Listen To: Dead Man’s Bones

In the valley of your rest
our winds are black as midnight breath.
Where hands can’t find the light to loose
the chains that keep me far from you.
So Dead Man’s Bones must wait to rise
from the house where shadows cry.
But all this must change October 6th
when our ghosts will leave their world for this.
To dance with us at twilight time
And bring your hand to lie in mine.

Upon entering Dead Man’s Bones’ spooked out Myspace page, you’re welcomed by a video with two glowing green hands waving around in the air accompanied by orotund church bells, twinklings from a Glockenspiel and cryptic droning that succeeds in being genuinely creepy. An old man enters, resembling a Faustian version of the Green Goblin mixed with a clean shaven Colonel Sanders. The grainy, glow laden head delivers the poem as transcribed above. The message is clear. Oscar nominated actor Ryan Gosling and his best friend Zach Shields are releasing their much anticipated self-titled debut album on Anti- Records October 6. The two have prided themselves on being amateur musicians, utilizing instruments they’ve never played and limiting themselves to no more than three takes. They revel in making fascinations with monsters/ zombies/ death come into fruition. Combine that with Silverlake Conservatory Children’s Choir providing extra vocals and Dead Man’s Bones will (hopefully) have a debut that fascinates its listeners with beautiful goth folk dread eerie enough to engage any credible music fan.

Dead Man’s Bones performing “Name In Stone” live in a cemetery with LA Inner Mass Choir and The Silverlake Conservatory of Music Children’s Choir

posted by: Bene Garcia

“Where the Wild Things Are” Mural By Robots Will Kill

(via brooklynstreetart.com)
“Veng and Chris (of Robots Will Kill) worked two days (18 hours) this week to complete the brand new piece in which they pay tribute to the children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak, published in 1963. It’s a concept they have wanted to paint for a while and their selected scene is a composite of both their painting styles and a few of the scenes in the book. Together they bring the viewer in touch with the power of imagination.”

Watch a great time lapse video of Veng and Chris creating the mural below

More about the making of this mural can be found here
Watch a trailer for upcoming film adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are” here

posted by: Brent Carter

Live Recap: Wavves

Immediately following Ganglians’ set Tuesday night at the Jackpot Music Hall, a tribe of previously docile hipsters charged the stage with bursting energy. By no means a slight against Ganglians, it was merely the excitement a Wavves performance garners from those young enough to throw elbows in the pit and rock skin-tight jeans. One such kid tapped me on the shoulder, presumably because of the camera around my neck, to warn me of the ensuing insanity I was about to witness not on stage but from the audience itself. Further questioning revealed that “it got pretty out of control last time I saw a Wavves show.” Needless to say, there was a palpable buzz in the front of the crowd that surrounded the always cramped stage of the Jackpot that night. They came to hear good pop music – albeit a fuzzed out, Niravnaesque version of it, they came to dance, and more importantly to “get a little crazy.” They would not be disappointed.

Armed only with a Marshall stack nearly twice his size, one of best living drummers – Zach Hill of Hella fame and a handful of lo-fi pop-punk songs, Zach Williams aka Wavves tore into a ramshackle version of “I’m So Bored.” With the first lazy chord strum and Zach Hill’s commencing drum clinic, motion exploded all around. By the third song of nearly pure distortion and greasy fast drum fills, the motion had turned into a mosh pit sing along. Prompting Williams to inform the audience that “we’re just going to fuck up every song tonight!” The crowd cheered, Wavves was feeding off their energy and giving them what they wanted.

From there Williams seemed to loosen up, more comfortable with any imprecision and willing to sweat his ass off because of the appreciative response. Sporadic fits of headbanging erupted from both band and crowd, while new converts joined in the melee near the front. Notes were missed and a false start or two occurred but Wavves continued to plow though the ridiculously catchy material, including my personal favorite “No  Hope Kids.” There was not a dry t-shirt in the crowd and everyone had taken their fair share of lumps from falling bodies as Hill kept the set moving with a perfect beat, playing the foil to Williams’ inclination toward no-wave guitar madness.

And then it was over as fast as it began. Calls for an encore died quickly as the house lights came up. It’s not that they didn’t want more, they simply understood what rock and roll is supposed to be about – abrasive pop tunes played from the gut so intensely that when it’s over the musicians respectfully have to say, fuck you I’m done.

video by Tricia Rock

by: Brent Carter

Carnival of Souls at Liberty Hall’s Midnight Movie Madness

This Saturday, September 19 Liberty Hall (644 Massachusetts in Lawrence, KS) presents Carnival of Souls at their Midnight Movie Madness showing. Door open at 11:30pm and the cost of a ticket is $5. This eery cult classic from 1962, produced and directed by Lawrence based Herk Harvey, is sure to kick off your fall horror film season with a bang.

posted by: Tricia Rock

New Music Review: The Fresh & Onlys’ “Grey-Eyed Girls”

It takes a special kind of album to open with a long-juicy pick slide. Like a stripper working the pole, you can practically see the porno shot, the hand sliding down the guitar neck, by the time it’s done you’re practically begging for the rock to begin.

And then it does, and what you’re listening to is the amazing, jangly, golden yet grimy, dug straight from the fertile musical fount of psychedelic rock/pop/punk goodness of The Fresh & Onlys new album Grey Eyed Girls.

Of course, there are few better cities to live in right now than San Francisco for the fostering of musical creativity – The Fresh & Onlys are only one of the many amazing bands like The Oh Sees, Sic Alps, and The Nodzzz, that have been mixing some killer melodies with crazy sounds.

But while The Fresh & Onlys are a fairly new band, the idea of the band has been around for longer than the recent past. The founding members of The Fresh & Onlys, Tim Cohen (Black Fiction) and bassist Shayde Sartin, started playing together back in 2004 but only started to record in 2008, giving the band’s sound and songwriting a little time to come together naturally, organically if you will – like a musical compost heap beginning to fuse together, gassy and creating heat.

And now that the musical compost has coalesced, when the settings were right, The Fresh & Onlys (which now includes drummer Kyle Gibson, Wymond Miles, and Heidi Alexander) have practically exploded onto the scene – releasing their first full-length, a couple 7” singles, and recently their newest album Grey Eyed Girls, all in the space of a year or so. And they’ve even got songs to spare for their next project – the band’s first full studio album.

What’s more amazing, the folks in The Fresh & Onlys sound perfectly comfortable mixing the best of cute, fanciful melodic pop, grimy fuzzed-out garage rock, and angular, driven punk – think Jarvis Cocker fronting the Buzzcocks or the 13th Floor Elevators mixed with Joy Division, all done effortlessly and in an amazingly loose yet concise way.

Grey Eyed Girls sounds as if it’s been lying forgotten in a dusty garage for 30 years, waiting, lurking, hibernating until the time comes where it springs up, fully realized like Athena from the skull of Zeus, and saves humanity from the legions of annoying, whining, soulless, auto-tuned, blather bands that continue to pass tired, regurgitated sounds off as music to a sad majority of folks today.

Every time Grey Eyed Girls ends, it feels like a song too soon, leaving your ears hungry for that nasty pick slide to start the sound of sonic joy all over again. Give these guys a listen and you’ll be hooked.

The Fresh & Onlys are currently on tour with The Oh Sees, and the whole show is coming through Lawrence on September 23rd at the Jackpot Music Hall (943 Massachusetts). Get there early, get your dancing shoes on, and get ready for some good times.

Listen to “Invisible Forces” by The Fresh and Onlys here
Learn more about the band here