Music”, “Lil’ Wayne, Elvis and the Youth of Today”, and our response to New York magazine’s “Indie Grown Ups”.

Poster for GOAT’s First US Tour

BY PETER LILLIS

Korpilombolo, Sweden is a remote “locality” in northern Sweden. With approximately 530 residents, Korpilombolo recently gained notoriety for being home to the mysterious GOAT, a fast rising and fantastic psychedelic rock band with a penchant for tribal drums, blues-drone freakouts and voodoo-like masks. Wrapping up their first US tour, GOAT played sold-out shows at some of our top venues, including The Music Hall of Williamsburg, Austin Psych Fest and the Empty Bottle. We were fortunate enough to catch their Chicago date, which was also attended by Ty Segall, Doug McCombs and countless other scene juggernauts. For reference, view their entire show at Philadelphia’s Johnny Brenda’s.

After their Chicago date, we caught up with a member of the band who introduced themselves only as Fluffan. The following interview only creates more questions: Who else is in their tribe? How did the GOAT tradition begin? What did the other iterations sound like? Are you pulling my leg? Nonetheless, Fluffan opened up to us about the meaning of psychedelia, the possibility of a second US tour and the planet Tellus.

Frontier Psychiatrist: We had World Music as our #2 psychedelic album of 2012, second only to Tame Impala’s Lonerism. Do you agree that GOAT is a psychedelic band? What elements do you have in common with other rising psychedelic bands? How is GOAT similar to the first wave of psychedelic bands, including Jefferson Airplane, Os Mutantes, 13th Floor Elevators, Cream, etc? 

Fluffan: Thank you a lot for that but I don´t know. The whole “defining music by genre” is getting quite boring by now to say the least.  And the term ” psychedelic ” has been so overused at this point in time that it almost does not mean a thing anymore. By now I guess anyone fits into the psychedelic category, even Lionel Richie. On the other hand anything will appear psychedelic at the right place when in the right state of mind, right?  Like Snickeriet and so forth. It´s all in the hands of the perceiver I guess

I really have no idea man. Similar maybe in the way that we also like to play music together with friends and be creative and have a good time? Jefferson Airplane had a female vocalist. Eric Clapton has glasses and one of us uses lenses.

FP: Is there a relationship between your music and drug use?

Fluffan: I don´t know you tell me. There is probably a relationship between our music and doing dishes, laundry and walking your dog as well for all I know.

FP: What world do you think World Music appeals to?

Fluffan: I guess it appeals mostly to the human population of Tellus and maybe some animals too. I´m not so sure about the rest of the universe yet.

FP: What role does your voodoo background play in your songwriting and/or performances? Do you make your own masks? Does each mask hold a special significance? Is there a relationship between each mask and each instrument and/or performer?

Fluffan: It´s not exactly voodoo but if you mean the vastness of the eternal seer/ GoAT then this is the foundation I stand on. My way of perceiving life and what fills my whole being. No [the masks] have been passed down through generations. The one I use has been buried together with former members of Goat several times. Then of course un-buried and put back into business again. You will learn more about this relationship in the info sheet of our coming LP.

FP: Have the masks changed over the years?

Fluffan: No they must never change!

FP: The album is well produced: very heavy and full sounds without losing the natural/tribal feel. How was the production, recording and mixing process? Who did you work with? Do you feel that the final product is what you imagined? Will the next GOAT album have a similar sound, or do you feel the moving in a different direction?

Fluffan: Thank you. It was mostly done at night during the cold winter. It was all effortless and spontaneous. I worked with people from our tribe. I don´t know about the final product though I never imagined anything really we kind of just jammed along but I think it sounds nice enough.

Yes, the [new album will be in] same direction, more or less..

FP: Are you enjoying your time in the USA? I see it’s your first tour here, have any members of the band visited the states before? How did you enjoy the tour?

Fluffan: Yes very much! Other members, yes. Me, no.

We absolutely loved every minute of it. I loved watching the performances of Holy Wave which just got better and better throughout the whole tour the more I got to hear the songs. Truly mind expanding music! Not to mention their light show. Among the best bands I ever saw actually and they are wonderful musicians and top notch lads on top of that. Someone should get them over to Europe ASAP! This is by far the best part of touring for me, all the wonderful people you get to meet!

FP: How was this tour made possible? I’m sure it’s not cheap or easy to move the band and all your equipment across an ocean and a foreign country. Do you have any interest in doing it again?

Fluffan: Through our booking agency, Holy Wave’s backline and good old dollars basically. Not cheap but you can keep costs down to a minimum I guess. Flights from Munich where I reside are not overly expensive and you can eat fairly cheap in the US as well and we borrowed all of the backline, plus some other gear from the gentlemen in Holy Wave. Yes I would love to [tour the states again] but I don´t know if that will be possible.

FP: Anyone you’d like to thank over the course of this tour?

Fluffan: Most certainly! All the people from the Goat commune. Holy Wave. The guys from Acme guitars – what an awesome performance! Everyone that came out to our shows and supported us! Anyone who tries to make a change in society for the better and contribute to the whole. All those who don´t settle down for old belief systems and look into reality using their own experience/ discernment. The seekers of truth!

FP: What are some other bands from your area that we should check out?

Fluffan: Anders (The Silent Boatman), Hills — new LP out on superb Cardinal Fuzz Records now, Joe MCphee – Nation Time, Sun Ra and The Shaggs. Also people should really check out Holy Wave, go see them live and buy their stuff. It will be worth a fortune in the near future so you can just see it as an investment in your wallet but more importantly as an investment in your soul and a way of saving yourself a lot of trouble and time buying stuff that is no good. The same goes for Cardinal Fuzz records and of course Rocket Recordings.

FP: What’s next for GOAT?

Fluffan: We are playing some festivals and of course doing service at temple. We are the businessmen of the mind & soul plus the players of instruments too!

