As the Sacramento summer heats up so does THIS Midtown! A Second Saturday block party series with music, art, beer, food and local vendors, THIS Midtown is returning on Saturday, Aug. 8, 2015, for the second-to-last show of the series. The lineup of live talent for this one is seriously incredible and we all should be thanking the organizers for throwing a party like this that is free to attend! Headlining will be Oakland-based indie-pop band Trails and Ways, whose new album Pathology came out recently on Barsuk Records. Regional groovers Sunmonks are also on the bill, so if you missed their set at Concerts In the Park recently, you can catch them at THIS. San Francisco rock outfit Tiaras, which features ex-members of Sacramento’s beloved garage rock band Ganglians, will also be on hand jamming out and Young Aundee will spin a DJ set. The party kicks off at 4 p.m. and runs until 9:30 p.m. Once things on the block wrap up, the after-party will be cracking off inside LowBrau with DJs Shaun Slaughter, Adam Jay and special guests playing nu-disco, tropical, house and funk tunes. THIS Midtown takes place on the MARRS Building Block on 20th Street in between J and K streets. Learn more at Facebook.com/thismidtown.

Ex-Ganglians member Kyle Hoover on the first album from his new group, Tiaras

All eras are defined by the fact that, eventually, they will end. There can be no Summer of Love Without a Winter of Discontent; no Woodstock without an Altamont; no old guard without a new wave; no lo-fi renaissance without a hi-fi takeover. Tiaras, a San Francisco rock outfit forged from the remnants of other groups (Blasted Canyons, Fine Steps, Sacramento’s own Ganglians), is starting the year by releasing a full-length illustration of this principle. The self-titled debut album, out Jan. 14, 2015, is a clear step away from the modes and methods characterizing the earlier work of its musicians. Where Ganglians once stood for a wild, heat-shimmery psych pop indebted to bands of the ‘60s, Tiaras glides—not leaps—further into music history (say, about two decades), emerging into a clearer, moodier intersection of mid-‘80s jangle-pop and new wave. Whatever the eras and styles that reverberate in Tiaras’ music, a few things are clear: their melodies are strong, their production is crisp and Tiaras may be one of the first great rock albums of 2015.

To get a deeper insight into the new record and its prehistory, we dialed up guitarist Kyle Hoover, who was spending his weekend hanging out in the illustrious Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. When considering the changes his band has been through, I wondered beforehand: how much of a hold does the past still have on that place? Does the feverish, acid-drenched zeitgeist of yesteryear still contain a slight hold on the City by the Bay? As numerous other bands from the local scene begin to decamp for other horizons, we can tell a lot about the current landscape from the musicians who have opted to stay. The music of Tiaras, for one, seems well suited to its locale. While traversing the bittersweet highs and lows of standout track “In the Room,” you can imagine the swift changes of elevation and climate one comes across while traveling through the city: the top of a tower, the bottom of a hill; burning sunshine and bone-chilling fog crowding into a single moment.

You’ve mentioned before that you’ve been living in the Excelsior area of San Francisco, how it’s fertile creative ground, but a lot of the old guard are moving south for greener pastures. What’s your point of view on these changes?
I’d say the curtains have been drawn back a little bit. I was joking around with my bandmates about the “endless summer of lo-fi ‘09.” It was this big thing—lo-fi garage, it was huge, it was everywhere. I mean, we were part of that too back in the day, but, I mean, me personally, I got over backing that stuff pretty quickly, and that’s part of the reason for the change. There’s definitely a message that we wanted to send going forward with Tiaras, like, “Alright, we live in San Francisco. We used to be kind of a garage band. Now let’s do something different.” A little more solemn, little more pop-oriented. We just wanted to do something different, and lo and behold, a year later, after the record finally comes out, there’s a bunch of other bands who are sort of shying away from that [lo-fi] scene as well.

A lot of my friends moved away—that’s just how it is. It’s super hard to live in the city. But it’s not the end of the world, there’s still cool stuff. I think if anything, it’s for the better that the garage thing has kind of faded a bit from the spotlight in San Francisco. More room to breed different genres.

The genre shift—going to the hi-fi sound, concentrating on the pop melodies—did you have anything to model yourselves on?
With this record, we definitely wanted to make it sound as good as possible. I’m a fan of using the best of both worlds—digital recording is super convenient and makes for a much less stressful recording environment; however, going analog is beneficial for different sounds. You can have the best of both worlds and get really experimental. With Ganglians, we were always trying to be hi-fi; it just always sounded lo-fi because we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing. But the idea was always to try and sound as good as possible. Genre-wise, the shifts…we just started listening to different stuff. I knew Ryan [frontman for Ganglians, Tiaras] in ‘08, and we were like, “Dude! Pet Sounds!” And the influence of that album is super evident in Ganglians. For the new record, Ryan and I were getting into a lot of weird, obscure ‘80s music, along with the rest of the world, apparently—but I guess that’s just how it goes. We just wanted to disassociate ourselves from our previous sound, which is hard because I still sound like me, and Ryan still sounds like himself. Now we have three other awesome dudes with their own take on things, and I think it works. People aren’t saying we sound like the Beach Boys anymore, so that’s fine.

When you say you all started listening to different stuff, was there anything in particular that you got excited about?
Ryan and I got really into Chrome, which was like this super weird, kind of avant-garde ‘80s rock thing. I don’t even know how to describe it. We’d heard about them from back in the day, but we started listening to them all the time. I personally started listening to a lot of Echo and the Bunnymen…just a lot of weird ‘80s stuff that I knew was good but that I’d never really taken the time to listen to. When the Cleaners from Venus record was reissued a few years ago, that was being played around our house 24/7. That was definitely a record I was super stoked about.

Was there a good deal of downtime between the dissolution of Ganglians and the recording for Tiaras?
Oh yeah, definitely. I think we stopped playing together after our last SXSW, which must have been the spring of 2011. Ryan moved to San Francisco, our drummer moved to Brooklyn, our bassist moved to Oakland and I was stuck in Elk Grove. I was living at my dad’s house for a good eight months until I finally saved up enough money to move in with Ryan in SF.

