The Bowery Presents

Music Hall of Williamsburg upcoming shows

GAYNGS

Glasser

Featuring members of Solid Gold, Bon Iver, The Rosebuds, Megafaun and more.
Venue:
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Date:
Mon 10/04
Notes:
18+
Doors: 8:00 PM / Show: 9:00 PM
$20 advance / $20 day of show
Tickets
Gayngs
official website
myspace
When Ryan Olson decided to make a record with Solid Gold members Zack Coulter and Adam Hurlburt, it was clear to them what the result would be: a collection of drugged-up keyboards and slick bedroom production almost exclusively inspired by 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love.” To be fair, they weren't entirely off. What they didn't know was that it would spiral into a project of epic proportions, enlisting the talents of over 25 musicians from various scenes around the country, relocating the base of operations from Olson's Minneapolis bedroom/studio to the Wisconsin-based studio April Base, and the genesis of a musical super-family, GAYNGS.

From the moment anyone heard Olson, Coulter, and Hurlburt's rough version of their first composition "The Gaudy Side of Town", they wanted in on it. To most of the players involved, this genre of music was quite foreign yet entirely familiar. Olson knew this, and began calling upon an eclectic cast of contributors whom he thought would share his vision, and relish in the idea of exploring uncharted musical territory within them. The first people to join the cause were North Carolina's Megafaun (Joe Westerlund, Brad Cook, Phil Cook), and with them came Ivan Howard (The Rosebuds), and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Mike Noyce. By mid-2009 the studio sessions were becoming more and more frequent, bouncing back and forth between April Base and Olson's bedroom. In Minneapolis, Olson brought in Rhymesayers rapper P.O.S and his fellow Doomtree artist Dessa, psych-rockers Jake Luck and Nick Ryan (Leisure Birds), song-birds Channy Moon-Casselle and Katy Morley, jazz-saxophonist Michael Lewis (Happy Apple, Andrew Bird), retro-pop duo Maggie Morrison and Grant Cutler (Lookbook), and slide-guitarist Shön Troth (Solid Gold).

Vocally, GAYNGS is a triumph. Zack Coulter (Solid Gold) shines from the jump, floating over the record with his airy, haunting melodies. Fans of Bon Iver will recognize Vernon's familiar falsetto, but will flip when they hear his Bone Thug's-style R&B. Ivan Howard sounds right at home with his sensual and breathy leads, while P.O.S. abandons his genre entirely for a soul inspired tenor. With over a dozen people contributing vocals, its incredible how cohesive the album sounds.

After a year of tracking and mixing, GAYNGS is officially ready to release the album, entitled Relayted. The initial goal was achieved perfectly, yet Relayted sounds refreshing and modern. With each song written at 69 BPM's, and tripped-out transitions from song to song, it is truly an audio experience from start to finish.
Glasser
myspace
Glasser is the one-woman orchestra of Cameron Mesirow. Her debut album, Ring, is a singular work. It moves like the wake of a small boat in a still lake: each song its own, but leading to, and becoming, the next. In doing so it builds on the tradition of classic albums like Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, and R. Kelly’s Trapped In the Closet song-cycle: albums that as a whole create stories that are bigger than the sum of their individual songs.

Glasser entered public consciousness in 2009 with her debut EP, Apply, on True Panther, and a UK-only 12” on the Young Turks label. The intimate, luxurious music resonated widely, despite being made by Cameron, alone and in airplanes and shoe stores, on Garage Band. Her EPs and live shows earned her attention from producers Van Rivers and the Subliminal Kid (who co-produced a few tracks and the transitions on this album) and opening tour slots with the XX, Jonsi, and Delorean.

With Ring, however, Cameron worked for months with producer Ariel Rechtshaid to re-imagine her musical arrangements, incorporating organic instrumentation like strings, woodwinds, bass, and a wide array of percussion into her once-sparse recordings. Her simple, minimal melodies and rapturous vocals are perfectly complimented by the album’s maximalist arrangements. The voice becomes a focal instrument, delivers abstract stories and sounds that drench the music in emotion without resorting to narrative clichés.

Ring is named for chiastic, or “ring”, structure, an idea borrowed from the oral tradition. In it, ideas are paired in a symmetric order, often leading bidirectionally toward a central idea. Cameron structured the album similarly, with no set beginning or end, with its songs representing fluctuating and often contradictory emotional states.
In “Treasury of We,” she claims, “We’re all the same/Set apart by different names,” then in “Mirrorage” says “we live alone…how can I trust in you?” Perhaps she is asking a lover, perhaps any person at all, or perhaps she’s asking Nature itself, another character in Ring. “Ain’t it odd how we mimic nature indoors, when nature is far more vivid to endure?” she asks, adding, “So where’s the comfort there? What’s real can be anywhere.” It offers fantasy (“Hollowed a log to ride…Behind a beast with a liquid hide”), hope (“Let me grow with you/And I will cut all the blooms/To decorate your room”), pain (“The clouds were dust, raining on us/There was a phantom me in a bed of love”).

In Glasser there exists, side by side, the optimism of a woman captivated by creation and travel, as well as the anxiety that accompanies nomadism and change. Of this duality, the New York Times said “these are beautiful songs, both sweet and abstract, deeply felt and anodyne.” Somehow, in Glasser’s efforts to make sense of her world, she has made an album with the universal lure of both a lullaby and a hymn.
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