Said “people who sing well” were of Eliza Jones (of Buried Beds) and Jesse Moore (of Auctioneer/Ladies Auxiliary), who together with Hartley added heart and corporeality to songs which on record, twinkle with space-age mystery—while drummer Michael Johnson’s (Ape School) beats added velocity and momentum. The band’s 45-minute set drew from both new record Oak Island and earlier releases, and included covers of Fleetwood Mac’s “That’s All for Everyone” (Jones singing perfect counterpart) and Albert Hammond’s “99 Miles from LA. ”

Opener “Time and Place,” which also opens Oak Island, was a welcoming swarm of warm harmonies and Hartley’s taped-up guitar picking, easing in to a rolling road beat—while closer “300 Clouds,” off 2010’s Forget the Mantra, was equally alluring, with harmonies that grew and contracted like a bloom. But it was new single “So Far So Long” that proved a personal fave, the wiggly beat and drawn- out vocals luring the crowd into a hazy slow groove. If this is Nightlands, let us never leave.

Setlist
Time and Place
So It Goes
Slowtrain
Other People’s Pockets
That’s All for Everyone (Fleetwood Mac cover)
All the Way
So Far So Long
Born to Love
99 Miles from LA (Albert Hammond cover)
300 Clouds

The early part of the night saw offerings from Ape School’s Scott Churchman (joined by other members of Ape School) and Sun Airway’s Jon Barthmus. Both sets proved visceral and moody, as Churchman wove haunted melodies (incorporating the rare musical saw)—and Barthmus contributed live guitar and vocals to Sun Airway faves, the solo setting allowing for spontaneous, off-the-cuff delivery. A welcome treat indeed!

Photo by Shawn Brackbill | ShawnBrackbill.com

Psych-thrashers Ruby the Hatchet headline tonight at MilkBoy Philly with Attic Dancers. Ruby the Hatchet features the heavy rock ‘n’ roll vocals of Asbury Park native Jillian Taylor surrounded by fuzzy riffs and clashing percussion, most recently captured on 2012′s OUROBOROS.  Attic Dancers are a relatively new local trio who released the ear-catching Carrier LP in April of 2012, mixing alt-rock foundations with psych/shoegaze-y layers.  Tickets and information for the 21+ show can be found here; below, watch Ruby the Hatchet’s video for “Black Tongue.”

Philly alt-folk five-piece Brethren headlines The Grape Room in Manayunk tonight. The band started out in 2010 making music very much informed by The Avett Brothers, but in the past two years have evolved in more of a refined pop / rock direction. Watch a video of the band recording the new song “Gone A Little Wrong” below, get more information on the show here.

Hideaway Music in Chestnut Hill uses album art as wall art

We can all agree (I hope) that the old “can’t judge a book by its cover” adage applies just as easily to albums. From Magical Mystery Tour to Rumours, The Talking Heads to The Smashing Pumpkins, and even this year’s standout Cat Power LP Sun, there’s a rich history of great music hiding behind heinous artwork. So does album art matter?

I think no and yes. “No” in that it’s about the music, not the packaging. In a world of digital listening, we interact with the songs themselves more immediately than ever before – there’s not that barrier of a bizarro / ugly sleeve to “get over,” in the event you find the sleeve bizarro and / or ugly. But also, “yes” in that cover art is still a way an musician represents themselves and their work. It may no longer be a first impression, but it is an impression, and you can almost look at it as an indicator of how much care they put into their overall project. And even on a more practical end, sure, physical releases no longer drive sales, but they are prized by collectors – the 180 gram vinyl editions and so forth are the sort of thing where people use the download card, then frame the LP cover and hang it on their wall. Would you really want to have Grimes’ frantic scribbled acid freakout hanging in your living room? (Okay, maybe you do.)

This week, UK music and culture blog The 405 listed their worst and best album covers of the year – lively reads, always – and it got me thinking about the role album art plays in 2012. Do you ignore it? Do you (like me) get antsy when your iTunes doesn’t have artwork for all its mp3s? What was the worst decade for album covers? (Hint: the 90s.) Which album covers blew you away this year? Which made you wretch? Discuss in the comments section, and check out some standout Philadelphia album covers from 2012 after the jump.