Did a lot of the ideas for the new group and album come out of that eight-month period?
That would be nice, but definitely not. That was more of like a—I don’t know, we were so worn out. I think at that point, we’d been on the road almost constantly for like a year and a half. We were starting to argue a lot, and it was kinda gnarly. So I was mostly just being miserable in Elk Grove, commuting to Davis with Alex’s [Ganglians drummer] mom every morning. That’s basically what I did. If anything was going on idea-wise during that period of time, it was with Ryan and Antonio in San Francisco while they were jamming together.

It seems collectively like you have decades of band experience—you’ve been in a lot of bands, you kind of know the drill. At this point, is it easier for you to tell when the chemistry is right, or when you’re ready to call it a day?
Yeah, I’d say so. This is probably only my third band, but this time, the songs came together easier. Ganglians was like a shitload of trial and error. That was kind of a turning period, because we were all new to what we were doing. With Tiaras, it was super easy to make things work. I’d say there was a year’s worth of time where we were learning to play with each other. And it wasn’t super natural at first, but now we all understand what we’re trying to do.

Playing TBD this past October was sort of a mini-Sacramento homecoming for you guys. How was the experience?
It was fun! It kind of felt like a Sacramento Burning Man or something. Everyone was walking around with scarves on their face and dust was everywhere. I definitely partied too hard, because I stayed there for the whole weekend. I think we were all hungover for like a week after that.

Finally, how do you feel about Tiaras as a group at this point?
When Tiaras first started, I had known Ryan pretty well from being in Ganglians. I’d known Antonio pretty darn well—I think I’ve known that guy since he was like 16—and I had just met Adam and our bassist Ryan Hansen, so I was getting to know them, and we were figuring out how to play together and what our sound should be like. Needless to say, we’re still fucking with our tone settings and our amps to figure out what sounds we have and stuff like that. But I feel like the songs are getting better, and we’re getting better at writing them.

See Tiaras live at Harlow’s in Sacramento on Feb. 10, 2015. Tiaras will be playing in support of The Dodos. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased through Harlows.com. Doors open at 7 p.m.

Could G. Green Become Sacramento’s Most Loved Band?

G. Green was once the most unpopular band in Sacramento. Originally Andrew Henderson’s bedroom recordings moniker, his solo shows in Sacramento garnered anathema of clandestine ridicule and indifference. There was a time I loathed seeing the name listed on every Hub show and house party, and I wasn’t alone. It was fun to smear G. Green in 2009 and it was excruciating to see them on the verge of amateurish implosion in 2011. Most of you probably still assume G. Green is locked into a static identity as Midtown brats, drunk on youth, and too drunk to do much besides be obnoxiously loud. While we were laughing, when we stopped caring and stopped looking, G. Green quietly became a serviceable indie band, writing songs destined to shed the onus of snotnosed bush leaguers.

Before she became G. Green’s drummer, Liz Liles described the first G. Green show (a one-off lineup consisting of Henderson on guitar and promoter Rick Ele on drums) as horrible and a disservice to the former KDVS DJ’s sterling reputation.

“I thought ‘why is DJ Rick playing with this idiot,’” she said. “Me and whoever I was with, we watched one song and then went into the alley to smoke cigarettes.”

In the greenhorn years of the band, Henderson was the perpetual opener; the sort that would clear a venue, living room or DIY space except for his steadfast cheerleader, DJ Rick.

“I put him in front of audiences, and the awkwardness, the house slippers on his feet, and the most piercing moments of singing were initially a big turnoff to people,” Ele said. “But Andrew seemed totally impervious to disapproval.”

*****
They’re all laughing at you, aka the infamous Capital Bowl show

Mt. St. Mtn. founder and former Mayyors member Mark Kaiser put out G. Green’s first record, Crap Culture, in 2012, but it took time for him to become a backer. In gathering stories of infamous G. Green failures, Kaiser and Liles invoked the West Sacramento Capital Bowl show in 2008 without hesitation. In those days, bands would rent out the events room to play, and according to Kaiser, “trash.” The bill was geared toward trashing the place with Mayyors and Eat Skull (a notoriously self-destructive Portland band), while the G. Green solo set was the black sheep. Liles said she and her friends openly ridiculed the G. Green set. While Kaiser likened the clumsy solo performance as arriving “too late for that mid-’90s Olympia-wrought ‘any art is good art’ vibe.” Henderson was not going to be the next Calvin Johnson.

“Andrew was really young, and looked really drunk and really nervous,” Kaiser said. “He let loose, and I cringed. The show was fun, drunken chaos, all the bands on the bills were renowned for being a wasted mess, but this was excruciating.”

*****
Laughing: from ‘at’ to ‘with’

Liles might have mocked Henderson at first, but one evening he showed up at her Midtown home, then known as the Funcastle, expecting a Thee Oh Sees show. Liles had moved the show to another venue, but the encounter with Henderson sparked a quick friendship. At the time Liles was a—quote, unquote—drummer for experimental groups Sucks and Fatty Acid. Untrained and illiterate to tempo, she began telling Henderson she was G. Green’s new drummer.

Henderson obliged after booking a house show with Kurt Vile, Eat Skull and Ganglians. He had two months to put together an opening band; Liles was the first piece. The remaining guitar parts were filled out by Julian Elorduy (drummer for Mayyors in those days) and Dylan Craver. Two months proved enough and sustained the approval of scene-dad DJ Rick.

“I didn’t really know if the band would continue after that one show,” Henderson said. “Rick loved us and threw us on all these shows and put us on [Operation Restore Maximum Freedom]. Pretty much the reason Liz and I still play music together is because Rick threw us into the whirlwind of the Sacramento music scene at that time.”

Kaiser recalls being at the full lineup’s debut, despite purposely steering clear of solo sets since the bowling alley incident.

“The second time I saw Andrew play it was with this first incarnation of a live band and it was a world of difference,” he said. “It was sloppy and chaotic, but it was fun and there were lots of ‘whoa, if they keep doing that’ moments that had me intrigued.”

Henderson and Liles cherish the times with that early incarnation, but also knew it could never last. Elorduy quit the band after Liles broke up with him for Hella drummer Zach Hill, and was replaced by Brittney Gray on bass. Henderson and Craver were the best of friends and also prone to volatile feuds. Every show and practice was a fun, drunken gathering that flirted with implosion.

“We were so close as friends that none of it mattered if people liked us,” Henderson said. “We were just getting drunk and having fun. Me and Dylan were good friends and then we’d hate each other. He probably quit the band infinity times.”

Before the final nail was put in the original lineup, G. Green enlisted Andy Morin, long before his stint in Death Grips, to record their debut, Crap Culture. A shambolic and lo-fi collection of mad-dash punk songs, Crap Culture captured G. Green at the time—unruly and unpolished, but beneath the caterwaul existed nuggets of pop punk gold. Kaiser compared the record to Superchunk’s No Pocky For Kitty, lauding G. Green for maintaining their live energy on record.

“‘Pool Of Blood’ was the song that made me offer them a record,” he said. “That song was a sign they had something and were capable of growing past the kiddish fun-punk into something bigger.”

Crap Culture arrived late to the cultural trend of low-budget to no-budget albums, home-recorded on junkable equipment. It was recorded in 2010, but did not see release until August 2012. By then contemporaries like Wavves had ditched the intelligible scuzz for pop-punk polished for MTV. Also, by the release of Crap Culture on Mt. St. Mtn., G. Green featured a lineup far superior to the rag-tag group that winged it through the debut.

With replacements Simi Sohota on bass and Mike Morales on guitar, G. Green returned to the studio, paying Robby Moncrieff to record a follow-up at the Hangar. Besides being a friend of the band, Moncrieff was a popular choice having recorded Dirty Projector’s critically praised Bitte Orca and fellow Sacramento band Ganglians’ Still Living. Unfortunately Henderson said the band made the mistake of requesting Moncrieff “make it sound like Woodhouse,” meaning Chris Woodhouse, the Hangar engineer responsible for seminal linchpins like all eight Thee Oh Sees records and the A Frames.

Henderson said, “We didn’t use Robby as he should be used as an engineer. He did the best he could, but it’s not the way Robby works. There was no unifying theme with it. It was just a smathering of shit and it didn’t sound very good.”

The record was scrapped, except for two songs which became the “Funny Insurance” b/w “Sounds Famous” 7-inch. Liles corroborated their poor performance, attributing it less to Moncrieff, and more to the band for it sucking. They entered the studio with songs written by all the members with no vision for the band’s identity.

Liles said, “we’ve had really bad luck recording full records… until now.”

*****
New lineup, new lease…

On June 10, 2013 I drove my then girlfriend’s Altima to Davis to see Parquet Courts, a burgeoning Brooklyn band, and Fine Steps, a new project by Julian Elorduy. G. Green was also on the bill, so I planned to arrive late, still pegging G. Green as the perpetual opener. To my surprise Fine Steps was on when I arrived at the Davis Bike Collective. I caught their last two songs. I grew despondent realizing a full G. Green set stood in the path to Parquet Courts. Who agreed to this bat shit order of operation?

With no beer to drink and no cigarettes to smoke outside, I remained inside conceding that despite my efforts I’d been hoodwinked into a G. Green set. Now, I don’t recall particular songs from the set in that blazing, claustrophobic bike shop, but I do know that’s the night I stopped laughing at G. Green. The additions of Sohota and Morales gave them chops previously lacking in the dynamic. Liles had become a force, and Henderson’s once pubescent screech had caked enough nicotine on his vocal cords for a second lease on his balls dropping. There’s plenty to love about a band bent on belligerence, but when that same band backs it up with the skills to earn that abandon, they stop being local brats and graduate into a menace worthy of unleashing on the country at large.

This year on the porch of Kupros I confess to the founding members the Parquet Courts show is when I started believing in G. Green. Henderson states it was his birthday that night, while Liles mentions that Parquet Courts opened for them when they played Brooklyn’s storied 285 Kent venue. Both are unphased that I once detested their band. I was never the only one and I wasn’t the only convert either.

Liles said, “A lot of people probably haven’t been taking the time to see us lately because they saw us so many times three years ago and have decided there’s no way we’ve actually progressed.”

Henderson added, “There’s an image that probably still exists in a lot of people’s minds of these weird shitty kids that are drunk all the time and looking for the next party. We’re convincing people who’ve seen it from the beginning that we’re a great band now.”

Liles and Henderson turned 25 this year. Neither member wanted to be pigeonholed to perceptions developed when they were still teenagers. The upcoming Area Codes album was honed on tour, the band delegating a set it would play nightly until the songs were ingrained in their muscle memory. The decision to be professional and treat their live set with care translates to the album, which was recorded by Woodhouse, whose specialty is live tracking, room sound and mic placement. Even a late night of binging on spirits and karaoke at the Distillery couldn’t sandbag their comfort with the songs.

“We finally developed a sound that cut any bullshit,” Henderson said. “We didn’t really know how to make a band sound. In recording with Chris, he just documents what we’re doing.”

But is their scene-dad Rick Ele a proud papa?

“So many Chris Woodhouse productions have that unmistakable Woodhouse touch,” Ele said. “He becomes the fifth Beatle to so many bands, but in the case of Area Codes, I think he really just used his magic to maximize the G. Greenness of this record.”

Kaiser was equally impressed, keeping the band on his Mt. St. Mtn. roster for a second go-round, calling their current incarnation a “quick progression.”

“The new lineup came about and they tightened up both their live presence and song writing. I kept telling Andrew to just pony up the money and record with Woodhouse. He’s the wizard, he knows their sound and knows how to make them sound more like themselves. That’s what they did and this new recording is a huge step forward.”

The night at Kupros we drank enough short-n-talls of Coors Light and Jameson to carry the festivities to the former Funcastle, now also the home of Henderson. I apparently needed to try “tangler,” a moonshine-like infusion engineered by Liz’s boyfriend. Once there it was filmed and failed beer shotguns for the tour promo video, messy blueberry pancakes, and Guided By Voices’ Alien Lanes on the record player. As both made more of a mess than a mouthful in shotgunning the PBRs, I wondered how they ever got the stigma of a party band. Earlier that night Liles insisted they were misunderstood. “We’re not a party punk band, we’re a weird band,” she said. “The record only mentions pizza once!”

