Music

Just because you can do something, doesn’t necessarily mean you know how. For Brandon Summers, the lead singer and guitarist of the Portland duo The Helio Sequence, this was a lesson he learned the hard way. On the band’s 2004 album Love and Distance, Summers pushed his voice to levels it didn’t know how to endure.

From the opening piano line of the pokey “I Will Light You On Fire,” Golden Shoulders reveal their home-cooked goodness. The recording is not studio-shine pristine and there is a vague background hiss, but the song is a charmer. Harmonized vocal parts form a web of “oohs” and “aahs,” while the repeated refrain “I will light you on fire” emerges from the beautiful chaos. It’s really a gorgeous moment that sets the stage for the rest of the album.

Marking the 15th memorial anniversary of the death of lead singer Mia Zapata, the documentary film The Gits – about the rise and tragic fall of the influential Seattle-based band – opens in select theatres across North America in July. Directed by Kerry O’Kane, the film is also slated for a DVD release on July 8th from Liberation Entertainment via Adrenaline/ADA distribution.

On June 17th, NOMO will have a record release party for their new album Ghost Rock. The band will grace The Hideout in Chicago with its soulful jazzy funk and rhythmic grooves. Ghost Rock – released by Ubiquity Records – picks up where 2006’s New Tones left off, but takes their unique sound in even more directions than usual. The Michigan-based collective look to expand their already eclectic musical armory on the new record, pulling influences from Eno to MIA to Funkadelic.

Since their 2003 conception, Canadian punk death glitch duo Crystal Castles has released three seven-inches (one of which sold out in three days) and a number of remixes, all consistent in their onslaught of spastic Atari synth and chug-a-chug dance punk beats. Many of these rarities have now made the cut onto their self-titled debut full-length.

The first impression of these effusively loud Scottish rockers make is they sound like Mogwai covering speeded-up Sigur Rós songs with a few kidnapped members of Broken Social Scene directing the whole effort. However, The Twilight Sad goes way beyond that. Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards, It Did.—an EP—features four re-worked numbers from the band’s first full-length, last year’s Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, as well as two other songs.

On the second-to-last day of their latest European tour, the Canadian hardcore punk quartet Cursed was robbed of equipment, passports, and tour earnings. Though no official announcement has been made, many sites have already announced the band’s breakup as a result of this unfortunate event.

Geoff Farina has made a career out of talking softly and carrying a big stick, that stick being his G&L Legacy guitar. For 14 years the Berkley College of Music graduate toured the world fronting the post-punk cum smooth jazz outfit Karate, eschewing the bombast and grit of his contemporaries for more precise playing and lyrical simplicity. Having nothing left to prove in the guitar department, Farina has let his instrument take a backseat to prose on his new project, Glorytellers.

With The Apples in Stereo‘s latest release, Electronic Projects for Musicians, now a few months old, the Apples are ready to hit the road in support of the b-sides and rarities disc. But in addition to revealing a slue of summer dates (see below), the Apples have also announced that they have been asked to make a special musical performance on Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report.”