Summer Singles, part # 3

Sic Alps – L. Mansion (Slumberland)

It’s an odd one to get a handle on, this Sic Alps thing. I kinda like them, I think I’m probably gonna go and see them at their London gig. If I see a record by them, I’ll buy it. Their music’s likeable, varied, fuzzy, rocking, vaguely tuneful and kinda interesting, but… I dunno, I mean, I doubt even their most vocal supporters could legitimately claim they were *brilliant* or, y’know, singularly extraordinary. Even in their very best stuff, there’s a certain… haziness, maybe… that makes them the perfect target for any preordained opponent of the new lo-fi hierarchy to jump on and cry WHERE’S THE BEEF?

As I say, I like ‘em, and listening to them makes me feel good, but at the same time they don’t seem like a band who under sane circumstances would necessitate instantly sold out singles or furtive online bidding wars, any more so than any other duo of dudes you might find working out some tunes on Californian beachfront one Friday night. And this particular single, redolent of the kind of pleasantly slapdash meandering that leads responsible adults to start referring to songs as “jams”, will likely prove more flagrantly offensive than ever to those out there who’d demand that the incoming generation should be taking names and blowing minds as a matter of routine.

Not to me though. I kinda like it. The two numbers herein find the Alps at their most melodic and overtly sixties-styled, with acoustic guitar and everything on the A-side, while the B's a bit more of a 'Mellow Yellow' pre-glam stomper. The idea of Sic Alps being hippies has never really clicked with me before (more like NZ-via-Ohio outsider rock warriors, surely?), but this is basically some nice hippie music right here, stripped of all the bullshit that makes hippies and their music so ghastly. It’s a bit like something a couple of the guys from Moby Grape could have banged out after a few beers when their management wasn’t looking. Only it isn’t, at all. There’s something intangible about these songs – and not just the recording or the guitar tone – that defines them as ‘modern’. This is music that couldn’t have happened before ‘punk’ became codified in the late 70s, maybe even before, urgh, ‘indie rock’ became codified in the early ‘90s. But it’s still essentially dumb, happy shit to sit out on the porch with.

A band like Sic Alps also raises some interesting quality vs. quantity issues; granted, there are only two short-ish songs here, but the heart of the underground rock fan is still warmed by the implicit knowledge that a group like Sic Alps will always have LOADS of songs like these kicking around, and by its very nature this knowledge raises the level at which the band can be valued/enjoyed. If you were to record just the songs on this disc and present them to the music world like some sort of achievement, you’d be lucky to raise even the smallest of collective shrugs. Record about a hundred of the things though, of comparable or lesser quality, and a lifelong cult following will surely be yours. It’s a funny old game.

http://www.sicalps.com/listen.html
http://www.slumberlandrecords.com/

The Specific Heats – Back Through Thyme EP (Total Gaylord/Hugpatch)

The Specific Heats were ridiculously, almost unbelievably, good when I saw them play in Nottingham back in July – the sort of band I was worried I might have accidentally dreamed into existence with all my basest impulses. Picture if you will a dancing virtuoso loon of a guitarist leading proceedings with a lovely Mosrite cranked up via a Fuzzrite stompbox, a rack-mounted Fender reverb unit and various other noise-making goodies, whilst three unfeasibly beautiful young ladies provide furious backing on echoed, descending bass-lines, clattering garage-punk drums and swirling, baroque/prog-infused organ respectively, birthing a veritable riot of explosive, expansive psychedelic surf punk pop bliss. Good grief, what a band.

For all their magnificent potential though, it seems that The ‘Heats have had tougher luck than they perhaps deserve translating themselves to record. A second album apparently still lays some time in the distant future, and their merch guy warned me against seeking out their debut (highly unrepresentative of what they do now, I’m informed), leaving just this 33-playing EP as a stop-gap to bring back the happy memories.