Titus Andronicus and The So So Glos, bringing back the dudes.

BY JORDAN MAINZER

After touring the hell out of their three LPs, you’d think that Titus Andronicus would run out of live show surprises. Wrong. On May 4 at Metro Chicago, the everlasting “war” between New York and Chicago provided plenty of fodder for the Brooklyn (via Jersey) band Titus, Brooklyn DIY punks The So So Glos, and Chicago-based but originally from Brooklyn band Sharpless (who sound like some sort of Thermals/Screaming Females hybrid and who also have a song that breaks down into the chorus of David Bowie’s “Young Americans“). But unlike the stereotypically condescending New Yorker view of Chicago or the just-admit-it-you’re-jealous Chicagoan view of New York, what emerged among Titus, the So So Glos, and Sharpless and between the bands and the crowd was a refreshing mixture of competition and mutual admiration.

The three bands represent an amalgamation of Brooklyn and Chicago, but all are related to Brooklyn in some way. As Sharpless lead singer Jack Greenleaf said, The So So Glos have been letting Sharpless play “bad Replacements covers” at SSG’s all-ages DIY Brooklyn venue Shea Stadium for years. While they now reside in different cities, among the three bands, there was an undeniable sense of brotherhood. The Sharpless drummer, wearing a Converge All We Love We Can Leave Behind tank, was right up there moshing during the So So Glos. And Titus bassist Julian Veronesi was wearing a So So Glos t-shirt (Stickles was, of course, wearing a Diarrhea Planet tee).

Meanwhile, while Brooklyn punks invaded the house that Jordan built, a group of Chicago punks invaded and dominated the house that Jay-Z built. Tom Thibodeau’s Chicago Bulls, the scrappiest bunch of unlikely winners the NBA has seen this year, established themselves as the rugged, zero-fucks given punks of the NBA. With the confidence of a skill-less group of English fifteen year olds looking to start a band during the Thatcher era, the Bulls went into Brooklyn, despite the absence of some of their best players (Derrick Rose, Luol Deng, and Kirk Hinrich) and beat Brooklyn. “You guys always win,” said So So Glos lead singer Alex Levine, referring to the Chicago Bulls, perhaps referring to Chicago in general.

Both the crowd and the groups playing (or at least the So So Glos) were conscious of the result of the basketball game, one that finalized right in between Sharpless’s kickass opening set and the So So Glos. The Bulls’ win was ample opportunity for the So So Glos to perform their shtick: they fed off of the Bulls win-fueled energy of the crowd. At the same time, the band wanted absolutely everybody to mosh; they displayed the same level of disappointment as Thibodeau after the Bulls give up one unnecessary three. “You’re under arrest for apathetic behavior…for being a bunch of So So Glos,” said Levine after going backstage to quickly change into a police uniform, one that he didn’t take off the rest of the night.

But what truly emerged from the camaraderie of all three bands is a sense of urban awareness: they recognize that having pride in where you come from doesn’t have to be corny. They recognize that you can be a punk and be a patriot, or perhaps be a punk because you’re a patriot, that you can be an individual while being an inseparable representation of the city you come from. They recognize that there is an element of capitalism in punk rock. As Titus Andronicus covered Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart“, the crowd seemed less enthusiastic than they did for any of Titus’s originals, but Stickles was not about to let up. Perhaps if he had covered “Born to Run” again, the crowd’s reaction would have been different. But to counter the So So Glos’ tips of the hat to Chicago sports, to Chicago pride, Stickles stood his ground and played a Springsteen song that was a hit at the time but is arguably not one of his most recognizable tracks now, especially when playing it in a city that tends to worship its homebodies. Plus, Stickles knew to eventually throw a bone to the city he was visiting. I mean, how cool was it when Stickles substituted “Wrigley Field” for “Fenway” in “A More Perfect Union“? Pretty fucking cool.

It all came full circle when, after an unexpected Titus/So So Glos rendition of “I Love Rock and Roll”, the two bands rapped an extremely faithful version of “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” (besides substituting “So So Glos” for “Beastie Boys”), presumably to honor the one year death of MCA (unrelated side note: on the day MCA died, I was at another epic punk show: Fucked Up. I’ll have to keep this trend going). I came to the Titus Andronicus show expecting something as by the numbers as their most recent album, keeping in mind that “by the numbers Titus Andronicus” is still way better than most bands out there. What I got instead was a series of tributes to cities with unique personalities, mutual recognition that we’ll never be able to settle the debate over who has better rockers, pizza, hot dogs, toughness, and yes, even sports teams. Simultaneous friendly competition and mutual admiration. But because life isn’t a four game series, it’s always a winless war with Titus, the So So Glos, and Sharpless. A playful war against your fellow cities, a meaningful war against those that try to repress your punk patriotism, and the everlasting war against yourself. The enemy is everywhere.

Jordan Mainzer is a Chicago-based staff writer at FP, recent graduate of Brown University, and the editor of art, architecture, and design blog DRA. Despite being treated to a Bulls win and Titus Andronicus show on the same night, he remains an extremely cynical Chicago sports fan.

NEXT Collective is a New York-based group comprised of some of the most notable young names in jazz. Except for producer Chris Dunn, there isn’t a single musician credited on the album that was born before 1980. Despite their youth, each of these musicians has already carved out a place in jazz history.

Their new album, aptly titled Cover Art, finds NEXT Collective giving contemporary takes on an eclectic mix of well-known pop, rock, and hip-hop tunes, including a few from my youth, including Stereolab’s “Refractions in the Plastic Pulse” and Pearl Jam’s “Oceans.” The record also features a fresh take on radio-friendly songs such as Drake’s “Marvin’s Room” and “No Church in the Wild” from Kanye West and Jay-Z’s Watch the Throne, featuring Frank Ocean. On the mellower end of the spectrum, the band also interprets indie rocker Bon Iver and “Thank You,” Dido’s saccharine classic—famously sampled by Eminem. The eclectic range of genres speaks to how these musicians –both individually and collectively—incorporate a wide range of styles into their brand of jazz.  

