MP3: The Builders and The Butchers - “When It Rains”

Portland, Oregon’s The Builders and The Butchers, led by songwriter / vocalist Ryan Sollee have been road warriors for the past year or so, and are heading back out on tour tonight for a string of shows with Langhorne Slim, Bobby Bare Jr., The Broken West and The Walkmen.

This piece from the Willamette Week serves as a great intro to the band:

[AMERICANA GOTHIC] At the Builders and the Butchers’ CD release party earlier this month, the band walked out of Valentine’s in the middle of its last song-and most of the audience followed. Around the corner at Voodoo Doughnut, the assembled crowd sang, “Find me, oh find me/ In the air, Lord, in the air,” to the late-night doughnut slingers and their patrons. Then it was back to Valentine’s for a couple more rounds of the gospel number’s chorus-a finish that left everyone feeling like they’d played a part in the good time.

Though the band describes itself as a blues and gospel ensemble, its music comes off more like rock ‘n’ roll invented during the Great Depression: The Builders’ shows are more like revivals than concerts, with audience members clapping, stomping, playing band-distributed tambourines, washboards and Little Tikes tom-toms and, of course, singing along. “I like songs that smack you in the face with the chorus [like] a big baseball bat,” says frontman Ryan Sollee. Not surprisingly, Sollee’s also the one running around at shows with an old bullhorn.

And the five-piece’s slew of instruments doesn’t end there: Acoustic bass, mandolin, banjo, organ, trumpet, Sollee’s acoustic guitar and two drummers (each focused on a single drum) are joined by occasional accordion and violin-not to mention the instruments in the hands of the audience. “One of my big weaknesses is going in a thrift shop and, any musical instrument that’s under $5, I just buy it,” Sollee says. “My girlfriend hates it.”

All this hoopla wasn’t necessarily intended, however. Sollee and former Builder Adrienne Hatkin (of local indie-folk outfit Autopilot) were starting a “funeral music” band, and Sollee started writing songs with a call-and-response core about dead relatives, coal mines and the creepiest bodies of water, lakes. When he played the songs for some fellow Anchorage music-scene transplants, they picked up whatever instruments were around and joined in, and a devoutly acoustic band was born.

But the Builders’ initial never-plug-in philosophy has been compromised, as larger crowds have forced the band to amp up and move from the middle of the crowd to the stage. But it’s a transition the band’s happenstance founding seems to facilitate. In fact, the trademarks of the Builders’ stage show-arming the crowd with instruments or taking their last song off down the street-are mostly things the band tried merely as one-time experiments. “I just want to see who we can get to follow us,” explains Sollee. By describing the genesis of the Builders’ off-kilter finales, Sollee has inadvertently summed up his whole band.

-BRANDON SEIFERT, WILLAMETTE WEEK

THE BUILDERS AND THE BUTCHERS

9/10: Hi Dive, Denver, CO
9/11: Jackpot, Lawrence, KS
9/12: Off Broadway, St Louis, MO
9/13: Mojo’s, Columbia, MO*
9/14: Bluebird, Bloomington, IN*
9/15: Schubas, Chicago, IL #
9/17: Maxwells, Hoboken, NJ
9/18: Middle East, Cambridge $
9/21: Mercury Lounge, New York, NY %
9/22: Rock N Roll Hotel, Washington, DC %
9/23: Grey Eagle, Asheville, NC %
9/24: Newport Music Hall Columbus, OH
9/26: Egyptian Room Indianapolis, IN
9/27: Bogart’s Cincinnati, OH
9/30: 400 Bar Minneapolis, MN

* = w/ Langhorne Slim
# = w/ The Broken West
$ = w/ The Walkmen
% = w/ Bobby Bare Jr.

