New Stuff for a Weird Friday from Quiet Slang and The RockNRoll Hi-Fives

The RockNRoll Hi-Fives

Closure

This has been a weird Friday around here. On the Jersey Shore, we're on like day 47 in a row of rain. The fact that Asbury Lanes is forever gone will be driven home this evening as the new venue at that address holds its "soft opening." This morning, I watched the guy who caused my brother's accident get handcuffed and taken away to serve out his seven-year prison sentence. Weird, to say the least.

At times like this, when I'm feeling kind of disconnected and disjointed, I turn to music that holds meaning for me.

Quiet Slang, "Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas"

Beach Slang's James Alex released Everything Matters But No One Is Listening today. Put out under the name Quiet Slang, the album re-imagines the melodramatic, romantic, and loud punk rock of Beach Slang. Alex calms things down, adding piano and strings where before there were "Guitar, bass, and drums. Played loudly."

Beach Slang were the last band to play Asbury Lanes before it closed in 2015, and I always associate  "Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas" -- and screaming along to that song with friends old and new in the front row -- with that evening.

It seems appropriate that we get this sad, quiet version of that song, along with the rest of Everything Matters..., on this dreary, rainy day when it becomes official that Asbury Lanes is never coming back.

Everything Matters But No One Is Listening is out now on Polyvinyl.



The RockNRoll Hi-Fives, "Hold On"

The RockNRoll Hi-Fives played the first set I got out to see following my brother's accident. I don't know if it was the best set they ever played. I don't know if it was the worst set they ever played. I don't know if it fell somewhere in between. What I do know is that show was exactly what I needed right when I needed it. The songs that The RockNRoll Hi-Fives played that night gave me the push I needed to get myself through the immensely difficult next few days and beyond.

I recently accompanied Joe, Gloree, Eilee, and Evren Centeno on their tour of Japan. We spent lots and lots of time together; and I got to feel that same lift, that same push, at each show. It was like getting a little refill every couple of days of the fuel I needed to keep on keeping on.

Earlier this week, the band released the first single from their forthcoming LP, Re-Introducing the RockNRoll Hi-Fives. With "Hold On," the family band take their sound into the glam stratosphere; and it's one of the songs on which Eilee really comes into her own as front-person. I can't help but see her flaming Vans stomping around the stage every time that chorus comes around.

Re-Introducing The RockNRoll Hi-Fives comes out June 29th on Little Dickman Records, and the band will play Asbury Park Yacht Club next week, May 26th, with our good friends in Dentist.

New Stuff from Quiet Slang, Japanese Breakfast, Big Ups

James Alex will be releasing a Quiet Slang LP.

Trying to Swim through the Flood

The South By Southwest music festival starts next week; and, when I signed up, I checked the little box that said I'd be willing to have showcasing artists contact me with information. Hoo boy. Let's just say it's been a lot. I'm pretty much a one-man show here with very poor organizational skills and the flood of incoming information has been sort of paralyzing. A good problem to have, I guess.

Anyway.

I made an effort over the last couple of days to try and make sense of what's coming in, and I'll share some of the SXSW- and non-SXSW-related stuff I find most interesting in a series of round-up posts.

Quiet Slang, "Dirty Cigarettes"

Quiet Slang is the solo, acoustic project of Beach Slang frontman James Alex. In October of last year, Alex released we were babies & we were dirtbags, a four-song, Quiet Slang EP featuring reworked versions of a pair of Beach Slang tracks ("Future Mixtape for the Art Kids," "Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas") along with covers of The Replacements' "Androgynous" and Big Star's "Thirteen."

Today, Alex announced that the first Quiet Slang LP, Everything Matters But No One Is Listening, is due from Polyvinyl on May 18th. To coincide with the announcement, Quiet Slang gives us the video for "Dirty Cigarettes." This version replaces the wall of guitars found on Cheap Thrills on a Dead End Street with piano and strings. The video features Mynabirds' Laura Burhenn and Heather McIntosh of the Elephant 6 collective.

James Alex is bringing his Quiet Slang to Austin for a couple of sets at SXSW next week, and [Loud] Beach Slang will be opening for Dashboard Confessional on a tour that brings them to The Stone Pony on April 2nd.



Japanese Breakfast, "Boyish"

Japanese Breakfast's Soft Sounds from Another Planet, with its combination of shoegaze, dreampop, and general spaciness, was one of our favorite albums of 2017. Japanese Breakfast is the solo project of Michelle Zauner, but Zauner has collaborated with Adam Kolodny on several videos. Zauner and Kolodny worked together once again on the video for "Boyish," and the clip shows that Japanese Breakfast is maturing visually as well as musically.

The song has kind of a sad, 60s vibe; and its themes of insecurity and unrequited love are captured perfectly by the setting of a school dance.



One of my great regrets has to be that I still haven't managed to catch Japanese Breakfast live. A spring / summer tour makes its way to TCNJ on 3/23, Warsaw in Brooklyn (SOLD OUT) on 5/31, Philly's Union Transfer on 6/3, and Panorama Fest in NYC on 7/28. Maybe I'll check that box after all.

Soft Sounds from Another Planet is out now on Dead Oceans.

Big Ups, "PPP"

I stumbled upon a set from Big Ups at the end of a long day at Northside Festival a couple of years ago. It was a stifling hot evening at Silent Barn, and I was spent. The band's energy, though, was contagious; and I left that show pumped and a fan.

Joe Galarraga (vocals), Brendan Finn (drums), Amar Lal (guitar), and Carlos Salguero Jr. (bass) have been at it for eight years. The post-hardcore four-piece have produced two essential albums in Eighteen Hours of Static and Before A Million Universes; and, yesterday, they announced that their third LP, Two Parts Together, would be out on May 18th via Exploding In Sound.

"PPP" is the first single from that record. The song is thrashing and confrontational. It uses the image of looking into a broken crystal ball as a metaphor for the way people can create their own, biased versions of the truth: "see what you wanna see, you wanna see, you wanna see."