Inside the Furry Fandom: Sept. 1, 2014

[ Cover photo by Jeremy Charles ]

My story on this year’s furry fandom convention at Robbers Cave State Park in Wilburton, Oklahoma, is out today in the Sept. 1 issue of This Land Press. For this piece, I imbedded myself with an anthropomorphic subculture whose members blur the lines between animal and human. The result is the product of many months of negotiating, researching, drafting and editing. I’m tremendously proud of this article, and I hope you’ll pick up a copy and support what the Columbia Journalism Review has called “perhaps the best for-profit journalism start-up in the country.”

For information on how to subscribe, or order this issue individually, visit This Land Press.

Layer Cake Somberly Triumphant in Possible Final Performance

My review of Layer Cake’s farewell show at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios is up now via D FrontRow, the official arts and culture blog of major Dallas-Fort Worth monthly D Magazine. Here I wax nostalgic about my time in Denton, Texas, and mourn the loss of one of the most exciting pop acts to emerge from the area in years.

I want to tell you that Layer Cake’s farewell show at Rubber Gloves on Saturday night was not a somber event, but I can’t. Endings, especially untimely ones, are rarely happy occasions, but I was somehow hoping to leave the show with a feeling of optimism—and, who knows, maybe I can generate that by the end of this piece—but I’m not going to lie: Saturday night was a stone cold bummer.

[Read the full review at D FrontRow.]

Deafheaven Draw Pop Music Outsiders to Metal; But Will the Showmanship Drive them Away?

My review of the Deafheaven show at Club Dada is up now via D FrontRow, the official arts and culture blog of major Dallas-Fort Worth monthly, D Magazine. Here I write about the unique challenges of  heavy metal, and have my patience tested by a preening front man: 

With every lull in the set’s breakneck pace, he would beckon the back of the crowd forward with two fingers and his nose upturned in affectation. It was a cringeworthy move typical of his off-putting persona, and—despite the band’s elegant delivery and technical prowess—I couldn’t help but feel complicit in what I felt was the collective response from the over-21 crowd not already pressed against the stage: “We’re fine here, thanks.”

[ Read the full review at D FrontRow. ]  

The Mountain Goats Play Deep Cuts, Mash Denton’s Nostalgia Button at Dan’s Silverleaf

Photo by Nick McRae

|| The Mountain Goats w/ Loamlands ||

|| Dan’s Silverleaf — Denton, TX ||

|| Friday, June 20, 2014 ||

I first saw The Mountain Goats in 2006 at The Opolis in Norman, Oklahoma. I was 19 and the band had just released their Get Lonely LP, songwriter John Darnielle’s most polite and somber offering to date. The evening was similarly understated as Darnielle was joined on stage by a stand-up bass and three-piece drumset that backed his fragile, lilting vocals with the lightest touch. 

It was a beautiful set full of great songs, but what I remember the most from that night is the perplexed reaction from a friend I dragged to the show: “I don’t know why you thought I would like that,” he said afterward. “It was just some dude singing about cleaning his house.”

It’s a reasonable critique, I guess, and it gets to the heart of what it means to enjoy Darnielle’s music. On paper, a hyper-literate former Sunday school teacher singing acoustic ballads about Pan-Asian supermarkets (“Golden Boy”) and defamed high school running backs (“Fall of the High School Running Back”) might read as cloying and precious.

Fans of The Mountain Goats, though—and I still include myself on this score—recognize Darnielle’s peerless knack for emotive storytelling and his ability to do big things in small spaces. Even when the lo-fi veneer of his early boombox recordings gave way to the sharp fidelity of records like Tallahassee (2002) and The Sunset Tree (2005), Darnielle retained his knack for creating miniature, tactile worlds where the mundane is made holy. (The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway, he sings on “Going to Georgia,” is that it’s you, and you’re standing in the doorway.)

It’s been twelve years since Darnielle recorded “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton,” but the line stretching out the door of Dan’s Silverleaf for Friday night’s sold-out show was testament to the song’s resonance here. (As of the time of this writing, the Denton show is the only Texas date on the tour that sold out. Tickets have been gone for weeks.) The crowd’s excitement was palpable early on, as people ordered drinks two at a time to get into position for the set. Even though Darnielle is from Bloomington, Indiana—and, contrary to some online reporting, has never lived in Texas—his performance at Dan’s felt like a homecoming.

And who wouldn’t want to claim John Darnielle as their own? He took the stage promptly at 10:00 PM, grinning warmly in appreciation at the sold-out crowd, and spent the next hour and a half charming new listeners and reminding old faithfuls why we found his whole thing so compelling in the first place. Joined by long-time bassist Peter Hughes, Darnielle played a wide range of songs from his extensive catalogue, from Full Force Galesburg (1997) to 2012’s Transcendental Youth. Raucous, melancholy classics like “No Children” were belted out with glee by the packed crowd, while sparse, delicate numbers like “Maybe Sprout Wings” hushed the room to a quiet I haven’t heard in a club in years.

