“With Twelve, I wanted to show that believing in yourself can take you further than what you’d think,” says rapper/producer Latrell James, whose new numerically titled album continually reflects his pride and drive in pursuing his hip-hop dreams in lieu of completing a college degree in business administration.
“I had good friends change up and ex-girls hang up,” James raps on “Distance,” defending his choice of priorities. “Don’t you ever interfere with my zone.”
The 12 tracks of Twelve reflect 12 years in his life, from waking to a world where people “skip lines of employment and jump in line for Jordans” in “Beautiful Day” to the thankful, defiant closer “Candles,” which he relates to his Dec. 12 birthday.
“It was kind of my rebirth situation,” James says of the album. “I feel like I’m so brutally honest and not afraid to expose myself, so people are going to connect.”
It helps that his lyrics are direct, his music atmospheric, with beats muted to the message. “I wanted to make sure the lyrics were the focal point,” he says, “but also that the production was complex with layers, though not too complex.”
James grew up in Dorchester. “I started producing because my parents couldn’t afford to buy me beats,” says the rapper, who was into Michael Jackson and R&B before he embraced hip-hop. “R&B songs couldn’t get a message across, but in a rap song, in 16 bars, you can get a lot of information,” he says. “DMX was one of the first reasons why I started rapping. Something about his energy and honesty.”
Now his family lives in Brockton, and James benefits from working in his basement studio, though the rapper who says “My Lamborghini was an Altima” on Twelve often comes up with lyrics on the road. “The car ride I guess opens your mind,” he says. “[There’s] a lot of mumbling in the car. Pretty awkward, but it works.”
He’s also itching to perform more, tapping live musicians to complement his studio beats and synthesizers. “There’s only so much energy you can get on a record,” he says. “I feel that people like to hear different interpretations of a song.”
Sound Check
From the Allston underground to the platform of Boston Calling, from soul-pop to folk-rock and garage-punk, our city produces scores of great original
By Paul Robicheau | Photo Credit: Dan Watkins | July 17, 2015
Ruby Rose Fox
Ruby Rose Fox took a long time to find her voice. “When you’ve been socially conditioned to be a Disney princess, it’s hard to sing like Elvis,” says Fox, whose low, luxuriant voice didn’t fit the script during classical studies at New England Conservatory she undertook while still a student at Brookline High in the early 2000s.
“When I was studying opera, they told me I was a contralto. So I immediately looked up all the parts I was going to be playing, and they were all whores and old women,” says Fox, who also grew dissatisfied when she took acting classes at Emerson, delivering words written by others. “I was forced to make my own path.”
Four years ago, she began writing dramatic pop vignettes, reflecting the emotive mood and tone of the Roy Orbison songs she loved as a child. And it’s paid off in the past year with a Boston Music Award for female vocalist of the year (plus a Boston’s Best award from The Improper), a line of singles launched with the immaculate “Die Pretty” and the chance to open shows for kindred spirit Martha Davis’ band, the Motels.
“I’ve had a real intense urgency regarding this music,” says Fox, who sang in the reggae/ska band Mass Hysteria in her teens as Rachel Eliot before legally adopting her late grandmother’s name. “I think that’s why I’ve grown so fast.”
“Blue Angel” and “Good Friday,” two more singles in advance of an album to be funded through PledgeMusic, hint at gospel beyond their biblical allusions. “When I was younger, I sort of broke up with God,” says Fox, who grew up in a fundamentalist Baptist family. “I’m still a little bitter at some of the dark aspects of Christianity.”
That gospel sound is amplified in her band, which boasts three female backup singers. “When I make demos, a lot of it is choral because I have to sing what I’m hearing,” she says. “I end up with demos that have four- or five-part harmonies and get attached to them. I’m also a huge Leonard Cohen fan, and he uses a lot of choral singers.”
Fox calls her backing trio the Steinems, after feminist pioneer Gloria Steinem. “It really helps to have strong women around me,” the singer/guitarist says. “They help me emotionally and spiritually.”
By Paul Robicheau | Photo Credit: Eric Jones
The Ballroom Thieves
Folk-rockers the Ballroom Thieves got their start in a Stonehill College dorm room, where Devin Mauch put a djembe on its side and began pounding it with a stick while Martin Earley played acoustic guitar. “Dorm rooms are too small to have a full drum set, so we wanted to get the big sound of a drum set without actually having all the parts,” singer/songwriter Earley says. “It’s just kind of evolved.”
