Back in September, I said I didn’t expect to hear another record I liked better than this one during 2013, and I was right, I didn’t. Ok, so its actual release date was Halloween 2012, thus making it a lumbering work of the ancients by this stage, but screw that, it deserves a #1 slot on some bloody list, and it’s going to be this one:

“Long-time dons of low key / non-showy axe magic, these guys have a better understanding of what makes an electric guitar ring true and hit the right synapses than, well… you or I, for a start. […] Within this racket though, thought and tenderness is ever in evidence. What these guys are working with here is over two decades of musical interplay, twenty-something years of learning to express themselves through the means of heavily processed strings and wood, of learning to carry us with them rather than simply assaulting us, of channeling all excess back into the song.

It may seem odd to wax so lyrical about lumbering temper tantrums like ‘Love Ordeal’ and ‘Psychic Toll’, but just listen to those riffs hammer down and point me toward a new band who can bring guts like this to the party, who can wring the neck of good taste with quite so much impassioned discontent. And moving on from everyday frustrations, there is at points a nigh-on apocalyptic feel going on here too, with Hatch and Tom S. bellowing through ‘Jesus Christ’ and, uh, ‘Apocalypse’ like grizzled sergeants calling their men to safety under heavy fire, polluted rivers parting as the band attain a kind of urban white man’s gospel.

And standing dead centre toward the end of side one, ‘Hold On to Your Soul’, where all this comes together, the kind of track it’s difficult to even consider approaching with words. Let’s just say that when things are looking black in the near future, when I’m walking to some supermarket in the dark wondering if I can be bothered to put one foot in front of the other, I know what I’ll be reaching for on my mp3 player. If I hear any piece of music this year that better reminds me of the reasons why I became so fixated on the strange magic of men manipulating guitars and speaker cabinets in the first place, that better reaffirms for me of the reasons why I should still make the effort, I’ll be very surprised.”

Hear some extracts via Youtube, buy the vinyl (in the States) from Columbus Discount, check with your local dealer of such product elsewhere, or if that fails, head across to friendly ol’ Amazon for the mp3s.

Labels: best of 2013, Cheater Slicks

Bigger and broader in scope than Lewis & Stampfel’s first collaborative record (2010’s ‘Come On Board’), and with a full-time rhythm section in tow, ‘Hey Hey..’ is no less charming or impulsive than its predecessor, and stands as another testament to the sheer, gargantuan amount of FUN these two bozos seem to have bouncing ideas off each other.

Stampfel in particular seems entirely reenergised by his experiences with Lewis & co, boldly stating in his introduction to this set’s voluminous song-by-song sleevenotes that his current goal in life is to have as much fun as Little Richard in 1956 - an ideal whose realisation the septuagenarian further explores on the self-explanatory opener here, ‘More Fun Than Anyone’.

Buoyed up by the demands of such fevered positivity, other highlights abound, serving to sketch out a rough mind-map of the varied cultural reference points currently shared by these irrepressible nerds; ‘Hey Hey’ somehow manages to reinvent Kyari Pamyu Pamyu’s surrealist J-pop smash ‘PonPonPon’ (the video for which Stampfel describes as being “..the artistic equivalent of three Mona Lisas”) as a kind of shuffling folk-punk hoe-down, lyrics and melody hopefully sufficiently altered to save the pair from a future spent languishing in a “..Japanese copyright-enforcement prison cell”, whilst ‘Do You Know Who I Am?! I’m %$&*?in’ Snooki!’ reinvents the outbursts of the titular reality TV star (I’ll have to take their word for it on that one) as something of a celebratory cacophony of unlikely self-importance. At the other end of the emotional spectrum meanwhile, ‘Moscow Nights’ pays spine-tingling tribute to the spirit of the late Tuli Kupferberg of The Fugs, and Stampfel’s personal anthem ‘Duke of the Beatniks’ provides my personal favourite track here, whilst ‘All The Time In The World’ (not the one you’re thinking of) waxes similarly self-reflective with a further spirited rejection of the rigours of age & hassle. ‘Crazy Creek (That’s Where We’re Sending You)’ rings out with all the alarming comic book insanity of ‘Have Moicy’-era Holy Modal Rounders, and several other cuts see Stampfel digging even deeper into his songbook of lost hillbilly wonders, shining a 21st century flashlight on the rather terrific ‘Money, Marbles and Chalk’, and, for the album’s conclusion, drawing out ‘Mule Train’ (a number # 1 hit for Frankie Lane in 1949!) into a full scale psychedelic wig-out.

If one thing is lacking from this album in fact, it’s probably Jeffrey Lewis – and Stampfel’s shtick is so persuasive, I’ve been listening to it for over six months before I really clocked the fact that examples of Jeff’s song-writing are few and far between here, with his efforts more focused on keeping his errant partner on the straight & narrow. (Which is perhaps just us well to be honest – in light of his last solo record, I can only hope he’s saving up a few hits for the next one). Lewis’s two main solo contributions to ‘Hey Hey..’ are a lovely little number called 'Another Inch of Rainfall' (no particular comment, but I like it plenty), and another entitled ‘Indie Bands On Tour’ – not, as I was hoping, a ribald, satirical swipe at Pitchfork-era excess, but instead an earnest tribute to those pale-skinned kings of the road. Initially, I was faintly disgusted, but as usual, Jeff brings an honesty and charm to proceedings that swiftly wins me over, even to such potentially unsavoury subject matter… and god knows, if anyone has the right to po-facedly hymn the rigours of the touring lifestyle, it’s this guy, who seems to have come to town about a million times since I first caught up with him in (oh-my-god-was-it-really) 2001.

