Manic Presents / Premier Concerts Update 03-07-19

Manic Presents / Premier Concerts Guest Post:

We’re back with our weekly Manic Presents Redscroll Blog! As usual, we’re here to share some exciting show announcements and remind you of the great shows happening this week. Just announced the Legendary Patti Smith and Her Band perform at The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford on (4/27)! At Space Ballroom – a last minute booking with Beach Fossils on (4/01), indie pop/rock band Charly Bliss on (6/08), and Sebadoh (feat. Lou Barlow of Dinosaur Jr.) on (6/20)! And lastly, at Cafe Nine as part our weekly Manic Mondays music series – Brooklyn synth-pop sister trio Teen (5/06) and North Carolina indie folk group Bombadil (6/24)!

This week’s show schedule begins TOMORROW (3/08) with a SOLD OUT  Pinegrove show at Space Ballroom! The jam-packed weekend at Space Ballroom continues with Canadian indie rock band Tokyo Police Club on Saturday, (3/09). Also on Saturday, (3/09) we have The Wall Live Extravaganza at College Street Music Hall – their visas are cleared and they’re ready to rock! Finishing off the week on Monday (3/11) as part of our weekly Manic Monday series at Cafe Nine, we have Quebec dream pop duo Ghostly Kisses. Don’t forget to grab your tickets and RSVP today! Just a note that Manic Redscroll blog begins on Thursdays and ends on Wednesdays

CONTEST TIME! Enter for a chance to win a pair of tickets and M&G with Gogol Bordello at College Street Music Hall on (3/19). Winner chosen on at noon Monday (3/11)!
Enter here: https://goo.gl/forms/kXiMJmRT6fegBYRJ2

Keep an eye out for more announcements and we’ll see you back here next Thursday!

Upcoming Shows…

Friday (3/8)
Pinegrove w/ Another Michael

SOLD OUT/All Ages/Doors at 7:00PM

Space Ballroom – Hamden

 

INFO: Pinegrove are a band from Montclair, New Jersey.
SOLD OUT

Saturday (3/9)
Tokyo Police Club w/ Dizzy

$20/All Ages/Doors at 7:00PM

Space Ballroom – Hamden

INFO: If the universe had tilted the tiniest bit, there would be no TPC—the not-quite self-titled fourth (and best) Tokyo Police Club album.

By 2016, singer-bassist and chief songwriter Dave Monks had settled into life in New York City he made a solo record and did some co-writing. Drummer Greg Alsop was living and working in L.A. Keyboard player Graham Wright and guitarist Josh Hook remained in the band’s native Canada. Tokyo Police Club created songs via e-mail, thinking they had enough natural chemistry and experience to make that setup work. But eventually, the lack of friction meant there was less musical spark, and it dawned on everybody that the end was near. There was resignation, not anger, when Wright, Alsop, and Hook told Monks they were done with the band. They didn’t expect him to disagree.

But Monks said this: “Fuck no. Definitely not. Hear me out.”

“Let’s make this band feel like a band we would want to be in again,” Monks implored his bandmates. “Let’s make it about being present for the moments that are important more than about being devoted to some rock stardom fantasy. We at least gotta go make Abbey Road first, and go out with a bang. You don’t have to give me five records. Just give me a few more rehearsals and some studio time and then we’ll figure it out.”

To that point, it had been a fun career built on self-imposed high pressure. Right out of the gate, TPC felt energized and unstoppable, with critics and fans on their side. But as the band and the world evolved, they began to feel diminishing returns, though no less pressure. “In the mid-aughts, we were quite the thing there for a second,” quips Wright. “Things started to level out for our career. Knowing that the tenth anniversary Lesson in Crime tour might be our last, I found myself really alert and drinking it all in. From that point forward, without even noticing, I started to enjoy every aspect of it.”

As the old proverb—or maybe it’s a Joni Mitchell song—goes: You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s (almost) gone. After putting aside the idea of splitting up and back-burnering their commercial expectations, there was just one thing left to do: go to church. Specifically a church in rural Ontario, where the foursome could recapture the energy of their early years by playing in a room together. Songs that Monks had written were abandoned when they didn’t feel right for this new energy, and TPC started to take shape, built on camaraderie and esprit de corps.

