Seashell Radio

One of the beloved hubs of downtown Tucson nightlife, the Rialto Theatre starts off the night with an 8 p.m. set from Matt Ellis. He was born in Australia and spent his formative years there, and he also spent significant time in Hong Kong and New Zealand, so it should be no surprise that Ellis brings a troubadour spirit to his rootsy singer-songwriter fare. Speaking of rootsy, it doesn't get much rootsier than the folk instrumentation and angelic harmonies of female threesome the Silver Thread Trio, who these days are adding more original songs to their repertoire of obscure ancient folk tunes. They're on at 9 p.m. Just when you think you have Seashell Radio pegged as an atmospheric piano-pop band, or as sweet balladeers who aren't afraid of sudden bursts of noise, they'll pull a 180 on you. Expect great, unexpected things when they play in the 10 p.m. slot, just before the veteran grit-rockers of Greyhound Soul, whose classic-sounding rock never disappoints, at 11 p.m. Midnight brings a real treat: Since their 1992 Matador Records debut, Palomine, Bettie Serveert, fronted by the lovely vocals of Carol van Dyk, has been churning out melodically charming, beefed-up-guitar-driven songs that are undeniably great. We caught them on their first U.S. tour almost 18 years ago and were absolutely blown away. - Tucson Weekly

by Mel Mason

Mothfight, Peachcake, Seashell Radio

CLUB CONGRESS

Wednesday, July 1

Seashell Radio is arguably Tucson's best-kept musical secret. There's no filler, and every member of the group is a master at his or her individual instrument.

At different points during last Wednesday's show, each member took on the lead vocals as if that was his or her main function. And the harmonies? They meshed their voices in a way rarely seen in this town. The maturity in their sound, coupled with intriguing songwriting, kept listeners focused. No one talked over the band, an all-too-often irritating occurrence at Congress.

Esmé Schwall's mighty cello playing and Cassie Van Gelder's magical piano hands purveyed a tenderness that balanced out the bad-assery of Jeremy Serwer's arresting guitar playing and J. Fen Ikner's remarkable skill on the drums. The set started with a downy softness and, a few songs in, spiraled into an engaging, robust free-for-all. The highlights included the songs "East Coast/West Coast Emo War," "Blue Skies Over Black Markets" and the brand-new "Eleven Months," which showcased the full range of Van Gelder's voice. To watch people work together with such joy was infectious.

Phoenix's Peachcake had to follow the unfollowable. They decorated the stage with stuff you'd find in a magical dress-up trunk at summer drama camp. While their electronic beats got toes tapping, they didn't really seem to know what they were doing. It wasn't even so bad that it was funny; the performance hovered in that irritating gray area where I didn't know whether to flee or stay in one spot and jam my earplugs further into my skull. The lead singer tried to get the audience to be a part of whatever trip he was on, but no one was buying it. I have no idea why they were on this bill, let alone in the second slot. To say they killed the mood is a huge understatement.

Austin's Mothfight! saved the evening for the people who were brave enough to stick around. Lead vocalist/songwriter Kevin Attics knows how to inject just the right amount of experimentation into pop music. Every song was catchy, and though the band is fairly new, I got the feeling they had been around a while based on how tight they sounded. Their indie hit, "Hopscotch," should be just the beginning for them.

- Tucson Weekly

If you're looking for something that says "Tucson" for the music lovers on your list this holiday season, it's hard to beat a Calexico recording. Calexico may be a California border town, but it's also currently the Tucson music scene's biggest name. Their latest is a soundtrack for the indie documentary film "Circo," about a Mexican itinerant circus family.

But there are dozens of other decent bands, in many different genres.

Emilie Marchand, owner of Preen on North Fourth Avenue, said CD and vinyl sales by local groups are strong at the boutique, particularly in conjunction with live performances at the store. Silver Thread Trio did an in-store recently and Marchand said it pushed sales of its new CD.

Marchand said she thinks having bands play in the store establishes credibility, demonstrating a good relationship between the musicians and the store.

"They know the artist is going to get the money. And it's good for us. Say we've got the new Brian Lopez, and if we're one of the only places selling it in town, it brings people in."

And, in fact, Marchand checked and found she was out of Lopez's recordings and made a note to reorder.

Here are some of the releases over the last year or two by Tucson groups. Most of these releases are on the artists' own labels, or small local labels. They're available through local stores, or nearly always through the artists' and bands' web sites or MySpace pages.

• Calexico, "Circo": When it comes to Tucson bands, Calexico is in a league of its own these days, with studio albums, live albums, sound tracks, collaborations galore and more (their instrumentals are frequently heard as bump music on National Public Radio). Their latest release is the sound track for "Circo," an indie documentary about a Mexican family circus troupe.

• Howe Gelb, "Howe Gelb and A Band of Gypsies": Gelb, of Giant Sand fame, continues to branch out from the desert-rock sound with which he and his bands are associated. He's got a new vinyl album with a group of Spanish musicians, as well as a couple of Giant Sand retrospective CDs.

• Andrew Collberg, "On the Wreath": A member of the latest generation of Tucson singer-songwriters released this disc earlier this year. It's produced by Tucson guitarist and collaborator-about-town Nick Luca.

• Brian Lopez, "El Rojo" and "El Blanco": Lopez, of Mostly Bears, is on record most recently in a series of solo EPs that catch him in his singer-songwriter mode. Lopez, who seems to be everywhere for the last year or two, will make an appearance as part of Mostly Bears, playing Club Congress at 9 p.m. Friday with Holy Rolling Empire.

• Marianne Dissard, "L'Abandon": Tucson's French chanteuse is back with a new album plus a companion film inspired by Andy Warhol's filmed-in-Tucson "Lonesome Cowboys."

• Namoli Brennet, "Black Crow": Brennet is one of the most polished of singers and songwriters, and prolific, issuing eight CDs in the last 10 years. Brennet's throaty voice and great sense of melody add to her artfully told stories.

• BK Special, "Hope Springs": Bobby Kimmel (vocals, guitar and bass) was a member of the Stone Ponys with Linda Ronstadt in the 1960s and went on to a national career of his own before coming home. He's a Tucsonan again and made a recording with local singer/hot-rod guitarist Stefan George and singer Lavinia White. Except for two cuts, it's a mix of originals by Kimmel or George. Worth the price for their cover of "Sea of Heartbreak."

• The Kevin Pakulis Band, "Shadesville": One of Tucson's most popular bands from the last few years has Pakulis on lead vocals and guitar, Larry Lee Lerma on bass, Duncan Stitt on keyboards and Ralph Gilmore banging the drums. It's familiar Pakulis, sometimes almost speaking rather than singing his country, rock and country-rock originals, often with a good bit of local imagery.

• Greg Morton, "When Pigs Fly": It's one of several recordings from the killer bluegrass flatpicker's catalog, all of which should impress guitarists on your gift list - or make them want to sell their guitars. Morton's recordings feature his guitar work, both solo projects and with his band, The String Figures.

• Fafi, "Groove or Die": Fafi, aka 3 Percent, is on Three Music, Hip-Hop - available at 17th Street Market's music store.

• Prophet, "ODT: Out Da Trunk": Another local hip-hop release available at 17th Street. This CD carries a "Parental Advisory" sticker and a cover shot of the artist wearing a Bluetooth earpiece and posing next to car trunk filled with what appear to be shrink-wrapped kilos of weed. The first track is called "Eastside." Very urban.

• Kate Becker and the Zodiacs, "Soft Revolution": This is an album of loungey, dance funk that mostly sounds like it could have been recorded in the late 1970s. Becker's vocals are way out front on this recording.

• The Dusty Buskers, "The Life and Time of . . .": These frequent street performers (you've probably seen them - Arizona Daily Star

Not the Same Old Thing
Call it a democracy: Seashell Radio is the product of its members varied and diverse musical backgrounds
by Gene Armstrong

"We're just a bunch of music nerds."

That's how keyboardist Cassie Van Gelder and, by implication, her three partners in the up-and-coming Tucson rock-band Seashell Radio describe themselves while explaining the diverse range of music produced by their efforts.

While Van Gelder and cellist Esmé Schwall have classical and jazz backgrounds, drummer Fen Ikner and guitarist Courtney Robbins grew up playing in rock bands.

Drawing from progressive and classic rock, folk, alternative, jazz and classical, and incorporating the occasional sound effect or found sound, Seashell Radio plays music that, by default, might be called avant-garde. But it's also accessible to mainstream ears. The band's tunes may sound unusual on first listen, because together, these four musicians actually are forging a unique new sound of their own.

And because Seashell Radio's music is fresh, and not simply a rehashed version of something familiar, some listeners might call it "weird."

