Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith w/ Rachika Nayar
Starline Social Club and Live Nation PresentKAITLYN AURELIA SMITHRACHIKA NAYARLive in the BallroomFriday December 9, 2022 – Doors @ 8pm$20 adv // $22.50 dos18+—————— Since the release of her 2017 LP The Kid, American composer, artist, and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has focused her energy in several directions. She founded Touchtheplants, a multidisciplinary creative environment for projects including her modular synth work Tides: Music for Meditation and Yoga and the first volumes in her instrumental Electronic Series (Abstractions, 2018) and pocket-sized poetry books on the practice of listening within. She’s continued to explore the endless possibilities of electronic instruments as well as the shapes, movements, and expressions found in the physical body’s relationship to sound and color. In advance of new music, Smith begins 2020 with the announcement of her signing to Ghostly International and a tour supporting Caribou through the US and Europe Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s formative years were spent communing with nature on Orcas Island in the northwest region of Washington state, a place she describes as “one of the most magical and peaceful places I have ever been.” Though she wouldn’t begin experimenting with modular synthesis for years, her creative work is infused with and inspired by the vitality and serenity of Orcas. Smith left to attend Berklee College of Music, where she studied composition and sound engineering, initially focusing on her voice before switching to classical guitar and piano. She employed the skills she refined in college in her indie-folk band Ever Isles, but a fateful encounter with a neighbor who lent her a Buchla 100 synthesizer had a profound effect on her. She explains “I got so distracted and enamored with the process of making sounds with it that I abandoned the next Ever Isles album.” Starting with rhythmic patterns and melodic pulses, she began sculpting lush and exciting worlds of sound. What began as a curious excursion soon became a fully forged path. 2015 saw the release of Smith’s full-length, Euclid, a playful and wide-eyed album that spurred from her experiments in writing music for geometric shapes while at the San Francisco Conservatory. A clear step forward from the nebulousness of her previous output, Euclid drew acclaim from all reaches of the experimental music world and cleared a path for Smith’s successive longform work under her birth name. Little more than a year later Smith returned with her wonderstruck psychedelic breakthrough EARS to universal praise in the spring of 2016. Pitchfork called EARS “rich and rewarding” remarking aptly that Smith “focuses on a narrow band of feeling – wonder, curiosity, disorientation, bliss – and constructs a gleaming sonic world to house them.” The site included both EARS, and Smith’s collaboration with longtime influence Suzanne Ciani, Sunergy, as two of the top twenty experimental albums of the year, while other outlets including NPR, SPIN, and Rolling Stone sung similar best-of-the-year praises. In addition to her collaboration with Ciani that year Smith teamed with Mark Pritchard for Absolut’s remix series, toured with fellow sonic-adventurists Animal Collective, and soundtracked Google’s incredible virtual tour series The Hidden Worlds of the National Parks.
DURRY w/ Good People Collective
Starline Social Club PresentsDURRYGOOD PEOPLE COLLECTIVELive in the Crystal Cavern at Starline Social ClubMonday September 19 2022 – Doors @ 7pm$13 adv // $16 dosAll Ages————————-Formed in 2020 in the depths of the pandemic, quarantined siblings Austin and Taryn Durry joined forces to make music together for the very first time. In 2021 their careers were launched by their tiktok viral track Who’s Laughing Now. Quickly gaining notoriety on social media and beyond, Durry is poised and ready to take on the music scene with their unique brand of Nostalgic Indie-Rock.
Jockstrap w/ Ernest Rareberrg
Starline Social Club PresentsJOCKSTRAPERNEST RAREBERRGLive in the BallroomTuesday December 6, 2022 – Doors @ 7pm$17 adv // $20 dos18+——————-
Chris Pureka w/ MaryLeigh Roohan
Starline Social Club PresentsCHRIS PUREKAMARYLEIGH ROOHANLive in the BallroomWednesday July 20, 2022 – Doors @ 7pm$20 adv // $25 dos18+————– It’s rare for an artist to bridge the divide between critical acclaim and dedicated fan engagement. Chris Pureka is a Portland-based singer-songwriter whose body of work has resonated deeply with these seemingly disparate milieus. Her music has straddled the folk, americana and indie rock genres over the course of her 20 year career, and over that time, her bold vulnerability in processing the intimacies of life in song has struck a chord with those listeners who crave authenticity and depth. Chris’s elegant emotionality as a vocalist and her flair as a lyricist have garnered her favorable comparisons to Chan Marshall, Bruce Springsteen, and Patty Griffin. Over many years of touring on both sides of the Atlantic, she has shared the stage with such diverse and esteemed artists as The Lumineers, Gregory Alan Isakov, The Cowboy Junkies, Haley Heynderickx, and Ani DiFranco. She has had her songs featured on such television shows as Brothers and Sisters, Covert Affairs and Shameless and well as a song featured in the Sundance featured indie film, The Royal Road. Along the way, Chris has remained truly independent, selling nearly 50,000 albums through her own label, Sad Rabbit Records.
