#Britt Walford

[kenneldistricts]

the pod photoshoot is very important to me !!

[slintarchive]

David Pajo, Britt Walford and David Yow, Chicago 1989

Photo by Shannon Smith

[thebowerypresents]

The Jesus Lizard Cut Loose at Brooklyn Steel

The Jesus Lizard – Brooklyn Steel – December 11, 2024

The Jesus Lizard are a band that only resurrects every once in a while, so it’s worth noting that vocalist David Yow looks well these days. He’s got a goatee that gives him an air of distinction. He’s also still got youthful vigor, in a toddler-still-learning-to-walk kind of way. “It’s nice to see your beautiful smiling faces, I want to stick my dick in every mouth I see,” were his first words of the night. One song in and Yow was crowd-surfing deep into the audience. His jacket was off by the second song, his shirt fully unbuttoned by the fourth. 

“I can swim, I can’t swim,” wailed Yow directly into the faces of the audience, really inches from them, as he crowd-surfed again during “Seasick.” For a man who spends about as much time being carried by a crowd as he does onstage, how many times in his career has he been dropped? One would think somewhere between dozens and hundreds of times. A few songs later, quite unexpectedly, the shirt was rebuttoned. “Thank you, New Jersey,” said Yow to some chuckles and groans. 

“Nub” had Yow surfing the stage in a vaguely Hawaiian way, floating quite beautifully over the song’s thudding rhythm, asking a recent amputee how he masturbates. The four-piece firing on all cylinders felt like an all-out assault, just as they do on “Hide & Seek,” the lead track on Rack, their first album in 26 years. The rhythm section’s throwing punches, Duane Denison’s guitar cutting like a knife. 

Yow can sound like both the assailant and the victim, sometimes at the same time. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice guy, I like him just fine / But he’s a mouth breather,” he snarled on “Mouth Breather.” The song takes its refrain from a quote from the late Steve Albini about Slint drummer Britt Walford, delivered by Yow with equal parts bark and bite. Another song ended with him still held up in the middle of the audience. “Well, I’ll just stay here for a while. Could I get a margarita?” But then he changed his mind: “Just let me down and I’ll fucking walk, OK? I’m serious.”

“This is the last song, and we’ll never see you … again,” said Yow before returning for their encore. “I hope you have a wonderful holiday season here in the United States of Fucked Up.” Before a few more songs, "Thank you very much, we'll see you in Boston tomorrow,” repeated Yow a few times, and another lie, as the band returned for a second encore. The night came with many tales of unexpected resurrection, which is something you should ask your doctor about if it lasts longer than four hours. —Dan Rickershauser | @D4nRicks

(The Jesus Lizard play Roadrunner in Boston tonight.)

(The Jesus Lizard play Union Transfer in Philadelphia tomorrow.)

Photos courtesy of Edwina Hay | thisisnotaphotograph.com

@thesearenotphotographs

[lunarmiggy]

i can sleep better at night knowing david yow and britt walford have snogged

[iloveitback]

Layout Redesign for :

Kids Being Kids’: Slint Look Back on ‘Spiderland’ at 30

Not my original writing, the layout is simply a collage of pictures online, and drawn assets I made in clip studio.

Done in Figma and Clip Studio Paint

2023

[bruciesexecutivelifestyleautos]

i need help i just love him

[musicmags]

[sinceileftyoublog]

Kim Deal Album Review: Nobody Loves You More

(4AD)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The debut album from former Pixies bassist and vocalist and Breeders frontwoman Kim Deal has been a long time in the making. It also, appropriately, feels like it's been around for as much time as classic records like Doolittle and Pod. Deal first started releasing solo music as part of a vinyl series in 2013, right around the time she left the Pixies and The Breeders' celebrated twenty years of Last Splash with a reissue and full-album tour. Two of those songs, the touching "Are You Mine?" and "Wish I Was", appear on Nobody Loves You More, an album that's an encapsulation of Deal's life and musical career and sees her collaborate with musicians old and new, all fitting and natural. Whether she's happy on the beach or sad on the beach, reflective or reeking of now-or-never desperation, Deal's alive.

Perhaps more impressive than Deal's chemistry with the wide range of musicians that grace Nobody Loves You More is the diversity of the instrumentation and number of personnel, and the resulting variance in sound. She frequently features string and horn arrangements. On the album's opening and title track, Deal's slinky guitar embeds within Susan Volez' violin, at once sweeping and cinematic and melancholy. By the time Michael Mavridoglou's trumpets blare, Britt Walford's steady and clacking drums disintegrate into ramshackle fills, momentary noise that retreats to the song's original motif. The moment is a microcosm of Nobody Loves You More as a whole, how it segues in and out of moments of chaos. For instance, the third track, "Crystal Breath", breaks the suggestion of the first two songs--that Nobody Loves You More might be a nonetheless warm "bummer in the sun" record--and layers Deal's vocals atop crunchy percussion. "Beat by beat, I'm feeling out of phase / Just another domino falling on my face," she sings, accompanied by only her sister Kelley on bass. The aesthetic matches the the theme: somebody in solitude, dangerously alone with their existential thoughts. "Disobedience", rife with harmonic guitars and thudding snares, is similar in ethos, Deal alternating between expressions of desire ("I wanna ride on the Ferris wheel / And a pop") and anxiety ("If this all is we are / I'm fucked!").

These grounded songs are necessary to contrast the moments where Deal has her head in the clouds, and vice versa. On paper, a song like "Bats In The Afternoon Sky" seems like an interlude, but its 90 seconds of whooshing and wordless vocals are a true palate cleanser following "Big Ben Beat", where Deal's sunny riffs are subsumed by the distorted bile of two Savages: Fay Milton (not on drums, but playing synths and strings) and Ayşe Hassan (bass). "Bats In The Afternoon Sky" previews the starry-eyed nature of "Summerland", but on the latter, Deal's optimism is also pure and honest. Inspired by winter vacations with her parents in the Florida Keys, the song paints a picture of a child who never wants to get out of the water. "I'm not even tired," Deal declares, "This world's for me."

Ultimately, where Deal truly shines on Nobody Loves You More are on the heartbreakers. The two released a decade ago, "Are You Mine?" and "Wish I Was", are respectively biographical and abstract, and continue to stand out. The former disguises itself as a slow-dance love song, but it's actually about her mother's dementia, sung from the point of view as a patient. "Let me go / Where there's no / Memory of you / Where everything is new / And nothing is true," Deal sings, accompanied by Dave Easley's high and lonesome pedal steel. Her delivery on "Wish I Was", meanwhile, cuts deep; if the song starts breezy enough, with jangly Velvets-style guitars, Deal singing, "Standing strong, it makes me wish I was...young" is enough to send you into a spiral. And then there's album closer "A Good Time Pushed", tracked with the late, great Steve Albini in 2022. Again, Deal's words pierce through a bed of noise: bendy bass and syncopated keys, Jim MacPherson's crisp drums, crisscrossed guitar patterns from Patrick Himes and Raymond McGinley. "Part of me wants to follow you off of this world," begins Deal, eerily prescient. "You quit the noise, put it behind us / Drive a stake they'll never find us." But it's the ditching of the idealism for a resigned, "I'll see you around," that's the most matter-of-fact admission on an album full of them. When she sings, "Now is the time / For me to get what I want," it makes me think that the album's title is but an incomplete sentence, one that should end with, "Than You (Should) Love Yourself."

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Vague Plot

Vague Plot is made up of New York City avant-indie regulars, veterans of other bands, who got together to make driving, moving, long-form instrumental music a la Can and Popul Vuh during the pandemic: Zachary Cale, Uriah Theriault, Phil Jacob, Ben and John Studer. Of their debut Crying in 9 from earlier this year, Jennifer Kelly wrote, “Vague Plot’s jams shimmer like highways melting in the heat, running straight on through Kansas or Nebraska until they disappear in the undecipherable distance. Which is to say, they go on for a while, repeating the same short grooves ad infinitum, with modest changes, until the measures blow by like mile markers and the journey transcends itself.” All five members contributed picks to this wide-ranging listed.

Phil Jacob (sax/keys)

King Tubby meets Lee Perry — Megawatt Dub, 1997

In my late teens I started getting into dub, particularly King Tubby and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. It’s tough picking one album, but this is the compilation I keep coming back to over the years. My favorite Tubby track, “Termination Dub,” isn’t here, but the giddy feeling I get from “Come By Yah” and “Perfidia” has no equal. And these are some of my favorite Lee Perry selections as well, particularly “Rainy Night” and “Open the Gate”. There’s an attention to melody here that often gets lost on dub remixes, even while these two are digging deep and pulling everything apart. Every delay drop seems to happen exactly when I want it to, leaping out of the speakers. A lot of the genre classics make me feel locked to the couch in a smoky haze, but this collection pulls me into a dance of dub ecstasy.

