Foxtails Brigade are a five-piece band based in San Francisco who make a peculiar brand of Gothic folk-pop which embraces the weirder side of life, a fact that is perhaps unsurprising once you’ve delved a little deeper into the life of lead songwriter Laura Weinbach. Growing up in Hollywood Hills as the daughter of a horror director and the sister of a cult comedian, her neighbours included Slash, Ice-T, Larry from Perfect Strangers… oh and circus contortionists who kept emus and fang-toothed monkeys.
The band haven’t put out a full-length album since 2012’s Time is Past, but did have a song (and award-winning video) on the OIM Records compilation out this summer. Not ones to rest on their (film festival) laurels, the act recently reworked Joanna Newsom’s ‘The Book of Right On‘, composing a completely new arrangement that is clearly novel yet still imbued with the special something Newsom weaves into all of her work. The result is a haunted indie pop song, the vocals (which are far crisper than Newsom’s) circled by an array of plucked guitars, glockenspiel and distortion and stalked by a vast empty space illuminated by pedal effects and echoes. Have a listen to the track below and download it for free via Soundcloud:
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Discovering the track coincided with us planning Lit Links: a new, semi-regular feature as part of our Quiet, Constant Friends project, one which will hopefully allow us to examine to relationship between music and literature from a different angle. The idea is to create a playlist of songs that are in some way relevant to a particular book, be they songs which are related to the plot or themes, exist within the same general mood, or just bring to mind certain passages for whatever reason.
Well, the link might be tenuous but we saw ‘book’ in the title and thought Foxtails Brigade might be the perfect people to kick us off. Luckily for us, Weinbach agreed, and has put together an excellent piece/playlist centred on Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron by Daniel Clowes.
Daniel Clowes and Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron Speak To Me
by Laura Weinbach
Despite mild disappointment and passively hoping for something better, there is a kind of entertainment factor to simply observing the innately crude, grotesque nature of the world. Daniel Clowes has a knack for magnifying that film of abhorrence clung to most people, places and things. When I picked up my first issue of Eightball as an early twenty-something year-old, I was hooked from the get go feeling like this was was something that sees the world the way I do and Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron immediately became the series within that I most anticipated.
What’s cool about Clowes, particularly with regard to Like A Velvet Glove, is that he captures an essence that feels uncensored and honest and without seeming to try too hard; there’s fluidity to the pages. As a result, the story reads like the transcription of a dream in a mood of impending desperation on the brink of total apathy. But unlike just hearing someone talk about some dream they had that isn’t real and doesn’t make sense to the listener, this isn’t boring because it feels like it’s the reader’s dream too.
Anyway, there’s no doubt that this book and much of Clowes’s other work, has had an integral impact on my developing psyche and pushed its influence one way or another through the stuff I make. Though it’s sometimes hard to really know or see what’s at the core of one’s own art, I sense a similar condition to Clowes’s (or at least his characters) inside much of what I do.
Tunes To Listen To While Thinking About Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron
(in no particular order):
1. Laura Palmer’s Theme – Angelo Badalamenti
2. Can We Kiss – Calvin Johnson
3. Took You Two Years To Win My Heart – Final Fantasy
4. Never Had No One Ever – The Smiths
5. Lightening Rods – Faun Fables
6. Shine On You Crazy Diamond – Pink Floyd
7. The Artifact and Living – Michael Andrews
8. Red Head Walkin – Beat Happening
9. In Boxes – Aurora Aksnes
10. I’m An Outlaw – Kurt Vile
11. Unloved – Foxtails Brigade
12. Barragan – Blonde Redhead
13. Seven Two – Blonde Redhead
14. Another One – Mac Demarco
15. The Perfect Timing – Nedelle Torrisi (from the 2013 Paradise In Piano Album)
To find out more about our Quiet, Constant Friends project you should head here. You can buy the Quiet, Constant Friends compilation now from the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page: All tapes come with limited-edition postcard prints (which you can browse here) and all proceeds go to the global literacy charity Worldreader.
