Greg Ginn loves wine.  Dry, red wine to be exact.  As do the members of his latest project, an instrumental trio dubbed Greg Ginn and the Taylor Texas Corrugators.  They all love wine so much that, despite playing 21 gigs in a row on their recent three-month tour, the Corrugators still managed to stop at a winery almost every day.

“More have popped up in the last ten years,” Ginn explained during our phone interview.  “They’re usually located in a real nice place just off the roadway.  They’re really beautiful, you wouldn’t expect to see something like that only two miles off the road.   It’s a great way to see different climates and places in the country.  It’s a real nice break.”

Much of the Corrugators’ collection pleasantly lolls more like days spent drinkin’ whiskey, yet a refined taste in jazz (and wine) heavily influences each song’s direction.  It’s not that any given tune is country, jazz, blues or rock, but rather any given tune is all of the above.  Moody guitar riffs morph into experimental solos, organ melodies swagger from swing to free jazz, Latin rhythms shake their hips across the drum set.   The band shares a soulful, funk breakdown then heavy bass lines rock in and out, pulling songs like “Welcome, Stranger” into a twisty acid world where cowboys and hippies host dance-a-thons with space aliens.  The energy is engulfing, even from just a recording.

“I wrote all the songs on the new CD [Legends From Williamson County, 2010].  I started about 50% of them on bass, but I like to take different approaches when I write.  I’ll start recording an instrument and then add to it from there.”

The lack of lyrics may seem unappealing to some, but don’t be turned off.  “Breakfast at Night” is as upbeat and catchy as any pop song (just with more class and depth) while the drum solo on “Twirly Bird” rocks as hard as Led Zeppeling.  The album, with Ginn on guitar/bass/organ, Gary Piazza on guitar and Sean Hutchinson on drums, also offers some in-the-moment grooves, blending composed and improvised material throughout.  However, the TX Corrugators stepped it up on their past tour and completely improvised every show.

“I improv day to day, have friends over to play.  You find the common denominator with other musicians and work from there.  Others add in their perspective and you find what you can work with.”

While such a thing is unheard of in our Williamsburg bubble of formulaic indie rock, the crowd at Zebulon and Issue Project Room loved the TX Corrugators.

“We were unsure how we’d be received in New York, if people would be into the whole improv thing or not, but they liked it, we had a blast.  Brooklyn has changed a lot, it was really fun.  I love this city.”

Whether speeding from the winery to the club in time for the opener or scoping out a local joint, Ginn regularly makes an effort to see new and unusual music.

“I like jambands and electro and various kinds of dance.  I really like to see live jazz.  Mostly electro and jazz, and rock bands that improv and incorporate electro elements.  I’m just not a big fan of indie hipster rock.  I like things that are more spontaneous.  You can get used to something and get comfortable but I try to get out of my comfort zone and hear stuff that I’m not familiar with.  I don’t want to just see my friends.  There’s a lot of good music at different places, from different cultures.”

While Ginn himself has achieved superstar status, his musical endeavors, past and present, are often labeled as “underground.”  When asked what that word means to him, Ginn replied, “It means mainly bands that are spread by word of mouth and not mass media.  I’m not against groups being successful, of course, but we’re doing something different and challenging and wouldn’t expect traditional media to pick up on it.  Like it or not, we are firmly rooted in the underground.”

What does a long-term undergrounder have to say to the newcomers?

“I guess the main thing is that people get jaded.  Just try to stay tuned in and find music you’re excited about making.  A lot of success is dependent on timing and luck as much as everything else.  You’re better off sustaining something you’re excited about.  If you stop feeling that way then get out of the rut, leave all the other stuff for the media and other people and just make your music, make what you wanna hear.  Don’t cater to someone else, to what you think someone wants to hear.  Then you’ll get cynical and dislike being involved in music.”

Need some inspiration?  Check out their new record at Electric Cowbell Records, a local label run by DJ/drummer Jimmy Thompson who only releases original, limited-run 7”.  Or, stream Legends From Williamson County here and download free copies of the TX Corrugators first two releases here.

Knocks' Top Picks:

THURSDAY
Ernest Jenning Record Co. presents @ Cameo Gallery

La Strada (pictured) 12am
Takka Takka 11pm
Blood Warrior 10pm
Chris Mills 9pm
Charles Burst 8pm

Doors at 7:30pm, $8, 21+

Runner Up: My Teenage Stride at The Charleston, 10:45 pm

FRIDAY
The So So Glos presents (curated by the band) @ Shea Stadium

The So So Glos 12:30am
The Beets 11:45pm
Asa Ransom 11pm
Electric Tickle Machine 10:15pm
Shilpa Ray (solo set) 9:30pm

Doors at 8:30pm, $10

Runner Up: The Fiery Furnaces at Brooklyn Bowl, 10:20 pm

SATURDAY
I Rock I Roll presents @ Bar Matchless

Dream Diary 11pm
Shark? 10pm
Akudama 9pm
Beloved Rogue 8pm

Doors at 7:30pm, $7, 21+

Runner Up: Twin Shadow at Berry Park, 11 pm

SUNDAY
Consequence of Sound presents @ Newtown Barge Park - The MetroPCS Stage

Les Savy Fav 8:30pm
Polvo 7:30pm
Grails 6:30pm

Doors at 6pm, $15/$18 day of, click here for tickets, all ages

Runner Up: The Press at Bar Matchless, 5 pm

“If you join me now/You’ve got a lot to gain.”
-“Pleasure Town”

Hide your boyfriends. Lock the back door. Throw on some pink spandex. Pleasure Town is ravaging a city near you, gassing it up with some sex. Rumor has there’s a hot girl in exaggerative lipstick and low cut skirts romping around the streets alongside her snakeskin boot wearing accomplice, pumping out intergalactic, sweaty, dance-hall grooves. They’re sucking in a whole class of the most dour and sophisticated hipsters, forgetting the trends and coolness and making them dance – actually dance. If you haven’t heard of them yet, well you have now.  If you like music that makes you move, check out the latest… Hank & Cupcakes.