“We’re a straight up indie rock band now,” she said.

Most importantly are these last words from Ele, their cheerleader since day one. Watching a solo project from an awkward kid from Folsom become a band after making friends with the girl who laughed at his sets.

“Andrew’s always the heart and soul of the band as voice and chief songwriter, but through these lineup issues, Liz really stepped up to become the band’s leading co-star. They could change lineups 100 more times, and from now on, I’ll always think of Andrew and Liz as G. Green.”

Celebrate the release of Area Codes Saturday, Aug. 30, 2014 at Witch Room (1815 19th St.) with G. Green, Rat Columns, Violent Change and more. The 18-and-over show starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are just $5. Check out
Facebook.com/ggreenband for more info.

Youth Lagoon, TIARAS, Roxanne from the Sandwitches

Harlow’s • Sacramento • Aug. 9, 2013

Recently turned on to Youth Lagoon, I’ve since been pairing their two albums, The Year of Hibernation and Wondrous Bughouse, with my daily morning coffee intake. Their dreamlike, underwater qualities make for an easy transition from half asleep to wide awake.

The brainchild of frontman Trevor Powers, Youth Lagoon hails from Boise, Idaho, and is signed to Fat Possum Records. Trevor describes his songwriting process as a mechanism to sort his thoughts and transfer his fears, and his music is accordingly not dissimilar to a roller coaster ride. Naturally, I was excited to hear about their appearance in Sacramento, booked by Abstract Entertainment, at Harlow’s.

Early into the first set, it was apparent that Youth Lagoon would be enjoying a decent turnout from Sacramento fans—the nightclub was already teeming with hipsters confusingly donning flannel shirts in spite of the warm summer night.

My mother always warned that if I couldn’t say something nice, then stay mum. So I’ll say little about the first act of the show, Roxanne from the Sandwitches. Her off-key soprano narrative atop her acoustic guitar made me feel uncomfortable, like an accidental voyeur peeping a broken-hearted amateur’s cathartic practice session.

After an inordinate amount of time following her exit, a quartet of scraggly musicians in tight jeans emerged nonchalantly from the green room and took the stage. This San Francisco-based, newly formed alliance called TIARAS was promoted as being partly comprised of ex-Ganglians and Fine Steps members. Three electric guitarists, a bassist and their menagerie of pedals created a beautiful, psychedelic soundscape, but TIARAS had an upbeat, danceable quality thanks to the drummer and cadence of the vocalist. The lead singer, Kyle Hoover, who resembled a hungry lion, brushed his long, side-swept blond hair out of his face, requested more reverb on his vocals and cuddled his guitar throughout their well-received set.

Then came the moment the now completely full house had been awaiting: Youth Lagoon assumed the position within an arc of giant canvas jaws lit up by a rainbow of colors, while exhalations of pink smoke seeped from between
the teeth.

Trevor Powers manned two stacked keyboards, adjacent to which was a tiny organ synthesizer. His touring band was made up of a guitarist, bassist and drummer, too, which sometimes rescinded into the background quietly to let the keys speak alone, to let Trevor sing softly.

Characterized as neo-psychedelia, Americana, indie rock and dream pop, Youth Lagoon’s genre-bending music dynamically transitions many times mid-song from calliope, to hymnal, to spacey, to driving, to noise—to pretty much anywhere on the spectrum of sound—seamlessly, skillfully and strategically, taking the listener on a journey through internal and external galaxies. Trevor beat his fists against his keyboards while playing restless arpeggios, and his band lifted the feet of the audience off the floor with climbing crescendos that culminated in eerie, cosmic plateaus. Then after carrying us across a starry expanse, Youth Lagoon cast us down cliffs, and we plummeted gladly in dramatic dirges before being hypnotically lifted up again.

Just as someone who’d nearly succumbed to submergence, Youth Lagoon left me feeling like I’d sunken into a deep, murky pool, struggled, panicked, gasped for breath—then, mercifully, a cloak of peace draped my consciousness and plunged me into a lucid euphoria. The bony fingers of death wrapped tighter and tighter around my throat until I was about to surrender…then let me go. It feels good to drown, and even better to live to tell about it.

It’s a 10-hour drive from Sacramento to Portland, Ore., though not a difficult one: take a right on I-5 and go straight for a while. Buy some olive oil in Corning, chuckle for a few minutes as you pass Weed, keep her steady over Grant’s Pass. Avoid Salem. You’re there.

For Portland’s BRAINSTORM, the former duo-now-trio of drummer Adam Baz, guitarist Patrick Phillips and bassist Dasha Shleyeva, who recently joined the group for a national tour, the distance between each city has proved inconsequential to the troupe’s appreciating of Sacramento music. Baz tells me that they’ve already circled their Sacramento show at Bows and Arrows on Nov. 3, highlighting the affair as a small reunion of sorts.

“For whatever reason we have kind of a sister community in Sacramento,” says Baz, calling from New York City before a week of CMJ’ing. “Part of it, for a while, was there were a lot of really talented Sacramento-based musicians living in Portland, and we got to know a lot of them. We hit it off.” Heat Waves, BRAINSTORM’s second album released earlier this month, was produced by Sacramentan Robby Moncrieff in Portland’s Type Foundry Studios. Baz recalls booking a show with Moncrieff and Zach Hill’s project What’s Up? a few years back, and Moncrieff’s production work on such albums as Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca and with locals Ganglians and Appetite grabbing the group’s attention early on.

“We’ve always respected his production, and his ear,” Baz says of Moncrieff. “I think he’s really good at recording pop albums in a way that yields a much more interesting product than some typical pop recording” (think Appetite’s Scattered Smothered Covered and Ganglians’ Still Living).

And if we’re categorizing BRAINSTORM’s brand of pop, we’d at the very least call it atypical. The band’s 2009 release, Battling Giants, blends riff-y, Math rock tempos stopping on a dime into squeaky clean, glee club-ish vocals over a tuba. The album should receive praise for its bold musicality–and it did–but Baz admits such a repertoire “can at times make it challenging for a listener.”

