One Last Batch of Singles Before the Year-End, Part # 1


Cyanide Pills – Suicide Bomber (Damaged Goods)

The second single from inexplicably ignored Leeds power-pop-punk upstarts Cyanide Pills is also the first of two a-sides on this batch of singles to take a queasily misguided shot at…. well I hesitate to say “contemporary relevance”, as that doesn’t seem quite what they had in mind for a song that begins with “my girlfriend she’s so fine / she lives in Palestine” and proceeds to a bridge of “that girl she’s dynamite!”. It’s just goofy, stupid fun of course – small beer next to the routine nastiness of KBD era punk. What’s a far greater sin is that it’s a slightly lesser tune that either of the songs on their excellent first single. B-side “Black Lightning” is better – it’s a great Chuck Berry derived car chase number about getting wasted and crashing your car into a train, if you can believe that! Utterly daft good fun on electric blue vinyl, and even at their worst these guys are still hitting way above par as regards making gleeful, catchy rampaging rock n’ roll. Make the other single a priority if for some ludicrous reason you’ve gotta choose between the two, but if you like this kinda thing (that being Adverts/Damned/Buzzcocks/Undertones amped up via The Exlpoding Hearts), do the decent thing and get both for chrissakes.

http://www.myspace.com/thecyanidepills
http://www.damagedgoods.co.uk/

Drink Up Buttercup – Mr. Pie Eyes (More Than)

I bought this one blind for the cool artwork, low price and promising title. Lord, I wish I hadn’t. Sounds as if some recent graduates heard The Move, decided LET’S DO THAT (it worked for Elephant 6) and proceeded to rampage way across the line into the no man’s land of total quirkiness, with subtlety and good taste rendered forgotten, ancient tongues as they drown in a slobbering mess of clod-hopping nursery rhyme melodies, faux-operatic shrieking, charmless, convoluted thudding and ghastly sub-muso wank. Yes, they wrote a song called ‘Mr. Pie Eyes’, the chorus to which goes “this is the story of Mr. Pie Eyes, Mr. Pie Eyes, Mr. Pie Eyes”. Then it goes “yah yah yah-ya-yah yah yah yah, yah yah yah yah-ya-yah yah yah yah”. I don’t think they ever get around to the story, but never mind, it was probably a shit one anyway. You know what was great about all those whimsical old ‘60s bands? The fact they matched their eccentricities with ideas and talent and didn’t come across like obnoxious dickheads shoving half-formed juvenilia in our faces, more often than not. I should have known: much as I love patronising their shop of a weekend, Rough Trade are canny counters of pounds, and if they put a 7” on for £1.99, there’s probably a reason.

http://www.myspace.com/drinkupbuttercupband
http://www.myspace.com/makemine

Fergus & Geronimo – Blind Muslim Girl b/w Powerful Lovin' (Tic Tac Totally)

Fergus & Geronimo’s huge-hearted, speaker-busting Sam Cooke-meets-Nobunny soul-punk is a beautiful thing that makes me very happy indeed, although I still know next to nothing about these guys, so seeing how they approach a tune entitled “Blind Muslim Girl” could prove a dealbreaker re: revealing their true intentions. As it turns out, it’s neither a bad taste goof nor some earnest politicising (god, how unthinkable would THAT be in this day n’ age?), just a straightforward, lightweight pop number in which F&G sing of their affection for a blind muslim girl. They want to take her hand and around the world, and they don’t care that she can’t see. If you can bring yourself to believe they’re playing it straight-faced, it’s all quite weird and sweet, with almost a Jad Fair sort of vibe. B-side “Powerful Lovin’” helps us believe they’re fighting the good fight by virtue of just being plain fucking fantastic – one of their best, most exultantly wrecked homages to ‘60s soul to date. And frankly, I could happily believe in flat earth theorists and guys who make a fuss about fluoride in the water if they were able to bust out tunes this mighty on their Vox organs and second hand drum kits of an evening. Fergus & Geronimo are ALRIGHT. What I wouldn’t give to be in Texas next month to see them play with Greg Ashley.

http://www.myspace.com/fergusgeronimo
http://www.myspace.com/tictactotally

Frankie Rose – Thee Only One (Slumberland)

Behold – the immaculately presented debut solo release from Ms Rose, former/current sticks-woman with Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls and Crystal Stilts (two out of three ain’t bad), and composer of one of the finest songs of recently years, ‘Where Do you Run To’. It’s funny how I still think Crystal Stilts are one of the most dreadful rock bands of the modern era, but here, backing up Frankie on her own songs, their personnel sound plain beautiful, shimmering like the ethereal Velvet Underground back alley sprites they wish they were. “Thee Only One” is a perfectly realised, reverb-heavy girl group stomper that probably sounds exactly the way you’d expect it to. That’s because it’s the way it SHOULD sound, and you’d be a fool to change the recipe at this stage. B-Side “Hollow Life” slows things down to a halt for an absolutely exquisite snapshot of a Bout de Souffle bedroom scene eternal now, vast faux-cathedral organ tones and distant guitar-drift making a bed for Frankie’s oh-so-delicate voice. Like “I’ll Be Your Mirror” medicated to the point of total bliss-out, it’s exactly the sound I want to hear last thing before I go to sleep, gently rising to a Cocteaus-y grandeur in, like, ninety seconds, then falling away to nothing. I see a tick next to “leave them wanting more” on a rose-scented to-do list. A flawless first record – I’m inclined to think that if Frankie Rose disappeared off the planet tomorrow, she’d have a healthy cult following twenty years from now, just on the basis of these three and a half minutes.

http://www.myspace.com/saintoftherose
http://www.slumberlandrecords.com

Labels: Cyanide Pills, Drink Up Buttercup, Fergus and Geronimo, Frankie Rose, singles reviews

Vivian Girls – Everything Goes Wrong
(In The Red)

So, ‘difficult second album’ time for the VGs, and, boy, they’ve really taken that ‘difficult second album’ conceit and gone to town with it.

One thing ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ definitely is NOT is the refining/reframing of the band’s pop song-writing sensibilities that would have seemed the natural next step for them, as suggested by all those tantalising pre-album singles cuts that threatened to win over doubters by amping up the three-part harmonies and the just-plain-beautiful melodies.

Another thing that ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ definitely is NOT is the potentially promising move toward a more strung out, ragged glory kinda sound, as trailed by the album artwork, and the profusion of four minute plus songs with names like ‘The Desert’ and 'Out For The Sun'.

Those were my best pre-listening guesses and expectations. But as becomes clear pretty quickly after actually dropping the needle on this one, my best guesses and expectations can fuck off. No outreach to a wider audience is to be found herein, and no pleasant developments for existing fans either. No pop, no style - they strictly roots. The roots in question here are punk, and as such ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ comes on like a total assault.

Well, maybe assault isn’t quite the right word – assault suggests an attack, whereas this album is all about defence, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Point is: I don’t suppose many people were expecting Vivian Girls to bounce back with an LP that’s as bleak and relentless and punishing as any grim-faced hardcore/noise band’s opus. I’m sure nobody asked them to make one. But they made it anyway – take it or leave it.

One more thing that ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ is NOT, contrary to what some reviewers still insist, is lo-fi. This record was made in a studio on a record label advance, and, y’know, I’m sure they had people around who knew where to put the microphones and stuff – fidelity-wise, it’s as loud and clear as you like. The fact it STILL sounds like a chaotic maelstrom of roar and clang, with buried vocals and excessive reverb and accidental open string skree, is simply a reflection of the kind of noise these girls want to make.

That the songs here sound like brooding playground chants, with flat, brutal, monotone choruses that are hammered home again and again like anxious, narcissistic curses and banishment rituals – I have no fun; I can’t get over you; this is the end; you don't even seem to care; don't turn around and miss me when I’m gone - that’s deliberate.

That Ali Koehler just won’t let up on that fucking ride cymbal at all, ever, beating it into your skull until you feel like jumping in front of a train – that’s deliberate too.

And that Cassie’s guitar sounds gigantic and screechy and wrong, dominating the mix like a whole room full of suffocating solid state Fender amps wheezing out their last trebley death rattles as they crawl over each others corpses, looking for a place to die..? – yeah, that’s how she wants it to sound.

The idea of self-defined, punk-birthed musicians paying tribute to the mechanised emotion of girl group pop is a fascinating one, and it won’t have escaped your notice that it’s become a pretty ubiquitous notion in pop culture over the past few years. Which is no bad thing, obviously – it’s easy and fun to tip a wink to the classics and vamp on some Spector-isms. But what sets the Vivian Girls apart, particularly on this LP, is that they approach this terrain with the spirit of total, deadly seriousness that’s necessary to give such angst-driven material life, recognising the Spector/Morton canon for the bloody heart of darkness it is, and responding in kind with an album that’s dead-eyed, blank-faced, introverted and drained of all the usual affectations and signifiers. It’s got its fingers in its ears, and it’s not listening, especially not to YOU. Tantrum music.

