Well, hello lovers of music and culture. We are Under The Stars, a quasi-weekly column that stays on message with strong-ass opinions, presenting new music releases, upcoming shows, and other adjacent items. We keep it moving, hustling with the changes, thinking outside the margins. We’ve been doing this for five years… Spend some time with us…
SWEEPING PROMISES, YOU SAY I ROMANTICIZE (SUBPOP RECORDS)
How fuggin’ dope are Sweeping Promises? Alternative chaos-making musicians who understand the importance of call-and-response, even in punk arrangements? When guitarist-producer Caufield Schnug and bassist-vocalist Lira Mondal, who both started in Boston and then relocated to their DIY compound in Lawrence, Kansas, get to the minimal yet powerful song structure—built up off the trembling, quivering, shivering, and convulsing drum beat and that always juddering bass work from Mondal—what happens? Buddy.
Nobody out here is bringing that art-rock rambunctiousness like they are. Nobody.
They, for one, are proof positive that label Sub Pop Records are back on their proper bullshit like a champion. That’s how dope, cousin. It’s right here at the end of the liner notes for the upcoming, seemingly kinda epic “You Say I Romanticize”: Sweeping Promises have long been progenitors of concept-forward art-punk music that is remarkably immediate and irresistible.
Yes. Immediate and irresistible is how the lead track “Shooting Stars” chooses to take you down with rapid-fire bass lines at the top. Mondal is vocally grabbing everyone by the neck, as if to say, we’re not fucking around this time. Not that they were previously, but there is some extra heat and added hysteria in the furnace. It is, yes, art-punk in its most anxiety-driven form. “Cocoon,” the second ripper on the release, operates at a slower drag, with a bit of guitar dissonance that expands like a foreboding shadow with the song’s length.
Lore has it that “Cocoon” has been knocking around in one form or another for years. Pushing up around that angular energy that Sweeping Promises have perfected, the track sounds real cool while it self-combusts. Mondal’s voice—yelps, screeches, wails, shrieks, squalls—remains one of the band’s greatest instruments, steely and reserved one moment and tearing through arrangements the next. Sweeping Promises straddles the edge of vintage and newfangled art punk like road warrior musicians who’ve seen some shit out there in the wilds but now are equipped to take dead-ass aim at the world.
I’m a bit excited for the Rickshaw show on 9/18. You should be too.
Pre-order that YSIR, here.
BALTHVS AT THE INDEPENDENT, OCTOBER 25
There is a “thunkering” that takes place when BALTHVS, the surf-rock fusion trio from Bogotá, decides to lean into their cover of “Shakedown Street” by the forever-living, never-can-kill-em-off Grateful Dead. Put aside all the allusions to traveling while not moving for a moment and squash that hippie-trotter fog machine, Mister Patchouli “I need a miracle” Joe.
Balthazar Aguirre on guitar, Johanna Mercuriana on bass, and Santiago Lizcano on drums know how to deliver those sped-up blues with nouveau accents. On a foggy grey night at Rickshaw a couple of years ago? Oh my gush… They dealt in that, Dick-Dale-on-shrooms type of funk to a sold-out, ‘I’m feeling the vibes thrown’ crowd.
Hey, don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart. You just gotta poke around.
After BALTHVS ripped and gripped, the patrons were left in the afterglow. A lovely, shapely woman in the front row, feeling it, wearing a frilly white dress, leaving hardly anything left to the imagination, twirled and glistened in those frequencies lilting in the air. While a skinny white dude in a puffy Patagonia jacket could not decide if he should be breakdancing or doing some Deadhead wave. Shit got wild.
That’s what their set—featuring swirling harmonies, thick, fuzzy whammying distortion, and just enough Garcia guitar flow with breezy Thundercat funk-bone attitude—can do. This new generation, a nouveau strain of, oh, let’s just call it “psychedelic mood music,” continued what Jerry and The Boys started so long ago on Haight.