A while back, to open up a show at the Cameo Gallery on North 6^th street in our fair Brooklyn community, Sagit Shir, singer and drummer for Hank & Cupcakes, told a story about a small leak she had in her apartment. The leak eventually turned into warped floorboards beneath her bed, which inevitably turned into utter frustration. That was until she heard the latest news on the earthquake in Haiti and the thousands who had died. She explained that her anger suddenly subsided into a horrible guilt; her little “issue” seemed so insignificant now. In front of an anxious, packed house, she said something to the extent that many people do not have the luxuries we had in that small Cameo space, “so lets get down and party like there’s no fucking tomorrow.” The audience responded, enthralled by that spirit some bands just simply exude.

Sagit is an empowering woman. She lacks little fear and seems always engulfed in self-confidence – not a boasting self-confidence, but more of an unselfish self-confidence. She’s much like Madonna in that she’s not afraid of her sexuality, dislike the Britney Spears alikes in that she has some integrity and sophistication and can actually write lyrics, and like Patti Smith in that she is often quite primitive and not afraid of expression. She’s a rockstar, capable of moving crowds, playing the drums but still dancing crazily to the beat as she hits the skins in a tantalizing yet precise way. Grown women feel like little girls talking to her, squealing and giggling. Oh, and she can sing quite well.

Bassist Ariel Scherbacovsky, the other half of the band, is perhaps the best bassist I’ve ever seen. I’m not positive what makes a good bass player, but from the noise that comes from his amp, it’s impossible to fathom what he’s doing. He is both lead and rhythm, playing purely with the four strings of his bass and a few pedals. Other bass players around the city are neither jealous nor loving, they are simply in awe.

Live, the band is nothing less than amazing. They have something special that will grow if they stick with it. There is nothing more enticing than watching a foxy punkish vixen shouting lyrics from atop her drum set. It’s simply revolutionary, like a protégé of Keith Moon. Their only flaw is their recordings. Although they have reissued their latest EP, (and it’s quite a remarkable EP), their live show is exponentially better. Apparently others have noticed as they are opening for the Gorillaz in Tel Aviv, Hank & Cupcakes’ hometown. Check ‘em out.

On “Thumbs,” the opening track to The Wooldridge Brothers' 2008 release, Days Went Around (Media Creature), Scott Wooldridge declares, “It’s a new day/ In a new age/ And I’m lost.”  Could he be referring to the fact that there are no more new episodes of Party of Five that he and his brother Brian can soundtrack with their bland Americana roots-rock? 

Yes.  That’s exactly what he’s referring to. 

Over the course of the album’s fourteen tracks, The Wooldridge Brothers repeatedly cover the same ground, churning out alt-country that is either a little more alt (you know, electric guitars for the kids) or a little more country (mandolin solo!).  Needless to say, none of it is very interesting or even remotely daring, with each song offering a pop hook that often sounds similar to the one preceding it.  In other words, look for this album at your local Starbucks, it’ll be located somewhere between Liz Phair’s most recent bullshit cop-out and a delicious tray of scones.  That is, of course, assuming your local Starbucks is located in Wisconsin.

The few cuts that do shine generally do so because they mimic their influences spot on, such as the sunny Marshall Crenshaw rip-off “Your Habit” or the brooding, Gin Blossoms-influenced guitar line of “Desiree.”  However, listening to these tracks begs the question, “Why don’t I just listen to their superior influences?”  Basically, this album will make its listener think, “I wish I was listening to the Gin Blossoms,” which is ridiculous in and of itself. 

Funnily enough, the best track on the album is “Sad Hill (intro),” an instrumental interlude comprised of a meandering electric guitar line laid over finger-picked acoustic guitar.  It’s 43 seconds long. 

So what is Days Went Around?  It’s what a church-going aunt would consider indie rock.  It’s the kind of album a high school drama teacher’s band would make on the weekends.  It’s dad rock.

By: Liz Levine
Rating: 5.5/11

With opening track “Thumbs” referring to how annoying it can be when people express themselves electronically rather than in person, The Wooldridge Brothers certainly reveal a rooting in another time. “I just can’t get a handle when you’re talking with you thumbs” is a reference to today’s modern texting, and while some may argue against the emptiness of textual expression, they’d certainly be showing their age in doing so.