Oh, and some misery and confusion as well—you can’t have great rock songs without those. Not only did his band’s near-collapse shake Monks’ songwriting foundation, but his long-term relationship unraveled in the months leading up to TPC, ending just a week before recording started. But what came from that mixture of renewed artistic purpose and personal uncertainty is the band’s best set of songs in years, maybe ever. “I had the most difficult year of my life, and making this record really helped me,” says Monks. “I didn’t think it was a break-up record, but now it almost feels like I was breaking up with my entire past.”
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2xeZ6qc

Saturday (3/9)
The Wall Live Extravaganza

$30-$45/All Ages/Doors at 7:00PM

College Street Music Hall – New Haven

INFO: Following the resounding success of Space: The Best of the Pink Floyd Show in a packed Salle Wilfried-Pelletier in Montreal, the production team of Richard Petit and Michel Bruno, in collaboration with Rubin Fogel, is back with their show, THE WALL LIVE EXTRAVAGANZA , featuring new sets, costumes and visual effects inspire by the The Wall thematics.

After more than 100 performances in Canada and the U.S. in 2016-2017, the production is getting a new look … staging that immerses you in the expansive universe of Pink Floyd’s masterpiece with an array of numbers from The Wall, Alan Parker’s film & across the spectrum of the original show, and Pink Floyd’s iconic repertoire.
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE:  https://ticketf.ly/2LZ75gi

Monday (3/11)
Ghostly Kisses w/ Pearl Sugar

Free with RSVP (or $5 at the door)/21 and over/Doors at 7PM

Cafe Nine – New Haven

INFO: Torn between dreams and reality, Ghostly Kisses presents her most recent album ‘The City Holds My Heart – EP’ in a dreamy and nostalgic universe of her own. Produced by Louis-Étienne Santais (Fjord), the music is inspired by the sonic textures of the 90’s and unfolds around Margaux’s soft voice, progressively revealing different drums, synths, string arrangements and piano layers. Accompanied by her three musicians, you experience and feel all the contrasts and subtleties of her ethereal electro-pop music live.
RSVP HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2yW0z6a

SHOW ANNOUNCEMENTS

Monday, April 1st
Beach Fossils

$20 ($18 adv)/All Ages/Doors at 7PM

Space Ballroom – Hamden

INFO: The long-awaited return of Brooklyn’s Beach Fossils, Somersault showcases a band in bloom. Charting into new musical territory with a refined songwriting style, it’s an album that captures flashes of life in New York grounded in personal experience.

The band’s self-titled 2010 debut established a sound that was both minimal and enveloping. With Somersault, the group’s first release since 2013’s Clash the Truth, Beach Fossils have channeled years of experimentation into expansion and reinvention. Augmented with more complex instrumentation, including string arrangements, piano, harpsichord, flute, and sax, the new songs offer multi-layered pop guided by sharp, poignant, and honest lyrics. As the band’s first release on Dustin Payseur’s new label Bayonet Records, which he co-owns with wife Kate Garcia—the group made the most of their newfound independence, investing ample time in expanding its range both musically and lyrically. While Payseur handled the bulk of the songwriting duties in the past, Somersault is a true collaboration between the founding member and bandmates, Jack Doyle Smith and Tommy Davidson. The new songs speak to a more fluid, eclectic sound, filled with lush compositions formed by studio experiments and sam-pling of the band’s own recordings. Orchestral pop gem “Saint Ivy” shines with plucked strings, buoyant basslines and a propulsive, wayward, guitar. “Tangerine,” a driving, tightly wound melody, rushes forward and briefly leaves the ground due to the gossamer guest vocals of Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell. The effervescent “Rise,” which hinges on the spoken word of Gavin Mays (Cities Aviv) discussing a failed relationship, hangs, like many recent breakups, in a sense of suspension. The cloudy, wistful “Social Jetlag,” bustling with samples of crowded streets, features the type of candid, off-the-cuff lyrics that make the entire effort immediately illuminating.

Recorded at multiple studios across New York City, a cabin in upstate New York, and even Los Angeles (including the home studio of Jonathan Rado of Foxygen, who helped engineer part of the album), Somersault turns the newfound chemistry between the trio into a sonic tapestry. Due to the variety of sessions and recording locations, the album was a Frankenstein-like series of reworking and reimagining songs. As the group pieced together different parts in a cycle of creation and co option, and built out more elaborate songs track by track, the process became more reminiscent of a record created via sampling and arranging than one built by simply grinding out riffs. The long-simmering album, filled with breezy music both melancholic and uplifting, sees the band channeling their voices and honing their craft.

