From the founding member of Sonic Youth, a passionate memoir tracing the author’s life and art—from his teen years as a music obsessive in small-town Connecticut, to the formation of his legendary rock group, to 30 years of creation, experimentation, and wonder.
Following the conversation, The Tara will host a screening of director Stuart Swezey’s documentary film, Desolation Center, featuring performances by Sonic Youth, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Swans, Redd Kross, Einstürzende Neubauten, and more. Moore will introduce the film.
A note on the THREE types of tickets available for this event:
Book Talk Ticket Includes a signed paperback edition of Sonic Life and admission for the 7 p.m. book talk and signing. ($20 + tax)
Book Talk and Movie Ticket Includes a signed paperback edition of Sonic Life, admission for the 7 p.m. book talk and signing, and the 8:30 p.m. screening of Desolation Center. ($36 + tax)
Movie Ticket Admission to the 8:30 p.m. screening of Desolation Center. ($16 + tax)
About the Book Thurston Moore moved to Manhattan’s East Village in 1978 with a yearning for music. He wanted to be immersed in downtown New York’s sights and sounds—the feral energy of its nightclubs, the angular roar of its bands, the magnetic personalities within its orbit. But more than anything, he wanted to make music—to create indelible sounds that would move, provoke, and inspire.
His dream came to life in 1981 with the formation of Sonic Youth, a band Moore co-founded with Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo. Sonic Youth became a fixture in New York’s burgeoning No Wave scene—an avant-garde collision of art and sound, poetry and punk. The band would evolve from critical darlings to commercial heavyweights, headlining festivals around the globe while helping introduce listeners to such artists as Nirvana, Hole, and Pavement and playing alongside such icons as Neil Young and Iggy Pop. Through it all, Moore maintained an unwavering love of music: the new, the unheralded, the challenging, the irresistible.
In the spirit of Just Kids, Sonic Life offers a window into the trajectory of a celebrated artist and a tribute to an era of explosive creativity. It presents a firsthand account of New York in a defining cultural moment, a history of alternative rock as it was birthed and came to dominate airwaves, and a love letter to music, whatever the form. This is a story for anyone who has ever felt touched by sound—who knows the way the right song at the right moment can change the course of a life.
About the Author Thurston Moore is a founding member of Sonic Youth, a band born in New York in 1981 that spent 30 years at the vanguard of alternative rock, influencing and inspiring such acts as Nirvana, Pavement, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, My Bloody Valentine, and Beck. The band’s album Daydream Nation was chosen by the Library of Congress for historical preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2006. Moore is involved in publishing and poetry and teaches at the Summer Writing Workshop at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He divides his time between the USA and England.
About the Film Desolation Center is the previously untold story of a series of early ’80s guerrilla music and art performance happenings in Southern California that are recognized to have inspired Burning Man, Lollapalooza, and Coachella, collective experiences that have become key elements of popular culture in the 21st century. The feature documentary splices interviews and rare performance footage of Sonic Youth, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Swans, Redd Kross, Einstürzende Neubauten, Survival Research Laboratories, Savage Republic and more, documenting a time when pushing the boundaries of music, art, and performance felt almost like an unspoken obligation.
Directed by Stuart Swezey, the creator and principal organizer of these unique events, Desolation Center demonstrates how the risky, and at times even reckless, actions of a few outsiders can unintentionally lead to seismic cultural shifts. Combining Swezey’s exclusive access to never-before-seen archival video, live audio recordings, and stills woven together with new cinematically shot interviews, verité footage and animated sequences, Desolation Center captures the spirit of the turbulent times from which these events emerged.
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Pylon Reenactment Society is fronted by Vanessa Briscoe Hay, whose voice brought Pylon’s kinetic energy to a fine point in the early ‘80s. With PRS, she fronts a wholly new group rounded out by guitar player Jason NeSmith, bass player Kay Stanton (Supercluster, Casper & the Cookies), and drummer Gregory Sanders (Casper & the Cookies). With their recently released debut album, Magnet Factory, the group expands upon Pylon’s angular style with a more pastoral approach in songs like “Educate me, ” “3 x 3, ” and “Fix It.”
Maybe they’ll roll out the seasonal hit (?), “Christmas Daze,” which materialized around this time last year.
Is/Ought Gap embodies the wild side of the no-frills ethos that fueled Athens’ heyday. “Artsy Peace and Love,” “Lucky 7,” “He Said,” and so many other ramped up numbers are defined by singer Bryan Cook’s razor-tongued and fun-loving invectives.
This show is a victory lap for Is/Ought Gap, who’s playing songs from this year’s long overdue discography LP, SUA, released via Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records.
After more than a decade between releases, the March Violets return with Crocodile Promises, a sleek and muscular new album that is as much a return to the group’s classic gothic rock and post-punk form as it is a bold step forward. The secret to the Violets’ success has long been their penchant for crafting undeniably catchy songs that thrive in an atmosphere of rich imagery and ambiance. Press play on the ‘80s hits: “Walk Into the Sun,” “Snakedance,” “Grooving In Green,” “Crow Baby,” et al. The art of balancing complex harmonies and melodies with lyrics steeped in perfectly compelling abstraction is the March Violets’ strong suit. For Crocodile Promises, core members vocalist Rosie Garland and guitar player Tom Ashton were joined by former Violets bass player Mat Thorpe (also of the group Isolation Division). Together, they fleshed out nine new numbers at Ashton’s SubVon Studios in the rural countryside near Athens, Georgia, where Ashton produced the record.
Crocodile Promises opens with “Hammer the Last Nail,” a song that’s bound by billowing and shadowy textures that slowly open up to reveal the album’s vast and majestic palette. Thick and undulating guitar riffs and constrictive hooks match Garland’s bewitching traipse into modern terrain. “Bite the Hand” and “Virgin Sheep” kick up the energy with a full-bore punk charge.
The “Kraken Awakes” and “Mortality” are slow-burners invoking tales of revenge and deceit. “This Way Out,” builds into a roaring and hypnotic groove, with its thumping beats and Garland’s pointed delivery.
The March Violets: Mat Thorpe (from left), Rosie Garland, and Tom Ashton. Photo courtesy Jace Media.
There’s a real sense of urgency at work in Crocodile Promises. The production is as subtle as it is sweeping when it needs to up the intensity, pushing heaviness, real-world angst, and aggression into new dark realms, alternating between understated tension and unleashed power.
Friday, October 25 March Violets, Korine, Tears for Dying, House Of Ham, Vincas, Panic Priest, and Miss Cherry Delight. Find Friday night tickets here.
James Brandon Lewis (left) and the Messthetics (Anthony Pirog, Joe Lally, and Brendan Canty). Photo by Shervin Lainez.
With their third and latest album, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, Brendan Canty, Joe Lally, Anthony Pirog, and James Brandon Lewis deliver a compelling blend of jazz and post-hardcore inflections, where Lewis’s saxophone intertwines with rhythmic intensity and experimental tones.
Canty and Lally, best known as Fugazi’s drummer and bass player, infuse the album with their trademark energy anchored by deep grooves. Pirog adds layers of sonic texture amid challenging twists and turns.
Before making their way to Atlanta to play The Earl on March 26, Canty, Lally, and Pirog talked about the creative process behind the album, working with Impulse, and the ins and outs of their favorite songs on the album. Lewis was busy playing a show in Zurich.
How did you meet James Brandon Lewis and start playing music with him?
Anthony Pirog: I met James about 10 years ago during a recording session in New York that the drummer William Hooker organized. It was a quintet: William was on drums, Luke Stewart on bass, Jon Irabagon on sax, James on sax, and I was on guitar. It was for an album called Pillars… At The Portal.
James and I liked each other’s sounds. When the recording was over we went out and got something to eat and started talking. He asked me to record a couple of records with him and to do some touring with him in Europe and the US.
When the Messthetics were asked to play Winter Jazzfest in New York in 2019, I thought it would be a good idea to have James sit in with us. He played three songs, and almost every time we’ve been in New York after that he’s sat in with us.
Joe Lally: We had played the Winter Jazzfest, and it just happened. It was hard to understand what happened because it happened while we were playing live. It was great, but then it was over and James was gone. It’s not like we got to hang out and get to know him or spend any time with him. Later, we were back up there for a show at the Bell House and we asked him to play with us.
This time, we had a little more time to assess him joining us. We got to talk about the song that he would join us on, and what we might do backing him up. That little bit allowed us to get a handle on it, and it felt good. Then COVID happened and a bunch of time went by. It was awful and lonely. At the end of it, we were getting out and playing again, and we were doing a show at Union Pool. James asked us if we would contribute a track to the record he was doing at that time.
And that’s the song called “Fear Not” on his album called Eye of I.
Lally: That’s the song! At Winter Jazzfest, we played the electric Miles “Black Satin,” we did Anthony’s tune “Adonis Painter,” and we did “Serpent Tongue.” At Bell House we did “Serpent Tongue” and we did “Once Upon A Time,” which is a Sonny Sharrock piece.
Anthony told us the day before we went up to play New York that James said if we came up the evening before—if we got there early enough—we could record in Brooklyn. So we went up early and recorded that song with him. We didn’t know what he wanted us to do, but Anthony had played that song with him before.
Pirog: I had only played it once before with him in a quartet in Catania when we had our residency over there.
What did James bring out of the Messthetics?
Lally: We get to be more Mess-thetic!
Brendan Canty: We’re Messthastecising [laughs].
Lally: Playing with James has amplified everything that we’ve reached for and everything that we’re capable of doing, and he has helped us reach even farther.
Canty: Playing with James has allowed me to play a little louder, honestly. He also reinforces a lot of the melody lines that Anthony wrote and turns them into these beautiful soaring pieces.
Anthony and James are good at playing with each other and on top of each other in complementary ways where they sound like one instrument. Anthony supplies these beautiful bell-like transient sounds and James has this big warm body. I hope that doesn’t sound too sexy, but it’s true [laughs].