Cough Cool – Lately (Bathetic Records) – This album cover is just so Philly, from the vintage shot of our hometown team smack in the center to the fact that it’s surrounded by that very specific shade of Phillies red. I’m not even a sports person and I love this. And sure, it doesn’t have a lot to do with the scuzzy lo-fi rock contained within, but it doesn’t not have a lot to do with it – and it certainly draws me in.

Family Band – Grace and Lies (No Quarter Records) – On the other hand, this cover has everything to do with the music. There is a lot of mystery, mystique and uncertainty in the atmospheric tones and surreal lyrics of recent Philly transplants Family Band. Words written on eyelids, startled and brethlessly gazing outward, gets it about right.

The Wrecking Crew – Wu-Tang Pulp (Three Dollar Pistol) - Illustrated album covers tend to be more impressive than photograph-based ones. This release from The Wrecking Crew goes a step further – it’s not just some impressionistic painting, it’s remarkable comic book style renderings of Philly MCs Zilla Rocca, Has Lo and Curly Castro, who this year nerded out over their own personal Beatles, Wu-Tang Clan.

mewithoutYou – Ten Stories (self-released) - Long-standing Upper Darby post-rock outfit never disappoint with their album covers, which often feel more like they should be on a museum wall than in a plastic shrink-wrapped case. For Ten Stories, which loosely tells the story of an 1800s circus train crashed in the wilderness, we get a rich illustration of the scene to help us connect the dots of the album’s narrative.

Lushlife – Plateau Vision (Western Vinyl) – Like Family Band, I’m drawn to the mystery on this one. One could easily dismiss it as blurry-arty-black-and-white-photo, but it seems an apt fit for Raj Haldar’s stream-of-consciousness raps and his imaginative backing tracks. It’s clearly a stage we’re looking at, and on Haldar’s stage, just about everything can happen.

Aaron and the Spell – Sing (self-released) – Another impressive painting; here, Aaron Brown is rendered as a wandering serenader, a nomadic musician somewhere in between the world of the living and the dead. Or maybe it’s more just an illustration placing him on the grounds of his grandparents’ Florida church where he first was inspired to sing. In any case, it’s a lovely cover for a lovely record.

Everyone Everywhere – Everyone Everywhere (self-released) - Photograph of a photograph. But more important, an illustration of vicarious living. The woman in the lower left loves the majestic mountain peaks and tall pines, but is content to experience them through a poster on the wall. Like Cough Cool, not particularly tied to the music, but it does get you thinking.

Sun Airway – Soft Fall (Dead Oceans) - Something about this reminds me of a Pink Floyd LP jacket. Intricately art-directed and highly surreal, this work the band commissioned from the N-A-M photographic collective is an otherworldly image for otherworldly music.

Heyward Howkins – The Hale and the Hearty (self-released) - I’m not sure how many photographs were shredded and geometrically arranged to create this striking, sky-blue illustration for Heyward Howkins’ debut LP. But if we are to assume that a major function of the album cover is, like we said, to draw you into the music, this one brings you directly in to the center and through the sleeve into its brilliant new folk character sketches and metaphorical musings.

Hop Along – Get Disowned (Hot Green Records) - My favorite LP of the year on a number of levels, and its album art couldn’t be more appropriate. Get Disowned‘s songs are covered in layers of sound – instruments, voices, noisemakers – and its lyrics can be as uncertain: the character Frances Quinlan follows is at once tormented, confused, frustrated and haunted. You just don’t know what’s going on, even after dozens of listens, and the image of a dense foliage, a vortex of leaves we can’t see beyond, fits. But like Howkins above, this cover draws you in, to the center, through the sleeve and beyond.

I didn’t realize when I contacted them how labor intensive it all was It was like a thirty-hour shoot ‘cause they actually hang all those wires—and they tie a leaf to a wire and hang it up, and they do that hundreds of times. And there’s a dozen people all doing this at the same time. Then they set it up and bring in the model and take the picture and that’s it. There’s no crazy computer trickery, which is kind of what I assumed it all was. What you see in the photo actually happened.

