Marnie Stern — The Comeback Kid (Joyful Noise)

A decade ago, when we last had a Marnie Stern album to consider, she was a beacon of instrumental prowess in a world of “Women who rock” features that largely confined themselves to singers. She was a shredder then and a shredder now, and dare we hope, the world has shifted so that this is no longer so remarkable? In any case, her latest album, The Comeback Kid, is full of shimmering, ultra fanciful castles of guitar-based sound, but it’s also kind of an experimental pop gem, like Deerhoof after a month of Guitar Hero or like OOIOO any time, really.

Stern has spent the last 10 years in ways both unsurprising (she had two kids now) and mildly unusual (she plays guitar on in Late Night’s 8G band). As a result, she sounds both refreshed from the hiatus and in sharp form from the practice. This is, of course, a contradiction, but makes sense when you think about it. Playing other people’s music five nights a week is very different from making your own songs and touring them.

In any case, she is audibly raring to go, in “Believing is Seeing.” She builds a song right in front of us, asking “What if I add this? And then?” and then adding it, big crashing power chords, antic dances of off kilter picking, handclaps, sugar-rush, girl-group shouts and refrains. “Don’t bow down,” she confides before launching the wholly, gloriously excessive “Working Memory” and then DOESN’T BOW DOWN. Instead she launches a Cecil B. DeMille production of an art punk song, with trebly choirs and neck warping firestorms of electric guitar wizardry. It’s the grand finale of all grand finales, but hold on, the album’s not even half over yet.

You’ve still got the stop-start giddy assault of “Earth Eater,” for instance, showcasing rapid-fire bursts of percussion and, again, guitar, as well as fizzy, popping, girl sung choruses that have something very Japanese about them. It’s here that I’m going to pull the Wendy Eisenberg card just because I can think of no other female artist with comparable chops and experimental pop tendencies, but Stern is pure pleasure where Eisenberg can sometimes seem a puzzle maker. You can turn it all off and enjoy The Comeback Kid—or listen in and enjoy the details. (Like that Van Halen solo right at the end of “Earth Eater.”)

Celebrate the comeback, sure, but it sounds like a big bang beginning.

Jennifer Kelly

Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet - Roulette, Brooklyn, New York, March 27, 2023 / Tiny Desk Concert

Here's what I wrote about Bill Orcutt's Music for Four Guitars for Aquarium Drunkard's year-end roundup: "A multitracked electric guitar masterpiece, [it] offers a richly layered trip. As with everything Orcutt does, there’s a wild intensity at work, but the interlinked compositions here could also work as meditation soundtracks. Orcutt continues to surprise." 

Most surprising, perhaps, is that Orcutt managed to take Four Guitars on the road this year. He brought with him some serious underground ringers to bring this stuff to life: Shane Parish, Ava Mendoza and Wendy Eisenberg. Thanks to Parish's notations, the quartet hews closely to the original compositions, but in a live setting, things open up and flow, creating a truly heady listening (and viewing) experience. Knotty, gnarly, totally beautiful. The musicians also seem to be having a blast playing together, which is always a plus in my book.

And hey, the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet is playing in Los Angeles TONIGHT. I'd go if I were you.

Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet: Tiny Desk Concert

Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet - Live at Roulette Brooklyn, NY 3/27/23

It's been a few weeks since I've spun a live recording of the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet (which is Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza, Shane Parish, and Bill Orcutt). This is a great video as it allowed me to fully see each guitar player unlike when I saw this amazing set at Big Ears a few days later where I was stuck behind a bunch standing ppl and a very low stage (picture below as I held up my phone while standing on my tippy toes lol).