"We're not trying to be weird for the sake of being weird," said Robbins when the band gathered recently for an interview at Ikner's downtown-area home. "It's just sort of what comes out, and I don't feel like it's that weird, really. There's some weirdness to it in that it's not your usual stuff."

Said Ikner: "I'd much rather fail at trying to do something that I've never done before, or heard done before, than just do the same old thing."

Seashell Radio will celebrate the release of its debut full-length CD with a gig Friday night, Aug. 6, at Plush. The band will play about 10:30 p.m., in between sets by the Tucson band Young Mothers, and Kinch, from Phoenix.
- Tucson Weekly

Curtis McCrary

Top 13—'cuz it's luckier than a Top 10!

(in no particular order)

Spoon, Transference (Merge)

Another minimalist mini-masterpiece from Spoon, a bit darker and more off-kilter than is typical, which is apropos enough in these dark and off-kilter times.

Aloe Blacc, Good Things (Stones Throw)

The first cut on Good Things, "I Need a Dollar," was the theme song for HBO's awful How to Make It in America dramedy, and the best thing about the show. You are forgiven for thinking Blacc is the second coming of Bill Withers. But would Bill Withers ever have covered the Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale"? Methinks not.

Ty Segall, Melted (Goner)

Melted like your face will be after listening to this scorcher, that is. Hat-tip to my main damie Josh for texting me about it.

The Budos Band, The Budos Band III (Daptone)

Superhot instrumental funk, like the J.B.'s something something. No, just like the J.B.'s, and that's awesome.

Drake, Thank Me Later (Cash Money/Universal Motown)

Although Drake is generally not credited with inventing "hashtag rap" (basically removing "like" from rap simile couplets), he is undoubtedly responsible for its 2010 ubiquity. That aside, Thank Me Later is proof of a major new talent.

LCD Soundsystem, This Is Happening (DFA/Virgin)

James Murphy can do no wrong in the studio—in this case, the famous Mansion in Laurel Canyon—and Happening is a brilliant coda to an all-too-short canon. Here's hoping he changes his mind about retiring.

Seashell Radio, What Do You Have Against Happiness? (self-released)

Answer: nothing at all. Which is why I love this record.

Harlem, Hippies (Matador)

I'm partial to this band because of the Tucson connection, and also because I stand in solidarity with my fellow Curtis (O'Mara), but even absent any of that, this collection of grimy pop songs belongs on e'rybody's list. Seemingly, it is.

The Black Keys, Brothers (Nonesuch)

The Black Keys make their most accessible album to date, license the shit out of their music, and reap well-deserved accolades and success. One can only hope that they won't be tempted to take their talents to South Beach like the other famous so-and-so from Akron did.

Sleigh Bells, Treats (Mom and Pop)

Fun, inventive, unique and, for some reason, divisive, due to the misguided anti-"hipster" backlash. Haters gonna hate, but remember the corollary: Lovers gonna love.

Titus Andronicus, The Monitor (XL)

A ripping American rock record like they used to make in Minneapolis. Your move, Hold Steady.

Das Racist, Shut Up, Dude and Sit Down, Man (independent release)

Very smart comedo-rap that doesn't descend to the level of piss-take, except on maybe "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" (but that was released in 2008, anyway). This is what multiculturalism is all about, people: rappers of Mexican and Indian ethnicity, who met at Wesleyan, making fun of Dinesh D'Souza over wacky beats.

The Acorn, No Ghost (Bella Union)

People were too busy slavering over The Suburbs to notice that No Ghost was the best album out of Canada this year. Subtly sad, understated pop recorded in the intentionally isolating cabin-in-the-piney-woods style, with predictable effect (or should I say "affect"?).

2010's Best Jams: Cali Swag District, "Teach Me How to Dougie"; Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, "Round and Round"; Far East Movement, "Like a G6"; Charles Hamilton, "Telemundo."
- Tucson Weekly

Dear Seashell Radio,

I love you. There, I said it, but it doesn't mean I'll feel better. It just means I have to get my ass to your show tonight at Plush so I can confirm that my love for you is real and true.

Really, I don't know what it is I love about you most. Your laugh, although sometimes you can take things a little too seriously. It could be Esme's cello, or the way Fen pounds his drums (his glasses are nice, too), Courtney's way of pulling us into a song and toying with us a little bit, and, of course, Cassie's dreamy keyboards and songs.

