It's been a while since we've heard from Soccer Team. Their wiry 2006 album, 'Volunteered' Civility and Professionalism, is excellent (or at least I think so!). And the duo's Ryan Nelson donated some music to a Taffety Punk Theatre Company dance performance earlier this year, and recorded a guitar part during Beauty Pill's public recording sessions at Artisphere. I'm looking forward to the new tunes.

"The band always had an aura of excitement and energy surrounding them, which only seemed to grow during their five years of activity," says Andy Low, who runs Robotic Empire. The Richmond label's inaugural release was a PG. 99 record: Low recently re-released two of the band's albums on vinyl, Singles and document #8. The latter, which came out 10 years ago, is a fan favorite, and it's just one part of what's helped the band's audience grow postmortem. "Since disbanding, I think rumors and legends slowly developed and word sort of continued to spread," Low says. "I've seen it happen with some bands where they become more popular after disbanding, but with PG.99 they just seemed to maintain a healthy following."

The group's legend is rock history-worthy: PG. 99 became known for raucous, cathartic live performances; the group would sometimes perform with more than a dozen people; it cranked out 14 releases, toured hard, and sometimes partied a little too hard before burning out.

All the newfound attention surrounding the group's reunion has been a little surreal for Mike Taylor, PG. 99's guitarist and principle songwriter. He attributes fans' growing interest to timing as well as mystery. "We did a whole lot really quick, made all these albums, and then just disappeared," he says. "leaving in the time the Internet was picking up ... that had a lot to do with PG. 99's ability to come back and still have interest."

Another reason is that a new guard of bands are reviving the style. Groups like Pianos Become The Teeth, Touche Amore, and The Saddest Landscape are at the peak of the new-old screamo scene.

Actually, the Saddest Landscape is an even closer peer: They started up 10 years ago in Boston. Frontman Andy Maddox recalls catching PG. 99 early on in the decade. "When I first heard them, honestly they kind of seemed like a mess to me, but really kind of entertaining," he says. "They would show up and there would just be this force, these amps and these people that would take over basements. It didn't matter to me that they were messy." But Maddox saw the band grow out of that messiness and into a tighter group, with document #8 as its pinnacle. He says that PG. 99 became something of a Fugazi-like band in its scene. Touche Amore singer Jeremy Bolm welcomes the comparison. "When our band started, we threw that out there pretty often," Bolm says. "That was the intention of that sort of style, pretty much '90s screamo hardcore."

PG. 99's also offers a kind of appealing sincerity. "Everyone into this type of punk rock or post-hardcore can definitely see when a band is being honest," says Pianos Become The Teeth guitarist Mike York. "They meant it 110 percent." It's that passion that's part of the appeal for York. "That's one of the coolest things of this kind of music," he says. "It's an honor to be included in it."

As much as today's torchbearers admire PG. 99, Taylor certainly appreciates their work, too. "It's definitely really cool because it gives us a platform to come back and do it again and it still has meaning," he says. A quick look at YouTube videos of the group's first reunion performance last week in Richmond during Best Friends Day demonstrates that.

"It was incredible, it was pretty overwhelming," Taylor says. "But at the same time it was kind of funny cause it didn't hit me that we were doing this PG. 99 show until I was checking out the shirts." Taylor has been playing with his PG. 99 cohorts Johnny Ward and his brother Chris in the dark folk project Pygmy Lush, so their time together preparing for the reunion didn't feel like it was out of the ordinary: While inner turmoil caused the band to break up in the first place, Taylor says that PG. 99's members made their friendship a priority, and it's part of why getting back together was pretty easy.

Taylor says the band had gotten offers in the past, but it wasn't until a festival organizer named Curtis Grimstead, who runs Rorschach Records, asked him in January. "I asked him and he said 'haha, that's really funny,'" Grimstead says. "Later that night he said 'actually maybe we could do that.'" Taylor says, "We liked the idea, so Curtis didn't really have to do much convincing." When all 1,000 tickets to their Best Friends Day set at Canal Club sold out, the band decided to schedule a second show in D.C.

