PLUG TWO

I have started writing some reviews for the venerable avant-rock website Freq.

My words on records by No Age and Mice Parade are up now, with others forthcoming.

(Just thought you might like to know..)

PLUG ONE: BEARD # 6
Well it's been a long wait, but finally here; a new issue of Beard magazine.

Sayeth Stew and Neil:

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Beard #6 out now!!!

That's right, the brand new, long awaited Beard #6 has been unleashed!

Featuring interviews with:

Vashti Bunyan
Silver Jews
Howe Gelb
Nina Nastasia
Jeffrey Lewis
BMX Bandits
Gay Against You
Danananaykroyd

and underground comics hero and Spongebob writer Kaz!

We're at large at all the best festivals - ATP, Green Man, Instal and Triptych - and have been reviewing a plethora of gigs and records.

Follow the saga of Beatnik Whaling Comix!

It's our best issue yet! A bumper, jam packed edition for only £2.50

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My own contributions to this issue include a rather chaotic Jeffrey Lewis interview, an appreciation of my favourite metal band ever, Electric Wizard, (complete with drawing), and the aforementioned comix adventure.

So help support a genuinely worthwhile independent publishing venture and order yourself a copy today. It's well worth concealing a few quid in an envelope for.

Email

Website

Great Forgotten Albums # 348:

ELF POWER – VAINLY CLUTCHING AT PHANTOM LIMBS
(Arena Rock Recording Company / Elephant 6, 1995)

So my recent trawl of Neutral Milk Hotel rarities inevitably sent me on a wider trek through the mountains of Elephant 6-affiliated demos, leading inevitably back to this singular work.

Elf Power, let it be said from the start, are not a band whose professionally recorded work I have ever wholeheartedly embraced. They certainly have their moments when the better aspects of their sound and song-writing come together (“Will My Feet Still Carry Me Home” and the very Neutral Milky “Jane” from 2000’s ‘A Dream In Sound’ spring to mind), but these aside, I fear that the group’s combination of ultra-twee wizardy type fantasy imagery, Disneyfied over-production and second-rate grasps at the Rev/FLips awe grail are likely to win them two enemies for every friend. I haven’t heard their last few records though, and catching them live at All Tomorrow’s Parties last year they seemed to fulfil the role of a capable but slightly underwhelming power-pop combo, so who knows.

But anyway, back to good ol’ Athens, Georgia 1994ish, and the album at hand here – essentially comprising the home-recorded demos of Elf Power leader Andrew Reiger with other future band members helping out - is a different kettle of fish entirely. Perhaps a rusty, hand-decorated hobo’s kettle full of dark, unsavoury deep-sea specimens that any right-thinking fisherman would leave be… or something.

I first heard the title track (take a listen below) played on John Peel way back when (not as far back as 1995 I should state – probably more like 2000ish – why he randomly played it five years after release I’ve got no idea), and as an easily impressed youth in search of musical weirdness, it appealed to me instantly. The very fact that there were people out there somewhere rejoicing under the name of ‘Elf Power’ and laying down fuzzy, whispered renditions of creepy, unnerving songs called things like ‘Vainly Clutching At Phantom Limbs’ alone gave me a spine-chill moment of joy and cultural recognition, and having no idea of this band’s provenance or of the scene to which they belonged, this song sounded like something from another planet. And indeed it still does. There is something profoundly WEIRD going on here. Who in the hell would make a record like THIS, I wondered: A goth band on a tight budget? Morbid high school kids? Indie-pop librarians suffering from a bad case of full-moon madness? The multi-tracked masterwork of some guy who lives alone above a convenience store carving wood-cuts of Lovecraftian gods? – all seemed likely possibilities. The fact that poor radio reception and my fading memory gave the impression that the lead vocals and heavy breathing backing track were female gave the whole thing even more mysterioso appeal.

So, a little bit later and I’m celebrating getting my first ever student loan cheque through the post by ordering a few CDs on import from the US, and hey, what’s this on the mail order list? ‘Elf Power – Vainly Clutching At Phantom Limbs’… how could I not take the plunge?

