30. Finally Punk – Casual Goths (Germs of Youth)

I didn’t go much on Finally Punk when I initially gave them a listen online, but I regret not making the effort to go and see them when they were in the country last year, because this LP, helpfully compiling their recorded output to date, is a total blast. I don’t know whether or not these 28 tracks are presented in chronological order, but I suspect so, as you can practically hear the band developing over the course of the album, from total temper tantrum fifty second spazz-fests at the start of side one to far more coherent, manic surf-punk in the Bratmobile mould by the end of side two. It took me a while to put my finger on what Finally Punk most remind me of. Some of the earlier tracks like ‘Johnny Depp vs Gator’ and ‘Redneck Gout Club’ are so hilariously trashed and infuriating they put me in mind of a girl gang answer to The Icky Boyfriends, but by the time we’ve made it past their cover of ‘Negative Creep’ at the halfway point (and hey, thanks for reminding me what a stupendously fun tune that is), the rickety, confrontational post-punk lurch and ranting, fuck-this-shit vocals have taken on the shape of something that I’m SURE already lurks deep in my boxes of old CDs and 7”s and – yes, that’s it! – GOD IS MY CO-PILOT, right there! I suppose bands like Finally Punk must get royally pissed off at aging nerds like me, taking in their unique and off-kilter style which has no doubt grown naturally from the personalities and shared humour of the band’s members and their friends and social context etc. etc., and coming out with “yeah, that’s really cool - y’know there was this band back in the ‘90s that used to do the exact same thing – hey, I’ve got their albums somewhere, I’ll do you a copy, you’ll like it”. But hopefully there’s more to Finally Punk than just entertaining the likes of me by sounding like God Is My Co-Pilot and The Icky Boyfriends. There’s more variety here than that, and some of the later, longer cuts are just fantastic songs – ‘Primary Colours’ hits with a musical and lyrical depth that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Sleater Kinney record, and disturbing tunes like ‘Missle’ and ‘Know Age’ take a more convincing stab at conveying the frustrations and fears of imminent victimhood young women have to put with than most earnest acoustic types who’d tackle such subject matter. That said, spasmodic, ranting rave-ups like ‘Boyfriend Application’ and ‘Dear Diary, Men Are Pigs’ are still my favourites – funny, angry, energised and fucked up, the world ALWAYS needs bands like Finally Punk.

Mp3> Boyfriend Application

29. Mean Jeans – Are You Serious? (Dirtnap)

“I was born in a leather jacket / the doctor called me a faggot / I’m fucked up but I don’t care / I ain’t never gonna cut my hair” - alright! Mean Jeans look like Buddy Bradley’s fucked up hometown loser friends from the New Jersey chapters of ‘Hate’, they list Wyld Stallyns in their top friends on myspace, and they sound like they’ve never owned a record that’s not by The Ramones. Stereo Sanctity says: WHERE DO I SIGN? Their vocalist may have learned to replicate Joey’s vowel sounds perfectly, but there’s no hiding the fact that Mean Jeans are pure Johnny n’ DeeDee, with any hint of ‘60s pop or emotional fragility hidden deep beneath the non-stop blitzkrieg riffola – this is stupid-head, steamroller pop-punk dedicated to the joys of eating, sleeping, rock n’ roll and getting fucked up. Such an approach sometimes comes with a downside, and indeed, the middle section of this album does kinda fall into a slump of toxic, cheap cocaine binge identikit over-EQed sludge, but even at their worst, Mean Jeans are still a ton more fun than Wavves oe whatever in the white-suburban-delinquent-trash stakes, and when they’ve got a good pop tune to cling onto – which is most of the time – they’re freakin’ unbeatable, busting through hits like “Born on a Saturday Night”, “Throwin’ Stones”, “Total Creep” and “Case Race” as if the spirit of da bruddas is keeping watch over their stoned-ass shoulders, making this record absolutely the best no-brainer, guilt-free pogo action since… god knows when. To anyone who still rues the day The Queers started to get too mature with all that Beach Boys stuff: you have a new favourite band.