The first track “Twice” by Little Dragon, begins with Logan Richardson (alto sax) and Walter Smith III (tenor sax) playing the melody while drummer Jamire Williams builds intensity on the snare. Ben Williams soon jumps in and echoes the melody on bass. The song has a feeling of looseness as each musician trades bit and pieces of the melody back and forth.

The solos are interspersed throughout the tune, broken up by one of Matthew Stevens’ hypnotic guitar riffs; at times Stevens doubles the melody with Richardson and Smith. The highlight of this tune is Richardson’s sax solo, which has a hint of reverb that mixes well with the bouncy feeling of the rest of the rhythm section. After Richardson, Stevens take a quick but burning solo—his playing style is so versatile, sometimes reminiscent of a math rock guitarist, other times more like a Prince solo. (In case you didn’t know, Prince is an amazing guitarist).

“No Church in the Wild,” features Christian Scott aka Christian aTunde Adjuah—the nephew of revered jazz saxophonist Donald Harrison—on what sounds like his custom-made reverse flugelhorn. Scott has made popular what he terms his “whisper technique,” an emphasis on breath rather than vibration on the mouthpiece. This technique is ever-present throughout his playing, adding a welcome balance to his incredible chops. He takes the first solo this Kanye/Jay-Z tune and begins simply, bending and playing long notes, before beginning to add in some characteristic sixteenth note glissandos. Toward the end of his solo, the rhythm section quiets down and allows Clayton to do his thing (i.e., kill it). Then, as it should, the song devolves into a whisper—each player drops off until only Scott, Clayton and bassist Williams remain.

Perhaps the best song on an album of great tunes is NEXT Collective’s group’s interpretation of N.E.R.D.’s “Fly or Die.” The song begins with a quick intro and a brief drum solo by Williams. The band then comes in full-force, everyone harmonizing on the melody. Between each soloist, Williams, who plays two measures of double stops (when two separate strings are plucked simultaneously, think power chords) on bass. This powerful but brief motif adds structure and groove to the tune. Again, Scott guests on this song. His playing on Cover Art occasionally reminds me of Dave Douglas’ playing on his 2002 album The Infinite, with Uri Cain on Fender Rhodes. This is probably because the interplay between Scott and Clayton reminds me of Douglas and Cain on that record.

Ben Williams takes a beautiful solo on “Fly or Die.” He starts out slow and melodic in the lower-register before moving up into thumb position to play a motivic phrase made of hammer-ons and pull-offs. Williams then plays some killer blues licks before Scott comes in with more whispers. 

The arrangements on this album are amazing but I’ve got to be honest I don’t care for half of the songs they chose. I’m not a fan of Dido or of Eminem’s remix of “Thank You,” nor am I a big fan of Pearl Jam (Eddie Vedder’s voice ruins it for me), and I prefer my indie rock to be a lot weirder than Bon Iver—but none of this matters because the songs they play on this album thoroughly reimagine the originals. While Cover Art may seem like an album aimed at musicians or fans of the original versions, the album’s originality makes its appeal far more universal.

Daniel Beauregard (@666ICECREAM) lives in Atlanta, where he works for a local newspaper, plays music, and writes poetry. Hi last piece for Frontier Psychiatrist was an interview with jazz/hip-hop saxophonist Darryl Reeves.

Aioli makes everything better

Condiments are truly the best. Maybe they all  don’t necessarily outshine the food they clothe, but they do possess the power to transform.  Sinus-scorching honey mustard turns a mediocre sandwich into an outrageous one; a zany marinade makes brisket wildly addictive; and a fresh summer tomato sauce turns boxed whole wheat pasta into a revelation (and that’s no easy feat).  Without sauces, dressings, and spreads, food would be without magic.  And so, in celebration of food’s under-appreciated sidekick, I wanted to share two of my favorite recipes for meal-altering condiments.  With warmer days tentatively approaching, I’m already thinking about park-side picnics with fresh fruit, crusty baguettes, an array of spreads, and illicit wine.  Is there a more idyllic meal?  As you wait for summer to grace us with its presence, start perfecting your condiments and give that “real food” a reason to be jealous.

Disclaimer: these recipes are not for the garlic averse.

Whisking up some aioli

Aioli. I must admit that Spain is on my mind.  In just two short weeks, I’ll be going to visit for the first time in years.  I’m planning to come back with plenty of Spanish inspiration (read: wine) on hand, and I can’t wait to share it all here.  In the meantime, I daydream.  And my dreams are smeared with aioli: creamy, garlicky, paprika-laced aioli.  The wonderful thing about the Spaniards is their recognition that aioli goes well with everything.  Patatas bravas?  Definitely.  Tortilla?  Why not?  Asparagus?  They were looking too healthy.  And you don’t have to go the Spanish route to make good use of aioli.  I was a recent recipient of great acclaim for my aioli-grilled hamburger buns, a take on grilled garlic bread that really brought my burgers up a notch.  Aioli is essentially garlicky mayonnaise, so you can use it anywhere mayo would first come to mind: a turkey sandwich with a kick, a sauce for grilled meat, an alternative to hollandaise at brunch.  And don’t be afraid of what seems a daunting task: hand-making mayo.  It’s far easier and less fickle than I expected.  One of those “eek, can I actually make this?” recipes that didn’t cause an ounce of trouble.  Nothing but a whisk, a bowl, and a wet paper towel.  It blew my mind.  I had a good teacher: check out this video by “Chef John” for the lowdown.

