Mistletone

Mistletone is truly thrilled to welcome the mighty Cash Savage and The Last Drinks to the family. Cash’s much-awaited third studio album, One Of Us is out now on Mistletone Records via Inertia Music. Pre-order LPs or buy CDs here; all mail orders will receive a signed CD or LP, while stocks last. Watch the video for “Falling, Landing” above and watch rollicking on-tour footage in “Rat-A-Tat-Tat”, below:

• ALBUM OF THE WEEK – 3RRR, 3PBS, RTR-FM, Beat Magazine
• “There’s a pain that rattles the core of Cash Savage’s third album… full of blues grunt and country groove that holler badass one minute and banjo tinged mellow the next” –  THE AGE 4.5 stars ★★★★☆
• “Savage comes at us with gruff, dirty-fingernails country-rock like her life depends on it” – HERALD SUN ★★★★
• “​Will make you want to dance, cry and croon all at once. It’s damn good value in our books​” – FRANKIE MAGAZINE
• “Rat-a-tat-tat might be unmatched as the best Aussie single of 2016. Savage gloriously steers a charged vocal  ensemble into the next world” – THE BIG ISSUE ★★★★
• “One Of Us is a particularly apt title for an album which grapples so thoughtfully and skilfully with questions, cares, ideas and experiences known to all humanity.  Cash Savage is recognised for her supreme storytelling skill, and across this new collection of songs recounts certain peaks and lows of the past year, always with compassion and humour, wisdom and insight. The potent lyrics are matched by equally impassioned musical performances: a clear, indomitable spirit” – TRIPLE R ALBUM OF THE WEEK
• “A big step beyond its two excellent predecessors, (One of Us) is layered with confidence, attention, ease and cohesion. It packs a big sound… It’s Cash Savage as we know and love, with modern menace from The Last Drinks” — 3PBS-FM (Feature Album)
• “There is a mixture of dark and light on One of Us…. Do You Feel Loved breaks from memory into frenetic celebration, My Friend is equal parts sincerity, sadness and love and Song For a Funeral is so heavy it buckles your shoulders and breaks your heart” – BEAT MAGAZINE ALBUM OF THE WEEK
• “One of the most respected songwriters in the Melbourne underground, Cash Savage has forged a reputation for gritty, raw, and Australiana-tinged storytelling; a vivid depiction of highs and lows” – FASTERLOUDER
• “Cash Savage is a unique figure. She looks like the love-child of Chrissie Amphlett and Rock Hudson, has the low notes of Concrete Blonde’s Johnette Napolitano but uses them like Angel Olsen… an excellent balance between the hideous power of gothic country, folk and blues and a band that can really pack them in the aisles” – 4ZZZ
• “Low down and dirty and in thrall to the kind of bygone era country-blues that liked the dark and didn’t bother with a porchlight… With her hard-swingin’, hard-twangin’ band The Last Drinks, (Cash Savage’s) latest howling missive One Of Us often sounds as though its main influence was whiskey. Gloriously reverb-sodden, it has the same kind of lurch that marked Nick Cave’s early work and Savage has taken the mercy seat all to herself” – 2SER

Ask Cash Savage how last year was and she’d tell you: “it was fucking awesome, but fucking hard”. It’s a statement that’s been instilled into the Melburnian’s growling alt-country for years, but never so strongly as on her newest album, One Of Us. In it, Cash Savage explores beauty, freedom and the darkness that seep into even the supposedly safest of realms: family, friendship, sleep and love. One Of Us is a record of duality, one that marks another stage of growth for Cash Savage and the Last Drinks.

The ecstatic highs and devastating lows of 2015 would shape One Of Us, Cash Savage and The Last Drinks’ debut album for new label, Mistletone Records. There was her marriage, a European tour and the loss of a few close friends and family to suicide. After a long spell from writing, allowing these emotional events to sink in, Cash Savage grabbed a six-pack, headed off to the studio, turned her guitar up to 12 and began composing the songs that would form One Of Us. Produced by Nick Finch and recorded by Nao Anzai at Head Gap in Melbourne, One Of Us follows on from 2013’s critically acclaimed, The Hypnotiser and is packed tight with the kind of well-crafted, country and blues ear candy the band has become known for.

Cash Savage opens One Of Us with “Falling, Landing”, a song of appreciation, with a lingering vision of potentially having been reduced to nothing. “Run With The Dogs”, “Sunday Morning” and “My Friend” continues to explore the reality that falling hard – both in love and in loss – demands a whole-world understanding that includes our darker sides. By the end of the record, on title track, One Of Us, Cash faces the actuality that even though we are together, ultimately we’re always alone.

