WCPO Lounge Acts

The Colorado-based quartet Slow Caves offers a relaxed and surfy update to '80s synth, '90s jangle and early 2000s indie rock on its EP Desert Minded, which dropped in March on Cincinnati's own Old Flame Records.

Danish-born brothers Jakob and Oliver Mueller handle vocals and guitars, rounded out by their childhood friends David Dugan on guitar/bass and Jackson Lamperes on the drums.

You'd swear the music video for "Glares" was yanked off reel-to-reel film footage they found at a thrift store, but they captured the fuzzy, nostalgic-looking scenes last summer on the final day of a trip across the pond in Denmark.

"We wanted the video to reflect how we are as a band internally, and kind of give people a taste of what it’s like to hang out with us. So, we handed the camera to our cousins, Kristian and Martin, and just kind of goofed around," the band told New Noise Magazine, which premiered the video in April. "We shot most of the footage at their school in Silkeborg (where Oliver and Jakob were born). The scenery there is unreal. We think the vibe of the video matches the song and our personalities really well."

Setlist:
- Desert Minded
- 2 Hrs!
- Girlfriend/Boyfriend
- Speaking in Tongues

Find more from Slow Caves at http://slowcaves.com
Find more from Lounge Acts at http://wcpo.com/LoungeActs

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This New York City trio rounds out Lounge Acts' Bunbury trifecta hot off the May 25 release of their synthy smooth single “So I Met Someone.”

“After a lot of dark, synth heavy disco-rock numbers, we wanted something with a different kind of energy,” VHS Collection told Billboard. “Our sound naturally evolves every few months, and we don't see any need to fight that.”

Members James Bohannon, Connor Cook and Nils Vanderlip have released two EPs since forming VHS Collection in winter 2014 and are looking forward to dropping their debut LP later this summer.

The group subscribes to a solitary confinement strategy of week-long bouts at a cabin in upstate New York to hash full songs out of the bits and pieces they’re constantly shooting back and forth digitally.

“During these sessions, the three members collaborate on every element of the song, with each member playing various instruments on the tracks. The band then weeds out the best of these home produced tracks to bring into the studio,” the group’s biography reads.

WCPO's Emmalee Smith caught up with VHS Collection after their performance at Bunbury to discuss their songwriting, breakups, and their favorite dumplings.

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Minnesota-born singer/songwriter Cobi performs new material for WCPO Lounge Acts. His debut solo single “Don’t You Cry For Me” hit No. 1 last June.

With a bluesy sound and inevitable Hozier comparisons, Cobi croons “Please help me chop this tree down/Or hold me from underneath/Words never once cut me down/Oh don’t you cry for me.”

The emotionally charged black-and-white music video concludes with the hanging of a black man after a white policeman gets shot in a scuffle.

“The song was written around the time when Michael Brown was killed, Baltimore was uprising and people around the country were protesting,” Cobi told Huffington Post. “There’s no denying the epidemic of police shooting unarmed black people. I hate seeing my friends living in fear and just had to speak what was in my heart and say what I felt needed to be said.”

Oscar Wilde thought “life imitates art far more than art imitates life,” but this is a seemingly clear case of the latter. Cobi has said he feels his job as an artist is to reflect the times we are living through.

Cobi followed up with an equally soulful second single “Prophet Story” in January.

Set list:
- "Church of the Lonely"
- "Burning One Down"
- "In the Arm of a Goddess"
- "Underneath"

For more about Cobi, visit cobimusic.net
For more Lounge Acts, visit wcpo.com/loungeacts

Mixed by Jonathan Barghout
Hosted by Austin Fast

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There are big ships and small ships, but the best of all is Frenship! This Los Angeles-based electro-pop duo met selling stretchy ladies’ garments at Lululemon and experimented with their sound before honing in on the ’80s-inspired, high-energy dual vocals that now define them.