Like the classic NY girl group productions, ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ strikes me as an urban record – a barrier to block out the noise of the city, to create a safe space for internalised melodrama to thrive. This album is the sound of The Shangri-Las out on their own, beaten, rejected and building a wall; a wall the like of which those fucking producers couldn’t even imagine. Not an exotic, enticing wall to trap the listeners inside, but a razor-wire topped prison wall of senseless repetition and tinnitus-inducing distortion, compressed to fuck to keep the hurt inside and keep EVERYONE. ELSE. OUT. Just like some pissed off hardcore kid jamming a tape in his walkman circa 1985.

Inevitably there are moments where individual songs make an impression – “Can’t Get Over You” might as well have “STAND-OUT TRACK” written next to it in permanent marker and “Before I Start To Cry” plays the bittersweet closing credits tearjerker ok – but song-wise there’s nothing here to rival my beloved “Where Do You Run To” (which, er, it turns out was written by acrimoniously departed drummer Frankie Rose anyway – just as well I wasn’t fool enough to shout for it when I saw ‘em play). This is an album that works more as a total, unified sound thing than as a collection of songs. Like an early Husker Du record, it’s a wall-to-wall whiteout, burying triumph and disappointment alike beneath a uniform, tar-covered roar.

If you find yourself navigating rush hour public transport with your heart torn out at any point in the near future (I’ve not recently, glad to say), this is the album you’ll need. You might not like the sound of it much now, as you hang about at home chopping vegetables or making tea or whatever, and it’s probably freaking out the cat, but trust me: keep it on standby. This is ugly, gut-level pop, exhilarating, broken-hearted punk rock, and when the time comes you can crawl inside it like a cocoon. It won’t make you feel better, but it’ll make you not feel dead, and that’s a start. I like music like that.

Mp3> The End

Buy Links: Norman, In The Red

myspace

Labels: album reviews, The Vivian Girls

A Perfect Monster Has No End:
Halloween Mix CD 2009

(cross-posted with Breakfast In The Ruins.)





download (92mb .zip file).

For reasons too dull to go into, last year’s Halloween mixtape actually dated from 2007 (give me a shout if you’d like me to re-upload it), so I’ve had a whole extra year to stockpile creepy tunes for your enjoyment.

Unlike the last one, there’s no film soundtrack / narrative type gimmick year, just a whole heap of the usual twisted rock n’ roll and such, with obligatory appearances by Roky and The Cramps, and taking in witches, demons, zombies, psycho killers, werewolves, vampires, demonic ghost-cats and the like. Like any good horror movie, it will hopefully succeed in being broadly enjoyable and atmospheric, with occasional lurches into the realm of genuinely disturbing mania. Try it out at parties.

So, simply my gift to you to celebrate what’s self-evidently the coolest day on the calendar, and if you’re stepping out this weekend, remember, play safe:



Further useful advice from Beat Happening:

Labels: Beat Happening, halloween, horror, mixtapes, videos

Brendan Mullen, The Masque and LA Punk ‘77

A few weeks ago, I happened to pop into that shop on Charing Cross Road that sells fancy art books for knock-down prices, and was delighted to find a copy of Live at the Masque: Nightmare on Punk Alley, a huge hardback tome showcasing photographs and ephemera from the heyday of seminal LA punk club The Masque circa ’77-’79 that’s been on my xmas list since I learned of it, for about one third of the RRP.

Thus, it can now claim the honour of being the one fancy hardback photograph book that I own. And well worth owning it is too. For all of its legendary baggage, LA punk has kept a surprisingly low profile within popular culture, and as such practically every page of the book is dynamite from both an informational and aesthetic point of view, an absolute motherlode for anyone who shares an interest in the history of punk, rock n’ roll and American youth culture.

It wasn’t until this week however that I learned that Brendan Mullen, founder and manager of The Masque who edited and provided the text for the book, died of a heart attack earlier this month at the age of sixty.

I’d been vaguely meaning to do a blogpost based on the book, with some scanned pictures and mp3s etc, but in tribute to Mullen I thought I’d move that intention way up my priority list for a combined deathblog/photos/music tribute post.


By all accounts Mullen was far, far more than just a club manager – he was an instigator of, participant in and spokesperson for the punk scene, and The Masque stands out as the definitive early example of a DIY “by the fans, for the fans” music venue/rehearsal room/community space of the kind that’s become such a vital part of the American music scene in recent years (far less so in the UK sadly, but thems the breaks), and Mullen, rather than some impresario looking to turn a quick buck, was a late-twenties punk fan himself at the time – just one with the drive and know-how to find a space and make it happen.

Subsequently, he has authored two books on LA punk, We Got The Neutron Bomb (about the scene in general) and Lexicon Devil (about The Germs), both of which are sure to be great reads, if the smart and charismatic prose he contributed to the photo book is any indication.


One of the things I’ve found most remarkable about reading/looking at “Live at the Masque” is the drastically different picture of the time/place it paints to my other major source of LA punk documentation, Penelope Spheeris’ film “The Decline of Western Civilisation” (which you can watch in a series of handy chunks on Youtube, beginning here).

Whilst “Decline..” (which opens with an interview with Mullen) is an amazing and exhilarating documentary, capturing a cultural milieu that might otherwise have come and gone leaving little in the way of visual evidence, I’ve always been irked by the feeling that Spheeris was chasing controversy when putting it together, deliberately choosing the most violent concert footage, interviewing the most troubled/fucked up fans and musicians etc…. not to mention ending the film with an absolutely torturous sequence on the aptly named Fear, whose ugly, audience-baiting jibes and homophobic/sexist bullying closes proceedings on a colossal downer – enough to put the casual viewer off investigating punk rock for life. In short, I get the impression that Spheeris came up with her apocalyptic concept first and set about assembling footage to justify it.

“Live At The Masque” manages to tell a completely different story, presenting evidence of a far more positive and cohesive underground community. The self-made mythology of ‘70s punk may centre on tales of drugs, squalor, nihilism and bodily abuse, but the kids in the crowd (and in the bands) here just look happy and friendly and excitable, each trying to outdo each other with their kick-ass NY/London influenced sartorial style. Flyers, newsletters and notes pinned to the doors are funny and self-deprecating to a fault, full of scene in-jokes, breathless announcements of which bands “might be playing, if they can get it together”, and hand-written summaries of local and international ‘punk news’. Even the graffiti that covers every surface is largely pretty good natured.


The negative vibes chronicled by Spheeris are hard to find anywhere in these photos, and even the self-destructive ‘no future’ ethos that goes hand-in-hand with early punk is undermined by the presence on the scene of cats like Greg Shaw, Kristine McKenna, John Doe, Exene Cervenka and Mullen himself, all providing the kids with serviceable models for how to grow up punk without fading away or selling out. Photos of some of the lesser known bands on the scene reveal a healthy compliment of women and non-whites taking a creative role in proceedings, and, in short, it’s difficult to flick through the book without feeling a pang of regret that you weren’t there to take part in such an awesome explosion of teenage creativity and self-definition.

In fairness, “Decline..” was filmed a couple of years after the heyday of The Masque, when the action seemed to have shifted to bigger, more barn-like venues with cynical managers and security guards, and when the native suburban hardcore pioneered by Black Flag and The Circlejerks was in the ascendant, as opposed to the more urban, relatively arty Pistols/Heartbreakers influenced combos that characterized the Masque scene. But still, the discrepancy between the book and the film is startling. As usual with these things, I guess the truth probably lies somewhere between the two.



Obviously the more artistically striking bands associated with The Masque – Screamers, Germs, X, Flesh Eaters, Dickies, The Dils and the much-underrated Bags – are the stuff of legend, and both The Weirdos, Plugz and my favourite ever Californian punks The Zeros (who played a coupla times) have achieved cult immortality by infusing their racket with a razor-sharp pop sensibility. Late period scene upstarts like The Go Gos and Holly & The Italians may have gone on to varying degree of Hollywood New Wave fame, and the book also has great pictures of awesome out-of-town headliners like Crime, The Cramps, Dead Boys, Avengers etc., but much of the fun of flicking through “Live At The Masque” comes from checking out the legions of less distinguished and/or completely forgotten groups.

The Skulls, Controllers, Flyboys, Backstage Pass, The Eyes, Simpletones, The LA Shakers, Deadbeats, Alleycats, Mutants, Schizos, F-Word, The Nuns…? Oh, if only these photos came with in-built sound.




So without further ado, here’s some choice mp3s, some from the “Live at the Masque ‘77” benefit LP, some from elsewhere, presented in tribute to Brenden Mullen, who saw these people and this culture sprouting up from nowhere around him, and did what it took to put the pieces together.

The Weirdos – Life of Crime
The Zeros – Cosmetic Couple

The Bags – Violent Girl (live)
The Germs – Let’s Pretend (live)

X- Los Angeles
Screamers - In a Better World

Labels: books, deathblog, Germs, LA, photos, punk, punk rock, Screamers, The Bags, The Zeros, Weirdos, X

New 8 Track:
Doomed & Confident

Yeah, another one of these damn things I'm afraid. Let me know if you're sick of me posting 'em here...