Evolved is an understatement—and that extends beyond Mauch’s setup, which now includes a snare, a floor tom, cymbals and some bells around his legs. The Ballroom Thieves released their fabulous debut album, A Wolf in the Doorway, in April and earned an opening slot at Boston Calling in May. Now the four-year-old trio is slated to perform at the Newport Folk Festival on July 26. “It’s one of our favorite places in the world,” metaphor-rooted songwriter Earley says of that landmark folk fest. “It was more of a ‘Holy shit’ moment rather than ‘This is expected.’ ”
The Ballroom Thieves did expect to gain a solid replacement on cello when the classically trained Calin Peters joined two years ago. “It’s just a really versatile instrument, so it allows us to keep our band kinda small,” says Earley, who plays some hollow-bodied electric guitar. But Peters has broadened the trio’s sound in unanticipated ways, adding electric bass to sinewy blues-rocker “Wolf” and not only joining in harmonies but serving as an enchanting lead vocal on “Bury Me Smiling.”
“We’ve done some things where all three of us play drums onstage or people switch roles,” Earley says of a sound that’s passionate and anthemic enough to appeal to fans of both the Lone Bellow and Dispatch. “It’s about having a good time while we play these songs.”
By Paul Robicheau | Photo Credit: Johnny Anguish
Zip-Tie Handcuffs
Hard rock often works best when it teeters on the edge of falling apart, something Zip-Tie Handcuffs had down to a science on their way to winning the 2015 Rock ’n’ Roll Rumble. Guitarist/singer Matt Ford sums it up by relaying a conversation with soundman Alec Rodriguez, who co-produced the trio’s fourth album, Sundream.
“He was telling me that mixing us is like driving a Camaro at top speed,” Ford says. “I like that feeling, on the verge of going too fast but keeping it on the rails.”
Ford, bassist/singer Ian Grinold and drummer/singer Max Levy have logged plenty of time on their high-performance engine. New Hampshire native Ford and the Connecticut-bred Grinold met at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline, forming the band in 2007. The Vermont-raised Levy joined a year later. And their ragged, joyous combustion can remind one of Nirvana when that band rode the rails.
“We’re definitely influenced by a lot of three-piece bands,” says Ford, citing the Jimi Hendrix Experience along with Green Day and Nirvana. One quality that sets Zip-Tie Handcuffs apart, however, is the trio’s shifting, punctuating vocals. “We mix a lot of heavy music with pop music. We love the attitude and aggression of punk rock, but we also love the poppy sensibilities of the Beatles and the Beach Boys. Our vocals [attract] people who are not usually into punk.”
Zip-Tie Handcuffs are writing a fifth album to record this fall and also planning a live release, a once-vital but now-rare rock artifact. “I personally love live albums, like the MC5’s debut,” Ford says. “You can hear the energy leaving the speakers.”
By Paul Robicheau
Dirty Bangs
Evan Kenney didn’t intend to start a new band. He’d already hit creative pay dirt with both post-punk outfit Read Yellow and party group Bodega Girls before his last project, Thunderbloods, proved short-lived. But the singer began working on songs at Thunderbloods guitarist Steven Lord’s Salem studio, and it all clicked.
“When you record something with two people, you think, ‘Maybe we just like it,’ ” Kenney says, but other people seemed equally enthused. “We were getting gig offers, and we didn’t have a band.”
That changed just as quickly. Kenney pulled in Read Yellow and Thunderbloods guitar foil Jesse Vuona while Lord drafted guitarist/bassist Ben Voskeritchian and drummer Rob Motes from his other group, These Wild Plains. Dirty Bangs were born, and they were off to Texas to play SXSW as well as shows arranged through San Antonio Spurs forward Matt Bonner and his brother, who’d caught Bodega Girls in a Northampton bar and became well-connected friends.
“It was like a camping trip with a bunch of guys,” Kenney says of Dirty Bangs’ maiden voyage in Texas. “Our personalities melded well together.”
That’s evident in songs like “I’m in Love with the Summertime” and the arch “We’re All Gunna Die Sometime,” which slay as dreamily distorted glides. “We found such an affection for simple soul and rock ’n’ roll,” Kenney says. “Kind of like what the Jesus and Mary Chain did, which was taking Ronettes songs and putting really loud music over it. That’s a formula I always loved.”
Dirty Bangs truly connect live, when the guitarists dabble on effects pedals for orchestral interludes and Kenney hops offstage to engage people face-to-face as he sings. “That whole aspect is from my old punk-rock days,” says Kenney, whose band plays Boston Calling in September. “We started focusing more on the old soul tactic where the band watches where the singer goes, just kicks ass, and brings it back when it’s time.”
By Paul Robicheau
Oh, Malô
Some people talk about music in terms of colors. Art-rock modernists Oh, Malô have brought that idea to fruition, releasing three haunting, color-coded EPs dubbed Blue, Red and Orange. It started not as a conceptual experiment, but simply a way to catalog songs that Brandon Hafetz wrote after a funk from a breakup.