Lally: There’s a simplification going on within us as far as the writing goes. We’re kind of minimalizing everything to allow for creative ways to carve out spaces that allow James and Anthony to fill in. It’s not like it’s easier to write; it’s that it’s more clear.
Canty: There is a certain level of abandon to these songs which is pretty inspiring. I have always felt that while playing with Anthony. One of the great things about playing with him is that we’re playing on stage and suddenly he’s pushing us to go somewhere completely different just to support him on a journey into cacophony.
Some people view Anthonly as a virtuoso, but I also know that he is the ultimate noise artist. I love being pushed into all of these different areas. James does the same. When people show up and play with that level of commitment and that level of ambition in terms of exploring and pushing the room around a little bit it gets exciting quickly. Every moment of the gig I’m playing catch up, and I’m trying to go with them to these places. It’s a blast.
With Joe and I there’s like an ESP in terms of playing together. We just go there with them. It’s a liberating way to play.
How is releasing an album on Impulse different from working with Dischord Records?
Lally: It’s a hard thing to describe because we have spent all of our life at Dischord. This record has barely come out, so we don’t know what it’s like.
Everyone we’re dealing with at Impulse is nice. There’s a big team there. That’s different. Dischord has like five people that make up the label. At the same time, this is the first record I have done where I feel like it’s just going to go away into the world. With my other records, everything else I’m involved with, it’s like my friend has them. They live there. I know where they are, and they’re taken care of. I feel like they’re being protected. This is the first one that’s going out into the world and now it’s gone.
I have a lot of respect for so many of the artists that I love who were and still are on Impulse. Being on a label with Irreversible Entanglements is fantastic!
Canty: Without getting too much into the business side, we’ve been working with a great bunch of people who seem to listen to us and allow us to control every ounce of content that we want to put out into the world. I’ve made all the videos myself. We’ve shot everything. I edited them all.
What happened, Chad is that we made the record first. Then Impulse heard it and got us excited. I sent it to my friend at Impulse and they said “We totally want to put this out.” So the music came first. I said, “Let me talk to everybody about it. I talked with Ian [MacKaye] about it. He said, “This sounds awesome!”
Everybody was excited about it. It’s working out fine so far. As long as we can keep it on our own in terms of how it’s being presented. They haven’t messed with any of the audio bits at all, and we got to do everything we wanted to do with it.
They didn’t say boo to us about it, about the mixes, or about anything we used. We mastered it. We got Bob Weston to cut the lathes, and they’ve been creative about distribution. They’ve worked with us. So far so good.
Lally: Making this decision about stepping away from Dischord is a really weird idea. Even if it’s just for one record it’s a weird idea for me. At the same time, what we’ve made with James is really different. It’s not like the other Messthetics records. Frankly, it all happened so fast! Brendan passed it along to somebody who is now suddenly saying, “Impulse really likes this!” It was hard to try to do anything with anyone other than Impulse because I was thinking of James and Anthony. We had to do this for them. This is too good. This is the music they’ve worked really hard at making. A huge part of it for me was we have to do whatever we can to see if this can work, and it’s been worth it.
Canty: I want to add that in no way do I ever want this to be reflected upon as us being dissatisfied with Dischord.
Lally: Dischord has always been so supportive of us, and still continues to be family. Ian has always been open to his bands trying different things and answering questions. He gave us his blessing. Working with Impulse for this record is just that circumstantial. The opportunity came up and it felt like the right thing to do for Anthony and James. It’s something that happened at that particular moment. I seriously see us recording for Dischord in the future.
You’re also bringing James’ fans to Dischord, and Fugazi and Messthetics fans to Impulse.
Canty: That’s the thing that’s so interesting about all of this, it’s the dialogue that’s coming with it. Everywhere I book a show in Europe or the US, I’m asking, “Is it this kind of show? We were invited to play the Vancouver International Jazz Festival and the Winnipeg Folk Festival, Hillside Festival, Big Ears, Treefort Music Fest, and Primavera. We’re getting rock festivals, jazz festivals, and folk festivals. It truly makes me feel proud that we’re able to play all those things while making music that I think defies categories. … Even if it’s on a jazz label [laughs].
Anthony, you have worked with indie labels like Cuneiform Records and Sonic Mass. What’s it been like working with Impulse?
I can only say positive things. My first record came out on Cuneiform when I was 32 years old. That didn’t seem possible. Then, hooking up with Joe and Brendan and being on records that came out on Dischord never seemed possible. And now this. I feel incredibly lucky that I’ve been able to work with these outlets.
In the six degrees of separation game, you’re connected to everyone from Moor Mother to John and Alice Coltrane to Minor Threat.
Pirog: Yes, and we’re all still processing that.
Joe, do you have a favorite song on the record?
I hesitate to say, but there’s something about the first song, “L’Orso.” It was such a strange thing for us to get a hold of. I remember when Anthony presented the riff to us, I spent the rest of the day being frustrated about not understanding where I was in the riff. Every time I tried to play it, I was just like, “Oh my God, I almost have it, but where am I? What comes next? I was always so lost in it.
