Love and Mercy and Sharks- An Interview with Jimmy Whispers

Photo from Facebook

Love and mercy and forgiveness and "all that good stuff." That's how Chicago "bedroom popper" Jimmy Whispers pegs his particular brand of lo-fi music which has been compared to Daniel Johnston "hanging out by himself at a beach party." A quick listen to his sparse but spry 2015 debut Summer in Pain reveals this love and mercy in full. There's of course "I Love You" where he essentially repeats the title as a mantra over his humming Thomas organ, which he's had for seven years, and the slight thwacking of drums. Efforts such as "Michael Don't Cry" manage somehow manage to find the good stuff too. The track stumbles along with faint percussion and has Whispers offering up a pick-me up to someone even as own his head seems to be down. "Summer in Pain," where Whispers croons into his iPhone and plays gentle chords, wades through "beer and piss" and an "Apocalypse" but is still resilient enough to not drown in all of that bullshit. To even continue you'd have to at least have a smidgen of faith in those concepts up above, a compulsion toward the light even when darkness is more prevalent.

In conversation with Whispers this bright affability comes through. He giggles between answers, in part to keep himself entertained on the solo drive to the night's gig in Bloomington, Illinois but also out of sheer amusement with how's his music's been compared to Frank Sinatra by “someone’s mom.” “No fedora though,” he prefers a ball cap with “Chicago” written in a 70s font. The Sinatra comparison is one that has him genuinely stoked. And that excitement bleeds into everything. He insists that "What a Wonderful World" by Louie Armstrong, a song he occasionally plays at his live shows, is "the best." At a handful of those same shows Whispers crams into a red dress and preens around on stage as the “song and dance man” he dubs himself. It originally started as more of an entertaining provocation, but Whispers admits "Now I just like wearing dresses" I leave a couple of dresses at my house all the time."

Two years ago Whispers didn't have the same kind of time to enjoy a luxuriant red dress. He was driving around "drunken idiots" in his white Honda Civic for Uber, working 12 hours shifts on occasion. He was recording songs, nearly 500 of them from his recollection, into an iPhone and promoting them with street art and zines without any idea when they might come out. In the past year he opened for heroes such as R.Stevie Moore and Ariel Pink. "It took me a minute not to be starstruck talking to R. Stevie" he fondly remembers. Over the summer at Pitchfork Music Festival in his native Chicago, he crowd surfed, danced and mock-executed his way to one of the standout sets of the weekend. He recently traveled to Europe for the first time and played in Holland, France, England, Sweden and Denmark. Now he's rocking the heartland, having a drink or two backstage and doing pushups to prep for the shows. In between there’s the long stretches of road that make up this “Midwest driving shit.” At most he can hope to see a twister while he's out on the highway. "Maybe I'll catch one," he gleefully imagines. Even if bad weather hits, Whispers places it as part of the good stuff. 

Those giggles and laughs sometimes paper over a certain seriousness though. “Everyday something creeps into my mind and tries to mess me up,” he responds to when he’s felt distanced from his musical dreams. "It’s constant revaluation and affirmation." "I wanna change the way I feel tonight," is how he puts it in "Pain in My Love," a highlight of his debut record as recorded by a guilt-plagued calliope player. When he's not on wax he enacts that change by "Thinking where I was a couple of months before and every day's getting better, things get better all of the time." 

(The "Greatest Bedroom Popper" is performing Saturday at Cafe Berlin in Columbia, Mo. The show starts at 8pm with DJ Moose and Chives opening.)

"I'll Be Laughing with Everyone I'll See"- Neutral Milk Hotel Live at Liberty Hall

I was worried going into Neutral Milk Hotel's set at Liberty Hall last night. Not for anything relating to the band mind you. I've seen them twice before, lead-singer Jeff Mangum once, and instinctively knew it would be an all-encompassing emotional event. There would be the sparse howling of "Oh Comely," the galloping "Song Against Sex" and the heavenly death mediation of "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea." Everything would A-Okay in that regard.

I was worried because I was going to the show solo. Even when I'm covering an event, I generally hate going solo because I love talking music with people. I run this blog to share and rhapsodize about music. So being "stuck" at a show is worrisome because all of that enthusiasm is bottled up. That's incredibly true of an NMH show where five different nerves can be struck on the same song. When those nerves are blocked, when you don't have anyone to connect with, it can be crippling.

