I heard this track 'Psalms' from A Constant Sea, the debut record from Brooklyn-based Heliotropes (out in June through Manimal Vinyl) and it floored me. True Widow parallels immediately swam to the surface, with the grungy undertones interspersed with , but this all-girl four-piece step out from the malaise with swathes of swampy psych sprawl. As if their electric cover of Roky Erickson's 'I Walked With A Zombie' last year wasn't enough indication, 'Psalms', the ozone-burning guitar solo makes your hair stand on end, all the better to tear it out as the band hit the accelerator and head for the brick wall as the song closes out. Jessica Numsuwankijkul's vocals are acid-sweet - providing disarming melody whilst emanating the slightest aura of menace. There is a vitality, a recklessness to this song that intimates that Heliotropes are overflowing with energy and a lack of sonic inhibitions - such freshness and enthusiasm burns away any hackneyed predispositions and instead presents pure, unadulterated rock (albeit of the distorted kind).
You can preorder A Constant Seahere. Heliotropes are playing the excellent 4Knots Festival in June, which pretty much namechecks all of Sonic Masala's favourite of-the-moment acts (Parquet Courts, The Men, The Babies, Marnie Stern, Reigning Sound, Kurt Vile) - and from the bubbling ecstasy generated from their fiery live performances, June cannot come fast enough.
Man, I am sooooooo in love with Marnie Stern. I apologise to my fiance, I do, but head over heels, right here. She is an awesome guitarist, songwriter, she gets Zach Hill and Kid Millions to drum with her - that is just some fucking ridiculous shit right there. I could go on. She also seems kind of stupid, as in she loves to muck around just as much as she does to hunker down with her guitar and blow everyone away, which every truly cool person must be. Because the truly cool person, is actually someone just like you and me - except they are really good at something, and it doesn't change them. Her new record, The Chronicles of Marnia, may not be in the same frenetic mash-up of previous recordings, but she nails even more because of that - there is bright, shiny pop mannerisms hiding underneath the manic aural colour streams. It's like Ponytail in structured form. I wrote a review of the album already for theMusic.com.au, and I've posted it below. (And by the way, Marnie, you should have extended your Win A Date comp to Brisbane, Australia. Just sayin').
Bursting
forth like a clusterbomb created by art-noise tricksters Ponytail and Lightning
Bolt (helped by the fact that the drumming duties, normally held by eight-armed
Zach Hill, are pinned down by Oneida’s whirling dervish, Kid Millions), Year Of The Glad, Marnie Stern’s opening
salvo on fourth album The Chronicles Of
Marnia, sets the tone for the entire record. Still featuring the
jawdropping fretwork dexterity that Stern is rightly renowned for, the track is
a maelstrom of hypercolour explosions for the ears, Stern’s high-pitched vocals
swinging from shrieking vowels to hushed murmurs, all evoking a sense of giddy
joy.
Yet
Stern has always countered her manic musical presence with a lyrical inversion,
straddling euphoria and melancholy in equal measure. And so it continues here:
the raucous math-rock punch of You Don’t
Turn Down is punctuated by Stern’s finger-tapping brilliance and a machine
gun delivery in the middle third that decries I’m losing hope in my body; Noonan’s
fizzing energy belies a tiredness as Stern implores Don’t you want to be somebody?/And you kept on bringing me down;
the kaleidoscopic singsong of Nothing Is
Easy underscores Stern’s proclivity for soldiering on. This continual
tug-of-war is what electrifies Stern as a person and an artist, and The Chronicles of Marnia has perfectly
captured this in all its effervescent glory.
And
the pendulum continues to swing – the one-two punch of closers Proof Of Life (with Stern imploring All my life, it’s based on fantasy/And all
the gods, they’ve stopped talking to me offering lows which seem
bottomless) and the feverish Hell Yes (which
quivers and jitters uncontrollably, and purred vocals I won’t give in/I won’t give up/All I’ve got is time). Marnie Stern
may feel torn, yet there’s no need to be – her musical legacy continues to
energise and impress.
Boston band Night Fruit have just released their debut 7" Dark Horse, and frankly I'm a pretty damn big fan, especially of the title track and 'Paper Thin', which is available below. Lead singer Amanda Dellevigne has quite a distinctive voice, and the fluid musical dynamics that underpin these songs are deceptive in their electric hooks. As if having an ace lil release isn't enough, these kids have garnered starting guernseys for the likes of Marnie Stern, No Joy, Joan Of Arc and The Depreciation Guild. It's golden.
