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| Thursday, June 19, 2008 at Hawthorne Theatre |
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(click for full-page printable poster)
GENRES
Indie Rock
Pop
Rock
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Please note this show has been moved from Crystal Ballroom to Hawthorne Theatre. All Crystal tickets will be honored. The Nylon Magazine Tour featuring:
She Wants Revenge
Be Your Own Pet
The Virgins
Switches
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Hawthorne Theatre 503-233-7100
1507 SE 39th Ave, Portland, OR (MapQuest)
8pm (doors open at 7pm). All Ages.
$20.00 advance tix from TicketsWest.
$23.00 at the door.
ABOUT SHE WANTS REVENGE -
When California based She Wants Revenge released their debut album back in early 2006, it fast became apparent that they had created the soundtrack for the dark and debaucherous on many-a-dance-floors across the nation.
Much like their Electronic Rock fore-fathers; Dave Gahan, Rob Smith and Ian Curtis had done so before, She Wants Revenge offered a voice and a rhythm for scorned lovers, bored housewives, jaded hipsters, gender-benders and club-kids across the nation, all seductively swaying their hips and pouting along to the undeniably catchy tunes such as These Things, Out of Control and the instant cross over hit Tear You Apart.
By retracing the musical footsteps of their childhood, they struck a nerve in music fans everywhere, with their tales of betrayal, lies, and deceit. They went on to sell more than 300,000 copies in the USA alone. The band had realized that music fans craved more than the average love song, and if they were going to write songs, they wanted to explore the sides of male-female dynamics that are usually left unexplored and unexamined.
Set to an infectious beat, they decided to sing about things you shouldn't do, and the things one does when no one is looking.
One song that encapsulated all of the above was their first single "Tear You Apart", it soon became a Top 5 Alt. Radio Single and was one of the biggest hits and radio spun tunes of 2006. Joaquin Phoenix went on to direct the video for the single which gained heavy rotation on all the leading networks, reached the homes of millions and secured a credible place in most critics and fans heads and almost everyone's record collections, myspace page and dance floors around.
Shortly after, they were invited to share a several dates with idol Brit pioneers Depeche Mode, in a surreal and symbolic passing of the baton, She Wants Revenge began to realize that the music they had lovingly written was beginning to reach a far larger audience than they had ever imagined. They went on to appear on all leading late night television shows including Conan, Letterman, Kimmel and Leno along with tours with Bloc Party, The Kills, and Placebo most recently.
Now it's their second round, and with the upcoming album release of "This Is Forever" (Geffen) out on Oct 09 - Justin Warfield and musical partner "Adam 12" Bravin have done what few new bands have managed to do - to not only beat the sophomore slump, but to have recorded an album that some would argue actually beats their impressive debut.
This Is Forever continues where their self-titled debut left off, a figurative morning after to the dance of the night before. Still continuing on the same path of creating thought provoking and emotional dance music, the album deals in the familiar themes of love, loss, and betrayal, yet somehow even darker in tone, with beats that bang even harder, and if it's possible, even catchier songs...a tall feat, but one they welcomed with open arms. With no intention of playing it safe this time out, the guys have crafted a challenging and compelling album that they are proud to present to their loyal fans and the uninitiated alike.
ABOUT BE YOUR OWN PET -
Get Awkward is the sophomore full-length from Nashville foursome Be Your Own Pet. Making it presented new challenges for Jonas, Jemina, Nathan, and John, and yielded some surprises. The songs remain fast and loud, totally wired and tantalizingly brief. Applying the dubious word "mature" is open for heated debate string arrangements and soppy ballads are blessedly absent but the music definitely reflects a sharp increase in experience.
"I was nervous, because it was our first second record," confides guitarist Jonas Stein. Stop squirming that syntax does make sense. "Before we recorded our first album, we'd had those songs for God knows how long, before we'd gotten attention from anyone but ourselves." (Since 2003, to be precise.) And following that gestation period, the ditties featured on their self-titled debut and assorted EPs and singles enjoyed months of refinement on the road. "After all that, it was like, 'Okay, time to write a new record starting from scratch.' It was the first time we'd ever done anything like that."
"The first time we were recording was scary," singer Jemina Pearl recalls of making Be Your Own Pet. The band was reluctant to tamper with proven formulae. Dead set against it, actually. "Try a slow song? No way. That's not what we do!" This is where the aforementioned experience creeps in. "You realize, doing other things doesn't make you less true to yourself," she concedes. "So this time, we were trying to mix it up, have more variety, rather than just attack-attack-attack, the whole way through." Adds Nathan: "We knew what sounds we wanted to make with our instruments more easily, and could have more interesting parts, and more interaction."
