Posts By 75orLess
The Wire Chimes – Archaeolomancy
75OL-295 The Wire Chimes – Archaeolomancy
$7.00 S&H Included
Digital download and streaming is available here
Track Listing
- Unabashedly
- Dispatch From The Tar Pits
- Crucial Minutia
- Elemental Megahertz
- New Musclebucket
- Summerbump, Ch. 3
- Between Randolph and Sheldon Streets
- Animal Arm
- Bronco (First Time Out)
- Sea Slider
- Shfting Drifts
The Wire Chimes is pretty much one guy, Jeremy Withers, chipping away at nuggets of melody until their true forms are revealed.
Archaeolomancy is a family of concepts that never found a home in other bands/projects/releases, some of them born of ore dating back twenty years. In coming together here, they’ve revealed a common lineage. These instrumentals’ DNA pull equally from mid-90s indie rock and weird bedroom electronica, all filtered through layers of grime to form the soundtrack to a fever dream.
Minky Starshine at Askew
with Eric Barao and John Faraone
Askew
Chestnut St
Providence, RI
8pm
Motif Magazine reviews Sick Pills ‘Nothing Is Funny Anymore’
Sick Pills — Nothing’s Funny Anymore (75orLess Records) — Take 2 Because They Are Good for You
As a hockey junky it is really amazing that I get anything done this time of year. I’ve referenced the debut album of The Blood Moons as one of my favorite local albums many times. Before that, there was Chris Evil & The Taints who they turned me onto Roky Erickson with their cover of “Night of the Vampire” many blood moons ago. So now in the virtual podcast format of Keep On Moving, I was stoked to chat with Chris “Evil” Guaraldi, or as I like to call him, Dr. Evil. Dr. Evil and I met in 2002, drinking homemade red wine at the New Wave Cafe in New Bedford when The Taints were playing with the Midnight Creeps, whom I was mis-managing at the time. I could go on, but this column is five days late and exceeded its word count (Ed: I can’t even…). So Dr. Evil’s Band, Sick Pills, have a great new album called Nothing’s Funny Anymore that I love. Let’s cut to straight to the Doctor cause it took 17 years to make this interview happen.
Marc Clarkin (Motif): Is there any backstory that inspired the tunes on Nothing’s Funny Anymore?
Chris Guaraldi: When it comes to themes, I do usually like to have some sort of “theme,” mostly because it’s easier writing lyrics if I know what I’m trying to say. Nothing’s Funny Anymore has a few different themes going on. The year 2018 was a little bit of a bummer. It started off with my dog Rocky [the adorable cover dog for Sick Pills Under My Skin album] dying suddenly, and that pretty much set the tone for 2018. Our drummer, Bob, was also going through a fairly rough personal event so that kind of worked its way into some songs. I write a lot of love songs/break-up songs, but they’re all pretty much friends’ experiences where I try to put myself in their situation and talk about how I would feel. The current political climate crept in there too (“American Virus”). It’s a little overwhelming seeing how openly racist, sexist and homophobic people have become because they feel emboldened by the current state of the country. As a fairly progressive person, I don’t think it’s all on one side either. “Watching the World” is definitely about that. I wrote more political songs than were on the album, but I really loathe the idea of writing too much political stuff because, really, who am I tell you what to think or believe.
MC: Musically, songs seem to have another dimension to some of the previous Sick Pills releases. From the winding paralysis ’60s Kinks-esque rock of “Watching the World” to the stripped-to-the-bones feel of “No Good,” what were some of the different things you worked in compared to past Sick Pills albums?
CG: I don’t know if it’s that much different from the past few albums. The first Sick Pills album (Sickening) was kind of an “I don’t know what I want to do but I want it to not be what I’ve done with Taints and Blood Moons.” I really wanted to make an ’80s-college-rock sounding thing, but after that first album I just started writing songs the way I normally would and a little more toward the rock ‘n’ roll side of things. Under My Skin is our “rock” album I guess; Mettle is kind of back to punk rock. I pretty much just plug my guitar into the computer and play along with some drum beats and hope to be inspired, or I program some bass lines and then work from there. We did add some keyboards/organs from our friend Ethan Weiss [he plays in space-y prog metal band Lazertuth]. He played keys on all the Blood Moons stuff and I asked him if he would like to play on some of the new Sick Pills songs. You can hear him on “Remind Me You’re Gone,” “No Good,” “Fix Me” and the re-recording of “Be My Girl.” Overall, it’s our fourth album and we wanted to try and be a little more dynamic.
MC: The album gets its title from a line in “Life’s a Joke,” which, despite the title and lyrics, is one of the most infectious pieces you have written. Between the breakdown and post-breakdown “Free Bird” surge, the band has a lot of different dynamics clicking. What is the backstory on that song coming together?
