This is going to be the first of two posts counting down my favourite new releases of 2018. #11-20 are below, and a second post running down #1-10 will follow soon. Simple, right?

It should be noted that I have heard so many good records this year, I could easily do a top forty, time and consciousness permitting. But, time and consciousness does not permit, so 20 it is. Psychic apologies to all those hard-working noise-makers left hanging just below the line.


11. Anthroprophh – Omegaville 2xLP 
(Rocket)

In the course of trying to process the rage, confusion and futility hard-wired into every second of ‘Omegaville’, I’m inclined to bypass the album’s ostensible near-future timeframe and instead take a step back into the past, reflecting on the wider possibilities for life that you, I and (presumably) Heads guitarist and Anthroprophh main man Paul Allen have all seen forcibly torn away from us over the past fifteen or twenty years.

Readers old enough to remember for themselves may wish to join me on the journey, thinking back to days of waking up safe and sound in yr little basement flat, walls painted whatever colour you like and the landlord won’t complain so long as you keep the bathroom and kitchen working and don’t bother him too often. Spend the morning tinkering with effects pedals or doing some drawings, have a smoke or two. Mooch down to the library and put in some obscure stock requests, see if you can get hold of those weird German records your drummer’s always going on about. Do a few shifts in your mate’s shop every week to pay the rent, safe in the knowledge you can pop back down to the Job Centre and start filling in forms if things get hairy.

It was great, wasn’t it? Life there to be lived, available to everybody. Well, not anymore. All that’s gone, never to return. In the UK circa 2018, I scarcely need to remind you, you’re either affluent or you’re desperate. Either way, you’re probably sweaty, red-eyed and exhausted. And if you’re priced out of the lovingly scrubbed refurbished semis and you can’t get a foothold on the perilous, built-to-burn eco-system of the new-builds (money traps set by gangsters, primed to catch uni leavers like so many wasps)… what then?

‘Omegaville’ fills in the blanks, beginning with Lisa Allen’s beautifully detailed gatefold cover art, depicting a ‘near future’ approach to Bristol city centre. Nix the ‘They Live’-style satirical billboards and it all looks distressingly believable too, a notion cemented by the inner sleeve’s montage of photos (provided by the band members), in which boarded up pubs, skeleton tower blocks, barbed wire gateposts and one-man tents pitched on rubbish-strewn waste ground all combine to tell an all-too-real real estate horror story.

Musically, things begin hard and heavy as the electrified corpses of The Groundhogs, Pink Fairies and Third World War jolt upright on their slabs, bulked up Reanimator style for ugly new times. This is thick-skinned, chemically-altered battle-ready street-rock, executed in proto-h/c speed-freak tempo and pumped up with enough 21st century compression & multi-tracking to make veins in even the hardest Head throb with anxiety; particularly when Allen’s consummately frazzled solos hove into view, squeezed onto the tracks like flaming ether from some heat-resistant toothpaste tube.

On ‘Housing Act 1980’, Allen gargles venomously in the guise of a Farage-faced Tory autocrat, passing the gift of property to his offspring whilst invoking scattered references to Fray Bentos pies, guard dogs and “sunlight reflecting off the bonnet of the Austin Austin”, but in terms of linear comprehension that’s about as close as ‘Omegaville’ gets. Elsewhere, every discernable lyric or moment of simple rock pleasure is sabotaged by thuggish, mind-of-a-madman echo or tangled tendrils of out-of-control synth freak-out.

As the first disc progresses, tracks get longer, stranger, more excessive. ‘Why Are You Smiling?’ detourns Soft Machine’s bucolic, hippie-era provocation into a brutal, urban death march – the sound of the last scattered inheritors of an “alternative society” bitterly trudging the outskirts until they come face-to-face with the tarmac. Perhaps the album’s single best track, ‘I’ ebbs and flows like a band on the verge of collapse, Crazy Horse/Dead Meadow-esque psych drawl soon stomped to death by an Earache metal killdozer – the sound of waking up fuzzy-headed one morning to hear iron clanking, glass breaking and tarmac splitting, right outside your bedroom window.

In time-honoured ‘Tago Mago’ style, the second disc goes way out there – two side long pieces that see Allen initially struggling to narrate the tale of one of those one-man tent-dwellers crashing out into street drug-fuelled mystic oblivion on side C, before the machines and the twisty knobs take over entirely on side D, the band huddled between condemned tower-blocks of back-line as a phantom M4 opens out before them, offering extended thumb sanctuary towards….. somewhere?

If I were feeling facetious, I’d say that I hope the Allens got their house move sorted out ok, but regardless – ‘Omegaville’ represents an extraordinary document of UK underground rock facing up to an ugly present, and an uncertain and evil future.

Listen & buy via bandcamp.


12. Comacozer / Blown Out – 
In Search of Highs Vol # 1 split LP 
(Riot Season)

From March:

“Veering more toward the instrumental stoner rock approach taken by Mike Vest in his Dodge Meteor project, Blown Out’s recordings here put me in mind of what the classic era Monster Magnet line-up might have come up with, had Dave Wyndorf buggered off for a while and left them to their own devices. […] It’s totally sweet – as fiery as anything this band have ever recorded; this is a slightly more ‘accessible’ sound than their customary side-long wig-outs perhaps, but there’s nothing half-assed about the world-eating skree that takes over each time the drums drop out.

[…]

Colour me happily surprised upon discovering that [Comacozer’s] seventeen minute ‘BinBeal’ is actually a pretty benign affair, with a gently propulsive Cecil McBee-via-Hawkwind bass groove taking centre stage, ranging hither and yon ‘cross an interplanetary landscape, accompanied only by shards of hard-echoed, clean toned guitar dopplering away into the distance and some low level patches of DikMik style primitive electronics hovering into view now and again. […] a swell example of bombast-free contemporary rockage, and a welcome reminder that not every space-rock track needs to be a one way power blast through the centre of a black hole.”