(Link.)

This one's got loads of neat stuff, like Francoise Hardy, Grass Widow, Phyllis Dixon, the Velvets, and kicks off with this little number from Canadian punks The Dishrags that gets more perfect every time I listen/watch:

Labels: 8 Tracks, mixtapes, The Dishrags

The Mountain Goats –
The Life of the World to Come
(4AD)

Ah, another baleful, frozen-skied, back-to-work autumn setting in, and another grimly introspective Mountain Goats album, right on cue to accompany it. Long may the annual cycle continue thus.

Those paying close attention to the ebb and flow of John Darnielle’s ever-prolific songwriting mojo (waves hello) will have noted some curious developments in his work of recent, with his attempts to expand his palette and keep his inspiration fresh perhaps showing through a little too clearly at times as he ploughs ever onward through the cathartic possibilities of words and chords.

Fans will have noticed the growth in what, for want of a better term, we might call “referential” songwriting – by that I mean songs that take some specific moment or event from history or popular culture, and deal with it in the abstract, creating an impressionistic picture of the emotions and characters involved, without venturing to spell out any specifics. Darnielle then tends to assign the song a title that hints – sometimes rather obscurely- at the original subject matter, and leaves the listener to do the detective work re: piecing together the song’s eventual significance.

Sometimes this technique works brilliantly, and a song like ‘Sept. 15th 1983’ from last year’s “Heretic Pride” was, if anything, even more fascinating and unusual BEFORE I figured out that its lyrics referred to the murder of reggae legend Prince Far I. Similarly, one doesn’t need a background in South East Asian cryptozoology to appreciate the feeling behind ‘Tianchi Lake’, or to google ‘Roger Patterson Van Crash’ to enjoy the song of the same name.

But on other occasions the device can prove extremely frustrating, serving to alienate more casual listeners. ‘Michael Myers Resplendent’ for instance may be one of the most effective moments on “Heretic Pride” when taken in context, but its significance could easily be lost upon anyone who failed to clock the title at a live show or missed the reference to the cinematic serial killer. This problem became especially galling on last year’s self-released ‘Satanic Messiah’ EP. If you happen to be familiar with the music and influence of cult Brazilian proto-Black Metal band Sarcofago, then sure, ‘Sarcofago Live’ is quite enjoyable. If not, what do you get? Just some verses about some people, somewhere, “raging” in a basement. Even more obtuse is ‘Wizard Buys a Hat’, which still leaves me puzzled. Sure, I like looking at the title, and picturing a wizard buying a hat, but beyond that...? A middling tune and some words about some guy wondering around town, seemingly hiding from some pursuers? Whatever. These songs are ok, but they fail to hit home the way that first rate Mountain Goats material should. When you’re listening to a song with an obscure backstory to it, the power of the song should sell an interest in the context to you, not vice versa, y’know what I mean?

But, for better of worse, this seems to be the way the wagon is heading, and if the stew of literary and cultural reference points successfully weaved into “Heretic Pride” marked The Mountain Goats out as a band whose albums can come complete with an implied reading list, then “The Life of the World to Come” takes things one step further, effectively presenting us with a *compulsory* reading list – albeit one limited to a single volume. Framed in its press release as “twelve hard lessons learned from the bible”, each song on the album takes its name from the bible verse that inspired it. That Darnielle should be a fan of the good book is scarcely surprising, given the fire & brimstone and narratives of sin and redemption that underlay much Mountain Goats material, and that he should prove to be predominantly an Old Testament man is equally unsurprising.

After the macabre blowout of “Heretic Pride”, “The Life of the World To Come” is a more somber, low-key affair, much in the vein of 2006’s “Get Lonely”. It is, some critic with a deathly pallor and dust for brains is laying in wait somewhere to pronounce, the most “ ‘ mature ‘ “ Mountain Goats album to date. So ‘mature’ in fact that much of it veers closer to the perspective of a elderly patriarch contemplating the inevitable from his deathbed than to the desperate, self-immolating young people that Darnielle has often spoken through in song. Within its grooves, a series of anonymous narrators calmly confront such issues as faith, loss, loneliness, earthly devotion and the persistence of hope, leading, inevitably, to the direct consideration of grief and death. It is, to put it bluntly, pretty grim stuff.

Like his fellow bible-basher Nick Cave, I gather that Darnielle now rents an office space that he uses solely to work on his song-writing on a nine-to-five basis, a decision that we might be able to see reflected not only in the two men’s shared interest in the good book, but also in their fondness for funereal tailoring, slow, sustain-heavy minor key piano chords and, most worryingly, a certain emotional detachment that has started to creep into Darnielle’s work, and that has arguably consigned Cave to dreary self-parody for years.

What was always most thrilling about The Mountain Goats material in the past was its immediacy, and its unflinching honesty. Even when working through wholly fictional narratives, Darnielle’s driving need to throw every ounce of his often frightening excesses of emotion and empathy into his music was beyond question, and mistakes, repetitions and self-indulgence could all be overlooked simply because his songs sounded like bulletins from a life being led in a state of permanent flux, all laid down on tape in private in a spare few minutes before the next crisis, the next revelation, the next bus out of town, all suffused with the shadows of experiences too overwhelming to easily deal with. Whether or not they actually were conceived under such circumstances is besides the point – they sound as if they were. Listen to ‘Sweden’ or ‘Full Force Galesburg’ or ‘The Coroner’s Gambit’, and that’s what you’ll hear: truth and desperation; one man against the world; all that stuff.

It’s a state of mind that every wouldbe alt-cowboy singer/songwriter ever has taken a shot at and almost without exception failed to realise, simply because, unlike Darnielle, they’re not there already, and if you find yourself trying to get to some dark, mixed up place just so you can write songs about it – I mean, what the hell dude? Put the stetson away and get a fucking job. The Mountain Goats have never made a virtue of suffering – they’ve just thrown it at the world and hoped for the best.

But, having exploded their approach into widescreen perfection on their initial string of classic 4AD albums, more recent ‘Goats material is starting to show a similar tiredness of spirit to all the Van Zandt wannabes they render irrelevant, and to Cave for that matter – the feeling of ‘songwriting as an exercise’ that presumably comes from sitting at the piano all day staring at the wall for inspiration, and the “reference” songs are only the most obvious symptom of this change of pace.

Nonetheless though, we can put such fears aside for the moment, as ‘The Life of the World to Come’ comes out on top once again. Spending some time in the new record’s company serves to affirm the essential strength of Darnielle’s A-grade material, a strength that lies beyond any change of circumstances or change of pace in the songwriting/recording department. Whilst they may no longer be crashing through your motel room door with flying fists, the songs herein are thematically consistent and assured meditations that aim at universal relevance in a way this band has rarely attempted before. They may be almost entirely removed from the baggage of monsters, teenage runaways, self-destructive addicts and doomed lovers who populate the ‘Goats back catalogue, but, after living with the album for a few weeks, we come to realize how little we still need these familiar faces, and we can be reassured, and moved, perhaps more gently but more firmly than we’re used to, by the way in which these songs attain a solemn, self-contained beauty that is all their own.

Before the new calm takes hold though, we’re still rewarded with one last sociopathic bellow-fest, in the form of the second track here, ‘Psalms 40:2’ (the King James says: “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings”). With the full band launching into a rolling, melodramatic vamp reminiscent of ‘Sax Rohmer #1’, and John spitting out his words like a crooked preacher, this is the most authentic fire & brimstone moment on the album by quite some distance, and the one that connects most strongly with Mountain Goats past. Through clenched teeth and fists, the song seems to tell the story of some people undertaking a traumatic crime spree/road trip through the bible-belt, investing their actions with a religious grandeur as if daring the Lord to strike down the monsters He has created. “Left that place in ruin”, they growl of a desecrated chapel, “drunk on the spirits, high on fumes”. Startling and unnerving stuff.

Another gift for those of us looking for the cheap thrills of yore is track 5, ‘Hebrews 11:40’, (“God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect”). A brooding little number that comes straight from the playbook of ‘Get Lonely’, it becomes remarkably compelling after a few listens, with Owen Pallet’s deliciously creepy string arrangements (more subtle than Erik Friedlander’s strings on the last album) coming to the fore. Beginning with a wealth of graveyard/horror movie imagery, this song seems to concern a man who is entirely alone in the world, rising from the tomb, either literally or figuratively, and assessing the challenges ahead of him, calm in the certainty that some implacable faith will see him through to his goal… whatever that might be. He talks of having to invent an imaginary family to keep him going, “if it comes to that”, and of his willingness to hurt whoever stands in his way. Although there’s no obvious wider context here, you don’t feel inclined to doubt him as he sings, “If not by faith then by the sword / I’m going to be restored”.

