Wild Arrows is a band headed by Mike Law of posthardcore bands EUCLID and New Idea Society but don’t expect that style of music on its new album Loving the Void. The single “Here’s the Ghost” exemplifies the fusion of musical ideas and palette of sounds. It begins as an almost ambient, synth pop meditation on being stuck in a feeling and the repetition of the line “So what if I still love you” the way you can get trapped in your head and the recursive loop of an internal narrative that probably serves to salve your wounded feelings but can be counterproductive in re-establishing psychological health. But halfway through the song the energy shifts and the words to “I only wanted to be with you in a way that you were all your own so here’s the ghost.” It’s a flipping of perspective from an aggrieved self-focus born of hurt to one of coming to terms with the break-up and maybe beginning to see a way clear of the unhealthy aspects of the relationship. The sudden yet somehow subtle shift of pace and tone around the 3:20 mark is an interesting way to show how your psychological orientation toward anything can change without having to lose anything. The uplifting sweep of the song out of a dreamlike melancholia is a dramatic evolution worthy of Mercury Rev. The whole album feels like a tapping into the emotional territory of Law’s other projects but through the lens of early OMD and that unlikely alchemy makes for a collection of fascinating and emotionally vibrant music. Listen to “Here’s the Ghost” on YouTube and follow Wild Arrows at the links below.
The Brian Jonestown Massacre has followed the colorful and heartfelt creative vision of Anton Newcombe since its 1990 inception in San Francisco. Its aesthetic informed by 60s psychedelic rock and experimental electronic music has evolved greatly in always fascinating directions through challenging personal times and tense periods within the band while garnering a strong cult following on the strength of its prolific output. Before psychedelic rock became a trendy style of music again in the past decade and a half, the Jonestown Massacre was influencing that directly or indirectly through bands it inspired or through Newcombe’s idiosyncratic mentoring. Too many people took the 2004 documentary Dig! at face value when it was a snapshot of a time in American underground music when alternative music was becoming relegated to the underground again while the possibilities of overcoming the forces of the music-industry-with-music-as-commodity seemed possible. Fast forward twenty years and Newcombe’s idealism and wide-ranging curiosity and creative vision seems vindicated by bands not only able to more directly reach an audience but one more organic and global. One June 24, 2022 the group will release its new album Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees, the product of much experimentation in terms of songwriting, production and testing reactions to the music through YouTube and other social media outlets and one of Newcombe’s strongest set of songs in recent years. We had a chance to speak with the songwriter about 2022 tourmates Mercury Rev, the band’s artwork for the tour posters unique to every date, his following the instinct to create regularly as a way of self-inspiration and staying in the habit of creating at as high a level as possible and the flow of the wordplay of his poetic and playful song titles among many other subjects.
Brian Jonestown Massacre performs at Ogden Theater on 04.12.22 with Mercury Rev. Listen to our interview with Newcombe on Bandcamp linked below. Full tour itinerary (including past dates) beneath the interview link and for more information please visit thebrianjonestownmassacre.com.
