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cover: Daniel Alexander

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foundryfourQ&A

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features

Rain City Requiem by Gavin Bertrum

OPOSSOM TOTEMS

THE OF TAPE Vol. 2by Brendan McBryde

by Sam Valentine

7RECORDZby Adrian Ng

by Martyn Pepperell

foundry isSam Valentine - editor Evelyn Blackwell - sub-editor Angus McBryde - designerthank you to all our contributors. ffoundrymagazine.co.nz

Tono and the finance company

by Amy Joseph

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For singer-songwriter, Anthonie ‘Tono’ Tonnon, the process of creating and inhibiting characters is central to his art. First rising to prominence as a Dunedin based musician with a songbook populated with detailed narratives and narrators, Tonnon has recently released his debut full-length album, Up Here For Dancing. Continuing the tradition seen on his previous EP’s, Love and Economics and Fragile Thing, Tonnon is still crafting dry, humorous depictions of modernity. But developed over a transitional period, Up Here For Dancing may just be his first masterpiece. Despite his razor sharp intellectualism, on a personal level, Tonnon’s music has always has always influenced my heart rather than my head. Hearing ‘Timing’ performed on acoustic guitar at Dunedin’s Mou Very in late 2010 was a truly moving experience. This was heartache pop, a love song so effecting, I felt I could have written it about myself. In this issue, Amy Joseph speaks with Tono about Up Here For Dancing from his new home in Auckland. Written before Tono’s nationwide tour in late May, it’s a wonderful conversation between two close friends. Also inside, new contributor Martyn Pepperell speaks to Ruban Winter about his new electronic project, Totems. A blend of genres inhaled through a cloud of smoke, Totems has been the soundtrack to my late nights for months. Filled with glitched swag, and stoner vibes, his beat tape is one of the best things I’ve heard this year.

Adrian Ng also joins the Foundry team this issue, with his surreal, impressionistic writing reviewing his favourite releases of recent months. Drawing vivid mental pictures, it’s a feature we hope to see regularly. And of course, familiar contributors Brendan McByrde and Gavin Bertram also reappear, tackling Odd Future and Mark Yarm respectively. All in all, it’s a fourth issue we’re pretty happy with. Of course, we’re always looking for more contributors. So if you’d like to be part of the Foundry team, email editor@foundrymagazine.co.nz; we wouldn’t exist without the group of writers, photographers, and designers who selflessly donate their time and expertise, usually free of charge. For this issue we owe a special thanks to Daniel Alexander whose work graces our cover. He’s a brilliant artist, whose full catalogue can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielblackball/. Let’s pray it won’t be another six months before we’re doing this all again. Enjoy the issue, Sam Valentine.editor

Deadlines aren’t our friends.

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Tono and the finance company

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Anthonie ‘Tono’ Tonnon has always sung with a sense of imparting the earned wisdom of his experience, a tendency that gets slightly less precocious as he inches through his mid-twenties. The last couple of years have clearly been a transitional time for Tono, who left his post-adolescent life in Dunedin for the mean streets of Grey Lynn.

photo: Emily Hlavac Green | lenslapse.com

by Amy Joseph

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It seems to have been a somewhat traumatising time too, if ‘23’ is anything

to go by. The song, from his debut full-length album Up Here for Dancing, is a world-weary catalogue of all the reasons why that in-between age is so frustrating. From the vantage point of the grand old age of 25, Tono still stands by 23 as “objectively” the hardest age to be.

“Somebody said to me at a gig when I played that song, ‘That’s very tongue in cheek, isn’t it?’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and she said, ‘Well, obviously the song’s about how no matter how old you are, you think it’s going to be the worst age to be,’ and I said ‘No, no – objectively, 23 is the hardest age to be.’

“I’m sure there will be more difficult ages – I’ve heard 34 is pretty bad – but [23] is that horrible midpoint between being an irresponsible overgrown teenager going to university and being some kind of professional member of society. I think it’s just at that point as well – and maybe this happened earlier in people’s lives in the last

generation – but it’s this point where you haven’t quite decided on what you’re actually doing, nothing is set. Even people that have a job at 23 – they’re probably just starting out in a lawyer’s agency and getting paid next to nothing and working 60 hours a week – and they’re still not sure if actually they wanted to, you know, go and travel. It’s generally awful.”

For a musician who often brings up his working class background in interviews, these “awful” problems seem awfully middle class. But it’s a set of problems Tono has elected not to take on, and he’s happy with the choices he made at that difficult, liminal age. “I’ve found in the years since 23, things have gotten a lot better – a hell of a lot better.

The wind changes. Your mum tells you if you make a face too long that when the wind changes you’re going to be stuck with that. And I think when I was 23 I was stuck with those alternate versions of myself. I was really worried that maybe I actually wanted to continue with economics and history, and maybe I did want to work towards being a politician or something, and I was very unsure of what path I actually wanted to take, so I just kept doing the one that I enjoyed most. But I feel like in the last couple of years, I’ve made a musician’s face long enough that the wind changed, and for better or worse that’s what I’m going to do for the foreseeable future, maybe the next seven years until my cells have changed over.”

Album opener ‘Multiple Lives’ embraces the fact that we all become different people over the years, from the cellular level through to our personalities and desires. The song is partly a “earnest, self-help kind of upper song”, partly a way for Tono to make peace with his own alternate futures. It was inspired by a post-university shift in thought processes triggered, much to Tono’s own surprise, by

When I was at univer-sity, I was very the opposite of magical; I was extremely logical.

Milana Radojcic

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an Allen Carr Easy Way to Quit Smoking book. “I was extremely skeptical - it’s this terribly written book, it’s mostly written in caps lock – you know, YOU DON’T NEED TO KEEP SMOKING kind of thing – and it’s very repetitive and it’s all pseudo-scientific nonsense. But yet, I was desperate to stop smoking, and I read the book, had my last cigarette and never smoked again. So I think that propelled me to a stage of my life of starting to accept more magical thinking, which is awful, but I don’t mind it.

“When I was at university, I was very the opposite of magical; I was extremely logical. I studied history: everything needed a source, everything needed to be backed up and the source couldn’t be Wikipedia. My view of the world was based on logic. But what

inevitably happens after you leave university is after a few years you start reading more novels and more art and actually starting to slowly enjoy the unexplained magic in things - you don’t need to know how the song works or the art piece works to like it. I know that it’s a slippery slope to then becoming those 45-year-old aunties and uncles you meet who are all airy-fairy and they’ve been reading self-help books and they tell you that you’ve got this strange aura around you … but that’s what the song is about! Maybe I’m on a slippery slope to that, and if I met myself when I’m 45 I’d probably hate myself - but when I’m 45 I’ll probably like myself, whatever I am.”

Potential future versions of himself have haunted Tono’s songs from ‘Barry Smith

of Hamilton’ on the Fragile Thing EP to ‘Eating Biscuits’ on this album. “So many of my songs are versions of myself in 20 years. [‘Multiple Lives’] gives a whole heap of options - there’s a convert to some questionable religion, in politics or morning television.”

So which likely future version of himself would Tono circa 2012 be most repelled by? “Probably a convert to some questionable religion, but I think that would be more fun than being a politician. I’d fear more for my sanity if I was a politician.”

Tono’s thinking has shifted after university, and so has he, moving from Dunedin to Auckland. “When I moved up to Auckland, I had two friends there and they were both

artists, and I first started meeting people in Auckland by going to art gallery openings. There’s a great culture of that on K Road – turn up for the free booze, pay minimal attention to the art, and meet people and talk, and maybe go to a gig afterwards. It’s a great system.” But it’s a system that Tono, like many of those involved, is ambivalent about. He relates that he was struggling to make progress with the song that would become ‘Tim’ when the man himself, one of those early Auckland friends, texted Tono to coax him out on the town. “And of course we just went to Whammy Bar and got drunk. And if you look around K Road, you can see a lot of people doing the same thing – you know, these pseudo-intellectuals avoiding making any art by being on K Road meeting people

and talking. It’s maybe the most political song on the album.”

One year after the doldrums of 23, Tono had apparently moved on to the age at which the preceding generation hand over the world to us. Perhaps they don’t realise what fevered overgrown adolescents we are scant months before. At any rate, it doesn’t seem like a very good deal. “[Tim] is a more recent song, I wrote that when I was 24 – we’re now at this part of our lives where we’re supposedly

having a handover. Our parents’ generation is handing over the world for us to run, but there’s no jobs and we’re getting dealt this shitty world that’s got a whole lot of problems with it that nobody’s going to pay for and there’s not many of us. It’s about being in this sort of lost generation, almost. But then none of the characters are particularly painted favourably – in there it’s me and Tim in the smoking area ‘making intellectual sounds such as I’m tired, I’m hungry / tonight I’ll give no guarantees that I’ll eat ethically’. It’s a song about my generation in this phoney handover of power going and avoiding it all by getting drunk.”

‘Tim’ seems to form a set with ‘With a Point’, a song that feels grounded in the same social

I studied history: everything needed a source, everything needed to be backed up and the source couldn’t be Wikipedia.

Rachel Brandon

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scene. “[It’s] really an unrequited love song, but it plays on that pointless intellectualism. Being in this generation of people that’s been to university, we all love postmodernism, and we all respect everybody else’s viewpoints and know that everybody’s right but we just come from different value judgements, and we don’t actually believe in making points anymore. Somebody said to me, ‘Artists don’t want to be didactic’ and I’m generally like that. … ‘With a Point’ maybe defines that dilemma of being intellectual and not being able to say anything with it because all you can say is that there are no points, and that there are no good guys or bad guys, and at the end of the day you’re just looking for something to say so that you can make somebody love you.”

Up Here For Dancing is the first full-length album from Tono and the Finance Company, although it isn’t Tono’s first attempt at the form. After debut EP ‘Love and Economics he was keen to record an album, but his sound engineer Stu Harwood left Dunedin and Tono was unable to find a replacement. “So I tried to record an album, which was a disaster because I don’t know how to record shit. On that album you had the genesis of the ‘Fragile Thing’ EP, … but then you had all of these other songs that I haven’t been able to listen to for years because they were so preachy and they were so themed and they were much too overt commentaries on the six o’clock news or songs about becoming PR men and that kind of stuff. And, you know, we were trying to be very jazzy ...” Tono trails off with wry disgust in his voice. “But I had a listen to it yesterday and I was like, ‘I’m kind of enjoying this.’”

After all, as the backing vocals croon on ‘Multiple Lives,’ ‘you’ve got to be bad at something before you’re good at something.’

“For once I felt comfortable - yup, those songs are too preachy, it’s a good thing there was never an album that came out of that, but I was enjoying some of the parts that I wrote and the way that I wrote them. Because I do, I write things very differently now to the way I did then. I mean, even to write a song like ‘Multiple Lives’ is something that I would have kicked myself for doing a couple of years ago - it’s much too earnest, it’s optimistic.”

Tono may have stepped back a bit from that possibly misguided jazz influence for this album, but he still shies away from traditional pop structures. “The music isn’t always easy -- in way that I write, I can’t do a lot of repetition and I can’t do musical cliches, so I’m always looking for some unusual way to end that musical phrase, or I’m always looking for a very tailored structure to suit a specific song. ‘Tim’ or ‘With a Point’ or ‘Eating Biscuits’ don’t follow straight A-A-B-A song structures or verse-chorus song

structures; they have song structures that only exist for that song. But I do try to load those songs with repetition in other ways -- there are repeating motifs, the same kind of half-melody line is repeated lots, but not always in the same way, and I feel like if you listen to it -- well, if I listen to it, I can hear the pop, but it’s maybe pop to my ears and not to a lot of other people’s.

“But in saying that… my aim for making this album originally was to make a much more pop album than I had ever written. ‘Marion Bates Realty’ was one of the first songs to come out of that, and ‘23’: these are songs with three or four chords, whereas on that ‘lost’ album I was all about jazz chords and lots and lots of different chords and – awful stuff, stuff I can’t listen to anymore. So for me, songs like ‘Multiple Lives’ and ‘Timing’ and ‘Marion Bates Realty’ are very straight pop songs. I guess it was a strange realisation at the end of this album that I’d made something that was still maybe a little bit difficult to get into… But you never do end up with the product that you start out to make, and that’s only a good thing.”

Although the line-up of the Finance Company has changed over the years – cellular regeneration on a macro level, perhaps – all of the musicians on Up Here for Dancing are people with whom Tono has strong relationships. “I could have just recorded it with all Auckland musicians – I probably knew enough Auckland musicians that we could have made it work, and we could have found a producer in Auckland who could have done it – and in some ways that would

even to write a song like ‘Multiple Lives’ is something that I would have kicked myself for doing a couple of years ago - it’s much too earnest, it’s optimistic.

