Cowboy & Indian Interview

Cowboy & Indian is probably one of the best folk bands we've discovered this year; there's this quirky, charming feel to their songs that's not replicated by any other band. The members each have different musical backgrounds that bring something entirely different to the group as a whole, and it makes your ears really, really happy. We asked Jazz Mills, talented singer and member of Cowboy & Indian, a couple questions.



Where do you get the ideas for your music videos, if they were envisioned by you, and what was it like working on them and making a visual of the music you play?

The Ledbellies (Hurt my Pride) was shot on our very first tour in Chicago. We had only been a band for about 2 weeks and decided to tour from San Francisco to NYC and back to Austin. A friend of Daniel's named William Cabral was a huge fan of Leopold and his Fiction and heard about this new band and asked if he could come to Chicago to shoot a video. Ledbellies was 1 of like 5 songs we had at the time. Trouble Tracks was created by Daniel and his friend Sarah Wilson and shot in Joshua Tree during our 5th tour. Both videos were really fun to make but really different. With William, we basically just walked around the city while he filmed us and I found randomly places objects at each place we stopped and picked them up. There is a common theme in each item that I found on the street, but no body has seemed to notice that yet. When we showed up to the set of Troubled Tracks...I actually had scene notes, wardrobe, make-up etc. I am not an actress by any means so it was more difficult, but I love Sarah and don't mind doing what she tells me.

What have you learned from being on stage, performing, that you wished you'd known before?

I have learned how important it is to stay focused and appreciative onstage no matter what I may be going through off the stage. It is important to me that the audience feels connected and appreciated for being there and listening. There have been times when I was sick or upset and I basically just waltzed up onstage and did "my job" and afterwards heard people say things like...."I really enjoyed the show, but you seemed really disconnected or upset." I want people to know that I love them for being there and I if I am having a bad day offstage that I am still only up on the stage for them. It was a lot harder than I thought.

Which one of your songs did you spend the most time working on, and why?

We haven't spent a ton of time [on] just one song. Daniel and Jesse write very quickly, but a lot of our songs will be written piece by piece when we are all in different states and then when we get together....we put the pieces together.

What song would you like to hear before and after yours on the radio?

I would like to hear Name in Stone by Dead Man's Bones before and Love is All by The Tallest Man on Earth [after.] Actually either order.

If a (Glitter) Pox epidemic were to break out, apocalypse-style, what would the title of your last song be?

I would do anything to cover I'm Going Back Home by Nina Simone.

And lastly, what's coming up for you guys? Album, tour?

Our first full album is finished, but the release date is TBA. We will be releasing more singles and videos soon though.

-----

Seriously excited for that album. While we wait, Jazz Mills is working on a solo EP for the newest member of Cowboy and Indian - her baby Ava. You can be a part of the process by pledging, and you can get signed EPs, tshirts, posters, and swaaaag, all while being a part of something great. Check it out here. We pledged, and if you like the music, pledge with us.

Little Hurricane - Haunted Heart

Favorite lyrics: I'll be your thief in the night so I can steal you.

Haunted Heart has a solid, blood-pumping bassy beginning topped with the calm simple-toned voice of the lead singer. There is something really sensual about this song; the lust in the lyrics is also portrayed in the music and the tempo. It's a desirous tangle of music, like each note is a footfall of someone languorously walking toward you. It's a nonstop beat of a mind that wants everything to do with only one person.

GP rating: 71% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Clare and the Reasons

Clare and the Reasons incorporate a lot of different sounds and instruments to give each song a different musical vibe, but Clare's voice brings it back together into one grounded album. She can range from jazz-y to sultry to soft candlelight high notes, but it is consistently a unique blend of vocal notes that strings it all together.

We checked out a stream of their music and thought it was an experience to share. 'Pluto' is comical but serious, like swan lake. 'All the Wine' is almost a little nonsensical and lazy, like if you were drunk on something sweet. 'Ooh You Hurt Me So' has heavy bass mixed with cheery holiday-like music; it has some mad jinglebell action, but with heartbreak in the bells. 'Under the Water' makes you feel like you're literally understream, with a beginning filled with nature sounds and vocals that sound like you're sifting through honey. There's a perfect setting set with each song, like it's an entire play being acted out in front of you. You can sit back and be transported into musical versions of space, drunkenness, and synchronized swimming inside one album.

Glitter Pox rating: 78% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Oberhofer - Heart

Favorite lyrics: I don't know what you think while you're sleeping, I hope soon I'll dream with you

This song is musically everywhere; it switches between depressing and uplifting, string and xylophone. It's like a choir of angels, a black-and-white cartoon, romance, innocence, passion, pain. It's remembering and forgetting. Involving everything and nothing. An experience instead of sole sound.

Glitter Pox rating: 85% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Drawn Ship - Glass Eye

Favorite lyrics: If that glass eye should see, I'll poke it out again so you're as blind as me.

There's definitely a dark mockery of the original nursery rhyme in this song. It sounds like it's trying to put you to sleep, but with words that are twisted and brutal, sung in a comforting way. The music is slow and sociopathic, a mix of monotony and sleepiness - but it's brilliant, because it's as dueling in its comfort and creepiness as the lyrics are.

Glitter Pox rating: 80% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Husky - History's Door & Dark Sea

Husky is a band that has a lot of stylistic range, so we're featuring

two songs that are equally fantastic in different ways.

Favorite lyrics for History's Door:

Two hearts burning

On a hillside turning

Round the blazing sun

History's Door has a more folk band quality, the echoing vocals resonating slowly, playing off the instrumentally faster melody. There are parts of it you want to hear in the sunlight and parts you want to listen to in pitch black - it's a song that manages both sides of emotion simultaneously, which isn't entirely easy to find.

Favorite lyrics for Black Sea:

We were once just children staring up at the stars

When did we grow older and become so very far?

It's almost like the silence in Dark Sea is as powerful as the sound; you can feel all the spaces in between words as if the lulls were made from their own instrument. It's like pulses of music, a heartbeat of intensity and quietness. There's always a fading note, so it's never really 'silent,' but instead a kind of eternal background buzz.

Glitter Pox rating: 77% contagious

Hope you catch it,

The Glitter Pox

Yellow Ostrich - Whale

Favorite lyrics: Whale, swim with me whale / We will go far into the sea / You will take me onto your back / Never look back, never look back

The tribal-sounding drumming that starts off 'Whale' sets up one of the best simple intros these ears have heard, with the tambourine adding a kind of flippant jerkiness - the warmest cold shoulder music can give. The beginning is medium-paced, followed by a slowdown and then a crescendo of instrument-panic, leading into soft vocal  "oh's" like the beginning - a loop that makes you want to listen to the song over again in a neverending string of play buttons and skewed whale noises. It's differently organized than most songs, the contrast and the seemingly chaotic order making it an anarchic anthem in that it doesn't follow any kind of music law; the lyrics/singing and the melody isn't something you would think to pair together, if you had heard them separately - unless, of course, you were Yellow Ostrich - but the way it fits together is pretty magnificent. These guys think outside of musical standards and it creates something really different and entirely enticing.

Glitter Pox rating: 95% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox