Download: Golden Triangle “Cold Bones”

(from the split with the Fresh and Onlys out now on Hardly Art)

“Second One To Know” b/w “Hated or Loved”
Recorded Spring 2009, released on Woodsist.
Both tracks taken from the super limited Bomb Wombs cassette on Fuck It Tapes.
Full color glue pocket sleeve.
Pre-order it here and impress your friends…It’s only $5.95. Easy gift.

Revisit L.A. Record’s Fresh & Onlys interview.

Download: Woven Bones “Some Call It A Grave”

(from The Minus Touch EP out now on Zoo Music)

Austin-based Woven Bones are the next installment of dark lo-fi weirdo rock to be introduced into L.A. Bandleader Andy Burr (vocals/guitar) talks to L.A. RECORD about melting faces, being buried with a Velvet Underground record and turning heartache and anguish into rock ‘n’ roll. This interview by Camella Lobo.

I couldn’t find a single interview with you guys online and it’s not for lack of blog and press coverage. And most all of your EPs have sold out. It feels mysterious.
Andy Burr (guitar/vocals): Yeah, it’s pretty remarkable how our music has spread around for how small the pressings of our records are. But there’s not really a personal identity out there for us as a band.
I think it’s better that way sometimes, though.
Andy Burr: I think so too. It’s random that you might actually get somebody who’s going to portray the band according to exactly what we said. And fuck it—I think the music should speak for itself.
So what should we tell L.A.?
Andy Burr: We just wanna rock out for people and hope that they get it, you know? We don’t have any sort of mission, like …
Like melting brains?
Andy Burr: We would like to melt faces. If the sound guy can make it loud enough for people to really get into it and get melted that would be pretty cool. At the most, I just hope when we come out to California, all the people who have been asking us to come out there come out and get to see us for the first time. We’ve been sort of like ghosts.
There’s a lo-fi/neo-garage scene that’s been developing into this critical mass—especially in L.A.—over the past few years, and Woven Bones seems to be getting a lot of recognition alongside it.
Andy Burr: Yeah, there’s definitely an element of appreciation for old bands that have been really influential in what we’re all doing, but I think the scene for what we’re doing is more eclectic. Instead of being a carbon copy of one of those bands, I think there’s a youth to it and an understanding that all of these bands are standing out in a very modern way. All these bands—like Dum Dum Girls, Crystal Stilts, Times New Viking, the Crocodiles, Jacuzzi Boys, Blank Dogs and Thee Oh Sees—none of us are making throwback ’60s psychedelic posters or any of that shit. At the heart of it, we’re all kind of like punk bands that have evolved out of our influences. The Velvet Underground was a punk band. Whatever people think we sound like at the core, the Velvet Underground is my favorite band. I’ll sit around and listen to that shit for the rest of my life. It’ll never get old. I know people keep talking about this ‘lo-fi’ thing and how there are so many bands like that now. It’s kind of like what happened in the ’60s with the garage scene. There were so many garage bands. When you think about it, there were just as many garage bands then as there were punk bands when we were in high school. We’re just trying to take the past hundred years or whatever and move forward. It’s the dawning of all the nerdy kids who were sitting around and listening to the same stuff and wanting to do something. We’re recording all of this stuff ourselves and putting out records on our own, or through strong, small labels. Now that the record industry is no good for the most part … you get the idea.
You’re not trying to get into a TV commercial.
Andy Burr: Whatever happens, happens. We just wanna be on the road. We wanna play and we want to put out records. We have no ambition to sit around town and be bored because we’re not doing what we want to do.
Even though your music is really primitive and minimal, your lyrics resonate in this broad and powerful way.
Andy Burr: I think that comes with keeping everything—even lyrical content—on a simple but intelligent level. I write about stuff that’s relevant to me and my everyday life and stuff that I’ve been through. Some of the lyrics are about a really dark time in my life when I dropped off the face of the earth. Sometimes they’re just about me and my friends—honest dudes who go through regular stuff. It’s less of me feeling sorry for myself as it is more of me belting out a story about what happened at the darkest point in my life.
Would you rather that some crazy shit happened than not?
Andy Burr: I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. I might have turned out to be some graphic designer dude living in New York, wearing really expensive jeans. When I hit ground zero, the only thing I had to keep me moving was a guitar and an amp. It was something that was totally self-gratifying. So lyrics, you know, sometimes they’re just about girls—or a girl—some bad ass girl that rules your mind and you’d rather have her kick your ass than ever think about another girl.
‘Janie’?
Andy Burr: Yeah. We were in art school together and we promised to move to New York afterwards. In the meantime, I fell into this dark abyss and didn’t end up graduating, and she did. It was a really fucked up thing and I was left behind. We sort of both knew what was going to happen and then one day she was just gone. It wasn’t either of our faults. You can read that song from my perspective, or from hers. You know, ‘My baby left me crying.’ I really love the lyrical style of the Modern Lovers and Jonathan Richman. Or like when Lou Reed sings, ‘She hit me with a mop,’ you know exactly what that means. It is what it is.
I came across a blog that likened your music to ‘drinking warm beer out of a carburetor’ and someone else said one of your songs reminded them of ‘waking up too early on a Saturday morning, shuffling into the kitchen and noticing the table is filled with a bunch of empty beer bottles.’ Another called your music ‘venomous, sweat-stained rock.’ Are you guys really as feral as your music seems to suggest you are?
Andy Burr: I mean, we party with all our friends and I’ll wake up on somebody’s couch because we were too drunk to go home or whatever, but I think a lot of that perception has to do with the drawl in my voice, or the fact that we’re from Texas. Our songs are dirty and I see that as more about our influences than us being from Texas. None of us are even from Texas, anyway. I mean, we like to get just as fucked up as anyone else. We just play primitive rock ‘n’ roll, so take it or leave it.
You’ve mentioned that in the past you’ve felt a little ‘green’ up on stage. I remember when we saw you in St. Paul you broke a string mid-set.
Andy Burr: It takes crazy voodoo to unite the three of us. If it’s not there, it’s really stressful. Now we’re not worried about it at all. Once we had been together and played together for about five shows, we felt solid. Since Colin—our drummer—has been with us for a while now there’s not really much of that green-ness left. And Matty’s my best friend, so at this point we’re just running on our subconscious.
Which album would you request to be buried with?
Andy Burr: Velvet Underground—self-titled. I could listen to ‘What Goes On’ forever.

