New Stuff Round-Up March:
Night People / Australasia Special.

A lot of my musical discovering this month has taken place via the auspices of a (legally) downloaded compilation tape put out by the Iowa based Night People label. Probably best-known at this stage for releasing the first few Peaking Lights records, they’ve also knocked out a herculean number of low-numbered tape releases over the past couple of years, featuring an applaudably wide stylistic/geographical spread of under-the-radar groups.

Reeling in what I assume to be one track a piece from each band/artist associated with the label, NP’s ‘Dada Damage’ comp is a mixed bag for sure, opening with a whole bunch of songs I’m not that bothered about (‘god-help-us-if-there’s-a-war’ style wimpy electro-pop, dead-eyed ‘80s fancy dress, etc) and closing with a whole bunch of songs I’m not too bothered about (murky ‘triangle time’ hyponogogery of an unappealing hue, etc). Wedged in the middle though is a solid kernel of utter greatness, ready for the intrepid explorer to seize and make off with, pursued by rolling boulders and angry, keytar-wielding natives.

That said kernel intersects almost exactly with the point at which the Night People roster verges onto recognisable indieish-rock with guitars and live drums is, I would like to think, mere coincidence, and has nothing whatsoever to do with my own prejudices and hardwired cultural expectations. I mean, that would just be silly, right? Clearly the rockier stuff on here is just objectively better. If we were still living in the glory days when up & coming independent labels could conceivably have staff and resources, I’d picture a bunch of genre-specialist A&R people sitting in Night People’s swanky offices, with the indie-rock guy just totally wired all day, MAKIN’ IT HAPPEN, whilst the others slouch around half-asleep. More likely, Night People is just one guy in a college dorm or something, but who knows, maybe his/her brain is stratified in equivalent fashion?

Anyway, enough of that. This Night People comp has introduced me to more solid stuff than any label sampler in recent memory, rendering blog snark and obtuse speculation as to the compiler’s psychological make-up wholly unnecessary.

It’s also interesting to note that, despite NP being US based, ALL of my favourite tracks on the tape originate from Australia or New Zealand. It’s not my place to speculate on who made the connection, but it sounds like it’s working out pretty damn well for both continents. Good work, Night Peoples!



First up, Wellington, NZs Terror Of The Deep verily knocked me out with their ‘I Am Ocean’, a real dose of what passes for that ol’ time religion for us frail slobs raised on K Recs and Sonic Youth. Sounding not unlike a happy, upbeat version of The Embarrassment, or a slightly less ethereal early Chills track, it carries that same unquenchable optimism that propelled the latter to great heights. The rush of a new, creative band simply *happening*, the kind of indie-rock that makes you temporarily forget what a festering cesspool indie rock is and just smile in fleeting amazement. A smashing tune.

There is definitely a Flaming Lips comparison to be made vis-à-vis Terror Of The Deep’s capacity for being earnest without sucking – the hardest game in town just at the moment I feel. Investigating further via their Bandcamp, they do sadly fall victim to the usual pitfalls of earnestness – long songs, under-developed rhythms, over-developed sleeve notes. But the unflappable NZ demeanour and Chillsian shine often sees ‘em through, and when the singer exclaims “ I believe in time travel!” on ‘Here and Now’, it almost cuts through my cynicism. Almost. My patronising talent show advice: there’s something good transpiring here, but you need to edit and compress the material fellas – edit and compress, and give the drummer something to work with while yr at it.





Even better, ‘Footscray Station’ by the curiously named Scott & Charlene’s Wedding will knock your fucking socks off if you feel any kinship at all with the mighty, bedraggled rust-belt blues embodied by Dead Moon’s ballads, Cheater Slicks circa ‘Forgive Thee’ or any gang of stranded mechanics who’ve ever assembled in a shed to distil ‘Tonight’s The Night’/’Darkness on the Edge of Town’ grandeur into a bullshit-free nugget or two of overdriven blurt that’s never going to get anywhere near a radio, even if it sounds like it was composed and performed in close proximity to one... if you get my drift. Rock n’ roll always has this great capacity for taking someone’s howl of complaint at being in a place they don’t want to be and spinning it out into a kind of transcendence that we who are in the place we wanna be can scarcely even imagine. And that’s what’s happening here.

