Azalia Snail, "Queen of Lo Fi," Plays Churchill's With Gun Outfit, Rat Bastard, This Thursday
Categories: Concert Preview
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| via myspace.com/azaliasnail |
| Azalia Snail |
What do you get when the equally weirdness-loving Roofless Records and Laundry Room Squelchers team up? Thursday, July 8 marks the first such promotional collaboration, but apparently, it yields an awesome night of lo-fi, scuzzy, and experimental sounds that marry old-school with new.
Representing the old-school (by now) is L.A. underground legend Azalia Snail, a solo wonderwoman who got her start in '80s New York, writing off-kilter, four-track hymns that managed to sound both lush and stripped-down. Thanks to boosterism from the radio station WFMU, she was soon dubbed the "Queen of Lo Fi." Finally crowned, though, she decamped to Los Angeles in 1999, a city perhaps more fitting for the psilocybin-dripping mood of her music.
Snail -- that's her real name -- is unabashed about the influence of psychedelics on her work, and cites past glam gods like T. Rex, Roxy Music, and Mott the Hoople among her idols.
Imagine stripping off all the studio layers of those groups, retaining their Oscar Wilde-ian lyrical and structural flights of fancy, and channeling it through a muse with an ethereal, dream-pop-worthy voice. In any event, Snail is a singular talent who New Times sister paper L.A. Weekly dubbed "Best New-Genre/Uncategorizable Artist" back in 2000 -- some 13 years after she had already been active in music.
Here's the video for "I Praise You," off her last studio album, 2006's Avec Amour:
The openers at this show are equally worthwhile. Olympia, Washington act Gun Outfit has been described as a sonic cousin of X, and the band features the same sweet male/female vocal interplay, but set atop more atonal, post-punk riffage. No Age are fans, which is all the underground-lo-fi co-sign you need. Here's their song "Phaedra":
Also performing are Dads, a Tampa act born from the ashes of a couple popular hardcore and noise bands from the city, as well as Miami left-field staples Rat Bastard (of course), and Amanda Green.
Azalia Snail. With Gun Outfit, Dads, Rat Bastard, and Amanda Green. 9 p.m. Thursday, July 8. Churchill's Pub, 5501 NE 2nd Ave., Miami. Admission is $5; age 18 and up; 305-757-1807; churchillspub.com
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