Whew, OK, that's enough.

I have a sickness Seashell Radio, and the only cure is tonght at Plush at their record-release party, 9:30 p.m., 340 E. Sixth St. Gene Armstrong captured your spirit well here. - Tucson Weekly

Halfway through a Saturday night outdoor set, Cassie Van Gelder, accompanied both by her keyboard and the sweet, buzzing song of the cicadas in the trees surrounding the stage, whisper-sang the words: "walking around downtown, keeping my ear to the ground, looking for some brand new sound."

For the 60 or more people in the audience that night, and for most who have heard the chamber pop stylings of the band Seashell Radio, a brand new sound is exactly what they would have found.

If you didn't make that show, no matter: Seashell Radio is captured on the band's first full-length offering, which gets a CD release party Aug. 6 at Plush.

The album's title, "What Do You Have Against Happiness?," and the band's lively stage persona, encompass their personalities as individuals and how they work together. This is a group that has fun, a spirited bunch of musicians joined both by friendship and a passion for music.

Fen Ikner (drums), Esmé Schwall (cello), Van Gelder (keyboards) and Courtney Robbins (guitar) make up Seashell Radio, a name derived from a line in Ray Bradbury's famous novel "Farenheit 451": And in her ears the little seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and a electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind.

Like Bradbury, the members of Seashell Radio draw from various genres to create their band's style, one crafted from a blend of four differing creative energies and irreverently funny personalities.

The way the group feels comfortable talking for, with and sometimes over each other while sitting around the table and sipping draft ale at Grill is indicative of the way they create music as well. A band member might, for instance, come in with a portion of a song and the others will build full tracks around it. This marks one of the band's most distinctive traits: no set lead singer.

Whoever writes the song, sings the song.

"We all write songs and so usually what goes down is that someone goes, 'Hey, I've got something new and here's how it goes ... or here's how I think it goes,'" Van Gelder says. "And then we all just sort of start playing along and then we figure it out."

Following the introduction of longtime Tucson singer-songwriter Courtney Robbins after Seashell Radio's first EP, the band took a more rock-based direction, not by premeditated choice but more as a natural musical evolution.

"We used to be very acoustic-y and soft," says Ikner, talking above the clanging keys of a piano player in the adjoining Red Room. Ikner notes that the new album gives the band a more distinctive rock tone, a tone he welcomed.

Ikner even feels that the one song with acoustic guitar on the new record is nothing compared to how the electric affects overall album.

"It wasn't like, we're going to be a rock band so let's use electric guitar," Robbins starts.

"As soon as we heard the electric guitar, we were like, maybe the electric would be good on this one song, maybe on this other song too, maybe it should just be there," Schwall adds.

The Plush show will be the kickoff of a West Coast tour that will take Seashell Radio from Arizona through California, up the coast to Washington and back down again.

They bat jokes back and forth—conversation switches from strange dreams to Ikner's near-miss with Ke$ha in Nashville, Tenn, to the decision to place real audio recordings of the Apollo 13 on "Happiness."

The album took three solid days of recording split between local studios and Van Gelder's closet-turned-vocal booth, followed by two to three more months of "tinkering here and there," Schwall says. The process was helped, in part, by Ikner's experience with recording music with and outside of Seashell Radio.

Though the band members split their time with different day jobs—Van Gelder tunes pianos, Schwall pursues a master's degrees in creative writing and Ikner builds boutique microphones and works as a recording engineer—they maintain connections as muscians and friends through twice-a-week practices and plenty of shows around Tucson.

"We all hang out outside of the band too," says Robbins, adding a joke about the difficulties of playing with people who don't enjoy each other's company.

"I've been in that band," Ikner says. "And this is not that band." - Tucson Metromix

This Wizard Boots duo (picture above), hailing from Portland (so they must be proven, heh), is actually kinda' similar to Golden Boots--the earlier stuff. Except the singer has this faux-British (maybe) accent, so he comes off more as Jilted John, or maybe Billy Childish and some songs are obviously patterned after The Violent Femmes. Distorted, twangy, twisted tall tales. OR, our own Gary Bear. More on this show later, but Fen's new wonderful creation Seashell Radio will be perfoming as well. All-ages, free and full kitchen, as always, at Red Room inside Grill. And Really Big Birds appears to be on this bill--gotta' love these free Red Room shows in March! - http://www.tucsonscene.com/?q=archive/2009/3/28