The Wooldridge Brothers aren’t doing anything new.  But for breezy alt-country pop, they do it well, bringing catchy hooks even if organized in a quite standard way, and delivering vocals that feel passionate despite their odd (for the kids) concerns. Sure, that might mean it’s dad rock, and their disc Days went Around would certainly fare well at a Starbucks establishment, but, for some reason, this is acceptable. The Brothers (and, oddly, one sister), take a formula and do it justice: pop hooks leading to toe-tapping, twang and hum bringing bring that homey feeling, pleasing vocal harmonies warming the blood. The album folds smoothly into the 90s alt-country cannon as if it had been there all along.

Lack of ingenuity can be frustrating, but there’s also something to be said for having the ear and ability needed to craft pleasing, hooky pop. Perhaps the Brothers Wooldridge should start penning hits for Top 40s radio rather than letting themselves be buried by the pressure to be appropriately “indie.”

(This interview took place in a bar in Bushwick called the Wreck Room. We apologize if the interview seems a bit erratic; it is difficult to interview four people at once in a loud bar. But for artistic purposes, we wanted to capture the wild spirit of GunFight! We have listened to them in recordings, seen them rile up crowds.  To have conducted the interview in the traditional, sterilized manner would have missed the point completely. The four members: lead singer Drew Mintz, lead guitarist Bill Dvorak, bassist Tony Aquilino and drummer Dominic Turi.)

SH: New album… where do you see it going? What do you think about it compared to your EP?

Tony Aquilino: The songs we wrote for this record, I think we kind of had a creative burst. We flushed out what our goals were musically more than our earlier stuff did. We expanded in the style a little more and explored some new stuff.

Drew Mintz: When we did the EP, not to say that we weren’t knee deep into what we were trying to do, but I don’t think we had really flushed out how we wanted to do it. We knew we wanted to take this concept of country music and this concept of punk and post punk and put them together in a way that wasn’t cheap or silly. You can hear it on the EP [All You Need – 2009]. There’s a lot of country on “All You Need,” and on “Vaccine” you can hear sort of a ballady country influence. But when it comes to the other songs it’s harder to hear. Those are some of the first songs we wrote. When it got to the album, we had a wealth of material to sort of look at and the time to say this is what we think is “Post” country, the genre that we’ve tried to push.

SH: What does Post Country mean?

Bill Dvorak: Ask this guy [Points to Drew Mintz].

DM: It’s a changing term…

SH: Well, I think country has a bad connotation.  When you say “I listen to country music…” people are like…

TA: Everyone says: “I listen to everything but country and rap.” Those are always the two qualifications.

DM: What is it about country that drives people away because when it really comes down to it, it is one of the highest grossing forms of music sold? Most people in America identify with this kind of music; if you live in the Northeast, you hate it. We’re all from the Northeast. We don’t have any ownership over this music. I know I just sort of fell in love with it, maybe because it wasn’t something that I could feel was mine.

TA: There is a point where I think we all had this opinion of country music that it was something that was really outdated and hokey.

Dominic Turi: Considering what it has been for the last 20, 25 years…

BD: Since the 80s it has been pretty shitty.

DM: I think one of the major themes in our music is that it draws a connection between the Northeastern suburban living, where we’re all from, with the ideas of country music. It’s all really the same idea of the American experience.

The way we live today, it’s probably true that kids grow up in Texas the same way that we grew up in upstate New York, which was not true 25 years ago. So when we all try to find out what our American identity is, we sort of look at southern country music from Tennessee or Texas from 25 years ago; that’s as much mine as it is anyone else’s. So trying to come up with a new American sound, there is something we have to share with that. We’re not divided anymore. We all have a K-mart in our town and a multi-plex.

BD: … the same themes, just decades later and many states apart.

I know a lot people that are from the New Jersey suburbs that identify with the ideals in contemporary pop country: just being a regular person, living humbly and not worrying about money and fame and whatever else. I think now, from coast to coast, it’s more of a class thing rather than a geographical thing. That’s why someone like us from the Northeast can pick up some of these ideas that have been around for a long time. They apply to people all over that come from a certain background that we can kind of identify with… the idea of being regular people and regular Americans.

SH: So how do you transform that into music?

DM: I have no idea.

TA: We just have a certain way that songs come out of us. There’s something about the way we play our instruments naturally that it just kind of results in the way the songs sound.

DM: We can try real hard to think about it in a methodical way, and we really have tried, we can take this little piece, with this lego piece and this lego piece and this connects piece… You can do that all you want and it’ll end up sounding manufactured and cheep.

SH: What type of country music do you listen to?

DM: Anything from silly prairie songs: from Jimmy Rogers or Jimmy Dean

BD: That Outlaw country stuff…

DM: In the past year, I’ve been obsessed with Waylon Jennings. I’ll absorb myself in that sound. If you boil yourself in soup long enough, you’ll taste like carrots.

BD: We’re also definitely influenced by punk. We sort of see the themes of it and early country music: working class lifestyles and simple themes about life and struggle… there’s definitely a parallel.

DM: You were definitely influenced by punk [pointing to Bill]. One of the funny differences between the band is where a lot of the sounds come from. You grew up in Jersey and you listened to punk music. Tony and I are from upstate New York, and we listened to classic rock all the time. I think that from Led Zeppelin to blues to country somehow makes a clean transition, but when it meets punk from New Jersey, all of those things meet in a weird way.

They’re all folklore, really. People who make this sound are not educated people. They are not people who have studied this music over and over to the point where it’s exacerbated. It comes from their heart and not teachings.