The next time we got together to play with Anthony, I was like, “I don’t know, man. I don’t know if this is entertaining to play. When I tried playing it for him, he said, “Wow, you kind of know it. I haven’t even learned it yet.” I felt like I was banging my head against the wall with it. It was just a different type of song for us. It was a hard one for us to get a grip on, and when we finally did it, it felt great.
Canty: “L’Orso” is one of my favorites to play. I always like the songs that feel like they’re pushing things a little farther than we’ve ever done before. And the melody that Anthony came up with for this one is ridiculous in the best possible way.
I love how understated it is, but it has this really tricky melody. Then James and Anthony destroy all the solos. It makes me happy. Beyond that, I like “Three Sisters” as a whole.
Anthony, what’s your favorite song on the record?
Before I talk about that, I want to say that Joe told that story about learning “L’Orso.” That song is really hard to play, and I wanted to throw that in there. I am very proud of that song, and I am very proud every time I get through the melody.
Brendan brought up “Three Sisters.” I believe that’s the first full song we wrote before we started talking with James—after taking a break during COVID.
And it’s funny because when I played that melody I was thinking of James. I was thinking that’s the kind of thing he would play or hear. He was on my mind even before we were having conversations about playing with him.
My favorite track on the record is “Boatly” because we wrote it together. My memory is that Joe had his baseline in the A section. Then we started playing the groove and I came up with the melody over that baseline. Then maybe the next practice or later in that rehearsal I started playing the chords in the B section. Brendan started singing to the chord, and that became the melody of the B section. Then in the outro, we just worked up this chord progression and we played it a little bit, but it was always like, “Ah, when James gets here he’ll start blowing over it”.
When we got through to that section in the studio, it just took off. During rehearsal, we never played it through the full arc of what it could be. It was like, “This will sound great. We’ll just do it in the studio.” That is my favorite moment on the record because of the overall arc of the piece. It goes where James and Brendan take it to when he’s pounding the rhythms out at the peak. I’m proud of that one.
Friday, February 23: Night One The Vaginas, Blood Circuits, Night Shrines, After Words (playing their first show since 1989), and Bog Monkey. $15. Doors open at 7 p.m.
Cemetery Filth
Saturday, February 24: Night Two Cemetery Filth, Day Old Man, Shehehe, Breaux!, Los Ojos Muertos, Blind Oath (OK), and Billy Hangfire $15. Doors open at 7 p.m.
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Radfest is back after a three-year Global pandemic hiatus! RadATL’s founder celebrates one more year around the sun, this time at Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery on Friday, January 19.
This year’s show features performances by seven post-punk, post-hardcore, and pure noise greats spread across two stages.
Photo courtesy x.nte
Athens-based cassette label \\NULL|ZØNE// gets the party started with a showcase of Georgia-bred noise acts including x.nte, Grant Evans (of Quiet Nights), and label boss Michael Potter’s own project The Electric Nature. Each act is cranking our short, powerful sets that challenge the traditional notions of what music is, and what it can be. Potter has been on the frontier of this scene for a long time, and it’s been far too long since his last Atlanta appearance, so it’s great to have him back.
Gebidan photo by Geoff Knott
Gebidan marks its live debut. The recently founded four-piece features Mike Patton of Orange County’s late ‘70s hardcore outfit Middle Class. The group is often hailed as the first North American hardcore act EVER. Patton’s musical resume also includes time spent playing with Jack from TSOL in the band Cathedral of Tears. He was also in Eddie And The Subtitles, and Trotsky Icepick. But really, check out his credentials on Discogs to see that he worked as a producer and backup vocalist on the Adolescents’ self-titled “blue album.” He also produced the Minutemen’s “Joy” single, along with a handful of other Minutemen releases.
Patton lives in Georgia these days and is singing and playing bass with the new outfit. Gebidan’s first recordings find the group embracing a more abstract, psychedelic take on indie and alternative rock songwriting. Great stuff!
tONY cURTIS photo by Ellen McGrail
WREK 91.1 FM’s “Destroy All Music” co-host and bass player Tony Gordon teams up with guitarist Curtis Stephens for tONY cURTIS. Together, they create a scrapping, smoldering grind of earth rattling textures. Gordon (also of FREEBASS, Zandosis, and Charlie Parker fame) is well aware of the power of subtlety, especially when it’s blasted at maximum volume. The 11 numbers that make up their latest release tc2 lull the ears and the brain into a meditative state by commanding a deeper level of ecstatic listening. Beyond rhythm, beyond melody, and beyond the drone lie the pure sonic textures of steel strings, and they are teeming with abstract beauty and limitless possibilities for the imagination.
Photo courtesy Whiphouse
Whiphouse brings a high-energy and death-afflicted punk dirge to the stage. It’s one of my favorite new bands to emerge from these parts in quite some time. Lots of homies in this group! Michael Keenan, Mike Bison-Beavers, Debbie Beat, Stanley Jackson, and one of my favorite former interns Kelly Stroup! It’s just an awesome assemblage of people tearing up on stage the only way they know how.
