40. Myelin Sheaths – Get On Your Nerves (South-Paw)

Half an hour’s worth of impossible row from these Canadian ne’erdowells, and it does me does me just fine thanks. Earlier this year I said of one of their singles:

“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.”

And much the same applies here, stretched across a longer duration. Sloppy, practice room recording quality is pushed through compression and EQ until it emerges bulbous and misshapen. Song-writing mopes across an axis garage-dumb and Ramonoid, but with a nuanced execution betrays background in canonical indie-rock and jangle, however much off-hand slobbishness they might try to obliterate it with.
Endearingly, an inexplicable obsession with medical/scientific themes seems to run through this groups work, and hits here include “What’s Your Diagnosis?”, “Everything is Contagious”, “Gloves”, “Blood Loss” and “Large Hadron Collider”. They are all pop songs, and many feature the title being yelled on the chorus. Lazy, noisy, excitable, pointless, scary, happy: kids will be kids, and I’m damn glad of that.

Mp3> What’s Your Diagnosis?


39. Cheap Time – Fantastic Explanations (and Similar Situations) (In The Red)

Ah, poor old Cheap Time. Their debut album found itself lurking about in the low 30s of my 2008 end-of-year list, but in retrospect I shoulda put it a LOT higher, cos it’s great! Now here they come with album #2 then, and whatayouknow, they’re still in the low ‘30s. Go figure. Just one of those pesky situations where a second album sees a group ‘developing’ too fast and in a not entirely painless direction, sprouting questionable new bits as their nascent audience (eg, me) looks on appalled.

As Jeffrey Novak and co have started to spread out and claim a bit of leg room beyond the realm of tightly-wound punk-pop, their song-writing has started to reveal a strong anglophile bent that would seem pretty peculiar for a group from Tennessee, were it not for the British Invasion-addled legacy of Big Star and their various satellites. Not that there’s much Beatles/Stones sugar to be found in Cheap time’s muse mind you – they’re pulling heavily toward a slightly darker, weirder strain of Britishness here, specifically the kind of stompy, sing-songy, cynical, working class pop that formed the flip-side of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s psyche-into-prog trajectory. Y’know what I mean – we’re talking The Faces, The Move, Victoria-era Kinks, early Slade, Hammersmith Gorillas, that whole deal.

Nothing wrong with that of course – it’s a strange and slightly audacious change of pace for a modern American band to say the least, and indeed there’s a lot of good stuff on this LP – the winning melody and bizarre processed guitar freakout on “Showboat”, the vengeful Crimson King stomp of “Miss Apparent”, “June Child” doing the business like an early Dave Davies solo tune – all great fun. But there’s also something distinctly unappealing about the record as a whole that stops me getting into it much despite its abundant musical strengths; some spiteful, fuck-you feeling running through the whole thing. Chilton without the charm, maybe.

As on their first record, the lyrics seem to take a default position of vague, sneering attacks against persons unknown, but while that approach worked great for ninety second punk blasts, it can’t help but sit uneasily in combination with the more jovial, more complex music found here. Novak’s leery, nasal delivery scarcely helps matters either, often making it sound as if the group worked for a week on each tune, then bleated out a buncha vocal tracks in a drunken one hour session and called it a day.

Weirdly, “Fantastic Explanations..” reminds me more than anything of what Supergrass might have sounded like on their first album, if they’d been a buncha really nasty guys who didn’t give a shit whether anyone liked them or not. Which is ironic, cos thinking about it I reckon it was a excess of easy-going niceness that put a pretty swift end to the creative shalf-life of Gaz and the boys. Maybe Cheap Time know something we don’t, but there’s gotta be a happy medium, surely. Hopefully on their next outing they might find it…

Mp3> June Child


38. Fursaxa – Mycorrhizae Realm (ATP)

Tara Burke’s umpteenth album as Fursaxa, and I dunno if anyone else is still interested, but personally I reckon this is one of her best. Largely dispensing with the wheezing harmonium drones and medievalist pretension that sometimes made her stuff a bit gruelling in the past, “Mycorrhizae..” takes a somewhat prettier, more easy-going route through the Fursaxa homeland, with fine and thoroughly psychedelic results, somewhat akin to the cosmic sprawl of her Kawabata Makoto-produced “Mandrake” from way back when.