The more I think about it, the more remarkable it is that his visits are still unquestioned highlights of my musical calendar after all these years, especially when Stampfel’s in tow, and I can attest that the gang who recorded this record are capable of absolutely bringing the house down, in a fashion that most louder, younger performers can only dream of. God bless ‘em for it, and here’s hoping they’re over again sooner rather than later.

Listen and buy on Bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2013, Jeffrey Lewis, Peter Stampfel

So, what say you to the concept of a UK doom super-group of sorts, comprising Mark Greening (Electric Wizard/Ramesses) on drums, Adam Richardson (Ramesses) on bass/vox and Mike Vest (Bong) on guitar..? Fuck Yeah, clearly.

That this first record what they have made is exactly as monolithic as their collective pedigrees might suggest, mixing up elements of the protagonists’ other bands in precisely the way I might have hoped it would, is good news indeed.

Nuff said really, but I suppose in the name of content creation, I should go on.

More of a long-ish EP than an album as such (four tracks / under thirty minutes on the vinyl, plus alternate ‘rehearsal versions’ and a brief riff on Loop’s ‘Black Sun’ on the CD & digital versions), ‘Super-Unnatural’ still represents the heaviest, beastliest, most indigestible thing that hit my ears in 2013, fusing the dense mysticism of latter-day Ramesses with a white noise static burn of guitar noise that takes the drone-wall of earlier Bong material and considerably ups the violence to Skullflower-like levels of nastiness, whilst Greening – oh joy of joys, thank you sir, and Satan bless you – locks straight back into exactly the kind of evil, slow-motion groove that once powered classic-era ‘Wizard as they laid waste to our cold earth back in the late ‘90s. And fucking hell, how I’ve missed it.

Picking formats on this one is a tough gig, as whilst the vinyl obviously roars with dust-choked ultra-bass of the infernal pits, the CD/DL instead gives you those aforementioned rehearsal cuts, which are perhaps even better, adding a totally evil, ‘90s-BM-demo-tape extreme-treble type blast to proceedings that practically has me stripping off to my grave-clothes and howling into the frozen void on a nightly basis. Well, ya pays ya money and ya takes ya choice I suppose. Personally, I like it so much I bought both. Yes, I PAID TWICE. Maybe that will go someway toward assuaging the debts I built up through those happy years of file-sharing. Either way, the spirit of the Dopethrone lives on in these recordings, and that is all you need to know.

Listen on Soundcloud, buy from Ritual Productions.

Labels: 11 Paranoias, best of 2013

Cor, now this the stuff! This is what you want to hear when you throw on a punk rock ‘demo tape’!

Eight songs / ten minutes of muscular rhythm section battery, primitive total ODed buzzsaw guitar, shards of feedback and a bilious litany of problems, solutions, frustrations, declarations, all laid down documentary style with a one mic, rehearsal room energy that perfectly captures the essence of the frrkin’ brilliant live sets I was lucky enough to see these four women play during 2013.

For the lack of anything else to say, I could raise the issue of whether this can still really be called a ‘demo tape’ when it is released by a record label (albeit a very small one) and sold for money, but, I wouldn’t want such categorical confusion to distract attention from how great Frau are, and what a solid burst of everything I want punk to be this tape is, free from contrivance, free from record collector blarney. No pop, no style – they strictly roots. Fucking brilliant.

Listen and buy from Tuff Enuff.

Labels: best of 2013, Frau

Right then…. if I remember correctly, I wrote a whole swath of rambling notes earlier this year regarding this raging masterpiece of weird, unapproachable avant-choogle, for a post that never quite came together. So let’s dig those out and see what truths we can muster, shall we..?

“Quite a name, isn’t it? A real line in the sand. ENDLESS BOOGIE. Are you in or are you out? Needless to say, those aware of my own music proclivities will find it all too easy to picture the sickening eagerness with which I rush to declare myself IN.”
“LONG ISLAND by ENDLESS BOOGIE – an exquisite bit of band name / album title poetry right there, enough to send me off on a little rock n’ roll reverie just thinking about it. Add a big, mossy-browed, shining eyed cyclopean troll face on the cover (a 1906 painting by Norwegian illustrator Theodor Kittleson), and I am beginning to feel that this is an object I would like in my house.”
“I wasn’t quite sure how to call it. Was this the sound of post-post-rock Chicago/NY Drag City type dudes reiterating classic rock gospel, and failing to get to the bottom of it? (Names such as ‘Stephen Malkmus’ and ‘Matt Sweeney’ hover heavy in their press biogs.) Or were they actually going for something more opaque… a sorta sideways approach to attaining The Real Deal, working hard to scratch a specialist rock-fan itch that lies beyond the ken of the casual, merriness-seeking listener..?”
“Combined heft is somewhat less than the postman-killing package you might have anticipated, and, far from being suitable for chopping logs or crushing rodents as the modern retro hi-fi enthusiast demands, these discs are – dare I say it – almost *floppy*, whilst the card-stock used on the sleeve is of a timbre rather apt to do that thing where it starts to bend in the middle when you take the record out. But hey, I’m no audiophile..”
“Opener ‘The Savageist’ comes on more bar band groove than high-end boogie, but the guitars are definitely where they wanna be, filthy low-end wah quack and sweet lead lines interlocking like a wicker basket full of mean-smelling happiness.”
“..the alarming stylings of vocalist Paul ‘Top Dollar’ Major still take some getting used to however, and I’d imagine his repeated evocation of “ONE BIG HOLE” – to give just one example - may prove an immediate dealbreaker for some listeners.”
“Another storming tune for those with a yen to dig it, a one-stop litmus test for one’s overall suitability to Endless Boogie could probably be established by measuring your reaction to the thirty second stretch that separates Major’s cringe-inducing “HEY SISTER, I’M THE CLOWN OF THE CLASS” from his transcendent declaration that “we all got… TORCHED ON THE PORCH!” (cue solos). If you’re feeling it by the time the ‘high-five-dude’ interlocking lead lines hit shortly thereafter, you’re probably in for the ride.”
“An atavistic monster of man, resembling a mountain troll who just ate Johnny Ramone for breakfast and assumed his physical characteristics, you’d be pretty disappointed if he *didn’t* holler away like David Lee Roth’s frontiersman granddad whilst unleashing an unbroken stream of the kind of beefy, show-boating guitar licks that younger listeners may well have assumed were banned under the Geneva convention – an ugly relic of mankind’s past sins.”
“Worth mentioning that there seems to be some sort of NYC psychogeography angle going on here too…. etc. The singer’s mixture of odd autonomous conjuration with penchant for absurd rockist bleating certainly but for an odd combination, and , troublesome though his excesses may be for some listeners, you’ve gotta admit he’s got SOMETHING going on that’s a bit different – some kinda MES-via-Billy Gibbons ranting guru shtick that invites the brave listener to dig in and at least TRY to piece together what in the name of god he’s goin’ on about.”
“‘General Admission’ on side D is where it all comes together for me, locking straight into what I want from Endless Boogie – greased up Status Quo chug cross-bred with Hawkwind-into-Motorhead muscle, sprawling ‘cross 7 minutes, Mr. Dollar growling incoherently like a guy about to get kicked out of a biker-bar at closing time, as Ecklow’s fuzz-wah belches up smoke and lead lines set out into the unknown like doomed Antarctic exploration parties. Yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about, and so forth.”

So hopefully that gives you a flavour. If you want a reason why ‘Long Island’ isn’t number # 1 on this list, I’m afraid it largely comes down to the fact that sections of it sound like the guy from Smog attempting improvised beat-poetry over some Slint outtakes. But for the rest of it, the good bits, the bits I’ve largely discussed above, make no mistake: I’M IN.

Listen to ‘General Admission’ on Youtube here, and buy from No Quarter (or Amazon or whatever, I suppose).

Labels: best of 2013, Endless Boogie

By the time you read this, I will be in an aeroplane, on my way to Tokyo. I was hoping to get the whole of this ‘best of 2013’ count-down in the can by the time I left, but I’m afraid things didn’t quite work out that way, and as such, we’re going to have to delay numbers #5 to #1 until I get back in late January.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, but hey, I hope I at least made a pretty good effort for someone who can usually only get it together to post about once a month.

So just talk amongst yourselves until service is resumed, have some terrific new year celebrations, continue with your lives and so forth, and I’ll see you all soon. Sayonara for now!

Labels: best of 2013, lameness

One of those groups who succeed in perfecting their chosen musical idiom so completely, and do so in such gargantuan style, that just about everyone else treading similar ground starts to seem surplus to requirements, I remain incredibly happy to have discovered the music of Bong a couple of years ago.

In fact, I love Bong to such an extent that a twelve month stretch without a new LP from them currently seems like a trying prospect indeed. To fill the aching void until their next magnum opus then, 2013 instead brought forth this live disc, recorded in St Mary’s Old Church, Stoke Newington, in 2011.

As you might expect, the sound captured here bears little trace of the cleaner, more purely psychedelic direction the band were pulling in on last year’s ‘Mana Yood Sushai’, with the necessarily muffled roar of live recorded doom metal and the unmistakable reverb of a big church building combining to make for a rather muddy, undifferentiated roar of a record. If Bong’s recent studio albums have sought to take us to celestial dreamlands or the depth of space, this one drags us right back into the bowels of the earth – a sodden, mud-choked, grave soil rumble, built around a cacophonous sub-bass drone and wah-blasted amplifier skree that recalls Sunn 0))) at their prime.

The opium-den overtones of Benjamin Freeth’s Shahi Baaja (that’s the sitar kinda thing to the likes of us) hang heavy as ever in the air, with additional formless blare from Mike Vest (here abetted by second guitarist Pete Ryde) and introductory incantations from bassist/vocalist Dave Terry meaning that by the time Mike Smith’s drums crash in about a third of the way through each side-long movement, the atmosphere is already treacle-thick and pitch black, and by the time you’re shaking your gory locks to his ball & chain dragging pulse beat, there’s no way out - you’re in for the duration.

Predictable maybe, but random taste tests from this one almost inevitably give me an image of skeletons, bones picked clean, rising from the grave; the earth throwing up its dead; Bruegel’s ‘The Triumph of Death’, and all that. And isn’t the spirit what metal, particularly doom, is all about really? Whoever that harried graphic design assistant was who struck that painting on the front of that old ‘Sabbath best-of, they were on to something. Arise! Arise! Wipe clean the surface, and return to the soil. Good times. When the rain is unceasing and even candle-light begins to seem too bright this winter, I know I’ve got just the record to reach for.

Listen and buy from MIE.

Labels: best of 2013, Bong

On the surface of things, there is much reason for fans of Jennifer & Jessica Clavin’s former band, Mika Miko, to feel rather surprised and disappointed the direction they’ve taken with Bleached.

Coming straight from the raw and acerbic, early ‘80s inclined sorta twitchy punk of their previous outfit, the sudden miraculous conversion to breezy, beach-inclined, hyper-melodic guitar pop seen here could easily seem a pretty cynical move – zeroing on the relative success achieved in that style by geographic peers like Best Coast and Dum Dum Girls, and riding it straight onto…. whatever phrase stands in for “the airwaves” these days as a signifier of quasi-mainstream public acceptance.