Check out the video below, and dig deeper into Fantasy and Reality – N-A-M’s series that inspired the cover – at this Huffington Post gallery, look at more of the collective’s work at its website and get information and tickets for tonight’s Sun Airway appearance at Making Time here.

Soft Fall is the featured album in this edition of Unlocked; hear the spotlighted single “Close” in Monday’s post, read Tuesday’s album review; watch the “Wild Palms” video in Wednesday’s post, read my interview with Jon Barthmus from yesterday. And stay tuned to The Key for future album spotlights on Unlocked.

Photo by Shawn Brackbill | ShawnBrackbill.com

Philadelphia’s Sun Airway can be a lot of things. Musical and visual stylists. Surrealist dreamers, lovelorn introverts, sonic trailblazers – often all within the same song. Their dazzling sophomore record Soft Fall was released on Dead Oceans on Tuesday, and the band is celebrating its release with a hometown show on Friday for the Making Time $2 Bill at Voyeur. We’re exploring the album this week on Unlocked, The Key’s regular spotlight on new and significant releases by Philadelphia-based artists, and today we have an interview with band leader Jon Barthmus. He and I sat down after Sun Airway played XPN’s Free at Noon concert a few weeks back and dug deep into the band’s creative palette, from collaging five full orchestras to finding the right photographs to accompany its sound.

The Key: So firstly – congrats on Soft Fall! It’s a really bold record, it has a confidence and groove to it that sets it apart from from Nocturne of Exploded Crystal Chandelier. Did you feel more confident making it?

Jon Barthmus: I definitely did. The first record was done with like no money whatsoever —really cheap microphones and very little gear, and I was learning those programs that I was using as I was going along. There was such fundamental things that I just didn’t know, like really simple things to do in programs that when I learned them I was like “Oh my God, how did I not know this? How did I make a whole record without knowing this?”

TK: “There’s this keyboard shortcut that could have just saved me hours…”

JB: Yeah, or even stuff like, “I guess you can’t do this, I guess I can’t crossfade anything.”But of course you can, and I just didn’t know! And I wasn’t really learning other than just doing stuff and trying to figure it out as I went along. So this time I got to buy better mics and got to take my time with it, actually got to do a couple days in legit studios, and had more people’s hands on it. They know what they’re doing better than I do, so that was definitely really helpful.

TK: When you’re making a Sun Airway record, is the writing / recording process all you, by yourself, and then it’s brought to the band?

JB: That’s basically the gist of it. The live band took a break, when I did the bulk of Soft Fall, and I developed it on my own. I mean for us, since a lot of it’s not really actual instruments on record, it’s a lot of samples that are chopped up and reconfigured, there’s a big process of figuring out how to divide them between five musicians—who should play what? Or if we should just have more ambient stuff in the background going on, on the computer, which we do…

TK: The collaging of samples jumped out at me, the string sections and horn parts. You know how you hear about William S. Burroughs’ cut-up style of writing, where words are excerpted and brought together in different ways? It felt like here, you had done that with classical records and even jazz records.

JB: Yeah. Nocturne was made almost completely like that with chopped up samples, but it was a lot of just weird old synth records…and just chopping a quarter-second, and making every note on the scale out of that quarter second and then putting together my own patch of that sound. A lot of it, I don’t think, even really comes off as sounding like samples; it sounds a lot of the time just like synth-patches but it’s stuff that I’ve kind of lifted from other things. But for this I wanted to stick mostly to this really high-quality classical music. And then that stuff, after kind of chopping it all up and putting it together, I wanted to break it back down into sheet music and then have an actual string section re-record it. So I found someone that kind of helped me transcribe that all—I would send him the parts and he would try to figure out what was going on or how to best approximate that with the string quartet. He did amazingly at that, and then what you hear in the end is kind of a balance of the original samples with the string quartet.

TK: Was it hard to find that balance?