27th March 2022 Philadelphia, PA USA Union Transfer 28th March 2022 Brooklyn, NY USA Brooklyn Steel 29th March 2022 Jersey City, NJ USA White Eagle Hall March 30th 2022 Baltimore, MD USA Rams Head Live March 31st 2022 Providence, RI USA Columbus Theatre April 1st 2022 Boston, MA USA Roadrunner April 2nd 2022 Montreal, QC Canada Le National April 4th 2022 Toronto, ON Canada Queen Elizabeth Theatre April 5th 2022 Detroit, MI USA Majestic Theatre April 6th 2022 Indianapolis, IN USA The Vogue April 7th 2022 Cleveland OH USA Agora Theatre April 8th 2022 Chicago, IL USA The Vic Theatre April 9th 2022 Milwaukee, WI USA Turner Hall Ballroom April 10th 2022 Minneapolis, MN USA First Avenue April 12th 2022 Denver, CO USA Ogden Theatre April 13th 2022 Salt Lake City, UT USA Metro Music Hall April 15th 2022 Vancouver, BC Canada Vogue Theatre April 16th 2022 Tacoma, WA USA McMenamins Elks Temple Hotel – The Spanish Ballroom April 17th 2022 Seattle, WA USA Showbox April 18th 2022 Portland, OR USA Roseland Theatre April 20th 2022 San Francisco, CA USA The Fillmore April 21st 2022 San Francisco, CA USA The Fillmore April 22nd 2022 Los Angeles, CA USA The Wiltern April 23rd 2022 San Diego, CA USA The Observatory North Park April 24th 2022 Santa Ana, CA USA The Observatory OC April 25th 2022 Tucson, AZ USA The Rialto Theatre April 27th 2022 San Antonio TX USA Paper Tiger April 28th 2022 Austin, TX USA Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater April 29th 2022 Dallas, TX USA Granada Theater April 30th 2022 Houston, TX USA The Heights Theater May 2nd 2022 Lawrence, KS USA The Bottleneck May 3rd 2022 Saint Louis, MO USA Delmar Hall May 5th 2022 Nashville, TN USA Brooklyn Bowl May 6th 2022 Birmingham, AL USA Saturn May 7th 2022 Atlanta, GA USA Terminal West May 9th 2022 Asheville, NC USA The Orange Peel May 10th 2022 Carrboro, NC USA Cat’s Cradle May 11th 2022 Washington, DC USA Black Cat
This Sunday, October 1, you have a rare chance to see Tears of Silver, a kind of super group consisting of Ken Stringfellow of The Posies and Big Star, Jonathan Donohue and Grasshopper of Mercury Rev and Jesse Chandler of Midlake. The show will happen at an intimate venue in the Denver metropolitan area announced a day or two before the show to ticket holders and you can buy tickets here. The set will consist of material from across the careers of all the musicians as well as select covers that fit in with the aim of the band to make a special evening of music that transports players and audience into wondrous emotional spaces with the aid of having the music take place in a space outside the usual environments most people are used to. For the full tour schedule please visit the Tears of Silver website. We recently spoke with Stringfellow about the tour and the group’s aims in doing a tour of venues that don’t normally host music and how that, for him, makes for a richer, more satisfying experience for everyone present.
Queen City Sounds and Art:Last year the Posies did a tour of unconventional venues which you’re doing this time too. What made you want to do that?
Ken Stringfellow: There’s quite a few reasons why this kind of tour appeals to me. First and foremost it’s aesthetically pleasing to find unusual places and warm places that don’t have that slightly seedy aspect lurking at every bar to some degree. Of course some people like the raw, underground feel of a bar because it is seedy and that gives it that kind of edge. I’m more into something more beautiful. Also, a bar, their job is to sell alcohol. That’s their business model and that’s their focus and everything that goes with it. Meaning staying open as long as possible to get the most sales in a night. They put music in bars as a loss leader to get people in. I want the focus of the evening to be the music. That’s what these shows have come to be about. It’s not a bar that has bands on now and then. This is something where we’re gathering at a place for a purpose and to share that experience and only that experience of music.
Denver has a long tradition of unconventional places that people play regularly. Did you have those kinds of experiences with live music coming up as a musician in Seattle and elsewhere?
Mostly if it was going to be an unusual [location] it would be a small festival put together for an event like Fourth of July or whatever and those places would be impromptu. But generally no, we would play the same clubs over and over again. The clubs would change names but it would be the same room. The club that’s called El Corazon now where punk bands usually play now used to be called The Off Ramp. It was called Sub Zero at one point but it’s been a few different things over thirty years. There isn’t that much variety and now touring for over thirty years coming back to the same clubs is fine and some of them take care of the bands the best they can. But we’re at cross purposes, generally. They want the shows to go from eight to two in the morning with the headliner on at midnight even if it’s a Tuesday because the longer it stays open the more booze it can sell. My audience and I on a Tuesday would pretty much be over by ten. Which is reasonable because there is no point. The only reason shows happen late is to sell beer. So I elminated that reason. It’s not beneficial for the art or the participants. It’s just beneficial to the beer companies and I don’t really care about their business and they’re doing fine without me. They don’t need my help.
With the Posies you played at churches and other places most rock bands aren’t playing.
