Posted in Whathaveyou on May 4th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
It’ll be an injustice if Turkey Vulture don’t publish the lyrics to their new single. “Little Monsters” is out this week in time for Bandcamp Friday, and it is already not the first instance wherein the duo’s domestic life has informed their creative work — see also 2021’s Tummy Time and “The Boy and the Slide,” both streaming below. Jessie May and Jim Clegg are parents of a young child, and in a refreshing bit of honesty, created this song with that in mind. Clegg says below that the kid even likes it — have I mentioned parenting as a dopamine chase; I wish I cared half as much about my own opinion of anything as much as I care about my son’s — and that’s surely satisfying. Monsters in my house usually means Sesame Street or some such. I’d take a track about Grover.
No word on if that’s where Turkey Vulture are headed, but at least the wait won’t be all that long to find out.
The PR wire brought the cover art and release info, as well as the preorder link for your perusal:
TURKEY VULTURE To Release “Little Monsters” Single
Connecticut heavy music duo TURKEY VULTURE takes a walk on the softer side with humorous new single “Little Monsters,” to be released on May 6, 2022. Jim Clegg takes over vocal and bass duties on this song inspired by the arrival of their second son, with Jessie May contributing guitar tracks.
Clegg comments, “I just wanted to write a cute and catchy song about monsters.” May adds, “Compared to the werewolves and aliens of our January EP Twist the Knife, these monsters are a lot more kid-friendly! Our toddler cries when I put on Twist the Knife, but he actually likes this song.”
CREDITS written by Jim Clegg and Jessie May recorded at The Grand Hotel in Milford, CT Bass, Vocals, and Artwork by Jim Clegg – @jim_clegg.art Guitars by Jessie May
Posted in Reviews on January 20th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Welcome to Day Four of the Jan. 2022 Quarterly Review. Or maybe it’s the other half of the Dec. 2021 Quarterly Review. Or maybe I overthink these things. The latter feels most likely. Inanycase, welcome. If you’ve been keeping up with the records as they’ve been coming in 10-per-day batches over the course of this week, thanks. If not, well, if you’re interested, it’s not like the posts disappeared. Just keep scrolling, then I think click through. One of these days I’ll get an infinite scroll plug-in. Those are for the cool kids.
Also, ‘Infinite Scroll’ is, as of right now, the name of my ’90s-style pixel-art role playing game. Ask me about the plot when these reviews are done.
For now…
Quarterly Review #31-40:
SOM, The Shape of Everything
Working from a foundation in heavy post-rock, Connecticut’s SOM soar and float like so many shoreline seagulls over the Long Island Sound on the eight-song/34-minute The Shape of Everything, which would call to mind the melancholy of Katatoniia were its sadness not even more shimmering. Early pieces “Moment” and “Animals” build a depth of modern progressive metal riffing beneath only the airiest of guitar leads, a wash of distortion meeting a wash of melody, and with guitarist/vocalist/producer Will Benoit helming, his voice rings through clear in melody and still somewhat ethereal, calling to mind a more organically-constructed Jesu in poppier as well as some heavier stretches. The penultimate “Heart Attack” tips into heavier fare with a steady bassline and bursts of crunching guitar, and the finale “Son of Winter” answers back with a (snow)blinding spaciousness and an entrancing last buildup. There’s enough room here to really get lost, and SOM are too mindful of their craft to let it happen.
Alright, I admit it. I went to “Icy Flatulence” first. Even before “Cyborgian Burger Hut” or “Euphoric Nostril.” Scott Heller, otherwise known as Dr. Space of Øresund Space Collective and any number of other outfits on a given day, is as-ever exploring on Muzik 2 Loze Yr Mynd Inn, and the results are hypnotic enough that they might leave you using the kind of spelling on the album’s title, but even in the relatively serene “Garden of Rainbow Unicorns” there’s a forward keyline — and actually, in that song, an undercurrent of horror soundtracking that makes me think the unicorn is about to eat me; could happen — and the extended pair of “T-E-T” and “Ribbons in Time” are marked by ’80s sci-fi beeps and boops and a kind of electronic shuffle, respectively, though the latter is probably as close as the 54-minute six-songer comes to soundscaping. Which is like landscaping only, in this case, happening in another galaxy somewhere. And there they call it jazz as they should and all is well. In all seriousness, I keep a running list in my brain of bands who should ask Dr. Space to guest on their records. Your band is probably on it. It’s pretty much everybody.
