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Reverberations Through A Closed Room: Gold Connections Release New Single “Confession”

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Richmond alternative rockers Gold Connections follow up on last fall’s Ammunition EP with a brand new song, “Confession,” which drops today and is sure to get your weekend moving.

Today, Richmond’s Gold Connections are releasing a brand new single, “Confession,” which features Will Evans of Charlottesville’s Stray Fossa, on hi-hat and toms. If you’re out on the road and play this track, you might agree with another local listener’s response: “Nothing wrong with any song that makes you want to get out and move.” Spacey and distinctive indie pop dominates on this meditative love song. Frontman Will Marsh’s lyrics transition from experiencing guilt to connecting with the universe as the music engages in a scattering rhythmic buildup. 

As influences, the band cites postpunk as a genre, and specifically the sounds of Nick Cave and LCD Soundsystem. My tip: listen for the acoustic guitar picking after the intro. I have a favorite memory of a Will Marsh solo acoustic performance in a high-ceilinged 18th century dining hall made of stone walls and plaster. Late afternoon sun lit the three-foot deep window alcoves above my head, and Marsh’s guitar picking slowly built upon the echoes of itself until the air was completely full of music! Listening to “Confession” brings me back to that memory now.

In this intriguing song, guitar is drawn forth along an electric Western-outlaw melody line and absorbed into brassy synth-pop rhythms that take me back to The Naked And Famous. I enjoy a mirage-waves effect of the electric meeting rhythm. A technique mastered so effortlessly by Tame Impala, for example, the strange, transporting effect has a digital quality on this track that does sound like LCD Soundsystem’s, uh, sound system. But the addition of Marsh’s warm, alto vocal tones takes us almost to the doorstep of The National (the band, not the venue). 

Music can try to mimic the reverberations of a closed room to create a feeling of overcoming, rising up, and midway through this vulnerable song, Gold Connections create exactly that mood, as vocal distortions disrupt and suppress the music. Listening becomes a momentarily frustrating experience, and I’m not entirely sure whether the end of the song recovers or finds redemption. On the whole, though, Gold Connections stands out for their expression of warmth and devotion. They have a knack for simplicity.

“Confession” is out today, and you can hear it for yourself on Gold Connections’ digital platforms: their website and Bandcamp page. Happy listening!  

Photo by Phineas Alexander

The Secret World Of the Iron Survivor

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With the soundtrack to a fake movie about the secret world of world-class Rock-Paper-Scissors competitions, Richmond trio Hewolf takes their goofy, theatrical cock-rock to the next level.

“Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoot!” Get ready to rumble, and get ready to listen to Hewolf’s latest album, Iron Survivor 2: The Motion Picture Soundtrack. This movie-less soundtrack needs no visuals to take you on an adventure through the wild world of underground, high-stakes Rock-Paper-Scissors Competitions. Through the eyes of lonely child Danny Laredo, we get to learn about love, lust, and what it really takes to win it all.

Iron Survivor 2 came out on October 30th, and has generated a buzz among Hewolf fans. The album features six tracks that walk listeners through the most poignant moments of the movie (which again, to be clear, doesn’t actually exist). Listen as Danny gains the confidence to compete, take on his most vicious opponents, and then vanquish them all. 

“[Bassist] Paul [Burnette] was the mastermind of piecing all of that together. Erik and I just kind of came with the ideas and Paul just started putting them all together,” said Johnny Throckmorton, Hewolf’s guitarist. “It’s like a Rubik’s Cube. Erik and I are all the colors, and Paul fits us into solid colors on each side.”

“Every time you listen to it from start to finish it can be a different movie in your head,” said drummer Erik Josephson. “The whole thing was laid in order for different characters, themes, and what’s going on in the movie. It’s a different movie every time you listen to it.”

Though the plot puts young Danny in perilous and serious positions, the guys in Hewolf don’t let that get in their heads when writing out his story. Their comedic take on “cock-rock” and the theatrics of metal bring light to the soundtrack, and help entrench us in the fast paced world that Danny strives every day to bury his stake in.

“We’re serious about our instruments, but everything that follows after that is sarcasm,” said Throckmorton. “The three of us are dads so we’re responsible, we’re punctual, we make sure that we get the job done, but we’re also total goofballs.”

In that endeavor to find the lighter aspect of their music writing, the guys have created a slew of easter-egg moments throughout the entire album. If you listen closely enough you’ll be able to hear impressions of Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, and the lovely sounds of the drunken pub song “Oh Danny Boy.”

“Johnny is the Easter Bunny when it comes to the Easter Eggs,” said Josephson. “In the last song, Johnny does these karate calls.”