BD: It’s raw emotion and not technical prowess.

DT: We’re all self taught.

BD: I still don’t know how to make chords properly. I just play them the way I think they should play.

SH: What drew me into the band was your energy, not just on stage. I actually listened to your recordings before I saw you live and that’s really what got me interested. Talk about that: where do you get your energy?

TA: I think it’s booze mainly.

DT: I just like being sassy.

BD: Yeah, I like a confrontational stage vibe.

DM: I don’t really know where that energy comes down to. I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I still have no idea how we ended up playing this kind of music.

TA: I’ve played in other bands and I’ve never been this energetic on stage than I have been in this band. I always just stood there.

DM: This guy will barf on stage. He’ll get naked. It’s all over the internet.

BD: I think part of it is just the energy of the crowd. I feed off of them so much. If no one’s there or nobody’s drunk and it’s a week ight, it’s not going to be that energetic. But when people are wild, we’ll be fucking wild.

DM: During the recording, if you listen to the EP, we tried hard to keep that energy in the recording. And when it came to the full-length record, the first obstacle to overcome was, “Are we going to able to get that energy for those twelve songs?”

SH: Is it just booze, or is something else?

DT: I think it’s like what Bill was saying about the crowd. Not only are they accepting, they are asking for it.

TA: I always remember our first days in New York. Me and Drew were both working for this shitty job. We would have these awful five days, have these breaks and go out and smoke cigarettes where we would talk about how much our lives sucked. Then Friday night, we would go out to Brooklyn and we would have a show and by the time we got there, we were so fed up with our shitty lives, it would all just come out.

DM: There is no other way to treat this music.

SH: When you are recording, is it the same idea?

DM: We recorded live. There are overdubs here and there, but for the most part, the record is 95% live. I think you’ll hear that a lot of the songs on the album have that wow energy. That’s what we’ve done before, but they’re also some songs on there that aren’t just balls out rock and roll country or punk. There are some songs that are a little bit more folky or more mid tempo or toned down.

BD: We have a more relaxed, middle section on the album.

DM: The most important thing about this record is that we wanted it to be entertaining to anybody that listened to it. There’s a wide variety of different definitions of entertaining, so one song will be entertaining because it’s loud and fast or one song will be entertaining because it’s dancey, or one song is entertaining because it’s a little bit slower but maybe the words catch you. There’s a different way to approach each song. So I think we tried to translate that energy through what was entertaining even if it wasn’t raw energy, it was energetic because it had something else that was entertaining about it…

Listening to what we have, in so few days… I’m proud of it. It’s hard to get anything to sound good when you are recording. There are things all throughout the record that I’m like “Damn it.” But I’m pretty proud of it for it being what it is.

BD: It’ll feel nice to have a full-length album to hold in your hands and show to everybody and say: “I did this when I was this age, and it sounds great.”

SH: To change it up a bit, I think there’s kind of two scenes in Brooklyn, there’s the Grizzly Bear that’s interviewed by Pitchfork…

BD: NPR indie?

SH: Yeah. I like that. Is there a parallel to you guys with them, or what do you think about that scene?

TA: We dig a lot of music in there, and we go to a fair amount of shows. There are a lot of Brooklyn bands that we all really like to listen to.

DM: And that we’re proud that they are part of our community. By no means do we not feel a sense of home turf with these bands. I think in terms of Brooklyn bands, it reflects Brooklyn in general. It’s all over the place and there’s no sense about it. You can think that you have a sense of what is a consistent Brooklyn sound, but when it comes down to it, there are so many different interests, there are so many different people playing into it, that you don’t know what’s going to come out of Brooklyn in the next six months: you don’t know who’s going to get promoted by Todd P; you don’t know who’s going to get promoted by some recorded label that runs out of a loft somewhere.

SH: Well I guess where my question is going is what is the point of having a band. Is it to go and have a good time?

DM: That’s a question you should go and ask them and not us.

To be honest, we have this idea of this American sound – this post country sound. We listen to all the things that are going around us, and we try to apply that to what we think it is to be an American today. We’ve been sticking to this idea as an intellectual concept longer, much longer, than what has been the sound of Brooklyn over the course of six months. The sound of Brooklyn has changed like two or three times since we’ve been playing…

BD: We’re not goona just play reverb heavy punk just because. We want to play something that for a couple of years we felt is us and not just some aesthetic that seems fun. That stuff is fun and it’s good, but we’re going to play what we want to play and we’re not going to compromise.

DM: I think what those bands have, and we sort of maybe are on the cusp of, is what people think they haven’t heard before; we try to make up by being as energetic about what we’re doing as possible. I don’t want this to come across as a rejection of that music…

BD: No, we like that stuff, but it’s not just what we do. There’s a lot of people who go to their shows who play in bands and have other musical tastes, and they like it because it’s a big scene and there’s a lot of press and a lot interest in it.

TA: It’s really good music to listen to; Brooklyn has a lot of great bands. It’s just something different than what we do.

SH: In recent memory, what was your best show?

BD: Our friends has a loft space and any time we play there it is a sweaty, crazy, crowd surfing show, and this guy’s dancing in his underwear…

DT: Also there was a very good one we played at Pyramids. We weren’t playing at someone’s house or working with some annoying venue, it was huge and there were like a million people there.

