5. Smith Westerns - s/t (Hozac)

Smith Westerns’ debut album is a work of over-energised, over-ambitious, overblown teen genius that I appreciate more each time I spin it – an instant refutation of anyone who’d seek to dismiss the new crop of American punk/garage/whatever bands as shiftless, couldn’t-give-a-shit posers. Initially coming to my attention via “Be My Girl”, a cosmically gorgeous, instant-hit evocation of the glories of T Rex, Smith Westerns’ keep the quality running high at all times, breathlessly cramming so much STUFF into their four-track level recordings that on occasions the whole thing just collapses under it’s own weight, leaving a sparkling, blown out pile of murk, as if the tape just plain melted in the face of such sonic maximalism. Defying the back-to-basics garage set-up of most of their peers, Smith Westerns build each of these songs up from a base of crashing, reverbed drums that sound like the rhythm tracks from an old Spector single being played by a rock drummer on a full kit, and proceed to throw in keyboards, glockenspiels, bells, TONS of guitars, outboard effects, kazoo, strings – yes, I swear there are fucking STRINGS on some of these songs – all vying with each other to see who can get closet to the front of the mix, and, fuck man, looks like we’d better EQ the hell out of all the vocals just so we can hear ‘em! Incredible stuff.

Initially, I assumed Smith Westerns must be slightly older guys – like, late-20s or something at least. Y’know, old enough to have been round the block a few times and done their homework re: understanding the history and kitsch-potential of the framework of garage and ‘60s pop and glam stomp within which they are working here. So, without wishing to sound * too * vampiric and creepy, it plain BLEW MY MIND to read that they’re all currently aged between 15 and 19, or something. I mean, when 27 year old guys write songs called “Girl In Love” and “Glam Goddess”, and lock straight into ’72 Bowie to sing “c’mon, you DIAMOND! BOYS!”, it’s good fun, but it’s box-ticking. When kids still in high school are blasting it out as if this stuff’s just sprung naturally from their mad, hormone-ravaged bones, it’s… I dunno man, genuine fucking teenage rock n’ roll nirvana…? And these guys just have such an inbuilt understanding of timeless, starry-eyed, romantic rock n’ roll vision, it’s incredible - holy, bombastic, breathless odes to girls and dreams and heaven, straight from the source. I mean, they’ve still got one foot in lo-fi garage-fuzz trash, and that’s great, but man, their song on the split 7” with the band Dead Ghosts sounds more like Mott The Hoople broadcasting rabble-rousing polemics over a post-apocalyptic emergency broadcast system! It’s sad that Greg Shaw isn’t still with us to hear this band – he’d be so psyched his head would fall off. And Kim Fowley WISHES he could have bottled something this good. Smith Westerns = the sound of teenage punks tearing up all the most powerful elements of their (grand)parents pop and looking on in wonder as the scraps rain down like confetti.

Mp3> Dreams

4. Condo Fucks - Fuckbook (Matador)

Whichever way you look at it, this album is pure self-indulgence. I mean, let’s face it, if any other three people in the world had made a one mic rehearsal tape of themselves bashing out a bunch of punk and British Invasion covers, complete with false starts and inaudible vocals, the result probably wouldn’t be getting a big-time release on Matador records. And if any other three people had made said tape, would I still have played it something like 56 times over the past nine months, grinning like a happy idiot…? Well… yes, I probably would have done, to be honest. I LOVE this crap, and I hope I always will. A friend of mine recently made a good point regarding the work of Quentin Tarantino, observing that, rather than *self* indulgent, his films are merely indulgent – eg, they indulge the audience just as much as the creator. And that’s the kind of logic that I’d like to apply in making the case for Condo Fucks as some of the most soundly unpretentious music of the modern era, because this is precisely the kind of honest, joyous, deafening, chaotic rock n’ roll that hits all my pleasure centres at once, with no unnecessary messing about to weaken the brew.