“Some of the samples I found were from little pieces on YouTube,” said Burnette. “One of them was from an arm wrestling tournament in Louisiana, and you just hear people yelling random stuff. One guy just yells, ‘go the fuck home!’ right in the beginning.”

Encapsulating all of this in the album is one thing, but as it is a movie soundtrack for a movie that never came out, the door is wide open for the creative pursuit of visual and stage representations. 

“Part of the hope for the soundtrack is that it would spark for someone, and maybe someone would want to make this movie happen,” said Burnette.

“We love playing live, and it’d be fantastic to have the big show with lights, smoke, and pyrotechnics, all the big stuff,” said Throckmorton. “Erik could do a Tommy Lee, we’d put him in a cage and just have him spin around while he’s playing.”

“We’d have a spinning octagon with people playing rock-paper-scissors inside,” replied Josephson.

“We do find some movie company to take this on, and we’ve got three executive producers right here ready to pitch in,” said Burnette.

Even though all of these ideas are just dreams at this point, the band has realized a lot of their ideas in the realm of pure music. Iron Survivor 2 was the second release the band put out during the insane year of 2020. Back in September, Hewolf had already released the Into The Darkness… EP. And now, while everyone is looking forward to playing all of this new music live someday, the biggest thing on their radar now is digging in and writing more music.

“Throughout this process, as much as we want it to go out and play, even if everybody is wearing masks and distancing, we just said we’ll do the smart thing and focus on the music,” said Throckmorton. “We have another six or seven songs we’re working on — we just don’t stop. Now is the time for not only us, but a lot of bands, to kind of push it and start writing stuff.”

Working together on these projects has come naturally to the guys of Hewolf after years of friendship and plenty of experience creating music with other bands. Before the clandestine formation of Hewolf, each of the members were in other bands that toured widely. Burnette was in Darkest Hour and Iron Reagan, Throckmorton was in Alabama Thunder Pussy, Josephson was in HRM, and both Burnette and Josephson were in Crackhead. 

“Johnny and I were in our first band together when we were in high school, and then we were in another band together around 2000,” said Burnette. “Erik and I were in two bands together. We were in a band in like ’93, and another band in the mid ‘90s after that. We’ve all been in bands together and known each other for decades, just had never all played together.”

Now that they’ve joined together for Hewolf, there is no separating them. Each member comes from a similar background and is living in similar circumstances, so their friendship has only gotten stronger over the years. 

“Any time I get opportunities to work with someone else, I always want to bring Paul and Erik into it somehow,” said Throckmorton. “We try to write things about real life, what’s going on. As far-fetched as a rock-paper-scissors tournament is, it could still happen. It’s not a song about dragons and sorcerers.”

“We’re singing about real shit, man,” Josephson chimed in.

“I don’t even miss singing in other bands because it feels so good to be here,” said Throckmorton. “If they said, ‘hey, put your guitar down, you’re going to play the kazoo now. We’re bringing in another guitar player.’ Just as long as I’m here playing with these guys, I’m happy. I’ll play a mean kazoo.”

Growing up in the punk and metal communities brought the guys a great deal of experience they don’t take for granted. Looking back, some of those experiences landed them in places they never thought they’d be, and are glad never to be in again, no matter how fun they were. 

“Darkest Hour got thrown in jail in Oklahoma,” said Burnette. “They hit us with like five different things and threw us all in jail. The band had money to get three of us out and we had to leave the rest of the guys in there until the next day so we could wait for western union the next day at the local Wendy’s. So we got $5,000 wired to us at the Wendy’s, and we still made it to the show in Texas.”

And this wasn’t the only run in with the law; sometimes they even got in trouble in other countries. 

“Our guitar player was having issues, so he [relieved himself in] a bag. He went down to the lower level of the double-decker bus and just was like, ‘What am I gonna do with this?’ Someone suggested to throw it out,” said Burnette. “So he pops open the door of the bus and he’s swinging it, he counts down ‘1…2…’ and as soon as he says ‘3’ there are these Belgian cops coming up alongside the bus going to an accident up ahead, and I swear this bag of hot shit was about three inches from this cop’s nose as he drove by at like 30 mph.”

While all these crazy experiences make for amazing stories and an exciting life, band life wasn’t always this way. Between the many nights of shows, the stops in fun places, and the run-ins with the law, there was plenty of downtime that wasn’t much to write home about. And to the Hewolf guys, that’s okay.

