Illinois

VIDEO PREMIERE: V.V. Lightbody - Fish In Fives

Will Shenton

V.V. Lightbody's self-described "nap-rock" earns its title on her dreamy new video, "Fish In Fives." Taken from her forthcoming solo LP, Bathing Peach, the soporific tune seems to take its bedroom-pop moniker literally, meandering among shots of the Chicago-based artist abortively trying to wake up and face the day. Awash in sleepy haze and Lightbody's soothing vocals, it's a deeply introspective song that steps back from a relationship in favor of self-discovery.

We see that self-discovery somewhat literally in the form of Lightbody's attendants, who seem to represent her own multifaceted indecision. As they lounge around her on the bed, help her get dressed in the bathroom, and watch her chop flowers in the kitchen, we're invited to see them as aspects of her own personality. It's as if she's yet to choose her own identity, but as soon as she leaves the house to lazily rollerblade around town, she's an individual once again. Her bedroom is where she retreats to grow, and the world outside is where she tries on her new self.

This is all to say nothing of the song itself, which is gorgeously groovy. Lightbody's voice, whether solo or harmonized, is the perfect vehicle for its naturalistic vignettes ("You know I'm just a little fox, babe / In its neighboring den / Sitting hens in a box"), and the understated jazz-pop instrumentals are irresistible. Warm and approachable, "Fish In Fives" is nonetheless cerebral, and the blend of concepts and styles it contains are truly impressive.

Bathing Peach is out June 15, 2018. Be sure to catch V.V. Lightbody's album release show TONIGHT (June 8) in Chicago!

REVIEW: Melkbelly - Nothing Valley

Phillipe Roberts

For artists percolating in global DIY, “debut album” is often a misnomer. Regardless of our fixation on the LP format as the defining unit of measurement for musical expression, these bands have usually been kicking around the scene for years, nervously fine-tuning their sound in bars and basements; chances are, they’ve “debuted” dozens if not hundreds of times before your needle hits the wax.

Melkbelly, who've just released their first long player after three years as some of Chicago’s leading noise-rock luminaries, are living that storyline right now: “emerging” from relative obscurity (having opened for such famous nobodies as Speedy Ortiz and Built to Spill) with a world-conquering debut of their own. Unapologetically refusing to pare down their wide-ranging sludge voyages in favor of pop appeal (they already have it in spades, thank you very much), Melkbelly turns up both the gain and the hooks for a more-is-more approach. Nothing Valley wisely takes the money and runs for the hills.

Previous releases by Melkbelly, even last year’s Mount Kool Kid/Elk Mountain split, failed to capture the frighteningly raw power that the four-piece brings to the stage, often sounding like you were hearing them from behind bulletproof glass. Their Breeders-by-way-of-Lightning Bolt ferocity means that Miranda Winters’ sing-song melodies are prone to spectacular and spontaneous combustion at any given moment. Seeing them can feel a bit like watching Godzilla stomping through downtown Tokyo—rapturous awe at the size of their sound, and sheer terror at the knowledge that they could bring it all toppling down with a flick of the tail.

Nothing Valley captures this unpredictability like never before. “R.O.R.OB” revels in one of Winters’ most earwormy melodies and the album’s most straightforward groove, before a round-the-kit thwack from drummer James Wetzel sets off a quarter-time dirt bomb of dissonance for the last two minutes. When Melkbelly collectively stomps on their fuzz boxes, they make sure it hits. Even confined to headphones, the hard-charging final two minutes of “Middle Of” leave craters in your eardrums, with Wetzel going off on the snare against an ascendant, sinister riff that feels like it’s running away from you.

Wetzel puts in his finest performances yet, keeping the reins tight on freakout jams and eagerly leading the band up and over difficult transitions through his assertive rhythmic fervor, but the core of Melkbelly’s staying power is the ever-evolving songwriting genius of their frontwoman. Sounding like a post-apocalyptic Kim Deal still dripping with radioactivity, Winters' melodic wit has never been sharper than it is on the one-two punch of singles “Off the Lot” and “Kid Kreative.” Her voice twists and turns like a knife, commanding and unfuckwithable on their catchiest songs to date.

The Melkbelly of Nothing Valley is devious and daring, their enthusiasm for huge riffs and shapeshifting song forms absolutely unquenchable. Coming into the haunting season, it’s fitting that the affair ends with “Helloween,” a cackling inferno of a victory lap, closing out the album with its most satisfying fuzzed out solo. Playing in the mud like carefree kids, Melkbelly uncover gem after gem of urgent, unsanitized rock. Here’s hoping they never give up the dirt.

PREMIERE: Fauvely - Break

Laura Kerry

Fauvley is the project of Chicago-based singer-songwriter Sophie Leigh, who melds folk with dream pop and a touch of shoegaze in music that feels deeply personal. The title of her forthcoming EP, Watch Me Overcomplicate This, speaks to the confessional tone of songs that range from delicately self-effacing to hauntingly sad. Leigh cites Mazzy Star, Angel Olsen, and Lykke Li as influences, and the comparisons are apt; in her last single, the EP’s title song, and in her latest, “Break,” she combines the dreaminess of Mazzy Star with Olsen’s smoky sadness and Lykke Li’s fragile pop.

In “Break,” Leigh also follows the legacy of those three artists as she captures a large swatch of emotional ground with simple gestures. Beginning with a quiet duo of guitar and vocals, the artist is vulnerable as she sings, “I think I need a break from all these voices in my head.” As the song builds to the chorus with an increasing density of guitar strums, it picks up speed and momentum, eventually introducing a full band with an oscillating rhythm that simultaneously adds a sense of release and an added nervous urgency. Leigh’s words over this new rise are direct and strangely powerful: “Sometimes I feel too much / Sometimes I don’t feel enough.” As the song swings between animated refrain and sparse verse, it’s impossible not to feel along with Fauvely.

