San Fran's Grass Widow, plus openers Coasting, Troop of Echoes and Outdates, bring the girl power to the Flywheel in Easthampton, Mass., on October 17.

Text & photos by Jennifer Kelly

It's a pretty good night for girl power at the Flywheel. Grass Widow, maybe the best of the current crop of female-centric post-punkers, is here from San Francisco to headline, while Coasting, a guitar-and-drums duo from Brooklyn and Nashville that is just starting to make a splash, has the #2 slot. The locals on the bill are more gender neutral - with jazz-rock-fusionists Troop of Echoes holding down for the boys, and shout punk Outdates two-thirds male, but with a long-haired and ethereal looking girl bass player thumping out a Wipers-esque low-end.

Outdates are just finishing up when I arrive, their fast-charging punk rock in the aggressive-but-not-quite-thrashy mode of the Volcano Sons and, as I said, the Wipers. They're not bad, in a hard-shouted, righteous kind of way, playing right down on the floor, amid the kids, Marc Candilore leaning over the mic until he almost touches the nearest people, Andrew McCarthy drumming with full-arm-extended abandon, the bass player Ally Einbinder stoic-faced and resplendent in fishnets. Their last song starts in a bashing, smashing, freight-train attack on the drums, and a raucous, sped-up surf guitar riff that would make Dick Dale proud. Candilore stands motionless, mouth wide-open as he rants into the mic, the kids bouncing off each other and the pillars and the walls.

Troop of Echoes, next, is the only band on the bill to fall outside even the loosest definition of punk rock. They play in the jazz-into-prog-into-experimental territory of all those bands on the Cuneiform label, their grooves a little too complicated for jam, a little too warm and sunny for post-rock. It's like Tortoise, but for dancing (except that, admittedly, sometimes Tortoise is for dancing), the blare of sax wheeling in dissonant abandon over viscous, bouncy basslines.  The bass player, Harrison Hartley, is fun to watch, a big guy, totally enrapt in what he's going, bobbing, weaving, jumping up and down, banging on his four-strings with a borrowed drum stock, and not missing a lick, sometimes locked in dialogue with also-excellent drummer Daniel Moriarty.

The band's evident skill - and its reliance on Peter Gilli's alto and soprano sax for melodic flavor - makes them seem like a grown-up, slightly anarchic version of the world's best high school jazz band. They play an interestingly angular, rhythmically intriguing piece called "Golden Gears", and a slower, smoother, lite-jazzier one named after a city in Maryland. Guitar player Nicholas Cooper switches over to synth for "Little Bird," giving the band an even more pronounced fusion-y flavor, but not in any kind of chilled, hypertechnical, cerebral way. This is post-rock played with the same fever and joy as post-punk. The instruments are different but the enthusiasm is not.

Coasting comes on next, a pair of young women in lady-like summer dresses and flats, whose music is anything but prim. They are, specifically, Madison Farmer on guitar and Fiona Campbell on drums. Campbell lives in Brooklyn and has played with the Vivian Girls. Farmer lives in Nashville now, but the pair of them met in Brooklyn while both working for house show impresario Todd P. After helping out with a parade of DIY shows, the two caught the bug themselves, and Coasting has the rough-edged, rough-housing jubilance of the best kind of untutored music.

To begin with Fiona Campbell hits pretty hard at her kit, setting up rackety, locomotive cadences on tom and snares, then blowing them up with rapid-fire fills and rolls. Farmer is no wallflower either, scrubbing out angular, rubbed-out chord patterns and trading yelped, sung, shouted and spat-out vocal lines with Campbell. The two of them sing in strident unison sometimes, joining, at one point for a joyful, defiant chorus of "You've got that right." Still more often than not, they fill in each other's gaps, Campbell tossing a line out, Farmer tossing it back, guitar breaking into flourishes when the drums stop and drums exploding into sudden scraps of white space. There's an asymmetry to their melodies that you might associate with earlier post-punk bands - Delta 5 and Ut come to mind - but also a flirtation with softer, girl group forms of pop. They're not especially loud, this duo, but they have a kind of unremitting energy that is like high volume, but only softer.