It would be a lot easier to write them off however were it not for the fact that ‘Ride Your Heart’ is actually really bloody good – a totally solid album that’s easily one of the best things this sorta ‘LA beach girl guitar-pop’ micro-genre has ever produced. The essence of the band’s punk background is nicely preserved, as drummer Dan Allaire helps lay down a solid, forward-moving backbeat reminiscent of The Wipers, whilst the Clavins’ guitars chop and strum and jangle and chime in extremely pleasing, multi-layered fashion. Melodies remain “aiming for the chart breakthrough” level sugar-coated throughout, but such an approach is handled in best possible fashion, retaining the kind of momentum and sense of purpose previously harnessed by bands like The Nerves and Shivvers back in the skinny-tie era.

And, whilst Bleached’s sing-song choruses and lovelorn, boy-focused lyrics may seem off-puttingly vapid on first approach, after a few listens I started to get a very genuine emotional hit from a lot of these tunes, ‘specially the Fleetwood Mac-ish gravity of songs like ‘Dreaming Without You’ and ‘Outta My Mind’. Basically, I think there’s a lot more depth here than detractors might assume, and certainly enough classic pop muscle to stop the band ever falling into dreary, Best Coast-style solipsism.

To be honest, I’ve really heard very little in the pop-punk kinda sphere that’s struck a chord with me in the past few years, but these guys are definitely hitting all the right bases, and, regardless of their intentions, they’ve taken on convincing ownership of their chosen style and made one hell of a good album.

Check out press blurb and previews via Dead Oceans, or pick up from yr usual places.

Labels: best of 2013, Bleached

So I cannot tell a lie – I like Boards of Canada. Then or now, you could have knocked ‘Music Has The Right…’ and ‘Geogaddi’ for all manner of faddish reasons (I know I did), but you know what? I’m still playing them. And, whether taken as palette-cleansing immersive listening or just background-y accompaniment to tedious laptop grift, they remain singularly elusive and fascinating piles of music. Many, I think, have attempted to follow their breadcrumb trail over the years, but no one else has ever quite managed to hit that particular, paradoxical combination of comforting and sinister in quite the same way, or so scratch their peculiar itch just so.

The less said about interim flop ‘Campfire Headphase’ the better, but now we can now at least forget about that and sing an eerie, phase-shifted child voice halleluiah, for ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’ is with us, and… more than anything else, it sounds like a bunch of tracks that fell off the back of the lorry when the master tapes for ‘Geogaddi’ were on their way to the pressing plant, to be honest.

Sure, there’s been some minor stylistic changes, some of them even seeming to reflect the whims of contemporary tastes – in particular, their use of rythym tracks has moved away from any semblance of stoner, break-beat head-nodding, and has assumed a more muted, industrial sort of character, whilst their synth work seems to be drawing more deeply from the currently ubiquitous well of Carpenter-ish ‘80s horror soundtrack chills (perhaps with particular reference to Ennio Morricone’s singularly icy Carpenter pastiche on his music for ‘The Thing’, if we’re gonna push the issue).

By and large though, the feeling here is wonderfully familiar, with those reassuring ‘‘70s airport public service announcement jingle’ vibes are never far away, always ready to warm us up again, like a winter-time dip in a volcanic lake. There is still no one else who can get that particular, faded-photo, decaying synth sound to work quite like this, however hard they try, and, whether re-treading old ground or otherwise, it is fantastic to hear that beautiful methodology applied to a whole new set of compositions here.

Highlights are many and varied, and I have neither the time now inclination to wax lyrical about them all here, but needless to say, if you retain any fondness for the old BoC albums and haven’t picked this one up yet, you should stop umming and ahhing and do so immediately. I know that sometimes saying a group’s new record is “just as good” as their previous ones doesn’t sound like much of a compliment, but in this particular case, I’m sure fans will appreciate how much weight such a statement carries.

Preview and buy via boardsofcanada.com.

Labels: best of 2013, Boards of Canada

So I confess I’m in a bit of quandary when it comes to reviewing this one, because, having already marked it up for that all important number # 9 spot, I realise that I only have it on vinyl, and, since I’m now back at my Mum’s place for Christmas, separated from my record player & records, that makes it difficult to follow what would be my usual course of action in a situation like this – that being to neck a few glasses of wine, throw it on and hammer out a pile of subjective, mystic blather, then subsequently seeing how it reads in the morning.

As it turns out, I’m ok for the wine and the blather, but the all-important ‘listening to the record’ bit is proving a challenge. So, for now, I’ll simply have to rely on my memory (never a good idea, especially when it comes to music like this), and just tell you that this is a new-ish LP by Neil Campbell (former main man of Vibracathedral Orchestra), and that it’s bloody brilliant.

I realise that Campbell has put out something like a million records already under the Astral Social Club name, but for some reason it’s been far too long since I checked in with what he was up to, so a chance purchase of this LP proved a suitably invigorating reintroduction, being as it is perhaps the best thing I’ve heard from him since the days of Vibracathedral. In general, I guess we find him hear operating in similar maximalist territory to Matthew Bower’s Sunroof project, or the brighter bits of the Campbell Kneale / Birchville Cat Motel catalogue, only somehow sounding a lot more joyous and approachable than either, laying out some background loops of mind-crushing primitive night club thump , then wrangling massed layers of out of control electronic noise and frippertronic kosmiche guitaring over the top, creating wonderful, dense, impossible tangles of sound to fascinate and delight the curious. Oh, and there’s a jew’s harp in there too somewhere, I seem to remember.