Emily Hlavac Green

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tense bringing that whole group together in Dunedin, in good ways – we were recording in eleven days, which is a very tight time period, so there was a lot of stress and a lot of pressure.

“I remember we were doing guitar overdubs for ‘Timing’. You had Paul on one guitar and Logan on the other guitar, and Jonathan who’d come down originally just to do organs and synths, but had already started playing some guitar on the record. It was the first time that Paul, Logan and Jonathan have ever been in one room, and there’s a little bit of tension in that, because they know that

Jonathan’s now playing guitar in the band, and it was a bit awkward, for sure. We were trying to get the riff down, but Logan wasn’t playing it the way he’d demo’d it, and I was trying to explain, ‘Oh, no, you do it like this,’ and I couldn’t explain it. Then Jonathan said, ‘You do it like this’, and Logan goes ‘Maybe Jonathan should just play this part’,

and I said, ‘No no, you have to play this part.’ But within ten minutes Jonathan was fiddling with Logan’s pedals while Logan bashed one guitar chord which made that big [here Tono makes a crunchy guitar-type noise that doesn’t translate well to print], which is probably my favourite part of the whole album. So you got that great thing that happens when different kinds of people meet and cool things come out of that.”

As Tono prepares to set off on the album tour how much of him is still the same person from the time when Up Here for Dancing first started taking form? “I think for the most part, I’m still the same set of cells that wrote these songs. They’re still twitching around there. ‘Eating Biscuits’ was the earliest song – some of those cells that I had when I wrote it will definitely be starting to die off, and the connections being lost in my brain so that I don’t even remember how I wrote it. But then, the arrangement of that song is extremely different to what the original version of the song was like… I still feel like I have these songs flowing around in my cells quite closely, and I think that’s a good thing to have when you’re first touring around an album, because it can be easy to have become a different person by the time you’ve released an album.”

have been easier; I might have just been able to do it every weekend for a few months. But it was important for me to build on things that I’d already done and to use relationships and what we’d learnt with other people, so it was important for me to go and record with Bugs [Chris ‘Bugs’ Miller] and to go and record with Tex [Houston].”

Assorted current and former Dunedinites were assembled, including Stu Harwood, Logan Valentine, Paul and Michael Cathro and Rainy McMaster. Jonathan Pearce was recruited from Tono’s current hometown, where they’d been playing live together.

“I think one of the great things about the record for me is that it’s a very unlikely meeting between the way that Dunedin musicians are likely to think of ideas and the way that Auckland musicians are. Perhaps I’ve developed more Auckland ears in my time in Auckland – I probably have and so has Stu – but I still love the ridiculousness of Logan playing a song like ‘Timing’ and then playing this funk guitar riff; by white guys from Dunedin, it’s absolutely ridiculous and it shouldn’t work, but it does somehow. That mixture of that Dunedin isolationism where you can do whatever you want and nothing matters ‘cos nobody listens to us anyway, man– ” Tono sneers, “ –and then that Auckland sensibility where you’re versed in the great weird Dunedin music but then you’re also very conscious of what’s going on overseas and you’re trying to at least make something that isn’t aesthetically a complete loner” (perhaps it’s the internationalist Auckland influence that makes Tono’s mainland accent far less pronounced on this album then on his earlier EPs).

Tono thinks that the creative tension of bringing that group of musicians together in this line-up of the Finance Company paid unexpected dividends. “It was kind of

buy ‘Up Here For Dancing’ attonoandthefinancecompany.com

my aim for making this al-bum originally was to make a much more pop album than I had ever written

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OPOSSOMQ&ACan you talk me through the process of recording Electric Hawaii. Did you record the record by yourself, or were already collaborating with Bic and Michael at that stage? I wrote, performed and recorded it at home in October 2011. I recorded and produced it myself. Has your songwriting process changed at all since writing with The Mint Chicks, or has writing always been a solitary activity for you? I wrote a lot with Ruban for the Mint Chicks, but I’ve always written on my own as well. My process hasn’t really changed much. I’ve been recording in my bedroom since I was a kid. Is there anything you think you’ll be more able to express/achieve in this format rather than say, The Mint Chicks outlet? It’s good to be able to play the drums live. I feel like I have more responsibility over the music now.

Has it been different being in total control of the bands aesthetic? Thus far, your videos and artwork have been quite uniform.Not so much different, It’s just been fun.

Do you still feel close to Ruban, in a musical sense? UMO and OPOSSOM seem to have taken off were Bad Buzz ended; almost as if exploring different areas of the same musical territory.

Kody Nielson burst onto the New Zealand music scene with his unhinged, captivating, and often self-endangering performances at the helm of critically acclaimed, ‘trouble gum art punks’, The Mint Chicks. After eight years, three classic LP’s (including

Real Groove’s New Zealand album of the decade, Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!), and following a now infamous onstage meltdown at Auckland’s Bacco Room, with the Mint Chicks on indefinite hiatus, Kody has crafted his own musical outlet under the alias Opossom. Extending the deceptively sugary, psych-pop aesthetic heard in the Mint Chicks moribund final months to its furthest psychedelic reaches, Foundry spoke with Kody and got some terse responses to twelve quick questions about the new album, and his continuing relationship with Ruban.

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Absolutely. Ruban and I have always had very similar taste in music and art. That said, any particular influences/tones you’ve been trying to channel in OPOSSOM? I’m still influenced by the same things. I think it just shows it bit more now. Speaking of UMO, are you officially their drummer now? I see you’ve been recording some drums for their new record. I’ve been touring and recording with Ruban lately. Did you really give Jimmy Page a copy of Electric Hawaii? Yeah. He came backstage at a show in London and hung out for a bit. He was interested to hear it, so I gave him a copy.

How much longer do you think you can keep up being a touring musician for? How much longer do you want to?I think I’ll always make music and play live as long as I can. Is Paul Roper doing anything musically currently, he seems to have basically fallen off the map? Paul’s still living in Portland and playing in a band called Blouse. What bands should we be listening to?Sly & The Family Stone What are your plans for OPOSSOM during the rest of 2012?Release Electric Hawaii. Tour in New Zealand, Australia, USA, UK, Europe and Asia. Start working on another record.

by Sam Valentine

OPOSSOM IS AVAILABLE NOWvia iTunes and in good record stores

It’s good to be able to play the drums live. I feel like I have more responsi-bility over the music now.

