Hit City U.S.A.'s #SomethingGood returns featuring TV Girl, Avid Dancer & Bad Wave!
Get urs
$10.00, 18+
TV Girl (#HiHatAlumni)
On the surface, TV Girl is a sunny, throwback splash of ‘60s French pop and southern California soul. Yet, under that shiny veneer lays a dark heart, beating with sharp wit and cynical alienation, and the music is all the more alluring for it.
TV Girl was formed in 2010 by Brad Petering as an outlet to blend the love of Spector-esque girl-group pop with an emerging ...
Hit City U.S.A.'s #SomethingGood returns featuring TV Girl, Avid Dancer & Bad Wave!
Get urs
$10.00, 18+
TV Girl (#HiHatAlumni)
On the surface, TV Girl is a sunny, throwback splash of ‘60s French pop and southern California soul. Yet, under that shiny veneer lays a dark heart, beating with sharp wit and cynical alienation, and the music is all the more alluring for it.
TV Girl was formed in 2010 by Brad Petering as an outlet to blend the love of Spector-esque girl-group pop with an emerging interest in hip-hop. Featuring shimmering vocals and sampled beats, the self-titled debut EP of the same year turned heads online immediately; the group’s lush vintage rhythms and timeless pop hooks were even making waves on the BBC. Soon after, Jason Wyman joined the band and they continued to release increasingly popular EPs and mixtapes between tours. Last summer, TV Girl unveiled their first full-length, the critically acclaimed French Exit.
The album keeps true to the TV Girl charm with a bevy of electronic samplings infused throughout light and airy guitars, whirring organs, and ethereal vocals. However, this record is not all summer nostalgia, and there are plenty of times where French Exit reads like disaffected fiction. The moody characters in these songs are fueled by revenge as often as love, underpinned by desperation and a deep yearning to connect.
Since its release in June of 2014, TV Girl's debut album French Exit has become something of a cult classic. Dollar signs in their eyes, TV Girl decided to record its follow-up, Who Really Cares, which will be out in February 2016.
Avid Dancer (#HiHatAlumni)
Jacob Dillan Summers has been many things. A sheltered fundamentalist Christian kid. A world champion drumline drummer. A marine. A lovesick transplant to icy Alaska. But in July 2014, he was just a man stabbing a nail into his own palm to draw enough blood to paint with. This is the story behind Avid Dancer – the nom de musique under which Summers is releasing his first full-length album 1st Bath.
Those recordings contain some of the most kaleidoscopic, distinctly individual – and above all, honest – pop music you'll hear all year. Summers started Avid Dancer to express himself viscerally – sometimes literally. For 1st Bath's artwork, he wrote the album's title in, yes, his own blood over a collage of photos from his early childhood. "This music represents my entire existence up to making this record," Summers explains. "I wanted to really let people in, so I decided to paint the album title in my own blood. I actually jabbed myself until I got a big enough pool to write with. I mean, what could be more 'me'?" That philosophy boils down to the intensity suggested in Avid Dancer's moniker. "I realized the name matches what I'm doing musically," Summers says. "When we dance, we lose ourselves in it – we put ourselves out there and don't give a fuck. I'm not a guitar player, not a singer – I'm just putting myself out there with this music."
In fact, Summers began as a drummer – a champion virtuoso, who won top honors for rudimental snare at United Corps International's prestigious annual bugle-and-drum corps competition. During the songwriting process, he'd start with rhythms he'd create on percussion. This process ultimately gave his material a righteous rhythmic heft across the board – from the highly danceable "All the Other Girls" and the smoky torch-soul ballad "Stop Playing With My Heart," to even the pedal-steel Americana of "Why Did I Leave You Behind?"
Even when Avid Dancer's music does evoke artists, say – from the trippy Madchester vibe of album opener "All The Other Girls," evoking Stone Roses and Charlatans to the insistent Pixies-style bassline opening "Medication" – it's a happy coincidence. Raised in a strict Christian household, Summers was forbidden to listen to any secular music until his late teens; as a result, his musical discovery remains ongoing. "Growing up before the Internet, I was cut off," he notes. "I wasn't even allowed to watch MTV! I lived in an alternate reality." I remember sending some songs to a friend and he said, 'Dude, you remind me of The Kinks.' I thought they were maybe a new band, but when I listened to them I fell in love with their music. Another time, I got compared to Elliott Smith, and then I got really into him."
Summers' entrée into the world of popular music proves a most unlikely origin story. He dropped out of his freshman year studying music education at the University of Tennessee to join the Marines – enlisting, in fact, on September 12, 2001. "It was the day after 9/11, but I'd planned on doing it anyway," says Summers. He ended up in the elite United States Marine Drum & Bugle Corps, with whom he'd play up to 300 performances a year in addition to regular combat training.
