The Mallard has made some big moves in the last five or six months: releasing Yes On Blood (an absolutely fantastic album that pushes the notion of garage in new and exciting directions), toured with Thee Oh Sees, and set the stakes for a summer of almost non-stop touring. Lucky for the Northwest, the band will be starting this Summer ‘o’ Tour with a jaunt up the coast, stopping in Portland, Olympia and Seattle.
It’s short, sweet, and totally worth your crumple up wad of dollars.
I especially recommend that Seattle show at The Comet as she’ll be playing with Koko & The Sweetmeats at what’s been called their last show before an indefinite hiatus.
When/Where:
Friday May 18th, Northern - Olympia, WA w/ Woolen Men, Naomi Punk, Penny Dredfuls
Saturday May 19th, The Know - Portland, OR w/ Woolen Men, The Happening
Sunday May 20th, The Comet - Seattle, WA w/ Koko & The Sweetmeats, Telemesser, Origami Ghosts
Ty Segall finally bids adieu all the pretenses of garage rock, adds a “band” to his name and throws down this ridiculous psych-rock burnout. It feels like destruction in a song. Burly guitar wail, electrically charged humidity, the nasal holler of Segall lacing it all together in to a screeching bit of burnt rubber.
Ty Segall Band releases Slaughterhouse on In The Red on June 26th.
Ty Segall plays with The Mallard and White Fences tonight at The Independent in San Francisco. Ty Segall plays Seattle on Friday at Chop Suey with White Fence, The Pharmacy and Tea Cozies.
Following the release of their stellar Castle Face debut Yes On Blood, The Mallard’s little star has been rising, well, quickly to say the least. A tour with Thee Oh Sees, a recent show with The Fresh & Onlys, and an upcoming slate of live gigs a mile long - it’s nice to see this fantastic band finally get the credit they deserve. I’ve been waiting for months and months for something they’ve done, anything really, to get the video treatment, and now Grass Widow’s Hannah Lew (director of videos for Hunx and His Punx amongst many) has done the honor. Broken glass everywhere, that’s all I can say.
Check out The Mallard tomorrow night at The Independent with Ty Segall and White Fences.
The Mallard (confessed friend and confidante) is steadily moving towards a Castle Face release of their first album YES ON BLOOD, and the tracks are slowly sliding on to the internet. “Vines”, a long time staple of The Mallard’s downright stellar live show is the latest and it lives up to the sonic squalor Greer McGettrick and company loan to it on stage.
Sometimes before I go to bed I sit and imagine what it’ll be like to hold a copy of this group’s truly fantastic vinyl in my hands. And it feels good.
The Mallard will be playing Thursday at The Hemlock Tavern with Seattle stalwarts Koko and The Sweetmeats and one of my favorite bands around, Burnt Ones.
If I can speak in broad blanket statements for a moment, I believe that San Francisco is putting out the best music of any scene in the country right now. I know, I know, you’re reading a Seattle-based blog, and I certainly know, my bias is completely out of control as I wake and live in this fine city each and every day and am engaged in the scene in a way that I can’t be in any other city. That said, I’m a national music reviewer. I scour the internet day after day trying to find music to populate my brief little column with and only a small fraction of it derives from The Bay Area. It says a lot to me that this small fraction makes up such a enormous part of my musical listening space and for that reason alone I thought this The Bay Area deserved it’s only little Top 10 write-up.
As always, I’m a failure at even numbered lists and as always I’m not one to rank. These are ten bands I thought unmissable, and I’ll admit it’s not a hugely different list than what I’ve composed before, but the bands that were good in SF last year, we’re just as good if not better this year.
Hope the New Year is already giving you cinnamon-scented massages. Thanks for reading.
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Thee Oh Sees
I’m a little bit obsessed with John Dwyer and his merry band of musical pranksters. Their live show, their prolific release schedule, their unstoppably energetic sound - I am a buck-tooth, scab-lipped groupie of Thee Oh Sees. 2011 may have been their best year yet with two original releases and a singles comp all beamed to the world amidst an exponential growth in their national popularity. John Dwyer’s record label Castle Face continued to pummel the Bay with some truly great releases (one or two that appear on this list) and I found myself chomping at the bit for 2012 just for the fruit of that labor to make it’s way in to my records stack. Lets be honest, Thee Oh Sees are probably going to be perennial favorites on this list, so get used to it.
The Mallard was almost silent in release this year, but her live show became something to behold with the addition of a drummer and a bassist. From gimmick-laden (but still amazing) solo performer to, behold to believe, rock and roll frontman, Greer McGettrick gets the nod for growing from one of my favorites, to one of everyone’s favorites.
I’m iffy on the current trend in rock ‘n’ roll to imitate the tight pants and feathered hair of glam rock precursors, but Burnt Ones still managed to melt me a new one this year. I don’t know if I had a better time at a show than the late night dance fest that was Burnt Ones at The Knockout this year, and their record, Black Teeth & Golden Tongues, is on constant rotation. It’ll make you want to pull on the tight tights, let your hair grow out, and booty shuffle your way to the liquor store.
Not a better song was released this year than “Lazybones” off of Wooden Shjips West. Fast paced, psychedelic as fuck, everything you want from a Wooden Shjips’ release plowed in to a four minute shred-fest.
Late entry on to the list, but Oakland’s Manatee is well deserved. I’ve felt the hints of early 90s punk touching on the edges of music for a while now, and though it’s scary to think we might be rolling in to a world where ska and Buck ‘o’ Nine are making a comeback, bands like Manatee take the raw energy and combine it with the artistic sensibility I’m loving right now. If this is the future, sign me up for a one-way ticket on a spaceship made of chrome.
Say what you will about the new records from Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin but their collaboration on the Castle Face Flexi-Disc were two of the best songs of the year. Both Bowie covers, both grimy and hard and all sorts of sonic ass-kicking, both not-so-subtle reminders of what these two gentlemen can do when paired together.
Sic Alps
I almost didn’t put Sic Alps on here after their cross-country meltdown and Mike Donovan’s sort of egoed rise from band leader to band unto-himself. But the hits just keep coming. Sic Alps have managed to take experimental noise and meld it with pop harmonies and nods the stranger corners of the 1970s and it is, well, fantastic. I miss the Sic Alps of yore, but am curious to see if the future holds anything.
The Mallard is back! The Mallard is back! After a relatively quiet end of 2011, The Mallard is set to release her debut LP YES ON BLOOD on Castle Face Records in the wee months of next year. It’s been spinning on endless loop in The Daily Choice headquarters and you and your friends and everyone you know are more than excited to have both your hands and two of your toes melted in to the vast void of rock ‘n’ roll.
An early peek just “appeared” on the internet last night:
If you’re in San Francisco, The Mallard will be a part of Positive Destructions2nd Annual Showcase featuring POW!, Hot Victory, and the much anticipated Blasted Canyons. Don’t miss out kiddies, or Santa’s shoving coal in your, ahem, stocking.
POW!, in the Encyclopedia of Bands (it’s out there, you just have to keep looking) would be filed beneath “sonic assault.” ”Cyberattack!!” the b-side to the bands two-song Pretend There EP, is a mix between a military call to arms, and the first wave of percussive bombs launched at a cluster of smiling protesters. It puts you in the street with a bullhorn being screamed in to behind you and there’s bombs falling and every once in a while you have to jump behind a burning pillar of some discarded car or garbage can. The sound, oh the sound, is heavy and dark and it ricochets around the ear drums like heavy artillery ensconced in vibration fired point blank in to a concrete wall. Play it loud and play it proud.
“Cyberattack!!” comes from the two song Pretend There EP that you can pick up … here.
POW! will be playing with The Mallard and Blasted Canyons at the Positive Destruction Presents show at Thee Parkside December 15th.
Niilo Smeds is yet another treasure I’ve been gifted during my friendship with The Mallard and her motley crew. Niilo Smeds is warm breath of fresh air in these times, oh these beautiful times, of fuzzed out garage and wonky electronica. Smeds vocals are clear and crisp and endowed with the sort of innate warmth you find in the vocal reaches of Bill Callahan and his ilk. A simple guitar plucks away behind him and I imagine an empty room and a single chair and a late bit of afternoon sunlight cutting through the dust motes. It’s a song to close your eyes to and be nostalgic for no particular memory, just a feeling or the outline of a moment.
You can pick up the whole Niilo Smeds album Helicopter Circles for free at his Bandcamp page.
I’ve heard rumors of a trip north with a show in Seattle with another Daily Choice favorite Koko and The Sweetmeats. Keep an eye out.
The Quiet Americans (recommended by The Daily Choice’s forever friend The Mallard) might be mistaken for the sort of swaggering, tilted-hat countrified rock ‘n’ roll this website, and this column in particular has been known to heap praise on in the past. Let us not stop the praise train for The Quiet Americans there though, for this is countrified rock ‘n’ roll strained through the fluctuating syne waves of the space-time continuum. The heel-clicking cowboys The Quiet Americans feign to be remains in the center, but the twangy guitar and tales of lost nights and dangerous futures are stretched and warped until the cowboy is no longer a corporeal being, but a spiritual concept drifting above the windy climes of some desert locale.
The Quiet Americans’ debut cassette Medicine is out on Coattrack Records now. You can also pick it up at their Bandcamp page.
I’ve always thought that the original version of “Money (That’s What I Want)” was lacking in something. It’s a song almost entirely about being a greedy prick. Take any prior version - the Barrett Strong original, The Beatles catchy hit, etc. - and what you have is songs about capitalist fantasy without the grit-filled smile of those who are really having them. ”Money” is a song about being poor and getting rich, and until I heard Philadelphia’s Lantern push this song through the grit-grinder I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a proper version of it. But Lantern gets it right forcing the song in to a tight box of proto-punk and distorted blues riffs until you can feel it hustling it’s way down the street, shoes broken, elbows torn, a half-smoked butt clenched beneath its teeth.
Lantern will be playing The Knockout next Monday the 17th with two of the best bands playing in San Francisco right now, The Mallard (now a three-piece) and Burnt Ones. Do not miss.
Pick up the new Summer EP 2011 at Lantern’s Bandcamp page.
The Doe Bay Sessions capture some of the Northwest's most talented emerging and established bands going acoustic in a quintessentially Cascadian setting:
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North of Northwest columnist, Contributing Photographer, Live Reviewer
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