Listen & buy via Riot Season.


13. Potion – Women of the Wand tape 
(self-released)

As I’m sure I must have repeated to the point of tedium in these pages in the past, it is my firm belief that doom metal lives or dies by The Groove.

Whereas many of the genre’s more sinister and cvltish adherents seem content to leave some slumbering drill sergeant behind the kit, occasionally rousing himself to deliver some stern, poorly-executed snare roll before fading again into the darkness, I reckon it is the duty of a doom drummer to work it hard, to remember the shining, jazz-inflected example of Herr Ward and shoulder the weight. Heads must bang involuntarily, however slowly. Riffs must crash ‘gainst cymbals, just so. Otherwise it’s going nowhere.

Potion are certainly going somewhere, that’s for sure. Hell, maybe they’ll even make it to Perth occasionally. I’ll confess, I wasn’t aware that Australia had much of a doom scene, and indeed, checking these guys’ social media would seem to suggest they’re first in line for support slots whenever a touring outfit of that general ilk hits Sydney. On the strength of this brief tape furthermore, I think it’s likely they must be blowing bigger names off the stage on a regular basis. Here’s hoping we’ll be hearing more from them soon.

In the meantime however, the two tracks / twelve minutes showcased here have The Groove in fucking spades. They’ve got The Texture too if we’re keeping score – thick, airless psychedelic sludge, dripping down the furry walls of sleep like ‘Come My Fanatics’-era Electric Wizard; atavistic hell creatures clawing the earth through mud-scooping bass drone whilst echo-addled guitar leads sear their way through some classically nasty triad moves.

Rehearsal room / tape mastered fidelity brings a uniquely muffled, pitch black heavosity to proceedings, like an old carpet thrown over the head of God, feedback shrieking with genuine menace between onslaughts. Drummer just won’t let those toms be, but under the circumstances that’s just fine.

Some of the absolute best doom I’ve heard from any corner of the year this year, in other words. Just EXACTLY what I need from the genre right now, boiled down, greased up and ready to go. A whole album or two of this stuff, unmolested by label/studio tinkering, would make me nigh on unimaginably happy.

Listen & buy via bandcamp.


14. Warp Transmission – The Process Ultra CD & d/l 
(self-released)

Funny where the byways of bandcamp can lead you these days. Here for instance, we have a Finnish space-rock group, deeply in thrall to both The Heads and the distant exhaust fumes of Dave Brock’s dreams, rocking a garden shed recording aesthetic only a degree or two more sophisticated than yer average basement black metal loner, and throwing a thick blanket of retro-futurist, Man or Astroman? style vintage sci-fi shtick across the console for good measure (yeah, dialogue samples and everything). Wild, man. Bring it on.

Raw guitar fuzz bombs across this half hour galactic opus like a burning toy dragster, leaving ashes all over the carpet, whilst the knob-twisting synth gloop goes totally out-of-control within the opening minutes and never returns to earth. Davros-inspired vocals curse and howl malevolently as the rhythm section pushes forward, ever forward, gearing up to a near-thrash level warp speed but never quite crashing over the line, much to the chagrin no doubt of whoever’s playing on the lead guitar overdubs which elbow their way in every now and then for a shrieking burst of twiddle, lurking just a few twists of the frequency knob away from the local high school’s Iron Maiden tribute band.

In the midst of all this carnage, ‘The Insect’ briefly shifts focus to some collapsed, alien electronics, before ‘Crashing Waves’ slows things down for an excursion into the kind of slightly-more-conventional, head-nodding psyche groove-out that the Brian Jonestown Massacre occasionally do so well. Of course it all builds up into yet another hulking monolith of sonic overload, but what did you expect? ‘The Stranded’ is a lovely little “cool down” track too, sounding as if Davros and his evil pedalboard joined forces with his fellow Whovians in Solid Space.

Mainly though, it’s in-the-red, freaked out madness that predominates here, and a thrilling, ridiculous journey into the furthest reaches of uncompromising, home-baked space-rock excelsis it is too. Yes, please sir, more of this kind of thing emerging from the musical underworld of this tired planet in 2019 would be lovely, thanks very much.

Listen and buy via bandcamp.


15. Windhand – Eternal Return 2xLP 
(Relapse)

On first impression, you’d be forgiven for thinking that “melodic doom” sounds like a pretty shit idea for a sub-genre, but give it a few moments consideration and you’ll no doubt realise that melody and song construction was key to the success of most of the genre’s all-time greats – so, hey, why not. Likewise, Richmond VA’s Windhand could easily be accused of sounding like an indie-rock band playing at two-thirds tempo with downtuned guitar… but, blinkers off, is that really such a terrible prospect..?

Well actually, I’ll admit, these concerns, combined with vocalist Dorthia Cottrell’s tendency to stretch out those descending vowel sounds as if she was in The Smashing Pumpkins or some shit, have caused me to prematurely write off this band on the first, second, and maybe even third, occasions on which I’ve given them a listen. Both personal recommendations and the more generalised quantity of ever-growing love they seem to have accumulated in recent years have kept me coming back though, and, after spending a bit more time with their new record this year, I think I’m finally sold.

Admittedly, acoustic-y interlude ‘Pilgrim’s Rest’ stands out as pretty questionable, but hell, even Sabbath’s best album put us through Changes, so anything’s possible. Elsewhere, moreover, this album is ON. The Groove is in full effect, the riffs are mighty and the songs have a lilting, Pre-Raphaelite arena-psych grandeur that really hits the spot, stretching out across some legitimately epic track lengths without losing sight of their compositional unity.