Mp3> Steve Don't Party No More

28. Sylvester Anfang – II (Aurora Borealis)

Sylvester Anfang are a trio of sinister gents from Belgium, who I imagine are usually to be found lurking in a haze of smoke, sniggering at outsiders for their ignorance of obscure krautrock LPs. And when they’re through doing that for the day, they like nothing better than to utilise everything at their disposal to create the perfect soundtrack for your next acid-fuelled Satanic orgy. Musically, they’re pretty open-minded fellas, but wherever they roam, this atmosphere always seems to remain at the heart of their work – you get the feeling that in Sylvester Anfang’s world, if it doesn’t evoke images of writhing, hypnotised priestesses raising ceremonial daggers above a blood-drenched altar, it ain’t worth shit. I actually saw these fellas play a few years ago, supporting Jack Rose. I was at the height of my “fuck all this free noise bullshit” period at the time, but they nonetheless still managed to impress me as they scrabbled around the floor, tinkling bells and abusing fuzzboxes with occult precision, demonstrating an uncanny ability to turn even the randomest blurts of sound into a pulsing, cohesive whole. The band’s earlier records and tapes have tended to concentrate on the kind of unglued improv I saw them performing that night, but for this double LP they’ve really upped the ante, inviting various guests on board and emerging with a veritable smorgasbord of styles complementary to their overall aesthetic, taking in endless, sickening psyche jams, forbidding, moog-heavy droning, Attila Csihar-style coffin chants, stuff that kinda sounds like a Hammer soundtrack run through an echoplex, and even some hair-raisingly uncool mutant blues hoedowns. The overall impression is akin to a European gothic horror version of one of those classic Acid Mothers Temple double-headers: too much of everything, conveniently sliced into segments for the terminally zonked. Just drop the needle, dim the lights, and before you know it you’ll be transported to a darkened basement full of gory Technicolor, twisting double exposed photography, bleeding skulls, gratuitous boobs and grinning, robed hippies proffering hits from bone-carved hash pipes.

Mp3> Burkelbos

27. Brilliant Colors – Introducing… (Slumberland)

Brilliant Colors’ two EPs showcased a delightfully shaky, Beat Happening-esque approach to homemade rock n’ roll, but for this debut LP they’ve tightened up considerably and upped both the speed and the fuzz, turning in a beautiful white-light half hour of high energy punk rock – as perfect an equation of melody, velocity and noise as I’ve heard this year. Of course, because they’re girls and play songs with tunes, the world will have Brilliant Colors down as ‘indie-pop’, but to my mind ‘Introducing..’ is just a brilliant punk record. Each song blasts off like a ramshackle rocket, with maxed out distortion cutting across ramming speed snare/hi hat drums, yelped, repeated phrases yelled at the top of their voices – “shake!shake!shake!shake!” and “ask me!, ask me!, askme!askme!” – a totally joyous energy blast in the spirit of The Avengers or the first Saints album, in which the substance of individual songs scarcely matters so long as you’re still getting from A to B at maximum speed with air in your lungs. That the album ends with a punked up new version of their previous super-hit “Should I Tell You” seems like a deliberate gesture – those EP tracks are what they *could do then*, this album’s *where they WANT to be* now. Can’t think of much more to say than that, but in my headphones at 8:30 in on a freezing morning this is an absolute beauty.

Mp3> Motherland

26.Thee Oh Sees – Help / Thee Hounds of Foggy Notion / Dog Poison (In The Red / Tomlab / Captured Tracks)

Knocking out three albums and a DVD’s worth of product this year, small wonder Thee Oh Sees have effectively become my ‘default music’ this year – the band that fills the gap whenever nothing else particularly springs to mind. Taken individually, I guess none of these records are as good as last year’s terrific ‘The Master’s Bedroom..’, but they’re nothing if not consistent, and I’m a fan of needlessly proliferating releases, so this landslide of effortlessly galumphing garage-psych riff-pop gets the thumbs up from me. ‘Help’ is, I suppose, the proper official album, with harder guitars, tighter playing and better production, and if it fails to manifest the hoped for leap forward in songwriting, it’s still a veritable riot of weird, chaotic rock n’ roll, with little surprises like the flute-rockin’ on ‘Meat Step Lively’ popping up on a regular basis to save the day. The defiantly non-Velvets aping ‘..Foggy Notion’ meanwhile is a CD companion to a largely frivolous DVD that features the band playing some tunes in unusual locales (by the side of a motorway, etc.), and it presents a quieter, stranger and altogether more enticing side of the band as they rework some of the rave-ups from their other releases as ghostly, reverb-heavy creep-folk, with excellent results, by and large. ‘Dog Poison’ follows suit, adding a bit of flagrant Fall worship and sounding kinda like a demos collection more than anything. I like demos collections, and, as we’ve gathered, I’m happy to cut John Dwyer and his pals WAY loads of slack in view of the extent to which their signature sound appeals to me, so we can notch this one up as another great LP. Plenty of flute on it too! I don’t know what the hell kind of point Thee Oh Sees are supposed to be making at any point in their voluminous output, but I sure do like the sound of them making it. If I had a talk show, they’d be the house band. So best be glad I don;t have one.

Mp3s>
Meat Step Lively (from 'Help')
I Can’t Pay You To Disappear (from 'Dog Poison')

Labels: best of 2009, Brilliant Colors, Finally Punk, Mean Jeans, Sylvester Anfang, Thee Oh Sees

I Like Thee Oh Sees.

Although it passed me by when it first appeared last year, ‘The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In’, debut LP from Thee Oh Sees, John Dwyer’s latest assault on the world’s sensibilities, has recently come back outta nowhere (or “the internet” as we call it these days) to claim a place as one of my, like, totally favourite things of recent months.

(I know they’ve got a new album out on (where else?) In The Red soon and/or now, but I’ve not heard it yet, so for now I’ll keep on talking about their old one if that’s alright with everyone.)

