The Tilt

Live At The Belly Up: The Tilt And Dead Feather Moon
Airs Friday, January 18, 2013 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV

Credit: Courtesy of Jeff Irwin/The Tilt

Above: John Urban (bass guitar), Jesse Malley (vocals), Abel Vallejo (drums) and Jeff Irwin (guitar) of The Tilt perform live at Belly Up, November 5, 2012.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Sometimes all you need is music. And sometimes you need that music live. Welcome to LIVE AT THE BELLY UP. San Diego has long been known as a hotbed of great musical talent. What’s more, San Diego is home to one of the best music venues on the West Coast. Since 1974, the Belly Up has been featuring great local bands from the Cedros Design District. Groove, dance and sing! Live at the Belly Up.


Courtesy of ©2012 Daniel Knighton/Pixel Perfect Images
Exterior photo of the Belly Up, located at 143 S. Cedros Avenue, Solana Beach, Calif., 92075.
This episode features performances by The Tilt and Dead Feather Moon:

THE TILT
An eclectic mix of blues, rock, and country drives the innovative sound of the new San Diego band The Tilt. Fronted by singer Jesse Malley and guitarist Jeff Irwin, San Diego-based quintet The Tilt plays a terrific mix of Southern blues, country and folk, with a touch of classic rock, a la Led Zeppelin.

The Tilt is on Facebook, and you can follow @TheTiltMusic on Twitter.

DEAD FEATHER MOON
Dead Feather Moon is a San Diego-based outfit whose distinguished sound combines rock with alt-country and psychedelic blues. Their heartfelt performances and rapidly-growing fan base have established them as one of San Diego’s most sought-after musical acts.


Courtesy of Garcia Borgo Photography
Dead Feather Moon, a San Diego-based band whose distinguished sound combines rock with alt-country and psychedelic blues. Courtesy of Garcia Borgo Photography
The band entered White Horse Studios during February of 2011, where they recorded their debut full-length album over the course of eight days. These ten tracks constitute their record, "Dark Sun."

Crafted with a sense of purpose and urgency, the album quickly generated enough buzz to garner the attention of San Diego’s 91X and FM94/9 radio stations - where the band receives consistent airplay.

When the band is not touring, you can find them rehearsing four nights a week. They continue to write new material and fine-tune their live performances. Their steady stream of concerts in the greater San Diego area include headlining shows at renowned venues. Dead Feather Moon is on Facebook, and you can follow @DeadFeatherMoon on Twitter.

UP NEXT:
"Vokab Kompany & Brawley" airs Friday, Jan. 25, 2013 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV

"The Devastators & The Grass Heat" airs Friday, Feb. 1, 2013 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV

"B-Side Players & Maren Parusel" airs Friday, Feb. 8, 2013 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV

These episodes will be available for online viewing after the broadcast date.

Belly Up brings the best in new, up-and-coming artists as well as established legends in genres ranging from alternative rock, rock, reggae, and hip-hop to blues, folk, jazz, Latin & more! Visit their online calendar of shows. Belly Up is on Facebook, and you can follow @BellyUpMusic on Twitter.

VIDEO

Live At The Belly Up: The Tilt & Dead Feather Moon


Watch Live at the Belly Up: The Tilt and Dead Feather Moon on PBS. See more from Live at the Belly Up.
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Series Preview: Live At The Belly Up on KPBS TV


Above: "The Styletones And Bushwalla" airs Friday, Jan. 11, 2013 at 10 p.m. "The Tilt & Dead Feather Moon" airs Friday, Jan. 18, 2013 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV. "Vokab Kompany & Brawley" airs Friday, Jan. 25, 2013 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV. "The Devastators & The Grass Heat" airs Friday, Feb. 1, 2013 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV. "B-Side Players & Maren Parusel" airs Friday, Feb. 8, 2013 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV.
VIDEO

Live At The Belly Up: The Styletones & Bushwalla


Watch Live at the Belly Up: The Styletones and Bushwalla on PBS. See more from Live at the Belly Up.
VIDEO

Live At The Belly Up: Vokab Kompany And Brawley


Watch Live at the Belly Up: Vokab Kompany and Brawley on PBS. See more from Live at the Belly Up.
VIDEO

Live At The Belly Up: The Devastators And The Grass Heat


Watch Live at the Belly Up: The Devastators & Grass Heat on PBS. See more from Live at the Belly Up.
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Live At The Belly Up: B-Side Players And Maren Parusel | February 5, 2013
Live At The Belly Up: The Devastators And The Grass Heat | January 29, 2013 - PBS

The San Diego five-piece band The Tilt is bringing the swing and grind of blues at its best back to the west coast. Staking out a distinctive sound that they describe as a mash-up between blues and outlaw country, The Tilt’s music is both innovative and traditional. Combining guitar solos sure to make any musician nod their head in respect with powerful vocals and an eclectic mixture of instruments, Howlin is a noteworthy debut for this new-age blues group.