Consequently, now there are shifts in tempo and dynamics: the rolling backbeat of "Becky," the abrupt time changes that punctuate "Twisted Nerve." You also get nihilism with pepperoni and extra cheese ("Black Hole"), and a stadium chant that unravels into white noise cacophony ("The Beast Within"). "There are songs you can listen to that make your heart feel a little soft," says Jonas, "and others that make you want to break something." Or, in the case of "Zombie Graveyard Party," eat some brains.
Why the change in attitude? "When you're younger, you have this specific idea of punk," observes Jemina who celebrated her 20 th birthday recording "Super Soaked," shrieking about her reluctance to grow up. "If you don't do this, or look like that, then you're not punk." Screw that. The Stooges featured sax improvisation. The Ramones sang love songs. There are no rules. "But sometimes you forget that, because you're trying to fit into the mold you think you're supposed to," she admits. "This time, we broke out and did what came more naturally."
Although the writing process was fundamentally the same, i.e. completely off-the-cuff, there were a few structural changes. For one, the installation of John Eatherly on drums which was only kinda-sorta new, since he and bassist Nathan Vasquez already played together in another band. And Jemina assumed responsibility for the majority of the lyrics. It was she who picked up on the head-shaking, pill-popping, freak out groove of "The Kelly Affair" and grafted on a narrative lifted from one of her favorite movies, Russ Meyer's decadent 1970 debacle Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Likewise, she took all-too-typical feelings of adolescent alienation and betrayal, stuck them under the broiler, and pulled out the murderous revenge fantasy "Becky."
Working once again with producer and Redd Kross veteran Steve McDonald, the quartet savored the recording experience more on the second pass; overdubs and screaming matches were in shorter supply. "Being in the studio really magnified the songs, so you could see and hear details a lot closer," admits John. Not that they hunched over the mixing desk like tech nerds all day; in between takes, Nathan and Jemina still made time for bike rides.
As for the title"We called it Get Awkward for a reason," concludes Nathan. "There has been some definite awkwardness in learning what being in a band is about." Graduating from basement parties to touring with Arctic Monkeys, or dividing press time between homemade fanzines, Rolling Stone, and a bazillion blogs. Where the music is concerned, though, any growing pains have only served Be Your Own Pet well. That first third album can't come fast enough.
ABOUT THE SWITCHES -
The nursery schools of Rayleigh, Essex had never seen the like. Most four-year-olds would turn up, stick some plasticine up their nose, piss in the sandpit and fill four hours happily smacking a plastic truck with a squeaky hammer. But not Mr & Mrs Bishop's little boy Matt -- when he wasn't sat in a corner writing T-Rex style songs on the electric guitar his dad had built for him in spare hours off at the BBC engineering department, he was bouncing sounds back and forth between an ancient reel-to-reel and a Fisher Price tape recorder like some kind of miniature Epworth. It was, to the stunned creche supervisors, nothing short of rusk'n'roll.
"When I was a kid all I did was listen to music," Matt remembers, "so I started playing and writing songs when I was four or five. At that age I only knew, like, two chords so it was mainly Bolan rip-offs. They've got pictures of me lying on the living room floor with a little toy piano and tape recorder, just lying around and pressing things. I used to be fascinated with multitracking. I had this Fisher Price tape recorder and my mum's reel-to reel and I used to bounce across. I don't know if those tapes still exist, I'll have to find them and do some remixes." And while this didn't make Matt -- Switches mainman and a classic rock nutter in the making - a 'child prodigy' as such ("A child prodigy is someone who learns classical piano and gets grade 8 by the time they're five, not a toddler wishing he had an afro and stars stuck to his face"), it was certainly the start of a childhood obsession with rock that bordered on the pathological. Having taught himself rudimentary mixing techniques at about the same age the other kids were getting the hang of joined-up writing and experimenting with four-tracks aged eleven, by the time he hit school Matt was a fully fledged Child Of Britpop (Blur Division) and his addiction had taken hold:
he found himself regularly bunking off to listen to records, sneaking into gigs, losing concentration in class because he was "dreaming of music" and interrogating his classmates on their favourite records -- whatever they'd recommend, be it Beefheart or Blink, Matt would then track it down and scour its grooves for the 'secret of music'.
"I'd even listen to Gary Glitter," he admits, "I hate to say it but my dad had a few of his records and I used to love those double-tracked drums."
