25. The Super Vacations – s/t (Shdwply Records)

I blathered a bit about this one earlier this year:

“Super Vacations provide a perfect example of a group turning the limitations of home-recording to their advantage, assembling a beguiling psyche-rock sound from the palette of slightly warped rock n’ pop elements at their disposal. Their debut album burns through sixteen songs in about twenty five minutes, each of them a swirling wonder of crisply recorded hi-hat n’ snare grooves, twangin’, FX heavy surf guitar, hazy layers of psychedelic jangle, occasional bursts of chaotic space-fuzz washout and ultra-compressed vocal tracks that range from pristine, chanted harmonies to distorted answering machine skree. […]Then, about halfway through the album they seem to get bored of all the dreamy, haunted psyche and throw down some of the truly groovin’ surf instrumentals that the lead guitar & drums have been hinting at throughout, sidestepping the pitfalls of redundant Dick Dale pastiche and instead recalling garage-racket oddities like The Nick & The Jaguars’ “Ichi-Bon No#1”, with a gleeful mix of rough-hewn rockin’ and out-of-control tremolo, and a lovely sense of Ventures-esque melodic purpose. Fab gear! Add a propensity for “let’s turn this fader all the way up and see what happens” type mixing desk experiments and more alien-planet reverb than the devil’s own bathtub, and Super Vacations start to sound eerily like they're channelling the last cloud of psychic detritus to escape through Joe Meek’s fireplace before the forces of darkness closed in.”

Yeah, that about does it I think.

Mp3> Mr. Mystery


24. Impediments – s/t (Happy Parts)

Hey, remember The Replacements doing “Staples In Her Stomach” and “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out”, with Westerberg spitting stupid/smart non-sequiturs outta the corner of his mouth, before people started to ruin things by telling him he was a genius? [If you don't: education time.] That’s exactly where we’re at with Berkeley’s Impediments, shamelessly mixing sloppy, fuck-off-and-die punk rock with the kind of antediluvian Stones/Dolls raunch that by rights should never be allowed to fly in this day n’ age and ending up with one of the most enjoyable rock n’ roll records of this or any other year. In terms of subject matter, there’s some really great, twisted song-writing talent going on here, and by way of example Impediments seem to be working through a series on all the Vs that are want to afflict impressionable young men - “Vom”, “Violence”, “Vagina Envy” – but the obvious stand-out is “You Want A Square”, an absolute jewel of a song that sees our spurned singer sneering through lines like “you want a guy likes Hall & Oates / rides ponies but he’s not riding goats”. It occurs to me that whether they’re taking aim at an unreconstructed ‘80s square H&O fan or a newly minted ‘hey-those-guys-were-geniuses’ hipster, the result is the same, and just as righteous, hopefully offering succour to every surly, leather jacket clad drunk in a thousand mile radius. Like ‘..Square’, just about every one of these songs goes out in a totally gratuitous barrage of ‘one-more-time!’s and Stinson-worthy ‘will-he-make-it-back-in-time-for-the-chorus’ stunt hero guitar, but they sound like they’re having so much fun it would take a hard heart indeed to try and make them rein it in. Damn, what a great band.

Mp3> You Want A Square


23. Eddy Current Suppression Ring – Primary Colours (Melodic / Aaarght!)

I know this album’s really 2008, but it only got a UK release this year, and I heard it this year, so it stays in the picture. Named after an electrical component, Melbourne’s Eddy Current Suppression Ring set about making guitar/bass/drums/singer rock music with all the utilitarian purpose of a dude fixing your TV. Initially I didn’t think much of ‘em – lots of four minute plus songs where the singer barks a handful of repeated lines over time-keeping rhythmic backing – kinda boring. But repeated listens bring out the near monolithic grooviness, persistent inventiveness and inspired noise-wrangling of their mid-tempo headnodders, cramming themselves into your consciousness until you’d be hard-pressed to deny that the Eddys are getting SOMETHING right in a way precious few other bands are at the moment. Check out the messily spectacular un-solo the guitarist throws into the middle of opener ‘Memory Lane’, or, in fact, the way he manages to do something really cool and unexpected with his trebly, overdriven strat sound in just about every one of these songs, without ever detracting from the overall momentum. Check out the irresistible ‘works outing beach party’ vibe that the singer’s persistent fitness instructor enthusiasm brings to ‘Sunday’s Coming’ and ‘Wrapped Up’, or the way that the rhythm section just…. y’know, rocks it like a rhythm section should, adding an explosive force to simple paranoid/political screed ‘Color Television’ and token instrumental ‘That’s Inside of Me’. Eddy Current are just a great, unpretentious band, reminding us that, when all the right elements are in place and the feeling is solid, four guys playing guitar/bass/drums/sing can still be a real event.