“Songs would just come out of nowhere, and I wasn’t writing in a consistent genre or style,” singer/guitarist Hafetz says. “These heavy [red] ones are really kind of angry, these blue ones are just moody, sad and ambient, and then the orange ones are the passive, melancholic, kind of calm-after-the-storm songs. But emotionally, I was really experiencing all three of those at the same time.”
The music production major at Berklee found sympathetic classmates in lead guitarist Jack McLoughlin, bassist Jordan Lagana and drummer James Knoerl, serving ethereal rock that’s rich in dynamics, with delicate vocals and surging builds that evoke Radiohead, Local Natives and, especially, the late Jeff Buckley.
“He’s a great example of dynamics,” says Hafetz, who first heard Buckley when people made the comparison during a high school trip through the French city that gave Oh, Malô its name. “That stuff takes a left turn and goes somewhere you wouldn’t imagine, then goes further, to the point it’s almost too much.”
The band plans to supplement the six songs of Blue, Red and Orange with six more tracks that should fit the same color spread for a fall album release. “We’re still not sure what people like best of what we’re doing,” Hafetz says. “Once you have fans, on some level, you want to satisfy them, at least as a young band.”
By Paul Robicheau
Nemes
If listeners have trouble categorizing the music of Nemes, they’re not alone. “It’s hard to pin down exactly what we are,” says guitarist/singer Dave Anthony, who formed the Worcester-bred band with his brother Chris on drums and fiddler/singer Josh Knowles, whom the guitarist first saw perform in their high school jazz band.
“I leaned into my dad sitting next to me and said, ‘That kid and I are going to make awesome music together,’ ” Anthony recalls. Five years ago, Nemes was named one of the five best unsigned bands in the country by Alternative Press magazine, and the group just drew new fans by cracking the finals of the Rock ’n’ Roll Rumble.
“The fiddle kind of changes it,” Anthony says. “Josh is such a unique, individual player. He’s able to make that fiddle sound like a ukulele when he wants to.”
However, Knowles’ often manic fiddling—particularly live—effectively works in counterpoint to the quartet’s smartly arranged blend of Americana, hard rock and lilting pop. Rounded out by bassist Alex Glover, Nemes shines on its diverse 2014 album I Carry Your Heart, which was named after an e.e. cummings poem and sometimes sounds like Mumford & Sons with ADHD.
“We’re kind of all over the place,” Anthony says. “Me and Josh love jazz, Alex loves jam music, Chris loves pop-punk, and it’s really weird the way we meld.”
I Carry Your Heart even sports one song, “Tengo Nada,” that Anthony sings in broken Spanish. “I learned Spanish from very poor farmers who were illiterate and came to this country illegally to landscape,” he says. “I worked with them for years, and they kinda taught me how to speak enough to seduce a girl.”
By Paul Robicheau
Latrell James
“With Twelve, I wanted to show that believing in yourself can take you further than what you’d think,” says rapper/producer Latrell James, whose new numerically titled album continually reflects his pride and drive in pursuing his hip-hop dreams in lieu of completing a college degree in business administration.
“I had good friends change up and ex-girls hang up,” James raps on “Distance,” defending his choice of priorities. “Don’t you ever interfere with my zone.”
The 12 tracks of Twelve reflect 12 years in his life, from waking to a world where people “skip lines of employment and jump in line for Jordans” in “Beautiful Day” to the thankful, defiant closer “Candles,” which he relates to his Dec. 12 birthday.
“It was kind of my rebirth situation,” James says of the album. “I feel like I’m so brutally honest and not afraid to expose myself, so people are going to connect.”
It helps that his lyrics are direct, his music atmospheric, with beats muted to the message. “I wanted to make sure the lyrics were the focal point,” he says, “but also that the production was complex with layers, though not too complex.”
James grew up in Dorchester. “I started producing because my parents couldn’t afford to buy me beats,” says the rapper, who was into Michael Jackson and R&B before he embraced hip-hop. “R&B songs couldn’t get a message across, but in a rap song, in 16 bars, you can get a lot of information,” he says. “DMX was one of the first reasons why I started rapping. Something about his energy and honesty.”
Now his family lives in Brockton, and James benefits from working in his basement studio, though the rapper who says “My Lamborghini was an Altima” on Twelve often comes up with lyrics on the road. “The car ride I guess opens your mind,” he says. “[There’s] a lot of mumbling in the car. Pretty awkward, but it works.”
He’s also itching to perform more, tapping live musicians to complement his studio beats and synthesizers. “There’s only so much energy you can get on a record,” he says. “I feel that people like to hear different interpretations of a song.”
