Filthy Gorgeous
Photo provided by, Filthy Gorgeous
Meet Filthy Gorgeous
Cheers to all things disgustingly beautiful. Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to one of my new favorite sloshy, frothy noise rock outfits. With origins in the musical soup that is jam bands Filthy Gorgeous takes improvisational style and gives it a wicked edge. Their 2020 album “A Long Blink That Accomplished Nothing” is relentless, and furious kicking and punching you in the head the whole darn time. Check out the tunes and get to know this terrific group of lads.
A self-portrait by, Filthy Gorgeous
Would You Rather
only be able to communicate with Morse code or dolphin noises?
We would rather use Morse code cause if we need to communicate with a lighthouse we could maybe still do that. Dolphins are dicks, too.
Some questions with Filthy Gorgeous
What was the creative process like working on your 2020 release “A Long Blink That Accomplished Nothing”
We sat in a basement making bits about ground beef. It was supposed to be a concept album about the extremes of human personality. DAVID is about paranoid anxiety, for example. One or two of them are about more specific characters. Almost the entirety of the writing and recording was completed in one weekend. It's like a million dogs all shouting our name in different languages. Our brain starts crying then we throw a basketball into God's mouth, ya know?
How has your background in jam band music influenced your project “Filthy Gorgeous”
Our first show was a jam show. We had no songs written and went under the name "Jack Flash and the Hamster Dance." Our songs have a much greater focus on structure now; we value working as a unified entity. Jamming and improvisation is still helpful to us in the very early stages of writing, but the performed versions of our songs require much more organization and structure than in the past. We always multitrack our recordings, which requires us to be a tight live band.
How do you keep the creative momentum of the project going during quarantine?
If anything we've been more active lately than we were a year ago. We tracked these new songs literally like, a week or two before COVID really took off in New York. We all live in different areas, so our band has always been structured around working long distance. We're on Google Hangouts right now answering these questions!
Do you have a party trick?
Put a snake in the jungle juice. Accidently make blood on the drumset and/or guitar. Give each other tattoos.
Did you ever get grounded growing up? If so why?
Well one day all three of our dads decided that something had to be done about the whole "us" thing. They put their heads together and thought real hard, eventually locking us into a small boiler shed with 5 pieces of string, a drawknife, and a carton of orange juice. They said we couldn't come out till we made a band that was better than the one their dads were in.
Do you drive? Are you a good driver?
We're pretty good. We're no SanDisk 2TB Extreme Portable SSD, but we hold it down; more like a Sony 16GB Flash Drive.
What has been your favorite live performance to date?
On our last tour we played a house show at this place in El Paso called the Nature House. Our van had broken down several days before this and we'd been stranded in Santa Fe, which caused us to miss a few shows. So we came into El Paso with a lot of emotional tension, but everybody there was so warm and receptive. It really meant a lot to us. Also Austin was vomiting for like three days leading up to this.
Any final comments? (This is your electronic soapbox for one last answer.)
INGREDIENTS:
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 stalks celery, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
8 cups chicken stock
2 bay leaves
Kosher salt freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 1/2 pounds bone-in, skinless chicken breasts
2 1/2 cups wide egg noodles
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice, or more, to taste
DIRECTIONS:
Melt butter in a large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion, carrots and celery. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 3-4 minutes. Stir in garlic until fragrant, about 1 minute.
Whisk in chicken stock and bay leaves; season with salt and pepper, to taste. Add chicken and bring to boil; reduce heat and simmer, covered, until the chicken is cooked through, about 30-40 minutes. Remove chicken and let cool before dicing into bite-size pieces, discarding bones.
Stir in chicken and pasta and cook until tender, about 6-7 minutes.
Remove from heat; stir in parsley, dill and lemon juice; season with salt and pepper, to taste.
Serve immediately.
Soup Up and Enjoy! Thank you,
Filthy Gorgeous