Mp3> Which Way To Go


22. The Coathangers – Scramble (Suicide Squeeze)

Sounding like a veritable Rorschach test of female alt-rock influences, this second LP from The Coathangers switches at various junctures between spiked ESG post-punk, belligerent Le Tigre stomp-alongs, Mika Miko dual vocal punk rock and Softies sweetness – not that I suspect The Coathangers care a damn for such tiresome comparisons and gender-defined baggage. No, they’re too busy just having a great time, writing songs called ‘Arthritus Sux’ and ‘Killdozer’, and laying down weird studio jams full of sci-fi sound effects, audio gags and dialogue samples to pad out their album. My kinda ladies! It may sound like an odd thing to say, but in era when a lot of bands routinely turn in albums of the “here are twelve songs in our signature style” variety, there’s something absolutely delightful about ‘Scramble’s bloody-minded quirk and inconsistency. Cultural precedent does not lead us to expect an all-girl punk band to start goofing off like the Bonzo Dog Band, and it’s a blast that they do. And in between all that, we’ve got a wide variety of A-grade material to enjoy here too – ‘Dreamboat’ and ‘Sonic You’ are absolutely perfect swoonsome crush songs, and ‘Gettin’ Mad & Pumping Iron’ and ‘Bury Me’ make for furious blasts of good natured riot grrl carnage. One of my favourites is ‘Stop Stompin’’, a song about their obnoxious upstairs neighbour (“why don’t you put on some slippers, mr. lead foot?”) – and frankly, any band with the suss to stretch a conceit like that across three minutes and come out with a really great, funny song is richly deserving of our attention.

Mp3> Stop Stomp Stompin'


21. The Clean - Mister Pop (Merge)

What a lovely surprise in the year that I started to make kiwi pop my bread and butter – a new album from The Clean, and it’s actually really good! It seems like the Kilgours and Robert Scott have all been doing a lot of listening and growing and palette-cleansing since the band’s last few scrappy, disappointing efforts in the late ‘90s. No one in a blindfold test would ever guess that ‘Loog’, with it’s phased female vocals and drifting organ textures, was the opening cut on a new Clean album – it sounds more like some forgotten krautrock luminaries scoring a decadent love scene, but it also sounds GREAT, and that’s what counts - and hey, a lot can happen in ten years. Hamish Kilgour has always been one of the best post-Mo Tucker rock drummers around, and his perfect less-is-more timing is at the heart of all these songs, fusing with David K’s distinctively serpentine guitar and the relaxed, melodic sensibility that Scott has perfected in The Bats, turning dreamy ditties like ‘Are You Really On Drugs?’ and ‘In The Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul’ into perfectly realised nuggets of psychedelic pop, transcending the drearily obvious drugs/Beatles references of their lyrics and sounding genuinely blissful - kind of like what I hoped all those ‘paisley underground’ bands might sound like, before I heard them and realised they were crap. ‘Tensile’ is another highlight, taking the krautrock influence a few steps further with a night-driving motorik pulse, Eno-esque synths and mechanised deadpan vocals, but it still can’t help but fall back on an inherently upbeat spirit, sounding less like a menacing trip into the unknown, more like quietly falling asleep in the back of a car driven by someone you trust. It seems to me that several other iconic underground bands (naming no names) have all come out with albums this year that were practically suffocated by their relentless *niceness*, and The Clean are treading similar territory here, but somehow, they manage to pull it off where others have failed, keeping things memorable and inventive throughout. With new sounds and new ideas being thrown into just about every song, it’s perhaps telling that ‘Factory Man’, the most obvious attempt to recreate the jangly NZ pop sound of the ‘80s, is also by far the least successful track here. ‘Mister Pop’ sounds like the work of a gang of collaborators who have aged well and travelled far in their down-time, bringing back a new sense of consistency and open-mindedness to their old band, and creating one of the most comforting, surprising and just plain lovely-sounding records of the year in the process.

Mp3> Asleep In The Tunnel

Labels: best of 2009, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Impediments, Super Vacations, The Clean, The Coathangers