They also are clearly still in the whoa-this-is-so-fun stage of the rock travelogue. At one point, behind her kit, Campbell suggests a song, Farmer plays a looping riff from it, and Campbell breaks out into a huge grin, as if it were her very favorite. They also mention, two or three times, how psyched they are to be playing with Grass Widow. Their excitement - at playing together, at being there, at making these songs - punctuates staccato, wordless choruses with extra exclamation points. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" the one sings. "Oh! Oh! Oh!," the other answers.

Coasting is right to be amped about performing with Grass Widow. They play next, and, after a long, frustrating struggle with the Flywheel's amplification set-up (has anyone ever played here and heard anything in the monitor?), the three of them decide to "Just try it and see what happens."

Grass Widow is a three piece, tall willowy Raven Mahon on guitar, wise-cracking Lillian Maring on drums and Hannah Lew on bass. The three parts seem equally important, Lew's abstract, Cubist-funk bassline intersecting in interesting ways with Maring's blustery beat, challenging the slash and clangor of Mahon's guitars. Vocally, too, the duties (and emphasis) are shared, in tightly coiled calls and responses and blossoming three-part harmonies that glisten like a slick of ice over notched and jittery post-punk mayhem.

Past Time, Grass Widow's first full-length, came out last year on Kill Rock Stars. They plan to release their next, now that KRS is out of business, on their own label. Lew tells me that the second record is done but not quite ready for release. In the meantime, they have some 7" singles out. The set list mixes old stuff and new, starting with long-time staples. There's "Tattoo," with its lacerating beat and soothing harmonies; "Celebrate the Mundane" with deadpan verse and swooping, circling refrain and bass-thumping, out-of-whack-riffed "Out of Body Experience," to start, and then new single "Milo Minute." The blistering post-punk rampage of "Rattled Call" breaks and turns, somehow, in an a cappella madrigal. The three women charge ahead chaotically, arms flying, notes pinging off each other like shrapnel, then when you least expect it, pull back into the sweetest kind of tuneful-ness.

The set closes with "Manniquin," the other side of "Milo Minute," and no one is ready to let them go. Maring explains that they have never liked the idea of an encore, even in Europe where it is almost an insult to an appreciative crowd if you do not walk off the stage, then return for a few more songs. Lew says, "But you can just do this," and turns her back, then turns again to face us. "We're back." And everybody claps. There are two more angular, angsty, oddly pretty songs, and then the night is over. I'd say that if it was a contest - and it probably wasn't - the girls won.

Sounds like classic Who to us! (And that's a good thing...)

By Blurt Staff

Word arrived not long ago that Jan. 1 is the target date for the new Guided By Voices album Let's Go Eat the Factory (on the GBV Inc. label). Meanwhile, a 7" single, "The Unsinkable Fats Domino" b/w "We Won't Apologize", will arrive Nov. 22 via Matador.

You can hear the A-side all over the web by now - like, below - for download or in handy streaming form. It's also at Robert Pollard's website, natch.

"The Unsinkable Fats Domino"

Brand new clip, "Alabama Pines," one of the key tracks on Isbell's latest record.

By Fred Mills

We'll come right out and admit it: here at BLURT we consider Jason Isbell one of our patron saints. He has yet to put out a bad record, and it seems like every time he steps on stage, either solo or with his band The 400 Unit, magic happens. So we're dead chuffed to bring you his new video, for the song "Alabama Pines" off his latest album Here We Rest (Lightning Rod Records).

It's a sleek, country-flavored, deceptively upbeat toe-tapper of a tune that contrasts with its moodier, contemplative lyrical thrust; the images convey a range of emotions that'll be familiar to fellow musicians and road warriors alike (and pay attention to the little girl).

