Fall Fest Concerts Preview: Soccer Mommy, SASAMI, The Boy Illinois Graphic by Steven Duong. By Kelly Page [email protected] Rising from the ashes of 10/10, this year’s Fall Fest will feature a night of music for Grinnellians. On Saturday, Oct. 6, students and community members will have a chance to see three buzzed-about musicians play right here on campus. First, at 4:30 p.m., former Cherry Glazerr keyboardist and incredibly cool lady Sasami Ashworth, whose stage name is SASAMI, will play a set of her solo music at the Commencement Stage, followed by Nashville-based musician Soccer Mommy at 5 p.m. If it rains, both acts will perform in the Harris Center instead. Finally, rapper and East Chicago native The boy illinois will perform in Gardner Lounge at 10 p.m. For the past ten years, SASAMI has been pretty much everywhere in the Los Angeles music scene. According to her Soundcloud page, “From playing french horn in orchestras and studios, to playing keys and guitar in local rock bands (Dirt Dress, Cherry Glazerr), to contributing vocals/string/horn arrangements to studio albums (Avi Buffalo, Curtis Harding, Wild Nothing, Hand Habits, etc.) and producing tracks for other respected artists (Soko), she has gained a reputation as an all-around musical badass.” A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, SASAMI has also spent time teaching music and writing orchestral scores for films. Having essentially done everything else she could have possibly done in music, she is now taking time to develop her solo work, planning to release an album in 2019, which Pitchfork says she describes as an exploration of “everyone I fucked and who fucked me last year.” On her recent single “Callous” SASAMI sings “When I look back, I can see myself so clear” over churning guitars. It ends in a synth solo that will have Grinnell students vigorously nodding their heads to the beat. 20-year-old musician Sophie Allison, who performs as Soccer Mommy, seems to have more in common with the average Grinnell student than just her age. Many of her lyrics, sung over her richly orchestrated guitar, sound like they could have been ripped from D-Hall conversations. Case in point: “I’m just a victim of changing planets, my Scorpio rising and my parents” (from “Scorpio Rising”), or “I wanna know her like you, I wanna be that cool” (from “Cool”). Allison dropped out of New York University after two years when her Bandcamp releases attracted the attention of notable indie record label Fat Possum. Since then, she has moved back to her hometown of Nashville and released two albums, Collection and Clean, which have positioned her as an exciting new voice in independent music. She has also toured with a particularly diverse set of musicians: contemporary favorites like Mitski, Jay Som and Frankie Cosmos, shoegaze legends Slowdive, recently heralded indie act Phoebe Bridgers and even Paramore. In an interview with Billboard, she says her songwriting is probably influenced most by Taylor Swift and Mitski, both of whom show through in her highly-personal lyricism. According to his Spotify bio, Lupe Fiasco once described The boy illinois as “one of the leaders of the next generation of hip-hop.” Forbes even said that he’s the “next hot Chicago act,” poised to join the ranks of Vic Mensa and Chance the Rapper. His most recent release, Windy, features a collaboration with rapper Saba and lush electronic instrumentation backing The boy illinois’s verses. This Saturday night will be the first, but hopefully not the last, concert-filled Fall Fest, featuring three artists who should not be missed. Ohmme to play Gardner Saturday Ohmme is playing on Saturday night at Gardner Lounge. By Jackson Schulte [email protected] Ohmme, a Chicago-based band that has received critical acclaim from national publications and Chicago critics alike, is coming to campus Saturday night to perform in Gardner Lounge. Bandmates Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart created Ohmme in 2014 after working with famed Chicago musicians like Chance The Rapper and Wilco. Since then, they have toured with acts such as Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and Iron & Wine. Their most recent album, “Parts,” came out last month and has received acclaim from both Chicago publications and national music outlets like Pitchfork. Doors open at 9 p.m. and the show is set to begin at 9:30 p.m. Waxahatchee plays an intimate show at Gardner Lounge Waxahatchee performed at Grinnell on Wednesday night with tourmates Anna St. Louis and Night Shop, a project by Justin Sullivan. Public domain photo. By Chloe Wray [email protected] “Mississippi, I’m alone in the alley / What am I supposed to be fighting for? / If you build yourself up tall you can tell me what the future