Music Ava Mendoza's Natural
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ASSOCIATION OF ALTERNATIVE NEWSMEDIA April 3, 2013 MUSIC AVA MENDOZA’S NATURAL WAY The experimental guitarist dabbles in the difficult realm of free jazz, but grounds it in a warm humanity. By Sam Lefebvre t’s a bustling Sunday night at Bar 355, and Oakland guitarist music,” Mendoza said. “I wanted to tour all of the time. I thought, Ava Mendoza is leading her avant-garde trio Unnatural Ways ‘I’ll die for music.’” She formed high-brow post-punk group Mute through a particularly exhausting section of music, when Socialite in 2006 with avant-percussionist Moe Staiano, and later suddenly, Dominique Leone’s keyboard cuts out. He glances at played in his group Surplus 1980, which also showcased jarring drummer Nick Tamburro, who fiddles with Leone’s amplifier rhythm and guitar histrionics. Fred Frith, a Mills’ faculty member Iwhile maintaining a frantic rhythm single-handedly. Tamburro and founder of experimental rock group Henry Cow, included remedies Leone’s synth, Mendoza stares at each player, grins, and Mendoza in a special performance of his landmark 1980 LP the group intuitively restarts the section. That knowing smile is Gravity at Slim’s last year. signature Mendoza — she’s made an art out of improvisation. With every project, Mendoza was developing a sound for what Unnatural Ways had just returned from its European tour, and would later become Unnatural Ways. “I learned a lot from these the group was clearly tightened by rigorous nightly performances. collaborations, but developed ideas that couldn’t be realized in The stylistic breadth of Unnatural Ways’ material lent the set a them,” she said. Mendoza met drummer Nick Tamburro at the thrilling unpredictability: Clamorous cymbals gave way to an San Francisco Rock Project, a nonprofit music school where she R&B beat beneath Leone’s keyboard solo, but suddenly the track teaches kids to play songs by Captain Beefheart, Deerhoof, and spiraled into tonal dissonance and Mendoza throttled her guitar Cline. They began performing as a duo, but she explained that, “a strings with a screwdriver. year later, Dominique [Leone] showed up at a show and said he There’s grace and ease in Mendoza’s experimental sound. At wanted to play bass.” Leone ended up on keyboards, completing Bar 355, she didn’t pander to the crowd with banter or engage the Unnatural Ways trio in early 2012. “What I do now is in this onlookers with a forced smile. Her gaze moved from Leone’s little bubble between a few different genres,” Mendoza said. fingers to his focused expression and back to her instrument, As such, she has collaborated with tUnE-yArDs on a live score for then quickly signaled a change with her guitar neck. Mendoza’s several Buster Keaton silent films at The Castro Theatre last year, virtuosity is staggering, but more important is her ability to make which they also performed at Bonnaroo, and has shared the stage expressive guitar work meaningful to the audience. Her fans span with such notable musicians as Carla Bozulich, Weasel Walter, and the gamut from academic experimental music aficionados to guitar Mike Watt. Cline also champions her work: “Could this be some virtuoso sycophants to followers of progressive rock and free jazz. skilled, overlooked master …? It would be easy to think so,” he And the kinds of venues she plays are just as diverse: “I’ll play a wrote in the liner notes of Mendoza’s 2010 solo album, Shadow squat one night and a high-brow jazz venue the next and what I do Stories. doesn’t fit in either,” she said. Despite her formal training and music studies, Mendoza Mendoza began playing music as a teenager in Los Angeles. evades academic elitism and discusses music without pretense. She asked Wilco guitarist Nels Cline for lessons after seeing him Her performances are distinctly expressive and evocative, relying perform in The Geraldine Fibbers. “We met up once a month much on the art of improvisation. to listen to records, talk about music, and play a little bit,” she Even her most experimental songs are grounded by a warm recalled. At the time, Mendoza studied classical guitar, but she humanity that she traces to her interest in Sixties and Seventies started experimenting at Mills College, from which she graduated free jazz, which strove for spiritual vitality through rejection of in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in Intermedia Arts. Resting conventional musical forms. firmly in Mills’ lineage of progressive music, she wed electronic “For me, abstract music is rooted in free jazz: Albert Ayler, experimentalism with her lifelong love of guitar by using a pedal Ornette Coleman, Sonny Sharrock,” Mendoza said. “They were board and a broad sonic palette. about expressing things that can’t be expressed in not-free music After graduating, Mendoza toured exhaustively with other and that’s my attraction to it.” l bands. “When I got out [of Mills], I thought I would do anything