Music | Shake It: Polaroid Kiss win friends with synth-y bleeps and boops but, so far, no label-maker.

In less than one year, Salt Lake City’s Polaroid Kiss has accomplished things that might cause musicians in more metropolitan cities to shake their fists in the air. How, they must be asking, does a band with no formal public-relations or marketing team and who’ve scarcely played out or even recorded a full-length album accumulate 26,000-plus MySpace friends? How do they receive international airplay and acclaim for their one single and receive requests to perform live with established European-based artists including Chris Corner, aka IAMX, formerly of Sneaker Pimps?

Polaroid Kiss guitarist Tim Burgess—the most recent addition to the quartet—shrugs and, with a slight smile, replies “I think people are getting sick of traditional guitar-driven bands. That’s been done so much in the past few years. They want something new.” Or retro.
If the runaway success of Polaroid Kiss is any indication, synthesizer-driven bands are making a big comeback. Of course, that’s discounting those who never ever stopped loving electronic bands.
Producer, songwriter and jack-of-all-instruments Brandun Reed says that Polaroid Kiss has received a great deal of attention in Europe, especially in Manchester and Berlin.
“Germans love synth. The old joke is, when America had Kiss, Germany had Kraftwerk,” co-producer/multi-instrumentalist Earl Dixon says.
Reed and Georgia-born vocalist Tom Bennett founded Polaroid Kiss in December 2006 following a lively conversation about their divergent musical tastes at a local dance club. Reed and Bennett are both DJs who adore electronic music, but the bulk of Bennett’s vocal experience—true to his Southern roots—has been fronting folk, acoustic and indie acts including Salt Lake City trio O Discordia, a far cry from the abrasive post-punk music that Reed generally enjoys.
Reed and Bennett wanted to produce highly danceable music that begged for multiple rotations at the club. Intelligent, catchy lyrics were also a must. Reed eventually invited Dixon—who has been friends with Reed since the fifth grade—and Burgess to join Polaroid Kiss to ensure a fuller, more developed sound.
Reed and Bennett’s vision is finally starting to come together. Their first single, the moody-yet-infectious Faint, New Order and Nine Inch Nails-influenced “White Lines and White Lies,” has fared well online and in several local clubs where it’s often blasted on repeat. Reed notes that he has even witnessed several people singing along as they dance.
“We’ve really taken our time,” Reed says. “Although we had a lot of ideas from the beginning, we didn’t rush into the recording studio or start booking shows immediately. We made an effort to put a lot of thought into what we’re doing.”
Bennett says Polaroid Kiss is in the process of recording a full-length debut with (fingers crossed) Kelli Ali—another former member of Sneaker Pimps—as guest vocalist. “Her management contacted us because they liked our sound,” Reed says.
Word of mouth still hasn’t landed Polaroid Kiss a proper label, though, and they’re on the hunt for a home. “I’ve always been happy to work really hard and do things myself. I’ve always made my own merchandise, for instance,” says Bennett, who has fronted bands since age 15. “But it does get really exhausting, and it would be nice to eventually have someone to help us with that.”
Reed says Polaroid Kiss’ first major live performance will include a carefully choreographed light show and several other flourishes. “Even though our music is very danceable, I want to make sure we put on a really good performance. Sometimes electronic music isn’t the most exciting thing to see live. We want to make our shows very enjoyable for the audience.”

Music | What is a Menomena? If you have to ask …

When the first Menomena album I Am the Fun Blame Monster (FilmGuerrero) showed up in the mail lo those few years ago, it was easy to dismiss them on name alone: “What the hell is a Menomena?” Not wanting an answer, and noting that the animated flipbook packaging would be highly collectible—y’know, assuming the cheeky band was any good—I stored it unheard for lo most of those few years until trusted friends dropped their funny little name, saying “Yeah, they are. Good.”

How does Brent Knopf, one of the Portland group’s three singer/multi-instrumentalists, feel about his album being held over until it’s ripe for eBay? “[Early on], that was the goal,” he says while roaming a Japanese garden in his hometown. “We realize that the music’s not worth listening to, but the packaging will hopefully be worth keeping.”