Influences beyond loss come in the form of bizarre occurrences, like “Do You Feel Loved”, which recounts witnessing a go-go dancing class in a local pub one rainy night and the insomnia tainted “Rat-A-Tat-Tat”. “Empty Page” comes from a long bout of writer’s block, while the hymnal ache of “Song For A Funeral” is where we find Cash’s ability to craft devastating honesty with her growling vocal exemplified. The Last Drinks added a multitude of instrumentation to the record, fleshing out Savage’s original compositions; Cash’s astonishing and confident vocals allow the musicians around her to flourish. Joe White provides soaring guitar work; Rene Mancuso contributes drums and percussion; Chris Lichti adds bass; and Brett Marshall lifts numerous songs with banjo accompaniments. Finally, Kat Mear on violin brings to light the eerie cadence and dramatic swells of the album’s dark side.

In the end, Cash fulfils the promise many heard on the first two albums and brings her most realised effort of song-writing and lyricism to fruition. The songs on One Of Us reflect the grieving that comes from loss and embrace the new road ahead. This new effort is bound to be regarded as Cash’s most intricate work to date.

Click above to watch the new video for “Comix” feat. Mala Rodríguez by Barcelona-based film collective CANADA, the good folks who brought you now-legendary “Bombay” clip.

• “(El Guincho’s) most resolutely electronic work yet, Hiperasia buzzes like an ice-cream headache. His beats bob between the lurching rhythms of the L.A. beat scene, the snap of dancehall and reggaetón, and the shuddering, double-time pulses of jungle and footwork, and his synths recall both Dâm-Funk’s fat, augmented chords and Rustie’s dynamics-squashing compressors. The way jagged samples are shoehorned into the mix is reminiscent, at times, of the Bomb Squad—or a tropical take on them, anyway, like an MPC that’s sticky with mango and mojo. Touch down almost anywhere on the record, and you’ll discover details that trigger a hair-raising rush of sensation—brittle 909 snare rolls, crystalline choirs, video-game melodies, and basslines that reach frequencies most indie-electronic fusions never knew existed” – PITCHFORK
• “A vivid, feverish soundworld of Auto-Tuned vocals, idyllic electronics and machine beats solid enough to stand alongside the best US R&B currently has to offer” – THE WIRE

After a 5 year break, El Guincho is back with a new album, HiperAsia. The album is out now on Mistletone Records via Inertia (purchase on iTunes, or order LP / CD via Mistletone mail order).

HiperAsia is another musical leap for El Guincho, composed and recorded in studios and spaces throughout Spain; in the Canary Islands, Barcelona and finally Madrid, in a chaotic period for Southern Europe. The music that has emerged is immediately disconcerting; prickly, bright and uncompromising and demanding, it is resonating with a whole new audience of El Guincho fans.

Ever the innovator, El Guincho‘s Pablo Díaz-Reixa is reinventing music distribution by launching a massive HiperAsia campaign with wearable tech and a Vaporwave short film. The first piece of El Guincho’s HiperAsia collection (available now) is a wristband wearable album which comes with NFC (Near Field Communication) technology and a QR code. You can use your smartphone to unlock a secret website that features the full album, a “3-D experience,” and a Manson-directed animated film called HiperAsia, La Aventura Lírica Animada. Plus, the website will be regularly updated with exclusive new music for two years. The wristband is your subscription to a world of ever-mutating El Guincho content streaming directly to you. Discover alternative cuts, instrumental versions, unique songs, beats, 3D experiences and many other features of the HiperAsia universe. Click here to order.

As Pablo writes of the genesis of HiperAsia:

“HiperAsia is a chain of enormous chinese bazaars in the outskirts of Madrid. My engineer took me to one of them when buying tools to build our new studio, back in february 2k15. I fell in love with the building and their products, sui generis takes on western brands, often more interesting than the originals. It was a good starting point for the record. I thought: how could I translate this whole business structure into sound aesthetics, a mixing concept, a song idea, etc. For sound I used the experience of walking around the corridors as inspiration. HiperAsia is an industrial plant with high ceilings, packed with so much stuff there’s actually way less echo than you´d imagine. Illumination isn’t very sophisticated either, which brings out the truth of the objects in an aggressive manner. So, I would use no reverbs, no echoes, reduce bit depth of sounds and use distortion as a way to separate the elements. For the mix I used their product placement, Unexpected, undivided, packed with data, and the customers walking around and experiencing it. The individual would be the mono signal, keep it simple, naïve, almost no effects, a little beat on the 808 or a bass line and some vocals, that’s it. I’d use the stereo to corrupt that and constantly renew the way you listen to the song. Breaks, other song ideas that pop in and out, abrupt silences, vocal processing as a way to separate thoughts, etc. And for song ideas I used their fake brands, their ability to create something fresh out of a very specific interpretation of an existing item. Songs would be my foreign takes on genres I’m not familiar with or usually dislike. Tv news music goth intro + synth gospel on ‘Abdi’, 8bit wavy confessional hh finesse + jazz fusion keys on ‘Rotu Seco’, purpleized neo soul imaginary pizza chain song wrote by a coke addict creative director on ‘Pizza’. I would write these genres down on a texted file and record songs to match those descriptions, keeping it as analytical yet innocent as possible. Whether I succeeded or not, this is the record I’ve enjoyed the most writing, recording and producing. Hope u feel it too” – Pablo Díaz-Reixa, 2016

What is Hiperasia? Hiperasia is a chain of Chinese bazaars in Madrid and its outskirts. In the words of Pablo Díaz-Reixa: “I discovered them on a trip with Brian Hernandez (El Guincho’s sound engineer), we were looking for a whiteboard for the studio back in February of 2014. I was blown away, entirely fascinated by the place. After that I discarded almost all the material I had composed and started from scratch with the premise: how would that place sound if it were music?”

And so Hiperasia is, too, the highly anticipated third album of El Guincho, marking the return of one of Spain’s most noted producers after achieving international recognition with his first album Alegranza (2007) and his sophomore mega hit Pop Negro (2010). “I started Pop Negro in 2008….. I’ve even forgotten some of the lyrics! Things have happened to me since that record which have left more of a mark on me than that album….. everything I record gets released, and it’s been that way since I was young; I’m lucky of course, but it also enslaves you”. The immediate impression on the listener to Hiperasia is its abrupt, almost violent, enhanced, futuristic sound.  ¨I thought of making music that pushes itself. I like music that seems to move inwards, from its sides towards its own centre. As if it were actively trying to become mono but some force, which is usually something prominent like a 808 or a voice, expands to push those sounds sideways¨.  Thus from a simple song based around one or two ideas, you will find intrusions –  “Tutti frutti”, as Pablo explains: “We can throw bombs in, firecrackers – sounds, other songs which poke through for a moment…. whatever you want”.

Though there are skeletons and scraps of songs recorded in Gran Canaria, Diaz-Reixa’s home island, during the recording of web-only El Guincho release, “Trances”, in 2012, and time spent in La Floresta in the outskirts of Barcelona during 2013, Hiperasia was mostly written and recorded at El Green, between February 2014 and June 2015, a studio that Pablo and Brian (Hernández, engineer, sound technician and right hand man to the project), pulled together with their own hands (including electrical circuitry) in an empty storage space above Everlasting Records in Madrid.

“It was a scruffy space but I felt potential, working with natural light. Brian and I put it together – we brought the recording equipment to the space, cabled it up, installed a mini golf. We call it El Green”. 
“Hiperasia is Madrid in macro. Las Tablas, China City, the M-30, Dalian Wanda Group, the Edificio España. It means me adapting to a new and exotic way of life. Experiencing more the city, spending more time in its streets, an experience much less private than Barcelona¨.

Discussing the radically different lyrical content of Hiperasia, Pablo examines the function of the words in his music.

“I always use lyrics tactically. When you’re making pop music, you usually try to convey yearning. So in Pop Negro I was aiming for common ground, unrequited feelings, situations which are within the possibilities of your imagination…. ideas which fix the listener’s ear on the music. And so the kinds of rhyme used, the structure of the syllables, the very length of the words used – all these things tend to define the genre. Hiperasia is something else; the texts denote a different kind of person, a worse kind – more like the person I really am; destructive desires, individualism, a disdain for my very profession. Even in moments of defeat like Rotu Seco or Pelo Rapado, there’s a brashness, an absence of affectation. I wanted to create a distance, which is there in the production of the voice. The works which move me most include this breach; a hole which you have to complete and which makes you active, a participant, as the listener”.

As far as the references to markets, production processes and capitalism go, “I’m not fascinated by or judging these themes. It’s more the sounds that inspire me – the noises of the stock exchange, the panelled walls, the wood floor, short, abrupt sounds, the music of money…. there are some field recordings included in tracks like Muchos Boys, or Hiperasia”.

Discussing the mixing process , Pablo goes deeper: “Brian and I mixed this together, right hand to left, face to face. In a mix you’re always orbiting an abstract idea which you can never quite attain. And to that you have to add your perception of yourself and your own music – which you must discard and attempt to approach as if unaware, your own incomplete ability with the tools, mad fan input from your record label…..but the focus was clear. We tried to create the style of the record in the mixing process. They are far less classical mixes than Pop Negro, less stereo, less three dimensional…. I got tired of that sound, I feel it softens the listener’s ear, makes her lazy. I like to find depth in another way, through parameters of compression, different types and ranges of distortion. So we didn’t use long effects, there’s barely reverb, just variation in delay times and saturation. You create an illusion of sincerity by different means. It’s tricky putting things so up there, so in your face but if you get it right, it freshens the music”.