More Isbell at BLURT:

Here We Rest review

Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit review

"Leap Of Faith" interview (April 2011)

The Blurt Video Interview + Unplugged Performance

Isbell and The 400 Unit will be on tour from now until Nov. 13, plus selected additional dates in Nov. and Dec. Check the itinerary at his official website.

The veteran film star plays the power-mad hunchback king to the hilt during a two-week run at San Francisco's Curran Theatre. (Shows run through Oct. 29.)

By JUD COST

Kevin Spacey has been unintentionally groomed to play the lead in Shakespeare's Richard III for decades. And he plays the power-mad, murderous, hunchback king as an uncontrollable force of nature. It's a breathtaking performance to experience in the close confines of San Francisco's Curran Theatre, as Spacey does everything short of confronting the audience directly to accomplish his mission. 

Spacey has a long history of playing unsavory characters. He shone bright in David Mamet's 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross as part of a marvelous ensemble cast that included a roomful of scheming, foul-mouthed real estate salesmen played by Jack Lemon, Alec Baldwin, Al Pacino, Alan Arkin and Ed Harris. Spacey was also right at home with Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce in 1997's L.A. Confidential. Primed by the evidence-tampering in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the movie portrayed rampant corruption within the Los Angeles Police Department. Spacey even played a crippled con artist in 1995's The Usual Suspects and won a best supporting actor Oscar.

Unlike Ian McKellan's version of Richard performed in the 1990's at London's National Theatre and set in Hitler's pretty much humorless Third Reich, Spacey milks certain situations tonight for laughs with the timing of a skilled standup comedian. But when it's time to howl at the moon like a rabid and wounded jackal, he delivers the goods.

Directed by Sam Mendes, who won a best picture Oscar for 1999's American Beauty, which starred Spacey as a suburban dad with unacceptable (and dangerous) sexual cravings, the sharp pacing tonight is suited to a filmmaker's eye. That in spite of the self-imposed limitations of Tom Piper's sparse set which consists of a large room with multiple tall doors through which the proper furniture was carried between scenes. Things brighten considerably when images of moving storm clouds are projected above the doors on the left. A squadron of live percussionists playing very large drums punctuates certain scenes with all the fury of an indoors thunderstorm.

This traveling version of Richard III wowed critics in its original engagement at London's Old Vic theatre and is now slated for limited runs in select worldwide markets. Dressed in unremarkable late Victorian attire by Catherine Zuber, most of the players, including Spacey, speak in their own native version of the English tongue. British accents are forced upon no one. The cast of 20 is almost equally divided between British and American actors.

Strapped into a thigh-to-ankle brace that apparently helps keep one leg canted inward at a painfully awkward angle, and bent from the waist with a large hump protruding from his shoulders, Spacey hobbles and skitters around the stage like a large poisonous crab.

When the current King of England, Edward IV, dies, his deformed brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is far down the line of succession. But not for long. Richard conspires to have everyone ahead of him murdered, including the King's two young sons (played curiously here by a pair of young women).

One incident is particularly unsettling. When the head of Hastings, who protests Richard's murderous ambition too loudly, is brought into the room in a cardboard box, Richard stabs at its contents vigorously with his cane, and the sickening squish, something like a pumpkin being prodded by a fireplace poker, is all too audible.

As his brief reign begins to crumble before a decisive battle with supporters of the Earl of Richmond at Bosworth Field, Richard is slumped in fitful slumber to the far right of a long table spread across the stage. With Richmond seated far left, the middle of the table is occupied by the ghosts of the seven people Richard has murdered in his rapid ascent to the throne, and they aren't very happy. It's also a chilling and ominous reference to Da Vinci's The Last Supper, that things may not go well tomorrow.

The brief final sword encounter ("My kingdom for a horse"), skillfully performed by Richard and Richmond, ends with the dispatching of the bloodthirsty, crippled monarch. But one final thrill remains for an audience, already wrung dry from this energetic performance. A long rope dangling from above is lowered to the ground and looped tightly around Richard's ankles. As the crowd gasps, the dead King is slowly hoisted to a dangerous height and left dangling upside down for what seems like a very long time before Richmond intones the final stanzas of the play.

