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I first became aware of Lida Husik’s work from a stellar review by Lois Maffeo in Puncture. Back in the pre-internet days I used to carry around a handwritten list of records I was looking for, and one day I hit pay dirt by finding Your Bag in my local shop’s $1 bin. And it turned out to be the best $1 I ever spent, because I can say without question that Your Bag is one of my favorite records of all time.

It’s a hybrid record that bridges the more straightforwardly ‘rock’ sound from Lida’s debut Bozo by stretching it out with sprawling, hypnotically hallucinogenic passages. (I later found out that this was because there was a misunderstanding about it being an EP —subsequently the tracks got stretched out to LP-length.) At times dreamily bucolic, at others times acid-drenched (in both the Woodstock and adjectival senses of the word), it’s not only a delightful crazy–quilt of sounds from start (the sing-song-y, elegiac “Your Bag”) to finish (the ten-minute long, beat-heavy acid-house pastiche “Match from Mars”) but one of the most moving albums about love and loss I’ve ever heard.

Lida made her first appearance on the Dischord compilation State of the Union, her dreamy poeticism strikingly different from the bristling, sometimes brutal angularity of her peers. But Husik, who grew up in “sweet old DC …before the Republicans came”, has proven again and again that romanticism and political engagement need not be mutually exclusive qualities in songwriting, as her deft writing never once tips over into mere didacticism. This is not an easy feat —how many usually capable songwriters fall flat on their faces when pointed commentary is the order of the hour? (The last Le Tigre album comes painfully to mind.)

Lida’s work with Kramer for his Shimmy Disc label resulted in three marvelous albums: 1991’s Bozo(or, as Lida wryly describes it, “my cute baby record, filled with girlish sparkle and drool”), the aforementioned Your Bag, and 1992’s The Return of Red Emma (a reference to Lida’s early State of the Union nom-de-plume and to the record’s higher-profile political focus).

Post-Shimmy Disc she signed to Virgin subsidiary Caroline and entered into a fruitful, long-running collaboration with British ambient-techno musician Beaumont Hannant. (Harder to track down but well worth it are Lida’s three songs on Hannant’s UK album Sculptured. On your marks, get set —ebay!)

Lida’s path in music has been a bit wayward of late. Things have been relatively quiet since 1999’s Alias swan song Mad Flavor. But she’s been making music, slowly but surely, and since the release of two new songs on a CD accompanying the literary magazine Gargoyle there’s been a flurry of activity.

There’s the new single, Nuclear Soul . All Lida’s albums are now available via Itunes. And in October she’ll be collaborating with Danish cellist Soma Allpass for a couple songs she’ll be including on her next full-length album.

Let’s hope there’s a tour in there somewhere!

SEVERAL PERTINENT FACTS ABOUT LIDA HUSIK:

1) She is criminally underrated. I mean CRIMINALLY.

2) She writes the most beautiful pop songs. Why they’re not universally known I have NO IDEA. I’m hell bent on getting the word out there. HELL BENT I say! If you see me on a street corner passing out copies of Lida records, don’t say I didn’t warn ya. And take one, for Christ’s sake!

3) Her melding of the existential (“Someday we’ll die with nothing figured out”) and the quietly ecstatic (“Hands in my pockets and I’m walking under colored lights/Warm weather coming on/Rain drop rings dancing out like an echo/…What a beautiful movie this day would make”) makes her the songwriter equivalent of Denton Welch.

4) She can use the word gendarmes correctly in a sentence.

Lida was kind enough to submit to the Warped Reality version of 20 questions —not once but TWICE. Here’s what she had to say…

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What were your formative musical experiences?

I’m so glad to have come of age in the 80’s which was the most fantastic time for music and for a fledgling musician. The whole period was so exciting on every level, art, music and the feeling of making a political difference. Certain shows were amazing and empowering: the Bush Tetras at 9:30 club, Richard Lloyd of Television’s solo show there, the Cramps, Pretenders with English Beat.

I remember the Bush Tetras because they were all ladies except the drummer and they were so strong up there, so rhythmic and complex, yet funny and campy and beautiful.

I gotta say Chrissie Hynde live in 1981 was a shock. I couldn’t believe she was real —she was like some machine of perfect punk power, so accurate, and that voice. I’m still blown away by her as a musician and as a human animal…

And all my little friends from kindergarden were making a lot of good noise at Dischord. I was involved with positive force the punk political group so it was a fun time in my life and very formative of who I am today. We were vegan at positive force house and I’ve managed to stay vegetarian since then and am a proud card-carrying vegan now.

