Tag: Kate Bollinger

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Arts Culture

Sound Choices: New projects break through the noise

A. D. Carson

i used to love to dream

(University of
Michigan Press)

A.D. Carson has made a career out of breaking boundaries. As a Ph.D. student at Clemson University, his dissertation was an album called Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics Of Rhymes & Revolutions. Across the project’s 34 tracks, he examined identity politics, and even challenged the university to look inward on “See the Stripes,” which points to John C. Calhoun, a slave-owning 19th-century statesman whose house is memorialized on campus. After garnering thousands of viewers and listeners on platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud, Carson was offered the position of assistant professor of hip-hop and the global South in the McIntire Department of Music at the University of Virginia.

He continued his work with the “mixtap/e/ssays” series sleepwalking, turning the spotlight on his new home of Charlottesville by tackling themes like the proliferation of white supremacy in the wake of the Unite the Right rally that ravaged the community in 2017. i used to love to dream is the third installment of the series, and it marks another milestone for Carson: It’s the first peer-reviewed rap album ever published by an academic press. Tracing his roots back to his hometown of Decatur, Illinois, Carson harnesses feelings of leaving home and what constitutes the idea of success or “making it.” Elsewhere on the collection, he tackles systemic racism, police brutality, and the impact of discrimination by the criminal justice system. i used to love to dream is a multifaceted, cross-genre display of how art and activism go hand in hand—and is a must listen (released on August 6).

Kate Bollinger

A word becomes a sound

(Self-released)

After generating a lot of buzz with her 2019 EP I Don’t Wanna Lose, Charlottesville native Kate Bollinger returns with another batch of languid dream-pop compositions. A word becomes a sound finds the songwriter, who recently graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in cinematography, expanding her sonic palette. Across the EP’s five tracks, she incorporates electronic elements and a new level of production, all while maintaining the hazy lo-fi quality that has become her signature. Bollinger once again teamed up with classmate and frequent collaborator John Trainum to achieve this balance. The result is a lush, laid-back offering of R&B, jazz, and indie shoegaze. Bollinger and Trainum finished writing and production for newer tracks like “Queen to Nobody” during the pandemic. But the opener, “A Couple Things,” has been a staple of Bollinger’s live sets for years. “If I mess up a couple things or if I mess up a lot of things,” she muses on the song. “If I fuck up a couple things, well, what if I fuck up everything?” It’s Bollinger’s ability to channel sentiments that are simultaneously personal and universal that makes A word becomes a sound her strongest work to date (released on August 21).

Various Artists

A Little Bit at a
Time: Spacebomb
Family Rarities

(Spacebomb Records)

Richmond’s Spacebomb Records is more than just a record label; it’s a musical nexus. Operating in a newly renovated studio, Spacebomb also serves as a publishing, management, and production company. Spacebomb sought to showcase its many facets with a new compilation, A Little Bit at a Time: Spacebomb Family Rarities. Digging into the archives, the album highlights Richmond-based artists like Andy Jenkins, Sleepwalkers, and Spacebomb founder Matthew E. White, alongside artists like Pure Bathing Culture and Laura Veirs, who have worked with Spacebomb in various capacities. Featuring B-sides, previously unreleased tracks, and demos, A Little Bit at a Time is the perfect deep dive from one of the biggest drivers of Central Virginia’s creative community (released on July 3).

Categories
Arts

Music in me: Kate Bollinger’s lifelong connection to healing through song

Kate Bollinger celebrates the vinyl release of her 2019 EP, I Don’t Wanna Lose, at the Southern on November 14. “Music is always around for a lot of people and it’s, I think, subtly powerful, but [not everyone] knows that it can really change people’s lives and change their brain patterns," she says. Publicity photo

The health benefits of music have been widely researched. Evidence has shown that music can alleviate stress, reduce pain, and lead to better cognitive functioning in patients suffering from memory loss. A popular study released last year asserted that routinely going to concerts can contribute to an increased lifespan. Charlottesville native Kate Bollinger witnessed music’s neurological impact firsthand while growing up: Her mom is a music therapist.

