In a little bit over 24 hours, Raleigh’s first-ever Hopscotch Music Festival will inundate downtown with over 120 bands. And on Saturday during that festival Churchkey celebrates its third birthday with a free day party at Tir Na Nog. Lasting from noon to 5 p.m. and headlined by the excellent Hammer No More The Fingers, Churchkey Three is a celebration of the three fun years we’ve had so far and the prospect of many more to come. To make sure you’re ready, we’ve got the last entry in our interview series. Today David Menconi of The News & Observer interviews Free Electric State, who is also playing our little shindig. Happy birthday to us.
Hopscotch, the music festival that kicks off Thursday in downtown Raleigh, is throwing a national spotlight onto the Triangle music scene — including Churchkey Records, the local label marking its third anniversary. Churchkey is sponsoring one of Hopscotch’s many free dayparties Saturday afternoon at Tir Na Nog in Raleigh, with a good chunk of the label’s roster playing. See below for an interview with one of them, Free Electric State, which is one of seven such interviews done on local blogs in conjunction with Hopscotch. And I’ll see you out and about this weekend.
Time in bars is often time misspent, but it worked out very well for Free Electric State. The band’s genesis goes back to Durham nightspot The Pinhook, where Nick Williams was tending bar in late 2008. David and Shirle Koslowski were among the regulars at Pinhook, where they’d regularly get into musical geek-talk with Williams – especially their mutual love of ’70s Krautrock and early-’90s shoegazer bands like My Bloody Valentine.
At the time, the Koslowskis were finishing up their run with the new-wave pop band Gerty, and they were looking to start something louder. So one night, they asked if Williams knew anybody who played guitar. Sure, Williams said, I do. Free Electric State was born shortly after that, and the band is decidedly louder and more aggressive than Gerty ever was. But the new group is no less catchy. “Caress,” Free Electric State’s Churchkey Records debut album, is a terrific example of the fact that crushing volume and melodiousness need not be mutually exclusive. In fact, Free Electric State’s melding of to-the-gut whomp with candy-coated sweetness is very much like My Bloody Valentine.
“My Bloody Valentine is the best, in my opinion,” Williams says. “Very cerebral. But one of our big influences that gets overlooked a lot is Swervedriver, which is first and foremost a rockin’ band that happened to have great, lush textures.”
“Yeah,” David Koslowski adds, “those big-guitar swirly rock songs with lots of great hooks and melodies. That’s what we want to do.”
Mission accomplished on “Caress,” which is remarkably cohesive given the circumstances of its making. After Jett Rink’s Tony Stiglitz signed on as drummer, the group recorded the album after being together less than six months, with little in the way of collaborative songwriting.
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We’re excited to announce the upcoming release of two records we love this fall: The new Spider Bags 7″, “Take It Easy Tonite” will hit store shelves on October 19th, and the debut album from Last Year’s Men, Sunny Down Snuff will be in stores on November 9th.