Friend and Foe, Menomena’s new Barsuk Records debut, continues the tradition of elaborate cover art—with hidden messages, decoder rings, die-cut shapes—that can be arranged to suit the listener’s visual tastes. Designed by cult graphic novelist Craig Thompson (Blankets), it’s also ripe for online auctions … if it wasn’t so good. Explaining Friend and Foe’s worth—and what it sounds like—is difficult, almost as complex as its artwork. Knopf and bandmates Justin Harris and Danny Seim don’t even try anymore. It’s not that they’re overly precious, describing their music as both organic and intelligently designed—like bonsai trees in a Japanese garden, if you will. It’s just tough and, frankly, complicated. They’ve explained themselves countless times and, in a statement issued through Barsuk, they’ve implied they’d rather leave it at this:
Most Menomena songs are the mutant result of what we call “Deeler Sessions.” Deeler is a computer program that Brent wrote in Max/MSP that is basically a glorified guitar-loop pedal. The result of a Deeler Session is a bunch of loop .aiff files that work together in some way. Later these loop files are often arranged into Menomena songs, with vocals usually added later in the process, and instrumental parts often being re-recorded. This explains why most of our songs are loop-based.
So technical, so boring—but it gets us closer to answering the hot question long ago posed by crusty, crotchety Muppet philosophers/hecklers Statler and Waldorf. Following a Muppet Show rendition of Piero Umiliani’s softcore porn hit “Mah N? Mah N?,” Statler asks his life partner, “The question is, what is a Menomena?”
Are they the result of an intersection between technology and right-brain function? The crossroads where artificial intelligence hovercraft and soul trains exchange insurance information? Hell, I don’t know. Probably not. The urge to say it’s just good festers alongside the catch-all critical handicap: a pop-culture reference equation. Perhaps something in a: Menomena = (Pink Floyd Can Steely Dan) / Kindercore laptop (Freemasonry x Art Bell) x (indie2 – math rock)?
Alas, as usual, it gets us close to nowhere and makes the head hurt. Here’s givin’ description a whirl.
Apropos of nothing and everything, Menomena uses instruments and machines to paint in broad strokes the image of a tapestry woven of musical threads started at various points in the last half-century. They frame it and, with a nail gun, affix an engraved plaque bearing the title: “Music: 1957–2007, Onward.”
In other words, their sound siphons from and references a dizzying selection of genres. One moment “Muscle’n Flo” melds indie yelps to quasi-break beats and fractured pedal-steel guitar. “Rotten Hell” distills Mark Mallman’s tip-jar-and-pill-bottle piano with some of Harold Budd’s beautiful, lecherous tinkling on La Bella Vista into atmospheric absinthe as gorgeous and trance-inducing as My Morning Jacket interpreting Neil Young’s Harvest. “The Pelican” takes the clattering cash-register funk of Pink Floyd’s “Money” to Philip K. Dick’s house for free-associations, cold sweats and intermittent expressions of anxiety and paranoia. On “Wet and Rusting,” clipped acoustic strumming, hallucinatory dings and disembodied vocals deliver a hot-stone massage for the ears.
Stranger still is how these distillations fluctuate within each song. There are copious side trips, from sparse four-note interludes to shit that sounds like Phillip Glass and Trent Reznor holding hands in Narnia. Opening the Menomena Russian nesting doll just exposes more weird little Weebles. Searching for explanations or attempting to divine a methodology or uncover blueprints takes the fun out of it.
“We’re very peculiar and very normal at the same time,” Knopf says, conceding Menomena’s inexplicability. Perhaps Muppet Waldorf’s rhetorical response to his partner’s query is the only accurate explanation. Turning to his partner, the jowly, Wilford Brimley-esque Medicare Muppet cracks, “The question is, who cares?”

The Helio Sequence

It's Personal: The Helio Sequence can’t quit us.

The Helio Sequence like us. They really like us. The tour for their most recent album, Keep Your Eyes Ahead (Sub Pop), wrapped two months back, and they’ve been holed up writing and recording in Portland ever since. That off-cycle creative time is precious, but when Will Sartain called to ask Brandon Summers (guitar, harmonica, vocals) and Benjamin Weikel (drums) to play a one-off in Salt Lake City to close out the City Weekly Music Awards, they said OK—just for us! Really. There are no other Helio Sequence shows booked until June, when they’ll tour the U.K. with Keane. We’re special. Here’s why: “We love Salt Lake City,” says Summers. Doesn’t every band say that? It’s no stroke. THS met Sartain when he booked Kilby Court in “2001 or 2002, right after Young Effectuals came out.” Sartain’s band Redd Tape opened the show, and they struck up a friendship. “Ever since then, it’s been one of our favorite places to play in the whole country.” Go ahead and enjoy the warm fuzzies for a second. It’s nice to be wanted, especially by a cool band—a loud, loud band whose songs incorporate the whiz-bleep gadgetry of electronic music pioneer Bruce Haack, melodic sensibility of little-known melodymakers Lennon and McCartney, and just a spiritual touch of The Black Keys’ Thickfreakness. And that’s before The Helio Sequence got really good, in kind of a roundabout way. It started on tour for their 2004 Sub Pop debut, Love and Distance. Summers’ vocal style, a barbaric, indie-rock yawp-yelp, began to shred his vocal cords. At first, he self-medicated with whiskey—not exactly a “coats, soothes, relieves” remedy—and kept delivering the vox as best he could. Soon, that meant Summers had to cease talking during the day. Eventually, he lost his voice entirely. “It was a compound of bunch of little things I was doing wrong and over-stressing myself and my voice,” he says. A post-tour doctor visit led to a compulsory two-month singing moratorium. Summers had to consider the possibility he’d ruined his pipes, but a daily regimen of Throat Coat tea, vocal exercises and jogging set him back on track. He maintains the routine today, considering it “just taking care of myself,” the same way he’d brush his teeth or comb his hair. “I make sure I warm up, and don’t play a show when I haven’t been singing for months at a time. And usually, things are all right.” The music, however, wasn’t the same. In the downtime, Summers’ and Weikel’s appreciation for songwriting bubbled up to the surface. The songs became less baroque, with the effects dialed down so the lyrics were more audible. Turns out, Summers had more of a voice, figuratively speaking, than he or we thought. The subsequent album, Keep Your Eyes Ahead, was a feast for fans. The electronic elements remained, albeit with a drowsy, ambient presence, that underscored a more vivid indie-rock sound that incorporates Brit-pop and Tim Buckley folk. “It was an opportunity to be stripped of everything and to rebuild—not just my voice, but my creativity. To rebuild the way I think about creation,” Summers says. “Benjamin and I write songs together and that influenced a lot of the music [on that album].” As the two wrote for Keep Your Eyes Ahead—and continue to write for the new, as-yet-untitled album—they’re more conscious of songs and arrangement. Part of that comes from the band’s self-production ethos. “It’s not just writing, but knowing what makes a recording work or not work. And you just become more conscious of these things over time,” Summers says. “In looking at songs in general, something that has a deeper meaning, a lyrical meaning, stands up stronger over time than something that has cool sounds or a cool beat. There’s a lot more going on in a song, and the further we go in our writing, the more we concentrate on that side of things.” The new songs have opened up a whole new world for Summers and Weikels. With the themes up-front, their fans identify more personally with the material. “Fans come up and actually wanna talk about something that was in a song, or just talk in general,” Summers says. It’s something that happened before to The Helio Sequence, but not to such an extent. Fans approach Summers and Weikels to share personal stories that the musicians feel they’d ordinarily share only with trusted friends. “The songs you write,” says Summers, “are an indication of who you are. People feel that they know you a lot better. Which is interesting for me. It’s actually very flattering that they get so personal and very open. That means a lot to me. That’s what music is about. I feel like I know, almost personally, the people that create the music that I love. I probably don’t, but it’s that feeling when you actually connect wit

h something.”

