Processing Grief Through Music

With Nick, circa 2016, at a show at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley

Other than it essentially being an unpaid labor of love (literally unpaid for me, at this point), music writing is the best job in the world.

I get to interview artists who I’ve long admired. I’m able to ask them questions that have been brimming in my brain for years. And then I get to synthesize those thoughts in a way that ideally convinces readers of the power and profundity of the artform.

And another unspoken rule about being a music writer is the free tickets. It’s generally understood that if you write a feature on a band (one that alerts readers of an upcoming performance), their publicist will provide you with a couple of comped passes to the gig. 

Yeah, it smells a little of quid-pro-quo, but it’s not like I’m writing for the Washington Post and shadily covering  up some abusive corruption. I get to write glowing articles about musicians I love, and as a way of showing their appreciation, they toss me a couple of tickets, gratis.

For years, that extra free ticket of mine was a hot commodity among my friend group. Before everyone got a little long in the tooth and started having kids, seeing a free performance of some band we all loved was a top rate experience. From about 2013 to 2019, I had to judiciously choose among a wide roster of candidates about who to ask to join me for a show.

One of my first choices was always my pal Nick. I met Nick in 2009 through my other friend Jeff, and we immediately hit it off. We enjoyed hanging out and having fun with our friends, and we had the same rascally sense of humor (rascally meaning we were unafraid to pummel a joke into the ground, and said “joke” was often only funny to an audience of two—me and him.)

We also shared a deep and abiding appreciation for music. The roster of bands we both adored was endless (Pavement, the Walkmen, the National, Built to Spill, Cut Copy, Beirut, New Order, LCD Soundsystem, Free Energy, the list could go on and on.)  Nick also loved himself some jam bands like My Morning Jacket and Phish (hey, agree to disagree) in addition to classic acts such as Pearl Jam and the Rolling Stones. But his favorite group of all was Sigur Rós, the dreamy, ambient collective from Iceland.

I had so many classic nights going to local shows with Nick, courtesy of my cherished free tickets. Vince Staples. My Bloody Valentine. M83. Dean Wareham. Beirut. (Confession time: we tended to chatter a bit during those live sets. I think we hold the Bay Area record for most time being shushed. Not exactly a coveted award. Sorry everyone! I know that’s annoying!)

One year, I scored us some passes to the Huichica Music Festival in Sonoma. Nick tried to convince us all that he saw My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James casually hanging out among the fans, clad in a poncho (Nick was a sucker for a good poncho.) We all expressed deep skepticism of the claim, considering his prodigious intake of mushrooms that day, but social media reports later confirmed his hunch. Sorry Nick, we should have believed you.

In 2023, Nick and I travelled together to Utah for the Kilby Block Party, a sort of heaven on earth for aging indie heads like ourselves. It was just the two of us going to the festival, but our company was all we needed to have a great time. 

One of the highlights of the multi-day fest was seeing the Walkmen, freshly reunited and sounding as glorious and clangorous as ever. The band’s lead singer Hamilton Leithauser punctuated their show by chucking loafs of French bread out into the crowd. Nick and I, feeling uplifted by that bit of surrealism, started hoisting up our vinyl copies of the band’s seminal album, “Bow and Arrows,” which we recently bought from the merch tent. Leithauser, apparently endowed with eagle eyes, called us out in front of the huge crowd for having purchased bootleg copies of the LP (I guess the fest was selling unsanctioned Walkmen records?) For the rest of the festival, random people would come up to us, and laugh about the dressing-down we received.

By far, the most unforgettable night that Nick and I had together was a Black Lips show at the Great American Music Hall. In a rare bit of unfettered access, I was awarded two backstage passes for the gig, courtesy of a story I had written for the SF Weekly. 

We showed up to the band’s green room prior to the show, and even though I had interviewed the Lips’ Jared Swilley just a few days earlier, he clearly did not remember me. We hovered awkwardly in the background, until Nick, emboldened solely by his own personal fortitude, grabbed a bottle of Jameson from a nearby table and started swigging away. The band, perhaps impressed by his utter brazenness, immediately loosened up afterwards. 

We spent the next two hours gloriously partying with the Lips and their assorted hangers-on. I ended up stage diving that night. Following the show, I was separated from Nick and I had assumed he had called it a night. After a few minutes, I was able to track him down—he was at the entrance to the backstage door, ready to keep hanging out, which is what we did, until the wee hours of the morning.

On Friday, March 14, Nick passed away, just over a year after being diagnosed with cancer. Toward the end, his condition worsened precipitously, but a large collection of his friends were able to say a last goodbye to him at the hospital that Thursday.

There were a lot of tears. And some laughs. And of course, music.

In that cramped hospital room, we played Sigur Ros and Pearl Jam and Pavement and Phish and Beirut. Despite being frail, Nick would bust out his trademark air guitar while the songs drifted out from someone’s iPhone. He could barely speak, but that didn’t stop him from mouthing the words to the Stones’ “Beast of Burden,” a longtime favorite of his.

In his final moments, Nick had his wife Silvia and their young daughter Rory by his side. His beloved Sigur Rós played as he entered into his next adventure. 

It’s impossible to type those words without tearing up. But it also reminds me of the power of music. 

No form of art has a relationship with ownership that is as permeable and malleable as music. And I’m not talking about possessing physical media or paying for streaming services. I’m referring to that magical moment of transference, when a song is released out into the ether, and the listener is able to impart their own feelings, emotions and associations onto that tune. 

The minute that Brian King and David Prowse put out “The House That Heaven Built,” that track no longer belonged solely to the Japandroids. It also belonged to me, Nick and all our other friends who spent endless late nights screaming along to that anthem. The same goes for songs by the Black Lips, the National, M83 and every other band Nick and I saw together.

After being diagnosed, Nick was often too weak to make it out to live shows. He rallied for a few, though. The last performance we saw together was the Walkmen at Bimbo’s, which meant the return of our old frenemy, Hamilton. The band played as if they personally knew Nick’s time was limited. They were absolutely glorious—loud, raucous and unhinged. Nick was having a blast, and I was hugging him throughout the show. It felt like old times.

So now, every time I play one of our favorite songs, those bands will actually be singing about Nick to me. Whenever I hear the “Rat” or “In the New Year,” my mind will go to Bimbo’s, and that image of Nick, happy and restored, will come rushing back. 

I’ll think of the epic last show. And I’ll smile. 

Broken Dreams Club Interview: This is Lorelei

Photo Credit: Eve Alpert

For years, Nate Amos uploaded hundreds of scrappy, fuzzy tunes to the Bandcamp account of his recording moniker, This Is Lorelei. Essentially demo recordings, the songs provided a glimpse of a prolific musician with a profound range, unafraid to explore any genre or sound.

In 2024, Amos finally formalized those recordings, releasing his first “official” album as This is Lorelei. The record—“Box for Buddy, Box For Star,” is the culmination of those intriguing early recordings, showcasing a boundless talent. 

Featuring dust bowl folk songs, heartfelt indie pop tracks, glitchy electronica numbers, club bangers and anthemic love ballads, “Box for Buddy, Box For Star” was one of the best releases of last year and brought welcome new attention to the talents of Amos, who also stars as one-half of the avant garde duo, Water From Your Eyes.

On Thursday, April 3, This is Lorelei—now a three-piece band—will perform songs from “Box For Buddy, Box For Star” at Café du Nord. The show will be presented by local production outfit Throwin’ Bo’s.

Broken Dreams Club spoke with Amos about the background of the record, feeling inspired by Shane MacGowan and Elliott Smith and what’s next for This Is Lorelei and Water From Your Eyes. 

Ok, you’ve got another round of gigs starting up this weekend. How are you prepping for this latest batch of live shows?

Well, with the kind of live form Lorelei is in right now, I basically tour and then kind of come back with a revision. It’s taken a while to figure out exactly what to do with it, because the project is so kind of scatterbrained in terms of instrumentation. It’s been an interesting process to figure that out. But I think it seems like the answer is always simplicity. I have someone playing lead guitar now, so I just play acoustic guitar and sing and don't worry about other stuff. And it's gotten way more fun and interesting for me.

I was looking up videos of our shows from earlier this year. It was just you and an acoustic guitar, right?

That’s what we did in January, yeah. There have been some other setups as well. I did one tour as a power trio last year, where I was playing electric guitar and trying to do double duty vocals and lead guitar. It’s just really fun to have someone else worry about one of those.

Was last year your first kind of “proper” This is Lorelei live shows?