Loud Humans
Loud Humans close out the show. More info. coming soon.
This is an ALL AGES SHOW! Doors open at 7 p.m. $10 gets you in. Fri., Jan. 19. 515 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd. Park in the lot across the street if the side street and front lot are full.
Thanks to this year’s sponsors! Eyedrum, Topo Chico, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Record Plug Magazine, The Tight Bros. Network, and to Dain Johnson who created this year’s magnificent flyer.
If you have enjoyed reading this review, please consider making a donation to RadATL. Venmo to @Chad-Radford-6 or click on the Paypal link below.
In Greek mythology, dryads appear as tree-dwelling spirits who lure men to their deaths by seducing them into a shadowy realm of the unknown, sometimes replacing them with a doppelgänger—a sinister look alike. It’s a dark and mysterious tale that’s been repurposed in everything from David Lynch’s surreal T.V. saga “Twin Peaks” to Jordan Peele’s paranoid horror film Us. It’s a puzzling metaphor about there being more to the natural world than meets the eye. It’s also a bewitching entry point into The Book of Flowers’ debut cassette tape, Pastels.
Press play on the opening three numbers, “Foxfire & Clover,” “The Housewitch,” and “The Dryad,” and dreamlike imagery takes shape amid swathes of murky country crooning, mellotrons, and British folk-style songwriting.
“I was thinking a lot about impressionist painting and things that use a lot of pastels,” says songwriter James Andrew Ford. “I wanted the songs to have a pastoral feeling to them, with a kind of a dark feeling as well, like watching the sun set over an empty field.”
Ford is a co-founder of Atlanta’s industrial, EBM, and dark wave label DKA Records. The lingering earthly and ethereal tones that he conjures in the songs on Pastels are a far cry from the digital crunch and urgency of much of the label’s output, including that of his own former project Tifaret. But from the soft dissonance of the cover art’s pink and green colors to the balance of electronic and organic textures over Krautrock rhythms of “The White Dress” and “Watch the Stars,” Ford’s shift in style emerges quite naturally.
“During the latter part of Tifaret, I was banging my head against the wall because I was having a lot of issues trying to do a full-length,” Ford says. “I was trying to figure out how to do something that felt satisfying and cohesive, but wasn’t just eight tracks of Front 242 or whatever. How do you create a sad song using synthesizers that doesn’t just sound like old synth pop? How did somebody like Trent Reznor or Depeche Mode get around the monotony of synthesizers?” he asks. “Well, In Depeche Mode, Martin Gore wrote a lot of songs on an acoustic guitar. Trent Reznor writes everything on a piano, or at least he used to. So I thought maybe I need to start writing on acoustic guitar.”
But Ford had never played acoustic before. He hadn’t played an electric guitar in nearly a decade. So he spent much of the pandemic learning how to play an acoustic guitar. The process was a period of discovery, planting the seeds for the songs on Pastels.
“It basically taught me how to have a song there before you have any music,” he says. “With Tifaret, I always wrote the lyrics last. So I was trying to cram in syllables, melody lines, and whatever else into what was already there. Versus if you start with an acoustic guitar, you’ve got your melody, you’ve got your lines written out. You don’t have to cram everything in.”
Book of Flowers
Previously, Ford was a religious studies major at Georgia State University. With The Book of Flowers he took a deep dive into British folklore. The first two songs to emerge were “Golden Lily” and “Housewitch,” both illustrate a reciprocal harmony that finds his slow and sweeping baritone voice shape the guitar tones, while the natural resonance of the acoustic guitar guides his rich, warm voice.
The lyrics call an epic range of images to mind, from rustic to quite horrific, in one musical motion.
In “The Dryad” he sings: “There in the bed she laid me to rest and slit my throat with a willow rod. She threw me to the raven. She threw me to the hound. She cleaned my skull for her god.”
“With that song, I always thought that I was basically writing an old fashioned murder ballad, but with the positions reversed.”
It’s a scene of pagan carnage that could have been pulled straight from films such as Robin Hardy’s “The Wickerman” or Ari Aster’s “Midsommar”—channeled through a palette of dark and apocalyptic musical inflections ranging from influences such as Current 93 and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It’s quiet, it’s intense, and it’s not for the faint of heart, despite the music’s idyllic presence.
A version of this story originally appeared in the November issue of Record Plug Magazine.
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Bob Mould is on the road for this “Solo Electric: Distortion and Blue Hearts Tour.” Before playing at City Winery on October 12, Mould took a few minutes to talk about returning to life in America after spending some time in Berlin, experiencing socio-political deja vu, and to reflect on his years with Sugar and Hüsker Dü.
Your current tour is titled the “Solo Electric: Distortion and Blue Hearts,” which sounds pretty straight forward. Are you playing a pretty comprehensive setlist?
Blue Hearts was the fifth album for Merge Records that was recorded with the same rhythm section—Jason Narducy on bass and Jon Wurster on drums—and with the same engineer, Beau Sorenson. Blue Hearts came out in September 2020. Obviously nobody was touring at that point.
