5. Smith Westerns - s/t (Hozac)

Smith Westerns’ debut album is a work of over-energised, over-ambitious, overblown teen genius that I appreciate more each time I spin it – an instant refutation of anyone who’d seek to dismiss the new crop of American punk/garage/whatever bands as shiftless, couldn’t-give-a-shit posers. Initially coming to my attention via “Be My Girl”, a cosmically gorgeous, instant-hit evocation of the glories of T Rex, Smith Westerns’ keep the quality running high at all times, breathlessly cramming so much STUFF into their four-track level recordings that on occasions the whole thing just collapses under it’s own weight, leaving a sparkling, blown out pile of murk, as if the tape just plain melted in the face of such sonic maximalism. Defying the back-to-basics garage set-up of most of their peers, Smith Westerns build each of these songs up from a base of crashing, reverbed drums that sound like the rhythm tracks from an old Spector single being played by a rock drummer on a full kit, and proceed to throw in keyboards, glockenspiels, bells, TONS of guitars, outboard effects, kazoo, strings – yes, I swear there are fucking STRINGS on some of these songs – all vying with each other to see who can get closet to the front of the mix, and, fuck man, looks like we’d better EQ the hell out of all the vocals just so we can hear ‘em! Incredible stuff.

Initially, I assumed Smith Westerns must be slightly older guys – like, late-20s or something at least. Y’know, old enough to have been round the block a few times and done their homework re: understanding the history and kitsch-potential of the framework of garage and ‘60s pop and glam stomp within which they are working here. So, without wishing to sound * too * vampiric and creepy, it plain BLEW MY MIND to read that they’re all currently aged between 15 and 19, or something. I mean, when 27 year old guys write songs called “Girl In Love” and “Glam Goddess”, and lock straight into ’72 Bowie to sing “c’mon, you DIAMOND! BOYS!”, it’s good fun, but it’s box-ticking. When kids still in high school are blasting it out as if this stuff’s just sprung naturally from their mad, hormone-ravaged bones, it’s… I dunno man, genuine fucking teenage rock n’ roll nirvana…? And these guys just have such an inbuilt understanding of timeless, starry-eyed, romantic rock n’ roll vision, it’s incredible - holy, bombastic, breathless odes to girls and dreams and heaven, straight from the source. I mean, they’ve still got one foot in lo-fi garage-fuzz trash, and that’s great, but man, their song on the split 7” with the band Dead Ghosts sounds more like Mott The Hoople broadcasting rabble-rousing polemics over a post-apocalyptic emergency broadcast system! It’s sad that Greg Shaw isn’t still with us to hear this band – he’d be so psyched his head would fall off. And Kim Fowley WISHES he could have bottled something this good. Smith Westerns = the sound of teenage punks tearing up all the most powerful elements of their (grand)parents pop and looking on in wonder as the scraps rain down like confetti.

Mp3> Dreams

4. Condo Fucks - Fuckbook (Matador)

Whichever way you look at it, this album is pure self-indulgence. I mean, let’s face it, if any other three people in the world had made a one mic rehearsal tape of themselves bashing out a bunch of punk and British Invasion covers, complete with false starts and inaudible vocals, the result probably wouldn’t be getting a big-time release on Matador records. And if any other three people had made said tape, would I still have played it something like 56 times over the past nine months, grinning like a happy idiot…? Well… yes, I probably would have done, to be honest. I LOVE this crap, and I hope I always will. A friend of mine recently made a good point regarding the work of Quentin Tarantino, observing that, rather than *self* indulgent, his films are merely indulgent – eg, they indulge the audience just as much as the creator. And that’s the kind of logic that I’d like to apply in making the case for Condo Fucks as some of the most soundly unpretentious music of the modern era, because this is precisely the kind of honest, joyous, deafening, chaotic rock n’ roll that hits all my pleasure centres at once, with no unnecessary messing about to weaken the brew.

Of course, the personalities of our participants to come into play to a certain extent, and perhaps the key to the album’s success lies in the way they apply their characteristic spirit of modesty and inclusively to musical forms more frequently despoiled by glowering Rolling Stones wannabes – cutting out the dull aesthetic pretence, whilst still bringing enough wild, overdriven abandon to send said wannabes to their graves. And it helps too that our heroes are consummate record nerds, their choice of material flawless as you’d expect. Oh, what a thrill for us cult-rock bores to hear our guys launching into the Electric Eels ‘Accident’, or to hear Georgia taking the lead on heart-shivering renditions of ‘This Is Where I Belong’ (The Kinks) and ‘With A Girl Like You’ (The Troggs), the ghost of her vocal often sinking under all the magical amp blare, but that’s ok cos we can all sing along. Absolutely beautiful. Better still is when they turn their talents to realising the perfect version of ‘Kid With The Replaceable Head’ that Richard Hell never got around to recording, with Ira – sorry, ‘Kid Condo’ – taking his best shot at trying to the out-Robert Quinn Robert Quinn, and succeeding. Listening to ‘Fuckbook’ is a bit like going to see a big, headlining band and discovering that they’ve ditched their regular set-list and are just gonna play their unexpected-cover-version-that-we-worked-out-on-the-bus-for-the-encore *all night long*. Party on!

