She Rides Tigers: Chicago's Thrilling Brit Pop

The first time I came across She Rides Tigers (SRT) I got pretty well impressed by their music. Later on I was told that they could be easily compared to bands like the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (BRMC), Queens of The Stone Age (QTSA) or even Royal Blood. I’ve found this sort of comparison a bit risky due to the fact that one knows quite well the full discography of both BRMC and QTSA as well as of Royal Blood’s mega successful first album.

SRT surprisingly good debut EP “Standing on The Edge” sounds rather different from them all as we hope to be able to demonstrate in this article. We’ve been also told that SRT could make a connection to both early Alice Cooper and Slade. Absolutely disagree with this idea. Alice Cooper stands aesthetically miles away from SRT and is a lot less raucous and lacks the epic melodicism of SRT. Early Slade was also discarded.

One recalls the days back then when we first got into Noddy Holder’s band success during the first half of the 70s just before Punk Rock showed up. SRT really sound to something else pretty much different from Slade and their northern glam rock for the working class. Later on while reading through SRT bio I came across another lot of well-known bands from which SRT supposedly draws some inspiration.

Taking into account the kind of sound they produce we’ve found that their inspirational mentors go from the notoriously obvious Led Zeppelin to the much less obvious psychedelic influence of both Temples (pretty much into The Kinks) and Tame Impala (pretty much into Cream). Anyway, there is much more on these influences/references issue. SRT also acknowledge some mentoring to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, T-Rex, The Who, Cream, Sex Pistols and finally (we agree on this one) Oasis. Pretty eclectic!

One of the most interesting things about trying to write about music, whether it is an EP/LP review or an in depth article lays upon the kind of research I like to do about it to more appropriately understand the way cultural background and emergent musical influences of a band actually articulate in order to weave a particular sonic outcome. Usually what bands take as their most cherished influences isn't as much reflected or noticeable in the music as they consider it to be.

This turns out to be quite puzzling sometimes. Almost an archaeological challenge trying to build some sort of connection between the references bands say they pretty much have in opposition to the aural effect they exert in our eardrums.

On the other hand the sound of most bands we write about shows that there usually are less obvious influences behind official ones which contribute rather surprisingly to the final aesthetic sonic product. This seems to be precisely the case with SRT.

When we start listening to this solid, exciting power trio from Chicago, formed by Joe O'Leary (vocals/guitar), James Scott (bass/vocals) and Matt McGuire (drums/percussion) blasting their deliciously electrifying rock & roll all over the place we inevitably feel the compulsion to check list all their influences as mentioned a few lines above and see if they really match with the final sonic blast seal of “Standing on The Edge”.

We have done it and digged through the full discography of all those bands mentioned and easily dismissed the direct influence of most of them behind the crafting of the raw, visceral infection-contagious, hook and riff powerful energized sonic blow of SRT and their highly recommendable debut EP.

Objectively and as stated a few paragraphs above we see no sign of Alice Cooper whatsoever in the work of this trio hailing from Chicago. Alice Cooper lacks raucousness, melodicism and most of all lacks the essential sonic references which mould the soundscape of SRT. The same applies to Slade? Noddy Holder and his wild bunch managed to have quite some success during the 70s mostly during the first half of the decade, nevertheless when you go dig for Slade early albums namely Play It Loud (1970) and Slayed? (1972) and essaying a comparison with the sonic boom of SRT we easily conclude that the connection is too fragile to be even taken into account.

But what about The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Who, Cream or The Sex Pistols? Can we spot any direct overwhelming and unavoidable influence of these famous bands upon the final result of SRT “Standing on The Edge”? Probably we can, but only through some kind of mediation made possible by the contribution of other bands that according to our understanding seem to really have huge ascent over the SRT aesthetics meaning that only very indirectly can those so called influences actually affect the Chicago powerful trio.

So which are after all the backbone influences behind SRT drenched guitar and excitingly pounding rhythm section? Nothing better than a track by track inquiry through SRT debut EP to clarify our point of view and conclude that the band is the best perfect blend of two of the most iconic and representative BritPop bands ever: Sterophonics and Oasis. This is their hardcore influence at least as we sensed it. BRMC has slight influence on SRT mainly through “Specter at the Feast” album mostly noted because of some kind of post punk bass lines though in general one can hardly spot many similarities between both bands considering BRMC’s previous albums' aesthetics.

