Archive for Kelley Stoltz

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Most Excellent News About A New Kelley Stoltz Album In The Offing

Posted in Uncategorized with tags on February 3, 2013 by johnbuckley100

We know that this Internet thing has been down ever since 2.5 billion people last night tried to download the My Bloody Valentine album, but today we have evidence it is back up and running, and it bringeth good tidings.  For those who remember a quieter, but no less happy time when the description of a San Francisco solo artist who crafted incredible rock’n’roll albums by his lonesome referred not to young Ty Segall, but to Kelley Stoltz, we have good news.  Well, in his own words:

i am lucky enough to say my new album will be released by a “fantastic record company” in spring of 2013.  It rocks and it rolls, it repeats, repeats – its got a 12 minute song, its got stuff about anarchists growing old, a song about love, a song about summertime and one about tickling tongues…ESG backs the EVERLY BROTHERS was the mantra.

There now.  Doesn’t that make your day?  The man whose Circular Sounds was the great musical discovery that everyone at Tulip Frenzy World HQ talked about, from its release that winter until it made #2 on the 2008 Tulip Frenzy Top 10 List ™ promises to be back this year with new music.  Yes, we liked 2010’s To Dreamers, but we are hoping this new ‘un fulfills the promise of Circular Sounds, and we await the day when the album arrives.  Don’t worry: tune in here and you will be the first to know.  And why should you care?  Because if Ty Segall is that relentless font of rock’n’roll energy, able to produce three good albums in a given year, think of Kelley as a high-end artisan crafting Ray Davies-inspired perfect musical gizmos in his atelier.   ESG backs the Everly Brothers? We can’t wait.

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Tim Presley’s White Fence And The Aromatherapy Of “Family Perfume”

Posted in Music with tags , , , on April 30, 2012 by johnbuckley100

With all the excitement over last week’s release of the gorgeous, epochal, mind-blowing Hair by Ty Segall and Tim Presley (d.b.a. White Fence), who knew that White Fence itself had just three weeks previously scented the air with Family Perfume, Vol. 1?  Things are getting interesting, folks, as for the next few weeks, the Center of the Rock’n’Roll Universe is wherever Messrs. Segall and Presley bring their caravan of strange psychedelica, culled from the grease pits and toolkits of an urban garage.

Just a few weeks ago, your friends at Tulip Frenzy were offering career advice to young Ty Segall that he should find a way to team up with fellow Bay Area solitary studio habitué Kelley Stoltz.  We now realize perhaps how conventional that team might have ended up being — with no insult in the least intended to Mr. Stoltz, whom we hold in high esteem.  Whereas, based not only on his pedigree — Darker My Love, The Strange Boys, The Nerve Agents, just to name a few of the bands Tim Presley’s played in — but also on the sheer sonic weirdness of White Fence, the combo of Segall and Presley is like the two brainiacs at the Mensa Convention who find that one has the Nitrous, the other the Oxide, and laissez les bon temps rouler.

Just as there is more computing power in an iPhone than there was in the Apollo moon shots, there’s probably more studio muscle in Garageband than George Martin had at Abbey Road.  A generation back, Olivia Tremor Control figured out how to produce music as magical as Sgt. Pepper’s with a four track and a bong, but on Family Perfume, Vol. 1, Presley sees them and raises them one by building a psychedelic masterpiece all by his lonesome.  Go listen to “Balance Yr. Heart” followed by “Do You Know Ida Know,” and ask yourself whether if we played them for you, and told you the names of the songs and the album title, and went on to tell you these were lost tapes emanating out of the Elephant 6 basement, you’d give us even a momentary argument.  You know you wouldn’t.  And you haven’t even heard the album yet!

Tim Presley operates like some cosmic rock’n’roll throwback.  His name is Presley, for cryin’ out loud, and according to this very interesting interview in Vancouver’s online Scout Magazine, White Fence operates like something not seen since the heyday of Chuck Berry: three different road bands to back him up, depending on where he is.  There’s an L.A. version, a San Francisco version, and we’re betting it’s the New York version that backs Segall and Presley for this East Coast dates in May (alas, only Portland, ME, and NYC.)

Thank Heaven for cheap technology, because Vol. 2 of Mr. Presley’s aromatherapy is being released in just a few short weeks.  Whatever is happening in the universe in the month of May, there’s nothing we can imagine that will be more exciting than seeing White Fence and Ty Segall get up on a stage together.  A one-man Pixies meets a one-man Alex Chilton-meets-the-Beatles-in-Topanga-Canyon-circa-1967.  The mind boggles.