After months of planning and learning all of document #8 for the show, the band delivered a 30-minute set that still affects Taylor. "It seemed more real and authentic to just get up there and make a whole bunch of blistering noise, and that's kind of what happened," he says. "It was beyond my expectations. I didn't expect us to play as well as we did. It was really something special, the crowd and the band kind of wrapped itself into one yet again."

That sets a pretty high bar for tomorrow night's show. The band won't play document #8 again, at least not in order, but Taylor doesn't want to skimp on the performance. And this could be a deciding factor in whether or not PG. 99 plays another show soon. For Taylor and the rest of the band, the future seems pretty up in the air. "I guess we'll just let this D.C. show come and pass and see how that feels."

PG. 99 performs with Circle Takes The Square and Thou tomorrow at 9 p.m. at Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW.

“Hello, this is John Maus. Please listen to my new album on Spotify.” Direct and chipper, the in-house advertisement was nevertheless an ominous thing to hear between songs this week, a few days after the Minnesota electro-pop singer created an indie-rock controversy by telling Pitchfork he’s glad so many record stores “have little ‘closed’ signs on their door now”—and nearly a month since Spotify, the latest service that promises to change how we consume music, arrived in the United States. Maus later apologized for the Pitchfork comment—and offered the clarification that he was referring to big-box outlets like Best Buy, not mom ’n’ pops—but his point remained: Here’s a guy on the right side of history, losers be damned.

If you’ve been lucky enough to receive an emailed invite to the service—or paid to join—you know that being on Team Spotify rules. Spotify’s streamable library contains millions of songs, licensed with the approval of artists and labels. I’ve pulled up music from Chuck Brown, and The Cornel West Theory, and every album in the Fugazi catalog, for free, with the only trade-off being an audio advertisement interrupting the experience every few songs.

The Sweden-formed, London-based Spotify isn’t the first subscription-style streaming service, but with its free, ad-supported format (you can also pay for more perks, such as streaming to mobile devices), vast library, and sleek interface, it’s convinced plenty of tech writers and pop scribes that it’ll eventually outpace the digital-download model now championed by iTunes. In some European countries, it already has.

But guess what royalties Dischord Records gets from streaming services like Spotify? “They’re negligible,” says Ian MacKaye, the D.C. label’s co-owner and public face. Although specific deals are confidential, Spotify tallies its royalty payments in fractions of a cent per stream—meaning a label might only make a few dollars, even if tens of thousands users play “Waiting Room.”

So digital music streaming has put small independent labels—you know, the kind we care about, the kind that can document and foster scenes—in a tough spot. Because it’s free and legal, Spotify disincentivizes piracy; why break the law if you don’t have to? For bands, if they’re already putting out a physical release, there’s not much extra overhead involved in putting the music on Spotify. Although Spotify users might be inspired to buy what they stream, the fear is that streaming may ultimately supplant digital downloads. Those downloads typically net artists and labels 70 percent of the retail price per sale.

“Quite frankly, it’s terrible,” says David Andler, the president and CEO of the Baltimore company Morphius Records, which does wholesale and digital distribution for hundreds of indie labels and artists, including D.C. outfits like Sockets. He cites a quarterly sales report aggregating all of the labels Morphius works with. It’s from 2010, so it includes Spotify in Europe, as well as other streaming services that have been operating in the United States for years. Approximately 86 percent of the digital entries were for streams, but they made up only 2.5 percent of revenue.

“I love new media and the immediacy of putting music into people’s hands, but the reality of the current culture is people’s psyches have been modified into thinking music is something you get for free,” says Andler. “That perception is fallacious in that the artists have to make that music somehow.”

Still, Andler’s company—and D.C.-area labels like Dischord, Cuneiform, Fan Death, ESL, Fort Knox, and others—have opted in, never mind Spotify’s piddly royalties and potential to cannibalize other revenue streams. “Choosing to not participate is somewhere between being a technophobe and a Luddite,” says Andler. The topic can make people like MacKaye come off like fatalists: “I assume there will be a point when [labels are] selling zero records,” he says. “That’s fine. We started selling nothing.” But many labels’ willingness to work with Spotify despite its negligible payments may, in fact, be existential. In a recent essay for the AV Club, Sam Adams advanced a theory that every time a form’s technology changes, some of its history—a Luis Buñuel film that never made it to DVD, the seminal early albums of Hüsker Dü that are missing from Spotify—gets lost. A preteen with a Spotify account now has access to a vast chunk of the history of D.C. hardcore, but not music from equally important labels like SST and Kill Rock Stars. As the technology changes, it’s easy for moderately and even widely available content to end up in history’s dustbin.