Music | Local CD Revue: Subrosa, Chaz Prymek

Subrosa, Strega?
Since their ramshackle house-party debut two years ago, heavy-folk quartet Subrosa has established a ferocious confidence that translates best onstage, with singer/guitarist Rebecca Vernon staring daggers and breathing fire over banshee beats and eerie electric violin. Many groups struggle to translate such live intensity to studio recordings, and while Subrosa’s earliest efforts (namely rough four-track demos) came close, Strega only succeeds in fits and starts. When the record peaks, it slays with haunting, full-bodied tracks including “Strega,” “Black Joan” and “Go Down, Moses,” a cool number with chants echoing through what sounds like an ancient temple. An ancient, evil temple, of course. Also up there, “Christine,” although it seems like a mistake to eliminate the deliciously bratty taunts that propelled the original version’s chorus. Others, namely “Crucible” and “How to Neglect Your Heart,” lose much in translation, with muffled vocals and violin that’s muted in all the wrong places. A solid effort, and worth picking up, but we’ll still hold out hope that Subrosa will continue to grow. 
Chaz Prymek, Everything is Wrong, Everything is Fine
Chaz Prymek might seem like a mellow dude, but this low-key artist is living on the edge! Seriously. These days, it can be difficult to push a record that’s not loud, fast and/or out-of-control. Modern music lovers want a challenge—a break from the sounds that defined so many generations before them. What, however, could be more difficult than convincing risk-takers to settle down with a collection of intimate acoustic-guitar instrumentals? Prymek’s short-and-sweet LP demands listeners to pause, perhaps put on a pair of headphones, and close their eyes while the nimble-fingered guitarist manipulates strings without amps, vocals or look-ma-no-hands virtuosity. Even the occasional bass, spare electric guitar and trumpet take a backseat to Prymek’s intricate compositions. Bonus points for cool accents like the sound of water droplets trickling slowly on “A Jacuzzi Scene.” One complaint: It might help to mix things up a bit. By the end of the album, it’s easy to … sorry, I just zoned out.

Caroline's Spine

Showing Backbone: Jimmy Newquist of Caroline’s Spine has no trouble keeping up with the times.

    

Caroline’s Spine cuts a familiar figure on Salt Lake City stages. Jimmy Newquist’s musical hard-rock combo is a longtime favorite at local clubs, going back to the mid-’90s. Their appeal goes beyond the music, with members employing good old-fashioned backbone and work ethic to “make it” in a fickle industry.

Caroline’s Spine’s self-titled debut established Newquist as a songwriting force. He also played nearly all of the instruments on that Anza Records release.

“It was a very cool process I don’t plan on repeating,” he quips. Producing plugged-in renditions of Newquist’s acoustic songs has been a formula that’s proven itself over a decade-and-a-half for the musician.

Not that his music is formulaic. Songs like “Why Don’t We Get Along” and “I Will Be Alright” pair highly personal lyrics with catchy, powerful melodies to fuel fun live shows.

After three albums for Anza, Newquist and the other musicians who by this time comprised the “Spine” had built up enough momentum that they got signed by major label Hollywood Records in the late ’90s, released two albums—Monsoon and Attention Please—and toured with Aerosmith and Kiss. It was the last of the heyday of the major label monarchies, but the experience of working with master producers Roy Thomas Baker (Aerosmith, Pearl Jam), Nick Didia (Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Stone Temple Pilots) and Eric Taylor proved invaluable.

In addition to his songwriting savvy, Newquist was smart enough to cut ties with Hollywood in 2000, later starting his own label, 7thkidinc—a nod to his place in a family of eight children. 7thkidinc is a vehicle for his own work, as well as that of documentary filmmakers. His entrepreneurial skills helped the band navigate the major-label rapids and adapt to the landscape afterward, using new media to engage with new audiences.

Caroline’s Spine didn’t sleep through MySpace, but used it to help popularize their 10th studio album, Work It Out (2008). While the band has sold more than 1 million units collectively, Newquist seems more excited about the fact that the single “The Light Inside” is their second-most-downloaded hit to date.

Work It Out doesn’t necessarily represent a new direction for the group so much as a refined approach. It’s also one of their strongest collections, “The Light Inside“ just hinting at the self-assuredness that has grown since Newquist’s initial songs to an impressive body of work true to his original inspirations. “I think our following has always been the same,” he maintains, and a sizeable portion of that fan base resides here in the Beehive State. “People in Utah know what Caroline’s Spine is all about.”
After their live gigs, the band heads straight to a recording studio outside Phoenix to record three new songs, the next chapter in the Caroline’s Spine story, followed by 40 or 50 additional dates. Newquist anticipates that “2010 is going to be a much busier year than I thought.” 

Music | Pandemonium: Noise rockers Demons project their beautiful noise onstage'and onscreen.

  When writing about art, it’s good to throw in big words to make you sound smart and sophisticated (this trick also works with scientific stuff). Synesthesia is an example of one of these smart words. It fits nicely in both categories and is also a very important term for understanding the band Demons. Synesthesia is the “neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway” (according to the very sophisticated Wikipedia). Basically, it’s your mind activating another sense in addition to the one you’re immediately experiencing.

For examples of synesthesia, all we have to do is look to MTV and classic cinematic moments. It’s nearly impossible to listen to “Stuck in the Middle with You” now without also thinking of the Mr. Blond-torture scene in Reservoir Dogs. Or try listening to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” without zombies dancing through your head. I bet you can’t even listen to the Psycho theme without wanting to do the stabby stab-motion. These examples are more than just connotations; they’re images that are so ingrained in our minds that they’ve become innate when we hear the corresponding audio trigger. Demons rely on this phenomenon to create what they call “visual music.”
During Hurricane Katrina, Steve Kenney retreated to Michigan, abandoning his beloved Pro One synthesizer in the weather-ravaged New Orleans. Upon returning, he found that his synth had become a moldy buzz-machine. But the horrible noise proved too intriguing to be dismissed and Kenney decided to keep the broken machine to utilize the variety of new sounds that it could now produce. Kenney’s friend and Wolf Eyes member Nate Young liked the new sound machine so much he decided to get one for himself. Meanwhile, friend and visual artist, Alivia Zivich found the pair’s droning sound to be the perfect soundtrack for her video collages.
“A few years ago I was living in L.A., and I saw this visual music retrospective on a variety of artists,” Zivich says. “There were just a ton of abstract animations, from guys painting on glass and the very types of analog computer animation. I thought ‘this is incredible!’ I couldn’t understand why this wasn’t still happening.”
Playing under the name Video Madness, Zivich would forward her love of abstract animation by projecting crude, analog images and manipulating them in accordance with the music that Kenney and Young would give her. It wasn’t long before the demand for new music was so high that they just integrated Zivich into their live performances and Demons was born. As one of the few bands that have incorporated a live image-player, Demons truly are the “visual musicians” they pride themselves on being.
“We thought that that would be an interesting idea for a band to have a visual element rather than just watching two guys sitting there turning knobs,” Zivich says. “Visual music is such broad term but mainly it’s a crossover for your brain. It describes the sensation when you’re hearing a piece of music and you close your eyes and the song becomes more expressive that way and you use more of your senses. We’re trying to bring that experience to you.”
Zivich’s complex system of manipulation includes two TVs, one is sound reactive and the other displays video feedback. She then uses two cameras pointed at these televisions that project on overlaying plastic and Mylar. To top it off she has a homemade video mixer to provide her with as much control as technologically possible. “Really, what I’m doing is listening very intently while translating the sound into something visual. Obviously, I can’t control stuff like oscillation and feedback, but the mixer allows me to reign control on pretty much anything else,” she says.
“What we try to do is something different than 99 percent of the bands you normally see,” she continues. “You’re not looking at people, but rather looking at imagery that’s created by the sound. It’s like a moving painting. It’s more pleasurable for your sense of sight and hard for your mind to wander. It’s just one step more engaging.”

It Takes Two: The Get Down get it right on Wednesdays.