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Waiting For Ty Segall To Roll Out Of The Garage

Posted in Music with tags , , on April 16, 2012 by johnbuckley100

Do Ty Segall and Kelley Stoltz ever get together over beers and talk shop?  You can kind of imagine the scene — the San Francisco fog coming in on little cat feet, Kelley fresh from his day job in a record store, en route to going home and, without benefit of bandmates, recording a perfect update of Ray Davies-style pop craft; Ty fresh from the studio where, without benefit of bandmates, he’s just recorded a perfect update of Ray Davies “I Can Only Give You Everything” punk rock…  Imagine what would happen if ever they teamed up, with a proper rhythm section?

We are eagerly awaiting the release of Segall’s next album, this one a collaboration with another human being, Tim Presley, under the heading of Ty Segall & White Fence.  Hair is due out on Drag City on the Queen’s birthday, April 23rd.  We wonder if, forced to work with another musician instead of, Prince-like, on his own will force the young genius to add, you know, bridges and choruses to the incredible riffs he’s capable of churning out in songlets at 1:40 in average length.  Segall is one hell of a rock’n’roll guitarist, singer, and (partial) songwriter, as he proved on last year’s gem, Goodbye Bread, as well as 2010’s Melted.  The Kelley Stoltz reference is true to the point that these are San Francisco-based pop historians that can produce incredible records on their own, but it breaks down when you consider that Stoltz is a craftsman carefully working alone in his atelier and Segall is a tyro churning out crude, if exciting fare in his garage.

The fatal flaw in most solo records in which the artiste-as-utility-infielder plays all the positions tends to be the drumming, the lack of swing that comes from not having bandmates to get that first track laid.  From Paul McCartney to Skip Spence to John Fogerty to Paul Westerberg, the underlying and unsatisfying weak spot has been the drumming.  This is one of the remarkable things about what Kelley Stoltz has been able to do — as the sometime drummer in Sonny & The Sunsets, Kelley’s got the drumming covered.  And Segall’s an adequate drummer, we guess.  But one of the reasons why punk rock is so much fun is that musicians who have not mastered their instruments mask it by playing really fast.  With Segall — who has more than mastered guitar — we still have to deal with Black Sabbath meters, when we’re yearning for something with a little more energy.

We’re counting off the days til April 23rd, as it sure will be nice to hear his work leavened by, you know, an additional human or two on bass’n’drums.  Meantime, we’ll just marvel at his prodigious talent and output.

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Tulip Frenzy’s #3 Album of 2010: Kelley Stoltz’ “To Dreamers”

Posted in Music with tags , on November 30, 2010 by johnbuckley100

By what alchemy is it possible that Kelley Stoltz can produce these handcrafted geegaws, mostly playing the instruments all by himself, that still swing like a band playing after midnight, when the crowd’s gone home, just for the sheer joy of proving their craft?  Look, as some folks who hang out in these parts know, we believe an injustice was done to Kelley in 2008 when the jury at Tulip Frenzy awarded Bob Dylan Album Of  The Year honors for Tell Tale Signs, an album of older, unreleased tracks, while Stoltz’ Circular Sounds was clearly the best album recorded and produced in that year.  We would like, this year, to have awarded To Dreamers the laurels, but in the honors race, it was at best this year’s tribune, as the consulship was claimed, fair and square by someone else.  Look, here’s what Kelley Stoltz does: he writes songs that veer from Ray Davies-like storytelling perfection to whimsical explorations of oddball sounds, and makes albums that contain beauty, verve, and kicks.  That’s all.  And he does it with a sense of humor, but mostly the sense of dedication to craft normally thought to be the province of, say, that woman in Naples who spends her entire life sewing just button holes, nothing else.  Like Hans Chew (see below), Kelley Stoltz’s amazing To Dreamers is the kind of album that just doesn’t get made anymore.  Oh, sure, Prince can still crank out two, maybe three albums a day over in Paisley Park, without contact with a single other human being.  Stoltz’ work is more like that first John Fogerty album, that first Paul McCartney album, where an artist creates what he needs from the material he has: his own guitar, bass, and drums.  He does it his way.  We don’t want to emphasize solitude, because for all we know, Kelley may be the life of the party.  What we want to emphasize is craft, deliberation, artistic clarity, dedication.  All bundled up in album filled with whimsy, hooks, and rock’n’roll joy.