And this is scarcely an accurate reflection of the band’s current line-up either it turns out, with production, song-writing and just about all the instrumentation being handled by guitarist/main guy Mat Patalano, with the rest of the live band only represented by Keira Flynn-Carson on drums. As such it’s a far more mannered and restrained affair than the live set, revealing a careful and perfectionist approach to recording, as Mat and Keira lay down a groovy ‘60s-focused sound that leans heavily on Zombies-esque baroque pop, some Stereolab/Monade style retro-futurist grooves, a bit of a surf twang, with a touch of Electric Prunes-ish studio-bound garage-psyche mayhem creeping around the edges. The result is a great listen, no doubt, inevitably recalling the work of Apples in Stereo’s Robert Schneider in both theory and practice, and imbued with the same irresistible positivity and pure love of sound too. All the same though, I can’t wait to hear what’ll happen when the brains and expertise behind this EP apply themselves to capturing the chaos and fury and wild ensemble playing of the group’s live show – I think it's gonna be pretty nifty.

Some killer live tracks / demos currently on their myspace though – check ‘em out!

http://www.myspace.com/thespecificheats
http://www.totalgaylordrecords.com/shop.htm

Top Ten – Girls Understand b/w Don’t Talk About Us (Classic Bar Music)

Classic bar music indeed! Keep me close to a bar for long enough, and I guarantee that before closing time this will be EXACTLY the kind of crap I’d want to hear, so let’s join Erin McDermott (ex-Bobbyteens, Trashwomen) as she and Top Ten bust through some cacophonous hard rock assaults on the world of power-pop, executed with all the nuance and restraint you’d expect. Only about two minutes per side here, but for some reason the pressing on this thing is pretty ppor, with thin sound, missing high end and a rhythm guitar track that sounds like an ape moaning along in time. I know that’s a weird thing to say, but seriously, you should hear it! The A-side has a good title and is pretty pacy, but a somewhat unmemorable tune, the B is a slightly unhinged bludgeoning of the Someloves classic. It’s ok, and kudos to them for covering such a great and relatively little-known tune, but it ain’t exactly too dynamic, y’know? I’m sure you could plot a graph pitting the potential enjoyability of this record against the number of cheap beers downed. Sounds like they’d had a few when they recorded it. I’m sober at the time of writing, so it could sound better.

http://www.myspace.com/topten
Classic Bar Music

Labels: Sic Alps, singles reviews, The Specific Heats, Top Ten

THE THIRTY BEST RECORDS OF 2008: Part #2

25. Rhys Chatham – A Crimson Grail: For 400 Electric Guitars (Table Of The Elements)


Yep, FOUR HUNDRED. Glenn Branca may, allegedly, have done the ‘guitar army’ thing first and, arguably, with greater sonic imagination, but it’s Chatham’s ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’ compositions (also see: ‘Guitar Trio’, ‘Two Gongs’ etc.) that have brought a more ferocious, single-minded WEIGHT to the table. Whether that becomes a weight of transcendence or annihilation can be hair’s breadth decision for the individual listener, but one thing’s for sure: his shit is heavy. When rock fans such as myself are drawn to recordings like this, we inevitably tend to approach them in sweaty-palmed anticipation of an unfathomable, brain-imploding multiplicity of string-mangling Thurston Moore caterwauling. And we are, equally inevitably, disappointed, then eventually awed, by the extent to which a legion of axes, split into battalions playing carefully scored overlapping tonal patterns, end up sounding not like guitars as we know them at all, but quite a lot like a more conventional, acoustic orchestra, as the timbre of individual instruments is lost within the vast space of the concert hall, their rock-power nullified as they are melded into a hive mind of pure sound, like a living string synthesizer the size of Antarctica. Particularly amazing on this recording is the way in which massed overtones seem to linger in the rafters, imitating the sound of human voices, like ghostly choirs of altos and sopranos, fading out just beyond the grasp of our ears. It has been argued in some quarters that the compositional element of Chatham pieces such as this one is somewhat unsatisfactory, and indeed, Crimson Grail’s rote cinematic swells and distant, ambient melodics cannot really be said to represent the spearhead of the avant garde forty years after the hey-day of New York minimalism. But whatever. The sound itself is incredible, leaving no space for such mealy-mouthed cerebral whining as it swallows you whole. I mean, c’mon – four hundred electric guitars, four hundred amplifiers, reverb the size of Jupiter – YOU WERE SAYING, Mr. Critic, it seems to bellow, as the learned musicologist crumbles to dust beneath the force of Chatham’s cosmic bombast.