Strand of Oaks w/ Pat Finnerty
Starline Social Club PresentsStrand of OaksPat FinnertySaturday May 21 2022 – Doors at 7pm$18 adv // $22 dos18+—— To say In Heaven is about conquering grief would be oversimplifying everything Tim Showalter has achieved on the eighth studio album from Strand of Oaks. A stunning, hopeful reflection on love, loss, and enlightenment, In Heaven is a triumph in music making, and a preeminent addition to the Strand of Oaks discography. In late 2018, Showalter’s wife, Sue, lost her mother in a car accident. Soon after, Stan, the cat they both adored, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Showalter quit drinking so he could take better care of his wife and help rebuild the life they shared. And within months, they decided to pack up and move across the country from Philadelphia to Austin, Texas. It was an irrational decision made at the height of a terrible time, but it’s one that shaped so much of what In Heaven is about. In Heaven was recorded in October 2020 with Kevin Ratterman at Invisible Creature in Los Angeles. Carl Broemel (My Morning Jacket) is featured on guitar throughout the record, while James Iha (The Smashing Pumpkins) contributed vocals and guitar for “Easter.” Bo Koster (MMJ, Roger Waters) provided keyboards, Cedric LeMoyne (Alanis Morrissette, Remy Zero) bass, Scott Moore violin, and Ratterman monstrous drums. Showalter also played a lot of synth on this record, which he hasn’t done since 2014’s HEAL. With clean sounds, Jeff Lynne-esque acoustics, and sophisticated songwriting, he approached In Heaven in a more poised and pop-leaning way than his past releases. “I wanted to strive for something greater than what I thought I was capable of.”
Joy Again w/ Rebounder & LoserLees
Throwin Bo’s PresentsJOY AGAINREBOUNDERLOSERLEESWednesday April 20 – Doors @ 7pm$18 adv // $20 dosAll Ages———
Emily Wells w/ Arthur Moon
Emily Wells Friday June 10, 2022 – Doors 8pm // Show 9pm $18 adv // $20 dos 18+ ——– Emily Wells “Quietly transfixing” composer / producer Emily Wells is known for her varied use of classical and modern instrumentation, “a master of blending the worlds of classical and electronics” (NPR) and “dramatic, meticulous and gothic songs” (New York Times). On stage Wells’ builds a “new instrument” out of acoustic and electronic drums, synth, violin, and her evocative performances leave audiences equal parts dancing and grieving. Wells’ latest work, This World is Too _____ For You released in March has been hailed by NPR as “breathtaking” “mind-blowing” and “visionary”. The ten song album, arranged for chamber ensemble by composer Michi Wiancko, was commissioned by Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series and Metropolis Ensemble who performs on the album along with drummer / composer Shayna Dunkelman (Du Yun, Xiu Xiu). “The new songs are the rub between desire for, and desire to strip oneself of all wanting” Wells says of the new material, which clamors around all the edges, and sometimes into the center of our collective uncertainties. “I grew up with hymns and I often find myself drawn to a form that seeks redemption, even for transgressions unknown… they are an offering, an oath. As a queer kid raised in the south and the midwest by a music minister and a preacher’s daughter I am interested in the reclamation of themes and ideas that have often been used to constrain me.” Of Wells’ video work, which accompanies her performances, she says, “the video and the songs are mirrors of one another: grace, the body, movement, and the natural world, beating against our windows, drunk with the answer.”
Jenny Hval w/ Discovery Zone
Jenny Hval Doors: 7pm Show: 8pm