“I wouldn’t change it, but it was definitely hard,” said Throckmorton. “There’s no way I could do it now. We would definitely need the rockstar treatment, have a big bus. Show starts early, ends early — because we’re all dads, and we’re falling asleep by 9 o’clock.”

“With past band experience you can take all that time and boil it all down and it’ll sound like the craziest shit that’s ever happened to somebody. And it really is,” added Burnette. “But before you boil it down, you have this massive amount of downtime — time that’s boring, or wasted, time.”

Something more fulfilling in this season of their lives has cropped up, and that’s fatherhood. The guys of Hewolf have all, at different points in their lives, become dads, and that commonality has helped them build a better routine in their creative life. However, dad life comes with its own ups and downs — ones that may just be as crazy as their former lives.

“Erik is helping take care of his daughter’s cat who had AIDS,” said Burnette.

“Yeah, that was also this week’s gift to me. ‘Dad, I got a cat!’ Okay, great! ‘…and the cat has feline AIDS’,” said Josephson. “I’m looking forward to vet bills on that, that’ll be great.”

Fans of Hewolf’s music might find it surprising that the members’ families aren’t always into what they have going on. However, if you’re a parent, you might not find it surprising at all. The dads of Hewolf have experienced some lackluster responses from their kids, but they know they’re loved regardless. 

“My daughter comes to some shows to support her dad, but it’s not her cup of tea,” said Josephson. “A couple years ago we had a sticker, and her whole car had all the Richmond band stickers on it. So I asked if I could put our sticker on, and she said, ‘No, ugh, you’re my dad.’ But she comes to shows — that is our thing to do.”

“My kid is 14, so the last thing he wants to do is anything to do with what his dad is doing. Whenever he’s ready to hang out, I’m all over it,” said Burnette. “You gotta jump on those moments, because when you’re 14, you want to be with your friends.”

Becoming dads and renewing their commitment to music has given the members of Hewolf new motivation in their work. Now, it’s not about simply being rockstars and having fun; it’s also about their families and using their influence and platform to help others.

One of those outreach platforms the members of Hewolf has been a part of over the years is Punks For Presents, a Richmond based punk non-profit organization that puts on charity shows every year featuring a variety of tribute bands. Through the shows, Punks For Presents raises money to fund donations of presents to children in hospitals and difficult situations during the holidays. In past years, the members of Hewolf have performed at these shows under the pseudonym Elvzig.

“That definitely sums it up — we’re a dad rock band, and you gotta do it for the kids,” said Throckmorton. “If we can help these organizations, or be the theme song to somebody’s really shitty day, that makes us happy. Someone walking down the street who just had a really shitty day and they throw on some Hewolf, then it’s mission accomplished. We are a light in the darkness, and I think it’s pretty awesome.”

Next time you’re feeling down, just imagine yourself winning the ultimate title at a rock-paper-scissors competition. And remember what this message from Hewolf: “Rock always wins.”

To find Iron Survivor 2: The Motion Picture Soundtrack, visit Hewolf’s Bandcamp page. Hewolf also encourages you to check out the Punks For Presents shop, at punksforpresents.storenvy.com. 

Photos via Hewolf/Facebook; Iron Survivor 2 artwork courtesy Hewolf

Getting High And Getting Freaky With Toward Space

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The Richmond garage-rock trio wanted to blow off some steam with the video for their latest single. And sure enough, the clip for Toward Space’s “I Won’t Do Crack (Without Heroin)” gets downright steamy.

Nothing can slow down the creative and kinky minds of the members of Toward Space, Richmond’s resident garage-punk threesome. As 2020 comes to a close, Toward Space is shaking up the chaos of the year with an out-of-the-box, but not out of the stall, music video for their song “I Won’t Do Crack (Without Heroin),” the title of which is inspired by the 2003 movie Party Monster. 

The song itself, which came out in August of this year, is catchy and an instant classic for the band as it is. However, with the addition of some glory hole fun, classic city porch hangs, and sexy leather and fishnet, the song comes to life in a whole new way. 

Not unlike the band’s past videos, like their 2019 release “Abella,” the cast is made up of loyal friends and local Richmonders. Gathering so many people for this occasion didn’t come without its challenges in the era of isolation. 

“I’m lucky I have a bunch of friends who were willing to all get COVID tests and follow protocol to be in the video. We keep joking this was our ‘last hurrah,’ since numbers have surged,” said Seyla Hossaini, the band’s bassist and vocalist. “Expect some sullen silent films from me this winter, with a much smaller cast.”