Spacey  and the cast received several well-deserved standing ovations, and bouquets were also in order for the fine performances of three veteran women: Haydn Gwynne as Queen Elizabeth, Gemma Jones as Queen Margaret and Maureen Anderman as the Duchess of York. The exit-poll verdict seemed unanimously favorable among those leaving the theatre. Even the guy waiting in line with me to get into the restroom at the Jack In The Box across the street was very impressed. As she collected her things after Spacey's inglorious trip to the rafters, the elderly lady seated next to me could only shake her head and say, "Poor Kevin." To which should be added, Bravo Kevin. He's set the bar very high for future performances of this endlessly rich work.

Family Tree - "a new home for outsider behaviors. First signing is Denver's Bad Weather California.

By Blurt Staff

Akron/Family has now made the unofficial official with the inauguration of their Family Tree Records. In 2012, the label will issue Sunkissed by the Denver misfit band Bad Weather California, produced by Akron/Family's Seth Olinsky. Check out this video of BWC:

$$$ BWC SUNKISSED PROMO $$$ from J Logan Corcoran on Vimeo.

Family Tree Records follows in the footsteps of John Fahey's Tacoma Records, Elephant 6 and Young God Records (the band's first home), artist-run record companies born from a desire to create their own context to more truly reflect their music and artistic vision, driven by a sense of independent thinking, ideas, and values.

Right from the start, Akron/Family was inspired by the likes of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Grateful Dead and Wu Tang Clan, and envisioned operating as a group of friends and artists, creating in ever-shifting combinations, drawing on an ever-widening circle of collaborators. Since Akron/Family started exploring music in 2002, their penchant for the unpaved road has brought them opportunities to collaborate onstage and in the studio with musicians from their own free-jazz heroes Hamid Drake and William Parker to legendary Japanese free-shredder Keiji Haino to the members of Woody Guthrie's family to the several thousand people who have been invited (either by the band or by their own excitement) to sing with the band at live shows. Family Tree Records will be the home for the sound documents produced by this process.

All along Akron/Family has collected recordings outside the norm of what appears on more commercial albums. They have edited together limited-run releases from live performances, dimly lit, all-night home sessions, and/or field recordings of wind and insects. These were lovingly hand-packaged and sold primarily on tour. Over time, these were referred to as their "Family Tree Records."

Family Tree Records started this year with the co-release (with Dead Oceans) of <bmbz>, a musical survey and documentation of a Banksy-an Internet prank where Akron/Family's latest album was demolished and reconstructed by seven different artists, then leaked online throughout the Christmas season.

In celebration of 2012, the year of the Mayan calendar's solar cycle prophecies, Family Tree Records is releasing Bad Weather California's Sunkissed. These Denver-based street partiers have been playing house shows and biker bars out West for years and are ripe to enter a wider world. Sunkissed features  exquisite beached out, afro-cana punk anthems with ripping guitar and street wise lyrics, all dedicated to the cellular source of life on this planet - the Sun! This skater-friendly, hippie/ punk aesthetic hearkens back to the glory days of early 80‘s SST Records:  the Meat Puppets (who've they've worked with), Minutemen and early Flaming Lips. Those bands emerged at a time when the punk tenets of artistic freedom  and militant individuality had gone out of fashion, only clung to by the most dedicated of outsiders.

The label has many other plans in store for 2012. Miles Seaton from Akron/Family is producing a record for Ju Young Lee AKA Praything, a wunderkind outsider-pop luminary who surfs the waves of Bruce Springsteen and Laurie Anderson in the Magic Kingdom of Orlando, FL.  There'll be a vinyl- only release of visionary electro-acoustic drone poet Greg Davis' Full Spectrum series.

Also in the planning stage is a touring performance series using portable, custom-built venues. There are plans for releases of Akron/Family side projects and previously un-issued band recordings.

Next Monday, Oct. 31 is the date. Check those international time zones, fans.

