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Premiere: “Motorcycle” By Lucky Witch and the Righteous Ghost

New Ways To Make Mistakes

“Motorcycle, there’s no god tonight. Only streetlights.”

Staten Island’s Lucky Witch and the Righteous Ghost is an eclectic group of erstwhile poltergeists.

LWRG formed in 2016 when vocalist/guitarist E. Niveous Rayside sought electronic sounds for the grunge-inspired music he was making. He started a musical partnership with his girlfriend (now wife), R. Brookes McKenzie, later rounding out the sound with bassist Eric Novak and drummer Jay Ackley. The quartet earned a cult following at the late SideWalk Café in the East Village.

“LWRG is driven by a strong muse to create,” says Niveous. Since 2016, the band has released a studio album called Spiderdust, as well as a live album chronicling their times in the East Village open mic scene called Night Owls. In 2019, they released an EP called All Hard Feelings, and they started off the year releasing their second studio album New Ways To Make Mistakes. Now the band is already crafting songs for album #3.

Motorcycle is the first single release from their second studio album, New Ways To Make Mistakes.

Self-described as “a concentrated ball of pure awesome,” LWRG is a rock n’ roll lineup with heavy grunge and garage influences, sprinkled with the ethereal chimes of a Suzuki Omnichord. “We have heard our sound referred to as “sunshine goth” and “What if the Cramps were Jefferson Airplane?” says Niveous. “We like to call it sparklegrunge. I write music for the sad kids.”

Motorcycle, inspired by the music of Curve, was written in the back of an Uber on the way to the studio to record LWRG’s first album. The dreary day inspired the song’s tale of a doomed motorcyclist. The video game Black Emperor by Jose Tomas Vicuna also served as inspiration.

The band worked with Alice Teeple to direct a live performance video with superimposed stock footage. Motorcycle was filmed on location in the cellar of a Gothic revival mansion in Hamilton Park, Staten Island. The eerie stone walls and psychedelic lights, straight out of the Addams Family, complement the dark lyrics of Motorcycle. 

Downtown is pleased to present the premiere of Motorcycle.

 

Purchase New Ways To Make Mistakes here

New Ways To Make Mistakes

 

SEE MORE:

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The Brilliance Shines Brightly At Rockwood Hall

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Clan of Xymox Materializes At Le Poisson Rouge

Categories
Featured Music

The Lion In Winter: Peter Murphy Returns To Le Poisson Rouge

“I’m a fucking legend!”

Peter Murphy has been through an immense ordeal since his last appearance at Le Poisson Rouge. During the month of August, Murphy played a highly-acclaimed series of intimate residency shows at the venue. Downtown covered two of the shows, including the final performance of his album Ninth.

Alice Teeple

The following night, those queued in the sweltering West Village for the Bauhaus show were informed that Murphy was unwell and unable to perform. Band members filed out one by one. He hadn’t sounded well the night before; his voice was raspy and breathless – perhaps he simply needed a night for some hot tea and rest.

It was much worse than that. During the Ninth performance, Murphy was teetering on the literal precipice of death, having unknowingly suffered a massive heart attack during sound check. The resulting burst of adrenaline coursing through his body allowed him to perform the entirety of the show.

Later, Murphy was whisked from his hotel to Lenox Hill Hospital for an emergency angioplasty and two stents.

“I could have died at any moment during that show,” he told Billboard in a recent interview.

He took several months to recover, regain perspective, and repair rifts with his former Bauhaus bandmates.

This week, Peter Murphy makes his return to LPR, as promised, wonky ticker be damned.

Murphy is a determined performer; he deeply values his audience, makes meaningful connections on stage, and lavishes salty affection. This was, however, a difficult show to witness. Despite his protestations, his health remains a concern.

Alice Teeple

Murphy’s legendary baritone has softened with his recent battles of the body, and the physical taxation of singing was evident in this performance. Bauhaus songs might have been a bit ambitious at the moment. The raw energy of Bauhaus relies on his wild barks and yelps, and with those mellowed, the energy shifted to the instrumentation of the band. Murphy made great strides to connect with the audience in more immediate ways, as well as the usual grousing about sound levels. “It’s not MY fucking fault,” he sassed at a heckler who complained about his microphone being too quiet.

He paced the stage in a gloriously ethereal sparkly shirt and bejeweled hands, gracing eager, reaching fingers with his presence and then stealthily ducking back into the fog; a wandering spirit shed of the stalking panther restlessness of his usual stage antics. Thankfully, he knew his limits, and vetoed a couple of numbers on the list…including Spirit.

