Black Belt Eagle Scout

February 24, 2019 12:36 PM

Black Belt Eagle Scout - Soft Stud, Black Belt Eagle Scout - Indians Never Die

Paul grew up in a small Indian reservation, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, surrounded by family focused on native drumming, singing, and arts. “Indigenous music is the foundation for all of my music,” Paul explains. From an early age, Paul was singing and dancing at powwows with one of her strongest memories at her family’s own powwow, called the All My Relations Powwow. Paul reminisces, “When I was younger, my only form of music was through the songs my ancestors taught the generations of my family. Singing in our language is a spiritual process and it carries on through me in how I create music today.”

“Having this identity—radical indigenous queer feminist—keeps me going. My music and my identity come from the same foundation of being a Native woman.” Katherine Paul is Black Belt Eagle Scout, and after releasing an EP in 2014 Paul has wrapped up the band’s first full-length. Recorded in the middle of winter near her hometown in Northwest Washington, the landscape’s eerie beauty and Paul’s connection to it are palpable on Mother of My Children. Stemming from this place, the album traces the full spectrum of confronting buried feelings and the loss of what life was supposed to look like.

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Mother of My Children is particularly elegant in the way it demonstrates how grief and love share space when something precious is taken from you, how the distinction between those emotions can blur. Paul embeds her coded wisdom in elemental language, refusing to differentiate between forms of heartbreak. But there’s truth behind her vagueness: You can get hit with more than one tragedy at a time; life doesn’t dole them out in distinct chapters. Paul’s project is to show the enormity of this undifferentiated mountain of loss, and to find a way beyond it. If a river dries up, mourning it doesn’t create a new river. It creates a memory where the river used to be, a monument of loyalty to what was lost.

Pitchfork

Black Belt Eagle Scout [2014 EP]

Labels: Good Cheer Records, Saddle Creek

posted by cult_url_bias (5 comments total)

Growing up we got our fireworks at "the res", just over the bridge from La Conner, which was not a tourist trap back in the day, not dangerous but not much to drive though. It's good to hear the tribe is pulling together some, it was rather in the dumps for a long while. They did have long boat races on the slough on the 4th.

Also had a gay friend from another local tribe, we took ballet at the same studio, I remember asking him to show me his "family dance" sometime but he felt it was boring, "just chasse's", which while certainly essentially the case shows the perception at different periods. Wish I remembered which tribe, not Lumi or Tulalip, darn.
posted by sammyo at 2:05 PM on February 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Growing up we got our fireworks at "the res", just over the bridge from La Conner,

Yeah, I was a Whidbey kid, and we'd always head through the northern end to get to the outlet malls. I was a lot older before I realized how much tribal territory was tucked away further south from the highway.

If people wanna dancing and racing, the Water Festival in Coupeville is usually the same weekend as Mother's Day.
posted by cult_url_bias at 5:24 PM on February 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

This satisfies some 1990s grunge-pop itch I didn't even know I needed to scratch!

*this is good*
posted by notsnot at 6:28 PM on February 24, 2019

i think there's historically been a bit of a trend of indie rock bands getting discovered off of one incredible barnburner of a song* and then the rest of the album not exactly matching up to it (not even in terms of quality, just in general style). Soft Stud immediately blew me away but the rest of the album is a lot more mellow and sedate, which is cool too it's just music for a different context. the other track i really enjoy is the final one, Sam, A Dream, which ends in two minutes of this sort of escalating circular guitar riff that really speaks to me. very neat record, katherine paul is a great songwriter and musician (she played every single instrument on this album!!!) with an incredible story, and i hope there are some more sick guitar jams on the next one.

*the canonical example of this is probably MGMT with Kids. my personal example is Speedy Ortiz's song No Below, which you'll probably like if you dig Black Belt Eagle Scout. that song is, to me, one of the best songs of the last decade, and it sounds nothing like anything else they've ever put out. totally tangential but the one time i saw Speedy they wouldn't play it because the singer "didn't want to feel sad" that night. totally her prerogative, but i'm sure i wasn't the only miserably depressed twenty-something drunk on too many narragansetts who was hoping to experience the catharsis of screaming along to the lyrics of a sad song that meant a lot to them with a crowd of 500 other people. looking at their setlists i guess it's back in the fold now so maybe they get that now.
posted by JimBennett at 7:18 PM on February 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

Thanks for this! She's touring (see the sidebar on her Bandcamp page), and for a taste of Black Belt Eagle Scout live, here's Paul with an additional guitar, bass, and drums, live on KEXP, performing Soft Stud, Just Lie Down, I Don't Have You In My Life, and Indians Never Die. If I'm not too tired, I'll report back on her live show in Albuquerque :)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:33 PM on March 14, 2019