Almost everyone I interviewed expressed this worry about digital consumers: That if they can’t find something on a streaming service (which pays a pittance) and that is their preferred mode, they won’t seek it out in other ways (like through legal downloads, whose royalties are more generous). Brian Lowit, Dischord’s manager and the owner of local label Lovitt Records (which isn’t on Spotify yet), cautions that at the end of the day, indies just don’t know. The technology could change again. Streaming’s revenue model might become more favorable. Or it might not. “I’m guessing someone looking for [Lovitt artists] Des Ark or Pygmy Lush on Spotify and not seeing it aren’t going to then go out and buy the MP3 or the CD because of it. They will just listen to something else,” he writes. “Hard to prove of course.”

For a time, Dischord weighed setting up its own digital store separate from iTunes, eMusic, and other platforms. But that process was slow, and the label’s bands wanted to sell downloads. In late 2003 or early 2004, Dischord started selling MP3s; now you can also find the label’s music on many streaming services. “The wider access is not within anyone’s control. It’s just the weather,” says MacKaye. “Our position is no exclusive. I think ultimately our job is to make the music available, and that was [always] the point.”

Certainly, there’s money in streaming already. Spotify paid 45 million euros in royalties in 2010, having the most success in countries like Sweden, where a significant chunk of its users pay for the service. Some major recording companies own shares of Spotify and earn from its revenues. In the United States, “noninteractive” streaming services like Pandora—on which, unlike Spotify or Rhapsody, users are recommended music but can’t choose it—distributed $250 million in royalties last year, according to Laura Williams of SoundExchange, the performance-rights organization for digital transmissions. Lots of artists receive checks in the six or seven figures, but to get a check at all—SoundExchange cuts them only for amounts above $10—you need to clock about 45,000 plays.

The key is scale—which is something boutique labels can never safely count on. For now, MacKaye says, Dischord wants to keep its options open: “Money streams in from different places, so the question is, Do you turn on the tap or not?” He admits that under the current pay models, things would be dire if streaming services replaced digital downloads as the label’s dominant digital-revenue source. “But there was a time when there was no money for everything, and artists managed to be artists then,” he says.

Illustration by Brooke Hatfield

In City Lights: Gesel Mason Performance Projects, Free Comic Book Day, Chaplin Fest, Dirty Beaches, Phosphorescent, Grazia Toderi.

Des Ark's Aimee Argote

It's about to be showcase season—only 1,500 miles away, at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas. We're not totally out of luck here, though. Windian Records has an all-day showcase at U Street Music Hall Saturday (more on that later this week) titled "Fuck SXSW." Like the Windian kids, Arlington's Lovitt Records seems to be skipping SXSW this year. But two of its mainstays—Des Ark and Pygmy Lush—are currently on tour together, and they're bringing their de facto label showcase to the Black Cat tonight. Both bands have new full-lengths out on Lovitt this year.

The newest Des Ark songs turn town the twang but up the stakes: They might start small—with distant noodling and sweet vocals from Aimee Argote—but usually end up huge, with mountains of harmonies, tidal-wave percussion, ringing guitars, and layers and layers of what sounds like toy pianos or glockenspiels or other things associated with finicky twee. It's now less country punk than pop punk, but it's also epic. I've been totally losing it for the song "Bonne Chance Asshole" all week.

If what I've heard of Pygmy Lush's new record is a fair indication, the Sterling, Va., band is still doing what it's been doing, but that's a good thing: The band traffics in moody shanties that clang and menace and build into aching cacophonies.

Des Ark, Pygmy Lush, and Hey Girl perform 8:30 p.m. tonight at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. $10.

HO HO WHO: Des Ark has been plugging away at rock songs and folk songs for years, once via Richmond and now via Philadelphia. The band has been a trio, a duo, and–as in this case–a solo affair. Though it's had relatively few official releases, Des Ark has been involved with local labels from Exotic Fever to Lovitt.