What sets The Tilt apart from other blues-infused rock groups is their interest in musical exploration. In addition to filling Howlin with traditional blues instrumentation like guitar, bass, drums and vocals, band members Jeff Irwin, Jesse Malley, John Urban, Abel Vallejo, and Ryan Weiss fuel their creativity by inviting instruments with country and classical ties into the sonic lineup. What starts as a somber cello venture in “Vultured Mind” transforms quickly into a raunchy violin and mandolin tag-team effort. Other tracks reveal the band’s influences through their instrument choice and execution: as the opening mandolin diddy in “Restless” recalls an acoustic Led Zeppelin, Malley’s singing in “South” brings to mind the vocal might of contemporary greats like Susan Tedeschi and Grace Potter.

With Irwin’s tenacious solos on lead guitar and Malley’s silky one minute, raw the next vocals, The Tilt stands as a force to be reckoned with. Familiar in small venues sprinkled throughout southern California, the band is looking ahead to expand their horizons in the new year. With a respectable debut now ready for the world to hear, The Tilt are on their way.

The Review: 8/10

Can’t Miss Tracks

- Oil Man
- Vultured Mind
- Restless
- South

The Big Hit

- Restless

Review by Meghan Roos
- Blues Rock Review

As EP bayou-slides into its backswamp politico anti-rig anthem in the album’s opening song “Oil Man”, one enters into The Tilt’s world of confident musical competence. The Tilt is a San Diego-based band playing loose for that city’s beach bar crowdscene, with a soul way deeper than their present frat-keg environs would reflect. Theirs is a poppy blues sound sometimes colored with Zeppelin acid effects, and most godly-surely by the sweet gift of Jesse Malley’s andromedal voice. The Tilt isn’t quite a band with that phosphorescent flare that would rocket them suddenly into the limelight of national star-dazed phenomena, but they’re headed at least towards an aperture to be looked on with great esteem by their fellow musicians. Their quality is that of any you would find on a good night of Austin City Limits, as they idealize the ACL pillars of outstanding musicianship, honest, raw expression, with the addendum of barely perceptible quirkiness that makes that show’s bands always at least a little interesting.

“Oil Man” is a bluesy rant presumably addressing the disastrous Gulf oil spill of late, with a fine effigy made of the careless dollar-hungry purveyors of that crude lifeblood of the transportation economy. The band cites the Black Crowes as an influence, and that band’s cool white-Delta approach is indeed heard, but the able dual guitars of Jeff Irwin and Ryan Weiss extend their reach insistently to the feature of Stevie Ray Vaughan, not so much in terms of regionalism as in the envelopment of their songs in the folds of duochromatic themes. Irwin and Weiss, as guitarists, aren’t artists who paint upon, but rather who tear into the canvas of a song, its frayed threads expressing most exactly their intention while holding the piece’s border firmly intact. “Oil Man” is a vengeful, exciting, well-rounded song with wah-wah screaming solos, pumping drums, and cleanly clever lyricism delivered with spunk.

Though The Tilt is full of individual talent through-and-through, Malley’s vocal dynamic is to be exposed for its multifaceted potency, for it reaches effectively opposite and contrasting ends. Her vocals change song-to-song to achieve successfully a luscious vulnerability, listenable storytelling, bold confession, lyrical balance, virtuosity, and range. Hers is a vocal persona that is at times lovely, tough, seductive, or wounded. In “Head On”, Malley’s vocal powers lend a spearheading, forward-driving momentum to the love ‘em and leave ‘em, experience- and location-hopping ethic of the traveling, seeking conqueror of the American road. Rich guitar tapestry executed with dexterity fills “Head On”, a song begun with BB King-like single-string riffing, later layered by a dual vocality enhanced by Malley’s heart for Aretha Franklin’s roof-raising juke joint operatics.

The Tilt’s prodigal guitarwork never conveys anything other than strength and solidity. Yet it’s against this parapet in the song “Wander Along” that Malley’s vocal and lyrical confession of weakness glows tenderly, with great sympathetic beauty. As ethereal melody alights, Malley’s melancholic euphoria betrays a vulnerability to temptation, evincing the theory that true beauty’s form is only accurately seen as it inhabits the precipice of tragedy and downfall. Malley’s “devil”, whether it actually be Satan or the defeating self, is treated in the song as that architect of personal brokenness to whose devices Malley fears falling victim.

Bright mandolin work brings in “Restless”, an Irish folk motif that moves in the abundant nurture of a river swath. The song is a display of honest, experienced, passionate musicianship, with an excellent and mature use of stringed instruments bringing a curious nobility to a song that perhaps only lacks an interesting title.

The only other glitch the album sports is in what is otherwise a viscerally emotive song. In “Wander Along”, the band wisely tempos up with a 3/3 rhythm in order to bring the song to final energy and to avoid a sense of the song being dragged down to its conclusion. Malley’s vocals don’t adapt relevantly to this transition, for her searing hungry prior pain is suddenly gone after the uptick, switched inexplicably to a surly funky rapture just to keep up with the beat. It would be more logical and complete if perhaps the uptempo was vocally treated with a jittery confusion or another tangential lack of resolution, so that the listener’s empathy, so sensitively developed up to this point, is not whisked away, in fact leaving him feeling more existential than he did before.

The Tilt’s EP is a proxy blend of cherishable vocal femininity and a band’s embedded musical commitment. Though just 4 songs, EP is more of a rarity than it should be in that here’s an active band that really should make its living making music. In a world in which Jessica Simpson made over a billion dollars last year, gems such as The Tilt should be honored as the real thing, especially - Indie Music Review