Of course, the personalities of our participants to come into play to a certain extent, and perhaps the key to the album’s success lies in the way they apply their characteristic spirit of modesty and inclusively to musical forms more frequently despoiled by glowering Rolling Stones wannabes – cutting out the dull aesthetic pretence, whilst still bringing enough wild, overdriven abandon to send said wannabes to their graves. And it helps too that our heroes are consummate record nerds, their choice of material flawless as you’d expect. Oh, what a thrill for us cult-rock bores to hear our guys launching into the Electric Eels ‘Accident’, or to hear Georgia taking the lead on heart-shivering renditions of ‘This Is Where I Belong’ (The Kinks) and ‘With A Girl Like You’ (The Troggs), the ghost of her vocal often sinking under all the magical amp blare, but that’s ok cos we can all sing along. Absolutely beautiful. Better still is when they turn their talents to realising the perfect version of ‘Kid With The Replaceable Head’ that Richard Hell never got around to recording, with Ira – sorry, ‘Kid Condo’ – taking his best shot at trying to the out-Robert Quinn Robert Quinn, and succeeding. Listening to ‘Fuckbook’ is a bit like going to see a big, headlining band and discovering that they’ve ditched their regular set-list and are just gonna play their unexpected-cover-version-that-we-worked-out-on-the-bus-for-the-encore *all night long*. Party on!

Maybe in a better world, the Condo Fucks experiment could provide a whole new way forward for struggling major-indie record labels. Got some big-name bands, cruising on their reputation, breaking up for ‘hiatuses’ or spending months in the studio making tepid, over-polite double LPs? Well fuck that noise – why not just get a few affable souls like, I dunno, say Thurston Moore, Guy Picciotto and Janet Weiss, stick ‘em in whichever local practice room does the best deal for four hours, keep the beer flowing, get ‘em talking about how great the Small Faces were, and let nature take it’s course? And if the results if even a fraction as much fun as this record, you’ll still be giving the record-buying public more bang for their buck than, ooh I dunno, the last three Yo La Tengo albums.


Mp3> With A Girl Like You

3. Nodzzz - s/t (What's Yr Rupture?)

What more to say about Nodzzz at this late stage? More than any other new band this year, their songs have been bouncing around my head pretty much endlessly and aren’t showing any sign of ceasing to do so in the new year. Great band, great guys, great sound, great songs – they’re top of the class, reducing me to clichés once again.

Here’s an edit of some stuff what I said about them back in March:

“Every song on Nodzzz self-titled 12” is a veritable education in the possibilities of Nerd-Bounce, each track throwing down in a uniquely enjoyable, off-kilter manner that fully delivers on the promise of “(I Don’t Wanna) Smoke Marijuana”.

Oft times, Nodzzz fleetingly remind me of my other “Revenge of the Nerds” heroes, The Embarrassment – one of the greatest, most frequently overlooked bands of all time, whom I’ve been meaning to write a proper post about for ages. Despite a raft of superficial similarities though, Nodzzz and The Embarrassment never manage to see eye to eye for more than a few moments. Whereas The Embarrassment always sounded as if they were being driven forward by a writhing mass of vengeful sexual frustration, even when singing about space travel or hunting dinosaurs, Nodzzz are, if not exactly *contented*, certainly a lot more…. easy-going… in their concerns. These are good natured fellas for sure, coming on witty like vintage Woody Allen, but with none of the neuroses in evidence.

In fact, Nodzzz very rarely sing about girls. You’d assume “Is She There?” might be about a girl, but the lyrics seem to be more about getting interrogated by the army. “Losing My Accent” wistfully relates how said loss took place whilst in bed with a girl “in the North-West”, but mainly it’s just sad about the accent. Nobly pencilling in the vast gulf left in pop songwriting once such concerns are removed, Nodzzz instead sing variously about their fears about moving to the city, their transport problems, getting old, being too young, and having to attend awkward social events on the great “Controlled Karaoke” (“it’s a party if you know what that means / no one wants to go and no one wants to leave”). I guess all of those themes sound like things one might moan about, and indeed Nodzzz probably ARE moaning, but you’d never know it unless you stopped to pay close attention, so darn irrepressibly upbeat and FUN do their songs seem on first exposure.