In October of 2020, the Distortion box sets started coming out on Demon Records in the UK. It was a 30-year career retrospective that took from the first solo album, Workbook, all the way through Sunshine Rock, which was the fourth solo album with Merge. In the fall of 2021, myself, Jon, and Jason did a pretty quick North American tour. Since then, I’ve mostly been doing solo electric stuff, touching on everything from Hüsker Dü and Sugar and the solo albums up to Blue Hearts.
The expense of touring is pretty high right now, and tours are still getting canceled left and right because people are getting sick. So for the time being, the solo electric thing is the easiest way for me to tour.
Most of the press that Blue Hearts has received hangs on it being about your return to the States after living in Berlin for a few years, and getting an eyeful of how much things had changed in a very short time.
The first half of Blue Hearts feels like a return to Hüsker Dü songwriting form.
Yeah, I felt like the fall of 2019 was a lot like the fall of 1983. The country was pretty unhinged, and sadly it seems to have gotten worse.
Staying in the fall of 2019, I’d been spending a lot of time in Germany. I was aware of what was happening in America, but when you come back to the US and you’re surrounded by 24-hour news cycles, and just all of the insanity that is America when things get like this, it felt very similar to my state of mind and my state of being, and how I saw the world back in 1983. It made me think about what I was doing back then, what the environment was like at the time. Most importantly, I was thinking about how I approached my work and the messages at that time, and how little resources a band like Hüsker Dü had in 1983.
The songs on Blue Hearts are more influenced by the reflection of those times and how it seemed like it was deja vu all over again.
The songwriting was pretty direct, pretty political, pretty economical. The record is pretty fast and furious, so it got me thinking about how limited resources in 1983 led me to write and record—making it brief. Not dragging it out, not hiring an orchestra from Prague. Just the three of us in a room banging this stuff out?
So 1983 was the Ronald Reagan era and 2020 was the Trump era. What differentiates these times?
Social media.
Through the ‘80s, we saw the ascent of Reagan, the Hollywood celebrity but, unlike Trump, Reagan was the governor of California. He had knowledge of how the political system worked. But televangelism was huge then—the moral majority. It was the beginning of HIV/AIDS, the cutting of mental health services in cities. That specific … Tony Fauci at NIH. It’s frightening to me some of the callbacks, whether it’s COVID or evangelicals, and all the sway that they hold over the Republican party. These are all things that I’ve seen before. It didn’t go well last time, and we’ve lost a million people to COVID in America.
At my advanced age, I did not think I would have to go through this yet one more time.
Did these songs come out of you pretty quickly?
Yeah. When I settled back in at the end of 2019, it did not take a lot of effort to look around and write what I know, write what I see. The song “American Crisis” had been kicking around for a couple years. That was the first track anybody heard off the album, but I actually wrote the music and the words for that in Berlin. Those lyrics took five minutes to write. There’s nothing sophisticated about it at all.
The remainder of the record; some of the music had been written in Berlin, but a lot of the words, and most of the music was written pretty quickly at the end of 2019. I went out and did about three weeks of solo touring at the beginning of 2020, tried out a bunch of the songs, and then we recorded the album in February of 2020, and had it wrapped up by the middle of March. That was when everything shut down.
“American Crisis” is the first song that you wrote for this album?
Yeah, that’s the North Star of the record. I had that one already put together in Berlin, probably later in 2018, and I just sort of followed the motif. The rest of the stuff came pretty easily.
“Next Generation” sounds like classic Bob Mold to me. Of course, I see what sets it apart from some of your other eras of songwriting.In terms of the strength of the song, though, I want to place it alongside something like Hüsker Dü’s “Sorry Somehow,” or maybe even “Hoover Dam” by Sugar. When you’re putting demos together, do you have a sense of when you’ve got a hit on your hands?
To me, that one falls closer to the mid-to-late ‘80s stuff I was writing. As a writer, I sort of look at it and go, “Oh, that would’ve been a Flip Your Wig song.”
When I’m working on stuff, I sort of know. I mean, I have x number of ways and x number of styles in which I write. I sort of know when a song is coming in that first 15 minutes if it’s going to either be a type A or a type X song. Then, it’s just a matter of wrapping it up and tucking in all the corners. I’ve got different styles of pop songs, punk songs, folk songs, songs with strings, songs that lean more on keyboards.
It’s sort of like, you get a couple free throws, you’ve rehearsed your free throws. You know how many dribbles you have, and where you’re gonna toss the ball.
Does it feel like there’s an uptick in interest in your songwriting right now?
I think people are still interested in what I do, both the work that I’ve done and the work I’m doing now. There are a lot of people that won’t be there in the future when another album comes out. In terms of politically charged punk music right now, a lot of the things that are coming out of the UK—a band like Idles being the main one that most people know, or Fontaines DC and stuff like that.
I’ve been a bit surprised that art in America hasn’t been as reactive as I thought it would be. Perhaps I’m not seeing it. Maybe it’s further underground than where I hang out, but for music specifically, it feels like more stuff has come out of the UK lately that is addressing the socio-political divisions we’re going through.
