Mike Hadreas, the Seattle songwriter who’s drawn great acclaim for the beautiful and pained records he’s recorded as Perfume Genius, is in a “frazzled” pre-tour state. He’s about to leave for a second U.S. swing in support of last fall’s Too Bright, his third and best record. It will bring him to Manhattan’s Stage 48 on Thursday, March 19th, ahead of dates supporting big-deal Matador Records labelmates Interpol and Belle and Sebastian. I caught up with him by phone, shortly after his return from Rite Aid, where he “somehow spent like a hundred bucks” in cautious preparation. (“It makes me feel better to have various cremes and serums.”) 

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Sam Ray has been creatively restless and irrepressibly prolific for years. The Maryland producer has multiple aliases for delivering lo-fi of differing flavors. He’s in indie-pop acts like Julia Brown and Starry Cat, and leans punk with the slightly more amped group Teen Suicide. More often he produces gauzy ambient and lightly glitchy electronic music, both in the collaborative group Heroin Party and what seems to be his primary creative vehicle, Ricky Eat Acid. Ray plays two headlining shows in New York City in the next couple of weeks, one at Brooklyn’s Shea Stadium and one at Manhattan’s Mercury Lounge, a sign that the project might be entering a whole new phase. (more…)

“I think everything is ridiculous, is basically my philosophy,” says Matt Flegel. Going by his dark lyrics for the Calgary post-punk band Viet Cong, straight-up nihilism would have been another strong guess. If the end of Flegel’s previous band, Women, was one source of his bleakness, that’d be understandable. An onstage fistfight with bandmate and brother Pat in 2010 put that band on hiatus, thus nixing a European tour. And the tragic death of guitarist Christopher Reimer the next year precluded any chance the band had to continue. But despite all this, Flegel seems good-natured and bright about his second run at success, and is hardly the caricature of a tortured artist. And it’s perhaps because of his experience and perspective that even Viet Cong’s career-boosting “Best New Music” nod from Pitchfork was met with an even, matter-of-fact affability from Flegel: “Our manager was pumped.”

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