CHOCOLATE REINDEER FOR EVERYONE: On this one, Aimee Argote's voice is as soft and soothing as a warm cup of cocoa on a winter's day. The folky, fingerpicked ballad bleeds nostalgia with its confessional storytelling, and Argote's sincerity envelops you like a holiday-themed slanket (which The Sleigher would gladly accept as a gift if anyone is curious).

STALE HALF-EATEN SANTAS FOR ME: Sure, the song was inspired by someone eating the much-anticipated Christmas candy in her Advent calendar (on December 3, no less), but it's awfully hard to connect this song to December 25. A subtle mention of tinsel, a vague description of snow, even a toss-off line about white beards would've been appreciated. Sad songs are great, but The Sleigher likes to know they are definitely about Christmas (or Hanukkah).

CHEER FACTOR: 6/10 Great melancholic tune but definitely Christmas-related in theory more than in practice.

You thought they were dead. It was only a ruse: The great D.C. spazzcore outfit Frodus tracked two new songs and remade an older one during its too-brief 2009 reunion stint, and just last week, Lovitt Records released the results, the Soundlab 1 7-inch. You won't find the songs on iTunes—the tracks are available digitally only via Bandcamp so that, according to the band, "No multi-national corporations will receive any percentage." Considering the colored vinyl sold out in only a day, you'd better move quickly if you want a copy of Frodus' Soundlab 1 on wax.

The new 7-inch begs the inevitable question: Will we be receiving further transmissions from the Frodus Conglomerate International? According to the band's most recent press release, there's hope! Core members Jason Hamacher and Shelby Cinca are working on a series of collaborations, and they're calling it Frodus Sound Laboratory. This first release features Liam Wilson (The Dillinger Escape Plan) on bass, but there's no telling who will appear on future records. The band's PR statement reads: "Each experiment will have variable groups comprising of musicians, friends, and associates with the control group being Hamacher and Cinca. Future experiments may involve members of Refused, Darkest Hour, Engine Down, Sleepy Time Trio, Norma Jean, and Converge."

Seriously? A possible Refused-Frodus collaboration? The world may not survive.

As if that somehow weren't enough for legions of post-hardcore fanatics to geek out over, Lovitt Records owner Brian Lowit confirmed today that his label is slated to re-release Frodus' And We Washed Our Weapons In The Sea on vinyl next year. When asked about the potential for a full-on Frodus reunion, Lowit said touring is unlikely, but the band just might play a few shows in the not-so-distant future. Keep your eyes open, kids.

Dave Lebleu: Well, in 2003 we did a split with Maserati on Kindercore, and we did a tour later that year. That marked the end of the nonstop playing, writing, and recording we'd been doing since 1999.  We decided to take a conscious break, though we had no idea it would be so long. We didn't think it would be longer than a year, but in that time Sander [Travisano, bassist] moved to New York, Tom [Reno, guitarist] got married, had a child, and started a design business, and I also moved to New York after becoming disenchanted with Gainesville.

WCP: Your most recent record, Chez Viking, came out on Lovitt last November. Did it feel odd to go into the studio after so long, or was it like nothing had changed?

DB: We actually recorded it in 2006, and it was like nothing had changed. We were intermittently getting together during that time, and we had some of those tracks including "Chez Viking," the title track, in 2003. There's actually a YouTube video of us playing a then-untitled track in 2004 in Gainesville, which was actually that song. We got a check from Tigerstyle from other records we'd done, and we decided to put that money into a new record. We had no booking agent or label at that point, so we took our time. It was a more refined, simpler music it turned out; we were just going in and enjoying ourselves and let the outcome be what it would be.

WCP: Who did you record with?

DB: Andy Baker, who has a home studio in Athens, Ga. He works with David Barbie of Sugar, and we're really comfortable with him. We liked the results the first time we did it, so we've recorded with him every time since. So, Andy recorded it, and it sat on the shelf for a long time. In November of 2008, I shook the tree enough to get people interested, and I had Jeremy Scott, a mutual friend, mix it.  There was no one to release the record, and then Michael Triplet of Fin Fang Foom suggested to Brian Lowit at [the D.C. label] Lovitt that we release it. We've known him for a while and we were friends with Engine Down, who was on the label.

