HALLOWEEN.

I’ve got a busy week on, but I couldn’t live with myself if Stereo Sanctity failed to mark All Hallow’s Eve in suitable style, so, much as I posted my 2007 Summer mix CD a few months back, here’s my effort from last year’s Plan B Halloween CD swap, offered up upon the altar of your enjoyment.


The more cynical amongst you may tend to assume that this disc was merely an excuse to jam together eighty minutes worth of my favourite horror-referencin’ rock n’ roll and psychedelia songs to no particular purpose. But no, I actually put a lot of – ahem – ‘thought’ into this one.

You see, the basic concept is that it’s the soundtrack album to the perfect, mind-blowing teen-horror movie that exists somewhere in the back of my brain, pitched somewhere between Charles Burns’ ‘Black Hole’ and ‘Horror Of Beach Party’, via H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror and decaying New England seaports, ‘Psychomania’, ‘Return Of The Living Dead’, all with some Jodorowsky-esque psychedelic loon behind the camera.

I can see it now: after the silent opening sequence in which a canoodling couple of clean-cut jock types are shockingly slain by some unseen aquatic creature, OPENING CREDITS ROLL as Roky launches into “It’s A Cold Night For Alligators”… fantastic. The amazing Micragirls would appear in the film, playing their song “Cat Fight” at the church hall teen-dance, into which a sanity-shattered victim of horrors-not-to-be-named would stagger, inadvertently sparking a wild delinquent brawl of some kind. At least some sections of the film would stick within the boundaries of b-movie teen tradition, but, as the soundtrack will make clear, things would swiftly descend into twisted lunacy, as the reality underpinning the lives of our gang of punk-kid protagonists would begin the collapse – a situation that calls for some SERIOUS PSYCHE for accompaniment. Things would naturally get darker and darker as the situation progressed, climaxing in a veritable rampage of utter WTF cosmic disturbance somewhat in the vein of Zulawski‘s ‘Possession’. And as the final set of eyes glaze over in death, there’d be a few seconds – just a bit more than would be comfortable for a cinema audience – of total blackness…. and then The Ramones would kick into “Why Is It Always This Way?” as the credits roll. Yeah.

Or, alternatively, just take it as a bunch of songs. Some of my selections may seem a little obvious to connoisseurs of weird/underground rock, but at the same time, I know there’ll be some folks out there who are still sadly unacquainted with “Deep In The Woods” or “The Crusher”, never mind “(Ballad Of A) Hip Death Goddess” or “The White Ship”…. and if those folks is you, well, there’s no better time than now to rectify that situation. And meanwhile, perhaps the more jaded amongst you can have fun pondering the unorthodox inclusion of Herman dune and Swell Maps on a horror-comp, and digging the bonus atmospherics.

Whatever though – this mix features some of my favourite music of all-time, so enjoy it.

I’ll be having myself a thoroughly crazed and adolescent Halloween this year anyway, going to see Slayer and Mastodon at the Hammersmith Apollo, and I wish you all a similar amount of authentically Wrong Fun. Because face it, it’s in all our interests to make the best of the one night of the year during which getting wrecked and watching Jean Rollin movies, playing Electric Wizard records at appropriate volume, and stalking around graveyards at midnight with blood dripping down yr chin, are all deemed to be socially acceptable.

Track-list:

1. “sounds from hell”
2. Roky Erickson & The Aliens – It’s A Cold Night For Alligators
3. Dead Moon – Graveyard
4. Frog – Wtichhunt
5. The Darkest Of The Hillside Thickets – Goin’ Down To Dunwich
6. H.P. Lovecraft – The White Ship
7. The Cramps – Teenage Werewolf (alternate version w/ false start)
8. …
9. David-Ivar Herman Dune – Sheer Wonder
10. The Micragirls – Catfight
11. Ultimate Spinach – (Ballad Of A) Hip Death Goddess
12. The Factory – Path Through The Forest
13. Swell Maps – Harmony In Your Bathroom
14. Breakfast Inside The Skull – Stalking Monstrous Prey
15. Roky Erickson & The Aliens – Bloody Hammer
16. Lightnin’ Hopkins – Black Ghost Blues
17. Sonic Youth – Shaking Hell
18. The Novas – The Crusher
19. The Beaux Jens – She Was Mine
20. The Birthday Party – Deep In The Woods
21. ….
22. The Ramones – Why Is It Always This Way?


