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HELLO BIRD
'Hello Bird' was recorded by Jeremy Smith @ several different basements onto a computer. it was mixed by Jeremy Smith & the band on a computer.
"Hello Bird isn't quite sure if it wants to be loud, raucous rock or plaintive,
psychedelic rock-but therein lies its charm. Like one must suspend disbelief in
a movie, so must you with this. The surprises will make you happy you did."
-Randy Harward
Tolchock trio - olde english for "big sound from three young men" (it's actually a Clockwork Orange
reference, right Joy?) - have 2 albums carved out of the finest Russian butter, and hello bird is their first.
Originally released on red triangle records , and later added as the initial release on {exumbrella},
this album continues to amaze me as does it's follow-up Ghosts Don't Have Bones .
Songs can begin in a somewhat standard pattern by suit & tie listings (I'm hearing " waltz "), but
come the appropriate time to end the damn thing, the trio absolutely destroy it.. . this is a seriously
common issue with tolchock - and I fucking adore it ("gold flax" follows suit). Tape reels begins to
sound like they're a year late on servicing, instruments are transforming to nests of fuzz and, at this
very moment, Cobain would be on top of Grohl's drumset. Then, as a furious fit of betrayal hits,
trio drummer Dan Thomas reappears and leads the other 2 parts tolchock (Oliver Lewis, Ryan Fedor)
into another minute of exquisite ramble that paints the blood red splotch on "waltz"'s exclamation.
Thomas is a damn fine drummer, tops in a mess of many indie wishers, a statement backed up on hello bird .
Further examination into the destructive side of T3 finds the 10+ minute true rock of "gotta disaster" - shit
gets technical around 7:30-mark and beats itself to a grizzly, static death.
Then there's the gentle facade of these three, on a gem like "The Estate Of Frank O ' Hara". On every
Brian Jonestown Massacre release, there may be that one track that beams like a stunner we all know
Anton Alfred Newcombe is capable of (think "Let's Pretend It's Summer" from Strung Out in Heaven )
- that's
what "The Estate Of Frank O ' Hara" is on hello bird . Am I saying tolchock trio sound like BJM? Not directly,
but in a " whatever - starfucker" kinda way. The grand fact is Utah's tolchock trio can keep you guessing and
enthralled at equal moments - things are pushed to the limits in mixing that simply amaze me. This band turns
what could be basement-band common noise into Jell-O™ Pudding Pops and shoves 'em in your ass - stick first.
This is where it all began for bog and all his holy angels and saints, with Ghosts Don't Have Bones as the solid
second offering (that has her review coming too). Seek both.
FYI: when asked what kind of music tolchock trio is, the answer is usually 'rock music'.
GHOSTS DON'T HAVE BONES
'Ghosts Don't Have Bones' was recorded onto tape @ 2 different locations - half of it by Andy Patterson @ Andy Patterson's studio and half of it by Jeremy Smith and the band @ the house we lived in at the time. it was mixed by Jeremy Smith and the band on a computer
"..Ghosts Don't Have Bones may be the coolest title to drop thus far in
2004, and the Tolchock Trio's second album, being released tonight, lives up
to it. The Salt Lake City threesome expands on last year's Hello Bird with a
keener sense of adventure, more purposeful noise, some well-placed guitar
rave-ups and that elusive indie-rock charm the kids (thankfully) still
clamor for. Tunes like “Goose,” “Sugar-Coated Hornets” and the epic
14-minute title track burn the speakers in 3-D—yeah, it's a keeper..."
- Bill Frost
" Every so often the national music media arbitrarily designates one area of the
country as a “hot scene.” We've seen this with Seattle in the early '90s, and more
recently with New York. Could Salt Lake City ever become such a hype town?
If any significant member of the music media were to stumble across Ghosts Don't
Have Bones, then I'd say it could. The refreshingly awkward ascending riff of “Wolf Eyes,”
the pump-up intensity of “Reflux Bollox,” and the strutting funk of “Goose” is enough
to put Salt Lake on the proverbial map. It's that good.