DM: I think in general we enjoy playing loft shows.

BD: Yeah, we’re a party band. We like it when it’s cheap as shit and everyone’s drunk.

DT: I like it when I can throw a beer at someone’s head and know I won’t get dragged out.

DM: Charges won’t be filed.

SH: I had this place back home called the happy shack-

DM: Where are you from?

SH: Cape Cod…

BD: We played there once.

TA: I got naked there too. It was in Hyannis Port.

BD: It was the only cool bar in Cape Cod.

DM: It was not cool.

BD: If you’re from Cape Cod, that’s about as cool as it gets.

DM: This guy’s from there, don’t say that!

BD: I’m just saying… I’m from Chester, New Jersey. There’s nothing cool there.

TA: Anyways, it was fun. We hung out real late and just…

BD: I was really nervous because Cape Cod is like a family place and this guy was running around naked.

SH: Anyways, is there a place you drew your inspiration from growing up?

DM: We had this place behind my friend Eric’s house. He was our first drummer for Gunfight! It was like a septic field.

TA: We called it The Field, or the Shit Field.

DM: We went up there because nobody would ever bother us. On the way we would go to the Getty on route 6 in Travoke. We called it “Getty Juice” because the guy would never card us.

TA: We also had the method where me and our friend Eric worked at different grocery stores. We would go into each other’s stores and buy beer from each other. But even though I was buying it from my friend, I was still really paranoid. I would chalk my I.D. and pretend to be an adult. I’d go in and ask about the sales that week and ask for a copy of the circular. He would call me sir and thank me for my services… and that was for a 12 pack of Budweiser.

DT: You guys made it look 12 times more suspicious.

BD: “Hello sir, how are your several wife and children?”

I guess locally, in terms of hang out spots that were influential to us, about a year ago or two years ago there was a warehouse around here that we called The Werehouse on Thames Street. It was a crazy party atmosphere. We used to hang out and play shows there and met a lot of our friends from New York. It’s changed and new people live there, we don’t really hang out anymore, but when I look back at first moving to Brooklyn and the friends I made and the shows we played, that was the place.

TA: That was where we met Dominic.

BD: Yeah, that was Dominic’s birthday. He was trying to surf on the bathroom door.

DT: It was just tolerable enough and now it’s so fucking disgusting you can never go back in there.

DM: If you listen to our songs, “Take Off” is about The Field, “Empties” is about drinking in parking lots in the York Town heights New York, “Wag Bag” off the new album is about drinking in Allston.

SH: How does drinking relate to country music?

BD: Every country singer from George Jones to Waylon Jennings had horrible drinking problems. [Mocking in a drawl] “I’m gonna drive my lawn mower to the bar because my wife took my car keys.”

DM: I think this is a problem I have with other bands that are doing the same things we do. Yes, drinking is, through and through, what we’re talking about on the album, but we don’t sit there glorifying drinking. It’s just sort of the reality. I think there’s a lot of contemporary bands that are probably doing the same things that I think make cheep country music. It’s the idea of incorporating country into their music just because it incorporates drinking. What we were doing on this album, by no means we were trying to do anything hokey or cheap or trying to exploit any ones culture. We were trying to take different things and make our own culture. Drinking is one of the problems that makes country music annoying these days because you’ll get these stupid songs just about drinking. You can boil top 40 country down to five different categories and probably half of those categories will be about alcohol. And it’s all just a joke!

BD: Early country artists, a good majority of them were drinkers, but when they wrote songs, they weren’t writing about drinking, they were just writing about things that were going on in their lives. The alcohol was always there, but now it’s being glorified.

DM: George Jones wrote about drinking all the time. He’d write a song like “Wine Colored Roses” and it wasn’t about drinking itself, but it was about the curse of drinking.

TA: Drinking songs used to be cautionary. They saw people that were sucked in by it and were kind of saying: “Don’t do this.”

DM: To an extent, studios wouldn’t agree to release a record unless they took that perspective.

TA: Nowadays, it’s the opposite.

DM: I love Waylon Jennings, but when you turn on a Shooter Jennings record, his son, he will just spew out weed references and drinking references. How many times on top 40 country can you hear the term Jack Daniels or Jim Beam uttered. That’s just so fucking stupid to me. I don’t know who they’re trying to please with that! It’s so disingenuous to me!

DT: There’s a lot of good songs about drinking, but when you have too much Wet Brain you can’t really write much of anything. I think that’s what’s happening.

DM: “All You Need” [off the EP] is about the way a relationship turns out when you’re drinking all the time. “Sticks,” on the new album, the main character is in this relationship and his significant other thinks he’s nicer when he’s drunk. So the whole song is about giving up sobriety. “Alright fine. I’ll be drunk. If you want me to be drunk all the time, I’ll be drunk.” But it’s sad. No one’s recommending it to anyone. Drinking comes with equal parts confusion and equal parts…

BD: Clarity…

TA: Connection…

DM: How many times have you gotten into a fight with somebody because you were drunk? And how many times have you gotten into a, “I love you man?”

I don’t want to be categorized as glorifying drinking because I don’t think anyone of us tries to do that. In history, every agricultural society has figured out that if you let that sit out too long and drink the puddle next to it, it will get you feeling fucking awesome.