Hossaini has played a major role in the creation and production for most, if not all, of Toward Space’s videos. She’s no stranger to the world of music video directing, having spent time directing videos for singers and rappers at Sound of Music Studios. Be it directing, choreographing, editing, or casting, she does it all with a flair for the freaky.

“I just happen to have a dirty mind,” said Hossaini. “I can’t help it, it’s always been like this.”

For this video in particular, she directed and tried her hand at choreographing. With some new dance experimentation, Hossaini grew her passion for conceptualizing music videos, and is already looking forward to future projects to keep stretching her abilities and gaining new ones. 

“For me personally, if I didn’t push myself to keep creating in the midst of all this I would probably end up in bed crying every day,” said Hossaini. “I believe the same goes for my bandmates. Having to cancel multiple tours at the beginning of lockdown had us moping around for a bit back in March, but I think now we’ve accepted the situation to a degree. There are ways to be safe and still make art.” 

In pursuit of a release of creativity in a locked-up setting, Toward Space created the music video for “I Won’t Do Crack (Without Heroin)” both for themselves and for the community they call home. Appropriately, all of the song’s proceeds on their Bandcamp will be donated to the CARITAS center for the month of December. 

The CARITAS center, or Congregations Around Richmond To Assure Shelter, is a well known Richmond non-profit that focuses on caring for and housing those struggling with homelessness and drug addiction. For over 30 years, CARITAS has been meeting the needs of the community in big ways, and they’re expanding to reach even more of those who could use a caring hand. For Hossaini, choosing to donate the song’s proceeds to this organization was an act of compassion that came naturally.

“Ever since my cousin, who I was extremely close with, passed from an overdose, I’ve wanted to raise money for organizations that help folks struggling with addiction,” said Hossaini. “I’ve raised money for Daily Planet in the past, and I chose CARITAS this time because they opened a new wing for women recently.”

At the intersection of passion and compassion, Toward Space has an eye for community care, and aims to uplift the masses as they take hold of the reins and uplift themselves. With the heavy-hitting political and polarized year we’ve all been having, Hossaini used this opportunity to aim listeners in the direction of weight-lifting fun.

“I want viewers to enjoy the video and have fun with it,” said Hossaini, who has been riding the tumultuous merry-go-round of American politics with the rest of us and needed the relief just as much as any of us. “I’ve debated myself on politics in my own head to the point of migraines, nausea, losing sleep. The process of making this video was a huge release for me. I needed to make a mindless, non-politicized video.”

Looking forward, while the tumult of the year continues, Toward Space isn’t looking to quiet down anytime soon. Sure live shows may be a while off, but Hossaini has a few tricks up her sleeve to develop the Richmond music scene and keep the musical freak flags flying. 

Watch the music video for “I Won’t Do Crack (Without Heroin)” below:

To download and donate to CARITAS, go to Toward Space’s Bandcamp (towardspace.bandcamp.com) this month, or stream it on Spotify and Apple Music.

All Photos via Toward Space

Post Sixty Five Returns With New Single, ‘Middle Child’

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Spurred on by pandemic-provided alone time and inspired by the loss of a loved one, the Richmond/Charlottesville indie-rock quintet brings us their first new music in three years.

Over three years removed from their last release, Richmond-via-Charlottesville indie-rock band Post Sixty Five has released a new single, entitled “Middle Child.”

The track has been part of the band’s live rotation for some time already, and was actually started way back in early 2018, before the band had decided to relocate to Richmond. Each of the five-piece’s members made the move one by one over the course of that year.

“It wasn’t collective, which is maybe the wildest thing about it,” said Kim McMasters, one of the band’s guitar players. “I think we were all sort of feeling saturated with Charlottesville, we’d been there since college and had seen a lot of things change, and we needed a better place for the music to grow and also for us to grow. So it was kind of this weird domino effect.”

“There are cool people doing stuff in Charlottesville, people that we love, but there’s just not that many people there,” said Matt Wood, the band’s bass player. “The scene’s just not that big.”

Between rehearsal spaces and their own homes, “Middle Child” was the first song recorded by the band entirely on their own. It was mixed by Taylor Bess, who plays in RAWLS, and some notable gear was used during recording, including a Red Panda Tensor delay pedal for the oscillating ambient sounds heard in the background, and a Line 6 Helix, which was used to record the fuzzy bass guitar. One of the synthesizer tracks on the song was recorded back in 2018, but most of the rest of the song’s tracks were done more recently. The band wasn’t afraid to add more layers to the song than would be possible to play in a live setting.

“I think because we knew there were not gonna be shows for a while, we felt a little bit more comfortable pushing the limits of recording,” said McMasters. “You have so many more hands when you’re recording because you can add layers and layers of yourself.”

The band’s members have stayed mostly isolated from each other over the past several months, but besides practicing in person, the way they’ve always been crafting songs isn’t much different from how they have to do it now. Hicham Benhallam, the band’s singer and primary songwriter, records an idea for a song on his own and then sends it to the others over the internet. Over the years, the band has amassed a large Google Drive folder of song ideas from this method.

“When quarantine started, I had realized that, for maybe the first time in my eight or nine years of writing songs more or less seriously, the fact that I do things alone was gonna come in handy,” said Benhallam. The band’s productivity writing and recording hasn’t wavered even though they haven’t been able to meet in person as a whole.

“Outside of working on these songs, I’ve actually struggled quite a bit to stay creative and motivate myself to work on stuff. I think personally I’m motivated a lot by the desire to play live and make music in the moment with my friends, and not being able to do that has been challenging,” said Wood. “But this has been a nice little light, because it’s still collaborative and there’s a lot of great communication that we’ve been able to do in spite of the circumstances, and it’s been great for me.”

Photo by Joey Wharton, via Post Sixty Five/Facebook

The song’s lyrics are about Benhallam’s father, who passed away a few months before the song began being written. Benhallam, who was 24 at the time, says it was a loss he was not prepared for and not equipped to deal with at the time.

“I didn’t have the emotional language, didn’t have the bandwidth, didn’t have good emotional examples to be like ‘Hey, I’m a guy who’s grieving for his dad, and I’m far away from home,’” said Benhallam. “That first verse is that initial moment of sorting it out over the first few months. The second verse is, I think, with a little more recall, trying to just remember this as much as possible about this person who is no longer around.”

Post Sixty Five is planning to release another single soon, entitled “Crowdsurfing,” although no date has been determined yet. For now, “Middle Child” is available as of today for streaming on Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play.

Top Photo by Joey Wharton, via Post Sixty Five/Facebook

Late Nights With Nancy Raygun

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Richmond-based psychedelic indie trio Nancy Raygun bring their first EP into a quarantined world with the hope of spreading happiness through music, even in trying times.

“Late Nights” opens with the sound of waves crashing on a beach, transporting you to the waterside, sand between your toes. When the whispering vocals start — a voice singing, “Lose track of time, every night / Wish you were here to stay” — you could just as easily be alone, driving down a moonlit road. Or are you in the crowded living room of a house? When the intro ends, the sounds of Nancy Raygun put you at the center of a DIY concert, slightly squashed and breathless but with enough room to dance and jump along. 

Given the band’s history, it makes sense for the title song off Nancy Raygun’s debut EP to take you to many places. It’s the first of four tracks the band has been working on for nearly as long as they’ve been a group. Each song hints at the various influences and shared history of the band, as well as their aspirations for the future. 

Nancy Raygun — made up of James Hope, Brett Johnson, and Sidney Blasiol — have been officially together for just over two years. But they’ve known each other for much longer. Hope and Blasiol have been friends since elementary school, and then became stepbrothers. Johnson met Hope when they were ten years old. They decided to move to Richmond to go to VCU, and the band formed shortly after. 

“We had been playing over the summer before school started, and then the day we got to school, we were like why not? We’ll just see where it leads, if it leads nowhere it doesn’t matter, we’re still in the same spot we are now,” Johnson said. “Thankfully it led somewhere.” 

Late Nights is a selection of the tracks Nancy Raygun have been working on since they formed. Hope says they wrote the last song on the EP, “Used To,” on the second day the band was formed. All four songs have evolved along with the band’s sound and their comfort level with their instruments and each other. 

“A big part of [our evolution] is over the past couple years we’ve been getting more together, moving as a unit rather than three people playing the same song,” Hope said. “I’d say the biggest difference is unity amongst us.” 

Since Hope, Johnson, and Blasiol all live together, working on music during the pandemic has been a daily affair. With more time at home to write, practice, and record, the band can spend hours fine-tuning and playing with different songs. 

“We have no noise complaints in the area, so we can practice for legitimately 12 hours, all night, or whatever we want really,” Johnson said.

Since the pandemic has also put most opportunities for live music on pause, Hope said the band sees Late Nights as their attempt to help people have a good time, even when times are tough. 

“Something that is positive in any light, to anyone, it would be really really great,” Hope said. “We just hope that it can reach people and that it has an effect like that — to make people happy.” 

Late Nights does just that. A promising EP with an infectious groove, Nancy Raygun at once transports listeners to the places they may want to be and meets them where they are. 

All Photos courtesy Nancy Raygun