The Vulgar Parts, The Cheats and other locals release new tunes.
Since 2016, Pittsburgh musician Adam Koisor has been taking people to the “Darkest Corners of the World” with a podcast that showcases punk, post-punk, indie and metal bands.
In one of those dark corners, he found the spark for a new project — The Vulgar Parts.
In 2019, Koisor, who fronts Pittsburgh band The Wire Riots, received a song from Grouch, the solo death metal project of Perth, Australia’s Brad Sinclair. When Sinclair came on the podcast, he and Koisor instantly connected, and Sinclair started guest hosting and co-hosting the show from the other side of the world.
Their mutual affinity for everyone from The Jesus Lizard to Dead Kennedys and Jane’s Addiction to The Stone Roses led to the remote musical collaboration.
“I had an endless well of extra songs that The Wire Riots didn’t like,” Koisor says. “I sent him videos of me playing acoustic guitar, for song structure, and then he took it and did it on his end with all his actual instruments, and then the drums were done via computer.”
On the flipside, Sinclair sent some tunes “that I simply sang over and then that became the song,” Koisor says.
The first single from The Vulgar Parts is “Meet Me By the Weird Church,” a crushing and chaotic song with sudden melodic shifts that blurs the line between their metal and alternative rock roots.
“It’s definitely the heaviest thing I’ve done,” Koisor says, “because Brad is coming from a death metal background whereas I am coming in with indie rock and pop lyrics and melodies. He’s taken every idea that I’ve had and made it extremely heavy, which is a good thing. It really keeps us anchored.”
More songs are on the way. In the meantime, you can find The Wire Riots this weekend at the Millvale Music Festival at 7 p.m. Friday in Gap Park.
Movie Club makes a video
Vince Cuneo doesn’t fly, but does some beautiful things with balloons in the new video from Movie Club.
The guitarist from Connellsville, who was in his sister’s Cait Cuneo Band, moved to Los Angeles four years ago and formed Movie Club in 2018 with drummer Jessamyn Violet. They released three EPs before last year issuing the psych-rock debut album “Black Flamingo,” which Glide Magazine called “the perfect soundtrack for a trip to the desert in a slightly rusty muscle car.”
For the new single “Trap Door,” the Venice rock duo dips into the Salton Sea with an artful, cinematic video inspired by the 1950s French classic “The Red Balloon.” The twist is that Movie Club makes its trip to various locations, from Bombay Beach to a small desert town, in reverse while cinematographers Dustin Downing and Brian Feinzimer chase the balloons with drones.
The video advances the Aug. 10 release of “Fangtooth,” a new album recorded at Fonogenic Studios by Jeff Thompson, mixed by Mark Rains (Paranoyds, Death Valley Girls) and mastered by Brian Lucey (Black Keys). “Trap Door” features bassist Tim Lefebvre (David Bowie) and flutist David Ralicke.
“We definitely went far outside of our comfort zone making this video,” Cuneo said in a statement. “I don’t know how to describe crawling into the Salton Sea, but there was a moment where I thought that I physically wasn’t going to be able to go through with it.”
Action Rock Jukebox
With a singer/growler like Todd Porter, any song The Cheats play will sound like The Cheats — even if it’s a Bay City Rollers song.
Without going overboard, The Cheats add grit to the 1976 hit by the bubblegum glam band from Scotland as part of Action Rock Jukebox series from the local Screaming Crow Records.
Eight bands from around the world — The Cheats, Stacy Crowne, The Dirty Denims, The Hip Priests, Black Sheriff, Mud City Manglers, Chuck Norris Experiment and The Ravagers — are releasing 7-inches with one original track and a jukebox song from ’70s and ’80s.
Up next are German acts Stacy Crowne and Dirty Denims doing “Radar Love” and Centerfold, respectively, and Dutch band Black Sheriff taking on “Centerfold.”
More info at screamingcrow.com.