Simple Garlic Aioli

Adapted from foodwishes.com

1 clove garlic

Coarse sea salt

1 egg yolk

2 teaspoons lemon juice

2 pieces of wet paper towel

1/2 cup olive oil

1. Smash the garlic clove and mince it roughly.  Add a sprinkle of coarse sea salt and continue to smash and mince the garlic until it’s essentially a paste.
2. Put the garlic in a small bowl and add the egg yolk and lemon juice, whisking gently to mix.
3. Using the wet paper towel, make a ring around the base of your mixing bowl.  This will help keep it in place so you can have your hands free to whisk and pour in the olive oil.
4. Whisking constantly, start pouring in about a tablespoon of the olive oil, just a few drops at a time.  Keep whisking until the mixture thickens and emulsifies. Once thickened, pour the remaining olive oil in a slow but steady stream, whisking constantly.

Skordalia: the dip of Greek gods

Skordalia.  If Spain doesn’t do it for you, maybe Greece will?  Skordalia is a Greek spread I discovered by way of another recipe, which was for Spinach Bulgur Patties, a burger I wrote about two summers back.  I don’t know if that post quite did skordalia justice.  It was indeed the star of that dish, as I maintain condiments often are.  It is strongly flavored without being overwhelming; it’s hearty, sweet, and hot.  This thick dip hangs in limbo somewhere between almond butter and hummus.  Sure, its base is almonds, which lend texture and flavor, but pungent garlic and spicy chili take center stage.  And I liken it to hummus not because of its flavor but rather its nature.  It’s the kind of spread that you keep around because it just seems to go with everything.  It’s a dip for carrots, a spread for pita, a crazy addition to chicken salad.  It’s loud and eccentric, but seems to always find harmony with others.  Namaste.

Skordalia

Adapted from Mark Bittman’s The Food Matters Cookbook

1 thick slice day-old bread, preferably whole wheat

1 cup vegetable or chicken stock or water

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup whole, skin-on almonds (not raw)

3 garlic cloves, or to taste

1⁄4 teaspoon cayenne or 1 teaspoon not-too-hot ground dried chile, or to taste

1 tablespoon lemon juice, or to taste

Salt and black pepper

Put the bread in a food processor and saturate it with stock or water, about 1/4 cup. Wait a couple minutes, then add 2 tablespoons oil, the almonds, 3 garlic cloves, and cayenne. Process the mixture until the almonds are ground. With the machine running, pour in enough of the remaining stock to form a creamy sauce. Add the lemon juice and some salt and pepper and pulse one last time.

Freya Bellin Levow writes the food column for Frontier Psychiatrist. Her recent FP posts include What is this, Top Squash?, I Scream for Gelato, and Good Spirits: How to Go Tasting.

James Blake’s sophomore effort, Overgrown

BY JORDAN MAINZER

It’s about 9:30 P.M. at Metro Chicago on May 4, 2013, and the crowd is stuck in some sort of limbo. Unsure whether to stand still and scratch their chins or dance, audience members look very awkward while a DJ plays minimally and lazily remixed versions of recognizable songs like Andy Stott’s “Numb” and D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does it Feel)”. All is well, however, because coming on in about 30 minutes will be James Blake, an artist who vacillates between dance and soul, blippy electronics and R&B, moody standstill music and club-worthy dance music. If you had to pick an eye roll-worthy, blogger-like genre invention to describe his immaculately crafted music, it would probably be post-dubstep electronic R&B.

Blake’s new album, Overgrown, is as excellent as his 2011 self-titled debut, our #1 Album of that year. James Blake was more minimal and perhaps insular, while Overgrown is collaborative, as Blake features RZA and Brian Eno on (the unfairly maligned) “Take a Fall For Me” and “Digital Lion”, respectively. They’re different, yet both sound quintessentially Blake.

Overgrown perfects the style that started with Blake’s underwhelming 2011 Enough Thunder EP: Blake as singer-songwriter rather than auteur. Enough Thunder’s two most buzz-worthy tracks, the Bon Iver collaboration “Fall Creek Boys Choir” and Joni Mitchell cover “A Case of You”, are actually two further subversions of Blake the singer-songwriter: the collaborative, vocal loops on vocal loops on vocal loops version and the perhaps too-insular version. Yet, when Blake embraces this insularity on Overgrown, his rich musicality complements his stripped-down loneliness. So it was no surprise that when Blake ended his Metro set with “A Case of You”, the rest of his band left the stage.

Both studio Blake and live Blake reveal an incredibly versatile artist, one who is serious about his craft but friendly and modest enough to make minimal, awkward, but endearing between-song banter. Live, however, Blake is smart to use his vocals on new songs from Overgrown as an instrument rather than as a story-telling device. For instance, a crowd looking to dance, whether in the United States or in the grey UK, does not want to hear about “the rainiest days.” Instead, Blake introduces “Digital Lion” by dedicating its performance to “Brian” and obscures the vocals that comprise the song’s first half, dedicating his and the band’s energy to the song’s danceable second-half.

Yet, to the Metro crowd it really didn’t matter how Blake’s Overgrown songs sounded: the songs from James Blake and from Blake’s early EPs generated the most enthusiasm by far. Blake builds up “I Never Learnt to Share” by recording and looping its lyrics. At the mention of opening words “my brother and my sister”, seemingly all of the girls in the crowd scream, and that Beatles on Ed Sullivan scream becomes part of the recording, making the James Blake live experience a participatory one, thankfully tearing away at the depressed singer-songwriter shtick. In addition, as an audience member, you truly feel like you’re experiencing a live electronic performance when watching Blake, mostly because the beats are created on drums right in front of you, making clubby tracks like “CMYK” a party that both fist-pumpers and electronic snobs can appreicate. On less clubby tracks, the drumming sounds like King of Limbs-era Phil Selway; arguably, Blake’s music sounds a lot like the type of post-dub thing Radiohead was trying to achieve with KOL.