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On Why The Re-Released “Exile On Main Street” Won’t Be Tulip Frenzy’s Album Of The Year

Posted in Music with tags , , , , , , on November 29, 2010 by johnbuckley100

There’s no question that the remastered Exile On Main Street, with its incredible unearthing of songs long presumed buried in Villefranche-sur-Mer, was the album we most anticipated, and it’s possible that “Plundered My Soul” was the best song released by any band other than Chappo.  It may well have been the music event of 2010.  And with those new tracks, it could even qualify as a “new” album.

But two years ago, when Dylan’s magisterial Tell Tale Signs was released with a few “new” songs but mostly rearrangements of songs that had been released earlier, we were moved to declare it #1 on Tulip Frenzy’s Top Ten List for 2008.  After all, we reckoned, when the history of 2008 is written, the release of Tell Tale Signs will be considered its landmark musical achievement.  And yet, in so doing, we screwed others.  We specifically screwed Kelley Stoltz, whose Circular Sounds, but for Dylan’s re-release, would have captured the top slot, going away.

And so we take this stand: we won’t list Exile as 2010’s top album, because in actuality it was 1972’s top album, and would have been so designated then by Tulip Frenzy if the gang hadn’t been more concerned with, like, passing Algebra 1 than publishing a blog.  This will offer justice to those young pups who deserve to be known as the makers of the Tulip Frenzy #1 Top Album of 2010.  We know who they are.  They are, for the record, younger than Mick’n’Keith, who while not quite needing walkers, certainly don’t need any more accolades than they get already.

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Kelley Stoltz Returns, Better Than Ever

Posted in Music with tags , , , on October 13, 2010 by johnbuckley100

Kelley Stoltz’ To Dreamers picks up where the most excellent Circular Sounds left off, which is to say, at the portal to Heaven.

Philosophers have debated since back in the day just what, exactly, constitutes Heaven.  It’s kind of a big question.  For the gang at Tulip Frenzy — who two years ago voted Circular Sounds the 2nd Best Album of 2008 — it’s fair to say that a record constructed, nay, handcrafted as a bespoke paean to the songwriting of Ray Davies, with such alchemical ability that can render a harpsichord a backing instrument in a garage band, is a good place to begin.

Look, some people keep searching for the New New Thing, and maybe it reveals conservative leanings that we think the post-British Invasion sounds of albums like Between The Buttons and Revolver just might represent the Apogee of Man. So of course we believe that in Kelley Stoltz we have found a kindred spirit.  We’d say he doesn’t get out much, but just recently we’ve heard his drumming with Sonny and the Sunsets, so we know he isn’t a shut-in, living with cats and his collection of vintage 45s.  And yet it is clear that this is a gentleman who has spent many an hour in quiet and solitary contemplation of the classics — you know, The Kinks Kronicles and the like.

If you can listen to the Buddy Holly-esque “Baby I Got News For You” without feeling a thrill, or can hear “Little Girl” without wondering aloud how ONE MAN CAN MAKE THAT ENTIRE SONG, then you have evolved to a higher plane than us.  We fully anticipate “Keeping The Flame” will find its way into our noctural reveries — maybe that’s why he calls the album To Dreamers. We could see Devendra Banhart nodding his locks to “Ventriloquist,” and honestly, “Fire Escape” sounds like what “All Day And All of The Night” would have turned into if Ray Davies had chewed on speed served up by the Diggers.

Not everything on To Dreamers is better than Circular Sounds — that would be difficult because Circular Sounds will, we feel confident, have a permanent place in God’s own jukebox.

So maybe let’s just leave it here: there are some albums and some artists that you should play at 2:30 AM, while contemplating whether it’s worth even waking up in the morning.  Kelley Stoltz is not that artist, and To Dreamers is not that record.  Of course ad agencies go nuts when a new Kelley Stoltz album comes out — I can think of ads for hotel chains and regional banks constructed from ditties from the guy’s last two albums — for this is the soundtrack to a bright Saturday morning with the coffee ready to pour and the dog thumping her tail on the floor, ready to play. And yeah, that’s pretty close to our idea of Heaven.