Those concerns were ultimately unfounded though because it was Neutral Milk Hotel I was seeing. If there are more inclusive fan-bases in music, I’ve yet to find them. NMH is one of those bands where if you look around at the crowd you know you’re on the same sonic wavelength. It takes a particular sort of person to hear earnest poetry in lyrics about Anne Frank and "placing fingers through the notches in your spine." It’s incredibly strange because Mangum’s lyrics are so intentionally cryptic that rallying around them shouldn’t be possible. They’re so tightly coiled, and he so personally reserved with his wild tangles of hair, that getting into the band’s world is an uphill slog on the level of Micky Ward trying to win in The Fighter.

But once you’re in, you’ll "wait for the rest of your life" as the line in "Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2" goes. The crowd at Liberty Hall was in before Magnum even took the stage to hammer away on the chords of Ferris Wheel on Fire cut "I Will Bury You in Time." Everyone around me lost their shit when the similarly bearded Scott Spillane came out to tune up his trombone. In all deference to Spillane, who is so splendidly puckish in the way he sings along to the lyrics when he’s not playing, a crowd that’s enthralled by the mere presence of a trombone player is one that will eat up anything.

And for the span of an hour-and-a-half, the sold-out crowd did just that. They head-banged to "Holland, 1945." They went silent for severely underrated On Avery Island tracks "Baby for Pree" and "Gardenhead." Mass hypnosis happened during the acid-folk/baroque march of "The Fool" where Spillane’s horns cried and Julian Koster’s accordion wearily exhaled. The roof could’ve caved-in at that moment and no one would’ve noticed for what was happening on stage. We all did our best warbly Mangum impersonation when he creakily declared "There is no reason to grieve" in "Two-Headed Boy."

Realistically, the line is one of the best pieces of advice you could offer to anyone worrying about the future of the band. This will be their last tour for a while, and considering they previously went dormant for a decade, things look pretty dim. The notion was reinforced by Mangum who was uncharacteristically warm at times when he would put his hands over his heart in gratitude to the fervent crowd. 

But like my fear of going alone, the band’s absence doesn’t matter. People who weren’t even alive when either of their albums dropped in the mid-90s continue to find them. There will always be a community around this band. Even when they go away their music will be around. It’ll be around to cry over, to laugh with and to giddily rock out to. There’s no reason to grieve.  

This Is Where We Play A Death Grips Cover Right?- Day 1 at Pitchfork

 
Day 1 of Pitchfork's annual music festival is a nervous rush for me, as it usually is. Though this year's ninth incarnation might've seen me at my most jittery. Approaching the main gate from a fresh patch of sidewalk on Randolph Street, I'm waiting in the longest line of attendees I've seen waiting to get into Pitchfork. The El could be heard in the distance letting off dull grey roars; horn honks and street vendors yelling "water for a dollar" pepper the sunny afternoon air. There's a small breeze blowing and the map I'm dutifully reading nearly blows away. A small panic mounted in my brain as I heard opening act Hundred Waters piping over the chain link fence I was craning my neck over. As soon as my bags and been checked and I'd been handed the must have book of activities, I trotted over to the red stage to see the Gainesville, Fla. quartet. 


Hundred Waters

A sprig of white flowers is hanging off of the "fragile" Nicole Miglis' mic stand as I approach. She's gingerly rubbing her hands together as she lets out a pained whisper-shouts that have earned comparisons to Björk. When Miglis finds the pocket in the experimental electronic/R&B group's snaking instrumentals, her fingers carefully walk across the keys. Even her terrific Death Grips joke is diplomatically tempered "this is where we play a Death Grips cover right?" The most ferocious she ever gets is in the midst of 2014 Moon Rang Like a Bell standout "Seven White Horses," where alien bleeps mix with Zach Tetreault's frenzied drumming. Her vocals smear together and contort into howls that pierce the thin layer of pot smoke in the pit. Once she reverts to quieter cries, Taylor Tryon's pounding AKAI drum machine and Sam Moss' percussive sprinkles can be heard. She doesn't have to continually shout to convey the torture in these songs. One yell surrounded by so much silence sends the message just fine.

