The Roadside Graves are headed to the Lemp to headline a full bill of MEGAFAUN, Matt Dill, Eric Hall and Harlot Bride. Should be a good show. To boot they have been getting some good press lately for their latest single Ruby places like Stereogum and Prefix. Be there July 17th, it’s only $5!
With an eye on what’s happening locally, Musicsucks is starting a series spotlighting local StL bands. One part MP3 free-for-all, one part interview, and one part soundcheck we’re hoping to highlight the diversity of talent right here in your own Lou. Today we’re talking talking with Robby Ritter from The Ghost Of The Forest, who professes a love of percussive instruments, fellow radiant popsters The Pomegranates, and all things “east of unusual.”
I first saw TGOTF at some random Red Sea basement show and they knocked my socks off with their naive exuberance. I immediately bought their hand-made $5 debut. This teen bedroom-pop outfit from St. Charles has a delightfully sparkling piano-driven sound that combined with lo-fi guitiars borrows heavily from Broken Social Scene’s instrumentals, with doses of sunny Camera Obscura-esque melodies, and Nick Diamond’s (The Unicorns/Islands) influenced rhythms. All of which belies lyrical themes of yearning, lost love, death, and ostracism. My favorite ‘We Are Men’ is both a hilarious commentary on masculinity (We are me/We fight with our hands/we steal your women/and pillage the land) and expose of the juvenile male experience. Their sophomore album “My Time To Die” is available at local Slackers locations, and you can catch Robby’s solo act Bear (The Ghost) at the Lemp Arts Center July 29th.
We Are Men (LISTEN)
The Ghost Of The Forest (LISTEN)
MS: How did The Ghost of the Forest get it’s start?
RR: well it all started back in 2006. I was a bright starry eyed child, looking for love in all the wrong places. One day i was driving to my school, and i saw these woods, and i was like, man, it would be sweet to play a show in the woods (which i still want to do!) and then the name The Ghost Of The Forest hit me. The first song i recorded under this new name was heavily influenced by Liars. I knew this would be my new style, dark, scarry, and awesome! Shortly after this i wrote the song “OH”, which is on our new album ‘My Time To Die’ and realized that in my heart, i was a pop song writer. The next song i recorded was ‘We Are Men’ which quickly rose to number 15 on the charts. I knew that i must start a real band. Collin and I played ‘We Are Men’ at our schools talent show. It went over pretty well, and we decided that it was time for the big leagues. We started asking friends to join the band. Our debut show was May 28th ['06] at Lemp Arts Center with Berlin Whale and Frog Eyes. Since then we have added new members and lost old ones, but we have finally found our sound and are ready to take the indie world by storm!
MS: Where do you draw your musical influences from?
RR: Well personally my biggest 2 influences are Sigur Ros and Sufjan Stevens. But across the band we get influences from Animal Collective, The Strokes, The Beatles, The Walkmen, Arcade Fire, Patrick Wolf, The Cure, and Gorillaz (just to name a few)
MS: What have you been listening to a lot of lately?
RR: hmmm… tough question, i usually just put my ipod on shuffle. I really like Pomegranates. They are a smaller band from Cincinnati and i listen to their CD and EP alot. oh, and i just heard the new Fleet Foxes cd….it blew me out of the water.
MS: Do you think that you are most influenced by current artists or stuff you grew up listening too?
RR: Well i used to be influence by The Unicorns, but lately i am mostly just influenced by what i listen to now.
MS: What is your favorite piece of musical equipment?
RR: well i grew up on drums, and since i play piano all the time it is really fun to play drums. Im gonna go with Drums for $500, Alex.
MS: Whats your favorite food?
RR: I really like Pei Wei, i think it is Japanese.
Here is an interview with Cadence Weapon, if you haven’t checked it out his new album Afterparty Babies is pretty dope.
New Girl Talk.
23Jun08
Since you are already on MusicSucks it means you are online and can download stuff. As such, go buy the new Girl Talk album, it’s a “name your price” sorta thing and is really easy. Well worth the money you have sitting in your paypal account already.
New Wolf Parade Due Out Tuesday.
13Jun08
Hey kids, go to Vintage Vinyl, walk past the new Coldplay and pick up the new Wolf Parade album At Mount Zoomer on Tuesday. From what’s on their myspace and what I heard last year it should be killer.
STL Blog Action.