Never before has the idea of The Mountain Goats releasing records on 4AD (“eerie madrigals on the campus eggslicer” and all that) seemed quite so appropriate, as songs like these emerge as beautiful bits of gothic, sounding like miniature Castles of Ontario, the perfect soundtrack to some black-clad early ‘90s Vertigo comics epic.

On any other Mountain Goats album, these outbursts would mark the calm before the storm, but here they’re more like the storm before the calm. The album’s true heart lays somewhere else entirely, in the sparse, ringing piano chords that underscore John’s voice on ‘Genesis 30:3’ (“And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees that I may also have children by her” ), one of the simplest and most beautiful devotional songs Darnielle has ever written. When I say ‘devotional’, I’m not sure whether the song expresses devotion to a lover or to a God, but to be honest it scarcely matters. As with several of the best songs on the record, Darnielle intentionally blurs the distinction between earthy and metaphysical faith, and in the process succeeds wonderfully in rising above the knuckleheaded bickering and terminal point-missing that blights 99% of contemporary discourse on religion, instead cutting straight to essential core of belief. In these songs, he speaks of the reality of feeling something within you that stretches beyond yourself, of the overriding sense of faith in the beauty of the world, and of a sense of purpose and an unwavering certainty that can be clung to throughout the very worst of times, whether it manifests itself as devotion to a church, as a gnostic ‘spark of the divine’, or simply as time spent in the arms of your beloved, or with an equally beloved family – for what, after all, is the difference?

Obviously the rather curious choice of bible verse complicates matters, but that aside ‘Genesis 30:3’ reminds me more than anything of the scene in Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenin’ wherein Levin, the tormented agnostic, realizes for the first time his sense of underlying, unshakable faith when presented with his newborn daughter. As usual, John D. gets it in one; “for several hours we lay there, last ones of our kind / harder days coming maybe, I don't mind / it sounds kind of dumb when i say it but it's true / I would do anything for you”.

This idea of the love song expanded to cover universal faith as well as personal devotion is returned to again and again on the album, as the prisoner serving life and tormented by monstrous imaginings in ‘1 John 4:16’ (“And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him”) testifies as if in prayer, “And I won’t be afraid of anything ever again / because I know you’re thinking of me, as it’s just about to rain”.

Not every song on “The Life of the World..” works for me, I’ll admit; I’m just discussing my favourite ones above. Some of the others leave me cold, some a merely a bit odd, and one in particular I just don’t wanna hear right now – it doesn’t seem like the right time. Sitting at the centre of the record, the cornerstone that puts the rest into context perhaps, is ‘Matthew 25:21’ (”His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord”), a straight-forward narrative about traveling to visit a loved one dying of cancer for the final time. At six minutes, it is probably one of the longest Mountain Goats songs to date. It opens with “They had you hooked up, to a fentanyl drip / to help mitigate the pain a little bit”, and gets progressively more hard going from thereon in. No gospel-aided philosophisin’ here, no declarations of self-belief, just a plain account of death, and a grief that it sometimes seems like the rest of the album exists to try to cushion. Musically, it’s flat, awkward and repetitious, just like the situation described probably would be, and I confess, as a carefree young-ish sorta person, it’s a freaking downer – one I’ll skip through if it’s all the same to you.

But at the same time, I know that if or when I find myself in similar circumstances, it’s the first song I’ll search out on my mp3 player, to see if it helps or reassures, to find solace, to compare notes or just to fill the journey to the hospital with something that won’t drive me to distraction. And that’s what this song, and the others on the album, are essentially all about, the same thing the archetypal good-hearted priest is all about – trying to help. This particular song might not be meant for me, right now, but if it manages to hit even a few people at the right time, if they hold onto it to some small extent in a hard place, Darnielle will have succeeded, and can be proud of his achievement, like a steadfast pastor of no fixed denomination.

You may think this is all getting kinda mealy-mouthed and sanctimonious – hell, you may have reached that decision as soon as you heard about the bible verse song title gimmick. But Darnielle’s success here comes in the way he approaches his subject matter not as a dogmatic Xtian, but as the kind of flawed, spiritually bereft post-industrial human that modernist novels always used to warn us about, picking up the lessons of the scriptures for the first time and finding them more relevant to his own being than he ever suspected. As the chaotic, self-doubting protagonist of ‘Romans 10:9’ confirms for us in a rousing chorus adapted straight from the text:

“If you can believe in your heart
And confess with your lips
Surely you will be
Saved one day”

And if we can put aside our kneejerk secular distaste for such phraseology and take that at face value, is it not a pretty fucking righteous note on which to start the day?

Mp3s:

Psalms 40:2
Genesis 30:3

Buy "The Life of the World to Come":

Norman
4AD

Labels: album reviews, The Mountain Goats

Forgotten Greats of the ‘00s # 1:
Jawbone

Jawbone was (and presumably is) one man from Detroit named Bob Zabor. Jawbone first came to my attention when John Peel played his song ‘What’s Goin’ On’ like three times in a single programme or something. I think if I had a radio programme, I’d probably want to play it three times in a single programme too. It’s wonderful and insane; an outburst of pure, maniac joy that takes every hoary, overcooked one-man-band-bluesman cliché you can think of and blows the whole lot outta your ass. Listen to Zabor’s feet beat out a bone-crunching double-speed bass drum / hi-hat pound, and to his hands layering total idiot, mono-chord guitar downstrokes over the top, whilst his gob puts in a double-shift, alternating between a brutal, honking harmonica riff and yelping out a bunch of petulant nursery rhyme blather, ending each stanza with the frankly inspired battlecry “DADDY GOT A HAIRCUT, MOMMA GONNA MOW THE LAWN!” How does all that make you feel - Startled? Exhilarated? Amused? Unhappy? Hungry? SOMETHING, that’s for sure. It is, in a profound sense, a tune.

And man, Peel absolutely went ape for this Jawbone stuff – I remember one night he had Jack White on his programme for some kind of special interview thing, and he set about trying to persuade him live on air that he should give Jawbone a slot as tour support for The White Stripes; “c’mon Jack, he’s a local boy and everything, what do you say?” Jack sounded pretty non-committal, but then that’s Jack White for you.

According to what I remember from the sleevenotes accompanying Jawbone’s debut album ‘Dang Blues’, Bob Zabor began his musical career when he was working as a furniture mover or a truck driver or something, and would make up stupid blues hollers to entertain himself when there was nothing good on the radio, pounding on the dashboard to keep time. He got more into this, and as time went on he bought himself a harmonica with which to express himself more fully. Eventually he started getting on stage between bands at shows and doing his hollers, but realised that nobody would take him seriously unless he had a guitar, so he got one of those too, and learned the basics. I guess the guitar probably meant he needed something louder than the floor to do his stomping on, so he got the drums, and Jawbone was born.

And indeed, most of the songs on the record sound like they started life as meaningless, a-capella yelling songs, like the kind of thing a really disturbed child might sing whilst sitting alone in a coal cellar after all the other kids have beaten him up, set to the most simplistic of musical accompaniment. I don’t usually have much tolerance for all that quirky “hey look, I’m a one man band, crazy huh?” bollocks, but Jawbone is really something else. And he’s pretty funny too, showing a total lack of respect for dreary blues tradition, making up stupid, surreal shit on the spot and hammering the same punk-ass chord for about three straight minutes, laughing in the face of the expected 12-bar turnarounds.

Naturally I pictured Bob Zabor as some kind of larger than life backwoods wildman - a Hasil Adkins style outsider lunatic, or a hairy, ostentatious king freak of some peculiar kind. And I enjoyed the album, and Peel continued to point me toward to new and exciting obsessions three nights week, and that was that.

That is, until a few years later, when I was surprised to see that Jawbone was doing a one-off gig in Leicester, where I was living at the time, courtesy of self-explanatory local promoters Not The Same Old Blues Crap (who have now also relocated to London).

Cut to darkened, crappy upstairs venue, about 9pm, and in typical Leicester tradition there’s nobody fucking there – just the promoter and a couple of his mates, and me standing quietly in the corner…. and Jawbone. Jawbone, it transpires, is a skinny, nerdy-looking white guy with an army haircut and a flannel shirt. He looks a bit like Steve Albini, or an electrician. Just a quiet, everyday sort of guy who probably went to college and studied something useful. He gives me a free badge.

Then he sits down on a barstool, and stretches around until he’s got all his various implements in the right position, and then his foot and strumming arm go BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG, and the sweat flies, and he commences his hollering, the fiery red eyes and apocalyptic bad kid drool of the coal cellar, interspersed with stunned silence and a minimal midlands clap. Whoa there. So let us consider old Jawbone the next time some insufferable blues bore makes a point of harping on about his authentic hillbilly credentials. Daddy gotta haircut, momma gonna mow the lawn!

Mp3s>
What’s Goin’ On
My Daddy

Jawbone’s website: http://www.dangblues.com/

Labels: blues, Forgotten greats of the 00s, Jawbone

Rock N' Roll Girl.