Musically, they’re absolutely spot-on too, hitting just the right balance between competence and spontaneity, just as lesser bands proceed to pointlessly tear chunks out of each other in the reviews sections in an unspoken war between over-cooked and under-cooked indie-rock records that are pretty dull in either direction. Listen to the two vocalists trying not to burst into giggles as the guitarist fluffs up just before they hit the second chorus of “I Can't Wait”, and the wonky, wood-block assisted riff-fest that follows and you’ll hear the ‘first take / best take’ philosophy of Swell Maps and the makeshift sonic anarchy of early Sun sessions at their finest. Listen elsewhere though – to the slashing, fast-strumming guitarwork on “Highway Memorial Shrine”, the intricate surfy-jangle lead lines and handbrake turn drumming – and you can (kinda, sorta) hear the spirit of The Minutemen rising in the distance, a spirit of carefully pre-studio prep work, obsessive practice and the desire to give the audience it’s musical money’s-worth that seems almost alien after extensive exposure to the trashed aesthetics that predominate amongst the rest of the currently resurgent lo-fi scene. Short, sharp, instantly likeable and packed with awesome, I hereby declare Nodzzz debut my the first out and out winner of 2009, or the last one of 2008, or whatever.”

Mp3> Highway Memorial Shrine

2. Future Of The Left - Travels With Myself And Another (4AD)

I may have somehow managed to go the whole year without publicly mentioning it to anyone, but as far as I’m concerned Future Of The Left have made the best rock album of the year. Which is a welcome surprise really, because, I’ll admit, the band’s first album, “Curses”, left me feeling distinctly underwhelmed. At the time, it seemed as if Andy Falkous just… wasn’t quite so angry anymore, and that the vicious, absurdist fury that fuelled his work with Mclusky was being diluted into a somewhat more resigned bag of quirkery, injokes and tepid man-rock jams under the FOTL banner. Well, rest assured, ‘Travels..’ sees Falco getting his rage back and then some, as he finally cashes in the ‘genius’ ticket he took out way back on ‘Mclusky Do Dallas’ and presents us with an album so flattening in it’s brutalist, bullseye-wrecking mastery, it’s hard to believe it won’t come to be seen as his all-time masterpiece, assuming there’s anyone left in future generations to care about such things.

I always find it hard to put the unique appeal of Mclusky/FOTL into words, but let’s just say that when they’re on form, Falkous and his comrades consistently give voice to, and rail against, the senseless minor frustrations and painful stupidities of trying to live a decent life in the British Isles in the 21st century with more passion and venom and wit and disgust than any other currently active musical unit. Veering closer to kind of cultural assault favoured by figures like Luke Haines or Chris Morris than to any of their contemporaries in the sphere of noisy heavy/art rock, I’m sure that Future Of The Left would rather spit teeth than align themselves with any direct political cause, but nonetheless, the seething fury and hilarious social insight of their songs serve as a more compelling argument for the existence of politicised rock music than anyone else since… well, ever, really.

Song titles like ‘Throwing Bricks At Trains’, ‘Chin Music’ and ‘The Hope That House Built’ may have tipped us off in advance that we’re dealing with a newly re-infuriated Future Of The Left here, and indeed, that proves to be the case. Over fiendishly orchestrated blasts of power trio lurch-metal, Falco proceeds to set out his current grievances and verbally beat the shit out of them, laying into everything from unscrupulous chain music venues (“without the young and the desperate / they won’t have anyone left”) to organised religion (“a justice of sorts if you listen to fools who dressed in the dark for a bet”). There’s more to Falkous though than just the rabid polemicist, and a songs like ‘Yin / Post Yin’ adopts a more oblique strategy, contrasting odd verses about dinosaurs going back to college with a baleful, rising chorus that seems to take umbrage with all the squandered potential of modernity, posing questions like “how far can you rise, on borrowed sellotape?”, with all the weight of a crushing Black Sabbath sermon. ‘You Need Satan More Than He Needs You’ meanwhile provides a grisly exclamation point mid-album, like an attempt by the band to separate the wheat from the chaff within their audience by pushing the boundaries of indie-rock good taste about as far as they can, as Kelson Mathias’ bull-seal distorted bass throbs with Melvins menace and Falkous explores the practical difficulties faced by the modern day Satanist – “what kind of orgy leaves, a sense of deeper love?” As searching, reflective and exasperated as it is plain angry/funny, ‘Travels With Myself And Another’ stands out as the work of songwriters unique in their field, and of the pre-eminent modern rock band who are capable of confronting the brain-aching failings of the contemporary world head on, rather than retreating back toward a weird dream of 1964 with added feedback.