“Part of the challenge of the band is trying to sync together these different genres in a way that still is coherent and not too all over the place,” he says. “Some of our older material in particular is a little more scattered.”

Heat Waves can be seen as an extension of the BRAINSTORM’s debut in terms of incorporating a variety of influences, though the sophomore effort distills these influences with greater care, and, perhaps, works them in more seamlessly. “Flat Earth,” the album’s opener, is at its core a ‘60s homage: a reserved guitar melody over drums more concerned with keeping time than setting new polyrhythm, and lyrics looking back on a love gone bad. We then transition into an upbeat movement, more vocal harmonies with Phillips’ guitar returning to the forefront–and then back again to the song’s original thrust. If this sounds like hard work, I assure you it’s not. Transitions in and out of BRAINSTORM’s temperamental shifts are clear, no-stress progressions.

“Forms Without a Frame” could be the album’s flag bearer for the new clarity in approach–a guitar-centric pleaser, Baz’s more understated efficiency on drums driving beneath, and a tuba in the back heartily bridging each chorus. BRAINSTORM has succeeded in staying true to its eclectic roots while aging into something more refined.

From a songwriting perspective, however, BRAINSTORM has changed little since its inception: “It’s a pretty democratic, organic process. Patrick and I usually bring little sections of songs to the table. I’ll have an idea for a riff or a vocal part, or just a drum pattern, and kind of jam on that and see where it takes us.” Piecing often disparate elements together continues to be a challenge, though Heat Waves tones down the experimentation of BRAINSTORM’s debut, or at least that was a goal Baz and Phillips set out for themselves.

“I hope [Heat Waves] speaks to our ability to write coherent pop songs,” says Baz. “We’re trying to really come up with perfect and persuasive riffs and stick to them a little more closely. We’re actually trying to write simpler songs, I’d say, in general.”

BRAINSTORM began in 2009 after Baz and Phillips exchanged mixtapes with one another, trading such bands as Lightning Bolt, Dirty Projectors, Ponytail and, notably, guitars from all over Western and Eastern Africa. You could call the African guitar BRAINSTORM’s most pronounced influence, the most immediately obvious incorporation from a varied set of tastes, especially in conjunction with Baz’s inclusive and rhythmic style of drumming.

“It was definitely a kind of music that Pat and I talked about early on,” Baz says of the group’s African influence, pulling from both contemporary and older recordings. “We try to tastefully reference that kind of music in a way that puts it outside of some world music category. I really don’t like that term,” adding, “I think what it generally stands for is some sort of commercialized recording. Our goal is to make experimental pop songs that may or may not contain that style.”

This past February, BRAINSTORM released two covers of Mdou Moctar, a contemporary Nigerian musician, after Baz and Phillips got hooked on a compilation from Sahel Sounds Records, a label set on unearthing recordings from Western Africa’s Sahel region of Mauritania, Senegal, Mali and Niger. It’s easy to appreciate a band working with this sort of material as opposed to just using and discarding, and that sincerity bleeds into BRAINSTORM’s own body of work; BRAINSTORM has, in a way, internalized the music they’ve become so enamored with.

Heat Waves will be unveiled live on a hyperactive, coast-to-coast tour cutting across the South and Southwest, hitting such cities as Fayetteville, Ark.; Marfa, Texas; and Fresno, Calif. before ending up in Sacramento.

“This is definitely the longest tour we’ve done, almost six weeks. When we’re out we try to take advantage of reaching every market that we can,” Baz says.

BRAINSTORM’s live performances have received significant hype, and were described by Baz as “explosive, energetic experiences,” but performing live has always been their strength, he admits.

“Neither of us know much about recording, personally, and so one thing we’ve always been really good at is presenting our music in a live context. It wasn’t until recently, with Heat Waves, that we felt really good about the recorded product as well.”

For more info, go to Facebook.com/brainstormbrainstorm.

2011 was a very successful year for the fine folks over at Verge Center for the Arts, located at 625 S Street in downtown Sacramento. To celebrate reaching a recent Kickstarter goal of $7,500, which is surely no small feat, especially considering the amount of online fundraising campaigns Submerge has seen go by the wayside, VCA is throwing a “Verge Ahead” success party on Saturday, Jan. 21 at 6 p.m. Catch live tunes from local favorites Ganglians, Fine Steps, MOM, Gentleman Surfer, Christine Shields, DJ Scott Soriano and DJ Hailey. Check out a huge art installation from artist collective Future Art Notables called Assorted Spaces, play around on a mini-golf exhibit created by VCA artists, drink delicious brew from local beer maker Ruhstaller or a fresh cup of joe from Insight Coffee. The event is for all ages and open to the public. A $15 cover charge includes two drink tickets. If you donated $25 or more to Verge’s Kickstarter campaign, you’ll be on the will call list. For more information check out Vergeart.com

In 140 characters or less…

It’s probably trite by now to remind you that fans just don’t consume music the way they used to. That doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. We still enjoy putting on an album and ingesting it en masse, but it’s also fun to put the iTunes on shuffle and let fate decide, troll YouTube for new music videos or share play lists via Spotify. So for this year’s Top 20, we decided to mix things up a bit. Instead of just albums, we included a music video, EPs, live shows (even a comedy album snuck in there). Here’s our favorite music moments of this past year, in tweet-friendly format.

20. Jason Webley (live show)

Beatnik Studios, Sacramento
Oct. 30, 2011
When the man on stage thrusts his torso into a giant red balloon and gets the entire audience drunk enough to link arms and sway, you know it’s a good show.

Each song rocks, and it’s short and catchy enough to listen back to back, and back. They have mastered a sound, exemplified here. Loud fun.

Possibly the local comic’s best work to date, if this album/DVD doesn’t have you rolling on the floor, check your pulse, you might be dead.

Mastodon ditches spacey prog metal for gnarly bruising metal/rock hybrid and makes us wonder why they haven’t tried it sooner.

From dub to dusty breaks Mike earns the name Colossal.

Metal heads dose heavy riffs w/ stoner-core harmonies, crushing drums, subtly brilliant solos & bring serious balls back to rock ‘n’ roll.

