“Turn the Light on, You’ve Been Exposed”: At Home with Amy O’s My Hand the Thief (2014)

[ Self-Released, 2014 ]

This brief liner note accompanying the Bandcamp release of Amy O’s My Hand the Thief is purely descriptive, but it somehow speaks volumes about the work: “All songs were composed, performed and recorded at home by Amy Oelsner.” Maybe it’s because the domestic looms so large on this distinctly person-sized collection, twinned with the Oelsner’s singular and compelling point of view. Whether it’s the casual cataloguing of “dirty underwear, dirty socks” or the handmade analogue charm of tape hiss buzzing throughout, My Hand the Thief is an exceedingly warm EP that emulates the creature comforts of a familiar living room. Crucially, though, there’s only so much comfort to go around here.

The best moments of Thief’s pithy twenty-minute runtime marry inflections of boredom, fixation and anxiety, like when Oelsner stubbornly insists “I grow old, I grow old / I grow old, I grow old,” on the Mirah-channeling centerpiece “Adventure Boy.” It’s a sweet-sounding song that unspools into a wordless chorus of yelps and grunts, gleefully disrupting its own center of gravity. In thrilling turns like this one, Oelsner’s voice strategically obliterates the recording and these deceptively small compositions outgrow themselves before the listener. (Another comes on “Biting My Leg,” when the final sung syllable cuts through the music like a blade, too-loud and unsettling, before dipping beneath an unadorned keyboard and the hushed spoken recital of what sounds like a diary entry.)

Oelsner’s guitar is equally important to the texture and shape of these songs. Her playing is polite but expressive, not unlike fellow weirdo guitar-charmers like Phil Elverum and Julie Doiron, and it’s every bit as rich and human as Oelsner’s dynamic voice. Sometimes it obediently serves the melody, like on album opener “Telephone,” and at other moments—the breezy, pine-scented “Calamine” comes to mind—it jitters around it like a restless, hand-drawn mosquito. It’s yet another feature of My Hand the Thief that recalls the impossible symbiosis of a miniaturized ecosystem, or the disordered coziness of a lived-in home.

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Amy O will be performing with Kleinerwasserbär, Callan Astar, and Mallory on 21 February @ The Good Girls Club in Bloomington, Indiana. For more information, visit the Facebook event page.

Weekending | 1.16.15Mike Adams, Spider Bags, and More

[ Merge Records, 2014 ]

Fri., 1.16 | Chapel Hill psych-punk trio Spider Bags will bring their gritty pop stylings to Washout (1424 S. Washington) for what is sure to be a fun, cochlea-blasting basement freakout. The band is supporting their critically-acclaimed 2014 Merge Records release, Frozen Letter, and they will share the bill with locals Dietrich Jon, The Constants, and Unions. The show begins—“on time,” the promoter says—at 8 PM with Dietrich Jon leading off. The Facebook event page suggests bringing “some cash (and booze) for the touring guys.”

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Fri., 1.16 | If you’re feeling cooped up in Monroe Co. after the holidays, make the short trip to see Mike Adams at His Honest Weight do their thing at The HI-FI in Indianapolis. The Power-Pop Prince of Bloomington—which is how I’ve just decided Adams should be formally introduced from now on—will be joined by classically-trained avant cellist Shannon Hayden. I’m still spinning last year’s Best of Boiler Room Classics (Flannelgraph Records, 2014) like it’s my job, and I’m looking forward to finally seeing Adams play with the full band. Friday’s show is part of the MOKB Sun King Concert Series. (Doors: 8 PM | Show: 9 PM | $10 | 21+)

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Is there an event or artist you’d like to see covered at B-Sound?

Email: jezy.gray@gmail.com | Twitter: @jezygray

New Music:Elephant Micah - Where in Our Woods

[ Western Vinyl, 2015 ] 

Where in Our Woods, the elegant new long-player from prolific art-folk purveyor  Elephant Micah, is streaming now over at Consequence of Sound. The eight-song effort is Indiana singer-songwriter Joseph O’Connell’s follow-up to 2013’s Globe Rush Progressions, and it was partially tracked and fully mixed at Bloomington’s Russian Recording LLC.  The album, which features contributions from Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, will see a January 20 release date on Austin’s Western Vinyl.

Full LP review coming soon. In the meantime, stream the whole thing at CoS, or check out the aching and beautiful standout “Slow Time Vultures” below.

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Is there an event or artist you’d like to see covered at B-Sound?

Email: jezy.gray@gmail.com | Twitter: @jezygray

“Bloomington Isn’t Flyover Country”:Madlib to Headline 2015 Pit Stop Festival

In case you forgot how significant Spirit of ‘68 Promotions is to the cultural health of Bloomington, here’s your reminder. They have just announced the lineup of this year’s Pit Stop Festival, and it’s pretty spectacular. The spring music event will bring legendary beat-maker Madlib to B-Town, along with local macabre-pop institution Murder by Death. They’ll be joined by Hiss Golden Messenger, Maps & Atlases, along with B-Sound favorites Sirius Blvck and Oreo Jones.

