SINGLES ROUND-UP: 2010 Thus Far, Part # 2.

Brilliant Colors – Never Mine b/w Kissing’s Easy (Slumberland)

New wax from Brilliant Colors is always welcome round here, and hopefully always will be, but arriving off the back of their brilliant LP last year, this little outing can’t help but seem, well… slight. Dialling back both the punk rock propulsion and brutalist fuzz guitar that made the album such a blast, these two brief tunes see the band regressing back towards the homemade, Beat Happening-y vibes of their early EPs. Not that there’s *anything* wrong with that of course, and they still hold it together nicely enough, but with most of the energy, charm and killer tunes that set them apart (and make this kinda shamble-core a good time generally) also somewhat lacking, this four and a half minute artefact that can’t help but seem rather half-arsed in view of what’s gone before. GREAT band, no doubt (I’m going to see ‘em in June, with Thee Oh Sees!), so I guess you might want to grab this if you’re a completist re: Brilliant Colors or Slumberland or cool pop groups in general, but for anyone whose primary interest lies in listening to the damn thing: get the album instead if you’ve not already; this is strictly leftovers.

http://www.myspace.com/brilliantcolorssanfrancisco
http://www.slumberlandrecords.com/

Lil Daggers – King Corps EP
(Livid Records)

Taking up the consideration of unguessable sociological/aesthetic shifts from my Flight review in the previous post, it’s worth noting that something very different is seeping into the water at the other end of the garage-verse from the shimmery, dislocated bliss-out we’ve recently come to accept as standard. Back down South, ideologically speaking if not always geographically, we can find an increasing number of groups swinging their lassos and taking the wild leap back toward authentically swampy roots rock drama, hanging onto some particularly fateful Dylan-via-The Gun Club axis of bluster, rattle n’ twang, and generating better results than you’d care to expect. Not that I’d want to get mixed up the journalistic dead-end of after-the-fact, thousand-miles-removed scene-building you understand, but sometimes you just gotta. Strange Boys, Demon’s Claws, The Mantles, Bridport Daggers… and now here’s Miami’s Lil Daggers, fitting right in.

Lunging around with a cataclysmic, red-eyed sound meant to be heard at a deafening whack in darkened, sweatbox clubs, Lil Daggers churn and weave in rabid Birthday Party fashion around a powerhouse drummer, duelling electric organs, frenzied string-bending guitar and bludgeoning low-end, howling through the requisite phone-line vocal filter about how they “hear the end is near”, in search of a constant, bloody climax.

For all that they’re covering distantly familiar territory here, this is still a pulverisingly BIG music, rich in an undeniable power n’ drama that belies the unimaginative band name, if you can only take a deep breath, say YES to the outlaw clichés, and let yourself get swept up in it. A lot of people were lurking about in this stubble-and-duster coats terrain back in the ‘80s, and god knows, a lot of people sucked at it. But this is 2010 buster, and if you still happen to be making movies about tough guys trudging ‘round the desert pointing guns at each other, get these dudes on the blower (probably the same one they do the vocals through) and they’ll be able to knock you up a real kick ass soundtrack full of holy fury and catharsis for you whilst Nick Cave and Warren Ellis are still lazing about in bed scratching their beards, wondering what the hullabaloo downstairs is all about.

http://www.myspace.com/lildaggers
http://www.lividrecords.com/

Octagon Control / Doctor Scientist – split 7”
(FDH Records)

My fault, this one. I took a chance on it just cos I like the cover photo, and think ‘Doctor Scientist’ is a really funny name for a band. The shop label said something about it being ‘synth-punk’, and I thought I could go for a bit of that good old retro-futurist fun right now – I’ve been catching up on a lot of vintage synth-heavy stuff recently in fact, and really enjoying it, so prob’ly about time I checked out what all these ‘cold wave’ kids are up to.

Oh dear – getting home and putting it on was like having to explain to an enthusiastic interview candidate that he’s applied for the wrong job.

“Uh, ok guys, I think we’ve got a misunderstanding here – see maybe it’s just me being a closed minded dumb-ass, but when I read ‘synth-punk’ and see a b&w photo of a girl with a goofy pre-Neuromancer VR headset, I kinda presuppose something that sounds a bit like The Screamers or Suicide or Gary Numan, y’know? That’s fair enough, isn’t it? You on the other hand, Octagon Control and Doctor Scientist, kinda sound more like bush league early ‘00s emo/metalcore bands who added a keyboard player for a bit of variety. I wish you well in your future quest for an audience who cares, but… well you see my problem, right? I’m sorry.”

