It has been a lot of work, but the idea is to create something really cool and special that goes beyond clicking some “content” on the internet to be immediately consumed and moved on from.
Of the many songs included, there is a brand new Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends song called Chekov’s Grift. Anyway, buy link in the comments because that’s how the ZUCK likes it! Consider picking up a copy for this labor of love (accent on the labor… and the love… but mostly the labor!), on this… the most holy of days… bandcamp friday!
Hopefully that doesn’t read like the Zodiac Killer code. First midwest shows since last summer, wow, really? Yeah I guess so. Great poster by Plastic Flame Press…
10/06/2023 – Tempe/AZ – Time Out Lounge W/Bright Sunshine, Hot Probs 10/07/2023 – Los Angeles/CA – Redwood Bar and Grill w/The Freeks 10/08/2023 – San Francisco/CA – Bottom of the Hill (Afternoon BBQ Show) w/Cassette Prophet 10/09/2023 – Sacramento/CA – Old Ironsides 10/10/2023 – Reno/NV – The Loving Cup w/Elephant Rifle 10/11/2023 – Eugene/OR – Sam Bond’s Garage w/Silence Mill 10/12/2023 – Portland/OR – High Water Mark 10/13/2023 – Bellingham/WA – Make Shift Art Space (Bellingham Exit) 10/14/2023 – Seattle/WA – Southgate Roller Rink (Rat City Recon)
LUNG x CONAN NEUTRON & THE SECRET FRIENDS: cello-grunge powerhouse joins forces with Melvins-affiliated rockers on electrifying new split LP; West Coast tour announced
Learning Curve Recordsannounces the October 6th release of Adult Prom, the new split LP by Lung and Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends.Pre-order the album, here:
Adult Prom is an example of the magic that can happen when an unlikely pair of bands, bonded more by spirit than by sound, choose to join forces and make a thing together. Like a mouthful of sugar and salt, the contrast between the two reveals the power of each. Where Lung brings sheer intensity, executed with dark, neoclassical flair, Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends revel in an exuberant, noisy reimagining of classic rock. Despite the divergent energies, these bands are united by friendship and mutual respect and they give themselves, one hundred percent, to this project. On Adult Prom, not only do the two share space on a slab of vinyl; each also covers one song by the other, reinterpreting it in its own singular style, and members lend their talents to other tracks as guest vocalists and musicians.
Explaining how the collab came to be, Conan Neutron states, simply: “We are fans of each other’s music and enjoy each other’s company and it just seemed like a cool thing to do.”
From Cincinnati, Ohio, Lung consists of Kate Wakefield, a classically trained opera singer and cellist, and drummer Daisy Caplan, formerly of Foxy Shazam. Fierce, ethereal, and heavy as hell, Lung rocks with the intensity of early grunge, layered with sinister undertones. “Tony Iommi teaching a Nirvana class at Juilliard,” reads one review from Cincinnati paper CityBeat.
“PJ Harvey is absolutely brilliant,” states Wakefield. “I also am a huge fan of Tori Amos, Hole, Cibo Matto. I also love dramatic classical composers like Prokofiev, Sibelius and Barber – who are all pretty metal, in a way. Daisy has also introduced me to tons of bands that have influenced our style since we started playing, like Minutemen, Smart Went Crazy, and Death From Above. Our sound is intentionally genre-bending, but the consistent thread is that everything we do has an intensity to it. We mean every word and every note we play, and people can feel that.”People can feel that, indeed, as Wakefield runs her cello through distortion pedals and big amps, and Caplan pounds out earthquaking beats on cartoonishly bell-shaped, vintage North drums. A relentless touring machine, the duo has played over 700 shows across North America and Europe, on bills with Brainiac, Screaming Females, Fucked Up, and so many more.
With roots in Oakland, California, transplanted to Milwaukee, Conan Neutron is a wildly prolific musician, podcaster, and impresario. As a co-founder and curator of Caterwaul Festival, and as the founder and host of the Protonic Reversal podcast, Neutron is a self-built pillar of what he has termed “independent-minded, iconoclastic, noisy music.” With Caterwaul, he has helped create an annual fest that has quickly become a major new axis for this “noisy music” scene, putting the likes of Flipper and Chat Pile on one stage and serving to strengthen a community of diverse, yet connected, bands and fans. With Protonic Reversal, he has chatted for hours with an absolutely legendary list of artists – members of The Stooges, Devo, The Birthday Party, Black Flag, and Fugazi, to name but a few – amassing a huge library of conversations that exists as a resource for the world to enjoy.As a band leader, Neutron wields the same creative fire and the same knack for putting exceptional people under one roof. His rhythm section, The Secret Friends, consists of none other than Melvins drum-slayer Dale Crover and bassist Tony Ash, formerly of Coliseum. (When Neutron takes the show on the road, he and Ash are joined by a revolving cast of live players – “a bench deeper than a baseball team,” in Neutron’s words.)Contrary to what one might expect from these guys, the sound hits like a burlier version of power pop – more Cheap Trick than AmRep. Honed over four full-length albums and shows with Big Business, Torche, and more, the songwriting and execution are world-class. Crover’s iconic drumming lays the foundation for rich tones, sweet hooks, and Neutron’s croon.Given the underground cred of Neutron and his gang, their choice to rock unabashedly might come across like a subversive act. Neutron puts it like this: “What we do is BIG WEIRD ROCK MUSIC. I have to throw the WEIRD in, because when people think of rock music they tend to think of slavish imitators of bygone eras or a specific kind of very safe consonant guitar music for middle managers and wraparound shade dads.”
