Live Preview

Get to know: Kishi Bashi

Tony Robles
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If you’re planning to hit the Fillmore tonight, I can only guess tickets were carefully debated then purchased mainly in order to see fantastical live sets by the magic indie sprites of Deerhoof and/or headliners of Montreal. But might I suggest getting there early for opener Kishi Bashi?

I caught his act last night at Slim’s (it was the same lineup as tonight — the three acts are on tour together) and was glad I did. Others in the crowd were pleased as well, yelling “I love you!” during the few quiet moments in between full blown song attacks.

If you’re not already turned on to his charms, the solo multi-instrumentalist and of Montreal touring member is basically (and I mean basically, as in reality there’s always more to the story) a male tUnE-yArDs looping violin instead of drums. He’s got the same frenzied charm, the same echoing tribal holler, and the same endless loops climaxing in a dizzying fashion. Unrelated but equally notable, he had snazzy bow-tie on last night, and told the crowd he’d just learned to tie it that night, though that was likely a fib as I see he’s wearing it on tour. No matter, more girly sighs and hoots. 

Here’s Kishi Bashi recorded:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JqDgrnaMC4

And here he is live, performing “Manchester”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-IJbaNZc9I

And here he is just one week ago in Texas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-0vJIYc_cQ

Enjoy.

Kishi Bash
With Deerhoof, of Montreal
Thurs/22, 8 p.m., $22
Fillmore
1805 Geary, SF
www.thefillmore.com

Success won’t jinx Sharon Van Etten’s ability to write sad love songs

Tony Robles
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Ed. note – Ahead of Sharon Van Etten’s long-sold out show in SF this week, Ryan Prendiville had the chance to catch up with the rising indie folk singer-songwriter (who recently released critically lauded third album ‘Tramp’) to discuss her songwriting process, lessons of South by Southwest pasts, and the influence of Nick Cave:

SFBG: How many shows are you playing at SXSW?

Sharon Van Etten: Just two. Last year we did eight in three days. It was really stupid. I burnt out and lost my voice for three days when we had just started a tour. I decided this year it just wasn’t worth it.

SFBG: You’re going to be touring nonstop for probably the rest of the year, are you not too worried about burning out?

SVE: I have to worry about burning out. These songs are more intense vocally with more band members, which I’ll still have to sing over. If the drummer loses his voice it’s one thing, but if I lose my voice we can’t really play. Before I just played as many shows as I could whereas now I realize that five in a row is kind of the max before we all start losing our minds.

SFBG: Are you thinking more of the long-term now?

SVE: I’m realizing that if I can learn how to perform in a healthy way, I’ll be able to do this for a long time. I know it sounds kind of adult or something. But for every record, if you really want people to hear it, you have a responsibility to tour at least a year, cover as much ground as you can, and play the best show that you can everyday. So you should take care of yourself. You’ve got to have fun, of course.

SFBG: Since your music is generally pretty sad, is there any danger, with your career going well and having fun, of hurting your ability to make similar music?

SVE: Some people are concerned that I’m going to start writing happy songs now that I’m doing well. The whole joke is, if you’re not miserable you’re not going to write as well. I’m not too worried about that. If I write differently, I write differently. I’m pretty at peace and proud of what I’m writing. I don’t want to jinx myself and say that people will like it just as much, but you don’t have to be miserable or tortured to record or be successful. So far most of my songs have been written in intense periods where I’ve been going through a hard time, but I think I can write songs just as well when I’m happy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1OBHLTaHnU

SFBG: There’s a bit of a stereotype that female musicians are often more personal, writing from their own life experience, than their male counterparts. Obviously a great aspect when it’s true, but can downplay a creative aspect.

SVE: Writing more emotional songs doesn’t makes a person less creative. I think a lot of men avoid it while women tackle it, and that’s just a difference in genders. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, just how most people are. Men are often more storytellers and detach themselves from an actual event, but I don’t think that makes them not passionate. I’d like to learn to be more of a storyteller, it just doesn’t come naturally to me right now. I’ve been listening to a lot of Nick Cave, and he’s really, really good at that. It makes me want to try a different way of writing next time.

SFBG: Are you working on new material while you’re touring, or do you kind of give yourself a mental break?

SVE: I’m always kind of writing, I just don’t know what it will turn into. I have different side projects that I’m working on but who knows if they’ll fuse together into something someday. I have piano music. I have electronic music. I have really minimal stuff but I also want to write more rock songs. Right now i have a lot of ideas, but can’t call them songs yet.

Sharon Van Etten
With the War on Drugs
Weds/21, 8 p.m., sold out
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
(415) 771-1421
www.theindependentsf.com

Cloud somethings

Tony Robles
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It’s unsettling how the first track off Cloud Nothings’ new LP makes one want to drop everything and flop on the ground in an arrested development expression of perma-teen angst. It’s hard to even type these words when the song is playing. It’s hard to lift my hands. I just want to listen to the melancholic chug-chug of dangling chords, bursts of crashing cymbals, and singer-guitarist Dylan Baldi’s stretched-out moan, “No Future/No Past.” I don’t want to do anything.

But that first track is something of a subterfuge as the rest of the album truly picks up beat-and-tone-wise, though the lyrics remain similarly restless. The second song off Attack on Memory peels me off the floor. By track four, “Stay Useless,” I’m nearly dancing, it’s nearing popped traditional emo, though still in that morose, everything-is-fucked clattering noise – recorded, as breathlessly reported in every story on the band, by the legendary musician-producer Steve Albini (Shellac, forever linked to Nirvana).

And that’s when I realize I love this record, I love everything about it: the trick start, the nouveu-grunge milieu, Baldi’s struggling vocals, suburban angst at its best. And the kicker: dude is only 20. He was maybe 2-years-old when Kurt Cobain died. And, perhaps even more surprising, he’s totally likeable, offering stoney laughs during our chat, and affably answering surely oft-repeated queries:

SFBG: How’s it going?

Dylan Baldi: Hey, I’m fine.

SFBG: How tired are you of talking about Steve Albini?

DB: I’m pretty tired of that [laughs], but if you have questions I don’t mind it.

SFBG: I can imagine, but people are obsessed with him. So I here I go – just wondering what your experience was like working with him?

DB: We were only there for four days and he’s a nice guy. He was pretty hands-off in terms of actually coming up with things to do but I kind of like that. I wasn’t looking for someone to tell us what to do with our songs, I just wanted someone to make the record sound good, and he did.

SFBG: The first Cloud Nothings record you recorded alone, correct?

DB: Yep.

SFBG: So when you recorded that first album was it almost an accident? Were you intentionally making a new project?

DB: Yeah it was sort of an accident, I just made two songs and put them online and someone liked it and wanted to put out a tape, so I made some more songs. It’s spiraled from there yeah. [This] started about two years ago.

SFBG: How long was the gap between putting it up on the Web and an interest being generated?

DB: It was literally two or three days. Super fast. It was on Myspace and a couple of blogs picked it up right away.

SFBG: Pretty awesome. So when did you start writing ‘Attack on Memory?’ What influenced you during that time?

DB: Last June pretty much. One of the big influences musically is a band called the Wipers. I was listening to them a lot over the year, between the two records. I guess musically also I wanted to do something that wasn’t like the last record, so it was a conscious effort to make something a little different.

SFBG: How did you discover the Wipers?

DB: A friend first told me about them, and I got their first couple records and I really like them and I couldn’t stop listening to them.

SFBG: They’re such an underrated punk band, it’s weird that people don’t talk about them more.

DB: They totally are! I was going to say exactly what you’re saying, it’s weird that more people don’t know about them. They’re amazing.

SFBG: What was the first record you ever bought with your own money?

DB: Oh! Um, I think it was probably Apollo 18 by They Might Be Giants. I was into them, I’m still into them.