JB: It was weird. I liked it because it surprised me with melodies that I wouldn’t have come up with just kind of falling into place because of how the samples might line up. There were interesting ideas between what the instruments do, some things where there’s one complete orchestra laid on top of another complete orchestra, and this one’s panned all the way to the left, this one’s panned all the way to the right. There’s this weird interplay. And at some points there’s like five complete classical orchestras on top of each other.

TK: That sounds intense.

JB: Yeah.

TK: So your old group, The A-Sides, was more of a five-piece rock band configuration. After that group dissolved, how did you decide to like make the transition to electronic music?

JB: It’s hard to say if The A-Sides would have just turned into that anyway, ‘cause that was definitely what I was most interested in doing. And I was starting kind of simultaneously starting to learn various software programs that did more of that kind of thing, but it also worked out that like everybody quit the band at the same time. So then, Patrick and decided it would be better to just start completely from scratch and make our own records, and not really rely on recording studios. I was just kind of ready for a change. I was tired of playing guitar, which is funny ‘cause now I’m bringing back the guitar, and it feels awesome.

TK: I noticed that with your Free at Noon set. It was my first time seeing you since XPoNential Fest in 2011, which I remember it was a really sunny afternoon and the three of you were in the front of the stage kind of like jamming away at samplers and keyboards…

JB: Yeah, it was really difficult to engage with a crowd or even just to kind of make it visually interesting standing behind the keyboard. We got someone else to join up and do that stuff, take that from me so I could do more kind of active things. Hopefully it’ll be a little better to watch. It’s hard to really get down behind the keyboard doing stuff.

TK: But you also, when you play like solo club gigs, you would have like a visual component—I saw a Johnny Brenda’s show where there was that awesome Klip Collective —is that something you’re going to continue doing?

JB: That was definitely helpful, and we definitely are continuing our relationship with Klip. They’ve developed a whole new show basically for us, for this record. It’s gonna be crazy, I’m really excited. I’ve seen about half of it, and it’s, it’s kind of the opposite of what it was; it’s more using the projector as a light show, so the projectors are on stage projecting out.

TK: Onto the crowd?

JB: Yeah. There’s haze so it kind of—uh, the light stuff picks up in the haze—it’s gonna be something. You can project on surprising things. That’s something that Klip definitely excels at. It would be really awesome to be able to put together like a huge scale show like that with Klip, ‘cause they would definitely totally kill it.

TK: Historically speaking, like you guys have always had an awesome visual sensibility. I love the cover photograph and sleeve images on Soft Fall…

JB: We’re very fortunate to have those. Those took a lot of work.

TK: And Nocturne had kind of its own distinct psychedelic kind of look to it. How do you choose the people you work with visually?

JB: The Nocturne stuff I did mostly myself, at least the design of it; I am a graphic designer also. Soft Fall I knew I wanted to be photographic, just because of the nature of the music, and it felt like that would be a better fit. When we were on tour in Europe, I picked up these art magazines and I saw this big spread of a Japanese art collective called Nam. I just thought it was like the total perfect thing for this record, so I just contacted them out of the blue, and they ended up being like really excited and just worked with me every step of the way on it.

TK: What about their look connected with you so strongly?

JB: The image that’s on the cover of Soft Fall is kind of a, a continuation of a series that they were doing, which is what I saw and what I kind of wanted them to pick up. It was called “Fantasy and Reality,” this series, and that’s like basically the lyrical gist of this record, so all the pieces were just of someone kind of floating and hovering and all this stuff in the room kind of floating around. It was mysterious and surreal—the exact kind of way that the record felt. I mean, Soft Fall , the name of gives the impression of floating and weightlessness, and that’s what they were doing. I didn’t realize when I contacted them how labor intensive it all was It was like a thirty-hour shoot ‘cause they actually hang all those wires—and they tie a leaf to a wire and hang it up, and they do that hundreds of times. And there’s a dozen people all doing this at the same time. Then they set it up and bring in the model and take the picture and that’s it. There’s no crazy computer trickery, which is kind of what I assumed it all was. What you see in the photo actually happened. It’s totally crazy, and they made it a video of them kind of putting it all together that we’ll have available pretty soon. It’s kind of mind-blowing to watch.

