There hasn’t been the influx of shows or reviews happening that I had hoped for in the beginning; I blame this horrifically shitty never-ending weather; it’s keeping me in hibernation mode. Since my last write-up, I had tickets for 2 shows which I basically just didn’t attend (because I was exhausted and cold), saw about 1/3 of a LBLB (an evening cut short by again; exhaustion and coldness) and performed with my own little band thingy I have going on (more on this later, perhaps). It would appear life was saving up this month for one big blow out, I feel almost rewarded for being patient by this weekend’s festivities…
Friday and Saturday night saw the first ever (may be annual?) Buoyancy Benefit show for the Moving Island Project. Googling “Moving Island” will see pretty much the same blurb regurgitated over and over again; (seemingly the only “official” info on the “about us” section of the site… It is community education “focused on emerging arts, empowering technology and the business of living.”) From what I understand and was told, this is what’s up: Maria from Schooner, Kelly from the Rosebuds, Adam Crane and Chris from Motor Skills got together and figured out that artists are poor…. And wouldn’t it be nice to reach out to kids (people in general) and teach them how to live successfully while still acquiring some sense of creative integrity? Maybe teaching bands how to do their taxes right? Or showing print artists how to make money on Etsy? I don’t know, I might be way off base with those examples, but this was a 2am drunk conversation in the parking lot. There is a good interview/description on New Raleigh, if you're interested... It sounds like kinda the best idea ever and I’m absolutely down with getting involved with or at the very least supporting these guys. And of course I’m going to support my friends in the local music scene and the probability of hearing some great tunes is always a draw. I got tickets.
The lineup was irresistible. There are literally only a couple (maaaaybe) other bands I would have thrown in to pump it up a little more, but overall, I’d say these kids did an amazing job getting some really stellar local talent in to play the space… which; first of all let me say, is incredible. Incredible in that La bohème kinda way… aesthetically, I’m not going to lie and say this is the most beautiful space for shows in town (that doorway was serious treachery after a few drinks) but there was an extremely welcoming/loving vibe in this space. And I don’t mean to get all earth-mothery on you all, but I am a notoriously pathetic slave to my instincts and the moment I got in the door, I knew I was in a good place. That everyone there was really happy to be there and was there for a good reason. I never once got that icky “There people are here because this is where the kids are tonight” vibe; I met tons of new people. Tons! Both nights of shows I will tell you, I felt nothing but welcomed, appreciated and face melted with pure awesome rock in a truly acoustically amazing space. (Srsly you guys – it sounded SO GOOD in there!)
Now, on to the actual bands! I won’t lie and say I knew every single one of these folks, I didn’t. But I am now fans of many new folks. Starting with these guys: the Big Picture... wow! …. WOW! I didn’t expect THAT! What had happened was: Jay, Roo, etc and I were at dinner. Jay is antsy because his friends are playing first and he wants to see them, I scoot him out the door whilst Roo and I finish our dinner and dilly dally (buying beer, etc…) and while at Roo’s house putting the final touches on our departure (the space is barely 5 minutes from us in Cameron Village) I get a call from Jay… the goof has called and is taunting me with the show!!! And I throw the phone on speakerphone and it seems abundantly clear we have to get down there ASAP! Roo and I, with the phone still on speakerphone, jump in the car and take off… a few moments later I hear Jay yell over the music “IM HANGING UP NOW I WANNA LISTEN” or something... Something like that. (He later tells me he pocket dialed, realized what was going on and said “hey fuckit” and just let me listen. He is awesome like that.)
So! The Big Picture! Much like every local band ever, this band is a band full of people from other bands, from what I was told (Annuals, Lost in the Trees, Hogg, etc). I do know this: Big sound! Not at all expected! These guys should *not* have been an opener, they should have been in the middle maybe, next time whoever is booking these guys; you need to give them the spot they deserve. There were certainly not enough people there when they went on to appreciate how spectacular they were. I totally have to wonder if whoever set up the lineup was kicking themselves after they went off… Their entire set consisted of Roo and I turning back and forth saying “Can you believe this?!” and “They are incredible!” and doing that flamboyantly gratuitous “GOURL” face over and over at one another. Where was the magic, you say? This is the part I knew enough to warn you guys about: I don’t know who was who in this band, I met them later but hey, I was drinking. These are the things I can tell you: Lead singer’s voice was a FORCE! Black dude playing the big toms like he was in Kodo was blowing my mind. There was some seriously good energy all over these guys and I am really psyched to see them again! New Friends! Yay!