Jack Endino’s production is top notch too – a deeply comforting wall of luscious, dark green fuzz, top end dulled for maximum bonged out satisfaction. I particularly love the imaginative psychedelic touches that ‘Eternal Return’ brings to the band’s sound too; Garrett Morris’s slightly out-of-sync, multi-tracked solos, the hard echoed pick slides exploding all over the exultantly murky outro to opening cut ‘Halcyon’ and the cacophonous entirety of pedalboard-blitzing instrumental cut ‘Light into Darkness’ are all great examples.

Precisely the kind of stately, atmospheric but unapologetically rocking alt-metal that should rightly be blasting out of a million teenage car CD players across the globe right now, ‘Eternal Return’ hits the same oneiric psyche pleasure centres that keep sending me back year after year to early Dead Meadow, Bardo Pond and various things of that general ilk. A very particular sweet spot, and one rarely serviced by commercially successful metal bands, I’ll admit, but I’ll take it where I can, and I’m getting tons of it from Windhand right now.

Listen and buy via bandcamp.


16. Holly Golightly – Live in London LP 
(self-released/SFTRI)

Earlier this December, some friends and I ventured out to catch Holly Golightly and her band at the Lexington in London. Turns out the last time I was present for one of her semi-regular Christmas(ish) shows in a scarifying ten years ago. But, worry not, little has changed. She’s still got Bruce Brand on the drums (worth the entry price alone!), she’s still got that big chap with the quiff on stand up bass – but, she does now have a young, hot-shot lead guitarist (why, he must be about thirty years old or whereabouts) to shake things up a bit, dispensing slick, session-man licks with consummate grace and good taste.

Seeing this disc amongst the merchandise on offer served to remind me that, despite owning much of her back catalogue in digital form (booo – artist, label-owners & fanbase), I don’t actually have any Holly Golightly on vinyl. Reflecting on just how nice it would feel to drop the needle on some of her sublimely unfussed Jerry Reed-meets-Wanda Jackson stylings whilst enjoying a cuppa on a Sunday afternoon, I decided that a recent, gigs-only live album would be the perfect way to rectify this oversight.

Recorded two and a half years prior to the gig in question (May 2016), the event commemorated here on plastic took place at the same venue, featured the same band (give-or-take a guest harmonica player on a couple of numbers), and indeed much of the same set list, if the grab-bag of old faves presented here are anything to go by. (‘Crow Jane’, ‘Wherever You Were’, ‘Big Boss Man’, ‘Sally Go Round The Roses’ – all present and correct and exactly where you’d want them.) Different banter though, naturally; touch of class.

Though the results couldn’t exactly be expected to match up to the drunken grandeur of 2003’s magnificent Down Gina’s at 3, they nonetheless make for another valuable performance document from a woman who by this point has been sticking to her story since her current lead guitarist was in nappies.

This ugly old world can do as it may, but she and her collaborators implicitly understand that the art n’ craft of playing this kind of slow-burning, low key rock n’ roll properly transcends any kind of hot-stepping retro bullshit, keeping just enough Medway grit in the mix to ensure no one’s going to mistake this for some supper club oldies gig after a few tins of real ale. Past, present, future – the records keep spinning as long as the kettle keeps boiling, and it’s nice to have a new one.

(Pedants may wish to note that there’s an unfortunate fadeout halfway through the final tune – maybe batteries on the mini-disc gave out or something? But hey, you can’t have everything.)

More-or-less self-released, but with a nostalgic shout-out to Sympathy For The Record Industry on the sleeve (long time no see!), this LP is solely available from gigs insofar as I can tell (I even had to take a picture of the cover myself). Holly also has a new studio LP out this year on Damaged Goods, but I’ve got had a chance to play it yet – my wife’s taken custody.


17. Tashi Wada with Yoshi Wada & Friends - Nue LP 
(RVNG International)

Tashi Wada is an LA-based composer in a minimal/ambient vein who quite possibly has the qualifications to prove it. (Perhaps he even has an accompanying tendency to earnestly discuss his ‘practice’ in a manner befitting an embattled small town dentist, but who am I to cast aspersions?) Tashi’s dad Yoshi meanwhile appears to be a happy-go-lucky fluxus artist who, in his capacity here, enjoys making a right old racket with bagpipes, chanters, alarm clocks, sirens, and ‘audio generators’. What fun!

Together with a few of Tashi’s friends (synth player & vocalist Julia Holter, percussionist Corey Fogel amongst others), father and son got together in September 2017 to record these ten varied slices of warm, familial drone, full of benevolent dawn chorus analogue synth trails and happy bursts of controlled, harmonious noise, redolent of new days, cold, sunny mornings, parting clouds, happy collaborative friendships and all the rest of it, leaving the stresses, anxieties and confusion of the world outside the studio a long, long way away.

Sometimes sounding a bit like those eerie interludes on Boards of Canada records extended into bright, four/five minute meditations on nature n’ nurture with all the eeriness carefully scrubbed out, and sometimes touching upon passages of space-lab choral harmony so pure and meticulously realised they could quite possibly single- terraform the nearest gas giant single-handed, the results are engrossing and exultant, full of deep, drifting tones that feel both intensely familiar and strikingly new.

This is beatific headphone communion that won’t take up too much of your time, but will leave you in just the right frame of mind as you enjoy an appropriately head-spinning night-cap before hitting the pillow eight hours prior to a another working week. Wondrous, droning peace.

Listen and buy via RVNG International.


18. Guttersnipe – My Mother The Vent LP 
(Upset The Rhythm)

I remember, back in the distant past, I used to try to sell people on Melt Banana by describing them as “pop music from the future”. Well, I don't know abnout that anymore. I suppose the future’s looking a lot bleaker and crazier than it did back at the turn of the century, which is probably why similar formulations spring to mind when trying to find SOME way, any way, to account for the existence of Guttersnipe.

Let me say straight off that, in terms of its level of uncompromising achievement, its sheer, mind-blowing totality, this album deserves to be *way* higher on this list than it is. The reason it’s lurking down here in the lower teens is simply than I’m a sensitive soul, and I find it pretty difficult to listen to in anything other than short bursts, to be honest.