DT: Even animals. There’s a video on YouTube. It’s like seven different types of animals getting drunk off of this one tree.

DM: I wanna get drunk off a tree.

TA: That’s funny. We’re always saying, “What do you think: Booze grows on trees?” and I guess it does.

Bisker’s lyrics are just as brilliant if not just as brine. Others have called her a “dangerous femme fatale” — tender then venomous, audacious then introspective, but never apologetic. In Bisker we have an honest woman of our generation, singing lyrics that remain confident in their unwillingness to be watered down or glammed up. Bisker taps at the edges of that part of the glass ceiling reserved for rock ‘n’ roll and smiles at you while she does it.

We caught up with Sweet Soubrette to talk about the songwriting process, the recording process, and the always-entertaining ukulele.

By: Nora E. Lindner

NL: What did you grow up listening to? Do you see any connection between it and the music you play today? 
SS: My dad likes to collect old stereo equipment at garage sales. You could play music in almost every room of our house, including the kitchen and one bathroom. So I grew up steeped in my parents’ music, which they played all the time — a cocktail of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, sixties rock and roll, folk songs, and show tunes from Li’l Abner to Andrew Lloyd Webber (I strongly recommend this combination to parents wishing to raise songwriter children — it’s like pop music primordial soup). When I was in high school I got really into the bad-ass women of 90s alternative rock, like Liz Phair and PJ Harvey and the Breeders. I have been hugely influenced by all these sources. The music I write is very lyrics-oriented and I use my songs to tell stories, like the folk and show tunes. The Beatles taught me a lot about melody and harmony, and Bob Dylan is an inspiring model of songwriter as poet (Leonard Cohen too). And my songs tend to have an edge to them, and a lack of apology, that I picked up from those cool lady rockers.     

NL: When did you start playing ukulele? Formal training? First performance? 
SS: I got a ukulele as a gift from a stranger at the end of 2005 and taught myself to play by using online chord charts to learn all the Magnetic Fields songs I knew all the words to, which turned out to be a lot. My first official performance was in the spring of 2006 at Galapagos Art Space in the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus’s Winter Cabaret variety show, which was appropriate since I had been working with the Bindlestiffs behind the scenes since 2003 and they had taught me basically everything I knew at that point about performing.    

But I had an unofficial debut a couple months earlier, when I went to the now defunct CB’s Gallery for an event a friend was hosting that was supposed to include an open mic. When I showed up, the friend said, “Oh, honey, you just missed it.” I figured, oh well, and started drinking scotch and sodas. After I had had two of them in quick succession, suddenly I heard my friend announce me as a special guest act. Surprise! My memory of the performance itself is a blur of swimming faces, bad tuning, and awkward fingers. It was at least brief. Then when I went backstage to put the uke away, Nick Jones (lead singer of serialized pirate puppet show rock opera band Jollyship the Whiz-Bang, and a total hero of mine) was getting ready to go on, and he looked at me and said: “Welcome to the small-time.” I think that was the moment I started becoming a performer.

NL: Where does the name Sweet Soubrette come from? What was your original concept for the band? 
SS: A soubrette is a stock character from comic opera — it’s usually described as the flirtatious chambermaid. The word comes from a type of soprano singing voice that those characters tend to have. On the vaudeville stage, young women who played and sang were also sometimes called soubrettes. This seemed in keeping with my act when I was mostly playing solo and trying out a very theatrical, flirtatious, over-the-top stage persona. My original concept for the band was really this alter ego as a solo act, singing songs of doomed romance, but I also wanted an alter ego as a performer that could later function as a band name. When I started performing I was in grad school and couldn’t work around anyone’s schedule but my own. Since finishing my degree I’ve put together a band, which has changed the music and the presentation, making it more rock and less cabaret.  

NL: What’s your song writing process? Where do you get your inspiration? What’s your favorite song of the EP and why? 
SS: My songwriting process really varies. The quirky ones come easiest, since I’m someone who does well with an assignment. Sometimes I come up with the assignment myself, like with “Unlucky in Love,” where I decided to make a list of every unlucky thing I could think of and apply it to a bad relationship. Other times it comes from somewhere else — for instance I participate in the Bushwick Book Club, monthly songwriting series where everyone reads a book and then has to write a song inspired by it. With my more serious songs there’s more of a process of trying to figure out what I’m actually trying to get at, which is sort of like when something is bothering you but you’re not exactly sure what it is. Sometimes a line comes into my head and I’ll carry it around for a while, let it run in the background and marinate, and then when it hits a critical mass I’ll build out from it in a more focused way, make myself sit and pick away at it. I like rules and structure and rhyme. I find a rhyming dictionary helpful for clues to where the song might go next. Some songs take a long time to write. Others fall out more or less complete. The process for each one is a little different. 

NL: Have you found any significant challenges in being a young woman in the mostly male-dominated music industry?  
SS: Well, I think in some ways you can be more visible as a woman in music, in that there are fewer of us getting attention in the field so if you can stand out you stand out more (of course this is totally a back-handed advantage, if it is one at all). Being respected and taken seriously as a musician, songwriter, artist, band leader can be challenging when you’re dealing with engineers, venues, bookers, other musicians. And as a woman you run the risk of having your music pigeonholed as “chick music,” like your songs would only be interesting to female listeners. But really I think the disadvantages are not so much the obvious things and more the things you don’t even know about — where you’re not being invited to play on a bill, not being suggested for a gig, not being asked to sit in on someone else’s set. Not getting opportunities to participate on equal footing.     