Organos. I can’t be mean because I’m not mean but I am so hesitant to even say anything. I think these gals just had an off night... When the music actually started, it was fine. But that was the thing; there was a lot of talking. They were talking for 5 mins then would play a 3 minute song. And the talking was all complaining about stuff. It was a little off putting. But the really awkward thing was that later I got to meet and talk to the majority of this band and I really like them! So I am certainly going to give them another chance and I could honestly swear I have seen them before and liked them, anyway, thus confirming the “off night” theory. Roo and I decided that the issue was the refusal to turn the “house lights” off during the show. It’s all good, do what you need to do, but it just killed the mood. Sorry kids, I feel as if I have failed you. Hard truth: we left in the middle of this set to get more beer. :(
Back just in time for Wowser Bowser from ATL! Or as I have decided to dub them “Baby Future Islands” or “FI-lite”, or “Hey these guys remind me so much of Future Islands, but like, not quite as show stopping and wild and dramatic, but hey - totally good!” These kids drew me in with their gypsy magic... I was kinda feeling it, then I was REALLY feeling it, then before I knew it was in the middle of a wild ass dance party covered in balloons and bouncing all over the room! I don’t know how, but it suddenly seemed like everyone within a 15 foot radius of the stage was somehow involved with this band. The LV as all over the crowd, random people were all over the stage, it was a total clusterfuck of “I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON BUT HOLD ON HERE WE GO!” As I said, they were very Future Islands-esque (one of my favorite bands ever, btw) and there is a fine line between imitation and inspiration, and I think these kids very delicately took a step towards “inspired by” so I didn’t feel any resentful dedication to Sam and the boys. I had mentioned in the previous post how each band had the Superfan… I don’t know how I had never heard of these guys, but they had an entourage of superfans! As I said, everyone within a 15 foot radius of the stage LOVED these guys. I was seduced by not only the music, but the energy of the people that love the music as well. I later, after their set, made each member of the band pinky swear they would come back to Raleigh for another show. It was confirmed, It has been sworn. In the middle of the pinky swearing ceremony I left mid sentence because I knew the time had come for…
…Dun dun DUNNNN! …GRAY YOUNG! I am so super excited to finally be doing a write up of a Gray Young show. In my own way, (which hey, let’s admit, I’m not that great at) I hope I can do them justice. This blog is me being all “I’m just a dumb girl with excellent taste in music and I like to write some” and is in no way professional… (Obviously) but I am passionate. And certain artists bring a certain frenzy of passion out of me that literally doesn’t compare to anything else you will ever read about in this blog. Unless I wind up at a U2 or Morrissey show in the future, the most spazzy and overzealous you will see me get about a band is when I see Gray Young. I love Gray Young.
Why I love gray young: An Essay
There are people who know what I like so well that it is off-putting and borderline invasive. Roo has me pegged. Jay is learning what I like. My brother. My best friend. And my musical soul mate, Eric. Eric and I met in the Indie music store I worked at for several years near NC State campus. He and his wife were scouting out a vinyl copy of “Do they know it’s Christmas” or was it “Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey” – I don’t know how or why, but we became friends. Good, good friends. Eric, his wife, and his BFF would come and spend hours lazing around the coffee shop next door, as I would take about 6 cigarette breaks an hour, I would most likely be sitting with and talking to these guys for most of my shift. (Thank you for enduring my digression, the point is this:) No one and I mean NO ONE can come up to me and be like “You should check these guys out, you’ll really like them” and nail it the way Eric can. Eric dropped Gray Young on me. Many times. I don’t know if it was laziness or apathy (or those might be the same thing in this instance) or what it was that kept me vague about checking them out. But then; Hopscotch. GY played the first night of the first set of the first show of the first-first-first of anything I saw that weekend. (At tir na nog, of course.)
GY Digression #2: The moment they got on stage at Hopscotch, I said out loud to my friend Varani, “Oh! THAT guy!” … The lead singer, Chas, I see pretty much every day at the coffee shop I walk to for lunch. We literally sat across from each other, headphoned and reading, every day for the entire summer. Now apparently he works there sometimes… The best thing? This still happens. I have, as yet, still not spoken to him; it’s almost become a game to me now. There is no real reason why I continue to do this, and I suppose the secret is out now and if he reads this, he might spoil the game but there it is. I have spoken with both Dan and Jeff many times, but not Chas. This adds some sort of mystery for me. I am a strange person; let’s all just agree on that. My *main* and possibly only deterrence is an interview I read in the Indy where he got snarky about “new” U2. This makes me bonkers! I understand people that like only certain “levels” of the boys; it’s almost impossible with the length and diversity of their career, but I’m so all or nothing… you can’t pick and choose! I don’t mean to discriminate against a picky U2 fan, because a little love is better than none, right? But this sticks with me. I just googled it and read it again and got all judgey… Fuckin’ Chas. I love you, but you suck. I also have this theory that he is probably my soul mate, so I just want to put that stress off as long as possible. // digression end.
So back to Hopscotch: from note one, I was stunned. After the first song I knew I was falling in love. Second and third songs, I knew I was in on something. Getting all earth-mothery again, but I honestly felt like this aligning of planets and like I was a part of this intricate universal design to put me in exactly that spot to hear exactly those notes that I knew were going to be a part of my life forever. Maybe change me, maybe just make me happy, but whatever it was, I knew I was hearing something bigger and better than what I maybe even deserved to hear.
