THE THIRTY BEST RECORDS OF 2008: Part #3

20. Lords - Everyone Is People (Gringo)


Lords’ first album from a couple of years back gets my vote as one of the unexpectedly amazing, inventive and ass-kicking British rock records of the decade. Beginning from their assorted backgrounds in muscular post-hardcore, the three gentlemen of Lords essentially set about dragging their music back through the wilds of gutbucket blues, ‘70s boogie thunder and chaotic jazz-inspired chops, and emerge all the stronger for it, and with a bit of genuine emotional character to boot. I mean, imagine: a heavy rock band who claim they’re gonna fill in the gaps between ZZ Top, Fugazi and Charles Mingus…. and then proceed to actually go ahead and DO IT. ‘Everyone Is People’ finds them refining their approach a bit – the performances are tighter and more reined in than the debut, the production is punchier, with heavier low-end, although they still take it easy on the distortion, which is cool. As before, guitar-tones are essentially clean, but achieve massive heft through the foolproof method of playing really fucking loudly through really good amps. There’s less flailing, bebop drumming, fewer sideways thinkin’ Zoot Horn Rollo guitar licks, and the vocals are perhaps less effective, occasionally resorting to the blooze clichés and Tom Waits crackly phoneline effect that the band’s debut so masterfully side-stepped. All of this would be disappointing, were it not for the work Lords have instead put into THE RIFFS this time around. Oh my lord, THE RIFFS flatten all, like the elephant on the cover. Tunes like “The Things We Do For Money” and “We Shook The Royal Throne” just step right up and demolish that wall of self-deprecation that forbids mild-mannered guys from indie backgrounds from really *rocking the fuck out* in obvious, glorious, unapologetic, fashion, and there’s some real classic “eat this!” back and forth soloing between the two guitarists to enjoy in places too. Naturally though, even in their most out-and-out rockin’ moments, Lords have still got group dynamics and inventiveness to die for, and a wild sense of good humour, resulting in an eventual brew that resembles…. uh, I dunno…. The Magic Band kicking the shit out of Queens Of The Stone Age or something? Put on your Gnarly Man-Rock Hat, just for a minute if you find such things distasteful, and the conclusion becomes self-evident and objective: this shit RULES. No further questions.

Mp3>The Things We Do For Money


19. Birchville Cat Motel - Four Freckle Constellation (Conspiracy Records)
18. Birchville Cat Motel – Gunpowder Temple Of Heaven (Pica Disk)



That there are a lot more people than there used to be out there making long-form drone music of one kind or another is no secret. That some of them have a tendency to poison the well somewhat by putting out lots and lots of it without much concern for quality control, encased within £££-harvesting limited edition, mysterioso formats, safe in the knowledge that this kind of subjectively experienced music is more or less immune to conventional critique, is hardly news either. In fact, as a gripe, it’s getting pretty old, and I should probably can it in future. I wouldn’t want my more rockist (guitar pop-ist?) tendencies to obscure the fact that I do actually listen to a lot of drone / ‘new music’ stuff, and take great pleasure from it. As you may have gathered from my write-up of the Rhys Chatham record, I’m becoming ever more of a sucker for stuff that approaches the musical equivalent of science fiction’s ‘Big Dumb Object’ theory. With this in mind, it is my considered opinion that, for all of his dozen or so annual releases under three or four different names, it is New Zealand’s Campbell Kneale who is the real KEEPER when it comes to the contemporary expression of this kind of music. Or at least, in the process of picking up bits and pieces of his discography here and there, I’ve never heard anything that’s been less than completely extraordinary, and 2008 has been a particularly good year for his Birchville Cat Motel mothership, with two new bone fide masterpieces to add to the trophy rack.

‘Four Freckle Constellation’ continues the work began by the truly astounding (sorry about all the superlatives, but what else can you do?) ‘Scream For Me Long Beach!’ / ‘Our Love Will Destroy The World’ material from a few years back (think Kevin Shields if he’d just kept on going further and further out after ‘Loveless’; think HOOVER OF THE GODS). It ditches the percussion and leftover rock DNA though, concentrating instead on arcs of screeching high end mic feedback and dense, tamboura-ish guitar distortion, ala Matthew Bower’s Sunroof project. As is ever the way with this shit, each track is punishing at first, but within two minutes you’ll hit the comfort zone and your ears will stop itching. Then you can switch off your attention, start doing something else (like writing this review), BUT – this is drone sufficiently powerful that it refuses to stay locked in the background. Ten minutes tops before you find yourself flashing toward gleaming, spectral vistas of…. fuck knows what, but it’s something a mile high and pretty solid, made of diamond, metal and molten lava, approaching fast over the lunar desert. Advice for life # 1: nobody who’s ever uttered the phrase “music to take drugs to” knows what the hell they’re talking about.

‘Gunpowder Temple Of Heaven’ is even better. A single 46 minute piece that seems to go for the jugular of taking on LaMonte Young, Conrad, Riley et al at their own game, it begins as a disconcerting mass of warped radio voices and looped casio-fuzz, but before long a central theme emerges and it sounds …. hmm, how to put this… It sounds as if Campbell Kneale died, and he went to heaven, and they said to him “so, what do you do then?”, and he said “I’m a musician”, and they were like “Oh really, we’ve been waiting for one of those”, and he was like “well then, show me what you’ve got!” And so they lead him to a cathedral organ of cosmic scale and construction – pipes climbing high across the length of the milky way, divine light shining from within, cherubim and angels flitting majestically between them, establishing homesteads, towns and cities scattered across the instrument’s galactic expanse. And so he steps up to the keyboard, cracks his knuckles, tries to vaguely remember the fingering for a real killer minor chord in the upper register, and HOLDS IT DOWN. The result? Perhaps the only time you’ll ever get a chance to say that something called ‘Gunpowder Temple of Heaven’ is appropriately named. Advice for life # 2: To all kids everywhere hunched over delay pedals thinking they’re blowing minds: fuck that dead-end shoegazer bullshit, this is how it’s done.