By Paul Robicheau
Vundabar
Photo Credit: Caitlin McCann
College students mill around an Allston house concert, crowding the basement space where Vundabar unleashes its indie-rock din. One kid starts to hang from a pipe but drops off after a collective shout of “No!” from his peers. “It got a little out of hand,” guitarist/singer Brandon Hagen recalls of a scene that belied his trio’s growing national profile behind its July 24 sophomore release, Gawk.
Stranger things have happened. Vundabar pressed 200 CDs of its 2013 debut, Antics, and handled its own press, landing a write-up in a French blog and a call from an overseas promoter. “It just sounded like a scam, ’cause he had broken English, like ‘I am big French agent. I bring you to giant festival,’ ” Hagen says. “We were kind of skeptical at first, but he turned out to be a great guy.”
So Vundabar played for thousands last summer, when the band’s biggest prior show had been opening for Mac DeMarco at the Middle East Downstairs. Quite the coup for “typical frustrated teenagers wanting to get out of their town,” Hagen says of himself and drummer Drew McDonald, a friend from Scituate High School who recorded Anticsin his bedroom with two microphones and GarageBand.
All of which sets higher expectations for Gawk, which brims with skewed pop and surf rock heavy on dynamics and a sarcastic edge in songs like the single “Oulala,” where Hagen sings, “Nothing really hurts when everything’s a joke.”
“It’s split down the middle between good-humored and cynical,” Hagen says of his attitude as a songwriter, “creating the unreliable narrator.”
By Paul Robicheau
Grey Season
Matt Knelman’s musical future came in through the bathroom window. “My window went out to an alleyway, and I could hear this singer,” guitarist Knelman recalls of listening to Jon Mills in the distance from his Berklee dorm. He didn’t know it, but he shared a class with singer/songwriter Mills, who not only had a distinctive voice but played the Irish bouzouki. And Knelman met banjo player Chris “Gooch” Bloniarz
on their first day at Berklee when their building was evacuated for a small fire.
Together, the three began busking in the park across the street, in front of a local Whole Foods and finally on Newbury Street. “It’s amazing actually, even from just busking in the beginning, how many people we run into who come to our shows and we meet down the line who heard us play on Newbury Street three or four years ago,” Knelman says. “It was a true training ground for us, and we still do it.”
There’s far less time for busking now. In June, they trucked off to Bonnaroo, where the band appeared after winning a SonicBids contest (and earned kudos from a Billboard writer, despite sparse attendance in a tough time slot). And they’re planning for another early time slot at this September’s Boston Calling, a gig bound to draw thousands.
The difference since the early days came in the addition of drummer Ben Burns and bassist Ian Jones, who pumps an electric Rickenbacker opposite the acoustic strings, while all five members connect in balanced harmonies. As a group influenced by the Band and Bob Dylan as well as the Beatles, Grey Season reveled in recording its 2014 album Time Will Tell You Well at the Woodstock barn studio of the Band’s late drummer/singer Levon Helm.
“Our love for old-timey music really comes out in what we play,” Knelman says. “We have a unique modern approach, but at the same time, it’s steeped in the old-time roots and folk music that we’ve listened to equally growing up.”
By Paul Robicheau
The Barbazons
Photo Credit: Thomas V. Alpern
A Barbazons show can induce the sensation of an art-school/punk party, casting shades of ’60s garage rock, the Cramps and the Velvet Underground as members of the Boston band groove away on guitars and stand-up drums.
“The confidence, if that’s a word for it, is just from growing up with these punk sensibilities and seeing so many heroes, like Lydia Lunch and the no-wave scene in late ’70s New York, just picking up whatever they could get their hands on,” says Melanie Bernier, who splits lead vocals with guitarist Ryan Major and adds a bit of saxophone in addition to pounding tom-toms with drummer Peaches Goodrich.
Second guitarist Matt Garlick bolsters a hint of psychedelia, while Jake Gilbertson joined a year ago to hold the distinction of following nearly 20 previous bassists during the past five years.
For most of that time, before a name change in March, the band called itself the Fagettes. “It came from a place of wanting equality and wanting to abolish the word faggot as hateful and reclaiming it as a bisexual woman,” Bernier says. “But over time, it ended up holding us back.”
Rechristened the Barbazons—a name that doesn’t draw the same concerns from venues and other musicians—the band launched a busy schedule behind Avec Plaisir, their lo-fi first album under the new moniker. “A barbarian and an Amazon are both figures of strength,” she says, “and that’s nice to think about before you get in front of a group of people and make a total ass of yourself.”
That’s also something that’s been toned down just a tad. “In the beginning, I was into wearing outrageous outfits like giant wigs, sequined loin cloths and fringe,” Bernier says. “Over time, I’ve become more comfortable performing, and we’ve grown to rely less on onstage personas. We’ve become ourselves.”
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