It's 1980, and The (Paul Collins) Beat are chasin' the dream:



2008 and they're still hot on the trail:



Glorious failures..?

LIFERS. : D

Labels: awesomeness, Paul Collins Beat, power pop, videos

An Apology to Spin Spin The Dogs.

Spin Spin The Dogs are a great band; I saw them on numerous occasions during the years I spent in the midlands, and they were always a hoot – chaotic, engaging, unique and good fun.

I’m not usually much of a fan of bands whose singers like to harangue the audience and get in peoples faces etc, but the Spin Spin The Dogs singer guy goes about it in such an imaginative, good natured and deeply strange manner, it’s impossible not to get drawn in and find yourself enjoying his antics and outbursts, especially as accompanied by the band’s excellent Beefheart/Homosexuals squall. Think of them as a benevolent, non-threatening Birthday Party, or something, maybe.

I’ve always thought that they’ve probably stayed off most folks radars simply because the improvisational crowd/response aspect of what they do is pretty difficult to capture on record. But, after a long period of not doing much, they’ve got a new album out soon, and this little video expresses their totality quite well I feel:



Meanwhile, The New Cross Inn just up the road from my current residence is… (what’s a good way of putting it without inviting angry correspondence?)… not the sort of venue that often hosts musical bills congenial to my own tastes.

On Monday last week though, I was delighted to note that Spin Spin The Dogs were playing there, supporting Lovvers.

Naturally on just about any other night of the year I’d have been there, welcoming back a fondly remembered band of yore who’ve been considerate enough to play within a ten minute walk of my house. But I had tickets for Nodzzz that night, and was really, really looking forward to seeing them. I also had a dinner invite from some friends I hadn’t seen in a while, so I popped along there for a while too. It was a very busy evening.

So I’m really sorry Spin Spin The Dogs – I hope it was a great night, and I hope to get the chance to see you again some time.

(Nodzzz were terrific, by the way – everything I’d hoped they would be; I just wish I could go and see them play every week, or just hang out in their garage and be their friends or something. A great band on every level. Wet Dog played a blinder as support too – I enjoyed them way more than the last time I saw them, for some reason, and Teen Sheiks were good fun too, and, oh man, time to cease this vague, reckless positivity and go write a proper blogpost about something!)

Labels: apologies, gig reviews, Nodzzz, Spin Spin The Dogs

Yet More Singles...

Five more gangs of salty customers trying to make our hair stand on end.

Drunkdriver – Knife Day b/w January 2nd
(Fan Death)

Good grief, this is horrifying. Starting with a long drawn out scream, “Knife Day” launches into a pile of sloppy, violent, sociopathic hardcore being blasted out the other end of a wind tunnel and EQed to death, harsh frequencies pummelling like a wifebeater’s fat fists through the tape hiss. “January 2nd” meanwhile sounds like a giant pig monster just stumbled upon punk club and started fucking it with slow, grinding determination as the punks within scream in terror and confusion. I know it’s naïve of me to listen to a basement hardcore/noise record and think “gee, these guys are pissed off about something”, but gee, these guys are pissed off about something.

http://www.myspace.com/drunkdriverusa
http://www.myspace.com/fandeathrecords

Florida – Icarus b/w Once Yr In It (Shadowplay)

Spooky homemade mutant rock here from…. well, Brooklyn actually – fancy that. These guys have a pretty distinctive sound going on though, centred on ominous, slowed-down vocals combined with normal speed instruments and quite crisp recording, to eerie and dramatic effect. Really strong song-writing here too; ‘Icarus’ could almost be some bastardised Duran Duran/Depeche Mode hit, veering briefly toward a declamatory Sabbathian sing-song metal chant on the chorus, with backing that clanks and hisses more like some lost Pere Ubu-worshipping art-punk ensemble from the dawn of time. I know that doesn’t really make much sense as a description, but neither does trying to jam a band like this into any of my critical reference point boxes, so you’re just going to have to put up with it. On the other side, ‘Once Yr In It’ is a more strung out and distant affair, with slithering hand percussion and low acoustic strumming, like an admirable attempt to fuse the sound of this decade’s surplus of avant/creepcore ensembles with, like, y’know, a band that does songs, until a truly majestic lead guitar rises from the campfire halfway through to take us home. When I say ‘majestic’ of course, I also mean creepy. Everything on this record is creepy, and creepy is good. It’s all out-of-time, hard to nail down, like someone’s attempt to make a haunted band. Basically, if you like the wonderful vintage Halloween photo on the cover, you’ll probably like the music within. It’s an inspired image/sound combo.

http://www.myspace.com/plasticpalms

Girls of the Gravitron – Malthusian Love Song EP (Boom Chick Records)

Band from Memphis. Debut 7”. The song on the A-side immediately hits all the warning buttons, sounding on the surface like a hideous, don't-give-a-damn basement-fi fuck-around that makes me want to yell YOU GUYS ARE JUST SPOILING IT FOR THE REST OF US, and go and listen to something recorded with more than one microphone. It would have been unwise of me to do that though, as the two offerings on the B-side soothe and surprise in an extremely pleasant manner, causing me the return to the A with fresh ears. Recording is still needlessly muffled, over-compressed scuzz throughout, but there are some really beautiful, twisted tunes going on here, sung by a guy who sounds like a gently lethargic alien hillbilly and backed up by a rollicking good band mixing foot-tapping garage rock n’ roll with some lovely, light-of-touch psychedelic slide guitar moves zapping out of the top of the mix like shiny eagles, sounding for all the world like some previously unheard wonder-juice guzzling ’67 session excavated from the International Artists vault alongside all those 13th Floor Elevators and Red Crayola rarities. And you’d better believe that’s a recommendation. Third song ‘Violent Appetites’ gets a particular thumbs up from me. I wish the vocals weren’t so distorted, because I’d like to hear the lyrics that go with the oddball song titles, but that aside this is effortless freak-rock goodness, and well worth a listen.

http://www.myspace.com/girlsofthegravitron
http://www.myspace.com/boomchickrecords

Topaz Rags – Tarot Harem (Not Not Fun)

Yes, Tarot Harem. If that doesn’t give you a pointer re: where these guys are coming from, nothing will. As you might expect, this initially sounds like music to accompany somebody’s tiresome idea of a sinister, LSD-fuelled Mansonite occult happening. Apparently the first 78 copies came with a free tarot card taken from the Crowley deck. What larks! “Tarot Harem” mixes disembodied Pocahaunted style female moaning with clattering, vaguely free drumming and a hypnotic five note bass figure that’s really annoying me, because it sounds like a total rip from another piece of music that I know I know really well, but I just can’t place it.

(Oh yeah, I’ve got it now – it’s, er, the guitar bit that underpins “Your Cells Are In Motion” by Jackie O-Motherfucker? Clocking that and then actually bothering to write it down perhaps counts as the geekiest moment of my life thus far. I mean, I don’t even like Jackie O-Motherfucker, aside from that one song, that I used to listen to a lot on a mix CD. Christ.)

Anyway, the other song here, “Black Honey” (ooh, those titles), is effectively identical to “Tarot Harem”, but with the bass and drums hitting a different, ‘slowly trailing victim through the streets’ kinda groove, and the addition of sparse, creeping piano notes. As on Pocahaunted’s recent ‘Passage’ LP, (which I couldn’t really get into), the free-form vocals here are largely devoid of effects and allowed to roam free, rendering them deeply silly in places. I mean, it’s just a few steps away from throwing in some whistling wind and clanking chains from yr sound FX records really, isn’t it? Still, all adds to the atmosphere I guess. And, without wishing to sound like an old grump, it’s actually the straightforward instruments rather than the ghostly groanings that are doing the bulk of the work in Topaz Rags, and they’re doing it very effectively too, and with a lot more subtlety than you’d have reason to expect. Do I hear some ghosts of distant LA noir jazz creeping in around the edges….? Let’s hope they stay around the edges; that’s where they work best. Peer at Topaz Rags from the right angle and you might even find them soundtracking some Maya Deren instead of some Ted V. Mikels. Even within the mightily oversaturated realm of avant-freaky creepscapes, this stands out as a pretty decent and well thought out addition to the catalogue of such things. Nice work.