Download (93mb .zip file)

Labels: halloween, horror, mixtapes

The Vivian Girls – self-titled
(Mauled By Tigers/In The Red, 2008)

I wrote this for the new issue of Beard (due soonish!), but In The Red's reissue of the album is finally in the shops, so I want to draw folks attention to it - hope nobody minds me duplicating it here. Not that the record needs any more hype, but hey, actually, it's great to see a new band I can relate to / a new band who really deserve it (delete as applicable) getting the big media buzz for once. I'll be going to see 'em play at The Windmill in December! Can't wait!

Subject of a rising tide of blog-hype that sees them mentioned in the same breath as such lo-fi chancers as Eat Skull and Times New Viking, listeners in search of the latest outsider skree may be surprised to discover that Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls are initially a dead ringer for, well… The Shop Assistants. The sing-song melodies and echoes of ‘60s girl-group pop, the frantic, stand-up drumming at hardcore tempo, gloriously messy live-to-tape recording and skin-peeling early JAMC distortion – it’s all here, though admittedly with the C86 giddiness kicked out in favour of deadpan NY cool.

That’s the formula, and as far as formulas go, you’d better believe it's a good one. But there’s more to the Vivian Girls than that. There’s something that’s hard to define creeping around the edges, something timeless that reveals scene-making hype for the sad joke it is, and that makes this record, this band, very special indeed.

The brittle love chants of “Wild Eyes” and “Tell the World” and corresponding temper tantrums “No” and “I Believe In Nothing” are almost vicious in their simplicity and emotional directness, dragged straight from the brain of any film noir teenage daughter of yesteryear, trying to make sense of a threatening, staccato black & white world. Pure, sinister, feminine rock n’ roll. But the girls wait until the stunning “Where Do You Run To” to really hit their stride, slowing down to a brooding, mid-tempo psychedelia, leaving shivering harmonies and tamed feedback hanging in the air like a frozen moment in some David Lynch directed dancehall of the soul – orange moon sinking on the horizon, sunglasses on stage, and there’s something bad waiting outside, but that’s ok, cos you’ll never have to go there.

Here is the kind of ineffable suburban teenage forever that Spector/Wilson wannabe producers sweat over their LA studio consoles for years to fleetingly recapture, reborn as a ragged punk howl and laid down raw and alive by three girls with little more than a couple of mics and a reverb unit. Such is the joy of life in 2008.

Mp3s >

Wild Eyes
No

http://www.myspace.com/viviangirlsnyc

Buy, etc: http://www.intheredrecords.com/

Labels: album reviews, pop, punk, The Vivian Girls

8 TRACKS

A new 8 track from me :-

http://8tracks.com/StereoSanctity/fuck-the-rolling-stones

I loves the 'Stones really, but sometimes you've just got to vent.

Click play below if you'd rather:

Labels: 8 Tracks, The Rolling Stones

Arthur Russell – Love Is Overtaking Me
(Audika, 2008)

Arthur Russell’s music, as experienced via the slow but steady series of reissues produced by Audika, Rough Trade and Souljazz, has come to mean a lot to me, and countless other music fans, in the past few years. I even own an Arthur Russell t-shirt, courtesy of the latter label’s ‘Sounds Of The Universe’ shop. As such, people are sometimes inclined to ask me, so, who is this Arthur Russell guy anyway? And whilst I would dearly love to immediately fill them in on the whole sphere of Arthur Russell-ness, the sheer breadth of the man’s work and the variety of the cultural spheres in which he moved makes that a very difficult question to answer without sitting the questioner down for a brief lecture, accompanied by slides and musical extracts. For, as I’m sure other fans will acknowledge, “oh, he was just this genius cello-playing gay Buddhist avant garde disco producer experimental pop song writing echo-obsessed home recording pioneer musical genius guy” fails to really get the point across.

