About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 14, 2011)
Package Liquor Store Your One-Stop Full Service Liquor Store Serving Athens for 28 Years * " •> OFFERING Build Your Own 0 Packs [Including Craft Beers] 50 COOLER D00 Conveniently located next to the Omni Club (Westside) 2303 W. Broad St • (706) 549-1686 www. abcpackage. com Upcoming Events: SAT-9/17* opening it 9am UGA vs. Coastal Carolina $3 BLOODY MARY BAR Serving BBQ, hot dogs, sausages and chips Watch the Braves on 4 big scr een TVs. $1 High Life ’SliSS-C-3 drafts during the games vs FL Marlins ■ Wed. 9/14 at 12:05 pm vs NY Mets • Fri. 9/16 at 7:35 pm vs NY Mets * Sat. 9/17 at 4:10 pm MONDAYS: ADULT TWV1A 9 to 11pm $20 tab for winning team $10 tab for 2nd place MOVIE NIGHT Sept 13 at 8 pm Ccdwr Rapids i NOW SERVING: Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs Polish & Italian Sausages Miss Vickie's Chips 254 W^CIa\ton Street 6a SCm" • ' 6.v YOU, 1 458 i. Clayton SI • 706-543-4454 Mon-Snt 11-7nni • Sun 12-6nni TbpiCdiQlEl Junkman s Daughter s Brother nstrumental Dane© Rock, Now with More ATARI! u 3H3S he more you think, the more you : stink," is the way famed, half-insane : < record producer David Briggs once put it. Rock and roll's mystification is meant to glorify the reptile mind: the idea that intuition, not sophistication, is meant to be music's Northern Star. And even if that's already an artist's modus operandi—the Neil Youngs, the Keith Richardses—that's fine for them, but there's no reason why rock music can't have a thorough thoughtfulness and still deliver the same oomph. The Bronzed Chorus, from Greensboro, NC, is the kind of band that puts a great deal of thought into how to maxi mize that oomph. The duo of Adam Joyce on guitar and Hunter Allen on drums and synth is instru mental; so, political theories or emotional treatises are not on their agenda. The music, they make is the end-all-be-all, and every thing about it, from the neatly recorded songs on their latest EP, The Gleaming, to the Christmas-light-lit live show, belies careful consideration. Joyce, who spends the time he's not playing music making handcrafted woodwork, talks about his music without flow- ; ery elaboration, sticking to the facts. Speaking about Alien—who, prior to The Gk. ming, ! was only a member of the group in a touring capacity—Joyce says, "This is the first record that we wrote songs together on, so it's defi nitely a different band now." Brennan O’Brien, the band's original drum mer, was not only a percussionist with a skill for propulsive rhythms, he also contributed keyboard bass, which he was able to pull off while drumming one-handed. When O'Brien had to step away from the group, Allen joined not only as a spot-on drummer/keyboardist, but he also came armed with an Atari 2600, the classic game console that can also be used for composing original 8-bit music. This grimy, primitive sonic contribution is immediately apparent on the EP's masterstroke, the epic "walletkeys/phonesmokes," where Allen's live drumming creates a lattice of rhythmic com plexity on top of the Atari's chiptune-style backing tracks. Adapting a tough-guy, dance- rock pose similar to the niche Maserati carved out on its recent Pyramid of the Sun LP, the new Bronzed Chorus sound retains much of the post-rock peak-and-volleying that the band is known for, but Allen's Atari work adds an indelible new element. "He wrote the first part, and I wrote on top of it, and that's never happened before; we wrote that song together," says Joyce. "The other pieces just kinda fell together like they used to, but it's going to be happening a lot more in the future. We're going to be writing a lot more together. So, I'm excited about that change." More than anything else, "walleykeys/phonesmokes" is the sound of musicians rocking while having deliberately mapped out an elaborate composition at the same time. It's a major step up for a band that already prided itself on consistently well executed work. The Gleaming was recorded with Mike Albanese and Joel Hatstat, both of Cinemechanica, and is currently out on Cinemechanica guitarist Bryant Williamson's Hello Sir Records label. Following a month long tour around the northern half of the United States, "we're doing two weeks with Manray down South, down to Florida, Alabama and Georgia," says Joyce. "Sharing their bus again. It’s like the most fun tour ever, the one we did with those guys." After that, unsurpris ingly, it's back to work. Says Joyce, "We're going to be leaning more towards the style of music that we're doing on the EP, and this winter we're definitely going to take some time and get enough written to start tracking on the LP soon, another full-length." Which makes sense: now that the group exists as two active songwriters, they're natu rally going to have more material to get out into the world. "I have songs I'm working on right now, and Hunter has some ideas of his own, and we're gonna try to get our songs where we want 'em, and try to pick 'em apart and tear 'em to pieces," says Joyce. "We're try ing a whole different way of writing the full- length. We're gonna try to really tear apart the songs, not overanalyze 'em, but really get 'em felt out, I guess. In the past, we just kinda wrote songs and said, 'OK, it's done,' instead of really looking back and seeing where we could add or take away. So, I'm really excited about doin' that." Jeff Tobias WHO: Cinemechanica, Manray, The Bronzed Chorus WHERE: Caledonia Lounge WHEN: Saturday, Sept. 17,10 p.m. HOW MUCH: $6(21+), $8 (18+) V J 16 FLAGP0LE.COM • SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 MIKE WHITE deadlydesigns.com
