Mission Mission

I have been listening to Sondre Lerche’s music for over ten years, which is a very long time for me. Since 2001, Sondre has released eight diverse, genre-spanning albums, including the jazz-inspired Duper Sessions, and two film soundtracks, including a haunting score for The Sleepwalker, a 2014 film directed by his recent ex-wife Mona Fastvold and starring Christopher Abbott (Charlie on Girls). I have seen him perform at The Fillmore, Swedish American Hall (RIP), Great American Music Hall, Bimbo’s, and a handful of places in Austin, Texas. I have seen him perform solo, with a full band, and everything in between; whatever the configuration, he always impresses with his distinct voice and shredding guitar.

Sondre’s latest album, Please, dropped a few weeks ago. Please was written in the aftermath of his divorce with Fastvold, and with it, he reinvents himself again. The album’s first single, “Bad Law,” was one of my top summer jams, combining a super charismatic dance riff with chunks of distorted guitar.

This Thursday, Sondre Lerche is playing at The Independent. I had the pleasure of chatting with Sondre about his record, upcoming tour, the color of his music, the idea of guilty pleasures, and why San Francisco is his favorite city in America.

MM: Tell us a little bit about your newest record, Please. I read that it was heavily inspired by your recent divorce. What was your process like? How was it conceived?

SL: I started out wanting to free myself from the regular recording cycle. I just wanted to do one song at a time, to be able to record instantaneously and enter into collaborations without having to carry the weight of the whole record. I just wanted to open up a bit. I usually write really thorough songs that limit what you can do in the studio, so I tried to open myself up to surprise, to surprising myself. There was a lot of music I was listening to that I realized comes out of a completely different process, and I was curious about what that is. So that’s how it started, and as I wrote more and more songs, I thought I knew what the record was about. And then all this stuff happened in my private life, that just forced me to reevaluate a lot of things. One of them was what this record was about; all of these other songs just started coming. I realized that certain things were more urgent than others, and the album just changed. I think it came out of the necessity of ventilating and trying to find reason in what is happening to you. And the studio is just the perfect place to figure out stuff, to get it out. I guess it’s a cliché, but it turns out it’s real.

MM: The first song on the record, “Bad Law,” is such a great dance song, despite being quite dark lyrically. What is that song about?

SL: It’s a song that took a lot of time to write. It started with that riff, and then I recorded the bass and drums, which was new – I usually start out with guitar. I had this idea of the sort of paranoia you feel when you pass through customs. As a Norwegian flying into the States, even though I now have a green card and have nothing to hide, I always feel a certain paranoia. So I wanted to play around with that ritual, where you feel so watched and pressured, that in the end you started doubting yourself, and maybe you do have something to hide. Maybe that’s how the police get people to confess things that they didn’t do. In the end, you’re just so worn down. It felt like a reasonable metaphor in the context of the record and everything else.

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In a shady nook at the Porch Stage (the best stage) this weekend at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass fest, I was impressed by a soulful rock band from Detroit called Jessica Hernandez & The Deltas, who were perfectly described as “think Gwen Stefani meets Amy Winehouse” (thanks Ty). She had all the 90s fashion spunk of Gwen, and the sexy dark retro vibe of Amy, and a powerful voice and dance moves to match it. Behind Jessica was a band of young guys, including a trombonist, playing upbeat and highly danceable music. The crowd went wild for them, and they even made an older drunk couple grind erotically. FUN!

Listen to them here.

Another highly honorable mention of the day was 21-year-old Oklahoma native Parker Millsap, who played soulful, crooning ballads that were brought to energetic life with his honky tonky band and his rockabilly moves. Check him out!

Last month I saw Old Hats at ACT. Bill Irwin is amazing. It was a really fun show, but I think that title would keep younger audiences away. If the theatre wants to get a new generation coming out, and they need to, they should really adopt a more modern naming convention, as this does this column. Katie & Brittany recently saw The Late Wedding, and while the title may not get you out of your chair, they say the play is worth it. Here’s their report:

[photo by Pak Han]

About a year ago Katie read a play called The Hundred Flowers Project by Christopher Chen in Theatre Bay Area magazine. She liked it so much she told Brittany “Whenever another Christopher Chen play is produced, we need to go”. That time arrived. Crowded Fire Theater Company commissioned the world premiere of Chen’s new work, The Late Wedding, and it’s now playing at The Thick House.

Katie: I really enjoyed the freshness of the format and devices Chen used. It really brought the audience into the story, and I liked that. I thought the staging was really neat, and the set was awesome. It was so inventive and the use of the space was creative, just that alone is worth seeing.

Brittany: I was continuously interested. At times I felt like the play was throwing me around, but it was fun how the playwright acknowledged it. I loved the asides to the audience, where they said, “That was weird huh, this is why” or “Relax and just go with it”. In the opening monologue we’re told to “trust the play and let it take you somewhere”, so after that I was open to it taking me anywhere, even though I didn’t always know where it was going.

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He managed to mix a little “Careless Whisper” into “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House.” An epic surprise at an all-around epic final LCD show by North American Scum. (But they’ll be back soon with a Talking Heads show.)

[via Simon]

The Wise Sons one is a Hawaiian sandwich with homemade spam, and the RPS one is pho noodle rolls with chicken and summer corn and some other stuff. Both were bomb, and both feature teriyaki sauce by SF-based sauce maker Soy Vay.

I hope they start canning their spam, am I right?

(The portions are small because this photo is from a media preview. Real portions should be bigger.)

(P.S. I heard Wise Sons is open for dinner now sometimes.)

Hoping for some sweet haunted houses in the neighborhood this year. I know Adobe Books is building one as we speak.

Christopher F. Smith spotted the above evidence on Mission Street last night. Hopefully it was purchased for a joyful reason.

If you’re anything like me, when you heard the news LCD Soundsystem was splitting up and playing one big final show at Madison Square Garden, you immediately booked a trip to New York and sat on Stubhub for hours trying to get tickets. And hopefully, like me, you didn’t fall prey to scalpers and instead got tickets to a couple of the much more intimate second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-to-last shows at Terminal 5. And then you had an awesome time seeing the band perform at its bittersweet peak.

And then, if you’re still like me, you were waaaaay stoked to learn there was an LCD Soundsystem cover band operating in SF, and even stokeder to learn that they were actually really good. And finally, if you’re like me, you got to relive the bummer all over again when North American Scum announced their final show, which is this weekend in the Mission.

But, they’re still awesome, and El Rio is a helluva lot more intimate than MSG or Terminal 5. Let’s party! Advance tickets are apparently going fast, and it’s kind of a small room, so get yours (only $8) here!

Reader Jane K. went down to the “Looking” shoot the other day and played paparazzo for us. These boys didn’t seem to mind:

If you wanna get caught up on Season 1, get your mom’s HBO Go password, or check out Kat’s official recaps for Mission Mission.

I took this picture of a tap handle at Toronado way back when I had a phone that actually took photos this size. Dig that crazy typeface!

Nowadays the logo is all normal and boring:

I’ve always wondered the same thing, but never had the guts to ask.

[via Hey, Cookie! on Facebook]