By Blurt Staff

PJ Harvey's second of two sold-out shows at London's Royal Albert Hall on Monday, October 31 is scheduled to be streamed live. The streaming will be in real-time, in HD audio and video, by LoveLive.

It will be available worldwide - for a price. In an intriguing twist, fans without tickets for this sold-out event will be able to purchase access codes for the live stream of the show on pjharvey.net, facebook.com/pjharvey and guardian.co.uk/music. (No word on whether fans with tickets will be able to access the stream for free and watch it on their smart phones while attending the show...)

 The Royal Albert Hall shows on Sunday  October 30 and Monday  October 31 are the first appearances at the London venue for Harvey, and her last UK shows of 2011. She will be playing material from Let Engoland Shake and other albums, with a live band comprising of Mick Harvey, John Parish and Jean-Marc Butty.

Read the BLURT interview with Harvey right here.

Best reason NOT to go to the local mega-mall on Novermber 25 this year...

By Fred Mills

Tha annual Record Store Day held the third Saturday in April has become the equivalent of Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and the 4^th of July all rolled into one for music headz and record collectors. By all accounts it's been a huge success for bands, stores and fans alike. The organizers aren't resting on their laurels, however, as they've announced they're doing it again next month - November 25^th to be precise, aka Black Friday.

It's not specifically RSD Pt.2, however - more like bonus beats. According to the RSD website, under Black Friday FAQs, we learn the following:

"In the past Black Friday was an American event celebrated by large corporate retailers as a shopping day that promoted mass produced items at super low prices in hopes of driving customers into their stores. RSD's Black Friday subverts the model and creates pieces of art in the form of limited special editions, often numbered, from some of the most revered artists of our time. RSD's version of Black Friday is an excuse to celebrate the specialness of music in our lives by putting out these unique releases. In other words, cheapness is not a main goal. Celebrating art is.

"The special releases for Record Store Day are made to be sold solely at independently owned record stores on the day that Record Store Day takes place (the third Saturday of every April) whereas Black Friday releases are made for the holiday season. This means stores will launch the special releases on Black Friday but may choose to carry them beyond Black Friday (as supplies last). 

These independently owned record stores/shops will also choose whether or not they want to sell their Black Friday releases on their websites to draw attention to the fact that many of them offer an excellent customer service option for those who wish to support independently owned record stores via internet purchases during the holiday season and beyond."

It should be pretty awesome, however. Take a look at some of this year's proposed releases - the full list can be found here, and more are sure to be added - and meanwhile, start scoping out your favorite store and talk to them directly about what they plan to carry.

Syd Barrett: "Mick Rock: Syd Barrett - the Photographs of Mick Rock" 7" 45

Beastie Boys: Hot Sauce Committee Part Two Book/Blu-Ray/DVD/CD
The Beatles: The Singles 7" vinyl box set
The Black Keys: "Lonely Boy" 12" single

Byrds: "Eight Miles High" & "The Tiems They Are A Changin'" 7"ers

Miles Davis: Miles Davis Quartet" 10" LP

Doors: LA Woman 7" vinyl box set
Bob Dylan: "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" 7" vinyl box set

Justin Townes Earle: "Slippin' and Slidiin'" 7"

Fear: "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"
Iron & Wine: "Morning Becomes Eclectic" LP/CD (Live at KCRW)
John Cale: EP: Extra Playful
John Lennon: Imagine 40th Anniversary Box Set
Nirvana: Nevermind -The Singles 10" vinyl box set

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Kiss My Amps Live vinyl LP
Pinback: "True North" 7"

Pink Floyd: The Wall 7" vinyl box set
Ryan Adams: "Do I Wait"/"Darkness" 7"
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings: Soul Time! LP
Soundgarden: Live on I-5--Before the Doors Soundcheck EP 10" colored vinyl

Pete Townshend: The Quadrophenia Demos Vol. 1 10" LP

Warren Haynes: "River's Gonna Rise" 7"

Wheedle's Groove: Seattle's Finest in Funk & Soul 1965-79 7" vinyl box

Wilco: "Speak Into the Rose" 10" (pictured at top, above)

Yardbirds: "Ten Little Indians" & "Ha Ha Said the Clown" 7"ers

Full documentary airs this Saturday night on Showtime.