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SWAGLANKY WHITE THOUGHTS ON THE O.F. TAPE VOL. 2

by Brendan McBryde

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LANKY WHITE THOUGHTS ON THE O.F. TAPE VOL. 2

ON DECK

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Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All is a pack of DIY punks with a social networking finesse and an aversion to xaboxes, genres, and conventional publicity in general. They don’t like interviews, ‘critiquing and bitching’, or reviews, presumably.

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Nonetheless, the press isn’t slowing for Tyler the Creator, Hodgy Beats, Domo

Genesis, and the rest of the motley Los Angeles gang whose continued assault on independent hip hop is innovative, arrogant, and thrilling to watch. Having basically created their own entire subculture of characters, attitudes and catchphrases, lyrical inspiration becomes almost self-sustaining, and anything outside of the Odd Future coterie is fair game for merciless defamation. Released at the tail end of March 2012, The O.F. Tape Vol. 2 is a comprehensive taster of themes, flows and frequencies from which some new favourites emerge and familiar talents continue to grow and impress. NY [Ned Flander] is an early winner, brandishing Tyler’s trademark ominous sub-bass, grinding underneath angular beats and dissonant keyboard loops. Hodgy and Tyler flex their bragging muscles with some impressive verses, the former being the primary rapper on Vol. 2 and featuring on the majority of the tracks, including twice as one half of MellowHype. Much of Hodgy’s rapping throughout the tape is rhythmically clumsy next to that of his brethren, and

perhaps his writing has simply been stretched too thin across his ten appearances to be consistently well constructed. But he still has radical tracks, an eloquent verse at the album’s end, and drops the occasional smoothly witty line on pagans or halogens.

Alongside Hodgy and Tyler, Domo Genesis is the third mainstay of the verses on Vol. 2, and

most of his contributions are pretty damn fine. Domo has been subsisting comfortably as Odd Future’s loveable stoner for the last couple of years, but his presence is now prominent, his flow captivating, and his rhymes sharp and cunning. His smoothly wistful contribution to ‘Sam [Is Dead],’ or his personal measure of swag in ‘Doms,’ demonstrate and brag how his game has improved. His solo releases

should be worth watching. Domo exhibits Odd Future’s shift from bored suburban friends rapping and mixing in a random bedroom toward concentrated artists pursuing music earnestly and honing their skills; not to mention throwing a bit of money around now that they’re big spenders.

The Internet, Syd tha Kid and Frank Ocean respectively contribute the elements that give the tape its supplementary R&B tag, and the occasional melodic break from everyone else’s unapologetically swag verses. Frank Ocean is one of the rising stars of the group in terms of outside projects and mainstream recognition, which along with his mid-twenties seniority make him seem like Odd Future’s odd one out. He cracks out a decent verse on the album’s closer, but Ocean is a soul

singer at heart and finds his greatest strength away from the emcee mic. His co-produced album highlight, ‘White,’ is a soul-searching and gently sentimental ballad that strips away the aggressive synth and beefy kicks, and shows why he is already collaborating with the kingpins of the industry.

The grooving vibe finds a place among Tyler’s

often shunned as misbe-having kids with no man-ners slapping photogra-phers at music festivals

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pieces with ‘Oldie’ and in ‘Analog 2/Wheels 2,’ which resurrects a handful of motifs from his first two albums’ songs. He utilises the smooth addition of Syd and Frank to craft them into a more spirited and soulful b-side to these older tracks. This track has been widely noted as demonstrating Tyler’s growing skill in production, and you can hear an expanding repertoire of sounds and instrumentation. This is evidenced, too, in the shimmering, alien ‘P’ and the marching, military ‘Sam [Is Dead].’ You hear that fucking brass?

Tyler’s presence on Vol. 2 is modest, letting his friends take centre stage and maybe saving his best material and efforts for his upcoming 2012 stoner-album Wolf. He is still as badass as ever, maintaining his nonchalant bass flow while dropping lines and clever double entendres, spitting a nice mixture of wordplay and crude insults towards your mother. Tyler keeps his verses short and sweet, and has no solo rapping tracks. Certainly, he is more comfortable and prolific as a producer, though even in this regard he gives up half of the tape to the coarse creations of Left Brain. LB, the other half of MellowHype, hit his stride with ‘Hcapd’ and ‘Rella’ but from his remaining tracks doesn’t yet seem to be in Tyler’s league, perhaps lacking the better senses of melody

and structure that Tyler is slowly mastering.

Everyone is stepping up their game as Odd Future continues to grow its influence and audience, and this slow mastery of genuine talents is a fitting summary of Vol. 2. It’s a mixtape disguised as an album, serving more as a cross-section of the current state of creativity within the Odd Future collective, rather than as a cohesive record with a dynamic or narrative structure. For this reason,

it can be imperative to also hear the solo and small group releases to get a full flavour of the more promising contributors. Still without mainstream radio presence, video play, or major label endorsement, Vol. 2 has likely already sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. Such successful and noteworthy figures, and the ensuing tour, brings all the critical praise

and slanderous denunciation to the surface for a fresh round of richly probing Marshall Mathers-style debate about freedom of speech and gleefully violent prose. When the side of the more hysterical commentators dismiss coverage of Odd Future as morally bankrupt, it is far too tempting not to entertain at least a brief spiel. Such a topic also seems of particular relevance to Kiwis ever since the BDO played it safe and deprived us of the chance to make up our own minds on Odd Future thanks to

Calum Bennachie and the Auckland City Council. That is until they packed out the Powerstation and escaped the more public scrutiny of a festival slot in broad daylight.

It’s true that Odd Future and its associated acts spit some sad attitudes and reference gruesome deeds, but the point often missed is to appreciate the frightening storytelling and not assume that the average listener is psychotic. While the Powerstation played host to

the usual collective war cry of ‘Kill people! Burn shit! Fuck school!’ it is not apparent that any more shit than usual was burned, nor schools fucked, in Auckland on January 19. Ideas and lyrics such as this are just the new embodiment of that familiar teen spirit, and do not necessarily instill an uncontrollable urge to ‘punch a bitch in her shit.’

without mainstream radio play, video play, or major label endorsement, Vol. 2 has likely already sold over 100,000 cop-ies worldwide.

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If one is inclined towards hatred and violence, finding encouragement and vindication in the words of Tyler and friends, then their tastes in hip hop are probably the least of their concerns. This is an ongoing and at times ferocious debate that certainly deserves fresh dialogue, though it stretches beyond the scope of this piece and into creative expression in general. Ann Powers, a well-versed critic on subjects of music and horrific themes that scare the children and may just destroy society, muses ‘In Defense of Nasty Art’ that “performers and listeners can forget that this is fantasy and take the game too far into the real world. But that can happen with anything: with John Hinckley and Jodie Foster, or David Koresh and the Book of Revelation.” Thanks Ann, moving on.