Adventureland

directed by Greg Mottola, 2009

Listen/purchase: Accept When by Caroline Davis & Wendy Eisenberg

i'm (hopefully) at home recovering from a minor heart procedure earlier this week but there's a new show set to air on wlur at 8pm tonight with two hours of (mostly broken) heart related songs. last week's show is also streaming on mixcloud and will air at 10pm tonight after the new show.

we also wrapped up our 'song quotes' theme last week. all semester long we've been starting shows off with a song that quotes lyrically from another song. we heard from: built to spill allo darlin, spiritualized, jeanines, okkervil river, hootie and the blowfish, car seat headrest, tori amos, uncle tupelo, vampire weekend, martha, the spinanes, destroyer, and u2.

no love for ned on wlur – april 12th, 2024 from 8-10pm

artist // track // album // label u2 // god, part ii // rattle and hum // island bodega // dedicated to the dedicated // our brand could be yr life // chrysalis armin // academic genius // armin cassette // lost sound tapes the real losers // beat your heart out // good clean fun // total punk macho boys // dinosaur // macho boys // dirt cult cowtown // tweak // paranormal romance // happy happy birthday to me hound // holding out // some days were good cassette // gold mold s:bahn // you could be mine // love songs // noiseland lung leg // krayola // maid to minx // last night from glasgow majesty crush // seles // love 15 // numero group drop nineteens // white dress // white dress ep // wharf cat nervous twitch // this song about ya // odd socks // (self-released) guided by voices // jabberstroker // sunfish holy breakfast ep // matador still house plants // sticky // if i don't make it, i love u // bison tam lin // snooping animals // tam lin cassette // discontinuous innovations titanic // circulo perfecto // vidrio // unheard of hope patrick shiroishi // the light is not afraid // a sparrow in a swallow's nest 7" // sub pop caroline davis and wendy eisenberg featuring greg saunier // concrete // accept when // astral spirits shabaka hutchings featuring saul williams // managing my breath, what fear had become // perceive its beauty, acknowledge its grace // impulse! tyshawn sorey, aaron diehl and matt brewer // reincarnation blues // continuing // pi harold land // one second, please // the fox (remastered) // contemporary akai solo // demonslayer // spirit roaming // backwoodz studioz serengeti // lou canela // kenny dennis iv // tha god fahim and oh no featuring your old droog // cobbler // berserko // nature sounds estee nack and futurewave // oscar de la renta // stone temple pyrex // wav god music valee and harry fraud featuring saba and mavi // watermelon automobile // virtuoso // fake shore drive beyoncé featuring linda martell and shaboozey // spaghettii // cowboy carter // parkwood entertainment the hit parade // apple tree // under the bridge, volume two compilation // skep wax haha same // calling it a night // guess what to do 7" // sub pop the ladybug transistor // always on the saxophone // can't wait another day // merge the flaming stars // ten feet tall // john peel session on october 17th, 1996 ep // precious club 8 // sunny // sunny digital single // golden islands the reds, pinks and purples // learning to love a band // unwishing well // slumberland

what on earth is wendy eisenberg talking about on twitter rn

Liked on YouTube: Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet: Tiny Desk Concert - Lars Gotrich | April 26, 2023 "How loud can we be?" Bill Orcutt asked as his guitar quartet tuned their Telecasters and Jazzmasters for sound check. A wild deconstructionist whose catalog spans a splatter of hardcore punk, noise and electronic music, Orcutt has written and improvised on four-stringed guitars for four decades, culminating in the ecstatic minimalism of last year's Music for Four Guitars, each part played and dubbed over by himself. At the Tiny Desk, however, Orcutt brought along a who's who of forward-thinking guitarists to perform these rowdy, giddy and shreddy pieces: Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza and Shane Parish, who transcribed the original recordings. From a frenzied hoedown ("Or from behind") and feedback-humming drone-pop ("In the rain") to something resembling Henry Cow playing Norwegian black metal ("In profile") and paradoxically Brutalist complexity ("Or head on"), each song is a short burst of finger-flicked frenzy. SET LIST "Or from behind" "In the rain" "At a distance" "In profile" "Or head on" MUSICIANS Bill Orcutt: guitar Ava Mendoza: guitar Shane Parish: guitar Wendy Eisenberg: guitar TINY DESK TEAM Producer: Lars Gotrich Director/Editor: Sofia Seidel Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Creative Director: Bob Boilen Series Producer: Bobby Carter Videographers: Sofia Seidel, Joshua Bryant, Kara Frame Audio Assistant: Brian Jarboe Production Assistant: Jill Britton Tiny Desk Team: Suraya Mohamed, Maia Stern, Marissa Lorusso, Hazel Cills, Ashley Pointer, Pilar Galván VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann #tinydesk #nprmusic #billorcutt

Bill Orcutt — Music for Four Guitars (Palilalia)

Music For Four Guitars by Bill Orcutt

Whether through confrontation or deconstruction or noisy exploration, Bill Orcutt’s music cuts, or wrestles, song structure to its essence. But Music for Four Guitars slices more cleanly than most.

