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Michael Gira | Interview
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The Brooklyn Rail | Jim KnipfelAddicted to Sound February '07 Michael Gira sat across the table at a quiet Brooklyn bar on a rainy Wednesday night. The conversation had settled on a mutual hero, Werner Herzog. "There's such a theme in his films of the quixotic character going out against nature," Gira said. "And that's how he does it personally, too. He's the last of the great hero artists, like Joseph Beuys, or John Huston." In many ways, Gira is himself a kind of quixotic figure, though in his case nature has been replaced by the music industry. After moving to NYC in the late seventies, he quickly gained notoriety as the founder of SWANS‹the most brutal of New York's no wave bands. Their music was a cement fist to the back of the skull, the noise overwhelming as Gira intoned songs about despair, disgust, pain, psychosexual violence, physical decay, and a particularly frightening kind of love. A quarter-century later, with Gira now in his early fifties, his artistic output has changed considerably. "If it didn't," he says, "I'd be pretty stupid." Then he added, "Maybe I'm fortunate in that I don't have a financial incentive to stay the......
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Akron/Family | Review
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The Weekly Dig / Boston | Michael Brodeur All together now "Quit your job, move to New York, we'll live in the shittiest neighborhood in the city, and we'll start a band. It'll be fucking great!" Ahh, the mating call of the North American indie rocker. Who in the prime of their youth hasn't heard its sweet, completely impractical song? And yet, as tired and done and old and over as the notion of leaving behind one's proverbial Pennsylvania to find success on the sticky stages and glossy pages of the big city may be, that's precisely what Akron/Family did. They also did the requisite crappy-apartment-in-Bushwick-right-above-volume-fascist-neighbors thing until they could afford separate quarters and a rehearsal space; as well as the 50-copies-of-their-demo-stuffed-into-an-Astor Place-mailbox thing, complete with "here goes" finger-crossing and starry eyes. The thing is, that shit actually worked. From the 50 vellum packets sent out by the four transplants, they received two replies: a friendly pre-printed "thank you"/"sorry" card from Merge ("That was nice of them," Akron multi-instrumentalist Dana Janssen says) and a relatively detailed appraisal and critique via email from ex-Swans czar and contemporary fringe impresario Michael Gira. "He started coming to see us perform every Sunday at......
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Akron/Family | Review
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The Ithaca Times | Natasha Li PickowiczAkron/Family Freaks Out Whatever you want to call it - New Weird America, free folk, improv folk, freak folk, psych folk, free improv - just don't associate it with Akron/Family. As far as they're concerned, they have nothing to do whatsoever with the widening landscape of "weird folk," although, ironically, it played a major role in their own success. The traces of the genre are undoubtedly there - a lo-fi, DIY aesthetic, hippy-dippy chorus singalongs, a pastoral, back-porch intimacy, noodling improvisation, acoustic instrumentation - Akron/Family equally plays with free jazz, electronics, noise, prog-rock and classic rock, honing their a varied, eclectic approach. However, unlike their more obscure "free folk" contemporaries, Akron/Family tends to be grouped with the more mainstream indie pop contingent: Grizzy Bear, Devendra Banhart, Animal Collective. And though the "jam band" and Phish references are off the mark, Akron/Family has been known to give in to an earnest self-indulgence live. Their show at Appel Commons on Thursday night will mark the first date of their winter tour. The trip to Ithaca will be a homecoming of sorts - Ryan Vanderhoof, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, is from Union Springs, and drummer Dana Janssen spent......
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Lisa Germano | Review
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www.evilsponge.org | Indoor Miner soft, melodic, and beautiful In the Maybe World | Young God Records It's tempting to write that these gentle, softly sung pieces will sound best in a candle-lit room on a long winter's night, the flickering flames casting unusual shapes across the walls whilst a coal fire burns brightly. But one of the first times I heard this album was when I was driving along a narrow, seemingly never-ending eighteen mile country lane that dissected some Scottish woodland which separated the main road and a quiet Loch-side village. I may have had written directions in front of me, but I've got to admit I'd long since started to wonder just where the hell I was going. And somehow Germano's quiet, slightly eerie voice was perfect for this journey. In The Maybe World opens beautifully with The Day. I should warn you, however, that if you don't like this track, then you may as well switch off now, because The Day pretty much typifies the album as a whole. If you do like it though, are you in for a treat! Too Much Space follows and is even better as Germano sings > In the morning without a sound, and......
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Lisa Germano | Review and Interview
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Montreal Gazette | Jordan ZivitzLisa Germano looks at loss and life: After confronting mortality in her latest album, L.A. singer takes to the road with Michael Brook Lisa Germano knows her fans - and she knows she won't find them at a kegger. She's more likely to find them alone at 3 a.m., seeking solace in intensely intimate music that a lucky few stumble upon - music that finds hope in the darkness, and the darkness in hope."You don't put (my music) on at a party," Germano said from her Los Angeles home recently, before beginning preparations for her third tour in four months. "If something reaches you personally, sometimes you're a little embarrassed. You don't go tell your buddy, 'Hey, dude, listen to that Lisa Germano record, man. It really rocks. It made me cry, man.' (Many people) are not going to say that. They'll just pretend they didn't hear it." Those who are on Germano's wavelength, on the other hand, can't forget a voice with the power to sound fearful, playful, vengeful, sarcastic and submissive - sometimes all at once. Her pleas and warnings are half-whispered over shimmering piano and guitar melodies that often drift in and out......