25. Nice Face – Immer Etwas (Sacred Bones)

Mid-way through this year, I was thinking about the kind of sound I wanted to develop my bedroom space-punk recording project thingy into. I had some ideas for a very particular kind of heavily-effected, mechanized racket that I wanted to make. Then I got hold of this Nice Face album, and I was like, damn, this asshole has the whole thing nailed down already.

Dunno anything about where this guy’s coming from, where he’s going, but I do know that the frantic, reverb-engulfed, violent pop found on “Immer Etwas” is some of the most kick-ass home-recorded stuff I’ve heard this year. Squelchy keyboard hooks, digitally-distorted guitars, great use of effects (just about the RIGHT amount of everything). Songs are all crazy-eyed, mutant new wave hits, like the boiled down remnants of The Knack and Iggy’s “The Idiot” being fused into a hideous bloody mess in some vat of radioactive transistor radio goo - just the kind of troubled tunes one might expect to hear on the stereo when driving an armoured taxi through the streets of future-New York in an ‘80s post-apocalyptic movie. Good shit!

Uh, yeah, I don’t have much more to say about this – in a few years it’ll sound very much ‘of its time’ I guess, but in 2010 it really hit the spot. The LP looks really cool, but the CD has lots of extra tunes so, y’know, choose wisely.

Mp3> Situation Is Facing Utter Annihilation





24. Frankie Rose & The Outs – s/t (Memphis Industries)

If nothing on Frankie Rose’s first feature length outing as band leader/song-writer can compare to the majesty of “Where Do You Run To”, this album is nonetheless a real grower, and a surprising and ambitious effort really, given the easy action the various groups she’s drummed for have attracted simply through the means of sloppy C86ish noise-pop. Of eleven tracks here, only a handful - “Candy”, “Girlfriend Island”, “Don’t Tred” – really attempt to follow the Black Tambourine / Shop Assistants jangle-punk formula that many might have assumed would predominate on a Frankie Rose solo record. As to the rest, what we’re essentially looking at here is an extension of the rather beguiling b-side of her Slumberland 45 – a kind of elegant, 4AD-indebted shoegaze, liberally draping some of those old ‘gossamer webs of sound’ across the back of skeletal, barely there melodies, with generally pretty lovely results.

Indeed, that aforementioned b-side, “Hollow Life” is the opener here, re-recorded in longer form I think (tho I could be mistaken). Writing about it way back in November ’09, I got a bit carried away, proclaiming it, ahem - “..an absolutely exquisite snapshot of a Bout de Souffle bedroom scene eternal now, vast faux-cathedral organ tones and distant guitar-drift making a bed for Frankie’s oh-so-delicate voice. Like “I’ll Be Your Mirror” medicated to the point of total bliss-out, it’s exactly the sound I want to hear last thing before I go to sleep, gently rising to a Cocteaus-y grandeur in, like, ninety seconds, then falling away to nothing.” And, a year and a bit later, hopefully that can stand as pretty good description of the album as a whole.

Vital to the record’s success is the fact that it is a very good recording in the conventional sense, heavily reliant upon its careful and clear sound, its reliance on lovely analogue echo, its gentle vintage organ sounds,gentle, decaying chords, and so forth. If “Little Brown Haired Girls” sounds a bit like a Dum Dum Girls cut reconfigured for a phantasmagorical regency ballroom, and the wordless, crashing fuzz of “That’s What People Told Me” could be Vivian Girls rewriting The Chills’ “Purple Girl”, well, that’s probably about as far as such comparisons can be taken, and, well… doesn’t that basically sound GREAT?

Based on sound and feel alone, this record would be an instant classic. It’s a beautiful listen. What’s keeping it back here #24 here rather than #3 though, is, bluntly, song-writing, or lack thereof. While the majesterial sound here is the kind that tends to work well when it comes to letting tracks that consist of little more than a simple chord progression and some chanted “la la la”s drift by pleasantly enough, I can’t help but imagine how brilliant they each mighta been with, uh, y’know, lyrics and stuff. Verses, choruses, emotional engagement. The stuff that helped make “Where Do You Run To” so out of this world, even as a garageband demo.