CG: “Life’s a Joke” started with the main melody line/guitar lead thing, which I thought was kind of catchy, and the chords just kind of wrote themselves. The whole song was pretty standard structure-wise, but I wanted to do something a little different for the middle. I thought going “heavy” for the break would be a cool change for such a poppy song, and it fit with the downer lyrics. When I started writing the lyrics, I came up with the chorus first and came up with the verses/pre-choruses from there. The verse and chorus music was so poppy I thought it would be nice to write some bummed-out lyrics.
MC: “Fix Me” kind of reminds me of Zuma-era Neil Young meets Stax Records on a dive bar jukebox. Any influence there?
CG: With “Fix Me,” I had to look up that era of Neil Young. I definitely know Cortez the Killer, but I don’t know anything else off that album. It was definitely not an influence for that song — at least not by me. I can hear it, though. I’m sure there’s a Stax influence there, too, especially with the ’60s sounding organ! When I started writing it, I was trying to make the slowest, most depressing song I could possibly write. I believe this is the longest song I have ever written. The original demo was about seven minutes long, so we definitely sped it up and trimmed some fat.
MC: What are some of the places people should check out for music in New Bedford?
CG: In regard to New Bedford, I still host a weekly open mic at Pour Farm going on nine years now, I believe. I’ve been doing shows/running open mic night at Pour Farm for a long time, and it’s a great place. They gave me a chance to do stuff there when there weren’t a lot of options, and that means a lot to me. No Problemo has a decent amount of shows, too — usually on the heavier side (punk/metal/hardcore/etc). It’s an awesome restaurant and good place to see bands. There are a few more places, but a lot of it is mostly cover band/bar band music. Next to No Problemo is a newer place, Greasy Luck, which seems to cater mostly to ’80s hair metal bands (not my thing). Greg Ginn’s Black Flag is playing there, though, so maybe they’ll start booking more stuff like that. Also in the area is Purchase Street Records. It’s a pretty decent record store with lots of old and new stuff — lots of metal/punk/hardcore records. New Bedford isn’t perfect, but there’s a lot of great stuff going on.
Sick Pills will celebrate the release of Nothing’s is Funny Anymore with shows at The Pour Farm in New Bedford with Baluchitherium and Jake Perrone on May 10th and at O’Brien’s in Boston on May 14th with The Cretins.
header The Wire Chimes Archaeolomancy
Jets Can’t Land & The Low Cards at Machines With Magnets
with Nico Rivers & the Black Grass, & Meaghan Casey
Machines With Magnets
400 Main St
Pawtucket, RI
9pm
All Ages
$8
The McGunks at Midway Cafe
with Silver Screams, Revilers, Damnation, Live Nude Girls
The Midway Cafe
3496 Washington Street
Jamaica Plain, MA
3pm
$5.00
Mark Cutler and Men of Great Courage and Bob Kendall Band at Askew
Askew Prov
150 Chestnut St
Providence RI
$10
Foul Weather Friend at Askew
with The BickerSins
Askew
150 Chestnut St
Providence, RI
8pm
WBOB reviews the Same Thing Project
The word gospel means “good news.” It is God’s news they say.
Well, Mark Cutler has been doing “the lord’s work” for awhile now with his ingenious songwriting group called The Same Thing Project.
This community meets every Tuesday morning at 10:00 AM in charming Rolfe Square in Cranston. It is a diverse group consisting of members of the music scene, actors, plumbers and even some folks who are considered disabled (although I believe that’s all relative).
Cutler is no stranger to songwriting collaboration. He has always given back through his music and taken something that he has so much talent for and shared it. He enjoys his craft, and when someone who loves what their doing does it in front of others, it becomes infectious.
I myself was part of a songwriter group with him which manifested into two CD’s under the moniker ‘The Dino Club,’ so I recognize the techniques and how fertile an environment Mr. Cutler can encourage.
It doesn’t surprise me that he’s standing in front of a white board and leading his group in accomplishing what (if you think about it) is pretty damn ambitious; writing a song in one session.
My friend got caught up in some pretty grave stuff these past months; beating a health scare and losing a beloved member of his family. Except for maybe one or two days due to treatment, he never let down his people, and wrote a song a week.
Which brings us to “Walks of Life Collaborations,” a brand new CD available through 75 or Less records. It contains ten songs from the cooperatives’ works and I am in love with the humanity that emanates from this recording.
The voices who appear on this piece, some of them known (MC himself), and others who became regular contributors are so wonderfully real that this sap actually wells up when I hear them.
Please don’t make me explain this record in prose. It must be heard. Buy it, don’t scrutinize damn it, please just purchase this record, and then you’ll understand.
Thank you Mark and company for spreading the good news.
- Bob Giusti
The Callouts, Jets Can’t Land, and Plug at AS220
AS220
Empire St
Providence, RI
9pm