Interview with Tim McGowan of Ghost Aviary

Hey, I just interviewed Tim from Orlando over the phone...if you wanna listen to it and stuff. It's pretty good...we talk about his band, their new release, Fred Durst, Fest, D4, BTMI, Minor Threat T shirts, and whatnot.

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-Idle

Arcania Fades- Sink Me Darling (Shit Tracks) 2009

Arcania Fades is a polk funk folk punk band from Quebec and I adore them. They meld a lot of great sounds together and it sounds kickass. JP plays guitar, harmonica, piano, and sings. Alex plays guitar and also sings. Eric plays drums and other forms of percussion. Lastly but not leastly, Dany plays bass and does vocals. Recommended if you like Against Me!, Black Sails Western Shores, Run, Forever, Harley Poe, or New Years Revolution.

"Coming Home" is a really, really fun song. It shows a youthful and inspiring spirit that I adore. Not only is the guitar so addictive and catchy, the different percussion aspects are wonderful too. Also, I fucking love the vocals. Great voices and great melodical lines.The upbeats on the high hat really pull the tone of the song together and set the fun attitude along with the catchy guitar and bass. My brother, whom is a great musician and probably one of my best friends that helps me with reviews sometimes, declared it "pirate punk" and that made me laugh pretty hard. The music is intricate, beautiful, upbeat but still rough, and has a raw sound. 

"Black Flags and Riot Chants" slows down the tempo a bit, and adds harmonica! It's still unbelievably catchy, which seems to be a theme with Arcania Fades. The combination of the acoustic and electric sounds really mix awesome, and I continue to be impressed with the pipes of the boys. They show a great understanding of music, but are still obviously fun people. This is most definitely dancing music. That's what I've decided.

"They Got Us" was a little rough for me at the beginning, but it grew on me! It's kind of a folk punk ballad. The tracks slowly lose pace throughout the album, but they don't lose their emotion. Oh, and the guitar in this song plays on heartstrings.

"Appetite for Decay" is the last song and my favorite! It's so great. The guitar almost reminded me of the Haunted Continents if pace was sped up, and the vocals are a lot like Run, Forever. Hence the RIYL above. This song has variation and strong parts on every instrument. I love every bit of it. It has both driving, fast riffs and slower verses. It just switches so nicely, and really gets my gears going. 

Arcania Fades rocks, and just reinforces my theory that all Canadian punk is good punk. Send them love. <3

-Bear

Interview with Matt Salkeld of Black Sails, Western Shores

Black Sails, Western shores is a great band from Bakersfield, California that I reviewed back when Idle and the Bear was first starting, and through that, I ended up becoming friends with Matt Salkeld. He's awesome!

Tell us how Black Sails, Western Shores started... There has to be a story. 

There is always a story. Myself, Wes and Brett were all in local bands here in Bakersfield. I heard the band they were in, and really liked it. So I threw them on a couple of shows with my old band. That's how we met and became friends. After both of our bands broke up, we started talking about forming a band together. After a year of practicing/writing/recording, while getting tight with each other on a musical level we had about 9 songs. We were trying to figure out what direction this band would go in as to musical style. We were going for more of a slowed down rock/punk feel and things weren't going the direction we wanted. That's when one day I was checking our myspace page, and we got a message from a local band called "Black Sails, Western Shores" Turned out BSWS was just one guy, Stephen Castro. He made a few songs on garage band with him singing, playing all the instruments, and some midi drums from garage band. He mentioned he really liked our music. Then I listened to his songs and immediately knew that I wanted to him to start playing with us. He was playing the stuff we wanted to write, but it just wasn't coming out at the time. All of us were into what he was doing and came to the agreement of meeting Stephen, seeing if he was a decent guy, and eventually setting up a practice with him. So we met, played, practiced and wrote. The rest is history.......

What kind of music were you guys making in the previous band- was it punk, or totally different? How long have you personally been into punk music?

With Brett, Wes and I, It was definitely punk, just a little heavier and faster. I did the majority of the writing too. 

Similar to: No Trigger, Smoke Or Fire, Good Riddance, Rise Against. 

I heard my 1st punk record when I was 10 or so. It was Propagandhi's "How to Clean Everything"  Who are to this day, my favorite band of all time. That record got me into independent punk music.

Propagandi rocks. Did you come from a musical family? What about the other members?

Actually none of us came from a musical background. We are all self taught. Just happened to all like the same bands growing up.

If you could fight any band, living or dead, who would it be?

1st off, great question!

I would have to say early Aerosmith, because I know they would be very weak from all the drug use and we could steal all there drugs and gear!

Great answer... So what is BSWS doing right now- are you recording, touring, or just relaxing/playing in Bakersfield?