THE HIPERASIA COLLECTION

El Guincho has conceived a collection of wearable items that give unique access to the Hiperasia universe.

Hiperasia is a virtual world, the universe behind El Guincho’s new album.

Hiperasia is a unique place, accessible only to those who possess a piece of the collection.

Hiperasia is conceived as a wearable item; an initial collection of wristbands and sweatshirts will connect its users to a secret universe with exclusive content hosted specially for fans.

By simply placing a mobile phone close to the NFC chip integrated in these items the user is directed to a secret website where, through a user and password, they will discover a unique universe with ever changing content like extra songs, video premiers and other details that will be unveiled gradually.

The Hiperasia Collection is born from the collaboration of El Guincho with creative duo from Madrid: Wellness.

Pablo explains this need for releasing a new format:

¨I started turning this idea over in my head after collaborating with Björk on Biophilia. It wasn’t just the format, I was thinking about understanding records as evolving projects, rather than as fixed capsules of a moment. You work for two or three years on something that you then imprison on a 16 bit CD, so you kill off a third of the data. Why do that? It’s cheap. The format explains the music it carries too, so it has to be equally exciting.

I’d been thinking about a chip that would direct the user to some kind of mutant version of the project, a richer and more intricate reality. This virtual space would be a sort of sub scenario where projects would exist only there, alternate versions of the songs – sometimes better than the originals -, 3D interactions, videos, a tv channel, etc. All this can be overwhelming so I felt the necessity of taking that experience to a more common, everyday experience.

It was then that the question hit me; what is the most intimate and inventive action that we share with everyone on a day to day basis? The gesture. It is essential to our identity, it’s loaded with symbolism, it generates questions and excites us. We don’t carry cassette tapes or CDs a friend burned for us anymore, we carry our cellphones. so the gesture had to be related to the mobile phone. Nowadays we can observe two popular…. and slightly annoying….gestures with the cellphone; the first one, when we take a picture, we are projecting the gesture outwards, towards the world. And secondly, the selfie, where we push the phone so far away we’ve come to the point of acquiring and carrying around long, ugly sticks that are annoying to carry. So I was attracted to an opposite gesture then, one that would generate that magical interaction bringing it closer to the body and linking it to the other great way we project ourselves socially; through fashion.

I met Wellness through Yago Castromil and Adriá Cañameras. When Adriá explained the idea to Yago he said “I’ve got your allies”. We met up, they showed me their “Salud” and “Image Identity Program” collections, and I knew. Andy and Mou get it – they get the codes, they’re awake, they understand texture, they were completely motivated by the project from the word go. Along with Yago and Toni Porteiro, they’re the most inspiring people I’ve met in Madrid.

HIPERASIA TRACK LISTING:

1. Rotu Seco
2. Cómix feat. Mala Rodríguez
3. Pizza
4. Sega
5. De Bugas
6. Parte Virtual
7. Stena Drillmax
8. Abdi
9. Muchos Boys
10. Hiperasia
11. Pelo Rapado
12. Mis Hits
13. Zona Wi-Fi

El Guincho’s brilliant debut Alegranza is available on Mistletone mail order, and the hugely acclaimed follow-up Pop Negro is available from Young Turks / Remote Control.

Artwork by Greedy Hen

We are overjoyed to announce a lineup to sizzle your heartstrings for our SUMMER TONES party at The Shadow Electric, Abbotsford Convent on Tuesday, January 26. Tickets $55 + booking fee on sale now from The Shadow Electric. Proudly presented by Mistletone and Triple R.

Summer Tones will be headlined by KURT VILE (USA) and also features guest of honour VIC SIMMS (La Perouse, NSW), plus MICHAEL HURLEY (USA), MEG BAIRD (USA), RYLEY WALKER (USA), and local champions MONTERO, TOTALLY MILD, THE ORBWEAVERS, TERRY and WINTERCOATS, plus courtyard DJs JONNY (HTRK) and KATE REID; and a few surprises to be announced. A smouldering Summer Tones lineup curated with love to induce deep heat and joyous states on a summer day.