Now I just feel all awkward.

http://www.fdhmusic.com/
http://www.myspace.com/doctorscientistband
http://www.myspace.com/octagoncontrol

Plasto Beton – 7” EP (SDZ Records)

Aah, now when I take a chance on some ‘synth-punk’ record in this day and age, THIS is more the kinda fucked up shit I have in mind. Not that these guys sound remotely like The Screamers or Suicide or Gary Numan or anything, but…

Well let me put it this way for you: French punk/indie/whatever type music has always seemed like pretty mysterious and fragmentary territory to those of us who’ve rarely gone out of our way to investigate, but you knew, didn’t you, that out there somewhere there’d be a whole gang of sick French fucks who worship Mark E. Smith and Throbbing Gristle and Pere Ubu, making horrible sub-underground type sounds infused with the grand perversity and defiance of their countrymen? Just stands to reason doesn’t it? And isn’t it a fine thing to think about of an evening?

Well duck you suckers, here they come – what seems to be more or less the same bunch of malcontents operating under such monikers as A.H. Kraken, The Anals, and now these guys, furiously mixing up dull-witted, ultra-repetitive caveman thud with chopped up Digital Hardcore noise-fuckery, random machine gun bursts, eerily detuned analogue synth tones and the kind of unhinged distortion pedal ranting that I daresay I wouldn’t be able to interpret even if I spoke French fluently.

It’s grotesque and upsetting and belligerent and wonderful, and I wouldn’t wish exposure to it on anyone who hadn’t specifically requested such in advance. Politicians take note: create a country characterised by strange and frustrating labour laws, new build suburban sprawl, mass unemployment, a rich but entropied cultural heritage and an uncommon reliance on nicotine, and sooner or later your youth will start making noises like this. Think on.

http://www.myspace.com/plastobeton
http://www.myspace.com/sdzrecords

Music and Dialogue from Sandy Harbutt’s Australian Motion Picture ‘Stone’ 7”
(Finders Keepers)

Seems pretty redundant to say “well this is a strange one”. Ever the pioneers, Finders Keepers throw caution to the wind and bring us a compressed burst of exactly what the title states, melted onto vinyl. I’ve been vaguely aware of Sandy Harbutt’s film ‘Stone’ for a while now re: it’s status as a landmark Australian exploitation/counter-culture artefact, and I enjoyed watching clips from it in the excellent Ozploitation documentary ‘Not Quite Hollywood’ last year. But if the evidence presented on this 7” is accurate, clearly I need to track down the complete movie ASAP, as ‘Stone’ sounds far-fucking-out!

Motorcycle engines roar through krautrock echo chambers; petrol tank explosions ricochet through slapback delay; morbid funk-rock blares; Australian bikies yell about worshipping Satan and initiating outsiders into the rites of their master. “Man, I love The Gravediggers – they are too cool”, says some guy in a pub, accompanied by strange, staccato musicbox jingles. “One night they came in here with The Orgasm; some of them had laid some really good acid on The Diggers, cos The Diggers used to travel with ‘em”… and so it goes on. “I guess we all just… CAME together”, says some drugged sounding girl. More echoed explosions. ‘Stone’, ladies and gentlemen – I can scarcely wait.

Quite what purpose this 7” serves is harder to quantify – would weirdo DJs drop this mid-set? Will people play it on their internet radio shows? Are cult movie fans gonna play this to their friends to convince them to watch the film? Or are malcontents like me just going to cackle over it in the privacy of their own homes? Overall the experience is similar to spending five minutes watching weirdo movie trailers on Youtube and then blinking and trying to bring yourself back to reality. And that’s something I like to find time for pretty much everyday, home broadband connections allowing, so HALLELUJAH, and thank you again Finders Keepers/B-Music – my life would be a far duller place without you.

http://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lloTd45PFPg

Yeh Deadlies – Magazine b/w Constitution Hill (Poltergeist / Fake Indie Label)

An absolute joy of a single from this Dublin group, prominently featuring Annie Tierney ex of Chicks on guitar and co-vox, so all you folks who helped make the post I did about Chicks a few years back this blog’s most popular item by a factor of about ten should clearly pay attention!