Almost every track here begins by matching a slow, distantly familiar folk melody to a background of shimmering, insect swarm drone, adds some Burke’s most comfortable and conventionally pleasant singing to date, and gradually bulks up through such familiar devices as hippie bell tinkling, creepo organ sustain, sinister low-end vocals chants and miscellaneous owl clatter, together with some really nice cello, proceeding with admirable clarity of purpose toward a great, big, enveloping blanket of a sound.

“Poplar Moon” and “Wall of Tuhala” in particular seem to carry heavy echoes of Lubos Fiser’s soundtrack for the classic Czech mystic-vampire-fairytale movie “Valerie & Her Week of Wonders”, perhaps reflecting Burke’s involvement in the ‘Valerie Project’ (a recent endeavour that saw a who’s-who of Philly/Baltimore psyche/folk types recording new music inspired by said film), and aesthetically speaking that should give you a pretty good idea of where this record is looking to take you.

A ruined chapel or standing stone, alone in a shallow valley with hills rising the horizon; mid-summer heat and bright sun shining through brambles. Long, long grass, weeds, unseasonable berries and nature running wild. Fuzzy technicolor making everything look dreamy. Heavy dragonflies bobbing around in the haze as a shining stream gurgles by. Or, alternatively: mystical plant-god interlude from a Studio Ghibli film. If that’s where you’re heading at the moment, this is the bus to catch! There has been an awful lot of shitty “psychedelic folk” music recorded in the past few years, but this one is a keeper, I feel.

Mp3> Poplar Moon


37. The Human Race – Duality 3” CD
(Savoury Days)

"CAGE FIGHTER, FRANKENSTEIN! CAGE FIGHTER, FRANKENSTEIN!” Ah, yeah. I knew as soon as I hit play on their myspace that embittered dole queue thugs with a heavy dose of Swell Maps in their DNA were the band for me, even if about half of their songs are completely terrible. Scrappy and eccentric and off-the-freakin’-wall enough to fit perfectly onto one of those Messthetics compilations, except that their track would probably turn up drunk and try to punch a Door & The Window b-side in the face, this is the kind of smart/stupid, junk/genius homemade punk rock that will always get the red carpet treatment round here. Trends may come and go, but you can’t keep a bunch of angry men with no money, too much spare time and a sense of despairing, comedic confusion from doing what they do best. “Bruises on your face/ bruise on your chin / bruises on your arm / pint of gin!” Exactly.

Mp3> Cage Fighter









36. The Moonhearts – s/t (Tic Tac Totally)

When particularly bored cultural historians come to look back on the lo-fi/garage/blah boom of the late ‘00s, they could do worse than point interested parties in the direction of this platter for a nigh-on definitive example of the form.

A punk rock rhythm section thunders away competently enough, almost eclipsed by obnoxiously-high-in-the-mix guitar, sounding like it’s being slopped through about ten Danelectro mini-pedals into a cheap, one-piece Marshall amp. There are surfy twang bits, and garage poundy bits and hardcore riffy bits, all fused into a sorta all-purpose basement/house party goo. There are vocals in there somewhere as tradition demands, even some inevitable shots at Beach Boys-y harmonies, helping to formalise some vague sense of ‘pop’ that would otherwise be lost in the blare, but the guy might as well be singing ingredients lists off beer cans for all the impression these songs make. Every two or three minutes, they stop, and start again with some slightly different chords. Reverb is ridiculous throughout.

