Tag: Will Marsh

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Arts Culture

Quarantine creativity begins to show

David Wax Museum
Euphoric Ouroboric,
Mark of the Leopard

As David Wax Museum, the husband/wife duo of David Wax and Suz Slezak have churned out studio albums brimming with their unique blend of Mexo-Americana whimsy for 14 years. In 2019, their debut label release, Line of Light, garnered the Charlottesville pair a performance on “CBS This Morning: Saturday,” and the track “Big Sur” was featured on Netflix’s No. 1 show, “Firefly Lane.” But the national momentum backing the band’s upcoming tour came to a halt with the onset of the pandemic. Housebound, Wax and Slezak tried their hand at home recording, tapping into unbridled creativity, and Euphoric Ouroboric is the first of four albums’ worth of material they generated throughout quarantine. For remote production, they relied on frequent collaborator Alec Spiegelman, who utilized loops, drum machines, and other digital tools to bring a new, modern edge to the duo’s folk-inspired palette. On the disc’s first single, “Juniper Jones,” the tale of the title character unfurls across a cacophony of accordion, traditional Mexican instruments, and digital processing. Elsewhere, “Love Comes Around” hits its stride with a beautiful confluence of woodwinds and strings, while “Real De Catorce” is a marked shift in Wax and Slezak’s sound, bolstered by explosive electric guitar loops and gurgles that give the effect of being underwater. It’s a collection that catapults the warmth and effervescence that made David Wax Museum a household name into a new stratosphere of experimentation. (Released April 16)

38KEA
Seeds, Thy Divine
Thresher, Lost Appeal

Richmond-based rapper 38KEA’s latest output is the genre-bending, head-turning bop that we’ve been waiting for in 2021. As we slowly emerge from our quarantine-induced sheltering, Seeds, Thy Divine Thresher provides a collection of snapshots (each of the record’s 22 tracks clocks in at three minutes or less) all centering on the inherent goal of a seedling: growth. Musings on community activity give way to sociopolitical commentary on a track like “Fill The Cup Up,” which includes a clip of Donald Trump besmirching the Black Lives Matter movement. Alongside collaborators Jak3 and LAMPGOD, 38KEA boasts all the touchstones of modernity, creating a patchwork of glitched-out layers, abrupt stops, beat switches, and malleable samples. The languid distortion on “Group Home” and reverb-drenched loops on “I Wrote N I Soul” are album highlights. (Released March 8)

Gold Connections
“Confession”
(Single), AWAL

As Gold Connections, Will Marsh spent the past five years in Charlottesville channeling the grit of the ’90s—and adding plenty of his own flavor—on four EPs. After the release of last year’s Ammunition, Marsh made the move to Richmond, where he’s continued to hone his lo-fi, post-punk sound. Now comes his first single since making the commonwealth shift: a reworking of an old poem, set to a vast expanse of dirge and dance-rock. From the layered background harmony to the song’s propulsive drive, “Confession” is a masterful maturation of the Gold Connections sound. (Released May 7)

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Arts

Grunge reprise: Local musicians pay tribute to Nirvana’s legendary ‘Unplugged’ gig

Saturday night at The Front Porch, a group of local musicians pay tribute to Nirvana's "MTV Unplugged in New York" record, released 25 years ago this week. Getty Images/News.com

The fuzzy, sage green granny cardigan hasn’t been washed in more than two decades. It’s missing a button, and the knit is stained in spots and cigarette-burned in a few others.

That sweater fetched $334,000 at auction last weekend because, despite its flaws, it’s an iconic piece of rock memorabilia, worn frequently by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in the months before his death in April 1994. Chances are, you’ve seen the sweater—it’s the one Cobain wore for Nirvana’s appearance on “MTV Unplugged.”

Released as an album on November 1, 1994—the band’s first after Cobain’s death—MTV Unplugged in New York has come to be regarded as one of the best live performances ever recorded, a series of songs that, many musicians and critics would argue, is considerably more valuable than the cardigan.

Patrick Coman is one of those fans, and his appreciation for the album led him to put together “Come As You Are: A Tribute to Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged,” at The Front Porch this Saturday.

Patrick Coman. Publicity photo

Nirvana was the reason Coman picked up a guitar in the first place, when he was a preteen at the tail end of the grunge era. During his fifth grade talent show, some of his friends played a few of the band’s songs, and Coman soon asked to take guitar lessons. One of the first songs he learned was “About A Girl,” off Nirvana’s 1989 debut, Bleach.

