Detroit’s Bonny Doon won’t kill you with kindness, nor will they burn much rubber on their musical journey. The foursome’s second full-length, Longwave, continues in the vein of forebears such as Berman/Malkmus coupled with the breathing atmospheric aesthetic of their fellow Woodsist labelmates. Part confessional, part confrontational, Longwave stretches out like days long on thought – the kinds that are peppered equally with illumination, frustration and inebriation.
We spoke with principle songwriters Bobby Colombo and Bill Lennox about the growth of their partnership, the categorization of their music, and the role their hometown plays in both their music and beyond.

Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can now be heard every Wednesday at 7pm PST with an encore broadcasts on-demand via the SIRIUS/XM app.

SIRIUS 515: Jean Michel Bernard – Générique Stephane ++ Yo La Tengo – Esportes Casual ++ Rikki Ililonga Fire High ++ Blur – Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club ++ Dutch Rhythm And Steel Show Band: Down By The River ++ Bongos Ikwue – All Night Long ++ Arthur Verocai – Dedicada A Ela ++ Luis Melodia – Baby Rose ++ Tim Maia – Nobody Can Live Forever ++ Billy The Kid – Anything And Everything (AD edit)  ++ Timmy Thomas – Why Can’t We Live Together ++ Keith Hudson – Riot (Version) ++ Dylan Taite Interview w/ Bob Marley – 1978, New Zealand ++ Bob Marley – Kaya ++ Nina Simone – The Pusher ++ Paul McCartney – Momma Miss America ++ Night Beats – H-Bomb ++ Parquet Courts – Alms For The Poor ++ My Solid Ground – The Executioner ++ Randy Holden – Fruit & Iceburgs (Conclusion) ++ Spirulina – The Message ++ Pink Floyd – Paintbox ++ OCS – On And On Corridor ++ Spaceman 3 – Come Down Easy (Demo) ++ The Velvet Underground – Andy’s Chest ++ The Velvet Underground – One Of These Days ++ The Velvet Underground – Ocean ++ England’s Glory – Shattered Illusions ++ Kevin Morby – Random Rules (Aquarium Drunkard Session) ++ Amen Dunes – Spirits Are Parted ++ Jimmie Speeris – Come Back ++ John Cale – The Man Who Couldn’t Orgy ++ David Vandervelde – Corduroy Blues ++ Girls – Headache ++ Jack Gardner – Clear The Air ++ Atlas Sound – Walk A Thin Line (Fleetwood Mac)

*You can listen, for free, online with the SIRIUS three day trial — just submit an email address and they will send you a password.

The spring equinox is upon us — track one to the stratosphere in a silent way. Via Sleeping Beauty, 1979.

Sun Ra :: Springtime Again

On April 13th, over twenty guitarists will descend upon John Fahey’s boyhood home of Takoma Park, Maryland, for an event called The Thousand Incarnations of the Rose – A Festival of American Primitive Guitar.

The three-day festival—the first of its kind—is the brainchild of guitarists/scholars Glenn Jones and Jesse Sheppard, and features, in addition to the performances, a panel discussion, rare film screenings, and a social room with community vendors. The festival coincides with the compilation The Thousand Incarnations of the Rose –American Primitive Guitar & Banjo (1963-1974), to be released on CD and triple vinyl via the Craft label on March 23rd.

James Jackson Toth of Wooden Wand recently spoke with co-organizer Jesse Sheppard about the event and the enduring legacy of American Primitive.

Aquarium Drunkard: Tell me how this idea originated. Who came up with the concept of staging the first ever American Primitive festival? How long has such an idea been gestating?

