Local fans of the lo-fi guitar hero band Ivy won’t have to wait until September 20—the official release date of the band’s first studio effort in seven years—to scratch their sonic itch for slow-building, spaced-out synths and ethereal, shifting beats.
They can get a live taste the week before, when the New York-based trio featuring Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger makes an equally rare live stop at Noho’s Iron Horse (on Sept. 13).
“We always plan on getting records out quickly, and somehow it never works that way,” explains Schlesinger. “We actually were recording on and off for several years after our last record, but weren’t too excited about any of the results. But then at some point, we started a new batch of Ivy songs we were excited about, so we scrapped probably a whole album’s worth of songs we had been trying to finish and the whole thing came together relatively quickly.”
The resulting product, a 10-tune tour de force dubbed All Hours, has already been hailed as “hypnotic” by Internet public radio’s KCRW and “typically seductive” by Rolling Stone.
While only the first single, “Distant Lights,” has been available for public consumption thus far, Schlesinger reveals that, despite dramatic shifts in the industry in general and music delivery specifically since 2005’s In The Clear, he and bandmates Dominique Durand and Andy Chase collectively agreed to release a traditional album in which the songs make cohesive sense as opposed to a bunch of potential hits.
“Maybe it’s a generational thing, but we still really like the idea of an album rather than just singles,” he says. “It feels so much more substantial in that it gives you the chance to establish a mood or vibe. But admittedly, it would be a lot less pressure to come up with a new song every once in a while and release it.”
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Similarly celebrating new studio product is April Verch—a Canadian-born fiddler, singer and stepdancer who dropped her eighth full length, Here’s How We Run, on Sept. 6.
“[I grew up in] Ottawa Valley, and what makes it unique is that it’s a melting-pot music,” Verch explains of the origins of her multi-sensory approach to entertaining. “People there work hard, and when it was time to let loose, you went and had fun together by dancing and playing music.”
“She has a great way of keeping things changing and moving, not only on her energy level, but the different kind of music she plays,” echoes Fred Kaiser, a programmer of the storied Philadelphia Folk Festival for more than 20 years and manager of the Mainstay in Maryland, who has booked her at both.
This Wednesday, Sept. 14, Verch will be at the Iron Horse for a 7 p.m. show. Tickets are $12.50 in advance, $15 at the door and also available at iheg.com.
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Last but not least, the Institute for the Musical Arts (ima.org)—a nonprofit that offers concerts by veteran female artists and showcases new female artists as part of its ongoing efforts to support women in music and music-related business—announced a trio of fall concerts.
The series kicks off this Saturday, Sept. 10 with singer-songwriter Toshi Reagon and continues with Christine Ohlman (of the Saturday Night Live Band) Oct. 29 before concluding Nov. 11 with Kristen Ford, Kara Kulpa and Carrie Ferguson.
Send correspondence to Nightcrawler, PO Box 427, Somers, CT 06071; fax to (860) 394-4262 or email Garycarra@aol.com.