All this being said, the tracks on Vol. 2 have noticeably less outrageous shock content as we have heard from O.F. in the past (although, hopefully this perception does not stem simply from an ongoing and exponential desensitisation). These tracks skip on the graphic violence and go back to bragging, some

decent story-telling and personal commentary. Some of the few socially stirring (but not gruesome) remarks probably come from ‘Real Bitch,’ which could have been omitted from the final tracklisting without upsetting too many people. So too, ‘We Got Bitches’ seems expendable thematically and is pretty rough on the ears. While nearly all the boys still rap about their dicks as often as they can, even still these two tracks drag down what feels like an emerging lyrical maturity shying away from the overt and obvious bitch hating of earlier releases. Whether this is due simply to which tracks were selected or omitted, or if it perhaps signifies a deeper change in mentality, it certainly gives people less ammunition for their whining. If this should be a continuing trend, maybe Odd Future, too often shunned as misbehaving kids with no manners slapping photographers at music festivals, can have attention turned to their growing talent and future promise.

The album closer ‘Oldie’ is mesmerizing, with a rich warmth provided by the intermittent

sub-bass line and a near-perfect tempo making it a smooth and unexpectedly tireless ten-minute groove. Eight MCs polish off and dish out their finest swagger, and Earl Sweatshirt’s surprise verse seven minutes in is supreme, demonstrating his mastery of the internal rhyme and his undisputed position at the top of Odd Future. This verse is his first appearance since his yearlong absence, time spent at a Samoan boarding school for wayward youth, which evidently served to tighten his flow and hone his lyrical acuity. Earl’s return has completely legitimised the intrigue from his comrades’ entire ‘Free Earl’ fever that has been so present in O.F. lyrics and screaming fans for the last year and half. The guy got fifty thousand twitter followers in three hours! That cray ridiculous. For the moment, it looks like Earl is keeping his friends close and staying loyal to Odd Future with his rapping, and no doubt won’t keep us waiting too long for future projects.

Shit, that’s all I got. Have a listen to a few tracks and get a feel. O.F.

THE OF TAPE VOL. 2available on iTunes

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Everybody loves usEverybody’s getting kind of oldCouldn’t hold a regular jobLong live rock and roll

(Overblown, Mudhoney, 1992)

ANY music form that comes to dominate the culture will inevitably be maligned

and ridiculed after its peak.

That’s particularly true of anything that has its roots in the supposedly hallowed ground of punk rock, where progression of one’s career or creative outlook is viewed with suspicion if not hostility.

After Nirvana’s unbelievable rise and tragic fall, the music that had come to be known as grunge fell victim to this syndrome. But 20 years on it’s possible to look back on the movement with clearer eyes, and rediscover a raft of gems.

Mark Yarm’s recent book, Everybody Loves Our Town, focuses on the phenomenon that was the Seattle music scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The tale is told masterfully through the oral history form – weaving

together hundreds of quotes from those who were there into a fascinating narrative.

Of course, there has to be some pre-history, and so Yarm begins this weighty 500-plus page tome by relating the exploits of Seattle band the U-Men in 1985.

“The U-Men are considered a proto-grunge band, the one band who pretty much anyone

in the scene at that time looked up to,” Yarm says. “But they didn’t get much attention – partially because they rejected that. And they broke up before grunge broke, and they rejected the opportunity to reform to cash in on it. It’s not something that many people will care about that much, but for me it was very important to have their voices in there because they were such the forefathers of this scene.”

That band, more in the garage punk mould than those they inspired, released the Step On a Bug album in 1988, before disbanding. In the meantime though, acts including Green River, Screaming Trees, Melvins, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and of course Nirvana were burgeoning in the north-western city.

All were steeped in the lore of underground music, with early releases on independent labels like Sub Pop, SST, and C/Z. It was a vibrant, self-supporting scene with really no discernible connection to the mainstream music world.

Gradually, though, it was co-opted into that realm as first Soundgarden, and then Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees, Nirvana, and Mudhoney were picked up by major record

RAINCITYREQUIEM

Penned by New York journalist Mark Yarm, Everybody Loves Our Town: A History of Grunge arrived to coincide with Nevermind’s 20th anniversary.

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by Gavin Bertram

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labels. The likes of A&M, Columbia, and DGC had recognised that something was brewing in Seattle, and in the broader punk rock milieu, and they wanted a piece of it.

On the back of the release of Nirvana’s monumental Nevermind in late 1991 – the publication of the book coincided with its 20th anniversary – the microscope went on Seattle. Stoked by the media and record company PR, the city was suddenly the hottest property in music.

Yarm reports that there’s still some residual bitterness about the way things happened.

“There was bitterness about why this band made it and we didn’t,” he says. “Or about the way the media and major labels came in, and then moved onto the next big thing. Some people had their shot and didn’t make it, and some people obviously died. There are sore feelings about that. But for the most part, with

20 plus years people can look back and laugh at it.”

Everybody Loves Our Town grew out of an article about Sub Pop’s 20th anniversary that Yarm wrote for the late US music magazine Blender. He had plenty of material left over from that, and so leapt at the opportunity when approached by a publisher.

Although in retrospect he says he “foolishly took it on” without realising what he was getting himself in for. That entailed tracking down many of those involved in the Seattle scene and persuading them to spill their stories.

Some were more accommodating than others. Screaming Trees vocalist Mark Lanegan flat out refused to be involved, while ex-Nirvana and Soundgarden bassist/guitarist Jason Everman, and controversial Hole front woman and Cobain widow Courtney Love seized the opportunity.

“Jason Everman’s a university student now, and had gone through the military,” Yarm says. “He hasn’t done much in the way of interviews, that’s kind of a part of his long distance past. It was surprising that he agreed to do it.”

“Courtney definitely has her version of events which most people don’t give much credence to,” he continues. “I definitely wanted her side of the story and her voice is super important in the book. People who have read it and maybe aren’t as familiar with grunge as others, they perk up a little when she enters the book.”

During grunge’s early-1990’s peak, things had got ridiculous in Seattle. Fashion houses including Marc Jacobs and Perry Ellis created ranges inspired by grunge, and media attention on the city was intense.

It soon grew tiresome, and those intimately involved in the scene began to amuse themselves by fucking with the somewhat

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naive journalists they were dealing with. The best example of this was a ‘Lexicon of Grunge’ provided to the New York Times by Sub Pop Records staffer Megan Jasper. It was a bunch of invented slang phrases, including the ludicrous ‘swingin’ on the flippity flop’ (hanging out), ‘cob nobbler’ (loser), and ‘lamestain’ (uncool person).

The venerable ‘Old Gray Lady’ of print bought Jasper’s ruse wholesale, illustrating how desperate the mainstream media were for an inside view on grunge.

No wonder many of those who were actually involved in the music were keen to tell it how it was in Everybody Loves Our Town.

“There’s all sorts of stuff that’s been sourced from one interview, and then that has pretty much been reported as fact,” Yarm explains. “A lot of the time I was going back to the original source. Someone who was adamant about getting certain things right was Kim Thayil from Soundgarden. He wanted to set the record straight about things he’d read in the past – just small factual things, like where did Soundgarden get its name? Things that had irked him over the years.”

While ironing out the reality from the myth was one of the author’s primary concerns in writing the book, dealing with the spectre of multiple deaths was another. After all, there had been an unfortunate number of tragedies involving those in the Seattle music scene.

Foremost was Cobain’s 1994 suicide, but there was also the heroin overdose of Mother Love Bone vocalist Andrew Wood, the alcohol and drug related death of 7 Year Bitch guitarist Stefanie Sargeant, the murder of The Gits vocalist Mia Zapata, and in 2002 the OD of Alice in Chains front man Layne Staley.

Naturally Yarm wasn’t looking forward to having to broach these deaths with his interviewees, and didn’t push the subject with those still struggling with the loss.

But some of the most poignant moments in his book are related to those incidents. In fact, Cameron Crowe’s 1992 movie Singles was a direct response to the outpouring of grief that galvanised Seattle’s music community following Wood’s death in 1990.

The chapters covering that era represent just one of the high points of Yarm’s Everybody Loves Our Town. It’s a compelling, entertaining, moving story of a music scene that was overwhelmed by its sudden and unexpected rise to prominence.

The author is loath to contemplate another oral history project of such epic proportion so soon, although he admits to be considering something.

“Part of me wants to do it again,” Yarm says. “I feel like taking what I’ve learnt from this I could do an even better job. But part of me is like ‘why would I put myself through that torture again?’ Oral histories are a lot of work

to do it right. I wanted (Everybody Loves Our Town) to read novelistically and tell a story. There are a lot of oral histories, and not everything should be made into an oral history. This was well suited because there were a lot of intertwining stories.”

20 Seattle classicsThe U-Men – Step on a Bug (1988)Green River – Dry as a Bone (1987)Soundgarden – Louder Than Love (1989)Melvins – Bullhead (1991)Gruntruck – Push (1992)Various artists – Sub Pop 200 (1988)Mother Love Bone – Apple (1990)Skin Yard – Hallowed Ground (1988)Screaming Trees – Sweet Oblivion (1992)Mudhoney – Superfuzz Bigmuff (1988)Nirvana – Bleach (1989)Tad – God’s Balls (1989)Alice in Chains – Dirt (1992)Various Artists – Deep Six (1986)7 Year Bitch – Sick ‘Em (1992)Temple of the Dog – Temple of the Dog (1991)Seaweed – Despised (1991)Mad Season – Above (1995)Mono Men – Back to Mono (1992)Malfunkshun – Return to Olympus (1995)

Everybody Loves Our Town: A History of Grunge by Mark Yarm is published by Faber and Faber

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Where and when were you born?Auckland, in 1994.

What were your parents doing then?I’m not too sure what my mum was doing but my dad has always been a plumber. They separated when I was a couple of months old.

So have you always had a dual existence or homes as a result?Yeah. But I’ve mainly lived with my mum. I’d go and stay with dad every now and then. With my mum I would just you know, do regular kid things. Then, when I went and saw my dad we would watch violent movies, play video games and eat bad food, just

because that was what he wanted to do what he wanted to do when he was looking after me. [Laughs]

What are your earliest recollections of music?Probably Smashing Pumpkins? My parents were into the whole alternative, grunge, 90s kinda thing.

Kinda like Benji Jackson from Muzai Records?Yeah! [Laughs] Definitely. I grew up listening to that, and a lot of blues and a lot of rock music.

When did you feel like you needed to start contributing to music?I started playing guitar when I was ten or eleven? Someone taught me how to play ‘Smoke On The Water’ and it was fun.

What part of Auckland was this all happening in?Mainly West Auckland. My dad has always lived in West Auckland, and my mum has mostly. I have moved so many times in my life, but mostly around West Auckland.

At what point did you move from playing by yourself to being part of a band?I was twelve. I got my friends from school,

Question: What is the common thread between Smashing Pumpkins, Muzai Records, ‘Smoke On The Water’, Nirvana, Don McGlashan, Concord Dawn, Dr. Dre, Outkast, Fruity Loops, The Mint Chicks, Tommy Ill, Flying Lotus, Odd Future, remixes, guitar, playing violent video games with your dad when you were a kid and having a mum who takes you to gigs when you’re twelve? Answer: Reuben Winter.

Q&ATOTEMS

Hailing from West Auckland, Winter started playing guitar at age eleven, moving into electronic music

production. Since then he has been a key member of breakout noize punks Bandicoot, drone fetishists Kitsuengari, punk rocker FatAngryMan, Hazy faux Shoegazers Halloween and now drum and bass guitar two piece weed Guys.

Along the way, Winter has honed a bedroom electronic beat production interest, performed as a young swag rapper with Google Cops, collaborated with Eno from the Super Villains on an EP, and found the time to shape up his own dubstep inspired production project Totems. Leaning towards the Witch House/Screwgaze end of the spectrum, Totems leans heavily on occult (and cult symbolism), faux Satanism, heavy stoner vibes and

elements of glitch. Winters recently released Totems first album 10-11 as a “name your price” digital download on bandcamp, and has just unveiled a music video for the album intro song Fenrisúlfr.

Oh yeah, you know how I told you he started playing guitar at age eleven? That was only six so years ago. At the time of writing, the kid isn’t even fucking eighteen. I know right? If you’ve ever wanted someone to give you a sense of anxiety about not having accomplished enough in your life by your mid twenties, Winter will do that by accident. He’s a prodigious talent and it’s somewhat terrifying to imagine what is going to happen when the dude is legally allowed inside bars and nightclubs, as opposed to Scout Halls and student flats.