NL: In your song “Homewrecker” you explain your “disrespect for domestic tranquility” and how you are “messing with the social order” — refreshingly unapologetic. Do you see your music as empowering in that sense? 
SS: Well first of all, “Homewrecker” should be taken with a huge grain of salt. It starts out very unapologetic, even bragging, but by the end I think it’s clear this character is in over her head and suffering because of it. That said, I do like to write from the bad woman’s point of view — “Siren Song,” from the (possibly deadly) mermaid’s perspective, and “Pacemaker,” from the heartbreaker’s, are two other songs in this vein. And on the second album there’s a song called “All That Glitters,” which is sung by a gold digger. It is definitely fun to write first-person songs for these characters who are usually being sung about by other people, usually men. Giving them a voice can be empowering. 

NL: Your songs seem so personal, especially about the doomed romances of your life. Is it hard to expose yourself like that? Are there some songs you wish certain people wouldn’t hear? 
SS: As a singer-songwriter you are usually singing in the first person, and people assume that the songs are all about you and that they are all true. In fact it’s more like being a novelist — you take bits and pieces from your own life, but you also take other pieces from things you read, things you hear, things your friends say, conversations that stick in your head. The distinction between those bits and pieces isn’t obvious to the listener, and it shouldn’t be if you’re telling a coherent story — the fact and the fiction are all mixed up. That’s the saving grace for me. I try not to reveal which parts are the true ones. Especially when my parents come to my shows. 

NL: You’re in the process of recording your second album, Days and Nights. Tell us more about it.  
SS: Days and Nights really expands on what the producer of Siren Song (Tim Cohan of MH Records, formerly of the indie pop band Tryst) and I were doing on the first album. Siren Song started with just me and a ukulele, and then we embellished those tracks with additional instrumentation, programming, effects, some loops and beats. Days and Nights was recorded with my band — the arrangements on most of the songs are ones we came up with together in rehearsal and refined in performance, so the core tracks that we brought into the studio were already incredibly rich.   

I’m extremely lucky in my band — they have all trained at high levels and are far better musicians than I am. Heather Cole has played classical violin since she was a 4-year-old Suzuki kid. She also plays bluegrass, klezmer and Irish fiddle and comes up with parts that are just brilliant. Bob Smith plays upright and electric bass, toured with the indie rock band Trunk Federation in the 90s, and now is the director of a public school music program. Mike Dobson went to the Hartt School and Mannes College of Music for percussion, can play anything you can hit with a stick, and works mainly symphony orchestra and professional circus music gigs when he’s not playing with me. The combination leads to some really interesting arrangements. So Days and Nights has a sound that’s more developed and more full, with more people’s ideas brought together.   

The subject matter on Days and Nights is a little wider, too — there’s a song about girls growing up together, and a whimsical lullaby in French, and a song about being childless in your 30s that’s so devastating that people laugh when we play it in concert. Fun! Doomed romance still plays a major role, but I think it’s a little more thoughtful.  
 
NL: Any other future plans? 
SS: I’m always working on something. I’m hoping to play some gigs outside of NYC this spring. I’m also planning a trip to Italy, where hopefully I’ll get to play a show or two.  An Italian fan who wrote an amazing review of Siren Song two years ago has offered a place to stay in Rome, and a musician friend of his who plays ukulele is working on setting up a couple of gigs there. The international ukulele community is amazingly, surreally generous, and I’m continually amazed and grateful. 

When thinking of some of the biggest musical disappointments of recent memory, Woods is definitely atop that list. This Brooklyn trio welcomes you in with a warm and dainty sound reminiscent of 1960s Britpop groups like Chad & Jeremy. But then, for some odd reason, they dump a big bucket of noise over their collection of folk tunes, and we’re left with a band that is trying to pull you in two different directions at the same time. To me, this analogy describes precisely how discomforting listening to Woods can be.Their newest offering, Songs of Shame (2009), opens with “To Clean,” featuring a guitar solo so agonizingly disjointed that it would make even Tom Verlaine want to jump off the Queensboro Bridge. And that’s well before the vocals kick in, which signal the true nail in the coffin for this band. A far cry from the lush falsetto of Justin Vernon, the vocal stylings of Jeremy Earle are painfully irritating and completely devoid of soul. Think of Miss Piggy if she was strung out on heroin. It’s a shame, because underneath it all, you can hear a band that is trying to pay homage to its folk forefathers. That is until they decided to be inventive. Unfortunately for us, and our ears, this band is not comprised of any world-beaters.

By Liz Levine
Rating: 5/11

A clear image comes to mind when one is presented with the band Woods: there’s their name, their label Woodsist, and the bucolic cover of their latest album Songs of Shame that features, well, woods. This all suggests to back-to-basics return to nature, which in Woods’ case translates into your classic home-recorded DIY rock. They shift between weird noise tape experiments and folky, simple-structured songs with 90’s guitar jam scratching around in the background. Singer Jeremy Earl won’t be starring on Broadway anytime soon, but his pre-pubescent squeal might appeal to those who prefer silly or strange vocals. All in all, Woods’ songs are more exciting than standard-issue pop rock, of which there is so much these days that even the well-written, well-made stuff out there can get boring quite quickly. They aren’t mind-blowing, but they will appeal to those who listen to so much music that they bore easily, or who prefer their tunes be random and heavily experimental.