I guess it depends on what you mean by proper. Lorelei has existed for a long time. Back in the day in Chicago, there was a really chaotic live Lorelei band. I think the biggest performance was 10 or 11 people one time. If you kind of knew the songs, I would basically enlist you to join in the band. As long as there was a bass player and a drummer, I would just book a show. And then I would tell everyone else, basically, show up if you want. That yielded a couple of really fun moments and a host of bad performances. And then, for years, I just did karaoke sets. I didn't even have any of the words memorized. It would just look at the computer and stand there and sing. So, It's really been the last year or two that the live band has really developed.

Got it. So, back to the beginning—you’ve been recording songs under the This is Lorelei moniker for years and uploading a ton of those tracks to Bandcamp. What prompted the decision last year to finally release an “official” This is Lorelei album?

It was a combination of things. For a long time, Lorelei was more of a demo idea sandbox. If I had a really good idea from Lorelei, I would just lift it for another project. That still applies to Water From Your Eyes. At least a handful of things from every Water From Your Eyes album are kind of just plucked up from This is Lorelei. It wasn’t really until the last couple of years that it felt like Lorelei developed an actual direction of its own, separate from me personally. It kind of just became more and more of a focus. Before, I would just put a song up on Spotify or Bandcamp whatever, without doing any press or anything. And my manager got really frustrated with me. He was like, ‘dude, let me shop one of these.’ This was honestly the first album where I worked on it hard enough that I didn't want to just put it out without any kind of notice.

And how are you able to differentiate these songs from Water From Your Eyes songs, or My Idea songs? There is something distinct about This is Lorelei, but the musical tastes on “Box for Buddy, Box For Star” run the absolute gamut—I mean so much is covered here. When you have such a wide range like that, how are you able to determine what makes sense for This is Lorelei?

I guess it’s basically a gut reaction. At this point, I kind of have my Lorelei brain and Water brain. This is obviously a question that comes up a lot. The answer that I tend to give is it's kind of like playing two different sports. There is the basic idea and scope of things you could possibly do that are similar, but there are different objectives and different muscle groups being used. And the way it's kind of naturally evolved is that Water From Your Eyes is a kind of exercise in rejecting tradition. Whereas Lorelei has kind of turned into a thing where it really is more about embracing existing songwriting archetypes. If I didn't have separate outlets for those two things, I don't know if anything would work. It would probably just be a mess. 

I know you’ve discussed this topic ad nauseam, so apologies for bringing it back up again, but you’ve talked about making this music while sober, which must have been incredibly daunting at first. Did that process get easier as you kept going? Were you able to really convince yourself that you could do this thing?

It was an odd period of time for me and getting sober was a big part of it. There are a lot of things you have to do in the aftermath of long term substance abuse, in terms of just mental health. Once you kick your thing, you have to learn how to be a person without it. And at that point, I still hadn't really done that. The only thing that I could do was obsessively get into my music. Ultimately, the reason this album got so much time poured into it, is because I was desperately looking for anything to do that wasn't working on my actual self. I wouldn't say it was easy, but I was very focused, at least.

So, in its own way, was this process therapeutic?

I try not to rely on that too much, because I spent too many years being like, ‘I don't need to do therapy, because I can express myself through my art’. I mean, that's kind of the ultimate cliche. There/s weight to that, but it can also be such a cop out. I know I've used it as a cop out.

I think everyone was just amazed at the wild diversity of songs on “Box for Buddy, Box For Star,” and I love that you start the album off with a real curveball track—this lonesome cowboy, tears-in-my-beer country tune, “Angel’s Eye.” That’s such an amazing tune, but clearly not indicative of the entire album. What made you want to kick off the record with that song?

I'm a sucker for a good red herring. That’s something I tend to do, but not to be deceiving. There’s a balance to it—I wouldn’t want to use really stylistically different songs at the start of an album in a way where it's just like, ‘check out how different I can sound!’ That wasn't the intention with this album at all. One of the things I was thinking about at the time was how a lot of albums tend to start in this very focused place, and then kind of drift off towards the end in different directions. I wanted to harness that same dynamic curve, but invert it. In a lot of ways, stylistically, this album is way more cohesive in the second half. It kind of begins as this ball bouncing back and forth—an up and down thing. And then the ball stops bouncing as high and kind of settles into this very comfortable place where that album lands. For me, the final resting place of the album was always [album closer] “An Extra Beat For You And Me”—that was kind of the point of the whole process. That’s the song that I feel like I wrote this whole album to get to. And “Angel’s Eye” and “Perfect Hand” were the two songs that were most different stylistically, so I think they worked best in the beginning of the album. I didn’t want to cut those songs because there wasn’t a good place for them, so I put them one-two in the sequencing.

And I’m going to spare you from going over this whole album, track-by-track, because I really could, but I wanted to touch base on a few of them. “Dancing in the Club” was one of my favorite songs of last year and it has this immortal line in there—“But a loser never wins/ And I'm a loser, always been.” I love it because it claims ownership over that. Indie music is supposed to be for losers and this song really feels like it belongs to indie fans. Did you have it in mind for this song to be a kind of defiant mantra?

Yeah—that’s the joke. It’s a club song by a person who would never get into the club. That song is funny because it ended up being produced in such a hyper specific style, even though it came from a place of simplicity. I was trying to write melodies that would function on their own without the assistance of any chord progression or things. I wrote about 90% of the melody and lyrics to that song walking around outside with nothing else going on. I like the idea of melody that sounds just natural when you’re humming it, walking through the woods. When you go that route, the lyrics that tend to fall into place have a certain melancholy. I was listening to a ton of Shane MacGowan at the time. Someone had sent me “Fairytale of New York,” which I had somehow never heard before—because a song on a Lorelei album reminded them of it. And then I went down this Shane MacGowan rabbit hole and thought to myself, ‘fuck, I have not written a real song in my life.” I've written joke songs, essentially, and he was someone who's tapping into the essence of the human condition that's relevant in rock music but also feels ancient. Basically, I listened to Shane MacGowan, had a panic attack, and realized I needed to write a good song.

I saw MJ Lenderman perform a cover of that song a few weeks ago. I know you two are friends. He has an interesting downtempo take, which I thought was great. What were your initial reactions to his version?

I heard him do it before he was playing it live and thought it was really cool. He’s got that voice—that very specific vocal delivery that can just communicate emotion. There are lots of really good singers who don't have that. There are lots of really bad singers who are great at singing, because they do have that. And he’s a great singer. I’d never really written a song with the idea of someone else covering so fundamentally in mind, before writing “Dancing in the Club.”

So, you wrote that song with the idea that it could specifically be covered by MJ Lenderman?

Not specifically by him, but I did have the idea that it could be covered. You want to write a song that other people want to sing—artistically, that's the dream. To have one of your songs leak through into the canon of songs that people play when they think of songs to play. That’s one half of the dream. The other half of it is like—it’d be really nice to have a cash cow.

Next stop, Sabrina Carpenter is covering that one.

Exactly. Or some country dude. And that's why it was really cool hearing Jake [MJ Lenderman] play it, because he showed it could be transposed into that country sound. For me, the main mark of a certain kind of song that is really good, is how it translates into being done in different styles. 

My favorite song of last year was “Where’s Your Love Now.” It reminds me of a modern day Beach Boys song and it feels to me equally about finding power in sobriety and emotional independence, outside of a relationship. Was that a ripped-from-the-headlines experience? Is that song autobiographical?

Yeah, I would say that song, at least more than anything else, was an autobiographical one. Most of the songs on the album are, it's just a question of how many layers removed they are. Sometimes it works better to push it a little further away, like “Angel’s Eye”, which kind of has its own narrative, or “Perfect Hand”, which just devolves into wordplay. But “Where’s Your Love Now” was definitely one that I wanted to remove as many of those layers as possible. I wasn't trying to write any particular kind of thing, but that’s just what happens sometimes. A lot of these songs went from not existing to being fully recorded and largely mixed in two or three hours. Nothing good ever comes from sitting down and trying to write a song. In my experience, it just has to happen organically, and then you have to latch on to that moment.

Again—you have such a wide range of sounds and approaches and genres on the album and there seem to be countless influences. One of the few songs that I view as having a direct forebear is “Two Legs,” which has this very Elliott Smith, “XO” feel to it. Were you listening to him at the time of making this album? Did he have an impact on the sound of that particular song at least?

He's someone who’s deeply ingrained in my songwriting. When I was about 15, someone gave me a copy of “Figure 8” on CD, and that blew my mind. His sense of arrangements on the “XO” and “Figure 8” period is something that has always stuck with me. I mean, with Elliott Smith, you can't be a guy who double tracks your softly sung vocals without that being the first thing that everyone thinks about. I knew what I was doing, but it actually started off as more of a Ram/Wings thing really, which sort of overlaps with Elliott Smith. In terms of production style, I was definitely thinking of Paul McCartney primarily, but I doubt I could have made it through that whole thing without at least thinking of Elliott Smith a few times. 