A full-blooded realisation of the kind flattening, full spectrum racket Guttersnipe make live, ‘My Mother The Vent’ comes on like some unholy amalgam of Carcass, Teenage Jesus and the Boredoms, stretching finger-in-the-socket death across expanses of five or eight minutes; it’s… too much, man. I can’t take it.

Nonetheless though, one of the keys to Guttersnipe’s singularity I think is their stated declaration that they wish to remain a rock band, despite pushing the concept to it’s further possible extreme. This makes me happy, and makes me like them even more, because I like rock bands. For all the excesses of their sound – each drum hit setting off a disorientating cacophony of overlapping delays, every guitar note filtered through a miniature city of transistors and lunatic EQ adjustments – there is still a feeling here of two human being playing off each other, of the wood and wire and fingers and wrists that can always keep me engaged where button-pushing electronic whiteout just leaves me cold.

Is this what the future sounds like? I don't know. Could be. I picture above-ground solar panels crackling in protest as subterranean tunnels roar with hordes of post-gender telepathic mutants, rinsing the power grid in a last gasp electronic overload. Could be worse, right?

Listen and download via bandcamp, vinyl available from UTR.


19. Mule Team 7” (Episode Sounds)

Finally, Mule Team on vinyl, and the vinyl is in my hand. Thank you, Episode Sounds. Still no download option, but it’s a start re: bringing them to the wider world. You might ask why, on an end-of-year list otherwise dominated by psychedelic rock and sundry other heavy nonsense, I have made room for these unassuming proponents of foot-tapping rock n’ roll? Well, the truth is, if there were twenty groups around the world playing foot-tapping rock n’ roll with the particular je ne sais quoi evidenced by Mule Team, I’d probably have ‘em all up here, assuming I had any energy left to write them up after going to see whichever of their number was currently closest to my locality each and every Saturday night.

As the entity once known as “garage rock” continues year on year to drift in the general direction of its own fundament (certain sainted veterans notwithstanding), mixing reheated leftovers with obnoxious, gimmicky clowning, Mule Team – warm, welcoming, no nonsense folks that they are – bring it back to base with music that is correspondingly warm, welcoming and devoid of nonsense. Skimming over the storied musical legacies of Memphis, Detroit and Nashville with a deep understanding that renders any strutting retro posturing immediately obsolete, they cradle their gear with a crafty respect learned from men who actually needed the damn stuff to earn their living, and indeed, they proceed to kick it as of they were earning a dollar for every head that nods.

A mild-mannered rave up built on a prehistoric Chuck B shuffle, ‘Give Up’ throws a wistful power-pop chord or two into its chorus for the sake of variety before the James Burton-esque melodic lead that’s been chasing the vocal through the song steps up to duke it out with the strident rhythm gtr over the break. The oddly named ‘I'm Going To Miss You Mr Illegal Civ’, reappearing after its initial bow on the band’s 2016 tape, ups the grit a bit with raucous, reverbed group hand-claps and some scarifyingly sweet guitar interplay, before ‘Grew Up in a Can’ takes us into full blown punkabilly territory, bolshy, overdriven bass stomping about like an early Fall track (of all things) whilst down-the-phone-line vox snarl against needle-peakin’ trebly guitarwork.

Most importantly of all though, the beat just keeps clipping along, Creedence-style, through all these numbers - a backwoods motorik choogle powering on eternally over the hill to the next roadhouse. Flaming arrows could bring down the ceiling and tear gas canisters take out the windows whilst these guys are playing, but feet would continue tapping as long as their backline stays plugged in.

Listen and buy via Episode Sounds bandcamp, but keep an eye out for the postage if you take the plunge, fellow Westerners.


20. Bo Gritz – Tape EP (Sad Tapes)

I don’t know why, but I continue to get a particular kick out of what these London scoundrels are cooking up. Still haven’t caught them live. From August:

“Point is: of all the endless, minute variations of bad-tempered, hopeless noise-rock that exist in the world right now, Bo Gritz - on the basis of this cassette release at least - play one of the few that I actually want to listen to.

Which is to say: the guitar sometimes sounds like a demonically possessed analogue radio that’s come to life and started attacking people, the bass is content to lurk shadily in the background, a hooligan under a tree in a nocturnal park, whilst the drums thud away in exhausted, groovelessly utilitarian fashion, rather like Simon King of Hawkwind reaching his own personal dead-end after X hours of LSD fuelled battery. None of the players display any flash whatsoever. No time-changes, no ‘look-we're-tight’ turn-around bits, no twiddly riffs - it’s just pure ug. Simple, beautiful idiot-rock, laced with a bit of Messthetics bend n’ scrape.

There are vocals in there too I suppose – potentially snarled down the same drain-pipe that used to belong to Jim Shepard or The Heads, more recently liberated from City Yelps – whilst the four track tape recording keeps that nasty treble in check and helps to bake the band’s potentially upsetting, bulbous aggro down into a warm and nourishing aural porridge.”

Listen and buy from Sad Tapes.

Labels: Anthroprophh, best of 2018, Blown Out, Bo Gritz, Comacozer, Guttersnipe, Holly Golightly, Mule Team, Potion, Tashi Wada, Warp Transmission, Windhand

FATAL OWLS & LETHAL LIPGLOSS: SEVEN GREAT SONGS

So, unsurprisingly, nobody has invited me to do this weblog-meme Seven Songs thing (1, 2, etc.). That’s probably because I don’t have many ‘blogger friends’. But hang on a minute – if I don’t have many blogger friends, does that mean I’m actually cool? Because, hey, who needs ‘em - I’m not wasting my life away on the internet, I’m out in the real world, making real friends, right..?