Bugs In The Dark are channeling the early days of indie rock in their first EP, Shake Shake.  Remember those days?  It was back when the only person listening to indie was your best friend’s estranged older brother who played a lot of Warhammer and subsisted on a strict diet of Corn Nuts and Dr. Pepper.  The early nineties time capsule that is Shake Shake provides a little grunge relief for this digitally enhanced world we find ourselves in today, but, in the end, it stands more wholly as a reminder that we have traded our misplaced angst and open flannel shirts for something better.

These Brooklyn rockers are well tuned to their musical strengths.  The buzzing guitars create a net of distorted rhythm on top of nice, hard-hitting drums.  Problems occur when their strengths bend against their obvious weaknesses.  Karen Rockower’s vocals are perfect for every song, gently stinging each lyric with the appeal of the Pixies and the harshness of Crystal Castles, but Zach Glass’s run-of-the-mill, filter-laden, unsure in Seattle style droning vocals are an unfortunate addition to all but one track, “Silence Is A Treason.”

Another over-used resource on this EP is random amp feedback.  The squeals and squawks of angry equipment still have their place in rock-and-roll, but this album gets too much mileage from them.  Tracks “I Change” – featuring Rockower alone on vocals – a and the aforementioned “Silence Is A Treason” are the best ones to catch from this release.
 
Look for their sound to evolve in the next year or two, as long as they can tune their ears to hear when a song is too heavily layered or repetitive.  Bugs In The Dark could benefit greatly from simplicity, despite that fact that they are pretty skeletal already (two guitars and a drum set, with no digital mixing that this reviewer can hear).  Shake Shake is their earliest EP.  To see the progress they’ve already made, check out the review on their newest EP, Grand Avenue.

Grand Avenue (self-released, 2008)
By: Faetra Petillo
Rating: 8/11

Bugs In the Dark's latest release Grand Avenue is proof that the post-punk hard rock sector of the indie scene is still alive and kicking and has not been completely buried by the nu-vo electronica meets folk wave. Depending on how you feel about cold, hard, screaming vocals, killer dissonant guitars coming from every direction and drumming so hard and fast it could be heard from the grave, this could be a good or a bad thing. Either way, it’s music to be reckoned with and I, for one, am happy to still see glimpses of the rock I grew up on, the yelping girls on guitars like Karen O that got me through some hard times in high school and college.

And so I will start with making the obvious comparison: Karen Rockower sounds exactly like Karen O. Eerily so. Meaning, her vocals are calculated yet lacking in control. Emotive but technical. When you are a punk singer, it's an important balance to maintain lest your singing just starts to come off as unpleasant noise. She uses her voice as an instrument that compliments her band without being overpowered by them. Keeping with the notion of controlled chaos, Zach Glass and Zeph Courtney (guitarist and drummer) know how to let the song carry itself away without breaking the consistency and rhythm. Each song is a roller coaster and there's a lot of highs and lows, fasts and slows that need to be executed with precision without making the music sound like it's not free. And they do it beautifully, resulting in great pieces of symphonic rock, music you want to be banging your head along to in the front row but at the same time doesn't turn you aggressive and angry.

The album itself is well crafted. For the most part it is a punk album and most of the tracks, while diverse, fit into the mold. Fast and furious with a little build up here and there. What I like are tracks like "Ave M,” a song that switches the rhythm and tone around, and "Miles of Stone," a rock ballad that is as beautiful as it is painful.  When Zach lends his vocals he compliments Karen well whether it means singing along with her or providing the low to her high.

Here's to hoping the band doesn't just come off as a carbon copy of what already came. They certainly do what they do well, and their energy and talent is unmistakably through the roof. But have we moved on from this kind of music? In a scene that values innovation and is constantly changing, is a band like this even capable of being next year’s breakthrough sound? Who knows... but either way, it's good listening and if their live performances are half as energetic as Grand Avenue, watching them is bound to be a wild time.

CSC Funk Band is bringing the real dance music to Brooklyn.  Forget the Nintendo-inspired electronica.  Forget the mustachioed indie rock bands.  Forget all the DJS spinning remixes of old funk and soul songs (who decided Curtis Mayfield needed remixing, anyway?).  CSC is the real shit.

Complete with congas and horns in addition to more standard instruments, CSC adds an Afro-Latin flair and a touch of experimental jazz to their slammin’ funk.  Wandering trumpet solos, jamband style guitar riffs and booty-shakin’ drum lines take their turn sharing the lead, hearkening The Talking Heads, Phish and The JBs all at the same time.  But don’t be deterred – CSC is not a band for arm-swaying hippies only.  With members formerly of USAISAMONSTER, Talibam and even Gwar, CSC Funk Band is loaded with talented musicians who know how to tear it up.

Dance your ass off to tracks “Bad Banana Bread” and "Caneca" on their myspace page, and check out drummer/DJ Jimmy T’s new 7” inch label Electric Cowbell Records for all the funkin’ details.  Next chance to see their killer live show in action: January 11th at Zebulon with The Wowz.