A self-described artist/musician based somewhere between Adelaide, New York and Melbourne, I’d take main guy Craig Dermody’s lyrical declaration that he’s “still drivin’ trucks” with a pinch of salt, but that he’s “makin’ no bucks” would sadly seem like a given. The Scott & Charlene’s Wedding LP ‘Para Vista Social Club’ – an excellent, if slightly overwhelming, listen throughout – was released in a long sold-out run of 200 copies, each housed in a one-off charity shop sleeve, modified by Dermody with images of witches, monsters and other such paraphernalia. Wrecking a copy of ‘Liege and Lief’ seems a bit beyond the call of duty, but nonetheless, the results look amazing – check ‘em out - and if you only hit one button today, make it 'play' on the track below.




‘I Don’t Care To Try’ by Melbourne’s Mole House is another ‘Dada Damage’ highlight, bringing some heavy Messthetics vibes with its searching bass, hesitant guitar and a drummer who completely fails to find a rhythm. All anchored by the male vocalist’s plaintive croon, it sounds kind of like an early line-up of The Go-Betweens playing whilst under the influence of heavy sedatives. Works for me! In fact if more of the things that get labelled ‘indie-pop’ incorporated the kind of right wrong directions taken in the second half of this song, I’d be a happy man.

The songs on their bandcamp (not including the one on the tape, sadly) are even more wrecked, verging on complete loss-of-all-motor-functions un-musical disintegration in places, but are all the better for it in a weird sort of way – as intricate and inexplicably charming as a band called ‘Mole House’ rightly should be, like three creatures slowly building a new language from scratch so that they can communicate their love for each other.



Check it out, Mole House in action!




Even more fantastically wonky, home-recorded guitar pop comes next, from Adelaide’s Peak Twins. Their passive-aggressive ‘Your Love’ kinda sounds like I always hoped Sebadoh might sound, before I actually heard them. Even more pleasingly (to me at least), many of the songs on their Bandcamp branch out further, taking a winningly psychedelic direction, with neat vocal harmonies and a great, low-key reverb-loaded production, emerging with something not unlike The Beets pretending to be The Brian Jonestown Massacre (christ, there’s a thought for you).

Such alarming notions aside, songs like ‘Waiting Room’ and ‘Sylvias’ are genuinely magnificent efforts; melancholy, slurred bits of crystalline bother that - like all the groups I’ve written up in this post, actually – evoke a kind of clear-eyed purpose and skyscraping scope that raises them above and beyond the kind of aimless, self-absorbed moping that the surface signifiers of this-kinda-thing would tend to imply. Brilliant cover of ‘Needles & Pins’ too. Really special.



And there’s plentiful non-Australasian good stuff on the tape too of course: Lantern’s beautiful hypnotic guitar strum/drone thing, Sore Eros soundin’ a lot better than they did on that Hozac 7” I reviewed a while back, China's Xaio Hong & Xaio Xaio Hong creeping around all abstract and unnerving, and a better class of hyponogogical ‘80s dress-up altogether from Featureless Ghost. Happy days.

Info on all Night People releases and a free download of the ‘Dada Damage’ tape can be found here:

http://raccoo-oo-oon.org/np/

Labels: Australia, Mole House, New Zealand, Night People label, Peak Twins, Scott and Charlene's Wedding, Terror of the Deep

300ft GOLD LEE BRILLEAUX.

In 1994, Dr. Feelgood singer Lee Brilleaux died at the tragically premature age of forty two.

In 2012, Scott King, a local artist in Brilleaux’s hometown of Southend-on-Sea, has started a campaign to get a statue of him erected on the town’s sea-front.

Evidently not a man lacking for ambition, King proposes that the statue should be 300 feet tall and gold-plated.

To put it into perspective, that’s twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty, almost twice the height of Nelson’s Column, or about one third of an Eiffel Tower.

Here is a picture of Lee Brilleaux:


300 feet tall.

Gold-plated.

Southend-on-Sea.

Here is a link to the petition:
http://focalpoint.org.uk/e-petition/

I think you know what to do, readers.

***

Whilst we’re on the subject, it seems that the Dr. Feelgood revival partially instigated by the documentary about them that came out a few years back has really been picking up steam lately. Having encountered nary a positive word about them in all the years I’ve been reading the music press and listening to the radio, it suddenly seems like their name is being dropped in reverent tones all over the place. (I don’t doubt anyone’s sincerity in the matter, but it’s funny how that process works, isn’t it?)