–RMac
" Balancing deceptively catchy melodies, energetic disocordance and off-kilter, yet right-on-time
drum beats, Salt Lake City's Tolchock Trio lay their groove right where indie-pop and post-hardcore
collide. In their sophomore release, Ghosts Don't Have Bones , the trio offsets the mounting dissonance
and vertigo with deft touches of vibraphone, organ, under-your-breath vocal murmurs and falsetto
oohs (that is, when not liberally channeling the bark and bite of Black Francis). This comes together
especially well in the beat-bending "Black Bats" and the Delta blues-twice-removed "Tolchock Riot,"
the latter complete with mid-section guitar collapse and overdriven recapitulation. All said, this disc
rocks some serious ass."
the nowontour website - http://www.nowontour.com/reviews/record/00935.php
Tolchock Trio
Ghosts Don't Have Bones
Red Triangle Records
Release: 4/20/2004
5 out of 5
Review by: Jason Warner
Ghosts Don't Have Bones is the latest album from the great rock band known as Tolchock Trio. Tolchock is a verb meaning: to hit. The band's name comes from Stanley Kubrick's classic tale of ultra violence, A Clockwork Orange. The album is not ultra violent, but it will make you sit up and take notice.
In 2003, the readers of the Salt Lake City Weekly voted Tolchock Trio's debut album, Hello Bird , album of the year. In 2004 Tolchock Trio again took home the imaginary prize by winning album of the year with Ghosts Don't Have Bones . Hello Bird was a great album, but for my money Ghosts Don't Have Bones is twice as good. The band has been together since 2000 when drummer, Dan Thomas, relocated to Salt Lake City from Minneapolis to join old friend, Oliver Lewis (guitars, bass, vocals), and Ryan Fedor (guitar, vocals) to form a band that was supposed to sound like a mix between Wilco and My Bloody Valentine. The band has always had a huge local following and that could be due in part to the fact that Tolchock Trio are some of the nicest guys you will ever meet, but I for one believe their acclaim, both in the local press, and on the tongues of the local scenesters, lies in the fact that their music is so consistently good. Ghosts Don't Have Bones only acts as evidence of this fact. The songs are solid, good listening.
In addition to displays of musical proficiency, of which there is plenty, Tolchock Trio shows a sensibility for the art of the song for the song's sake. The songs are artistic and that same sense of creation went into the mixing of the album. One track, "Tolchock Riot" is a recording engineer's nightmare, with everything in the red a good majority of the time. The clipping is so intense you will wonder if you are in a nightmare of some old time barber shop with the man wielding the razor just a little too close to your neck skin. Ghosts Don't Have Bones is not about whimsical experimentation though. It is an album more about a group of musicians seeing how far they can push themselves in any given direction, whether it be in the crafting of songs or the destruction of those same songs. You may feel a little like you just watched A Clockwork Orange after listening to "Tolchock Riot," but then the boys return to earth (or the moon), with such standout tracks as, "Hornets," a ping-pong exchange of singing between Lewis and Fedor, all the while with Thomas banging out his precision beats, or the poetic, "Goose," a song about the current state of real estate on the earth's largest satellite. No matter the track, Tolchock Trio knows how to rock out, and they know how to make your ears bleed.
Tolchock Trio is a busy group. When the various members are not practicing or performing with this group, each one plays in at least one other band. This leads me to ponder the question, if this group can make music this good while splitting their time with other groups (not to mention day jobs, school, etc.), what could they accomplish if they focused only on this group? It's a possibility the world will likely never know as we know how incestuous local music scenes become over time, but it seems Tolchock Trio is doing fine within the allotted time and with an album as good as Ghosts Don't Have Bones , for me to ask for more would be plain greedy.
"Tolchock Trio label themselves as a "rock" band, but to say that's oversimplifying is an understatement.
Their new record, Ghosts Don't Have Bones , is one of the most exciting albums I've heard since
Beulah's farewell, and from the opening pomp of "Our Lady Of Good Counsel" through to the ethereal
experimentalist fugue of the title track, there's not one moment when it's possible to turn off your CD
player without feeling slightly disrespectful towards these fine musicians.