24. Fucked Up – The Chemistry Of Common Life (Matador)


Say what you like about Fucked Up, they sure know how to start an album. An ominous 1972 vintage flute solo rises from the silence, glimmers of feedback and fuzz build up as it fades, then WHAM, the fucker explodes into about half a dozen overdriven guitar lines, a pulse-racing motorik beat, a gutteral “WaaaaaaGGGGgggggHHhhhh!”, and … they’re OFF! A shoe-in for ‘intro of the year’, for sure. From there on in though, ‘Chemistry..’ initially seems like something of a confused and underwhelming record, after the motherlode of 2006’s colossal ‘Hidden World’. Sure, the guitars (lots of ‘em) keep on chugging, the drums keep on pounding, Pink Eyes keeps on ranting on about god knows what, but in the process of cutting the umbilical cord to their hardcore roots and advancing into a more amorphous kinda studio-bound punk spacerock, the band seem to have lost some of the fearsome urgency that fuelled their earlier work, and instead sound like they’re driving blind, keeping the riffs and the 4/4 flowing on autopilot without a clue as to their eventual destination. And for all the careful attention that’s clearly gone into recording and layering them, the guitars sound neutered and over-polished, lacking the crucial centre of ferocity and off-the-cuff violence that makes for good hardcore. Then, on the second or third listen, it CLICKS. What have we basically got here? Three chords, one beat, a singer intent on spouting gobfuls of incomprehensible wisdom at all and sundry, weird multi-layered noise and electronics, general feeling of some rough n’ ready rock dudes attaining escape velocity and pillaging blindly through the multiverse? – this is HAWKWIND for the 21st century, dude! And suddenly it all makes the most wonderful sense. Long may the, uh, Fucked-Lords fly.

Mp3>Son The Father


23. Sic Alps – U.S. Ez (Siltbreeze)


Usually it annoys me when people insist on comparing all these new zero-fi scuzz bands to Guided By Voices, because, y’know, GBV’s original line-up were recording lo-fi through necessity rather than through affectation, and furthermore, they put a lot of work into making their records sound clear, and interesting, and great, rather than just sitting back and taking pride in sounding as shitty and half-assed as possible. Sic Alps though, to their credit, really DO have a mode of operation going on that begs a GBV comparison, simply with regard to banging out tons of short, easily melodic, lyrically confounding songs, and piecing them together into cohesive and intriguing albums amid bursts of weirdness, failed 4-track experiments and flatout noise. Obviously their songwriting isn’t half as hot as Pollard and co (whose is?), but I don’t think they’re really trying to compete in that race, which is fine. Both bands may betray a heavy ‘60s influence, but the sound Sic Alps are aiming for is quite different. Often, they seem to be gunning for some groovy beatnik-bluesy shuffle, like 'Subterranean Homesick Blues', Aftermath-era Stones or the really early Magic Band stuff. Which is awesome! And at other points on ‘U.S. Ez’, they’re hitting on a more spaced out line of reverb-drenched psyche-pop, which is really very nice too. I definitely get the feeling that if these guys had made it to the studio and got in an outside producer instead of recording at home, they would have emerged sounding more like, say, the Black Keys or the Brian Jonestown Massacre than anything Siltbreeze or basement-dwelling noise scenesters would touch with a bargepole. Just cool, solid, easy-going retro-styled rock n’ roll, essentially. There’s a real nice, positive energy going on here that I’m down with, not to mention some great riffs, weird words, hair-raising noise and captivating melodies. They use the limitations of their lo-fi-fu in a kinda pleasing fashion too, exploring distorted, decaying drum thwacks and distant amp hum in a way that’s warm and fuzzy and analogue-mysterious, rather than abrasive or irritating. So, yeah, this is GOOD STUFF right here, sorta nicely, sloppily pleasurable – in many ways, the diametric opposite of the more confrontational end of the ultra-lofi spectrum. The musical equivalent of sitting down in a comfy chair and drinking some beer and forgetting to shave. It’ll be a joy to hear what they get up to in future. More of the same I’m guessing, and that’s just fine.