Jesse Sheppard: It seems like the idea of getting all the American Primitive players together has floated around in the backs of a lot of people’s minds over the years. I know some players got together in New York after Fahey died, but since then I don’t think it’s been discussed much. For me, this music is a family and the thought of bringing everyone together was enticing but never seemed practical. It wasn’t until a series of overlapping conversations took place around the middle of last year that the concept of The Thousand Incarnations of the Rose Festival came into existence. The start of it all was really the evening my band [Elkhorn] played RhizomeDC in Takoma Park last June. I was sitting out back with Steve Korn (co-founder and president of the space) and he asked if I’d be interested in doing some kind of solo guitar festival with him. I think he knew that I was close to a lot of the players from the video work I’ve done and setting up and playing shows over the years. The funny thing was that only a few days earlier I had heard from Glenn Jones (guitarist, writer, friend of John Fahey and Robbie Basho and Jack Rose) that he had just completed the liner notes for a 2 LP compilation album of early American Primitive players that was coming out on Craft Recordings. His essay (over 6,000 words) was a deep dive into the history and meaning of the music that had been such an animating presence in his life and in the lives of so many others. So I connected Steve with Glenn and at that point the festival was definitely becoming more real.

What really pushed it into existence were conversations that Steve had with Laura Barclay at Main Street Takoma (the local business association) as well as others. They were aware that Takoma Park was Fahey’s childhood home (in fact Takoma was referenced in a lot of his early song titles and obviously gave its name to his record label), and were excited to help support an event that would bring attention to the creative history of the town. The last piece of the puzzle was the conversation that Kathy Harr was having with her husband, Josh Pfeffer (who is also the festival’s webmaster and graphic designer), about selling their house in Berkeley and moving east. Kathy had run her own booking agency (where she had booked tours for Glenn’s band Cul de Sac) and had been one of the organizers of the Terrastock festivals, but her life had taken a turn into local politics. The move was sort of her return to the music world and she was looking for a cool project to sink her teeth into. So Glenn put Kathy in touch with me. Suddenly there was a team and a concept and some support… we were on our way.

Over and over again on Amen Dunes’ fifth album Freedom, songwriter Damon McMahon punctuates lyrics with the word “man.” “We play religious music/I don’t think you’d understand man.” “I really gotta go/yeah man.” “Pride destroyed me, man.” The word peppers his sentences in conversation, too. It’s this and that “man,” repeatedly. Even while describing the guiding principles of feminist New Mexican artist Agnes Martin, whose creative principle — “I don’t have any ideas myself; I have a vacant mind” — is quoted at the start of the record, McMahon employs a masculine pronoun: “She’s my boy, my kind of artist.”

But McMahon’s relationship to masculinity isn’t one-sided, and it’s rarely celebratory. Like his last record, the sprawling and destined for classic status Love, the new lp opts to grapple with huge themes. McMahon didn’t go in with a design to write about mythical maleness, ego, his parents, and about the process of “relinquishing…various definitions of self,” but that’s what he ended up with, employing a wide cast of characters to set his scenes. Small-time crooks and dealers show up; so does Jesus Christ; so does awesome asshole Miki Dora, the surfer who, after being featured in films like The Endless Summer, hightailed it out of the US to avoid getting busted for fraud.

McMahon finds no small share of ugliness and beauty in these complicated character sketches. The sounds he pairs with them are just as thorny. Working with collaborators like drummer Parker Kindred, guitarist Delicate Steve, Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and others, McMahon blends spiky guitar pop with electronic textures, shifting from motorik pulses to bass-heavy boogies. The spectral folk of previous records is still there, but its augmented with post-punk melodies and funky lift. It’s always been tough to describe the sound of Amen Dunes records, even with names like Skip Spence and Lou Reed at the ready, but Freedom‘s the toughest to pin down yet. Conceptually and sonically, it’s an auteurist step forward.

Speaking over the phone from New York, McMahon detailed the way it often feels like he’s channeling his songs as much as writing them. “There’s no use in being close-hearted,” he sings in “Skipping School,” and speaking with the artist, it’s clear he’s out to free himself of any notions — masculine or otherwise — that would keep him from staying all the way open. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Aquarium Drunkard: You’ve made a couple of classic albums as Amen Dunes, but Freedom sounds effortless in a way that illustrates how hard you must have worked to make it. How does this one feel different than the others?

Damon McMahon: I’ve never focused so hard on crafting music before. I gave myself time to revise and re-approach all kinds of things. I mean, even just the songs themselves. The writing of the songs on an acoustic guitar took me at least a year of consistent writing. It was an endless iteration of each song, and then once we got to the recording process, that’s a whole other stretch of time, and then vocals, lyrics, and mixing, I mean…it was extensive.