Maybe it’s because I’m in Georgia, but Mercyland recently released their long lost record, We Never Lost A Single Game. That’s been the subject of many conversations recently, and I’ve had more people talk with me about Sugar and Hüsker Dü this year than maybe ever before. Maybe that’s because people are talking about Mercyland’s record, which brings Sugar, Bob Mould, and Hüsker Dü into the conversation. Also, September was the 30th anniversary of Copper Blue.
That’s right! Hopefully I get to spend some time with David [Barbe] while I’m in town.
I think Copper Blue is just such a very disciplined, but really exciting pop record. I’m always happy that people have good things to say about it, and that every now and then it takes on a new life.
It’s tight and concise in ways that were very different from Hüsker Dü.
Oh … Hüsker Do was like a bunch of planes trying to take off the same way all at once. That was a completely different beast. Hüsker Dü was so loose and constantly rushing forward in the tempo. That was what people loved about that band. For me, discipline came my way when I started working with my recently deceased colleague Anton Fier, who played drums on both Workbook and Black Sheets of Rain. Working with Anton was where I learned how to study things. He was an amazing drummer. He was a real stickler for time and keeping things pretty strict. Sugar was the next iteration of the rhythm section, and we brought that discipline to the studio. Live, sugar was pretty wild.
What really set Hüsker Dü apart from many of the other bands of the era, like Black Flag, T.S.O.L., X, etc. was the savage tone of the guitar.
It was. And with Hüsker, with Sugar, and with Jon and Jason, it’s the power trio. The guitar tone has to cover a lot of ground and fill in a lot of spaces. That’s something that Pete Townsend had to do with the Who, and something Hendrix had to do. It’s a certain style of playing where you have to be a really good rhythm player, but also be able to sneak lead guitar in there as well, and as you said, it was a unique tone that was necessary given that it was the only guitar. The tone that I’ll be using on these solo shows is not very far away from that tone. So calling it the Distortion and Blue Hearts tour is a pretty literal description of what’s on tour right now.
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Death is inevitable. It is the natural order that affects every living creature, and sooner or later, it’s coming for everyone.
No two people cope with the reality of the situation the same way. For Dusty Gannon, the singer, guitar player, and principal songwriter leading Athens’ rising goth and post-punk outfit Vision Video, death commands absolute respect.
Gannon is a former Army rifle platoon leader who served in war-torn Afghanistan, and until this summer, he has worked for five years as a metro Atlanta firefighter and paramedic. He is no stranger to death, and fostering a healthier relationship with it is the idea lying at the heart of Vision Video’s latest single, “Beautiful Day To Die.”
The song also offers the first glimpse at what Vision Video has in store with the group’s forthcoming second album, Haunted Hours, set to arrive October 14 — just in time for Halloween.
“Beautiful Day To Die,” takes shape around a simple, powerful melody that’s layered in rich musical textures that open up an emotional evocation of mortality. Gannon wrote the song by pulling together aspects from different stories that he witnessed firsthand to illustrate the sentiments that fill the air when someone dies.
“There is a bizarre energy that happens when somebody has been pronounced dead,” Gannon says. “ A lot of the time it’s terrible, and awful, and sad, but if you look closely at it, and if you don’t shy away from it, you’ll see these beautiful moments that are hidden alongside the grief.”
Pushing the idea forward, Gannon relives the details from one of his recent shifts as a paramedic, when he pronounced an older patient dead on the scene.
“There was really nothing that we could have done, and there was nothing that this patient’s daughter could have done,” he says, while walking through the steps that are taken before a person can be declared dead.
“While we were waiting for the coroner to arrive, I was sitting in the kitchen with the patient’s daughter, and she was telling me all of these stories about this person, about their kindness, and about what an amazing life they had lived,” Gannon recalls. “There was so much sadness, but there was also this small and intimate celebration of this person’s life taking place. It was painful, but it was also beautiful. That is one of the motifs behind the song.”
This is just one of the stories behind the 10 songs that make up the new record. Haunted Hours is stylish, and steeped in shadowy imagery, while remaining existentially buoyant.
Vision Video was born in the summer of 2017 when Gannon and drummer Jason Fusco started playing music together. Singer and keyboard player Emily Fredock and bass player Dan Geller joined the band soon after.
Geller is a co-owner and Chief Technical Officer of Athens’ Kindercore Vinyl pressing plant, and he has a long history of playing in Athens indie, pop, and rock-and-roll bands, including Kinkaid, the Agenda, I Am the World Trade Center, as well as the Booty Boyz DJ team.
VISION VIDEO: Photo by Mike White
The band’s name gives a nod to Athens’ once-great, but now defunct video store, bringing something that they all loved back from the dead — at least in name.
Naturally, after living through his experiences during war time, and then confronting death repeatedly in the civilian world, Gannon needed an outlet where he could exorcize the many traumas that he has endured.
In April of 2021, Vision Video’s debut album, Inked In Red, arrived as a self-released offering. Songs bearing titles such as “In My Side,” “Static Drone,” and “Organized Murder” came out blending grim imagery with a gothic snarl, paired with campy horror film imagery.
Each of these elements coalesced around a colorful, modern take on a classic goth, new wave, and post-punk musical lineage touching on everything from Joy Division and New Order, to the Cure, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the Sisters of Mercy. Each song was propelled forward by barreling dance-floor rhythms and major-chord songwriting.
The group’s cover of “Picture Of You” adds warm tones to one of the Cure’s most charming numbers.
And, of course, not all is so austere with Vision Video. A campy song about Gannon’s affection for the felines who walk among us, titled “I Love Cats,” proved to be something of a viral hit, sporting lyrics such as: “I love cats, so much more than I love humans. They’re adorable, hilarious, and not one of them is a Republican …” and “They might keep you up all night, but they’ll never take your human rights.”
If Inked In Red laid the sonic blueprint for Vision Video’s sound, Haunted Hours builds upon its foundation by slowing down and stretching the group’s ethereal pop drive to a dark and seductive breaking point.
Songs like “Cruelty Commodity,” “Death In A Hallway,” and a muscular reworking of Joy Division’s “Transmission” are so voluptuous that their hazy textures become tangible.
Gannon’s vocals meld perfectly within a lingering atmosphere marked by reverb and space. From the sinewy title track and “Nothing Changes” to the lingering reflections in “Unwanted Faces” and “Burn It Down,” the album strikes a balance between simplicity, urgent pop melodies and contempt for the failing world.
As such, the album is an assured follow-up that entrenches Vision Video’s stature as more than a flash in the pan for Athens music.
For this album, the group returned to Athens’ SubVon Studio to write and record with producer Tom Ashton.
Ashton is, perhaps, best known as the guitar player for Leeds, U.K.’ early ‘80s post-punk outfit the March Violets. He also did a stint performing live with Xymox, the early ‘90s iteration of Dutch darkwave act Clan Of Xymox.
Ashton has also served as Vision Video’s live bass player for several shows surrounding the Haunted Hours sessions, and continues filling in when he’s needed.
Before recording, Gannon wrote most of the music’s skeletal parts including the melodies and the chord progressions for the guitar and the vocals on his own time. As a result, the rest of the group had months of lead time to consume the demos while thinking about their parts to add, which were written while they were in the studio, working out the songs.
“That allowed us to edit on the fly, and there were no set opinions about any one piece,” Gannon says. “If something didn’t work, we changed it then and there. If somebody had an idea, we would field it. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. But it was crafted in a malleable way where, on the fly, we could say, ‘That part doesn’t jive, let’s change it to this,’ and that’s part of the reason it’s so different from the first album.”
Ashton agrees, adding: “It’s just a more mature and spacious expanse. Dusty brought in a different writing approach which really paid off.”
Vision Video may prove the ideal outlet for Gannon to deal with anxiety and darker subject matter, as it relates to sadness, misery, warfare, inequity, and mortality — things that he’s witnessed personally — that can be expressed through aggressive lyrics and performances. But what has garnered equally as much (if not more) attention for Gannon is the Tik Tok character that he has created, called Goth Dad.
“The idea behind Goth Dad,” Gannon says, “Is to create a pure and wholesome character who makes people feel comfortable, safe, and accepted. There aren’t a lot of good father-type figures out there. My dad’s awesome,” he adds. “I was fortunate as a kid to have a really good, positive role model as my dad.”
The Goth Dad character that he plays has gone viral on social media via a series of short video clips that touch on everything from make-up tutorials to corny jokes, such as “What do you call a goth lawyer? Siouxsie Sue!”
“I have been trying to cultivate this place where people can bond and commiserate, and speak their mind about things safely and respectfully, hopefully positively,” Gannon says. “But even if it’s not, that’s cool too. It’s about finding a place for like-minded people to feel like you’re not alone. That’s like the worst part of having post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, or anything like that. When you’re feeling like you’re totally in your head and alone, and even if you understand that people are there for you, sometimes it feels like it’s impossible to relay that to anybody,” he adds. “Those are the things that I’m working toward, and I hope that I foster that sensibility.”
Still, it’s the music, and creating a spectacle during live performances with Vision Video that encompass the most important aspect of everything Gannon does.
“It’s like the difference between Twilight as a vampire series and Near Dark,” he laughs. “They’re both about vampires, but they have very different tones, they fulfill very different purposes, but they both fulfill something that’s meaningful in people’s lives.”
Despite Goth Dad’s popularity online, it is onstage in the material world with Vision Video where Gannon is at full tilt. Live, he takes cues straight from the Cramps’ vocalist Lux Interior’s playbook, imbuing high-energy rock with elements of an undead drag cabaret show.
“Of course, I want you to be in the message of the music when we play live, but I also want it to be fun, I want it to be a party,” Gannon says. “That’s the most important thing above everything else: Did you have a good time? Was it safe?” he asks.
When dealing with so much darkness and confronting mortality, levity plays a key role in bringing such death-afflicted music to life.
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