Thankfully, I can now point questioners in the direction of ‘Wild Combination: A Portrait Of Arthur Russell’, which I went to see at the ICA a couple of weeks ago, and found to be one of the most moving and thoughtfully assembled music documentaries I’ve had the pleasure of watching in recent years;



But anyway, back to the subject in hand, the DVD release of the above film has been scheduled to coincide with Audika’s latest archival release, ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’, a long-awaited collection of Russell’s more unadorned pop, country and folk material. And for those of us who have heard the simpler instrument & voice recordings – near unbearably beautiful fragments of pure expression – that have turned up on previous collections, this one could well carry expectations of being a veritable motherlode of Arthur’s songwriting prowess.

Going in with such expectations, I’m afraid the initial feeling here is, inevitably, disappointment. The majority of the tracks here take the form of straight-up countrified pop, often verging worryingly close to the realms of soporific post-James Taylor ‘70s MOR. Presumably drawn in part from the sessions Arthur recorded with Springsteen/Dylan producer John Hammond, these songs help add yet another odd detour to the narrative of Russell’s career-path, suggesting an interlude in which he might have been actively courting success as a cowboy hat-sporting FM balladeer.

Having said that though, this is still motherfucking *Arthur Russell* recording country-pop songs, so it goes without saying that they still carry a certain wordless emotional weight and unvanquished oddness, and that they also convey a genuine love for the comforting joy and fleeting profundity of an easy-going pop melody. But Arthur’s songwriting chops, whilst nice enough, remain underdeveloped here in view of what came later. Whilst these compositions still convey the essential purity of intent that marks out all of Russell’s music, and a couple of the better tunes (‘Close My Eyes’ and ‘Oh Fernanda Why’ are my picks) make it to within stumbling distance of the sublime, the effortless transcendence of his later work is lacking, dooming most of this collection to lurk closer to the realms of the ‘curious’ than the ‘mindblowing’ in yr music collection.

And curious is the word, as fragments of zen lyricism and sonic exploration can’t help but creep in, sabotaging any dreams of radioplay. ‘Goodbye Old Paint’, a fairly corny number about a dead horse no less, begins with an austere cello and tamboura intro, and things get full-on WEIRD on ‘What’s It Like’, a lengthy track which sees Arthur putting on a gruff hillbilly-tinged accent to recite a mystic spoken word narrative about a priest and his lover finding god amongst the Ohio cornfields, as an airport lounge-worthy backing track that keeps threatening to turn into ‘Wonderful Tonight’ by Eric Clapton plays out in the background. It’s pretty far-out in it’s own sweet way, and although I’m aware that music-should-speak-for-itself blah blah blah, I can’t help but wish I had some sleevenotes and recording details to help me make sense of all this. I probably shouldn’t really be writing this review before I’ve got hold of a proper copy with sleevenotes actually – I'm sure it's full of factual errors and dodgy assumptions, but hey.

Altogether more to my liking on ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’ are the scattered tracks taken from outside of the ‘country’ era. ‘Time Away’ is brilliant - a witty, upbeat Jonathan Richman via Talking Heads art-rock song, perhaps not sung by Arthur but definitely written by him, presumably originating with one the bands Arthur fronted in collaboration with Ernie Brooks of The Modern Lovers. I’d guess that 'Hey! How Does Everybody Know?' and 'Habit Of You', a pair of absolutely sweet, soft-touch new wave pop songs, share a similar lineage. 'Eli,' by contrast, is a brief and oddly harrowing voice & cello piece, it's harsh textures and drone-like construction sitting in stark contract to the gentle fare on the rest of this disc, perhaps highlighting the certain-elusive-something what’s missing from much of this material. And the set closes on a definite highlight with ‘Janine’, a beautiful radio-hit-that-never-was, sounding like the missing link between the earlier new wave songs and the private universe of avant-pop sartori Russell went on to craft on ‘Calling Out Of Context’ and ‘World Of Echo’.... that is, until it cuts out unexpectedly at 1:45, throwing us back down to earth like a rock slung from a motorway overpass, realising how warm and engrossing Arthur Russell’s music can be, how lucky we are to be able to spend time in its company, and how, for all the mysteries and inconsistencies of this particular collection, his songs never fail to make the world feel like a good home for a few minutes.