I read that you view This is Lorelei as kind of a low-priority side project. Are you surprised at all that the album has resonated the way that it has?

It’s been a shocker. Because Lorelei predates Water From Your Eyes by five years or so. It’s the oldest running thing of mine, and so I'm very used to it not being something that elicits any sort of response, which I was always fine with, because it was kind of my secret thing. But I do feel like it turned into a more serious project at some point, slowly over the last five years. I'm really glad that it's happening on this album, as opposed to some of the others. 

You’ve always been super prolific—have you been working on follow-up This is Lorelei songs to this album? What about Water From Your Eyes? 

I'm kind of constantly flipping back and forth. I'm working on writing new Lorelei stuff now and the next Water From Your Eyes album is done—it’s in the bag. The idea is to alternate years with those projects, at least as long as I can keep up with it. 

So, Water From Your Eyes will be touring and putting out an album out this year?

Yeah—it’s going to come out later this year—it'll be announced soon. There’s a bunch of stuff planned for this year for Water From Your Eyes and I would love for another Lorelei album to come out next year, in 2026.

Are you excited to be coming back to San Francisco? Water from Your Eyes has played here plenty. But I think this will be the first This is Lorelei appearance?

This is going to be the first time that Lorelei has played any further west than Chicago, unless I'm forgetting something. I'm really excited to be playing in San Francisco. It’s funny how different touring can feel with different bands. I never really realized that until this last Lorelei tour. I'm so used to going on tour as Water From Your Eyes, which has a very specific headspace to be in every night. And it's just different touring with Lorelei. But I think we are all excited to be coming out to California now.

Show Details:
This is Lorelei with Starcleaner Reunion
Where: Café Du Nord
When: 8 p.m., Thursday, April 3
Tickets: $27, available here.

Oakland’s Kathryn Mohr Stuns With Stirring Debut Album, “Waiting Room”

Photo Credit: Senny Mau

The myth of the origin story has a long and uncomfortable history of overshadowing the works it's credited with inspiring.

For years, Justin Vernon had to answer questions about his solitary sojourn in the woods when explaining the making of Bon Iver’s 2008 masterpiece, “For Emma, Forever Ago.” The members of Pink Floyd couldn’t discuss their epic prog-rock adventure, “Wish You Were Here,” without recalling the time they were visited by their tragically unrecognizable former bandmate, Syd Barrett. For generations, historians linked “Wheatfield With Crows” with the apocryphal tale that Van Gogh immediately shot himself after completing the painting.

But at the risk of continuing a legacy that’s uneven at best, it would be impossible to talk about Kathryn Mohr’s hauntingly gorgeous new album, “Waiting Room,” without providing some context about how the record was crafted.

To create her eerie post-rock tour-de-force, the Oakland-based musician decamped to Stöðvarfjörður, a tiny fishing village in Iceland. Mohr spent most of her 30-day stay at the coastal hamlet ensconced inside a crumbling warehouse, which had only recently been repurposed from a fish factory into a studio space for local artists.

The result of that month-long trial-by-ice is a spectral 11-track album marked by negative space, absent melodies and cavernous atmospherics. “Waiting Room” is a ghostly, oddly thrilling experience and the warehouse is its omnipresent co-creator.

“I’ve always been really drawn to abandoned buildings,” said Mohr, who will perform at Indexical in Santa Cruz on Saturday, March 22. “I have a real affinity with the energy that’s left there. I wanted to capture what I felt like was a really unique and beautiful situation. It was an opportunity to document a place, while also writing songs that were inside of me, because I felt like I had a lot of songs to get out.”

A native of the South Bay, Mohr has been creating atonal, challenging no-wave music for the past half decade, pulling from disparate sources like Sovietwave and Yoko Ono’s primal scream endeavors. 

Eventually, a demo of hers made its way to Jonathan Tuttle, the owner of the venerable San Francisco music label The Flenser. Home to an array of virtuosic black metal, darkwave and other left-of-the-dial outfits, there could not be a label in America more suited for Mohr’s talents.

Through The Flenser, Mohr connected with ambient drone specialist Madeline Johnston of Midwife. In 2022, the two decamped to Johnston’s isolated farmhouse in New Mexico to record Mohr’s stirring EP, “Holly,” setting a precedent of sorts for the secluded creative process that powers “Waiting Room.”

Because, make no mistake about it, it’s difficult to imagine this record being made anywhere else. After hearing about the fish factory from a friend who is a visual recording artist, Mohr arrived in Iceland with a rough sketch of songs she wanted to record. However, she abandoned those ideas early on in the process, instead opening herself up to the inspirations of her Iceland environs.

“I scrapped everything I had and really just had no expectations of myself,” said Mohr. “I flipped a switch in my brain and said, ‘I don’t have to do anything, I don’t have to make music.’ And once I did that, I sat down and started writing. There was this sort of emptiness in my mental space—I was very alone and isolated. There was nobody. I just embraced that feeling.”

Empty noise brims throughout the record—every missing note hums with tape hiss or pulsing feedback. That ghostly apparition is a character that recurs throughout “Waiting Room,” a lurking specter hiding in the recesses of the vast, cavernous industrial plant. You can practically see the wintry breath that accompanies each song.

Mohr recorded nearly the entire record in a large windowless room, and that harshness bleeds into the songs. “Diver,” the album opener, is an austere acoustic number, with Mohr’s simple guitar strumming rising barely above her voice, which mordantly repeats, “This comfort/Discomfort is bad for your health /but what can we do / when it comes to you?” 

“Driven” follows much of the same pace, a brooding elegy where Mohr’s voice sounds like it’s carried off in the wind and “Petrified” is an ambling anti-folk number—a Julien Baker-inflected piece that has been plunged into cold, dark waters. 

For “Waiting Room,” Mohr mostly eschews the analog synth and electronica-infused pieces of her earlier work, instead relying on quiet acoustic guitars and strange sonic manipulations. On “Take It” and “Elevator” the guitars are louder and noisier, but the album is mostly marked by its somberness and discomfiting placidity. The most notable contributions are the field recordings of the warehouse and the Icelandic countryside captured by Mohr. 

“It was really magical to be able to record all those sounds,” said Mohr. “There’s the wind and the water, but also this buzzing fluorescent light. I always listen to shortwave radio whenever I’m recording, and I was able to incorporate that as well.”

Elements of Grouper, Slint and a host of bands from The Flenser can be heard in “Waiting Room,” but the vibe is unmistakably Mohr’s. While she acknowledges the profundity and brilliance of those artists, Mohr said she typically avoids listening to those musicians when making albums.

“I love those bands. I love Grouper—I love her [Liz Harris] methodology and the beauty of her music,” said Mohr. “But I can’t really listen to it too much, because it makes me so emotional and sad. I need music that takes me away from my emotions.”

While she might not take direct inspiration from those acts, she manages to attain the same elusive goal of those outfits—to create beauty from darkness. 

“Waiting Room” is a sad, unnerving record, but there are countless moments of unmistakable reverie contained within its unforgiving settings. Like witnessing the gnarled, glazed branches of a tree after an ice storm or appreciating the crumbling grandeur of post-industrial landscapes, “Waiting Room” is a pursuit to find grace in the unconventional. 

That dichotomy has been recognized by numerous music critics and publications. Pitchfork, music’s most venerable tastemaker, awarded the album its coveted Best New Music label.

“I think music criticism is flawed, but it’s still very flattering,” said Mohr. “I discovered so much amazing music from Pitchfork as a teenager. To receive that kind of attention—and to read something that captured my intent so articulately—was pretty surreal.”

Surreal is an apt way to sum up the entire “Waiting Room” experience. It is an album of vast, oceanic landscapes and cloistered rooms—is it both claustrophobic and boundless. 

To find that balance, Mohr needed to travel to the far reaches of the globe. As a result, we are all able to steal a fortunate glimpse into that wholly unique world.

Show Details:
Kathryn Mohr with Still House Plants
Where: Indexical
When: 8:30 p.m., Saturday, March 22
Tickets: $20, available here.

Soccer Mommy Delivers Predictably Great Performance at the Fillmore

There are few things more reliable than a Soccer Mommy record. 

For the past seven years, Sophia Regina Allison, the brainchild behind Soccer Mommy, has released a series of vulnerable and elegantly crafted indie pop albums. Her 2018 debut album, “Clean,” introduced her as an emotionally raw, lovelorn singer-songwriter. Subsequent Soccer Mommy releases have added more gauze and sonic layering to the barebones, lo-fi offerings of that initial record, but the basic template has remained the same—Allison singing plaintively about heartbreak, loss and self-doubt over fuzzy tunes that recall 90s alternative rock acts such as Hole and Liz Phair. 

On Saturday night at the Fillmore, Allison and her band brought that same dependable energy to a sold-out crowd, the second of her two gigs at the venerable venue as part of her headlining slot for this year’s annual Noise Pop Fest.

Drawing heavily from her celebrated 2024 release, “Evergreen,” Allison performed faithful, emotive versions of her studio albums, blasting through her setlist with the able backing of her four-piece touring band.

Other than a few friendly thank-yous to the receptive Fillmore crowd, Allison kept the stage banter to a minimum, befitting an artist whose priorities always seem to favor substance and productivity over performative, superficial statements.

The crowd reacted warmly to the nine songs Allison performed off “Evergreen,” but perhaps the biggest response came to her set closer, “Your Dog,” the defiant screed against abusive relationships that’s long been a “Clean” favorite.

Following a brief sojourn backstage (very brief—Allison really doesn’t seem to have time for silly theatrics), the band came back for a two-song encore. She closed out her performance with a fiery performance of “Don’t Ask Me,” a powerful shoegaze track from 2022’s acclaimed album, “Sometimes, Forever.”

It was a thrilling end to a predictably great show. We’ve been trained to expect brilliance from Soccer Mommy, and on Saturday night Allison and company more than lived up to that promise.  

Al Harper Highlights Standout Collection of Local Artists At This Year’s Noise Pop Fest

Photo Credit: Kari Orvik

The early musical memories of San Francisco-based musician Al Harper sound cribbed straight from the pages of the great American songbook—a sort of portrait of an artist as a young woman. 

Growing up in Bakersfield, Harper spent the days of her youth travelling with her dad in his 1969 convertible, blasting tunes from the old Sounds of the Seventies tape compilations, which featured classic acts such as Fleetwood Mac, Linda Ronstadt and The Carpenters.

However, it wasn’t until years later, after seeing those artists without the lens of rose-colored glasses, that Harper was able to truly appreciate those bands—to hear the musicianship above the memories.

“That was always my dad’s kind of music—something that I would sing just with him,” said Harper. “But then when I was in my 20s, I started listening to those artists again and realized that they’re amazing. Not just the hits of bands like Fleetwood Mac, but their whole albums—they were all so technically gifted. I began to understand that my love for that music wasn’t just based on nostalgia.” 

Now, Harper deftly captures those vintage sounds, reimagining the light textures and soft passages of Laurel Canyon songwriters, 70s studio acts like Todd Rundgren and the country Americana of her native Bakersfield to create music that feels revivalist but also contemporary. 

Her latest release, 2024’s “The Analemma Observation League,” is full of buoyant, jaunty and joyful pop nuggets—a collection of sun-dappled tunes that feel perfect for the open road or a day at the park. 

On Sunday, Harper will play selections from that album at the Kilowatt as part of the annual Noise Pop Festival. A multi-day musical extravaganza taking place at dozens of venues in San Francisco and Oakland, the festival recently announced a sterling addition of local artists, highlighted by acts like Harper. 

The depth and breadth of the bands affirm San Francisco’s always-solid standing as an incubator of creativity, and Harper stands out as a unique element of that scene. After being inspired by a couple of childhood visits to the city, Harper enrolled in San Francisco State University upon her graduation from high school. Once enrolled, she immediately fell in with a group of scrappy, like-minded musicians (included in that cohort was Mike Ramos, the purveyor of the opaque, exploratory outfit Tony Jay, a frequent collaborator with Harper.)

As the case with most DIY-inspired artists, Harper embraced lo-fi, punk leanings, focusing on the power of performance and immediacy over technical prowess. It was only after a long musical voyage—one that included a sojourn to New York City for a few years (that was briefly delayed after a frightening car accident)—that Harper began to feel comfortable sounding fresh and fuzz-free.

“I felt really shy at first about having this crisp, clean sound, because in my heart, I’m a lo-fi kind of person,” said Harper. “But that kind of approach just didn’t feel true to what I was writing. Logistically, I really just want to sing—that’s my main instrument. And it’s pretty hard to sing well in that lo-fi, noisy environment. It was definitely scary to have everything be so clear and straightforward, especially because I grew up in this scene that wasn’t really doing that thing.”

While those initial fears might have delayed Harper’s embrace of a more polished sound, her instincts are more than validated on “The Analemma Observation League.” The second full-length release under her own name, following 2021’s “Promises I Kept,” the album showcases Harper’s powerful, clarion-clear vocals. Evoking luminaries such as Stevie Nicks, Kate Bush and Jenny Lewis, Harper’s warm and rich deliveries add a degree of hushed approachability to the songs.

Standout tracks on the album include opener “Day One of the Sunflower,” a lush, brimming statement filled with lilting harmonies, and an inspired cover of Melanie’s 1971 release, “Some Day I’ll Be A Farmer.” At the centerpiece of the record is “Let Me Be,” a magnum opus of sorts, combining jaunty melodies, vibrant keys and beautiful group vocals.

“’Let Me Be’ was a long time in the making—something I pieced together over like a decade,” said Harper. “I had this verse I was messing around with for years, and then I saw that Beatles documentary that everyone was watching during the pandemic and was kind of inspired to finish that song. I was never really a major Beatles fan growing up—I just didn’t listen to them for whatever reason—but seeing the production efforts in that documentary really motivated me to finish that song.”

Appropriating Beatles-like production efforts is a far cry from her halcyon days as a punk rocker, but Harper pulls it off seamlessly on “The Analemma Observation League” (an analemma is a diagram of the sun when photographed from the same time and place over a year). Working alongside prolific local producer Jason Kick, Harper played most of the instruments on the album, wielding everything from guitar to percussion to Wurlitzer organs to her own field recordings.

Although her sound sets her apart from the gloriously ramshackle janglepop of Slumberland bands like Chime School and the Umbrellas, and the eerie tape-hiss beauty of outfits like Tony Jay, April Magazine and Cindy, Harper is not completely alone in her adoption of the shimmering and sunny. Other local groups like Silverware and Yea-Ming and the Rumors harness a similar kind of aesthetic.

“At first, I was like, ‘oh my gosh,’ who am I going to play with now,’” said Harper. “But this scene here is special. Honestly, I feel like that’s what keeps me going, to keep pushing through on this level. We’re not doing this for the money—we’re doing this for pure love. We have a very healthy little ecosystem going on here.”

Harper closes out her album with “This Time Take Time.” A hymnal that sounds like a Christmas Noel for people who celebrate the holidays in the desert, the song is a self-help mantra that serves as a NorthStar for her winding, wending journey. 

“I actually thought of the last song after walking my baby around in a stroller,” said Harper. “I just had this epiphany to let things happen and not worry too much about them. When you’re putting out an album, you don’t know what’s going to happen—you don’t know if anyone will actually ever hear it. So, I just set my mind to put this out into the world and let it go. I wanted to appreciate things as they come, and not take this too seriously.”

Show Details:
Al Harper with Marika Christine and Uncle Chris
Where: Kilowatt
When, 8 p.m., Sunday, February 23
Tickets: $20, available here.

Wild Pink Bring New Muscularity to The Independent For Two Sold-Out Shows

Photo Credit: Fire Talk Records

During the early days of Wild Pink, the heartland rock band won a loyal following for making music both devastatingly earnest and exceedingly delicate. Led by the soft cooing of chief songwriter (and sole permanent member) John Ross, the group created worlds of fragile beauty, imbued by quiescent synths and plaintive piano pieces. 

As such, Wild Pink studio albums were drenched in somnambulant atmospherics and wistful, gossamer thin assemblies. The hushed nature of the songs and their multilayered production methods, however, made it difficult for Ross and company to faithfully replicate that sound in a live setting. And with the band touring increasingly more behind a steady output of great albums, being able to authentically transfer the sounds of the studio onto the stage took on greater importance for Ross.

The result of that redirected philosophy was last year’s majestically weighty album, “Dulling the Horns.” Easily the heaviest record in the band’s oeuvre, “Dulling the Horns” finds Wild Pink exploring chugging guitar riffs, feedback-laden dissonance and cascades of metallic sonic manipulations. Wild Pink might have once moved like a lithe featherweight, but now the band has bulked up into the heavyweight division, and audiences are hearing the fully realized sounds of a group embracing its muscularity.

“I think ‘Dulling the Horns’ came from me feeling kind of frustrated with how I was doing some of the songs live,” said Ross. “There was some studio stuff that just didn’t translate—certainly my vocal delivery didn’t sound the same. I just wanted this album to feel fun—to have the record sound just like the live show. We haven’t really done that much before.”

On February 17 and 18, Wild Pink will bring that newfound heft to The Independent, where they will open for acclaimed singer-songwriter MJ Lenderman (it’s a lineup that truly deserves the title of dream billing.)

Ross and Wild Pink provided a glimpse into this bigger, denser approach with 2022’s “ILYSM,” a sprawling and adventurous album that delved into an array of industrial-leaning directions while topping out at the one-hour mark. But nothing on that release approaches the immensity of songs like “Cloud or Mountain” or “Disintegrate,” two standouts tracks from “Dulling the Horns” that act as sturdy exemplars of the album.

“Cloud or Mountain” starts off innocently enough with a string of brisk guitar strums, but at the 10-second mark the song collapses on itself, as those brief lilting moments are crushed by a wave of crunchy distortion. Much in the same vein is “Disintegrate,” which is marked by stomping kickdrums, thick basslines and grunge guitar aesthetics (also, saxophones!) On the latter song, Ross pushes his vocals into a new register, evoking an urgency and desperation not often heard in other Wild Pink tunes. He said that track was inspired by “Save it for Later,” a jaunty number by new wave legends the English Beat.

“’Disintegrate’ is definitely one of my favorite songs on the album,” said Ross. “Again, it was about just having fun making a song. I really wanted to embrace that approach for the album.”

That feeling of levity is noticed throughout “Dulling the Horns,” a reaction of sorts to the stern and serious undertones of “ILYSM.” A confrontation with his 2022 cancer diagnosis, “ILYSM” was understandably anguished thematically and lyrically (Ross is now cancer-free and healthy.) 

“Dulling the Horns” is more relaxed and jocular, evidenced by songs like the “Eating the Egg Whole,” a skittering, quick-moving piece that references late 90s sports arcana, including commentary on Michael Jordan’s iconic wardrobe choices.

Ironically, Lenderman wrote a similarly wry ode to His Airness back in 2022, when he penned the “Hangover Game,” a hilariously conspiratorial take on Jordan’s heroic “Flu Game” in the 1997 NBA Finals.

“You know, I told him I had not heard his song yet when I wrote ‘Eating the Egg Whole’—I swear that was just a coincidence,” said Ross. “That said, I’m sure we’re going to have plenty of conversations about 90s NBA basketball.”

Jordan is among a number of famous (and infamous) persons that populate “Dulling the Horns,” with Ross also name-checking David Koresh, Lefty Ruggiero and the death cult Heaven’s Gate. Ross said there was no grand narrative tying everyone together (an idea that Jordan would likely appreciate, given the sordid reputations of the others.)

“Sometimes songs make more sense after the fact,” said Ross. “I don’t really know why those people and names popped up in my brain. It’s just really fun to write about other people, to kind of turn attention away from yourself for a moment.”

That sense of seeking joy is consistently cited by Ross when describing the entire infrastructure of “Dulling the Horns”—from the cheeky, impish tales that account for the lyrical output of the album, to the blown-out sound that makes for a raucous, rocking live show. Based on the euphoric reaction to the album—it was lauded by critics and named best rock record of the year by Paste Magazine—Ross’ blissful instincts have paid off.

After surviving such an intense health scare, it’s no surprise that Ross is eager to embrace a lighter, more easy going attitude—a feeling that can be easily transferable to the crowds assembled at Wild Pink shows, now that the band has a more honed formula for bringing their music to the masses.  

“I feel very fucking lucky—like I dodged a bullet,” said Ross. “I didn’t have to do chemo or anything dramatic like that. It really inspired me to appreciate what I have—to keep my output high and really make music that’s fun to listen to. I’ve made challenging records. Now I’m here for the fun ones.”

Show Details:
Wild Pink with MJ Lenderman and the Wind
Where: The Independent 
When: 8 p.m., Monday, February 17 and Tuesday, February 18
Tickets: Sold Out!

Broken Dreams Club Interview: Stuart Murdoch

Photo Credit: Stuart Murdoch

As the chief songwriter for beloved Glaswegian indie-pop group Belle and Sebastian, Stuart Murdoch has created some of the most memorable musical characters of the past 30 years.

Whether illustrating a teenager’s love for equines, speculating on the sexual orientation of a professional baseball player, documenting a trove of irreverent sinners, lamenting the lost potential of brilliant artists or cataloging despondent loners, Murdoch has long demonstrated a singular capacity for world-building in four-minute time frames.

So, it should come as no surprise that he’s written his first novel. 

Largely autobiographical the novel, “Nobody’s Empire,” captures the protagonist, Stephen, as he battles myalgic encephalomyelitis (commonly referred to as chronic fatigue syndrome), an ailment that Murdoch has contended with for more than 30 years. In the novel–named after a 2019 Belle and Sebastian song–Stephen befriends another isolated teen, Kira, before eventually setting off for a transformative trip to California–events that mirror Murdoch’s life.  

On Monday, February 10 at The Chapel, Murdoch will sit down with Slumberland Records founder Mike Schulman and local artist Nommi Alouf to discuss “Nobody’s Empire.” 

Prior to that, Murdoch spoke with Broken Dreams Club about the challenges of his illness, visiting San Francisco, transitioning into novel writing and what’s next for him and his band. 

For starters—how is this book tour going? How has the experience been so far?

It’s working out great—I'm really enjoying it. I mean that in a practical sense. I'm a bit under the weather at the moment, so that's the kind of downside. But then the upside is everything else. It feels like I’m just travelling around, carrying a suitcase full of stories with And with the format so far, it’s almost like an American football game, with four quarters. I start with doing readings and we play some music clips. Then we do the interview with the host and I then play some songs acoustically. And then we finish with a Q and A. It's a nice variety for an evening—everything moves quite smoothly. 

You’ve spent the last 30 years on tour, for the most part. What’s it like to be travelling now, by yourself? With no band and only a book in hand—as you say just carrying a suitcase full of stories? 

I’ve always been quite reticent since the band started to actually get out my guitar, and do something by myself, because, you know—I fought so hard to get my band, I don’t want to be without them. But I think this has been a perfect situation for me–to kind of combine a few things by playing music and doing the reading. It’s almost like, if you have that tool in your arsenal, then why not use it? If I was just supporting a book, and I was just going to visit book shops, it wouldn't be so much fun, and you also wouldn’t get that many people showing up. It’s been nice to mix things up a bit.

I don’t think anyone is in the least bit surprised that you’ve written a book, given your novelistic approach to your songwriting. From the very beginning, Belle and Sebastian introduced such rich, fully developed characters. You go all the way back to the “State I’m In,” which is probably the first Belle and Sebastian song many people heard, and there is this central character who feels so real and multi-dimensional. Where did that approach come from—was it the result of being an avid reader?

I think there's such a huge difference—it’s almost like a through-the-looking-glass thing. There are two sides of this endeavor—one of being a consumer of artistic things, and the other to be a producer. They’re so separate and different. Because I can remember trying to write songs in this era when I was consuming a lot of music and reading books all the time, and I just couldn't do it. It wasn’t until I went through this illness and disaster, and years of being in this kind of vacuum that I actually found my own voice. And there’s not many things I set out to do. It just kind of comes out that way, and that's genuine. We were talking about this last night in Toronto, and I think it all comes back to the illness. It all comes back to my life stopping when I was 20. I had these four, five, six years of very little happening. And instead of being part of the world, I had to just be the observer. And at that point, I started to romanticize about the people that I was observing. I could be sitting in a laundry, and somebody would come in, put their wash in, and leave, and I would write a song about them. There was so much that I extrapolated. I wondered what their life was like, because I was standing still. So, I put those thoughts and movements into my songs.

Back to “Nobody’s Empire.” You started writing this book in 2019, right? What prompted the decision to write a novel?

Yeah, it was a kind of lazy decision. I wanted to do something creative that wasn't out of the realm of the band. I thought I might do a comic novel, and it actually started like that. I was supplying pages to a friend of mine, Graham, who was illustrating them, but once I got going, it sort of quickly outstripped the pace that he could write. And I thought, I'm ‘I'm just going to keep going with this and see where it goes.’

How daunting was this task? You’ve been writing almost mini-novels your whole life in the forms of your songs—did they prepare you at all for this endeavor?

I think I was probably just naturally building up to this. I remember Stuart [David] from the band in the early days, he used to write novels, and I thought that was amazing. It was like the moon to me that somebody could just sit down and fill page upon page of thoughts and observations. But again, I'm quite lazy. I don't try too hard. It’s great if you're going to start somewhere, to do what I’m doing. Like “This Side of Paradise,” or “A Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man,” just this side-step from what actually happened. It wasn't this huge amount of invention.

And the novel shares the same title as the 2019 Belle and Sebastian song that opened “Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance,” which captures the struggles you’ve had with chronic fatigue syndrome. When you wrote that song, did you have any idea that you could expand it into a novel?

Not at all, actually. Even that song surprised me at the time, because although I've been writing inadvertently about ME for years, that was the first time that I'd really sort of captured it in the era and the time when it happened. It was actually years later when I did actually write about those initial experiences. I was doing some live readings of some of the passages before the book was fully written, and somebody afterwards on Facebook commented, ‘oh, you should call your book “Nobody’s Empire.”’ I immediately realized that that would be the obvious title.