Flowing between shimmering compositions and immersive soundscapes, Somersault evokes the laid-back mood of a warm, breezy city night, the air crackling with humidity and excitement. These songs pulse and pull, capturing a blend of promise and heartache. It’s beautiful and layered, a refined, sweeping creation that threads together numerous styles, textures, and themes into a refreshing, singular vision.
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2NBnKZU

Saturday, April 27th
Patti Smith and Her Band

$35-$75/All Ages/Doors at 7PM

The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts – Hartford

INFO: Patti Smith, born in Chicago and raised in South Jersey, migrated to New York in 1967.

In 1975 Patti Smith’s first recording, Horses, was inducted into the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress in 2010 by The Library of Congress by the National Recording Preservation Board. Her subsequent albums are Radio Ethiopia, Easter, and Wave, Dream of Life, Gone Again, Peace and Noise, Gung Ho, trampin, Land, twelve, Banga. Outside Society, and Horses/Horses. She is a four time Grammy nominee, most recently nominated for a 2017 Grammy for the spoken word recording of her latest book M Train, and a Golden Globe nominee for the song Mercy Is from the film Noah.

Author of the acclaimed memoir, Just Kids, which chronicled her friendship and journey in art with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith was awarded the 2010 National Book Award. Her other books include Witt, Babel, Coral Sea, Woolgathering, Auguries of Innocence, Collected Lyrics, and the 2015 publication of M Train.

Patti Smith’s art has been exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide. Represented by the Robert Miller Gallery in New York since 1978, her exhibitions include Strange Messenger, Land 250, Camera Solo, and most recently “18 Stations”. Steven Sebring’s 2008 documentary, dream of life: the movie, was acknowledged internationally and received an Emmy nomination.

As well as a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Patti Smith also holds the honor of “Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture, and has been awarded honorary doctorates from Rowan State University, Pratt Institute of Art, and the School of Art Institute Chicago. Patti Smith was honored by ASCAP with the Founders Award, representing lifetime achievement, and the recipient of Sweden’s Polar Award that is an international acknowledgement for significant achievements in music.

February 7, 2013, Smith was awarded the Katharine Hepburn Medal from Bryn Mawr College, which recognizes women whose lives, work and contributions embody the same drive and accomplishments as the four-time winning actress. On May 18, 2014, Barnard College Board of Trustees will present Patti Smith with their Medal of Distinction that honors individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to excellence in their communities, and their careers. On November 1, 2014 Patti accepted the Chicago Tribune Literary Award.

September 2016 Patti Smith delivered the keynote address at Yale’s Windham-Campbell Literature Prize ceremony, in which she delivered a lecture titled “Devotion” which will be published by Yale University Press in 2017 as part of the prize’s “Why Write” series. In November 2016 she was awarded the Burke Medal for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in Trinity College, Dublin.
NOTE: Tickets will NOT be available for purchase at the Redscroll Records box office at any time.
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: http://bit.ly/PattiSmithCT

Monday, May 6th
TEEN

Free with RSVP (or $5 at the door)/21 and over/Doors at 7PM

Cafe Nine – New Haven

INFO: The band TEEN came together at the turn of the decade, but its members have known each other their whole lives. Teeny, Lizzie, and Katherine Lieberson are sisters. Although they grew up in a musically vibrant Halifax home—their father was the esteemed composer Peter Lieberson—their first band jelled once they all lived in New York.

Teeny officially conceived TEEN in 2010 while on break from touring as part of renowned band Here We Go Magic. Following her self-recorded 2011 release Little Doods, she invited her sisters to join the project, transforming TEEN into a full-blown band. Carpark records caught wind of Teeny’s work, and TEEN signed to the label for its proper debut album, 2012’s In Limbo. The sisters’ unsurprising, inevitable chemistry manifests across the record’s sprawling, lo-fi psychedelia; the familial bonds that formed it gave it a strength that resulted in acclaim from publications including Rolling Stone, which claimed, “the matter-of-fact beauty of [Teeny’s] sweetly somber voice and the album’s unapologetically fat synths…proves highly evocative.”