When GY plays, (and I have used this as my selling pitch, slight reference to digression #2,) I feel like I have somehow taken a time machine back to 1981-ish and I am watching the birth of U2. They may not have identical sounds but there are definite elements to the structure and tone of almost all GY songs where I can hear echoes of U2. They seem to know how to speak U2’s language and in a musical equivalency that no other band has yet to come close (in my not-so-humble-opinion). But this way of ‘speaking’, this interpretation of the guidelines that U2 may have set up for them are uniquely, delicately, and perfectly their own. They are completely separate entities on a ballistic level that no other bands have seemed to touch. And this is flipping BIZARRE! U2, the biggest band in the world, perhaps and then GY… these three random dudes I see out at the bar… I don’t know how I am not star struck around them at all times, I was playing the “I don’t want to talk to you and turn you into mortals” game for a while, but sometimes I get drunk and I need to hug… anyway… When I see Gray Young, I know I am witnessing the birth of something incredible; something life changing. I feel like I am in on this big secret that not everyone has figured out quite yet. I’ve seen them play many times and every time I see them, I always walk up on a group of people afterwards saying “Who were those three guys? That was amazing!” and I interrupt to tell all about them, like I am a one-woman GY-PR Machine.
Staysail, to me, is almost as perfectly a crafted album as I have ever heard. It is, literally, on par to me (and I really hope my closest friends know the depth and severity of my making this statement); it rivals Peter Gabriel’s US or U2’s Joshua Tree… in the sense of flow and basically just this… story; this heartbreaking/hopeful/terrifying/redeeming story… Let me tell you about one song, Vermillion. It’s one of those songs that on paper, in a literal translation, you could say it was a good, solid rock song. But there is a depth. There is a yearning, a pain; something you want so bad to understand but maybe it’s not meant for you to… The little quietness about a minute and a half in that turns into just this … BURST of everything! It’s like that moment when you know you’re falling in love with someone and you’re just screwed… everything is so big, delicate, too bright and too sensitive but then there is just that “awww fuck it!” moment and you throw everything on the table and you say “Here is my heart… what are you going to do with it?” I could, and probably am very wrong. I could just ask the guys what this song is about, could be about someone’s grandma’s apple pies and just how yummy they are, what do I know? But that’s the best part… Chas’s voice is almost unintelligible to the point where it becomes an instrument in itself and not a cipher for whatever emotion you feel like you’re supposed to feel when you know the words. Then there is a point where it almost feels like the subtlest of key changes, it may not be, but it is a fever pitch to an already heart wrenching song. You get lost in whatever you need this song to be for you. I do. Every time. That is this whole album. Every song is specifically crafted to be what you need it to be. Every song is dramatic, yet tender. Every song is raw. Really fucking raw. I vibe on raw. I totally vibe on red bloody hearts on sleeves. Gray Young is like an open chest wound for me. Like someone is reading my diary. Staysail almost feels like an invasion of privacy. I really love this band.
End of Essay //Actual review of show
As previously stated, the vibe at the venue was off the charts groovy. Everyone was really happy to be there… the sound was amazing and the almost non-existent stage lighting added a depth of, I dunno, mystery to the whole situation. I knew I needed to be taking notes/pictures something… I got some pics, of course, but it irritated me to have to open my eyes and come back to reality to take them. I tried to talk Roo into doing it, but I got so distracted that I forgot to give him the camera… When GY hits the stage it is akin to seeing some of the larger/more famous something-something bands. Every time I get to see Gray Young live, I feel really fucking lucky I get to see Gray Young live. I don’t know why I still feel like this and I keep wondering when that magic is going to fade to mediocrity, but it just hasn’t and I am really starting to expect that it won’t. I have seen them play say… Tilling the Wind a dozen times live, right? I still get teary; I still “WOOOO!” like it’s the first time I’ve heard it. I still lose my shit at the raging guitar solo at the end of Meridian. I had almost gotten to the point where I had stopped listening to staysail quite so much but then after the show Dan ran up to me and gave me a copy of the newly more mixed down album (I think is what he said, either way…) and now it hasn’t let my cd player since Saturday morning. And here I am, all through the writing of this part I am watching/listening to the recording of the staysail release part at pour house, which was incredible. I feel very involved with Gray Young, not necessarily just an observer/fan. I feel like I am a part of something incredible when I see them live. Am I gushing? I think I’m just being unnecessarily gushy at this point. Hey guys, guess what? I get emotional about music. GY was amazing. It was one of the better sets I’ve ever seen of them. Thanks guys!
Soooo... Next was Veelee, who is fantastic and I love to see live, but after a smoke, a trip to the restroom ,and then a mission to find jay who had to be at work at 730am the next morning, we disappeared in the middle of their set. Sorry, Veelee. We love you. We also missed Lonnie Walker, whose set, I am told, was stellar. And I am sorry I missed that as well, even though I have seen them several times. Sorry, Lonnie walker. We love you. I will see both these bands again soon, I’m sure. WAIT! Yes Veelee is playing with Motor Skills at Kings in like, 2 weeks. See?
I am suddenly realizing this is very long and it is only day one! I will continue with day 2 in another post...
