No day makes me feel luckier to be living in Richmond, VA than Monument 10K day.
I know I wrote something similar this time last year, but I can’t resist trying to put the experience of running in this past Saturday’s event into words.
Richmond Music
Stephen Frost
About a month ago, when 2013 was a near-blank slate with nothing but a week’s worth of scribbling on it, I posted a song by Richmond-based musician Stephen Frost. It was called “Age Of Gold,” and its release was accompanied by a YouTube video in which Frost pulled back the curtain to reveal how and why the song was created. Being the backstory junkie that I am, I was more than a little intrigued by this formula. Hearing a bright and engaging song and immediately looking under the hood to find out what makes it work so well? That’s about as good as it gets, and it’s precisely the recipe for Frost’s nascent “Paris Métro” project, which recently saw its second installment — the considerably darker “Wimyn Redux” — hit the Internet. I was so excited that I asked Frost if he would answer a few questions via email about the new song, his approach to writing and recording, and his plans for the Paris Métro project going forward.
The Low Branches
Positive feedback comes in many forms. A thumbs-up. A compliment. A vote of confidence. If you’re a dolphin performing tricks at SeaWorld, it comes in the form of a tasty, frozen fish. Yum!
But in certain situations, the best feedback of all is total silence. The Low Branches’ January 19 album release show at Gallery 5 is a wonderful example.
Dead Fame
When it snows here in Richmond, even just an inch or two, things tend to shut down. Stores close early. Employers send workers home. Schools cancel classes before a single snowflake’s hit the ground. It can be a little ridiculous.
But there’s one intrepid organization that doesn’t scare so easily. A quintet that stares down Old Man Winter with ice in its collective veins. I’m talking about post-punk/New Wave-influenced indie rockers Dead Fame, who were kind — and brave — enough to stay late after practice two Thursdays ago, while a particularly wet, slushy snow was falling outside, and chat about their evolving stage setup, pre-Dead Fame musical experiences, favorite albums from 2012, and more.
Despite the inclement weather, this turned out to be the perfect time to catch up with the band. They’re performing at The Renaissance this Friday, February 1, for WRIR’s Party For the Rest of Us 8, and they’ve just released “My Body, My Fool,” which is the first in their new “Mask Singles” series. We kicked off the conversation by talking about the round of Pedro Aida-helmed recordings that gave birth to The Mask Singles.
The Low Branches
Near the end of August of last year, I had the opportunity to interview Christina Gleixner about the home recording project she’d undergone to help pay for the next Low Branches studio release. At the time, not many details on the album were available, other than the fact that they’d done some production work with John Morand at Sound of Music, some themselves, and that the final product was to be titled One Hundred Years Old (or 100 Years Old, as I styled it at the time).
Exactly four months after that interview was published, the album’s title track hit the interweb via Richmond Playlist, and I haven’t been able to get over how much I love it… in large part because I can’t seem to get it out of my head.
Stephen Frost
Moments, by definition, are fleeting. Like snowflakes in the palm of your hand, or unhealthy breakfast food brought into work on Friday morning.
But moments never really disappear… not when you have documentation. Not when you sit down and write a song about what you’re feeling right then and there. “Age of Gold” is just such a document, both in terms of what it says and how it came into being.
White Laces
More than a year and a half ago, I dove headfirst into the White Laces universe by snagging their eponymous EP at Deep Groove Records, and I’ve been exploring the vast, dream-like spaces they create ever since. I wrote then that hearing them for the first time was like “like stepping on a live power line,” and the resulting delirium has yet to wear off, especially because the months since have seen them release new songs, new vinyl, new videos, and a fantastic debut full-length in MOVES. The rich sonic landscape they’ve carved out expanded even further last week, when Stereogum premiered the video for MOVES track “Heavy Nights” — a clip which offers a dark and winding take on the Wonderland trope that will irreversibly alter the degree of comfort you feel when looking at tea and fruit-topped cookies. To celebrate this new addition to the White Laces universe, I caught up with frontman Landis Wine via email about the video’s genesis and the band’s plans for the near future.
Sounds of RVA
The internet is a funny place.
Well… I suppose it’s not actually a place. It’s a thing. A network. A series of tubes, much like the ones used to transport endorsed checks between you and the bank’s drive through teller. The fascinating thing, though, is that it feels like a place. The virtual spaces we visit so that we can interact with people who share our interests feel just as real as the 7-11s we hit up for coffee on the way to work — even more so in some cases, given that a diligently updated blog can be front-and-center in your consciousness several times a day, if you’re equally diligent about reading it.
Though I’ve never met Sarah Moore Lindsey in person, her words regularly occupy that front-and-center position, thanks to Sounds of RVA.
The Snowy Owls
So I’ve been excited to hear the new Snowy Owls tunes. How excited, you ask? So excited that, a few months ago, I compiled some of the Twitter-based progress reporting the group posted as they were preparing for the recording process. More details have emerged since, and I’m happy to say that the suspense bubble is set to burst tomorrow, when The Snowy Owls release the Within Yr Reach EP — a beautiful, 8-song, impressionistic portrait that showcases the band’s knack for pairing memorable, guitar-driven melodies with hazy arrangements that set a distinctive and mesmerizing mood. I had the chance to catch up with Owls frontman Matt Klimas via email this weekend, and he answered a few questions about the EP, his favorite pedals, Swedish pop music and more.
The Trillions
Last week, I shared a little about how I pick songs for Fridays, saying that I tend to look for the most fun/weekend-y thing I heard during the course of the week. On a somewhat related side note, I woke up with R. Kelly’s “Ignition (Remix)” stuck in my head, which is fun and all, but not really appropriate for 8 a.m., no matter which day of the week it is. (By the way, have you seen Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance of “Ignition”? Well worth a look-see.)
Wait… what were we talking about? OH YEAH! Besides levity, there’s another great reason to save a post for Friday — the need for a couple of weekend days to chew on it.
You Hear That 