So, the album arrives, and oh man, aesthetically-speaking it does not disappoint! Mysterioso to the nth degree! As you can see above, the front cover looks like the kind of creative effort by a precocious 4 year old that would likely instigate a quick visit to the parents by social services, whilst the inner sleeve features an awesome black & white photo of a Satanic wedding ceremony, complete with robed priest, naked celebrants marking the perimeter of the pentagram etc. Track titles, baffling ‘notes’ and minimal recording info are provided via difficult-to-read, photocopied manual type-writer text, and promise songs such as “When The Serpents Approach” and “Arachnid Dungeon Attack”. Wow.

Musically, the album might not be quite the immediate outsider masterpiece needed to live up to such perfect packaging, but it’s a creepy and intriguing bunch of 4-track adventures, with a unique atmosphere and enough great songs that make it a keeper. First of all, there are a few instrumental tracks which seem to be intended to soundtrack nefarious (and largely serpent-related) goings-on in one of Reiger’s demented fantasy kingdoms, an idea which the band explored further on 1997’s ridiculous concept album, “When The Red King Rises”. These tracks are quite compelling, despite the appalling recording quality, with cello, guitar feedback, ethnic percussion and distant echoed flute rising through the murk, eerily winding their way through some solid melodic ideas in a generally pleasing manner, somehow managing to convey a lot more charm than the band subsequently mustered when recording this sort of stuff under ‘proper’ circumstances.

The bulk of the album through consists of fuzzy, ingenious geeky pop songs that will prove instantly comforting to partisans of the loose-knit ‘90s lo-fi fraternity, with that winning combination of great tunes, eccentric subject matter and self-depreciating humour managing to overcome technological constraints and wobbly musicianship almost every time. What really sets the songs Reiger presents here apart though is the sense of wilful darkness and horror movie perversity that pervades even the more light-hearted material. It’s curious that Elf Power so quickly set a course for saccharine, cartoon psyche-pop and forced cheeriness on their future releases, because these early songs are lonely, freaked out and ever so slightly fucked, and are all the better for it in my estimation.

Several of the best songs deal with missing limbs (how many non-metal albums can you say that about?), whilst others, such as “When The Serpents Approach”, chronicle the experiences of miners in Reiger’s fantasy kingdom being menaced by demonic, underground snakes (ditto). “All Your Experiments” is an initially chirpy number about being abducted by aliens, recalling the Flaming Lips’ goofier material circa “Clouds Taste Metallic”, until you consider the hollered chorus line of “..you can do all of your experiments, if you promise not to bring me back!” “Loverboy’s Demise” meanwhile finds our protagonist morbidly despondent after a disappointing concert by his heroes, the Canadian soft-rock band Loverboy (“..and I didn’t even try to catch the guitar picks..”). “Finally Free” and “Circular Malevolence” reveal themselves as straight-forward hate songs directed at.. well, who can say. A couple of enjoyably off the wall cover versions (The Dwarves ‘Drugstore’ and Robyn Hitchcock’s ‘Surgery’) round things off.

History, should it mention such things at all, will likely recall that the American lo-fi boom of the 1990s allowed unconventional artists such as Sebadoh, Guided By Voices and The Mountain Goats to rise to prominence on their own terms, their DIY recording and distribution techniques fostering a sense of intimacy and personal connection with their audiences, and allowing their music to pack an emotional punch which would otherwise have been lost. But whilst these guys might well have dealt effectively with personal experience and literate, dramatic wordplay in their songs, let history also record that it was Elf Power who, however briefly, brought the consideration of important issues such as phantom limbs and arachnid dungeon attacks to the table.

Mp3s >

Elf Power – Vainly Clutching At Phantom Limbs
Elf Power – Temporary Arm
Elf Power – When The Serpents Approach

OOPS.

To make up for recent weblogging slackness, I was planning to publish a couple of new posts this weekend.

Unfortunately though, I, er, left them at work. Sorry.

Keep the faith, and I'll be back with you on Monday.