Here’s some context you probably don’t need: “Cold Wind” and “When I’m King” were written around the time of Wellington, New Zealand’s Beastwars‘ 2011 self-titled debut (review here). They may even have been recorded — I could’ve sworn “When I’m King” popped up somewhere at some point — but they’ve now been redone from the ground up and they’re pressed to a limited 7″ as part of the 10th anniversary celebration that also saw the self-titled get a new vinyl issue. Now, is it helpful knowing that? Yeah, sure. If I came at you instead and said, “Hey, new Beastwars!” though, it’d probably be more of a draw, and whatever gets Beastwars in as many ears as possible is what should invariably be done. “When I’m King” is a banger (bonus points for gang shouts), “Cold Wind” a little more seething, but both tracks harness that peculiarly sludged tonality that the band has owned for more than a decade now, and the guttural delivery of Matthew Hyde is only more resonant for the years between the writing and the execution of these songs. That execution is beheading by riffs, by the way.
A Nocturnal Crossing, the second album from Toulouse, France’s Deathbell and their first for Svart Records, can come at you from any number of angles seemingly at any point. Which thread are you following? Is it the soaring, classic-feeling occult rock melodies of Lauren Gaynor, or her organ work that, at the same time, adds gothic drama to so much of the material on the six-songer? Is it the lumbering groove of “Shifting Sands” and the doomed fuzz of “Devoured on the Peak” earlier, speaking to entirely different traditions? Or maybe the atmosphere in “Silent She Comes,” which is almost post-metallic in its shining lead guitar? Or perhaps, and hopefully I think, it’s all of these things as skillfully woven together as they are in these tracks. Opener “The Stronghold and the Archer” and the closing title-track mirror each other in their underlying metallic influence, but that too becomes one more texture at Deathbell‘s disposal, brought forward in such a way as to emphasize the unity of the whole work as much as the individual progressions.
After debuting on Svart with 2018’s Toinen Toista (review here), sax-laced Helskini classic prog pastoralists Malady offer Ainavihantaa (‘all the time’) across a lush and welcoming six tracks and 37 minutes. The flow is immediate and paramount on opener “Alava Vaara” and through the flute/sax tradeoff in “Vapaa Ja Autio,” which follows, and though it’s heady fare, somehow the “Foxy-Lady”-if-King–Crimson-wrote-it strut-into-meander of “Sisävesien Rannat” skirts a line of indulgence without fully toppling over. Side B is jazzy and winding across “Dyadi” and “Haavan Väri” ahead of the title-track, but the human presence of vocals, even in a language I don’t speak, does wonders in keeping the proceedings grounded, right up to the Beatlesian finish of “Ainavihantaa” itself. This was on a lot of best-of-2021 lists and it’s not a challenge to see why.
The Earth, ecologically devastated by industrialization and the wastefulness of humans — capitalism, in other words — becomes a wasteland. A few billionaires, who’ve been playing around with laughably-phallic rockets anyway, decide they’re going to escape out into space and leave the rest of the species, which they’ve destroyed, to suffer. It would be — and used to be — the stuff of decent science fiction were it not basically what homo sapiens are living through right now. A mass extinction owing to climate change the roots of which are in anthropocene action and inaction alike. French outfit Wormsand tell this utterly-plausible story in cascading doom riffs that reminds at once of Pallbearer and Forming the Void, keeping an edge of modern heavy prog to their plodding and accompanying with clean vocals and some more gutty shouts. As one might expect, things get pretty grim by the time they’re down to “Carrions,” “Collapsing” and “Shapeless Mass” near the album’s end, but the trio get big, big points for not trying to offer some placating “you can avoid this future” message of hope at the end, instead highlighting the final message, “The oracles warned us long ago/That a huge mass would swallow us all.” Ambitious in narrative concept, expertly conveyed.
