One band that has seemed perpetually under-the-radar the last few years is Bangor's CAPTAIN HOLLOW. Listening now to their newly released debut, the long-delayed Greatest Hits, we're wondering why. Was it that they haven't played Portland enough? Have we been confused about whether or not they'd broken up? Or is it just that the lure of post-hardcore/screamo bands from Penobscot County doesn't generally get us to bite? Whatever the cause, it is no more. For years, it's seemed like GOOD KIDS SPROUTING HORNS, the "other" band of CH frontman Ryan Higgins and (early) bassist Anthony Bitetti, got all the bright lights and sexy ink (aided perhaps by the more easily digestible pop formulas in Bitetti's songwriting, more recently funneled into rock bands GREAT WESTERN PLAIN and LEAVES LEAVES). This record will change that. The eight-track album isn't for everybody, of course, but it's a solid document of confused, anguished, precocious, indeterminate, rural young adult punk desperation. And it is loud. It's also very smartly recorded (by Bitetti) and mastered (by Ron Harrity at Forest City): raw in energy and measured in how it captures the tortuous passages of these songs. It's true that this style of music has been overrun by emotional histrionics, youthful overindulgence, and unflattering pristine recordings, but this little band from Bangor seem to get a lot right. Hear Greatest Hits at captainhollow.bandcamp.com.
dilly dilly |
Iconography, aesthetics, folk music, human skin — if you pay attention to these sorts of things, you may have noticed the large, magnificent tattoo of a cameo of a woman's profile inked onto the sternum of Erin Davidson, a/k/a the peripatetic alt-folk songwriter DILLY DILLY. As a (mostly) Portland-based musician for 20 years, dilly has made music in almost as many genres, and collaborated with dozens more. Though she's had the ink a comparatively shorter time, her tat is a signature design for an already unmistakable Portland artist.
And she's not finished getting mileage out of it. The ex-Cerberus Shoal member recently printed official shirts bearing the cameo image, which she's packaging as a bundle with her most recent album, Of Art and Intention, to help fund her travels in England. She released a video for a punchy new song titled "Coming Along," last week, recorded live on some picturesque English fen on the River Colne and gussied up with some trippy editing-room surrealism. As we welcome any nonconventional methods in the quest for ideas to help fund artistic growth and worldly travel, we recommend you observe the offer on her page at dillydilly.bandcamp.com.