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one who played drums, and one who played bass, who actually taught me to play ‘Smoke On The Water’, and I was playing guitar and singing. I guess we were playing our shitty take on punk?

Do you feel like you could all communicate musically at that point?I guess? It was more like, here is two chords that sound cool, we should all just play these two chords. Sometimes it would sound cool. Once we all bought distortion pedals and stuff it all sounded a lot better because we were learning about feedback and shit.

Okay, so you say it was your shitty take on punk. Were you listening to punk music at that point?I was listening to Nirvana. I was also listening to a lot of the Offspring. I was just into simple energy music. We were angry twelve year olds man.

When did you start making electronic music?I think I started making it around the time we started Bandicoot. I think I had downloaded the demo version of Fruity Loops. I must have been about fifteen.

So tell me about Bandicoot?That was people I went to school with, Pearl and Daniel. Pearl is one of my best friends. She’d been one of my best friends through high school. Daniel has been a good friend as well. I knew he could play drums, but he was only just learning when we started. This was all at Western Springs High School.

I guess it was just normal for you to go to her house and have Don McGlashan there.Yeah man! The don! Everyone’s dad has done something cool at Western Springs. While we were doing Bandicoot I was making really bad drum and bass on the side on my computer. I was like, man! I wanna be like Concord Dawn! yeah! I’ve always listened to electronic music. Coming from hip-hop and stuff, I always listened to hip-hop since I was a kid. All my cousins were just ghetto kids from West Auckland. My mum and dad brought the grunge rock side, but my cousins listened to Dr Dre and Outkast.

And the interest in electronica was an outgrowth of hip-hop?Yeah! I’ve always liked it though. My parents always had a bit of stuff like Portishead and Massive Attack and that.

While you were doing Bandicoot, you were also developing the electronic production vocabulary that would lead to Totems?Yes. I would say so. Around the time Bandicoot was starting to do well, I was starting to do more beats.

At what point did you feel like you could make electronic music?A couple of years ago maybe? I made one track that was really sweet and put

it on my facebook. I had started hearing more stuff like Flying Lotus and Hudson Mohawke, Brainfeeder and Hyperdub stuff. They were these weirder versions of these, not mainstream genres, but commercial underground genres and it made me see where I could go as a beatmaker.

Where does your interest in noise music come from?Ahhh! It was from seeing The Mint Chicks play! I had a friend and he was like, if you

like this, you should check out these bands like Lightning Bolt.

How old were you then?I saw them a few times when I was a little kid, but I think the first time I saw them and went holy shit! was when I was twelve? They played at a C4 Live At Yours thing. I went to it!

The one where they covered ‘Umbrella’ by Rihanna?Yeah! That was awesome!

I like all music, so why can’t I make all music?

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So your parents have really allowed you to be engaged with music from a young age?Yeah!

Under that light, What has been the importance of your mother been to your development as a musician?Iona has been great. She is just really helpful with anything I need to do whenever I need to have a show, or need a lift anywhere. She is usually quite happy to do it, which has been really awesome.

Now, when did Bandicoot finish up, and what happened after that?That was at the beginning of sixth form, so two years ago. Since then I’ve played in Fat Angry Man, Kitsuengari and Halloween. These have all been pretty short band projects, and I never really intend that , but something always fucks up. Like with Kitsuengari, Taylor moved to Wellington at the beginning of the year. We hadn’t done anything for six months though, so it was kinda like, meh. With Halloween, Liam wanted to take his other band Cool Cult more seriously. So for different reasons things fuck up, so I do something else.

Where do you find these people?A lot of the time they are from school. All of Kitsuengari were from school, apart from the second drummer who we met through The

DHDFDs. Liam [from Cool Cult] I had gone to primary school with him. But generally they are just people I know or people I meet around at shows.

What has the importance of Muzai Records been to the band side of your music?Benji [Jackson from Muzai] was just really helpful with Bandicoot and Kitsuengari. He got it out there, I had no idea what to do with making an EP when I was fifteen. It was good to have someone who could help out and show me what I needed to do.

And at what point did you start doing your live hip-hop performances?I’d say that was in Google Cops. That was our joke rap thing. We rapped over dubstep. This was at the end of 2010. Me and Kieran had always made dubstep together. We’d rapped together once before. We thought we would do it for fun at a party this girl asked us to play at. I wasn’t in any proper bands at the time, so we just decided to rap over some dubstep beats that we had made.

What was happening culturally at the time that made you want to go and do rap music?Partially it was to do with Odd Future. I was real into Odd Future, but the other guys weren’t really. Odd Future was a really cool do it yourself kind of thing. Like how they put about ten albums up for free on their tumblr; and they were all real sick. I still feel that there are so many that have been overlooked.

Does Tommy Ill have any importance to your approach to hip-hop?Kind of initially. Tom was a big supporter of Bandicoot and stuff. I’d say he was an inspiration, seeing white dudes who were hipsters, they were able to rap too and be real sick. You know, you don’t have to be a gangster to be a rapper. I didn’t think you had to be a gangster to rap, but at the time I was listening to Wu-Tang, Biggie, Outkast, so it was cool to see a different side to it.

Where did you take the hip-hop side of things after Google Cops?I always just made beats in my room, all the time. Sometimes I don’t make beats for months, but other times I will make like five in a day. If I am on my computer I’ll look around, find some cool sounds and start making a song. I’ve always just made like that. I think we used two of my beats in Google Cops. Mainly we rapped over stuff that Kieran had made, dubstep stuff. I felt like I could keep doing that because it is fun, and people seemed to like it.

What other hip-hop projects do you have going?Apart from Totems I’m doing an EP with Eno from Super Villians. Me and him are working on a five track EP. Outside of beats and rap I’ve also got a new band called Weed Guys, but we’ve had three line-ups in the last month. We’re a two piece now, we’re just bass and drums, but yeh.

Tell me about the EP with Eno?It’s just five tracks. We’re trying to get some rappers on it maybe, but we’re not sure. Two of the songs are remixes of popular Southern

While we were doing Bandicoot I was making really bad drum and bass on the side on my computer.

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hip-hop songs. One is a Lil’ Wayne remix of ‘Pop Bottles’ and the other is a remix of ‘Sippin’ On Some Sizzurp’ by 3-6-Mafia. But, we’re taking them out of the context of the original song. The ‘Sippin’ On Some Sizzurp’ remix only has the sizzurp sample. It’s a completely different song. We don’t want to be strictly hip-hop though, we want to have all kinds of things going on within it.

