Recording: No Frills

Artist: No Frills

Song: Birthday

Recorded at The Gladstone Hotel's Melody Bar (Long Winter 8.3), January 11, 2020.

No Frills - Birthday

Perhaps taking cues from frontman Daniel Busheikin's lowkey manner, No Frills isn't out to get in your face with with extroverted swagger. Instead, there's some carefully-calebrated dynamics at play here — late-period Pavement hooks and the same sort of offhand narrative stance one might find in a Nap Eyes tune. Put it on stage though, and the five-piece rocks pretty convincingly.

[No Frills will be playing the Monarch on Friday, February 21st alongside $keleton Club, Condo, and Raymans. Long Winter is back on that same night, returning to Workman Arts for a night of art and music — including sounds from Mil-Spec, Korydor, Laps, Tallies, Isla Craig, Hua Li, Backxwash, Witchrot, Scorpio Rising, Lavender Bruisers and Tongue Patrol.]

Recording: Context, NA

Artist: Context, NA

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Somewhere Else, October 20, 2017.

Context, NA - unknown

So far as I know, this was only the second live appearance from this project, a vehicle for the poetic lyrics of Jonathan Pappo (best known as the beatkeeper in groups such as WHIMM and Hooded Fang). Bringing his guitar and atmospheric samples, he was given additional buoyancy with floating synth textures from Zoë Alexis-Abrams and Daniel Busheikin (of Grounders and also No Frills, a new-ish combo in which Pappo is also playing drums). I asked Pappo if the "NA" was an abbreviation for "North America" making this an address or if it stood for "not applicable" — and he simply said "yes", so that's a good hint of the terrain explored here: nonlinear but not too ungrounded, this mini-suite of four drifting songs promised more dreamy landscapes to come.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!