“I think it was important to see music in that context—as something that really, powerfully can help people get better,” Bollinger explains. “[My mom] works with a lot of older people that have dementia, and then she also works with younger kids who have autism and developmental disabilities. Music is always around for a lot of people and it’s, I think, subtly powerful, but [not everyone] knows that it can really change people’s lives and change their brain patterns.”

Bollinger’s musical lineage can be traced back to those early music therapy sessions.

“My mom was always releasing children’s music albums, so I grew up singing in children’s choruses for her albums,” says Bollinger. “From a young age, I had the chance to see how it works to record in a studio and to sing with other people.”

Meanwhile, both of Bollinger’s older brothers played music, hosting band practices in their basement. This exposure informed her own approach: She joined the girl’s chorus in middle school, and by high school was recording and releasing her own songs on SoundCloud.

Now a fourth-year cinematography major at the University of Virginia, Bollinger’s teamed up with classmate John Trainum, and they’ve put out a string of singles over the past couple of years. Trainum plays keys and synth on Bollinger’s tracks, and is credited with mixing and production.

“[Trainum and I] put out two songs together that we just recorded in his room—I guess it was two years ago now—and then he would make beats and I would write over them,” she says. The duo have been recording at White Star Sound in Louisa.

Over the summer, Bollinger released a five-song EP, I Don’t Wanna Lose, which marked a period of growth for her: It’s the first time she’s worked with a full band during the recording process. Along with Trainum, the disc features drummer Jacob Grissom, who Bollinger met in high school. Enrolled in the jazz program at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Grissom brought along fellow VCU jazz students Chris Lewis (guitar) and Jimmy Trussell (bass). Possessing all the familiarity of a lo-fi bedroom recording, I Don’t Wanna Lose is a languid collection that’s easy to get lost in.

While the EP’s themes are universal—a sense of insecurity about the future and the pains of heartbreak—Bollinger says songwriting, for her, began as personal catharsis.

“I feel like I’ve written a lot of songs in tears about something, so it definitely started from a self-centered place, just trying to hash out what I felt and trying to make something productive out of usually bad feelings,” she says.

But as her audience continues to grow, it’s clear that Bollinger’s work harkens back to the touchstone of music therapy—music as a communal tool for healing.

“It’s been really cool to hear that [my songs have] helped with people’s anxiety, so I’m definitely thinking now in a bit of a broader way, that hopefully it can help other people with their feelings.”

Kate Bollinger celebrates the vinyl release of her 2019 EP, I Don’t Wanna Lose, at the Southern on November 14.

Categories
Arts

Album reviews: Craig Leon, Naytronix, Matt Martians, Kate Bollinger, and Crumb

"Restful on the surface but restive underneath," Crumb has a new full-length album. Publicity image.

Craig Leon

Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 2: The Canon (RVNG Intl.)

Craig Leon produced the classic debuts of the Ramones and Blondie before covering some classical stuff himself (key title: Bach to Moog). On his ’80s new age albums Nommos and Visiting, Leon imagined the vernacular music of extraterrestrials, presenting it as slow, synthetic, and sweeping. (Well, who knows?) He revives the concept on the mostly instrumental Anthology, picking up right where he left off. A couple of tracks driven by minimal percussion patterns suggest a new age version of Can’s “ethnological forgery” series; the rest of the album, dominated by droning washes of keyboards, has a quiet tension, like it’s watching the skies for distant lightning. ***1/2

https://craigleon.bandcamp.com/album/anthology-of-interplanetary-folk-music-vol-1-nommos-visiting

Naytronix

Air (BatCave)

Naytronix is Nate Brenner, bassist and co-producer for Tune-Yards. Brenner also helped Merrill Garbus score Sorry to Bother You, and Air might also benefit from a movie to pick up the slack, as Brenner’s splattering, Ratatat-derived dance rock doesn’t quite gel. Not that there isn’t potential in the rubbery bass lines or in Brenner’s vocals, which he never oversells as he flickers through various affects: a benumbed Lil Peep; a Bowie fan mirror-singing; Arthur Russell with less soul. But there’s nothing in the way of rhythmic or melodic hooks, and Brenner’s banal bummer lyrics could have been transcribed from a bathroom wall. **1/2

https://naytronix.bandcamp.com/album/air

Matt Martians

The Last Party (3qtr)