Nice try, but no – I spend all day on the internet AND I don’t have any blogger friends. I lose. To cheer myself up after this realisation, I shall do the Seven Songs Thing anyway, and damn the consequences.

The Riff Randells – Lethal Lipgloss

After over five years worth of occasional gigs and vinyl releases, the two core Riff Randells (sans a permanent bass player) actually put out their first proper album last year on Dirtnap. I dutifully picked it up and… well, I don’t want to seem like I’m going out of my way to talk shit about a band I’ve loved from the word go, but it’s really not very good – very generic, professional sounding midtempo pop-punk with no spark to really differentiate one song from another. I’m not really sure what went wrong there, but let us speak no more of it. Let us instead stick to their earlier singles and EPs (from which this song is taken), which are absolute PERFECTION.

The first thing I like best about this song is the way it launches straight into that great, chugging riff riding the none-more-bouncy drums – I guess you can tell The Ramones got to me pretty deep at an impressionable age, because after a start like that I know nothing can go wrong.

The second thing I like best about this song are the opening lines; “she’s got a hot date / but she’s already late / cos she’s pulling up her stockings too slow” – oh man, what I wouldn’t give to be able to write a throwaway pop lyric that ineffably wonderful! Oh how I wish that sort of teen trash brilliance, rather than obtuse, dictionary swallowing indie-ness, ran free in my veins!

The third thing I like best about this song is that it has one of those gnarly guitar solos that follows the vocal melody of the verse perfectly – and it’s so damn sweet.

Sometimes, in the dark hours of the night, I find myself wondering why the vast majority of my contemporaries (by which I guess I mean over-educated 20-something music fans) seem to favour various shades of mindlessly unsettling, unconventional and berserk and/or depressing weirdo racket over perfect confections of 100% proof mindless bubblegum FUN such as this one, which, looked at from a certain angle, mark the very zenith of American pop cultural achievement, in my eyes at least.

Could it be that unlike me they’ve successfully adapted to their ongoing lives as forward-thinking grown-ups, rather than floundering around trying to reimagine a parody of the perfect John Hughes teenhood they never had? Or, alternatively, are they just a bunch of stuck-up jerks? Either way, at least we’re agreed on the mindlessness.

Jawbreaker – Chemistry

To continue somewhat from the points expounded above, Jawbreaker are a much underappreciated band within the ‘indie’ sphere, although they at least get plenty of respect from U.S. punk and old school emocore kids. Their sound may veer toward overcooked, angsty alterna-rock a little more than some are comfortable with, particularly on major label failure album, ‘Dear You’ from which this is taken, but their songwriting suss and commitment to making powerful and smart music was frequently second to none. In fact, I think the reasons why Jawbreaker didn’t end up being Nirvana are liable to be more easily found in some record label accountant’s ledgers, or some journalist’s choice of drinking buddies, than on their records.

Proof of their endearing goodness was confirmed in a grim weekend a couple of months back, when I pulled out their albums for the first time in ages, and connected straight-away, like the musical equivalent of a high-five, and a variety-pack of their best songs has been in frequent rotation ever since, regardless of mood.

Worry not though, as ‘Chemistry’ carries little in the way of direct personal resonance for me to hang on to, although as with any great, honest punk rock song, it’s a mass of conflicting emotion and ugly/beautiful dynamics that’s way too confused to get a straight angle on, even whilst the rush of the performance makes it compelling. Framed around reminiscences of a frustrating high school crush, but with some echoes of grown up frustrations undoubtedly thrown in too, Jawbreaker lurch between selfish, macho bitterness and cosmic, unconditional girl-awe at the drop of a hat, never quite making up their mind whether they’re going for an air-punching teen anthem about motorbikes and nosestuds with goofy school subject / love metaphors in the chorus, or a cruel punk rant about wasted youth and empty manhood. Hitting home awkwardly at some rare and impassable juncture between the two, it’s a song that grabs fleetingly at some pretty profound feelings re: the essential experience of being a teenager, and maybe about being an adult too, but…. shhhh, that’s a secret, right?

Billy Childish & Holly Golightly – Hold Me

Funny things, chords. As I have moved into the role of actively trying to write songs in the past year or two, it has become clear to me that it is a relatively simple task for just about anyone to write a reasonably satisfactory three minute song with, say, six or seven chords in it – different ones on the verses and the choruses, or a key change in the middle, or whatever. Even if the central thrust of your song is boring, the changes serve to keep people’s ears vaguely tweaked, and you get by ok. What’s actually a lot more challenging is to do what Herman Dune or The Wave Pictures, or Creedence and The Beatles, do so well. That is, to put across a strong enough melody, imaginative enough lyrics and a solid enough rhythm to keep an audience enthralled or entertained – perhaps even moved, heaven forbid - for three minutes whilst sticking strictly to a standard three chord pop/blues turnaround.

Taking this line of thinking straight to its logical conclusion, Billy and Holly have raised the stakes considerably by recording a whole album – “In Blood” – which is based entirely on variations of ONE chord (B, I believe, but I’m tone deaf, so don’t take my word for it). And it flat out RULES throughout. Beat that, punks.

Howlin Rain – Lord Have Mercy

To describe a track like this as ‘over the top’ would be rather like claiming that Lawrence of Arabia’s overland assault on the city of Aqaba in 1917 was ‘a bit much’.

I mean, I love this shit, and even I’ve got my doubts about those Queen-esque lightning-strike operatic vocal bits toward the end of this song… but could Howlin Rain care less? – hell no, they’re just getting ready to kick back in and save the day with that awesome, Freebird-quoting wah-wahhed solo that closes proceedings on a high note. The defences are breached through sheer force of numbers, and your citadel is theirs, whether you like it or not.