Mp3s>
Close My Eyes
Janine

Buy, etc: http://www.audikarecords.com/

Labels: album reviews, Arthur Russell, country, pop, reissues

Greg Ashley – Painted Garden
(Birdman, 2007)

This is a solo album from the guy behind the band The Gris Gris, from a couple of years back. I only picked up a copy recently though, and a few listens in, it’s pretty amazing stuff; a rare and wonderful example of how to make a modern day psychedelic folk album that neatly side-steps the universe of bullshit clichés and retro referencing that the term ‘psychedelic folk’ implies, and instead concentrates on getting down a real weird, unique sound, centred around some pretty solid and captivating strange/dark/witty songwriting. An all-round perfect listening experience, in fact, to keep you on your toes for 45 minutes, preferably when the lights are low and the winds are a-howling in the midst of some phantasmagorical swampland mansion of the soul.

Stylistically it’s all over the shop, incorporating dour Leonard Cohen / Tim Buckley type brooding songsmithery, early ‘Lips/’Rev acid-punk chaos, ‘Highway 61’ styled lysergic boogie, Gary Higgins/Skip Spence stoner revelations and, on the extraordinary ‘Sailing With Bobby’, what I can only describe as a surreal, Japanese folk-influenced girl group song, somewhat akin to Moondog collaborating with Phil Spector. Rather than some headache-inducing, tribute-paying mash-up though, all of these elements seem to grow together organically in Greg's garden, all dwelling in harmony and trucking on toward a unifying mellow/sinister groove, rising and falling with loping grace from an eerie and imaginative backdrop of found sound atmospherics, garbled dictaphone conversation, deep, droning fuzz and woozy string arrangements reiterating strange, melodious themes in the distant background. Proper psyche, if you will.

Sounds potentially groan-worthy I realise, but importantly, ‘Panted Garden’ has the good grace to remain totally FUN throughout, with none of that laborious “I know this is boring but PAY ATTENTION” stuff you’re liable to get from certain other contemporary psych-folk chancers. From beginning to end, this record is nectar to the trained weirdness-ear, calculated to raise a “wow…. who’d you say this guy was again..?” from even the most shellshocked record nerd.

Unbottling the spirit of some of your favourite ‘60s cult classics, but having the good sense never to consciously riff off them and consign itself to becoming a head shop museum piece, ‘Painted Garden’ has a great feeling to it that suggests a guy who heard EXACTLY the sound he was looking for chattering away in the back of his mind, went out with his microphones, mixing board, instruments and musicianly pals, and didn't rest until he’d succeeded in nailing down every aspect of it.

To describe a guy who’s already helmed at least one masterpiece album (this one) and nearly a decade’s worth of pretty good ones with The Gris Gris and The Mirrors as ‘worth keeping an eye on’ seems a little patronising, but Ashley still seems to be labouring well beneath the indie-rock radar. Both of his myspaces show little sign of recent activity, and it seems unclear whether or not Gris Gris are still operational, whilst Greg seems to be concentrating more on offering up his services as a producer.

The depth of ambition and sonic expertise revealed within ‘Painted Garden’s soundworld is vast though, and I’d like to think Mr. Ashley is merely keeping a low profile whilst working up material for an imminent return that’s REALLY going to start blowing some minds. But in the meantime, apparently he’ll charge a modest $1200 to do your album for ya. I don't know about you, but I'm certainly tempted.

Mp3s>
Pretty Belladonna
Caroline And The Orange Tree

http://www.myspace.com/medicinefuckdream

Update: Since I started writing this review, I’ve done a bit of internet-aided retrospective research, and acquired Greg’s first solo album, 2002's unpromisingly titled ‘Medicine Fuck Dream’. And on first impressions, it’s astonishing. Obviously home-recorded, it's sparse, loose and lo-fi in comparison to ‘Painted Garden’, but more fragile and open in it’s execution too, and I think I like it even better. As a collection of loopy, insular suburban teenager weird-love songs, it owns my heart from the word go. In fact I think I dig this guy so much, I’m going to have to buy him a Christmas present. Amazing.