Basically listening to this, I get the image of a man in a small room, wrestling endlessly with massed tendrils of fizzing electrical cables, all animated by some strange, Akira-like intelligence. But y’know – in a nice way. The record label page for the release (linked below) contains a vast amount of praiseful blather of the kind that I can’t possibly try to compete with without the record at hand, so… I’ll direct you over there for further adventures in the reckless use of audio / verbal metaphor, but needless to say, I like this album a hell of a lot.

You can listen to a six minute ‘sampler’ and weep for the fact you didn’t buy this LP whilst it was available via Trensmat records.

Labels: Astral Social Club, best of 2013

Now here’s something you don’t see very often these days: a really strong, instantly likeable album from a previously unknown band that doesn’t fit into any pre-existing genre framework, or invite immediate comparison to any other artists. Not that I’d go as far as to say that Italian duo Satelliti were daring new pioneers or anything – their style still relies on wildly pulling chunks out of the past 50 years of popular music – but the way they combine their plundered ingredients feels fresh, new, noisy, *cool*. I like it!

Andrea Polato’s muscular, aggressively mixed kit drumming keeps things ostensibly anchored in a rock setting, but Marco Dalle Luche on electronics & keyboards ranges far and wide, from overdriven John Carpenter-via-Detroit Techno riff beatdowns to skittering loop pedal noise, Italio-prog bombast and fragrant psyche-jazz meandering, usually all within the same track. The band claim a strong jazz influence, and whilst this may not seem immediately obvious, it can soon be heard in both surface elements (‘Bitches Brew’ style electric piano tinkling features prominently) and at the roots of their essentially improvisatory technique.

Basically their mode of operation here recalls that of many of the bands we’re now legally obligated to call ‘krautrock’: seeding a stentorian rock groove with chaos, experimentation and unexpected left turns, building in a kind of energised ‘travelogue’ feel that seeks to take us from A to B, where ‘B’ exists only as an as-yet-invisible unknown.

Unlike many other groups employing such methodology though, Satelliti seem happy to relegate any high-falutin’ notions to the back seat, concentrating instead on basic rockin’ out. Most of ‘Transister’ sounds as if it could have been recorded live in front of an audience, with the group keen to kick that audience’s ass in classically macho fashion, as jazzist walkabouts never distract us for long from the central business of avalanching, Bonham/Liebezeit-indebted drum damage and vicious, distorted electro riffs.

At a push, categorisation obsessives could maybe put Satelliti in a box with more burly American experimental rock units such as Trans Am or mid-period Oneida, but I’ve certainly not heard their like for a while, and certainly not heard this kinda thing done in such invigorating, free-wheeling fashion. Expect to hear a lot more from these guys. TOP STUFF, in case they need a sticker for the front of the CD.

Listen and buy via bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2013, Satelliti

For reasons social, psychological, geographical, but mainly financial, I pretty much gave up buying new singles in 2013. The few I did pick up almost all came my way via gigs, merch stalls, local London labels and that sort of thing.

And happily, this more selective purchasing strategy resulted in the ones I did get almost all being pretty good.

So, the pretty good-est ones I find sitting at the front of my record box come this December, in no particular order except for the fact that City Yelps is unquestionably Number # 1, are:

Labels: best of 2013

A little package of nine home-recorded songs from Humousexual, whose work continues to touch me more than that of any other earnest, lo-fi songwriterly types currently in operation.

I probably can’t say much about why I like the songs here so much that I didn’t already say when I wrote about their Grenzenlos CD a little while back, so I’ll try to keep blather to a minimum here and just try to awkwardly convey my belief that these songs are just… honest, and straight up, and necessary and GOOD, y’know?

These guys are just doing things right, quietly letting us know how they feel with solid tunes, spirited words, simple home-made recording and no contrivance or melodrama or miscellaneous hoo-hah getting in the way. ‘Crisps with Personality’ and ‘Take My Hand in the Summer’ are my favourite ones on it, but most of them are really great.

For all things Humousexual-related, go here.

Labels: best of 2013, Humousexual

When opening track proper ‘My Black Sabbath’ kicks in, The Limiñanas (I still keep wanting to call them Les Limiñanas..) seem set on replicating the formula that made last year’s Crystal Anis such a hit: minimal, tambourine-heavy percussion, an insidiously funky bass-line, languorous Francophone vocals and that weird, banjo-sounding thing (is it like, a zither or something?) - the requisite ingredients are all here for another fine example of their trademark sound, and indeed you’ll likely find yourself pulling your Fedora down over your eyes, traversing the back alleys of Montmartre, within seconds, regardless of where you happen to be listening.

With that reassuringly confident flashback to the last album is out of the way though, the band proceed to follow a somewhat different muse over the space of the next 40-odd minutes, largely ditching the melodic pop element of their sound as they delve even deeper into the world of ‘60s French kitsch to create a more brooding, groove-heavy, early-‘70s-crime-movie-soundtrack type confection, so transparent in its stylistic intent that they might as well have put a picture of Serge Gainsbourg and Alain Delon driving a 2CV past the Eiffel Tower in on the front, with Jean-Luc Godard cranking up the camera somewhere in the background.

You remember those couple of tracks on ‘Crystal Anis’ that featured that Gainbourg-style close-to-the-mic spoken word kinda thing, and the awesome chase scene instrumental ‘Belmondo’? Well that’s the style that prevails this time around, for better or for worse. It’s a lushly recorded business too, with sitar twangin’ away here and there, enough vintage organ to fund a second home in the country and lashing and lashing of that wonderful tremoloed fuzz guitar (praise the lord!). A really sensational recording in fact, if that’s your bag.