Shows will be spread out between The Bishop, The Back Door, The Bluebird and Buskirk-Chumley Theater. For more information, including the full artist lineup, head over to pitstopfest.com.

From the Facebook event page:

“The idea is simple: Bloomington isn’t flyover country; it’s where great independent music puts wheels on the ground. Pit Stop is a three-night sprint of live music featuring national, regional & local acts. Like SXSW for the Upland South, catch the best of indie rock, Americana, hip hop and more as they roll through our town.”

Tickets go on sale Friday at noon. Don’t sleep on this one.


[EDIT: To clarify, Pit Stop Music Festival is a separate collaboration with Spirit of '68 Promotions and The Bishop.]

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Is there an event or artist you’d like to see covered at B-Sound?

Email: jezy.gray@gmail.com | Twitter: @jezygray

An Evening with Sirius Blvck:Indy Emcee Drops Considerable Heat at The Bishop

Sometimes it’s hard for me to get excited about the prospect of seeing rap music performed live. It’s a reluctance I often share with electronic music. I think these genres offer the richest and most exciting sonic possibilities in studio, but I don’t always feel compelled to stand around and watch someone fiddle knobs or perform lyrics over a pre-recorded beat, regardless of how much I like hearing it on record. (“I get it,” I think to myself. “Don’t need to see it live.”) I attribute this to a need for collision and possibility that only a group of live collaborators can provide, but the truth is that I’m not twenty anymore, and the already-short list of things I’m willing to stand around all night watching is becoming slimmer and slimmer by the season.

Still, I felt like I had to see Sirius Blvck at The Bishop last Friday. I’ve spent the last couple weeks digging into the Indianapolis emcee’s excellent LP trilogy, recorded over a 22-month frenzy with producer Bones of Ghosts, and it’s pretty seamless stuff. Maybe I showed up because it was Blvck’s first headlining show in Bloomington, and he sounds so hungry on his latest LP, Light in the Attic, that I had to see what his appetite looked like on stage. The presence of fellow Indy rapper and amateur Internet cooking personality Oreo Jones’ name on the marquee further suggested that this might be a night worth turning out for. Turns out, it was.

Ironically, it was the live bands that left me cold on Friday night. Local openers Nightcap and Birdbath clopped through some unremarkable indie rock, both showing intermittent flashes of potential in between a yawn of half-baked garage jams. (Nightcap’s singer and lead guitarist was the only bright spot here. I found myself wanting to hear her break free of the rhythm section, who seemed more interested in scratching their own itches rather than giving the songs the support and consistency they needed.) By the time Oreo Jones took the stage, I was ready for some vitality. I was ready to see some appetite.

Performing with a live drummer over a pre-loaded auxiliary track, Oreo slipped into his self-assured if somewhat subdued stage persona with a calm confidence that comes from knowing your material backward and forward. He may have only shifted into a couple gears throughout his brief set, but you get the sense that a couple gears is all he really needs. Oreo’s approach here shares a chromosome or two with Queens-based contemporary Heems, whose smoked-out brand of weirdo rap strikes me as a spiritual cousin to the Indy emcee’s laid back, non-sequitorial style. (I don’t mean to suggest that “laid back” is Oreo’s only register. At his best moments, he delivers his rhymes with a percusive snarl, vis-à-vis a young Ghostface Killah.)  Songs like “Needy” and “The John Wayne” were especially sharp on Friday, highlighting Oreo’s knack for control and delivery, and left me anticipating his upcoming album this spring. Oreo Jones’ take on the genre is compelling and fun, and tonight it sounded like the noise of a bright young artist with room to grow.

Sirius Blvck | Photo by Jezy Gray

Sirius Blvck took the stage sometime after midnight. The crowd seemed a little thinner than it did in the front half of the evening, but the excitement was still legible. If there were a few less bodies in the crowd, you couldn’t tell from Blvck’s high-energy performance. Accompanied by DJ  Littletown, Blvck brought his remarkably accomplished studio bangers and slow-burners to life, cycling through some of the best cuts from his recent string of excellent LPs with tremendous poise and charisma. Even songs like “L.A. Confidential”—which, for my money, comes across as a little too by-the-book on record—sounded vivid and urgent as Blvck spat out the hook like a bad taste. He spent the rest of his nearly-flawless set flexing his considerable talent and demonstrating exactly why he’s a deadly serious force to be reckoned with.