Like many others I suspect, I’ve been a bit hot/cold on Dwyer’s previous bands, as experienced via the garage/noise of The Coachwhips and the noise/noise of Pink & Brown. Listening to both of those groups, I felt a mixture of respect for Dwyer’s pure energy in honing in on exactly the kind of demented, unconventional sound he was after, and disappointment that the results were often so chaotic, inconsistent and self-sabotaging. With Thee Oh Sees though, he’s shifted focus quite a bit, playing to his sonic strengths and really hitting the jackpot, letting loose a beautifully skewed mess of jangling psychedelic rock n’ roll, resurrecting the spirit of the earliest 13th Floor Elevators material and splicing in strains of mutant rockabilly and contemporary noise-rock thunder, equal parts melody and chaos over a relentless party-time backbeat, nailing an absolute killer sound.

Perhaps ironically for a band with it’s roots in San Francisco, Thee Oh Sees sometimes seem to be aiming at an ideal of psychedelia that draws a direct line between basic, backwoods rock n’ roll and total whacked out strangeness, writing the unnecessary baggage of the British invasion, folk-rock and hippie blues-jam phases out of history entirely. The sound of weird, sub-beatnik kids sticking forks in their third eyes back when everybody else was still wearing matching stripy shirts and playing ‘Louie Louie’. Barring the odd Townshend-derived riff, tambourine and some faint ‘we-listened-to-Dylan-on-acid-and-it-was-awesome’ Elevators-esque folk vibes, a lot of these Oh Sees songs sound like some kinda freaky thing that might have been birthed had the boys down at Link’s three-track shack just thrown caution to the wind and got waaaay out there one night.

A good dose of Dwyer’s lunatic-with-a-megaphone distorted vocals have survived from Coachwhips, but here they’re translated for the human race by co-vocalist Brigid Dawson, the two voices more often than not coalescing into an uncanny, genderless alien howl, framing a seemingly endless series of deliciously strange psych-pop readymades and surfy Monks/Seeds groove-stomps. You probably won’t get any terribly deep lyrical sartori from this Oh Sees album, but the odd snatch of vocab and titles like “Ghost In The Trees” and “Graveyard Drug Party” combine with the juggernaut of sound to tell you everything you need to know about the kind of scene being explored here.

Everything in Thee Oh Sees world comes served via an overdriven tube amp roar, slathered in slapback echo and tremolo. Almost every song jumps into life from a swamp of murky, delayed clatter, a ubiquitous “1,2,3,4!” sounding like it’s being beamed in from a distant ham radio, before the frantic rhythm section lays down the law and Dwyer’s applaudably demented, wild man guitar-playing proceeds to steal the show, slicing his way through Troggs-worthy hulk riffs, twangy jack-in-the-box rock n’ roll leads, pure destructo noise and endless fried solos with all the restraint of a kid on xmas morning.

For all the nerve-rattling racket though, these tracks are always accompanied by a tune to write home about, a pre-verbal yellalong chorus and the kind of honest-to-god crowd-pleasing hooks that most straight-laced garage bands would die for. Opener “Block Of Ice” and definitive dilated pupil girl-ode “Maria Stacks” present the band at their pop-est, like some inexplicably amazing two minute epiphanies you might find buried deep on a ‘Psychedelic Experience’ comp or ‘Pebbles Vol#36’, and proceed to obsess over for years. Longer groove-based cuts like “Two Drummers Disappear” sound like they have their root in some absolute killer rehearsal jams - ones that were WORTH KEEPING, would you believe - and even the more abstract items, such as the perplexing “Visit Colonel”, featuring as it does a roar of sound that makes me fear I’m about to be run down by a train every time I play in on my earphones, still rope in a melody I could probably hum for you, had I not let all the other competing Oh Sees melodies bounce happily around my brain for so long.

Across this album’s whole forty something minutes, only penultimate track “Quadrospazzed” begins to lose focus and run out of steam, and the closing “Koka Kola Jingle” makes up for it, a beautifully wasted, barely there lament, hinting at an entirely different aspect to the band’s music, before ending proceedings, as is only right & proper, with a resigned, echo-wrecked guitar drop/plug pull. Sadly you’ll have to add in the closing footsteps leaving the recording booth yourself, but no matter, ‘The Master’s Bedroom..’ still evidences a plain fantastic hit-rate for music this essentially spontaneous and crazed.

Thee Oh Sees is timeless, damaged freak music of a kind that’ll have 70 year old weirdos chortling for joy and 20 year old squares turning pale and reaching for the pause button. This one stands alongside those Greg Ashley solo discs, Oneida, Dead Meadow, Animal Collective and The Heads ‘Undersided’ on the long-list of my favourite psych-rock albums of the decade.

Mp3s>

Maria Stacks
Two Drummers Disappear


Thee Oh Sees myspace.

Buy this album from Norman.

Download some rare Oh Sees singles from the increasingly unbeatable Pukekos.

Labels: garage, I like, Psychedelia, punk, Thee Oh Sees