Mp3>Damn Infinity Hairpie (from ‘Four Freckle Contellation’)


17. Pierced Arrows – Straight To The Heart (Tombstone)


Scarcely more than a few months after breaking up Dead Moon at the end of ’06, Fred and Toody Cole were back in business with a new name, a drummer and – perhaps – new sense of purpose, and on the basis of this ‘debut’, business is good as ever. Fans of Dead Moon will know exactly what they’re getting here, and in fact this is the group’s strongest set for a while, certainly their rawest. Fred launches straight into freaked out anti-war tirades on ‘Guns Of Thunder’ and ‘Black Rainbows’, guitar fuzz set to ‘NASTY’ for a real guttural, heavy psyche sound, but it’s Toody’s ‘Caroline’ that’s the real stand-out, another fist-pounding, self-mythologing hymn to halcyon teenage days and long-lost chances. ‘Shades’ meanwhile is a great, desperate blues, another in a long line of blood-curdling songs that seem to be about the Coles’ own relationship. And, as ever, it’s a mystery how they keep it together so well as a band and as a couple, with Fred on stage spitting blood every night about how “..she plays me like that bass guitar!” A totally wrecked cover of Neil Young’s ‘Mr. Soul’ is another highlight, maxing out the original’s ‘Satisfaction’ steal to great effect. “The Wait”, “Up On A Cloud” and “Lost” are all absolute killers too, captivating enough to stand alongside anything in the Dead Moon back catalogue. And that’s yr lot. So, if you’re in search of innovation, or indeed a fifth chord or a competent guitar solo, do yourself a favour and look elsewhere. But for the rest of us, this is straight ahead, gut-level outlaw rock n’ roll, like red diesel for the stripped down Mad Max buggy that’s gonna get you through the post-apocalyptic wasteland. And it’s great to still have these guys with us keeping the engine running.

Fuck it, this is an amazing album, and I’ve put it WAY too low in this lame top 30; have two Mp3s:

Caroline
The Wait


16. Electric Wizard / Reverend Bizarre split 12” (Rise Above)


Yes, I’m afraid that’s actually the cover. Sorry.* When I ordered it off Rise Above’s website they said I was getting the ‘censored version’ too, so god only knows what these antisocial deviants actually wanted to put on the front. Anyway, it certainly proves that Electric Wizard have access to vaults of grizzly ‘70s horror that make my own stash of old Redemption VHS seem rather pale by comparison – but would we expect anything less? Electric Wizard is as Electric Wizard does, and “House On The Borderland”, the side-long weird fiction epic they turn in here, is probably the best thing they’ve done since reforming as a four-piece. When I first played it, my flatmate came up tell me to turn it down cos the bass was making the floor shake, so that’s certainly a good sign. If not * quite * as heavy and hypnotic as the glory-days of ‘Dopethrone’, it’s certainly a welcome bloodthirsty lunge back toward the sick psychedelia of ‘Come My Fanatics’, complete with droning b-movie organ and howling wah-wah leads adding some pallid colour to proceedings. As an attempt to capture the cosmic dread of Edgar Hope Hodgeson’s extraordinary novel in deafening doom metal form, it’s pretty groovy. Admittedly, I don’t remember Hodgeson mentioning any of the “priestesses of black magic” or “apocalyptic rites” about which Jus Osborn grimly intones here, but unimpeachable b-movie logic dictates that if he had found room for them, well the whole thing would have just been EVEN BETER, so we’ll let it slide. On the flipside meanwhile, Reverend Bizarre, Finnish True Doom stalwarts commanded by one Albert Witchfinder (seriously), turn in a characteristically funereal take on Beherit’s ‘The Gates of Nanna’, which gives them a great opportunity to break things down mid-song for an “ave Satan, ave Lucifer” shout-out to their infernal lord & master. I love Reverend Bizarre, and the way they manage to walk a fine line between utter austerity and earnest dedication to gothic despair on the one hand, yet on the other hand they’re so self-consciously goofy and OTT, with their slow motion drum solos, giant crucifix necklaces, faux-gregorian chanting, it’s… beautiful. Unusually for The ‘Rev, who’ll gladly drone on the point of utter tedium on their own albums, their track here is a bit short to justify a whole side of vinyl, so they bulk things out a bit by reversing it and sticking the backwards version on the end. Genius. Old school doom doesn’t get much better than this disc, anyway.

*Seriously, I hope nobody’s angered or upset; I know I’ve got no justification for perpetrating such nasty & degrading imagery, even when it is viewed through the comfortingly kitsch lens of ‘70s euro-horror. I considered not posting the cover, but on reflection decided that would just seem censorious and sensationalist, and would have sent you all straight over to google image search to find it anyway.

Labels: album reviews, best of 2008, Birchville Cat Motel, Electric Wizard, Lords, Pierced Arrows, Reverend Bizarre