THE THIRTY BEST RECORDS OF 2008: Part #4

15. Christina Carter - Texas Working Blues (Blackest Rainbow cassette)


Following the recorded output of Charalambides / Christina Carter can be a frustrating business. Anyone who’s seen the Carters live, or heard their best records, will know the extraordinary depths of power and catharsis their music can draw upon. But pick the wrong selection of product off the shelf, and you’d be forgiven for thinking they’re the most pretentious and self-involved musicians who ever walked the earth. For instance, Christina’s ‘official’ release for 2008 – ‘Original Darkness’ on Kranky – seems to me to be an unsatisfying and difficult affair, piecing together disjointed musical fragments and spoken word monotone into a confounding and uncomfortable failed(?) experiment. This micro-label cassette release meanwhile (no I don’t actually own a copy – I copped a sneaky download), is just plain beautiful - one of the most engrossing and satisfying solo Christina joints to date. In contrast to recent stark, brittle outings, the sound here is instantly warm and welcoming – maybe that’s deliberate, to suit the songs, maybe it’s just the fuzzy, analogue cassette factor. Either way, it’s a winner. This is exactly the kind of music I always WANT Christina to make, and those familiar with her work will know the score by now I’m sure; dense, happy spiderwebs of heavily effected, finger-picked electric guitar notes hanging in the air like bright yellow smoke, tracing ghosts of divine melodies that never quite seem to coalesce, whilst sustained vocal syllables cut through like hot knives, comforting and settling, telling you exactly what’s up, even when you can’t make out the words. To say nothing of some of those star-gazing Garcia-esque solos you always assumed Tom was responsible for on the Charalambides records. Blessed with more in the way of form than is often the case, this is fascinating, wholly honest and idiosyncratic songcraft with a strange, non-linear psychedelic desert drift that recalls nothing so much as the testimonies of earlier Texas psyche-blues travellers Cold Sun. I think this would sound amazing whilst stoned; y’know, where you get into that headspace where you’re listening to music, and the spaces between the notes seem to stretch out, becoming more important than the notes themselves..? This is the kind of record that gets you to that stage whilst sober. “I want to use my voice for good, however small the good, in this world of foolish dreams”, Christina sings on ‘Preserve Our Face’, and so under the spell are you by that point, there’s nothing to do but to spit our a slurred, delay pedal “HELL, yeah” from deep within yourself, and slip back down to dig the sunrise, or something.

Mp3>A Blind Eye

14. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Real Emotional Trash (Matador/Domino)


Back in May, I said:

“Were this not the work of a man with so much history and expectation still hanging over him, we might even be able to appreciate it for what it is. And what it is is an extraordinary, bold and deeply STRANGE concoction of sweet, stoned fuzz and vertiginous audiophile thunder, cross-pollinating full band progressive rock blowouts with more hallucinatory, laugh-out-loud wordplay than ever before, all assembled like some grand architectural folly, with Malkmus’ perfectionist production aesthetic searching the studio console as usual for some manner of rock perfection that is never quite ‘old’, never quite ‘new’, but is certainly pretty oblivious to the social/cultural context of making a record in 2008. The results are meandering and monstrous in equal measure, an hour or so of genuinely multi-faceted, imaginative music that makes perfect, goofy rock n’ roll sense but is at same time completely off the map, answerable to nothing except the inscrutably odd logical-musical pathways of the hallowed Malkmus brain. Previous solo Malk escapades may have paid reference in passing to such comfortingly dusty fetishes as Turkish psych, obscure folk rock and European prog, but it’s only on ‘Real Emotional Trash’ that he’s really dared to step fully out of his own ‘indie’ shadow, putting together the kind of powerhouse band you kinda suspect he’s always wanted to have backing him up (that’s veteran Jicks Joanna Bolme and Mike Clark, with Janet “she-is-so-awesome-we-don’t-even-need-to-bother-pointing-it-out” Weiss taking over on drums of course), and playing a brand of big-in-every-sense, capital letters Rock Music whose central axis veers between CLASSIC on one hand and WEIRD on the other, and proceeds to take no prisoners.
[ … ]
There’s a definite feeling on ‘Real Emotional Trash’ that this time Steve’s got his Orange amp and his boutique fuzz pedals and fingers itching to get busy. His scrabble board keeps on delivering the goods, he’s got a band behind him who could chase Robert Fripp round a labyrinth all day, and he’s gonna fuckin’ JAM, regardless of what anybody wants or expects. And I for one say: bring it on Steve, I can dig it!”