You’ve been very candid about your struggles with chronic fatigue syndrome. When you were first diagnosed, what were those early periods like? I can imagine that must have been incredibly frustrating, since so little was known about the disease at the time.

It was a psychological nightmare. It's like the rug is pulled right out from under you and your life is stopped completely. And nobody can tell you what's going on. There is no road map to recovery–not even a road map to being ill. I remember going to see a specialist, and he was very nice and said, ‘look, we don't know much about this. You know more about this than we do.’ And then he sent me home, and that was it.

The main character in the book, Stephen, obviously shares so many similarities with you. Was there ever any thought of writing a memoir instead of a novel?

Again, I really didn’t think too much about it. The moment that I wrote the first page, it set the tone. I gave Stephen a name, and everything just felt natural to me. It wasn't really until I finished the book and my agent was like, ‘what is this? Is this autofiction?’ I didn't even know what that was. He said, ‘well, it's not a straight memoir,’ and I said, well, it can be whatever you want it to be. But in the end, I'm happy that they called it fiction.

In the book, Stephen meets Carrie, who is also dealing with health issues. I think people can make all sorts of assumptions about who Carrie might represent—is she based in real life? Or was that character completely made up?

She is very much based on my best friend, Kira. Kira is on the cover of “If You’re Feeling Sinister,” and she's my best friend to this day. The friendship is the absolute core of the book—I meet her on page two and that’s where the magic is. Everything just flows from there—that friendship. And there is a little bit of, ‘well, If they're so close, why aren’t they a couple?’ It’s definitely the central relationship in the book.

With a subject matter that hewed so closely to your life, did it feel liberating to write “Nobody’s Empire?” Or was it scary to be that open?

I don't find anything scary. When you've been through something like ME and you're still going through it, and you've had really bad depression and all that stuff, creativity and being open is actually almost a relief—it’s like the counterpoint. It's a consolation to be so open about this. It's almost like an excuse to be completely, well—not necessarily brave, but just out there. Kira is the same way—where it's sort of bred in us—this inborn sort of stubbornness and openness, because we know what life is. Life is too short, and we've wasted so much time being ill—so we’re just going to tell it how it is. Since the start of Belle and Sebastian, that's always been my driving thing. I have no qualms about it. I will never turn away from getting up on a stage because the alternative is darkness and that is no fun at all.

A central part of the novel and a central part of your life story is this journey to California. You’ve talked in the past about how transformative that experience was for you, and I know that you lived in San Francisco for a short while. Why was that moment in your life so important for you?

Well, it was an accidental thing to be honest. It could have been Melbourne, or it could have been Nice. In the book—and what happened in the book did kind of happen to us—the boys just picked a place to get away for the winter and be warm in a Mediterranean climate. In real life, we actually picked San Diego because we heard it had the best weather all around. But the thing is— the plane landed in San Francisco first. We were there for a few days before we continued our journey. San Francisco was really the first city outside of Glasgow I spent any time in. It got its hooks into me really quickly. And so we went down to San Diego, and that's written about in the book, but I was always getting pulled back to the Bay. San Francisco was such a contrast to Glasgow and there was an obvious liberation happening there. We started to literally feel better because of the weather and there was a lot of baggage that was lifted there. I know it’s a cliché, but when you come to a new city, especially one California, you can be whoever the hell you want to be. In Glasgow, there were a lot of people that still wanted you to stay in your place. They would look down their nose at you if you wanted to try and be a songwriter. It really did all happen in California for us.

And, like every novelist, you have to determine when the story ends. How did that process work for you? 

I remember the advice that a friend of mine, Barry Mendel, gave me. He was the producer in a movie I made called “God Help The Girl.” When I was writing that movie, he said, ‘whatever you do, before you start writing, just decide where it starts and where it stops.’ And so, I used that for the book. I did at least know that much when I set out to write it. I knew it started when I met with Kira, and I knew it was going to finish two years later, just when I came back from the trip. That at least was set in stone. But actually, it's funny, because the American part originally was only meant to be about the last 20 percent of the book. It contrasts nicely with the first half—where we really don't go out of our postcode area. Suddenly, the two of us are in California and more starts to happen. And I ended up writing much more than I thought I would about that trip.

Going back to San Francisco—you’ll be returning here on Monday, to speak at the Chapel. Are your experiences coming back to San Francisco always special moments for you? Anything you’re particularly looking forward to seeing here?

I just let it happen. Sometimes, when you're on tour, you don't get a chance to do all the things you want to do, but in San Francisco it tends to be different. There’s a character called Jeannie in the book, and I get to hang with the real Jeannie in San Francisco, which is great. She's remained a firm friend for years. Actually, the last time I was there, in May, we rolled up to Oakland, and I was, as usual, really sick. I got off the bus and I went for acupuncture, and it was like a Saturday morning, and the center said they could take me, but I would have to be in a class where I was part of a demonstration. I went into this kind of lecture theater, and they put me on a table. And there were like, 50 Chinese students learning acupuncture, and I was the subject. There was this very good healing vibe about, and they were all smiling and happy to be there. I was ‘like, San Francisco, you've done it again.’ I got out of the acupuncture and I thought I should really go back to the bus and rest, but then I just said ‘fuck it, I'm getting on the BART’, and I ended up in Mission Dolores Park. I made it there and met my friend Heather, and we just caught up and it was such an amazing day.

You’ll be speaking with Mike Schulman from Slumberland Records and Nommi Alouf. You mentioned these book talks as almost “American football games with four quarters.” What can we expect on Monday?

The fun thing about every talk so far—and I've done this in the UK as well—is that every night, it's a different host. Every day goes in a different direction. We don't know where it's going to go, and I'm really happy about that. This will be the first time that there's two hosts and Nommi is kind of in the book–she’s represented by this character called Sharon, who is a DJ that Stephen runs into. But I think it will be that kind of slightly misty thing, where it’s kind of hard to tell what will happen.

Looking ahead—any other novels in your future? Or was this a one-time endeavor?

I love storytelling and I guess music is what I'm best at. But I'm always just waiting for the next thing. My radar is on all the time. I think on the whole, I'll probably do less Belle and Sebastian stuff in the next 10 or so years, and try to do slightly different creative endeavors. I'm not sure if I'll end up writing another book, but I always feel very creative, and I know that time is short.

Belle and Sebastian played a bunch of shows last year, but nothing is scheduled for 2025. Do you all have any live dates in the offing? 

We’re going to wait until 2026 and we're going to some bigger shows. Usually, we start recording music right after we're done touring, but I wanted a little break. I wanted a chance to maybe think about doing something else. Those guys are all doing their own thing, I mean, Stevie [Jackson] is recording just now, Chris [Geddes] and David [McGowan] are writing together, Sarah [Martin] is writing. Everybody's doing their own thing.

What about new music? You all have been incredibly prolific over your career. “Late Developers” came out in 2023—can we expect new music soon?

Yeah--there won't be an album, which is what I was kind of hinting at. I personally want to put my creativity into a different project. I've been writing different music. I'm interested in writing for choirs, actually—more like a kind of spiritual music, this kind of gospel, churchy type music. This is just early days, and I really don't know which choir I'm going to do it for, but sometimes you just gotta swing the bat the other way and see what happens.

Show Details:
Stuart Murdoch “Nobody’s Empire Book Tour”
Where: The Chapel
When: 7:30 p.m., Monday, February 10
Tickets: $30, available here. 

Will Oldham Fittingly Brings Tales of Grace to Show at Grace Cathedral

Photo Credit: David Kasnic

Tucked quietly near the end of “The Purple Bird,”—the latest album from folk-rock troubadour Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, aka Will Oldham—is an austere, finger-picked cover song of the 1980 gospel standard, “Is My Living in Vain,” originally recorded by The Clark Sisters.

A hushed and devastating testament to the power of the righteous struggle, the track acts as a serene call to stay strong despite all life’s challenges, and serves as a centerpiece of “The Purple Bird.” 

Prior to his graceful cover song, Oldham populates the album with his typical collection of absurdist characters and vignettes, ridiculing and lambasting the hypocrisy and selfishness prevalent in so many elements of our society while painting a portrait of a modern day culture that is both hilarious and horrifying.

And while the album has plenty of earnest moments, none quite touch the plaintive beauty of “Is My Living in Vain,” with Oldham delivering the chorus in a defiantly triumphant tone, stating eloquently, “No, of course not/It's not all in vain.”

“If anyone is questioning by the time they get to the 11th song on this album, how the hell does anyone keep their optimism, that track provides the answer,” said Oldham. “It’s because that optimism is born out of necessity. There is almost no other choice.” 