Howlin Rain’s less-is-NOT-more restatement of the grandest ‘70s rock truth is a thing of absolute beauty when it comes together, and it’s a shame that the rabidly enthusiastic review I had planned of their ‘Magnificent Fiend’ album ground to a halt upon the realisation that however, well, magnificent the record’s first side may be, the second half sadly loses it’s focus a bit and drifts off into confusion. But on those three hefty tunes that open proceedings – BOY HOWDY, do they ever get it right!

The way than Ethan Miller has grown into a singer is in itself a wonder – from being the babbling, echoplexed drunk nearly ruining all those early Comets On Fire jams a few years ago, he’s now got his tonsils exactly where he wants them, moving effortlessly between a laidback Jerry Garcia croon and a fearless Fogerty bark as the music dictates. And thankfully in Howlin Rain, that’s exactly what the music dictates. Take all the best bits of early ‘70s ‘Dead and Creedence, add a heroic dose of Blue Oyster Cult’s skyscraping high concept weirdness and a healthy reverence for the dusty, meaty tones of the Hammond and Fender Rhodes (which near eclipse the guitars through most of this track), combine with a spirit of positive and reckless invention, as opposed to aimless pastiche, and happy days are here for one and all!

And the lyrics – dear god, the lyrics. I won’t spoil the surprise by quoting them here, just download and listen for yourself; preferably not whilst sipping a hot drink, or there’ll be trouble. Let’s just say that if those of us who value truly extraordinary and inexplicable rock lyrics were to band together and form a club (and perhaps we should), there’d be little doubt that Ethan Miller would be getting our annual grand prize (perhaps the much-coveted B.O.C. medallion?) for this one. I mean, the Moorcock-inspired ‘Dancers At The End Of Time’ is pretty cool too, but ‘Lord Have Mercy’ takes the biscuit. Whatever headspace Miller inhabits that allows him to belt out stuff like this without fear of ridicule, I want to get there. Lord have mercy indeed.

The Vivian Girls – Where Do You Run To?

It’s been hard work trying to keep the debut album from Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls off my computer speakers of recent. It may take a couple of listens to sink in, but these girls are on to something special that extends beyond their initial lo-fi teen rock n’ roll appeal. Not that there’s anything wrong with that appeal, mind you! Initially, they sound pretty much exactly like The Shop Assistants – frantic stand-up drumming, wild guitar fuzz and punked up girl group bubblegum – only rendered live to four-track with cavernous reverb and a classically nervous, deadpan NY attitude substituted for C86 giddiness. Which is brilliant!

But on the album’s best songs – this one and ‘Wild Eyes’ in particular – the girls hit upon pop melodies so strong, dark, simple and understated, vocal refrains so abstract yet universal in their import, that they find themselves within the same zone occupied by the most ineffably mysterioso of ‘50s rock n’ roll ballads – songs that could pass you by swiftly as a morning breeze at some weird juncture of the AM radio dial, or else could take you to the very heart of cosmic grandeur, repeated again and again through some eternal David Lynch directed love scene. The blood-curdling menace that will no doubt erupt in the next scene is visible on the horizon, but cool down, it’s never going to arrive, as long as this band are in some moody club somewhere, probably wearing shades on stage and getting away with it, playing this song.

In slightly more prosaic terms, ‘Where Do You Run To?’ sees the band slowing their usual breakneck pace by about 50% (much as Iggy persuaded the Stooges to play ‘Penetration’ at half the regular speed, having convinced himself that the first side of Raw Power needed a ‘ballad’) and stretching out into a beautifully languid psychedelic space that recalls Detroit’s excellent and underrated Slumber Party, a space which will hopefully serve them well on future releases.

Truly, a band to watch out for, and that rare thing – a song I could happily listen to on repeat, forever.

Pete & The Pirates – She Doesn’t Belong To Me

Pete & The Pirates are everyday fellas who sing good songs that they’ve written, utilising furiously strummed guitars, drums that go off like a dynamo, ear-worm sing-song melodies and carefully crafted lyrics whose subject matter is concerned almost exclusively with girls, being sad and wanting to stay in bed. Naturally, I take to them as instinctively as a panda takes to eating bamboo. They’re like The Verlaines for the man on the street (if that street happens somewhere suburban at the edge of zone 2 at an unsociable hour at least); great dramatic, self-pitying type stuff, without all that pissing about with composition PhDs and symbolist poets.

On this song, Pete & The Pirates capture the exact feeling I encounter when getting up and heading to work on a Monday morning. I would hazard a guess that as I’m doing that, the members of Pete & The Pirates are probably feeling much the same, somewhere not a million miles away, and it was good of them to write a song about it, to let all us lazy, underachieving middleclass swine know we’re not alone.

In particular, I like the way this song is not a second longer than it needs to be to make its point.

I also like how it saves up it’s chief lyrical/romantic hook until the end, so that whilst it starts off sounding like just some bloke moaning, it ends with… well, some bloke moaning in a slightly GRANDER fashion, at the very least.

Similarly, I like how musically it starts off somewhere at the pale end of ‘wussy’, but builds up over a brisk ninety seconds into something that’s about as close as aforementioned everyday fella British indie commuter blokes get to ‘furious’.

I also like how, on their album ‘Little Deaths’, Pete & The Pirates immediately follow this song with “Lost In The Woods”, which has a good sorta “siiigh, alright, fuck it, let’s go” feeling to it, thus preventing early morning headphone listeners from following the song’s criminal advice and ruining their lives forever. Pete & The Pirates: a band you can rely on for things like that.

Silver Jews – Candy Jail

The new Silver Jews album, ‘Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea’, is extraordinary. All of the ten songs within it, even the ones that initially seem like baffling throwaways, are bottomless repositories of joy, beauty and crab-walking profundity. For this reason, amongst others, Silver Jews remain an extremely difficult band for me to try to get an angle on in writing, and reading various recent reviews of the record, all of them deeply unsatisfactory in conveying the essential ‘!?!!?!?!’ of this music’s existence despite the best efforts of the word count bound scribes concerned, would tend to confirm this, and encourage me to leave my floundering attempt at a career overview forever unfinished. I mean, I haven’t even STARTED trying to write about this song yet, and look how bloody convoluted that last sentence ended up. It’s a losing battle.