SFBG: What are the some of the records you’ve guys have been listening to on this tour?

DB: You know that song by Ozzy Osbourne, “Mr. Crowley” – it goes like [singing] “Miiiister Crooowley” [laughs]. It starts off with this crazy keyboard thing? We listen to that song a lot. As far as full-length records, our goal today is to listen to Death Magnetic by Metallica because we have a 12-hour drive and that’s a good album. I guess we don’t listen to a lot of like, “good” music.

Cloud Nothings
With Mr. Dream, Your Cannons
10pm, sold out
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com

Clouded: Oakland’s Main Attrakionz rise up from the fog

Tony Robles
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Clouded: Oakland’s Main Attrakionz rise up from the fog

Maybe it’s the dreamy, celestial quality of their ethereal beats, or the cloud of weed smoke that seems to float from the speakers whenever Squadda B or MondreMAN spit one of their sky-high verses. While the origin of the term “cloud rap” may be up for debate, it’s undeniable that Main Attrakionz is carving out its own place in hip-hop by pioneering a new sub-genre.

Squadda and Mondre diligently recorded track after cloudy track in a foam-padded bedroom closet in North Oakland before entering a professional studio to lay down their most recent mixtape 808’s & Dark Grapes II. Thanks to its more polished production — and an ever-growing spotlight on the emerging DIY rap movement — 808’s & Dark Grapes II catapulted Main Attrakionz to the spotlight.

The pair is back at the home studio where it all began when I call them one winter afternoon. Mondre and Squadda, both barely 20 years old, are in high spirits, laughing and joking while we chat. The self-proclaimed “best duo ever” has been rapping together since age 12; they met in a seventh grade math class, and they’ve been inseparable ever since. “We would write and perform at talent shows,” says Mondre.

“Old school Cash Money, back in the ‘90s, those were the first CDs I ever bought,” he says of his formative influences. “No Limit, DJ Quik, Snoop Dogg, Too $hort. East Coast, West Coast, the South, all of it.”

Back in their talent show days, Mondre and Squadda were members of a four-piece called 4Figgas. The summer after they met, they recorded their first track – rapping over the Neptunes-produced beat for the Clipse’s “Grindin’.”

Beats for other early Main Attrakionz releases were often supplied by Shady Blaze, an Oakland rapper, producer, and prominent member of Main Attrakionz’s hip-hop collective Green Ova Undergrounds. More recent work has featured ambient, new-agey beats by up-and-coming artists like East Bay duo Friendzone, whose praise for Main Attrakionz’s off-the-cuff writing process sparked my interest.

“They make a brand new beat, we gotta write brand new shit to go along with it,” explains Squadda. He describes his studio mentality as “blank minded.” The pair listens to a track, rolls a few blunts, and cultivates breezy, zoned-out rhymes on the spot. “Wherever the beat takes it, that’s where we take it,” he says.

A refreshing realness runs throughout Main Attrakionz’s lyrics. The hardships of coming up in Oakland are neither downplayed nor glorified. Smoking weed is a continuous motif, as are the young rappers’ lofty ambitions and dreams. When there are mentions of money, it’s usually in the context of having enough to get by.

Main Attrakionz’s mixtapes have featured a slew of guest appearances from rising stars like ASAP Rocky and Danny Brown. When I ask Squadda whom he’d recruit if he could collaborate with anyone, alive or dead, he responds with youthful cockiness. “It’s gotta be a producer first off, cause I gotta have somebody that can bring something to the table,” he says. “It’s gotta be [UGK’s] Pimp C. Hands down, case closed.”

“It’s crazy that it came at this time, cause now we don’t even care about all that,” Squadda remarks on his recent critical acclaim. “[I’m just] glad to put music out that people can hear from anywhere.” Upcoming projects for Main Attrakionz include solo efforts from Mondre and Squadda, a Green Ova Undergrounds compilation, and a debut full-length.

