J Fernandez is led by Justin Fernandez, a Chicagoan with an unabashed love for Krautrock (both of the original variety and its many followers, including bands like Stereolab). His debut full length, Many Levels Of Laughter, came out earlier this year, and it’s a slow-burning gem. Here, Fernandez and his band tackle the floating majesty of Enya’s 1988 hit of New Age wonder, “Orinoco Flow.” It’s a gorgeous little earworm both in its original form and Fernandez’s more indie-inspired version.
Not sure if it'll be great or a weird uncomfortable show, but Richard Lloyd (of Television) is going to be in Billings Montana next weekend. I've been e-friends with Richard on Facebook for a few years and he strikes me as "on the spectrum" as they say these days. But ten bucks... can't pass that up.
A few weeks ago, in prep for our little vacation to Justine's hometown, I was generally just wasting time looking for live music in nearby Visalia, California. I found a show with the Helio Sequence... a band I'd heard of because they're on Sub Pop and KEXP plays them sometimes. So we sort of planned on going to that. Then I saw that they had an opener, Quarto Negro, ostensibly from Sao Paulo, Brasil but really it's only one or two guys from the Brasil band on tour, and the rest are US based... but they were great. I'd checked out some youtubes and didn't go Wow, but would put the feel of their set as something like Radiohead... lots of good shimmering guitar noise and strong angsty vocals. This was the last show of this particular tour so you missed it but I'd put them down as a band worth checking out.
Here's something from their new album:
Helio Sequence... better songwriting (for me), lots of hooks and a ton of pretty noise... I'm really glad we went. They were very familiar with the throbbing metropolis of Visalia, and were sweet about saying how much that little out of the way town has meant to them over the years. Definitely worth checking out. I'd like to see an acoustic set from them, too. I like the noise but some of their songs really had a happy pop sound that would fit in a completely different show. So anyway. Got to see some music tonite!