Many people will consider this pretty bad music – dumb, head-ache inducing thunk, devoid of finesse, character or purpose. But that’s why I love it, y’know. It’s senselessly loud and chaotic and it’s got a real violent kick to it, the way this stuff has in various reiterations in 1957, 1967, 1977, 1987, 1997. And it’s alright now, in fact it’s a gas. It holds the centre and soundtracks walks across town and drunken, undistinguished evenings while some other asshole is off trying to make “Forever Changes” and failing. Rock n’ roll, no more no less. It’ll do nicely. The instrumental cut “Death Star Pt.I” and the Monkees rippin’ “Love Is Gone” are my favourites, and I like the nod to The Gun Club’s “Miami” on the cover art too.

Mp3> I Said

Labels: best of 2010, Cheap Time, Fursaxa, Moonhearts, Myelin Sheaths, The Human Race

Cheap Time / Bad Sports – split 7” (Scion A/V)

The last Cheap Time single I picked up was sounding a little ropey, and Jeffrey Novak’s solo album was a flat out nightmare, so it’s reassuring to hear CT returning here to the straight up blast of their self-titled record with “Proper Introductions (Running Nowhere)”, two minutes and forty four delightful seconds of sneering, ribald Chilton-esque pop about how unexpectedly running into old acquaintances at the supermarket really sucks. It’s great. A post on Raven Sings The Blues today informs me that a press release for Cheap Time’s second LP promises it “..will surely surprise, divide and leave fans scratching their heads as to where Cheap Time will go next!" Hmm, we’ll see how that works out.

Bad Sports of Denton, TX are a new one on me, but they too really do the business with a thoroughly swell bit of lean, muscular power-pop. Production is loud and rough, as it should be, but both song-writing and playing suggest so much hard graft it’s almost uncool. I mean, they even break the three minute barrier. RIYL The Nerves EP, The Last, Buzzcocks, Zeros. Also recommended if you’ve never heard of any of that crap, and just want a really cool rock song to blast when you’re cruising around with the car windows down. Which I suppose would mean you’d have to install a turntable in your car, but I THINK YOU SHOULD DO THAT. Or just buy the mp3s like I did and burn them on a CD. Cos face it, that Blue Oyster Cult tape in the glove compartment is getting you no action whatsoever – give it to me, and get this.

Oddly, talk of vinyl in the above paragraph is probably slightly off the mark, because although it does exist, this single is put out principally via digital means by some weird internet company whose website plays wanky car advert electronica at you incessantly. “Scion continues to promote the finest in emerging music talent by partnering with today's most progressive artists and labels on its Garage 7-inch series to produce exclusive music”, they say. “Pick up a copy on vinyl at your local Scion event or listen now right here!!”

They’ve done stuff with The Oblivians, Jacuzzi Boys, Dirtbombs, Pierced Arrows et al and they even do an annual festival in Lawrence, Kansas, but I mean, HUH? Vague, corporate-voiced online media companies? Garage-punk? It all makes me rather apprehensive.

http://www.myspace.com/cheaptime
http://www.myspace.com/badsportsband
http://www.scionav.com/index.html

Labels: Bad Sports, Cheap Time, singles reviews

Summer Singles, part # 1

Boy, oh boy – what a fine haul of singles I’ve accumulated recently! For the first time, a couple of the items that follow are downloads/digital singles, but the majority are still ones I’ve got on plastic.

Cheap Time – Woodland Drive b/w Penny & Jenny (In The Red)

You may recall that I ranked Cheap Time’s debut album, like, 29th or something in my run-down of 2008 albums, but it retrospect it definitely deserved to place higher. It’s been growing on me ever since – a 0 to 60 masterclass in raucous, spiked power-pop. By contrast, “ After the Ball”, this year’s solo album by band leader Jeffrey Novak, won’t be making it anywhere near my 2009 best of list, for the simple reason that it’s quite horrible – a shrieking, hectoring mess of galumphing, harpsicord-addled Brit-psych whimsy, but one entirely devoid of the charm, tunes and wit that still keep us tuned to obvious inspirations such as messrs Ayers, Wood, Davies, Stanshall, Innes etc. forty years after the fact.