“Play Terror Couple Kill Colonel!” one audience member impatiently shouted, perhaps mistaking Le Poisson Rouge for karaoke night at Sing Sing.

“Oh, yes, that IS a lovely song, isn’t it?” he replied tersely, denying their request and instead launching into a rollicking, if cautious, Bela Lugosi’s Dead. Ç’est la vie! A lowered spot illuminated Murphy into a ghoulish floating head, the effect eerie and haunting. “Undead, undead, undead,” he howled in an unearthly moan. Poor Bela.

Alice Teeple

The band was tight, with guitarist Mark Thwaite, bassist Emilio “Zef” China and drummer Marc Slutsky returning to the stage with a set full of Bauhaus classics.

The shining moment of the show was his passionate rendition of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything. “It’s a fucking good song, innit? Daniel Ash wrote the lyrics and I wrote the music.” He discussed its meaning to the band and how it represented an escape from a working-class factory town; not the kind of place to nurture a young artist.

Although this lion in winter might still need a bit more recovery time before attacking the stage again, it was truly good to see Peter Murphy perform live once more and in such good spirits. We wish him continued good health and beautiful artistry.

SEE MORE:

Peter Murphy Spits Roses At Le Poisson Rouge Residency

Flooded With Memories: They Might Be Giants Celebrates Thirty Years of Flood

The Brilliance Shines Brightly At Rockwood Hall

Album of the Year: Civilian by Frank Tovey

Clan of Xymox Materializes At Le Poisson Rouge

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Culture Featured Music

Clan of Xymox Materializes at Le Poisson Rouge

Clan of Xymox Materializes at Le Poisson Rouge

By Alice Teeple

Photos by Alice Teeple

Eyeliner? Check. Black lippie? Check. Mesh, lace and platform combats? All present and accounted for, with a gloomy rainy night for good measure.

It was undeniably a Clan of Xymox concert down in the rumbling subterranean catacombs of Le Poisson Rouge in the West Village. The venue found itself stuffed to the gills with New York City’s goths, punks, leather daddies, kohl-eyed Gen Xers, telephoto-wielding photographers…and most wonderful of all, a genteel-looking mama jacked up on Bud Light. She was over the moon to introduce the music of Xymox to her daughter. “I’m from the South, honey!” she shrieked with delight, waving to frontman Ronny Moorings. “We make our performers feel WELCOME!” She hugged everyone within her immediate radius, bumping the enthusiasm levels right up to eleven. What a fantastically eclectic crowd at this show.

NYC’s own Pawns and Chicago’s The Bellwether Syndicate (led by William Faith of The March Violets and Faith and the Muse) riled up the crowd with their outstanding sets. Thunderous, energetic, and gothic as hell, these two darkwave outfits were terrific choices to support Clan of Xymox.

Clan of Xymox
Ronny Moorings

For the uninitiated, it was a real treat to see this new material live as well as the members in great spirits. The Dutch band, featuring Moorings, Sean Gøebel, Mario Usai, and Daniel Hoffmann, made a blessed final stop in New York, wrapping up this leg of their Days of Black Tour. Clan of Xymox was finally completing a cross-continental schedule of shows. If they were fatigued from the series of sold-out gigs, they certainly showed no signs of it.

Continuously playing in various incarnations since their formation in 1981, Xymox still sounded fresh and prescient with their philosophical lyrics and screeching synths. Xymox rolled out their old tried-and-trues like A Day, Obsession, and Muscoviet Mosquito, but introduced plenty of newer tracks as well.

Moorings, with his wonderful mop of jet-black hair, was in fine form, making wry political jokes. He mischievously taunted the audience and encouraged clap-alongs, as synth player Sean Gøebel went hog wild on a melodica. At times Gøebel appeared almost otherworldly as he serenaded the crowd, twisting and turning like a mohawked, German Expressionist Pan. Hoffmann and Usai kept up the pace, basking gleefully in the stage fog. The real surprise of the night was an inspired cameo appearance by their friend Curse Mackey of Pigface.

Xymox wound up the evening with two encores, and finally sent the children of the night off to their lairs with Going Round. The set lists were divvied out to the devoted, and the Southern mama’s daughter triumphantly snagged one of  Mooring’s abandoned guitar picks.

“This will make a nice Christmas present for Mom. Maybe a necklace or something,” she said, just before the duo tackled Bellwether Syndicate’s William Faith in the lobby with big hugs and good ol’ Southern hospitality.

Yes, ma’am!

