Marcella René Simien – Memphis Flyer

The Memphis Dawls

Rooted In The Bone

Madjack Records

The best Memphis music has always put the pieces of popular music together in unexpected and novel ways. On their debut full-length, Holly Cole, Jana Misener, and Krista Wroten plunder country, folk, rock, and soul to create a mix that transcends genre. Album opener “Please Don’t Leave Me” shows off all their tricks: lush orchestration, propulsive pizzicato, and mini-symphonic song structures worthy of Brian Wilson. On “Where’d You Go My Love” they show they can construct a three-minute Carter Family hymnal hoe-down single. And then there are the vocal harmonies. When supporting Cole’s Linda Ronstadt lead lines, Misener and Wroten hover on the periphery, reinforcing harmonics and providing counter melody. Misener plays Carla Thomas with guest stars Teenie and Charles Hodges on soulful album highlight “Liar,” and Wroten channels Paul McCartney on the Beatlesque “Ride Alone,” whose spacey string coda shows off the depths of the band’s compositional talent. But it’s on cuts like “Shadow in The Room” when the ladies sing together, and the distinctions between lead and harmony, vocal and instrumental disappear, that the Memphis Dawls show what they do better than anybody else. These are songs you can sink into; sonic landscapes you’ll want to live in. — Chris McCoy

GRYSCL

Finding Comfort in Obsolescence

Broken World Media

Bands and critics throw the term “screamo” around so often that it has begun to take on many different shapes and sounds. But GRYSCL is a needle in the haystack. While some bands take years to finish a record, the screamo outfit has released a 7,” two splits, and three EPs since the tail end of 2012. Finding Comfort in Obsolescence, the band’s latest EP, was released earlier this year through Broken World Media. Six tracks long, it showcases a band rich in dynamics and range. “The Sandbox” opens the EP like an explosion, and their clear-cut post-hardcore influences mesh with complex guitar riffs reminiscent of the bands the Fall of Troy and Minus The Bear. Remove one member of the four piece, and they probably wouldn’t sound like the same band. The rhythm section serves as a twisted backbone for the group. On “The Worker,” the bass and drums display a systematic madness as the track moves from soft beginnings to the unpredictable, never-saw-it-coming progressions that reoccur throughout the EP. Whether they are shouting, screaming or singing, each member contributes to the vocals. The multi-faceted melodies further separate GRYSCL from other bands that fall under the “screamo” moniker. “The Sermon,” an ambient, spoken-word digression from the fast-paced controlled chaos that precedes it, bleeds into “The Clock,” a hard-hitting finale to the EP, highlighting the band’s brightest moments. On every front, GRYSCL delivers. — Joshua Cannon

Nots

We Are Nots

Goner Records

On We Are Nots, the synth-driven, bare-boned band has stripped punk rock down to its necessities: driving bass, dirty guitars providing powerful riffs, and screeching vocals. In fact, Nots gets so much right on their debut full-length, a more than adequate addition to the Goner Records catalogue, that it’s hard to find a place to start. “Insect Eyes” opens the LP drenched in synth that fills out the track while vocals howl over the thumping bass and noisy guitar. Take note, this is a reoccurring theme throughout the album. We Are Nots is more steady-handed and polished than their earlier EP, Dust Red. The production kicks the dirt off the vocals and allows each member to lend a helping hand to the other while maintaining the raw energy that embodies the band. From start to finish, the drums are a driving force, providing a home for the other instruments to return to when they aren’t exploring their boundaries. On “Strange Rage,” a guitar soaked in echo and reverb peaks in at the beginning of the track while a groovy bassline follows the drums and synth trails in and out. The nine-second “Get Along” immediately follows, a group-vocaled nod to traditional hardcore. Goner released the record on November 11th, but Pitchfork has been streaming it since the beginning of the month. We Are Nots is much more than a title. It’s a statement, and it’s a big one. — Joshua Cannon

Marcella & Her Lovers

The Bronze Age

Swamp Soul Music

There is perhaps no current Memphis musician with more buzz surrounding him or her than Marcella René Simien. The past couple of years have seen Simien evolve from a largely unknown Louisiana transplant/art student playing house shows to a very much in-demand solo act and bandleader about town. Last week, Simien and her band, dubbed Marcella & Her Lovers, unveiled a long-awaited debut EP titled The Bronze Age. And to my ears, anyway, it absolutely delivers. Expertly recorded by local producer/engineer/musician Scott Bomar at his Electraphonic studio, the EP shows Simien and her band — which features Simien’s drummer/writing partner Rory Mills Sullivan, guitarist Dave Cousar, bassist Dirk Kitterlin, keyboardist Jonathan Schallert, and the horn section of Victor Sawyer and Randy Ballard — indulging a myriad of influences, including Memphis soul and R&B, zydeco, post-punk, and pop, to great effect. What’s more, Simien herself is a tremendous singer and an engaging performer, which clearly comes across on the recording. Honestly, there really are no duds here, but two stand-out tracks would be the up-tempo groover “Branch Strewn Sky” and the spacey march “We Rewind.” — J.D. Reager