So, a potentially salty character, this Mr. Novak. And in view of the above, where exactly is this new batch of Cheap Time material throwing down? Answer, unsurprisingly, is somewhere between the two known poles of the Novak temperament. The strutting punk momentum and insensible racket of the CT album is present and correct, as is that record’s brevity (both songs are, like, seventy seconds or something), but here it finds itself combined with a strutting, stop/start theatricality and a faintly unhealthy ‘nightmare nursery rhyme’ approach to melody, particularly on ‘Penny & Jenny’, which starts off sounding almost like a lost Jennifer Gentle song, but swiftly sours our initial enthusiasm, bounding heedlessly into the arena of the irritating. ‘Woodland Drive’ fares better, a pacy ol’ mod stomper. Splitting the difference, let us conclude that Cheap Time 2009 = Todd Rundgren on a budget. I think we can agree that’s some kinda result. I mean, Todd’s been doing this shit for over forty years and his latest tour poster portrayed him as an axe-wielding barbarian standing on a rocky outcrop beneath a storm-wracked sky, so… I’m not gonna argue.

http://www.myspace.com/cheaptime
http://www.intheredrecords.com/

Julie Doiron / Calm Down It’s Monday – split 7” (K)

Ah, Julie Doiron – blessed in the books of all known gods; the eternally awesome, ever-comforting earth-mother to all of our converse-wearing, bespectacled brood. One of my favourite live music memories of recent years was seeing her play at the Windmill a while back. She introduced her cover of ‘Shady Lane’ SO wonderfully earnestly, like: “hey, do you guys know this song ‘Shady Lane’, it’s so good..”, and then she danced around the stage playing all the requisite Malkmus twiddley bits, pausing to join the whole grinning room in singing along off-mic with “…and the overfriendly concierge!” A magic moment rendered from elements that would have been cringeworthy on the part of any other performer, brought about by Julie’s awsomeness – all serving to demonstrate why she remains one of the few introspective singer-songwriter types that it’s always worth finding time for. Her achingly beautiful voice helps too, and, should you need further proof, the two unaccompanied songs on her side of this humble disc close the case, quietly crushing and reshaping the heart of any attentive listener with each spin.

“Oh Heavy Snow” is a solemn lament that strongly recalls our heroine’s collaborations with Phil Elverum, letting silence itself play the third man inbetween gentle, scuttling guitar notes. “Oh heavy heart / forgive me / make me feel like it’s all ok” Julie sings, taking words some bearded slacker could toss off like a paycheque, and making them a prayer sent down on the wind from a mountain fortress. Listening to the song for maybe the tenth time, I’ve only just noticed that that silence is quietly forming itself into some drums and organ towards the end, so the song’s not so unaccompanied after-all – that’s understated backing for you, I guess. “It’s Nice to Come Home” meanwhile is simpler, warmer, happier – a song nobody human could hate, as Julie sings about her after-work routine, how she imagines it compares to her man’s after-work routine over in New Brunswick, and how much she’s looking forward to seeing the two routines merge next time they’re together again. A real life love song, free of drama, free of artifice. It almost makes me cry every time. And now it’s time to sit for a minute or two, let the silence sink in, and then reach over to put the needle back to the start again for… well, who knows how many times I’ve played this side since I bought this single. A joy forever.

On the other side, Calm Down It’s Monday (featuring Julie on drums I think, and her drummer on guitar/vocals) do the kind of music you’d rather expect from some guys who called their band “calm down, it’s Monday”. Lethargic, faintly belligerent North-West indie-rock, like Love As Laughter on an off-day, Some Velvet Sidewalk in a bad mood. Not to worry though, Julie’s songs would be cheap at twice the price.

http://www.myspace.com/juliedoiron
http://www.myspace.com/calmdownitsmonday
http://www.krecs.com/

Golau Glau – Soft Silver Young b/w Heartland Half Seizure (Oddbox)

Interesting stuff from this somewhat hermetic Welsh outfit, with a homemade sound anchored somewhere between the eerie border country electronica of prime Ochre records output and the dalek torch songs of Broadcast. Although ostensibly still pop, and song-based, there’s something deeply spooked about Golau Glau. They sound like they’re broadcasting from some soul-dead, suburban seaside town, laptop and vintage mics hidden in the basement beneath a pebble-dashed bungalow where they sit in the dark, thinking about the cliffs down the road. Voodoo drums and Wurlitzer organ, together at last. Soothing sounds for weirdo.