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Vixen In Disguise

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Culture Featured Music

Christine Smith Waits On The Far Side Of A Star

Christine Smith Waits On The Far Side Of A Star

By Alice Teeple

Photos by Alice Teeple

Christine Smith takes a drag from her well-deserved cigarette outside the Bowery Electric. She’s just wrapped a spectacular solo performance for her sophomore album release, Meet Me On The Far Side Of A Star. It’s fitting this album made its debut in the intimate Map Room: its twinkling, celestial backdrop placing Smith in a sort of netherworld somewhere between Weimar Berlin and Major Tom’s shuttle. 

“Oh dear! Looks like I’m molting,” she chuckles, as several wisps of black marabou feathers float from her dress to the sidewalk. She stamps out her smoke, signs a CD for a fan, and warmly greets old friends who came to see the songstress on her former stomping grounds. 

The Bowery is foggy, with a damp chill in the air: the kind of weather that reluctantly welcomes nostalgia and melancholy. This night, Smith served as the ferrywoman, steering the boat with electric piano keys and a small red Spanish accordion, through an emotive display of loss, longing, and regret. Christine Smith treads the line between days gone by and harsh modernity. She ruefully gazes back at the storms of the past with wry observation, hard-fought wisdom, and persistent optimism. She is a seasoned warrior armed with wit, poetic dreams and a delicious glass of red to calm those tides. 

Smith’s seen her fair share of touring and recording over the last twenty years, having played with Crash Test Dummies, Jesse Malin, and Ryan Adams; as well as sharing the stage with Bruce Springsteen, Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan, Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group, and H.R. of Bad Brains. 

With such a punk/rock background, it’s astonishing to hear Smith’s own gentle, conversational voice and classic piano plucked straight out of a 1930s cabaret. It turns out that during her early days living as an ex-pat in London, Smith supported herself playing jazz standards. From there she served as the musical director for Newsrevue (London’s longest-running satire show). 

There are strong elements of the Great American Songbook in this album, but Smith proudly wears her other influences on her sleeve – echoes of Petula Clark here, some Patti Smith there, some Simon LeBon flair, sprinkled with a bit of Angelo Badalamenti and 1950s doo-wop. She is a shining result of her eclectic tastes and influences. Her autobiography will be one hell of an incredible read one day. 

Meet Me On The Far Side Of A Star began as a collaboration with Texas singer-songwriter Victor Camozzi, who shared Smith’s passion for 1930s-40s American classics. A year and some massive life shifts later, Smith’s “achingly beautiful” masterpiece was finished. Meet Me On The Far Side Of A Star is an artistic triumph. Rolling Stone recently praised her track Happily Never After (featuring Tommy Stinson of the Replacements) as a top ten Country/Americana song of 2019. One hopes that Christine Smith keeps exploring her own voice and draws more from her deep well of experience and compassion.  

The album is available for purchase here.

It can also be streamed here:

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Culture Featured Music

Interview With Niabi Aquena of Searmanas

Niabi Aquena of Searmanas Comes to NYC

Niabi Aquena of Searmanas in an interview with Downtown

Listening to the opening strains of a Searmanas song is like falling into a murky pool of lucid dreams. The ethereal vocals of Niabi Aquena gently sprinkle cinematic fairy dust over her lush soundscapes. Her work has been described as “etheric darkwave,” with nods to Sigur Rós, Fever Ray, and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson. 

Searmanas (pronounced SHA-mah-nas) is the Irish word for “ceremony.” Much of her poetry explores nature and ritual through unusual sonic channels; for instance, she used the radiotelephony spelling alphabet in her song Opening With Phonetics. Aquena’s live performances transform her into a priestess solemnly creating altars of noodly wires and sound waves.

“I love the exploration of the role of ceremony within both urban and rural experience,” says Aquena.  “I like showing, not telling. I’m inspired by intensity and poetry. I’m a romantic.”

Although she has called NYC home for two decades, Aquena originally hails from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where the oldest mountain ranges found on earth surround the region with rolling hills and green pastures. Many of her atmospheric progressions sonically mimic that landscape. 

“I grew up in this beautiful place feeling as an outsider and a weirdo,” Aquena explains. “My mom named me from a New Age baby name book she found. I was 5’9” at age twelve; I had flaming red hair. I was different, and in rural Virginia, that was not accepted. This led way to a vulnerability founded in mettle.”

Aquena has since struck an intriguing balance with her place as a metropolitan artist, and the acknowledgment of the pastoral beauty that shaped her youth, through her mystical lyrics and transcendent electronic experiments. She is a unique fixture in the New York music scene, having shared the stage with other electronic visionaries like John Bender and Hieroglyphic Being. 

“The city certainly has taken my heart, and the rhythm of this place motivates me to my core.”

Seamanas
“The only solution I could come up with after hot compresses failed me, was an eyepatch! The pics from that show turned out cool though, so now I’m asked when I’m bringing the eyepatch back…”

Since debuting Searmanas in 2016, Niabi Aquena has been signed to Cleopatra Records and taken her project on tour all over the Midwest and East Coast. Aquena describes tour life as “grueling, but very rewarding.” On the last leg of a major tour, however, a minor crisis struck.

“I got bitten on my eyelid at someone’s place and my eye swelled up. I looked terrible but was playing a show that night. The only solution I could come up with after hot compresses failed me, was an eyepatch! The pics from that show turned out cool though, so now I’m asked when I’m bringing the eyepatch back…although it most certainly wasn’t a fashion statement!”

Aquena has lent her considerable talents to other bands such as Dead Leaf Echo and Textbeak, but she has many more plans for her solo project. 

“I’m waiting on getting a pedal. It takes the firmware from one of my favorite modular synths, but in a stompbox. Earlier this year I taught myself guitar, so I’m thinking of incorporating these two loves, modular synthesis, and guitar, together for the next iteration of Searmanas.”

Searmanas performs the Hart Bar on 7 November.

Check out Undo by Searmanas here:

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Peter Murphy Spits Roses At Le Poisson Rouge Residency

Peter Murphy
Peter Murphy
Peter Murphy at (le) Poisson Rouge

By Alice Teeple

All photos by Alice Teeple 

Peter Murphy is not resting on his laurels, hammering out the same songs for four decades. In fact, it speaks highly of his ever-evolving artistry that in 2019, his audience spans multiple generations. Scanning the sea of faces in the crowd at Le Poisson Rouge, where he is in residency this month, one sees the usual Siouxsie clones, spider dancing, Gen X goths, and wistful boomers. But there were many young faces present as well, equally eager to see their hero. Murphy has extraordinary charisma, even when he’s a bit salty. 

The Dust show at LPR was a jolt to the chakras. Murphy’s opener both nights, Soriah, blasted the room open with traditional Mongolian chant. The astonishing performance, created with a drum, bells, folk instruments and a loop, showcased the potential of the human voice. The introduction of Tuvan throat singing proved jarring to those who came expecting vampire songs, but it fit perfectly with the Asian and Middle Eastern-influenced sound on Dust. Murphy’s thundering voice has soldiered through recent strain and still holds court splendidly. It especially melted during the ode to his daughter, Girlchild Aglow.

Murphy commanded the stage with his full album shows, bringing a fierce intimacy with those hypnotic pale eyes of his.  And the clothing! For Dust he appeared clad in a jacquard kimono, massive rings on his spindly fingers. The singer has transformed from the gaunt spectre of youth to a veritable Emperor tarot card sprung to life; Lord Summerisle live in concert. 

There have been urban legends floating around of Murphy’s grouchiness, particularly over iPhones creating barriers to his performance, but he showed no sign of irritation this time. What did set him off, however, was a sound SNAFU.

“Stop the song! This isn’t on the album. STOP THE SONG!” he roared. “Alright, three verses is enough for a gig, innit?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he paced around the stage, thanking his band, and fled down the stairs into the darkness, leaving some fans confused; others roaring with laughter. All was well when he returned for the encore, “Subway.” And what an encore. He played with the audience, sour mood restored to joy, fingers hopefully reaching toward a blessing.

  • Peter Murphy
    Peter Murphy at (le) Poisson Rouge
  • Peter Murphy at (le) Poisson Rouge
  • Peter Murphy at (le) Poisson Rouge

The Ninth show and album had a more rock-n-roll oeuvre. The outfit of the night was a black Shakespearean blouse offset by long chains, and a patterned scarf that quickly made itself a nuisance and was last seen hurtling toward oblivion. 

“Why are you here tonight? Is it because I’m…gorgeous?” he drolly asked, basking in the ensuing shrieks like a sleek cat in a beam of sunshine. 

During I Spit Roses, a woman thrust a bouquet at him. The confetti of crimson petals exploded on the stage as the crowd sang the chorus. He was generous with praise for his musicians, particularly guitarist Mark Thwaite, and ended the show with the haunting violins of Créme de la Créme. Indeed.

The final shows are not to be missed. Murphy continues his residency through 19 August with the following performances:

15 August: Greatest Hits

16 August: Bauhaus (SOLD OUT)

18 August: Tribute to David Bowie (SOLD OUT)

19 August: Tribute to David Bowie 2

Purchase tickets here

Official Peter Murphy site

Peter Murphy
Peter Murphy at (le) Poisson Rouge