The warm reception for North Carolina quartet Loamlands proved that Denton is still a hospitable place to be an opening act, and their more elaborate setup illustrated just how pristine the sound quality at Dan’s really is. This was less important to the Mountain Goats set, which depended more on feeling than clarity. (A broken string during “Woke Up New” confirmed that John Darnielle could have worked the room simply by standing on a chair and shouting his lyrics into the eager crowd.) Still, it was refreshing to see all of the perfunctory elements for a great show come together in Denton, where national tours seem to stop with less frequency each year. 

I met up with Darnielle after the show and asked him what it’s like coming back to the town that has such a special connection to his work. Did it feel at all like coming home? 

“Absolutely,” he said. “You can feel it in the crowd. It hangs over the place. It’s not this intense, even in Tallahassee—which is pretty intense. Denton is different, for sure.”

[A version of this review appeared in the Dallas Observer music blog, DC9 at Night.]

Concert Review: Shlohmo w/ D33j and Jim-E Stack @ Trees (Dallas, TX)

My review of the Slohmo concert at Trees in Dallas is up now at D FrontRow, the official arts and culture blog of major Dallas-Fort Worth monthly D Magazine. Here I muse on the trappings of dance music culture and offer a number of grumpy observations about teenagers:

"I was a little shocked to see my first pair of feathered angel wings and furry, pink go-go boots. And it didn’t take long until I was standing awkwardly next to an 18-year-old wiggling his lit-up LED fingers in a manner befitting Criss Angel’s insufferable baby brother. Just what were these kids expecting from this performance? Certainly not the night of slow-burning, atmospheric soundscapes that I was. I soon began to suspect, though, that they were right and I was wrong."

[ Read the full review at D FrontRow. ]  

Momentum OKC 2014

Photo by Jezy J. Gray

E

ach year, the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition entertains submissions from the state's best and boldest artists under 30 for their annual arts event, Momentum. It's a young, fast and raucous celebration of a side of Oklahoma that rarely gets packaged for export, emphasizing the dissonant notes in the heartland's major-key cultural melody.

Momentum OKC 2014 showcased a number of challenging and beautiful works soundtracked by Oklahoma natives TALLOWS and John Wayne's Bitches. A heavy but manageable crowd buzzed throughout the space, nursing local craft beers and sustaining the night's "full-speed" aspirations. The real design winner was the OKC Farmers Public Market, which—gorgeous enough in its own right—could not have been more conducive to this explosive meeting between the state's young guard and its capitol city's rustic frontier history.

Photo by Jezy J. Gray

Shining especially bright was the work of 2014 Momentum Spotlight Artist Eli Casiano, whose tripped-out pop culture nightmare portraits demanded the attention of everyone in the room. His four pieces hung around a suspended speaker looping a dense, sample-based sound collage thundering somewhere between the jagged, power tool drone of late-era Swans and the familiar contours of mid-90s radio R&B. The music sought you out from across the room, and the paintings clutched you fiendishly by the lymph nodes.

“Rehashing images from movies, comics and TV, Casiano’s work draws in viewers with its recognizable imagery while challenging our connections to these representations. Casiano’s paintings and sounds mimic the bombardment of information we face in an age of increasing technological communication.”  - OVAC

Courtesy of EliCasiano.com

His Momentum exhibit, End in Itself, comments on our cut-and-paste culture of endless visual stimuli by reworking a very particular stripe of popular childhood Americana into a form that retains its familiarity while verging with confidence on the horrific. He both resists and engages these images, creating an aesthetic and moral tension unmatched in its barbed, complex representation of American cultural memory.

Casiano has talked about the importance of transformation in his work, and what's especially compelling here is the pain of these transitions as his figures morph from doe-eyed cinematic touchstones into hideous, shrieking abominations begging for their former dignity. Coursing beneath it all is a current of sharp ethnic consciousness whose jittering zaps illuminate a culture in which identity is malleable and unfixed.

While End in Itself hovered menacingly above the rest of the work at Momentum, the space was filled with interesting and powerful pieces that represented the diversity, pugnacity, and range of aesthetic possibilities within a new wave of Oklahoma creative culture. If you missed it this year, don't make the same mistake next time.

Photo by Jezy J. Gray

::: For more information on Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, visit their Facebook page :::

::: Eli Casiano's work, resume and contact information can be found at elicasiano.com :::

This Machine Divines the Invisible

My essay, “Invisible State: Rediscovering Ellison’s Oklahoma,” is out today in the March 1 issue of This Land Press. It’s a special issue commemorating the centennial of Ralph Ellison’s birth, and it includes contributions from New Yorker staff writer Hilton Als, Michael Mason, and poetry by Quraysh Ali.

 

THIS MACHINE DIVINES THE INVISIBLE
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