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Gowns
2004- Present
On their debut LP, Red State, Gowns sketch out a vision of what the future of the rock band could be. Their over-the-counter psychedelia draws no
lines between acoustic guitars and feedbacked pianos, processed spazzoid drum flails and a cappella harmonies. For the past two years, former
Mae Shi vocalist/gunk programmer Ezra Buchla and Amps for Christ guitar-wailer Erika Anderson have brought to the American West Coast a fertile
marriage of eerie folk murmur and crushed, twisted electronics. The sound conjured by Gowns is a digitally
ruptured, gospel valentine to the heartlands.
Recorded at home, in bedrooms and basements from rural South Dakota to Los Angeles, Red State tells the story of life lived in the flyover zones. Consider
"White Like Heaven," written a year before South Dakota's proposed abortion ban. The confessional lyrical style and woozy, throbbing synths create the ultimate
prosaic breakdown, a car crash onto the front lawn of suburban America. On "Rope", Erika's multi-tracked voice emerges like a death-bent Ronettes, haunted by
a spectral wall of sound, harmonic mantras repeating in a lilting fuzz bed. "Mercy Springs" has an Earth-style low drone shattered by Buchla's raw screams and
pent-up kinetic percussion. In these songs, Gowns imagine a nation where psychedelic noise, folk, and electronics can co-exist and breed hybrids better
adapted to a dystopian future.
>> Gowns website
See Also
Expo 70, Matt Hill, Cantus Firmus
Press
"Gurgling electronics. Open-ended folk songs. Jagged buildups. Soft landings. It’s hard to get a handle on Red State (Cardboard), the warm and weird new CD from the Los Angeles-formed, Bay Area-based band called Gowns. The group revolves around a partnership between Erika Anderson, who often plays guitar, and Ezra Buchla, who often plays electronics. In her gently (or ungently) assertive singing and his quietly crazed murmuring, you can hear refracted echoes of punk rants and indie-rock ballads. After about 40 minutes of crashing and flickering, there’s a surprise: a halfway garbled song called 'Cherylee' suddenly mutates into something more forthright. 'You’ve gotta write down all your symptoms even though it’s obscene/You’ve gotta stay there underwater till you get yourself clean,' Ms. Anderson sings, and it sounds as though she’s shivering." --New York Times (Kelefa Sanneh)
"Gowns' music dares to venture into alien haunts, the eerie intersections between past and present, the strange spaces where AOR rock meets the avant-garde, places where the trio finds quiet beauty and moments of bristling cacophony." -- SF Bay Guardian (Kimberly Chun)
"Gowns strikes a fiercely unstable balance between the simplicity of '60s folk, the risk-taking experimentalism of early American no-wave and the no-mincing-of-words directness of '90s grunge on its latest album, Red State. Clanging pots-and-pans percussion, clashing guitars and cracked whispers of blunt prose are fed through a laptop; the result is a beautiful but uneasy soundtrack for the voices inside your head to hum along to." -- San Francisco Chronicle (Bill Picture)
"In an age of increasingly prevalent musical globalization, the lines that once defined music via regional and/or national lines have been blurred so repeatedly
that they exist now only in the form of some vague, almost forgotten demarcations that tend to operate more imprecise level than that of pure codification.
The style of a people can (and is) recycled, reconfigured, and regurgitated by citizens half a world away, and while older indigenous styles may ever remain
signifiers of their homeland, they’re transported to ears worldwide in new contexts, and more recent innovations tend to be disseminated so rapidly that the
shelf life of a regional sound seems, at times, perhaps best considered in weeks, not months or years. So, in this modern mishmash, perhaps the search for a
signature sound, as defined by geographic or cultural boundaries, is more futile than ever, though there remains music that is unquestionably a product of its
environment, not immune to the rapid, seemingly inevitable, dispersion, but still quintessentially of its time and place. Gowns’ Red State is of this ilk,
a disc that feels distinctly American, a fractured folk, its tendrils wet with the violated entrails of numerous other genres, music heavy with memory and
hallucination.
Red State is Gowns’ full-length debut, the product of two years of working and reworking by Erika Anderson and Ezra Buchla, Gowns’ founding duo, and
percussionist Corey Fogel. Their music is not without antecedent; Amps for Christ, of which Anderson was once a member, is an obvious precursor, and Gowns
certainly have like-minded compatriots working in various American outposts as I type. Red State, though, is an album with a particular sound, like the
sun-bleached Polaroids of one’s family, documenting personal exercises in communal cultural contexts. Melodies lie obscured under a matte of cracked
electronics, trains of thought dissipate before reaching a resolution, and thick streams of static and noise disturb states of ghostly beauty.
Imperfections are purposeful and frequent, and the music derails from its predetermined path with consistency. Still, despite whatever formal roadblocks
are constructed by Anderson and Buchla, Red State remains an album of emotion, first and foremost, a tableaux of hazy recollection, hushed confession, and
forceful behest. It’s the disc’s more embellished moments that tend to be its best, while the earnest simplicity of the more uncomplicated tracks has an
allure, instances such as the ramshackle sustained crescendo of “White Like Heaven,” are where it’s at, collisions of sentiment and sound, breaking points
on a disc that would feel far too conspicuously maudlin without them. At times, even with a dose of deliberate obfuscation, Red State can seem melodramatic,
though Gowns’ stylistic expression is probably more a question of taste (and, perhaps cynicism) than objective excess.
On the vocal track of “Advice,” a woman is heard to reflect briefly on the pitfalls of addiction specific to those of a creative disposition, and the
squandering of her own intellectual resources. It’s the album’s most transparent admission, though Red State is a disc full of disclosure and catharsis,
an expulsion by Anderson and Buchla of closeted skeletons and emotional stew. This openness is a cornerstone of the album, perhaps its most palpable quality,
and even with the miasma of electronics, strings, percussion, and guitars under which it operates, it’s Gowns’ cloudy rumination that dwells longest
in the mind." -- Dusted Magazine
"Berkeley trio Gowns has estimable avant-indie cred. The collective rock resume of members Ezra Buchla, Erika Anderson, and Cory Fogel includes
stints in Amps for Christ, Mae Shi, and Curtains, and electronics maestro Buchla is the son of synth groundbreaker Don Buchla.
The group's debut CD delivers on that intriguing pedigree. Red State's darkly beautiful vignettes reference the suffocation and quiet desperation of
American hinterland existence. Images of suburban ennui haunt the lyrics, beginning with "Fargo," which features a litany of recreational boredom-relievers
recited over shimmering keyboards. Epic droner "White Like Heaven" offers Velvet Underground-ish psychedelia while Anderson sings about such mundane moments
as "a man outside walking his dog, mowing his lawn." On "Fake July," Buchla mutters that "you can smell desperation like a huge sick bird/promise of
salvation/hovering overhead." Sonically, the compositions are unsettlingly intimate and blissfully melodic. With elements of freak folk, glitchy noise,
chamber strings, and more, Red State is a powerfully ominous yet lovely place worthy of return visits." -- San Francisco Weekly |