Coman loved grunge—Nirvana, Alice In Chains—and he couldn’t imagine listening to or playing anything else, particularly folk music, which “seemed too cheesy. Like campfire songs, things you’d sing at summer camp.” That changed when he got a copy of the Unplugged album and heard his grunge idols close their set with, of all things, a blues arrangement of a traditional folk song.

Nirvana was at the height of its popularity when the band recorded that segment in November 1993. The previous year, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” from the 1991 release Nevermind, topped music charts all over the world, and was credited with bringing grunge into the mainstream. In January 1992, The New York Times noted that Nevermind was selling more than 300,000 copies a week.

MTV likely would have loved for Nirvana to play an acoustic version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” says Coman. But that wasn’t the band’s vision for the set. “It wasn’t greatest hits with acoustic guitars,” he says.

Instead, Cobain and his bandmates Krist Novoselic (bass) and Dave Grohl (drums), plus a few guests, played new, mostly acoustic, folk-influenced arrangements of 14 songs: one from Bleach, four from Nevermind, three from In Utero (1993), and six cover songs, including three tracks by the Meat Puppets; David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World”; The Vaselines’ “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam”; and closed with blues musician Lead Belly’s version of a traditional song, “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” MTV Unplugged in New York was Coman’s introduction to roots music, and he’s played it ever since.

When Will Marsh of Gold Connections was in middle school, his dad showed him the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video, and not long after that, sometime in the early 2000s, Marsh got a “best-of” Nirvana CD (which, he notes, he still keeps in his car and plays from time to time).

“Nirvana was the first mythological influence on my music, one of those few bands that’s way bigger than a band,” says Marsh. “There was this wholeness to the music that struck me,” the way Cobain brought in sonic structures from the Pixies and song structures from The Beatles, says Marsh, “he brought it all together and gave me a formula for writing songs and performing. He’s been a huge influence.”

Alice Clair wasn’t even born when the album she’s helping to celebrate came out. In fact, she wasn’t really into Nirvana when she signed on to do the show. She’d heard the band on the radio and on the Guitar Hero video game, but says that grunge music gave her “a lot of anxiety” when she was younger.

When Coman approached her to participate in “Come As You Are,” the only song left was “Polly,” an anti-rape song Cobain wrote about the abduction and rape of a 14-year-old girl in Tacoma, Washington, in 1987. Clair learned the song from scratch, and says she’s come to appreciate and respect how many Nirvana songs are “heartfelt, and protest-type” songs,” ones driven by “raw emotion.”

Saturday night, Coman, Clair, Marsh, and a number of other Charlottesville musicians and Nirvana fans will play all 14 tracks from MTV Unplugged in New York, in order, but not exactly as Nirvana would have done it. It’s an homage, not a recreation, says Coman, adding that a friend summed it up for him pretty well: If Kurt Cobain could give you advice about what to do, it would be to be true to yourself and your performance style when you do these songs.

Ultimately, that’s the spirit of the record, says Clair. “I think it’s cool as hell that they went out and didn’t play all the hits. That, in some ways, [Cobain] is being difficult for all the pop audiences,” she says. “It’s great to be paying tribute to this particular performance, because while it wasn’t made to cater to so many, it absolutely did.”

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Arts

ARTS Pick: Gold Connections

Gold Connections plays songs from its upcoming EP, Like A Shadow, at The Southern Cafe and Music Hall on Thursday. Publicity photo

Gold Connections’ upcoming EP, Like A Shadow (due in March), benefits from the camaraderie that Will Marsh found with his touring bandmates while on the road last year. Going into the studio with familiar players allowed Marsh to move past his former indie-rock associations and forge a path of his own musical volition on songs “about the struggle to move forward into a world that seems both infinitely precarious and abundant.”

Thursday, January 24. $10, 8:30pm. The Southern Café & Music Hall, 103 S. First St. 977-5590.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Gold Connections

Gold Connections plays tracks from its latest record, Popular Fiction, at The Southern Cafe and Music Hall on Friday, August 31. Publicity photo

Many associate Will Marsh’s band Gold Connections with Car Seat Headrest thanks to several collaborations, but Marsh’s group stands solidly on its own. After a label switch,
the long-awaited release of Popular Fiction arrived in 2018, marking an impressive step forward. The album shows off the group’s broad musical range and challenging lyrics that address everything from Greek mythology to world religions.

Friday, August 31. $10, 8:30pm. The Southern Café and Music Hall, 103 S. First St. 977-5590.