The small porch in Davis provided the perfect environment to fall in love with every up-beat strum from The Generationals.

Hacksaw Ben Thuggin. Period. Fik is a rapper for real. From Halloween concepts, to catchy anthems, his words are precise and full of vigor.

Under-appreciated experimental rocker Ann Clark dropped the most schizophrenic, bipolar mélange of musical porridge ever stirred into a commercial triumph.

No one expected Oak Park to birth the ingenious production and vocal aggression of Death Grips. Nor expected it to tear down stages worldwide.

Eight tracks of chiming synths and fragile vox swelling into magical crescendos. Trevor Powers gives a taste of hibernation at its best.

Local country-tinged rockers spin 15 songs and something for every mood. Engaging, memorable songwriting at home in any genre.

Classic Sacto shots in this Faux Real Productions video. Light rail, top level on a parking garage, in front of downtown murals, real nice.

A solo debut that amalgamated the producer’s credentials with midnight recordings of glitch hop in the kitchen.

Appetite’s Teddy Briggs masterfully created this rich, dense album that’s nearly impossible to define. Weird pop-folk that dabbles all over.

Big band indie rock devoid of cloying twee impulses. Sprawling yet hauntingly intimate. A rare EP that doesn’t feel incomplete.

Irresistible neo-retro hip-hop from a fashionable Trinidad-born, Brooklyn-based MC. A “rap” album hipsters and indie-kids can agree on.

Take the gentle vocals of Feist, acoustic guitars, special guest Little Wings, and it might equal the most intimate show of the year.

Sacramento’s psych rockers produce yet another gem, keeping that Beach Boys sound meshed with unexpected twists, ballads and tribal rumbles.

KTP made Harlow’s feel like a house show! “Flight” theme featured hot stewardesses and (drunken) pilot outfits. Plenty of moshing ensued.

If you’re not familiar with the artists we chose to perform at our 100th Issue Party on Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 at Ace of Spades, first off, where the hell have you been? Living under a rock? Anywho, if you don’t know who they are, see the vitals below and be sure to type the URLs into your fancy little computer devices. Prepare to be inundated with awesome-ness, because, well, we know how to pick ‘em! See you at the show.

Home Base: Sacramento, Calif.
For Fans Of: Down tempo (yet intense) indie rock/trip-hop. Operatic and dramatic female vocals, mixture of live drums and programmed percussion with keys, synths, guitar, the whole nine.
You Dig? You’ll Dig!: Portishead, The XX, MGMT
Bragging Rights: Signed to Manimal Vinyl Records, recently toured with The Album Leaf. Has been featured everywhere from Showtime to Nylon magazine.
Listen/Learn More: Sistercrayon.com, Facebook.com/sistercrayon

Home Base: Sacramento, Calif.
For Fans Of: Spastic, experimental-rock featuring insane guitar work (two-handed finger tapping, tons of effects pedals, etc.) and non-traditional song structures.
You Dig? You’ll Dig!: Hella, The Flaming Lips, Don Caballero
Bragging Rights: Signed to Sargent House, countless U.S. tours, played Forbidden Fruit Fest in Ireland this year with The Flaming Lips and Aphex Twin.
Listen/Learn More: Teramelosmusic.com, Facebook.com/teramelosmusic

Home Base: Sacramento, Calif.
For Fans Of: Fun, catch-y, space-y/psychedelic garage-rock.
You Dig? You’ll Dig!: Thee Oh Sees, Wavves, Beach Boys
Bragging Rights: Affiliated record labels include Lefse, Woodsist, Captured Tracks and Souterrain Transmissions. Ganglians will be an official showcasing artist at 2012’s SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas.
Listen/Learn More: Facebook.com/ganglians

Home Base: Sacramento, Calif.
For Fans Of: Jam-y funk-rock with reggae roots. Extended jam sessions and dance-offs are common occurrences during ZuhG sets.
You Dig? You’ll Dig!: Phish, O.A.R., Grateful Dead
Bragging Rights: They run their own local music/art/clothing store. Countless tours, tons of positive press, multiple SAMMIES awards.
Listen/Learn More: Zuhgmusic.com

Home Base: Sacramento, Calif.
For Fans Of: Intelligent hip-hop rich with satire and dry wit meets real turntablism.
You Dig? You’ll Dig!: Nas, Talib Kweli, Gang Starr
Bragging Rights: Winner of numerous spoken-word and rap awards/competitions. Has shared the stage with Nas, Immortal Technique, Tech N9Ne, Zion-I, Living Legends and more.
Listen/Learn More: Randomab.com, Randomabiladeze.bandcamp.com

Home Base: Sacramento, Calif.
For Fans Of: Extremely catch-y and well-written pop-rock fit for an arena setting.
You Dig? You’ll Dig!: Muse, Coldplay, The Killers
Bragging Rights: Music has been featured in multiple MTV shows/commercials including, The Real World, True Life, Made and Real World Road Rules Challenge to name a few.
Listen/Learn More: Earlystates.com

Tickets Available @ ZuhG Life Store, Dimple Records, The Beat, Armadillo (Davis)
Online: AceOfSpadesSac.com
By Phone: 1.877.GND.CTRL or 916.443.9202

Renown Sacramento Producer Raleigh Moncrief Steps Out from Behind the Boards for His New Solo Album

A fine piece of apothegm to live by is, “you’re only as good as the company you keep.” Look at Ringo Starr. He got by with a little help from his friends, who happened to be the greatest musical minds of his time. A relevant and localized example is producer Raleigh Moncrief, who’s collaborated with Zach Hill, toured in Marnie Stern’s band and co-produced/engineered one of the most unanimously lauded albums on a national scale in the past two years.

If he lived in Brooklyn, he would get accosted by hipster vermin at every DIY show he attended. Living in Sacramento means relative anonymity, even indifference to an extent, which allows unlimited hideout time to craft a solo record while producing for the budding local bands. A hermit’s life is how creative-types get things done, and for Moncrief it means recording in his kitchen with an acoustic guitar and laptop at odd hours between sessions with Ganglians and Teddy Briggs of Appetite.