An overlooked member of Odd Fu-
ture and The Internet, Matt Martians explains his new album as a kiss-off aimed both at his ex and at music bizzers clinically scrutinizing his artistic moves. But The Last Party is way more provisional than triumphant, as Martians mumbles sticky-note-sized analyses and affirmations: “I laid down all my pride / You were not thankful”; “I’ve got new boots on my feet, baby.” Still, the muted, jazz-tinged tracks have an effortless, muzzy charm, as does Martians him-
self; I gotta pull for the guy. ***1/2

Kate Bollinger

I Don’t Wanna Lose
(Kate Bollinger)

Meantime, in happy local developments there’s Charlottesville native and UVA student Kate Bollinger’s
I Don’t Wanna Lose, an assured EP of laid-back bedroom indie tinged with tropicália. It’s a charmer, as Bollinger’s relaxed, nimble voice weaves artful lines through jazzy guitar chords thickened with tremolo (courtesy of fellow ‘Hoo John Trainum). Bollinger brings a slightly wounded but wizened Rickie Lee Jones vibe to standouts “Untitled” and “Candy,” as she navigates the shifting terrain where friendship and romance meet, retreat, and repeat. Feels like we’ll be bragging on the homegrown Bollinger real soon, and for a while. On June 22, Bollinger plays the Southern with Gold Connections and Goodnight Daniel. ****

https://katebollinger.bandcamp.com/

Crumb

Jinx (Rough Trade)

Straight outta Medford, Crumb formed at Tufts before relocating to NYC in 2016 and releasing two EPs with the help of Richmond’s Citrus City Records (hurrah!). Both generated online buzz, and Crumb jumped to the legendary indie Rough Trade for their debut full-length. But the sound on Jinx is just a hair more pumped up than the EPs, and Crumb is still Crumb, doubling down on dark, beaty psychedelic pop and Lila Ramani’s sad-ghost vocals—fans of Broadcast might get misty. Restful on the surface but restive underneath and downright groovy at times (“Nina”), Jinx plays like a weird but cool dream. ****

https://crumbtheband.bandcamp.com/

Categories
Arts

Trickling streams: How digital has affected local musicians

Getting added to one of Spotify’s curated playlists gave Alethea Leventhal’s “Ships In The Night” new listeners, but not a big payday. Photo by Tristan Williams

Paul Curreri remembers getting rid of his CD collection. He and his wife, Devon Sproule, both musicians, were packing up their Austin, Texas, home to move back to Charlottesville in 2015, when Curreri realized he hadn’t added to his CD collection in a while. “There wasn’t a bad one in the bunch,” he says of the 2,500-odd discs. The collection “used to be super fun, and vital, and alive,” he says, but once he stopped adding to it, it wasn’t fun anymore. Curreri sold it all for about $400.

Paul Curreri

“Now we have Spotify, and we have Pandora, and [I have it all] technically, on a hard drive somewhere. …But then I open up Spotify and I literally can’t think of artists. It drives me nuts! It’s like I’ve lost my entire filing system without having [the albums physically] on the wall,” he says.

Curreri’s story likely sounds familiar, and it demonstrates how consuming and appreciating music has changed drastically in recent years.

There’s no shortage of talk about this on music blogs and in entertainment magazines, particularly how the advent of streaming pays artists only a fraction of a cent per song play. But how is it affecting non-superstar local artists, in a small city with a fairly robust music scene?

It’s hard to find an exact number for how much a single-song stream pays. “It is pretty meager,” says Alethea Leventhal, who records dark electronic, ethereal synthesizer lullabies under the moniker Ships in the Night.


Conversations with Charlottesville-area musicians of many genres reveal that for the most part, they’re not in it for the money; they’re in it because they have something to say and to share.