Mp3> Little Brown-Haired Girls



23. Dead Meadow – Three Kings (Xemu)

There comes a time in every band’s life, when a gatefold double LP ‘greatest hits live plus new studio cuts’ set accompanied by a feature length concert footage/fantasy odyssey movie modelled after Led Zep’s “Song Remains The Same”, featuring cover art that sees the band enthroned like decadent rock n’ roll wizards, their groovy analogue equipment collection spread out before them across a verdant hillside, is the only way to go.

Of course, the difference is, Led Zep had the money and global following that allowed them to indulge such ludicrous conceits with a straight face. Dead Meadow, presumably, do not. Which as a long-term fan of the group, make me all the more keen to laugh loud and support them in their elaborate whimsy.

The movie, of course, is pretty stoned and pointless, squandering the potential for a Jodorowskian psychedelic mindfuck on some unexciting concert footage and vague, faux-symbolist music video tomfoolery… but I was happy enough with it. I mean, I wasn’t really expecting much else. It almost would have spoiled the gag if it was really good, wouldn’t it?

It did bug me however that I couldn’t hear Steve Kille’s bass on the soundtrack, like, *at all* - a factor which is obviously somewhat detrimental to the enjoyment of eighty-odd minutes of low-end heavy power trio rock. Partially, this can be blamed on the crappy speakers on my cheapest-one-in-the-shop TV, and indeed, the bass was audible when I played the LPs, but still not mixed high enough for my liking - a circumstance that is perplexing given that Kille takes sole production credit here. Also somewhat of a bummer is Jason Simon’s voice – never the band’s strong suit – which is heard here completely clean, and unsettlingly high in the mix, his throaty, tour-hardened, off-key bark a world away from the reverbed & phased tones that used to meander through the band’s older records like a gentle stream. I realise that a touring band aren’t able to achieve a perfectly lovely, otherworldly vocal mix every night, but for the recording of a live album, it… well it might have been a good idea to sort that shit out before it went and harshed everyone’s perfect Dead Meadow mellow, that’s all I’m sayin’.

Anyway, production gripes aside, I’m happy to be able to report that performance-wise, Dead Meadow are at the top of their game here, with the particular brand of well-honed hard rock telepathy that makes them such a killer live band much in evidence. Drums crashing by like the tides of the ocean, bass standing solid like the rocks as the waves hit, guitar spiralling off like a boat fulla warriors, off on some distant adventure - if you’ve heard the band before, well it’s the same old shit, (I think I’ve even done that metaphor before), but when you love it as much as I do, it never gets old. As heard here, “Til Kingdom Come”s Immigrant Song-esque tale of ocean-going pilgrims flat-out slays the version found on the lacklustre “Old Growth” album, and “At Her Open Door” and “The Whirlings” have never before spun and spluttered and screamed they way they do here. Psychedelic rock, the way it’s supposed to be done.

Change moves slowly in Dead Meadowland, and the very fact that they don’t end this set with a fourteen minute “Sleepy Silver Door” can be taken as a shocking and daring break from tradition. I didn’t mean to sound grumpy moaning about the production and stuff earlier on – hearing Dead Meadow on form in 2010, dropping heavy, hazy shit like this, is all the reward a humble fan could ask for. Maybe next time they’re in town I can score drugs for them and introduce them to loose chicks and… huh, what year did I say it was again?

Mp3> Til Kingdom Come



22. Dead Luke – American Haircut (Florida’s Dying)

More deliciously nasty homemade campfire psyche twaddle, bubbling up on this occasion from some unspecified location in the South Eastern USA. Like the Haunted Houses tape, I really like this one a whole lot, but it’s difficult to quite put my finger on why. Unlike the Haunted Houses tape, it’s quite varied, spread across nine long-ish tracks, each slightly different from the last, all rich in, uh, ‘aural interest’.

“Dreaming, Pt.3” has a kind of ritualistic, unheimlich stomp to it, reminiscent of Sylvester Anfang II, while “Luke Is Not Dead” is more of long-lost mutant guitar-blues effort, with a sorta rhythmless Velvets chug, like a mid-60s Lou and Sterl lost in the woods communing with witches. “Sunrise” and “Acid Forest” could nicely soundtrack the acid trip / blood sacrifice scene in some regionally produced early ‘70s hippie witchcraft shocker, complete with somebody banging away inexpertly on the sitar and webs of gnarled old feedback growl, but then “Lil Red Riding Hood” is back on the transcendent weirdo blues tip. The central riff and melody of “You’re Bringing Me Down” sound an awful lot like “Snowblind” by Judy Henske and Jerry Yester, I’m sure you’ll all be shocked to hear. It’s good though, and turns into a great delay pedal shredding drone in its final minute.

The one unifying element behind all this is the presence, in some form or other, of a voice whose slow, unsettling snarl seems to be drawing from the same well as Greg Ashley on the darker Gris Gris material, an influence that also seems to trickle down into the song-writing in places – the aforementioned “Lil Red Riding Hood” could’ve been pulled straight off “Medicine Fuck Dream”.

What more d’you expect me to say? I don’t know a damn thing about this record, but I find it very satisfying and comfortable listening. It sounds like the work of some cool and inspired people, and it suits my morbid proclivities perfectly.

“Backwoods campfire psyche revival” sounds like about the most unpromising phrase I’ve ever typed, but between this, Dignan Porch, Florida, Irma Vep and Purling Hiss’s “Public Service Announcement”, it seems to be creeping up on us regardless, sounding more spirited than we ever could’ve guessed.

Mp3> Luke is Not Dead


21. Hype Williams – untitled LP (no label)

Live review from August this year:

“There is something compelling about what they do that’s hard to quite define at a time when so many faceless acts seem to be groping around in the same closet without a flashlight, but I’m gonna take a leap of faith and say that the way Hype Williams do business essentially reminds me of Boards Of Canada. Although wisely bypassing the rotting carcass of ‘90s ‘IDM’ that lurks always beneath those Boards, they’ve got that same winning mixture of insistent pulse, rich, inviting melody and darkly unsettling undertones; garbled voices, melted ghosts of pop hits, crying children marching over the hill in the distance. It draws you in, it keeps you sedated with increasingly familiar games of fuzzy-headed audio-nostalgia, and it’s only then that you notice the nasty tricks, the sudden lurching stabs into the unknown. Very good stuff indeed. Friends with whom I was earnestly discussing what a dead end live electronica can be can be half an hour ago are now head-nodding, happily entranced as the duo crouch over their gear on-stage, if you’re willing to take that as any barometer of quality.”

So I’ll level with ya, when I bought a copy of this, the scribbled label on the merch table said “Hype Williams LP, £10”. That aside, the record is completely anonymous, guaranteed to confound Music & Video Exchange clerks and senile record collectors for years to come. Anyway, since the label said “LP”, the first few times I spun this, I did so at 33, and was mightily impressed by it’s hazy, slurred voices and cough syrup n’ weed nightmare dub atmospherics. Then I thought, hang on a minute. Sure enough, it sounds even better at 45, the vocal samples coherent and all the more unsettling for it, and the music brighter, stranger and more varied, percussion sounds and shaky guitar/key riffs hitting off at what sounds like the speed they were played at. Great! Obviously this is a 12” guys, not an LP. Duh. Then, earlier this week, I noticed it was approaching time to write this review, but I’m down at my mum’s house for xmas sans record or turntable, so I thought I’d see if I could find a quick download to refresh my memory. So I did that, and…. the mp3s are ripped at 33. So you see my dilemma: which one to review?

At 45, the chief point of note is that these recordings reveal Hype Williams to be far less of an electronic/sample based outfit than was suggested by their live show, with most of the music based around what sound like scrappy basement psyche jams, cut with odd, verite spoken word samples and heavily treated radio pop samples creeping in and out of the mix (a woman screams, a nervous-sounding home counties vicar discusses the Ark of the Covenenant, claiming “..the power of god was resting within that tabernacle” and suggesting “..putting a musical box inside it..”, before recommending “a dose of good, old fashioned hellfire preaching” to all and sundry). This approach, it should be noted, is very much in keeping with that taken on their earlier “High Beams” EP.

At 33 meanwhile, Hype Williams do indeed sound like a kind of evil Boards of Canada, hiding screaming children behind a grim, headnodding miasma of chopped n’ screwed electronics. This is very much in keeping with the kind of stuff they were doing in their live performance.

As previously noted, I have my concerns about this kind of sound ultimately becoming little more than a 21st century reiteration of the horrors of ‘trip-hop’. But at either speed, Hype Williams are certainly doing a lot to nullify my fears through the generous application of imagination, sonic depth and good old fashioned weirdness. Find yourself a copy and take yr choice.

Mp3> Untitled # 6

Labels: best of 2010, Dead Luke, Dead Meadow, Frankie Rose, Hype Williams, Nice Face