5 Charms 4.24

Marielle Allschwang & the Visitations – Precession of a Day: The World of Mary Nohl (Milwaukee, WI; 2019)

The lake when you enter pulls
As shrouding dream about you

Hidden with heightened sight full
Beauty, spectres, treasures, blue.

Marielle Allschwang is a songwriter, artist, and musician from Milwaukee who I first saw as part of the post-rock ensemble Group of the Altos (also known just as Altos). Her solo work is spectral, gothic, songwriter rock, by which I mean it’s minimal, dark, and wordy—Chelsea Wolfe with air added to the doomy chords. Allschwang put out two records in 2019 with her band The Visitations. The first was simply titled Visitations IV, and was a traditional full-length (and follow up to her incredible 2015 record Dead Not Done). The second record, Precession, is a conceptual post-rock performance piece about the life and art of Mary Nohl. The album’s 9 tracks offer vignettes about Nohl’s life or reaction to her outsider art in a chiming, droning soundtrack. I was fortunate enough to see her perform Precession with her band (and video installation). It was just the right amount of noisy, very sincere, and extremely moving. Nohl is one of my favorite visual artists and Allschwang is one of my favorite musical artists, so it makes me very happy to hear what happens when one reacts to the other.

Marielle Allschwang: words, guitar, vocals, samples
Adam Michael Krause: words, guitar, caxixi, timpani, samples
Thomas Duffey: acoustic and electric drums, timpani, vibraphone, samples
Nathaniel Heuer: upright and electric bass, vocals, harmonium, synthesizer
Ken Palme: guitar, Taurus pedal
Additional vocals on “Fear It,” “Roam,” and “Turning” by Caley Conway and Erin Wolf.

Field Report - Brake Light Red Tide (Milwaukee, WI; 2020)

I won’t say haunted, but I get visited
It follows me around, wherever I go
So all things being equal, lately I just stay at home

There is no more quintessential Milwaukee songwriter than Chris Porterfield. He gets every phrase right, with lyrics reading like the social realist poets or regionalist short story writers produced by the upper Midwest. Engrossing stories about his own quotidian life that zoom in and out and intertwine with the lives of other folks dragging existenstial boulders up and down the eskers and moraines of the glaciated midwest. "Brake Light" is a beautiful and rare piece of work--indebted to 70s songwriters and 2000s indie folk, but transcending all of that, with production tuned to focus on Porterfield's voice and lyrics. There are synth washes, chiming acoustic guitars, the splash of a snare, and wandering electric guitar lines that compliment each song, not to mention gorgeous background vocals by Caley Conway. This record came out during COVID, with no touring or national distribution to bring it into the world. CDs and vinyl sold out over night, but the digital recordings exist as testament to the creative vision of everyone involved in this iteration of Christopher Porterfield's project:

Barry Paul Clark - bass
Caley Conway - harmony vocals, electric guitar
Devin Drobka - drums
Daniel Holter - percussion
Christopher Porterfield - vocals, guitars, pads
Thomas Wincek - Prophet, chorus keys, upright piano

Large Print - In the Dark/In the Clouds (Milwaukee, WI; 2022)

We’re only happy when it’s raining
And under dressed for the weather

In 2022, Milwaukee band Large Print released two albums: In the Dark and In the Clouds. The music owes a lot to late 90s indie and early 00s garage-gaze acts like Headlights and Asobi Seksu. Whatever the influences of the band, they know how to coat the guitars in sandpaper, the drums in reverb, and float the vocals above everything. It's great driving music, with riffs for days, and just the right amount of poppiness. Highlights include "Dried Fruit" and "Afterthought," but all of the songs are wonderfully smooth little pebbles of noise (many of which are well under 2:00 minutes in length). Check out Large Print's new single, "Dreamt Lost Car," to hear how their sound has evolved over the past two years. The members of Large Print are: Andy / Eric / Grace / Jay / James.

The Daredevil Christopher Wright - The Nature of Things (Eau Claire, WI; 2012)

Come on baby
Come on home
I wish you were here
When I walked into the room

I ordered this CD from Bandcamp years ago. It was sent from some record label in France. This summer, I found another copy at a record store in the "international music" section. It's international in the sense of the distance between Eau Claire and Milwaukee, by way of record labels in Canada and France. (Daredevil, although a band "from here," was signed to a small label "over there.") So now I own two copies of The Daredevil Christopher Wright's incredible swan song of an album "The Nature of Things," which rose from the reedy pond of the mid-00s Wisconsin music scene and flew off into the sky, never to be seen again.

Friends, this album is one of my favorite music things of all time, so it's hard to talk about it without hyperbole or poetry. J.E. Sunde is the songwriter all songwriters hope to become and his voice is the voice all singers wish they had. Wander through the caverns of "Ames, Iowa," and you'll see what I mean: he rhymes "Doff my wedding ring" with "Methamphetamine" while pulling off trapeze-level heights of vocal harmonics. It makes no sense. Where did this record come from? Where did it go? A gem of midwest psych-folk that found a home in the blog music scene that also housed bands like Pioneer, Blessed Feathers, Conrad Plymouth, Yellow Ostrich, and Phox, Daredevil was the songwriting partnership of brothers Jon (J.E.) and Jason Sunde along with vocalist/percussionist Jesse Eddington. The three of them were also multi-instrumentalists, composers, and singers.

This record is as dark as the Bible, but with more nuance. Daredevil got compared a lot to 60s British and Laurel Canyon folk, but a better comparison would be the Danielson Famile and Sufjan Stevens--spiritual-minded indie rock with kitchen-sink instrumentation, yelping, and rhythms like a road map with no detours marked. "Nature", their final statement as a band, was a more controlled and mature version of their previous freak-folk albums, none of which broke through into the wider world, for some reason. It's a shame because this is music that deserves to be heard. The Daredevil Christopher Wright was:

Jon Sunde, Jason Sunde, and Jesse Edgington

Operations - Fog Museum (Milwaukee, WI; 2020)

[lyrics indescernible]

There is never a time when arpeggiated bass is the wrong choice, or when you shouldn't double up on echoing guitar lines. "Fog Museum" is a wonderfully sychronistic album that sounds exactly like its title: a winding, resonating space filled with hallways and shrouded in low hanging mists. Bouncing from wall to wall comes vocals, guitars, drums, but it's hard to say exactly where the sound is coming from. Subconscious stuff equally at home in a tractor plowing a field of late summer corn or a forest trail in a winter snowfall. Not quite fuzzy enough to be shoegaze, this is a perfect dream pop album with some heavy guitar and creative drumming to keep it grounded. Next time you find yourself wandering, grab a copy of "Fog Museum" and keep going, you'll get the end of the trail eventually.

Operations, currently playing shows sporadically in Milwaukee, is:

Charles Markowiak - Vocals, Guitar
Alisa Rodriguez - Vocals, Guitar
Sam Gargulak - Bass
John Schoneman - Drums, 12-string on Farewell Message