I very much enjoyed listening to Yeh Deadlies on myspace a while back, their predominantly gentle, folkie approach sounding rich and genuine and full of love, hitting the same sweet spots that the early Herman dune albums used to do for so well, and that 90% of modern ‘folk’ artistes manage to miss by a landslide. The best kind of folksie music, I think, is always the kind that sounds like it was made outside of consideration of any kind of music scene or industry, by some kinda generous and warm-hearted people who know each other well, just doing some songs with sounds and words that they like. It’s a difficult balance to maintain, but Yeh Deadlies seem to fit the bill perfectly.

So a single with a couple of examples of that on it would have been dead nice, no question, but imagine my surprise when ‘Magazine’ revs up with a punk drum beat, fizzy fuzz-tone guitar and a lead vocal from Annie herself, an absolutely beautiful nugget of super-optimistic, shambolic, sugar-rush, we-can-do-anything, distantly wistful, cardigan-wearin’ power-pop that bounces around like sitting on a freshly mown hillside with your friends on the last day of school in July, throwing chewing gum at passing cars… or something. Man, it’s almost as good as Chicks, or Mary Lou Lord, or pre-major label Kenickie, and only a *bit* more grown up. It’s so great I could cry.

The B-side, ‘Constitution Hill’ is really lovely too – more in the folksie sorta vein described above. I don’t have much to say about it; it’s about leaving a party prematurely and walking on a hill and feeling sad, and it’s approximately a hundred times better than every other song you’ve heard this year about walking on hills feeling sad. It makes me feel funny in my tummy, in the way these kinda songs are always meant to, but so rarely ever do.

Incidentally, the few real life Irish people I know are all apt to describe things as being ‘deadly’, in the same way we in this country would say ‘cool’ or ‘awesome’ or whathaveyou, so that’s presumably where these guys take their name from. I always find it really interesting, the way that slang like that does or doesn’t spread from place to place, the same way that some of the weird jokes and tricks and stuff that spread around the playground when you were at school seem to be universally recognised around the country, while others are meaningless to anyone who didn’t go to your specific school, and…. well anyway, who cares – please listen to this single, it’s really, really special.

http://www.myspace.com/yehdeadlies
http://www.myspace.com/poltergeistrecords
http://www.myspace.com/fakeindielabel

Labels: Brilliant Colors, Doctor Scientist, Finders Keepers, Lil Daggers, Octagon Control, Plasto Beton, singles reviews, Yeh Deadlies

SINGLES ROUND-UP:
2010 Thus Far, Part # 1.


The Blanche Hudson Weekend –
Letters To Daddy EP (Squirrel)
Rats In The Cellar EP (Oddbox)

You’ve got to love people who stick to their story. When The Manhattan Love Suicides split up last year, Caroline (vox) and Darren (guitar) seem to have scarcely batted an eyelid before ploughing on regardless as The Blanche Hudson Weekend. That The Blanche Hudson Weekend sound exactly like The Manhattan Love Suicides with a slightly less driving rhythm section can scarcely be seen as a surprise, but the continuity is welcome. You know just what you’re getting here; a tumultuous mixture of C86 melodicism, vicious fuzz, exploitation movie imagery and an endless series of pop readymades with the DNA of the J&MC’s ‘Darklands’ sunk deep into their bones. The trash affectations are cute, the noise is great, the tunes are killer - it’s always a good time.

Each 7” features a different portrait of Joan Crawford as the eponymous Ms Hudson in 1962’s “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?” on the front, but otherwise they’re near-identical, so make sure you don’t buy the same one twice. By way of differentiation, the Squirrel disc is black and the Oddbox one is red. If you’ve only got £3.99 to spare, “Letters To Daddy” is probably my pick, simply because it’s got more fuzz. “Rats..” concentrates more on the quieter numbers, but it is certainly not without its charms, particularly the longer cut “Only Snow”, which brings in some dissonant Cale/Conrad style viola for a low-key drone/jangle blowout. Very banana album, very nice. We’re in safe hands.

http://www.myspace.com/theblanchehudsonweekend
http://www.squirrelrecords.co.uk
http://oddboxrecords.com/

Flight - Feels So Good b/w In The Morning Light (HoZac)

Another welcome pat on the head from Hozac, Flight sounds like the ghosts of some muscular ‘70s rock radio hits with distant hints of Knack/Huey Lewis era new wave, fed through a hazy ketamine vortex of slowed reactions, tape hiss, decay-heavy distortion and underwater wobble.

If you’d told me five years ago that Ariel Pink was gonna be such a massive influence on the sound of the next generation of American bands, well, I just wouldn’ta believed ya. I bet it must speak of something all deep n’ sociological, the increasing prevalence of this whole ‘familiar tunes / dislocated sound’ thing? The way it’s gone from being regarded as some bizarre affectation to sounding completely natural, just in space of a year or two? I think I can see it, somewhere, out of the corner of my eye; instinctively, it all makes sense.