On the one end of the Orcutt spectrum is the wild, menacing abandon of Harry Pussy; Adjacent, if totally different in execution, is his mesmerizingly irritating 2021 solo digital piece, A Mechanical Joey.  Elsewhere (here I must abandon the idea of straight lines) are Orcutt’s nearly unrecognizable renderings of some of the best-known entries to the Great American Songbook. And then there are his improvisational outings, both on his own and with longtime collaborators such as Chris Corsano: For 2021’s long distance collaboration Made Out of Sound, Orcutt improvised over Corsano’s recordings, piecing together a lovely slow-motion rock-tumbler of guitar and drums.  

Music for Four Guitars has been in the works, as a piece of music, since 2015, and was originally meant to be performed by four guitarists. On this record all four parts are played by Orcutt. The chance to hear his recognizably frenzied, blown-out guitar tone times four is our good fortune. Should you care to launch your own guitar quartet, an 80-page score transcribed by Shane Parish is available via download. (Don’t worry if you lack the chops: the record will be performed live by Orcutt, Parish, Ava Mendoza and Wendy Eisenberg next year at Big Ears Festival).

Orcutt has said that he is built for a certain kind of cyclical rhythm, which Music for Four Guitars offers in large supply. He told the Guardian in 2013 that, via this rhythm, he felt a kinship with Gertrude Stein: "The way that she wrote," he said, “it's not repetition, but repeating something with variations, with these tight loops. … I know this sound because it's in my head all the time.”  

Here the track titles, read together, form a kind of poem, in a style not dissimilar to that of Stein. If the listener/reader is playing along, their awareness will shift from “In profile” to “Seen from above” to “On the horizon,” and so on.  But perhaps it’s best not to overthink the titles, though they fit the musical pieces, which are likewise brief and relatively accessible, and more complex than they might seem.

In a recent Substack post about the philosopher and mystic Simone Weil, poet Emmalea Russo wrote of “the dreariness of not looking down, of not looking up, of gorging on culture and forgetting what lights it up.”  

Music for Four Guitars is both steeped in solar brightness and grounded in the dirt, but in its more baleful moments — see “Only at dusk,” a foreboding perpetual canon sliced through with a gorgeous ascending note — it reminds me of the complex, darkly-toned psalms I was drawn to as a child in church. We had no official choir, so parishioners sight-read their separate vocal parts from their hymnals.  

Four Guitars is, to be clear, not worship music, unless you subscribe to a Weilian idea that music is an expression of pure attention, which therefore makes it a form of prayer. And, as Tom Carter argues in this record’s liner notes, Four Guitars is too indelicate to be considered chamber music, tempting as that classification may be. Of course, anyone as rooted in American music as Orcutt cannot help but brush up against the pew now and again, and American church music, like Orcutt, can be a real bruiser. 

But as with church music, or choral music, Orcutt builds musical structures layer by layer, part by part. These compositions are sometimes jaggedly ecstatic – “Or head on” for one, leaps and lurches with joy. As in any congregation, sometimes a delighted, discordant, untrained voice rises in volume above the rest. 