TK: You mention the lyrical content being in between a dream and reality. I feel on Nocturne, there was a lot of emotion, a lot of longing, a lot of pain. But if you listen to the record it doesn’t necessarily come off that way, ‘cause it’s so dreamy, there’s this wash of like sound, samples, chiming ambience. This record feels more directly like bringing the emotions in the lyrics to the forefront. Would you say that’s the case?

JB: Probably The vocals are definitely out front a lot more, just in general. And that’s partially because, um, I have a better microphone and I feel a little more confident singing. And maybe the subject matter this time around. Both records are basically developed around a single theme—more or less, there’s like a stray song here or there that’s not—but for this one there’s kind of a very specific vision of this kind of palatial, surrealist, alternate universe where kind of all these things were happening that really didn’t make any sense, but it tied in with real life stuff. But none of it’s really personal , it’s kind of just writing from different perspectives, and trying to kind of push whatever thematic elements.

TK: Right. The “I” in the songs is not necessarily you, but because you use it, it makes the songs relatable in a way.

JB: People definitely do think that this is all autobiographical, which it’s not. I mean, that is weird because then it looks kind of like I’m a hopeless case. A lot of these characters are definitely having struggles. I guess I end up finding like pain and suffering more interesting to write about than just happy love songs all the time.

Soft Fall is the featured album in this edition of Unlocked; hear the spotlighted song “Close” in Monday’s post, read Tuesday’s album review; watch a music video for “Wild Palms” in yesterday’s post and check back tomorrow for a further exploration of the Nam photo collective’s Fantasy and Reality series.

Soft Fall is the featured album in this edition of Unlocked; hear the spotlighted track “Close” in Monday’s post, read yesterday’s album review; and check back tomorrow for an interview with Barthmus.

The album, released yesterday on Dead Oceans, opens with a placid, pulsating synthesizer note that swells and hums, building up alongside a gradual spectral beat. The minute-long scene-setter – one of three “Activity” interludes across the record – then launches fearlessly into lead single “Close,” and the song’s fierce snare drum hits and shaker percussion carry us away. This dramatic entrance is a contrast to the way their 2010 debut Nocturne of Exploded Crystal Chandelier began; a supernova of chimes, echo and mystical reverberations on the song “Infinity.” Also kind of dramatic, sure, but that gauzy dream-like vibe never quite let down – it was the sound of that album. So even when songs like “The American West” and “Put The Days” away were, underneath the clouds, kind of upbeat, it was hard to really feel it. On Soft Fall, the fog has lifted and Jon Barthmus is standing there with his musical collaborators, energized, invigorated, ready to go.

In its title, “New Movement” references the symphonic undercurrent of the record’s core; instead of swaying to splashes of impressionistic ambient noise, these songs jog to jostling string sections, bright horns on “Activity 2,” punchy textures and urgent tempos on “White Palms” and “Laketop Swimmers.” The pulsing “Symphony In White No. 2″ is carried by a poppy violin lead as much as it us by the commanding four-on-the-floor rhythm. “You’re the kind to get lost, get lost in your dreams, and I’m no longer fit to come after you,” Barthmus sings, and it’s a meloncholic sentiment as much as an unconscious summation of Sun Airway’s relationship to its sound. The band undeniably continues exploring ethereal avenues on Soft Fall – the sunburst synthesizer refrain on “Black Noise,” the cut-up groove of “Activity 3″ – but does so with subtlety, firmly grounded, no longer lost in the vibes.

Its a tricky thing – the band’s early recordings helped set the stage for the chillwave microgenre, so one might be inclined view Sun Airway circa Nocturne as bold and confident pioneers. But it’s important to remember that that album was, for Barthmus, a transitional work, a gateway between his old indie-rock outfit The A-Sides and the exploratory electronic sounds that newly captured his songwriting interest. On Soft Fall, there’s no reticence or uncertainty – this is Sun Airway clear, confident and catapulting themselves forward with feeling

Soft Fall is the featured album in this edition of Unlocked; hear the spotlighted single “Close” in yesterday’s post, and check back later in the week for interviews, video and more.