Maybe in a better world, the Condo Fucks experiment could provide a whole new way forward for struggling major-indie record labels. Got some big-name bands, cruising on their reputation, breaking up for ‘hiatuses’ or spending months in the studio making tepid, over-polite double LPs? Well fuck that noise – why not just get a few affable souls like, I dunno, say Thurston Moore, Guy Picciotto and Janet Weiss, stick ‘em in whichever local practice room does the best deal for four hours, keep the beer flowing, get ‘em talking about how great the Small Faces were, and let nature take it’s course? And if the results if even a fraction as much fun as this record, you’ll still be giving the record-buying public more bang for their buck than, ooh I dunno, the last three Yo La Tengo albums.


Mp3> With A Girl Like You

3. Nodzzz - s/t (What's Yr Rupture?)

What more to say about Nodzzz at this late stage? More than any other new band this year, their songs have been bouncing around my head pretty much endlessly and aren’t showing any sign of ceasing to do so in the new year. Great band, great guys, great sound, great songs – they’re top of the class, reducing me to clichés once again.

Here’s an edit of some stuff what I said about them back in March:

“Every song on Nodzzz self-titled 12” is a veritable education in the possibilities of Nerd-Bounce, each track throwing down in a uniquely enjoyable, off-kilter manner that fully delivers on the promise of “(I Don’t Wanna) Smoke Marijuana”.

Oft times, Nodzzz fleetingly remind me of my other “Revenge of the Nerds” heroes, The Embarrassment – one of the greatest, most frequently overlooked bands of all time, whom I’ve been meaning to write a proper post about for ages. Despite a raft of superficial similarities though, Nodzzz and The Embarrassment never manage to see eye to eye for more than a few moments. Whereas The Embarrassment always sounded as if they were being driven forward by a writhing mass of vengeful sexual frustration, even when singing about space travel or hunting dinosaurs, Nodzzz are, if not exactly *contented*, certainly a lot more…. easy-going… in their concerns. These are good natured fellas for sure, coming on witty like vintage Woody Allen, but with none of the neuroses in evidence.

In fact, Nodzzz very rarely sing about girls. You’d assume “Is She There?” might be about a girl, but the lyrics seem to be more about getting interrogated by the army. “Losing My Accent” wistfully relates how said loss took place whilst in bed with a girl “in the North-West”, but mainly it’s just sad about the accent. Nobly pencilling in the vast gulf left in pop songwriting once such concerns are removed, Nodzzz instead sing variously about their fears about moving to the city, their transport problems, getting old, being too young, and having to attend awkward social events on the great “Controlled Karaoke” (“it’s a party if you know what that means / no one wants to go and no one wants to leave”). I guess all of those themes sound like things one might moan about, and indeed Nodzzz probably ARE moaning, but you’d never know it unless you stopped to pay close attention, so darn irrepressibly upbeat and FUN do their songs seem on first exposure.

Musically, they’re absolutely spot-on too, hitting just the right balance between competence and spontaneity, just as lesser bands proceed to pointlessly tear chunks out of each other in the reviews sections in an unspoken war between over-cooked and under-cooked indie-rock records that are pretty dull in either direction. Listen to the two vocalists trying not to burst into giggles as the guitarist fluffs up just before they hit the second chorus of “I Can't Wait”, and the wonky, wood-block assisted riff-fest that follows and you’ll hear the ‘first take / best take’ philosophy of Swell Maps and the makeshift sonic anarchy of early Sun sessions at their finest. Listen elsewhere though – to the slashing, fast-strumming guitarwork on “Highway Memorial Shrine”, the intricate surfy-jangle lead lines and handbrake turn drumming – and you can (kinda, sorta) hear the spirit of The Minutemen rising in the distance, a spirit of carefully pre-studio prep work, obsessive practice and the desire to give the audience it’s musical money’s-worth that seems almost alien after extensive exposure to the trashed aesthetics that predominate amongst the rest of the currently resurgent lo-fi scene. Short, sharp, instantly likeable and packed with awesome, I hereby declare Nodzzz debut my the first out and out winner of 2009, or the last one of 2008, or whatever.”

