FATAL OWLS & LETHAL LIPGLOSS: SEVEN GREAT SONGS

So, unsurprisingly, nobody has invited me to do this weblog-meme Seven Songs thing (1, 2, etc.). That’s probably because I don’t have many ‘blogger friends’. But hang on a minute – if I don’t have many blogger friends, does that mean I’m actually cool? Because, hey, who needs ‘em - I’m not wasting my life away on the internet, I’m out in the real world, making real friends, right..?

Nice try, but no – I spend all day on the internet AND I don’t have any blogger friends. I lose. To cheer myself up after this realisation, I shall do the Seven Songs Thing anyway, and damn the consequences.

The Riff Randells – Lethal Lipgloss

After over five years worth of occasional gigs and vinyl releases, the two core Riff Randells (sans a permanent bass player) actually put out their first proper album last year on Dirtnap. I dutifully picked it up and… well, I don’t want to seem like I’m going out of my way to talk shit about a band I’ve loved from the word go, but it’s really not very good – very generic, professional sounding midtempo pop-punk with no spark to really differentiate one song from another. I’m not really sure what went wrong there, but let us speak no more of it. Let us instead stick to their earlier singles and EPs (from which this song is taken), which are absolute PERFECTION.

The first thing I like best about this song is the way it launches straight into that great, chugging riff riding the none-more-bouncy drums – I guess you can tell The Ramones got to me pretty deep at an impressionable age, because after a start like that I know nothing can go wrong.

The second thing I like best about this song are the opening lines; “she’s got a hot date / but she’s already late / cos she’s pulling up her stockings too slow” – oh man, what I wouldn’t give to be able to write a throwaway pop lyric that ineffably wonderful! Oh how I wish that sort of teen trash brilliance, rather than obtuse, dictionary swallowing indie-ness, ran free in my veins!

The third thing I like best about this song is that it has one of those gnarly guitar solos that follows the vocal melody of the verse perfectly – and it’s so damn sweet.

Sometimes, in the dark hours of the night, I find myself wondering why the vast majority of my contemporaries (by which I guess I mean over-educated 20-something music fans) seem to favour various shades of mindlessly unsettling, unconventional and berserk and/or depressing weirdo racket over perfect confections of 100% proof mindless bubblegum FUN such as this one, which, looked at from a certain angle, mark the very zenith of American pop cultural achievement, in my eyes at least.

Could it be that unlike me they’ve successfully adapted to their ongoing lives as forward-thinking grown-ups, rather than floundering around trying to reimagine a parody of the perfect John Hughes teenhood they never had? Or, alternatively, are they just a bunch of stuck-up jerks? Either way, at least we’re agreed on the mindlessness.

Jawbreaker – Chemistry

To continue somewhat from the points expounded above, Jawbreaker are a much underappreciated band within the ‘indie’ sphere, although they at least get plenty of respect from U.S. punk and old school emocore kids. Their sound may veer toward overcooked, angsty alterna-rock a little more than some are comfortable with, particularly on major label failure album, ‘Dear You’ from which this is taken, but their songwriting suss and commitment to making powerful and smart music was frequently second to none. In fact, I think the reasons why Jawbreaker didn’t end up being Nirvana are liable to be more easily found in some record label accountant’s ledgers, or some journalist’s choice of drinking buddies, than on their records.

Proof of their endearing goodness was confirmed in a grim weekend a couple of months back, when I pulled out their albums for the first time in ages, and connected straight-away, like the musical equivalent of a high-five, and a variety-pack of their best songs has been in frequent rotation ever since, regardless of mood.

Worry not though, as ‘Chemistry’ carries little in the way of direct personal resonance for me to hang on to, although as with any great, honest punk rock song, it’s a mass of conflicting emotion and ugly/beautiful dynamics that’s way too confused to get a straight angle on, even whilst the rush of the performance makes it compelling. Framed around reminiscences of a frustrating high school crush, but with some echoes of grown up frustrations undoubtedly thrown in too, Jawbreaker lurch between selfish, macho bitterness and cosmic, unconditional girl-awe at the drop of a hat, never quite making up their mind whether they’re going for an air-punching teen anthem about motorbikes and nosestuds with goofy school subject / love metaphors in the chorus, or a cruel punk rant about wasted youth and empty manhood. Hitting home awkwardly at some rare and impassable juncture between the two, it’s a song that grabs fleetingly at some pretty profound feelings re: the essential experience of being a teenager, and maybe about being an adult too, but…. shhhh, that’s a secret, right?