Headlining the outdoor stage at Summer Tones will be Philadelphia’s own KURT VILE, in his first ever solo Melbourne performance. Kurt Vile‘s solo performances are a beauty to behold; as the Sydney Morning Herald wrote of his Sydney Festival solo performance last year, “Yes, tonight’s show ends too early. That would have been my complaint had it gone ’til dawn”. Summer Tones guest of honour is the legendary VIC SIMMS, one of this country’s most entertaining of entertainers; a Bidjigal man from La Perouse, NSW who made the long-lost classic album The Loner, an Australian masterpiece recorded in Bathurst jail in 1973. The Summer Tones lineup features three more esteemed North American guests; much-loved rollicking folk troubadour MICHAEL HURLEY; rising Chicago psych-folk guitar great RYLEY WALKER, hailed by Uncut and The Guardian as a worthy successor to Nick Drake and Tim Buckley; and the illustrious MEG BAIRD, a master of deep psych-folk vibrations whose collaborators include Will Oldham, Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn and Sharon Van Etten; Meg Baird is revered as a solo artist as well as a founder of thunderous doom-folk outfit Heron Oblivion (recently signed to Sub Pop Records). Local champions on the Summer Tones lineup include the eagerly-awaited return of MONTERO, led by travelling stargazer and celebrated comic book artist Ben Montero, who’s been recording a new album in London with Jay Watson (Tame Impala/Pond/Gum) in Mark Ronson’s Tileyard Studio; indie popstarz TOTALLY MILD, who ruled the Meredith ‘Sup with their melancholic masterpiece Down Time, one of the best Australian albums released this year or any year; treasures of Melbourne THE ORBWEAVERS, deep in the process of creating their visionary new album Deep Leads, drawing on stories from Melbourne’s natural and industrial history and exploring themes of mining, botany, poisons, working life and folklore; the misshapen glam pop glory of TERRY — divide Terry into four and you get Al Montfort (UV Race, Total Control, Dick Diver etc.), Amy Hill (Constant Mongrel, School Of Radiant Living), Xanthe Waite (Mick Harvey Band) and Zephyr Pavey (Eastlink, Total Control, Russell Street Bombings); the sumptuous one-man symphony who is WINTERCOATS, soon to unveil a debut album of much wonderment; plus cosmic courtyard DJ action from DJs JONNY (HTRK) and KATE REID (Psychedelic Coven / It Records).

In announcing this event, Mistletone’s founders — husband and wife team Ash and Sophie Miles — made the following statement: “Summer Tones is a celebration of summer and beautiful music. We are very conscious that our event falls on Survival Day / Invasion Day, and we acknowledge the deep cultural pain of this day. We pay our respects to the Wurundjeri people on whose land we are holding our event. Always was, Always will be, Aboriginal land. We hope that in the future, Australia can find the maturity and sensivity to nominate a more inclusive date to celebrate a true national holiday and will be donating $1 per ticket sold to a local Aboriginal community organisation.”

Mistletone is mega proud to release Music For Listening To Music To by La Sera, a bobby dazzler of a record by Katy Goodman (with whom we had the privilege of working with, back in the Vivian Girls days) and her guitarist/co-writer/new husband Todd Wisenbaker. Music For Listening To Music To is out now on Mistletone via Inertia.

Ryan Adams joined the dynamic duo to produce the fruit of their union, Music For Listening To Music To — La Sera‘s first live-recorded analogue album, featuring 10 tunes about good love, bad love, dead men, and confused kids.

Music For Listening to Music To opens on “High Notes,” where rollicking guitar and punk drums chugga-chugga beneath Goodman’s assured coo. Her lines deftly wrap the snark of Morrissey inside the sneer of Johnny Cash, and if you ask her what her favorite parts of the new album are, she’ll tell you it’s the scrappy stuff. “Time to Go,” which hurdles out the gate on a rocket of slide guitar and elastic bass, is another one aimed at settling old accounts — just ’cause our heroine is happily married doesn’t mean she can’t take swings at those who came before.

Thanks to popular demand, Beach House have sold out their Melbourne show and have added an extra show at the same venue, 170 Russell, on Thursday February 11. Tickets on sale now.

Beach House will be gracing our shores at the beginning of 2016 for Laneway Festival, in support of their two stunning albums released on Mistletone within two months of each other this year.

Beach House’s Laneway sideshows in Sydney and Melbourne were announced last week and, after selling out the Melbourne leg, a second show has been added & we advise you to act quickly if you’d like tickets! (link above).

It’s been a stellar year for Beach House. Much to the delight of fans, the band dropped their first new music since 2012 by way of velvety long-player Depression Cherry, promptly followed by – to everyone’s surprise – an entirely new record, Thank Your Lucky Stars.

Both of these hugely acclaimed records are now available on vinyl, CD and digital formats on Mistletone Records via Inertia Music and there are small quantities of Loser edition vinyl for Thank Your Lucky Stars still available on Mistletone’s mail order.