I feel a bit cheapened having to admit the fact that the band’s work has only really come to my attention now that it’s officially hip to like them, but that’s not going to stop me jumping on board this revival and riding it as far as it’ll go, just because, well… merciful heavens, these guys take care of business so well they should’ve been running the Department of Trade & Industry;

Labels: Dr Feelgood, Lee Brilleaux, public statuary

MONSTER MOVIE.

Back when I was busy ingesting Can’s discography for the first time (and I’m still eternally grateful to the chap from Brighton who sent me CD-R copies of the whole lot with wonderful cartoons of the band members scribbled on the paper sleeves, back when I was on the dole with a dial up modem and hungering for some good psyche, in the days before such things could be acquired in seconds), received wisdom told me that ‘Monster Movie’ was a formative work, a mere warm up for the definitive, academically-certified good stuff the band were to embark upon when they got Suzuki in the band and hit Wire-reader paydirt from Tago Mago onwards.

Listening again today though with my own ears, it seems patently obvious that ‘Monster Movie’ is about the best thing they ever did.

If they’d had the foresight to wait a year or so and whack ‘Mother Sky’ on the end after they recorded it for Skolimowski’s ‘Deep End’, I think we could’ve been looking at a ABSOLUTE, DEFINITIVE A+ GRADE TIMELESS/ENDLESS/NAMELESS MINDBLOWER of an LP, or whathaveyou, here.

In support of my claim, I point to the following:

1. It’s called ‘Monster Movie’. And if you don’t think that’s a better name for a thing than ‘Ege Bamyasi’, I’m afraid you suck.

2. It’s got THAT THING on the cover. (See point # 1 for aesthetic compare/contrast).

3. Every single minute of it is completely fantastic. Yeah, I know: it’s a classic era Can album, but it doesn’t hurt to restate the obvious.

4. MALCOLM MOONEY! Nothing against Damo, but someone needs to write a freakin’ BOOK about how great and relatively overlooked Malcolm Mooney’s contributions to the Can-on are/were.

5. Numbers #3 through about #8 or something of the Best Michael Karoli Guitar Moments Ever. Damn me as a rockist ‘til you run out of breath and die, but his fuzz-tone on ‘Father Cannot Yell’ alone means more to me than the 26 times I’ve “hmm.. maybe I’ll like it better time round”d my way through ‘Soon Over Babaluma’. (#1 – entirety of ‘Mother Sky’, #2 – pedal drop on ‘20th Century Man’, by the way).

6. I guess maybe the full uniqueness of Jaki Liebezeit’s drum style hadn’t quite clicked by this point, but he’s still pretty bloody good, and there’s more to life than unique drum styles for chrissake. Gimme this much awesome fuzz guitar and Malcolm Mooney doing his nut, and they could’ve just hired some guy to beat his fists against a treetrunk for all I care.

7. You know, I don’t think I can hear a single thing Irmin Schmidt does on this whole record, aside from those heavy tremolo key-drone bits that open ‘Father..’ and close ‘Yoo Doo Right’. He’s by far my least favourite member of Can, so I’m actually kinda ok with that. Maybe they turned his amp down and just told him he was coming through just fiiine. (I sort of have the preconceived idea - partially inspired by aforementioned CD-R sleeve cartoons, and partially by that absolutely preposterous TV footage of him in the Can DVD - that Schimdt was some kind of pompous, ugly jerk who the others all sniggered at behind his back and played pranks on as he determinedly banged out his sweaty keyboard epiphanies. I know that’s deeply unfair, so if anyone’s got any pro-Schmidt diatribes to offer, or extensive recommendations from his side project/ solo work etc, go on and hit me – comments box below.)

8. Hmm.. those last two points weren’t so much glowing testaments to ‘Monster Movie’s unquestionable supremacy really, were they..? Time to wrap it up I think.

9. DREAM NEVER TO BE REALISED: one day I’m going to karaoke the fuck out of ‘Yoo Doo Right’.

10. I’m sorry if this post means nothing to you. Hopefully it at least contains enough strange and exotic word-clusters to keep you entertained for a moment or two. I do have a few better/longer/proper posts half-written, so just hold on, it’s coming.

Labels: Can, old music

How To Be a Rock Band, with Mick Farren & The Deviants, Hyde Park 1969.

Y’know, casual misogyny aside (oh Mick, you freakin’ dimwit), this is pretty much what I want to see/hear on any given occasion, right?