Since it accompanies every mention of the duo, I can’t resist asking for a definition of cloud rap. “Hold on,” says Mondre. There’s a lot of commotion as he hands the phone to Squadda, and all I can make out is, “We’re higher than everybody else.”

Main Attrakionz
With G-Side and DaVinci
Tues/20, 9 p.m., $15
Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

Madlib’s Medicine Show returns to SF

Tony Robles
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Madlib’s Medicine Show returns to SF

The final album to Madlib’s 13-part Medicine Show is scheduled to be released this month, capping a series that may prove to be the producer’s magnum opus. Through 12 albums, already he has journeyed through genres – hip-hop, dub, soundtrack music, free jazz, soul, psychedelic rock. He sampled music from around the world – Brazil, Africa,
Jamaica. He culled work from different eras – records from the 1970s, his own unreleased tracks from the ’90s, new productions from today.

When not delving into his massive record collection and producing mixtapes as the Beat Konducta, Madlib goes by a variety of different production aliases, ranging from the
warped-voice lyricism of Lord Quasimoto to the jazz-themed stylings of Yesterday’s New Quintet. He gained new fans in 2004 when he collaborated with rapper MF Doom to form Madvillain and combined blunted beats with heavy, slurred rhymes on album Madvillainy (Stones Throw). Rumors are circulating that the duo is working on an eagerly awaited sequel. Meanwhile, Madlib still remains tapped into the hip-hop scene, recently teaming with Black Star (emcees Talib Kweli and Yassim Bey, formerly known as Mos Def) to produce new track “Fix Up.”

So what does Madlib have in mind for the Mighty crowd on Fri/19? The flyer for Mighty says it’s Madlib’s Medicine Show with Stone Throw mate J-Rocc. Maybe we’ll get to hear
snippets of Medicine Show 13. Maybe Lord Quas launches into a helium-noted harangue on the police. Maybe Madlib spins Krautrock. Really, it could be anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf_YoG9M6Mk&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=SPA1483AB92DEEA9EE

Madlib
With J-Rocc
Fri/19, 9 p.m., $25
Mighty
119 Utah, SF
(415) 762-0151
www.mighty119.com

We love the sound: Wild Flag will play the Great American Music Hall

Tony Robles
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Back in 2010, when the members of Wild Flag initially started playing music with one another, whether a band would be forged or not wasn’t altogether clear. Carrie Brownstein, Rebecca Cole, and Janet Weiss (all from Portland, Ore.) had been writing the score for art documentary !Women Art Revolution when they tapped Mary Timony, who lived in Washington D.C., to record vocals. One project naturally led to the other.

Given the bands they had played in before, you would think there’d be no question as to whether or not they’d make a good group: Brownstein and Weiss had Sleater-Kinney until it disbanded in the 2006, Timony led Helium in the 90s, while Cole had backed the Minders. However, the four weren’t certain. In theory, sure, but: “Everyone knows, whether, you’re a fan or a musician, that theories do not make good music,” Carrie Brownstein said in a phone interview on Thursday. Wild Flag is now north in San Francisco for a two-night stint at the Great American Music Hall starting Friday, Nov. 4. “We spent a lot of time working to figure out if the band was necessary.”

Necessary — it’s something Brownstein stresses about the band. And it seems that it not only determined the fate of Wild Flag, but also determines her involvement in just about any project, which likely explains the reason why everything she does, she does extremely well — she needs it, and it undoubtedly needs her. Her co-created IFC sketch comedy with Fred Armisen, Portlandia (whose second season begins in January), is spot on and hilarious. Her blog at NPR Music, Monitor Mix, was intelligent and delightful. And Sleater-Kinney was one of the most talented feminist-punk bands of the late 90s and early 2000s.

Now, Brownstein and the others have found Wild Flag necessary — the songs were telling them so. “The songs felt like they were being played by a band,” Brownstein explained, “not individual people with separate ideas that weren’t congealing into something interesting.”

