Tag: Matthew E. White

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Arts Culture

Reflecting the past and staring down the future

Matthew E. White & Lonnie Holley
Broken Mirror, A Selfie Reflection
Spacebomb/Jagjaguwar

For his latest solo effort, the mastermind behind Richmond’s Spacebomb Records has teamed up with 70-year-old Alabama singer Lonnie Holley. Before pursuing music, Holley was known for his work as a visual artist, crafting sculptures and environments from found objects. When Matthew E. White asked Holley to write and sing across a batch of instrumentals that he had recorded with the Spacebomb house band, Holley applied the same artistic aesthetic to the project. Comprised of five extended “compositions,” Broken Mirror, A Selfie Reflection is an indulgent, dreamlike amalgam of sound and imagery that serves as a commentary on life in the digital era. The title track, “Broken Mirror (A Selfie Reflection)/Composition 9,” is a 10-minute romp of chants and synth layers that draws on cultural tropes like “mirror, mirror on the wall,” and the threat of “seven years of bad luck,” as the narrator stares at his own image on a cell phone. This record isn’t a casual listen, but rather, a thought-provoking one that manages to be entirely futuristic while remaining rooted in the present. (Released April 9)

Vivian Leva & Riley Calcagno
Vivian Leva & Riley Calcagno
Free Dirt Records

Born and raised in Lexington, Virginia, Vivian Leva had a vast musical training ground right at home: Her parents are veteran old-time musicians who have been performing for over a decade as Jones & Leva. Alongside her mom, Leva brought the sounds of the Blue Ridge Mountains to Washington state as a workshop teacher in the summer of 2016. There, she met Riley Calcagno, a member of the string band The Onlies. They forged a musical partnership, and Calcagno contributed to Leva’s 2018 debut, Time Is Everything. Now, the duo has released its first proper full-length, a beautiful integration of indie-folk, mountain music, and classic country. The pair’s pure harmonies unfurl over virtuosic finger-picking, as they tackle themes of heartbreak (“Will You”), the sublime (“Love and Chains”), and loneliness (“Biding All My Time”). Leva and Calcagno are more than the sum of their parts, and while they currently reside in Portland, Oregon, their self-titled disc is pure Appalachia. (Released March 12)

Stray Fossa
With You For Ever
Nice Guys Records

Brothers Nick and Will Evans grew up in southern Tennessee, and along with childhood friend Zach Blount, they wrote songs and played in bands together throughout high school. The trio went their separate ways for college, but after graduate stints across the globe in Berlin and the U.K., they reformed as Stray Fossa in Charlottesville in 2018. (Will had attended undergrad at the University of Virginia, and Charlottesville’s burgeoning music scene seemed like a good place to kick-start their musical pursuits.) The group built a studio in an attic, where the guys recorded a handful of EPs as well as their full-length debut, With You For Ever. Written in the beginning stages of the pandemic, the album not only reflects the surreal aspects of a global health crisis and social isolation, but also brims with nostalgia, offering a joyous and hopeful reprieve of shimmery dream pop. Standout track “Bright Ahead” boasts a maturation in sound from the band’s early work, while highlights like “Orange Days’’ take a wistful look in the rearview. With You For Ever is a collection to get lost in, washing over the listener in a wave of keys, steady percussion, reverb, and gossamer vocals. (Release March 9)

Categories
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

Test of time: Natalie Prass merges old soul with a modern, political beat

Natalie Prass aimed to cut through the chaos with 2018’s The Past and The Future. “It’s a challenge writing catchy, danceable [tracks] about these deep, heavy subjects that are so nuanced, so multilayered,” she says. Publicity photo

Singer-songwriter Natalie Prass is camped out at a friend’s warehouse space in Richmond, Virginia, enjoying some down time before she embarks on the next leg of her tour, and she’s going through her morning routine, which includes making coffee and throwing on Janet Jackson’s “Pleasure Principle” from the 1986 album, Control.

“Janet [Jackson] has always been an artist that I’ve looked up to,” says Prass. “The whole Jackson family was played a lot in my household growing up, which I’m very thankful for.”

Music has been a creative channel throughout Prass’ life. In 2016, she had her second album written and ready to go. And then came the presidential election. The collection of songs she had compiled no longer felt relevant, so she scrapped them and started anew, writing what would become The Future and the Past.

“It was my mission to try to make the most compelling music I can about what’s happening right now—something I feel so many emotions about,” she explains. “I’m sure that if I’m feeling this way, there has to be a ton of other people that feel the same and they probably need music, you know, and I needed it.”

Gospel music was another source of inspiration for The Future and the Past, as was the ever-present Jackson, whose revolutionary Rhythm Nation 1814 turns 30 this year.

“She balances the political message with femininity with danceability so effortlessly, and it’s very sexy and modern and it’s all her own,” Prass says. “She’s always been very political and outspoken about human rights and our country, but then doing it in this package where it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m gonna still be positive and I want to dance.’ It’s music that’s for everybody. It’s music that stands the test of time.”

Prass successfully struck the same balance, with songs like the feminist anthem “Sisters,” which reframes the phrase “nasty women.” It’s an album that oozes soul, groove, and even love (look no further than the catchy lead single, “Short Court Style”). To harness that signature sound, Prass once again teamed up with Spacebomb Studios founder Matthew E. White.

Prass and White both grew up in Virginia Beach, and initially crossed paths in high school at a Battle of the Bands competition, where Prass’ band covered—you guessed it—Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”

“I was in ninth grade and I was wearing fake leather orange-red pants and a Sid Vicious T-shirt and neon green shoes,” Prass recalls. “And I don’t even know if I really talked to [Matt] but I distinctly remember…being like, ‘Look at that hippie.’ I’m pretty sure he was wearing either a ratty T-shirt or a polo shirt and khaki pants and Birkenstocks…a puka shell necklace or a hemp necklace but he says he wasn’t.”

Years later, when Prass was trying to make it as a musician in Nashville, a friend suggested she reach out to White about recording an album. In founding Spacebomb, White’s influences were Stax, Motown, and The Wrecking Crew. Prass, meanwhile, was looking to make an “old-school, Dionne Warwick-style record.” Collaboration seemed like a no-brainer.

The result was Prass’ 2015 self-titled debut, on which she plays guitars, drums, and keys. But she has largely shedded those instruments on this tour.

“I wanted to experiment with being a frontwoman. Sometimes I feel constricted on stage by playing instruments—I feel like I can’t connect as much to the audience,” she explains. “I’ve been really enjoying playing with these monster jazz musicians that are in Richmond. They’re incredible and it’s just a fun ride getting to build the sound with so many skilled people at my side.”

It’s a musical ride that captures the present, owns the past, and will endure in the future.

Natalie Prass aimed to cut through the chaos with 2018’s The Past and The Future. “It’s a challenge writing catchy, danceable [tracks] about these deep, heavy subjects that are so nuanced, so multilayered,” she says.

Natalie Prass plays The Southern Café & Music Hall Wednesday, January 23.