Deathblog:
Poly Styrene
(1957 – 2011)

It would remiss of me not to mark the passing of Poly Styrene. Surely a definitive influence on all the subsequent generations of female screamers I’ve celebrated here over the years.

She was pretty cool.

Her voice was amazing.

Some of her lyrics were killer.

‘Germ-Free Adolescents’ is a great spin.

There’s something kinda… rigid?... about X Ray Spex sound that always put me off a bit even though I liked the vocals and the songs. Now though, I think I really like that aspect of it. I should listen to that LP more.

Etc. : (

Great round-up of obits from XRRF here.

Labels: deathblog, Poly Styrene, punk, X Ray Spex

Two Tears – Eat People 7”
(Kind Turkey)

Not something I had anticipated finding on my metaphorical desk, but that I’m glad to have received nonetheless, here’s three tracks from Kerry Davis, ex of Red Aunts, working in a primarily solo/homemade capacity.

Red Aunts were always one of the more garage-trash-punk affiliated riot grrl bands (or one of the more riot grrl-affiliated garage-trash-punk bands, if you prefer), and the more low-key Two Tears material initially seems to follow suit, Davis growling through “Eat People”, with all the Mr. Airplaneman-ish raunch you’d expect.

“Heisse Hex” and “Senso Unico” though are both persuasively mechanical, distantly Fall-like songs, the foreign language titles barked and twisted as if they were private language glossolia or magical incantations between whispered threats and complaints. The former in particular is great, chugging away like nobody’s business, a brilliantly sinister coda/end section and call-and-response chorus ringing like some cross between Mark E. Smith and Petra Černocká’s spell-casting in Saxana.

This is distinctive, quietly bad-ass music that raises the spectre of Mo Tucker’s ultra-primitive “Playin’ Possum”, filtered through the PJ’s 4 track demos, and probably every other contrived example I can pull from my itunes of a cool rock lady bludgeoning us with menacing self-sufficiency. Recommended!

http://www.myspace.com/thetwotears
http://www.kindturkeyrecords.com

Labels: singles reviews, Two Tears

The Other Girls by Vivian Girls.

It bugs me how the dumb Pitchfork reviewer was really nasty about the guitar playing on this track - I think it sounds really nice. Maybe the VGs should call up Neil Young and they can go egg the guy's house or something. Damn muso.

Anyway, don't believe the un-hype; even I was all prepared to be totally unexcited by this new Vivian Girls record, but y'know what? It's a really, really good listen - a far more interesting and enjoyable buncha songs than a lot of people might have anticipated. Give it a chance, before you go writing 'em off as the year-before-last's rudderless hype casualties or whatever.

Labels: The Vivian Girls

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow.

Shamefully, I nearly missed the fact in the midst of the assorted crap that constitutes ‘life’, but today marks ten years since Joey Ramone passed away.

Ten years! Ten years since I spent a week stomping round a midlands university campus, wearing black jeans black shoes and my black Ramones t-shirt. I’ve still got it; I was planning on wearing it tomorrow, oddly enough.

To mark the occasion, here are five brilliant Joey-penned songs that often get overlooked.

1. I Remember You



I’ve been kinda obsessing over this song recently – it’s never quite hit me in the past for whatever reason, but I think it’s one of the absolute highlights of ‘..Leave Home’. It’s got that kind of beautiful, doomed midtempo feeling, like you hear in the tougher live versions of ‘Here Tomorrow, Gone Tomorrow’ from this period, or of course on ‘I Just Wanna Have Something To Do’ a few years later – moments when Joey’s heartbreak and Johnny’s metallic riffage seem to be working in complete unison to take pop to sad, dark places. Joey’s vocal delivery on this track is absolutely stunning.

2. Babysitter



Another recent obsession. WHAT A SONG! I want to start a band that just plays this one song, over and over again until they’re forced to leave the stage. It’s perfect. Imagine a band so good that they deem this an outtake. Live versions are even better, but I can’t find any on youtube.

3. 7/11



I was gonna say ‘everybody knows I love this song’, but obviously they don’t – I’m talking to fucking strangers on the internet, why would they? I’ve played this my myself on the guiter for years and have tried to record it two or three times but never quite done one I’m happy with. A bit of an overcooked example of a crushing teenage heartbreak song some might say, but it makes me cry frequently enough.

4. She Talks To Rainbows



It has long been my belief that if you compiled all of the sporadic really good tracks The Ramones recorded in their lacklustre post-‘Too Tough To Die’ years, you’d have one of the best rock n’ roll records of all time. This would be on it, of course. Written by Joey for Ronnie Spector, I believe.

5. I Want You Around



What can I possibly say that this clip doesn’t?