Listen more closely though, and Golau Glau’s initially pretty, chanting space-songs are scarcely very reassuring, quietly addressing themselves to subject matter that would likely appeal to Luke Haines at his most ghoulish. “All our songs are about real events or things that interest us generally”, they say in the accompanying blurb, “not love songs or songs about how miserable we are or how to do a funny dance or anything, and the words can sometimes be abstract but always have meaning as well as sounding musical”. As such, ‘Soft Silver Young’ commemorates a couple who jumped off Beachyhead together with their dead baby in a rucksack, whilst ‘Heartland Half-Seizure’ concerns itself with “..Oswald Mosley, Jeffrey Hamm and the anti-fascist riot in Tonypandy in 1936”. Are you fascinated yet, or running for the exits? If the former, this single is still available as a free download from Oddbox here.

http://golauglau.wordpress.com/
http://oddboxrecords.com

Local Girls – EP (sourpuss)

This nifty little number (price: 99p!) includes six whole songs, a double-sided, fold-out photocopied sleeve with a picture on the back of the band with animal heads photoshopped over their own faces, a hand-stamped, multi-coloured inner sleeve, a download code, a locked groove at the end of side # 1, and a vinyl sticker featuring a picture of some fat, naked women (um, I'll pass on that one I think). Top marks for DIY gusto and value for money, but I’m afraid Local Girls don’t grab me overmuch. In the noble brit-pop tradition, they seem to be a bloke band with a girl singer who (probably) stands at the front in all the photos, and conveniently they also seem to make vaguely dancey, choppy indie-rock that is also very much in the brit-pop tradition. It’s none too bad. It’s got sludgier distortion than you’d have gotten for yr pound in ’97, at least. Lyrics take the default position of cynical bitching (song titles: ‘Eartha Shit’, ‘Nick and Ben are Cunts’), but none of it’s as sharp as it thinks it is. If your soul sighs for a band who sound a bit like Lovelife-era Lush, Powder and second album Elastica, you’ll dig the hell out of this one. I like that stuff just fine too and I love Elastica forever, but man… I lived through the mid/late ‘90s once already, and we have proper girl bands now, and the internet and stuff, so please, can I turn this off now? Local Girls sound like they’re trying to drag me back to that dark era, and that gives me the fear, like seeing the Witchfinder General striding down the high street. Make it stop!

http://www.myspace.com/localgirlsband

Labels: Cheap Time, Golau Glau, Julie Doiron, Local Girls, singles reviews

THE THIRTY BEST RECORDS OF 2008

Introductory Notes:

I’m not sure whether it’s because I’ve been exposed to more of it, because I’ve taken more of an interest, or simply because there’s been more going on that’s hit the right buttons for me, but regardless – 2008 has been a fantastic year for new music.

Whereas 2006 and 2007 found me listening mostly to old records and reissues, and struggling to scrape together a decent end of year top 10, this year I could easily have knocked out a list of fifty records I’ve enjoyed. Compromising slightly, I’ve got it down to a list of thirty really good ones.

And, for the first time in Stereo Sanctity history, I've put them in order too. I'm not sure why really; I guess there's just been so much stuff worthy of love this year, I felt the need to establish some kind of hierarchy to outline precisely which records had the biggest impact on me personally, and to stop the results just looking like a big, confusing mess of disparate music, or something. Obviously my numerical placements are pretty much arbitrary, as I realise that putting a recording of a symphony for 400 guitars next to a South London punk band next to one of Africa's most accomplished musicians next to Jonathan Richman and trying to decide which one is the best is a ludicrous proposition. But no matter, I've done it anyway!

Naturally this means I’ll have to count things down backwards, from #30 through to #1, split across six different posts that I’m gonna put up over the next couple of weeks, which will look slightly confusing if you’re reading ‘em all in one go, but c’mon, you’ve all got your GCSE maths (or nearest local equivalent), I’m sure you can figure it out.