Billy Childish & Holly Golightly – Hold Me

Funny things, chords. As I have moved into the role of actively trying to write songs in the past year or two, it has become clear to me that it is a relatively simple task for just about anyone to write a reasonably satisfactory three minute song with, say, six or seven chords in it – different ones on the verses and the choruses, or a key change in the middle, or whatever. Even if the central thrust of your song is boring, the changes serve to keep people’s ears vaguely tweaked, and you get by ok. What’s actually a lot more challenging is to do what Herman Dune or The Wave Pictures, or Creedence and The Beatles, do so well. That is, to put across a strong enough melody, imaginative enough lyrics and a solid enough rhythm to keep an audience enthralled or entertained – perhaps even moved, heaven forbid - for three minutes whilst sticking strictly to a standard three chord pop/blues turnaround.

Taking this line of thinking straight to its logical conclusion, Billy and Holly have raised the stakes considerably by recording a whole album – “In Blood” – which is based entirely on variations of ONE chord (B, I believe, but I’m tone deaf, so don’t take my word for it). And it flat out RULES throughout. Beat that, punks.

Howlin Rain – Lord Have Mercy

To describe a track like this as ‘over the top’ would be rather like claiming that Lawrence of Arabia’s overland assault on the city of Aqaba in 1917 was ‘a bit much’.

I mean, I love this shit, and even I’ve got my doubts about those Queen-esque lightning-strike operatic vocal bits toward the end of this song… but could Howlin Rain care less? – hell no, they’re just getting ready to kick back in and save the day with that awesome, Freebird-quoting wah-wahhed solo that closes proceedings on a high note. The defences are breached through sheer force of numbers, and your citadel is theirs, whether you like it or not.

Howlin Rain’s less-is-NOT-more restatement of the grandest ‘70s rock truth is a thing of absolute beauty when it comes together, and it’s a shame that the rabidly enthusiastic review I had planned of their ‘Magnificent Fiend’ album ground to a halt upon the realisation that however, well, magnificent the record’s first side may be, the second half sadly loses it’s focus a bit and drifts off into confusion. But on those three hefty tunes that open proceedings – BOY HOWDY, do they ever get it right!

The way than Ethan Miller has grown into a singer is in itself a wonder – from being the babbling, echoplexed drunk nearly ruining all those early Comets On Fire jams a few years ago, he’s now got his tonsils exactly where he wants them, moving effortlessly between a laidback Jerry Garcia croon and a fearless Fogerty bark as the music dictates. And thankfully in Howlin Rain, that’s exactly what the music dictates. Take all the best bits of early ‘70s ‘Dead and Creedence, add a heroic dose of Blue Oyster Cult’s skyscraping high concept weirdness and a healthy reverence for the dusty, meaty tones of the Hammond and Fender Rhodes (which near eclipse the guitars through most of this track), combine with a spirit of positive and reckless invention, as opposed to aimless pastiche, and happy days are here for one and all!

And the lyrics – dear god, the lyrics. I won’t spoil the surprise by quoting them here, just download and listen for yourself; preferably not whilst sipping a hot drink, or there’ll be trouble. Let’s just say that if those of us who value truly extraordinary and inexplicable rock lyrics were to band together and form a club (and perhaps we should), there’d be little doubt that Ethan Miller would be getting our annual grand prize (perhaps the much-coveted B.O.C. medallion?) for this one. I mean, the Moorcock-inspired ‘Dancers At The End Of Time’ is pretty cool too, but ‘Lord Have Mercy’ takes the biscuit. Whatever headspace Miller inhabits that allows him to belt out stuff like this without fear of ridicule, I want to get there. Lord have mercy indeed.

The Vivian Girls – Where Do You Run To?

It’s been hard work trying to keep the debut album from Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls off my computer speakers of recent. It may take a couple of listens to sink in, but these girls are on to something special that extends beyond their initial lo-fi teen rock n’ roll appeal. Not that there’s anything wrong with that appeal, mind you! Initially, they sound pretty much exactly like The Shop Assistants – frantic stand-up drumming, wild guitar fuzz and punked up girl group bubblegum – only rendered live to four-track with cavernous reverb and a classically nervous, deadpan NY attitude substituted for C86 giddiness. Which is brilliant!