Artwork by Ben Montero

LIAM FINN TOUR DATES:

• MELBOURNE: Friday November 20, 7:00-8:00pm: SUCCESS by Liam Finn + Anthony and Alex (NYC), at ACMI (Federation Square, Melbourne). Tickets on sale now.
• MELBOURNE: Thursday, November 26: Liam Finn + Dan Kelly at The Shadow Electric, Abbotsford Convent with special guest Palm Springs. Tickets on sale now.
• SYDNEY: Sunday, November 29, 6:00pm: Liam Finn + Dan Kelly at Newtown Social Club. Tickets on sale now.

Liam Finn returns to his one-time hometown to present SUCCESS at ACMI during Melbourne Music Week, featuring original compositions and improvised pieces performed by alongside a filmic collaboration with New York directors Anthony and Alex. This engrossing show will consist of a series of vignettes and performance pieces in which Liam Finn tackles the concept of success; its subjectivity and the battle of insecurity and arrogance that ensues in its pursuit. Alex and Anthony describe SUCCESS as “An experimental meditation on the human and technological ideology of success.” Liam Finn will be performing new songs, maniacally jumping between instruments, and triggering cassette tape loops to keep up with the unpredictable visuals. A show which will range from serene minimalism to heights of wild chaos.

Liam Finn also teams up with Dan Kelly; two great songwriterly forces, reckoning with each other in the double bill of our dreams for two intimate shows in Melbourne and Sydney. Tickets for Liam & Dan’s Melbourne show at The Shadow Electric are on sale here and their Sydney show at Newtown Social Club is also on sale now.

This solo tour is a rare chance to see New York-based Liam Finn in intimate solo mode. It is Liam’s first show back in Australia since 2011, and a return to his one-man band show last seen around the time of I’ll Be Lightning, his solo debut released shortly after disbanding Betchadupa in 2007. Since then he’s released two brilliant solo albums, FOMO (2011) and most recently, last year’s The Nihilist which featured the infectious single “Helena Bonham Carter”, and was a top ten chart hit in New Zealand.

Below, watch the official music video for “Snug As Fuck” from Liam Finn’s album The Nihilist, written & directed by Anthony Caronna & Alexander Smith, Liam’s film collaborators for SUCCESS:

Liam Finn “Snug As Fuck” from Liam Finn on Vimeo.

Sydney Beach House fans rejoice, the band have today announced they will play Sydney Opera House on Wednesday, February 3. Tickets on sale now from Sydney Opera House.

RYLEY WALKER TOUR DATES:

• SYDNEY FESTIVAL: Friday January 22 @ The Famous Spiegeltent, 8pm. Tickets on sale now from Sydney Festival.
• SYDNEY FESTIVAL: Saturday January 23 @ The Famous Spiegeltent, 5:45pm. Tickets on sale now from Sydney Festival.
• BRISBANE: Sunday January 24 @ The Junk Bar. Tickets on sale now from Oztix.
• MELBOURNE: Monday January 25 @ The Toff with special guest Palm Springs. Presented by Triple R. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix.

Mistletone is proud as punch to present the first Australian tour by rising Chicago guitar virtuoso and neo-psychedelic singer-songwriter par excellence, Ryley Walker. Making the journey to Australia by invitation of Sydney Festival and riding the velvet coat-tails of his brilliant and hugely acclaimed album Primrose Green (released earlier this year on Dead Oceans via Inertia), Ryley Walker plays flawless, crisp jazz-folk songs in the vein of the end-of-the 1960s zeitgeist — but imbued with a fire, spirit and youth that transforms his every show into a mesmeric, jaw-dropping wig-out.

• “Ryley Walker’s Primrose Green may take notes from shaggy-haired ’70s dudes — hell, just look at the cover art — and root itself firmly in Walker’s dexterous acoustic guitar skills. But its spirit is beyond and is unruly. This is rock ‘n’ roll” – NPR
• “Crests warm currents of jazz, folk and rock as, say, Van Morrison and Tim Buckley did… (but) while Walker has absorbed these admirably free-roaming influences, this is clearly someone reaching for their essence” – UNCUT (9 out of 10)
• “Stoned, summery 70s-style jazz-folk” – The Guardian (4 stars)

Artwork by Aaron Billings

Ryley Walker is a true American guitar player. That’s as much a testament to his roving, rambling ways, or the fact that his Guild D-35 guitar has endured a few stints in the pawnshop. Swap out rural juke joints for rotted DIY spaces and the archetype is solidly intact. His personal life might be tumultuous and his residential status in question, but his bedrock is disciplined daily rehearsal and an inexhaustible wellspring of song craft.