One press release from the recent past calls it: “small scale arena rock for smart alecks and malcontents.”Lung’s tracks on Adult Prom were recorded and mixed by John Hoffman at The Lodge in Dayton, KY; Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends’ trackswere engineered and mixed by Toshi Kasai. The album was mastered by Shellac’s Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service.
Adult Prom’s album artwork, created by Aaron Cross, comprises paintings of the two bands’ vans – two 2006 Ford Econolines, coincidentally. On October 6th, the day of the LP’s release, Lung and Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends will get in said vans and kick off a West Coast tour together. (See those dates, along with Lung’s other upcoming touring, below.)Adult Prom tracklist:1) Lung – Fucked Up Darling 2) Lung – Kingpin 3) Lung – Cash Machine (Two Ton Boa cover) 4) Lung – The Impossible Task (Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends cover) 5) Lung – Pastor 6) Lung – Anyone Else (feat. Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends) 7) Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends – Wild Antics 8) Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends – Crybullies 9) Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends – Fridging (feat. Kate Wakefield of Lung) 10) Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends – I’m Nervous (Lung cover) 11) Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends – Criminal Hypnosis 12) Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends – We Were WolvesLung w/ Screaming Females:Aug 16 – Morgantown, WV @ 123 Pleasant St Aug 17 – Cincinnati, OH @ Legends Aug 18 – Chattanooga, TN @ Songbirds Aug 19 – Asheville, NC @ Static Age Records Aug 20 – Washington, DC @ Songbyrd Lung: Sep 1 – Michigan City, IN @ Oktoberfest Sep 2 – Indianapolis, IN @ Romanus Fest Sep 7 – Knoxville, TN @ Pilot Light Sep 8 – Athens, GA @ Flicker Theatre
Lung w/ Djunah:
Sep 9 – Savannah, GA @ It Takes Two fest Sep 10 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle Sep 11 – Asheville, NC @ Grey Eagle
Lung w/ Thelma and the Sleaze: Sep 19 – Newport, KY @ Southgate House Revival Sep 20 – Louisville, KY @ Whirling Tiger Sep 21 – Athens, OH @ Union Sep 22 – Cincinnati OH @ Fountain Square Sep 23 – Lafayette, IN @ North End Pub Sep 24 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
Lung: Sep 26 – St. Louis, MO @ CBGB Sep 28 – Denton, TX @ Rubber Gloves Sep 29 – Austin, TX @ The Electric Church Sep 30 – San Angelo, TX @ The Deadhorse Oct 1 – El Paso TX @ Mona Oct 2 – Bisbee, AZ @ The Quarry Lung w/ Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends:
Oct 6 – Tempe, AZ @ Time Out Lounge Oct 7 – Los Angeles, CA @ Redwood Bar and Grill Oct 8 – San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill Oct 9 – Sacramento, CA @ Old Ironsides Oct 10 – Reno, NV @ The Loving Cup Oct 11 – Eugene, OR @ Sam Bond’s Garage Oct 12 – Portland, OR @ High Water Mark Oct 13 – Bellingham, WA @ Make Shift Art Space Oct 14 – Seattle, WA @ Southgate Roller RinkLung:
Lung:
Oct 20 – Logansport, IN @ The Record Farm Oct 21 – Dayton, OH @ Dayton Music Fest
Photo of Lung, by Rachelle Caplan Photo of Conan Neutron, by Abbey Garside…
Now That We Are All Ghosts will be released on Seismic Wave Entertainment April 3rd, 2023 in LP, CD and Digital formats. Nine songs of Chamber Doom Americana. Frequently described as cinematic, the band will be releasing a video for all nine songs, an ambitious undertaking that rarely sees fruition. The album is self-engineered, recorded and produced, and mastered by Bob Weston of Chicago Mastering Service.