With a set that ranged from “Retrograde” to “Limit to Your Love” to “Wilhelm Scream” to EP-era “Klaiverwerke”, Blake mixed his popular tracks with his deep cuts to create one of the better live performances I’ve seen all year. For a guy who has always been conscious of his place within the music world, Blake finally seems like he’s being himself, creating music that is a manifestation of his mind rather than a conscious attempt at seminal, influential classic (e.g. the xx’s debut). I left Blake’s show looking forward to the next time I got to party with him live, looking forward to the next time I could listen to Overgrown by myself on a gray, rainy Chicago day.

Jordan Mainzer is a Chicago-based staff writer at FP, recent graduate of Brown University, and the editor of art, architecture, and design blog DRA. He didn’t go to Blake’s post-show DJ set at Smart Bar because he didn’t want to be tired at work the next day. In other words, he’s a lame wimp.

Mikal Cronin

BY JORDAN MAINZER

He’s been starting over for a long time. He feels anew. So instead of baking a new cake, Mikal Cronin has proved that the cherry on top can make something special. In other words, tweaking and refining goes a long way.

Lest we forget, tweaking and refining for Mikal Cronin doesn’t just mean playing even more with Ty Segall: the two Cali rockers have performed and recorded together for a decade. It also means getting a B.F.A. in music and learning how to compose for different instruments, the latter of which manifests itself on Cronin’s excellent new album MCII, an improvement from his already great self-titled debut (2011). On the new record, Cronin plays guitar and piano, expertly woven with K. Dylan Edrich’s strings. As Cronin puts it, MCII is a more “fully realized” version of his debut. And it’s one that establishes him as one of the best pop craftsmen in the game today.

In a recent phone interview, Cronin distinguished between feeling new and starting anew: while he may have switched to a new label and added a new member to his live band, the changes he’s made don’t make him a new musical entity. They make him Mikal Cronin Pro. The Beta Version. I could go on forever, so please just read the interview transcript after the jump.

Frontier Psychiatrist: Why did you switch to Merge for this album?

Mikal Cronin: They approached me. I was really surprised that they were interested. I thought about it for a bit, and it seemed like a pretty clear, good choice. They’re really on top of things and they have a really good history.

FP: Were there any Merge bands or albums in particular that you loved that influenced your decision?

MC: Neutral Milk Hotel still gets me. The Magnetic Fields, Superchunk, Arcade Fire. A lot of bands. I’ve gotten into a few more, too, since I started working with them.

FP: Does the change to Merge explain some of the differences between your debut album and the new album?

MC: I was pretty conscious of having a label change not affect me, to the point where I was writing songs when I was deciding on a new label. I wanted to make sure the songwriting process didn’t change.

FP: In your own mind, what are some of the differences and similarities between these two LPs?

MC: I’d like to think the new one is more fully realized. I had a little more time to work on it. And when I was writing the first record, I really didn’t have a clear idea of what direction I was going in. I was trying things out. But now, having played live and everything, this new one sounds more solid. It sounds like what I would’ve hoped the first record sounded like.

FP: Have you been playing with Ty Segall more as of late or have you always been consistently collaborating with him?

MC: It’s been going on about 10 years. I was in my first band in high school with him. But when I joined his live band, I toured a shitload. It’s been more as of late.

FP: Did rejoining his live band and playing on Slaughterhouse influence your recent aesthetic at all?

MC: Yeah, the songwriting and the style. It was really good experience playing live and extremely loud. I came to appreciate force and volume.

FP: Back in February, you played at Saki in Logan Square. Do you do a lot of acoustic record shop performances?

MC: Not really. I played Permanent Records in Chicago a couple times, but that was the first time I was acoustic like that. It was terrifying [laughs]. I’d be interested in figuring out a setup like that a little better and figuring out a way to make myself comfortable doing it. That’s the first time in my life I’ve sat in front of a group of people with a guitar.

FP: Do you think it worked out?

MC: It worked out all right. It could work out better. It’s hard to play songs that stripped down. Emily, my drummer, helped me out.

FP: Your touring begins soon. Is there anything in the new tour different than in previous tours?

MC: I have a new backing band. I added a fifth member who plays guitar. But I’ve played a lot of the venues before with my band or with Ty’s band.

FP: What are your long-term plans or goals after this album cycle?

MC: I’m still trying to figure things out. After all of this touring, I want to start working on something new. I’m not sure what form it will take, whether it’s like the last two or completely different. I have some ideas, but I wouldn’t want to talk about it at this point. They’re not fully formed.

Jordan Mainzer is a Chicago-based staff writer at FP, recent graduate of Brown University, and the editor of art, architecture, and design blog DRA. MCII is the best post-post-punk aloof-garage-pop-revival album he’s heard in the past week or so.

Original Illustration by Yuri Priamo Canales

BY PETER LILLIS

In the days after the loss of an icon, what progress can be made? The late Storm Thorgerson certainly has created many iconic works over the years, mostly in the form of artwork for several definitive psychedelic and progressive rock bands, including Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and The Mars Volta. You’ve seen his artwork before, no doubt. His imagery is so ingrained in the fabric of pop culture that the ethereal yet concrete pieces can float by unassuming, taken for granted. Of course, there is serious craft and labor that goes into the creation of these works—mostly in the form of an all-day photo shoot with handmade sets and features—but at the heart of these pieces is a thoroughly challenging concept.

I had the honor of meeting Thorgerson in September of 2012, at Wicker Park’s Public Works Gallery. In his late 60s, Thorgerson wasn’t exactly a pleasant person, but no less of an inspiring one. The Show—titled “Computers Have a Lot to Answer For”—focused on the real quality of his images, as opposed to the rendered and digitally illustrated fashion of today’s designers. A curmudgeon, Thorgerson was prone to give pop quizzes on the specifications of his work, scoffing at those who got it wrong (i.e. Q: how tall were the heads on the cover of The Division Bell? A: 14 ft). He spoke with great fondness about his time working with the members of Pink Floyd, and only had negative things to say about his professional relationships with their label representation. For a creator whose career and legacy exists thanks much in part to the production and distribution of mass media, he openly expressed disdain for the commodified nature of his work.