Margaret Welsh

jaimie branch Tribute Show Announced in NYC

Wendy Eisenberg, Sandy Ewen, Luke Stewart, and more will honor the late trumpeter at Trans Pecos in Queens from RSS: News https://ift.tt/cBfP6rm

jaimie branch Tribute Show Announced in NYC

Wendy Eisenberg, Sandy Ewen, Luke Stewart, and more will honor the late trumpeter at Trans Pecos in Queens from RSS: News https://ift.tt/esgulE1 via IFTTT

In Memory of John Peel Show 210409 Podcast & Playlist

In Memory of John Peel Show 210409 Podcast & Playlist

 Jane Fonda “keep doing this essential work” >>> the best new music, independent of the industry system – back this show on patreon Paypal to [email protected] heard in over 90 countries via independent stations  https://radiopublic.com/in-memory-of-john-peel-show-6nVPd6/ (RSS)Pod-Subscribe for free here or embed/listen at podomatic – itunes here’s the latest…

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PAL-080 Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet Gatefold 2LP

"Four Guitars Live"

NOTE: Shops & distros worldwide can contact Revolver USA for stock.

As Bill Orcutt’s most mature and exhilarating LP to date, Music for Four Guitars was a slab of undeniable Apollonian beauty. Its approachability and obvious novelty landed it not only on the year- end lists of every key-pushing codger in the underground in 2022, but also on NPR in the form of the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, an ensemble assembled to perform this music and featuring Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza, and Shane Parish in addition to Orcutt. But while their Tiny Desk Concert gave a whiff of the quartet’s easy intimacy, the sterile confines of the virtual recital medium still left a puzzle unsolved: how might these brutally mannered bricks of minimalist counterpoint sound on a stage in front of actual breathing bodies?

This was the question foremost in my mind when I first saw the quartet in San Francisco a few months before this double live LP was recorded. I was already familiar with the prowess of Eisenberg and Mendoza, two of the most technically intimidating shredders to blast out of the noise/improv underground, and knew Parish as the mastermind behind the epic translation of Orcutt's quartet recordings into a fully notated score. I was ready to be “blown away" — and I most assuredly was. The quartet navigated Orcutt's jaggedly spiraling right angles into the shining core of the compositions with joyous ease, faithful to the originals in nearly every way (though their tempos were slightly ramped up, Blakey style, to communicate their breathless rush). The renditions were flawless, stellar and inspiring. I had expected nothing less.

Which leads us to this album, Four Guitars Live, recorded in November of 2023 at Le Guess Who? festival during the quartet’s first European tour. The true essence of this set is not simply in its faithfulness to the source compositions, but in the group's easy familiarity (no doubt the result of weeks on the road) and the generosity of their improvisations, both collective and solo. Orcutt, clearly cognizant of both the caliber of his collaborators and the

singularity of their voices, has given everyone room to stretch out, and all have delivered some of their most moving passages to date.

One of this record's great thrills for me is imagining a listener, perhaps unfamiliar with the outer limits of contemporary guitar improvisation (or the Tzadik catalog), slammed into catatonia by Mendoza's liquefying lines on Out of the corner of the eye, then revived and healed by the languid, breathy lines of Parish's unaccompanied, spaced-out breakdown of the track's main theme, finally only to be crushed by Eisenberg’s staggering extended solo on Only at dusk (somehow channeling both Eugene Chadbourne and Buck Dharma).

There's another peak, which begins at the end of side B, in Orcutt's own languid solo, encapsulating the flowing focus of his recent solo LPs, and serving as an introduction to the next side's ensemble tour de force, the psychic heart of the album, On the horizon: its melodic core passing first to Orcutt, launching into a sublime solo turn by Eisenberg, a duo of Parish and Mendoza, before parachuting back into the ensemble for a smashup rendition of Barely visible and Glimpsed while driving (renamed Barely driving) knitted together with an softly bubbling ensemble improvisation. The transfer is orchestrated yet seamless, its tonal form undeniable even in the presence of obvious dissonance.

The breadth of Four Guitars Live gives lie to the false notion that agile, polytonal improv is necessarily without soul, is necessarily inaccessible. Rather, Four Guitars posits a human avant-garde music that the most conservative will recognize as virtuosic and revel in its classic intervals, boiling counterpoint, and precisely- layered facets. Even the rockers in your life might dig it, so why not pass it on? — TOM CARTER

Listen/purchase: Accept When by Caroline Davis & Wendy Eisenberg