But on the album’s best songs – this one and ‘Wild Eyes’ in particular – the girls hit upon pop melodies so strong, dark, simple and understated, vocal refrains so abstract yet universal in their import, that they find themselves within the same zone occupied by the most ineffably mysterioso of ‘50s rock n’ roll ballads – songs that could pass you by swiftly as a morning breeze at some weird juncture of the AM radio dial, or else could take you to the very heart of cosmic grandeur, repeated again and again through some eternal David Lynch directed love scene. The blood-curdling menace that will no doubt erupt in the next scene is visible on the horizon, but cool down, it’s never going to arrive, as long as this band are in some moody club somewhere, probably wearing shades on stage and getting away with it, playing this song.

In slightly more prosaic terms, ‘Where Do You Run To?’ sees the band slowing their usual breakneck pace by about 50% (much as Iggy persuaded the Stooges to play ‘Penetration’ at half the regular speed, having convinced himself that the first side of Raw Power needed a ‘ballad’) and stretching out into a beautifully languid psychedelic space that recalls Detroit’s excellent and underrated Slumber Party, a space which will hopefully serve them well on future releases.

Truly, a band to watch out for, and that rare thing – a song I could happily listen to on repeat, forever.

Pete & The Pirates – She Doesn’t Belong To Me

Pete & The Pirates are everyday fellas who sing good songs that they’ve written, utilising furiously strummed guitars, drums that go off like a dynamo, ear-worm sing-song melodies and carefully crafted lyrics whose subject matter is concerned almost exclusively with girls, being sad and wanting to stay in bed. Naturally, I take to them as instinctively as a panda takes to eating bamboo. They’re like The Verlaines for the man on the street (if that street happens somewhere suburban at the edge of zone 2 at an unsociable hour at least); great dramatic, self-pitying type stuff, without all that pissing about with composition PhDs and symbolist poets.

On this song, Pete & The Pirates capture the exact feeling I encounter when getting up and heading to work on a Monday morning. I would hazard a guess that as I’m doing that, the members of Pete & The Pirates are probably feeling much the same, somewhere not a million miles away, and it was good of them to write a song about it, to let all us lazy, underachieving middleclass swine know we’re not alone.

In particular, I like the way this song is not a second longer than it needs to be to make its point.

I also like how it saves up it’s chief lyrical/romantic hook until the end, so that whilst it starts off sounding like just some bloke moaning, it ends with… well, some bloke moaning in a slightly GRANDER fashion, at the very least.

Similarly, I like how musically it starts off somewhere at the pale end of ‘wussy’, but builds up over a brisk ninety seconds into something that’s about as close as aforementioned everyday fella British indie commuter blokes get to ‘furious’.

I also like how, on their album ‘Little Deaths’, Pete & The Pirates immediately follow this song with “Lost In The Woods”, which has a good sorta “siiigh, alright, fuck it, let’s go” feeling to it, thus preventing early morning headphone listeners from following the song’s criminal advice and ruining their lives forever. Pete & The Pirates: a band you can rely on for things like that.

Silver Jews – Candy Jail

The new Silver Jews album, ‘Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea’, is extraordinary. All of the ten songs within it, even the ones that initially seem like baffling throwaways, are bottomless repositories of joy, beauty and crab-walking profundity. For this reason, amongst others, Silver Jews remain an extremely difficult band for me to try to get an angle on in writing, and reading various recent reviews of the record, all of them deeply unsatisfactory in conveying the essential ‘!?!!?!?!’ of this music’s existence despite the best efforts of the word count bound scribes concerned, would tend to confirm this, and encourage me to leave my floundering attempt at a career overview forever unfinished. I mean, I haven’t even STARTED trying to write about this song yet, and look how bloody convoluted that last sentence ended up. It’s a losing battle.

Anyway, in a brief interview for Said The Gramophone recently, David Berman seems to suggest that ‘Candy Jail’ is his reflection on the irresistible yet spiritually deadening lure of contemporary popular culture.

I will simply quote the opening verse…

Pain works on a sliding scale
Just like pleasure in a candy jail
And true love doesn’t come around
Any more than fatal owls
On a Monday in Fort Lauderdale

…and say; ladies and gentlemen: our greatest living poet.

Actually, GODDAMN IT: I just checked the lyrics sheet on the inner sleeve of my (beautiful, brand new, vinyl) copy of the album, and discovered that “fatal owls” is actually “fate allows”. Yet more proof that defective ears and slurred pronunciation are always our greatest living poets. Sorry Mr. Berman.

In honour of this transcendent misunderstanding, I think everybody reading this should get together and start a band called Fatal Owls. I’ll play congas.

Labels: Billy Childish, Holly Golightly, Howlin' Rain, Jawbreaker, Pete and The Pirates, Silver Jews, song reviews, The Riff Randells, The Vivian Girls