holds / Will you settle where you stand or keep it to yourself?” The lyrics to “Chapel of Pines,” released as a single in July, resounded throughout Gardner Lounge on Thursday, Sept. 19, as Katie Crutchfield took the stage under the banner of her solo project Waxahatchee. “Chapel of Pines” appears on Crutchfield’s latest release, an EP entitled Great Thunder. Written in 2012 under a now inactive project by the same name as the EP, the songs on Great Thunder were reimagined and then recorded in December 2017. Over the years Crutchfield has interspersed the piano-heavy ballads of Great Thunder throughout sets. Despite this, the songs off the EP are still relatively new to fans and they were played alongside band-backed, guitar centered verses familiar to audiences of previous albums. A theme of duality echoed throughout the evening, beginning with sentiments shared by Crutchfield in an interview before the show. For Crutchfield, this three-week tour has been a revue of sorts. The tour has been a low-pressure platform for Crutchfield to play Great Thunder, with many of the performances filling old theaters and churches. Anna St. Louis and Justin Sullivan, opening with their solo sets, have come back to the stage each night of the tour as the backing band to Waxahatchee, a convenient and intimate framing for the show. After the tour stops in Lincoln, Nebraska, on Sept. 20, and Lawrence, Kansas, on following next day, Crutchfield will take a week-long break before joining Courtney Barnett in Denver for the beginning of a month long run. As for this tour with St. Louis and Sullivan, Crutchfield said, “It’s nice to have two people who don’t sound exactly alike, and they don’t sound just like me. … They’re on different ends of the spectrum that I like to be on — it’s kind of like two different shades of a thing that I like to put forth.” Reflecting on her own work, Crutchfield expressed a difficulty in being objective about her music. Patterns in the themes presented in her music are easier to notice in hindsight, observed Crutchfield, noting that it is difficult to consciously work patterns into her work during the process of song-writing. Rather, she prefers to let the writing process occur naturally, especially when it comes to trying to include her southern roots into her music. Originally from Alabama, Waxahatchee being the name of a creek close to where she grew up, Crutchfield used to oppose the narrative some fans and critics put forth which focused on her music as that of someone from the South. Over time she came to realize how integral those sounds, and vivid descriptions of place, were to her music and how much of it came from Alabama. Now with her continued songwriting and the release of Great Thunder, a reminder of the music she started this project with, Crutchfield lets reflection point out influences in her music but is content to go with the songwriting process, wherever it takes her. “I think there’s always been an apparent need, or a gravitation towards marrying really beautiful melodies with sad, intense, personal lyrics and that juxtaposition is like the voice that I’ve found,” Crutchfield said, speaking to the contradictions which have remained central to the evolution of her music, which she sees as a progression without a clear trajectory. “I think that those two things are sort of in a natural conflict with one another and that natural conflict is where I like to stay.” In the second-to-last song of the night, Crutchfield’s voice was joined by that friend and collaborator, singer-songwriter Kevin Morby. Crutchfield also spoke on the “Chapel of Pines” music video. Directed by Christopher Good, the video was filmed on a farm outside of Kansas City to the tune of a dream-like world in which shoots only occurred at sunrise and sunset. “We were all psyched because we knew what we were getting was so cool,” Crutchfield said. The video aimed to achieve a feeling reminiscent of Terrance Malick’s film, Days of Heaven The evening ended with Crutchfield on her own once more, rounding out her set as she started it, alone on stage as Waxahatchee. Concerts lineup released for fall By Kelly Page [email protected] Students have been ecstatic about the concerts schedule for this semester. Although some of the more high-profile acts (like Girlpool and Kero Kero Bonito) were leaked via Spotify prior to the official lineup release on Friday, Sept. 7, finally seeing a complete concerts schedule did not fail to be one of the most exciting moments of the new semester. This year’s concerts coordinator, Cassidy Christiansen ’20, worked hard behind the scenes all summer long to provide the College with some of the best up-and-coming artists of modern times, despite cuts to the student activities budget this year.