It’s like that 1970 footage of the MC5, forcibly boiled down to the level of blithering, sub-human caveman dementia. Utter fucking ruination of civilised ideals, channeled through a bunch of Ladbroke Grove drop-outs, a primitive fuzzbox and amp stacks that probably weigh more than their entire home & possessions.

For most of it, they seem to have forgotten what language is, never mind ‘notes’.

So beautiful it makes me weep.

Look out for the Paul Bartel-meets-Ming The Merciless, ‘I’m the critic from the Evening Standard’ guy towards the end of the first video, appearing unmoved.

If you like this, well… god help you, but maybe you’d enjoy my biker rock comp.

Labels: 1960s, fuzz is all, punk rock, The Deviants, UG enthroned, videos

Deathblog:
The Montague Arms

Extremely sad news this week about the closure of The Montague Arms in New Cross, following the deaths late last year of Stan and Bet Pownall, who had been co-managing the pub and serving behind the bar since 1967.

Admittedly, this will probably be of limited interest to readers outside South-East London, but the Montague was a unique and frequently wonderful place that I think deserves some sort of tribute here in view of its position as, at its best, about the finest drinking/music establishment I could possibly have imagined.

It was one of the first places I found myself visiting when I was first thinking of moving to London about six or seven years ago, and it’s fair to say I was pretty blown away. Beyond an exterior which frtankly looked pretty unpromising, I found myself in a room that was as much like some idiosyncratic folk museum as a bar, full of looming stuffed animal heads, antique diving apparatus and a full-size Victorian hansom carriage driven by a zebra – all clearly genuine, and clearly acquired long before lesser pubs started routinely adding such ‘quirky’ paraphernalia in a doomed attempt to create character.

The beer was great, and pleasantly affordable, and served by a white-haired gent with a set of droopy dog braces to die for*, who honestly seemed like the friendliest man in the world. The elderly staff and regulars (all depicted in a collection of mystifying, in-joke filled cartoons framed above the bar) seemed to be getting along splendidly with the assorted punks and art student-y types also in attendance, whilst on the stage at one end of the room, a bunch of ropey bands who all sounded a bit like Liars (this was what, around 2005-ish?) belted out their stuff at excruciating volume which somehow didn’t compromise anyone’s ability to hold audible, indoor voice conversations at the other, non-music end of the bar.

I don’t know quite what anyone else’s idea of a perfect night down the pub might be, but that one did quite nicely for me I think.

The most memorable band I ever saw play there was of course the legendary house band, comprising Pete the aforementioned barman on drums and a friend of his on the organ, performing some of the most extraordinary renditions of ‘60s pop hits I’ve heard in my life (imagine two OAPs trying to recreate the bombast of the E Street Band, to give you some idea). I remember going down there for a quiet drink with a friend once, seeing the previously empty pub suddenly full of dancing couples as the two of them wandered on stage and struck up ‘Daydream Believer’ – a beautiful moment, and it brings tears to my eyes just thinking that it will never happen again.

Apparently they put out a couple of LPs in the early ‘70s, under the name The Two Petes – I’d genuinely love to hear them.

In 2009/2010-ish, I spent a year living just down the road from the Montague, and whilst variable opening hours and entry fees for gigs sometimes made it a difficult prospect for a casual beer, the stars did align often enough for me to enjoy a few more great nights there. A lot of pubs put great emphasis on being ‘welcoming’, and most get about halfway, but how many places are there that you could wander down to on your own on a random night, have a few drinks and a chat with whoever’s around, and enjoy a wildly divergent selection of musical acts (I caught nights of stoner rock, skronky avant-jazz and electro-whatever type pop during my infrequent visits, as well as actually playing there once in my own all-too-divergent combo), all whilst feeling completely comfortable and among friends?

I didn’t get a chance to visit much after I moved to the other end of Lewisham Way in 2010, but now it feels like a real privilege to have been able to spend some time at the Montague, and I wish I’d made the effort a bit more often. I’m very sad to see it go.

Plenty of further info, photos and memories over at Transpontine, who have also put together this quick tribute video, featuring The Two Petes performing an utterly astounding take on ‘Macarthur Park’;

*By which I mean actual braces, with the character Droopy the Dog on them, not some kind of weirdness you might be about to look up on urban dictionary…

Labels: bad news, deathblog, The Montague Arms, The Two Petes, venue talk