WILD NOTHING and ABE VIGODA
WILD NOTHING
Wild Nothing is the solo-project of Jack Tatum whose music is inspired by a longtime love affair with nostalgia. His debut full-length album, Gemini, released on Captured Tracks spring of 2010, is full of dreamy, carefree synth-pop songs that linger with an inexplicable sense of regret. The band followed up Gemini in fall 2010 with the Golden Haze EP, also on Captured Tracks.
On the debut album, Gemini, recorded and performed solely by Tatum, carefully orchestrated synth-pop arrangements, trebly guitar riffs and tattered drum machines blend together to create an intriguing, texturally rich glo-pop album that could come only from the young at heart.
“While Tatum’s words can edge on maudlin, his delivery is more romantic than dreary, and there’s a sly, understated, and subtly addictive melody that gorgeously frames his sentiments. And melodies like that one, which the album features in spades, are ultimately what make Gemini more than just another indie pop record, and often more than the sum of its parts.” - PITCHFORK
“For me, the ’80s were mostly stressful and fucked-up, so it was hard to be all romantic and daydreamy about fey and gloomy Britpop-the Smiths, Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen. I liked it all, but it rarely fit my life. Now that life has beaten me down and I’ve come to terms with that, Tatum makes these lovely little musical postcards of all that music, and I can drift off without being pissed at Reagan and stuff.” - SPIN
“However you package it, this is a beautifully produced piece of heart stealing song writing. Will Tatum’s words work as well when the winter settles in and the sunshine has disappeared? There’s only one-way to find out; listen to this record all year round. Yes please.”- THE LINE OF BEST FIT
“One suspects that there’ll always be something unrequited haunting whatever Tatum puts out in the coming years, but on the evidence provided so far it’s certainly not doing him any harm. A musician with a dazzling future dealing in a half-remembered past and one who, right now, is putting the majority of his contemporaries in the shade.”- THE QUIETUS
Live band: Jack Tatum, Clay Violand, Nathan Goodman, Michael Skattum
ABE VIGODA
MYSPACE :: FACEBOOK :: POST PRESENT MEDIUM
If you want to know how kids can get so fucked in the head growing up in southern california, you gotta know about Abe Vigoda. Chino is the home of this sort of No Wavey sort of Pop oriented sort of twisted punked 4 piece. You can see it in the way they pound the living shit out of the instruments they play, and you can see it in the way they talk about things they are interested in, these kids are fucked, but in a good way. Fucked in the way that they can make a good record and play really good shows above all odds, like having terminal cancer and mental illness. Juan will kiss you if you ask and they are HUGE in England.
Those who clocked Abe Vigoda’s transition from 2006’s debut Kid City to 2008’s startling tropical-punk Skeleton should know the LA quartet aren’t ones for repeating themselves. To Skeleton’s hot-hot-hot template, they now add glassy shards of ‘cold wave’ pop, with synthesisers, sequencers and altogether broodier beats. Scorching temperatures, icy currents... CRUSH is a thermal column of vertiginous brilliance!
But let’s not get bogged down in categories. Just as Skeleton was difficult to define, Crushis a similar collision of sound, another helter-skelter joy ride through four boys’ private party. Even so, there was a thought process behind this new surge. In 2009 Dane Chadwick replaced drummer Reggie Guerro, introducing a new style of regimented beats as well as other musical ideas to the table. “More than just rhythmically, Dane helped with melodies and most of the electronics on the album,” says vocalist Michael Vidal.
Meanwhile, guitarist Juan Velasquez had already posted the fact he dug UK dreampop and goth. To which Vidal adds, “My favorite kind of music is instantly nostalgic and emotionally confusing. And reverb has always been a big part of our sound. We were definitely inspired by cold wave and minimal wave stuff, as well as Arthur Russell.”
From the pell-mell pop of "Sequins" to the New Romantic crush of "Throwing Shade" and the title track’s MBV scree, Crush feels a long way from the Smell Club band scene of AV’s roots. For one, they’ve added so much emotion to their sonics, to which the album title bears testament - crush meaning both the infatuation kind of love and the act of destroying something..
Turf Club