On Saturday, Oldham will bring those tunes to San Francisco, playing a Folk Yeah-produced show at the Grace Cathedral Church—a strangely fitting venue for an album anchored by beguilingly hopeful undertones.

Produced in Nashville, “The Purple Bird” contains all the classic elements of a record made by Oldham, who has recorded under a myriad of monikers, including the Palace Brothers, Palace Music, Superwolf and his own name. The album is filled with quirky Americana adjacent and gospel-tinged elements, bolstered at all times by Oldham’s soulful, quavering vocals and his unique characterizations of modern day life.

Never an overtly political songwriter, Oldham takes a more direct approach on “The Purple Bird,” writing painful laments on environmentalism (“Downstream”) while devilishly skewering the nation’s obsessions with firearms (“Guns Are For Cowards.”) The latter tune is a jaunty, lilting jig with shockingly direct lyrics (“Who would you shoot in the face?/Who would you shoot in the brain?”), offering a bracing juxtaposition for the strange acceptance we have for gun violence.

“There are some people who like to fight for something, and some people who just like to fight,” said Oldham. “There seems to be a significant portion of our population of our country that is just bred to fight. They’re the fighter ants of our colony.”

While “The Purple Bird” is filled with weighty themes, it’s still an Oldham production, so there are plenty of impish, ribald tunes, evoking the rapscallion nature of 70s outlaw country tunes. “The Water’s Fine” is a banjo-powered ode to the wonders of washing away your worries in the local swimming hole, while “Tonight With The Dogs I’m Sleeping,” is an uproarious recollection of drinking too much and having hell to pay from your old lady. 

With its familiar mantras (“Never liked sleeping out in the yard/But crawling up the stairs is too damn hard”) “Tonight With the Dogs I’m Sleeping,” feels like a lost B-side from a dusty cowboy bar single.

“There were four of us just sitting around the kitchen table and that song kind of just started happening,” said Oldham. “I mean, nobody spoke aloud the name Hank Williams, but we were all thinking it. Everyone was probably, consciously or subconsciously, aware that we were expanding upon the concept that Hank had tackled so well with ‘Moving on Over.’”

Although his twangy voice and his comfort with traditional American instruments (fiddles, slide guitars, mandolins) would make Oldham a natural for the Nashville scene where “The Purple Bird” was created, he’s never been one for conformity. A true outsider, Oldham grew up in the punk environs of Louisville (he’s childhood friends with the members of the legendary post-rockers Slint), and has always zigged and zagged throughout his career, departing from certain sounds, concepts and approaches right when listeners might have him pegged.

In many ways, “The Purple Bird,” is the latest example of that slippery nature. In these ridiculous times, when the baseline assumption is that music should reflect an angry and wrathful reaction to oligarchy, cruelty and bigotry, Oldham has created an album asking for grace. “The Purple Bird” is not an apologist tract for any of today’s loathsome behavior, but it does imply a somber plea for unity.

That sentiment is best captured in the understated beauty of the album’s opening track, “Turned to Dust (Rolling On),” an irony-free paean to the notion that our similarities are stronger than our differences. In that track, Oldham sings “If we rely on love to lift us higher/Things'll be all right for you and me.” 

It is simple and schmaltzy and saccharine and also undeniably true. When Oldham delivers that line, it really feels like has no option but to believe in that kind of beauty.

Show Details: 
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy with David Ferguson
Where: Grace Cathedral Church 
When: 8 p.m., Saturday, February 8 
Tickets: $58, available here.

Broken Dreams Club Interview: Tim Heidecker

Photo Credit: Chantal Anderson

As the creator of programs like “Tom Goes to the Mayor” and “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” Tim Heidecker—more so than any other artist—helped establish the absurdist, surrealist comedy stylings that are ubiquitous today. His influences can be found in everything from television commercials to programs like “The Eric Andre Show” to the work of comics like Nathan Fielder, Julio Torres, John Early and Kate Berlant.

For the past decade, however, Heidecker has also cultivated a second career as a plainspoken and earnest musician, embracing the sounds of 70s’ Laurel Canyon singer-songwriters as well as troubadours like Randy Newman and Elvis Costello. Last October, Heidecker released “Slipping Away,” his latest collection of folk-inflected rock songs. 

On February 22, Heidecker and his Very Good Band will perform at Bimbo’s 365 Club. Prior to that show, Broken Dreams Club spoke with Heidecker about the inspirations for his new album, among other topics.

Your latest tour kicks off next week here at Bimbos’ here in San Francisco. How are you all preparing for this latest batch of shows?

We’re going to rehearse this week, but the San Francisco show is going to be interesting, because we’re not doing a warm-up show first in Los Angeles, like we normally do. We’re just jumping into the deep end. It’s a whole new set, and we’re going to try some new things that I haven't done before on the road, so it's going to be a scary first show for me. I'm sure we'll learn some things. It'll be interesting to get audience feedback from the Bay Area. I mean, it will probably make for a really fun, unique show. We might make some mistakes, but I always kind of like seeing that as an audience member—that human element of the performance.

You’ve been pretty prolific touring these past few years. You’re never taking more than a few months off between shows. How important is it for you to maintain this live music schedule, and how are you able to fit this in with all your endeavors?

Once I jumped in and put this band together it started this cycle, where my first tour led to a record with the band, and then some opportunities to play some more behind that. America is so big and there's so many places to play. You can do one route one year, and then a totally different route the next year. You get to go away and not always play the same places. So, we were able to do that for a couple years and then we were able to go to Europe. You have to plan these tours so far in advance—that’s sort of the scary thing. I think we started planning this tour a year ago, and so it's just been sitting on my calendar. It’s like this slow moving train coming my way. But I'm excited to play with this band, and to get out there and check in with the people of this country, and play these songs from the record. Maybe play some songs that I haven't played live before, and do some new stand-up comedy I’m excited about.

Obviously, you first made your name for yourself through your comedy, but you’ve been playing music for most of your life as well, right? What was your introduction to music, and have you been playing pretty much consistently since you first started? I mean, music was always an integral part of Tim and Eric…

I mean, in high school, I was a big classic rock fan, big music fan. My cousin played guitar, and some of his friends played in, like, hardcore bands and punk bands. And it was just the thing to do. I wasn't a sports guy. I was kind of into theater and music, before comedy. Really, I loved comedy too, but music was something you could actually do with your friends. You could make videos and stuff with a camcorder, but you really couldn't do much more than that with comedy. But you could put a band together, and you could rent a four track tape machine, and you could play shows. So that's what I did, and that's what most of my friends  did. And so, I kind of always maintained that part of my life. And I think in the past 10 years, it's been something I’ve taken a little more seriously. I find a lot of satisfaction in songwriting and trying to make the best records possible. 

“Slipping Away” is your latest collection of slice-of-life California folk that is composed of really pretty songs, and even more, it’s just a disarmingly earnest album. Tim and Eric basically set the template for the absurdist, ironic comedy that is absolutely ubiquitous everywhere now, but you’ve said in recent interviews how it took you a while to kind of emerge from that cocoon of irony. What did it take for you to arrive as this songwriter who is really devoid of that irony—whose songs are candid and honest and plainspoken?

I think it has a little bit to do with boredom with where I was at creatively. I'm very antsy and always looking for the next thing to do, and never really satisfied with where I am. And those kinds of tendencies have always been with me. I think I sensed that I was stuck in a creative place. So, it seemed kind of natural to me that, after 10 years of sort of very deep irony and disassociation with feelings, that the most interesting or most severe turn I could make would be to be very open and honest. And it's also just better for the music. My thing is to try to hold all these things together, or hold all these things at once, and it's sort of project based. If I want to make a record, I want that record to feel as well conceived and earnest and moving as possible. And if I'm making a season of On Cinema, I want it to be the funniest, craziest, sickest, stupidest thing you've ever seen. I just want the thing that I'm making to be the as pure a version of that thing as possible.

One of the things that makes “Slipping Away” so enjoyable is that your fears and insecurities are so damn relatable. For someone who has been so insanely prolific over the years, to hear a song like “Well’s Running Dry” is almost shocking in its plaintiveness. I would never imagine that someone like you struggles with creative blocks, but it also is a reminder that you’re a human like the rest of us. Is that something you confront a lot—finding moments where inspiration just doesn’t arrive? 

I go through periods of dry spells and this mix of maybe feeling uninspired or not very creative. And I also go through periods, where there are things that I want to do, but nobody else wants me to, or that there's no market for. You know—shows don't get picked up or movies don't happen or whatever. I have plenty of that—there is plenty of rejection in my life—me and all the people I work with. And then I have feelings of procrastination, or feeling not motivated to finish something that I started—just like everyone else. I do have nice periods of productivity where things happen. But in between all those, I wallow in that kind misery of not being always clear about what to do next. 