Becoming something of a musical sponge, as a teenager Matt wrote hundreds of songs spanning vast swathes of genre -- early attempts were influenced by Blur, Bowie, The Beatles or T Rex; Bee Gees style disco tunes; Billy Joel piano ballads; Beck-esque hip-hop; glam rock, punk and hardcore emo. His stacks of home-made tapes were typhoons of conflicting styles and it wasn't until he went to college in Guildford that he put together a band -- formed by emailing every student over the intranet and then hiring the respondents he liked best without hearing them play -- to initially act as a siphon for all this overwhelming influence and then come together as... "well, the idea was a band, but we're really a neurotic bunch of obsessive compulsive weirdos" smiles Matt. They're not so much the last gang in town as a foursome of amiable loners, fiercely individual to the point of each finding their artistic drive from a different musical decade. Ollie Thomas is the self confessed sixties throwback guitarist, socialite and communicator of the band, aspiring to psychedelic tinged virtuosity, Hendrix and Abbey Road. Matt is the seventies, with a love for 10cc downright strange in someone who wasn't born while they existed. Jimmy G on drums is all sharp dressed eighties, Thriller, Vegas and Let's Dance era Bowie - he also claims he sold one of his kidneys to buy a drum kit, but he may be bluffing here, being an avid poker player and dry source of amusement for the rest of them. Finally, Max Tite on bass is the nineties and beyond, the most up to date musically, the odd man of the band, too slack to be a geek, with a borderline pathological desire for vitamins, cake and Sufjan Stevens songs. In another life he'd be Vincent Gallo and has a quiet musical rebelliousness to counter Ollie's love of the big guitar and Matt's of the big tune. They were called Matt Rock And The Others, they got compared to Weezer and The Vines a lot (Weezer for the music, The Vines for Matt's unpredictable stage madness which often saw him falling over the drumkit and clambering onto tables) and the peak of their success was winning the university Battle Of The Bands competition: first prize, a support slot with The Darkness.
"We didn't know who they were when we saw them backstage." Matt says. "Max was going 'when are Status Quo on then?'" From there, there was only uphill. Relocating to a flat next to a Guildford brothel in 2003, where they would write songs to the backbeat of the banging eminating from their neighbors, Matt Rock And The Others became Switches, toured around the south for a year and eventually got snapped up by Degenerate Music then, after an amazing trip to South by South West in Texas, Atlantic Records, on the basis of the most mind-boggling demo of the decade. Matt grins. "When my publisher first approached me he was like 'I've heard five tracks -- one of them sounds like The Bee Gees, one sounds like T Rex, one sounds like Fugazi...'" Rather than head straight into the studio to record a disjointed mish-mash of an album -- what could have been the pop equivalent of a schizophrenic jabbing random numbers into a karaoke machine for 45 minutes -- Switches hit the road in support, variously, of The Rakes, Louis XIV, Nightmare Of You, Hard-Fi, The Rifles and Graham Coxon on a mission to solidify their sound and present a coherent musical front. They returned this April ready to record the 'Message From Yuz EP' -- four tracks of handclappy glamstomparama that crystallize the last decade of British pop excellence and stand as the perfect introduction to Switches' skewed and sensational world.
For two tracks (the title track; '13 Years Inside') it's Supergrass kung fu kicking their way through a burning firework factory, then it turns into The Killers doing Blur's 'Girls And Boys' for 'No Hero' and winds up in a three-way rock opera face-off between ELO, Kraftwerk and Ziggy Stardust on 'Joysticks', a song Matt wrote as an entry to a college song composition award, presumably the only entry about convincing your girlfriend to let you shag her sister. "The first bit is in ballad mode," Matt explains, "but I guess it's more of a sarcasm sort of thing.
Then it breaks out into the full band and it gets more deviant in a sexual way, talking about keeping your sister satisfied. Not my own sister, my lover's sister. That song was three things that came together, I tried to make some sort of suite out of it."
It's not all deviant sexual practices in Matt's lyrics - no, mostly it's emotional deviance. His imagery works as metaphor for his relationships; when 'Message From Yuz' talks of "You told me that my head had gone blue... you showed me what I needed to do" it's speaking, Matt claims, of "some sort of communication between two people, whether it be love or desperate medical attention". Likewise '13 Years Inside's references to Alcatraz prisoners and feeling trapped signify "trying to escape embarrassing encounters with women". And Switches debut album, due in 2007, will be swamped in the bitter sting of romance. "The message is going to be of love but to be wary," says Matt. "A lot of the songs are going to have a sour bite to them, love songs that aren't quite happy endings. Songs like 'Every Second Counts' are glorious love songs, saying every second counts in love but there are other songs that aren't so... I've written a song for my girlfriend which is a bit sad. I don't know if it's completely reflective of our relationship. I think it's my age. Maybe when I'm married with kids I won't write about women anymore. I really admire Damon Albarn for starting off in that mode and writing loads of albums that weren't involving him, he was just watching. Ray Davies did it as well. I'd
love to be able to do that at some stage but at the moment I need to be true to myself and that's writing songs about emotion."
But one thing niggles. With so many potential futures open to Switches, so many styles and genres already mastered, just what kind of band are they going to end up? "Hopefully a really creative and passionate one," Matt states, "and one that pushes boundaries. Rock music is still alive and kicking but there could be some changes made to it. A lot of bands
seem to be overtly retro in their influences and that bugs me a lot. I hope we can take rock'n'roll into new areas." He grins broadly. "I don't know exactly what those will be ...... yet."
From tuneful toddler to genius genre glutton, Matt Bishop and Switches are turning it on.
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