The same goes with little difference for QTSA though we can spot a bigger influence than with BRMC for there are traces of “Rated R”, “Era Vulgaris” and “...Like Clockwork” albums in the SRT sonic proposal though the dirty aggressive experimentalism articulated with a more direct rock sound we acknowledge in most of the QTSA albums is not so easily found in “Standing on The Edge”, but SRT isn’t supposed to be a carbon copy of the bands they like or are influenced by.

We dare to say that from the first track of the EP (Chase The Flame) to the very last one (Stronger) there is a massive presence of both Stereophonics and Oasis. While going through each one of the albums from both these bands we acknowledged major influences in the whiskey vocals, the drenched fuzzy distorted guitar trademark of Kelly Jones and Noel Gallagher, the thick vibrating bass lines, the steady pounding drumming and most of all the highly admirable feature of “Standing on the Edge” which is a sublime re-enactment of the epic melodic patterns, atmosphere and anthemic vibrations able to bind a whole generation together around songs such like “Local Boy in the Photograph”, “I Could Lose Ya”, “Trouble”, “Doorman”, or “I Got Your Number” (Stereophonics) or “Wonderwall”, “Live Forever”, “Supersonic”, “Champagne Supernova” and “Look Back in Anger” (Oasis).

In spite of being an American band SRT were able to somehow resurrect that inflammable generous memoir of the best ever made BritPop sustained in some zepplelin-esque roots rock painted with some strokes of The Cult from “Sonic Temple” and “Beyond Good and Evil” era. "Standing on The Edge" is beyond doubt one of the best EP’s we have reviewed this year. Nicely played not overproduced and superbly appealing to the ear (drum). Well done Joe, James and Matt! This is an 8/10 EP for INDIEVOTION and it surely leaves room for some justified great expectations concerning the SRT first album in a near future.

Courtney Barnett: Melbourne Superstar on The Rise (Part Two)

Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit it really is one of those albums (the very same, also applies to A Sea of Split Peas) that makes you want to spin it round and round while indulgently sipping some tequila with lime juice, brown sugar and crumbled ice while the fan wheel revolves some fresh air in the warm lounge in a late afternoon. It is almost a physical impossibility not to fall in love with the album song after song, spiral after spiral.

This is the kind of album that gets stuck into your head in such a way that it travels you everywhere risking becoming a kind of second skin. How can you avoid the urge to suddenly begin singing “Don’t jump little boy, don’t jump off that roof, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you’re still in your youth, I’d give anything to have skin like you!” in the middle of the traffic jam? Or "My internal monologue is saturated analogue, It’s scratched and drifting, I’ve become attached to the idea it’s all a shifting dream bitter-sweet philosophy" when you plunge in your machinery of thoughts at the end of the day, but also "I wanna go out but I wanna stay home"

when your girl wants to go out socialize and all you want is to watch football on TV and stuff yourself in beer and fried chips? You can't.

Just for the record Courtney Barnett’s exhilarating debut album hit the recording studio in April 2014 at Head Gap, Melbourne though the finishing details were delayed mostly due to the massive touring and finally released on March 20 coinciding with her North American tour plenty with highly awaited acclaimed gigs at SXSW 2015.

This album is the perfect testimonial from a musician that breathes' talent, but most of all from a person searching the right bias between the times of clinical depression, high anxiety and a sudden, though very consistent and physically demanding success through massive touring and media attention, which kept Courtney Barnett out of her natural comfy environment, friends and girlfriend Jen Cloher for weeks in a row. So it’s more than natural that when one gets deeper and deeper on this album one inevitably confronts with someone who deals with the normal up and down the emotional escalator, someone who gets worried, thoughtful, saddened and happy to the extreme and shares it within songs.

Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit offers a set of eleven masterfully crafted songs enhanced with a musicality that grabs you right on spot needless to say that Courtney Barnett reveals herself as a tremendous guitar player with a very peculiar technique. She never uses a pick but fingering and contrary to what we maybe think of this does not stop her from switching between musical genres spanning from dreamy melodies to pop grunge, alt country and psych rock.

Music media really loves to label everything making it more identifiable for the public assuming that the labeling is anyhow the equivalent to a great scientific discovery or a first step of man on the moon. One believes that the sustainable though somehow surprisingly sudden success of Courtney Barnett’s music left many critics and music journalists a bit confused and one knows how these people like to feel assured of what they say and write but also make some orthodox doctrine about their intellectual masturbation.

The press was fast in cataloging Courtney Barnett music as «slacker» which is quite an inappropriate term to apply to her music considering the term generally suggests some lethargic state of mind, non participation, apathy and aimlessness, some sort of alienated deep uninterested for the sociopolitical causes. Slacker is a term that goes for underachievement which is quite the very opposite of what we can actually say about Courtney Barnett considering all the sustainable aspects emanating from the way she is building her career. Quite predictably then the music press simply considered that Courtney Barnett music exhaled deep unavoidable influence from all slacker rockers of the 90s just like she was merely emulating their work. And they did the very same because of the grungy tone and mood of “Pedestrian at Best” swearing that it got to be some Nirvana in it.

Why it has to be like that? Why not Magic Dirt or The Drones? It seems a bit myopic even insulting to consider Courtney Barnett’s music as maybe merely replication of her supposed influences. Considering all released material and not only her brutally addictive debut album one perceives that as a listener she consumed a lot of different sonic stuff. People may feel tempted to label Courtney Barnett is half Sheryl Crow, half Stephen Malkmus; half Liz Phair, half Pavement.

It’s easier to go for this let’s say more evident sonorities than to consider other less obvious but rather sustainable alternatives. It hardly seems deniable that Courtney Barnett soundscape ultimately feeds itself on some early 70s New York underground aesthetics. There’s so much of Lou Reed, so much of Tom Verlaine and Television, even some strong bits of Robert Quine in her music that all summed up helps one to picture her so called influences in a rather different approach.

We figure out that there is a strong presence of Evan Dando; The Lemonheads; Dan Kelly; Darren Hanlon and even of The Simpletons, in much of her material but most of all there is a huge influence of Jen Cloher on her music and last but not least of Patti Smith which spiritually floats over Courtney Barnett aesthetics subtly. If one goes through the albums Horses and Radio Ethiopia we easily understand tracks such like Small Poppies or Out of the Woodwork.

It is hugely rewarding to see that Courtney Barnett is much more than someone who releases nice music. She is somehow reconstructing and re configuring a musical thread by revisiting past generations of musicians that can really be a good help for the further deeper consolidation of her art which demands from the presumed critics an informed approach to her sonic inspiration.

As said a few paragraphs above Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit offers a very cohesive set of songs opening with Elevator Operator tells a story of man who likes to go to tall buildings at the same time as a woman on Botox that he meets on the elevator urges him not to throw himself out from the roof onto the pavement. This track brings some good and light power pop with steady guitar and bass with an effective drum pattern all relinquished with some Hammond style organ which give a pretty soulful vibe to this theme.

Pedestrian At Best, is generally a song about self-awareness of who you are and how you managed to get to where you are now. It’s a song in which past meets future in the uncertainty of what the present might represent. The garage punk song of the album awesomely energetic and inviting for the mosh pit with massive reverb noise guitars and enraged rhythm section. An Illustration of Loneliness (Sleepless in NY) is mostly a song about Courtney Barnett's longing from her girlfriend due to sudden and drastic change of life habits and routines out of her natural environment due to the huge success of Sea of Split Peas which implied loads of gig ’n’ tour.

Another power pop song reminding some Luscious Jackson material, but enriched with a kind of funky sway and slightly distorted guitars with a Lou Reed/Robert Quine touch that marvelously lingers too through Small Poppies that tells us not only about resentment towards other people's talent and success as it seems to mostly be about the social phenomenon of domestic violence. The instrumental parts of this song leaves in the listener the feeling that the underground music scene from NY mid seventies landed in Melbourne. Fabulous track with all instruments on the right spot.

Depreston is in a way the midpoint song of the album and so far so good! It tells us about the hardships of nailing the perfect affordable dwell to live in Melbourne’s suburbs, and how each house has its previous life. An indie pop lovely tune with gentle guitar playing, melody and soloing reminding of some tunes from The Go-Betweens embellished with a gorgeous steady broomstick snare work. Aqua Profunda! Meaning “deep waters” is a summer song about someone trying to impress the next lane swimmer, but the outcome was not the desired one. The musicality of this theme has some cool, nice indie rock features mostly the rhythm section work with a very present drumming pattern and bass line colored with a guitar chopping which makes The Breeders come to mind.

