Waterloo Records Instore with Shawn David McMillen

via Helderberg House

Waterloo Records Instore: Shawn David McMillen
Friday, May 7
Waterloo Records (600A. North Lamar Blvd.)
5 PM, Free
[info]

For Dead Friends (Tompkins Square), third release for Austin-based guitarist and sound collagist Shawn David McMillen, a mixture of celebration and seance-like atmospheres are created, drawing on steel-string Americana, found sounds and dirges from cultures and environments half-dreamed and pulled from direct reality. Comparisons with Charlambides' isolationist psychedelia and the addled ethnographic mergers of the Sun City Girls are apt, but McMillen has his own thing going. On front-porch sing alongs with violinist Ralph White, an easy jamboree is overlaid with kalimba and twinges of Afro-Caribbean rites. Minimal piano wanderings and cheap-guitar feedback recall the bedroom Krautrock of Blues Control, while imbued with a primal and ecstatic enthusiasm. McMillen has been exploring the furthest reaches of experience - both his own and that of the collective underbelly - for over a decade and, while there are only a few documents to hang at the altar, the humanity of his explorations should not go unnoticed.

For this celebratory in-store at Waterloo Records, McMillen will be joined by bassist-composer Josh Ronsen and Jonathan Horne (Plutonium Farmers guitarist) on drums. Expect both the somber and the jovial to transpire, often within the chordal outlines of the same song.