Moncrief is one of the few “behind-the-scenes” guys that has his name shouted out in press releases and in print. Contributing to Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca record plays a significant role in that, but this year alone he’s recorded a Ganglians record, the Appetite record and an EP with Cuckoo Chaos–those are just the ones released. Last year he sporadically released free digital beat tape EPs and remixed a few local rap artists. Without hearing Moncrief’s solo debut Watered Lawn, one might assume he’s scatterbrained or has A.D.H.D. when it comes to music, but over the phone he cleared the air with, “I like to work fast and get it out of my face or my mind.”

Listening to the advance of the Anticon debut, the many faces of Moncrief begin to blur. Even my iTunes player struggled with defining Watered Lawn, by anointing it “New Age”–the dishwater of music genres. When I shared this curiosity with Moncrief, he replied through laughter, “How the fuck did that happen?”

Defining Moncrief’s music can be quizzical; a task he sidestepped by casually stating, “That’s not my job,” but the record is not beyond comprehension. The title itself suggests a project well tended and cared for, which is properly delivered in the 38-minute duration. Written in the three-month span of December through March, Watered Lawn is the amalgamation of Moncrief’s flighty interests in mainstream hip-hop production, a bit of leftover 8-bit intrigue and his various indie collaborations whittled down into 11 songs. Last year’s Carpal Tunnels beat tape introduced Moncrief as a hip-hop producer, but as time wore on the sound began leaning toward chillwave and beat music associated with the Los Angeles scene. In our interview, he offered a slightly alternative progression.

“In my mind I owe more to mainstream hip-hop,” he said. “It’s kind of weird because I don’t really listen to that beat music so much. There are elements of it I really like. It’s really about the low end. That’s something I took away from that [scene]. But I think that T.I. was more inspiring than the beat scene.”

By March he leaked “Lament for Morning” to the blogs, which ushered in the first glimpse of a newly discovered identity. The track made sense in fluidity of past work, but the release of “I Just Saw” in late August broke his vocal silence and hinted at a friendly influence. On the track, Moncrief is twitterpated by a female vision, stretched to a joy of singing without concern to his voice’s limitations. It is a singing style often attributed to David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors.

“I can’t help but be influenced by everyone I’ve worked with,” Moncrief said. “The main thing I took away specifically from working with Dave was exploring those outer limits. Being someone who’s not afraid to go to a place that is uncomfortable for yourself. Being brave and having the courage to try something that you’re not going to be confident in is valuable.”

Tracing back to his days in instrumental post-rock bands What’s Up? and Who’s Your Favorite Son, God?, Moncrief was the silent axe man, which continued into his project with Zach Hill and playing alongside Marnie Stern. While recording his debut he described the urge to sing as something growing in his mind, a new challenge to go along with his newly discovered production style. “I’ve written things and had other people sing them,” he said. “It reached a point where it felt like doing it myself was something I needed to prove I was capable of.”

“Lament for Morning” was the first leak, but the track that was his breakthrough was “Cast Out for Days,” which achieves a balance of the organic instruments (guitar and vocals) alongside warping glitches, flickering synths and programmed drums. “To me, [“Lament for Morning”] still sticks out like a sore thumb on the record,” he said. “Originally it was a guitar piece that was instrumental, but I didn’t know if it fit. So I just changed the guitar parts to vocals. That was my vain attempt at making it fit contextually.”

With new discovery can come bothersome uncertainty, but relating back to ol’ Ringo, one gets by with help from their friends. Moncrief had his share of butterflies. He sent his music out to the hodge-podge of contacts and friends he accumulated in the industry, including label heads at Anticon who initially balked at his beats. “I’d send them out to friends and say, ‘How does this make you feel?’

“I was looking for reinforcement because when you’re isolated like that it’s hard to have perspective,” he said. “Which is something good about the isolation as well. I got a lot of good feedback that helped build confidence in pursuing the change, because it’s a pretty big departure from most everything I’ve done previous.”

Oddly enough, it took a blog post instead of a personal e-mail to get Anticon’s attention. The label head contacted Moncrief and offered him a record deal. The label even sent Watered Lawn to Los Angeles to be mastered by Daddy Kev, owner of Alpha Pup Records and founder of Low End Theory, a weekly club night featuring experimental hip-hop–ask any Low End theorist or resident and they’ll say it’s an honor to receive his visionary stamp of approval. Raleigh could only say in approval, “He made it loud. Good work, Daddy Kev.”

The record awaits an Oct. 25 release date, but Moncrief is not taking a breather from issuing personal challenges. He has a few California tour dates, mostly coastal, scheduled sooner than he’d probably prefer. It will be his first opportunity to debut his songs, as well as perform with a four-piece band, which was lacking completion at the time of our interview. “It’s short notice,” he said. “It’s coming together well, but there’s still a lot to be done before I’d feel confident performing, which is funny because I think there’s a show in two weeks? Three weeks?”

As sketchy as he said he felt, it also seemed as though the pieces would fall into place regardless. Moncrief lamented it was tough to find people to play, but perhaps he will call in a few more friendly favors.

Look for Watered Lawns from Anticon Records on Oct. 25, 2011.

Ganglians release a new double LP, Still Living

Forget rolling joints or slamming pills. Pop on a pair of headphones, shut your eyes and listen a while, and within minutes you are high as a kite. Meth huff? Easy. Coke snoot? No problem, just queue the track on your laptop. Wouldn’t it be nice if a high was as easy as paying 99 cents for an audio delivery of pure ecstasy?

In fact, the audio drug fad has recently caught media attention as parents debate whether or not “i-dosing” is in fact getting their children high. Communities in the Midwest have been particularly stressed about it, Ryan Grubbs, frontman of Sacramento’s psychedelic acid pop act Ganglians mentioned in a recent conversation with Submerge.

There was a sense of amusement in the way he described how genuinely terrified parents are by the thought their children might get hooked on ear-fed drugs. While the notion is laughable, the Montana native weighed in heavily on the effect music can have on the body, especially when it is delivered through headphones.

“We’re all guilty of listening to music on laptops and stuff,” he said.

But there is no musical experience that quite compares to an array of sounds streaming into each ear through a set of headphones, he added, creating a sort of vortex that almost feels paralyzing.

“There’s something about headphones [where] you can’t ignore the music, everything around you becomes part of the music rather than just being in the background.”

Rest assured, Ganglians are not looking to convert their listeners into junkies. Creating a setting, sometimes hallucinogenic or based on psychedelic experiences, however, plays a part in how the four band members (Grubbs, guitarist Kyle Hoover, drummer Alex Sowles and bassist Adrian Comenzind) write their songs.

Stereophonics, the encompassing delivery of sounds to each eardrum, is something that the four-piece has toyed with since the release of both their self-titled debut EP and full-length Monster Head Room in 2009.

Still Living, Ganglians’ next anticipated album via record labels Lefse and Souterrain Transmissions (in Europe), is no different.

The band released its first single, “Jungle,” in April 2011, accompanied by a tripped-out music video saturated with colors and Play-doh like prosthetics (which debuted in May), and quickly stirred an online buzz amongst music blogs and sites like Pitchfork and Fader. It was followed by the release of another single, “Sleep,” in July, made available for free download online.

The double LP comes out Aug. 23, 2011, giving Ganglians-lovers the chance to experience Still Living in its entirety. While Monster Head Room feels a bit more tribal and raw, Still Living is a dose of shimmering exultation, something like a joy ride. From the opening notes of “Drop the Act,” an anthemic call to arms to today’s apathetic youth, the album will keep listeners guessing from start to finish. Like Monster Head Room, it is peppered with subtle surprises–sounds of rain, panting, sirens, bats–staying true to the band’s ear-teasing tendencies. At the same time, Ganglians provides an album that’s more complex than its predecessors, venturing into R&B territory with “Things to Know,” a minimal composition of rumbling bass and Grubbs on vocals, and exploring heavier composition with the six-plus minute ballad “Bradley.”

Meanwhile, the band is preparing for their August tour, which starts along the West Coast on Aug. 10. Grubbs has been living in San Francisco, and with his return to Sacramento there is little time to waste being five months out of practice.

Still, this band is young, and jobs and living situations get in the way. Touring and putting out records was not something the band had expected during their early beginnings in the attic of a Sacramento house three-and-a-half years ago.

The fact that they have come this far by their mid-20s has been a surprise, or a “happy accident,” as Hoover put it.

Submerge spent an afternoon with three of the young four at Luigi’s Fungarden. Discussing the upcoming album, lo-fi and slacker-ism over beer, Sowles sat quietly while Grubbs and Kyle did most of the talking. The following is an excerpt from our conversation.

When I listened to Still Living I was feeling really elated. Do you have the same feeling when you’re playing your songs?
Ryan Grubbs: When we’re recording, there are moments of euphoria, and not necessarily dread, but uneasiness, uneasiness juxtaposed with euphoria. Yin and yang kind of stuff. Not trying to be too blissed out and not trying to be too depressed. It’s an album. You want people to experience a range of emotions.

Were any of the songs reflective of Sacramento living?
RG: Of course. And of people, and just day-to-day life. Struggles. First and foremost you’re trying to please yourself and experience yourself. And secondly you want to give your friends something. And then after that is the wide spectrum. You want everyone all and all, to find something there. You know, “Jungle”–it’s like the city of trees, it almost feels like a jungle but it’s kind of urban. “Sleep” is kind of about trying to escape day-to-day life by just sleeping, but then you have that voice in the back of your head that just throttles you out of it, like, “Hey, you got to make something. You can’t just like sit on the porch all day doing nothing.” They’re definitely reflective of the life living in Sacramento, for sure. I think that the whole ambiance of the album is very busy.

Alright, you can laugh at this question, but do you feel like your music represents your generation at all?
Kyle Hoover: In the sense of slacker-ism? There is a sense of underachievement, a little bit, every once in a while.
RG: Definitely. We are not trained musicians at all. We are not studio musicians. We just kind of picked up the instruments and tried to create what’s in our heads. But as far as this is music created for us, and for our friends, definitely. I mean that’s part of the reason I put “Drop the Act” in the beginning, because it’s kind of a half-hearted call to arms. Because I think I wrote the lyrics for that song after reading an article about the “twenty-somethings,” and I had never even thought about that point, but I thought, “Wow, they’re just choosing to drop out in bigger numbers than ever.” They just don’t want to be part of the system. They’re kind of just fed up with all the politics. They don’t want to participate at all. And that’s kind of what “Drop the Act,” the first song on the album, is just about not wanting to participate in that. And I think that a lot of people in our generation feel the same way.

When you guys are writing songs, how often are psychedelics part of your writing process?
RG: Never. Well just weed. The part that it is a process is in…
KH: Conceptualizing. Experiencing it and drawing from that experience and putting it in a song. But none of us ever get high and write music.
RG: Yeah, I tried it. “This is so amazing!” And then the next day, I was like, “What the fuck? Am I scratching a needle across the table?” But at the time it’s all-absorbing. There’s nothing else in the world that matters.
KH: I feel like as far as psychedelics influence goes in our music, it’s more constructing that feeling from your experience on psychedelics.

In a recent interview you expressed a desire to move away from the lo-fi garage scene and hope that Still Living accomplished that. Are you hoping to appeal to a different crowd?
KH: I don’t think we were ever trying to appeal to the lo-fi crowd in general. We never intended to be lo-fi. That’s why I get so mad when I read about that stuff in music journalism in general, because I feel like all these bands that we’re lumped in with and we sort of know, no one goes out of their way to make a bad-sounding record.
RG: I don’t know, there’s something that’s very rewarding about that kind of recording and I understand why I like lo-fi and why other people like lo-fi. There’s something about lo-fi, it’s just the perfect encapsulation of that moment you can’t tweak with. Whatever you have around you at the time, that’s what you’re going to do with it.
KH: But I think Monster Head Room was definitely intended to be a hi-fi record, it just wasn’t there. And then this was like, oh shit, we got the money and the studio to do it, let’s make a fucking clean record. A pop record. A meaningful pop record.

Still Living will be released through Lefse Records on Aug. 23. Go to Lefserecords.com for ordering information. You can check out Ganglians live at Luigi’s Fungarden on Aug. 10.