Yeah, like empty office spaces, after hours retail, recording studios and some houses. This tour is continuing this them. I have a partner in booking these spaces, Tina Dunn, who has been finding even more spectacular places to play for this tour. There are a couple where I’ve never seen anything like it. On Saturday we played this plant nursery. This guy has a couple of acres in central San Diego, it’s mostly residential and business out there, and he has an oasis with plants and farm animals and he sells everything you need to grow food. Farmer Bill is his name and his family has a house they built in the middle of the nursery. They have a great vibe and have these seed beds in the back boxed in with railroad ties and they’re a foot high. They’re laid out in parallel rows and make natural seats over which they throw burlap sacks. Then you look up fifteen feet above you where there’s a slope, a little hill, with a flat area up there where you can set up. It’s weird because you’re fifteen feet up looking down on people four feet in front of you. It was strange and wonderful. On Monday we played this motorcycle repair place on Treasure Island. It was an old, industrial building built with thick, wooden beams. It was clean but had a gritty vibe. They put two work lights on the floor turned to not blind people sitting in front of us. We were back lit but no standard show lighting and that was really cool.
Do you find playing the environments affect the way you play?
I think it’s fairly consistent the way we play but I think it makes sure the audience knows this is something unique and will only happen once. I think that’s the subtext. I don’t know if we’ll ever play shows again in this configuration. The plan is to play the tour and put out some online tracks. It’s really just about coming and playing this music this time in a unique way, with a unique line up in a unique place.
Why did you want to work with these other guys in the band for a tour like this?
I’ve just been an admirer and I worked on Mercury Rev’s last album, contributing vocals, creating elaborate vocal landscapes, stacks of surreal vocal sounds. That’s the only way I know how to describe it. I really want ot make a distinction, especially with my solo work, that the power pop thing that comes up again and again my solo work is further away from it. It’s more an Americana jazz-o-sphere. I think if you lined up Lyle Lovett, Bill Frisell and some kind of Gershwin influence or something, that’s where I’m at. All my music has a spirituality to it that’s probably the thing that I’m getting at. The power pop genre isn’t particularly spiritual. It’s kind of a feel good kind of thing—light and romantic. Whereas there’s a gravitas to my solo work that I’ve put in there as well as spiritual, philosophical and scientific themes. I want to make sure people know that’s not power pop as I know it. Power pop isn’t a dirty word but it just doesn’t apply. People base their conception of what I do based on, shall we say, The Posies’ first album, which came out when I was a teenager thirty years ago. It would be silly to assume that I would be in the same place now that I was then with all the experiences that I’ve had and all the opportunities to grow. I’ve done my best to capitlize on growth as a person, a thinker and a writer.
I think Mercury Rev has a spiritual depth and has a hymnal aspect to their music that is also not what a [hardcore] power pop fan would choose or want. If I were on tour with Matthew Sweet and Tommy Keane, who are on tour together know, a power pop fan might think that’s the best thing ever. And they might be disappointed when they find that my solo work doesn’t really fit. I’d rather stop that argument in its tracks and say I’m out here in a more ethereal sound [as is the case with this tour]. Whether we play in a church or not, our sound has a cathedral-sized reverb on it at all times. There’s no drums so it’s more hymn-like than it is rock or pop. Three guitars, beautiful piano and four voices sometimes doing four-part harmonies. I said in a recent interview that it’s more like if Crosby, Stills & Nash were a shoegaze band and released albums on 4AD.
I’ve seen Mercury Rev a couple of times, not since December 2008, and it felt like a spiritual experience. It was transcendent and you felt like you were in a different place other than regular, mundane earth for the duration of the show.
Exactly. That’s how I feel about what they do and I think what I do as a solo artist is a little more earthy but the sentiments and the philosophy apply well to this lofty, otherworldly playing so it’s a good mix.
You were a member of one of the ultimate power pop bands with Big Star but there was always something otherworldly about their music, especially Third.
Precisely. And we open with “Nighttime.” It kind of sets the stage because you’ve probably not heard it the way we play it before. We all know it, we all sing on it and fans know Third. I think it really sets the tone for the evening.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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