In the fall of 2019, Milwaukee’s Resurrectionists released an album they called What Comes In, a collection of everyman trouble tales delivered with enough wit and Midwestern twang that one could imagine Will Oldham settling into them.
As everyone knows, very little outside of the natural world remained the same after the year 2020, and so it was with Resurrectionists as well. Hardy was replaced by multi-instrumentalist Gian Pogliano, trading Hardy’s mournful swells for Pogliano’s spin-the-wheel-of-sonic-atmospheric sensibilities. The change is evident on the new Resurrectionists long-player Now That We Are All Ghosts. The twang remains in Cannon’s banjo pluck, and the band hasn’t lost their goth-country-as-fuck Appalachia via Milwaukee aesthetic, all of which perfectly supports Cannon’s words and vocals which, if we’re being totally honest, are the real show. Not only is Cannon a ridiculously skilled lyricist; he can sing the hell out of his songs with a tent preacher’s conviction and a working class punk’s urgency. Think D. Boon with the life experience of a forty-something man fronting The Bad Seeds in a Wisconsin log cabin in the dead of winter. You get the idea. Now That We Are All Ghosts is a collection of life-or-death songs that are that haunting, that primal. It’s an album made for these weird times.
Frequently described as: “The Best Live Band in Milwaukee” When WORK drummer Kavi Laud moved to Austin, TX a few years ago, Joe Cannon pressed pause on that outfit and fired up something entirely new with WORK bassist Jeff Brueggeman, drummer Josh Barto and a stellar pedal steel guitar player named Gavin Hardy and thus, Resurrectionists were born.
Now That We Are All Ghosts – SW031: Seismic Wave Entertainment
Multicult Hands Up Who Wants to Die Child Bite Big’n Traindodge Djunah Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends The Grasshopper Lies Heavy Grizzlor Haploid Them Teeth Powerwagon Naw Delicious Monsters Burned or Buried Upright Forms
Sunday, May, 29th, 2023 – at Palmer’s
Whores Distorted Pony VAZ USA Nails Totimoshi Cherubs Rid of Me Reptoid A Deer A Horse
Kal Marks The Art Gray Noizz Quintet Couch Slut Mr Phylzzz Wiirmz Heet Deth Action Chief
Monday, May 30th, 2023 – at Palmer’s
SUPER SECRET BAND! (TBD) Nerver Vincas Salvation STILL/FORM Animal Bite The Tunnel Terminus Victor Work Party Primitive Broadcast Service Resurrectionists Another Heaven Chief Tail Something is Waiting Gay Witch Abortion
This is a “new” band, long time coming. I (Conan) just play guitar in this. Which has been a super cool challenge/constraint for me. I really love what we came up with, and I think Mike Lust did an amazing job recording it, a bit different than anything in any other band i’ve been in.
My stated goal was to try “just shred” in this one, a thing i’ve never done before in any band, largely because my guitar playing existed somewhere in the “evolved caveman” category of skill for most of my life. Joseph Cannon capably and defty write the lyrics and sings (Resurrectionists, WORK, Check Engine, etc.) in this collaboration we started 4 1/2 years or so ago. We’re now joined by noted rhythm section badasses Tony Ash and Jonathan Brown on bass and drums, who absolutely killed it.
There have been more than a few false starts over the years, but we liked the songs so much we wanted to make them live and laid hands on this weirdness during this whole *gestures around* thing going on. We really dig how this weird little record turned out. Whole thing on bandcamp now if you’d like to check it out, and if you want to buy a cd, download or art print you can do that too. Album art by Aesthetic Apparatus. Who you may recognize from the many different awesome christian fitness records. Link to the record in the comments.
“What’s in a name? Would ‘Kiss From a Rose’ by any other name sound so sweet?” Easy concept, kids. Two bands that are idiosyncratic and unique and are frequently related to the cultural dead end of “project” team up for a wild concept.
THE MISSION: pick 3 song titles Each band writes a song to the song title, without hearing or knowing anything about the other band’s work.
The title inspires the music, the lyrics, the entire approach. Certainly things have a chance of getting interesting, yes?
Anyway, what transpires is the results of this collaboration/challenge. Feast your ears upon it… if you dare! DANGEROUS NOMENCLATURE.
— VINYL PRE-ORDER COMING SOON THROUGH LEARNING CURVE RECORDS, when we have a more realistic idea of the timeline when it might actually arrive. Thank all the Adele and Taylor Swift collector’s records for that.
credits
released February 4, 2022
The Erratic Retaliator Strategy Mike – guitar, vocals Ron – bass, vocals
Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends – Dark Passengers. An 11 song record about depression and mental health. On Learning Curve Records. CDs on seismic wave.
