Rip Ethan thank you for showing me this band so many years back. I’ll remember forever

W.A.C. PLAYLIST

From the album The Consistent Brutal Bullshit Gong out April 29, 2022 on Western Vinyl.
Pre-order / Listen: https://lnk.to/XHoJYpp2

On their debut for Western Vinyl, recording engineer and multi-instrumentalist Nate Mendelsohn and his band use lyrical maximalism for the powers of good. Where Market’s previous home recorded releases shifted genre restlessly, on The Consistent Brutal Bullshit Gong Mendelsohn took a core band of longtime collaborators to a house in rural Massachusetts where they carved out space for his words to speak through with humor and intensity. 

Though he comes from a background in experimental music, Mendelsohn’s ear for pop has prevailed. Certain moments on Bullshit Gong reveal his stranger side, as on the thundering bridge of “Scar,” which sounds like a more unhinged Parquet Courts, or the angular  “I Would Do That,” which takes cues from Cate Le Bon. On the whole, though, this band of close friends insists on directness, their arrangements clear despite the intricacies. Guitars and synthesizers tangle fluidly atop the rhythm section’s tight bedrock, evoking the tenderness and backbeat-centric qualities of Elliott Smith or Big Thief. 

After college, where he met most of the members of Market, Mendelsohn became an engineer and producer at the Brooklyn studio Figure 8 Recording. Through that community he’s recorded artists like Frankie Cosmos and Wendy Eisenberg, and played with Yaeji, Vagabon, Katie Von Schleicher (who co-produced Bullshit Gong with him), and Sam Evian, who mixed the album. 

While writing Bullshit Gong, Mendelsohn grappled with long-gestating OCD, watched a formative relationship dissolve, and experienced a mental health crisis that lasted a full year. During this turbulent time, Mendelsohn began to consider the ways he has approached friendship, partnership, and especially family. Those observations and partial conclusions make their way into the songs in an essential capacity, as he mixes the small with the very big on a dogged search for empathy. On “Control” he sings “I heard a kid ask a teacher today / ‘What is a memory?’ / Man, sometimes life is great / At 4:15 I was awake and a mess / My mind’s a broke machine.” 

The words flow in much the same way as Mendelsohn’s thoughts, with observation and memory giving way to moments of profound anxiety. This emotional heft is met in crucial ways by his band. On the tender “Watergate,” a love song set against both the Watergate scandal and James Comey’s senate testimony, the arrangement is simple and trusting, adding depth and intimacy to each word as he compares his life, love, and temperament to that of his parents. 

While recording “Old,” the band sat around an omnidirectional microphone shaking percussion instruments and singing out certain lines. In the background, you can hear Mendelsohn pick up his clarinet and eke out a few notes, a spontaneous act of playfulness that made the final cut. These tonal shifts matter deeply, as the words he sings could be interpreted differently in a darker setting: “Half of these feelings aren’t my feelings anymore / But I guess I could still enjoy the notes and chords / Maybe that’s just the way it goes / We always sing about things that are old.”

Creating intimacy out of manic self-reflection requires a delicate balancing act, one Mendelsohn tackles with abandon. His words never skew too poetic or grandiose, and when he invokes the ugly it’s met with a sonic tonality that sets him right again. In tender moments, his voice is often flanked by bandmates Natasha Thweatt or Von Schleicher, who help skew his words toward the universal. Still, Bullshit Gong is an obsessive look inward, one in which Mendelsohn simply asks himself if he is good to those he loves. It’s an act of trust between the artist and the imagined listener he takes with him.

The Consistent Brutal Bullshit Gong

Market - "Scar"

Available now on streaming now, Vinyl pre-order at http://gezelligrecords.com

Let You Down

Chime School's long-awaited sophomore album, out August 2024 on Slumberland Records

The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hotel

Chime School - The End

My Light, My Destroyer

Hayley

'I am the moon, you are the sun' is an attempt to challenge a pattern of always putting others first without daring to appreciate ones own importance.

I am the moon, you are the sun

Single out 8/14/2015 on Mermaid Ave:  http://smarturl.it/TRAnsweredPrayers

Answered Prayers

We don't sleep anymore
We sold everything
We've given up teeth We can't remember what
We use them for 

We've given up minutes. We’ve given up on time
Stop crossing rivers
Just drift on them
We hate computers
Throwing out our phones 

We don't have money 
the banks closed

We are behind and not coming back 
 
generating people
I don't need babies anymore

I don't need anything anymore

Maybe these things are these things and
We've walked into nothing. 
We've walked into clowns 
We hated the pyramids
They're coming now


anything

Dangerous Band Out Of Tune

River Pt. 1

Last Forever

In Our Talons

Dark Dark Dark - Daydreaming

The Dodos - Red And Purple

Cryptacize, "Cosmic Sing Along"

'Overgrown Path' out September 25th on Captured Tracks.

Chris Cohen // Optimist High

Julie Doiron stopped by the 88.1 KDHX studio in St. Louis on June 27, 2009 for a live performance. Discover more great music at http://kdhx.org

Julie Doiron "Tailor" Live at KDHX 6/27/09

Taken from forthcoming 7 inch single "In Other Words" b/w "You Are A Sort (Don't Call Me)" out June 10th on MÏLK records
www.milk-records.co.uk/

In Other Words

Mute Song is an independent music publisher based in London, England.

dj 
singer / member of the late band eliotE & The Ritournelles
use to sing, play instruments badly, write and compose with my SUPER fellows Guillaume Magne et Thomas Charlet

featuring vocals for soundtracks 
singer
- The Baikal Paradise's songs have been used as a soundtrack for several audiovisual materials. 
Music is currently published by Bleepmachine, a french independent publishing company. If interested please contact : bleep@bleepmachine.com

The Dodos - Red And Purple

MuteSong

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