https://fortherabbits.net/2022/04/29/five-things-we-liked-this-week-29-04-2022/

Five Things We Liked This Week - 29/04/22

Waves Will See (Your Smiling Face)

When Caitlin Cobb-Vialet sits down at her grand piano in San Francisco, it feels like you are sitting on the bench right next to her.

The young songwriter and multi-instrumentalist creates immediate intimacy in the opening moments of her upcoming debut album Endless Void, arriving via War Chant Records on May 6th, 2022.

The songs are often fleeting (album opener “Not Enough” clocking at a slim two minutes, for example), but it doesn’t matter; Cobb-Vialet imparts so much feeling in such a small amount of time.

I’m moving to Oregon 
With Noah forever
I’ll see you on Facebook 
Or maybe I’ll mute you 
Whatever

Does a proper name ever pop up in an album opener? Or the mention of a social media platform? It doesn’t matter that you don’t know Noah (and you don’t want to know Facebook.) This sentiment is powerful and timeless, even when expressed in the vernacular of the day.

Discovered by visionary bay area producer, Jim Greer (credits include Foster The People, Macy Gray, Angelo Moore of Fishbone), Cobb-Vialet is, actually and truly, a discovery. It even feels like the songs must have been hidden from the songwriter herself, only being recognized and realized as they are being performed.

Cobb-Vialet’s studies at the Playwrights Horizons Theater School at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts could have something to do with the dramatic effect of that.

“The studio encouraged me to be a well-rounded artist who could write, direct, design, as well as act,” Cobb-Vialet explains.

Immersed in what she describes as the “busy-ness” of college, performing and composing as part of several productions at once, Cobb-Vialet’s musical theater background and love of the abstract art that she was exposed to in downtown NYC provided the experiences that she had been readied for as a child brought up in a progressive, blended home.

“I was raised by four moms,” she explains. “I had two moms, and then when I was in the fifth grade, they separated and partnered with two moms of kids at my school. So I have two moms, two step-moms, my brother, and six step-siblings who I’ve known since elementary school.”

As the oldest child, Cobb-Vialet was bound to be looked to in the household as an example (many of her siblings are also in the arts), but her insights hit home outside of her literal home, too.

Especially with Greer, who is effusive about their work together.

“At our first meeting, she played me a few songs, and right away I heard shades of so many songwriters I’ve always been a fan of,” he remembers. “Bits of Freddie Mercury, Kate Bush, David Bowie, Regina Spektor – the kind of artists that make their own universe and communicate wide swaths of emotion and beauty.”

Accessing for herself these timeless artist’s knack for accessibility is part of the inherent potential Cobb-Vialet’s songs have to connect and convey a unique young life that, even now, isn’t often represented.

“Besides love and heartbreak, these songs also explore queerness, consent, mental illness, friendship, and coming of age,” she says. “As an artist I would say I am non-linear, emotional, brutally honest, and relentless.”

The fleeting intimacy that takes place at the bench of Cobb-Vialet’s grand piano... It is quite grand indeed.

Endless Void, the debut album by Caitlin Cobb-Vialet, arrives via War Chant Records on May 6th, 2022 preceded by the singles “Ask Me” (Feb. 4th), “Joan To Catherine” (March 4th), and “Disco Ball” (April 15th).

Endless Void

Disco Ball

Caitlin Cobb-Vialet - Disco Ball

Work Hard

My Other People

Limehouse Cut

The Great Awakening

Aqaba

Big Time

Alberta & The Dead Eyes is the giant-sounding band that in reality is the majority work of one real-life carpenter, David Boone (or D. Boone as he often signs off, evoking another literal and figurative giant of musical history, D. Boon of The Minutemen.)

In fact, Boone’s songs contain that same ramshackle joy and conversational, inclusive tone that Boon’s do. It’s the sound of a natural talent letting it fly.

“I’m a carpenter by day and sometimes even by night,” Boone says. “A fine carpenter at that, but a better musician.”

You may want to leave the page now to find out more about Boone, but don’t bother. He made the right choice. The choice that none of us made and many wish we had. Boone is nowhere to be found on social media. 

He lets the songs do the sharing.

Alberta & The Dead Eyes will release its new 11-song album Give or Take on March 15, 2024. The album will be preceded by “Ghost Kitty,” a four-song EP of additional songs on Dec. 22, 2023.

The songs on Give or Take represent a man in withdrawal from a two-packs-a-day cigarette habit that went on for 15 years.

“Mama, did it fuck me up more than I expected,” Boone confesses. “I wrote the entire record pretty much curled up in a ball.”

Grieving his relationship with nicotine while composing, Boone kept company with his influences, numerous and varied. So numerous and varied that mentioning a handful isn’t going to help you any more than looking for Boone online will.

“I love Billie Holiday. And The Stooges. And The Band. And Outkast. And Duke Ellington. And Cole Porter. And David Sedaris. And Bill Watterson. And the Detroit Pistons. And John fucking Prine.”

Boone doesn’t mention The Minutemen, but likely would, if prompted.

“I mean Jesus, should I keep going?”

Get it?

The thing about Boone as musician that isn’t likely is how much Boone as carpenter makes it into his music. He doesn’t mention the Grateful Dead either, but the steadfast focus that underpins Boone’s freestyle nature is kinda Alberta & The Workingman’s Dead Eyes.

“I’m a complete ‘no one is coming to save you’ type of person,” he explains. “Keep your head down and
do your job. Musician schmoosician. Do what your supposed to fucking do. Write good songs. Play good
shows. Show up on time. Be humble and be fucking nice.”

A real-life carpenter keeping it real-life real. Refreshing.

It should be even less surprising now that musician Boone rejected Instagram squares for T-squares just like he painfully swore off smokes cold turkey for the clean lungs that arrived with the songs, or as Boone sees it, he arrived to them.

“The songs are just there, hanging out, waiting for someone,” he says.

Now that someone is you.

Alberta & The Dead Eyes will release its new 11-song album Give or Take on March 15, 2024, preceded by “Ghost Kitty,” a four-song EP of additional songs on Dec. 22, 2023.

Alberta & The Dead Eyes - So Cool

Fanatic is a music marketing company established by Josh Bloom in 1997 to build fan-to-fan connections between artists and the media. For 25 years, Fanatic has continued to help launch and maintain careers through the strategic advocacy of creative talent.

Caitlin Cobb-Vialet - Disco Ball

Fanatic Promotion

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