We won’t go into the bands I saw before punk because that would include America, The Osmonds, Crosby Stills and Nash Without even Young, and yes, (not the band yes), Fleetwood Mac.

Have you ever surprised yourself with something you’ve written? Maybe you played it back later and thought, “I wrote that?!”

There are a lot of cool riffs and phrases floating around on unmarked cassettes near a great deal of cat hair. But if it doesn’t get used right away it’s usually forgotten. I have had that morning listen where I’m like, wow that’s really pretty —that was a good night’s work. Sometimes I’m a little impressed. but my methods are unconscious and unstudied. There’s very little method actually — I just start noodling and then I try to feel what mood is evoked by the sound. Then I fill it in with my experience using the mood of the sound to coax some kind of memory out that I can then chip away at and mold. Like the fine clay of southern Tuscany ripened by the august sun, dripping with golden relevance, etc….

There have been a lot of digressions into what I’d almost call world-music influenced rhythms but I have yet to really build on that. perhaps in the future. Yeah, it’s time for my Paul Simon African period.

Do you listen to your own music with a critical ear, or is it possible to lose yourself in it?

If you mean, like, a Jewish critical ear, like ‘Omigod, did I really think that note sounded on key? And now it’s permanent forever, like it’ll suck forever, and like, what, you thinkin’ people will listen to your music forever, what kind of delusional BLAH BLAH BLAH… ”

OK, it’s really not that bad but I do cringe here and there. People don’t realise that sometimes you have to make a record in four days. It’s exhausting so after a while you don’t care about every blip you hear, and then you forget that it’s permanent. So no, there’s not a whole lotta ‘getting lost in it’ but there are actually a lot of times when I’m emotionally moved by it.

Do you think your music would fit better in a different time period and/or place? If so, why & where?

I think my sound is very of its time. The electronic stuff of course, and the messiness of the lo-fi indie sound, that would have been swallowed up in the sixties or seventies.

It’s always been important to you to make music that’s also politically engaged. That can be a dicey proposition, because too often the politics begin to overpower the music (eg, Le Tigre’s latest). But it seems to me that you manage to integrate your themes very subtly and carefully. Is this ever a struggle, especially given that you live in DC and are surrounded by one of the most corrupt, toxic governments we’ve ever had? I mean, it must be scary being so close to it all.

It’s scary, awful, sick and disgusting and that’s why I’m moving to San Francisco! I was born here in DC, and through the years I’ve developed an amazing ability to spot, or rather, smell Repugnicans. I don’t mean to say all of them are bad, that’s too simple, but let’s just say most of them are, at best, selfish, at worst, amoral, and on average, dumb as toast.

Being subtle in the music is actually really hard. Singing ‘the world is so fucked and G. Bush is such a stupid ass and why don’t I rule the world for just one day’ may be how I feel but it doesn’t make for good lyrics. So there’s a lot of blending of personal experience with the outer experience, and attempts to hit the targets from an angle and not from dead on.

I’m so disgusted with this government that i’m a secessionist at this point. I’m a citizen of Lidonia, population 1.

What do you do when you’re not making music? And, if you didn’t have music as an outlet, what do you think you’d do instead?

I write more and more lately. I’m a very quiet person in my lifestyle but outside my apartment I’m loud. If I wasn’t in music I shoulda been on the stage.

Favorite guilty pleasure?

Judge Judy. I ‘ve been watching off and on for years and I think I just really love watching this very smart very enraged woman beat the mental crap out of people. I ‘m sure I ‘d hate her in real life. I actually saw her ridicule hilary clinton on a talk show. Granted Hilary ain’t perfect, but all things being relative… I also feel guilty ‘cause I don’t like participating in the Romans-in-the-coliseum aspect. It feels kinda bloodthirsty. But the situations are so dumb and the people are soooooo dumb it sorta explains a lot about how our country got the way it is now. Plus she’s wearing a hairstyle from like, 1956 and a doily around her neck. Plus any show that John Lydon was on can’t be all that bad!!

What musical artist will you just never ‘get’? For me, it’s Elvis Costello, for you it’s…
U2. BORING. and they lost me permanently when they sued negativland.

The late Egg Magazine’s music reviews consisted solely of the dollar amount they thought the album was worth. How would your most recent music purchases shake down for cash based on aesthetic & artistic, not retail worth? (Bonus: How’d you rate your own oeuvre?)

I just bought a cd of Ben Selvin and his Orchestra —stuff from the 20’s that I’d rate at a thousand big ones, because it makes me happy everytime I hear it, and I listen to it a lot.

I also got that cd by the Thai Elephant Orchestra. It’s so neat ‘cause they save elephants and rehabilitate them with music and other therapy, and they are talented! That’s pretty priceless.

Now I’m waiting to get 3 Feet High and Rising from De La Soul. I used to have it on cassette and lost it. I can’t wait to hear it again, I’d put it at about a thousand as well.

My stuff? To me it’s priceless, but on Amazon you can get it for a cool 98 cents!!!!

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Lida’s website | Buy her albums from ITunes* | …or from Amazon. | Check Lida’s MP3 page from time to time for new stuff.

* Fly Stereophonic, Faith In Space and Mad Flavor aren’t yet available via Itunes, but they will be shortly!!

The songs that follow are some of my favorites. But honestly, having to choose was almost impossible!

Lida Husik, “Hateful Hippy Girls” [from her debut Bozo]

Lida Husik & Beaumont Hannant, “Ormeau” [from Sculptured]

Lida Husik, “Mother Richard” [from Joyride]

Lida Husik, “Nuclear Soul” [from her new single]

I’m not even sure at this point when or how I stumbled across the Occasion. But I do remember the precise moment that I heard “I Can’t Stop Falling.” It’s a song so compelling you just fall effortlessly into the little world it creates, this pocket fiction you want to take with you and study with rapt, slightly stunned attention. The refrain “I can’t stop falling,” repeated often and with a slowly escalating sense of desperation, is punctuated by sharp, startling whip-cracks of percussion. It is by turns quiet and poetic, furious and tense. “Sooner or later it will come to me,” singer Jordi Wheeler whispers, sounding like a man resigned to a peculiar sort-of hell that he both fears and welcomes.

After some investigating, I found out that “Falling” was off of their self-titled debut [Say Hey, 2004]. Their second album, Cannery Hours [Say Hey], is equally intense, building on similar timeless, enigmatic lyrical concerns and playful sense of sonic experimentation. Musically, the band paints in watercolors —sometimes in broad, dusky swathes, sometimes with bright, pointillist delicacy. Equal parts fitful and elusive, songs like the epic “The Maiden” and the stoic “Register My Complaints” evoke parched soundscapes —deserts where one or two hardy species of plant survive, seemingly against all odds. “You May Know Me” is touched with a rare, effortless sense of grace and buoyed by double-tracked, gentle harmonies and Brent Cordero’s plangent piano. In addition to the somewhat formal, elegiac quality, there’s also a subtle, surreal sense of whimsy at work. “What is this?” Jordi sings on “Register My Complaints”, “Is it the work of some imaginative florist?”

Loosely speaking, The Occasion traffic in a kind of pastoral psychedelia. Psychedelia is, at heart, about freeing music from earthbound limitations, and in turn invoking a trance-like state in the listener. And the sum total of the Occasion’s music offers no such balm. Songs often begin with undulating, gentle waves of sound, lulling you into a false sense of complacency, only to stun you with distortion and rumbling basslines. From there, it builds to these incredible crescendos, pulling you effortlessly to the top of a massive swell and leaving you there, slightly stunned and wondering how in the hell you’re going to get down to Earth again.

The band is, in some ways, a bit of a Frankenstein creature —the push and pull of influences is sometimes internal, and they’re a better band for it. While their sound certainly has some antecedents in the 60s and 70s (the Velvets, Cale, Tony Conrad, echoes of the motorik mantras of Can, Amon Duul II, and Neu!) it also has the crisp single-mindedness and emotional raggedness of post-punk, post-rock groups like Savage Republic, Slint, and Scenic. (The S’s in a row were purely coincidental.) They manage to incorporate three singers —Brent Cordero (vocals, Rhodes piano), Charles Burst (vocals, drums), and Jordi Wheeler (vocals, guitar)— without compromising individual songwriting styles. Yet, somehow, everything coalesces in this incredibly organic way, aided and abetted by the equally impressive contributions of bassist Marlon Sporer and tape loop guru/percussionist Sara Shaw, whose deft way with splicing gives the songs their tenacious, slightly windswept quality.