This sort of Breeder-esque vibe is also present in Dead Fox is a well humored account about the way of the world concerning the quality of what we eat, short-term profit and greed over environmental issues of any order from animal rights to consumer health. The way the guitar and bass link together just like there were two lead guitars works amazingly and the perfect rock drumming does marvelous to the song as well as extending its tentacles onto Nobody Really Cares If You Don't Go to the Party which is a song dealing with the interaction issue between different personalities and reciprocity in relationships and the opposition between extroverts and introverts and how easily people ignore the differences preferring to condemn and reject them.

Debbie Downer is musically a happy song in spite of the lyric subject tells about someone depressing, non positive, that feeds on negativity. The opening of the song reminds The Doors “Light My Fire” keyboard part with a pretty interesting groove. Kim's Caravan, is a wonderful dark song about the duality of the human condition in general, we are light and darkness, good and evil, life and death, silence and noise, significance and insignificance. Musically the song has some background sonic landscape that perfectly emulates what would be someone/something slowly drowning in the depths while reverberating, magnificent guitars rise in steady blows reminding again the Lou Reed/Robert Quine guitar work. Fantastic.

Boxing Day Blues is a somehow enigmatic conversational style song about someone that isn't there for another when needed, a song about disillusionment and the defilement of a relationship. This is the closing song of the album and it closes it per opposition to the vibrant opening song. It somehow resembles some acoustic work of Robert Forster but mostly (still) of Lou Reed and his Perfect Day from the Transformer album. No, Boxing Day Blues does not sound to Perfect Day but the atmosphere and moody balance of Lou Reed’s song is all there. And it’s so cool.

One has already said enough about Courtney Barnett to conclude that we are in the presence of an extremely humble, down to earth person with dazzling talent in the artistry domain she has chosen to work. We're also convinced that her debut album will easily be in the top 20 of the 2015 best albums because it is in fact a great album with excellent songs and musical maturity that gives the listener the assurance of further development and experimentation.

When one goes through Courtney Barnett album if we are honest about it, we inevitably have to recognize that there are signs or hints of influences she has from other musicians (which is only natural) but we undoubtedly see the evidence of a personal style either in guitar playing, singing or songwriting. A proper aesthetic even if unintentionally.

The mundane euphoria concerning Courtney Barnett resides in the fact that she is original and must not be enrolled with the lot of girl bands just like she is one among many. By her own merit she entered without making too much fuss in the restricted group of top class women acts where for instance one also can spot: Anna Calvi, Catherine Anne Davies, Warpaint, St. Vincent, Jen Cloher, Chelsea Wolfe, And The Kids, Emily Jane White, Daisy Victoria, Marissa Nadler, Sarah Blasko or Sharon Van Etten to name just those who came to mind while we’re writing this article.

One of the most amazing features of Courtney Barnett is that not only she does have an incisive opinion about what is going on around the world, but she puts it with a certain laid back state of mind that may sound slackly, when in fact it is more like she was a kind of third party, someone who keeps distance to gain better focus and produce opinion with humor like she was the Sarah Silverman of electric guitar. Enough said, we are in the presence not of a new Bob Dylan like some like to call her, but right the contrary in the face of someone who reached the pedestal that only Courtney Barnett [all comparisons put aside] could have reach.

INDIEVOTION ranking for “Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit” is 9/10

Courtney Barnett: Melbourne Superstar on The Rise (Part One)

The Australian music scene had always undoubtedly been one of our most favorite trends. One's own musical taste education would have never been what it is if we did not know about The Birthday Party, The Triffids, SPK, The Go-Betweens, The Divinyls, The Church and many of the musicians involved in these bands whom have often pursued parallel solo projects. This made us have a genuine interest in all the indie/alternative music hailing from this ever fascinating country. There's something special about Aussie bands that make their vibrant sound get inside your head in a clearly different manner than the British, American or Canadian bands. So it is only natural that all along the years we stood attentive to all the exciting sounds coming from Melbourne, Sidney, Brisbane, Perth.

There are a lot of gorgeous bands and musicians around the Aussie block for the moment such as Rainbow Chan, Go Violets, The Native Cats, Screaming Match, Blank Realm, Animal Hands, British India, Alpine, The Jezebels, Bloods, Jagwar Ma and so many others that we could go on and on with a list of names but that is not our purpose here though one can be assured that Australian offers an amazing aural experience. This article focuses on someone that whether you like her or not revamped much of the actual Australian scene and made the indie world know about it in complete gaze. I tend to believe that she is doing a lot more in Australia than Mr. Tony Abbot government. Her music is generating a consensus of both admiration, praise and acclaim as well as reaching a multitude of people that Mr. Abbot never will.