THE BUILDERS AND THE BUTCHERS LINKS:

Myspace: www.myspace.com/thebuildersandthebutchers

Label Page: bladencountyrecords.com/

MP3: Deerhoof featuring Zac Pennington of Parenthetical Girls - “Gut Symmetries”

To celebrate the release of Entanglements, their first album for Tomlab, Parenthetical Girls asked some of their friends to cover and remix some of the songs from the album - the first two offerings came from labelmates No Kids and fellow NW avant heroes The Dead Science, who covered “This Regrettable End” and “Young Eucharists” respectively. Now Deerhoof have covered the song “Gut Symmetries” and we use the term “covered” loosely because they kept Zac Pennington’s original vocals intact. We’ll be able to share even more tracks from this series with you in the near future - feel free to post this and the previous tracks liberally as they are not scheduled to appear on any official releases. The band has also added quite a few shows to their tour schedule, mostly dates with The Evangelicals, in addition to the shows they already had scheduled with Sunset Rubdown.

Official Bio:

“His legs gave way like pages from a pop-up book…”

Long-time traffickers in the business of viscerally disarming disquiet, Portland, OR’s Parenthetical Girls trade in small-screen, corporal sincerity for a bold and blustering Technicolor - a lush, longing and lusty celluloid schmaltz they call Entanglements.

An orchestral song cycle of grand sonic ambition, Entanglements is an eleven-song, linear narrative of ascendancy, adolescent sexuality, quantum mechanics, consent, and other moral ambiguities - all set to an elaborately orchestrated olio of Modern Classical and timeworn, traditional American pop forms.

Borrowing from the string-swept sentimentality of unlikely pop-ulists like Van Dyke Parks, Scott Walker, Jack Nitzsche, and Burt Bacharach, Entanglements draws colorful lines across the expanse between these orchestral pop antiquities and the more formidable strains of Modern Classical composers - its hues distantly reminiscent of names like Krzysztof Penderecki, Philip Glass, and Gavin Bryars. The result - as blended with Parenthetical Girls‘ already messily dripping palette - is an unsettlingly relentless emotional offensive; a gasping, restless confluence of cerebral and sentimental disparities, bound for their mutual allegiance to the uncannily timeless soundtrack that engulfs them both.

Drafted in fits and starts over the course of the last three years, the seeds for Entanglements were initially conceived by Parenthetical Girls founder Zac Pennington as a conceptual/orchestral follow-up to (((GRRRLS))), the band’s self-released (and largely ignored) debut. When the task eventually proved too daunting for Pennington - a relative non-musician - alone, the project was abandoned in favor of a more sonically direct approach; a tact that would eventually birth the band’s critically acclaimed sophomore record, 2006’s Safe As Houses.

Following years of fluctuating ranks (past line-ups included members of The Dead Science and Casiotone For the Painfully Alone, among many others), Pennington at last drafted what was to become a permanent Parenthetical Girls line-up-core multi-instrumentalists Matt Carlson, Eddy Crichton, and Rachael Jensen, along with constant studio collaborator Jherek Bischoff (The Dead Science, Ribbons) - who would prove to be the final components necessary to realize the long-abandoned Entanglements project. Aided immeasurably by Carlson’s classically trained hand, the group set about eschewing Indie Rock’s propensity for orchestral dabbling by forgoing the “Rock” almost completely. (Incidentally: there is exactly one note of guitar in all of the record’s blisteringly brief thirty-two minutes). As a result, Entanglements is foremost a modern Orchestral Pop record - its motifs dissected and appropriated from a century’s worth of sources, and reconfigured anew into something altogether different.

Recorded between Seattle, WA and Portland, OR over the course of two strenuous months, the Entanglements sessions gathered upwards of twenty-five classically trained/experimental musicians to realize the songs’ dense and dramatic arrangements, as laid to paper by both Carlson and long-time (((GRRRLS))) producer/engineer Bischoff (with additional assistance from Dead Science frontman Sam Mickens). The lavish orchestral sprawl is matched only in the album’s ornately disconcerting narrative, all crooned and cooed in Pennington’s liltingly familiar falsetto. The result is uncannily ageless, sensually unsettling, and above all else, extraordinarily ambitious.