Oh, and, er, THE RULES, as it were: everything I’ve heard during 2008 that was released in 2008 on a longer format than a 7” single, and that consisted primarily of music being released for the first time, has been considered for inclusion. So EPs, 12”s and other miscellaneous misshapes have been included, but no singles, and no reissues or compilations of previously released material. This means that possibly my overall favourite release of the year – Comet Gain’s singles & rarities comp ‘Broken Record Prayers’ – hasn’t made the cut… but that’s probably just as well, as trying to condense the essence of it’s twenty song motherlode of howling, singular expression into a couple of hundred words is somewhat beyond my writerly skills, at least until I’ve had a chance to live with the thing for a little longer.

And so, with these caveats in mind, we say: Hey, Ho! Let’s Go!:

THE THIRTY BEST RECORDS OF 2008: Part #1

30. Michael Yonkers & The Blind Shake – Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons (Farm Girl Records)


You may recall my write up of Michael Yonkers’ debut LP ‘Microminiature Love’, on which he indulged his yen for DIY electronics and guitar vivisection, resulting in a mixture of detuned blues primitivism, suburban shut-in nihilism and all-out racket that rendered the record not so much ‘off the wall’ as ‘circling round the ceiling, shrieking like a robot hummingbird’ in the musical context of 1968. Well since then, Yonkers has been remained an elusive figure through necessity rather than choice, his recordings and live appearances sporadic since an industrial accident left him partially disabled during the ‘70s. But, on the basis of this new outing recorded with garage-rockers The Blind Shake, age certainly hasn’t mellowed our man, and his peculiar and terrifying sonic imagination remains undiminished. Coming on like a cacophonous mixture of Cleveland proto-punk, Sabbathian metal thunder and industrial circuit-bending skree, ‘Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons’ finds Yonkers and his collaborators still mercifully oblivious to any notion of canonical respectability, genre convention, or indeed sanity, as his perpetually dissatisfied songs see him taking umbrage with everything from non-specific liars n’ cheaters to the laws of organic chemistry. I recommend playing this one on the stereo at work, just to see the beautiful look on your colleagues’ faces as any hopes might harbour that you’re actually a productive, upstanding citizen with whom they can meaningfully communicate fall away in an instant.

Mp3> Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons


29. Cheap Time – s/t (In The Red)


Not much to say about this one. It’s just a killer album of noisy, punk-ass, home-recorded power-pop. Fourteen songs, each one loaded with exactly the kind of hooks and windmilling guitar licks you wanna hear (or I wanna hear them anyway), thirteen of them clocking in under 2:30. Nice! Echoes here of the songs that actually rock on any given Sloan album, The Nazz, Buzzcocks, Redd Kross – you know the score. All busted out on four-track with mega tape compression and weedy, yelped vocals, and they don’t piss about dragging every mediocre tune out to four and a half minutes like most power-pop outfits either. If Cheap Time are lacking anything, it’s character; tracks fly by in a pretty uniform fashion, and lyrics are mostly pretty inconsequential, but who cares, let’s rock!

Mp3> People Talk


28. Cars Can Be Blue – Doubly Unbeatable (Happy Happy Birthday To Me)


Cars Can Be Blue are, for me at least, the kind of band the ‘skip’ button was invented for. The duo’s more straight up, 100 second guitar/drums pop-punk blasts are vicious things of wonder, directed straight to my musical pleasure points. Three chords, killer melody, zero instrumental fat, a GO GO GO pace and lyrics that alternate between bitchy, cynical insecure ranting and heart-rending straight-to-the-point honesty in a thoroughly beguiling manner more akin to The Queers or Bratmobile than their supposed indie-pop peers. If all 16 songs on here were as good as the opening one-two punch of “Sun Blows Up” and “Coattails”, they’d be top ten, no questions asked. Unfortunately though, CCBB have also built their notoriety largely on a tendency toward one joke potty-mouth comedy songs and skits which are, well… absolutely dreadful to be honest. I mean, that kinda stuff’s not really my scene at the best of times, but CCBB’s contributions to the oeuvre really seem to suffer from a drop in musical standards and a loss of the charm of their better material, rendering them merely kinda tedious and nasty. So for every song here that’s GREAT, you’ve got one that’s kind of ok, and then one that’s just…. NO. The brilliant twelve minutes or so of this record is still some pretty special kinda brilliant though, so here’s hoping for more of it in future.