Mp3> Arming Eritrea

1. Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard - 'Em Are I

The more I think about it, the more it seems that Jeffrey Lewis has been one of the few constants in my-individual-world-of-music over the past decade. Others have come and gone and fallen by the proverbial wayside, but, from 2001 when he was strumming through “East River” on the John Peel show, through to the present day, which sees him dealing with an annual touring schedule that would send Motorhead to their graves and the same kind of heartbreak and disillusionment that caused Alex Chilton to throw his toys out of the pram forever, and delivering the best album of his career thus far in the process. Yes, he’s a guy you can rely on alright – you’ve just got to have some trust.

From its odd name and cover art on down, ‘Em Are I’ is an album that initially seemed to be setting fans and casual observers up for a fall. Lacking the broad humour of Jeff’s previous records, and without an obvious OMFG-that’s-amazing Youtube-worthy hit to file alongside “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror” or “Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song”, it leaves us lost for a moment, wondering how best to approach a consistent, ‘serious’ and fully realised Jeffrey Lewis record from start to finish. Of course, like all great humourists, the point of Lewis’ work is that it’s ALWAYS been completely serious, with even his most goofy songs rising from a well of confusion and anxiety, the depths of which are plainly acknowledged and explored throughout. What’s REALLY disorientating about ‘Em Are I’ is the extent to which it transcends its creator’s self-doubt by succeeding at every turn, ditching the apologetic lo-fi shambling that’s become Jeff’s calling card and allowing him and his band of collaborators to truly command the various styles they’re boldly marching into here with a justified degree of confidence – no self-deprecation or sideways glance injokes either required or delivered.

Opener “Slogans” is a great literate punk rock song that Richard Hell or The Clash might have recognised as a goer, although I doubt they could have made me grin like Jeff’s observations about “shoguns and Hulk Hogans / and cavemen shouting slogans / back and forth around the fire / now connected by a fire”. In fact, if there’s one thread connecting these disparate songs, it’s Jeffrey’s rambling, ingenious wordplay – always his strong suit, but here it frequently ventures beyond the realms of narrative storytelling into lengthy metaphysical digressions and philosophical conundrums. Shaky ground for any songwriter, but Jeff’s been working this shit out in front of audiences for so long, he’s able to tilt at the windmills of his thought processes with a showmanship that helps him sidestep the potential descent into navel-gazing wank, and instead to craft his own compelling and entertaining internal dramas, leading to conclusions that sound less like teeth-grinding hippie platitudes and more like, well… yeah man, I see where yr going with that one – that’s a real good way of looking at things – thanks dude!

Now if only his contention that “it’s hard to get too bored / when you pick the right two chords” could prove true of more finger-picking open mic botherers. It helps of course that Jeffrey’s acoustic numbers are now fleshed out into gorgeous psychedelic fantasias full of drifting textures, gambolling strings and singing saws, his two chords just sitting at the centre of what’s a real old-fashioned great sounding record. It’s also no secret that Jeffrey was going through a pretty unhappy time in his personal life when this album was being written/recorded, and, given the constant temptation to lapse into ugly self-pity that presents itself when grievances are aired in public in pop/folk songwriting, it is brave and commendable that he manages to entirely avoid the diary entry narcissism of some of his peers, instead channelling his misfortunes into terrific songs like “It’s Not Impossible” (“..as long as failure’s only 99%..”) and the self-explanatory “Broken, Broken Heart”, giving voice to his feelings with a rare good grace and sense of universal relevance that any number of male guitar-jockeys could stand to learn from.

My favourite song though, and perhaps the album’s real breakthrough, is “The Upside Down Cross”, which sounds so unlike anything you’d expect to hear on a Jeffrey Lewis album, and yet succeeds so completely, it is a beautiful and righteous thing indeed. Herein, Jack Lewis’ strange tale of a radical couple trying to rekindle their relationship through engagement in revolutionary struggles is spun out into a brooding, nine minute psyche-jazz epic, full of muted trumpet, fiery noise guitar, free-form piano and lock-step octopus drumming, like Art Ensemble of Chicago’s ‘Theme De YoYo’ reinvented by a bunch of crazy Lower East Side beatniks – the kind of thing that shouldn’t work in a million years in other words, and yet it’s a fucking triumph. (In fact, I think I’ll make a point of shouting for it the next time I see them live. After all, Jeff must get sick of running through all those intricate solo acoustic songs night after night, and I’m sure they’d all enjoy an excuse to wig out on this one.) Similarly successful is the awkwardly titled closer “Mini Suite: Moocher From The Future”, which refashions Cab Calloway’s titular heroine into a time-travelling robot queen dispensing psychedelic wisdom and… well, you see what I mean: who the hell else is out there coming up with ideas for songs like that and actually making them really good, rather than just getting ignored or routinely punched?