I’ve caught the band live twice now —once during CMJ at Sin-é, and recently at Boston’s Middle East, where they were opening for Acid Mothers Temple. Both shows were impressive in different ways, The first because the band took their limited time and ran with it, giving us a concise set that never once let up in intensity. Seeing them a little over a month later at the Middle East, it was clear that touring with loose-limbed collective Acid Mothers Temple had liberated the band in some crucial ways. Songs that were organic to begin with became even more freeform, ebbing and flowing with a newfound confidence and innate sense of trust. That, and they seemed to be having a lot more fun.

Long story short: live or on record, they’re a fantastic band and you would do well to have a listen to the MP3s posted on the Say Hey website. Or over at Beekiller.

“Cannery Hours” and “The Occasion” are out now on Say Hey. | The band hopes to be playing some dates soon —check the band’s site for details. | Their MySpace page has their recent BBC session (which they promise on vinyl soon!).

The Occasion, “A Dulcimer’s Fancy”

The Occasion, “Register My Complaints”

Rhys Chatham’s ESSENTIALIST
HEATHEN SHAME
September 9, 2006
MassART | Boston, MA

When a piece of music begins with sheer, obliterating noise it sends me into a panic. I’m constantly looking for narratives in music —patterns and emotional cues— and noise initially puts up a wall of pure hunger, of force, that is not only daunting but difficult to reconcile with. You want to ask of any piece of music: Who are you? What are you doing here? What are you trying to say? but the pummeling wall of sound hurls you backwards, scrambling your logical brain and frying your synapses before you can even begin the inquiry.

There’s catharsis to be found in something so pure. Saturday night, Heathen Shame —consisting of Kate & Wayne of Major Stars/Magic Hour on guitars and Greg Kelley on amped trumpet— began their set with feedback so loud I started to wonder if I could jam multiple sets of ear plugs into my ears. But once the noise settled down to more manageable levels, I was free to engage their performance on its own terms. On the one hand, the group created a palpable sense of tension, echoing Kate and Wayne’s intricate pas de deux of aggression between the guitars with exaggerated, orchestrated movements. As the players stalked intently around the room with mechanized precision, their bodies silhouetted in near-darkness, the forbidding (and foreboding) noise gradually gave way to patterns. Patterns and ritual. The guitars were no less frenzied, but the chaotic bacchanalia of notes began to sound like Indian ragas. Something delicate was there, buried but audible, like the last shred of Hope in Pandora’s box. The piece built and built to a strangely cathartic finale. It was emotional and exhausting.

I’d heard that Rhys Chatham’s new band Essentialist was inspired by the glacial, drone-laden metal of groups like Sunn0))) and Earth. The performance certainly started out that way —with a beautifully orchestrated slow burn, tension ramping up with carefully calibrated precision. Then, BAM! The drummer let loose all that coiled energy and suddenly we had a very different beast on our hands. Not a slow, lumbering beast of burden but something lightning-fast and sleek. It also reminded me of nothing so much as speedy metal in the Pantera vein, albeit played with a sociological sense of detachment. (What the Brits would call “po-faced,” I believe.) Riff-o-rama heaviosity without all the attendant clichés like adolescent posturing, macho bluster, and ridiculous genuflecting at the Church of Satan transmutes into something else entirely —something pure and almost new. (I say almostbecause man, dusting off Monsters of Rock dinosaur metal is a tall fucking order.) If you think about how Rhys has previously performed his alchemical straw-into-gold with punk rawk (applying avant-garde techniques to rock n’roll structures) this new outfit makes sense. Appropriately enough, Saturday night’s show led, full circle, to a blistering performance of 1977’s “Guitar Trio,” a work that never fails to strip the paint off the walls and remind you how vital the sound of three guitars can be.

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Essentialist will be recording later this month, with an eye towards releasing an album in mid-2007. Chatham’s “A Crimson Grail” will be released in December 2006 on Table of the Elements. Visit Rhys Chatham’s site or that of his record label Table of the Elements for more info. “Guitar Trio,” which is taken from the recently reissued compilation of early works entitled Die Donnergötter (The Thundergods) is available online. | Buy releases from Heathen Shame, Table of the Elements, et al.:Twisted Village. | More info about other NonEvents here.

Rhys Chatham, “Guitar Trio (1982 Version)”