nThe bubbling noises coming from Kyle Erickson’s living room huka are so frequent, they sound like part of the music thumping out of his speakers. Erickson, aka Flash n’ Flare, reminisces with fellow DJ Lance Trimble, aka Roksteady. The duo recently started a Wednesday residency at W Lounge known as The Get Down. Their style is best described as indie electro-dance music, but their set also features a strong fusion of hip-hop, soul and other styles. Someday, they might leave as big of an impression as DJ Trip left on them after a live set at the Hotel. n“Yeah, that was a total Wayne’s World moment, like, ‘We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!’” Trimble says, to which Erickson replies, “He really dwarfed us—we saw how far we have to go.”
nnCity Weekly: What do you think of Salt Lake DJ’s?
nFlash n’ Flare: We have some really good DJs and we have some that shouldn’t even have the letters D and J in front of their name.
nCW: Names, please?
nFNF: Ha, no. But I will say there are some really skilled DJs like Sam Eye Am, Chase-One and Knuckles. They’ve all got a lot of respect.
nCW: Is being technical really that important? It seems promoting has become the largest role of a good DJ.
nFNF: Yeah, I personally suck at promoting. But some guys are good at it, and they may just be pushing play, but they know how to fill a club and know what will keep the crowd moving.
nRoksteady: I find myself saying time and time again, “Hype kills.” I always hear all this hype about a show, or about a DJ, and I go, and I’m just unimpressed. So for us, along with the guys at the W lounge, we all agreed, let’s let the music speak for itself.
nCW: How is the Salt Lake City crowd from a DJ’s perspective?
nRoksteady: I think [Salt Lake City] can sometimes be difficult because people claim they want to hear the latest and greatest, but if they go out and don’t hear the tracks they know, they kind of get turned off. In Los Angeles, DJs can probably play stuff that people don’t know yet and still fill the club. So here in Salt Lake City, we’ve just got to find that perfect balance.
nCW: During the ’80s, DJs were more of a backdrop to the MCs. Why do you think we’re seeing more DJs as touring solo artists?
nFNF: There was a time when Daft Punk blew up and Fatboy Slim was all over the place. A lot of European DJs were all over MTV for a while, but it kind of went away from that and moved more towards rap. But now you’ve got people like Flosstradamus. People are going back to dance. I don’t know if they are dancing more because of the new DJs or if DJs are just feeding off the demand for dancing. People are dancing to hard electro-shit, and that used to be really rare.
nCW: What would you say to someone who says a DJ is not an artist?
nRoksteady: Let me show you what it takes to make a mix and a remix. As soon as they realize that you’re manipulating something with your hands, you’re checking the tone of something, you might be doing a mash-up that’s something brand new that nobody’s heard before. It all takes creativity and if you’re doing something manually that takes creativity. That’s art.
nFNF: I think that scratching alone is almost like picking a guitar. You have to train your hand in a certain way. Nobody can just walk in and do that on a record, I mean, it takes years and years of practice.
nCW: What can people expect out of your Wednesday sets?
nRoksteady: People can expect good, new music, every week—music that hits all those different genres. Just come out and get ready to dance, because we’re just going to take that beat and carry it from 9 p.m. until 2 a.m.

Jucifer

War Report: Rock nomads Jucifer return with Throned in Blood.

There are other sludge-metal bands, even other loud two-piece husband-wife duos, but then there is Jucifer. The name is enough to strike terror into shuddering eardrums. The two-member onslaught of Gazelle Amber Valentine (vocals, guitar) and Edgar Livengood (drums—what bitchin’ rock star names!) formed in 1993, releasing one album after another, juggernauts of sheer sound tempered with moments of poppy insolence, brash punk and banjo breakdowns. After their last album, the massive double-set L’Autrichienne, a theme album about the French Revolution, they are set to release Throned in Blood, a deceptively brief yet dense-as-dark-matter disc about war.

That in itself isn’t so remarkable, human conflict being heavy metal’s stock in trade. But an album by them makes you feel like you’ve lived—no, endured—the subject matter. A song like “Work Will Make Us Free” from Throned In Blood is uncomfortable with its bleak, trudging rhythms that feel like feet leading to the concentration camps that bore the German version of that inscription above their gates. You might think the music was the product of intense research, but Valentine says it’s less pedantic: “We both read all the time and watch educational shows when we get a chance. If you’re interested in stuff like history and human nature, it’s fascinating.”

But it’s not a scholastic exercise. She notes, “Music is really emotional for us, and when we learn about something that touches us, we kind of exorcise those feelings by putting them into songs.”

Jucifer isn’t just a band to the pair—it’s a lifestyle, living in an RV in between shows, as nomadic as ancient warriors. She calls it an “edge lifestyle.” One of the few things they do share with other bands is the two-piece configuration. “It used to be annoying when we were treated as weirdos for being a two-piece. Now it’s annoying when someone thinks we’re jumping on a trend, since in the last few years a bunch of loud, heavy two-piece bands have come out, and some of them have copied a lot about our show.”

“We’ve always approached our records like movie soundtracks,” she adds of their cinematic quality. “We like to feel that a record takes you somewhere. But before L’Autrichienne, we never made the concepts we were building albums around clear. We used to think it was better to be subtle. But we learned that subtlety can mean the story getting overlooked, which is pretty tragic when you’ve put so much thought into mapping it out.”