And I think that’s where the joy of “Em Are I” lies really; almost every song here must have looked like a really bad idea on paper, rendered risky either by weird/icky/over-personal subject matter or by unlikely leaps of musical faith. But every single time, Jeff and his band-mates manage to take the risk, leap the chasm, save the day and keep the engine running, emerging with what’s simply an album of superb, uncategorisable, weird and moving songs, each capable of surprising and entertaining on each listen, of communicating handy truths and enriching the lives of listeners in some small but tangible fashion. A masterpiece, I guess you’d call it.

Mp3> The Upside Down Cross



(Phew, I don't know about you, but I'm bloody exhausted! Do you know I've published over 19,000 words on here in the past six (ok, seven) weeks? Sorry it took so long... I think I'm gonna take a week off.)

Labels: best of 2009, Condo Fucks, Future Of The Left, Jeffrey Lewis, Nodzzz, Smith Westerns

An Apology to Spin Spin The Dogs.

Spin Spin The Dogs are a great band; I saw them on numerous occasions during the years I spent in the midlands, and they were always a hoot – chaotic, engaging, unique and good fun.

I’m not usually much of a fan of bands whose singers like to harangue the audience and get in peoples faces etc, but the Spin Spin The Dogs singer guy goes about it in such an imaginative, good natured and deeply strange manner, it’s impossible not to get drawn in and find yourself enjoying his antics and outbursts, especially as accompanied by the band’s excellent Beefheart/Homosexuals squall. Think of them as a benevolent, non-threatening Birthday Party, or something, maybe.

I’ve always thought that they’ve probably stayed off most folks radars simply because the improvisational crowd/response aspect of what they do is pretty difficult to capture on record. But, after a long period of not doing much, they’ve got a new album out soon, and this little video expresses their totality quite well I feel:



Meanwhile, The New Cross Inn just up the road from my current residence is… (what’s a good way of putting it without inviting angry correspondence?)… not the sort of venue that often hosts musical bills congenial to my own tastes.

On Monday last week though, I was delighted to note that Spin Spin The Dogs were playing there, supporting Lovvers.

Naturally on just about any other night of the year I’d have been there, welcoming back a fondly remembered band of yore who’ve been considerate enough to play within a ten minute walk of my house. But I had tickets for Nodzzz that night, and was really, really looking forward to seeing them. I also had a dinner invite from some friends I hadn’t seen in a while, so I popped along there for a while too. It was a very busy evening.

So I’m really sorry Spin Spin The Dogs – I hope it was a great night, and I hope to get the chance to see you again some time.

(Nodzzz were terrific, by the way – everything I’d hoped they would be; I just wish I could go and see them play every week, or just hang out in their garage and be their friends or something. A great band on every level. Wet Dog played a blinder as support too – I enjoyed them way more than the last time I saw them, for some reason, and Teen Sheiks were good fun too, and, oh man, time to cease this vague, reckless positivity and go write a proper blogpost about something!)

Labels: apologies, gig reviews, Nodzzz, Spin Spin The Dogs

Summer Singles, part # 2

Mazes – Bowie Knives (Sex is Disgusting)

So it was essentially on the basis of mp3s of the songs from this 7” that I made my initial assessment of Mazes last month. To wit: “Guided By Voices and The Clean are the self-acknowledged chief reference points here, and whilst obviously Mazes aren’t remotely as revelatory as either of those groups, theirs is a straight up blend of roaring, rough-hewn subterranean power-pop that hits all the right buttons. At worst, file under “thoroughly satisfactory”, and at best, songs like "Bethesda" are f-ing superb; strong song-writing, goofy immediacy and a killer sound that recalls GBV’s ‘Propeller’”.