Curreri says that when he began recording and releasing music in the early 2000s, he got regular checks, for hundreds of dollars a week, from his distribution service, CD Baby. His records were well-received by critics and audiences, and he started selling enough albums to make his money back on recording, and then some. But just when it seemed like he could make a real living off music, sometime around 2007 the checks started shrinking. That was the year Radiohead released In Rainbows, not as a CD, but as a pay-what-you-want download, and arguably altered the way people thought about releasing and purchasing music. (The physical version of In Rainbows was offered in January 2008 through Coran Capshaw’s TBD label, and was certified gold with 500,000 copies sold by March 2008.)

Crunching the numbers

BuzzAngle Music’s 2018 data shows that people are listening to more music than ever, but purchasing less with each passing year.

701 million

Total album consumption in 2018, including physical, digital, and streams (up 16.2 percent over 2017)

5.8 billion

Total song consumption (27.4 percent increase over 2017)

809.5 billion

Total on-demand streams (35.4 percent increase over 2017)

121.2 million

Album and song sales (a combined decrease of 189.6 million­—in 2018, there was not a single song that broke one million in sales)

Now, artists often record their music at a personal financial loss and rely on live shows—their cut of the door, plus merch and physical music sales—to make money from music.

Last year, one of Leventhal’s songs made it on to a curated Spotify playlist—a placement that Curreri likens to “getting on Letterman”—and while she only made a few hundred dollars from the resulting streams, she saw it as a channel to new ears. Perhaps some of those listeners came out to one of the 70-plus shows she played last year, or shared the song with a friend.

“That’s what inspires me to always keep sharing music,” says Leventhal. “Just that one person in a sea of many who it really, really reaches, and maybe helps.”

Kai Crowe-Getty

“We see Spotify not as a revenue stream, but a carrot to get people to come to our show,” where they’ll have a good time, buy merch, and hopefully see the band next time it rolls through town, says Kai Crowe-Getty, guitarist and vocalist for Americana/Southern rock band Lord Nelson.

“People want to experience things together, in the dark, with people they know and don’t know,” says Crowe-Getty. That part of enjoying music hasn’t changed, though he scratches his head at how some folks shell out $150 for a concert ticket, but not $15 for an album.

Indie rock band Stray Fossa had a few songs appear on various music blog playlists, and in November 2018, its single “Commotion” appeared (how, the band has no idea) on Spotify’s “Fresh Finds” and “Fresh Finds: Six Strings” playlists. Bassist Zach Blount says that while the resulting tens of thousands of song streams didn’t result in more physical or digital music sales via Stray Fossa’s Bandcamp page, “we have had people turn out for shows while on tour who said they had found us on Spotify and decided to check us out.”

Kate Bollinger, a third-year student at UVA, only releases her music digitally right now, with many tracks exclusively available on Spotify. She approached the platform, with its 87 million paying subscribers, not as a money maker, but as a way to get heard.

Last year, her song “Tests” appeared on a YouTube playlist with a considerable following, and was later added to several Spotify playlists. As a result, her songs now have more than 80,000 monthly listeners, and she’s almost certain that her Spotify artist page is what got a recent show mentioned in the New York Times.

Bollinger says that her Spotify success hasn’t resulted in a big check (or any check, yet), but it gives her confidence that music is something to pursue long-term.

Local rapper Kevin Skinner, aka Sondai, has previously told C-VILLE something similar: so far his 2017 single “One Chick” has more than 2.2 million listens on Spotify alone.

Curreri is now part of the growing group of artists, like Bollinger, that releases music exclusively online. He and Sproule have a Patreon page, where they release at least two new things—usually original songs, sometimes covers, videos, or even essays—each month, and supporters choose how much they want to pay per release. It averages out to about $400 a song, says Curreri, so while it’s not bad, it’s not enough to make a living. Part of why Curreri agreed to be interviewed for this story, he says with a laugh, is because he hopes a reader might think, “I’d like to hear what Devon and Paul are doing.”

Curreri implies that all is not lost—musicians are still making music, and people are still listening to it. He and Sproule have about 30 songs up on their page—making at least two songs every month “is something we would not have done otherwise,” says Curreri.

“It’s a huge priority for me. It’s our work, and our art, and our opportunity and platform to present something to an audience, to insert something into the universe.”