Mp3> Highway Memorial Shrine

2. Future Of The Left - Travels With Myself And Another (4AD)

I may have somehow managed to go the whole year without publicly mentioning it to anyone, but as far as I’m concerned Future Of The Left have made the best rock album of the year. Which is a welcome surprise really, because, I’ll admit, the band’s first album, “Curses”, left me feeling distinctly underwhelmed. At the time, it seemed as if Andy Falkous just… wasn’t quite so angry anymore, and that the vicious, absurdist fury that fuelled his work with Mclusky was being diluted into a somewhat more resigned bag of quirkery, injokes and tepid man-rock jams under the FOTL banner. Well, rest assured, ‘Travels..’ sees Falco getting his rage back and then some, as he finally cashes in the ‘genius’ ticket he took out way back on ‘Mclusky Do Dallas’ and presents us with an album so flattening in it’s brutalist, bullseye-wrecking mastery, it’s hard to believe it won’t come to be seen as his all-time masterpiece, assuming there’s anyone left in future generations to care about such things.

I always find it hard to put the unique appeal of Mclusky/FOTL into words, but let’s just say that when they’re on form, Falkous and his comrades consistently give voice to, and rail against, the senseless minor frustrations and painful stupidities of trying to live a decent life in the British Isles in the 21st century with more passion and venom and wit and disgust than any other currently active musical unit. Veering closer to kind of cultural assault favoured by figures like Luke Haines or Chris Morris than to any of their contemporaries in the sphere of noisy heavy/art rock, I’m sure that Future Of The Left would rather spit teeth than align themselves with any direct political cause, but nonetheless, the seething fury and hilarious social insight of their songs serve as a more compelling argument for the existence of politicised rock music than anyone else since… well, ever, really.

Song titles like ‘Throwing Bricks At Trains’, ‘Chin Music’ and ‘The Hope That House Built’ may have tipped us off in advance that we’re dealing with a newly re-infuriated Future Of The Left here, and indeed, that proves to be the case. Over fiendishly orchestrated blasts of power trio lurch-metal, Falco proceeds to set out his current grievances and verbally beat the shit out of them, laying into everything from unscrupulous chain music venues (“without the young and the desperate / they won’t have anyone left”) to organised religion (“a justice of sorts if you listen to fools who dressed in the dark for a bet”). There’s more to Falkous though than just the rabid polemicist, and a songs like ‘Yin / Post Yin’ adopts a more oblique strategy, contrasting odd verses about dinosaurs going back to college with a baleful, rising chorus that seems to take umbrage with all the squandered potential of modernity, posing questions like “how far can you rise, on borrowed sellotape?”, with all the weight of a crushing Black Sabbath sermon. ‘You Need Satan More Than He Needs You’ meanwhile provides a grisly exclamation point mid-album, like an attempt by the band to separate the wheat from the chaff within their audience by pushing the boundaries of indie-rock good taste about as far as they can, as Kelson Mathias’ bull-seal distorted bass throbs with Melvins menace and Falkous explores the practical difficulties faced by the modern day Satanist – “what kind of orgy leaves, a sense of deeper love?” As searching, reflective and exasperated as it is plain angry/funny, ‘Travels With Myself And Another’ stands out as the work of songwriters unique in their field, and of the pre-eminent modern rock band who are capable of confronting the brain-aching failings of the contemporary world head on, rather than retreating back toward a weird dream of 1964 with added feedback.

Mp3> Arming Eritrea

1. Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard - 'Em Are I

The more I think about it, the more it seems that Jeffrey Lewis has been one of the few constants in my-individual-world-of-music over the past decade. Others have come and gone and fallen by the proverbial wayside, but, from 2001 when he was strumming through “East River” on the John Peel show, through to the present day, which sees him dealing with an annual touring schedule that would send Motorhead to their graves and the same kind of heartbreak and disillusionment that caused Alex Chilton to throw his toys out of the pram forever, and delivering the best album of his career thus far in the process. Yes, he’s a guy you can rely on alright – you’ve just got to have some trust.