This album is yet another departure for the band, whose past few releases have been on Relapse Records, as they’ve started their own label, Nomadic Fortress. Like everything they do, it’s by sheer design. “Everything in our lives points us toward wanting autonomy and a streamlined existence,” Valentine says. “To focus and be and do purely what we believe. As part of expressing what we want to express in the most pure way possible, we’ve always wanted to have our own label, and before now, we just didn’t feel that we were ready to take it on. Now we are. And we’re really happy about being able to license the vinyl to Alternative Tentacles. Jello Biafra being a fan of ours still totally blows our minds.“

Here barely six months ago, Valentine notes that they don’t get to Salt Lake City much, but this is a “quickie” before they depart for Europe in April. You can expect them to hit Burt’s like a beachhead.

“Burt’s is awesome, especially now that they’ve expanded. We played it the first time years ago when it was just the tiny bar. Our equipment took up so much of the standing room that people had to push Edgar’s ride cymbal out of the way to get to the bathrooms!”

Music | Grade A: The Meat Puppets stay relevant.

  "I want to come off as pathetic, grasping yet gratified on every level. That’s the kind person I want to come across as.” n

For all intents and purposes, bassist Cris Kirkwood’s parting words over a telephone conversation should be taken with a heavy heart, seeing how his band The Meat Puppets are the reason shows like Behind the Music exist. Back in the ’80s, the seminal genre-bending band gained fans among the underground music elite, most notably Kurt Cobain, who invited the Kirkwood brothers (Cris and Kurt) to play along during three Meat Puppets songs on Nirvana’s Unplugged album. nAfter the modest hit albums Too High to Die and No Joke!, Kirkwood began a well-publicized descent into drugs; his wife overdosed and he became estranged from his brother, who continued to write music as a solo artist.
nYet, Kirkwood remains optimistic. “I fucking hurt myself pretty bad. The tragedy was unnecessary, avoidable, and I’ll never get over it. But I’m not going to let it control me or make me who I am. Now, it’s just a fucking blast for Kurt and I to be back together again,” he says.
nAfter nearly seven years of separation, Cris and Kurt got back together for the 2007 release Rise to Your Knees, an album full of tenderness and sensibility. Whereas most of their peers had either faded into obscurity or were recording the same dated ’90s-music, Rise to Your Knees had shown that the two had matured and that the Meat Puppets could remain relevant in the ’00s.
n“I don’t think we make a conscious effort to remain relevant; we were careful to not paint ourselves into a corner, but that’s more incidental in the fact that it’s the art that we like to make,” Kirkwood says. “Music today is more genre-specific: Punk-rock scene, alt scene, etc. Where we were coming from artistically, that’s the way that we want to play music.”
nThe band continues their foray into reluctant maturity by playing songs from the forthcoming Sewn Up, due in late March
n“Using music as an art-form,” Kirkwood continues, “it’s going to be affected by whatever period of age that you’re at, relationship with yourself, or the instrument you use—you grow with it. Kurt and I aren’t cut out to do anything else than this.”

Felix Cartal

Popular Mechanics: Felix Cartal sticks with the program.

Felix Cartal is a mystery man in plain sight. The DJ/producer is on all the social networks—Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr. His nuanced, Technicolor house music is online in abundance at the aforementioned services, as well as on track and album-share blogs and various MP3 retailers. Naturally, he has FelixCartal.com staked out and active to the point that he shares the nitty-gritty technical details of his creative process. Try to draw a bead on Cartal the person, though, and you’ll find little more than his real name (Taelor Deitcher) and city (Vancouver). He lacks even a Wikipedia entry, which even the most inconsequential musicians seem to boast lately. “I don’t think there’s an intentional idea behind it,” Felix says in a mellow drone, but “at first, it was fun to toy with [anonymity].” At least, it is until Cartal gets associated on Google—via a common spelling error—with the notorious Arellano-Felix drug cartel. “I’ve never tried to associate myself with that, by any means; that’s actually sort of an unfair coincidence for me.” Another unfair association would be to juxtapose Felix with earthy 1980s cock rockers Tesla. It’s not because of their stylistic divergence, but rather the band’s well-documented “No Machines” stance toward the use of keyboards and computers in musical performance. Tesla’s position was ironic (their namesake is mechanical engineer Nikola Tesla), but so is Cartal’s. One might expect him to be reflexively defensive of his craft, but he’s eye-to-eye with Tesla on the musicianship count. “I hate the term ‘live’ for DJing,” he told Monday Magazine in December, “because it’s not really live, no matter what you do. I manipulate recorded sounds.” In the week that his debut album Popular Music gets a digital release, Cartal stands by his words. While dance music entails technique and artistry, it is mechanical or, at least, automated. As bass player and vocalist in the indie-rock band Orange Orange, he knows what he’s talking about. “When you’re playing live, the charm behind it is that you can make mistakes. You can hit a wrong note, or my drummer could be late on the two or the four.” With programmed music, these goofs don’t happen. “You press ‘play’ … and it’s not ever going to fuck up.” The other aspect of Tesla’s and others’ gripes was that machines drain the emotion from music. Cartal agrees that, generally speaking, dance music is rather a one- or two-note genre, always happyhappyhappy or trippy-mellow—but that’s the point. “In the simplest terms, it’s a party. You can’t overthink it.” Dance music is about letting go, not navel-gazing. That’s probably why Cartal doesn’t bog down his Websites with solipsism. Instead, he opens up through his music, although rarely via direct lyrical expression. Mostly, he’s subtle, like in the video-game humor of “World Class Driver” or the sublime tones of “Something Nice.” And when Cartal is straightforward, like when he blogs about the track “Montreal Dreams” (Skeleton, 2009), he shares only so much. The track, writte

er). He lacks even a Wikipedia entry, which even the most inconsequential musicians seem to boast lately.

“I don’t think there’s an intentional idea behind it,” Felix says in a mellow drone, but “at first, it was fun to toy with [anonymity].” At least, it is until Cartal gets associated on Google—via a common spelling error—with the notorious Arellano-Felix drug cartel. “I’ve never tried to associate myself with that, by any means; that’s actually sort of an unfair coincidence for me.”

Another unfair association would be to juxtapose Felix with earthy 1980s cock rockers Tesla. It’s not because of their stylistic divergence, but rather the band’s well-documented “No Machines” stance toward the use of keyboards and computers in musical performance. Tesla’s position was ironic (their namesake is mechanical engineer Nikola Tesla), but so is Cartal’s. One might expect him to be reflexively defensive of his craft, but he’s eye-to-eye with Tesla on the musicianship count. “I hate the term ‘live’ for DJing,” he told Monday Magazine in December, “because it’s not really live, no matter what you do. I manipulate recorded sounds.”

In the week that his debut album Popular Music gets a digital release, Cartal stands by his words. While dance music entails technique and artistry, it is mechanical or, at least, automated. As bass player and vocalist in the indie-rock band Orange Orange, he knows what he’s talking about. “When you’re playing live, the charm behind it is that you can make mistakes. You can hit a wrong note, or my drummer could be late on the two or the four.” With programmed music, these goofs don’t happen. “You press ‘play’ … and it’s not ever going to fuck up.”

The other aspect of Tesla’s and others’ gripes was that machines drain the emotion from music. Cartal agrees that, generally speaking, dance music is rather a one- or two-note genre, always happyhappyhappy or trippy-mellow—but that’s the point. “In the simplest terms, it’s a party. You can’t overthink it.”

Dance music is about letting go, not navel-gazing. That’s probably why Cartal doesn’t bog down his Websites with solipsism. Instead, he opens up through his music, although rarely via direct lyrical expression. Mostly, he’s subtle, like in the video-game humor of “World Class Driver” or the sublime tones of “Something Nice.” And when Cartal is straightforward, like when he blogs about the track “Montreal Dreams” (Skeleton, 2009), he shares only so much. The track, written in Glasgow as afterglow from his first show in Montreal, is a “personal favorite,” and the city is “one of my favorite cities to visit and DJ in,” he writes, before commencing a lengthy breakdown of the track’s technical ecstasy.

Emotions have their place in music, Cartal says, but “there has to be a balance” between that and the diversion artists represent. “I feel like a lot of rock bands, when they [get deeper] into their careers, they lose the idea that people just want to have fun when they go to concerts.” He doesn’t need to be a celebrity, and won’t inflate his music or his story with so much hot air.

Even when he’s given a chance to give big ups to Salt Lake City when asked about the inspiration for his track “Salty Lake” (also from Skeleton), he keeps it real. Sometimes a song isn’t about anything; it gets its identity from where Cartal was at—geographically—when he wrote it. “It’s as simple as that,” he says, and he’s quite content to let the songs be his identity. “The more music I put out, the more I put myself out there.”