The entire album is a wonderfully colourful pageant of diversely costumed rhythms, counterpoints
and melodies, with nods to everything from Renaissance dance music to Radiohead's Amnesiac
and earlier Explosions In The Sky. Serious composers as well as songwriters, the Trio employs
Sondheim-esque tactical deployment of catchy melodic percussion to subvert their own seriousness.
The opening song is a gentle intro, not as energetic as much of what's to follow, but it's fertile ground
all the same. The slinky guitar-twanging is tantalising in its fleeting nature, and the lyrics, while
gloriously abstruse, are delivered with languid verve by the talented Mr. Oliver Lewis. It's mood
music at its best, and the mood in question is introspective and a little claustrophobic at this stage,
with full-blown euphoria yet to descend upon us.
"Black Bats" begins like a slightly tighter Modest Mouse opening, but finds its own way
from there. The song beguiles with a straightforward verse before launching into its killer chorus
of "I wrote you 'cause I needed to ." "Reflux Bollox" is similarly joyous, containing a rapturous
guitar-drum instrumental that would feel overblown by most standards, but here is carried off
with skill and sensitivity. Also deserving lavish praise is "Meteor," which features some playfully
simplistic yet loveable vibraphone, contrasting the stately and perfectly-timed guitars and drums
beautifully. And just when you think the song's over, there's a reprise! It's amazing how pathetically
grateful one is for the opportunity to have it all over again without needing to reach for a button, almost
as though the band are aware of the intoxicating power of their sweeping, ambitious music. They're
one of the rare groups whose instrumental skills are so strong that it takes until the third play of the
album to even contemplate paying proper attention to the lyrics (which are by no means poor).
That's not to say the Trio is too esoteric to appeal to wider tastes, however. "Hornets" is rocking in a
more mainstream, Radio 4-style way, with an excellent series of question-and-answer vocals and
perfectly straight drumming, lifted above the average by the imaginatively chaotic dissonance of the guitars
and vocals. Surely a hit in the making is "Wolf Eyes" (that's the first "Wolf Eyes," because there's a brief
instrumental reprise of this song much later on the album). The riff, cleverly syncopated against the drum beat
to give the impression of messy fragmentation when it's actually a very precise orchestration, is one that promises
to stay in your head all day, and the lyrics - " I get scared! " - are suggestive of the tightrope walk that is
everyday life for those of a nervous disposition. The closure of the song is punkish yet amiable: they're nothing
if not a band of reconciled contradictions. "Goose" starts out mildly threateningly - " if you don't like it, get out " - but
soon segues into a devil-may-care funk of descending riffs and organ that echoes the leading rhythms of courtly
dance, and you'd be hard-pressed not to tap your feet to it.
By the time the eponymous closer emerges, you can't believe it's going to get any better, and yet it does.
There's some ambient fretwork to open with, along with a distant rumble of snare, and this lasts just long
enough to create anticipation without grating, as it develops into a very zen soundscape of vibraphone and
twinkling guitar, which turns out to be the eye of the storm before the booming drums return. From this
point you're not just listening to an excellent album, you're also receiving a master class in form and phrasing,
with the repeated lyric " ghosts don't have bones ," beguilingly cryptic before it's replaced by stream-of-consciousness
poetry set against swirling, psychedelic guitar. The denouement, after twelve minutes, is fortunately not self-defeating
mindless thrash but a well-thought-out disassembly, via repetition of the song's central riff, eerily fading and leaving
only a tiny shiver on your spine as you're left in silence.
Tolchock Trio demonstrate the virtue of music for music's sake time and again on this record, rather than
merely providing an accompaniment for the vocalist, and allow themselves the space to explore particular melodic
paths, without worrying about returning to base for the next pop single. There's something very new and refreshing
about this band, and yet their music has a very familiar feel. That's because listening to Ghosts Don't Have Bones
may well prove as much of a revelation as the first time you heard any of the greats that now take pride of place in
your collection and in your heart."