And all that still stands (hey, I don’t change my mind THAT quickly), but now that I’ve got these numbers on an actual disc (great cover art, and a really nice, good sounding pressing too – three cheers for Sex is Disgusting), I like ‘em even better. Mazes are just a really straightforward great band, making great songs that sound great, with (it seems) little in the way of ego, silliness or career ambitions getting in the way – they’re ditching the hassles and just getting down to it. The spirit of Greg’s basement circa 1993 lives on. ‘Bethesda’ really is a hit – the kind of spooky, self-explanatory, unbeatable singalong tune I wish I’d written; “There’s a witch in distance / and she knows what I know”. Sensational. So if like me you’re the sort of fool who’s prepared to regularly shell out £5 for four minutes of neatly packaged music, don’t let this one pass you by - it’s real nice. Limited to 250 apparently. Cor, you’d think they’d at least stretch to 500. Anyway, two thumbs up!

http://www.myspace.com/mazesmazesmazes
http://www.myspace.com/sexisdisgustingrecords

Miniswap – Whistler b/w Human Error (Cloudberry)

Miniswap is the band that the other three members of The Bats turn into when Robert Scott is off on his holidays, or serving time in The Clean, or whatever. So guitarist Kaye Woodward takes the lead vocal, song-writing duty is shared and the result is as gorgeous a pile of perfectly formed chiming kiwi guitar pop as you could hope for.

With Woodward’s softer tones, and some jovial recorder and whistling, things are sufficiently cutie to gain a release on Cloudberry (er… not that there’s anything wrong with that..), but the songs are also more upbeat and energetic than recent Bats material, with ‘Whistler’ in particular barrelling along like a lost Look Blue Go Purple song, carried forth by Woodward’s dense, shimmering rhythm guitar strummage as she seemingly takes on the role Scott plays in The Bats, rather than her usual quietly ferocious lead work. ‘Human Error’ meanwhile is more acoustic, but still catapulted forth by the band as Paul Kean’s muscular bass and the faintly Smiths-y melody take centre stage. A fine listen.

I really like the cover to this one too. Not that I’m some twee foot fetishist or anything, but it’s really pleasant to look upon… the Mazes one also. Heck, I even quite like the Mother of Tears one, and that's just plain ugly. I'm a pushover for covers.

http://www.myspace.com/miniswap
http://www.cloudberryrecords.com/

Mother of Tears – Little Ratty b/w In The Morning (Hozac)

Boy, this is sure not what I expected a band called ‘Mother of Tears’ to sound like. I wonder if they’re named after that notoriously awful Dario Argento movie? Whatever; just like that movie probably will when I get around to it, this hits my pleasure receptors with a dull thud, and life is alright. Well executed if ultimately undistinguished, it’s good natured, masculine ‘Punk Rock’ in a wouldbe sky-scraping, vaguely fist-pounding ‘anthems for barflys’ kinda vein. Close one eye and you could be listening to a demo of ‘Do The Collapse’ era GBV, but close the other and you could just as easily be hearing The Weirdos, or some other hardworking LA outfit on the cusp of that punk-becomes-new wave moment. The singers sounds a little like Gary Floyd of The Dicks in places, although a lot less OTT or distinctive. ‘Little Ratty’ goes on a bit too long, but has a great, dramatic ending with “are you ready to die??” yelled over a one note guitar crescendo. I think this band does drama pretty well actually; ‘In The Morning’ has a far more blatant New Wave thing going on, almost a vampy LA goth kinda vibe if it wasn’t simultaneously so macho – it’s got a real cool ‘80s horror movie theme song type stomp; good times, although it ends before it really gets going. Not bad at all!

It’s crazy isn’t it, how we (or at least I – dunno about you) have these so, so many accutely delineated little categories and cross-referenced tick boxes for each and every possible variation of dudes playing guitars and drums and hollering…?

So, I dunno, fuck it – this is some rock music. It’s a lot better than the majority of other rock music out there, so if you’re thus inclined you might as well give it a spin if you’ve worn out all your Alice Cooper records. But if you’re thinking of ordering some 7”s off ebay from overseas for mucho $$, I’m not sure I’d make it a priority.

http://www.myspace.com/motheroftears
http://www.hozacrecords.com/

Nodzzz – True To Life b/w Good Times Crowd (What’s Your Rupture?)

First new material from Nodzzz since their album, and…. straight in the back of the net! Or ‘home run’, or whatever your preferred crappy sports type expression of effortless success and exhilaration is. Seriously, this band can do no wrong for me at the moment, and these are two more beautiful little songs to add to the pile. The recording here is brighter and cleaner here than on the album, but correspondingly perhaps a little thinner. Who cares though, you can hear it all fine and these guys are definitely a ‘song’ band rather than a ‘sound’ band.