I hate to call out a falsehood, but Virginia duo Thunderchief‘s claim that, “No fucks were used, or given, on this recording,” just isn’t the case. I’m sorry. You don’t rip the fuck out of your throat like Rik Surly does on “Aiboh/Phobia” without a clear intent. That intent might be — and would seem to be — fuckall, but fuckall’s way different from ‘no fucks.’ If they didn’t give a fuck, Synanthrope could hardly come across as furious as it does in these seven tracks, totaling a consuming, gruff, sludged 39 minutes, marked out by centerpiece “King of the Pleistocene” fucking with your conception of desert rock, the second part of “Aiboh/Phobia” — the part named after a grind band, oddly enough — and “Toss Me a Crumb” fucking around with some grind, and closer “Paw” trodding out its feedback-laden course with Erik Larson‘s drums marching in crash with Surly‘s riffs. Hell, you got Mike Dean to record the thing. That’s giving a fuck all by itself. This kind of heavy and righteous, purposeful aural cruelty doesn’t happen by mistake. It’s too good to be fuckless. Sorry.
No lyric sheet necessary to get that the longest song on Turkey Vulture‘s Twist the Knife EP, the three-minute “Livestock on Our Way to Slaughter,” is based lyrically on the ever-relevant film They Live. The married Connecticut duo of guitarist/bassist/vocalist Jessie May and drummer Jim Clegg (also in charge of visuals), find thrashy release on the four-song release, which totals about eight minutes and in opener “Fiji,” “Where the Truth Dwells,” as well as “Livestock on Our Way to Slaughter,” they rip with surprising metallic thrust. The closing “She’s Married (But Not to Me)” is something of a further shift, and had me searching for an original version out there somewhere thinking it was a cover either of Buddy Holly or some wistful punk band, but no, seems to be an original. So be it. Clearly, at this point, May and Clegg are finding new modes of sonic catharsis that even a couple years ago they likely wouldn’t have dared. They’re a stronger band for their readiness to follow such whims.
In Stargo‘s Dammbruch, I hear a signal back to European heavy rock’s prior instrumentalist generation, the Dortmunder three-piece not completely divorced from the riffy progressions that drove the warmth creating heavy psychedelia in the first place, even as the four-part, 14-minute title-track of the EP shifts between those impulses and more progressive, weighted, extreme or airy movements before its eerily peaceful conclusion. “Copter,” which could be titled after its wub-wub-wub effect early and the guitar chug that takes hold of it, and the closer “Bathysphere,” with its outward reach of guitar telegraphed in the first half but still resonant at the end, bring likeminded breadth in shorter bursts, but the abiding story of the EP is what the band — who made their full-length debut with 2020’s Parasight — might continue to offer as their style continues to develop. 35007, My Sleeping Karma, The Ocean, Pelican and Russian Circles — Stargo‘s sound is a melting pot of ideas. They only need to keep exploring.
Fabrizio Monni, also of Black Capricorn, issues a second EP from the solo-project Ascia following up on Sept. 2021’s Volume I (review here) with the marauding lumber of Dec. 2021’s Volume II, bringing his axe down across five tracks in a sub-20-minute run that’s been compiled onto a limited CD with the first release. Makes sense. The two outings share an affinity for the running megafuzz of earliest High on Fire and showcase the emerging personality of the new outfit in the melodies of “The Will of Gods” and the untempered doom of the later slowdown in “Thousands of Ghosts.” The instrumental “A Night with Shahrazad” closes, and feels a bit like a piece of a song — it crashes out just when you think the vocals might kick in — but if Monni‘s leaving his audience wanting more, well, he also seems quick enough to provide. “Eternal Glory” and “Ruins of War” will remind you what you liked about the first EP, and the rest will remind you why you’re looking forward to the next one. Mark it a win.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 30th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Give it up for Turkey Vulture having the capacity to both reproduce and rock and roll. The idea, of course that the two are mutually exclusive is and has always been a fallacy as every successive generation of artists and musicians has shown, but as anyone who’s ever encountered one can tell you, babies can be time consuming. Following up on a topical single “Tummy Time” earlier this year, the married Connecticut duo announce now they’ll answer back this Fall with a new short release called Twist the Knife. I only look forward to finding out the lyrical origins of their use of the phrase, should there be any.