In that same vein, you’re very humble and grounded on this album. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that you’re a titanic figure to so many people like me—the absolute pinnacle figure of creativity and comedy—yet on “Dad of the Year,” you seem to be coming to terms that your original dreams and aspirations might not ever come true. That seems almost a little unduly harsh, but also a reminder that we all face self-doubt. How do you cope with those feelings and are there moments when you can kind of indulgently reflect and realize that you have had a profound impact on a lot of people?

I appreciate that. The record came out really good, and I'm really happy with it and the feedback I get is always nice. People seem to really like it—but it's not like it was on any best-of list, you know what I mean? That’s sort of my career. I think that there is real appreciation. I hear a lot of nice stuff, but I think from the beginning, even with Tim and Eric stuff, there was always this sort of feeling of not being treated the way some other people are treated. We don’t maybe get the recognition that I think we deserve. And that that might not be your perspective, but it is mine. So, when I'm playing “Dad of the Year,” I do feel that way sometimes. 

The New York Times did a really nice story about you recently!

For sure. And not to get into the weeds of the media, but there is the kind of media where it’s like a profile or an interview or conversation, and those are always really nice. But then there's this other editorial side, that is maybe a little snobby or a little dismissive of me. And that’s probably because of the insecurity of them asking, ‘is this a joke?’ ‘Is he being sincere?’ I think there is a feeling of not really knowing. Like—where am I coming from, even though I'm very explicit about my intent.

One of the joys of your album is the commonplace things that make you happy. “Bottom of the 8th” is just a sweet song about enjoying a baseball game with your daughter. When you were in that moment, were you thinking, ‘man this would make for a good song?”

That one definitely was written on the road. It was a combination of things. My daughter is getting to the age where we can go and do things together, and it's really fun. And she loves baseball. I love baseball. We go to the games, and we can hang out like a couple of pals. You know, it's really a beautiful thing. I was literally in North Carolina in the summertime, down the street from where the Durham Bulls play. It was all swirling in my head. I sat at the piano and just started playing a song about taking my daughter to a baseball game. And it's probably because I was missing my family on the road. But yeah, it just felt like one of those songs where I was surprised it hadn't been written yet.

And then there is “Trippin (Slippin)” which is about as close as you get to the hedonistic rock n roll lifestyle. What was that experience like—eating some mushroom in a random hotel, right?

I had dabbled in that stuff years and years ago in high school, like probably a lot of suburban Gen Xers, and really hadn't returned to it in a long time. I felt very paranoid. I'm not a drug guy, and I don't do that kind of stuff very much. And I was nervous. But there is this sort of a mushroom renaissance happening the past few years and we had finished most of the tour. We had like two more shows left. We had a day off. We were in the desert, and I really had grown very close to the band and really enjoyed them, and we just got along so well. And we had a bag of mushrooms from a good, trusted source, and I thought, ‘I'll take a little bit’, you know, and that was the key. The dosage is so important. When I was 17 years old, I’d probably take, like, a whole bag of the stuff and then feel like the world was coming to an end. You find that little dose that makes you feel like things are cool and you can sit by the pool and just relax. So, I wrote that song coming from that earnest place of like, an embarrassingly honest drug song.

You have so many great contemporary musicians on Office Hours, and you’ve toured with indie rock heroes like Snail Mail and Waxahatchee. And your pals with Weyes Blood and the Lemon Twigs and Jonathan Rado. Still, a lot of your music seems drawn from that Laurel Canyon rock and Randy Newman kind of singer-songwriter era—are there any newer musicians who inspired or influenced this album?

I mean, first of all, all those people you mentioned seem to also draw from that era and that's probably why we all get along pretty well. We have the same musical language or whatever. But yeah, we had this guy, Christian Lee Hutson, on the show recently and he talked about This Is Lorelei. Do you know that guy?

Yeah—that album is one of my absolute favorites of 2024. 

Yeah. I don't listen to a lot of new music, but when I find something like that, I just listen to it all the time. I listen to it every day. And so that hopefully will turn me on to some other things. I've been listening to my own music trying to get ready for this tour. And I've been going back to early Dylan because I ended up really liking “A Complete Unknown,”—

which I was very surprised about. I thought it was going to be, you know, not good, but I ended up really liking it. I'm such a big Dylan fan. Yeah, so I started going back and listening to those early records that I hadn't listened to in a while, and kind of marveling at what just unbelievable well of creativity that was happening when he was so young.

Looking ahead to this show at Bimbo’s—are you excited to be coming back to San Francisco? Are you familiar with the venue at all?

Yeah—I'm excited. I've never been there. The past few times I've been to San Francisco, we played at the Palace of Fine Arts, which is not like my favorite room. Just kind of felt a little more like you'd see an opera there or something. But we’re happy to be playing in San Francisco. Ellie [Athayde], our bass player, is excited because her parents are from the Bay Area. She said her parents used to go to Bimbo’s when they were teenagers. 

And you’ve got Kyle Mooney opening! That’s amazing! What can we expect there? Will you be joining him at all? I know you mentioned to expect a little comedy alongside your music…

Yeah—Kyle's opening, and then I've been doing this routine. It's not my stand up character, but I've been doing this routine in LA that's really fun a little bit more for me. I haven't really talked about it very much, but I've been collecting YouTube comments and Instagram comments and Facebook comments and I've curated some conversations that I think are interesting to discuss. I've done that with a little slide show. I want to dedicate a good 20 minutes of the show to me goofing around to break up some of the music. A side of me that you probably see more on Office Hours. I'm still putting that together, but I'm excited—it will be a multimedia thing.

Is Kyle going to join for that? Or is he going to be doing his own thing?

We’ll probably overlap a little bit. It will be a new thing for this tour—picking up different, different openers along the way. We’ll have Neil Hamburger and DJ Douggpound. I’ve got this great community—not only of the audience, but of people like Neil and Doug. I’d rather just try to keep it in my little clique, and I think the audience is gonna love it.

And to transition just for a moment to some of your other endeavors. The latest season of On Cinema debuted on Christmas and it’s as epic as ever. Newman Heidecker seems to have a nice new sheen to his face.  When you and Gregg first started this, did you have any inkling at all that it would still be going 15 years later and not only that, but it would also evolve into this all-encompassing cinematic universe?

We had no idea. I mean, we started small, but it did occur to us early on that they're always going to put out movies, so we could always do this—there's always something to talk about. And once we got season four or five, we realized that you could tell some pretty interesting stories without spending a lot of money, because you can just talk about things. You don't have to really see them happen. It’s more like radio play or something. And so, it’s kind of compounded on itself, and the stories got more complicated and more involved. But at the core, there was always this grounding foundation of two guys, who hate each other, talking about movies. And every year, I think ‘does this still work?’ ‘Is this still funny?’ Even when we're shooting it, there's this uncertainty about it, but then the cuts start coming in, and we're like, ‘yep, there it is.’ I feel as happy about it as I've ever felt. And there isn't really any reason to stop, now that we're doing this paid model, the subscription model, which has been working. I'm always looking for it to expand, and we're working on getting an app and getting it so you can watch it on your TV and stuff like that. It's like running this small business that is not always fun, but it's great that we can keep doing it. Gregg still makes me laugh. I still make myself laugh.

Yeah, the last few episodes were as funny as any On Cinema episode ever. One of the things I think must be enjoyable for you is the evolution of the Tim Heidecker character. There’s a new look every season. I can imagine it’s fun to just embrace that ridiculous nature of the character. 

Sometimes the story drives that, and sometimes it’s just where I am at in my life. And yeah, We have a text thread that throws looks and ideas back and forth. I don’t think we thought this new look was going to be that great at first. And then when we started doing the hair, we all just started laughing. And everyone's running around, like, ‘you gotta come in and look at this’. Eric [Notarnicola], our director, when he first saw me, came by and was just like, ‘Oh my god. Wow.’ I mean, we still crack ourselves up like that.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask if you have any future creative projects planned with Eric. Anything in the works there?

Yeah, we are writing something that we've been planning to write for a while. We’re going to start before I go on tour, and then hopefully be writing when I get back. And it's a movie idea that is still in the early stages. But hopefully that will find its way into your lives sometime this year or next year.

Anything I missed here? Any other upcoming projects you’re working on at the moment? I’m finally catching up on What We Do in The Shadows and you’re great in that…

At this point, my life is just touring, and then Office Hours and On Cinema—and a little acting. So that's it, right now. I'm not looking to do more than that.

Show Details: 
Tim Heidecker and the Very Good Band with Kyle Mooney, DJ Douggpound and a special command performance from Tim “no more bullshit” Heidecker
Where: Bimbo’s 365 Club 
When: 8 p.m., Wednesday, January 22 
Tickets: $48.88, available here.