Well, don't know about you, but here at the end of December, he's still got me "dancing like a pitbull, minus the meat".

Mp3>Hopscotch Willie


13. Hotpants Romance – It’s A Heatwave (Happy Happy Birthday To Me)


“You said my lipstick was the best you’ve tasted / c’mon baby let’s get wasted!” Yes! Hotpants Romance are here, and their album - 12 songs in 17 minutes - is nothing less than inspiring in it’s wrecked, Ramonetastic, homemade pop splendour. And they cram a pleasing amount of variety and ideas into that seventeen minutes too; “Shake” and “Blow My Fuse” are the perfect grrl-garage party anthems, like if Thee Headcoatees had shaken off Billy and learned to play their own instruments, whilst “Effing & Jeffing” and “We Used To Meet” lurch more toward shrieking, electrifying noise-punk, and “I Don’t Wanna” is the purest and most touching forty-five seconds of DIY pop yearning you’ll hear this year. It’s always a thrill to hear a band who set enthusiasm at ‘10’, technique and musical know-how at ‘who cares’, and kick your ass into remembering that that’s exactly how it should be. Can’t sing? – just shout! Got a guitar? – whatta you waiting for, hit the fucking thing! And if you’ve got the songs in your head and the awesomeness in your heart that these girls have, you’ll be the best band in town within minutes. Magic. With a fucking ‘k’, if you must.

Mp3>Effing & Jeffing


12. Congregation - s/t (Bronzerat)


This year, Congregation played for a capacity crowd of about twenty people in the really nice vegetarian cafe down the road from my work, and they were very loud and very good. I enjoyed it when a late-working co-worker walked past the front window and stared in with a classic ‘these damn beatniks with their rhythm & blues!’ type expression. Congregation also brought out their first album this year, and it is also very good. It’s got a real professional sounding production job and, whilst my initial instinct would be to want to hear this band in a more garagey live-with-one-mic set up, it works well for them. There’s some big echo, heavy delay and slap-back on the guitar, some overdubs and suchlike, but, most importantly, Victoria’s songs are allowed to stretch out into some darker territory than is communicated by their live show, with a very real sense of vicious depression creeping in between the more raucous r’n’b footstompers; songs such as “Dose Of Hell” and “Never Forgive” deliver as their titles promise.

Reviewing Congregation’s first single, I ventured: “This is some vitally genuine, minimal electric blues right here – not ‘genuine’ in the sense of paying cack-handed homage to some never-existed traffic jam of blues cliché, but genuine in the sense that it’s music with guts and heart, wrought from exactly the elements it needs to hit your own personal spot, wherever you are in time & space, and not or note nor beat more.”

And, after seeing them at 2007’s End Of The Road festival (although probably with memories of a couple of other shows I saw them at in mind too), I got a bit carried away and cranked out the following; “Benjamin Prosser is a shit-hot rhythm/slide guitarist, playing consummate electric blues and boogie that raises the spirits of Bukka White and John Lee Hooker, recalling just how propulsive, spine-chilling and flat-out awesome this sound was before the late-‘60s generation drove it headfirst into formalised, shrieking self-parody. Victoria Yeulet sings sweet, subtle and impossible to ignore, with the commanding authority of an Irma Thomas or a Bessie Smith. A bass drum thump and Victoria’s leg bells bring the mama-heartbeat. Basically, Congregation jam together some of the best elements of some of the best fucking music ever made, and bring it straight back to us, ragged and powerful in a way that never goes out of fashion. ”

I think all of that still basically holds true, so why repeat myself? I think these guys are fucking great, essentially.

Mp3>Hard To Bear


11. Howlin Rain - Magnificent Fiend (Birdman)


Earlier this year, I said:

“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, 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. 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. The Moorcock-inspired ‘Dancers At The End Of Time’ is pretty cool, 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.”

So for any aspiring songwriters out there wondering how to do a real proper chorus…

“Mrs. Amelia Underwood,
Carry my heart in your hands!
Jesus will shine on your journey,
Into the Hollow Lands!”

…is how to do a chorus.

I’d pass on Howlin Rain’s advice on the verses too, but it’s still blowin’ my mind too heavily man. Listen and learn.

Mp3>Lord Have Mercy

Labels: album reviews, best of 2008, Charalambides, Christina Carter, Congregation, Hotpants Romance, Howlin' Rain, Stephen Malkmus, The Jicks