I bet as far as the guys in Flight are concerned, they’re just making cool songs, and recording them the way they think sounds good. And indeed they are. I wish I had the brains to figure these trends out on advance – I could clean up making bets with, I dunno, Byron Coley or someone. Anyway, listening to this Flight record is extremely pleasurable. Whether it will be so in five years time remains to be seen, but I’ll listen to my eerie, prefabricated nostalgia in the here and now and enjoy it, damn you.

http://www.myspace.com/inflighttunes
http://www.hozacrecords.com/

French Kissing – Oh Suzanne (Sleep All Day)

With one foot in the whole reverbed-out beach-trash aesthetic and the other dancing ‘cross the mildewed shores of ol’ fashioned garage revivalism, London’s questionably monikered French Kissing knock it outta the freakin’ park with the A-side of this debut 7”. An absolutely perfect nugget of catchy garage-pop craftsmanship, mixing a bubblegum early Beach Boys vibe with just a touch of surly Medway Beatles worship, I loved it on first myspace play and pre-ordered the single immediately. Come the third play, I wasn’t so sure, but by the sixth play I’d had to time reflect on how fucking awesome and weird the guitar solo sounds (solo of the year thus far??), and how swell the group’s effortless “I Get Around” groove is. Great song, great sound, great playing. Chug-a-lug!

Flipside “The Lonely Streets of Cairo” is a bit of a bummer by comparison, a rather fragrant novelty item hinging on endless repetition of the old ‘belly dancing theme’ music (y’know; da-da-dow-dow-dow, da-da dow-dow dow-dow-dow etc). It sounds a bit like if the grandchildren of all the guys from The Downliners Sect got together and formed a band inspired by all their granddads’ *worst* songs. Still, only the B side to a cracking A.

Oh, and while I’m needling them, that girl-kissing-dog cover is pretty gross too, and not even an art credit to help shoo away the suspicion that they just grabbed some picture of a girl in an embarrassing-out-of-context pose off flickr and stuck it on the front of their record – tsk, kids today.

http://www.myspace.com/frenchkissingband
http://sleepalldayrecords.bigcartel.com/

Hanoi Janes – Across The Sea b/w Skeleton Girl (Captured Tracks)

I picked up this one up momentarily thinking that it might be a solo record by Oneida’s Hanoi Jane, conveniently forgetting that I’d heard no mention of such a thing existing, and that he’s gone by ‘Baby Jane’ for about a decade. But it looks cool, and it has a song called ‘Skeleton Girl’, so I bought it anyway, cos that’s the kinda crazy guy I am.

Turns out The Hanoi Janes are a bunch of German Phil Spector obsessives, doing what modern day Phil Spector obsessives do best and sitting in their basement with the laptop trying to make their indie guitar band sound like him. Well it’s a damn sight better than sounding the way most indie guitar bands sound these days I suppose.

To their credit, ‘Across The Sea’ takes the Spector pastiche thing well beyond the realms of the standoffish, incorporating chiming bells and a ‘do daa do….’ chorus line to rather nice effect. ‘Skeleton Girl’ meanwhile tones it all down a bit, but wins cos it’s a better song – a real good one actually, a veritable stormer even. With so much great, ragged, classically-informed pop-rock kicking around at the moment, it’s hard to anything more to say about it beyond the Spector thing, but it sure is great.

So that’s Hanoi Janes for you I guess. Take it or leave it. I’m gonna take it.

http://www.myspace.com/thehanoijanes
http://capturedtracks.com/

The Manhattan Love Suicides – Dandelion Radio Sessions CD (Oddbox)

Lovingly presented by Oddbox in both stereo and mono mixes (instant props for this brilliantly impractical gesture of music geek dedication), these sessions for internet radio station Dandelion are chiefly notable for presenting what I guess are maybe, probably, the Manhattan Love Suicides’ last recordings. They are secondarily notable for establishing the band as maybe, probably, the first to ever cover “I’m Not A Young Man Anymore”, the ‘lost’ Velvet Underground song included on the Gymnasium ’67 bootleg. And if The Manhattans don’t quite manage to nail Sterling Morrison’s sick central guitar riff or match the gloriously fucked Lou/Sterl interplay of the instrumental sections, they do at least capture the churning, circular groove of the piece perfectly, and prove that a little bit of faux-Rallizes feedback goes a long way.

