5 Charms 7.24

The Belle Weather - Don't Let Your Blood Run Still (Sheboygan, WI; 2019)

Time is running out / I swore I'd make it out / It's been 20 years now

You might or might not remember what happened in the 90s when MTV had its influential unplugged series--artists started busting out stringed instruments, using dowels on their snare drums, and sitting in rocking chairs. The Belle Weather draws from this cultural moment for their signature sound: a quartet with acoustic guitar, cello, upright bass, and violin. No drums. Eric Cox, who writes, sings, and plays guitar, has a voice that is more than a match for the best hard rock/grunge singers of the 90s, soaring and loud and just a touch of grit. "Blood," which is a pre-covid record (the band is currently in the studio recording a follow-up), contains some of their best work: the blues/punk "Catching Mercury," acoustic grunge tune "Madness," the sweeping ballad "Suitcase." Despite what you see on stage, The Belle Weather makes no pretense at playing traditional folk music or bluegrass. Nothing prepares you for their blast of noise, the organic beating of strings and bows, the howls and stomps. The Belle Weather is a sweating fever of a rock and roll dream that wakes you gently when the fever breaks. The Belle Weather is also:

Eric Cox: Vocals, guitar
Thea Vorass: Cello
Marisa Verbockel: Violin
Cory Ripley: Upright bass

The Sapsuckers - I'll Know It When I See It / Wishes (Soldier's Grove, WI; 2021)

Give me a smile, say you do.
I'll wreck my life for you.

The music of the Sapsuckers (songwriters Nikki Grossman and Joe Hart) is country and western music. It grows straight from the driftless streams and fields of western Wisconsin, along those country roads where you can stop to buy eggs, honey, or lettuce from the end of someone's driveway. You drive over a narrow bridge spanning a mossy creek. Stop at a crossroads with a quiet, stone-colored church on one corner, staring across at a tavern sided with faded planks. The yards are strung with laundry rope. The playgrounds still have slick metal slides. In the center of town, you'll find a grassy park where someone is opening a fiddle case on the steps of the bandstand, bright in its fresh coat of white paint. It's almost not fair, the amount of talent The Sapsuckers possess--the effortless harmonizing, the bow dancing across the violin, the melodies old as staying home to greet the one you love when they arrive. They haven't released much official music recently, and when you listen to this incredible, out of print single, Wishes/I'll Know It When I See It, you'll immediately want more. It's real country music about real people, a soundtrack to those empty places that aren't really empty, just overlooked by people who don't know any better. The Sapsuckers are:

Nikki Grossman: Vocals, guitar, violin
Joe Hart: Vocals, guitar

The Stolen Sea - Voyager's Companion (Madison, WI; 2024)

You see the way we shake?
it's all decisions that we made
that bring about this narrow doorway

Telling stories is at the heart of what most songwriters do. I don't know anything about Nate Meng, but the stories that his band The Stolen Sea collaborates in telling are hypnotic, complicated, and a little sad. Backed by cello, percussion, slide guitar, and clarinet, a listen through The Voyager's Companion takes us on a journey into faith, love, and finding a home in community. From the opening track "The Generators" ("Just believe, none of us made it here alone") to the "The Instrument" ("I am only as holy as this moment will hold me"), Meng sings with a melancholy that is tinged with hope. Occasional bright splashes of Hannah Edlen's clarinet and John Hitchcock's slide guitar(s) surface above the murk and echo. It's a wonderfully strange album with a sonic palette that is at once unique and comforting. Supposedly, there are two more albums coming this year from The Stolen Sea, which are:

Nate Meng: Vocals, guitar, piano, percussion
Allison Lenz: Cello, vocals, harmonium, percussion
John Hitchcock: Guitars (electric, classical, lap steel, baritone lap steel)
Hannah Edlen: Clarinet, baritone sax, vocals

Gauss - Whale Fall (Milwaukee, WI; 2023)

Put my ear to the surface
and I wept.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Whale Fall is Gauss's last album. As a final statement from the moody post-rock band, it's somewhat understated. The album opens with skittering drums, guitar harmonics, a dark trumpet melody, then the slightly off key singing of Eddie Chapman. Melodies collide and weave around themselves, knotty like jazz, but warm as a string quartet. The album simmers along like a rich sauce, layering acoustic and electric instruments, the first half a nice showcase for their lo-fi chamber-punk aesthetic. The mathy starts and stops of "Pop-Up Storm" and "Persistent State" leads the record into a weirder second half. The songs get longer, the tempos change. Album closer "Sounders of the Depths" builds on everything that came before, looking forward with trepidation to what will come next: "I think it's alright," sings Chapman,"To feel emotion, to feel frightened." Gauss was:

Eddie Chapman: Guitar, vocals
John Larkin: Trumpet, guitar
Eric Ash: violin
Brandon Miller: Synth
Elise McArdle: Bass
Andy Grygiel: Drums, vocals

Interlay - Hunting Jacket (Chicago, IL/Madison, WI ; 2024)

Found religion in the ceiling
Room spinning

When Glastonbury Festival recently announced that there weren't enough guitar rock bands to hire to play their stage, I closed my internet and hugged my dog. O the smallness of living in a world where you don't know bands like Interlay exist! For at least the past 5 years, femme and queer-fronted guitar rock bands have been taking over the indie scene. Which scene? Any scene. The hard music world, in particular. We're talking about a generational shift in who plays in bands, who books bands, and who signs bands. The fact that big festivals don't know who is out there playing music means more about the festivals than about the artists.

But I'm not here to talk about demographics. I'm here to shout the praises of Interlay--a band who grew up in the Madison scene, then moved to Chicago. Their new record, Hunting Jacket, is a magnificent splash of loud music from the opening screech of "Virgin Mary" to the spiking drone of the title track. This is dark music, but danceable. It's joyful music, but the joy of being outside on a sub-zero day when the sun is shining: dangerous and cold. Distorted bass, crushing drums, intricate guitar work, and the brave and confident singing of Alexandria Ortgiesen. Just listen to the way lead single "Medic" swarms in, then rattles apart, then snaps itself back together. Get their music and see them play before they are signed by Deathwish or Temporary Residence Ltd. or some label that will whisk them away even further than Chicago.

Interlay is:

Alexandria Ortgiesen: Vocals, guitars
Sam Eklund: Guitars
Kayla Chung: Bass
Henry Ptacek: Drums