James Sunderland and Brett Hite’s single “Capsize” went viral in June 2016, streaming more than 18 million times on Spotify within a month of its release and earning a nod as a contender for Spotify's Song of the Summer.

“Once the song came out and we started playing concerts, we realized how big it had become because the houses were packed and everyone was singing along,” Hite told The Fairfax Times. “We had this big song and we weren’t really prepared for it.”

By the time Frenship released its debut EP “Truce" and dropped the video in September, Capsize was (unfortunately) on its way to being named among Billboard’s 20 most underrated pop songs of the year. Going platinum just two weeks back, though, may bring some consolation.

Set List:
- "1000 Nights"
- "Carpet"
- "Kids"
- "Capsized"

For more, visit wcpo.com/loungeacts

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Colin Rigsby of colorful pop band Vesperteen performs live and chats for WCPO Lounge Acts.

What is it about Columbus that’s inspired so much joyous, colorful pop music lately? From world-beating duo Twenty One Pilots to up-and-comers Vesperteen, our neighbor to the north is doing something very right. Fronted by drummer/singer Colin Rigsby, Vesperteen channels the glammy vibe of Queen shot through with the sexual energy of 1980s Australian pop-rock icons INXS and the electronic bent of contemporary groups like Bleachers and The 1975.

The band’s self-titled 2015 EP features their signature digital pop anthem, “Shatter in the Night,” a rousing track that mixes programmed drums and keyboards under distorted vocals and guitars for an epic song that belongs in front of massive festival crowds even as the group makes its way up the musical ladder in sweaty rock clubs. The other tunes on that six-track effort stir in elements of gospel (“I Never Knew How to Love You”), ambient rock (“Obsess/Possess”) and the aforementioned INXS-like pop (“Feathers so Hollow”).

It makes sense that Twenty One Pilots drummer Josh Dun has tweeted out props to Vesperteen and worn the group’s merch, as he and Rigsby both drummed in the Columbus Christian-associated band House of Heroes before moving on to to their current projects. (They also reportedly share the same drum tattoo on their arms.)

After writing, recording and touring the world with House of Heroes for a decade, Rigsby took a break, only to find himself working on new music that turned into his solo project. The one-man-band’s name is a play on the word vespertine, which, fittingly, refers to something that flourishes in the evening. You know, like a rock band.

The mash-up sound has clearly made an impression on the group’s many followers (known as the Vesperteam), who were tapped earlier this year to star in a crowd-sourced video for the bouncy new wave single “What We Could Have Been.”

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Whether it’s finishing work on his long-awaited third solo album or finding the perfect spot for a new recording studio, Brian Olive is a man of infinite patience. That explains why the sessions for his upcoming effort, Living on Top, took close to three years, as the retro sound-loving former member of beloved Cincinnati garage rock icons The Greenhornes and Detroit’s hard-charging Soledad Brothers toiled to make sure it sounded just right.

Based on a preview of four songs Olive played on the latest edition of WCPO’s Lounge Acts podcast, the results are well worth the wait. Asked when he started working on Top, Olive was pretty sure it was 2015. But then he was reminded by a band member that it was actually the year before, explaining that “a few things” were getting in the way. “It was worth taking the time to do because I like the way this one worked out,” he said.

Taking over the Digital Lounge with an all-star band that included Yusef Quotah (Halvsies, You, You’re Awesome) on keyboards, Tim Seiwert (Whiskey Shambles, Casey Campbell) on drums, bassist Andy Jody (Barrence Whitfield & the Savages) and back-up singers Beth Harris (The Hiders, the Perfect Children) and Kristen Kreft (The Perfect Children), Olive rocked the room with a heavy dose of his patented Motown-influenced soul. The album’s title track is a propulsive choogle that mixes the blue-eyed soul of Steve Winwood’s Traffic with such Motor City legends as Mitch Ryder and Bob Seeger, with Olive handling both the chicken scratch lead guitars, yearning vocals and playing a wicked, frenetic saxophone solo.