Seeing Blvck live, like listening to his records, is something like a hip-hop geography lesson. He chauffeured the crowd down to 90s-era Houston with the smoggy, chopped-up codeine trip of DJ Screw-inspired cuts like “Backwoods” and “Smoke Signals” before being joined onstage by Oreo Jones for Attic-standout, “Tribe Quest,” nodding to a veritable golden age of west coast hip-hop duets. Elsewhere, Blvck’s set recalled Detroit heavyweights like Elzhi and Black Milk and, at some particularly surprising moments, the raw emotive vocal power of the brilliant Atlanta collective, Migos.

Of course, the most significant geographic spot for Blvck is the middle of the map. Indianapolis looms large in his lyrical universe, and I get the sense that it lends him a power that might be softened in a more obvious metropolitan area. I see Sirius Blvck and Oreo Jones as the embodiment of what makes this spot such a rich place for the arts. As Blvck says in “Tribe Quest”:  “Ghost Town Collective, my n---a: Indiana / we comin’ up, yeah we comin’ /  N----s thinkin’ that we f----n’ around / but I swear we bout killed a whole song.” There’s a scrappy unexpectedness to his live show, and his work writ large, which seems to reflect the spirit of the community that produced him. Given his supportive posture throughout the night, enthusiastically watching every act from the crowd, Sirius Blvck strikes me as an artist who invests in that community and enjoys its rewards. Speaking as someone new to Indiana, seeing Blvck do his thing offered valuable insight into what this scrappy little corner of the Midwest is capable of producing—and it’s pretty impressive. When all was said and done at The Bishop on Friday night, I was glad I stood around for this.

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Is there an event or artist you’d like to see covered at B-Sound? 
Email: jezy.gray@gmail.com | Twitter: @jezygray

Weekending | 1.9.15Sirius Blvck and Poetry for Protesters

Fri., 1.9 | Indy’s Sirius Blvck will bring his rich and brainy hip-hop stylings to The Bishop tonight in his first Bloomington performance since the December 15 release of his excellent third LP, Light in the Attic. Blvck will be joined by fellow weirdo emcee and amateur Internet cooking personality Oreo Jones, along with Nightcap, Birdbath, and DJ Littletown. ($6 | Doors: 8 PM | Show: 9 PM.)

Sat., 1.10 | Busman’s Holiday and UpFolk are playing at a benefit poetry reading at Backwash (201 E. 2nd St.). Proceeds from the event will go to support incarcerated Chicago protesters arrested while demonstrating in support of Desean Pittman, a youth killed by police last August. Event organizers suggest a $8 donation. For more information, including a complete list of readers, visit the Facebook event page. (Doors: 5:30 PM | Poetry: 6 PM.)

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Have an event or artist you’d like to see covered at B-Sound? Email me @ jezy.gray@gmail.com.

“Head to the Ground, Feet to the Clouds”: Sirius Blvck - Light in the Attic

[ Rad Summer, 2014 ]

Sirius Blvck isn’t afraid to put in work. This won’t surprise anyone following the Indianapolis rapper’s recent LP trilogy, which has proven Blvck to be—at the very least—an artist with serious stamina. Beginning with 2013’s Ancient Lights, through last January’s Year of the Snvke and the Dec. 15 release of his latest, Light in the Attic, the indomitable Indy emcee has dropped three full-length albums in just under 22 months.  And he still sounds hungry.

On Light in the Attic, Blvck teams up again with producer Bones of Ghosts, who continues to operate on a sonic plane somewhere between sun-baked VHS exercise tapes of the late 80s and the slick, angular production of modern alternative R&B. Like longtime collaborators Drake and Noah '40' Shebib, the relationship between vocalist and producer here has become so enmeshed in the very fabric of the project that it almost becomes hard to imagine one without the other.

But smart production isn’t the only thing going for Blvck’s latest effort. Light in the Attic showcases some of the sharpest verses the rapper has managed in his recent string of full lengths. On Attic’s excellent first single, “Young Vultures,” Blvck weaves effortlessly through the pillowy beat, calling to mind the aesthetic gymnastics of Main Attrakionz with beat-dreamers Clams Casino and Friendzone, flexing his lyrical strength against the track’s gossamer textures:

Asking my father what it costs to be a man,

he thought about it and drew a blank stare in the West End.

Sunlight pouring out the palm of my hand,

livin’ in the divine light, livin’ like a dead man.

In moments like this one, Blvck favors the evocative over the precise, turning personal reflections into cosmic ones. These pivots stand out as the best moments of the record, and they anchor against the heavy-handed hook worship creeping into the somewhat less invigorated lyrical work of songs like “Smoke Signals.” But whatever hat Blvck wears from one verse to the next, it’s clear that Light in the Attic is the sound of an artist who has only begun to show what he’s capable of.

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Sirius Blvck will be performing with Oreo Jones, Nightcap, Birdbath, and DJ Littletown on January 9th @ The Bishop in Bloomington, Indiana. For more information, visit the Facebook event page.