Mp3>Gellyroll Gumdrop


22. Moss – Sub Templum (Rise Above)


It’s been a hard-fought battle for thee ultimate in glacial metal sludge over the past few years, but all bets are off – Moss have won the doom arms race. Taking their initial cue from Burning Witch’s torture chamber approach to metal convention, Moss’s secret weapon is their bloodyminded refusal to bow to the extremity of their own art, their ability to keep their amplifiers shackled to the mast of song form, even as the basics of rock band ‘dynamics’ threaten to collapse through sheer hellish lethargy and weight of noise. What I mean is: when you listen to Sunn 0))), you’ve always got the ‘ambient’ escape route; zone out, treat it as a drone; relax. Listen to Asva, and you’ve got their different compositional ‘segments’ and experiments in sound to keep you occupied. Listen to Moss on the other hand, and they refuse to let you forget for a second that you’re FUCKED. As the sub-neanderthal sub-bass creeps outta the tarpit at a BPM approaching single figures, for five, ten, twenty, thirty minutes at a stretch, the drummer keeps on drumming – painful, heartbeat defying chasms hanging between each snare thwack – and worse still, the singer keeps on singing – inhuman howls of pain that seem to linger in the air indefinitely until the dude’s poor throat seizes up. Jus Osborn of Electric Wizard is at the controls, bringing the kind of sickening heaviness that his own band has been lacking of recent, and it’s good to have it back – a total cocoon of roaring, misanthropic noise-comfort. But The ‘Wizard are practically a party band compared to these guys. Moss aren’t the only band to gleefully take doom metal to it’s further extremes, but, for all the mish-mash of esoteric imagery adorning their album sleeves (I spot medieval alchemy, freemasonry, thelema, Seal of Solomon – the usual suspects), they’re one of the only bands to do so whilst reminding you at every turn this is still music made by *people*. People who are still, on some level, trying to sing you a song. LOOK HOW WRONG IT WENT, and tremble.

Mp3> Dragged to the Roots


21. Toumani Diabate – The Mande Variations (World Circuit)


When I found myself getting into Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate’s ‘In The Heart Of The Moon’ a few years back, I naturally assumed it was the late Toure’s contribution I was digging the most, he being the blues-based guitarin’ guy and all. But now I suspect it was probably Diabate who brought the lion’s share of that record’s otherworldly yet utterly earthbound beauty, as a similar beauty is chronicled in pretty much every second of the man’s solo work, of which The Mande Variations represents something of a motherlode. It’s certainly been his highest profile release in the West thus far, appearing during the year in which African music started to make some serious inroads back into 1st world musical consciousness, and presenting nearly an hour of Diabate’s unaccompanied Kora playing. And, once you’ve heard it, there’s not much more to say, beyond an acknowledgement that this is amongst the most pure, peaceful, heart-stoppingly beautiful music you will ever hear; the testimony of a man who has dedicated his every waking moment to mastering these nine strings, and to drawing from them the most graceful, satisfying sounds available to us here on earth. It’s melodies, harmonies and purely expressive tonal explorations seem to carry a power that is universally applicable, able to stop any music lover, from any culture, dead in their tracks. Music like this exists on a plain above and beyond any thorny griping about the convoluted politics of Western youth adopting African musical idioms, about the reductive labelling and marketing of ‘world music’, about the phony lure of ‘exoticism’, or whatever else. This is music for everyone, no explanation offered, and none required. Everything you need to know about it, you can find within it.

Mp3>Elyne Road

Labels: album reviews, best of 2008, Fucked Up, Moss, Rhys Chatham, Sic Alps, Toumani Diabate