No Expectations 039: shanty
Catching up on new releases from Diners, Jeff Rosenstock, Buck Meek, and Slowdive.
It feels like there’s a collective summer hangover happening right now. An alarming number of my loved ones are Going Through It and the vibes that were pristine just months ago are frankly off. Here’s just one incredibly minor example: Just last week in this newsletter, I accidentally numbered the blog “No Expectations 037” even though the week prior’s edition was actually “No Expectations 037.” (I am grateful that the lovely folks who subscribe didn’t really roast me for that). It happens and that’s life. It’ll suck for a second but then it’ll get better. It always does.
After spending eight days in Michigan, I took it easy. I watched a bunch of U.S. Open tennis, made some other deadlines, and saw friends. In the spirit of giving yourself a break and because of the shortened Labor Day week, it’s a quick, recommendations-based newsletter this time.
No One Likes Merch Cuts
Early in the pandemic, I was working at VICE and my beat pretty abruptly shifted. For the first couple of years of my pre-COVID tenure there, I was mostly writing about bands I liked but when the lockdowns happened and live music stopped, I was mostly reporting on how COVID-19 was affecting all corners of the music industry from record labels to touring musicians, independent venues, and venue workers. A big theme of my conversations with sources while writing on that beat was that once live music safely returns, it should come back in a better, fairer, and less exploitative way. That didn’t really happen. It got worse.
Alongside industry-wide issues with accessibility and ticket prices is the longstanding practice of merchandise cuts, where a venue takes a percentage from the artist of all merch sold during the show: t-shirts, records, stickers, posters, and more. Jeff Rosenstock, a popular punk musician who just put out a great new album called HELLMODE, recently shared the merch cut percentages for each venue he’s playing on his upcoming tour. Three of the venues on this 13-city tour don’t take any percentages from merchandise sales while the other 10 do ranging from 10 percent to 25 percent. Some venues charge an additional tax while others only take cuts from “soft” merch like clothing.
Jeff’s tweets highlight a lingering issue with the concert industry where decades-long practices originally meant for the biggest artists end up hurting the mid-and-lower tier acts most. If you’re a band opening up for an act making $250 a show where you have built-in costs for gas, lodging, and food, selling your merch is a lifeline to break even and not lose money on a tour. If you sell $400 worth of merch and a venue takes 25 percent, you really feel it. The economics of touring and the live music industry at large are needlessly complex and need to change (the nitty-gritty of this will undoubtedly be the subject of future newsletters). It’ll take a long time and the biggest artists (the Taylor Swifts of the world, not just the Jeff Rosenstocks) need to help lead the charge here.
Merch cuts undoubtedly suck and chances are one of your favorite venues engages in the practice. You can peruse an incomplete list of North American venues that don’t take any cuts from the artist here but most of the bigger rooms do, especially ones owned by LiveNation and AEG. There’s a chance your favorite independent room does too. I’m not here to comment on the discourse surrounding this necessary discussion beyond that I think it should end.
What I listened to:
Diners, DOMINO
Diners is the songwriting project of the Los Angeles-based guitar pop artist Blue Broderick who goes full-power pop on her latest LP DOMINO. For this album, she enlisted the Portland-based producer, multi-instrumentalist, and Friend of the Substack Mo Troper to flesh out these impeccably written breezy tunes. She’s an artist who gets compared to Harry Nillson and Brian Wilson a bunch but there’s more bite here. You can pick out references to Tom Petty, Big Star, Fountains of Wayne, and Frankie Cosmos. There’s no bad song on the tracklist: a relentlessly hummable collection of classic, reverent songwriting.
Jeff Rosenstock, HELLMODE
Jeff Rosenstock makes punk music on a markedly grander scope than most of his peers. His songs zig-zag, swirl, and expand in surprisingly off-kilter directions to the point where it feels like he’s scoring a major musical while making some of the cutting-edge guitar music right now. There are Greek choruses of shouty backing vocals peppering his songs, soaring guitar solos, and the occasional sax freakout. Over his past few LPs, he’s expanded his palate into more adventurous indie rock directions but if you were a fan of Bomb Music Industry you’ll find a lot to love. Opener “WILL U STILL U” especially hits for me. Back in 2017, I interviewed Jeff for my Blind Spots column at RedEye Chicago. I played him Oasis’ (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? which he had incredibly never heard.