"Cavity"- Moon Rang Like a Bell

Factory Floor

I see a dingy cardboard sign that reads "feelin' Spacey" held up near the front right of the crowd as I trod towards the festival's Blue Stage, which is fitting for the trance-y disco-punk groove the London trio Factory Floors lock into. Though they only have a 2013 LP to their name, they play like a band that's been strutting around since 2005. Gabriel Gurnsey's drum rhythms are dense, but danceable. He dives right into fills without a bit of hesitance as the band tears through their sole LP, 2013's Factory Floor. Lead Nik Colk saws at her electric guitar with a bow like a seasoned professional, not once considering the damage it'll do; only the alluring shrieks it'll emit. If anyone in the band showed their prowess though, it was mod-synth player Dominic Butler whose synthesizer squiggled like a giant worm in the dirt during "Two Different Ways." The post-industrial, dance music they trade in desperately depends on a strong electronic presence and with Butler, Factory Floor have just that.

"How You Say"- Factory Floor

Neneh Cherry & RocketNumberNine

As I trekked from the shaded Blue Stage towards a Sun-soaked Red Stage, the method of dance was transformed. Gone were morose hi-hat tics, replaced by the splayed drumming of Neneh Cherry's backing band RocketNumberNine and warm keyboard chords. Tightly clasping the microphone, the Swedish-born Cherry was pure spectacle. She'd laugh like a hyena during interludes and scatted "who took the cookies from the cookie jar?" between tracks. "S*** we've only got 10 minutes left," she kindly informed a sweat caked crowd before tearing into her collabo with Swedish electro-pop singer Robyn. Swept up by the rush of "Out of the Black"'s muted horns and full-steam ahead drumming, Cherry let her arms swing freely and grinned like a Cheshire cat on acid. The grin remained for closer "Buffalo Stance" which calmly threatened "better not mess with me," atop cresting electro waves. If nothing else, Cherry's set was a reminder audience members aren't the only ones having fun at a festival.

The Haxan Cloak

The Quietus

Then darkness engulfed the grounds of Union Park as the Haxan Cloak unleashed their unrelenting strain of dark ambient upon the crowd. When I listened to Bobby Krlic's 2013 record Excavation in my blue Scion with two friends, everyone was put on edge. I'd like to pretend it was the endless traffic we hit on I-88 coming into Chicago, but I know it was the pummeling bass and hair-raising screams. Live the "band" was more unnerving as Krlic stood behind his effects table with the rigid posture of a Buddhist monk and drummer Robert Heneke sporadically attacked his kit like a rabid lion looking for food. Few in the crowd were smiling, save for a bearded 20 something man with grungy auburn hair who stood next to me and nodded in hypnotic approval. Unlike an oppressive black metal group (a la Deafheaven) there were no blast beats or power solos to save the crowd. Just a dense tangle of shifting knobs and lacerating static. Rarely is the sound of a slow and painful death so beautiful.

Giorgio Moroder

New York Times Red Bull Music Academy Performance

Fortunately the next full-act I was able to see was Giorgio Moroder, whose set cleansed my palate of the stale taste of death left by the Haxan Cloak. He began with his affable introduction "my name is Giovanni Giorgio, but you can call me Giorgio" which immediately fed into a revved up version of his 1975 Donna Summer collabo "Love to Love You." While a muscular electro bassline prattled under the disco queen's pillowy vocals, the 74-year-old Urtijëi, Italy native clapped along and giddily led the crowd in a wave. A TV-screen to his left projected fractals of electric red-yellow triangles swallowing one another up, until a romantic montage culled from Top Gun devoured them all. An MDMD dosed "Take My Breath Away" (penned by Giorgio and Tom Whitlock) burst like a dam from the Red Stage's speakers as the grandfatherly Giorgio meticulously tinkered behind his Macbook laptop. "Hot Stuff" followed the revamping trend and showed off four on the floor moves that only a sped-up Summer sample could keep pace with. The first dozen rows clapped in euphoric unison with the dance radio comfort food Giorgio was ladling out to them. With his silver hair blowing backwards in the evening air, he was simultaneously a terrific nostalgia act and a restless forward thinker. 

The two moments that most adeptly proved his bend towards the present were the steely handclaps of the "Bad Girls" rework which I'd swear were yanked from burgeoning R&B act Kelela. Those brief bits of "futurism" fully mechanized for Giorgio's reconstruction of Iggy Azalea's summer smash "Fancy." Synthesizers whooshed over the song's rubbery, ratchet bassline like an SR-71 Blackbird in flight. My friend Dylan couldn't help but yell "yeaaaahhh" as approval of the remix and I similarly concurred by uproariously applauding. More than 40 years after he first played at the Scotch Club in Aachen, Germany, Giorgio proved he could still hold sway over a crowd of complete strangers.

Check back in tomorrow at the same time for the Saturday review and follow AllFreshSounds on Twitter for updates throughout the day.