Let's put politics aside and call in the magic of Courtney Barnett. She was born in Pittwater and grew up in Sydney's seaside area where the best beaches are located just before moving to Hobart, Tasmania, with her parents. Barnett’s mother being a former Australian Ballet dancer while her father worked as a graphic designer. After finishing high school, she attended University of Tasmania’s art school though hesitating between fine-art photography and music. Music won and Courtney Barnett dropped out University, moved to Melbourne where in between working in a bar and a tennis shoe store she began writing her music and became assiduous in the Melbourne music scene which would be of decisive importance to Courtney’s music career.

She played guitar in several small bands mostly garage outfits before joining psych band Immigrant Union and feature in the song Numbers on Baby We Were Born to Die EP (2012) by Jen Cloher and also playing on (2013) Cloher’s third album as full time band member. When Courtney went solo she launched her own label: Milk! Records to release her own music, but the label has grown and includes some of her favorite musicians in Melbourne and collaborative projects with her and friends. You definitely have to be bold enough to found your own record label with first headquarters in your own bedroom! Courtney Barnett did it and released the first self-produced EP I've Got a Friend Called Emily Ferris in 2012 while the following one, How To Carve a Carrot into a Rose, would be released in the early cries of 2013.

Pretty convinced that listeners were somehow lost in translation between both EPs and missing much of the issues and subjects. So she decided to combine them both in a double EP format and released them by the end of 2013 under the title of The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas. Later that year, Courtney Barnett and the band embarked on an almost sold out non-stop tour that took them to North America, Europe and back again to Australia with little available time to start recording what would properly be her debut album. The unanimously acclaimed A Sea of Split Peas, allowed Courtney Barnett to internationally make room for herself during 2013, in such a way that her recognition hugely went way beyond the Australian borders and got her booked on the widely known and influential Jimmy Fallon, Coachella, Glastonbury, and received appraisal from influential press such as The Guardian, NME, Rolling Stone and Pitchfork to mention but a few.

Courtney Barnett started writing songs by the time she started learning guitar, though she only began performing them in public when she was around 18. Her first accomplished song was Canned Tomatoes and like every other it was written from a regular human being perspective dealing with common emotions, roller coaster kind of ups and downs, good and bad experiences spanning everything going on in her life. The lyrics are ideas and feelings set to some background and it is no surprise that they show the gathering of loads of finely observed details excised from mundane existential routine. All of this goes into Courtney Barnett songs since she kind of compulsively observes what’s directly in front of her and normally the writing momentum happens on the spur of some inspirational circumstance which fill her journals with endless inner monologues before the words are set to the guitar.

She crafts her lyrics with great care, so it seems and then delivers them as if she’s improvising. One may say that it is purely logic and analytical procedure. In some sharp sense one could say that Courtney Barnett is a true master of an observational universe blurred between profundity and banality since the song themes can be triggered just because of drinking wine with friends in a living room or looking at cracks in a plaster wall or driving in the suburbs of Melbourne, or the personal objects of a deceased old lady. Courtney Barnett writes about many of the issues affecting the contemporary capitalist alienation and the lyrics perfectly achieve that equilibrium between personal, everyday moments and all the cargo of emotionally that often rides through one’s mind. Observation requires emotion in order to give personality and meaningfulness to the songs.

If one was considering literary styles one would feel tempted to say that though technically Courtney Barnett writes about her own life, she is far from being a traditional confessional diarist in singer-songwriter mode. On the contrary, she manages to be hyper-specific avoiding short-sighted outlooks on the issues she writes about. This is probably one of the most visible explanations that helps to understand the reason why one can easily connect to her lyrics. Her songs really tell a story and build upon a world of experiences that one maybe naturally acquainted to in spite of the fact that the nature of Courtney Barnett's songs derive from the uniqueness of her life experience, but there is also a lot in them coming from the alien experience of other people’s lives. Due to this evidence one can say that she writes from a perspective definitely shared not only by Australians or New Zealanders, but by a worldwide legion of young and not so young educated urban individuals above the average cultural enlightenment though almost broke if not poor in some cases.

To Be Continued On Next Post…

Poppy Seeds...

This is INDIEVOTION's sonic proposal for the weekend. it is 100% made up with some of the very finest female talent and musicianship that can be found wherever there's a wild spirit creating beauty. Tripping enjoyment...