Mark Matos & Os Beaches
Mark Matos and his shifting San Francisco ensemble, Os Beaches, have been transmutated in the two plus years since the release of Words Of The Knife (Porto Franco Records, 2009). They have stood atop the mountain behind Pappy & Harriet’s in Pioneer Town amongst the Joshua Trees and sang goodbyes. They have seen a darkness and stepped crashing into the light. A fire took the band’s mission district headquarters, dealing the men to the wind. MM went south for high desert visions and came back with Coyote & The Crosser, a concept album following the story of Trans Van Santos, his quest for the elusive Ball Of Light and his dealings with the titular Coyote. Inspired by the psychedelic experience, the album is a cosmic allegory of individuation, a new western future myth that recasts the promise of Words Of The Knife’s more mystical and adventurous side B as prelude in an evolving sonic narrative, gesturing to the great works of the past while reveling in it’s own singular mythology.
Words of the Knife
(2009)
Like the neighborhood the band calls home, Words of the Knife is a product of hybrid bloodlines. Tucson-flavored pop songs meld with the sun-baked chords and beats of 70s Tropicalia and sleepwalks through smoky rock venues - every genre that emerges here is shredded and combined. Matt Adams of Blank Tapes, percussionist Dave Mihaly (recently seen backing Jolie Holland), and Tom Heyman (Maps of Wyoming, Court and Spark) lay down a warm, lush backdrop for the vine-like guitar work of Ben Reisdorph, the Hammond B-3 and piano of Matos, and the ghostly vocal harmonies led by Kacey Johansing. Matos deals, in a voice remarkable for its lack of affect: half-sung, easy and versatile and honest, invoking Skip Spence, Jim Carroll, and Steve Malkmus, about love and leaving, loss and revolution, and drunken, broken, undying hope. A Bay Area native, he left San Francisco a decade ago to jump trains and learn life and music in the American wilderness: deep in Alaska and the Florida Keys, cold in Boston Squats, among slack-key players in Hawaii, and as an active force in the Lo-Fi scene of Tucson, where he began playing as Campo Bravo among the likes of the Golden Boots, Howe Gelb, and Andrew Jackson Jihad.
Led by Bay Area native son Mark Matos — main man behind anarcho-popslingers Campo Bravo, Os Beaches is a collective of Mission District veterans who teamed up with Tim Mooney’s Closer Recordings and producer Eric Moffat to bring you Words of the Knife. Throughout the album Tucson-flavored pop songs meld with the sun-baked chords and beats of 60’s Tropicalia, New York street poetry and California country-rock. Words of the Knife is a window into exactly what is happening in San Francisco right now — a renaissance of independent music of hybrid bloodlines.