As if the band’s influences weren’t clear enough, they spend the entirety of ‘Votre Coté Yéyé M'emmerde’ listing them, managing to sound disconcertingly cool in the process (“et Morricone… l’écoute le fuzz!”). A more leftfield highlight is the English language ‘Cold Was The Ground’, a graveyard crawling gallic blues (not a cover of the similarly titled blues standard, though obviously seeking after similar territory), led by eerie Harry Lime-esque zither (yeah, I’m going to go with zither) and a fantastic, ice cold vocal from singer/drummer Marie. Then there’s the delightful ‘BB’, which unexpectedly backtracks into pure garage territory, sounding like the kind of charming teenage psyche-blunder that could easily have been pulled from some gallic Teenage Shutdown comp. Nice.

Those exceptions aside though, we’re deep into mod-ish crime movie OST territory here, basically, with the ghost of Serge stalking large. So if you like that sort of thing, DIG IN, but if you find it all a bit of a contrived vintage put-on, perhaps best steer clear. I mean, I get where you’re coming from with that I guess, but – sorry, what was that? Excuse me, I’m too busy digging in.

Buy from Trouble In Mind, or give in and check it out on Amazon.

Labels: best of 2013, The Liminanas

It’s a tough gig, the post-reunion comeback album. Seems to function very much like the arid badlands of a music ‘career’. Many have been there; few have come back alive. So, how fare The Oblivians, a group who often made a virtue of sounding like they had no idea what the fuck they were doing even back in their glory-days, riding a wave of belligerent aggression and random, hard-livin’ noise through a series of records so accidentally brilliant that they emerged by default as pretty much the best punk band of the ‘90s…?

Well, to be honest, chances of them managing to recapture that same spirit twenty years down the line seem pretty slim, but thankfully they’ve got a different, none-more-Oblivians ace up their sleeve: namely, the fact that they couldn’t give a fuck about doing that.

So yeah - anyone expecting a disc that sits happily alongside ‘Popular Favorites’ and ‘Soul Food’ will be heading straight for disappointment here. Is it as good as the old stuff..? Well, no, obviously, but the point is, it’s not really trying to be. With two additional decades of music-playin’, business, family, friendship behind them, it would frankly be quite worrying if these guys were still bringing the kind of fuck-everything chaos heard in their early work, and it’s good that they don’t tarnish their dignity by trying to force it.

No, instead this is a cleaner, more easy-going Oblivians by a factor of 10. Recording is done competently by someone who knows how to record stuff, and melody and lyrical good humour predominate. So you’re saying it’s gone all middle-aged..? Fuck no! Mainly it just sounds fun, and good - the sound of three friends going into a room with two guitars and a drum-set and banging out a bunch of tunes, leaving anyone else’s expectations at the door. And sure, the results aren’t perfect – there’re a few duds scattered through, a few misguided attempts to hook up with old formulas – but the basic, instrument-swappin’ set-up and non-professional drumming keeps things grounded nicely, and with almost all the cuts clocking in below the two minute mark, there’s little room for ego or ambition to start doing any damage.

Furthermore, the song-writing is frequently top-notch, meaning that the song-by-song hit rate here remains high, reflecting the strengths of three separate writers who all have their own neat little thing going on. ‘Pinball King’ and ‘Little War Child’ are totally sweet glam stomps that could have come straight from the songbook of someone like King Tuff or Nobunny; ‘Come a Little Closer’ and ‘Loving Cup’ (not a ‘Stones cover) are convincing bits of bluesy swagger that veer toward Greg Cartwright/Oblivian’s work with The Reigning Sound; ‘I’ll Be Gone’ is a reassuringly vitriolic put-down of Pitchfork-ish indie celebrity (“your dreams have nothing to do with mine”), and ‘Woke Up In A Police Car’ is a text book demonstration of Pink Flag-esque punk rock efficiency that will stick in your heads for days. All quite different, all keepers.

The acid test for any reunion album of course is to take a step back and ask yourself how well it would stand up if it was by someone you’d never heard of, rather than a gang of returning heroes. Happy to say, ‘Desperation’ passes with honours: if this was a debut album by some out-of-nowhere garage-punk band, I’d rate it as a solid, characterful and super-fun effort and look forward to hearing what they came up with next. Reunion badlands successfully traversed!

I realise these guys all probably have better things to do than spending the rest of their lives cashing in on their old band name, but Oblivians 2.0 is lookin’ good so far, and I for one would be happy to see ‘em continue to make a go of it.

Listen via Youtube, and pick up from wherever you normally go for In The Red stuff.

Labels: best of 2013, The Oblivians

Hey look everybody, it’s another unexpected genre exercise from The Dirtbombs, following up their supreme Detroit techno effort ‘Party Store’ with this affectionate tribute to the oft-pastiched micro-genre of Archies/1910 Fruitgum Company style American Bubblegum. As I probably said when reviewing ‘Party Store’, I think these kind of projects often bring out the best in Mick Collins, whose bands, though all mighty rock n’ roll units, sometimes tend to flounder on record when operating in “hey, do whatever you like” territory. And I’m happy to report that ‘Ooey Gooey..’ continues to bear that theory out.

The main thing that sets this one apart from ‘Party Store’ and ‘Ultraglide in Black’ is that it relies on original song-writing rather than covers, but thankfully Collins & co. fare extremely well in this regard, conjuring up a pile of effortlessly catchy, triumphantly shallow ditties whose cross-pollination of the bubblegum formula with the DB’s patented fuzz garage stomp produces results that for my money are generally more enjoyable than the oft rather tepid confections offered up by the original bubblegum era.