STEREO SANCTITY RADIO SHOW No.4

Well my fourth edition is now up on the Podbean page for your consideration.

This time around we start off with a bunch of cheery, rockin’ tunes, stagger through a world of dreamy psychedelic weirdness and emerge to find a selection of world-weary songs of sadness and loss, with a few more rockin’ numbers thrown in for good measure, taking in the work of such luminaries as Roky Erickson, Panda Bear, Charlie Parker, The Micragirls, Spirit Caravan, Husker Du, Joe Harris, Soko and many more.

Enjoy.

TRAPPED ON AVERY ISLAND: Neutral Milky Ephemera

Those of you who know me in real-life will hopefully need no reminder that, however derailed and diversified my music taste may have become in recent years, I am still an unapologetic devotee of the mid-90s mystery cult known to indie bores, lovers of eccentric song-craft and anguished teenage depressives the world over by the name – oft whispered, stammered or shrieked I suspect - of Neutral Milk Hotel.

At which point I bid farewell to those of you reflexively growling, and extend a warm welcome to any of the massed legions of Mangum-ites who happen to have turned this post up on a search-engine or something.

Having played both “On Avery Island” and “In An Aeroplane Over The Sea” to the point of absolute oblivion a few years ago, I’ve actually let my NMH fixation subside a bit over the past 18 months, simply due to the lack of any further stuff to listen to.

Given the obsessive interest which has slowly grown up around this band since they ceased operation, there is inevitably a mountain of Jeff Mangum ephemera flying around on file-sharing networks and the like, but from my experience much of it is disappointing; a mixture of pointless lo-fi noise experiments taken from NMH’s early self-released cassettes (see the detailed discography here) and inferior demo/live versions of already released songs.

But nonetheless, there are still a fair few golden, cosmic song-needles to be found in the haystack of garble (if you will), and the reason for writing this post is that – probably a few years after everybody else – I’ve finally stumbled across this rather amazing page, which essentially compiles ALL of the worthwhile extra-curricular NMH material as quick, free Mp3 downloads, along with an additional bunch of live bootlegs, videos etc.

What joy! What gratitude I owe to the person who put that humble site together!

Since the downloads are freely available anyway, I’m assuming no one will mind if I repost a few of my favourites for you here.

Of primary interest to those whose connection to the band lies solely within the powerful and painful songs that comprise “In An Aeroplane..” are a few rare recordings of songs Mangum was working out during/post “Aeroplane”, ‘Little Birds’ and ‘Ferris Wheel on Fire’. The former in particular is a beautiful song, but it makes for difficult listening and is perhaps even more cracked and harrowing than the troubling dirges on the second half of “Aeroplane”, hinting at the kind of mental state that led Mangum to retreat from the music world shortly thereafter.

More immediately to my liking are some of the earlier songs, so here are a couple of those. Firstly a solo acoustic version of “Dream Girl”, one of the great lost NMH songs, and (I believe) quite an early Mangum composition which sets the tone for both of his subsequent albums. Then there’s “Glue”, a bit of an oddity which I’ve had knocking around on my hard-drive since a brief downloading spree a couple of years ago. Only now do I learn though that it’s actually a song written by NMH and Olivia Tremor Control horn-player Scott Spillane for his own band, Gerbil. It’s a great lo-fi recording of a great song, betraying a heavy Mangum influence. Although I still don’t know where it originated or who the hell that guy with the Jad Fair-like voice rambling away at the end of it is – I’m pretty sure it’s not Jeff, and Spillane certainly doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’d speak with such a squeaky, comedic accent… any Elephant 6 fanatics out there want to set me straight?