Anyway, in a brief interview for Said The Gramophone recently, David Berman seems to suggest that ‘Candy Jail’ is his reflection on the irresistible yet spiritually deadening lure of contemporary popular culture.

I will simply quote the opening verse…

Pain works on a sliding scale
Just like pleasure in a candy jail
And true love doesn’t come around
Any more than fatal owls
On a Monday in Fort Lauderdale

…and say; ladies and gentlemen: our greatest living poet.

Actually, GODDAMN IT: I just checked the lyrics sheet on the inner sleeve of my (beautiful, brand new, vinyl) copy of the album, and discovered that “fatal owls” is actually “fate allows”. Yet more proof that defective ears and slurred pronunciation are always our greatest living poets. Sorry Mr. Berman.

In honour of this transcendent misunderstanding, I think everybody reading this should get together and start a band called Fatal Owls. I’ll play congas.

Labels: Billy Childish, Holly Golightly, Howlin' Rain, Jawbreaker, Pete and The Pirates, Silver Jews, song reviews, The Riff Randells, The Vivian Girls

PRIMAVERA: Friday

Friday’s music begins for me creeping into the darkened indoor auditorium to catch the last half of the set by Holly Golightly & The Broke Offs. Holly seems a little distant and uncomfortable in such a huge space, but, her music being what it is - namely all that feels right and rocks solid and is undeniably GOOD, naturally she brings it home nicely. Of course I miss the swing of her full band, but the rough Sun Records style honkytonkin’ blues she bashes out with the Broke Offs man are dead good too. I mean, how could they not be, right? One day I’ll find the time to write some appropriately real good stuff about Holly Golightly, but it shall not be today, as I am tired this evening and I’ve still got a ton of other festival reviewing to get through.

Back out in the sunshine, I’ve agreed to meet up with Pete to go and see a band called It’s Not Not. The reasons for this are unclear in my memory, but I think we wanted to make an effort to catch some genuine Spanish punk rock in amongst all the laurel-resting old American geezers who comprise the bulk of this festival’s lineup, and I took it as a good omen that some of this lot apparently used to be in a group called ‘Tokyo Sex Destruction’, and that they decided to call their first album ‘NO TIME FOR JOKES’. That title alone, along with the accompanying photo presenting them sitting outside some woodland cabin absent-mindedly poking gas canisters with sticks and generally skulking around in some gap-toothed hardcore kid/hillbilly fashion, led me to suspect we may have been in the presence of some odd kind of genius. Sadly though, It’s Not Not are, well… not. Not dreadful by any means, but not all that great either. They’re a pretty serviceable unit – one of those bands that I guess marks the exact point at which what were once daring post-punk moves become expected, default rock moves. Heavily in thrall to Liars, their most exciting song is even one where they all go “Run! Run! Run for your life!” over tom-toms and doom-funk bass in precisely the way you’d expect. I think a band like this one might be just the ticket if you were, I dunno, 17, and saw them in some sweaty, scary club having previously had no experience of Birthday Party / Jesus Lizard type performance punk, and the singer accidentally hit you in the back of the head of something. But playing to the jaded likes of us in a three quarters empty concrete coliseum on a sunny afternoon, their antics are just not happening.

After that, there’s a big gap in my schedule where it seems I didn’t see any music… I think we went and had some dinner, and stuff. So, you rejoin our correspondent a few hours later, charging alone across the big, open square and taking a flying leap (ok, not quite, but you get the idea) into the centre of the crowd to watch The Sonics.

Andy Parypa of The Sonics

Yes, I know, the actual Sonics! It seems completely ridiculous. In my mind at least, those timeless, frenzied, holy sides of unparalleled maximum rock n’ roll that busted out of Northwest nowhere back in 1964 with ‘The Sonics’ stamped on them might as well have been made by cartoon characters rather than real, flesh & blood people, such is the disconnection between their larger than life, brain-bypassing lunatic appeal and anything extant in what is commonly held to be ‘the real world’. But, as the mania for lucrative and unlikely band reformations gains increasingly silly momentum, here we all are in Spain, and the sun is shining, and the bloody Sonics are playing. Well, some of them are anyway. Sax man Rob Lind would seem to be the driving force behind this new get together, dominating most of the between song chat as if he were taking a run for the senate, along with original guitarist Andy Parya and legendary organist/frontman Gerry Roslie (who’s looking a bit shaky these days, but still keeping it together and looking/playing like a cool cat), ably assisted by a bassist/vocalist who I thiiiink (correct me if I’m wrong) is Wally Kemp of the New Colony Six, and a new drummer.

Now, a number of people I spoke to later in the weekend said they found The Sonics set to be disappointing. The phrase “pub-rock” was bandied about. Well let it be said that if this is pub-rock, maybe I should be spend more time hanging out in pubs, because dancing with a load of random Spanish guys to some of the most joyous, good-times rock n’ roll ever laid down, yelling along to every word of “Boss Hoss” and “Walkin’ The Dog” and “Have Love Will Travel” and “Dirty Robber”, was undoubtedly the most FUN thing I’ve done in months.