Raised on the banks of the ol’ Rock River in northern Illinois, Ryley’s early life doesn’t give us much more than Midwestern mundanity to speak of. Things start to pick up for young Walker when he moves to Chicago in 2007 and briefly attempts a collegiate lifestyle as he storms the always fecund local noise scene with his Jasmine-brand electric guitar; just a cheap knock-off from which he could coax unearthly sound hallucinations. A few years of wasted finger-bleeding basement shows variably under the names Heatdeath and Wyoming (with requisite cassette-only releases) firmly established his name locally, if not always positively.

Ryley transitioned slowly into the finger-style artist we know today in 2008 and 2009, still opening for synth nerds in basement venues, but growing by leaps and bounds in virtuosity. He perfunctorily maintained day jobs with frequently amusing results, famously getting fired from Jimmy John’s for practicing in the walk-in freezer. By 2011, at age 21, he finally began issuing recordings from his already impressive catalog of compositions. Evidence of Things Unseen and Of Deathly Premonitions (with Daniel Bachman) appeared briefly as limited cassette releases. Both efforts were impressive displays of fingerpicking prowess though not fully elaborated documents.

It was a 2012 bike accident that set Ryley on his current path. He quit his day job to recuperate but instead of returning to the grind he duked it out on the rock club circuit. Practice became more diligent; he began lacquering his fingertips at cheap salons, permanently giving his playing aggression and tone difficult to achieve with naked fingertips or finger picks.

Though seen as part of the fraternity of young guitar masters like William Tyler and Daniel Bachman, his voice defied that stereotype. He was finding a new path refracting the British traditional spectrum, from Bert Jansch to Nick Drake, and defying all the limitations of the genre. His 2013 recordings, that resulted in The West Wind EP and All Kinds of You LP, fully express these Anglophilic tendencies to the point of nearly exhausting their possibilities.

This brings us to the present. The board was barely reset from the All Kinds of You sessions before Ryley was corralling his by-then-rejiggered band back into Minbal studios in Chicago to solidify a totally new direction in his creative vision. Primrose Green couldn’t be restrained. It begins near where All Kinds of You leaves off but quickly pushes far afield. The title sounds pastoral and quaint, but the titular green has dark hallucinogenic qualities, as does much of the LP.

Ryley didn’t have much time to write this LP, so some of it he didn’t… bits of lyrics were improvised into full-blown songs in the studio on the fly more often than not. However, the ratty bits of handwritten words that make up the balance of the record were largely pieced together while on an ill-fated 2013 tour with Irish guitar whiz Cian Nugent. The title track “Primrose Green” was nearly discarded after its incarnation on a bleak St. Patrick’s Day spent in Oxford, Mississippi. “Primrose Green” is a colloquial term for a cocktail of whiskey and morning glory seeds that has a murky, dreamy, absinthian quality when imbibed, and a spirit-crushing aftereffect the morning after. It is the moment before departure from Ryley’s All Kinds Of You mindstate. “Summer Dress” is liftoff… seizing the mantle from Tim Buckley’s Starsailor and perfecting its frantic jazz-induced fits. It was written in a dressing room in upstate New York, but perfected in rehearsal, veering between a six and ten minute epic. Contained here is the flawless conclusion, but reference the live set to experience thefull possibilities of this anarchic work.

A forgotten roadside hotel in Tennessee yielded one song, “Same Minds”, with just a hint of self-loathing. It was kicked around in rehearsal until taking its shape as a drifting bit of dreamy jazz. A 5-day stretch in Austin, mostly staying on Lechuguillas’ Jason Camacho’s tile floor with no blanket in a room barely large enough for one yielded most of the rest of the lyrics. “Griffiths Bucks Blues” was almost jettisoned but a thumbs-up from Jason kept it in the repertoire. Griffith Buck was a local artist and eccentric botanist in Ryley’s hometown of Rockford, Illinois who has likely had few other songs named for him. “Love Can Be Cruel” spends almost two minutes “out” before becoming the song it was originally intended to be. Drummer Frank Rosaly pushes the song further and further until it borders on a cathartic meltdown to close out Side A.

Side B sets off with a shot of Americana, “On The Banks Of The Old Kishwaukee”. It’s an ode to the immersion baptisms Ryley’s witnessed while walking along the banks. Unlike the idyllic memories of christenings under the weeping willows while a crowd looks on happily in their Sunday’s best at the healthy young catechumens; the river was brown and polluted and the participants dirty and tired and disinterested. “Sweet Satisfaction” presents some of Ryley’s most intricate and ecstatic fingerpicking. It’s hard not to recall John Martyn’s early 1970s work, though Ben Boye’s piano work is particularly revelatory here. “The High Road” was written while the trio of Ben, Ryley, and Brian Sulpizio (guitar) were on tour, opening for Cloud Nothings. Stuck crashing in a busted, unheated old house in New Orleans Ben sunk into a depression, Brian drank and Ryley drank, but also managed to turn out this ode to the rambling life. “All Kinds Of You” is the oldest song included here. The title should seem familiar… it was written after his first LP, All Kinds of You, was finished, but the name seemed to fit that collection of songs better than anything else. By now, the song has seen many transformations and now sits more comfortably amongst Primrose Green’s cosmic transmissions. Lyrically, it copes with Ryley’s roadworn identity crises, the need to be so many people in so many cities, trying to fit in however possible in different hemispheres or different languages. Side B closes with a bit of tossback: “Hide In The Roses”, the only solo jam included herein. Cooper Crain (Cave, Bitchin’ Bajas), de-facto producer of the record, encouraged Ryley to use the extra studio time to bang something out, and this brilliant piece of Anglophilia emerged as the album’s closer.

No one knows what the future holds for young Ryley Walker. Hardship and setbacks and dilapidated housing only seem to spur him on creatively. Here, with this record, we risk limiting his access to personal disaster by flirting with success. A short lifetime of interminable practice and discipline have resulted in a masterpiece of an album, an album of a sort we haven’t seen since the 1970s. If the world catches on, the Ryley that follows up this album may be a different sort of person, one who knows the taste of better liquor and comfortable bedding and isn’t nearly as driven. I think he will be just as visionary, thoughless hungry, but either way… this is the time to get on the Ryley Walker bandwagon.

Meg Baird photo by Amy Harrity

MEG BAIRD TOUR DATES:

• MELBOURNE: Friday January 22 Northcote Social Club with special guests Lower Plenty. Tickets on sale now from the venue.
• SYDNEY FESTIVAL: Sunday January 24 @ St Stephen’s Church with Michael Hurley, doors open 6pm. Tickets on sale Monday October 26 at 9am from Sydney Festival.

Mistletone is proud to present the first Australian tour by Meg Baird; an artist we’ve admired from afar for more than a decade. Meg Baird brings her deep psych-folk vibrations to Australia for a Melbourne headline show at Northcote Social Club (tickets on sale now) as well as an unmissable double bill at Sydney Festival with the legendary Michael Hurley as part of their “Quiet Music for Curious Ears” program, in Sydney’s beautiful St Stephen’s Church.

• “As well as forming and being a mainstay in Espers, Meg Baird is a member of the decidedly freakier Heron Oblivion, who recently had their first show opening for The War on Drugs. As well as this, she has collaborated with Will Oldham, Kurt Vile, Sharon Van Etten, and toured with Bert Jansch. You get the picture. She’s well connected, and on the strength of this album she certainly has the chops to join such illustrious names on the upper echelons of her genre. It’s hard to properly describe an album which needs to be experienced from start to finish rather than intimately analysed. Give yourself the opportunity to become part of Meg Baird’s brave new world. You won’t be disappointed” – DROWNED IN SOUND

Released mid 2015 on Drag City, Don’t Weigh Down the Light is Meg Baird’s first solo album since 2011’s Seasons On Earth, and it arrived alive with mystery and colour — buoyed by a voice that’s a warm, mesmerising call across time.

Like Meg’s previous LPs (and much of Espers output,) the foundation of Don’t Weigh Down the Light is her lyrical, precise, and propulsive fingerstyle guitar work and a voice that moves from soaring and tender to soothing and spellbinding. A voice that more than a few have likened to folk’s greatest female voices: Sandy Denny, Jacqui McShee, and Shirley Collins.

But where Dear Companion and Seasons on Earth were relatively minimalist affairs, Don’t Weigh Down The Light is multi-hued and swimming in texture. Electric guitars and organs float and dart around Meg’s intricate picking and voice like ghosts. Distant drums thump as heartbeats. Piano and electric 12-string guitars shimmer like sunlight on rippling, crystalline seas.

Recorded at Eric Bauer’s Bauer Mansion studio: more famous for producing fuzzed-out and unhinged work from Six Organs of Admittance, Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, and White Fence, Don’t Weigh Down The Light was forged from Meg’s deep, natural Anglo-Appalachian instincts and wed to the deepest, most longing sounds of Skip Spence and Ben Chasny, Virginia Astley’s pastoral abstractions, Opal’s dusty, paisley West, Gene Clark’s Byrds-era torch ballads, and Popol Vuh’s dreamscapes. Inevitably, some songs reflect the solitude of leaving and arriving anew. But there’s also a sense of strength in friendship and home, with lyrics full of affection, care and guidance. And in spite of that wry, wary, sideward glance at power and promises, they are a plea to live, to thrive, and to stick around. A reminder that we need the dreamers — even if it’s wake-up time.