for ASSOCIATION OF ALTERNATIVE NEWSMEDIA May 8, 2013 MUSIC THE TWO SIDES OF TONY MOLINA Constantly juggling hardcore and pop projects, the veteran musician has won over fans in both camps, most recently Slumberland and Matador Records. By Sam Lefebvre hether fronting pop or hardcore bands, Tony Molina heavily overwhelmingly positive. By 2004, the lineup settled with Molina, who indulges in the characteristics of each genre. “If I’m playing wrote, sang, and played guitar, plus Monnot, Andrew Kerwin, and Max hardcore all of the time, I’m listening to pop the whole time,” Schneider-Schumacher. The band toured the West Coast and Pacific said the Millbrae native, who now lives in San Francisco. “If Northwest, and in 2010, opened for San Francisco’s Grass Widow in I’m playing pop all of the time, I’m listening to hardcore.” Since New York City. Ovens’ lyrics grappled with classic pop tropes — broken W2002, Molina has strictly applied this maxim to a slew of groups, relationships, self-deprecation, and melancholic resignation. Song including Dystrophy, Ovens, Lifetime Problems, and, currently, Caged titles like “Puke When I’m Sad,” “We Know We Suck,” and “I’m a Animal and his solo work. Creep” reveal that these lyrical themes aren’t fit for hardcore, but share For the frenetic and intense 28-year-old, it’s not a self-imposed the genre’s simplicity and directness. creative constraint but a practical necessity. “I think I need the fucking Molina was at first wary of brandishing his affinity for guitar hooks balance, dude …. I can’t do one without the other, but I don’t know that and melody in the hardcore scene: “We were hella afraid to play out because I’ve never tried,” Molina said. with Ovens for years because everyone knew us from hardcore,” Molina In both hardcore and pop, Molina values lyrical simplicity, explained. “How could the same dudes come out and play pop music?” structural concision, and the emotional impact of guitar riffs. Two Yet, his hardcore credibility remains intact, and is even bolstered by recent releases — the wistful riff rock of his first solo album,Dissed and his gall to defy the scene’s codified sounds. Molina’s hardcore peers Dismissed, and his new hardcore band Caged Animal’s barbaric debut haven’t criticized his seemingly incompatible interests. EP — illustrate the striking dichotomy that runs throughout Molina’s Most musicians avoid citing their immediate influences, but discography over the last eleven years. On Dissed and Dismissed, Molina specifically discussed his early interest in Weezer with a Molina intensifies the slacker clichés and self-deprecation of Nineties refreshing lack of pretense: “I heard Pinkerton for the first time in indie rock into absurdist hyperbole. He expresses vulnerability and sixth grade and it was my favorite album for most of my childhood melodrama through bizarre truisms while referencing his forebears: …. I’ve always loved pop.” He cited the guitar-based Nineties rock Thin Lizzy leads, Radiohead lyrics, Replacements sneer. Molina of Guided by Voices as another clear forebear. On Dissed and appropriates unapologetically, but distills the past into bursts of Dismissed, Molina covers Guided by Voices’ “Wondering Boy Poet.” reverence less than a minute long. With Caged Animal, Molina It flows seamlessly with Molina’s own songs — which hardly ever indulges just as heavily in the traditional tropes of hardcore and exceed two minutes — partly because of its similarly short length. similarly amplifies them to extremity. In 2009, Andee Connors, of vaunted San Francisco music institution Based on the strength of Dissed and Dismissed, which was released Aquarius Records, attempted to catch up with Molina’s bountiful by local imprint Melters in February, Berkeley’s Slumberland Records recordings, releasing a 44-track, self-titled Ovens CD on his own plans to release a split record with Molina and San Francisco lo-fi tUMULt imprint. The massive compilation contains recordings from project Swiftumz. Slumberland is arguably responsible for putting out 2006 to 2008. In his writing for the Aquarius catalog, Connors has more enduring pop releases than any other local label. Molina was also repeatedly christened Molina a “pop genius.” Justin Briggs, who recently invited to contribute a seven-inch for an upcoming series of released Caged Animal’s debut on his Warthog Speak label, described singles released by indie titan Matador Records. Molina’s newest hardcore project as “knuckle-dragging, no nonsense, Molina’s simultaneous affinity for both hardcore and pop began far ignorant [and] mosh-able hardcore” in the press release. Slumberland before Dissed and Dismissed and Caged Animal. He started Millbrae owner Mike Schulman admitted he isn’t familiar with Caged Animal, hardcore group Dystrophy when he was sixteen and played alongside but readily compared Molina’s solo work to Nineties power-pop greats such punk bands as Life’s Halt and What Happens Next? A few years Teenage Fanclub.