Labels: album reviews, Greg Ashley, Psychedelia

End of the Road Festival, 2008

So, as expected, End Of The Road at the weekend was all manner of awesome. So many of my favourite bands and artists played in such quick succession that by the end I was getting almost blasé about it. From my own personal POV, this was almost certainly the best British festival line-up of my era. I mean, look at it;

Equally predictable in its own strange way is the fact that despite all this, I didn’t find it quite such a revelatory / enjoyable experience of last year’s fest. Last year you see, I didn’t really have high hopes for the festival experience and was prepared to just drift around and see what happened, result being that much of it was rather like a relaxed weekend in the countryside where unexpectedly amazing musicians kept pitching up and singing a bunch of songs for me, resulting in a joyous time. This year, there was obviously a lot more forward planning involved, and a lot more expectation of MIGHTY FUN. The festival seemed bigger, more crowded (though not to an unpleasant degree), there were a lot more people I knew going, a lot more social shenanigans, a lot more “I must be in THIS place at THIS time to see THIS band” kinda manoeuvring. Also, my uncomfortable tent/sleeping bag arrangements and manly disregard for such niceties as a camping mat and warm clothing sadly rendered sleep near impossible throughout the festival, encouraging me to drink more and stay up later than last year, all of which contributed to me getting a bit flustered and exhausted at times, especially given the performances from various bands whose music, emotionally-speaking, tends to hit me like a ton of bricks.

But that’s nothing new – in retrospect, I always seem to end up feeling a bit survivalist at festivals, even nice comfortable ones where I have a bed. Over-stimulation, that’s what it is. 95% of the festival was still totally unspoiled enjoyment.

I’m not gonna do a big band-by-band write-up of everything I saw, partly because I saw so much bloody stuff that that would be a massive undertaking, and partially because for the most part I was watching bands with whom I’m already familiar, and whom I’ve (hopefully) oft mentioned on this blog before, so I don’t want to repeat myself.

Unlike last year, I didn’t really make many ‘new discoveries’, but it was wonderful to see all the acts I was discovering/championing on the festival’s smaller stages last year moving up to better slots and bigger audiences this time around - Congregation opening the big top tent, David Thomas Broughton headlining one of the other tents to a massive crowd. The Wave Pictures played in blazing sunshine on the main stage on the Sunday afternoon – almost exactly the same spot/situation as Herman Dune last year – and totally OWNED the place, not that I was in any doubt re: their ability to do so. Liz Green also played one off the best sets of the weekend to rapturous response in the big top tent. She’s so much more comfortable and relaxed on stage than a year ago, it’s a great thing to see, and, now fleshed out by some well-balanced accompaniment from a small band, her music seems more purely beautiful than ever – simple, dark, honest, upfront songs about stuff that happens to people in their lives, played with an unfettered emotion that stops the breath in my throat.

In a welcome change of pace, and volume, it was great too to see Dead Meadow putting in an appearance in one of the smaller tents late on Friday evening, playing one of the best sets I’ve seen them do in years. I mean, to a – ha! - outsider it must have seemed pretty much interchangeable with any of their other sets - they’re not exactly a band that goes in for surprises - and I’m well aware by now that the vast majority of my learned fellows are sadly blind to the abundant charms of The ‘Meadow’s timeless approach to things, but they can all go whistle down a mineshaft, cos on this occasion the band, and by extension myself, were IN THE ZONE, if you will, and, as they slip inside the ‘Sleepy Silver Door’ for the millionth time, the Dead Meadow Zone is one of my all time favourite places to be. You wouldn’t fucking believe how comfortable the seats are in there, or the things they do with the lighting.

Of the main stage stuff, A Hawk And A Hacksaw and The Dirty Three both kicked it pretty thoroughly on the Friday night too, although Low’s set on the Saturday night was actually quite upsetting. I’m not gonna talk about it here, because I’m sick of retelling the same story, but if you’re a fan of the band, or an avid music media/blog follower, you’ll likely have heard the gory details by now. Aside from all that though, let it be said for the record that they played one of the best sets I’ve ever seen/heard from them. That they were followed directly by Mercury Rev’s current pageant of simpering lunacy seemed… unfortunate scheduling. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m a big ‘Rev fan, I even dig ‘All Is Dream’, but when the band is reduced to Jonathan prancing like a tit amid dry ice and Grasshopper throwing shapes and making the occasional comedy skreeeee noise over a laptop booming out their Disney OST backing tracks, what can you do but laugh? Their bombast is writ so large it’s positively surreal, but any true feeling their songs might once have carried seems lost to the ravages of time.