Mp3> Coat Tails


27. Jennifer Gentle – Effervescent Land EP (Heron Recordings)


If the old, two-man Jennifer Gentle sounded like an alien Syd Barrett impersonator trying to get to grips with earth technology, their current quartet line-up is more like the ten armed, helium-voiced hindu monster spirit of Syd himself, freefalling back into our dimension with enough sugarcubes to kill an elephant and a whole load of new tricks to show off. What the new incarnation has in common with old though is that it still makes about the most utterly joyful, hyper-imaginative, lunatic psychedelic pop available to us on this mortal plain, as revealed to great effect on this splendid four-tracker. Seeing these guys in the flesh for the first time was definitely one of my favourite gigs of the year – just breathtaking. Everything about their music is so, so WRONG, from the affected, temper tantrum shrieking, to the ham-fisted Morricone dramatics, the prog-afflicted mellotron excursions, multiple kazoo solos, wacky slide guitar licks, blaring feedback… dear god, how do these strange Italian men manage to combine it all into something so wondrously RIGHT..? Pop from another dimension in which the Olivia Tremor Control were slaughtered Giallo-style by full moon crazed loons, who didn’t mean any harm, it’s just… it’s just what they do.

Mp3> She’sAlright


26. The Mountain Goats & Kaki King – Black Pear Tree EP (self-released tour 12”)


A great example of two artists with their own highly distinctive working methods getting together in the name of mutual appreciation to make something together, each shedding an interesting new light on the other’s work. John D. brought along a handful of top notch songs, oft recalling the desolation of ‘..Get Lonely’ with an added dose of morbid apocalyptic imagery, along with his new-found fondness for hammering away dramatically at the piano, Nick Cave style. Kaki meanwhile brought her expressively muscular guitar style, her gift for killer arrangements and sound textures, and her hesitant, dislocated vocal harmonies. The result: six very strange and beautiful songs that sound like both, and simultaneously neither, artist. Some pleasantly head-scratching subject matter is on hand too; ‘Roger Patterson Van’ chronicles the death of the bass player from the band Atheist (thanks, wikipedia), whilst ‘Thank You Mario, But Our Princess Is In Another Castle’ appears to be written from the point of view of one of those frogs or mushrooms or whoever the fuck it is that Mario rescues at the end of each level in Super Mario Bros. And it’s a far more earnest and well-developed character study than you’d suspect any song written on that subject by a sane individual really should be, too. I think ‘Supergenesis’ might be about a video game character too – a troubled, pixelated warrior snake it would seem: “feel the wet leaves pressed against me / cling like drowning men / try to hoist myself upright, again, try again..”. I know Darnielle has never been one to do things in half measures, but he might want to consider cutting down on the Nintendo in future. Despite such eccentricities though, these six songs share a rich vein of low key brooding weirdness that I feel renders them this year’s best soundtrack to pondering historical oddities in dilapidated autumnal churchyards.

Oh, and I’ll take this opportunity to note that Kaki King’s album ‘Dreaming Of Revenge’ is really, really excellent too, and should definitely be in this top 30 somewhere, except I can’t think of anything in particular to say about it, and I’m not entirely sure it was 2008. It’s a splendid piece of work anyway, and if I were her I’d be pissed at having been left off the list in favour of a bunch of trashy rock rubbish, and would boycott this blog forever.

Mp3> Black Pear Tree

Labels: album reviews, best of 2008, Cars Can Be Blue, Cheap Time, Jennifer Gentle, Kaki King, Michael Yonkers Band, The Mountain Goats