It was with their 2014 follow-up The Way and Color, though, that the sisters solidified their accessible but complex, psychedelia- and synth-informed pop lens through which they explore romance, womanhood, and social constructs. Of the album’s more outré, electronic-influenced sounds, The New York Times raved: “The band’s new songs bloom with vocal harmonies and double down on intricate counterpoint…. TEEN’s music never [loses its balance].”

Good Fruit, the band’s fourth and newest album, is its sharpest thesis yet. A meditation on life after love, it’s thematically the opposite of its predecessor, 2016’s Love Yes, which The Guardian praised as “reminiscent of…inventive late-70s to mid-80s pop groups.” Musically, though, Good Fruit is the logical evolution of Love Yes’ massive uptick in synth use and sticky-hot choruses. The album boasts self-assured, skyrocketing synthpop anthems including “Only Water” and “Runner,” which betray the crucial lessons the sisters took from experiencing the distinct, enlivening ways that their myriad Love Yes tourmates employed synths. As with all TEEN albums, there are haunting ballads, most notably “Pretend,” which swells into a roaring synthetic climax as it details a relationship’s failure. A precise analysis of life after love, it’s an ideal note on which to end Good Fruit, a bold statement on moving forward and letting go of the past.
RSVP HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2ESZ1xo

Saturday, June 8th
Charly Bliss

$15/All Ages/ Doors at 7PM

Space Ballroom – Hamden

INFO: “I don’t know why it’s easiest for me to frame the darkest lyrics in the context of upbeat songs,” says Charly Bliss’ Eva Hendricks. “It’s completely instinctual and not something I ever plan out. It sort of mirrors how I am, and maybe it’s a way of protecting myself. IAlso, in my opinion, the two best emotional releases are crying and dancing, so it makes sense to me to marry the two.”

That combination is the core of Charly Bliss who, on this record, embraced both sides of that equation more than ever before. Challenging each other to be exposed, to be seen for who they really are as people, and then to double down on the sound that emerged from that process is the story of the band’s evolution from the scrappy upstarts who made 2017’s brash punk LP Guppy, to the confident, assured artists behind the comparatively dynamic, unapologetically pop Young Enough. “We definitely go to different places on this one,” says bassist Dan Shure. “But it still sounds like us. It’s still fun.” As they started writing, they tapped into their mutual love of pop music. “You know, bangers? Songs that just stick with you for a really long time,” Dan says. In particular, the expansive but gritty title track and the synth-driven, emotive song “Chatr Room” served as key points of reference for the overall direction of the album.

But for Eva, the path to these moments of exaltation was fraught. Much Many of the singer’s Young Enough lyrics were inspired by a past abusive relationship, one that had Eva – as such relationships are designed to do – doubting herself on many levels. Songwriting, which “wasn’t something that I grew up thinking I could do,” as she puts it, became a new source of respite, and, eventually, of redemption. “You go through experiences of loss or extreme pain and you just keep moving,” Eva says. “You look around and wonder, how has the world not stopped? But it’ is also powerful. I’m still here, I’m not a person who is ruled by pain, I still like who I am.” If the singer had any lingering doubts about her craft, they’re gone now. “For a long time I understood my ability to write songs as like, OMG another one just fell from the sky what luck – another one will never come again!” Eva says. “Now I know, I’m meant to be doing this. And I accept and honor that.”

Exposing oneself emotionally, even to close friends and creative collaborators, is never easy — especially when one of those people is your brother. Growing up in Connecticut, it was their parents’ “wildest dream,” as Eva puts it, that she and Sam, the band’s drummer, would wind up playing in a band together, so of course they avoided it for as long as possible. The Charly Bliss origin story begins instead at performing arts summer camp, where guitarist Spencer Fox first met Dan. Eva and Dan also knew each other also through musical theater; they did shows together as pre-teens. “We are super hardcore,” jokes Spencer.

It was Spencer who first saw in Eva the possessed energy the bands’ fans are so drawn to, this tornado of joy and rage and celebratory sorrow spinning out to mesmerizing effect on stage night after night. “It was just there,” he says. “It was obvious.” He eventually asked Eva out of the blue if she’d been writing songs, which shocked her a little; dudes didn’t usually care. “I would always ask the guys at my high school who played music if we could start a band or write or do something together, but they pretty much ignored me,” she remembers. “But Spencer totally encouraged me.” Before long, the pair was writing together, and they called on Eva’s big brother to join on drums. “It was kind of like, oh why didn’t we do this a long time ago,” Sam says.