This is the spooky action at a distance. And these are Entanglements.
PARENTHETICAL GIRLS

Sept. 07 Portland, OR The Leftbank / PICA’s Time Based Art Festival
Sept. 16 Brooklyn, NY Music Hall of Williamsburg *
Sept. 18 Philadelphia, PA First Unitarian Church *
Sept. 19 Washington, DC Black Cat *
Sept. 20 Columbus, OH Skully’s Music Diner *

* = w/ Sunset Rubdown

Parenthetical Girls
Entanglements
(Tomlab)
Street Date: Sept. 9, 2008

01 Four Words
02 Avenue of Tree
03 Unmentionables
04 GUT Symmetries
05 A Song For Ellie Greenwich
06 Young Eucharists
07 Entanglement
08 The Trysting Tree
09 The Former
10 Windmills Of Your Mind
11 This Regrettable End

PARENTHETICAL GIRLS LINKS:

MySpace: myspace.com/parentheticalgirlsband

Press Materials: www.tomlabel.com/parentheticalgirls/

Band site: www.slendermeanssociety.com/parenthetical/

Label Page: www.tomlab.com

MP3: Restiform Bodies - “Panic Shopper” (Tobacco Remix)

Seven years later, the beast stirs. In the gap that followed Restiform Bodies’
genre-crushing self-titled LP (and companion piece, SunHopFlat), much did happen,
and several records of those times were made. Bomarr holed up in Oakland,
mastering his hypno-bounce sound (Freedom From Frightened Air, 2007).
Telephone Jim Jesus roamed Europe, collecting etherea previously unexcavated
(Anywhere Out Of The Everything, 2007). Passage went solo (The Forcefield Kids,
2004), and then to hell and back. In 2008, the three-headed post-mod monster called
Restiform Bodies is whole once again. And, at long last, the RBs drop their official
Anticon debut like a sack of analog televisions onto the fractured landscape of
modern urban forms.

TV Loves You Back is a dark and dense, art-twisted, New Wave-inflected hip-pop
marvel born of our overstimulated era. Musically, it stands alone, which is to say it
fits perfectly within the Anticon oeuvre. Strains of ghettotech, crunk, and hyphy
twirp and twirl with Eno-like atmospherics and buoyant bass swells, while
rapper/songbird Passage warps his vocals over blistering synth. Likewise, the lyrics
gallop at a ferocious clip. Like electron shots from a cathode ray tube, they combine
to form a deliciously sardonic image of modern living, and break down into
constituents that are metaphysically hopeful, socially relevant, poetic, and playful.

Fittingly, opener “Black Friday” begins with 30 seconds of ominous Top 40 rap
bluster (crowd cheers and wonky, reverbed “uhhs”), forcing the Restiform tongue
through its cheek before launching into a track that traverses burbling synth bounce,
doubletime drum ‘n’ bass, and free-floating atmosphere. Passage forges the vocals to
match-laidback rap, unlikely falsettos, rapid-fire couplets, a chorus of bent
melodies-while tempering his words into a poignant evocation of the mind of a
mall shooter hitting his prime.

Our narrator too is in top form, next styling over the wamping, squirilly club beat
of “Foul,” then navigating the chopped white noise and guitar of “A Pimp-like God.”
And when “Panic Shopper” creeps in like a vintage horrorcore tune, painting a
QVC-inspired nightmare in stream-of-consciousness strokes (”Look at you vibrating, bent-necked, bowed-head/PS3 building-jumping panic shopper/Launch off
the parking garage/In a Tony Robbins murder-suicide with infomercial knives…”),
it’s clear that Restiform Bodies have made something as enjoyable as it is topically
thick.

“Consumer Culture Wave” details a crux theme: the supplantation of sexual urge
with purchasing power. And on “Bobby Trendy Addendum,” Passage adopts a
Brooklyn sneer to bang out bitter satire atop a lo-bit mélange. He connects impulse buying to nightly news fear-mongering here, then traces our need to be placated by
prizes to a childhood pastime in “Pick It Up, Drop It.” “Interactive Halloween Bear”
is classic Restiform-surging synths, crystalline overtones, bassy blips, snapping
drums-overrun by a rich imagery that seems to portend societal collapse onto the
living-room couch.