Categories
Arts

Gold Connections’ future looks bright

Will Marsh’s indie-rock project, Gold Connections, has two releases slated for 2017. Photo by Mike Bottorff

A couple of years ago, while home on winter break from the College of William & Mary, Will Marsh found himself feeling overwhelmed by thoughts that drift, and often race, through young minds. Marsh was studying English, playing in a few bands on campus and worried about choosing a path—the right path—then facing the consequences of his choice.

He knew he wasn’t alone in this, but he couldn’t find solace in any of the music in his collection, so he picked up his guitar. “It’s cool when you listen to a song and it totally feels like how you’re feeling in that moment,” he says. “But oftentimes there aren’t those songs, so I write my own songs for my own moments.”

The result was “Icarus,” the latest single from Marsh’s music project, Gold Connections.

“I didn’t mean to fall apart / to break my own heart to crumble. / But look at me, take a look at me. / And I didn’t mean to let it all go / To let it all fall down like Icarus / We’ll take a look and see,” Marsh begins, singing over chunky, strummed chords. As he considers his future, he can’t help but think of Icarus, the mythical figure who flew too close to the sun on wax-and-feather wings and fell to his death.

“Icarus” is about taking a risk, Marsh says. It’s about his choice to pursue music and the lifestyle that comes with it. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if your wings are made of feather, bone and sinew or wax and worry; it’s hard to know how close the sun is.

This outward profession of anxiety is the root of what Marsh believes is a new moment in indie music, a moment defined by a feeling of emotional realism. “It’s not authentic in that back-to-nature-having-a-beard authentic” way, he says. “We’re talking about how it feels to live in 2016, actually talking about it in our songs.”

“Get back to rock ’n’ roll,” he sings in refrain at “Icarus’” end, a mantra reminding himself to get back to basics, do what he wants to do. Get back to rock ’n’ roll, and everything will be okay.

Marsh graduated from William & Mary in spring 2015 and came to Charlottesville, the place where some of his favorite bands, including Pavement, Silver Jews and Sparklehorse, lived, wrote and played music more than 20 years ago. “There’s a music tradition in Charlottesville that I resonate with,” Marsh says. These guys represent “a different way,” a more alternative tradition not just for Charlottesville music, but for music in general.

Back in January, Marsh worked with Daniel Levi Goans of Lowland Hum on the full-length Gold Connections record, Popular Fiction, that ultimately put him on the fast track to success.

Marsh sent the record to Mark Keefe, general manager and program director at local radio station WNRN, who says he listens to around 50 new full albums each month and always makes an effort to listen to local music. Keefe was stunned when he heard the record and immediately gave it to the station’s music director to put it on-air.

“It struck me,” says Keefe. “It hit a nerve. I remember the first time I heard Pavement.” It was an indescribable feeling, but a distinct feeling, he says. Gold Connections struck him in the same way. “Whatever that sound is, he’s got it down,” Keefe says of Marsh.

Keefe played the record for former WNRN colleague and independent music promoter Ronda Chollock, who sent it to a few indie labels. One well-established label (to be officially announced soon) jumped to sign Gold Connections. 

“It does not happen like this,” Keefe says. “There are people out there who make really good music for years and don’t make a break like this.”

In early 2017, the label will release a basement tapes-type EP of the Gold Connections’ songs that Marsh wrote in his William & Mary days. Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo, Marsh’s good friend, former classmate and former bandmate (the two Wills played in each other’s bands), produced the sessions years ago and is currently mixing the tracks.

Sometime after the EP release, they’ll release the full album—the disc that got the band signed in the first place—which was originally scheduled to drop this month.

Marsh and his touring bandmates, bassist Noah Rosner and drummer Patrick Haggerty, are currently playing big venues like the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and opening for Car Seat Headrest, rising indie-music megastars, at The National in Richmond. Technically, those venues, with their big sound systems and stage crews, are a dream. But Marsh really wants to play house shows and DIY venues.

“House shows are, in my opinion, the best way to start an immediate relationship with people, because you’re right there in a small room,” he says. “They’re pretty uplifting to use as performers, too, because of the house show ethos,” where Marsh sings just an arm’s length away from a crowd of people that likely shares his anxieties about growing up, making major decisions and figuring themselves out.

“I came back home to sweat it out / To let it all go but you were right there / Like a phantom in the memory / Staring back at me,” Marsh sings in “Icarus.” The big difference now that he’s gotten back to rock ’n’ roll is he’s staring his fears straight in the eye—and looking ahead to the future.

Contact Erin O’Hare at arts@c-ville.com.