Most of the best stuff for me though took place in the dark realm of the big tent, and I guess it almost goes without saying that Pete & The Pirates kicked ass, that Let’s Wrestle were fantastically enjoyable - geeky good fun, like the kind of band I’d always assumed I’d probably be in. Billy Childish and the MBEs went down a storm too, of course. Jeffrey Lewis played one of the most chaotic and enjoyable sets I’ve seen him do in recent years too, despite a few guitar malfunctions. He started off with a couple of really wonderful new solo songs, went through a few raucous psych/punk numbers with the band, Jack sang a fantastic Jeff-less song about attending Neil Young’s imaginary funeral. With near sickening inevitability, David Tattersall came on to play ukulele on a couple of selections from the Crass covers album, and, somewhat more surprisingly, John Darnielle made an appearance too, bounding on grinning like the easter bunny to sing the chorus do “Do They Owe Us A Living?”, briefly creating a ‘Last Waltz’-like personal best for the number of my favourite songwriters I’ve seen on stage at one time.

One of the best things about the festival actually was the unscheduled after-hours shenanigans in the couple of smaller music tents. It’s all a bit hazy, bit it seems like I spent several whole hours watching fresh-faced classic rock revival troupe The Young Republic soldier through sets of Dylan and Chuck Berry covers. Whilst their original material is – what’s a nice way of putting it? – only intermittently inspired, they’re certainly an accomplished and joyous bunch, much taken with the idea of reconstructing a careful approximation of that hallowed Big Pink / Basement Tapes vibe, with much good-natured, ego-free chooglin’ thrown in for good measure. And above all, they’re aware that there is much to said for the simple joys of some well-lubricated musicians belting out the singalong-ready goods to a well-lubricated audience by the light of a full moon in the early hours. Good times, as they say, pretty much defined.

Speaking of which, perhaps the best moment of the whole festival goes as follows; after midnight on the Saturday, and we’re all a bit flagging energy-wise (well, I am anyway), looking for something fun to keep us going… so we’re crammed into this packed tent where apparently some kinda (clearly not very) secret musical happening is going to be a-transpiring. So, hey, apparently it’s some guys from British Sea Power and some of their pals and, with no disrespect intended to them as a band, this does not really fill me with faith in imminent good times… BUT, they take the stage, and they say, hello, we’re going to be playing a set of Jonathan Richman covers. And they do!

You know that feeling, when you’re in a situation of some kind – in this case, an unknown musical unit setting up to play - and you think ‘who knows, maybe something fun will happen here – prob’ly not, but you never know’, and then the universe knocks you flat by presenting you with something so, so, so, so, so much more fun than you could possibly have expected? Like, the absolute PERFECT thing you want to happen at that moment? – well it was a bit like that. They mostly did stuff of the first couple of post-Modern Lovers solo records – ‘New England’ and ‘Ice Cream Man’ and ‘Government Center’ and ‘The New Teller’ and ‘Important In Your Life’ and ‘Abominable Snowman In the Market’ and ‘Martian Martians’, as well as ‘Cornerstore’ and ‘The Girl Stands Up To Me Now’ from later in the great man’s career, and probably a bunch of others, I forget. ‘I’m A Little Airplane’ went down a storm too – I mean, it’s never really been a favourite of mine on record, but the appeal of getting drunk and yelling along at the top of your voice to a song that mostly goes “WANGITY-WANG!, WANGITY-WANG!” is never to be underestimated. And, moving from the ridiculous back to the sublime as only Jonathan can, they did ‘The Morning Of Our Lives’, absolutely note/word perfect to the version on ‘Modern Lovers Live’! I could have wept. I think I probably did. I think I might weep again now, just writing about it.

Go and do whatever you do, British Sea Power guys – even if you release twenty six albums of fascist speeches and reversed dog barks, I’ll love you forever for pulling this one out of the hat.