At the end of his time with the Marines, Summers moved to Los Angeles: there he endured a number of awkward stints drumming for bands and studied audio recording.
Another sharp turn in Summers' life came when he moved (of all places) to Alaska for a woman, it was here some of the songs on 1st Bath rook shape. As they grew, Summers would eventually return to LA and make his home at Venice Beach, where he completed 1st Bath. "This album for me has been all about honesty – with myself and about myself" Summers says reflecting on how his vast array of experiences have come together to shape his songwriting. Blogs started raving about early Avid Dancer demos, and they also caught the ear of noted producer Raymond Richards (Local Natives, Ferraby Lionheart). Together, Summers and Richards began recording the Avid Dancer songs that would eventually appear on 1st Bath at Richard's Red Rockets Glare studio in Culver City, California – all except for the version of "I Wanna See You Dance," which was produced by Dave Trumfio (Wilco, OK Go, Built to Spill,The Mekons).
Since then, he's formed Avid Dancer's live touring unit, a fluid ensemble that's already supported the likes of Mac DeMarco, Warpaint, Hamilton Leithauser and Cold War Kids with its energetic live show. "I try to learn from other bands," Summers says, "seeing how they hone in on delivering their message." Ultimately Avid Dancer's own message manifested itself when he wrote the song "All Your Words Are Gone" – one of 1st Bath's most memorably plangent moments. "I met a sad girl and wrote that song to make her feel better,'" Summers says. "Writing that was a defining moment. Previously, I tried to write music that had never existed before. But doing 'All Your Words Are Gone' made me realize there are no new chords; what I needed to do was write a song that means something to me. I now understood I could do whatever I want: I don't have to carry around any baggage – I can do anything. Whether it's an acoustic country song, an electro track, or a heavy guitar jam, the style didn't matter: I just channel whatever I'm feeling into a song that has something to say. That's how I've been doing it ever since."
Bad Wave
Bad Wave are the band two best guy friends start when life's responsibilities have gotten too great and they need to reflect on their shared youth, almost in secret. Except songwriter Tucker Tota and his production backbone Patrick Hart are far too young to be nearing midlife crisis. In fact, Bad Wave began out of the sort of trappings familiar to all 20-somethings scrambling to piece their shit together in adulthood's early stages. "Patrick was randomly living with me and my girlfriend for about a year on and off in LA," explains Tucker. "We really didn't know each other at all but he picked me up at the airport," adds Patrick. "And then I was his roommate. Just like a scene from Craigslist."
Unlike most duos, Patrick and Tucker were not the yin to each other's yang. They bonded over similarities: a love for Weezer and other favourite '90s alt rock bands they'd wear as badges of honor in Middle School – Patrick in Nashville, Tucker in Miami. They found comfort in each other's similar geekdom and propensity to work alone. So they worked together, separately, and mostly via email. "We'd build analogue synthesizers and talk about plug-ins. We weren't looking, but..." jokes Tucker, of their two-year long, tech-inspired bromance. Not usually such a pop fan, Tucker found himself taken with Drake's 'Hold On We're Going Home' and wanted to write a similarly brooding R&B number. His solo attempts failed miserably. Patrick knew how to make beats, so he gave his new buddy a helping hand. Before long, Patrick was writing more electronic tracks for Tucker to write melodies and lyrics to in his solitude. Their first single 'Look Out' – released on LA imprint Crazy Heart – was born from there. "Just to be clear, we both live in LA," says Patrick. "But we're like the Postal Service, doing this all online. Even if we lived in the same building, we would make Bad Wave over the internet."
New singles 'Runaway' and 'Good Girls' continue in the same sonic vein; like pop-punk shot through the filter of glassy '80s electronica. The angst is disguised by bouncing basslines and warped choruses more befitting of Animal Collective than Green Day. It's a sound that has been most surprising to the duo themselves. "I like to play the mandolin, not electronic drums," says Tucker.
The name Bad Wave itself is taken from the Spanish phrase 'mala onda', which literally translates as "bad waves" but you can take it as meaning "bad vibes". "We're trying to spread good vibes though," reassures Patrick. By releasing their own anxieties through Bad Wave, these two only have great intentions.
Bad Wave's second single 'Runaway' and third single 'Good Girls' debuted at 10K Islands' site: https://10kislands.wordpress.com/ 'Runaway' and 'Good Girls' appear on Spotify, YouTube and iTunes.
– Eve Barlow