Photo by Shawn Brackbill | ShawnBrackbill.com

Philly electronic pop outfit Sun Airway plays our Free at Noon concert tomorrow, and their latest album Soft Fall comes out on Dead Oceans in a couple weeks. Today the band released a new music video for “Close.” Watch it below, and RSVP to check out the Free at Noon concert here.

Photo by Shawn Brackbill

Here at The Key, we toss a fair heaping of free downloads your way, so it’s completely understandable if you miss a few. Here are our top five bits of digital music from the past week:

Richmond, Virginia musician Matthew E. White is releasing his album Big Inner on Hometapes/Spacebomb Records on August 21st, and plays the TLA on Oct. 11 with The Mountain Goats. This week, his song “Big Love” was a My Morning Download, and you can get it below.

On the heels of making an XPoFest splash a couple weeks ago (and tearing up The Barbary last week), Work Drugs released another track for free download from their album Absolute Bearing. Download “The Art of Progress” below – the band says it was “originally written in 1994 as a response to U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signing the Kremlin accords.” You can also watch the music video here; Work Drugs next plays Philadelphia on Aug. 31 at Johnny Brenda’s.

Family Band celebrated the release of its excellent new record Grace and Lies this week by playing the First Unitarian Church’s side chapel, recording a Live at the World Cafe session and appearing live on the air for XPN2′s Folkadelphia. You can download their Folkadelphia performance of “Ride” below.

• Rideby Family Band, recorded live on Folkadelphia, 07.29.12Download

Northern Liberties’ 2nd Street Festival is going on today, and one of the great Philly bands playing the main stage at the Pizza at Schmidt’s is The Great Unknown, who were spotlighted in last week’s Key Studio Session. Download their performance of “Borrowed and Temporary” below, and catch them this afternoon at 4:15.

• Borrowed and Temporaryby The Great Unknown, from The Key Studio Sessions, Aug. 1, 2012Download

As anticipation for their new record Soft Fall builds, Sun Airway released a mixtape on Wednesday that blends Bartok, Boards of Canada and The Chemical Brothers.

Photo by Shawn Brackbill | ShawnBrackbill.com

Sun Airway also announced a string of dates with M83 today; there’s no hometown appearance among them, but we anticipate there will be a local blowout sometime around Soft Fall‘s release on Dead Oceans Records on Oct. 2. Meanwhile, you can check out the track list for I Need You Close below.

Daphni – “Ahora”
Dirty Projectors – “Impregnable Question”
Boards of Canada – “Ready Let’s Go”
Bill Fay – “I Hear You Calling”
Mozart – “Quartet in G Major”
Bartok – “String Quartet #1 in A minor”
Factory Floor – “Real Love” (Optimo Remix)
Sun Airway – “Close” (Companero Edit)
Modeselektor – “Blue Clouds”
Daphni – “Ye Ye”
Burial/Four Tet/Thom Yorke – “Ego”
The xx – “VCR” (Four Tet Remix)
Here We Go Magic – “How Do I Know?”
Chemical Brothers – “The Boxer” (DFA remix)
Daft Punk vs. Major Lazer – “Pon More Time” (Shoujo Edit)
David Bowie – “A New Career In A New Town”
Arp – “Pastoral Symphony: I. Dominoes II. Infinity Room”
Spiritualized – “Medication”

Photo by Shawn Brackbill | ShawnBrackbill.com

Soft Fall tracklisting

1. Activity 1
2. Close
3. New Movements
4. Activity 2
5. Wild Palms
6. Laketop Swimmers
7. Soft Fall
8. Black Noise
9. Symphony in White No. 2
10. Activity 3
11. Over My Head

M83

Sun Airway just posted a remix of M83′s “Reunion.” M83 play the Electric Factory on Wednesday, August 1st. Go here for tickets and more information about the show. Listen to the Sun Airway remix below and watch the video for M83′s “Reunion.”

“Wild Palms” is the second Sun Airway video directed by Ricardo Rivera of Klip Collective (who also directed Sun Airway’s “Put The Days Away”). The collective is made up of fellow Philadelphians who’ve showed brotherly love to native sons like Kurt Vile as well.