"Gloriously Unceremonious"- Willie Nelson Live at Starlight Theatre

(From Kansas City Star/Roy Inman)

Aside from the house lights fading down and cheers erupting into the cool summer night air, country legend Willie Nelson's on-stage entrance at Kansas City's Starlight Theatre was gloriously unceremonious. Coming after a riveting set from rising alt country artist Jason Isbell and Alison Krauss' nostalgic bluegrass affair, Nelson's work was austere from the start. Opening with "Whiskey River", he firmly stood in place with his weathered guitar Trigger and nasally sang "whiskey river don't run me dry" before his Family Band had set up on stage. Rather than dwell on the slinky vamp of "Still is Still Moving to Me", he spit out lines like they were last rites. At 81 years old, Nelson has every right to play up his legend. He could coast on past glories and no one would blame him. But not once in his near two-hour show to a sold-out crowd did he kick up his cowboy boots. 

When classics came, Nelson never lingered on them for long. Most artists would anchor sets or close with a song like "Funny How Time Slips Away", not Willie. He has enough songs for 20 shows and is blessed with the luxury of tossing out greatest hits like they were garbage. He didn't afford the bluesy ballroom number its proper denouement; choosing instead to leapfrog into the aching "Crazy". I personally prefer Nelson's effort to the Patsy Cline affair and last night reminded me why. His punctured whine fully conveys the desperation of "I'm crazy for trying" and live the line is devastating. But even "Crazy" wasn't allowed to luxuriate at Starlight. Nelson and the Family obliterated it into dust with the walloping "Night Life". Mickey Raphael's harmonica wailed and Nelson soloed with the steely-eyed intensity of a contract killer. The admission "it ain't no good life" would've been toothless without their full-committal. 

While Nelson and the Family's allegiance to the material was mesmerizing throughout, the show's middle was the most spellbinding. "Georgia on My Mind" brought the crowd to a reverent hush with just the wobbling incantations of "Georgia, Georrrgia." Bobbie Nelson's work on the keys was punctuated, affording Willie room to sweetly sing his old song. In the right hands the number has the power to stop anyone in their tracks and it was clearly in the right hands with Nelson.

It was "Always on My Mind" though that truly won the night. If the phrase "hindsight is 20/20" didn't exist before Nelson cut his version of the Brenda Lee song in 1982, it would've been invented shortly after. Few song narrators have ever sounded as wrecked as Nelson in "Always on My Mind". Everything he should've done was blindingly obviously, but he ignored all of it. Watch Nelson in the song's rudimentary video. Around the 1:40 mark his eyes repeatedly look away after he confesses "I just never took the time." It's the look of a man who knows he'll never get her back. She had every right to leave and fully executed said right. Despite the song being set to a slightly slower tempo live, Nelson kept in that nervous flitting. More than his defiant soloing in new track "Bring It On" or picking in the eerie border town tune "I Never Cared for You", his nervousness was the most bone chilling. For a master wordsmith, it's oddly hilarious that what left the biggest mark was a simple action.

"Odd" is what has best described Nelson since the beginning though. Crossing over from Nashville songwriter to singer in the early 1960s was "odd." Releasing an insular concept album about a murderous preacher and having it go double-platinum is "odd." Ending the night with the one-two punch of goofy pot ode "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die" and Hank Williams country gospel standard "I Saw the Light" is "odd." He's not "The Red Headed Stranger" as has long been suggested. He's genuinely strange. And without his peculiarities, country music would be far less interesting.

Setlist:
1. "Whiskey River"
2. "Still is Still Moving to Me"
3. "Beer for My Horses
4. "Kansas City"
5. "Funny How Time Slips Away
6. "Crazy"
7. "Night Life"
8. "Me and Paul"
9. "Shoeshine Man" (Tom T. Hall cover)
10. "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" (Ed Bruce cover)
11. "Good Hearted Woman" (Waylon Jennings cover)
12. "Help Me Make It Through the Night" (Kris Kristofferson cover)
13. "Georgia on My Mind" (Ray Charles cover)
14. "I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train" (Billy Joe Shaver cover)
15. "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground"
16. "On the Road Again"
17. "Always on My Mind" (Brenda Lee cover)
18. "Nuages" (Django Reinhardt cover)
19. "Bring It On"
20. "Band of Brothers"
21. "I Never Cared for You"
22. "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?"
23. "I'll Fly Away"
24. "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die"
25. "I Saw the Light" (Hank Williams cover)