When we listen to the Ramones, we are all Riff Randell.

Let's raise a glass tonight to the coolest guy who ever lived.

Labels: anniversaries, deathblog, The Ramones

The Zygoteens –
Sleeping With the Stereo On EP
(Timme Heie Humme)

Four cuts of absolutely perfect pocket-rocket pop-punk/power-pop blastage from these fresh young fellas outta… I dunno.. some place in Germany? Nope, Milwaukee apparently.

Equal parts Look-Out Recs (fizz and easy melody), Exploding Hearts (heart-on-sleeve confessional oomph, Heartbreakers boogie) and Supersuckers/Teengenerate/early Hives etc etc(velocity / plain-fuckin’-GOINGFORIT-ness), it sounds like maybe they recorded this cheaply and turned in a master with all the levels pushed up too high, prompting some snotty functionary at some stage in the production process to cut all the tops and bottoms off, leaving things sounding all muffled and flubby where they should be comin’ on all “Guitar Romantic”/”Jet Generation”.

But you can’t stop the rock so the light shines through! “WE WERE CHEWING BUBBBLEGUM / AND ACTIN’ REALLY DUMB,” Zygoteens yell through the murk on “Sleeping With The Stereo On”, and you’ll be hard pressed not to answer with a fist-raised “YEAH!”. Funny how as a concept/substance, actual bubblegum is about the foulest thing I can imagine, but when used as a signifier of a certain set of aesthetic values in pop records, it never fails. Plus I just read the lyrics sheet and the last line of that song (as in, repeat ‘til close) is “Living in a world of pizza tonight”. Word.

I hope the time never comes when I don’t love stuff like this. However many records that sound like this I might own, it will never be enough. I will always want to listen to another one straight away. Great full colour cartoon artwork here too, nice thick vinyl, limited to 400 if yr into that sort of thing.

Damned if I can think of what else to say here, except that it is difficult to sit still in front of the computer whilst this music is playing… instead it is calling upon me to leap up and see how long you can touch the ceiling for, to pound on the walls, try to do a backflip for the first time in fifteen years and see how that ends up (ouch). This music does not allow for inaction, damn it! Get up! Review ends here.

http://www.myspace.com/thezygoteens
http://www.myspace.com/timmeheiehummerrecords

Labels: singles reviews, The Zygoteens

Great Garage-Rock Ranting Song of the Week # 4


The Angels – Get Away From Me

“Oh what’s the matter Jim, can’t you take a little hint
Can’t you see you’re buggin’ me?
Well my lovin’ got a price
Get outta my life
Get away from me… baby!”

A super-rare example of female garage-ranting. Fantastic wise-ass gang-girl vocal delivery!

Available on:

Girls With Guitars (Ace Records).

Labels: Girls With Guitars, Great Garage Rock Ranting Songs, The Angels

The Last Days of The Last Days of Man on Earth.

I mean, where else on the internet are we gonna go to find pictures of Pittsburgh band
Real Enemy drinking beer outside a grocery store in 1983…?

Bit late posting about this, but I was sad to discover this week that one of my favourite music weblogs, Joe Stumble’s Last Days of Man on Earth, has decided to call it a day.

To rehash what I said in the comments on his goodbye post, ‘Last Days’ has pointed me in the direction of a vast amount of good stuff over the past few years, be it punk, hardcore, new wave, early hip-hop or miscellaneous art-rock weirdness, and I’ll really miss it.

As well as the music, I’ll particularly miss Joe S’s sharp commentary, assorted historical delving and scene-setting etc. It seems like my favourite music blogs are dropping like flies and the moment, and with so many others around that just throw up a mediafire link, say “yea, cool shit, check it out” and call it a day or else just recycle press releases, decent writing, opinions and compiling of info on marginal music like this is always, always, always appreciated.

So if anyone knows any sites I might be missing out on that broadly cover the various kinds of music I like mouthing off about here (or not) and feature actual content rather than just functioning as glorified press services for careerist indie PR crap… well now’s the time to point me in the right direction.

Sorry, that got a bit ranty, didn't it? Apologies.

Anyway, if you like music and cool stuff from the punk/new wave era, I recommend hitting the archives of ‘Last Days..’ and filling your cup whilst the site is still functioning.

Labels: bad news, punk, ranting

Black Sunday –
Can’t Keep My Hands Off You b/w Lights
(Red Lounge/Disordered)

Y’know who are a really under-rated band from the past decade or so? Black Sunday, a Memphis band led by singer/synth player Alicja Trout. Admittedly, their 2005 magnum opus “Tronic Blanc” has a few things going against it: drab cover art that makes it look like some out-dated post-hardcore/emo effort, a slightly testing 45 minute run time and an opening cut of bilious shoegaze fartery. But stick with it and one of the more varied, atmospheric and inventive artefacts to have crawled from the indie/punk-ish undergrowth in recent years will surely be revealed.

