VOICE WITHIN YOU

Charalambides – Dead/Live (Wholly Other)

A 2004 live recording – limited edition CD-R with hand-written info packaged in glorified tissue paper… of course, of course. Pretty sweet, but I’m not sure if it’s flimsy physicality will stand up to a lifetime’s labour in my CD mines. Anyway, musically; an utterly devastating set – the special-est thing I’ve so far heard pressed onto plastic by this most very special of bands. Way, way removed from their recent restrained/quiet form, this is intense stuff; heavy on shrieking webs of cheap metallic distortion and strangulated no wave un-solos coming straight from the gut, but still so fathomlessly beautiful that only a fool would bother trying to stuff it’s pregnant silences and pre-vocal messages with words.

GOIN’ TO THE BARN DANCE TONIGHT!

American Roots (record label / origin unknown!)

This is a 4 CD box-set that I copied off my friend Alex (his second namecheck in as many posts), and… it kicks ass! Effectively doing for crazy rockin’ old-timey folk/bluegrass/blues what ‘Nuggets’ did for ‘60s garage-punk, this is the absolute motherlode of great ‘30s-‘50s white rural American music, but crucially one which is compiled more from the perspective of hit recordings and famous songs than from any aspirations toward Alan Lomax style ethno-musicology, so we run the gamut from long forgotten backwoods porch-sitters with a few killer tunes through to big names like Woody Guthrie and definitive hitmakers like The Carter Family. Just like Nuggets, every song is rendered kinda familiar thanks to the long tradition of stuff it’s referencing and the subsequent decades of music which have in turn referenced it. And, also like Nuggets, every song rules! Who among us can honestly say they don’t have time in their lives to listen to Fiddlin’ John Carson & Moonshine Kate laying down a few tunes every now and then? Oh, and I’m glad Uncle Dave Macon isn’t my uncle – he sounds mental. Needless to say, ‘essential’ hardly covers it.