Certainly, one feels that the purveyors of ‘60s/‘70s bubblegum’s cloyingly pre-pubescent ideal would have gone red of face and weak of knee if faced with the percussion-heavy fuzz-box funk and libidinous innuendo of ‘Sugar On Top’ and ‘Hot Sour Salty Sweet’. Listeners who like their pop-fun to come with a bit of a grown up kick to it should have great time with ‘em though, and the former in particular matches the best bits of ‘Party Store’ in its “perfect world floor-filler” potential. Elsewhere, the Shoes/Badfinger-esque ‘Crazy For You’ gently out-Power-Pops 90% of current contenders in the power-pop sub-division of contemporary garage/punk (love that middle section), and that sentiment that applies double to the dumb-faced happiness bomb of ‘Sunshine Girl’, whilst ‘Girl On The Carousel’ takes a surprisingly successful turn toward lush, Association-ish bubblegum-baroque.

As with most bubblegum type stuff, the inevitable onset of sugar toothache means it would probably be a sign of mental illness if you actually wanted to listen to this LP every day, but when the sun’s shining and you’re feeling UP, UP, UP, it’s the bedroom dancing album of the year for sure, and another jewel in The Dirtbombs’ increasingly shiny back catalogue.

Listen on Youtube, buy from the shops.

Labels: best of 2013, The Dirtbombs

Well, this year’s Man… or Astroman? comeback might have proved a bit of a damp squib (on record at least – I didn’t manage to catch them live), but fans of their particular oeuvre can at least wipe away a tear and console themselves with the knowledge that we’ve still got mobs like Los Pecadores, coming straight out of the land of exotic adventure that is 21st century Leeds with a nigh-on perfect reclamation of M… OAM?’s classic-era formula.

So yes: you will by now have clocked the goofy album title, the Mexican wrestler mask and the comic book aliens that adorn the cover. You probably could have guessed that carefully chosen dialogue samples from ‘Wild, Wild Planet’ and ‘Invasion of the Bee Girls’ are just around the corner, and that the drumming is amazing. You know whether you are in or out.

Personally, I love this kinda stuff, so I’m in like Flynn, and I’m happy to report that by and large Los Pecadores stick to the very punk-est end of Astroman’s stylistic spectrum. Certainly, they’re less nerdy and less sonically inventive than the past masters, and perhaps less melodically imaginative too…. but such deficiencies are more than for by sheer velocity. Maintaining a near hardcore pace throughout, ‘Escape From Uranus’ is a relentless 20-something minute punk-surf ripper than barely slows down long enough to catch a breath, let alone a wave. Guitar tone is wild as gtr, bass and drums clash and swerve with all the swashbuckling prowess this kinda music demands, and I’m happy to crown these guys a worthy replacement to London’s much missed (by me at least) One Fathom Down.

If you were feeling grumpy, you could note that their compositions tend to get a bit dreary when they push into cruise control territory on some of the longer tracks, and that the master volume on my CD copy is set inexplicably low, but the record as a whole is such a rush, you’d have to be bloody picky to take issue at such trifles. Definite gold medallists in the hotly contested British Instro/Surf Album Of The Year category, anyway.

Listen and buy via bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2013, Los Pecadores

Have I written here before about how much I hate the term ‘gig’, in its current usage? Makes me cringe every time I have to say it. I mean, I’m sure you all know that in its original usage, as coined by the pre-rock n’ roll American hipsters of legend, a ‘gig’ = a job, a thing you do for money, a task you are contracted to perform. It first gained its musical connotation when used by jazz musicians, who were literally describing the job of playing music that they had on that night, or whatever. For it to be regularly used by people by people who are merely *attending* a musical performance, in the year 2013 no less, seems an absurd anachronism. Plus it just sounds stupid.

Unfortunately though, the alternatives are even worse – a ‘show’ seems a cringe-worthy Americanism that fits poorly in the lips of other nations, whilst describing a DIY rock n’ roll type event as a ‘concert’ sounds even more ridiculous, like you’re trying to justify it to your grandma or something (‘oh, uh, yes, I went to a .. concert last night nan… yes, that’s where I got these bruises..’).

So, for the lack of any feasible alternative, gig it will have to be. And to finally get to the point, boy have I witnessed some great ones this year! Seriously, you may not know it from my sour tone and lengthy absences on this blog, but it’s been a great, great year as far as getting out and about and enjoying life and music goes.

Those who attended the Indietracks festival back in July might have witnessed me going absolutely ape-shit in appreciation of Helen Love’s first public appearance in about fifteen years; I guess I forgot until they very moment she/they started playing, what amazing achievements a lot of those songs are, and how much they used to mean to me back when I was growing up – total nostalgia of course, but it was a magnificent occasion.

It would take a heck of a lot to beat that, but I’m afraid if I were writing a numbered list it would still come in at #2, simply because that Jeffrey Lewis & Peter Stampfel gig in Brighton a few months earlier was such an incredibly good time. Really one of the best.

Elsewhere, seeing Humousexual play at the end of a few nights myself and my friends organised at the Deptford Birds Nest was a very special moment, and Ethical Debating Society were a revelation too. To fill up to rest of a potential top ten, I also really, really enjoyed… ooh, let’s see now… The Necks at Café Oto, Endless Boogie at Corsica Studios, a FANTATIC gig on a boat somewhere near Vauxhall featuring Brilliant Colors, LaLa Vasquez, Bloomer and Good Throb. Dan Friel, Purling Hiss, King Tuff and French band The Feeling of Love, all playing on separate occasions at the Tufnell Park Dome; King Khan & BBQ Show at Birthdays (shit venue, shit corporate promoter, shit crowd – great band), Frau kicking ass in various support slots, including one with Hard Skin – oh yeah, Hard Skin! Seeing Discharge at the New Cross Inn was an absolute hoot, then there was Fabio Frizzi taking a bunch of soundtracks he knocked out on a cheap synthesizer in the ‘80s and getting a freakin’ 12-piece band to play them at the Union Chapel on Halloween… and how did I forget to mention Shonen Knife playing a greatest hits set at Dingwalls on a fairly magical Sunday night of exhaustion? Yeah, it’s been a great year.

Lots of mediocre and bad stuff was witnessed too of course, and there were lots of really choice events I sadly missed due to social or geographic disjuncture (AMT, Mainliner, Man.. or Astroman?, Sun Ra Arkestra), but never mind, that's the way it goes. Still a great year.

Labels: best of 2013, live reviews

Thoroughly disgruntled punk racket from this Memphis crew, who initially sound a bit like a skinny, more wiry (and indeed Wire-y) take on circa ‘82 Black Flag (think if they lost most of their muscles and replaced all the distortion with small amp treble), but subsequently strike out in a more imaginative direction, attaining a sort of expansive, graveyard crawlin’ feel reminiscent of The Flesh Eaters, tempered with shots of obtuse venom and strangulated telecaster terror that come on like distant echoes of The Dicks’ ‘Kill From The Heart’ LP.

And speaking of distant echoes, there’s a bit of a contemporary, post-Oh Sees type element going on here too, with excessive reverb and barely controlled echo applied to just about everything, working well with some malignantly convoluted riffs and buried female back vocals to give things a pleasantly unearthly horror movie psyche feel at times.

I guess I don’t have much more to say about it right now, beyond dutifully noting that it turns out this is actually a late 2012 release that I didn’t hear until recently, so let’s just conclude by stating that, whilst it’s not really an immediate head-banging blast or anything, a few listens really cement this as one of the best punk records I’ve heard this year. Check it out.

Buy from Goner here.

Labels: best of 2013, Ex-Cult

I suppose you can’t blame an artist when his or her closely guarded style suddenly becomes the ‘in-thing’. With piles upon piles of haunted, isolationist downer dirge increasingly filling the record racks, the past few years have seen James Kirby aka The Caretaker aka V/VM aka Leyland Kirby move from being a marginal, faceless malcontent – purveyor of onimous noise-fogs and evil-minded remixes that used to spook unwitting John Peel listeners when they least expected it - to a position somewhat akin to a ringleader for a whole swathe of underground music practitioners.

From being an entirely anonymous, shadowy presence back in the early ‘00s (I was listening to both V/VM and The Caretaker for years before I realised they were the work of the same person), he’s moved on to become a fairly ubiquitous figure - an easy reference point, with a readymade set of expectations; “Oh yeah, it’s more of that Caretaker sort of stuff”, etc etc.

Like I say, it’s not his fault, but still - I confess that when I first saw the name and cover art of his new venture under the name The Stranger, I couldn’t help feeling that maybe he’d finally jumped the shark and succumbed to self-parody. “Watching Dead Empires In Decay”? You’ve gotta be kidding, right? Ooh, look, faded b&w portrait of a bleak, abandoned tower block… gimme a break. In fact this album’s aesthetic presentation, taken in and of itself, could make a pretty good case for all this dark, industrial electronica in 2013 occupying a similar position to that of post-rock in 2003 – eg, predictable, self-important, shit-boring, and of little use to anyone.

So I went in with low expectations, not feeling much in the mood for a bunch of contrived cyclopean gloom and suspecting that this might be where Kirby and I finally part company. But, of course, actually listening to the thing tossed all those foolish notions out the window straight away. Dash it all, why does he have to make everything he touches so damned good? That’s talent for you I suppose.

Taking a distinctly different approach from either the Alzheimer’s wracked ballroom memories of The Caretaker or the melancholic drones of Leyland Kirby, The Stranger introduces us to an entirely new landscape of musique concrète amplified machine-shop rumble, distant thudding reverberations of earthquakes or collapsing zombie nightclubs, detuned cellos and bassoons howling exhaustedly at the moon, and bright, skittering percussion spelling out warm, non-human rhythm patterns, like raindrops hitting tin shack roofs. Such woolly descriptions and glib comparisons don’t really do these compositions justice, but if you’re looking for a map reference, imagine David Lynch and Alan Splet’s ‘Eraserhead’ soundtrack filtered through the methodology and emotional undertow of Pierre Henry or Steve Reich and the musical language perfected by The Necks and you’ll get some idea of the general tone of this record. There’s some sinisterly cozy Boards of Canada-esque synth drift buried in there somewhere too (well, I mean, of course there is), and each track in turn brings out some welcome new twists and sound sources that ably succeed in fighting off the monotony often inherent in this kind of music, as does the presence of a subliminal melodic sensibility that occasionally emerges fully formed in staggeringly beautiful fashion (particularly on closing track ‘About To Enter a Strange New Period’, which must rank as one of Kirby’s best moments to date).

Easily surpassing the limitations imposed by its increasingly tired aesthetic signifiers, ‘Dead Empires..’ makes for compelling listening. As is so often the case from Mr. Kirby, it’s the kind of record so engrossing and atmospheric it can practically change the temperature in a room when played. The question of precisely WHY you’d want to change the  temperature is a trickier one to get to grips with, but if you’re dead set on languishing in the doldrums of late-capitalist pre-apocalyptic despair (and many contemporary listeners are, it seems), you’d be hard pressed to find a better way to go about it than this.

Listen & buy on bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2013, The Stranger