After they announced that Wild Flag was official late last year, the band set out on tour, without an album or recorded songs, to play fairly small clubs (including Bottom of the Hill) and to give fans a pure, unadulterated listen to the band. Over the course of that tour, the band earned a reputation for its passionate live performances. Then, in April of this year, Wild Flag went into Sacramento’s the Hangar studio to record its self-titled debut, releasing it five months later on Merge.

The record is tough but catchy, original but accessible, and recalls just about every sub-genre between post-hardcore and classic hard rock. It also speaks to just how important music is to Wild Flag. “We love the sound, the sound is what found us/Sound is the blood between me and you,” they harmonize on the dynamic single, “Romance.” Most of the music besides the vocals on the album was recorded live as well, making it a raw and undisguised release.

“For our first album, we wanted an unadorned, mirror document of who we were — our capabilities, our presence, and our sound,” Brownstein said. “It was exciting to have a blank slate; to not be comparing or measuring ourselves to any previous body of work.”

Although the four musicians have been playing in bands for decades and they feel familiar, Wild Flag is itself still a very new project. Even for someone like Brownstein, who is in familiar territory. “I feel like this band is very recent and still in its infancy,” she says, “there are still a lot of places to go with it, and there are a lot of things I still don’t know about it.”

Clearly, this is just the beginning for Wild Flag. The members are anxious to move on from this point and explore the band and it’s ultimate potential. “We’re trying to just be present in the band and be in the middle of it. But at the same time, we’re impatient. I really want to have new songs, those are what I love playing live.”

“But,” she adds, “that’s not going to happen between now and San Francisco.”

Wild Flag
With Drew Grow & the Pastors Wives
Fri/4 and Sat/5, 9 p.m., $19
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
www.gamh.com

The awesome video for “Romance”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J8n9R8rnB8&ob=av2e

Think this is Judas Priest’s final concert? You’ve got another thing coming

Tony Robles
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1

With some of the most memorable and recognizable heavy metal anthems ever put to tape or performed live, Judas Priest has been at the forefront of the scene for some 40 years now. Featuring singer Rob Halford’s piercing vocals, the twin guitar attacks of Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing, and the rock solid rhythm section of Ian Hill and Scott Travis, the band has come a long way from its humble beginnings in Birmingham, England, where it earned the moniker, “Metal Gods.”

Songs such as “The Ripper,” “Breaking The Law,” “Living After Midnight,” “Hell Bent For Leather,” and “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” are among just a few of the classic tracks that fans will be able to sing along with the band when they take the stage in Concord tonight. Although this outing for Judas Priest is being dubbed the “Epitaph” tour, and some venues are advertising it as a “farewell” tour, that doesn’t exactly mean what it might imply, as Halford explains over the phone from a tour stop in Las Vegas.

“We don’t want to get wrapped up in these farewell fiascos where people say ‘We’re quitting,’ and then come back three years later, we think that’s not a very cool thing to do, so we’re making it plain and clear to fans that this is not the end of Priest — this is our last world tour, but we will be going out for selected shows in the future.”  Halford, who recently turned 60, said the band’s decision to stop undertaking massive world tours after this one was due in part to several factors, with the desire to continue to making quality music and put on the caliber of shows that fans have come to expect from Judas Priest being the ultimate reason.

“We’re just facing mortality and reality — the fact that these big world tours take a couple of years to accomplish, and we’re such a physically demanding bunch of guys, we really push each other on stage, so it’s a workout as much as anything else. We just had three back to back shows and I’m feeling it today,” Halford says.

He promises fans an epic concert tonight, worthy of the band’s storied reputation — a nearly two and a half hour set featuring songs spanning the entire spectrum of it’s career, and of course, an elaborate stage show, complete with the lights, lasers, smoke, costume changes, and more. The singer adds that he will ride out on his signature Harley-Davidson motorcycle, which is something done for JP tradition, and it also represents something for him personally.

“The Harley really represents rock ‘n’ roll — it’s made of metal, which is very apropos, and then of course it’s loud and smells and pisses certain people off. Rock ‘n’ roll should still be a kick in the butt, it should still be offensive to some people who don’t understand it.”

As a sign that Judas Priest really is going to continue on in the future, Halford says the band is working on a new album. With most of the songs already written, he hopes to record and have it out sometime next year.  “We’ve been in each other’s lives for so long, it would just seem an impossible thought not to see each other again, and not to work with each other again. There will be more to come,” Halford laughs, “as Johnny Carson used to say…that’s showing my age!”

He ends in a more serious tone: “It’s a combination of a lot of feelings and emotions when you’ve been doing something as wonderful as we have for the last four decades — we’ve loved every minute of it.”

Judas Priest
With Thin Lizzy and Black Label Society
Thurs/27, 6pm, $20-$108.50.
Sleep Train Pavilion  
2000 Kirker Pass, Concord
www.livenation.com

Unknown Mortal Orchestra returns to the Bay, digs Dolores Park

Tony Robles
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No one could have predicted what was about to happen when Ruban Nielson uploaded a single  track – the fuzzy, undeniably catchy “Ffunny Ffriends” – to Bandcamp in late 2010.  A mere 24 hours later, Pitchfork had seized upon “Ffunny Ffriends,” posted the song on its site, and bloggers were going nuts for the new project, Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

When Nielson recorded the track that launched a thousand blog posts, he’d essentially given up any serious pursuit of a musical career. The New Zealand native had resigned to a job as an illustrator in his adopted home of Portland, Ore., after ending a lengthy stint as guitarist in the semi-successful noise rock outfit the Mint Chicks.

Despite its mysterious lack of identity, live gig offers for Unknown Mortal Orchestra started pouring in. Neilson recruited veteran Portland producer Jacob Portrait to play bass, enlisted wunderkind Julian Ehrlich on drums, then took his pet project on the road. The band ran out of money during the early stages of touring, so Nielson succumbed to relentless courting by Fat Possum and handed his recordings over to the label. With its clear psychedelic influences, glimpses of early Motown soul, and tripped out basement beats, Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s self-titled debut is one of the most entrancing albums of 2011.

When I speak with Nielson, he’s laid out on a friend’s couch, throttled to exhaustion by the rigorous performing schedule of CMJ. “I just need to sleep for, like, four days,” he says. Though he clearly needs it, sleeping for four days is beyond the bounds of possibility for Nielson. Unknown Mortal Orchestra is embarking on yet another national tour, this time bringing up-and-coming shout-pop duo Gauntlet Hair along for the ride. Unknown Mortal Orchestra has already hit up a bunch of local venues this year, and will return next week to play at the Rickshaw Stop on Nov. 3. “San Francisco is maybe our favorite place to play,” says Nielson. “We always go to Dolores Park for some reason and buy drugs and stuff. It seems kind of cheesy, [but] we always end up taking acid.”

Amidst the acid trips and endless touring itinerary, Nielson’s been steadily developing material for his next album. “I just write things down in the notepad on my phone and hum things into the recorder,” he says. The severely fatigued Nielson perks up a little when he tells me the writing of the album is almost complete.

He’s just purchased a house in Milwaukie  (a suburb of Portland), and is setting up a recording studio in the basement. Much of Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s debut was recorded in a similar location. “I didn’t have my own basement,” Nielson explains. “Some friends of mine went on tour and I would borrow their basement.”

“It’s just a nice place to get away from people,” he says. “I feel like I work better by myself.” With his crackly, witchy voice and a talent for arranging weirdly addicting instrumentals, a shadowy underground recording lair seems all too appropriate.

UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA
With Gauntlet Hair and Popscene DJs
Nov. 3, 9 p.m., $12-14
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
www.rickshawstop.com

With Gauntlet Hair
Nov. 7, 9 p.m., $8-10
The New Parish
579 18th St., Oakland
(510) 444-7474
www.thenewparish.com

Check it: “Ffunny Ffriends”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-36lCKovBg

Zola Jesus rises from the dust of the rural Midwest

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Zola Jesus rises from the dust of the rural Midwest

Rural Wisconsin is full of freaks. I can attest to this because I grew up one state west and interacted with similarly entertaining crazies on a pretty regular basis. This brand of strange usually keeps to small town shenanigans, but Nika Roza Danilova translated her weirdness into artistic independence and rose to become Zola Jesus.

As a young child and teen, Danilova became comfortable with the isolation of her surroundings and learned early on that one must seek their own stimulation. She became obsessed with learning to sing opera, but only in the confines of her own home. She listened to instructional tapes, practiced songwriting on her parents’ piano and decided to separate herself from the world before it decided to do so first. As a self-proclaimed freak, Danilova was free to revel in her uniqueness without guilt or remorse. In high school she took on the moniker Zola Jesus, which she called a conscious effort to alienate her peers. 

As a student of French and Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Zola Jesus officially released her first full-length record, The Spoils [Sacred Bones, 2009], earning instant comparisons to rock legends like Siouxsie and placement in the goth rock genre. Her songs are gorgeously epic, ballads of dark rock that haven’t lost their soft parts. Backed by a roaring synth choir, Danilova sings with fierce confidence in an unpretentious, humanized manner. I could write terrible letters to past lovers with Zola Jesus as my muse, or I could happily entwine myself in optimistic dreams with the same soundtrack.

As of late 2010, Zola Jesus had put out four records and played 97 shows. She’s playing her music around the world and getting just as much attention for her songs as her wardrobe. She’s being portrayed as a gothic hottie, getting mentions in Vogue and fashion magazines for her bewitching look. Yet she’s still totally reveling in her bizarre foundations. My favorite Zola Jesus quote to date, as said during an interview with The Quietus: 

Everyone’s a goth now. It blows my mind. I don’t like to comment on this whole trend because I’ve come to resent myself being associated with it. If goth is trendy then I’m buying fucking polo shirts. They’ll still be black, though.

If only all the Midwest townies could became wonderful creeps like Zola.

ZOLA JESUS

w/Naked on the Vague

Fri/6, 9:00 p.m., $14

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

www.RickshawStop.com

 

Can do: Malcolm Mooney discovers a Tenth Planet in SF

John Elberling
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Can do: Malcolm Mooney discovers a Tenth Planet in SF

Since recording debut album Monster Movie with seminal Krautrock band Can back in 1969, vocalist and visual artist Malcolm Mooney has mostly made his home in the States. More recently, he has recorded with San Francisco-based band Tenth Planet, with whom he takes the stage Thurs/1 at Bottom of the Hill.

Mooney is up there in years (though the Internet fails to provide me with his actual age), and in some ways a relic of a very odd moment in musical history — the birth of Can — but his broad artistic pursuits suggest he’ll have something new and different to offer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWl7qSXEuV4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BP-RU2Ckuk

MALCOLM MOONEY AND TENTH PLANET
With Stephen Kent, Extra!
9 p.m., $10
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St, SF
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com

Oakland hosts Buzz band

John Elberling
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Oakland hosts Buzz band

By Sam Stander

First-wave British punk’s pop geniuses the Buzzcocks have been reunited for some time now, currently sporting two members from the band’s heyday in the late ’70s, guitarist-vocalists Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle. They’re passing through the East Bay on Fri/4, at Oakland’s Uptown, backed by pop-punkers the Dollyrots. It’s their only Bay Area stop on this go-round, and a surprisingly small venue for such a heroic act. Buzzcocks monopolize a distinctive mixture of frankness and enthusiasm that still trumps their countless teen-bop imitators, and any chance to see them even at this late date should be relished. Videos (now and then) and show info after the jump.

 

THE BUZZCOCKS

With Images
8:30 p.m. (doors), $35
The Uptown
1928 Telegraph, Oakland
www.uptownnightclub.com

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