For more from Brian Olive: http://www.brianolivemusic.com
For more from Lounge Acts: http://wcpo.com/loungeacts

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The power duo has met its match in Nashville’s Smooth Hound Smith. The duo consisting of guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Zack Smith and singer/percussionist Caitlin Doyle makes a righteous noise with a boot-stompin’, tear-in-your-beer fervor that earned them a spot opening for the Dixie Chicks last summer.

Drawing comparisons to everyone from fellow power duos the White Stripes and Shovels & Rope to Little Big Town and Jack Johnson, Smooth Hound Smith credit the eclectic musical soundtrack of their youths for the genesis of their unique approach.

More from Smooth Hound Smith: smoothhoundsmith.com
More from Lounge Acts: wcpo.com/lounge

Hosted by Gil Kaufman. Mixed by Brian Niesz

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Yoni Wolf of the alternative hip-hop group WHY? performs for WCPO Lounge Acts.

If Yoni Wolf had been born 20 years earlier he might have fallen into the same slipstream as poet/singers like Leonard Cohen, or been greeted as a kind of politically agnostic Bob Dylan. The longtime leader of Cincinnati-bred hip-hop/folk group WHY? definitely deals with politics on the band’s recently released sixth album, Moh Lhean. But they’re not the politics of street protests or the anti-anti-immigration polemics of songs like A Tribe Called Quest’s pointed Trump takedown, “We the People.”

Wolf is concerned with the politics of the heart, the legislation of figuring out where he stands in the world and where to find some light in all that darkness. It’s a topic he’s explored in depth over the group’s nearly 20 year career, but on Moh Lhean some of the cynicism and skepticism of the past is put on a shelf in favor of a more optimistic outlook.

“I would say this album is less… maybe it’s melancholic, but it’s less dark than previous WHY? albums,” says Wolf of the hope embodied in the image on the cover, a hand reaching skyward from under the water. Some people have seen it as a snapshot of man drowning, but for Wolf it’s the opposite: a stretch up, a sign of resilience. “I think there’s [also] a joyfulness and a rejuvenated… a new lease on life.”

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Dead Meadow's buzzy wash of words and jams make this music for lighting up incense in a dark room and just chilling with a bottle of bourbon (or other preferred mind-altering substance).

Nearly two decades and six albums along, Dead Meadow’s singer/guitarist Jason Simon, bassist Steve Kille and on-again-off-again drummer Mark Laughlin are self-recording their seventh album when they’re not on tour. Laughlin’s lawyer day job keeps him from the road, meaning Juan Londono of the Strangers Family Band is filling in for this trek to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

Jason Simon performs a solo acoustic session for WCPO Lounge Acts.

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Northern Kentucky rockers Frontier Folk Nebraska's name is “basically just words” that singer/guitarist Mike Hensley said popped out to them as they got their start a decade ago.

As they kick off their Warpig EP SXSW Tour on Thursday, March 9th in Nashville, the rock 'n' roll foursome leaves no false pretenses about the reputation they’ve earned as a set list-shunning live band.

“(Not having a set list) scared him to death when he first started,” Hensley said, pointing to bassist Matt McCormick, who came on in 2014 with drummer Mark Becknell. “This is who we are. We can’t get up and try and morph into something else. It’s either going to work or it’s not for everybody else. We’re there. We’re just going to be ourselves.”

Taking the stage at the largest music festival of its kind would give anybody stage fright, but Frontier Folk Nebraska is staying super chill about its swing through the Deep South before hitting South by Southwest on March 18 in Austin, Texas.

The 11-stop tour celebrates the release of their four-song EP Warpig, available March 24 via digital download and on cassette tape. Yes, you read correctly. Cassette. Too bad my dearly departed 2000 Pontiac Grand Am now rusting at a Tri-State scrap yard is my closest existing link to a cassette player.

Setlist:
- Girls Like Wine
- Cut You Loose
- interview -
- Sunken Ship
- Ghost on a Tap

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