REVIEW: Noname - Telefone

Laura Kerry

You could say that Noname’s first release, Telefone, is an optimistic one. With its bright yet low-key mixture of jazz-infused hip-hop, the album flows breezily and lightly. Noname—formerly known as Noname Gypsy and still Fatimah Warner—raps with a natural ease that comes from performing slam poetry with the YOUmedia Project, a group for artistic youth in Chicago, where she grew up creating alongside other talents such as Chance the Rapper (whose song “Lost” from Acid Rap features a verse from her). Her fluid voice organically lapses into neo-soul melodies, such as in the pop chorus on the opener, “Yesterday,” which says, “When the sun is going down / When the dark is out to stay / I picture your smile / Like it was yesterday.” Along with this and other wistful memories of the past, Telefone contains other positive messages: “You are powerful” (“Reality Check”), and “Love is all I need” (“All I Need”).

Coexisting with the optimism, though, is a weight of sadness that sits like the gray skull atop the childlike portrait on the album’s cover. Though the bright piano trills, muted beats, and mostly mellow rapping set the mood of Telefone, it’s the direct emotional lyrics—social, political, and personal—sitting among those features that establish the real tone. Much of the album addresses childhood and growing up, which, for Noname, encompasses the experiences of being black, being a woman, and coming of age against the backdrop of a neighborhood in a city with systemic inequalities, with violence. When Noname sings of the past on “Yesterday,” she expresses a complicated wistfulness: “Don’t grow up too soon… / Don’t let the cops get you.”

Telefone is a staggeringly personal work, but it’s the other characters and voices that define it. Some of those are the guest rappers and singers strewn throughout the album, an impressive list of ten artists that includes the smooth, soulful romance of Xavier Omä and Eryn Allen Kane’s singing and the sharp crack of Saba’s rapping. Noname filters other voices through her own, citing artists who came before her and people in the neighborhood, even those who ended up in caskets. Some of the most prominent voices are from the women who preceded her—her mother, who told her to come home before the streetlights come on (“Dibby Bop”), her aunt who fought cancer, and her granny, who, in response to the artist’s musical aspirations, would “Turn up in her grave and say / ‘My granny really was a slave for this?'” (both on “Reality Check”). Though quiet and streamlined, the album’s many voices make it rich and dimensional.

The title of the album speaks to all of this. Throughout, the telephone appears in different contexts, ranging from a phone call signaling opportunity in “Reality Check” to the hope that the “telly don’t ring” to inform the answerer of a lost loved one in “Casket Pretty.” Capturing all of this range—anxiety, joy, sadness, hope—in a concise image on straightforward record, Noname and her Telefone paint a portrait of family, a neighborhood, and a rich inner life.

REVIEW: The Pills - Take Your Pills

Kelly Kirwan

There are two sides to the psych-rock coin; the dizzying, distorted heights of frenetic riffs—firing off in streaks of neon across a song's arrangement—and the more subdued waves of lo-fi guitar twangs offset by a steadily chugging percussion. The sort of trance-like buzz that often goes hand-in-hand with a gentle mind-altering experience, leaving you loose and dreamy in a world of brighter and broader color. For or our midwestern friends that have set up shop in Chicago’s alternative scene, The Pills, we have the kind of late 60’s revival that leans more towards the mellow.

Their tunes are for gentle teetering between the heels and balls of your feet--a crowd that sways in tandem--with the occasional head-bang for when their melodies flirt with that amped, hallucinogenic delirium. Their album, Take Your Pills, wryly references that pupils-dilated subculture most famously represented in the summer of '69, which sought a little wrangling in their perception with the help of an LSD strip. It's an album title that also puts a pleasurable spin on that old adage of sitting tight and taking one's medicine. And it's in the space between those references that The Pills exist--what you crave also just happens to do your body good (or your earbuds, specifically). 

Drummer, singer, lyricist, producer (and seemingly jack-of-all-trades) Max Barnett led The Pills on this follow-up to last year’s Real Cheese—delivering seven groove-laden tracks. The more subdued tempo of their tracks fosters a warm, sedated environment—you feel at ease amid their melodies, which have the sort of structure of a kaleidoscope’s inner image—rich colors swirling in no set pattern. On tracks like Is There Any Other Way, you slip into a welcome lethargy, as if inspired by the act of a snake charmer, instilling a sense of calm with the tangy-spiral of their notes. It’s easily a top pick off Take Your Pills for the ease in which it rolls along, the guitars and drums working in a repetitive tandem—their interplay instantly familiar, feeling like a lost remnant from a Beatles—Beach Boys hybrid with a modern twist. “I’m thinking of a time/When everything is fine…what if I could disappear/there’d be no fear” Barnett sings in his high head-bound pitch, and we feel relaxed as our thoughts run off on tangents, as if The Pills were the push in a domino sequence. It’s top notch. 

Equally enticing is Only Children, which is even softer than Is There Any Other Way in its opening delivery. The track shimmers with soft cymbal tapping and Barnett's airy voice, before breaking into a melody that's a complete change of pace. It's a sly move, a song within a song, the latter half focused on slow strumming and a rolling dorm line that's still downtempo but deliberate in its every move. You don't even realize it presses on for just under ten minutes–just as you don't realize when Take Your Pills is nearing its end. Because, the band's songs fit seamlessly into your experience. They're unassuming but not soon forgotten–a lesson that feels intuitively learned, or a pill that goes down smooth.