Alicja was in Lost Sounds with Jay Reatard back in the day, a circumstance which seems to have gained her a foothold in the garage-punk milieu, despite Black Sunday working from a different blueprint entirely (although the continuity with Lost Sounds’ violent synth-rock/garage-trash crossover thing is certainly maintained). Let’s see now… we’re looking at something like cold wave/minimal synth kinda stuff, stripped of the accompanying aesthetic attitude and mixed up in variable quantities with bits of basement scuzz excavation and ol’ fashioned, upbeat KRS/K indie, perhaps..? I dunno. Her/their sound hits a lot of bases, but there’s little that ends up in quite the same place.

I don’t know what Black Sunday’s set-up is/was, or indeed whether this is really a Black Sunday single or an Alicja Trout solo joint, or quite what the difference between the two propositions might be, but I can at least assert that both sides here find her/them in good spirits, stretching the 3/4 minuters that comprised “Tronic Blanc” out a bit, letting each song luxuriate across a whole seven inches of of 33 playing vinyl. This single also cleans up the album’s grue to a significant extent, pushing guitars and distortion into strictly cameo roles, instead favouring cleaner, more repetitive synth-lines and simple drum loops, shifting toward a recognisable electro-pop kinda sound.

B side “Lights” would have been a real stand-out on the album, a convincingly catchy wavo power-pop number enlivened by some unexpectedly great lead guitar playing, but “I Can’t Keep My Hands off You” is longer, sweeter and even better; ascending synth patterns and a lovely melody over propulsive drum machine… I could almost imagine the twee-pop mob going for this, although the six note chorus refrain has a gloriously sinister edge to it, repeating through a lengthy closing segment that almost veers into Broadcast/United States of America territory. Quite a long track, as mentioned, but really, it could have been three times as long and still not lost my interest for a second. A real keeper.

I like the earlier/scrappier stuff fine, but I like this better. Listening to this single sorta makes it feel like the album, interesting/enjoyable though it is, was merely the middle ground between the bombastic sturm-und-drang of Lost Sounds and the more refined, more fully realised sound that’s finally making it’s way into the light here. To hear a full LP of this would be a fine thing indeed.

http://www.myspace.com/blacksundaymemphis
http://redloungerecords.com/

Labels: Black Sunday, singles reviews

Fungi Girls –
Owlsey Knows b/w Glare # 2
(Group Tightener)

The second single I’ve acquired from this canny Texas group, who seem to have found a happy place anchoring themselves to the notion of not doing anything new exactly, but studying the old stuff harder than anyone else, thus emerging fresh by default. If ya see what I mean.

Moving away from the Flying Nun echoes of their Hozac single, this disc finds them closer to home geographically if not temporally, engaged in a thorough excavation of the International Artists back catalogue. Harnessing the reassuringly ‘off’ sound of ’66-’68 Texan psychedelia, Fungi Girls undertake their borderline historical re-enactment with a bright-eyed panache so distant from the drug-mashed stumble of this music’s original practitioners that it sounds kinda refreshing, and inviting. Like, bands making this kind of music aren’t supposed to play together exactly on the beat, maintain a jaunty, upbeat pace throughout and put in the studio hours necessary to get a really lovely mix of complementary instrumental tones, y’know… but wouldn’t it be nice if they did?

Clearly, a preppy, cleaned up take on first album 13th Floor Elevators sounds like a hideously redundant notion whichever way you squint at it, but, well, what can I say? A band who christen their A-side in tribute to the recently departed Mr. Owsley obviously feel no shame in their retrogressive agenda, and nor should they - like that first Strange Boys record, Fungi Girls do the still-sounds-good-to-me thing with enough grace and vibrancy to really send ya, so to speak, zeroing in on that strange moment where a crisp, surf-rock rhythm section meets post-Byrds electric guitar, early whiffs of drug-fiend hipster consciousness creeping in via stinging bolts of weird tremolo and mumblin’, brain-blown lyricism… summer’s coming on and it still sounds good to me.

http://www.myspace.com/fungigirls
http://grouptightener.tumblr.com/

Labels: Fungi Girls, singles reviews, Texas

Great Garage-Rock Ranting Song of the Week # 3



The Standells – Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White

“You think those guys in white collars are better than I am, baby? Then FLAKE OFF!
You don’t dig this long hair? Get yourself a crew-cut darlin’!
Yeah… I mean what I say!”

Utter classic.

Available on:

Nuggets box set
Dirty Water LP
Probably a bunch of other records

Labels: Great Garage Rock Ranting Songs, The Standells