Similar Albums
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
Explosions in the Sky - The Earth is Not a Dead, Cold Place
Radiohead – Amnesiac
Chris Griffiths
03.02.2006
ABALONE SKELETONE
'Abalone Skeletone' was recorded by Scott Selfridge @ our practice space and @ Oliver's house onto a computer. It was mixed by Scott Selfridge and the band on a computer
Tolchock Trio
Abalone Skeletone
Exumbrella
Street 09 05
T3 = My Bloody Valentine + Sonic Youth + Jeff Tweedy
As difficult as it is for an outsider to pin down exactly what Tolchock Trio sounds like, it is comforting to know that a similar problem exists among the band itself. The liner notes mention that this album, the third full length by a band that doesn't take the number three too seriously, has been in the works since the summer of 2006 (bordering on geologic time for local music). While the final product may not sound like it took two years to churn out, this is a good thing. Abalone Skeletone is comfortable, in the same way that an endless Velvet Underground jam surrounds you with the idea that everything will be all right. The album is immediate in its execution, and the players (as many as seven on one track) wander between musical and vocal roles quite easily. This is not only one of the best local discs this year, it's also better than most national releases. Who knew that Salt Lake had the chops to turn indie psychedelia on its head?
--James Bennett
Tolchock Trio Then & Now: Comparing the band's two most recent CDs.
By Brian Staker
Posted 09/04/2008
Ghosts Don't Have Bones (2005)
“Our Lady of Good Counsel”: spare, languid and loose, yet edgy with guitars that can snarl. “Wolf Eyes” brings a bit of horrified discotheque beat along with indie-rock scarification. This “indie-rock groove” repeats itself throughout both discs, slightly reminiscent of Joy Division. “Black Bats” shows T3 in the tradition of local lo-fi indie bands Red Bennies and The Wolfs, but with a wholly distinct personality. There's a kind of abrasive fog through which everything is seen through, but that doesn't blur—it somehow renders everything sharper. “Meteor” emphasizes the fact that the band's work is very much about natural forces—the guitar lurches and sways, veritably froths with fuzz.
“Reflux Bollox“ is the first song with a real “rock” riff instead of a loose groove. But like with Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse, it feels like the singer is trying to fight his way out of the beat instead of inhabit it. On “Goose,” Ryan Fedor sings, “You're breeding danger with your hips” as the tension rises then falls not in release but merely reprieve. “Tolchock Riot” is a riot; the singer growls, the same chord is hammered into place like a nail. “Hornets” is another high-stepping rocker, a great riff with just a bit of reverb, like the air that whistles through your head when you start to feel buzzed. Dual vocals, 'cause one alone couldn't convey the urgency. This incitement to the dance floor is what the record has been building toward. This Ghost is scary on several levels, but also sexy and occasionally witty.
Abalone Skeletone (2008)
This collection is much warmer, opening with piano and distant train horn on “Divorce Papers.” The guitar interplay is more subtle than ever before. But “Two Rivers” inaugurates another rock groove. As their name hints, they are all about the tension between purely animal impulses and the strictures of society. Ryan Fedor sings of his beloved fishing in “Sheepshead,” exposing it as a kind of civilized savagery. But there's also a kind of joy not fully embraced by a Tolchock song before.
“Little Pieces” is an Oliver Lewis lyric about the wrong girl, and all the heaviness that implies. On “Dronesville” he sees a different girl, a different day, and whole “other worlds” are evoked. On “Factory,” Lewis asks, “Who owns me today?” and solves the problem of the mundane with “just give me fantasy.” Here again, the danceable rhythm is either liberator or enslaver. Lewis' “Sleepytime” takes a long time to wind up but ends up knocking into things in the night.
Lewis closes out the record with “Like I Knew You Could,” an acoustic, backhanded stab at optimism. It's an odd closing to another eccentric album from your favorite over-three-members-at-all-times Trio. The kerfuffle between animalistic urges and societal shackles isn't resolved but played out in myriad unsettling ways on what could be one of the best local releases of the year.
The first thing I notice at Oliver Lewis' west-side house is the squash growing by the front yard. The first thing Lewis' bandmates in Tolchock Trio notice is my Flaming Lips T-shirt. They mention that they actually have Zaireeka parties, playing the Norman, Okla., nutcases' disc as it was meant to be—on four different players. I've never heard it that way, only one at a time with channels dropping out like dead brain cells. These guys could be interesting.
Bassist/vocalist Lewis and drummer Dan Thomas have played together since junior high. Thomas moved from Salt Lake City to Minneapolis, and Lewis played with guitarist/vocalist Ryan Fedor in St. Ryan's Lament. Thomas returned to Utah for college, and Lewis and Fedor lived with him for awhile. That was 2000. That's when things started to happen.
“Our original mission statement was to sound like My Bloody Valentine crossed with Wilco,” Fedor says, and reminds Thomas, “You got me into Modest Mouse.” Built to Spill and Sonic Youth come to mind as well. But T3 are their own animal.
They take their time, working at a snail's pace to produce each album. Their debut Hello Bird (2003), produced by local guitar and studio wiz Jeremy Smith, sounds a bit ramshackle—a quality that's always been part of their fiber—but it also evokes a sense of imminent danger and emotional elevation. A Russian friend told them, besides the Clockwork Orange reference, their name is slang for everything from flea market to prison toilet.
The new Abalone Skeletone is more polished than their second full-length release, Ghosts Don't Have Bones , though Bones is slightly more immediate. Skeleton's opening track “Divorce Papers” (featuring former guitarist/vocalist Chad Murphy who moved out of state for grad school) started as the end of another song, Thomas recalls, and it shows how the group really works as a team—each member singing at times; all hands in on the songwriting. For example, Fedor is a fishing aficionado, and “Sheepshead” depicts a nightmarish impression of a fishing trip on a young boy. Lewis says “I like that different songwriters and voices keep us from getting bored.”
Thomas drums for Red Bennies, Vile Blue Shades and Glinting Gems but says he doesn't feel as invested in those other bands. “Drumming can make a guitar riff sound cool or stupid,” he believes. His inventive drumming work is a big part of the band's sound, but it's really all about the interplay between musicians, which reaches a high point on Skeletone .
Tolchock attended SXSW several years ago, winning the City Weekly SLAMMys competition, and while they plan to tour some, they aren't interested in moving to bigger ponds. What makes Salt Lake City a great place for music? “The national media isn't focused here, so we all have our own motivations,” Fedor says. “It liberates you.”
-- Brian Staker
http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/article-5030-music-unlocking-the-tolchocks-salt-lake-city-rockers-release-their-long-awaited-albalone-skeletone.html
What five CDs would you most recommend as holiday gifts, and why? 1) Andrew Bird, "Armchair Apocrypha." This album is beautiful and accessible. It is interesting enough for the music snob in your life and just plain lovely enough for the average listener. 2) Fleet Foxes, "Self Titled." This record is full of surreal vocal harmonies that will impress the hardest of souls. It is flawless and powerful. 3) Bon Iver, "For Emma, Forever Ago." On most people's Top 10 list of the year (including ours), this record is heart-melting. Filled with intense emotion and a beautiful hint of redemption. Good for any music lovers from beginners to experts. 4) Tolchock Trio, "Abalone Skeletone." One of our own homegrown releases, this record should be selling out in stores nationwide. It is that good. Full of catchy rock songs that are too good to be kept to ourselves, this will impress any out-of-state music lovers that think they have everything. 5) Kimya Dawson, "Alphabutt." Most people know her from the "Juno" soundtrack, and her latest album (for the kids) doesn't disappoint. It is adorable and hilarious and perfect for kids — and their parents!
http://dev.inthisweek.com/view.php?id=131
Posted 01/29/2009
Oh man, if you haven't heard Tolchock Trio's most recent release Abalone Skeletone you are missing out! Sell your Walkmen records and forget about whatever indie-rock album you were going to buy—it's all just “average” compared to Abalone . Go to their shows, buy their albums, and plan on bragging to your friends that you knew them back when they were a “local” band. (Chris Brozek)
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SXSW SECTION (some links probably expired)
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