AD: At one point you had recorded a version of this record, but then scrapped it. Why?

Damon McMahon: Well, it just didn’t sound inspired, man. There wasn’t that divine spark in it, and that led it to sounding bad and the takes not being good and a little limp. It just didn’t have the energy, and I don’t think I was ready at the time. Also, it wasn’t as heavy-duty of a recording scenario as we ended up getting, so I think that affected it, too.

AD: When you go to a place like Electric Lady, as a music listener and fan, what does it feel like to make music in a space like that?

Damon McMahon: Electric Lady was a real gift. Man, that place.

“We weren’t people that simply obeyed. You could say that we sidestepped all the house rules, the recording studio; we simply broke away from situations that weren’t convenient. I have always believed in what I do.” L.M.

Born Luís Carlos dos Santos, Brazil’s Luiz Melodia died last summer at the age of 66. Singer, songwriter, player and actor, Melodia’s professional career as a musician began in 1963 and continued until his death, working within and around various permutations of samba, soul and MPB. While Melodia’s 1973 debut, Pérola Negra, has long been one of my favorite Brazilian records (read: definitely check this out in full if not yet hip), its follow-up, 1976’s Maravilhas Contemporâneas, was a later discovery and one I’ve found myself returning to of late while working on a current project. So, here’s a taste — side one’s final track, “Baby Rose”, where things begin stretch out and get…loose (hey, sitar). It’s nearly spring, enjoy.

Luiz Melodia :: Baby Rose

Over and over again on Nap Eyes’ third lp I’m Bad Now, songwriter Nigel Chapman owns himself. In album opener “Every Time the Feeling,” he’s a “space case,” a “loser in a meaningless place.” It’s worse in “I’m Bad,” where he’s a “hated son,” “a disappointment” who’s “so dumb.” In “Dull Me Line,” he’s “bored and lazy.” It would seem Chapman is hard on himself. But here’s the rub: the new record, which follows 2015’s excellent Whine of the Mystic and 2016’s  Thought Rock Fish Scale, is the band’s warmest and kindest yet. Not only does Chapman write with more interrogative passion about his inner life than many songwriters twice his age, here he expands outward, unpacking religious themes on “White Disciple,” pondering connection to others on “You Like to Joke Around With Me,” and wondering what becomes of all our big ideas on the beatific “Sage.”

The lyrical growth is matched by the group’s expanded musical sensibility. Over the shuffling rhythm section of bassist Josh Salter and drummer Seamus Dalton, Chapman and guitarist Brad Loughead trade shimmering chords and striking melodies. Reliable comparisons to the Velvet Underground and the Modern Lovers don’t fail this go-round either, but more than ever before the band’s instrumental interplay feels like its own thing: restrained, considered, and riveting. “Please don’t ask me to throw my work away,” Chapman sings over Salter’s rolling bass on album highlight “Judgement,” and it’s clear why. Nap Eyes is doing the best work of its career with I’m Bad Now.

Recently, Aquarium Drunkard called Chapman up from his place in Halifax, to discuss the spiritual themes of the record, dissect slang terms, and the relative values of turning inward and outward. The conversation has been edited for clarity and cohesion.

Aquarium Drunkard: I love that the record is called I’m Bad Now. It’s a great contrast to imply. To say “I’m bad now” means, “I was previously not bad. Now I am.”

Nigel Chapman: People tend to see things in binary terms often.  With dichotomies in general, with binaries in general, and then specifically [in regards to] badness and morality. That’s something I’ve felt pretty viscerally at the core-of-my-being. I either feel like a good person, like a kind person or a sincere person, or I feel like a totally false or selfish or phony person. I think having a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of that tendency is a good way to step back from it a bit and look at yourself. And also not expect yourself to be some kind of non-human, you know? A perfect being. Everybody has badness. As you’re growing up, there are a lot of things you need to learn. But you’re a flawed human being, and once you’ve learned [those lessons] you don’t have to hate yourself for it [or get caught] in that pattern of thinking. The title reinforces that, for me anyway. But Seamus [Dalton], our drummer, is actually the one who created that title.