>http://www.myspace.com/topazrags
http://www.notnotfun.com/

Vermillion Sands – In The Wood (Fat Possum)

I’ve played this single many times of recent, and I can’t quite get an angle on it, although I think it is very, very good and unusual. Hailing from Italy, and winning points from the outset for the J.G. Ballard reference, Vermillion Sands are led by one Anna Barattin, who possesses a raspy, gutsy singing voice that’s faintly reminiscent of Drugstore’s Isabel Monteiro. Having said that, I just listened to some old Drugstore stuff to check, and actually there’s not THAT much similarity, but nonetheless, the comparison may serve to give you some idea of where Vermillion Sands are coming from, emotionally speaking. This 7” sees Barattin and her band bust through three wonderfully idiosyncratic, low-key garage-folk-punk tunes that combine a slightly eerie rural ambience with ramshackle, Basement Tapes good cheer and choruses slow n’ steady enough for you to sing along before you’ve even clocked the words. Powered along by clanging hollow-body guitars, rough fuzz riffs, tambourine and meaty Vox organ swirl, these are some really great songs that demand repeated listens, their exuberant three-sheets-to-the-wind execution belying some dark and foggy feelings buried beneath. “I always felt sick and sad and lonely,” Barattin sings on the chorus of ‘May’ as the band whoop it up behind her, “if only I could move from my bed”. In the wood indeed. Getting more compelling as it gets more familiar, this one’s a flat-out winner.

http://www.myspace.com/thevermillionsands
http://www.myspace.com/fatpossumrecords

Labels: Drunkdriver, Florida, Girls of the Gravitron, singles reviews, Topaz Rags, Vermillion Sands

New 8 Track: Clowns & Locusts

Yet another one I'm afraid; just another bunch of great songs - no theme, although you could probably sum it up as new weird garage vs. old weird garage. I'd also like to take the opportunity to congratulate The Fresh & Onlys on coming up with my favourite stupid/genius song of the year so far (although I'm not really sold on their output as a whole).

Clowns!



(Link.)

Labels: 8 Tracks, Clowns, mixtapes, The Fresh and Onlys

Um Tributo ao GBV!

This week, for reasons hazy at best, I found myself listening to a Guided By Voices tribute album put together by a bunch of unknown Brazilian bands.


The very existence of such a thing brings a tear to one’s heart and warms the cockles of your eyes, doesn’t it? Just to think that fifteen or twenty years ago, a bunch of scraggly lookin’ 30-something dudes in a nowheresville rustbelt town were getting together in a windowless basement to write and perform a seemingly endless series of weird rock n’ roll classics called things like “Jar of Cardinals” and “At Odds With Dr. Genesis”… and a decade or two later a whole community of kids on a whole other continent (well, kinda) who were probably in primary school when ‘Propeller’ came out, with English as a second language at best, are sufficiently inspired to collectively pay tribute to their efforts. That’s a pretty good measure of musical success for you, right there.

Of course, such is the power of Guided By Voices. My own GBV fandom has been growing steadily ever since Matthew of Fluxblog first introduced be to their stuff via the wonders of a 120 minute mixtape around the dawn of this decade, from initial 'hey, these guys are ok' interest to the point where it now borders on obsession. Just as British music fans of a certain age will never, ever be able to get enough of (or stop talking about) The Fall, instead I have GBV. Man, just don’t even get me started on them, if you value your wakefulness. I guess they’ll never be my #1 Official Favourite Band, so long as The Ramones and the Velvets exist, but given their voluminous output, I almost certainly listen to them more frequently than any other band; all the more so since the internet has allowed me to track down a whole secondary canon of rare EPs and odds & ends releases, Fading Captain side-projects, fan-curated rare tracks compilations and the like. According to iTunes, I know have 2.5GB of GBV/Robert Pollard related material stashed away, and I don’t even have any of those ‘Suitcase’ box sets yet. I’ve actually been thinking about putting together an all-GBV Mp3 player that I can carry around and just stick on ‘shuffle’ whenever I feel the need. I should be pitied, probably, but clearly I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think the band were consistently amazing, exhilarating, moving, funny, majestic, fascinating etc. etc. to an almost unprecedented degree.

And it’s always good to be reminded that I’m not the only one still in that frame of mind, even as Bob Pollard’s recent avalanches of disappointingly dreary new material are scarcely helping to win him any new admirers... so let’s get back to this Brazilian tribute album.

Look, here’s the back cover:


Amazing stuff.

As is inevitably the way with these things, the vast majority of the tracks are pretty underwhelming. Many of the bands represented sound like fuzz guitar/drum machine/4-track solo projects, and few of them add much to the GBV legacy, just running through basic chord n’ lyric arrangements with less gusto and conviction than the original recordings. Perhaps taking advantage of GBV’s rep as ‘godfathers of lo-fi’, some contributions sound hasty and tossed off to the point of embarrassment, with a first take, ‘reading lyrics off the screen’ quality to them; poor Grasiela Piasson in particular sounds like she’s being forced to get to the end of ‘Motor Away’ at gun point. Most of the tracks are pretty good natured and vaguely enjoyable though, and it’s nice just that this album exists.

And as is also inevitably the way with these things, when genius strikes, it strikes hard.

To wit:

Sabia Sensivel – June Salutes You

I’m also rather fond of Telerama’s version of ‘Game of Pricks’. It’s just real nice; reminds me a lot of The Breeders take on Shocker in Gloomtown. And is it just me, or does a female vocal put a nice twist on this weirdly universal anthem of open-heartedness vs. cynicism? Neat little melodic guitar break too.

Telerama - Game of Pricks

Of course, this album also allows us the fun of spending a few minutes going “Wot, no ‘Postal Blowfish’? No ‘Do the Earth’? No ‘Shocker in Gloomtown’? No ’14 Cheerleader Coldfront’?” etc. etc., but criticizing a GBV tribute album for not finding room for everyone’s fave songs is like criticizing a paperback movie guide for no including every single motion picture ever made.

Ok, one more: I like this version of “Unleashed! The Large Hearted Boy”. I dunno why really, it’s pretty much just a slightly less good version of the original, but it makes me think more bands should play this song. The way those wrecked guitars plunge in over the opening bassline in that completely dissonant yet completely awesome way: who wouldn’t want to hear a live band unexpectedly launch into that? It’s just ON.

Tape Rec – Unleashed! The Large-hearted Boy

Anybody want to start a Guided By Voices tribute band? Aptitude for transcribing chords and drinking beer an obvious advantage – give me a shout.

“Don’t Stop Now: Um Tributo ao GBV” can be downloaded for free from Transfusão Noise Records.

UPDATE:

The kids in Ireland are way ahead of us on this one:



http://www.myspace.com/voidedbyponces

Labels: album reviews, Guided By Voices, tribute albums

Summer Singles, part # 3

Sic Alps – L. Mansion (Slumberland)

It’s an odd one to get a handle on, this Sic Alps thing. I kinda like them, I think I’m probably gonna go and see them at their London gig. If I see a record by them, I’ll buy it. Their music’s likeable, varied, fuzzy, rocking, vaguely tuneful and kinda interesting, but… I dunno, I mean, I doubt even their most vocal supporters could legitimately claim they were *brilliant* or, y’know, singularly extraordinary. Even in their very best stuff, there’s a certain… haziness, maybe… that makes them the perfect target for any preordained opponent of the new lo-fi hierarchy to jump on and cry WHERE’S THE BEEF?

As I say, I like ‘em, and listening to them makes me feel good, but at the same time they don’t seem like a band who under sane circumstances would necessitate instantly sold out singles or furtive online bidding wars, any more so than any other duo of dudes you might find working out some tunes on Californian beachfront one Friday night. And this particular single, redolent of the kind of pleasantly slapdash meandering that leads responsible adults to start referring to songs as “jams”, will likely prove more flagrantly offensive than ever to those out there who’d demand that the incoming generation should be taking names and blowing minds as a matter of routine.

Not to me though. I kinda like it. The two numbers herein find the Alps at their most melodic and overtly sixties-styled, with acoustic guitar and everything on the A-side, while the B's a bit more of a 'Mellow Yellow' pre-glam stomper. The idea of Sic Alps being hippies has never really clicked with me before (more like NZ-via-Ohio outsider rock warriors, surely?), but this is basically some nice hippie music right here, stripped of all the bullshit that makes hippies and their music so ghastly. It’s a bit like something a couple of the guys from Moby Grape could have banged out after a few beers when their management wasn’t looking. Only it isn’t, at all. There’s something intangible about these songs – and not just the recording or the guitar tone – that defines them as ‘modern’. This is music that couldn’t have happened before ‘punk’ became codified in the late 70s, maybe even before, urgh, ‘indie rock’ became codified in the early ‘90s. But it’s still essentially dumb, happy shit to sit out on the porch with.

A band like Sic Alps also raises some interesting quality vs. quantity issues; granted, there are only two short-ish songs here, but the heart of the underground rock fan is still warmed by the implicit knowledge that a group like Sic Alps will always have LOADS of songs like these kicking around, and by its very nature this knowledge raises the level at which the band can be valued/enjoyed. If you were to record just the songs on this disc and present them to the music world like some sort of achievement, you’d be lucky to raise even the smallest of collective shrugs. Record about a hundred of the things though, of comparable or lesser quality, and a lifelong cult following will surely be yours. It’s a funny old game.

http://www.sicalps.com/listen.html
http://www.slumberlandrecords.com/

The Specific Heats – Back Through Thyme EP (Total Gaylord/Hugpatch)

The Specific Heats were ridiculously, almost unbelievably, good when I saw them play in Nottingham back in July – the sort of band I was worried I might have accidentally dreamed into existence with all my basest impulses. Picture if you will a dancing virtuoso loon of a guitarist leading proceedings with a lovely Mosrite cranked up via a Fuzzrite stompbox, a rack-mounted Fender reverb unit and various other noise-making goodies, whilst three unfeasibly beautiful young ladies provide furious backing on echoed, descending bass-lines, clattering garage-punk drums and swirling, baroque/prog-infused organ respectively, birthing a veritable riot of explosive, expansive psychedelic surf punk pop bliss. Good grief, what a band.

For all their magnificent potential though, it seems that The ‘Heats have had tougher luck than they perhaps deserve translating themselves to record. A second album apparently still lays some time in the distant future, and their merch guy warned me against seeking out their debut (highly unrepresentative of what they do now, I’m informed), leaving just this 33-playing EP as a stop-gap to bring back the happy memories.

And this is scarcely an accurate reflection of the band’s current line-up either it turns out, with production, song-writing and just about all the instrumentation being handled by guitarist/main guy Mat Patalano, with the rest of the live band only represented by Keira Flynn-Carson on drums. As such it’s a far more mannered and restrained affair than the live set, revealing a careful and perfectionist approach to recording, as Mat and Keira lay down a groovy ‘60s-focused sound that leans heavily on Zombies-esque baroque pop, some Stereolab/Monade style retro-futurist grooves, a bit of a surf twang, with a touch of Electric Prunes-ish studio-bound garage-psyche mayhem creeping around the edges. The result is a great listen, no doubt, inevitably recalling the work of Apples in Stereo’s Robert Schneider in both theory and practice, and imbued with the same irresistible positivity and pure love of sound too. All the same though, I can’t wait to hear what’ll happen when the brains and expertise behind this EP apply themselves to capturing the chaos and fury and wild ensemble playing of the group’s live show – I think it's gonna be pretty nifty.

Some killer live tracks / demos currently on their myspace though – check ‘em out!

http://www.myspace.com/thespecificheats
http://www.totalgaylordrecords.com/shop.htm

Top Ten – Girls Understand b/w Don’t Talk About Us (Classic Bar Music)

Classic bar music indeed! Keep me close to a bar for long enough, and I guarantee that before closing time this will be EXACTLY the kind of crap I’d want to hear, so let’s join Erin McDermott (ex-Bobbyteens, Trashwomen) as she and Top Ten bust through some cacophonous hard rock assaults on the world of power-pop, executed with all the nuance and restraint you’d expect. Only about two minutes per side here, but for some reason the pressing on this thing is pretty ppor, with thin sound, missing high end and a rhythm guitar track that sounds like an ape moaning along in time. I know that’s a weird thing to say, but seriously, you should hear it! The A-side has a good title and is pretty pacy, but a somewhat unmemorable tune, the B is a slightly unhinged bludgeoning of the Someloves classic. It’s ok, and kudos to them for covering such a great and relatively little-known tune, but it ain’t exactly too dynamic, y’know? I’m sure you could plot a graph pitting the potential enjoyability of this record against the number of cheap beers downed. Sounds like they’d had a few when they recorded it. I’m sober at the time of writing, so it could sound better.

http://www.myspace.com/topten
Classic Bar Music

Labels: Sic Alps, singles reviews, The Specific Heats, Top Ten

Summer Singles, part # 2

Mazes – Bowie Knives (Sex is Disgusting)

So it was essentially on the basis of mp3s of the songs from this 7” that I made my initial assessment of Mazes last month. To wit: “Guided By Voices and The Clean are the self-acknowledged chief reference points here, and whilst obviously Mazes aren’t remotely as revelatory as either of those groups, theirs is a straight up blend of roaring, rough-hewn subterranean power-pop that hits all the right buttons. At worst, file under “thoroughly satisfactory”, and at best, songs like "Bethesda" are f-ing superb; strong song-writing, goofy immediacy and a killer sound that recalls GBV’s ‘Propeller’”.

And all that still stands (hey, I don’t change my mind THAT quickly), but now that I’ve got these numbers on an actual disc (great cover art, and a really nice, good sounding pressing too – three cheers for Sex is Disgusting), I like ‘em even better. Mazes are just a really straightforward great band, making great songs that sound great, with (it seems) little in the way of ego, silliness or career ambitions getting in the way – they’re ditching the hassles and just getting down to it. The spirit of Greg’s basement circa 1993 lives on. ‘Bethesda’ really is a hit – the kind of spooky, self-explanatory, unbeatable singalong tune I wish I’d written; “There’s a witch in distance / and she knows what I know”. Sensational. So if like me you’re the sort of fool who’s prepared to regularly shell out £5 for four minutes of neatly packaged music, don’t let this one pass you by - it’s real nice. Limited to 250 apparently. Cor, you’d think they’d at least stretch to 500. Anyway, two thumbs up!

http://www.myspace.com/mazesmazesmazes
http://www.myspace.com/sexisdisgustingrecords

Miniswap – Whistler b/w Human Error (Cloudberry)

Miniswap is the band that the other three members of The Bats turn into when Robert Scott is off on his holidays, or serving time in The Clean, or whatever. So guitarist Kaye Woodward takes the lead vocal, song-writing duty is shared and the result is as gorgeous a pile of perfectly formed chiming kiwi guitar pop as you could hope for.

With Woodward’s softer tones, and some jovial recorder and whistling, things are sufficiently cutie to gain a release on Cloudberry (er… not that there’s anything wrong with that..), but the songs are also more upbeat and energetic than recent Bats material, with ‘Whistler’ in particular barrelling along like a lost Look Blue Go Purple song, carried forth by Woodward’s dense, shimmering rhythm guitar strummage as she seemingly takes on the role Scott plays in The Bats, rather than her usual quietly ferocious lead work. ‘Human Error’ meanwhile is more acoustic, but still catapulted forth by the band as Paul Kean’s muscular bass and the faintly Smiths-y melody take centre stage. A fine listen.

I really like the cover to this one too. Not that I’m some twee foot fetishist or anything, but it’s really pleasant to look upon… the Mazes one also. Heck, I even quite like the Mother of Tears one, and that's just plain ugly. I'm a pushover for covers.

http://www.myspace.com/miniswap
http://www.cloudberryrecords.com/

Mother of Tears – Little Ratty b/w In The Morning (Hozac)

Boy, this is sure not what I expected a band called ‘Mother of Tears’ to sound like. I wonder if they’re named after that notoriously awful Dario Argento movie? Whatever; just like that movie probably will when I get around to it, this hits my pleasure receptors with a dull thud, and life is alright. Well executed if ultimately undistinguished, it’s good natured, masculine ‘Punk Rock’ in a wouldbe sky-scraping, vaguely fist-pounding ‘anthems for barflys’ kinda vein. Close one eye and you could be listening to a demo of ‘Do The Collapse’ era GBV, but close the other and you could just as easily be hearing The Weirdos, or some other hardworking LA outfit on the cusp of that punk-becomes-new wave moment. The singers sounds a little like Gary Floyd of The Dicks in places, although a lot less OTT or distinctive. ‘Little Ratty’ goes on a bit too long, but has a great, dramatic ending with “are you ready to die??” yelled over a one note guitar crescendo. I think this band does drama pretty well actually; ‘In The Morning’ has a far more blatant New Wave thing going on, almost a vampy LA goth kinda vibe if it wasn’t simultaneously so macho – it’s got a real cool ‘80s horror movie theme song type stomp; good times, although it ends before it really gets going. Not bad at all!

It’s crazy isn’t it, how we (or at least I – dunno about you) have these so, so many accutely delineated little categories and cross-referenced tick boxes for each and every possible variation of dudes playing guitars and drums and hollering…?

So, I dunno, fuck it – this is some rock music. It’s a lot better than the majority of other rock music out there, so if you’re thus inclined you might as well give it a spin if you’ve worn out all your Alice Cooper records. But if you’re thinking of ordering some 7”s off ebay from overseas for mucho $$, I’m not sure I’d make it a priority.

http://www.myspace.com/motheroftears
http://www.hozacrecords.com/

Nodzzz – True To Life b/w Good Times Crowd (What’s Your Rupture?)

First new material from Nodzzz since their album, and…. straight in the back of the net! Or ‘home run’, or whatever your preferred crappy sports type expression of effortless success and exhilaration is. Seriously, this band can do no wrong for me at the moment, and these are two more beautiful little songs to add to the pile. The recording here is brighter and cleaner here than on the album, but correspondingly perhaps a little thinner. Who cares though, you can hear it all fine and these guys are definitely a ‘song’ band rather than a ‘sound’ band.

In ‘True To Life’, Nodzzz return to their familial home in the suburbs and sing to everyone about the things they’ve learned at the art school. “If you must make a picture, make it true to life”, they advise sagely. Sounds like a refreshingly down to earth approach to the arts to me – presumably this wasn’t the same art school that gave the world all those Lightning Bolt type dudes, or the subsequent generations of fluorescent bozos who hang around this neck of the woods.