When Marcella René Simien first moved to Memphis to go to Memphis College of Art (MCA) and join the local music scene, she had a bit of a leg-up on her contemporaries making noise in basements at house parties. Trained on piano, mandolin, guitar, and drums and well-schooled by her Grammy Award-winning father, Terrance Simien, Marcella quickly left the house-show scene and began playing at clubs like Bar DKDC, the Beauty Shop, and the Mollie Fontaine Lounge. Since then, it’s almost impossible to have a week go by without Marcella Simien appearing somewhere in town. She’s at the Hi-Tone on Monday. We sat down with Marcella to find out more about what drives this immensely talented Louisiana native, how she’s made music her career, and what it was like to sing a song on a Grammy-winning album.

Flyer: You’ve been around music your whole life, and other members of your family have had success in the music industry. When did you decide to start playing music?

Marcella René Simien: I started playing music when I was really young. My dad has had a pretty successful music career for the past 30 years. He’s traveled the world playing music ever since I was young. My mom was his manager and his booking agent, so we were pretty much all in it together. I started playing piano when I was 7, then moved on to guitar and mandolin, and then I started playing drums when I was 15.

Were you able to travel with your dad while he was on the road performing?

Not as much of the international traveling that I would have liked to do. My parents thought about home-schooling at me at one point, but my mom and I decided to stay at home base, which was Louisiana at the time.

When did you move to Memphis?

In August of 2009, I received a good scholarship to Memphis College of Art and just kind of fell into the music scene that was happening.

Can you give me a rundown of some of the groups you were playing with when you first moved here?

The first performance was just me and an accordion, in March of 2010, and we would do parties at MCA houses. We also played DIY spaces like the Dairy. I teamed up with [local rapper Cities Aviv] Gavin and sang two songs on his first release, Digital Lows. After that, I played a lot with Tout Le Mon, which was more of a loose cover band that played places like the P&H. Since then, it’s just been me solo playing the piano at Mollie Fontaine or with my band Marcella and Her Lovers.

At what point did playing locally become the way you make a living? How hard was that to achieve?

It’s rough, because it was only until last year that I felt comfortable asking what I felt was fair for a performance. And some places turned me down. I had to negotiate a little bit. But I learned a lot from my parents when it comes to dealing with people in the music industry. There’s a lot that goes into performing, but thankfully there are venues here that understand all that and they want to pay their entertainment well. In a city that has so much talent and so many great bands, sometimes people don’t want to pay for it. It’s been a slow, progressive thing for me, but I’m almost able to make a living doing this and waiting tables on the side.

Karen Carrier [owner of the Beauty Shop, Bar DKDC, and Mollie Fontaine]has played a huge part in my success locally. She makes it possible for me to play weekly shows and sincerely supports what I do. I love her like family. Making a living in music is the ultimate goal for me, and Karen is an artist so she understands that and encourages me in every way.

How many times a week do you normally perform?

About three times a week on average. Sometimes it’s one, sometimes it’s four.

As a singer-songwriter, how do you balance the number of covers you do as opposed to original songs?

Right now, my set is almost all covers, and that’s not something I like to admit, because I have so many originals I’d love to work into the set. Doing covers hasn’t been a terrible thing, because it allows me to make the songs my own. I like being able to do my own arrangements of some of my favorites. We cover Otis Redding, Outkast, the Animals, Dr. John, Etta James, Lil Bob and the Lollipops, and it’s one of the most flattering, and comical, things to have an audience member come up after a gig and ask if I wrote one of the covers we did that night. It’s really just cool that any audience member is into what we do. If I can reach one or two people out of an audience and know that they had a good time and got to escape their daily life for an hour at our show, then that’s enough for me.

Your father won a Grammy last year for an album that you appear on. Can you tell me more about that?

Well, to clarify, I was on one song on my dad’s latest album, Dockside Sessions, and it won a Grammy for Best Regional Roots Record. The producer, George Receli, had a song that he wrote for his granddaughter. He wanted it translated into French, and he was going to have my dad sing it. In the middle of recording it, my dad was just not in the mood to go through all the translating, so he had my grandfather translate it into Creole French. I sang the melody of how it should go to George, and he decided I should sing it. So I just have one track on the album, and I got credit as a composer and as the singer on the song.

What else do you have planned for the rest of the year?

We’re going into the studio soon to record with Scott Bomar at Electrophonic, and we are going to be cutting a single there. I’d really like to get out of town now that I’m done with college. Up until then, I was trying to balance school and start my career, but now that I’m finished with school I’d like to do some regional tours and take my music out of town.