In the wake of his death, journalists (and my father) have been quick to also mark this event as the death of true album art. Lamenting the end of the medium and experience, many have essentially dismissed or marginalized the rise in vinyl sales and interest, new vinyl specifically. Although great new covers are less likely to reach Thorgerson’s icon status, expressive and effective visual art is still prevalent in music today, only on a much smaller scale and with much smaller budgets (recent favorites include !!!’s Thr!!!er, Spider Bags’ Shake My Head, Shabazz Palaces’ Black Up, Flying Lotus’ Cosmogramma). Independent music isn’t able to support large-scale installations and labor-intensive shoots employed by Thorgerson and his team. We are, however, able to create consistent and challenging visual identities across forms, as evidenced by the engaging and mysterious presence of artists such as The Weeknd, Tycho and Daft Punk.

Storm Thorgerson was—and remains—a juggernaut at the intersection of contemporary design and pop culture. His work is recognized globally as some of the most high-concept and successful commercial artworks of all time. To expect the next generation to blaze a trail of similar significance is unreasonable and unfair to the artists producing quality work in his shadow. And to declare the medium dead with the passing of its greatest—but not only—star, is short sighted and disconnected, not to mention wrong. The work of Thorgerson isn’t meant to stifle the creation of ideas, but to cultivate new ones. As long as his work endures, so too will that inspiration.

Peter Lillis is Managing Editor of Frontier Psychiatrist. He has a signed copy of Wish You Were Here on his wall.

Yuri Priamo Canales is a Graphic Designer based in Chicago.

Chicago in April

BY PETER LILLIS & JORDAN MAINZER

Today, Peter and Jordan continue their monthly roundup of the shows they saw in the last month. As seen below, April includes two of their favorite sets of the year. These 16 additions put our collective concert tally at 47 for the year, not including our coverage of SXSW and Lollapalooza Brasil.

4/5 – Neon Indian @ The Mid

Surprisingly, chillwave pioneer Alan Palomo of Neon Indian fit in with fellow DJs Zebo and Gemini Club on Friday, April 5th at Chicago dance club The Mid. Ditching the summery vibes of Psychic Chasms and the Drive soundtrackisms of Era Extraña, Palomo used panning to full effect to create a spacey atmosphere but still played a set that sounded great in a legit club (he passed the test, in my book, when bros were dancing at the bar while waiting for drinks). While perhaps not as obviously danceable as, say, Gemini Club’s awesome remix of Outkast’s “Roses”, Palomo’s set showed a crowd that was half hip, half regular club crowd that he can play that game, too. –JM

4/6 – Ringo Deathstarr/The Yours @ Backstage Live, Hong Kong

Although Hong Kong may not be the most punk rock place in the world, there are still some traces of the western art of fuzz and flannel to be found. The Yours are a rising Hong Kong noise rock band that would (and should) share a bill with rising US grunge-revival bands such as California X, Purling Hiss or The Young. This particular bill—headlined by Austin, TX shoegaze slackers Ringo Deathstarr—would have fit very well in the Empty Bottle’s Free Mondays series. Which is why I was so shocked to learn the cover was $250 HKD (approx. $33 USD). When in Rome? The Yours were a great set, loud and heavy when necessary, but always with a strong grasp on melody. On the other hand, Ringo Deathstarr should consider hiring a professional tuner with all that entry money. The Chinese win again. –PL

Ringo Deathstarr in Hong Kong

4/6 – Jamie Lidell @ Lincoln Hall

It seems as though Jamie Lidell has completed his transformation from “soul music on coke” to “soul music on MDMA”. Like this year’s fine self-titled album, Lidell’s set was half maximalist electronic beats, half cheez whiz, one hundred percent fun. Lidell was thrilled to be playing in Chicago; he cited the influence of Chicago House on his music multiple times throughout the set. Clearly, this isn’t the same Lidell that caused every music writer to label him “blue-eyed” back in 2005. That is, he adapted most of his material, from this year’s great “What a Shame” to Multiply’s “When I Come Back Around” and “A Little Bit More”, to his current Rustie-obsessed style.

That being said, the undeniable highlight of the night was still Multiply’s title track. “It’s songs like this that are why I’m still here,” Lidell said, introducing the song that garnered the most enthusiastic audience reaction by a landslide. At this point, “Multiply”, to those who are familiar with the song, is like “I Want You Back” or “Let’s Get it On” in that its genetic makeup somehow automatically gets everybody in the room dancing.

But while I enjoyed every second of “Multiply”, it only reinforced what I felt about Lidell’s entire set: he just looked so damn lonely up there. Even if he ditched the laptop to perform his best song, he would have sounded so much better with a band backing him up. The way he performed in the past. Still, per usual, a post-show bathroom conversation aptly summarized the whole night:

“I wish he played in front of a band.”

“Yeah, but that was still fucking amazing. I mean, the guy’s singing into two mics? Shiiiiiiiit.” –JM

4/10 – Iceage @ Empty Bottle JM

After Iceage’s godawful Pitchfork Music Festival 2012 set, one plagued by sound issues and even an even worse lack of enthusiasm from the band members, I was actually eager to give them another chance. The band that released one of the best debut punk albums in recent memory (2011′s excellent New Brigade) sure have a fun, full-throttle, zero fucks given live show in them, right? As it turns out, they do, as their set at the Empty Bottle proved. Perhaps it was the addition of some of the best songs from the comparatively inferior (but definitely growing on me since I, um, wrote this) You’re Nothing, but just as likely was the venue’s size and space. Everything about the time and place felt right: The Empty Bottle provided enough moshing space for Iceage and frontman Elias Rønnenfelt, who, multiple times, half-assedly swung the mic at the hands of those trying to high-five or touch him, half apathetic and half exhausted. Most importantly, the band sounded great.

Iceage’s set was all energy, never letting up; if Rønnenfelt had said any more than the title of the next song in between songs, he probably would have fainted by the end of the show. Thankfully for Rønnenfelt, Iceage played for about 45 minutes, beginning with “Ecstasy” and ending with “Morals”, looking back to New Brigade‘s title track and crowd favorite “You’re Blessed” along the way. They’ve passed the studio test twice. Here’s hoping they keep slaying live. –JM

4/11 – The Men @ Lincoln Hall

The Men are an elusive bunch. It’s not like their name is very SEO friendly, and without any other web presence save a blogspot account, getting in touch with them can be a serious challenge. Which is why it was so awesome that I was able to welcome The Men into my home. They asked that our time together be off the record, and I’ll respect that wish, but I will say that they’re cool, friendly dudes, not unlike the direction in which their music has headed.

I’ve said it before: The Men are one of the absolute best live bands in the game today. Their wall-of-guitars approach to Americana is as fresh as it is familiar, squealing their way into the mainstream music world with virtually no self-promotion. Despite some major technical difficulties (their Wurlitzer crapped out on stage on the second day of their tour) the band still managed to put on a charmed set that most of the crowd will remember for years to come. Now if I could only get that interview. –PL

4/12 – The Dear Hunter @ Bottom Lounge

What separates The Dear Hunter from similar alt-rockers like Manchester Orchestra and Portugal. The Man is their exemplary rock instrumentation. Not quite a jam or prog band, The Dear Hunter have proven their ability to play longer versions of their tracks live than on record. Combining tracks from 2011′s excellent The Color Spectrum and tracks from their new album, Migrant, The Dear Hunter played for a total of two and a half hours, about two hours longer than the time they’re normally allotted. Preceded by a fun set from Strokes-inspired Naive Thieves, the band heralded the crowd’s enthusiasm multiple times throughout the set, as a full Bottom Lounge sang along to every word. The highlight of the set? When The Dear Hunter live singer Casey Crescenzo and Naive Thieves lead man, or Julian Casablancas-imitator with a handlebar mustache Cameron Thorne duetted to cover The Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream”. The second-best part of the show? By my count, no confused hipsters there to see Bradford Cox. –JM

4/13 – Phosphorescent/Strand of Oaks @ Lincoln Hall

Seeing an act touring for his, her, or their career-best album often results in a show-of-the-year contender. It wasn’t a surprise, then, that Matthew Houck’s 75 minute set at Lincoln Hall was only rivaled, for me, by Tame Impala at Milwaukee’s Turner Hall Ballroom in early March. Both of those acts know how to adapt their studio songs to a live setting, extending them without reaching into jam-band cheese. Specifically, Houck and company burned through all of Muchacho’s best tracks, such as “Song for Zula”, “Ride On / Right On”, and “The Quotidian Beasts”, and played highlights from previous efforts such as Here’s to Taking it Easy’s transcendent “Los Angeles”. A mixture of guitar, bass, drums, keys, and organs, Houck’s band was entirely capable of giving life to the electronic elements of Muchacho using traditional rock instruments. Add a few Houck solo songs (including one Randy Newman cover and another in which he looped his own voice multiple times), and the set was diverse, some songs fast and some slow, some sad and some joyful, all glowing.

Meanwhile, spacey folk rockers Strand of Oaks played an excellent forty-five minute opening set, comprised of just lead singer/guitarist Timothy Showalter and drums. Laden with reverb that made Showalter’s voice as big as the sky and lyrics that made his persona a beacon of isolation, Strand of Oaks in general is probably best encapsulated by Elton John singing, “It’s lonely out in space.” (The long-bearded Showalter reminded me of another long-bearded guy who just so happened to cover the aforementioned Elton John song: My Morning Jacket’s Jim James). Showalter’s ability to balance folk and rock make sounds that could soundtrack zip-lining alone through the Grand Canyon, the sound of your echoes as big as the void itself. –JM

4/16 – Shuggie Otis @ Lincoln Hall

On the night of the reissue of Shuggie Otis’ classic Inspiration Information and its accompanying collection of unreleased material, Wings of Love, Otis and his band (which included his son) burned through classics like the Inspiration Information title track and “Sparkle City”. Oh, and crowd favorite “Strawberry Letter 23″. Weirdly, Otis didn’t shy away from the fact that both the album release and its corresponding tour (likely) occurred for financial reasons; it seemed like Otis was really emphasizing that the bills needed to be paid.

Still, Otis’ unique mixture of soul and blues (he’s an underrated guitar player) deserved a larger crowd than that of the sparsely attended show at Lincoln Hall. Perhaps the crowd was larger the following night. Nonetheless, what Tuesday night’s crowd lacked in bodies it more than made up for in enthusiasm. Hoping to catch opener Jesca Hoop, I arrived late, confused about the start time. I lamented my situation to a fellow crowd member, who responded, “At least you get to see Shuggie Otis.” Quite the consolation prize. –JM

4/17 – Dr. John @ SPACE Evanston

When it came time for the interview, Dr. John came into SPACE’s backroom in a blue button-down long sleeve shirt and slacks, an outfit that you might see your father wearing to work and one that you certainly wouldn’t expect from Dr. John. Eating a banana even slower than he spoke and seemingly tired from the performance, Dr. John didn’t have the energy to put on his act. He was simply himself, thick, unintelligible accent and all. Better yet, his Dr. John-isms have seemingly become a part of his everyday dialogue. At one point, he compared his blank memory to a Salvador Dali painting. He pronounced “The Grammys” as “the grandma’s.” And he called me “young buck.” Or something like that. –JM

Read Jordan’s full interview with Dr. John here.

4/18 – Pissed Jeans @ Empty Bottle

At the head of the new wave of funny (!) noise rock is Allentown, PA’s Pissed Jeans, who have released one of the best albums of the year so far: Honeys. Their wisecracks on their albums are bested by their live performances, as lead singer Matt Korvette turns a concert into a piece of performance art. Starting off the show by tearing off his t-shirt to reveal his hairless, skinny torso, Korvettek, throughout the show, felt himself up, contorted his body, and pretended to cry, laugh, and orgasm. You wouldn’t expect such a performance from a man and from a band who sound like they’re exploring the nadirs of masculinity. This is what makes Pissed Jeans more than just a noise rock band playing at the dude haven that is the Empty Bottle. They’re trying to correct their own male gaze, and from the looks of Korvette’s demeanor, they’re on their way to recognizing the absurdity of, well, everything. Moves like Jagger, indeed.

The songs themselves rocked, too. If you had never heard Pissed Jeans before, Korvette wouldn’t have cared about you singing along. He reduced the songs’ lyrics to their formative sounds as he screamed almost unintelligibly into the microphone on tracks like “Bathroom Laughter”, “Romanticize Me”, and King of Jeans standout “Half Idiot”. The crowd responded: they moshed, they knocked over FP’s Peter Lillis, and they made me go to bed with a beer-soaked t-shirt. The mark of a great set. –JM

4/19 – Lydia Loveless/Luke Winslow-King @ Hideout

One was an old-timey rootsy blues and country player, one was a country, punk rock and 90s-obsessed 20-year-old singing about ex-boyfriends who fractured their penises. Guess which one was which.

On Friday 4/19, the Hideout was host to two acts similar in aesthetic but who couldn’t be more different in terms of subject matter. The main act was Loveless: a small blonde girl who initially simply blended in with the crowd at the Hideout, Loveless wore her sunglasses the whole time. More country on record, live, she was kind of like a drunk, Southern version of Waxahatchee. From songs about musicians (“Steve Earle”) to songs by other musicians, or solo performances of Elvis Costello’s “Alison” (!) and Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” (?), Loveless had the rock star vibe down. But it’s hard to be an aloof rock star when another batch of your songs are inspired by guys standing in the front row of the crowd and you point this fact out, as Loveless did. I also think that was the point at which she took off her sunglasses.

Winslow-King, on the other hand, was a well-coiffed (in haircut and in suit) slide guitar player who played in a three piece band, burning through delta-folk, ragtime, and pre-war blues while having just as much fun as Loveless. If you missed him at the Hideout, fortunately, he plays all the time around the Chicago area, so if you live here, be sure to catch one of his shows at venues like Fitzgerald’s or SPACE. There aren’t enough shows for music as timeless as his. –JM

4/23 – Spray Paint/Basic Cable @ Permanent Records

Shows in record stores are strange. There are certainly benefits, the first being that you’re in a record store, one of two types of businesses to which I don’t mind giving my hard earned money (the other being theme parks, of course). Shows at Permanent Records on Chicago Avenue are always free, and always BYOMiller High Life, which is totally awesome. But it is challenging to get into the amelodic punk rock of Spray Paint at 6 PM on a Tuesday, still in my suit from work. I ended up enjoying the drunk punk of Chicago’s Basic Cable more so than the openers, due to the fact that they were more apt to write songs with structure, melody and wit, as opposed to just plain noise. –PL

4/24 – Clinic @ Lincoln Hall

Clinic at Lincoln Hall

Just like I was shocked to learn the Los Angeles Clippers are in the playoffs for the second year in a row, I was blown away when I read that Clinic have been around for 15 years. And also like professional basketball, I am in no position to comment on the career of Clinic. Their show at Lincoln Hall was strong and self-serious in a British sort of way. They were precise and moved in tandem at all times, even on their more destructive rock numbers. The solemnity of the set made their medical garb even more disorienting. My mind had trouble processing the sound of Ade Blackburn’s voice without being able to see his mouth, and although I’m not certain, I’m pretty sure that’s the point. –PL

4/25 – Danny Brown @ Bottom Lounge

Unlike the majority of today’s hip hop stars, Danny Brown is a professional. He and DJ Skywalker embody the spirit of party in the best ways, without the childish boasting or unintelligible posse raps of an A$AP Mob “performance,” or the wheezing and unending lyrical flubs of a Schoolboy Q show. No, Danny Brown knows why he’s on tour, why he’s an artist and why people connect with his talent, and he appreciates and respects that connection, rather than exploiting it. Sure, he likes to get fucked up (why else would he go by the name of the Aderall Admiral), and yes, he’ll brag and he’ll boast (see “The Black Brad Pitt”). To Danny Brown, he’s as much married to his character as he is to his craft, and that’s what shines through his performance. –PL

4/26 – William Tyler/Brokeback @ Hideout

William Tyler is essentially Nashville’s Ravi Shankar. His instrumental solo wanderings are as steeped in mystery and passion as the late sitar master, capable of conjuring images of dirt-swept highways rather than the foreign Indian landscape. With serious touches of John Fahey and Duane Eddy compositional elements, he transcends the obvious instrumental tropes to create engaging and emotive works. Even better, he can do all of it live. And better still was Doug McCombs’ Brokeback and their dusty, Morricone-esque jams. Seriously, ya’ll are sleeping on their latest …and the Black Rock. –PL

4/27 – High on Fire @ Dark Lord Day

Wow. Just, wow. So much better than I ever imagined. Matt Pike—doom metal god and recovering alcoholic—brought his humongous three-piece (four if you count that gut) back to 3 Floyds Brewing in Munster, IN to celebrate the yearly distribution of Dark Lord, their Russian Imperial Stout. Maybe it was the fact that I was drinking fantastic beer for the last 8 hours, or the fact that De Vermis Mysteriis endures as one of my favorite albums of the last few years, but this set was absolutely perfect. A must see for anyone interested in the art of heavy, and one of the best shows I’ve seen this year, if not ever. –PL

High on Fire at Dark Lord Day

Peter Lillis and Jordan Mainzer are both staff members at Frontier Psychiatrist. You can catch them at GOAT this Thursday at Empty Bottle.