But before all descends into chaos, TV Loves You Back hits back with the sixminute-long climax, “Opulent Soul.” Passage burns through a Gary Numan-esque
laissez faire croon, cocksure rhymes, and a distorted Knife-like nastiness while the
music intensifies like a thunderstorm of seething digitalia. He crescendos with a 32-
bar rap rife with quips (”When Ty says ‘move that bus’/It just cleans my ducts”) and
affecting observation (”Round and round goes the collection plate/And ain’t defeat a
wicked virus, how it lives to repeat?”), and by song’s end, our hero reclaims his
humanity from the bottom of circuit pile.

TV Loves You Back comes to a quiet close with “Ameriscan,” a bittersweet
lullaby about cancer recognition technology. It’s an ending that only Restiform
Bodies could pull off, but it’s also perfectly apropos for an album so focused on the
comforts that bring chaos into our daily lives.

RESTIFORM BODIES

September 29th- Denver, CO Hi- Dive*
September 30th- Salt Lake City, UT Kilby Court (early - 7pm)*
October 2nd- Vancouver, BC Richard’s On Richard*
October 3rd- Seattle, WA Vera Project*
October 4th- Portland, OR Wonder Ballroom*
October 7th- San Francisco, CA Bottom of the Hill
October 10th- Los Angeles, CA The Echo

* = w/ WHY?

Restiform Bodies - TV Loves You Back (Anticon)
Street Date: Sept. 30, 2008

01 Black Friday
02 Foul
03 A Pimp-like God
04 Panic Shopper
05 Consumer Culture Wave
06 Bobby Trendy Addendum
07 Pick it up, Drop it
08 Interactive Halloween Bear
09 Opulent Soul
10 Ameriscan

RESTIFORM BODIES LINKS:

Myspace: www.myspace.com/restiform
Press Materials: www.anticon.com/pr/restiform.htm

MP3: Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron and Fred Squire - “Flaming Home”

MP3: WHY? - “The Vowels, pt. 2″ Dublab Vision Version Session

It’s been a busy and interesting year for WHY?, since the release of their acclaimed album Alopecia in March, the band has been touring the world almost non-stop, with a U.S. tour in the Spring and a lengthy European tour that immediately followed. Only one slight hiccup - while in Europe, two of the band members (brothers Yoni and Josiah Wolf) got the mumps, and on top of that, Yoni broke his hand. The band has soldiered on despite these minor setbacks and launch another full North American tour tonight in Los Angeles. Along the way they will be joined by pals Mount Eerie, Rafter, Tender Forever and label-mates Restiform Bodies, Tobacco and Alias.

…..

It’s been an equally busy year for Phil Elverum and his Mount Eerie project - just trying to keep up with his release schedule and it’ll make your head spin (or you can click here for an overview). Amongst the slew of releases, there is one that stands out as one of the best records he’s ever made and also one of the best record of 2008 - that album is Lost Wisdom, his collaboration with Julie Doiron and Fred Squire. Julie and Fred will be joining Mount Eerie on select dates on this tour where you can witness the full magic and beauty of those songs in a live setting. Also along the way Elverum will meet up with old pals Mirah, No Kids, and Thanksgiving as well as The Music Tapes.

WHY?

September 4th- Los Angeles, CA Echoplex $
September 5th- Tempe, AZ The Clubhouse $
September 6th- Tucson, AZ Solar Culture $
September 8th- Austin, TX Mohawk*
September 9th- Dallas, TX Granada Theater*
September 11th- Pensacola, FL Sluggo’s*
September 12th- Gainseville, FL Common Grounds*
September 13th- Miami, FL White Room*
September 14th- Orlando, FL The Social*
September 16th- Asheville, NC Grey Eagle*
September 17th- Philadelphia, PA First Unitarian Church*
September 18th- New York, NY Bowery Ballroom*
September 19th- Boston, MA Museum of Fine Arts +
September 20th- Portland, ME Space Gallery &
September 21st- Providence, RI Club Hell
September 22nd- Montreal, QC La Sala Rossa
September 25th- Cincinnati, OH Midpoint Music Festival
September 26th- Chicago, IL Bottom Lounge#
September 27th- Minneapolis, MN Triple Rock#
September 29th- Denver, CO Hi- Dive @
September 30th- Salt Lake City, UT Kilby Court (early - 7pm)@
September 30th- Salt Lake City, UT Urban Lounge (late)
October 2nd- Vancouver, BC Richard’s On Richard @^
October 3rd- Seattle, WA Vera Project @
October 4th- Portland, OR Wonder Ballroom @^

* = w/ Mount Eerie
# = w/ Tobacco
$ = w/ Rafter
+ = w/ Alina Simone
& = w/ Alias
@ = w/ Restiform Bodies
^ = w/ Tender Forever

MOUNT EERIE

09-04 Salt Lake City, UT - Kilby Court
09-05 Denver, CO - Brooks Center Arts
09-06 Penasco, NM - The Penasco Theatre
09-07 Marfa, TX - Marfa Book Company
09-08 Austin, TX - Mohawk #
09-09 Dallas, TX - Good Records (in-store)
09-09 Dallas, TX - Granada Theater #
09-10 Ruston, LA - Louisiana Tech
09-11 Pensacola, FL - Sluggo’s #
09-12 Gainesville, FL - Common Grounds #
09-13 Miami, FL - White Room #
09-14 Tampa, FL - Transitions Gallery (early show)
09-14 Orlando, FL - The Social #
09-15 Athens, GA - Ciné !
09-16 Asheville, NC - Grey Eagle #
09-17 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church #
09-18 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom #
09-19 Brooklyn, NY - Lutheran Church of the Messiah *^
09-20 Northampton, MA - Iron Horse Music Hall *^
09-21 Worcester, MA - The Grind at Clark University *^
09-22 Providence, RI - Building 16 *^
09-23 Purchase, NY - SUNY Purchase *^
09-24 Pittsfield, MA - Copperworks *^
09-25 Saratoga Springs, NY - Falstaff’s *^
09-26 New Haven, CT - People’s Center *^
09-27 Boston, MA - Mass Art *^
09-28 Annandale-on-Hudson, NY - Bard Hall at Bard College *^
10-12 Montreal, Quebec - La Sala Rossa ^
10-13 Ottawa, Ontario - SAW Gallery *^
10-14 Toronto, Ontario - Church of the Redeemer *^
10-15 East Lansing, MI - Scene Metrospace *^
10-16 Pontiac, MI - Crofoot Ballroom *+
10-17 Cincinnati, OH - Art Damage Lodge *^
10-18 Gambier, OH - Kenyon College *^
10-19 Delaware, OH - Ohio Wesleyan University *^
10-20 Chicago, IL - AV-aerie *^
10-21 Madison, WI - Gates of Heaven *^
10-22 Louisville, KY - Skull Alley *^
10-23 Bloomington, IN - The Cinemat *^
10-24 St. Louis, MO - Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center *^
10-25 Springfield, MO - Randy Bacon Gallery *^
10-26 Norman, OK - Opolis *^
10-27 Santa Fe, NM - Warehouse 21 *^
10-28 Phoenix, AZ - Modified *^
10-29 Irvine, CA - UC Irvine Cross Cultural Center (early show)
10-29 Los Angeles, CA - SiteLA *^
10-30 Santa Cruz, CA - The Crêpe Place
11-01 San Francisco, CA - Million Fishes $
11-02 Oakland, CA - TBA
11-03 Sacramento, CA - VOX
11-04 Eugene, OR - Wandering Goat Café

# with WHY?
! with the Music Tapes
* with Julie Doiron
^ with Calm Down, It’s Monday
+ with Mirah, No Kids
$ with Thanksgiving, White Fang

WHY? LINKS:

Myspace: www.myspace.com/whyanticon.

Press Materials: www.anticon.com/pr/why.htm

MOUNT EERIE LINKS:

Artist Page: www.pwelverumandsun.com