Jessie May and Jim Clegg both also have outside projects, from her running Alternative Control and overseeing money management for headbangers to his design and video work. They are, in short, a one-stop DIY shop. Busyness, it would seem, suits them.
The EP announcement, sans finer details, came down the PR wire:
TURKEY VULTURE TO RELEASE NEW EP
Connecticut heavy music duo TURKEY VULTURE is on their way to putting out their third EP, Twist the Knife. Once again recorded by “Black Metal” Dave Kaminsky, the release is expected in late 2021 or early 2022.
Frontwoman Jessie May and drummer Jim Clegg met in 2008, playing together in a local rock band called PINK MISSLE. In the decade and a half since then, they’ve played in several different bands together with their collaboration as musicians becoming stronger each passing year.
But more recently, their relationship has taken on a new identity: husband, wife, and parents. Twist the Knife plays on those roles, as well as weaving TURKEY VULTURE’s gritty Americana with a creeping horror punk influence.
Follow TURKEY VULTUREs YouTube channel for an upcoming “making-of” documentary produced by Jim Clegg.
Lineup: Jessie May — guitar, bass, vocals Jim Clegg — drums, artwork/design/photography
Posted in Questionnaire on February 23rd, 2021 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Jessie May of Turkey Vulture, Owl Maker, AltCtrlCT, and More
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Defining what I do is the hard part. I enjoy writing and music, and do bit of both. My illustrious writing career began in middle school with an “underground newsletter” of dirty jokes called The Funky Chicken. (Apparently my bird obsession goes back a long way too.) Right now I edit the blogs Alternative Control and Metalhead Money, and do some freelance copywriting on the side. I also self-published a book about personal finance last year, called Money Hacks for Metalheads and Old Millennials. I came to do that through a lot of research, personal screw-ups, and some extra time on my hands due to the pandemic.
Re: music… My most active band right now is Turkey Vulture, where I play guitar and sing. My husband Jim plays drums. I like to think of us as a really loud Americana band, but there are influences from doom, punk, and 80s metal as well. Turkey Vulture’s journey started about twelve years ago when I joined Jim’s band Pink Missile. Several bands, a marriage, and one baby boy later, here we are!
Bass is my main instrument, or at least the one I’m decent at playing. I’m on “maternity leave” from a folk band called The Shoutbacks and I’m also the bassist of Owl Maker, who I hope will come out of hibernation once all this pandemic stuff is over.
Describe your first musical memory.
Probably hearing that song “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” as a nursery rhyme or something.
I also remember singing along to the Allman Brothers and Vanilla Ice cassettes in my dad’s truck!
Describe your best musical memory to date.
My best musical memory is a recent one: Jim and I made a playlist for the hospital to listen to during our son’s arrival. The playlist ended up being longer than the entire labor and delivery process lol… One highlight was hearing “Faithless” by Social Distortion in the delivery room shortly after our son was born, which was our wedding song.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I can’t think of a specific time, but I remember thinking during my first marriage (which ended in divorce), “Gee, this is a lot harder than it looks!”
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Speaking for myself, I’ve gotten more comfortable advocating for my own musical ideas. I no longer need other band members to confirm for me that a riff or something is “cool” — not that I want to run a band dictatorship lol, but it feels good to have more confidence.
On the other hand, my “artistic progression” of playing in basement metal bands also means I’m rusty at things like reading sheet music.
How do you define success?
Music-wise, I think success is creating something that connects with your audience and communicates a story or feeling to them. And if people like it enough to buy it, even better!
In broader terms, success is spending your time in a meaningful way and making your corner of the world a better place — whether that’s through your relationships, job, art, or all of the above.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
I wish I could erase thousands of crime show episodes from my memory; I think they have made me distrustful and even paranoid about certain things. But on the other hand, there are a lot of disturbed people out there — and my aim is to avoid running into them.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Welp, Turkey Vulture has another five or six songs we could possibly record. Jim and I have talked about giving it a try this summer if we can wrangle the cost and scheduling. Until then, it’s gonna be all home-recorded GarageBand demos!
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To communicate ideas and feelings.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Watching our baby grow! And hopefully adding a little brother or sister to the lineup. ;)
