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Spirit Vine
Rock
Los Angeles, CA
Date and Time
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
8:30pm
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DEAD DAWN / VIRGINIA REED / SPIRIT VINE / HEPA/TITUS 8:30pm / FREE / 21+Dead Dawn || WatchVirginia Reed If Virginia Reed’s debut album, She Is The Horse, were a cocktail it would be the delicious swill in the depths of a Jim and Coke. It’s unpolished and gritty. It’s raw and real. It accomplishes exactly what that last slurp of whiskey has in mind — it hits the fuckin’ spot.…Virginia Reed is the solo project of Keith Hendriksen — a relatively unknown Hollywood troubadour whose distinctly lo-fi recordings tiptoe the line between catchy indie-rock and sweetly unrefined folk. But this isn’t folk fit for bales of hay and barnyards, it’s folk for the smokey venues and dim-lit lounges of urban cores. It’s less Norman Rockwell — more Upton Sinclair.Virginia Reed chucks the standard acoustic-drums-strings format of folk out the window, and replaces it with a hodgepodge of multi-tracked vocals, noise machine sound effects, and a brashly strummed guitar. She Is the Horse covers a lot of ground on the musical spectrum by mixing experimental noise with classic folk. “Loveless Junkies,” the second song off She Is The Horse, features exceptional double-tracked vocals — as one line sails high and melodic, the other hangs low — emerging from the mysterious hollows of Hendriksen’s voice with a modest boom.The album’s eerie edge is probably an adaptation of its recording locations. The tracks on She Is The Horse were reportedly recorded in mental institutions, rehabilitation centers, and trailers. This comes as no surprise, since Hendriksen’s uses his noise machine to give many songs ambient, swirling backings that sound like a pack of howling ghosts.The record’s real foot-tapping, head-bob-inducing track is the outro “Little Did He Know” — which is speedy, with the quintessential folky twang and hard-luck lyrics. With the grainy bass line sounding like it’s coming out of a busted headphone, She Is The Horse concludes with the same pleasantly unrefined sound it begins with. Sometimes squalor is nice, and in a city inundated with over-produced pop music, Virginia Reed’s debut album comes through with a refreshing balance of a coarse sound created by polished musical techniques.By Whitney HawkeSpirit Vine || Listen||Watch Picture yourself on a boat on a river, riding on the wave of a musical crescendo as you’re taken by a hazy groove and the swell of an organ … and then the drugs take effect. The new EP from Los Angeles-based quintet Spirit Vine offers three psychedelically fueled tracks that synesthetically alter the senses and tantalize the ear’s taste buds. Entitled Golden, the EP begins with a track of the same name; however, the songs on the release are more of a dirty, whirling kaleidoscope of sound—an intoxicating blend of soulful vocals, insightful lyrics, incendiary tone, heavy bass and pulsing rhythm. The title track features time changes that slow down and speed up in awesome form that return to a hook telling us we’re “nothing but a state of mind.” Following that is the track “Lazy Son,” with Gabriel Pacheco (guitar/vocals)singing lead, portraying a title character who is “a piece of everyone,” while Jacquelinne Cingolani (vocals) and the rest of the band harmonize with reverb-drenched vocals. And the final track, “Roam,” is so good it defies description! Despite each song’s epic length of over five minutes per track, the new EP is so good, I feel I owe the band gas money for the trip.LA RecordHepa/Titus|| Facebook Kevin Rutmanis- cows, teenage larvae, gaswar, melvins, tomahawk, Hepa/TitusSterling Riley- likes to go to the desert to let things cool off, Heap of Titans, Hepa/Titus… Dana Young- c.a.n.s., testicular homicide, psyche meds, aerial pink, zeppelinDavid Sender – union 13 Share: