Lilac Shadows - Back from the Dead (Fellowship Hall, Durham, 11/1/13)

Lilac Shadows popped up for the first time in quite a while, with a new line-up and a series of three small shows around Halloween, fittingly billed as Lilac Shadows Back from the Dead!  I caught the one in Durham, where some of the band have re-located.

Fellowship Hall is an intimate little community space which kind of reminds me of Pensacola's old Mystic Garage.  BYOB, cozy (read, curb-rescued) couches, funky painted walls.  You'd never know it was there if Lilac's Nathan Price (and DiggUp Tapes impresario) wasn't hanging out at the door.  Durham (and the Triangle) need more spaces like this.

Besides the constants of Price and frontman Sam Logan on guitars, Lilac's new line-up includes Reed Benjamin (ex-Jenny Besetzt) on drums, Brian Corum (Lonnie Walker) on bass.  They've talked about a change in sound from the more atmospheric material on the EP A Shallow Madness.  Well, based on this show, they're still "atmospheric"...  a hurricane is part of the atmosphere, right?  A more appropriate word would perhaps be "onslaught".

The first song was like New Order devolving back to Joy Division as it progressed.  Lilac has been compared to both of those bands in the past, but this new sound was more rhythm-driven.  I swear Reed almost broke the drumkit once or twice, and as good as he is fronting Lonnie Walker, Corum seemed to relish his role as sideman, kicking in the bass.

Oh yeah, and they're now noisier.  Much, much, noisier.  Much.  Maybe the small venue intensified the effect, but at times the dual guitars drove so hard you would just get swept up in a tornado of over-stimulation.

So the new Lilac Shadows?  Still atmospheric, but feeling the effects of global climate change.

The Great Cover Up 2012 - Night 3 (Kings, 12/15/12)

I couldn't make the first 2 nights of this year's Great Cover Up at Kings.  That's too bad, because I apparently missed Iggy (Cosky) doing Iggy (Pop), Janice Joplin, and E. L. muthafuggin' O!  Damn!  That must've been great.  Video, anyone?

But Night 3 was pretty impressive as it was.  Luckily, I didn't show up 10 minutes later, or I would have totally missed Joy Division.  Sam Logan, Nathan Price (Lilac Shadows, etc...), and Reed Benjamin (Jenny Besetzt) had us momentarily transported back to the Factory in 1979 Manchester.  I caught fairly authentic versions of Transmission and Love Will Tear Us Apart.  Sam did his best detached Ian Curtis onstage...

Jumping up a few years, Thom Yorke & Co. took the stage as Radiohead played... well, I don't listen much to Radiohead (although I'm told I'm supposed to), so I don't really know what they played.   Actually, Ari Picker (Lost in the Trees) and Alex Maiolo (Fan Modine) made me think "maybe I AM supposed to listen to Radiohead!"  

Then the roof blew off the joint.  It was an old-fashioned rhythm and blues revue, featuring the Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin!!  Well, Reese McHenry (ex-of she and the Dirty Little Heaters).  Reese did a pretty good approximation, which is saying a lot.  She also had a BIG band of 10 backing her up!  Killer keyboards (that guy was wailing), backup singers, horns, the works.  R.E.S..P.E.C.T., You Make Me Feel..., Think, etc.  Reese was the best moment of a great show I saw a few months back when she got up and sang the opening number for Spider Bags.  I had never seen Dirty Little Heaters, but I wondered what I would hear again from her and when.  This was exactly the type of thing I was hoping for.  

Then the Yeah Yeah Yeahs took the stage, featuring two members of Cellar Seas and Zeke Krautwurst from T0W3RS.  Chelley Godwin WAS Karen O!  I mean, you tell me...

Though she only sings backup with Seas, she owned the stage here. This was also one tight band, if only for a one-off gig, and she and the guitar player made for a helluva dynamic pair.  It was stripped down and spare, but loud and garage-y in that sweetly dangerous way the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are.  I don't really remember the set list... I think they did Maps? 

Speaking of garage, the Sonics followed.  I'd heard of them.  But Ian told me they invented garage.  And he was probably way influenced by them.  You know....  back in Manchester...  in the '70s..  when he was alive.  Anyway, this band was made up of The Infamous Sugar and members of Savage Knights and Black Zinfandel.  "Suge" preached over the keyboards and the crowd, while the rest of the band had that '60s proto-grunge thing going full force. 