I don’t know what the show’s detractors might have been expecting – some terrifying explosion of proto-punk violence perhaps? Well certainly, The Sonics lack the energy and attack they brought forth on their original recordings, but I mean, of course they do – sixty year old guys with careers, families and Eagles tapes in the car are just NOT going to swing out like sexually frustrated seventeen year olds trying to be Little Richard, playing three sets a night for gas money, and it would be churlish to expect them to. It must be said that the manic fills and killer timing of original drummer Bob Bennett are notably absent – quite possibly the new guy is still playing them, but one of the secrets of The Sonics impact on record was the way in which the drums sprung so unnaturally loudly into the foreground of the mix, and a modern outdoor festival set-up can’t/won’t allow for that sort of unusual tweaking. And Roslie and the other guys’ trademark “AAAAaaaaaRRRggGGhHH!!!!”s are perfunctory rather than spine-chilling, but hey, they make the effort bless ‘em, and the audience are more than ready to compensate if they can’t hit the high note anymore.

For, as long as they keep busting out the hits (and ALL Sonics songs are hits), one can’t help but think, FINALLY, somebody at this damn picnic’s had the good sense to bring The Proper Music to the people amid all the marathon doses of arty, noisy shit, and as a result the positive energy in the crowd is immense when they close, as they must, with ‘Louie Louie’, and their unbeatable triumvirate of original punk rock classics… I won’t patronise you by reminding you what they are. But remember: she’s got long black hair / and a big black car / I know what you’re thinking / but you won’t get far / she’s gonna make you itch…. (ready?)…. COS SHE’S THE WITCH! AAAAAAaaaaaaaRrrrgghh!!!

They don’t write ‘em like that anymore. And for good reason! But the bare bones of the Sonics material is eternal: these songs can be played anywhere, by anyone, and two minutes and ten seconds of knuckleheaded, feral abandon is guaranteed, so being able to get down for a while with the creators of such integral pieces of rock n’ roll culture is a rare privilege.

The development of punk rock of course took a pretty strange and circuitous route after it was pounded into shape by The Sonics, and little do I suspect that I’m immediately going to get hit over the head with an even more primal experience by a guy who embodied it twenty years after them, as I look at my watch as the last note of ‘The Witch’ dies away and think, hey, I’m still in time to catch some of Bob Mould’s set…

Now a quick survey: who here remembers ever reading/hearing anything good about Bob Mould’s solo albums of the past decade or so? I don’t own any of them, and that’s probably because all the critical/public feedback that seems to surround them tends to boil down to “oh, he’s such a hopeless middleaged windbag, his songs get so generic and awful, he tries to do all this pop stuff with vocoders and dance beats and it’s just embarrassing, oh why can’t he just rock out like he used to” etc. And I could never really get into Sugar either to be honest, so, y’know, shrug, fair enough, fickle, hype-led swine that I apparently am, I haven’t exactly made catching Bob’s latest endeavours a top priority. Instead, I’ve been satisfied to just wait for one of those grim mornings when it’s a struggle to put one foot in front of the other, and drag myself into some sort of forward motion by cranking up the volume to lose myself for the millionth time in the sanctuary of the tinny, poorly mastered hurricane of the seven or so years Bob Mould spent co-fronting one of the truest, most inspiring, cathartic and NECESSARY rock bands of all time.

Bob Mould

But, as soon as I get close enough to the stage he’s playing to see/hear what’s going on, I instantly want to stick it to all the haters who’ve led me to believe that Mould is washed up, because clearly he’s in GREAT shape, and he and his backing band are on fire. I don’t know whether Bob’s been putting in time down the gym, hiking through the wilderness or has just been toughened up by a few decades of additional life experience, but frankly he looks like he could beat the shit out of the sadsack who turned up in those grim Candy Apple Grey promotional appearances back in ’87. He’s lunging around the stage in full-scale punk rock fashion, hands a blur, guitar ringing out sheets of purest, shrieking treble.

The couple of solo Bob tunes I catch are sounding pretty damn fine to me, and I’m about to turn to some friends I’ve noticed I’m standing next to in order to express this thought when suddenly……. the opening riff to “I Apologise”. Whoa. Battle stations! The next twenty minutes or so are something of a blur of white light, sweat and myself quite possibly freaking out like some sort of spastic, but at least some part of my brain was still on-point enough to recall that he went on to play “Chartered Trips” and “Celebrated Summer” and “These Important Years” and “Makes No Sense At All” and finished with – holy jesus – “New Day Rising”.

As with most of the important / overwhelming events in life, I wasn’t expecting this one at all. It came out of nowhere, left me utterly wrecked, and went back into nowhere. I know I’ve invested a lot in Bob Mould’s songs over the years (although at a push I’ve always been more of a Grant Hart man), but I never realised it was QUITE this much until now.

And there’s not much more to say on the matter. I may often be apt to bitch about aging indie-rock stars, cynical band reformations, lacklustre performances, poor sound, corporate festivals and the like, but feel free to kick me or ignore me the next time I get started on that line, because as both Bob Mould and The Sonics prove beyond a doubt, sometimes it’s only the songs that matter. And no matter how lame the nostalgia-fest might get, there’ll always be people in the audience for whom they matter a HELL of a lot, and, whether or not the musicians are still feelin’ their work of x decades ago or just putting their kids through college, it can be their duty to acknowledge and respond to that ‘hell of a lot’, even if it’s just by being there, and remembering how to put their fingers in the right place for a few minutes.

What happened after that? Man, who cares. Oh yeah, I bought a bootleg Husker Du t-shirt off some genuinely nice folks who’d printed up some shirts in order to cover their expenses in coming to the festival. Then I went and watched Sebadoh. They were alright.

Then there was, like, a 45 minute break or something before we were allowed the opportunity to become yet more disillusioned in the face of Cat Power’s new brand of soulless soul, so I declare I’ve had enough for one night and go home instead.

Hopefully it won't be another whole week before I finish writing up Saturday!

Mp3s>

Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs - You Can't Buy A Gun When You're Crying
The Sonics – Keep A Knocking
The Sonics – The Witch (live)
Husker Du – I Apologise
Husker Du – New Day Rising

Labels: Bob Mould, festivals, Holly Golightly, Husker Du, It's Not Not, live reviews, Primavera, The Sonics