For thoughts on the other five songs here, see my Blanche Hudson Weekend write-up above, but needless to say, they’re all really good. How many songs that sound like ‘Head On’ is it possible to write before those chords collapse in on themselves? Who cares. Just keep ‘em coming. I prefer the mono, but then I would, wouldn’t I? The in-the-red bleed around the edges of the guitar sound on the loud bits is SWEET. I suspect maybe the constant feedback arcs are a bit contrived, but then what do I know about recording cool feedback? (Not half as much as I’d like to know, unfortunately.)

http://www.myspace.com/themls
http://oddboxrecords.com/

Myelin Sheaths – Do The Mental Twist EP (HoZac)

Whammo! That seems like the natural way to begin a review of this one. I don’t know what a ‘myelin sheath’ is, but I bet it’s something horrible. As for as Myelin Sheaths the band are concerned, I know they come from Alberta, Canada, and I know they’re something wonderful. I guess they’re not really doing anything special here, except, y’know, just plain ROCKING, flying the flag for rampaging, female-led punk rock, utterly blasted compression/distortion, good vibes and a gleeful love of fun songs and chaotic noise.

“I Don’t Wanna Have An Operation” is the kind of pure Ramonery that never goes out of style, while “Do The Mental Twist” veers more toward that ‘psychotic garage’ kinda vibe the title would suggest and “Drugstore/Pharmacy” gives us a more sustained burst of gut-busting racket, with an unexpectedly pleasant dose of stand up drumming and repetitive jangle at its core, emerging not unlike an uglier, strung out Shop Assistants.

Myelin Sheaths’ guitars have a certain Sonic Youth quality to them – a thick, dissonant, mid-heavy blurt - and their bass rumbles like a rockslide. Maybe think ‘Eliminator Jr’ or something, stripped of any art world pretensions, reinvented for a beer-sozzled provincial punk scene. With most conventional, album-orientated “indie-rock” in such a moribund state at the moment, it’s always a thrill it is to hear stuff this beserk and fun, happy just to be itself. Any old punkers/grungers still not sold on the new world order of inarticulate kids making no-fi noise-pop on overpriced boutique 7” labels are advised to take a listen to this and try to write me some reasons why it’s not totally great.

http://www.myspace.com/myelinsheaths
http://www.hozacrecords.com/

Labels: Flight, French Kissing, Hanoi Janes, Myelin Sheaths, singles reviews, The Blanche Hudson Weekend, The Manhattan Love Suicides

Things of Interest # 4:
Ice & The Iced.

Ice & The Iced came from Podenone, Italy, late '70s. Maybe they were the first punk rockers in town, maybe not. It makes a better story if we assume they were though.

Ice has HAD ENOUGH. His dad treats him like a criminal, and wants to see him working all day. His teachers are fat, and sexually repressive, and don't care about the life he's bringin' on.

So what's a boy to do? Tell the world all about it in one of the best fuckin' songs ever, that's what.

Seriously, I can't express how wonderful this is. To anybody who ever made any "this track really defined what punk was all about blah blah" type claim re: some storied London/New York band; Ice & The Iced will blow you to smithereens.

As Joe Stumble of Last Days of Man On Earth where I first heard this last week puts it: "You think you could write a better song than We’ve Had Enough? You can’t. Kids all over the world are learning this song right now. Somebody needs to send me the tabs. It’s gonna be the next generation’s “Satisfaction”. Get on the train now or you are gonna miss it."

Labels: Ice And The Iced, Italy, punk rock, things of interest

Things of Interest # 3:
Meet the Renees.

Sorry for the brief hiatus in posting – just moved house and am busy with all manner of related and unrelated craziness.

Never mind that though: meet the Gymslips! Brought to my attention via Girls Can Tell, they’re the most thuggish, drunken '80s girl-punk band I've ever heard;





It seems that a few years later a couple of Gymslips, plus one of Delta 5 and a few other folks, regrouped as The Renees, and tried to make it big with a synth-heavy Human League styled single entitled "He Called Me A Fat Pig". Both song and video are brilliant, and completely mental;



I think the bit where the little girl starts stabbing a monstrous, deflating foam rubber policeman with a pitchfork stands as an all-time classic “and they wonder why they didn’t make it to Top of the Pops” moment.

Enjoy, or just feel faintly disturbed!

Labels: aggro, Delta 5, Gymslips, punk, The Renees, things of interest, videos