Closing the night, Swedish death metal progenitors At the Gates performed most of one of their albums (Slaughter of the Soul?  Sorry, not a metal guy). This incarnation of ATG was composed of members of locals Morose Vitality, and they were pretty tight and intense.

A perfect closer to a diverse evening's music.  What I can't figure out is just how Kings gets all these famous (sometimes dead) acts to play such a small room.

Lilac Shadows - A Shallow Madness EP (DiggUp Tapes)

Okay, for starters at least, I have to compare Lilac Shadows' A Shallow Madness EP to T0W3RS recent release, If All We Have Is Time. There are just too many commonalities. The bands share 3 members (Sam Logan, Derek Torres, Karen Blanco; the other Shadows are Zack Oden and Nathan Price). Derek produced this one, and Sam produced T0W3RS' record. When you add the number of letters of "Shadows" and the numbers in Lincoln's birthdate, you mysteriously get... well, okay, maybe it stops there, but you get the point. There's some overlap. Nevertheless, they ARE two distinct bands, and sounds.

Based on these two releases, T0W3RS frontman Torres is John, and Lilac frontman Logan is George (don't go gettin' swelled heads, guys). Whereas ...Time was gritty, a little bluesy, and full of pain, heartbreak and redemption, A Shallow Madness is much more ethereal and contemplative. Not to psychoanalyze in a record review, but I'd venture a guess that Logan has had less tumult and heartbreak in his life, but more concerned with meditations about mysteries of consciousness, the universe, and the nature of reality. Okay, I'll put away my Jung.

But seriously, this EP deals with the realms of the mind much more than the heart or the nuts-and-bolts of living. It takes a trip into the subconscious, and the soundscape matches. When this space wrote up their release show a few weeks back, they were compared to '80s-'90s British pop and 'gaze. As you listen to A Shallow Madness more, you also hear further back in time. Bowie, Pink Floyd, all in a current indie context. Part of it, I guess, is the slightly Brit-sounding vocals. Still think there's a little VU in there, too.

The EP is basically 4 songs, though each is separated by an atmospheric intro which segues the EP together in a flowing manner, not unlike a dream. The title song sings of a madness that is indeed shallow, even  pleasant. Lotus, anyone? You're lulled in by a galloping, jangly beat and swirling guitars and synth. But from the first words, you're forced to doubt reality ("When you open up your eyes / do you see what isn't there?"), and wonder whether it's a healthy place to be or not ("and the sun that runs behind you eyes / is floating only for darker times"). What Dreams keeps us going in this sleep-like state (or are we awake?). It's a lullaby of sorts, but one that doesn't exactly reassure you. As in the first song, images of insecurity and seeking out comfort in darkness (figurative and literal) recur. The dark fairy tale feel is slower at the start, a simple echoing guitar line backed by quiet/chaotic noise. But it eventually opens up to rock out in segments. As the band's bio describes them, this song is, also, "Bright. Dark. Quiet. Loud."

Bloodworth picks it up, a really driving number that's a bit of an '80s throwback. It relies more on bass and drum, with guitar being mostly used for droning background and touches. Spiteful lyrics liken someone to a fallen star "comin' down through the clouds", their lies, and fires, burning. This one's mostly just "Dark. Loud." Rise wakes us up: "Rise up slowly, lift your eyes from the warnings / nightmares and longings, they won't find you in the morning". It's the first time the EP gets a little uplifting. But at the same time, it still longs for the subconscious: "It's simpler in dreams / as simple as nothing, only breathing gracefully". You know, back to being Jung, I'm sure there's a lot intended here about the power of dreams, as dark and scary as they can be, to heal. As the song, and EP, come to a close, neat little organ blurbs (steel drums?) pop in and out, giving us a little blips of contentment without the scary undertones.

Musically, A Shallow Madness soars. You just aren't sure where (or if) you're going to land.  And, thankfully, there's not a Ringo number on it (or on All We Have Is Time).  No Octopus' Garden, no (shudder) Act Naturally. Okay. Enough Jung. Enough Beatles. Just get the EP and go see Lilac Shadows next time they play... including Friday, May 4th at Kings, at the Vote AGAINST Amendment One Party, with Cassis Orange, and First Person Plural.  They also play Friday, May 11th, at the Cave.