By 2014 Charly Bliss was a fully formed band, living in New York, working the standard barista/bartender circuit by day, rehearsing by night. They recorded and released their debut EP, Soft Serve, and played lots and lots (and lots) of shows. There was a purity to those years. “I loved it,” remembers Eva. “I really loved working in a coffee shop. I’d write songs while I was putting away milk.” After they released Guppy through Barsuk Records in 2017, time spent out on the road increased, as did the Charly Bliss fanbase. But the essence of the band’s sound, two and a half minute torrents of blissfully tight chaos that blew the roof off the place, (not to mention the band members’ lifestyles) didn’t change much.
TICKETS AVAILABLE 10AM FRI 3/8 HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2tkha0o

Thursday, June 20th
Sebadoh

$25 ($20 adv)/All Ages/Doors at 7PM

Space Ballroom – Hamden

INFO: It’s been six years since Sebadoh put out their last record, so it would seem that the release of this ninth full-length, Act Surprised, is long overdue. But actually, that’s relatively quick for the lo-fi indie rock legends. After all, there was a 14 year gap/semi-hiatus between 2013’s Defend Yourself and its predecessor, The Sebadoh, so really, six years is nothing. Besides, the trio – Lou Barlow, Jason Loewenstein and Bob D’Amico – have a pretty good reason.  “Lou is always being taken away and abducted by Dinosaur Jr. for these fun and exciting next-level rock’n’roll tours,” chuckles Loewenstein, “so when we get him back we have to relight the fire.”

That’s exactly what the trio did, recording 15 new songs with Justin Pizzoferrato, the engineer behind many Dinosaur Jr. albums. Recorded at Sonelab in Easthampton, Massachusetts it marked a change in approach for the band, who had not only produced the previous record themselves, but who also gave themselves a bit more time than usual to get everything finished.

“In the past,” says Barlow, “we would write in the studio and the songs would develop on the road.“
This time, we did some rehearsals a few weeks before recording,” adds Loewenstein, “which we almost never do. So we got a chance to not use the first take and took time to finesse things, which we also don’t usually do, so that was a good step.”

And while Loewenstein admits that the album became something it wouldn’t have done had Sebadoh self-produced it, as they did with Defend Yourself, he learned to just go with the flow while they were making it.

“I’ve done a lot of recording for other bands as well as the last Sebadoh record,” he says, “so it was a little bit strange giving up the science and the tech sides of the recording process. I had to try to leave Justin alone and let him do his thing, trusting that it would be okay. I really enjoyed working with him and he’s a perfect fit for this band.”

“I’ve always wanted to work with Justin on a Sebadoh record,” adds Barlow. “We were able to finish a record as opposed to handing it off in the final stages to the Dinosaur Jr. machine.”
“Besides his technical skill as an engineer,” says D’Amico, “his temperament is perfect for the personalities in the band, and we all were comfortable working with him. He’s a musician and he works that way – thinking like a guy in the band and the engineer simultaneously.”

It’s true. As such, this is a collection of songs that recalls the classic Sebadoh sound – that iconic fuzzy, jangle of guitars that’s both joyful and wistful at the same time – but which also takes their sound both forwards and sideways. It sees Barlow and Loewenstein singing and harmonizing together more than ever before to create what D’Amico terms a “real ‘sound’.” Barlow and Loewenstein each wrote seven songs, while D’Amico wrote penultimate track “Leap Year” – a hyperactive mush of angular rhythms that reflects the odd, slightly dystopian world that we all seem to be living in right now.
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2NmGhJl

Monday, June 24th
Bombadil

Free with RSVP (or $5 at the door)/21 and over/Doors at 7PM

Cafe Nine – New Haven

INFO: Bombadil is a long-running folk-pop band from Durham, NC. The band is known for their creative and heartfelt lyrics, lush vocal harmonies, thoughtful arrangements, and engaging live show.
RSVP HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2EPUVpQ

**Tickets are available for all these shows in the shop (cash only for ticket sales) without the online fees. **