From its odd name and cover art on down, ‘Em Are I’ is an album that initially seemed to be setting fans and casual observers up for a fall. Lacking the broad humour of Jeff’s previous records, and without an obvious OMFG-that’s-amazing Youtube-worthy hit to file alongside “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror” or “Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song”, it leaves us lost for a moment, wondering how best to approach a consistent, ‘serious’ and fully realised Jeffrey Lewis record from start to finish. Of course, like all great humourists, the point of Lewis’ work is that it’s ALWAYS been completely serious, with even his most goofy songs rising from a well of confusion and anxiety, the depths of which are plainly acknowledged and explored throughout. What’s REALLY disorientating about ‘Em Are I’ is the extent to which it transcends its creator’s self-doubt by succeeding at every turn, ditching the apologetic lo-fi shambling that’s become Jeff’s calling card and allowing him and his band of collaborators to truly command the various styles they’re boldly marching into here with a justified degree of confidence – no self-deprecation or sideways glance injokes either required or delivered.

Opener “Slogans” is a great literate punk rock song that Richard Hell or The Clash might have recognised as a goer, although I doubt they could have made me grin like Jeff’s observations about “shoguns and Hulk Hogans / and cavemen shouting slogans / back and forth around the fire / now connected by a fire”. In fact, if there’s one thread connecting these disparate songs, it’s Jeffrey’s rambling, ingenious wordplay – always his strong suit, but here it frequently ventures beyond the realms of narrative storytelling into lengthy metaphysical digressions and philosophical conundrums. Shaky ground for any songwriter, but Jeff’s been working this shit out in front of audiences for so long, he’s able to tilt at the windmills of his thought processes with a showmanship that helps him sidestep the potential descent into navel-gazing wank, and instead to craft his own compelling and entertaining internal dramas, leading to conclusions that sound less like teeth-grinding hippie platitudes and more like, well… yeah man, I see where yr going with that one – that’s a real good way of looking at things – thanks dude!

Now if only his contention that “it’s hard to get too bored / when you pick the right two chords” could prove true of more finger-picking open mic botherers. It helps of course that Jeffrey’s acoustic numbers are now fleshed out into gorgeous psychedelic fantasias full of drifting textures, gambolling strings and singing saws, his two chords just sitting at the centre of what’s a real old-fashioned great sounding record. It’s also no secret that Jeffrey was going through a pretty unhappy time in his personal life when this album was being written/recorded, and, given the constant temptation to lapse into ugly self-pity that presents itself when grievances are aired in public in pop/folk songwriting, it is brave and commendable that he manages to entirely avoid the diary entry narcissism of some of his peers, instead channelling his misfortunes into terrific songs like “It’s Not Impossible” (“..as long as failure’s only 99%..”) and the self-explanatory “Broken, Broken Heart”, giving voice to his feelings with a rare good grace and sense of universal relevance that any number of male guitar-jockeys could stand to learn from.

My favourite song though, and perhaps the album’s real breakthrough, is “The Upside Down Cross”, which sounds so unlike anything you’d expect to hear on a Jeffrey Lewis album, and yet succeeds so completely, it is a beautiful and righteous thing indeed. Herein, Jack Lewis’ strange tale of a radical couple trying to rekindle their relationship through engagement in revolutionary struggles is spun out into a brooding, nine minute psyche-jazz epic, full of muted trumpet, fiery noise guitar, free-form piano and lock-step octopus drumming, like Art Ensemble of Chicago’s ‘Theme De YoYo’ reinvented by a bunch of crazy Lower East Side beatniks – the kind of thing that shouldn’t work in a million years in other words, and yet it’s a fucking triumph. (In fact, I think I’ll make a point of shouting for it the next time I see them live. After all, Jeff must get sick of running through all those intricate solo acoustic songs night after night, and I’m sure they’d all enjoy an excuse to wig out on this one.) Similarly successful is the awkwardly titled closer “Mini Suite: Moocher From The Future”, which refashions Cab Calloway’s titular heroine into a time-travelling robot queen dispensing psychedelic wisdom and… well, you see what I mean: who the hell else is out there coming up with ideas for songs like that and actually making them really good, rather than just getting ignored or routinely punched?

And I think that’s where the joy of “Em Are I” lies really; almost every song here must have looked like a really bad idea on paper, rendered risky either by weird/icky/over-personal subject matter or by unlikely leaps of musical faith. But every single time, Jeff and his band-mates manage to take the risk, leap the chasm, save the day and keep the engine running, emerging with what’s simply an album of superb, uncategorisable, weird and moving songs, each capable of surprising and entertaining on each listen, of communicating handy truths and enriching the lives of listeners in some small but tangible fashion. A masterpiece, I guess you’d call it.

Mp3> The Upside Down Cross



(Phew, I don't know about you, but I'm bloody exhausted! Do you know I've published over 19,000 words on here in the past six (ok, seven) weeks? Sorry it took so long... I think I'm gonna take a week off.)

Labels: best of 2009, Condo Fucks, Future Of The Left, Jeffrey Lewis, Nodzzz, Smith Westerns