09Jun08Have any of you noticed that Annie’s blog AtoZ has blown up in the last couple months? They are blogging madmen/madwomen over there. I crunched the numbers and did a little write up about it on my personal blog. Basically AtoZ has had a huge increase in show reviews and posts in general, last month they had 26 show reviews! I’m glad that the show review trend has caught on here in St Louis, prior to your friends here at MusicSucks and certainly prior to AtoZ there was little to nothing about upcoming or past shows in STL. To that end the blog scene here has gotten quite a bit bigger, blog/sites like AtoZ, Toe Taps and Spastic Claps, Dividing By Zero and Lo-Fi St. Louis have all made St Louis a better city for music. Yay for blogs!
A Few Good Shows.
09Jun08Hey folks, there are a few shows coming up you should go see.
June 11 : She Wants Revenge/Be Your Own Pet/The Virgins/Switches, Pageant
June 12 :The Raconteurs/The Fiery Furnaces, Pageant and Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk, the Lemp Arts Center
June 13 : Iron and Wine, Pageant
June 16 : Ladytron and Datarock, Pageant
June 17 : Ahleuchatistas, Lemp Arts Center and Pomegranates/Ghost of the Forest, Off Broadway
Sadly, I will have to miss the Ahleuchatistas show at the Lemp, it should be worth well more than the 5 bones it takes to get in the door. A couple shows definately worth checking out a couple weeks down the road are Everthus the Deadbeats and the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players at the Bluebird June 24th, as well as Wolf Eyes at 2 Cents Plain June 26th. Rancid is playing Pop’s on June 28th as well. So plenty to look forward to.
To start the week off right here is a recent interview we did with one of our favorites Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk. They also have a slew of EPs out now and are playing at the Lemp this week, Thursday June 12th, go check them out.
How did Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk get it’s start?
hi, this is oscar. i used to make drew sandwiches at the coffeeshop i worked at and we would talk about dinosaurs and effects pedals. when we found a way to combine the two we realized we didn’t really want to do anything else. right before i joined and for a little while after we had a really awesome drummer named josh and we played lots of loud guitars that were kind of in tune, but he left for med skool and took all our tuning pedals so we had to make up for it by writing CHOMP WOMP on everything we own and starting to eat all of our friends. over the past two years we’ve consumed jameson, isaac, josh, drew, me, luke, derek, barrett, ellen (chip chirp), hillary, harry, tom, eric, jim dandy, jocelyn noir, gaurav, seth, james, lisa, the umbros, charlie, brad, alex from lenny stoofy, patrick, j.p. doerr, leah, and the engine of my mom’s car.
Where do you draw your musical influences from?
henry darger paintings, fumbly fingers, broken stuff, and pretty girls. window DRONES. original star wars trilogy (un-debased). CHOMP WOMP.
What have you been listening to a lot of lately?
we’ve been listening to (and looking at) gobbledigook, that new sigur ros single, cos its pretty much the ideal summer jam. the sounds of helium evaporating on the poles of distant planets and intergalactic radio waves. also burial and the field and the replacements. Iggy downstairs working on Norrit tracks all day long. the new lil wayne and deerhunter. people talking to fish and trees. speaking of which, drew’s starting to get into that awesome jonny greenwood comp.
Do you think that you are most influenced by current artists or stuff you grew up listening to?
Drew says there’s pretty much no difference for him cos he didn’t start listening to music til he was 18, so all his early influences were lawnmowers and tractors. we (pronouns are confusing) guess current stuff gets us the most excited cos its new, but oscar suspects those simon and garfunkel records his mom played when he was growing up might have infected him with a cheesy streak.
Are there any musicians/artists that standout to you right now?
Norrit, Coat Party, Alas Alak Alaska!, Lenny Stoofy, Hairy Belafonte are some of the ones you might not know.
I heard that you are planning to move to Detroit to live in a abandoned toy factory, what’s the story behinds that? Are you still planning to head up to the motor city?
ALL HAIL LORD SCRUMMAGE! who knows, man…i think we started playing music because we were incapable of following through on anything else. making the plans is the fun part anyway…i’m pretty sure we’re going to end up there for a little while this year one way or another. besides, that’s the only place i know of where a band can live comfortably off of the detritus of a drunken summer.
What is your favorite piece of musical equipment?
GarageBand and the old iMovie.
I know you guys love Taco Bell but whats your favorite food?
Crunchwrap Supreme with beans instead of meat. and a mild/hot/fire sauce mixture for icing.
The past few days the MusicSucks team has been in Chicago seeing Efterklang, which produced our pick for the best album of 2007. The show was great and I have to say that I really enjoyed Illinois smoking ban. 