In ‘True To Life’, Nodzzz return to their familial home in the suburbs and sing to everyone about the things they’ve learned at the art school. “If you must make a picture, make it true to life”, they advise sagely. Sounds like a refreshingly down to earth approach to the arts to me – presumably this wasn’t the same art school that gave the world all those Lightning Bolt type dudes, or the subsequent generations of fluorescent bozos who hang around this neck of the woods.

On the other side is ‘Good Times Crowd’, wherein Nodzzz perhaps examine a different aspect of the art school life, communicating the thrills and disappointments experienced by a fragile fellow attempting to adjust to a new-found life of hedonism. It doesn’t sound like it ended well, but it doesn’t sound like it was entirely fruitless either.

Perhaps soon there will be enough Nodzzz songs for us to place them all in order and piece together a concise and comprehensive biography of an earnest young man making his way in the world and experiencing new things. And, rendered by way of the band’s insistent, twangy guitar lines and jaunty ‘nerd bounce’ sound (of which the A side here is another definitive example), it would be hard not to wed this unfolding tale to the mental image of our protagonist happily striding down the street on a sunny day with a mischievous look in his eye, his picaresque troubles overcome and a spring in his step as he marches on toward adulthood. Sort of like The Embarrassment if they’d taken some anger management classes, got a bit more fresh air and really sorted their shit out.

I’m going to see Nodzzz at the end of this month, and I can’t wait! *Claps hands in theatrical excitement*

http://nodzzz.blogspot.com/
http://www.whatsyourrupture.com/

Labels: Mazes, Miniswap, Mother of Tears, Nodzzz, singles reviews, The Bats

I Like Nodzzz.

Nodzzz is a really terrible band name, you’ve got to admit. The kind of vague, stupid sounding, deeply irritating band name that the more grumpy half of my brain is on the verge of starting to ignore on principle when they turn up on the pages of Plan B or on the listings of some hip promoter. Because, dudes – I know we’ve been raised in the ‘80s (or even – arrg – ‘90s; it kills me to refer to a decade I remember in it’s entirety in distant, historically-finished past tense), on a diet of garish, eye-grabbing and meaningless product names, ads and cartoons jammed with gratuitous Zs, Ks, !!s etc., but do we REALLY have to reflect that in our bands, which we’ve named ourselves, as grown-ups? Back when people primarily talked about music with each other outside the realm of the internet, Nodzzz would have been Nods (perhaps The Nods), no questions asked. Do fans of !!! or Rac-oo-oo-n or Sunn 0))) or XBXRX get fed up with not being able to talk about their fave bands without a five minute grammatical clarification?

Tormenting sub-editors for the heck of it is all well and good, but do these guys realise that whenever I get around to mentioning Nodzzz In Real Life, I’m gonna be all like “hey, have you heard of that band Nods, yeah, you know, the one with the three zeds?” EVERY SINGLE TIME?

But no matter, within three seconds of the start of any of their songs, Nodzzz will be forgiven, the name issue forgotten, because – and it feels good to say it - I like Nodzzz! I like them quite a lot in fact! I think they’re one of the best new bands I’ve heard in ages.

The a-side of Nodzzz debut single, “I Don’t Wanna (Smoke Marijuana)” is an instant classic, a timeless ninety-five second nugget of perfectly realised, self-contained awesomeness in the manner of “Read About Seymour” or “Judy is a Punk”. Over a rollicking lead bass line and clanging first-strat-into-first-practice-amp guitar chords, it’s a tale of teenage frustration in which Nodzzz shriek of their dissatisfaction with the awkwardness and hassles of casual drug use, wishing they could simply “..get high… in another place!” I bet I could listen to the song’s middle section breakdown (“grandma’s always saying he’s so rude / used to be number one but now you’re TWO!”) every day for the rest of my life, and it would still make me smile.