We are about to start recording for a new full length,a cover song for a upcoming tribute album, and a couple split 7". More info on all that soon. In the meantime we are gearing up for Way Out West Fest in AZ! April 8th-11th! Party time

Ooh, who are the splits with? :) When do you think the full length will be done?

One split is with The Anchor. The other is a 3 way split with Gunners Daughter and Captain Were Sinking. The full length should be done and released by the end of the year.

Sounds great! One last question- if you guys could have any great musician join your group, who would it be, and what would they play?

Max Buchard (I think that's how you spell his last name?) He is the former bassist for Bigwig on their record "A Invitation To Tragedy" and the drummer for Near Miss on both of there records. He is a insanely good musician/singer/songwriter. I'd have him play everything! Haha!

Black Sails, Western Shores Facebook learn about them, give them money, rock out to them. They make people happy. :)

--Bear

Random Hand - Seething Is Believing

Hopefully this is the last ska band I review until my friend Luke's (bear's brother) mostly-solo EP is released. I think I chose a good ska band for this one. Random Hand's new album "Seething Is Believing" is the best thing to come out of England since "The Chameleon Script" by that one band that doesn't matter anymore, Howard Alias. (Note to reader: Go listen to The Chameleon Script.) What else can I say? They play ska. They play it in the style of bands from Community Records, for the most part. There's elements of punk, hardcore, metal, dub, trad ska, and whatnot. It's all good in the proverbial hood.

The album starts off with horns-a-blazin' on the starter track "Tales of Intervention". The hornline conveys a mysterious atmosphere, like it takes place at a masquerade where somebody is killing everyone off whenever the lights flicker, but nobody's sure who it is. This gypsyesque song is complemented by some heavy vocals in the vein of Boofish and that guy from Stuck Lucky. The second song the band suddenly becomes the Cro-Mags or the International Superheroes of Hardcore, before they remember they're a ska band for a few seconds at a time.

This album sounds pretty powerful overall, whether it's showing proper horn focus or it's just metal time in suburbia. The horn lines are really nice and executed well, and the thing with ska band that involve horns, is that nothing else in the music hardly matters once you break through the horns and the vocals. The instrumentals are on par, but this isn't Fatter Than Albert or anything, so don't expect much. Could they stand on their own without horns and with a singer with a less original sounding voice? Probably, but I wouldn't care to listen to it. The horns add a nice change-up from the ordinary, and I guess that's the whole point of there still being ska bands. I mean, after all of our shows people are usually like, "a trombone? what?"

There's not too much variation from the two styles I pointed out for these songs up until the song "Floating Ghosts", which has pretty interesting instrumentals, other than just the horns. The backup vocals are also pretty cool, while there is pretty often somebody singing under the lead singer, there's also some woahs going down. This song demonstrates the absolute power a ska band can achieve and does it well. It's a good time, despite the bass tone being lackluster. Why can't every album have the same bass as The Fad's Kill Punk Rock Stars?

"Bones" is the first song to stick mostly to the ska script as far as guitar is concerned, while the vocals represent something closer to street punk. It's good that they don't do the same thing all the time, which is like the gun to the head of ska artists.

"Start the Fans" makes me realize that I really like the drumming for this album, along with the horn work. This song heavily reminds me of Detonate, and now I really miss Detonate. Thanks, guys :( It's followed by what can be described simply as a hardcore punk song and not much more. It's good and stuff.

"It sounded like the beginning Woah-Oh by Forever the Sickest Kids" said the hipster next to me. What? She was talking about the "Henchmen" song.

The album ends with a ska song, "42 Days Off the Records", and this song actually has other ska elements involved that haven't been for the rest of it. Mainly the basslines from the lame bass tone. I like pretty much every song on this album, but I don't think I'm going to go any further with getting into this band. I actually used to listen to their other albums back in the day (a year or so ago), and it's all good stuff. If you're into ska, then give them a chance. Also hit up Do It With Malice...everyone's been talking about them recently.

-Idle

Straight Outta Junior High - Lamb of Godzilla

The weird thing about Straight Outta Junior High (SOJH) is that ever since initially discovering them a few years ago, I've heard them mentioned by absolutely nobody. But, everything I hear their music, I wonder why the hell my friends haven't discovered them and brought it up to me ever. Their songs are befitting to their bandname, because namesake has not died out yet. The topics are as juvenile as they ever will be for most pop punk efforts, but you get the feeling that these guys would never punch a couple girls at a hipster event.

Don't you love songs about fantasy football? My brother probably would...he's like a giant 12-year-old who some how is a legitimate adult with a family now. His google search history is honestly "boobs", "porn", "ESPN", and "videos of people getting hurt on youtube". So basically, my brother might be this band's target audience for the most part, other than the chicks they clearly are in this biz for. The first song, "Fantasy Football", is obviously about fantasy football.