The other highlight was, of course, the privilege (and it really is a privilege for us in the UK) of getting to see The Mountain Goats on two consecutive evenings – first at the festival, then at their London show the following day. Strangely perhaps, the crowd for their festival slot seemed to be a lot more psyched (read: fanatical) about things than at their headline date, but who knows. They were both great sets, obviously. The new three-piece Mountain Goats with Jon Auger on full-time drums seems like a far more straight-up ‘rock band’ kinda proposition than when there was just the two of them, with a pretty fixed night-to-night setlist and little room for digressions. So at EOTR they gave us all the ‘hits’ from the 4AD albums in short order, no older songs or obscurities whatsoever. Which, seeing as how those albums comprise the best body of original song-writing of the century thus far, is clearly TOTALLY GOOD, however much a little bit of me might be silently yelling for ‘Going To Cleveland’ or ‘Going To Bristol’ or ‘Alpha Sun Hat’ or ‘Downtown Seoul’ or whatever else. Hearing a hushed take on ‘Have To Explode’ on both nights is beautiful, and maybe the most poignant moment for me was getting to hear ‘Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod’ during the EOTR set – hammerblow obvious though it may be, I’ve still got no words for that song. John Darnielle seemed to get pretty worked up on both nights playing Heretic Pride’s brilliantly odd ‘Sept. 15th, 1983’, and it’s not until afterwards that it’s occurred to me – Sept. 14th/15th 2008 – 25th anniversary. Somehow, I was actually unaware up until this point that the song is actually about the death of reggae star Prince Far-I (perhaps making it a good companion piece to The Sunset Tree’s ‘Song For Dennis Brown’?), and I think maybe I actually preferred it as a completely mysterious tale of some kind of baffling secret society assassination, but no matter. Similarly, John’s spoken introduction to ‘How To Embrace A Swamp Creature’ really clicks the song into place – I’d previously been sorta quite struck by it, but unable to get an angle on it’s full meaning. Narrative context explained, the song means a hell of a lot more to me, and its live rendition scratches and pounds my heart just like it should have done the first time I heard it.

As an aside, it occurs to me that this rather oblique approach to context/meaning and heavy reliance on outside reference points has become a pretty constant motif in recent Mountain Goats material. I can’t help but wonder what, for instance, audience members unfamiliar with the song’s title, never mind the cultural significance of the ‘Halloween’ franchise, make of ‘Michael Myers Resplendent’, which opens both of these sets. Similarly, John treats us to a couple of new songs in Monday’s set, and I can well see ‘Sarcofago Live’ becoming a bit of a puzzler for those unfamiliar with the finer points of the early Brazilian metal scene. The other new tune rejoices under the name ‘Wizard Buys A Hat’, by the way.

But thankfully, the emotional half-nelson of The Mountain Goats best material transcends any such need for contextualisation or personal identification, and having drilled even the slightest of them deep into my mind via years’ worth of solitary, pavement-pounding walkman time, it was strange and unnerving and delightful to be there at End Of The Road, doggedly holding on to a good spot at the front as fellow devotees crowd around in advance, and watching apparently happy couples yelling along in tandem no ‘No Children’ and guys who probably had comfortable middle-class upbringings raising their fists and singing every word to ‘This Year’. Myself, I refute such accusations by closing my eyes and smiling and singing along to absolutely everything.

Actually, I seem to have ended up doing my whole ‘singing along’ thing quite a lot throughout this festival. I know it’s weird, and obnoxious, and almost unbearably nerdy… so I’ll end by apologising to anyone I irritated.

I was only going to do a quick festival summary, but it’s near 2,500 words already, so.. END!

If you’ve kept reading this far, you deserve some Mp3s. They are good ones, so treat them well.

The Mountain Goats – Sept. 15th 1983
The Mountain Goats – Going To Bristol
Liz Green – Hey Joe
Jonathan Richman – The Morning Of Our Lives

Labels: Dead Meadow, End Of The Road, festivals, Jeffrey Lewis, live reviews, Liz Green, The Mountain Goats

8 TRACKS

So Muxtape in it's prior form is officially deceased, although the site's founder has some pretty smart and even-handed things to say on the matter, and is planning to relaunch the whole business as something that sounds as if it MIGHT be a functional, non-corporate alternative to band myspaces - so that's something to look forward to.

In the meantime, behold: Stereo Sanctity 8-Track!

You know the score, I'm sure. Only eight songs allowed, but I can embed these on the blog too, like so:



Enjoy!

Labels: 8 Tracks, announcements, mixtapes, Muxtape