Buck Meek, Haunted Mountain
Buck Meek is the inventive and unorthodox guitarist of Big Thief who also makes ramshackle folk-rock songs under his own name. This is his first album with major indie 4AD after a handful of releases on the Texas indie Keeled Scales and it boasts some of the best songs of his underappreciated solo career. Meek is such an intuitive player and a patient songwriter: he can lock into a groove and stretch out a song to the point where it feels urgent even when it’s unhurried. Haunted Mountain feels like a future Sunday morning mainstay.
Slowdive, everything is alive
As a teen growing up in Grand Rapids, I bought a CD of Slowdive’s classic 1994 LP Souvlaki at Vertigo Music (which is still my favorite record store). That album had a constant rotation in my Honda Civic. If I was driving home from a show or a friend’s house, nothing hit better than hearing “Souvlaki Space Station” or “Alison” on a nighttime drive. In my opinion, while My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless might be the cooler and more important LP, Slowdive just had better songs, especially here. Recently, the iconic shoegaze band returned from a six-year hiatus with everything is alive, which blew me away. I skipped most of the singles besides “kisses” because I wanted to hear them in the context of the full album. Being in Michigan last week, I naturally queued up the album on a nighttime drive. Opener “shanty” is such an enveloping and mesmerizing song it already feels like it’s hit “Alison” status for me. The rest of the album is still pretty astounding, a document of a band who’s been doing it for over 30 years and still making vital music in their fifties.
What I watched:
We Are the Best!
Lukas Moodysson’s low-stakes but potent coming-of-age dramedy We Are The Best! follows three young Swedish girls who start a punk band. It’s the rare movie that captures the adolescent urge to start a band and devote your life to music without any of the cringe mythmaking you’d see in a similar film. It’s a sweet and sad movie about friendship and figuring out who you are. Anyone could love this one.
What I read:
The Hardest Ticket at the U.S. Open? Ball Person. (Talya Minsberg, NYTimes)
The group of 500 people — already whittled down from some 1,200 online applicants — would be vying for 120 spots as ball people for the U.S. Open, during tryouts over a full week that were forced indoors because of rain. Those selected joined the 200 or so ball people who are returning to service the courts in Queens.
“I don’t think people understand, it’s a highly sought-after job,” said Tiahnne Noble, the director of the U.S. Open Ball Crew.
Ranging in age from 14 to their mid-70s, the hopefuls came from all corners of the country. Applicants flew in from California, drove from Indiana, took the subway from the Bronx and rode the train from Connecticut. Some were tennis fans, some played themselves and others had their curiosity piqued from seeing ball people on TV. Could they do that? (Spoiler: Mostly not.)
The Weekly No Expectations Chicago Show Calendar:
Thursday, September 7: Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, Hemlock, H.C. McEntire at Sleeping Village. Tickets.
Thursday, September 7: Diners, Rust Ring, Mairy at Beat Kitchen. Tickets.
Thursday, September 7: Neu Blume, Charlie Reed, Fran at the Hideout. Tickets.
Friday, September 8: Justice Hill and Nighttime Love, Basic Comfort at the Hideout. Tickets.
Friday, September 8: Kaina at Taste of Chicago Grant Park. Free.
Saturday, September 9: Kaleta and Super Yamba Band at the Hideout. Tickets.
Saturday, September 9: McKinley Dixon, Semiratruth, Orion Meadows at Schubas. Tickets.
Sunday, September 10: Whitney at Taste of Chicago Grant Park. Free.
It's a tangent, but I've found the differences in reactions between Rosentock's merch cut post and those of Karly Hartzmans's take on touring/SxSW really interesting. Both were railing against the current realities of touring artists, but the reactions could not've been more different- at least on my timeline(s).
P.S. Here's to late drive drives in a Civic!
Not the hugest Slowdive fan, but the front half of the new album is mighty impressive - will keep listening!