The vocalist reminds me of if Dicky Barrett ever decided to sing way softer, and never developed a growl to his voice. It's on the deeper end, and chooses to express no emotion, while still being very energetic. I wouldn't directly compare this band to anyone, because they're kind of different in general. It's not like they do anything crazy or experimental...they just kind of have their own sound to me. They definitely have elements of surf punk in tact, and can sound similar to a more developed version of the Queers...just without the Ramones influence.

The intro to "If I Was Dead" sounds like a fucking video game theme. It's pretty awesome...this song is way less on the pop punk song, and more on the arena rock side. The lyrics are all like "If I was dead, would you remember my name? Cause I didn't blow up my face or blow my car in a drag race?" and other stuff people think about when their thoughts approach ever ceasing to exist. The song goes on to talk about a lot of dead people or people they wish were dead and whatnot. It's catchy and different.

Then there's a song poking fun at ska. Because that's how they roll I guess. It's called "8th Wave" and includes horn lines. The lyrics are actually funny, because when he talks about this gang and he says "don't you dare call them ska. More like punk; pop-punk with horns is what they like to be called." Because I'm always telling people I play trombone in a punk band, to which my friends always give me shit and say, "I'm sorry Idle, but you're in a ska band." Then I hang my head in shame. If anyone knows who they're talking shit about, let me know. Because this song is hilarious, and awesome. And does a perfect job of sounding like Reel Big Fish.

You can pick up this album over at their website if you're oh so interested. Because you should be.

Love,
Idle

Ghost Aviary - Summer of Cicada

Tim has probably vomited every bit of information regarding his band Ghost Aviary that he possibly could've...but I still don't fucking remember who does what. I just remember Tim plays drums, because I'm an idiot. Well, I know Chris plays guitar and sings, actually. I think their bassist has changed a lot? I don't know. Fuck it, it's not my job to know everything about every emo band I review. Oh, it is? Whatever.

I've already reviewed something done by Tim before, and that was the goofy Campfire Suburbia split with tragichero...the latter of which is actually a solo act by the guy Chris who sings and guitars for Ghost Aviary...so I guess I do remember some things sometimes. The point is, this release is way bigger sounding and way better sounding and way better and bigger in general. They remind me of Rites of Springs meets Off With Their Heads meets some NYC hardcore shit. People get annoyed with what I compare bands to, but that's pretty accurate, so fuck everyone.

The album starts off with "I-95", and while the drummer may be balls and a half, the rest of the band is pretty on par. This song is gritty, and far more on the hardcore side for the first half, but then kicks it emo for a good chunk of it. The bass tone is kind of lackluster, but the playing is good. The singing is the kind that sounds like the dude is working towards uprooting his vocal cords and making them look more mangled than Blake Schwarzenbach's. It's full of emotion, spite, and grit. The drummer isn't bad, he's just straight edge. And that's not bad either, he's actually a great guy. I'm an ass. I'm just mad because he's supposed to move to Ohio and play drums for my pop-punk affairs, not write actual music with an actual band that plays an actual genre.

"A Profound Hatred of Me" starts off with Tim being an asshole with the cymbals and then is joined by the rest of the band, guitar first. There's an ambiance being deployed here, but I never notice these type of things. Vocals come firing out like fucking torpedoes, and it's totally deserved. Who sings backup vocals? I don't know, but it reminds me of 80s hardcore punk whenever they're going down. It's some pretty intense shit, folks.

"Chris Carrabba" comes on next, and you realize they have a knack for letting Tim start songs off so he feels more important. Everyone who doubted my OWTH comparison can fuck off, because this one is an awesome pop punk song. It's catchy, and as I said awesome. Is that Tim singing backups? I think it is. Dude can't sing. Chris has a powerful voice though; I love it. The leads for this song are exactly what you'd expect from a band like Teenage Bottlerocket, but employed by a band you wouldn't expect it from. It's a nice changeup from the rest of the songs, and makes it so you're not bored listening to the same song repeated with a new title.

The title track is hitting the late 80s, early 90s emo pretty hard, and taking no prisoners. Other than our ears, our ears are prisoners. It's okay though, because it's better than having our ears murdered or raped, so it's all good in the hood. Oh hey, Tim is singing. This song is pretty good. It's also not just more of the same. It sounds like Jawbreaker. I like it.

Oh hey, the last song has more of Tim starting it off slowly. Fucking surprise, dudes! By the way, it's Tim's birthday as I review this. He's not getting drunk though, so he's doing it wrong. This song would be epic sounding if I were to be the type of person to refer to something other than a work by Homer as "epic". It's pretty cool, but it's not my cup of tea. Arnold Palmer's is my cup of tea.

-Idle

You can listen to it here. Their CDs haven't arrived yet.

Till Plains

Anyone else ever notice how they're the best band in the world?

Yes?

Yeah.