If there’s one word that instantly springs to mind when hearing Nodzzz for the first time, it is, for better or worse, NERDS. Now, I don’t have any very good reference points for what Nodzzz look like, or what kind of people they are, but… the impression comes across pretty clear, and I feel confident in thinking they’re unlikely to be a bunch of beefy jocks who are gonna want to come and ‘whale on me’ for writing this review. I’d like to imagine a Nodzzz live show would be a veritable riot of chunky NHS glasses, inappropriate headwear, baggy t-shirts and arms so skinny they look like they’re gonna snap like twigs if they ricochet off the bass strings too hard. I’d also like to imagine that they really like to *bounce around* the place to their heart’s content. You know that peculiar, jaunty, topsy-turvy kind of poppy *bounce*, like you get on early Violent Femmes or Camper Van Beethoven records? NERD BOUNCE – that’s what it is! Now that I come to define it as such, Nerd-Bounce is probably one of my all-time favourite musical things, and Nodzzz are masters of it.

Every song on Nodzzz self-titled 12” (as an aside, has anyone else noticed this deal with underground American bands deciding they’re doing “12”s” recently, as opposed to the more portentous “albums”? – kinda like “ok, no big deal, this is just like one of our singles, only this time we made a really big one with 11 songs” or something?) is a veritable education in the possibilities of Nerd-Bounce, each track throwing down in a uniquely enjoyable, off-kilter manner that fully delivers on the promise of “..Marijuana”.

Oft times, Nodzzz fleetingly remind me of my other “Revenge of the Nerds” heroes, The Embarrassment – one of the greatest, most frequently overlooked bands of all time, whom I’ve been meaning to write a proper post about for ages. Despite a raft of superficial similarities though, Nodzzz and The Embarrassment never manage to see eye to eye for more than a few moments. Whereas The Embarrassment always sounded as if they were being driven forward by a writhing mass of vengeful sexual frustration, even when singing about space travel or hunting dinosaurs, Nodzzz are, if not exactly *contented*, certainly a lot more…. easy-going… in their concerns. These are good natured fellas for sure, coming on witty like vintage Woody Allen, but with none of the neuroses in evidence.

In fact, Nodzzz very rarely sing about girls. You’d assume “Is She There?” might be about a girl, but the lyrics seem to be more about getting interrogated by the army. “Losing My Accent” wistfully relates how said loss took place whilst in bed with a girl “in the North-West”, but mainly it’s just sad about the accent. Nobly pencilling in the vast gulf left in pop songwriting once such concerns are removed, Nodzzz instead sing variously about their fears about moving to the city, their transport problems, getting old, being too young, and having to attend awkward social events on the great “Controlled Karaoke” (“it’s a party if you know what that means / no one wants to go and no one wants to leave”). I guess all of those themes sound like things one might moan about, and indeed Nodzzz probably ARE moaning, but you’d never know it unless you stopped to pay close attention, so darn irrepressibly upbeat and FUN do their songs seem on first exposure.

Musically, they’re absolutely spot-on too, hitting just the right balance between competence and spontaneity, just as lesser bands proceed to pointlessly tear chunks out of each other in the reviews sections in an unspoken war between over-cooked and under-cooked indie-rock records that are pretty dull in either direction.

Listen to the two vocalists trying not to burst into giggles as the guitarist fluffs up just before they hit the second chorus of “I Can't Wait”, and the wonky, wood-block assisted riff-fest that follows and you’ll hear the ‘first take / best take’ philosophy of Swell Maps and the makeshift sonic anarchy of early Sun sessions at their finest. Listen elsewhere though – to the slashing, fast-strumming guitarwork on “Highway Memorial Shrine”, the intricate surfy-jangle lead lines and handbrake turn drumming – and you can (kinda, sorta) hear the spirit of The Minutemen rising in the distance, a spirit of carefully pre-studio prep work, obsessive practice and the desire to give the audience it’s musical money’s-worth that seems almost alien after extensive exposure to the trashed aesthetics that predominate amongst the rest of the currently resurgent lo-fi scene.

Short, sharp, instantly likeable and packed with awesome, I hereby declare Nodzzz debut my the first out and out winner of 2009, or the last one of 2008, or whatever.

The Beatles – now there’s a REALLY crappy band name. And I guess people didn't go around calling them "you know, The Beatles, with an 'a', it's like a really bad pun" all the time either.

Nodzzz Mp3s:

I Don't Wanna (Smoke Marijuana)
I Can't Wait

If you wanna hear nine other songs just as good as those, why not buy the Nodzzz record?

Nodzzz have a weblog and a myspace too.

Labels: I like, nerds, Nodzzz