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band — Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller), 1978

Possibly the best music education I ever received was playing in a Beefheart tribute band. The emphasis on polyrhythms as arranged by Don Van Vliet and John French on Trout Mask Replica made me feel music in an entirely new way; that it’s best if things don’t always line up at the beginning or end of a bar, a tension I enjoy searching for. TMR does it so often and with such ferocity that it grows exhausting over the length of the 79-minute album. On the other hand, Shiny Beast manages to incorporate some of those ideas into layers and layers of infectious hooks. From the driving bass line of “Floppy Boot Stomp” to the loping funk of “Tropical Hot Dog” to the stately guitar lines of “Owed T’Alex” to the existential spoken-word closer “Apes-Ma”, every track perfectly highlights a different aspect of what makes Beefheart so unique to my ears.

John Studer (drums)

Slint — Untitled EP, 1994

When I first heard the song “Glenn,” it changed the physicality of my body. Britt Walford has an impressive skill to subtly shift around beats so they gently roll and slide over themselves. It’s as if he’s repeating the same line of poetry but with different punctuation to give it fresh meaning each time.

DJ Shadow — Endtroducing, 1996

The surprisingly refreshing choices around arrangements and samples on this album highlight their unexpected connections. Repetitive, hypnotic rhythms combine with soothing layers of instrumentation and allow every special moment to shine appropriately. Endtroducing then delicately transcends these distant connections to create an entirely new space.

Zachary Cale (guitar)

Sonic Youth — SYR 1: Anagrama, 1997

The music on SYR 1 consists of four instrumentals. The first song “Anagrama” has a beautiful winding arc to it. Over the span of nine minutes, you can hear the band searching and expanding. When I first heard it in 1997, it broadened my sense of not only what guitars could do but also the importance of listening when playing within a group. There's structure but it's extremely loose, there's playfulness but not without restraint. That's a big part of what Vague Plot is about. One thing about Sonic Youth I've always appreciated is that even though they “jam,” they never get trapped into a traditional blues or one-chord vamp freak out. It's modal. Sometimes that can lead to dissonance, but that dissonance has always rubbed against something highly melodic.

CAN — Ege Bamyasi, 1972

I once had a summer job painting dorm rooms at the college I went to. One day I found a discarded CD with no jewel case or artwork. It was Ege Bamyasi. I took it home and put it on not knowing anything about the band. I was completely taken off guard upon hearing it. I could not place it into any known quantity. The inscrutable lyrics, the infectious rhythms and the mystery and sonics of it all; it cracked my brain wide open. To me CAN’s mission was always to find the pulse, vibrate with it and then ultimately dance around it. Vague Plot uses some of that same framework in our music. A singular idea to keep extrapolating on. Now that I know more about music history I can hear Fela Kuti, Stockhausen, disparate folk music as well as 1960s psychedelic rock all mixed up in this record. CAN has always seemed genreless to me in their fearless exploration of style. That’s something we as a band all aspire to. All gates open.

Ben “Baby” Copperhead (bass)

The Staple Singers & Curtis Mayfield — Let’s Do It Again, 1975

Let’s Do It Again is a soundtrack album composed by Curtis Mayfield and performed by The Staple Singers. A few years ago, I had the honor of performing a benefit concert for Little Kids Rock. I was playing guitar in the backing band and one of the singers was Hozier who wanted to do the title track “Let’s Do It Again”. Mavis Staples was also on the bill. It was an unforgettable evening. After the concert, I bought this record on vinyl and it’s been on heavy rotation ever since. The string arrangements are absolutely magical. The whole album is a beautifully recorded masterpiece with Curtis Mayfield and his stellar band backing up The Staple Singers. What more can you ask for?

Ornette Coleman — Change of the Century, 1960

Change of the Century was the first Ornette Coleman album I bought when I was in college. I was interested in the world of “free jazz” and Ornette and his band were the pioneers. Surprisingly, all of it is incredibly melodic with bebop-style phrasing, which I wasn’t expecting at the time. All the musicians have incredible ears to be able to pull this off. Ornette Coleman used the harmolodic system which allowed contrapuntal movement during the solos to avoid a key center. Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins were masters at this and could make any soloist sound great by deep listening, feel and support.