Where does Totems sit within this?Totems is just all of my stuff that I make.

Your lonely bedroom music?More or less [laughs]. It just depends on what I am listening to at the time I guess? Lately I have been listening to a lot of 90s dance music. That has influenced a lot of what I have been making lately.

What does Totems let you say musically that you can’t say in these other contexts?I don’t know. I guess Totems is just whatever I want it to be at the time, rather than music by committee? Although a lot of my bands was me writing all the songs and telling people what to do. This seems easier.

Just you telling Fruity Loops what to do?

Exactly! [laughs] It’s just easier doing stuff alone than with people a lot of the time.

Why do you think you have been so interested in speaking in so many different musical vocabularies?I like all music, so why can’t I make all music? Just because I am in a noise band

doesn’t mean I can’t make hip-hop as well? Why not? If I can do it I will do it. It’s just fun man.

Why not have your cake and eat it?Exactly!

What are your intentions for Totems and it’s first release?I just want people to like it really. It’s not so much an album as a beat tape, but at the same time that isn’t right. Really it’s just a collection of all the best stuff I have made in the last couple of years. It’s a summary. I used to make beats to sporadically to ever have an EP. Lately though I’ve been working a lot more on them. About a month ago I was thinking, and I thought why don’t I just put it all in an album for people to download? I have so much shit on my computer that no one has ever heard. Stuff that I have never put up on the internet even. Whenever I have an

idea for a beat I put it on my soundcloud, just to see peoples responses to it. If people seem to like it, I will continue on, and if people don’t like it, I will try and make it better. I don’t know.

So there is a bit of a committee thing going on, you let the internet A&R your songs?Yeah. And I think that is a good way of doing it. You just load something onto the internet and people can see it. I guess I was influenced by Lil B in that regard?

Tell me about the video clip you have just done?Me and my friends just made it. It’s really evil trippy kind of imagery that goes with the song. We filmed it all ourselves.

by Martyn Pepperell

I was like, man! I wanna be like Concord Dawn!

hear totems attotems.bandcamp.com

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7RECORDZ

The Men – Open Your HeartCountry, noise, rock n’ roll, soundscapes and punk songs. Snapshot of a long dark highway eclipsed by an endless night. Driving past stretches of burning terrain, you close your eyes and are greeted with a montage of wounded animals, faces wrapped in leather, lonely figures screaming from a graveyard of dissected hearts and muffled echo. Bodies of hunchbacked guitars bewildered beneath a ceiling of stars. A collection of primal, raw, beautiful and intricate constellations of sound.

Standouts: Oscillation, Animal The Men are a four piece from Brooklyn, New York

Grimes – VisionsYou’re dizzy, you check your watch and it’s an hour after midnight, you tilt your head upwards to witness an assemblage of colored lights. This is your wild confusion, your cold-blooded ecstasy, captured in a cybernetic dream. This is digital candy. Grimes is a heavily textured, gloomy, shiny, postmodern, and electronic ghost of pop music. Vocals like a switchblade drenched in jelly, containing a sharp, melodic killer instinct. This is music for dancing under a falling neon sky.

Standouts: Oblivion, Color of Moonlight

Grimes, is a Canadian-born artist, musician, and music video director

Lana Del Rey – Born To DieBittersweet hooks coupled with a creeping melancholy. She sings mostly retro pop songs over hip-hop beats. Super feminine. The record plays out like a hyper romantic diary of a suburban princess. Her image and sound are a star-crossed combination. Some songs sound a little too typecast and lack genuine personality. A red plastic rose aiming for perfection but falling flat due to an absence of life and vigor. The singles are amazing.

Standouts: Blue Jeans, Video Games Lana Del Rey, is an American singer-songwriter

Adrian Ng

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Death Grips – The Money StoreChaotic, drug-fucked, cannibal hip-hop? Beats are glitchy, grimy and heavy. Cyclones of swirling, sometimes-abrasive synth and muddy bass. These dudes sound pissed and channel it through their thick British accents, showcasing an arsenal, which includes quite a bit of shouting and occasional chanting. Sometimes he’s rapping and sometimes I think he is hardcore punk rock. What

you have here is some seriously dark shit, dipped in acid and soaked in Alex Delarge’s brooding stare. Consume if you’re in the mood for a bit of the old ultra violence.

Standouts: Hustle Bones, Get Got Death Grips is a group from Sacramento, California

Gross Magic – Teen JamzVelvet Goldmine anyone? I thought that movie tried too hard to be a movie about David Bowie even though it wasn’t a movie about David Bowie and that made me cringe a little. It was still entertaining, even though the songs were nowhere near as good as David Bowie songs. Don’t worry, influences are channeled quite a bit here but it’s not cringe worthy. It’s pretty fun in fact. Maybe a tiny dash of Nirvana somewhere, Smith Westerns

but not as consistent. It sort of sounds like a T. Rex record, some songs catchy, some songs filler, some slow jams, and some boogies. Pretty much all glam. Standouts: PYT, Sweetest Touch

Gross Magic is the name that Brighton-based musician Sam McGarrigle has chosen to release his music under

Beach House - BloomGlistening reverb soaked tunes with soaring vocals; Slow paced pop of a majestic nature. Their previous album but with different song names. A calm, audible representation of spacious green fields and double rainbows, a soundtrack to angels having sex. Some breathtaking moments but not much variation in terms of sound. I think they’re really good, I wonder though if Beach House records all their albums in Narnia. They

just sound really magical, fairytale like, which is good, if you can handle it.Standouts: Other People, New Year Beach House is a duo formed in 2004 in Baltimore, Maryland

M. Ward – A Wasteland CompanionThis is just a really friendly folk pop record. Actually it’s pretty fifties influenced too. I hear a bit of Buddy Holly and Elvis. There’s nothing particularly bad on here, nothing that’s outstanding. I quite like M. Ward, he does everything pretty well. He’s a good producer too and that aspect might sound familiar if you’ve listened to some of his previous material. He always has this light reverb, retro sheen on his

records. This isn’t really on par with his best though. Check out the albums “Transfiguration of Vincent” or “Transistor Radio”. Anyways, this is pretty solid.

Standouts: Primitive Girl, The First Time I Ran Away M. Ward, is a singer-songwriter and guitarist who rose to prominence in the Portland, Oregon music scene.

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