Ceremony
Tony Molina
Creative Adult
FLAK
Saturday, July 11th
Sweatshop Gallery, 2727 North 62nd St.
9 p.m., $10
http://ceremonysweatshop.brownpapertickets.com/
CEREMONY
Breakup albums mark a turning point for a band: the moment when their sound completely changes and reaches a new level of emotional clarity. All that heartbreak and malaise condensed into any single record often makes for a defining piece of work, no matter the genre. The best records explore the nooks and crannies of sadness, learning it inside and out — celebrating it.
Ceremony’s fifth studio album, The L-Shaped Man, uses singer Ross Farrar’s recent breakup as a platform to explore loneliness and emotional weariness, but it is by no means a purely sad album. Rather than look inward, Farrar uses his experience to write about what it means to go through something heavy and come out the other side a different person.
In order to tell Farrar’s story, Ceremony have almost completely stripped back the propulsive hardcore of their previous records, turning every angry outburst into simmering despair. “We’ve always tried to be minimalists in writing, even if it’s loud or fast or abrasive,” says lead guitarist Anthony Anzaldo. “It’s really intense when I hear it. Not in a way where you turn everything up to ten. Things are so bare, you’re holding this one note for so long and you don’t now where it’s going—to me, that’s intensity.” That intensity is apparent on “Exit Fears,” the first full song on the record. It meticulously pairs Justin Davis’ loping bassline, which pulls the track along, with Anzaldo’s icy, minimal guitar work. It brings to mind some alternate version of Joy Division that hasn’t quite lost all hope. It gets close to exploding, but instead plays the shadows, never quite rising above a nervous simmer.
“A lot of the content has to do with loss, and specifically the loss of someone who you care deeply about,” Farrar says. “There is no way for you to go through something like this artistically and not have really strong emotions of loss and pain. There’s not really any way to hide that.” Farrar, for his part, is singing with a new kind of intensity, his baritone swooping and retreating from stressed angst to unsettling near-mutter as he sings, “You told your friends you were fine/ you thought you were fine too…” and later, “nothing is ever fine/ nothing ever feels right/ you have to tell yourself you tried.” It’s the first of many lyrically direct moments, and it should be hard to listen to, but Ceremony have so effortlessly nailed the sound of sadness that it feels great to live inside for awhile.
The sound is abetted by producer John Reis, who honed his sound in seminal bands like Rocket from the Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, and Hot Snakes. Much of the gravelly aggression he experimented with in those bands is present on The L-Shaped Man.
There’s a story behind the title too. “I was speaking to our driver Stephen while on tour,” Farrar says. “We were talking about men in general and what shape they are…their body type. I said, ‘I guess men are in the shape of an L. The torso is straight. Vertical. And then you have the little feet at the end.’ There’s this painter named Leslie Lerner who was living in San Francisco in the ‘70s and ‘80s and made these beautiful paintings. He died on my 21st birthday. A lot of the record is about the similarities in our ideas. In what we’re trying to make. Things that have to do with love and losing love.”
Tony Molina
Constantly juggling hardcore and pop projects, Bay Area veteran musician, Tony Molina has won over fans in both camps. Since 2002, Molina has played in several bands including Dystrophy, Ovens, Lifetime Problems, Caged Animal and currently, his solo work. In both hardcore and pop, Molina values lyrical simplicity, structural concision, and the emotional impact of guitar riffs.
Two recent releases — the wistful riff rock of his first solo album, Dissed and Dismissed, and his new hardcore band Caged Animal’s barbaric debut EP — illustrate the striking dichotomy that runs throughout Molina’s discography over the last eleven years. On Dissed and Dismissed, Molina intensifies the slacker clichés and self-deprecation of Nineties indie rock into absurdist hyperbole. He expresses vulnerability and melodrama through bizarre truisms while referencing his forebears: Thin Lizzy leads, Radiohead lyrics, Replacements sneer. Molina appropriates unapologetically, but distills the past into bursts of reverence less than a minute long.
Andee Connors, of vaunted San Francisco music institution Aquarius Records, attempted to catch up with Molina’s bountiful recordings, releasing a 44-track, self-titled Ovens CD on his own tUMULt imprint. The massive compilation contains recordings from 2006 to 2008. In his writing for the Aquarius catalog, Connors has repeatedly christened Molina a “pop genius.”
Creative Adult
Creative Adult comes from the diverse musical breeding ground of California’s North Bay Punk scene. The band surged the scene last year playing shows with Ceremony, Nü Sensae and Lewd Acts alongside their debut 7” Dead Air, which was released on their own Broke Hater Collective. The four song sonic blast careens between the harsh, noisy punk of Scratch Acid and Gang of Four while carrying the brooding emotion of Joy Division’s darkest moments.
In late 20013 Creative Adult’s style of fuzzed out, dark, noisy psychedelic post-punk led them to to Montreal, QC where they recorded their debut full-length /Psychic Mess’. Engineered and produced by Efrim Menuck of Godspeed You! Black Emperor at Hotel 2 Tango Studios in Montreal, the band returned with a dramatic punk rock record. Infused with psychedelic haze and dark goth-rock calling to mind bands like Bauhaus, Fugazi, Sonic Youth and Scratch Acid. Not for the faint of heart, Psychic Mess is a reminder things can still be crazy and nothing is ever chill.
Creative Adult’s sophomore EP “Bulls in the Yard” takes the band further down the vibing, manic path of their debut and wanders further into flourishes of contemplative effects – laden post punk. These four writhing bursts are akin to an acid-fueled paranoia grafted together with the spastic energy of garage greats like MC5 and Murder City Devils.
FLAK
WARGRIND fueled by drums and bass.
http://flakne.bandcamp.com/releases