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2nd Best Album of 2008, Kelley Stoltz’s “Circular Sounds”

Posted in Music with tags , , , on December 8, 2008 by johnbuckley100

Classicists — and apparently creative directors at the nation’s advertising agencies — rejoiced when Kelley Stoltz released Circular Sounds in January.  It is not enough that half of the best songs used in ads in the last year came from his previous album, Below The Branches; many of the best songs from this one are — whether you realize it or not — blaring from ads for banks and hotels on car radios.   And if the only way he can get on the airwaves is through having his little gems cut into zircon jingles, we’ll still take it.  What the world needs now is not, as David Lowery once had it, a new Frank Sinatra: it’s a new Ray Davies.   Stoltz has put out the best Kinks album since Preservation.  This would have been Tulip Frenzy’s #1 choice had not a certain Mr. Zimmerman staked his claim.  “When You Forget” was probably played on the TF office  iPod more than any other song this year.  Dollars to donuts the same thing can be said this time next year.

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Down The Rabbit Hole With Kelley Stoltz

Posted in Music with tags on March 2, 2008 by johnbuckley100
  • Finding a review of Kelley Stoltz’s “Circular Sounds” in the, I dunno, February or March issue of Uncut may have been a mistake.  Until then, blissfully ignorant of his work, I was just an ordinary fiend, listening to my Beatles and Beefheart, taking my Kinks straight up without a chaser, leaving room in my heart and my iPod for the Eels and Devendra Banhart.  But then I made the mistake of listening to “Circular Sounds,” and let me tell you, we can call off the rest of 2008.  The best album of the year was released in February.  
  • My bigger mistake, though, was pulling on the thread and dragging up “Below The Branches,” the album Stoltz released in 2006.  So it’s maybe better than “Circular Sounds.” It is, minimally, its equal.  Ah, but was I content to leave things there? Oh, no.  I had to keep pulling, had to get “Antique Glow” and “The Past Was Faster.”  Not as good as the two most recent albums, mostly because of production values, or the lack thereof.  The early ones seem more of the DIY, homegrown, low-fi variety, while the two most recent albums seem to have been delivered to us like tablets from the pop-rock deities.
  • So, it’s been down the rabbit hole with Kelley Stoltz.  And here’s a quiz to determine whether you’ll soon be joining me, whether you can talk your way past the doormen, that seven foot monster with his midget pal.  Do you like the Kinks?  The Beatles, particularly the Lennon songs? Is your idea of a good Paul McCartney song “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?” Have you found yourself moved by the pure bohemian beauty of Devendra Banhart’s songs?  Were you ever at least mildly amused by the sensibilities of Camper Van Beethoven?  Do you like Nick Drake in small doses?  Did you ever hear Henry Badowski’s absolutely bizarre 1981 album “Life Is Grand”?  Do you like any of the Elephant 6 bands, particularly Beulah, Apples in Stereo, and Olivia Tremor Control?  Will you admit, either publicly or at least to yourself, that you kind of liked one or two Harry Nilson songs?  Do you, as I do, hate the Beach Boys, while admitting that Brian Wilson’s weirdly overwhelming impact on recent white pop music is not all bad?  At any time in the last five years have you listened to David Bowie’s”Pin Ups” album, especially his version of “See Emily Play”?
  • Answer yes to any two of the above questions and you can join me down the rabbit hole in Kelley Stoltz’s Wonderland where pop music is crafted by hand, and is delivered by a divine messenger.  Hurry.  Wouldn’t want to be late.

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Kelley Stoltz “Circular Sounds” Gets A Jump on The Best Of 2008 Lists

Posted in Music with tags , , , , on February 18, 2008 by johnbuckley100

Because they’re friends, the reference point for San Francisco-based pop genius Kelley Stoltz has tended to be Brendan Benson.  And I can see that: they’re both incredibly clever pop classicists who can craft bespoke masterpieces out of threads pulled from old Beatles and Kinks records. On “Circular Sounds,” Stoltz’s brand new album, (his fourth) you could easily see him fitting into the Elephant Six Collective, with “Everything Begins” bearing resemblance to something by Beulah, and more than a few other songs invoking the late great Olivia Tremor Control.  But I mean this as the highest compliment: Stoltz is the pop Wes Anderson.  No, not for anything having to do with preciousness, but because of the way he conjures the greatest small moments from the exceedingly weird 1970s.  There’s a Spirit/Randy California-ish ring to the guitar, but Ray Davies and the Kinks — heroes of Wes Anderson —  would seem to be the songwriting model invoked most often.  Here is a completely realized vision: power pop (lower case ‘p’s) based on beautiful songwriting so removed from current trends and sensibilities that if you told me this was some great lost record from 1973, I’d fall for it completely.  Just as I fell for “Circular Sounds.”  Doubt me? Go to the iTunes store and listen to “When You Forget.”  If you can resist, you’re probably the type that can eat one potato chip.

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