WCP: How long has it been since you've toured?

DB: The first show we played since 2006 was on a small eight-day tour in March, mostly in the South.

WCP: Are you guys ready to hit the road again?

DB: It feels really good. The March tour was better than any of the last few tours we had done. It was better attended, interest seemed to be higher, and it just felt better.  It was shocking and awesome.

WCP: Has the process of touring and being in a band changed a lot since you first started?

DB: Things have been simplified. Last time we were out, cell phones were a new thing. Having smart phones and laptops on the road has made transit and communication with venues easier than ever before.  It really feels good just to get out and play, period.

WCP: Are you comfortable with the word post-rock as a descriptor of your music?

DB: I never use that word. I don't even really understand it. If you want to use it, that's fine. It's just redundant; we're not "after rock" because rock keeps happening. I don't really know how we would describe our music, I'm just a part of it.

WCP: What would you say your band is about—is there like a particular aesthetic goal or mission?

DB: No. When we started the band it was because we had come together playing music and collectively wanted to make whatever we naturally put out. We weren't trying to sound like anything in particular, though much of our sound can be attributed to our influences. We would get together and just create this sort of energy between us.

WCP: Does the subtlety of it ever get lost in rock clubs?

DB: No. I don't think anything we've done has gotten too quiet and gotten lost. There are quiet parts, but I'd say for the most part we bring the rock.

North Carolina trio Fin Fang Foom, on the other hand, has encountered some very real and serious obstacles. The band's original drummer, Peter Enriquez, passed away in an automobile accident. In 2004 guitarist Michael Triplett spent several months in the hospital after being diagnosed with spinal meningitis. But the group has endured none the less. And its newest record, Monomyth, is among its finest works—full of glacial riffs and cascading instrumental crescendos. Washington City Paper spoke with guitarist Michael Triplett about making music, getting sick, and keeping a band together.

Fin Fang Foom performs tonight at Big Bear Cafe with Buildings and The Fordists
1700 1st St. NW
7:00 pm
$5

Washington City Paper: There was a pretty big lag between records, four years between With the Gift Comes the Curse and Monomyth. Do you guys work on the band on a consistent basis?

Michael Triplett: We do. I think what happened with this record—we toured the last record, and then we took a break, and time flits away. Then I got sick. And that took up a good solid year. And at that point it changed a lot as far as the priorities, too. As far as being a band and putting out a record and touring, working in that sort of way. But we’ve stayed productive. We’ve always been writing music and practicing really consistently.

WCP: How have you priorities changed?

Triplett: Just as far as going through the constant cycle—practice, record, and tour. There’s less appeal to that.

WCP: When did you get sick?

Triplett: It was 2004-2005. I had spinal meningitis. Then that turned into encephalitis and then one of my lungs collapsed. I had a 12 percent chance to live. I woke up paralyzed from the waist down.

I was in hospital for two months. They told me I’d never walk again at one point. After all that, the band becomes more about us in the practice room playing, about us being together, rather than recording a record just to keep touring.

I mean, it changed my whole approach to life. I started to think, “What are all the things I want to do?” I went back to school and finished my degree. As a band our focus changed as far as our personal lives. We’re just playing music to enjoy it—the art of it. That’s why we’ve had a band for so long in the first place. We still like to hang out together. We still enjoy practicing. The playing is what I enjoy most.

WCP: Did that experience change the way you guys wrote music at all?

Triplett: The approach has actually been pretty similar. The music is written collectively, which is the same way it’s always been. But there is a level of intensity that unconsciously gets translated into the music—three people wanting to make it happen, the energy in the practice room, us being together after all that. For Eddie and Mike, I’m sure after them coming to see me on my deathbed and for us to be playing again, the bond is stronger.

When I first played a show and I was standing up with no cane... there’s that energy that’s pretty great after you’ve gone through all that.

And the punk rock community supported me while I was in the hospital. People would go play all these benefits for me. It was awesome of them. I just felt like, this community I committed so much of my life to, it’s all worth it.

That’s the most rewarding things about playing in a punk rock band—having that ideology behind it. That community.

WCP: Did you have insurance to help cover the hospital bills?

Triplett: I had insurance, but it was pretty crappy. My mom and I tried to figure out the total—it was something like $750,000 in hospital bills. I got funding from the Musicians Care foundation. I also ended up getting funding through a hospital through UNC—you send them your W-2s. They ended up writing off most of my hospital bills. It ended up pretty well as far as not screwing me. But it took a long time before I could actually work. It’s pretty incredible how it all worked out. There’s nothing worse than being stuck with all that. I ended up paying $10K in the end, but compared to what it could have been…

WCP: After all this, was it physically difficult to start performing again?

Triplett: My hands were fine. I spent a month in rehab and had my acoustic guitar. Some of those riffs [from the new record] I made up in my hospital bed. After three or four months it got better. I went from not being able to walk and slowly got better. I’m pretty fortunate that I’m pretty close to 100 percent now.

WCP: What about touring, does it take more of a physical toll?

Triplett: For sure. It’s harder for us to do longer tours because of that. Residual stuff from nerve damage makes it hard to be on the road a long time. It also took a huge toll on my immune system. I get sick pretty easily. I have to be careful to take care of myself on the road. I watch what I eat and make sure I’m sleeping. But we’re still doing it.

But five years later those other bands are over–Engine Down called it quits in '05 and Ambulette threw in the towel two years later–and the members have moved back Richmond. So, there's isn't much of a reason for Denali to stay broken up these days. After reuniting for a few shows last year Denali decided to make a go of it again, at least part time basis. Singer Maura Davis spoke with City Paper about the band, being back in school, and why it finally made sense to get Denali back together.

Denali, KI: Theory, Pygmy Lush @Black Cat
1811 14th St. NW
Sat., June 5, 9 PM, $13

Washington City Paper: So, you just got out of a big test. What are you studying?

Davis: I’m in nursing school.

WCP: Denali broke up in 2004, but you played some reunion shows last year. Are you guys officially back to being a band again?

Davis: Um, we’re kind of playing for fun now. We want to write some new songs and put out a record eventually but everybody’s lives have been so busy. We haven’t gotten a lot of that done. We just kind of do shows when they come up, which is not very often lately. I guess we’re officially back together.

WCP: What made you decide to do it again?

Davis: Cam (DiNunzio, guitarist) moved back here from New York and I was wasn’t doing my other band anymore. We were all here (in Richmond). We figured, “What the hey, we should get back together.”

WCP: Do you miss playing music now that you’re back in school full-time?

Davis: I do miss playing, but I don’t miss touring. The last band that I was in (Ambulette) kept going on a roller coaster ride of excitement and let-downs. I was just over it. I felt like my life wasn’t stable. I never knew when I would have any money. So I decided that music, right now, is probably not the safest thing to be in if I wanted to pay rent.

WCP: Was that a tough call to make?

Davis: Not really. I think I was kind of ready. I always dreamed of moving up to that level where you were on a tour bus, but we never got there.

WCP: You were saying that your last band was a bit of a roller coaster ride, what happened?

Davis: Well, we got on Capitol Records, which was a huge big deal. We went out to California and recorded a record for two months, then the whole process of it took so long–getting money to record, money to tour. Then Capitol got bought out and lots of people got fired, they had to drop a lot of bands, and we were on of the bands that got cut. I didn’t know if I could start over again.

WCP: Why did Denali break up in 2004?
Davis: Jonathan (Fuller) and Keeley (Davis) were in Engine Down, too, at the time. They left Denali to concentrate on that. After that Cam and I had problems keeping Denali together. We got some new members but it wasn’t the same.

WCP: But now you’re back to the original line-up?

Davis: Yeah.

WCP: Did it feel good to play those reunion shows last year?

Davis: It was amazing. I didn’t think anyone really cared anymore. But we played at the national here in Richmond and so many people came out and we had a bunch of friends help us with lighting. We had video screens behind us with projections. It was a really fun time.

WCP: Was it hard to get back into band-mode after being back in school and out of that world for a while?

Davis: No. But when we did the reunion show I was working as a nurse’s aide at a retirement home where I had to clean people’s poop up all the time. Then I played this amazing show where we all felt like superstars and had to go back to cleaning poop again. It was very humbling for me.