By Blurt Staff

U2 recently posted 3 clips from their forthcoming Davis Guggenheim-directed From the Sky Down documentary about the making of their 1991 album Achtung Baby. The first clip features a story about Larry Mullen being harassed by an East German police officer, after his car had broken down on the road. The second clip features bassist Adam Clayton talks about the beginnings of the band and their lives after school. The third clip features rare uncut 16mm footage of the band around the time of the Achtung Baby sessions. More clip clips from the documentary will be unveiled soon on www.u2.com.

Watch the 3 clips, below.

"From the Sky Down" is included in the Uber and Super Deluxe 20th Anniversary Editions of Achtung Baby, which are available November 1st, and will be premiering on Showtime Saturday, October 29th at 8pm. BLURT will also have some special U2 coverage next week, so keep your eyes peeled.

First set of studio recordings since 2004.

By Fred Mills

The New York Times is reporting that songwriter Leonard Cohen is planning to release a new album titled Old Ideas in 2012. It will be his first studio album since 2004's Dear Heather; during the interim he has released a number of live recordings, both archival and new, including 2009's Live In London CD and DVD set.

"I've played it for a few people, and they seem to like it," Cohen told the Times. "You know, when you're writing, you're always an absolute beginner. Each time you take up your guitar and sit by a blank page, you start from scratch. It's a struggle."

Cohen was in Spain at the time to receive the Principe de Asturias Prize for literature (for his poetry).

Next week Cohen releases the Complete Studio Albums Collection 11-disc box set comprising, naturally, all of his studio albums to date: Songs Of (1968), Songs From A Room (1969), Songs Of Love & Hate (1971), New Skin For The Old Ceremony (1974), Death Of A Ladies Man (1977), Recent Songs (1979), Various Positions (1984), I'm Your Man (1988), The Future (1992), Ten New Songs (2001), Dear Heather (2004).

Spoiler alert: It's out next week on Anti-. And you had your chance to listen to it streaming all this week. Any questions?

By A.D. Amorosi

Ever since Tom Waits dropped the jazz-bo Small Change piano man routine, his work has become a cheap carnival of souls haunted by chain-rattling characters as brashly disturbing as his claustrophobic arrangements and melancholy melodies.

Stones-y blues, Brechtian cabaret and Beefheart-ish avant-workouts are so much a part of Waits' tangle that after this review we need not mention them again. They're in Waits' dog house and wag their collective tail every time the master speaks brusquely. Co-written and produced by his missus Kathleen Brennan, Waits' songs - Bad as Me included - find their center immediately and stick like a record's skip. The insistent mess of percussive banjo, oinking guitars and huffy harmonicas that is "Chicago;" the wheezing organs, steel wool drums of "Raise Right Man; the tinkling ghost piano and whammy bar's bend on the softly spun "Talking at the Same Time;" onto these Waits coughs and wheedles while espousing his delirious gospel's daily absolutions.

On "Raised Right", he's proud to plead to extol the virtues of a good woman who can make a diamond from a lump of coal while on "Same Time," his freakish falsetto can be heard politicizing about the rich getting richer and the poor getting bloodier. "Get Lost" finds a vocally trembling Waits and company (which includes Keith Richards and Les Claypool amongst other Waits stalwarts) re-imaging "96 Tears" as a Suicide song.

Tom Waits - Bad As Me by antirecords

Like every great Waits album, there's a softly Irish seasick shanty as heartbreaking as a Montgomery Clift glance and as melodic as any Sammy Kahn ballad - this time it's the perfect album closer "New Year's Eve" which quotes "Auld Lang's Syne" so seamlessly, it's as if Waits penned it himself.

Please visit the new issue of BLURT, on newsstands soon, for yet more Waits reading matters.

[Photo Credit: Anton Corbijn]