It seems Bogotá’s finest export these days has relocated to San Diego, and despite just releasing an album this past March, the band’s forthcoming fifth studio album, Manifest, which promises a more rock-driven sound and Ethio-jazz vibes, will be dropping later this year. Personally, for my money and ears, they could release all Supertramp covers and the Phil Collins basement tapes to boot. It makes no diff. If Bogotá’s finest are playing, I’m showing up.
You should too; they have that live, on-the-fly mojo to keep you engaged and rolling—yep, that IS what I mean—through some kind of journey. Like the folks who showed up at the Sphere in Las Vegas for the nine-show, no-repeats performances by Phish. Never have so many Hoka shoes been in one building at one time, but the vibes at this October show at The Independent for BALTHVS? Will be flowing down like Lobos Creek in the Presidio.
Pre-order here.
DUM1, ON A DIME (TAKE A TURN RECORDS)
There’s a degree of weight and humidity that hangs in the air that DUM1, Mack Narragan’s musical project, occupies through 10 songs that feel pleasurably haunted by the spirit of Paul Westerberg.
Inspired by the yearning to expel some kind of energy after learning of the loss of several family members and a close friend, Oakland-based artist Narragan got busy on a Sunday night. Wrote and recorded two songs, had them mixed on Monday, and released the following day on Bandcamp as an act of productivity while experiencing a difficult emotional time. He’s stated in liner notes that, yes, the songs were written in haste. But sometimes the best songs ever get done in 10 minutes.
That directness in the production got the attention of local radio stations in the Bay, and over the next couple of months, Narragan finished writing and recording On A Dime. What began as some form of catharsis turned into a deeply personal record that documents a difficult moment and eventually turned into captivating art, despite a battery-powered air organ with a bad motor. Recorded entirely by Narragan, the On A Dime live band features Bay Area old-hands: Gracie Malley (The Greasy Gills, Rip Room), Sam Benedetti (The Greasy Gills), and Julio Palacios (CVCC).
Here’s a sitch where pressure made an alt jangle power pop diamond. Pre-order here.
THEE OH SEES, OFF COURSE (DEATHGOD)
Sometimes, and I do mean all the time, following Thee Oh Sees (Hey, that’s the version of the band name somebody is using this week) can be like organizing all the side characters from The Simpsons. It’s a daunting task due to the many iterations of the show, different eras, and whether anyone in the 21st century still cares about Disco Stu. But get me, it’s still a rewarding job. Yes, job. It’s work, boy! Tracking all the different versions of Shorts McGee and his mind-blowing band.
Off Course, which dropped from the ever-loving sky in mid-June without any type of publicity advance, finds stalwart member Jon Dwyer getting real chewy with the arrangements. The best description of the album comes from him in the liners (“We jammed, and jammed, and jammed”); the record cover finds a pixie-candy font of the Osees band spelling next to a shiny warrior figure that reminds us all, adults and children: Never take candy from a stranger.
Not being trite or redundant, but Off Course IS… off course. Guitars are sometimes swapped out for proggy synths, making room for kraut rock jam sessions that rely more on feel and tone than precision.
A defining trait of late drummer-legends Clyde Stubblefield and Jaki Liebezeit. Who are somewhere swirling in this auditory expanse, dropping beats like breadcrumbs, giving our interstellar groove a way home? On the one, James Brown-style.
Dwyer loads up those 4am workouts, turning them into the fean mugger of jam “Hecate’s Reflection Is a Trick.” Where the psyche-punk-funker, self-proclaimed “earworm farmer,” seems to be having the time of his life and invites us all in for the jam, while Tom Dolas (guitar, samples, keys), Tim Hellman (bass), Dan Rincon (drums), Paul Quattrone (drums), and the spiritual center of this version of the group, vocalist Brigid Dawson, take us out, way the fuck out, for an eight-minute polyrhythmic cleansing.
Keep gettin’ in on this type of weird shit, Dwyer; it’s not just a vibe. It’s Gospel.
Let me just drop this real quick: The four-night residency at San Francisco’s The Chapel (8/26-8/29) is already sold out. So you know the drill, SF; get crafty because Dawson is on the bill, singing and playing keyboard and tambourine for all four shows. As if you didn’t need more reason to get your hustle on, there it is.
