New York, NY (Top40 Charts) New York City duo, Dollshot, aka Rosie and Noah K., shared a video today for "Nacht und Träume", a Schubert cover that closes out their new album, Lalande, which arrives on Friday - watch + share via YouTube. To celebrate Lalande, Dollshot will perform next Monday, January 28 in Los Angeles, at Harvard & Stone, 10pm.
Discussing filming the Angus Borsos directed video, Dollshot stated, It was a place that demanded we not make any noise. We moved quietly, though the trees seemed immediately aware of us stalking the grounds, searching an entrance. Inside, the cold came up through our feet and pressed at our backs. But leaning into the walls, they responded, revealing now a passage, another room, a shaft of light.
The lyrics to "Nacht und Träume" come from a poem by Matthäus von Collin, translated as thus:
Holy Night, you sink low;
Even lower dreams flow
Like your moonlight through rooms,
through sleepers' silent breasts.
With pleasure you overhear them
Cry out when day awakes;
Return again, Holy Night!
Sweet dreams, come again!
Dollshot are a group who feel most at home in a state of perpetual dislocation. The husband-and-wife duo of vocalist Rosie and saxophonist Noah are forever hovering between oppositional worlds-physically, musically, and spiritually. She's from a small town in Virginia, and he's from L.A. They both cut their teeth at conservatory (with copious classical compositions, chamber-ensemble commissions, and jazz recordings to their names), but they conceived of Dollshot as an indie-rock outfit where they could bend the rules of their formal training. This is a band than can school you on the microtonal theories of Russian experimental composer Ivan Wyschnegradsky and gush about No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom with equal enthusiasm.
With Lalande, Dollshot peel out for parts unknown, with that enigmatic album title-sourced from Brazilian author Clarice Lispector's 1943 novel, Near to the Wild Heart-serving as the cryptic signpost for the unpredictable journey ahead. Says Noah, "We were both really taken with the idea of this made-up word, 'Lalande,' that's described in the book as this naked feeling of the infinite when you look out at night over the ocean. This album is about a woman who's looking in on herself, and it's ambiguous as to whether or not she's really alive. That's the basic thematic framework: these liminal realms that this girl inhabits."
Lalande resembles a house of mirrors perched on a fault line. Each song plots out a byzantine maze where familiar sounds-from 19th-century German lieds to '70s prog and fusion to '90s post-rock and IDM-are twisted and mutated, and the foundation is constantly shifting underneath. There is great tension in the music that lies in the inherently confrontational relationship between Rosie's pristine, diamond-cut voice and the bull-in-a-china-shop drumming of Mike Pride, who anchors a backing band that also includes bassist
Peter Bitenc, keyboardist Wes Matthews, and cellist
Kevin McFarland. There is no easy safe passage through Lalande - you just have to work up the nerve to step inside and get lost in the labyrinth.