Uriah Theriault (guitar)

Dirty Three — Ocean Songs, 1998

My first exposure to Mick Turner came through this album, which introduced me to a broader range of guitar styles than the folk music I had been listening to. Unlike Fahey’s intricate picking patterns, Mick Turner’s guitar work resonated as lyrical phrases more than prose. Often open and spare, other times stormy and erratic, his guitar created atmosphere and conveyed emotion without relying on virtuosic solos. He and drummer Jim White crafted moody mise-en-scenes for Warren Ellis's main character, and l found myself drawn to the visual storytelling more than the narrative itself. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to see Mick perform in various forms, but the tour for this album stands out due to a specific memory. During a live performance of “Authentic Celestial Music,” my then-girlfriend passed out right in front of the stage. A stranger and I caught her and moved her to the side. When she came to, her only remark was, “Great song.”

Popol Vuh — Hosianna Mantra, 1972

I was familiar with Popol Vuh only as Herzog’s house band until I heard this album, and it cut immediately. I listened religiously to this enigmatic album over the span of a few years, whenever I took a shower so that my attention was undivided. Defying easy categorization, the collection spans classical, ambient, and krautrock. The title track was haunting, calling back to the only music I knew growing up, Catholic hymns. The guitars, oboe, and harpsichord weave sinewy webs of harmony — more chamber music than rock bravado, more conversation than monologue. The ecclesiastical tenor of the Hosianna Mantra (Hosianna, or "please save") sits uncomfortably amongst its dancy krautrock contemporaries, but the slow-burn nature of this album is anything but stiff. If deep attention is akin to prayer, as suggested by Simone Weil, then to me, this album is a dozen rosaries — penance not required.

[jiimjaaam]

thinking about how when Britt Walford and Brian McMahan were like 13 years old they would record audio tapes of themselves taking a shit and share the recordings with each other cuz they thought it was the funniest fucking thing ever, and honestly thats true friendship

[rastronomicals]

7:13 AM EST November 11, 2024:

The Breeders - "Safari" From the EP Safari (April 6, 1992)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

Love Britt Walford's drumming here I mean Shannon Doughton's.

[slintarchive]

A Touch and Go online store exclusive…

Spiderland on a limited edition 180g purple vinyl!

Limited to 1000 copies!

Grab it while you can

[yeats-infection]

re-reading ‘in the garden’ (for the 10th time…) and wondering what saint rose sound like — accept for the breeders, what were the main influences?

and i know it might be a spoiler for future stories, by did graeme come back to the studio to record the second album! i really want him to, his playing with imani, and flora, and sal seems to be very therapeutic, but in a gentler way than with crucia… sending you all the love🤍

thank you for asking! so the main influence on saint rose besides the breeders, is a band that should have been as big as the breeders, who are actually very connected to the breeders. the unbelievably amazing band throwing muses! the two songwriters and vocalists in throwing muses in the late 80s-early 90s were tanya donelly and kristin hersh who i think are stepsisters. their album the real ramona is one of my favorites ever.

the breeders was originally going to be the side project of the two second chair songwriters from two big boston indie bands of the late 80s, the pixies and throwing muses: kim deal and tanya donelly. so tanya was briefly in the breeders for the recording of their first album pod. she can be seen shredding in this video. she is a super underrated guitarist. this brings me to the overall inspiration for graeme's whole character arc... drumming in that linked video is britt walford from the louisville kentucky band slint who was at the time 19 years old.

other reference points from the 90s era are veruca salt, lush, madder rose, the cranberries circa to the faithful departed, etc. but honestly the band i think saint rose most sound like is speedy ortiz. they are the best at amalgamating the 90s influences and making them sound modern. the guitar playing is always cool and sadie is a genius lyricist. like i can very clearly visualize a very 90s music video of this song with the members of saint rose...

also YES the idea is that the final story in the series is all of them together recording the second album, spite. first they have to be talked into it :) it will happen eventually!

[lunarmiggy]

from my spiderland photo book hehe

[sequestered-song-skirmish]

Round 2 Poll 21

Creative Living With A New And Improved Me：

The Struggle：　「This song and this band in general are so fucking good but virtually nobody knows about about them, which is really odd since the band members went on to form Slint, which is a huge band, and though not the same vibe the songs are really good nevertheless. Anyways the instrumental is so intense, especially the drums? god the drums are incredible, I am obsessed, Britt Walford is just a terrific drummer. Also the whole album is just incredible, especially if you're into the hardcore/post-hardcore.

i can only find the whole album on youtube but it's the opener」

[whoisnoahdillon]

Lou Reed, American. Michael Gira, American. Rozz Williams, American. Peter Steele, American. Britt Walford: American. Trent Reznor? American. Jacob Bannon -- American. Noah Dillon. American

i have duel citizenship