Peace In the Middle East
Claire Rousay does not explode your cellphone at Middle East on Sunday, 22 September 2024.
Lavagxrl and Jude Ivy open the triplestack bill.
The booker behind the local live music series Illegally Blind (puts together the Fuzzstival and more), Jason Trefts, is raising money to start a non-profit organization, staffed by brain tumor survivors, “that will provide free short-term care coordination services for people in the Boston, MA area recently diagnosed with a brain tumor.”
The mission of the project hits close to home for Trefts. In his own words, “I was diagnosed with an incurable Astrocytoma at 24 years old. I have spent the decade-plus since navigating chronic disabling conditions while working in the human services field.”
“Astrocytoma” is a type of brain tumor. And while Trefts has been dealing with that, he has also been working in care coordination himself, observing first hand how important the work is. His proposed non-profit would make more of that important work happen for more people. Find out the details and donate at the Still Around Gofundme.
Jude Ivy
The bullets and missiles and exploding cellphones are flying halfway around the world, but at the Middle East club, it’s business as usual. A three-band bill in the Upstairs, headlined by emo ambient & emo prolific artist Claire Rousay, who crowd-sourced support act suggestions back in the spring.
Was Judy Ivy in that list of replies somewhere? The pop punkers are a fun time, with quick firing progressions, and thumping rhythms. Not quite cut from the same cloth as the rest of the bill, genre-wise, but a good “wake up” act on a Sunday night show. Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays – sometimes you just need a kick in the ass at the start of the set to remind you, “Yeah, we’re doing this!”
A member of Mallcops was hanging around, shouting out his album release show at Deep Cuts at the end of the month. We pulled off an exceedingly short interview.
Lavagxrl
We’ve covered a live show from Lavagxrl before… at Warehouse XI? It was pure microphone-and-backing tracks pop.
At the Middle East, the artist shifted into a more experimental register, playing moodier pieces (and moodier versions of her usual set) from behind a keyboard. Maybe to help the room transition more easily from the uptempo rock of Judy Ivy, to the downtempo emo ambient broodcore of Claire Rousay? I think it worked.
Claire Rousay
The LA-based musician Claire Rousay has a lot of irons in the fire. Or maybe just one iron in the fire, except the one iron has a dozen different social media platforms, record labels, and side projects at any given moment. Super prolific and super awesome, but hard to gauge what’s going on at any given moment.
What label(s) is this artist releasing music on?
Can’t keep up, but you go girl! Kind of reminds me of the way DJs release music. When you produce music via primarily electronic means, there’s less of a preoccupation with “the album” as the central organizing unit of all your efforts. You know, write the album, record the album, tour the album. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Electronic artists, on the other hand, crank out a remix here, an EP via obscure European label there, and slot into anonymous late night club gigs everywhere.
Is Claire Rousay an electronic music artist? Yeah, for sure, and she kind of splits the difference between an electronic and analog approach to music. At the Middle East gig, she played an electric guitar in collaboration with some kind of electronics board for a moody, glitchy sort of ambient pop. Sampler, looper, effects, what have you were all in the mix.
More to the point (because a lot of artists mix analog and digital effects), you get the sense that Rousay composes music from the digital-first perspective. Which is contrary to what most artists do, having learned to play the violin, or the guitar, or the cello, or the piano, in music class with Mr. Liebowitz, or Ms. Schneider, or Dr. Veith, or Mrs. Guiglietta, or whomever, when they were young and impressionable — and only added digital effects, or messed with digital recording and production, after the fact.
When Claire Rousay plays the guitar, she incorporates the sound of the guitar into the piece with a kind of compositional neutrality that is largely indifferent to the history of the instrument. She lets the sound that guitars make determine their function and use within the composition. Which sounds obvious. But you’ve got to remember that most musicians learn guitar from the starting point of “wanting to play that really sick lick from their favorite song,” and they never really grow out of that mindset.
Rousay composes like a “digital native” (Heard that phrase somewhere. It’s great.) who’s not too involved with how a guitar is “supposed” to be played. The results can be fairly mundane as far as the specific guitar parts are concerned, but you should be listening to the whole of the song, not the parts — and the whole sparkles.
The set was light on the field recording element of Rousay’s body of work. More like a pop set for a pop bill on a pop night. It popped.
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