Mp3 > Neutral Milk Hotel - Dream Girl

Mp3 > Gerbil / Neutral Milk Hotel – Glue

One of my favourite things on the downloads page is what shall be known for posterity as ‘Unreleased Demo Tape # 2’, a bunch of songs recorded by Jeff Mangum on 4-track in 1993. The first track on the tape, ‘Everything is..’, went on the become the A-side of the first official Neutral Milk Hotel single (released on Cher Doll records in 1994), and ‘April 8th’ was re-recorded for “Avery Island”, but the rest of the songs on the tape are complete unknowns that it seems Jeff never bothered reviving or playing live. Which is a shame, because some of them are really great! A world away from the cathartic and sometimes overwrought side of NMH that eventually became “Aeroplane..”, the songs on this demo are so, well, FUN, I suppose: breezy, fuzzy, homemade psychedelic pop of the best possible kind. They utilise a more conventional ‘rock’ blueprint than most later NMH material, in terms of both sound and structure, with Jeff laying down straight-up, rudimentary drumbeats, overlaid with sweet fuzz guitar chug and some hesitant (tho actually kinda awesome) lead lines and soloing. The vocals are quite quiet and mannered, as if Jeff had neither the confidence nor inclination to dredge up the kind of ear-splitting hollers he became known for later (either that or he was trying not to wake the neighbours), but his way with a great melody and a beautiful, reality-fracturing lyric is already on full display, making these songs essential listening for anyone who has ever engaged with the laidback cosmic pop beauty of NMH’s world, as opposed to just the emotional hysterics and quirky Victoriana. (“Life is Never-Ending” is a particularly fine song.)

Mp3 > Neutral Milk Hotel - Jennifer

Mp3 > Neutral Milk Hotel - Life Is Never-Ending

This demo tape serves to remind me why I fell in love with Neutral Milk Hotel in the first place. In fact, it takes me right back to when I first started getting into “On Avery Island”, all that time ago. I’d just bought myself a guitar, having never previously played a note, and I had a vague yet strangely specific idea of the kind of music I wanted to make, the kind of music that I thought should exist but didn’t… a kind of noisy, folky, punky, psychey grab-bag of weirdness with awesome totally-cosmic-yet-still-grounded-and-about-stuff lyrics. A few listens to ‘Song Against Sex’ and ‘Naomi’, and it became abundantly clear that these guys had beat me to it and done it better than I ever could, sending me back to the drawing board. (Not that that stopped the first few attempts at songs I fumbled together from being pale and obvious NMH rip-offs.)

Now it’s odd that this demo tape should land in my lap four or five years later just as I’m finally getting stuck into working out some solo, song-based home recordings (yeah, I know, I’m a slow learner), and once again it strikes me as sounding like a really good example of exactly the kind of thing I want to make. The difference being that this time it almost sounds like something I COULD conceivably make…. if I were a far more gifted song-writer and natural musician.

The other demo tape (#1) is also worth a listen, but on the whole more of an obsessives-only affair, featuring sketches for some potentially startling songs that never saw the light of day, although they’re very much works in progress, and the poor recording quality and minimal instrumentation don’t do them any favours.

The highlight of demo tape #1 is a song called ‘Bucket’, which I have deliberately saved until last, because it’s one of my favourites. There is a ‘properly’ recorded version of the song floating around (I suspect it may be an outtake from one of the albums) which replaces the wobbly keyboard of the demo with droning, distorted guitar, but the results are pretty charmless and it’s easy to see why it was never selected for release. The more genuine feeling and melodic grace of the demo win hands down, despite its no-fi origins.

Mp3 > Neutral Milk Hotel - Bucket (demo)

Apologies for all the music-geek talk in this post, but I fear I would only end up sounding like an idiot if I tried to put into words the simple, transparent joy of understanding that the best Neutral Milk Hotel songs can bring me.

I guess it’s kind of like what Richard Meltzer was getting at, when he said that most modern music fails because it’s simply content to bang around at point ‘A’ for a bit and go home. He said he prefers listening to jazz, because jazz guys work a bit harder and at least guarantee you a pretty decent A and B and some shots at C and D. But the power of rock n’ roll when it was new and at it’s best, he says, was it’s capacity to zoom straight from A to Z in a few seconds, without even knowing it was doing it.

So with that in mind, I would particularly implore NMH unbelievers to listen to some of these tunes and to bear witness to some guy alone in his bedroom in Athens, Georgia 14 years ago, running down the alphabet in a heartbeat.