On the other side is ‘Good Times Crowd’, wherein Nodzzz perhaps examine a different aspect of the art school life, communicating the thrills and disappointments experienced by a fragile fellow attempting to adjust to a new-found life of hedonism. It doesn’t sound like it ended well, but it doesn’t sound like it was entirely fruitless either.

Perhaps soon there will be enough Nodzzz songs for us to place them all in order and piece together a concise and comprehensive biography of an earnest young man making his way in the world and experiencing new things. And, rendered by way of the band’s insistent, twangy guitar lines and jaunty ‘nerd bounce’ sound (of which the A side here is another definitive example), it would be hard not to wed this unfolding tale to the mental image of our protagonist happily striding down the street on a sunny day with a mischievous look in his eye, his picaresque troubles overcome and a spring in his step as he marches on toward adulthood. Sort of like The Embarrassment if they’d taken some anger management classes, got a bit more fresh air and really sorted their shit out.

I’m going to see Nodzzz at the end of this month, and I can’t wait! *Claps hands in theatrical excitement*

http://nodzzz.blogspot.com/
http://www.whatsyourrupture.com/

Labels: Mazes, Miniswap, Mother of Tears, Nodzzz, singles reviews, The Bats

Summer Singles, part # 1

Boy, oh boy – what a fine haul of singles I’ve accumulated recently! For the first time, a couple of the items that follow are downloads/digital singles, but the majority are still ones I’ve got on plastic.

Cheap Time – Woodland Drive b/w Penny & Jenny (In The Red)

You may recall that I ranked Cheap Time’s debut album, like, 29th or something in my run-down of 2008 albums, but it retrospect it definitely deserved to place higher. It’s been growing on me ever since – a 0 to 60 masterclass in raucous, spiked power-pop. By contrast, “ After the Ball”, this year’s solo album by band leader Jeffrey Novak, won’t be making it anywhere near my 2009 best of list, for the simple reason that it’s quite horrible – a shrieking, hectoring mess of galumphing, harpsicord-addled Brit-psych whimsy, but one entirely devoid of the charm, tunes and wit that still keep us tuned to obvious inspirations such as messrs Ayers, Wood, Davies, Stanshall, Innes etc. forty years after the fact.

So, a potentially salty character, this Mr. Novak. And in view of the above, where exactly is this new batch of Cheap Time material throwing down? Answer, unsurprisingly, is somewhere between the two known poles of the Novak temperament. The strutting punk momentum and insensible racket of the CT album is present and correct, as is that record’s brevity (both songs are, like, seventy seconds or something), but here it finds itself combined with a strutting, stop/start theatricality and a faintly unhealthy ‘nightmare nursery rhyme’ approach to melody, particularly on ‘Penny & Jenny’, which starts off sounding almost like a lost Jennifer Gentle song, but swiftly sours our initial enthusiasm, bounding heedlessly into the arena of the irritating. ‘Woodland Drive’ fares better, a pacy ol’ mod stomper. Splitting the difference, let us conclude that Cheap Time 2009 = Todd Rundgren on a budget. I think we can agree that’s some kinda result. I mean, Todd’s been doing this shit for over forty years and his latest tour poster portrayed him as an axe-wielding barbarian standing on a rocky outcrop beneath a storm-wracked sky, so… I’m not gonna argue.

http://www.myspace.com/cheaptime
http://www.intheredrecords.com/

Julie Doiron / Calm Down It’s Monday – split 7” (K)

Ah, Julie Doiron – blessed in the books of all known gods; the eternally awesome, ever-comforting earth-mother to all of our converse-wearing, bespectacled brood. One of my favourite live music memories of recent years was seeing her play at the Windmill a while back. She introduced her cover of ‘Shady Lane’ SO wonderfully earnestly, like: “hey, do you guys know this song ‘Shady Lane’, it’s so good..”, and then she danced around the stage playing all the requisite Malkmus twiddley bits, pausing to join the whole grinning room in singing along off-mic with “…and the overfriendly concierge!” A magic moment rendered from elements that would have been cringeworthy on the part of any other performer, brought about by Julie’s awsomeness – all serving to demonstrate why she remains one of the few introspective singer-songwriter types that it’s always worth finding time for. Her achingly beautiful voice helps too, and, should you need further proof, the two unaccompanied songs on her side of this humble disc close the case, quietly crushing and reshaping the heart of any attentive listener with each spin.

“Oh Heavy Snow” is a solemn lament that strongly recalls our heroine’s collaborations with Phil Elverum, letting silence itself play the third man inbetween gentle, scuttling guitar notes. “Oh heavy heart / forgive me / make me feel like it’s all ok” Julie sings, taking words some bearded slacker could toss off like a paycheque, and making them a prayer sent down on the wind from a mountain fortress. Listening to the song for maybe the tenth time, I’ve only just noticed that that silence is quietly forming itself into some drums and organ towards the end, so the song’s not so unaccompanied after-all – that’s understated backing for you, I guess. “It’s Nice to Come Home” meanwhile is simpler, warmer, happier – a song nobody human could hate, as Julie sings about her after-work routine, how she imagines it compares to her man’s after-work routine over in New Brunswick, and how much she’s looking forward to seeing the two routines merge next time they’re together again. A real life love song, free of drama, free of artifice. It almost makes me cry every time. And now it’s time to sit for a minute or two, let the silence sink in, and then reach over to put the needle back to the start again for… well, who knows how many times I’ve played this side since I bought this single. A joy forever.

On the other side, Calm Down It’s Monday (featuring Julie on drums I think, and her drummer on guitar/vocals) do the kind of music you’d rather expect from some guys who called their band “calm down, it’s Monday”. Lethargic, faintly belligerent North-West indie-rock, like Love As Laughter on an off-day, Some Velvet Sidewalk in a bad mood. Not to worry though, Julie’s songs would be cheap at twice the price.

http://www.myspace.com/juliedoiron
http://www.myspace.com/calmdownitsmonday
http://www.krecs.com/

Golau Glau – Soft Silver Young b/w Heartland Half Seizure (Oddbox)

Interesting stuff from this somewhat hermetic Welsh outfit, with a homemade sound anchored somewhere between the eerie border country electronica of prime Ochre records output and the dalek torch songs of Broadcast. Although ostensibly still pop, and song-based, there’s something deeply spooked about Golau Glau. They sound like they’re broadcasting from some soul-dead, suburban seaside town, laptop and vintage mics hidden in the basement beneath a pebble-dashed bungalow where they sit in the dark, thinking about the cliffs down the road. Voodoo drums and Wurlitzer organ, together at last. Soothing sounds for weirdo.

Listen more closely though, and Golau Glau’s initially pretty, chanting space-songs are scarcely very reassuring, quietly addressing themselves to subject matter that would likely appeal to Luke Haines at his most ghoulish. “All our songs are about real events or things that interest us generally”, they say in the accompanying blurb, “not love songs or songs about how miserable we are or how to do a funny dance or anything, and the words can sometimes be abstract but always have meaning as well as sounding musical”. As such, ‘Soft Silver Young’ commemorates a couple who jumped off Beachyhead together with their dead baby in a rucksack, whilst ‘Heartland Half-Seizure’ concerns itself with “..Oswald Mosley, Jeffrey Hamm and the anti-fascist riot in Tonypandy in 1936”. Are you fascinated yet, or running for the exits? If the former, this single is still available as a free download from Oddbox here.

http://golauglau.wordpress.com/
http://oddboxrecords.com

Local Girls – EP (sourpuss)

This nifty little number (price: 99p!) includes six whole songs, a double-sided, fold-out photocopied sleeve with a picture on the back of the band with animal heads photoshopped over their own faces, a hand-stamped, multi-coloured inner sleeve, a download code, a locked groove at the end of side # 1, and a vinyl sticker featuring a picture of some fat, naked women (um, I'll pass on that one I think). Top marks for DIY gusto and value for money, but I’m afraid Local Girls don’t grab me overmuch. In the noble brit-pop tradition, they seem to be a bloke band with a girl singer who (probably) stands at the front in all the photos, and conveniently they also seem to make vaguely dancey, choppy indie-rock that is also very much in the brit-pop tradition. It’s none too bad. It’s got sludgier distortion than you’d have gotten for yr pound in ’97, at least. Lyrics take the default position of cynical bitching (song titles: ‘Eartha Shit’, ‘Nick and Ben are Cunts’), but none of it’s as sharp as it thinks it is. If your soul sighs for a band who sound a bit like Lovelife-era Lush, Powder and second album Elastica, you’ll dig the hell out of this one. I like that stuff just fine too and I love Elastica forever, but man… I lived through the mid/late ‘90s once already, and we have proper girl bands now, and the internet and stuff, so please, can I turn this off now? Local Girls sound like they’re trying to drag me back to that dark era, and that gives me the fear, like seeing the Witchfinder General striding down the high street. Make it stop!

http://www.myspace.com/localgirlsband

Labels: Cheap Time, Golau Glau, Julie Doiron, Local Girls, singles reviews