WOVEN BONES WITH THE FRESH & ONLYS, THE TIJUANA PANTHERS AND COBALT CRANES ON FRI., DEC. 4, AT THE 5 STAR BAR, 267 S. MAIN ST., DOWNTOWN. 9 PM / $8 / 21+. THE WOVEN BONES’ THE MINUS TOUCH EP IS OUT NOW ON ZOO MUSIC. VISIT THE WOVEN BONES AT WOVENBONES.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/WOVENBONES.

Fortunately for the Echo’s insurance premium, The Fresh and Only’s were scheduled to spread their sticky rhythms and catchy bass hooks all over us all before Thee Oh Sees would have a chance to shatter our every bone. Like a Vietnam vet who’s been through The Shit and left a part of himself there, Fresh and Only’s singer Tim Cohen pulled his smooth bellowing voice from the pockets of his camo fatigue with a nonchalance that assured us all would be okay, at least until the end of their set.

As Thee Oh Sees began piling their amps and speakers clear to the ceiling, I realized the true meaning behind Cohen’s blasé demeanor: he had come to the realization there is no avoiding the type of guerrilla warfare born from John Dwyer’s frantic…everything. As soon as Thee Oh Sees powered up their equipment we were taken for a frenzied run through a springy forest teaming with reverb booby traps and tambourine tripwires until we reached the mansion where the head of state resides. Luckily, everyone figured out pretty quickly that the best way not to get destroyed is to just keep moving.

—Daniel Pelt

Any time spent on 3rd and Main includes a few strange observations of sexual behavior by those “who do not belong to the scene,” some local, beer-soaked, working class men and women who frequent the bar WE have invaded with rock and roll. This tends to happen at one of the little Mexican haunts around the corner from the Smell with a jukebox, where couples dance close and fast, where we learn to put coasters and napkins on top of our beers to reserve them, where you see men touch each other’s penis sometimes through their pants. The Five Star Bar had one very small lady who kept trying to dance with the girls there to see lo-fi rockers the Fresh and Onlys. I think the lady did some major drugs in the bathroom, but she danced the crap out of the music between throwing herself upon her silent but affectionate lover at the bar. The Fresh and Onlys, who carry a message of light and gentility, seemed to glow more angelically in the potentially lewd atmospheric background. Like a beacon, the band’s music rose and fell in calm swells, jangled by the tambourine, hinged on philosophies that describe a moment much like the one we were experiencing–“Love And Kindness” felt especially right, “Why are we here?/Are we here? Why are we there?/Are we there?” Singer Tim Cohen’s hand was in a cast so he beat his tambourine against his chest for the sake of our souls. It really felt that way. He has the great presence of a cult leader, a sort of goofy charm that offsets his lumberjack appearance. The Fresh and Onlys plays in the garage, bouncing romantics and subtle wisdom against the four, hot walls that warm the sounds they’re making like an easy-bake oven. The sunshine begins from within.

—Daiana Feuer (words and photo)

[View with PicLens]

Download: Ty Segall “It #1″

(from Lemons out July 14 on Goner)

Since the Epsilons’ first record, released in early 2006, Ty Segall has proved himself to be one of the most prolific members of the California music community, releasing LPs, 7”s and tapes of his many bands at an alarming rate. As guitarist/vocalist of the Epsilons; member of Traditional Fools; part time drummer for Party Fowl, Fresh and Onlys and Sic Alps, and leader of his own namesake band, which switches between the one-man-band format to its current full band incarnation, Ty Segall has managed to craft a unique sound and create a scene all his own, which has lead him into the arms and hearts of legendary garage rock figures like Eric Oblivian (Goner Records founder, member of Oblivians, Bad Times) and John Dwyer (Castle Face Records founder, member of Coachwhips, Thee Oh Sees, the Hospitals, etc.).

On Ty Segall’s second solo LP Lemons, released on Memphis’ Goner, Segall has toned down the yelps and howls he favored on his first solo record and the preceding Epsilons recordings in favor of an attempt to favor a more universal lo-fi garage rock sound. At times on this record this pays off, such as the beautifully trudgy “In Your Car,” but washed of the distorted vocals and frantic guitars this record feel less like a Ty Segall record than I would like.

This record has a much slower tempo compared to his previous outings, and as most of his long players were pressed to vinyl at 45 rpm and I have a strong feeling that this one will be at 33 1/3. Some songs, like “Johnny” and “Can’t Talk,” feel like a continuation from his early recordings and these to me are the brightest moments on the album. However, there is also “Rusted Dust,” which to me is a little too close to a slow Nirvana, or even Wavves, song for my liking. I don’t mean to criticize this song, but for someone with as unique of a voice as Ty’s I feel it’s a shame when he starts to sound like someone else. But to offset the slower moments, there is also a faithful rendition of Captain Beefheart’s “Dropout Boogie,” which is a cover you could never go wrong with. In all, I enjoy this record and I eagerly await his next, which knowing him will probably be out within a few months.

— Daniel Clodfelter